In Dark Waters Page 5

He drove down Second Street past the older buildings toward the town's oldest residential neighborhood. Thick oaks lined the curbed streets flanked by neat lawns and large blooming pink, white and red azaleas.

  "So where did you and your mother live while you were away from Grant's Forge?"

  "We traveled a lot. We never stayed in one place for more than a year."

  "What'd she do for a living?" When they'd worked together, he'd asked about her mother, but she'd always dodged the questions.

  Kelsey shoved her hand through her hair. "Whatever suited her. There was a time when she wanted to be an actress. I was real little then. So we moved to L. A. But she spent most of her time waiting tables so we headed north to Seattle. She worked in a bakery and for a while we had all the day-old cookies and bread we could eat. I liked the school there, but the rain depressed Donna. She got into drugs and I ended up in foster care for a while."

  Mitch tightened his hands on the steering wheel, but he said nothing. People often got very uncomfortable when she talked about her childhood. If they'd grown up in a happy home, her stories made them feel guilty. If they'd had a bad time, she was a tangible reminder. So she'd stopped talking about herself.

  "Anyway, to make a long story short, we jumped around the country until we landed here when I was fifteen."

  "Your mother ever make any enemies?"

  "Lots. She had a knack for pissing people off."

  He turned onto Mulberry Street—her aunt's street—and she found herself tensing. The trees were a little larger, but other than that, the row houses were exactly as she remembered.

  Mitch pulled up in front of Ruth's house without having to ask the address. His familiarity with her life irked her.

  She reached for her duffel bag and pulled out her camera. She popped a disk from the camera. "These are the pictures of the car. They might help you." She was grateful to get rid of the images.

  Mitch tucked the disk in his pocket. "I'll get this copied and returned."

  She closed up her camera and replaced it in the duffel. "Great. Thanks for the lift."

  He shut off the engine. "Do you have a key?"

  "Ruth always hid one under the flowerpot on the front porch. My guess is that it's still there." She opened her door and, to her surprise, he also got out. "I can take it from here."

  He didn't miss a step. "Just making sure you get in all right."

  His overprotectiveness should have irritated her, but she found it oddly comforting. There was something rock-solid-solid about Mitch that comforted her more than words ever could.

  Fishing for, but not coming up with, a smart remark, she settled on silence and walked up the cracked sidewalk up to the covered front porch that stretched the length of the house. The black front door had been freshly painted and the brass mail slot in the center of the door and kick plate glistened in the afternoon sun. A lime-green metal glider sat to her right, and to her left a white wicker chair and a large clay pot that held wilted red geraniums.

  She tipped back the geranium pot and easily found the front door key. "Ruth didn't change a thing."

  "Older folks don't usually."

  She slid the key into the lock. "She's been old forever."

  "Eighty-seven when she died."

  The news surprised Kelsey. She'd never known how old Ruth was. The woman would have been in her mid-seventies when she'd taken Kelsey in. Few women of that age would have taken on a surly teen, and Kelsey couldn't help but admire her aunt.

  She turned the key and opened the door. A week's worth of mail had piled in the darkened entryway, forcing Kelsey to kneel down and pick it up. As always, the house smelled of overcooked green beans and bacon grease. Her stomach soured.

  As she stood with the mail, Mitch switched on the light. Two of the three bulbs in the ceiling light fixture were blown and the remaining one cast eerie shadows down the long center hallway. Dust floated in the air and coated the side table. A smudged mirror hung to her right. Floor-to-ceiling newspapers and shoe boxes lined the hallway.

  Mitch yanked off his glasses. He scanned the clutter and dust. "What happened here?"

  "Home sweet home."

  "The place had always looked like this?"

  Kelsey remembered the first time she'd seen the inside of the house. She'd half expected Herman and Lily Munster to walk down the stairs. "Yep."

  "I had no idea."

  "Most people didn't. Ruth was always good about keeping the exterior and the front hallway clean. The other rooms must really be full if her mess was moved out here."

