Cold River - Carla Neggers [51]
“Do you like having him back in town?”
“Neutral. No opinion.”
Sean stood up from the stool. He’d had only two sips of his beer. His head was already screwed up enough with his reaction to Hannah in her cellar. It wasn’t thinking about kissing her that he regretted. It was not kissing her—a line of thinking, he knew, that was the path to frustration.
“What about Bowie and Hannah?”
“I’ve never understood their relationship.” Liam reached for Sean’s glass. “She saw my uncle in action. Bowie’s father. He’s a great guy to the rest of the world, but he was rough on Bowie. A bad drunk. When your father’s against you, maybe you feel like the whole world’s against you.”
“Does Bowie blame Hannah for his arrest—for being here that night, then for showing my father where to find him?”
“Anything’s possible. I don’t claim to know how Bowie thinks. All I know is it’s a good thing you grabbed her that night. Those guys weren’t going to stop. Who knows how far they’d have gone with it. With her.”
“Bowie should just have walked out of here.”
“The insults were tough to listen to.”
Sean noticed his friend hesitate. “What is it?”
“Nothing. I don’t know.” Liam scratched the side of his mouth, awkward now. “I haven’t seen those stupid bastards in here since March. Derek Cutshaw. That guy’s a prick. I don’t know if he was just talking about Hannah.”
“Who else?”
Liam dumped Sean’s beer into the small sink in front of him, below the bar. “Doesn’t matter.” He looked up. “Was that trip out here in March the last time you saw your father?”
Sean nodded.
“I’m sorry, Sean. I’m really sorry.”
He left the bar, buttoning his coat as he walked down Main Street to the building he owned and rented out to Hannah Shay and her brothers. The gallery on the west end of the first floor was struggling. Three Sisters Café was thriving. His father had been surprised by the café’s immediate success. He’d never expected there were enough people in Black Falls who’d keep such a place in business.
He dialed Elijah. “Police done at the crypt?”
“All set. They didn’t find anything that disputes either Hannah’s or Bowie’s story.”
“Elijah, was it an attack?”
“It wasn’t a raccoon or a ghost,” his brother said.
“Kids? Could Bowie have walked into the middle of a drug payoff? Could he have been in the middle of one and Hannah—”
“No evidence of either.”
“Does Jo believe Hannah told her the truth?”
“The truth,” Elijah said, “just not the whole truth.”
“Meaning she stuck to the facts and didn’t tell Jo what she’s thinking.”
“Hannah never tells anyone what she’s thinking. Keep that in mind, brother.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Sean said, and disconnected.
He stood on the shoveled, sanded sidewalk and watched Hannah pull open the heavy front door and trot down the stone steps. She had on a simple black wool dress coat, her skirt even longer, her flat-heeled boots suited to a walk on a cold Vermont winter evening. She wasn’t wearing gloves or a hat, her fair hair not pulled back, shining in the glow of the Christmas lights.
She handed him his scarf. “I forgot to return this,” she said nonchalantly, as if seeing him on Main Street was an everyday occurrence and nothing had just happened between them.
“Go ahead and wear it.” He wrapped the scarf around her neck. Her bruised cheek wasn’t badly discolored, and the swelling appeared to be no worse. “I’ll walk over to the Robinsons’ with you.”
“You’re coming to dinner?”
He smiled at her slightly stricken look. “I am.”
She didn’t seem tired or self-conscious as they walked up the street. They turned onto a side street and crossed a covered bridge, rebuilt after the original had come apart in a flood fifty years ago. The Robinsons’ Greek Revival house was another twenty yards past the river. Its white wooden fence was draped with holiday greenery. Multicolored lights sparkled on a spruce tree in the front yard.
“Is Judge Robinson helping you prepare for the bar exam?” Sean asked.
“He’s bugging me to get a study partner and cut back on work at the