Cold River - Carla Neggers [102]
“When was that?” Sean asked.
“The fall before he was killed. The last time I saw him go up there was late November, I’d say. I don’t think he went up much over the winter. I wasn’t there in April.” He shrugged. “You know where I was.”
“Bowie, were you used by these killers?”
“We all were, Hannah,” he said.
Bowie rose stiffly, nodded goodbye and left. Hannah spun around to Sean. “Give me a minute before you follow me.”
“Half a minute.”
“Sean—”
“Clock’s ticking.”
She sighed and ran out the door, barely aware of the dropping temperature and snow flurries as she caught up with Bowie. “You worked at Rose’s house in November,” she said to him.
He dug his keys out of his vest pocket.
“She hasn’t told anyone else,” Hannah said. “Her brothers don’t know.”
“It’s not a secret. I just don’t talk to them about my work.”
“I understand that. Bowie, you know what I’m asking.”
“Nah. I really don’t.” He grinned at her. “You’re about ten times smarter than I am, Hannah. If there’s something you want to know, just ask me. Remember that when you’re a prosecutor.”
She paused on the sidewalk. “Were you at Rose’s house the day Melanie Kendall was killed?”
“Yes. That afternoon. I waited for her driveway to get plowed and went up and did some work. I was on the tail end of the job. I finished up before she came home. You and the Camerons can believe what you want.”
“I make up my own mind,” Hannah said. “I don’t rely on what anyone else believes or wants to believe.” She followed him onto the street as he went around to the driver’s side of his van. “When I look at the Camerons, I see four siblings who want to know the truth about their father’s death, whatever it is.”
“Define truth,” Bowie said as he got into the van and shut the door.
Dismissed, Hannah jumped back to the sidewalk as Sean fell in beside her. “That was more than thirty seconds,” she said.
“It’s so damn cold my watch stopped.”
“It’s cleaning night at the café tonight,” she said, her teeth chattering more from nerves, she realized, than the cold. “The police already crawled through the kitchen and dining room in November. They looked in the cellar, but the jar—it would have taken one of us to have recognized it. Dominique, Beth or me. It could have been there all along.”
“Have the police talked to Devin?”
“They haven’t said. He’s over eighteen. They don’t have to tell me.”
She kept walking, but Sean easily matched her pace.
“Why did you come back here?” she asked, without looking at him. “Why didn’t you just stay in California?”
“People care about you, Hannah. They always have.”
She felt a snowflake land on her cheek and melt, and she pretended not to hear him. “You came back because you and your brothers think I might be onto something that can lead you to whoever hired those killers.”
“Maybe I came back because I couldn’t stop thinking about kissing you.”
She smiled suddenly, in spite of her tension. “Once again, I see why people call you the charming Cameron.”
“Who does?”
“Your brothers.”
“Ha. A chunk of granite’s more charming than either of them, so that’s not saying much.”
“Jo and Beth Harper say so, too.”
He grinned. “Then it must be so.” He slipped one hand into hers and with the other brushed snowflakes off her hair. “How are you doing, Hannah?”
“Devin didn’t steal that money. Neither did Bowie.”
He nodded. “I know.”
She leaned into him, even as she warned herself against falling for him, wanting more from him than he could give. “Thank you for coming back.”
He kissed the top of her head and squeezed her hand. “Let’s go grab some rags and get cleaning.”
Twenty-Six
January 3—Washington, D.C.
The inside of Jo Harper’s ground-level Georgetown apartment was more or less what Grit had expected from the outside—small, efficient and a notch above a hotel room in personality. She was a Secret Service agent. She didn’t count on staying in one place for long.
She’d had a call about Hannah Shay’s discovery of the Three Sisters Café’s empty petty-cash jar in the cellar. The cops were all excited, which showed Grit just how desperate