Where Angels Rest (12 page)

Maggie didn’t obsess over her looks but she knew, even now, she drew stares from men. The occasional woman, too.

“I’m not bad for an old fart,” she said.

Rodney shook his head. “He doesn’t deserve you, Maggie. He never did.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Right,” he said, letting it go. They’d been through it before. “I should get back to the office, anyway; I shouldn’t leave the phones unattended.”

He meant,
I’d better go field the cancellations.
When word spread that the owner of Hilltop House was accused of murder, it was bound to happen.

He left and Maggie went back to her clay, urging it to life in her fingers. The artwork was her solace—it always had been. She reached for the facial mold Rodney had selected and began pushing fresh clay over the surface, smoothing the silky mud over the curve of a cheek.

But all the while, even as the mask began to take shape, a question pricked at her brain like a fish hook: Was John telling Reverend Whitmore the truth?

N
ICK PREPARED THE
appropriate paperwork for the Florida AG: The Jack Calloway residing in Hopewell was the man who had gone by John Huggins prior to 2007.

Done, Nick thought, tossing his pen on the desk. His role was finished.

Except that Erin Sims was still in town and her brother was still facing death. And except for the fact that some son of a bitch had deliberately scared the living hell out of her at her motel, right under Nick’s nose.

Jack? It seemed unlikely that Jack would believe a little paint in her motel room would get rid of her. On the other hand, he didn’t need to get rid of her entirely. He only needed a stall tactic: delay her for five more days and it would be too late to save her brother. Lauren McAllister’s murder would be laid to rest along with Justin.

Nick propped his feet on the desk and laid a forearm over his brow. Even at the height of his detective days, he’d never worked a case this old. When a murder was fresh, solving it was a matter of tracking down real live people in real time, handling evidence as quickly as possible, and
rushing around in several different directions trying not to let any one of multiple trails cool off. When a murder was twelve years old, solving it was a matter of reading age-old reports, mentally recreating relationships and situations so they could be studied. It didn’t have the sense of urgency a current case did.

Except that this time, a man was about to die. The urgency was there, but the people, the relationships, the situations weren’t. And there was nothing Nick could do about that.

Except one relationship—the one between Erin Sims and whoever wanted her gone—did exist today. Here, in real time, in Hopewell. That’s the one Nick had to unravel. Because whoever was at the other end of it knew something about Lauren’s murder.

Nick pulled his feet from his desk and arranged to meet Quentin at Hilltop House. For the next two hours, they talked to anyone who had information about the confrontation between Jack and Erin. Jack and Margaret, of course. Dorian. The McCormicks and another pair of guests who’d heard the commotion and wandered in on it. Rodney, who’d gone home to his cabin just before Sims arrived, and Rosa, who worked at the inn in the mornings and lived with her son in an apartment in the second story of the barn. Finally, there was only one person left. Calvin, Rosa’s fifteen-year-old son.

“Bad woman,” Calvin said, twisting his hands. “Margaret cry, cry, cry.”

Nick looked at him. “What do you mean?”

The boy shook his head but his eyes didn’t move from a spot on the carpet. Calvin’s peers considered him a freak, but Nick had always thought that his brain was just overrun with data. It wouldn’t surprise him if, somewhere in
there, Calvin was calculating equations that could solve the energy crisis or build a nuclear bomb.

“Where were you last night? Did you see Dr. Sims here?” Quentin asked.

“Guns. Shotgun. Gunsgunsguns.”

“Guns?” Rosa asked. She stuck her hands on her hips. Nick recognized the expression and the pose: Rosa was Valeria’s daughter and he’d been at the dangerous end of Valeria’s no-nonsense glare more than once. “Calvin, were you into Jack’s guns again?” she asked.

He shook his head faster. Not to argue, Nick realized, just to move. “Seven-eighteen p.m., November tenth, two-thousand-twelve. Seven-eighteen p.m., November tenth, two-thous—”

He started going in circles with the time and date Erin Sims had been there, and Rosa looked at Nick. “He likes the guns. Jack has said it’s okay. They aren’t loaded. Calvin takes them apart, puts them back together.”

