Family Skeletons Read online

  “An errant bullet that could’ve killed either one of us.” Resolve tightened his expression. “Though I understand your wish to avoid unpleasantness, I can’t go along with it. You’re asking me to jeopardize my medical license, and I won’t do that.” He turned away. “If you won’t report it, I will.”

  * * *

  The resident deputy sheriff’s office consisted of one room with a tiny adjacent bathroom, its door open, and one cell which was also open and presently unoccupied.

  “He was right, Sunny.” Deputy Sheriff Tom Fairly leaned back in his chair and it creaked in protest. He wasn’t a big man, but the chair was a relic, possibly older than its occupant, and it groaned every time he moved.

  “Hmm,” she said in a tone that admitted nothing. Because of the cramped space and limited seating, Jonathan had said his piece and then left to wait outside.

  “And you were wrong,” Tom finished.

  Sunny looked up from her contemplation of the sickly green linoleum, the ugliest color she’d ever seen. “Rubbing it in, are you?”

  “’Course I am. We men have got to stick together. When one of us is right, and our female counterpart is wrong, we got to make note of it.”

  “Mavis been giving you a bad time lately? She won the last couple rounds?”

  “Last couple? She hasn’t lost one in twenty-five years.” The chair tilted back to an alarming angle, and he put the heel of his right shoe atop the corner of the desk. A file hit the wastebasket. He brought his leg down, rescued the file then replaced his foot where he wanted it. Somehow neither chair nor occupant toppled. “She told me you’d called. I was well briefed before you showed up. But you got nothin’ to worry about. The newspaper doesn’t call every day to find out what juicy tidbits I got for ’em. Unless you’ve actually got a dead body somewhere—”

  His easy manner disappeared. “I’m sorry, Sunny. That was...”

  The dead body of the missing Franklin Corday would be a juicy tidbit, all right.

  “Tact.” He shook his head at himself. “No one ever accused me of hoarding it.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” She prepared to rise from the wooden chair. It was the old-fashioned kind that teachers used to sit in, and judging by the faded, warped condition of this one, she guessed that a good number of teachers had sat in it. Then she stopped and gave him a questioning look. “We are done here, aren’t we?”

  He waved her away. “Get outta here. And take your new doctor friend with you.” With a thoughtful air, he pursed his lips. “Seems like a pretty good guy, though maybe a bit on the persnickety side. I’ll give Mavis a good report.”

  At the door, she heard her name and looked back.

  “Remember now. He was right, and you were wrong.”

  “Yes, Tom. I’ll remember.”

  Jonathan stood in the sun, leaning against the SUV’s dented fender, and he looked up when she exited the office. She met his wary gaze, but said nothing for a long moment. Then she smiled. “Okay. You were right, and I was wrong. Tom wanted me to be sure and tell you that.”

  His face relaxed.

  Her forehead itched. She started to scratch it, thought better about it, and dropped her hand. “We’ve lost almost the whole day already, and I need something for dinner. For tonight, and for tomorrow when Ryan’s coming. Remember?” Reluctantly, she looked across the street at Beverly’s Emporium. “I don’t feel like making the run into Castleton. Maybe we can pick up something at Bev’s.”

  He fell in step with her. “What does Ryan do for a living?”

  “He’s a psychologist. And he has an annoying habit of analyzing everyone he meets. Don’t encourage him.”

  Jonathan’s nose wrinkled when he walked into the small store.

  “Yeah,” she said. “They sell bait, too.”

  “Emporium?” he murmured, looking at the three short aisles of stacked shelves.

  “What did you expect? Chester Beach is so small, it’s more like a wide spot in the road than a town.” She led the way to the cold storage section in the back. The glass-enclosed counter held a salmon on ice, prawns and scallops. “One thing about Bev. She only sells fresh fish.”

  “Uh, Sunny.”

  She looked up questioningly.

  “I really don’t care for fish.”

  “Oh. Well, there goes that.” She thought for a minute. “I’ve got a tub of spaghetti sauce in the freezer. Will you settle for that tonight?”

