Chapter 2 Cold Case Thawing?
One day later
Ashiver worked its way down April Chandrakanta’s spine as she drove past the city limit sign and entered Heart Lake.
Though she’d grown up in the small cattle town, there’d been no reason to return before now.
While she was young, her parents hadn’t tried very hard to fit in.
They hadn’t made friends, attended church, or joined any clubs.
Both of them were research scientists — all-work-and-no-play kind of people who stuck to themselves.
They’d lived in a posh townhouse on the sparkling lake the town was named after.
The views there were still gorgeous. She drank them in as she slowly drove past the lake.
A light breeze was whistling off the distant foothills, making the blue water ripple.
Sadly, because of her strict upbringing, April’s biggest after-school activity hadn’t been splashing at the water’s edge or playing with the neighbor children.
Not even close. According to her parents, a child’s time was best spent doing homework.
A few days after she’d completed her residency, her dad had whisked her American mom to India to help him care for his aging parents. In their absence, it had been all too easy for April to marry her job. Being a workaholic was like a family curse.
The only upside to it was her extraordinary success as a forensic pathologist. Her expertise was highly sought after.
Unhampered by family ties or other roots, she’d been free to travel from coast to coast, helping put some of the country’s most heinous criminals behind bars.
She’d spent most of her career in metro areas.
Plying her skills at the much smaller Heart Lake Police Department was going to be a jarring change of pace. In Heart Lake, there would be no noisy crowds to fade into. No throngs of pedestrians on the sidewalk to hide her painfully solitary existence.
As she approached the busier downtown area, where the quaint brick buildings were bunched closer together and the line of vehicles still didn’t qualify as “traffic”, she was suddenly unsure if she was ready for the slower, quieter hum and flow of small-town life.
It was unnerving to be showing up with nothing more than her professional credentials and accolades to show for the many years she’d been away.
No doubt most of her high school classmates were married by now.
Many of them probably had children and even grandchildren.
A few might be divorced, widowed, or remarried.
She’d experienced none of those joys and blamed it on spending more time with skeletons than with other living, breathing humans. A quiet, studious forty-eight-year-old wasn’t exactly the life of the party.
Nor was she in town for a social call. The only person in Heart Lake she’d stayed in touch with over the years had reached out for strictly professional reasons.
Regardless, it had been wonderful to hear from Gil Remington.
The way she’d jumped all over the retired sheriff’s invitation to assist with a case was proof of how starved she was for human connections — something she’d never thought too hard about until recently.
Maybe it was because she was pushing fifty, or maybe her return to Heart Lake was amping up the flow of nostalgia. Whatever it was, it was making her feel restless and on edge.
She shifted uncomfortably behind the steering wheel as she slowly drove around the brown brick building that served as Lonestar Security’s home office.
When she was a kid, the lovely old structure had been a post office.
Despite housing a security firm these days, the exterior looked the same as she remembered.
The white stone outsets along the roofline were original.
It would be interesting to see what changes they’d made on the inside.
The parking garage behind the building, however, was brand-spanking new. Gil had told her to park back there.
She braked at the gate attendant’s station and rolled down her window.
“I’m April Chandrakanta,” she announced briskly.
“Gil Remington is expecting me.” She flashed her driver’s license at the man for good measure.
He carefully examined her driver’s license.
Then he raised the gate for her and waved her through.
He must have called ahead to let Gil know she’d arrived, because the tall, retired sheriff was waiting for her by the glass entrance door after she parked. She stepped out of her old Volvo and walked his way with her briefcase in hand.
Even though she hadn’t seen him in person for over twenty years, he was the same Gil she remembered. Just older, with a tinge of frost in his auburn hair around the temples.
“Dr. Chandrakanta,” he drawled. “I’ve waited a long time to call you that.” He was grinning widely at her while sizing her up the same way she was sizing him up. Reading and analyzing body language came with the territory of their respective professions.
