“What about Jasper Vanderhorn?”
“I asked her about him back in November when his name first surfaced in my investigation—the investigation. She’d read about the fire. That’s it. I’m doing all the cross-referencing I can.”
“Just on the internet, right? Nothing top secret.”
“I can’t access top secret sites. Well, I probably could, but—”
“Don’t.”
“Right. I won’t. How’s Beverly Hills?”
“Beverly Hills is fine,” Grit said. “This morning was difficult.”
He watched Hannah pop out of the pool and adjust her swimsuit, her skin still pale after months of winter in Vermont. She smiled at Sean. She wasn’t demonstrative but she wasn’t shy, either, about being totally in love. They both sat at a table by Beth’s lounge chair.
“My sister met Portia once,” Charlie said. “She told the Secret Service. It’s sad, what happened to her. I wish I could have figured this out before she died. I hope I can before anyone else dies.”
“Charlie, it’s not your job to figure out anything. If someone’s killing people, that’s the person responsible for any deaths. No one else.”
“What about you?”
“I went out to where Jasper Vanderhorn died.”
“What’s it like?”
“The land’s being reborn.”
Charlie was silent a moment. “Don’t think because I’m smart that I have no feelings.”
“I don’t think that. I think you want to matter, and I think you’re afraid this firebug is coming after your family.”
“What if he’s a Secret Service agent?”
Grit gripped the phone tighter. “Charlie.”
“I can speculate all I want. It’s not Robert Feehan, unless he’s operating under an alias.”
“How do you know about Feehan?”
Charlie didn’t seem to hear him. “He’s on the run but he’s innocent. He didn’t kill Derek Cutshaw.”
“Charlie.”
“Internet. That’s how I found out.”
“I can’t stop you from theorizing, but don’t do more than that.”
“I’m not. How could I? The Secret Service is all over me. You’d think I was vice president, not my dad. I ran for class president in ninth grade. You know how many votes I got?”
Grit wanted to throw his phone in the pool. “No, Charlie, how many?”
“Two. My cousin Conor and me. Nobody likes me.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Two votes, Grit. Two. That’s why.”
“What would happen if you ran now?”
“I doubt even Conor would vote for me.”
“That’s because you’ve gotten him in trouble with the Secret Service.”
“And the school,” Charlie said.
“Charlie, just because your classmates didn’t want you as their president doesn’t mean they don’t like you.”
“Yeah, whatever. Think about it, Grit. Portia Martinez was murdered in Beverly Hills probably the day before Derek Cutshaw was murdered in Vermont.”
“Maybe Robert Feehan is the firebug, using an alias.”
“I can’t find any connection between him and Marissa,” Charlie said, loosening up on using names. “Trent isn’t a bad guy. He’s just a self-absorbed prick.”
“Language.”
“Jackass? Son of a bitch? Lout?”
Grit gave up. “Any idea where Trent could be now?”
“No. On your end?”
“No. Is he immersing himself in Vermont for some screenplay or acting role? Never mind. I’m starting to think like you. If you make any connections using that 180 IQ of yours, call me. Don’t do anything else. Got that?”
“Got it. There’s something here, isn’t there?”
“I don’t know. I just know I found a dead woman today.”
“Marissa…Grit, she’d fall for you if she got to know you.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“I’m serious,” Charlie said.
“Hell, so am I. Hang in there, kid. You can’t have everything. You have to live in the world as it is, not as you want it to be.”
“Are we talking about your leg?”
Grit gripped the phone. “No, we’re talking about you.”
“Oh.” Charlie seemed oblivious. “Okay. I’ll talk to you later.”
He was gone. Grit sighed. In some ways, Charlie Neal was thirty. In other ways, he was twelve. Rarely was he a regular sixteen-year-old. He had a good family, tight-knit and strong, but they were in the limelight, which was difficult enough without adding a genius IQ and four older sisters to the mix. Marissa was attractive and intelligent, but she wasn’t getting involved with a disabled SEAL from the Florida Panhandle.
Grit looked over at Beth Harper, still under her towels. “Getting back in the pool?”
“Not right away.”
“Have you talked to Special Agent Harper?”
“Yes.”
“Want to tell me what she said?”
Beth pulled the towels off her upper body and her long, strong legs. “She said you’re trouble.”
“Ah.”
“I came out here to relax. Everything was supposed to be over. Then you show up.”
“That woman was dead before my flight was even in the air.”
“But we found her, not the neighbors, not her family, not her friends.”
“Just as well, don’t you think? Someone had to find her, and we’ve both seen dead bodies before. You’re just out of your element and you’re here to swim and buy shoes.”
“I’m not buying shoes.” She sighed at the slowly darkening sky. “I’m taking my emotions out on you. I’m scared, Grit. If one of these killers slipped through the cracks or some other killer’s attracted to Black Falls because of Lowell Whittaker and what he’s done…”
“Don’t do that to yourself. We have to deal with the facts as they are.”
She shivered as a breeze hit her wet swimsuit. Grit figured she thought of him as a brother. He wasn’t sure he liked that. It was one thing to think of her as a sister, another for her not to even consider that he might be checking her out.
It was Thorne, Grit decided. Beth was preoccupied with their romantic issues, on top of the murder scene they’d walked into and the goings-on in her hometown.
“Have you always been a one-thing-at-a-time, let’s-not-jump-ahead type?” she asked. “Or did your injury force you to take things a day at a time?”
“I move forward. I don’t dwell on what I can’t control. It gets me nowhere. You’re the same, or you couldn’t do the work you do.”
“I’m resentful because I don’t want any more violence,” Beth said.
“Trooper Thorne resentful, too?”
“I wouldn’t know. Are you trying to counsel me, Grit? Because you don’t have to. I’m fine. If Scott wants to check in with me, he knows how to reach me.”
“Think you’ll quit as a paramedic?”
“And do what?”
“Help Myrtle Smith open a dinner service at the café.”
Beth’s laughter seemed to catch her by surprise as much as it did Grit. “We’d kill each other within two weeks,” she said. “Myrtle’s not staying in Black Falls no matter what she’s telling herself right now, and I’m not cut out to run a restaurant. I like the mix of what I do at the café and as a medic. I often know the people I respond to, but I’m not burned out.”
“If you’d been in Black Falls, you could have ended up checking out Derek Cutshaw.”
“Possibly. Anyway, this isn’t about me.” She directed her attention to Sean at the table next to her. “Do you trust Nick Martini with your sister?”
“Nick’s solid.”
“Rose has—”