  "Damn."

  She shrugged. "Look on the bright side. If there was ever any clue about Donna, Ruth has it tucked away somewhere. It's just a matter of finding it."

  Mitch followed Kelsey down the hallway through the maze of rooms filled with more papers and boxes. As he stepped over crate after crate, he had a new appreciation for Kelsey. She'd not only survived Donna but this insanity as well. And to top it off, she'd gotten out and made something of herself. He stared at the long dining room table piled high with rows and rows of mismatched socks. "I can't believe you lived in this mess."

  "Two glorious years." She wandered toward the hallway and the carpeted center staircase. "She let me keep my room clean."

  He followed Kelsey up the stairs to a door at the end of the hallway. She pushed it open and stepped inside.

  The room was unlike any other in the house. It was very neat. The double bed and dresser and mirror were simply made and not very expensive, but other than a coating of dust they were clean. Teen posters, along with snapshots taken by Kelsey, still covered the walls. The photos were of cats, dogs, birds and a circus elephant. No people, he noted wryly. The bedspread and curtains were a deep purple and covered with large yellow flowers.

  Kelsey opened the curtains and let the sunlight stream in, catching the blond streaks in her hair. His gut tightened as he looked at her and he wanted to pull her into his arms, protect her and, yes, see if she still felt as soft as she once had.

  "When I first moved in, it took me a solid week of cleaning to clear out this room. It drove Ruth nuts and she wouldn't let me throw anything out. I had to move everything to the attic, but I insisted on an organized room. Since I was a little kid, I've always been a stickler for organization and neatness."

  A clean room was about the only thing she could control in her life. He remembered how precisely her dive equipment had been arranged on the tarp by the quarry. "Do you really think you can find anything about Donna in this place?"

  "If anything, I am persistent. And if the medical examiner takes as long as you say he will, it will give me something to do."

  "I've got a truck you can borrow."

  "How about a forklift?"

  He laughed. "It could be arranged."

  "I might take you up on it." She set her cloth sack purse on the bed and headed downstairs.

  "You're not really going to stay here, are you?" He hated the idea of leaving her here.

  She shrugged. "I might as well. I'll save money and have more time to work on this place."

  He studied her a moment. "All right. I'll bring your car by in a few hours. At least you'll be able to get around town."

  "Thanks."

  A mouse scurried behind a stack of papers. Mitch hesitated a moment. "Take care."

  She followed him to the front door. The debris in the house seemed to press in around him like a wraith. When he jerked the front door open, sunlight flooded into the dreariness.

  He got in his car. As he drove down the street, he glanced in his rearview mirror at her standing and watching him leave. Sadness seemed to settle on her slumped shoulders. There'd been a time when he'd made her so happy. And now, like everything else in this town, he only conjured up sad memories.

  Mitch expected the protective urge he felt for Kelsey to fade, but he couldn't shake the image of her standing in the doorway. He didn't like leaving her there one bit. The damn place gave him the creeps.

 
Instead of heading north toward his home in the hills outside of town, he turned south toward the office. He wanted to poke through the department's old files and see if there was anything on Donna Warren.

  He parked in front of the one-story square building. Unlike the buildings in the historic district, the police department was housed in a simple modular structure. It had no character and few windows. The lack of windows bothered him. Often he'd said he'd take a pay cut for a large window he could open and close.

  Mitch walked up the concrete sidewalk to the double glass doors. Mabel Riley sat at the dispatcher's desk. She'd worked at the station for a good twenty years and she knew everyone in town. She'd tied her gray hair back and wore her customary white collared shirt and khaki pants. She wasn't a cop, but she'd always liked the idea of having a uniform.

  "There's no word on the body yet," she said, reading his mind. "It's on its way to Richmond."

  "I didn't figure there'd be news. I just thought I'd look in some of the old files and see what I could find."

  "So you think the body is Donna?"

  Mitch lifted a brow. "Do you know everything that goes on in this town?"

