Chapter 1
Chapter One
TEMPERANCE
Three and a half weeks later
It was amazing the things you could learn working as a waitress in a small-town diner.
In Chicago, the city I’d called home for twenty-one years, you could live across from the same person for more than a decade and still not know them.
I knew this as fact because I’d been in my tiny apartment for that amount of time and still didn’t know a single one of my neighbors.
We’d pass each other in the halls and offer a chin lift or short wave, but that was the extent of it.
Everyone was too busy or too consumed with their smartphones to get to know anyone else.
I told myself I loved where I lived, but the truth of it was, although I was surrounded by people constantly, city life could lead to a very lonely existence. And I’d unwittingly allowed myself to be sucked into it.
Today was only my second day back at Evergreen Diner, and already I knew of all the goings-on within the town limits. People in small towns knew each other. People in small towns talked. People in small towns made it their business to meet the newcomers and make them feel welcome.
I wasn’t necessarily a newcomer, but I’d been gone for so long that there were plenty of faces I didn’t recognize. Though that didn’t mean they weren’t just as open and friendly as those who remembered me.
But man, did they talk. And what they had to talk about was downright intriguing, albeit slightly terrifying.
Hope Valley had always been a peaceful, quiet place with hardly any crime. When my parents had been killed in a burglary gone very, very wrong, it had rocked this sleepy little place to its very foundation. Stuff like that just didn’t happen, not here.
Or at least that’s what I thought. Hell, it was what everybody thought. And for the second time in twenty-one years, Hope Valley was shaken.
It started with a rash of break-ins. Fortunately, that man had been caught, but not before his sister—who I didn’t know—had been caught in the crossfire, quite literally, taking bullets from some really nasty men who’d been after him.
All the good guys in that scenario came out with their lives, and the bad guys had not, another fortune in a string of nasty. But that wasn’t even the worst of it. Oh no, the worst of it had come with the murder of Martin Henderson.
A murder that was still, to everyone’s knowledge, unsolved.
Back when I was growing up here, Martin Henderson hadn’t been very popular. He was like the real-life version of Clint Eastwood’s character in Gran Torino, only without a single one of the redeeming qualities.
When I turned fourteen, my parents got me a puppy for my birthday.
Buddy was part bloodhound, part chocolate lab, and was actually so ugly he was adorable.
I had the big, sweet goofball for a year and a half, and had never been able to break him of his tendency to dig no matter how hard I tried.
One day, after I let him out to do his business, he managed to dig his way under our fence and out of the backyard.
I’d barely made it around the side of the house in search of him when I heard the gunshot.
Martin Henderson claimed he was simply defending himself and his property by shooting my dog, but everyone knew he was full of shit.
Buddy wouldn’t have hurt a soul. He was the kindest, sweetest dog that ever existed.
It caused a stir in town. People took sides, and it started to get pretty nasty before my parents stepped in to play mediator.
They settled everyone’s discord and even offered to get me a new dog, but I said no.
It wouldn’t have been the same. Any dog I got wouldn’t have been Buddy.
After that, I harbored an intense disdain for the man living down the street that never went away, but that didn’t mean I felt he deserved to be killed, let alone in his own home.
No one deserved that, and having heard about his death, the past had come barreling to the forefront of my mind and refused to budge.
But that wasn’t all I’d learned in the past two days.
In spite of years of avoidance, I found myself soaking up every morsel of information on Hayes Walker that came my way like a bone-dry sponge.
I’d learned of his time in the Marines. I learned he’d gotten out and joined the Hope Valley police force.
I learned he worked his way up to detective.
And I learned he was the lead on the murder of Martin Henderson.
For all the years I’d spent blaming him for what happened, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of relief that he’d made a good life for himself.
To hear the people in town talk, Hayes was a well-respected, well-loved member of the community.
He’d built an incredible life for himself, and I was glad for that.
The animosities I’d held onto and let fester inside me for so long, the animosities that I allowed to root so deep in me that I’d ripped myself from everything and everyone I’d ever known, and done it without so much as a backward glance, were no longer there, seeping into my blood and unleashing their poison.
