Chapter Eighteen
The Harrington Cabin
Jill was questioning a lot of things right now.
Why had she moved to Montana? Why had she stayed? Why had she let her friendship with Aly bring her into the world of the Bennet brothers?
Why did the way Cal looked at her feel different than everything?
She didn’t head down to town immediately. She went back to the cabin. Grandma wasn’t in the living room or kitchen, so Jill sat down at her laptop and wrote a quick, concise email to Jake asking if there was a time they could meet today or tomorrow. Or never.
Then she closed the laptop with a decisive click and got to her feet. She looked at the ancient coffee percolator in the kitchen and wondered if the cabin’s generator would even handle the electricity for Cal’s fancy coffee machine.
Grandma came in from where she must have been out in her gardens.
She frowned at Jill. “Heard the truck. Back so soon?”
“I’m … well, Cal asked if I’d go ask Detective Hayes a few questions. So, I guess I’m taking a break from writing today. Waiting for the detective to email me back. Then I might go back down and meet with him.” She winced.
“Something wrong with that?”
“No. No, I want to help in any way I can. I just … Maybe it’s best to…”
“It’s best to help,” Grandma said firmly. “A lesson you taught me, little girl.”
Jill wanted to smile. When she’d been little, Grandma had written her letters and always called her little girl. It was a nice memory.
Life had been simpler back then. At least for Jill. Not for Grandma, who’d been a prisoner of her own trauma.
But through the truth, Grandma was better. Really, truly better. Jill still wanted her to get some therapy, but still. So much progress had been made in only a month.
Because of the truth. Which felt like an indictment. Like Jill had to help fight to find the truth for her friends, just like they’d helped fight to find it for her grandmother.
“Do you want me to go with you?” Grandma asked gently.
It was a kind offer. Genuine. Still Jill shook her head. “Not unless you want to pull out the ghost of Marietta routine? Give the detective a good scare.”
Grandma smiled a little. “If I thought Hayes might believe it, I would.”
It made Jill laugh. Then she sighed, thinking of Detective Hayes. The Bennets. This whole weird thing.
“What do you think of him, Grandma?”
Glenda had a way of seeing people for who they were. Her gut was rarely wrong. She just didn’t always verbalize her gut.
Grandma considered. “All I know for sure is he’s one of the few people I can’t get a good read on.”
Which wasn’t helpful at all.
“There’s a kindness, but”—Grandma’s eyebrows drew together as though she were giving it deep thought—“also a hardness.”
“I thought he had kind eyes, and then he was so … condescending about Cal’s trauma.” Jill frowned at the memory. It still made her mad. “He’s always nice to me, but he hasn’t been nice to Nate. It’s like he’s two people.”
“Or maybe we’ve just seen the sides but not the heart of him.”
Maybe. Jill held that with her the next few hours, helping Grandma in the garden. When she got the email from Jake that she could stop by the station at any point this afternoon, she tried to take it with her then too.
Her friends needed her to be a cool head, a sort of unbiased figure, even if she was a little biased, and Jake knew it. So she’d endeavor to be that. To try to figure out … the heart of Jake Hayes, underneath the kind side and the hard side.
When Jill arrived at the station, she had to wait a few minutes, but that was okay because it gave her time to request Jules Hyatt’s police report. She had to pay five dollars and was told it’d take a few days to be ready, but it was done.
When Jake appeared and waved her back to his office, Jill followed. She’d been here a few times over the past year, for so many issues it seemed almost fictional now. That so much bad could happen in one little place.
But good had come out of the bad. Truth and justice, at least in some places.
Jake gestured to a seat across from his cluttered desk. He had a laptop open, a walkie-talkie on the windowsill behind him.
“What can I do for you, Jill?” he asked, taking a seat in his chair.
Jill took a seat too. “I just wondered if you’d be able to answer a few questions for me.”
Hayes studied her. “About your book or about the Nate Bennet murder case?”
“I know you don’t have to talk to me about Nate’s case. I’m just hoping you will. Sam would be here, but she’s pretty angry. Cal would be here, but … well, as much as he can play lawyer when he needs to, none of us are sure he can do that with you.”
“So they sent a friend. A writer. Instead of someone trained to do any kind of investigating.” There was that condescension that had irritated her so much last summer when he’d spoken about Cal’s traumatic amnesia.
“They sent you to flirt with me and get answers, because they think I’m that simple. ”
Jill held his gaze. She kind of understood why he thought that, but it was also kind of insulting. “I’m not flirting with you. I’m just asking questions.”
Jake looked a little irritated by that. “Fine. Go for it. I can’t promise I’ll answer.”
No, Jill didn’t think he would. But she had to bring something back to Cal. She had to try. Because poor Sam was ready to tear down the world for Nate.
“Jules Hyatt had a meeting with someone at the Marietta Police Department before she died. She reported harassment to someone here. Was it you?”
He didn’t react. Not even a flicker. He just held her gaze, as though he hadn’t heard the question at all.
“We have the exact date. A few days before she was murdered. We have reason to believe she was handed off to a detective, but maybe it was someone else.”
Jake maintained his silence, his stillness.
“It’s a simple question, and I’m not sure why you’d avoid answering it, Detective.”
He leaned forward then, forearms against the desk. Brown eyes alight with something hard, but his voice was easy and calm.
“You really think I’m going to tell you whether or not I met with Jules Hyatt a month ago so you can take it back to them and they can draw their own shitty conclusions when I have physical proof that Nate Bennet was at that motel that night?”
Jill blinked, surprised by this information. According to Cal and Sam there wasn’t any. “What physical proof?”
Jake got very still. His expression didn’t change, didn’t so much as flicker or even lean back in his seat, but that told her something.
He hadn’t meant to let that slip. Though she wasn’t sure why if Cal was going to be able to see it in discovery. Typically, the prosecution had to share all the evidence with the defense. Cal had told her that.
She held onto that piece of information to bring back to Sam and Cal.
“I get it,” Hayes said. “They’re your friends. They’ve helped your grandmother, been there for you. I get the loyalty. I really do. But you do not know what you are getting into, and I’d highly suggest keeping far, far away from it. Let the Bennets hang themselves, Jill.”
She really didn’t care for the way he said that. The way he lumped them all together. The way he acted like they were somehow the enemy, when what he should really be concerned about was the truth.
Which gave her courage enough to say what she was thinking. “I wonder why anyone has to hang, Jake.”
His jaw was set. His gaze still hard. But she saw the flicker of something at that. Grandma suggested his heart was between the two sides of himself she’d seen. But Jill couldn’t get a read on that. At all.
Maybe he just didn’t have one.
So she stood, but she didn’t leave right away. Maybe it didn’t matter, but she felt like she had to say it. “I don’t believe Nate killed anyone.”
His expression didn’t change. He held her gaze. There was nothing smug about it. Nothing angry. Just a quiet, calm surety. “That’s a shame, Jill. Because I do. And I’ve got the evidence to prove it.”