Keeping the Peace (24 page)

“Did Natalie press charges? For assault?”

“No, she didn’t. The security guys said they would call the police, but she said she didn’t want any trouble, to just let it go.”

“What did the e-mails say?”

“You can read them. Mia printed them all out. Mostly they said stuff like, ‘I saw your mother today. She was coming out of Los Rios Drive.’ You can Google the street where I live and see that it transects Los Rios Drive, so that doesn’t mean anything. The stuff that creeps me out is when they say things like, ‘You think I’m just a girlfriend, but I’m not. I’m something else.’ Stuff like that. Then there was a new one today.”

“What did it say?”

Strand cleared his throat. “It was kind of scary. It said, ‘First I was hurt. I couldn’t believe it of you. Then I realized you are totally self-centered. Now I’m angry. You’d better watch your back.’”

“The e-mail said that? ‘You’d better watch your back’?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. I need to see those e-mails.”

The musician straightened up a little and slapped both his hands down on his knees. “This is a nightmare. Now there seems to be two stalkers. Bruce Blake is dead. I’m the one that the killer wanted dead, so that doesn’t make me feel warm and fuzzy. And I’ve got a show.” He looked straight at John. “And I’m going to do that show, Chief. If I start letting things like this get to me, I’m finished. My band is counting on me.”

John blew through his lips. “We’ll try to narrow it down before Saturday night. I think I’ve got a good lead on Seeley. I don’t know what to do about this Kayla person. I’m sure we can trace her through her e-mail, but she may not be where her e-mail suggests she is. What do the blogs say? Or the message boards, I guess they’re called?”

“I never read those things.”

“Go back in the house, Gabriel. Go with Melanie and get your business done. Have your conference call. Then stop back at the station. I’m going there now, and we’ll see where we get with some concentrated effort.”

He gripped the young man’s shoulder for an instant. Strand nodded in acknowledgment and got out of the car. John hurried back to the station.

Melanie was alone in the kitchen when she heard the door open. She knew it was Gabriel before she turned around. They hadn’t spoken of the incident at the barn, but she could feel it brewing just below the surface. She turned to face him and smiled.

“Would you like some coffee? I just made a fresh pot. Then we can go down to my office and get this conference call out of the way.”

“Okay,” he said and took a seat at the table.

Melanie set a mug of steaming coffee in front of him. She sat across from him with her own mug.

“Where did the kids go?” he asked.

“To other parts of the house. They’re afraid to hang around here too long. They’re afraid I might ask them to do something.”

Gabriel gave a little laugh, and then he said, “Melanie, I’m sorry about what happened in the barn this morning. I was out of line. I’m just freaked out right now.”

“You don’t need to apologize, Gabriel,” Melanie said softly. “I kissed you back. I guess I’m as guilty as you are.”

“You’re very beautiful,” he whispered, a slight smile playing on his lips.

Melanie blushed in spite of her resolve. “Thank you, but I’m nearly old enough to be your mother.”

“That doesn’t bother me,” he protested as he took another sip of his coffee. “I’m in love with you.”

“Oh, Gabriel! Think about what you just said! You aren’t in love with me! You don’t even know me.”

“I am. I am in love with you. I’d get to know you in time, but I’m in love with you right now. Do you understand how that works?”

Melanie sat back in her chair and raised her mug of hot coffee to her lips. “Sounds like a guy thing to me,” she said. There was just the slightest hint of sarcasm in her voice.

“Please don’t mock me,” Gabriel said. There was no mistaking the passion in his deep brown eyes as they stared into her sky blue ones. “I need you to know that I’m in love with you.” Melanie was silent, so he went on. “I don’t know how it happened. I didn’t plan on it, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since I met you at the accident. I travel all over the country. I meet hundreds of people. I have to scrape the girls off me. I hardly notice them. I hardly ever meet a person who impresses me one way or another. And then, here I am, in the sticks of a tiny state in New England in the middle of a blizzard, and you come out of nowhere and break my heart!”

“As I recall, you’re the one who came out of nowhere.”

Gabriel smiled a little at that. “You know what I mean. I had to see you again. That’s why I came up that evening. I just had to know who you were. I couldn’t let you just fade back into the snow. Then—then, all this happened, and now here we are.” He paused and sighed, studying some invisible spot on the table top. Melanie waited, and then he looked up at her and said, “I take back my apology. I’m not sorry. I’m glad. I’m glad I kissed you. I want to kiss you again, right now. I’d give anything just to put the world on hold for a second—no, a week. A week with you and nobody else around. A week with you on a South Seas island. I’d give up all the fame in the world for that.”

Melanie laughed. “Now you’re being silly!”

Gabriel didn’t smile. “I’m not being silly. I’m not a child, Melanie. I’m a man. A man with a job. A man who has learned what he wants. I know the feelings I have for you are real. I’ve had relationships before. I know what I thought love felt like, but now, here you are, and the feeling is something I’ve never felt before. Melanie, tell me you have some feelings for me. Please, tell me what to do about this.”

Melanie blinked back tears that burned at the backs of her eyes for reasons she couldn’t fathom.
I must be tired
, she thought to herself.
This kid is getting to me
. Even in the wake of that spectacular love fest with her husband, not an hour ago.