  "And then some." Her voice rumbled like raw whiskey. "So is the body Donna Warren?"

  He moved to the front desk and hitched his hip up on the edge. "I don't know. Kelsey Warren sure thinks it is."

  "Why?"

  "A bracelet found on the body. She said she gave it to Donna for Mother's Day."

  Mabel shrugged. "Donna could have hocked it. She'd have sold anything for money."

  "You knew Donna?"

  "Went to high school with her. We weren't friends but knew of each other."

  "So she as wild as they say?"

  "Oh, yeah. She discovered men when she was fifteen and never looked back. Ran through them like tissue paper. She was a real user."

  The bitterness in Mabel's voice surprised him. "How did Kelsey figure into all this?"

  "I don't know much about the kid. I'd joined the army right after high school and by the time I got back, Donna had left town."

  "Any files on Donna?"

  "I'm a step ahead of you there, boss." A smug smile curved the edges of her thin lips as she pulled out a stack of yellowed files. "I went down to the records department and pulled what I could find on Donna. There's not much. Mostly petty stuff."

  Mitch accepted the files. "Mabel, you scare me sometimes."

  She grinned. "Part of the job, baby."

  Mitch retreated down the hallway to his office in the back. The room was simply furnished with a large desk, a computer and file cabinets. There was a small round conference table, covered with piles of files, across the room. He liked keeping the active files in sight so they weren't forgotten. But after seeing Ruth's house, he resolved to clean it up when he got the chance.

  Though he'd held the office for two years, he'd not gotten around to hanging pictures on the walls. He did have a browning plant his mother had given him and a picture on the wall of the Blue Ridge Mountains that had come with the office.

  He sat down in the rolling chair and slid under his desk. He flipped open the first picture.

  Stapled on the left inside flap was a mug shot of Donna Warren taken when she was about eighteen. For a moment, Mitch stared at her, dumbstruck. At first glance, she was the spitting image of Kelsey. Substitute Donna's Farrah Fawcett hairdo for Kelsey's sleek straight cut and they could have been twins.

  But the more he stared at the picture, the more he saw differences. Even as young as she had been, Donna possessed a hardness in her eyes. And her eyes were brown, not the deep rich blue of Kelsey's.

  He set the picture down and scanned the record. Mabel was right. There wasn't much here. Donna had gotten in trouble when she was fourteen for stealing jewelry from the department store. A year later, Ruth filed charges against Donna for stealing money from her, but she later dropped the charges. A couple of drunk and disorderly charges followed and then nothing. Donna was trouble, but there was nothing here in the records to hint at a murder motive.

  Mitch leaned back in his chair. Donna would have been about twenty when Kelsey was born. He searched his memory back to the days he and Kelsey had worked together at the scuba center.

  He remembered the first time he'd really noticed Kelsey. It had been his first day working in the scuba shop one hot June morning. She'd been working behind the counter, laughing at a joke of Stu's. Her laughter had rung in his head like church bells. So he'd bought her a soda that afternoon and invited her to sit out back with him. She'd blushed deeply and hesitated before she'd agreed. She'd worn a blue tank top, white shorts and flip flops. He'd wanted to kiss her.

  Instead, he'd asked her about herself. She'd dodged most of his questions. But she had told him that she'd been born in Richmond. Richmond. He wished now he'd had enough sense to press for answers. He wasn't sure what he could have done for her but he should have shown more interest.

  Mitch shook off the memory.

  He sent a telex to the Richmond City Police Department. He briefed them on the body that had been found and requested information on Donna Warren. Kelsey had said they'd lived in Los Angeles and Seattle so he telexed the police departments out there as well.

  He didn't know where the Donna Warren trail would lead, but he was willing to follow it for Kelsey's sake. He owed her that much.

  Mitch checked his watch. He'd left Kelsey over an hour ago.

  He could get her car from the Yancey Motel and deliver it to her. Maybe on the way, he could pick up some Chinese food. She'd not eaten much at the diner and had to be hungry. "Or you could leave her the hell alone," he muttered to himself.

