A Merciful Fate Page 4
“You outdid yourself this time, Bree,” Royce Gibson told her. “You ever going to share the recipe with my wife?”
Bree laughed. “I did months ago.”
Royce took another bite, chewing thoughtfully. “It doesn’t taste like this at all.”
“Hmmm. Maybe I left something out of the recipe I gave her. I’ll get in touch.”
Lucas squeezed his mother’s shoulders, and she gently slapped at his hand as she smiled up at him.
Looks like Lucas knows Bree doesn’t share her exact recipes.
“You working with Ollie tonight?” Truman asked. Bree tutored the teenager a few times a week as he worked toward his GED. Bree was an English teacher at the high school but spent her little spare time tutoring.
“Not tonight,” she answered. “He’s coming along really well. It’s like his brain is a sponge. I don’t think I’ve ever had a student who wants to learn with such enthusiasm.”
Truman agreed. Ollie was thirsty for knowledge.
Lucas walked his mother to the door as she said goodbye to the men. Once she was gone he turned to Truman with suppressed excitement. “You gonna tell us about the remains Ollie found?”
Truman hadn’t told anyone what had happened that morning. “How’d you hear about that?”
“Ben told me.”
“I heard about it at the feed store at lunch,” Ben said with a full mouth. “Not sure how it got started there.”
Truman scanned his four men—his work family. Ben was the oldest, with decades of police work under his belt. Samuel was a solid ex-military man who now lived and breathed law enforcement. Royce was young and rather naive, and barely kept up. And Lucas was Lucas. One of a kind.
All trustworthy, good men.
But damned gossips, each one of them.
“I think we all know the feed store is a front where the men in this town go to gossip,” said Truman.
“It’s a news source,” Ben corrected him. “Our own little local newsroom.”
“It’s gossip. And it’s often wrong.”
“Ollie didn’t find a body this morning?” Samuel asked with a confident look in his eye.
Clearly they knew the story was true and were deliberately ignoring the point of his lecture.
He gave in.
“Ollie found remains in the northern section of Christian Lake’s property. Looks like they’ve been there for years. Maybe decades,” admitted Truman, keeping silent about the bullet hole and the money bags.
The men immediately turned to Ben, Truman forgotten. “Remember anyone who went missing over the years?” Royce eagerly asked the older officer, who stored most of Eagle’s Nest’s history in his brain.
Ben swallowed before answering. The seventysomething-year-old looked pleased to be recognized for his longtime-resident expertise. “Well now . . . old Don Ward vanished one day in the 1980s. Don’t know what happened. He lived alone, and one day his mailman went up to the house because his mailbox was overflowing. Never heard a word about what happened to him. Simply gone.” Ben looked at Truman. “Were the remains male?”
“Don’t know for sure. Odds look good.” How much of this will be repeated at the feed store tomorrow?
“If it’s female, it could be Harriet Zimmerman. College girl that disappeared while hiking on her summer break . . . I think that was somewhere in the nineties.” Ben rubbed his chin. “Those are the unsolved disappearances I can remember off the top of my head. There’re more. I’ll look into it.”
“This case is Deschutes County’s,” Truman pointed out, keeping the FBI’s involvement to himself. That fact would come out soon enough, and he didn’t want to answer a dozen questions about why the FBI had been brought in so quickly. A phone call from Mercy after lunch had caught him up on the emerging details of Ollie’s discovery.
She believed it was related to the infamous Gamble-Helmet Heist.
“We’ve got our own problems to focus on. Another car at Sandy’s had a window bashed in today. I want everyone driving by her B&B whenever they have a spare moment. Maybe park across the street for a few minutes. Let our presence be seen.”
Scowls filled all four men’s faces. “Asshole,” muttered Samuel. “I don’t like that someone’s targeting her. I’ll stop by a few times each shift.”
Sandy would roll her eyes at the testosterone that’d suddenly filled the station.
Her recent issues had struck a chord with his men. You didn’t mess around with one of their residents. Especially a single woman. “I’ll find her some security cameras,” added Truman, glad he’d redirected his men’s focus. They didn’t need to worry about remains in the woods.
But he struggled to contain his own curiosity.
Has Ollie discovered the answer to a decades-old robbery?
That evening, Mercy parked and admired the new structure in the woods.
Four months ago, Mercy’s secret cabin had burned to the ground. The hidden location had been where she found peace of mind as she stocked supplies for an uncertain future, compelled by a survivalist upbringing that had taught her to prepare for the end of the world. If society collapsed, she’d be ready.
