311 Pelican Court - Debbie Macomber [30]
Yeah, sure!
Seven
As a Seattle police detective, Roy McAfee had always had a hard time letting go of a case, no matter how cold. That hadn’t changed, although he was now retired and living in Cedar Cove, where he’d become a private investigator. His dogged determination served him well in his new job. He liked his work, liked the diversity of cases that came across his desk. He was good at what he did, and he knew it. Roy had discovered through his years of police work that if he was patient enough and lucky, he eventually discovered what he needed to know. However, things didn’t always turn out exactly the way he expected.
The disappearance of Dan Sherman was a prime example of that.
Grace had come to him shortly after her husband had disappeared. She was a strong woman. In his experience as a private detective, Roy had been hired by several women looking for answers regarding their husbands’ activities or whereabouts. Twice he’d been asked to track down errant spouses. In one case, he’d started the investigation on a missing husband and had only gotten a week into the search when his client told him to quit looking. She’d claimed that in retrospect she was better off without the bastard. She didn’t want to know where the hell he was. If he’d taken off with another woman, as she suspected, then the other woman was welcome to him.
From the little bit he’d learned about the missing husband, Roy figured his client had made a good choice.
It surprised him that Grace Sherman had contacted him again. Dan had been found, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and laid to rest. Roy assumed the case was closed. She had the answers she needed, but not necessarily the ones she wanted.
He heard the outside door open and glanced at the small clock on the corner of his desk. Twenty-five after twelve. A minute later Corrie, his wife and business manager, stepped into his office.
“Grace Sherman is here for her twelve-thirty appointment.”
She ushered Grace into the room. Corrie’s eyes met his, and she shrugged as though to say she was as much in the dark about this meeting as he was.
“Have a seat,” Roy said, gesturing to the upholstered chair across from his desk.
“Would you care for a cup of coffee?” Corrie asked.
Grace declined, and Corrie left, closing the door behind her.
“What can I do for you?” Roy began. He leaned back in his chair and waited.
Grace held her purse in her lap, her hands nervously gripping the clasp. “I came because I wasn’t sure where else to turn,” she said, gazing down at the floor. “It has to do with Dan.”
“Unfinished business?”
She nodded. “Before he—before he killed himself, he wrote me a letter. Sheriff Davis gave it to me.” She opened her purse. “The letter has some…information and I don’t know what to do with it.”
Roy didn’t remember hearing anything about a letter. “What kind of information?”
Grace reached inside her purse for the envelope and handed it across the desk to Roy. “No one else has read this. Not even my daughters.”
“What about Sheriff Davis?” Roy asked.
“I…I think he might’ve started reading it and then realized it was personal, and out of respect for Dan and me, he…” She paused, then shook her head. “I don’t know if he read it or not. I doubt it.”
Roy slid the letter out of the envelope. The writing in the first few lines was even and precise, as though Dan had carefully considered each word. Halfway down the second page the writing grew large, slanting downward. At the bottom, where Dan had signed his name, it was barely legible.
Roy turned back to the first page and began to read. Dan Sherman apologized to his wife for killing himself, and for the hell he’d put her through during their marriage.
Then Dan relayed the details of an incident that had happened in Vietnam when he’d walked into a village and killed a woman and her child. He’d mowed them down with bullets, murdered them out of instinctive fear. In the desperation of a young man willing to do anything to get out of the war alive, he’d killed innocents. Others had, too. How many had died in the village