“Just April,” she corrected, holding out a hand. “Unless you want me calling you Sheriff.” She preferred not to sling titles around with one of the few people in the world she called a friend.
“Nah, you can skip the sheriff stuff. I’m retired.” He gripped her hand in a full cowboy squeeze she hadn’t realized she’d missed until this very second. Nobody in the country could shake a person’s hand like a native of Heart Lake.
For a moment, she was overcome with nostalgia.
“You don’t look retired.” She glanced pointedly at his solid black outfit.
He was wearing a long sleeve dry-wicking shirt tucked into cargo pants.
The cuffs of his pants were tucked into combat boots.
A shiny black-on-black logo was heat-seared above his left breast pocket.
It read LONESTAR SECURITY in all caps. It was a uniform designed to blend into the background while leaving him mobile enough for just about anything — the perfect gear for the security expert he’d become during his second career.
“Only from the force.” He held open the door for her, gallantly ushering her inside the office building.
There was that cowboy charm again. “I didn’t get very far away from them, though.
As you’ll soon see for yourself, Lonestar Security works closely with the Heart Lake Police Department.
They subcontract all kinds of work to us. ”
It made sense to her. “I imagine they appreciate having your retired sheriff skills on tap.”
He nodded. “That, and an attorney, several private detectives, a couple of forensic artists, and an army of personal security guards.”
She was impressed. “Sounds like a sweet deal for the police.”
“It is.” He sobered. “For all of us, actually. For me, it’s the next best thing to being on the force. If my first wife hadn’t gotten terminally ill, I might’ve never turned in my badge. That said, I have no complaints about the way things turned out.”
They walked down a wide hallway with a black-and-white marble floor to reach his office. A nameplate engraved with Gil Remington, Partner was mounted beside the door. “No complaints whatsoever.” His voice grew abruptly softer and gentler as he crouched down and held out his arms.
A chubby toddler waddled his way, babbling, “Da Da! Da Da!” He’d been waiting for Gil inside his office.
A second toddler was right on the heels of the first toddler, moving a tad slower because of the enormous stuffed bunny she was clutching.
April blinked at the realization that she was staring at nearly identical twins. Though one was a boy and the other was a girl, their facial bone structures were remarkably similar. They were the same height, and both had red hair, though the girl’s hair was a few shades brighter.
“You’re a father,” April breathed, experiencing every nuance of envy.
How had she missed the news that Gil finally had a family of his own?
She’d heard he’d remarried, but his first wife had either been unable to have children or hadn’t wanted them.
Watching his expression as the twins approached him was one of the most beautiful things April had ever witnessed.
His heart was full. His whole world was full again.
“Yep, I’m the father of twins. A double blessing!
” He scooped up the two adorable children.
“This is Bran and Carrie Rose.” He nuzzled their cheeks and drew some giggles out of them.
Then he planted a tender kiss on the slender, dark-haired woman waiting for him on the other side of the door.
When he turned around to face April again, his eyes were glowing with contentment.
“This is my wife, Bliss. Bliss, this is April, the forensic pathologist I was telling you about.”
Bliss held out both hands to April. “It’s so nice to meet you. What I wouldn’t give to spend an hour, or three, or ten discussing your work!”
April briefly clasped the woman’s outstretched hands, eyeing her dusty blue linen suit with approval. It looked like an outfit from her own closet. “That’s not something I hear every day.”
“I’m an archeologist,” Bliss informed her, as if that explained everything.
In a way, it did. “Ah.” April nodded in understanding. “I imagine you’ve excavated your fair share of bones.” Up close, she could see that the two of them were about the same age, which transformed the choking envy in the back of her throat into inexplicable hope.
Gil had remarried in his fifties and started a family, turning middle age into a whole new beginning. The knowledge made the weight of April’s looming fiftieth birthday feel less burdensome.
“I’ve excavated everything from bones to ancient pottery to buried treasure.” Bliss cocked her head at April, studying her curiously. “Not nearly as many bones as you’ve held under a microscope.”