I hadn’t even realized those cold, hard feelings I’d left Hope Valley with were gone until I’d come back.
They’d drifted away little by little over the past twenty-one years, so obscurely that I didn’t know it had been happening until I laid eyes on him for the first time, standing across from me at the cemetery and there’d been no venom coursing through my veins.
“Hey, honey. Can I get a refill?”
Twisting around, I spotted Joe Silvester with his empty coffee mug held aloft.
My lips stretched into a smile. Waitressing was, I quickly discovered, like riding a bike—you never forgot.
And one of the first lessons I’d ever learned was the bigger the smile, the bigger the tip.
Same went if you flirted a little. That training was obviously ingrained in me if the wink I offered the older man as I sidled up to him was anything to go off of.
“This makes your fifth, Joe,” I warned playfully.
“Hasn’t your doctor told you that too much caffeine is bad for you?
” The nurse in me cringed every time I served the older men and women in town something I knew in my gut was clogging some serious arteries.
But after two days I’d learned good and well that these folks were set in their ways and had no intention of changing.
“He stopped with the warnings when I told him my fist to his ugly mug was worse for him,” Joe replied with not one single ounce of remorse.
I gave him a shake of my head in mock disappointment and said, “I’d expect nothing less from you, Joe,” as I topped him off.
Joe was just one of the many familiar faces I’d seen the past couple of days.
He was about five years older than my father would have been had he lived this long and, while surly, was as lovable as could be.
“Lucky you’re such a looker, Tempie, or your constant needlin’ over my health would be a real pain in my ass.”
“Give it time,” I said with another wink. “Couple more days and my gift for being a pain in the ass will outweigh my looks. You’ll see.”
The corners of his mouth quirked in an attempt to fight his smile. “Damn cryin’ shame how all you pretty ladies have a knack for crazy.”
“Yeah, but we make it worth it.” I shot him a saucy little finger wave and started back around the counter just as Ralph’s booming voice bellowed, “Order up for table five!” from the passthrough.
I started in that direction when the bell over the front door chimed. Turning to greet the latest in a long line of customers, the words died on my lips when I saw the man walking through.
His eyes remained downcast and his expression was drawn tight as the door closed behind him, only coming up when Sally called, “Hey there, Detective.”
“Sally.” Hayes tilted his chin, gaze pointed at only her as he requested, “Can I get a coffee when you have a chance?”
“You got it.”
He nodded, dropped his focus to the floor once again, headed for a booth toward the back, and settled in. And in that moment, something came over me that I couldn’t explain. When Sally reached for coffeepot I’d just replaced, my hand shot out to stop her.
“I got it, Sal. You mind taking care of table five?”
She stared at me for several beats before a knowing smile finally stretched across her face. Then, with an almost indecipherable nod, she turned to the passthrough, leaving me to face the man I’d walked away from twenty-one years ago.
Hayes
The dull, persistent ache behind my eyes had only gotten worse as the day progressed.
I’d stared at the board at the station until my eyes crossed, read and reread the case file until the words blurred together, and I still had nothing.
The first murder in Hope Valley in over two decades, and there was shit—not a lead, not a clue, not a fucking suspect. Nothing.
In the past several weeks, the only guy who looked good for the death of Martin Henderson was cleared of the crime, and the residents of Hope Valley were growing restless, rightfully so.
The file was carefully tucked under my arm as I pulled the door to the diner open and stepped inside.
“Hey there, Detective,” Sally called as I made my way to the booth in the back I always occupied when I stopped in for lunch.
“Sally,” I returned, tilting my chin up in her direction. “Can I get a coffee when you have a chance?”
She shot me a thumbs-up. “You got it.”
Settling in on the side that faced the door, I slapped the folder down on the table, flipped it open, and got down to work, hoping a change of scenery was what I needed to open my mind to something I might have been missing all this time.
I was in the middle of scanning the first page when a mug appeared in my line of sight, a trail of steam wafting up from the hot coffee inside. “Thanks, Sal. I—” My attention lifted up and the words died on my tongue.