“It would be hypocritical of me to sit here and say I didn’t care about you, that I wasn’t attracted to you, too, but I’m a married woman. Married for a long time to a man I love very dearly. I tried to explain that to you in the barn. A physical attraction, even an emotional attraction, can happen between people at any time. It’s not unusual. However, I, for one, won’t act on it. I’m absolutely flattered that a b—a man like you, young, extremely attractive, with testosterone oozing from every pore, a celebrity with his pick of women no less—would feel this way about me. You have no idea how it’s touched me, this attraction we have, but Gabriel, I do love my husband, and I know, I
know
, he loves me, too. We met when I was fifteen, and I dated other guys, even thought I was going to marry one of them, but I always came back to John. We belong together. Our connection trumps everything. Always has; always will.”

The young musician rubbed his hands over his face. When he looked up, he said, “Will you tell him about what happened in the barn?”

“Not all of it,” Melanie answered.

“Why not?”

“Why?” she asked coolly. “What purpose would that serve? Nothing happened that would change the way I feel about him.”

“Well, thank you for that,” Gabriel said, smiling suddenly. “I wouldn’t want him to find out and then conveniently let somebody take me out!”

Melanie laughed out loud. “You’re funny!” She got up from the table just as Mia came into the kitchen.

“Am I interrupting something?” she asked sulkily.

“No,” Melanie replied. “Did you have any lunch, baby? How’s your shoulder feeling?”

“It’s okay, I guess.” Mia sat down at the table. “I’m not that hungry right now. I want to go somewhere, but we’re short a car!” She glanced nastily at Gabriel.

“Hey, I’m really sorry,” he said. “My trip here really put a kink in your whole family’s plans.”

Mia smiled. “Oh, that’s okay. I’ll be able to tell my grandchildren about how I was snowed in with Gabriel Strand.”

They both laughed.

“Yes, we are short a car, and Gabriel and I have to get down to my office for that conference call. Call your brother down here, Mia. We’ll have to use his car.”

The pale winter sun was slipping down toward the horizon. Afternoon had descended.

Chapter Seventeen

“R
ICK
W
ANTS
Y
OU
T
O
K
NOW
it’s going to be a while for Melanie’s car,” were the first words spoken to John as he walked in the door.

Becky was standing behind her desk. She was the best co-pilot, wing man, and first mate a captain could want. She was his “brother-in-arms,” personally and professionally, and had been since high school. She was at once pragmatic, practical, and optimistic, and he envied her that. She had an uncanny knack for being able to see the prize without losing sight of the trail or the details along the way.

“Why are you looking at me like that, John?”

“Do you remember when you sneaked Melanie out of her house the night we got married?”

“Please! Don’t remind me. I was scared. I carried the suitcase.”

“Well, it ended up fine, didn’t it?”

“You know what they say about fools and drunkards.”

He laughed. “You might have a point there.”

“What made you think of that?”

“Melanie and I took a ride into the hills to talk to Bud Seeley. We were talking.”

“And is he related to this Richard Seeley?”

“He is. He’s his grandfather. Richard Seeley’s been staying there, saying he was on a ski vacation.”

Jason Patterson and Steve Bruno came into the room from their back office. “Does he know where he is now?” Steve asked.

John shook his head. “No, he doesn’t, but he showed me the room where Seeley’s been staying. His suitcase was still there. And here’s the kicker: Bud Seeley, the grandfather, owns an old twenty-two-caliber pistol.”

“No shit!” Jason exclaimed, forgetting himself.

“That’s right,” John said. “What’s more, the gun’s missing. The old man claims it’s been lying untouched in the drawer of his bedside table for years. It wasn’t there today when I asked to see it.”

Becky spoke up, saying, “So the old guy was cooperative, then?”

John sighed. “Very. Made me sad. It’s a long story. I’ve got to write it up, but obviously this guy hasn’t left the area. If he is the guilty party, by this time, he must know it wasn’t Gabriel Strand he shot. He’s not going to go far. They never do. He’s going to have to have the last word. Where’s Cully?”

“He went to your house,” Steve said.

“My house! What the hell for?”

“Mia called him on his cell phone. I guess her brother wouldn’t give her a ride to a friend’s house or something. She asked Cully to give her a ride.”

“That kid is out of control!” John was mad. This was Melanie’s bailiwick, not his, but Melanie was running around with this rock star kid at the moment. He gritted his teeth. “Becky, get Cully back here right now. I need everybody on, and I need everybody here right now!” He whirled on his heel and into his office. “She thinks the whole frigging world revolves around her!” he muttered loudly, not caring who heard.

With his office door closed, John called his contact at the State Police, informing him of the situation. After that, he called the “neighbors”—police departments in nearby towns—to put them on alert as well. Then he grabbed a clipboard and returned to his staff. Jason and Steve were still standing there, waiting patiently. “I’ve been on the phone with Ostrowski down at the State Police Barracks. They’ve put extra cruisers on routes one-oh-three, ninety-one, and eighty-nine. Rutland police have Bud Seeley’s place staked out in case he shows up there. Personally, I think he’s riding around trying to figure out where the kid is. He’s going to try again. That means he’s right here under our noses.”

In the background, Becky was on the phone. “Don’t bother, Cully. Just get in here now. Somebody will get Mia to her friend’s house. I don’t care! This is life and death. The chief needs everybody. Bring her in with you, then. She can talk to her father.”