Chapter 19 #2
It was the town’s property, strictly speaking, but she was too rattled to bother with the correction. Nick slowly lowered his arms until his hands rested at his sides.
“First off, it’s not even eleven o’clock.
Second, you weren’t answering your phone, and I didn’t want to raise you on the radio for everyone to hear.
” Nick took a step forward, his gaze traveling past her shoulder, hunting whatever it was that had put the firearm in her hand.
“I wanted to make sure you were all right, though. And I’ve been combing the Mercer notes. I found something worth showing you.”
Her cell phone. Damn it. She’d plugged the dead thing in hours ago and forgotten to turn the ringer back on. It was sitting on the nightstand this very minute, charging, mute, and useless.
“It died.” Hadley rubbed at her forehead in frustration. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”
“I’d really like it if you’d tell me there’s not a body back here that I’m going to have to help you bury.” Nick tilted his head toward the side of the house. “If there is, though, I’ve got a shovel in the back of the truck.”
A laugh escaped before she could stop it.
“No body.” Hadley couldn’t help wondering if he’d actually go that far for someone he’d known barely a year. “But I appreciate the offer. I’ll know exactly who to call if it ever comes to that.”
“See that you do.” Nick’s gaze dropped and came to rest on her feet. His head tilted. “Are those rabbit ears?”
She followed his stare to the two enormous fuzzy slippers, the most comfortable pair she’d ever owned, floppy ears and stitched-on buck teeth and all. She’d cleared a dark backyard with her service weapon in one hand and a pair of bunnies on her feet, and she would not be apologizing for either.
“If you tell a soul, it’ll be you buried in this backyard,” Hadley quipped good-naturedly as she tipped her head toward the door. “You drove all the way out here. You might as well come inside and show me what you found.”
She led the way, then stopped short of the back stoop.
A single dried corn husk lay on the step. Pale and curled and brittle, the kind that usually came off a stalk a week past harvest, sitting square in the middle of the concrete where her own floppy-eared slipper would have crushed it going out five minutes ago…if it had been there.
“Wind.” Nick offered it from behind her, half an excuse. “This time of year, that stuff gets everywhere. Blows clear across the county on a good gust.”
Hadley kept her thoughts to herself. There’d been no wind all evening. The air over the yard currently sat dead still. And they were four blocks off Main in the middle of town, a good long way off from any standing field. She didn’t believe for a second the husk had blown in.
Still, she nudged it off the concrete with the toe of her slipper and reached for the knob.
“Probably.” Hadley stepped inside. Nick followed, and she shut the door and threw the deadbolt behind them. She’d send him out the front when he left. “Don’t mind the mess in the living room. I printed out everything your deputy emailed me. All of it.”
She led the way up the staircase. At the top, she walked through the apartment to the bedroom and returned her weapon to the fingerprint safe on the nightstand.
Nick had been in the upstairs rooms before.
The whole department had gone through everything after Reed died, searching for anything that might point them at a killer, so nothing about the layout of the old Victorian would be new to him.
Only the furniture had changed. That, and the fact that the area rug now lay under mounds of paper.
He’d stopped just inside the living room, and he was still in that same spot when she returned from the bedroom.
“How long have you been at this, Hadley?”
“Since about five.” Hadley picked her way back toward the couch and gestured him toward the armchair, which would have meant stepping over the worst of the stacks to reach it. “Had a few things keep me out of the office today, or I’d have made more headway. You want anything? Water, coffee?”
“I’m good.” Nick remained standing a moment, and she became aware of him in a way she didn’t care to examine too closely.
She hadn’t had another person up in this space since she’d moved in.
Not even Mason. The upper level had been hers alone for eleven months, and for some reason, Nick took up more of it than she’d expected.
He was out of uniform, a plain flannel worn soft and jeans and boots that weren’t his duty boots, and the ordinary clothes did something to him.
Made him a man who’d been home for the evening and driven back out, rather than the sheriff of Cane County… or a colleague.
“So, tell me.” Hadley reclaimed her spot on the floor. “What’d you find?”
“An interview.”