Chapter 7 #2
Gray pulled the engine forward onto the apron, stopped, and shifted into reverse. She could see his face through the windshield—focused, jaw set, eyes tracking between the mirrors. He eased the truck backward. The angle looked good this time. It looked, in fact, very good.
The rear bumper cleared the right door track by what looked like three inches. The left side tracked true. The engine slid backward into the bay with the cones untouched.
Then the left front wheel caught the edge of the concrete pad, the whole truck jolted sideways, and the last cone went down with a soft plastic crunch.
She laughed.
She didn’t mean to. She pressed her hand over her mouth, but the laugh escaped anyway, bright and involuntary, because he had been so close, and the cone had died so peacefully, and the expression on his face through the windshield—half fury, half bewilderment—was the funniest thing she’d seen in months.
He heard her.
He looked at her through the open driver’s window, and his frustration was still there, but something startled and warm and unguarded flashed in his eyes as if catching her laughing at his expense was the most disarming thing that had happened to him all week.
She held his gaze for one beat too long. Her hand dropped from her mouth.
“Sorry,” she said, not very convincingly.
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m really not,” she admitted.
The corner of his mouth twitched. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was close, and the warmth in it reached all the way to where she was standing.
Cassidy looked up from her clipboard. “Thirty,” she announced.
That night, Gray sat at the table in the bunkhouse and opened the folder of Tucker’s photographs.
He’d photographed the Shoemacher barn foundation from every angle and had even snapped a few of the area around the well house.
Gray had already been through these images dozens of times. But now he was looking for something specific.
He unrolled his copy of the blueprints that he’d picked up in Apple Pie Creek this morning and placed it beside the printed enlargements of Tucker’s photos.
The mechanical systems page showed the sprinkler supply line entering the building at the center of the north wall, running the length of the structure with branch lines left and right to feed sprinkler heads.
If that system had been installed, there would be pipe stubs at the north foundation wall where the supply line had entered the building.
He picked up his magnifying glass and started with the north wall photographs.
Nothing.
No pipe stubs, no circular holes in the foundation where a water line could have entered the building, no hardware of any kind protruding from or embedded in the concrete.
The blueprints showed a thirty-thousand-gallon pressurized water tank buried adjacent to the well house.
A tank that size required a pressure gauge assembly, a pressure relief valve that would’ve been mounted on a pipe sticking out of the ground above where the tank was buried, likely a fill gauge indicating how much water was in the tank, and a hatch into the tank itself for cleaning and repairs.
There was no pressure relief valve. No pressure or fill gauges. No hatch. No evidence whatsoever of a water tank, let alone a pressurized one.
He set down the magnifying glass and leaned back in his chair.
The fire suppression system on the approved blueprints had never been installed. And the building inspector had either not noticed or been paid not to notice.
He still needed one more piece of independent confirmation. A witness. Someone who could tell him whether there had been sprinkler heads in the ceiling. He’d completely struck out at finding anyone local who would talk to him.
But he knew someone everyone in town would talk to.
Bonnie picked up on the second ring. “Hey.” Her voice was soft, relaxed. The voice of a woman who had shed the day’s armor and was being herself.
“Is it too late to call you?”
“Not at all. The kids just went down. I’m settling in to read a bit.”
“What are you reading?”
“The Light Between Oceans.”
“I’ve read that. It’s devastating.”
“I’m on my second time through, which probably says something unflattering about me. But Isabel makes choices I understand, even when they’re wrong.” A beat. “You didn’t call to discuss a book, did you?”
“Not tonight. I need to ask you a question, and I need you to tell me if it’s inappropriate of me to ask it of you.”
“Yes, I turn thirty in a month. No, I’m not looking forward to it,” she said humorously.
Startled, he laughed. He replied, “My mother made it crystal clear to all us boys never, ever, to ask a woman her age.”
“Smart woman.”
“She’s the best,” Gray said warmly.
“What’s your question? And yes, I’ll tell you if it’s inappropriate,” she said more seriously.
“I need to find someone who knew the Shoemacher barn well. Went inside it regularly. Can you think of anyone like that who’s still in the area.”
“Besides Lucas Shoemacher?” she asked.
“Correct.”
“Why?”
“I need to ask them a question about the building.”
She was quiet for a moment. He could practically hear her considering pushing for more details and deciding not to.
“The stable hands and trainer who worked there left after the fire. The farrier who used to trim all the horses in this area retired and moved away a few years ago. That really only leaves the Shoemacher kids.”
“Would any of them talk to me?”
“Honestly? I’m not sure. The fire devastated that whole family. Lucas ordered his kids never to speak of it again. He may not be an easy man, but his is their father. I expect they would be protective of him.”
“Any chance one of them less close to Lucas than the others? Maybe has a chip on his or her shoulder?”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“The youngest daughter. Eloise. Everyone calls her Ellie.” Bonnie’s voice had gone careful and he sensed she was choosing her words carefully.
“She had a huge falling-out with Lucas right after the fire. Left Cobbler Cove and has never been back. As far as I know, she and Lucas haven’t spoken since. ”
“Do you know what the falling-out was about?”
“Not specifically. But Ellie loved those horses. She practically lived in that barn. After the fire . . .” Bonnie trailed off. “I think it broke something between them that was already fragile.”
She was exactly the kind of person who would know every inch of the barn.
“Do you have a phone number for her?”
“I do.” Bonnie hesitated. “But Gray—let me call her. She knows me. I was friends with her older sister, and Ellie and I always got along well. A stranger calling out of the blue to ask questions about the worst thing that ever happened to her? She’d hang up on you before you got two sentences in.”
Bonnie made a good point. People didn’t open up to strangers bearing hard questions.
“Would you be willing to ask her if she’d be open to talking briefly with me?
You don’t need to tell her what it’s about specifically.
Just that I’m looking into the fire and have a question about the barn.
Just one yes-no question. It’ll take her two seconds to answer it and then I’ll leave her alone. ”
“I can do that.”
“Thank you, Bonnie.”
Silence settled between them, the kind that happened when two people had run out of business to discuss but neither wanted to hang up.
“How’s the book the second time through?” he asked.
“Still heartbreaking.” A pause. “But I get why she keeps secrets. She believes loyalty requires it. But by the time she realizes the truth is more important than her loyalty, she’s in so deep that telling the truth will destroy everything she’s built.”
Something in her voice made him go still. She wasn’t just describing a novel.
He said quietly, “In my experience secrets always come out eventually. But the longer they remain hidden, the more they fester.”
She was silent for a moment. “Goodnight, Gray.”
“Goodnight, Bonnie.”
He set the phone down and stared at it thoughtfully. If he wasn’t mistaken, Bonnie had just hinted she had a secret she’d kept out of misguided loyalty and now was trapped by it. What on earth could she have to hide?
Outside, wind pressed against the bunkhouse walls, carrying the last of winter’s cold down from the mountains. In a few weeks, spring would come. Calving season would end. He would conquer the cones. And he would have to sit Bonnie down and tell her what he’d found.
He wasn’t ever going to be truly ready for that conversation.
But he wasn’t going to walk away from it, either.