  He looked relieved. “I like spaghetti.”

  Wondering if she’d ever met anyone who didn’t like spaghetti, she left that section and went to the packaged meat display and discovered there’d been a better variety at the fish counter. Chicken wings were on special, but she didn’t like chicken wings. Neither did she like the color of the hamburger, and the fat content was twenty-two percent. Way too high. She picked up a package of thinly sliced top round that looked okay and thought about what she could do with it.

  She glanced up, caught Jonathan’s bemused, uncomfortable expression, and resisted the urge to tell him that she’d only led him into a small town grocery store, not ladies’ lingerie. “How do you feel about stroganoff?”

  “You know how to make stroganoff?” The look he gave her held reverence.

  “Sounds like he likes it,” said a familiar voice.

  Sunny turned, and then gave a hug to the tall, gaunt woman who smelled of tobacco. “Hi, Mavis.”

  Mavis returned the embrace, then offered her hand to Jonathan without giving Sunny a chance to introduce them. “Hello, Jonathan Corday. I’m Mavis Fairly, and it’s good to meet you.” Her medium-brown hair was swept to one side on her forehead, fell to her shoulders in a casual pageboy, and was being allowed to gray naturally. Her eyes were emerald-green, bright and interested. “If you’re wondering how I fit into the scheme of things, I’m Roberta’s best friend. Have been for years.”

  He shook her hand. “I’m pleased to meet you. You’re also our real estate agent. And your last name is the same as the sheriff’s.”

  “That’s because I’ve been married to him for a while now.” She looked at Sunny. “Haven’t you filled him in on anything?”

  “Golly gee, I just met him this morning, Mavis.”

  The woman lifted the bangs at Sunny’s forehead and examined the raw furrow there. Sunny flinched, but allowed the familiarity. The older woman’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t like that, Sunny. Something like this should never have happened. Too many outsiders coming through here.”

  Her gaze traveled to the checkout counter where a slightly built teenaged boy stood, waiting for a customer to give him something to do. “If it was an outsider,” she added under her breath.

  “I heard you, Mavis Fairly, and you’re looking at my son. What do you think he did?”

  “Oh, Bev, I didn’t see—”

  “Apparently you didn’t. What do you think Matthew did?”

  Sunny scrunched her face up. Criminy, anyway. Why don’t one of you write up the headline and the other one can run it over to the newspaper office?

  Bev matched Mavis in age and height, had a head of short dark curls, and brown eyes that were presently flashing with resentment. Since Mavis seemed to be having difficulty getting her tongue and brain coordinated, Sunny stepped up to the plate. “There was a target shooter out near the house, Bev, but we have no idea who it was. As soon as Mavis gets her foot out of her mouth, she’ll apologize. And this is Jonathan Corday. Jonathan, this is Bev Wilkes, the owner of the store. That’s her son Matthew at the counter.”

  Bev directed a brief nod his way, but didn’t actually meet his eyes, or Sunny’s. Sunny’s dry speech had apparently defused the storeowner. Having nothing to dispute, her manner now seemed as strained as her peer’s.

  Mavis finally got her tongue unstuck. “Excuse me, Bev. I wasn’t implying Matthew might’ve been responsible, so much as I was thinking of those other boys that—”

  “Well, I’d believe it of them, too. But not Matthew. He’s a
cut above them.”

  Leaving the two women to sort it out, Sunny motioned Jonathan around the corner to the fresh vegetables, where she grabbed a package of mushrooms.

  “We need a tub of sour cream, and we’re low on milk. You see the dairy section over there?” As he walked away, she added a head of lettuce, a tomato and a cucumber, then went searching for egg noodles, hoping she wasn’t going to lose anything on the way and wondering why she hadn’t thought to grab a cart on the way in.

  Matthew checked their items. He glanced up once at Sunny, but never met Jonathan’s eyes. The young boy looked nervous, and she guessed he’d overheard his mother and Mavis.

