Ann nodded. “A packed day all around. Evie, while we’re talking with Will, how about taking Paul by the post office, get him up to speed on the Florist case, see what he notices? He’s good at finances.”
Her husband winced, and Ann laughed, gave him a hug. “You really are, it’s just geeky grunt work. Gabriel will drop me off there, and you can pay me back by explaining-in copious detail-what you’ve found.”
“Now that sounds like a deal,” Paul said. “Gabriel, take care of my girl.”
“Plan to. Come on, Ann. For some odd reason, Will tends to be an early riser.”
“Yeah.” Ann grabbed her jacket. “We should be about an hour.”
Gabriel nodded goodbye to Paul and Evie and followed Ann out. He was hoping nothing else in the county needed his attention today-no car wrecks, domestic calls, farm accidents during the last of the harvest, school fire alarms pulled in jest. It would already be a long, intense day without the normal problems of being sheriff crowding in.
Will Thane
Sitting on the steps of his back porch, Will Thane broke a strip of bacon in half and held the pieces out to the dogs on either side of him. Apollo nipped the snack from his fingers, swallowed it in one gulp. Zeus sniffed first, bit the top edge, tugged it free, and swallowed it. Will looked at him with amusement. “Took you long enough, young man.” He reached over and scratched the animal behind the ears, got a thank-you lick to the face. Evie’s dogs were getting comfortable with him.
Apollo subsided to watchful resting, his attention on the barn cats leaping over each other in the backyard, if you could call three acres of open prairie a backyard. Will kept the walks neatly trimmed, but the rest of it was native grasses. He could do without the snakes, but the chipmunks and mice, rabbits and possums, the ground-nesting birds all making their home in the grass attracted eager four-footed and winged prey and kept the snakes’ numbers under control.
Apollo leaped from the porch to the ground, took off like a dart. A rabbit burst from cover, slipping underneath the shed just in time. “I’d say those bruises are healing,” Will said under his breath, watching Apollo lope back to the porch. His own two dogs were likely down at the pond, pointing birds even though Will wasn’t there to appreciate their skill. The four animals had been enjoying each other’s company.
Will heard the car before it turned onto the crushed gravel of his long drive, watched it crest the rise and saw its distinct squad-car markings. Probably Gabe bringing Evie out to collect her dogs, he thought, with not a little regret. They were war dogs trained to search out explosives, he’d realized after trying the handful of Dutch words he learned from dog handlers in Iraq. That they were retired while still relatively middle-aged suggested they’d lived through some close explosions and been medically discharged. They seemed calm enough, though he wouldn’t want to be shooting off a firearm near the two. For a cop to have adopted two of them made it likely they were war buddies, accustomed to being together. He was glad they had each other in civilian life.
A combat medic for a lot of years, he still missed the guys in his battalion. He’d done a solid job over his six years, had the medals to prove it. He’d left because it was time, but he missed his buddies. He hugged the two animals on either side of him, affection for them running deep. Dogs had been part of those years overseas, mostly German shepherds like these two. “That your mom coming to get you, fellas?”
The car pulled around to the front of the house where he kept a neatly mowed patch of grass and flowers alongside the walk. He heard car doors slam, said go ahead in Dutch, and both dogs bolted from the back porch. He followed them around the corner.
The dogs were leaping up to greet Gabriel. But it wasn’t Evie Blackwell with him. Will paused, held out his hand with a smile. “Ann. Hello. I heard you were in town.” She’d become an important friend to his brothers while he was away. The news about Grace his father had told him the night before likely explained her visit now. A hard thing, what his father had told him, and a harder thing yet, what Grace was asking Josh to do.
“Will, good morning,” Ann said. “We need to talk with you about something. It’s related to Karen Lewis.”
The way Ann said it had him narrowing his eyes at her, then looking to Gabriel. He recognized the expression on his brother’s face-sheriff’s resolve crossed with a large slice of empathy. Will had promised his mom to clean up his language now that he was home or he would have expressed his feelings in the words first to mind. Will sighed instead and walked up the front steps to open the door for his guests. “Come on in. Coffee is hot.”
He’d made a deal with himself that he’d make no major decisions in the first three years back in the States-a homecoming gift to himself, and so far he was honoring it. Come year four, he planned to build a larger master bedroom onto this place, ask Karen to marry him. Then he’d start blueprints for a few more bedrooms. The land was spacious enough to raise half a dozen kids, with room for outdoor forts, golf carts, bikes, horses, some sheep and cattle. Karen wanted kids too, he’d already discovered.
Karen Joy Lewis had a way with her smile that reminded a man of what was good in life, and a joyful woman was high on his wish list. He figured he’d fallen for the crepes coming out of the restaurant kitchen, then spied the woman making them, and tumbled a bit further the first time he was able to catch her eye and get that flash of a smile before she looked away. Karen would be a delight to have sitting at his table for the next fifty-plus years. He’d rival his dad for being a contented married man.
Whatever Gabriel and Ann wanted to talk about concerning Karen, he needed coffee in hand first. “Watch the construction zone.” He was getting ready to gut the living room and dining room to redo the electrical and put up new drywall. “The kitchen half is finished. Come on through.”
The updated kitchen had counters long enough to make a professional chef envious, with double ovens, a large range, and a wide-screen TV to keep him company while he worked at the center island.
Will pulled out a chair for Ann, let his brother get them coffee, pulled out another chair so he could see the back porch and open the patio door if the dogs wanted to come in. “What do we need to discuss about Karen?”
“Do you remember a trial up in Chicago,” Gabriel began, “a few months after you came back home… restaurant owners, a couple, stabbed to death?”
Will shook his head. “It wouldn’t have stuck with me even if I’d seen something in the news about it.” He accepted the mug of coffee Gabriel handed him.
Ann laid a folder on the table in front of him. “I pulled three articles from the Chicago Tribune. The first report is on the crime, then the trial in progress, its verdict. Take your time reading. It’s easier this way.”
“Easier for who?”
“Me mostly.”
Will pulled out the articles, found them in chronological order, and began to read, assuming it related to Karen. Given the look he saw pass between Ann and Gabe, he wondered if Karen was maybe the daughter of the victims.
She’d come to town with some kind of trouble in her past, he knew. He’d seen soldiers who had lived through years of war and recognized a similar look in her eyes at times. Given that sadness, he was careful in how he asked about the past so as not to stir the pain. He was content to enjoy the present he had with her and let her talk, or not talk, as she preferred.
He got his first real surprise in the second article, reading about the trial. As he made the connection, he said in a low voice, “She’s the witness.”
“Yes.”
He glanced over as he heard Evie’s dogs return to the back porch, settle back into a watchful waiting. He turned the page in the article, kept reading. “Karen Josephine Spencer,” he said. “Now, that’s a nice name.” Karen Joy captured her personality, but her birth name was pretty cool too. Nice and regal, that Josephine. He smiled at the thought and moved to the final article.