  He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. His head throbbed.

  What the devil was he thinking? He and Kelsey were oil and water. He was rooted to Grant's Forge and she'd be gone as soon as the investigation was complete.

  They had no future together and, after seeing Ruth's house, he guessed she had more issues than a politician. Damn.

  He should leave well enough alone.

  He should.

  But he didn't.

  "Mabel, get Harris on the phone. I need a lift over to the Yancey Motel."

  Chapter 6

  Kelsey heard the car pull into Ruth's driveway at half past seven. She let loose the garbage bag she'd been filling with old newspapers and walked to the front window to peer out. To her surprise, it was Mitch driving her car. Behind him in his car was a Grant's Forge cop and behind him another cop in a patrol car. She'd never expected Mitch to return so soon. His promptness was oddly touching.

  Kelsey set the bag aside and walked out onto the front porch. Crickets hummed and moths darted around the front porch light. Mitch waved to the other officer, who climbed into the patrol car and drove off, and then strode toward the front porch. Carrying a large brown paper bag, he walked with the grace of a predator confident in his strength and skills. Her body tingled at the sight of him and she found herself wishing she'd brushed her hair.

  "You got yourself a regular parade there, Sheriff," she said. Sarcasm seemed her best defense now.

  Even white teeth flashed. "All I need is a whistle and a baton and I'll be all set."

  She laughed. She could fall for this man very easily—again—and the idea frightened her. Why couldn't Mitch be thirty pounds overweight, balding, with a wife and three kids?

  The cop climbed out of Mitch's car and into the one behind it. The officer behind the wheel tooted his horn and drove off. Mitch waved goodbye.

  "So what's in the bag?" Her voice sounded a bit hoarse.

  He paused at the bottom of the front porch, planting his foot on the second step. "Dinner. Seeing as lunch got nixed, I figured you were hungry."

  The rich smells of ginger and chicken drifted from the bag. And on cue, her stomach grumbled.

  She pressed her hand to her flat belly and despite her best efforts blushed with embarrassment.

  "I see I'm just in ti
me," he said.

  "I appreciate the housecall, but I've got a lot of work to do in this place."

  "A half hour won't make a difference with this place." He stared up at the house. His distaste for it was clear. "I still can't get over this place. From the outside, it looks to be in mint condition."

  "Ruth was always concerned about appearances. She didn't want the neighbors talking ill of her."

  He shook his head. "It's a nice night. Let's eat outside."

  "Thanks but—"

  "No buts." He sat down on the porch, staking his claim, and started to unpack an assortment of white takeout boxes. He also produced two cups full of hot tea. He held out a plastic fork to her. "I didn't know what you liked, so I got a little of everything."

  He'd slept with her—taken her virginity—and he didn't know what kind of Chinese food she liked. The irony irritated her and seemed all the more reason to tell him to shove off.

  However, Mitch Garrett wasn't going anywhere. She could push the matter, but the truth was she was hungry. She took the fork and sat down on the step.

  The evening air was soft and the sky was filled with hundreds of stars. She inhaled, grateful not to smell any dust.

  She chose the box filled with stir-fried vegetables and dug in. It tasted good.

  Mitch chose the beef dish. "So you uncovered anything yet?"

  "I got my room cleaned up. Sheets changed, dusted. Now, I'm working my way through the newspapers. She has papers that go back thirty years."

  He poked around the vegetables, stabbed a piece of beef and ate it. "I've got a couple of nephews, they're fourteen. Mouthy, but hardworking. I'll send them over tomorrow."

  "That's very kind, but no thanks." Her debt to him was mounting too fast as it was.

  "Why not?"

  "I'm not good at accepting help, if you hadn't noticed."

  "I noticed." He rooted through the white box for more beef. "What's wrong with taking a little help?"

  "Strings. Help always comes with strings?"

  His jaw tightened slightly. "No strings, Kelsey. Just being neighborly."

  "No easing any old guilt?" There, it was out.