  “Been working all day?” she asked, thinking they might as well get it out in the open.

  But either he didn’t recognize the gambit or chose not to respond. “Close to it,” he said, telling her nothing at all, and totaled their bill. “That comes to twenty-nine eighty-five.”

  That was way too high for those few things, but she’d known their prices before she’d come in here. She had her wallet in her hand and started to pull out bills.

  “I’ve got it,” Jonathan said.

  “We’ll split it.”

  “Let me get it.”

  “Thanks, but we’ll split—”

  “I’ll get it,” he said firmly. Though he was polite about it, he elbowed her out of the way. When she stepped on the foot of someone behind her, she looked up apologetically. Mavis held a can of tomato sauce and a loaf of French bread. The Fairly family might also be having spaghetti for dinner tonight.

  “Met your match, Sunny?” Mavis asked. “That’s twice today.”

  Curiously Sunny looked at her, then realized Jonathan was at the door and waiting for her. She put her wallet back into her shoulder bag and grabbed the second grocery bag. At least he was letting her share in the carrying out part.

  That’s twice what, Mavis?

  You went up against him twice today, and he won both times, stupid.

  Oh, for Pete’s sake.

  Chapter Five

  “You outdid yourself, Sunny,” Ryan said as he placed his fork across his empty plate.

  “Yes, that was an excellent meal,” Jonathan agreed.

  “But note that I brought dessert,” Ryan told him. “She doesn’t like sweets. If you want it, you provide it.” He looked at Sunny, and she looked back. He pushed his chair away from the table. “Note that you also have to serve it.”

  He rummaged in the cupboards until he found plates, then in the drawers until he found a knife, then in the refrigerator until he found his pie, lemon meringue, then brought everything to the table without dropping anything.

  Jonathan watched the interplay between them with neither obvious interest nor disinterest.

  Ryan had brought back three plates. When he got to the third one, he glanced at Sunny and she shook her head. She got up and put the unused dish back in the cabinet, then worked between the table and sink while the men ate pie.

  After scraping his plate free of the last bit of meringue, Ryan turned his attention to Jonathan. “Looks like a neat SUV out there, except for that big dent. New truck?”

  “I’ve had it a couple of months. I was tempted to take it into Castleton and look for a body shop, but then decided to wait until I get home and take it to people I know.”

  “Yeah, I would, too. Sunny told you not to worry about the Reviler?”

  “No. That’s your car?”

  “My grandmother’s. I inherited it. They took her license away when she tried to run over a cop.”

  Jonathan appeared to be wondering if that was a joke as he picked up his water glass. “How old is she?”

  “Ninety next month.”

  “Sounds like a lively ninety, wanting to drive as long she could.”

  “Yep. Only thing that scared her was cops. She was driving on borrowed time and knew it. He’d just paralleled and was opening his door to get out. He made her so nervous she misjudged, got too close, and took his door off.”

  His listener flinched.

  “She missed him somehow. But she knew she was in trouble when he wet his pants.”

  Jonathan choked on his water.

  “She saw that spreading stain, turned off the ignition and surrendered right then and there. The cop had to park the car for her. Left a wet stain on the seat.”

  “He’s not kidding.” Sunny grinned at the look on Jonathan’s face. “It really happened.”

  She glanced back at Ryan. “You want to walk down to the beach and catch the sunset?”

  “Definitely.” He rose, picked up his plate and Jonathan’s, then stopped in the middle of the kitchen as if lost. “No dishwasher? How do you do dishes?”

  “I’m it. It’s an arrangement that works. Go compare fender dents, and I’ll meet you outside in a couple of minutes.”

  Their voices carried through the screen door. As she worked, she listened to them discussing standard equipment and options, upholstery versus leather seats, rear windows, fold down seats and storage space, and finally she lost interest.

  If it’s not football, it’s cars. It’s a guy thing.

  A short while later the three of them stood at the top of the cliff path, looking down.

  “No kidding,” Ryan said dubiously.

  Jonathan appeared pleased that someone agreed with him.