For years the cabin had been her dirty little secret. She’d been raised by preppers, and though she’d angrily left home at eighteen, she couldn’t shake her deep-rooted need for a safe place. One with a good defense and years of fuel, food, and medical supplies. When she worked for the FBI in Portland, she’d spent her weekends and vacations improving her safety net in the Cascade foothills near Bend, telling no one where she went. Now her new coworkers believed she had a little cabin getaway for skiing.
She didn’t correct their assumption.
The destruction of her years of work on the cabin had dismayed her until Truman urged her to rebuild. The new cabin wasn’t finished yet. The inside was bare, but the contractor had completed most of the basic structure. It had solid walls and a fireproof metal roof. The image of flames destroying the old roof was still fresh in her head. She wanted brick walls, but the cost was beyond her at the moment. Someday. She and Truman would try their hands at amateur masonry in the future.
Finishing the interior was up to her and Truman. The goal date for completion was the end of summer. Three months had sounded doable to her until she landed the Gamble-Helmet case. Her evenings and weekends were no longer her own and wouldn’t be until the case was solved or, if her research produced no leads, downgraded to a back burner. She knew Jeff would give her at least a month to run full tilt at the case.
She was determined to make the most of it.
Tonight’s trip to the cabin was to work on her shopping list for the new structure, knowing she might not be back for a few weeks.
Infrared floodlights. Night vision goggles. A few infrared break beams for the long driveway to warn her of visitors.
The photovoltaic solar power system had been ordered, along with a new gun safe. A bigger one.
She also needed to buy the basics. Beds, chairs, a table, kitchen supplies.
Getting out of her truck, she noticed Truman had arrived first and parked around back, closer to her big storage barn. Thankfully, the barn’s contents had been spared during the fire. It held her years’ worth of stocked food, medical supplies, tools, fuel, and batteries, and a backup generator. The knowledge that her reserves and larder were safe had kept her from completely falling apart as her cabin went up in flames.
She went up the steps and opened the front door. A heavenly scent greeted her, and her jaw dropped open as she stared at the scene inside.
A plywood board was balanced on sawhorses and set for dinner for two, complete with lighted candles and paper plates. Two large bags from her favorite Italian restaurant sat at one end of the table.
Her mouth watered.
The sight of the man unpacking the bags also made her mouth water and her heart swell with happiness. Truman brought excitement, laughter, and love to her everyday life. Things she had rarely experienced before she moved to Bend.
He grinned at her with a smugly pleased expression. Surprising Mercy wasn’t easy.
“Hungry?” he asked.
“I didn’t eat dinner.”
“I figured that would happen.” He spread his arms to indicate the makeshift table. “I thought I’d arrange a little surprise.”
“You got food from Marta’s?”
“Where else?”
The tiny Italian restaurant had yet to be discovered by the tourists, and Mercy hoped it’d stay that way. It was cozy and quiet, with impeccable service and food. Marta, the Italian owner, would talk to her customers and pour more wine. If you hadn’t ordered wine with your meal, she’d wink and pour you a small glass “for just a taste.”
Which always inspired Mercy to buy the exact bottle from Marta’s tiny Italian food market next door.
Marta knew how to drive sales.
“Sit,” he ordered.
She sat on a stool that was too high for the makeshift table. She didn’t care. They could sit on the ground and she’d be happy with Truman. Currently the home had plywood subfloors and open framing, but part of Mercy loved the empty, bare look; it promised that something fabulous was coming.
Fabulous and practical.
Truman leaned over and poured red wine into the plastic cup by her paper plate. Mercy spotted the Italian label and knew Marta had recommended the wine. She sighed and buried her nose in her cup. The fragrance was deep and bold, with hints of plum and smoke.
“Italy,” she mumbled into the wine.
“What?” asked Truman.
“I want to visit Italy. How does a honeymoon in Italy sound?”
A grin filled his face, and the sensation of butterflies fluttered up her spine.
Or maybe it’s the wine.
She took a sip of her wine as she studied his face. So familiar and dear to her. A smile to stop traffic. Eyes that crinkled in happiness. Several scars that testified to his love of law enforcement. Her attraction to him was more than skin deep. She was in love with the person he was. He was a natural leader and easily commanded respect. His people turned to him, followed him, admired him. His natural sense of honor was a magnet for her.