  “I hope you don’t think I’m going first,” Ryan said.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Sunny pushed by them and started down. She stopped and looked back up. “You do understand we go one at a time.”

  “You betcha.” Ryan’s head bobbed in an emphatic nod.

  He was the last one down. Once safely at the base of the cliff he looked back up, then over at her. “No need to go to an amusement park for a thrill ride when you’ve got this in your backyard.”

  Sunny ignored him. She slipped out of her shoes and played tag with the water, most of the time letting it catch her, but neither companion seemed inclined to join her. Leaving them to themselves, she wandered a short way south to a crevasse in the cliff. It was deep, extending inland in an inverted V parallel with the house. On the far side of the ravine, a grove of cypresses stood near the bluff’s edge, and she wondered if that was where the rifle shot had come from.

  She walked a short way into the narrow canyon amid numerous beer and soft drink cans. She made a mental note to come down here one day and clean the place out. With her foot she nudged one that was dented with bullet holes. Undoubtedly the cans had been tossed down here and used as targets. She shook her head and looked at the cliff high above.

  Stupid. Reckless. And inconsiderate as hell.

  An aged cypress hung precariously over the edge, one long root exposed and snaking halfway down the side of the bluff. It resembled a crooked fireman’s pole, or a natural ladder if one were a monkey.

  She retraced her steps and joined the men, who were yakking away and paying no attention to her or to the incoming tide that was getting perilously close to them. The sun was also sinking fast, but evidently football was more important. They must’ve talked the present to pieces because they were now on the past.

  She watched and waited.

  “Green Bay was on top for a long time there,” Ryan said. “Those cheesy hats have got a place in history all their own.”

  “The Forty-niners really earned their dynasty days. They had talent. Montana, then Young and Garcia. And Rice—”

  “Hey!”

  “What...”

  They retreated in an awkward backward run but their shoes still got soaked and their slacks were wet to the shins. Once he got to a safe distance Ryan looked suspiciously at Sunny. “You knew that was coming and didn’t tell us on purpose.”

  She said nothing.

  “Don’t stand there with that grin on your face. I’m tempted to get you wetter than I am.”

  Jonathan looked up and down the coast. “A person could get trapped in here. We’re already cut off from going north or sou
th.”

  She sat down to put her tennis shoes on. They’d get full of sand but they’d wash out. “You need to be aware of the tide and time of day if you want to go jogging. There’s beach access in Chester, about a mile and a half that way.” She stopped and pointed. “And to the south the road descends to sea level after about five miles. It’s pretty private in here.”

  He gave her a curious look. “You appear to know both the people and terrain well.”

  She paused in the act of slipping on the second sneaker. “I used to live around here before I ended up in San Francisco.” She got to her feet, aware of Ryan’s narrow-eyed look but not meeting it as she led the way to the cliff’s path.

  * * *

  The next day Sunny followed Ryan and his suitcase down the porch stairs. The early morning fog danced around them in patches. She wore a baby blue turtleneck over snug black jeans, and she hugged her arms against the chill. He deposited his bag in the trunk, closed it and gave her a pointed look.

  “What are you up to, Sunny?”

  Staring at the ground, she leaned against the car and folded her arms. She’d gone to bed early last night to avoid this, but she could put it off no longer. “Thanks for not giving me away.”

  “What are you up to?” he repeated. His disapproval bordered on angry.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose. It just kind of...”

  “Let me guess. You were pissed and started talking about Laurel in the third person. Am I close?”

  She didn’t look up. “Yeah.”

  “You’re playing mind games. I don’t like it, and neither will he. When are you going to level with him?”

  “He’s got a very low opinion of Laurel.”

  “He wouldn’t if he knew he was living with her. He seems like a decent guy, and you seem to be getting along all right. When are you going to tell him who you are?”

  She met his eyes. “Okay, okay. You’re right.” She smiled in resignation. “And I’m wrong.” Just like Tom said. “I’ll talk to Jonathan.”