Nick nodded. At the top of the main stairway from the lobby stood a gun cabinet with several nice weapons. He’d admired them more than once. They were just for show; Jack was neither a hunter nor a marksman.

“So you were looking at the guns when Dr. Sims was here,” Nick said. “That’s fine, Calvin. You’re not in trouble for that. But you said Margaret was crying. Why?”

“Bad woman. Go homehomehomehome.”

Nick straightened. He glanced at Quentin and Rosa caught it. She took a step forward.

“What’s the matter?”

“Calvin,” Nick said, “did you get mad at Dr. Sims for coming here?”

“Wait a minute,” Rosa said. “What’s going on?”

Nick hesitated, but had to tell her. “Someone vandalized
Dr. Sims’s motel room early this morning. Left her a message to go home.”

Rosa stared. “You think Calvin did it? He was here this morning. How would he even get there?”

Nick refrained from pointing out the obvious: Calvin may not have a license, but he could drive. He often did odd jobs around Hilltop. Nick had seen him drive the van Margaret used to transport sculptures and carry supplies, as well as use Jack’s work truck on the property. Not to mention Rodney’s scooter.

Nick said, “Rosa, you come over here to cook pretty early in the morning, don’t you?”

“I come at 4:30,” she admitted.

Leaving Calvin asleep in the apartment.

Just how angry had Calvin been when he stood by the gun case watching Erin throw accusations at Jack? Angry enough to try to scare her home?

Nick stood. “Rosa, we’d like to look around in the barn.”

Her eyes blazed. “You won’t find anything.”

“Then we could move on,” he said gently.

She worried it for a few seconds then said, “Come on.”

The Calloway property consisted of forty acres and three main structures: the big house, which included the gift shop and all the guest rooms; a carriage house now used as a garage; and a barn, which included Margaret’s studio, classroom, and the apartment in which Calvin and Rosa lived.

Rosa and Calvin had moved in three years ago, when Hilltop’s business picked up to the point that the Calloways needed full-time help. Hell, Nick thought, passing through Margaret’s workshop to the back stairs of the barn. Just about everyone in town had worked at Hilltop
House at one time or another, including him. A decade earlier, the abandoned Hilltop area had all the earmarks of an up-and-coming drug haven that posed a threat to Hopewell’s Norman Rockwell existence. Nick and Jack had arrived about the same time—about five years ago—and when Nick’s first act as sheriff was to clean the area up, the Calloways bought it and secured a grant from the Historical Society to refurbish the buildings and grounds. The County annexed the three hundred acres surrounding it, and now, instead of sprouting meth houses and trash, the land surrounding Jack’s forty acres was surrounded by parks, historical markers, and a reservoir. Nick had even initiated an ongoing work-release program for jail inmates to keep up the county property.

Rosa led them upstairs and entered the apartment without a key. Calvin ducked in ahead of them.

“Go,” she snapped, and Nick and Quent walked around, sticking their heads into a bath and looping through the kitchenette. It was a small apartment, with exposed beams and rough-hewn walls, calico curtains on the two windows and matching chair covers. A realtor would call it “quaint.”

And there were photos everywhere: a wedding picture of Rosa and Calvin’s father, a picture of him in uniform, and several shots of Calvin at various ages. The most recent showed him and his dad just a few months ago, when he’d shipped out to Iraq.

“How much longer?” Nick asked.

“His tour ends in three months.”

Nick nodded, sympathetic. He knew about single parenting. He pointed at a closed door. “Calvin’s?” he asked.

Rosa nodded and Nick rapped his knuckle against it. When there was no answer, Rosa opened the door.

Calvin sat on his bed, a set of headphones in his ears and an Mp3 player in hand. His head moved back and forth. If he noticed them, he didn’t show it. Nick looked around: a few books and DVDs on a shelf, a small TV and stereo on a nightstand, and an armoire against one wall. The room was neat, obsessively so, and Nick wondered if the compulsion for order came with Calvin’s condition. There were no pictures on the desk or posters on the walls, no piles of junk or containers sitting out, filled with spare change or paperclips or old erasers. No calendar or baseball trophies or keepsakes. No dirty socks on the floor.

Nick found himself stricken. This wasn’t like any fifteen-year-old kid he knew. As autism went, Calvin was highly functional. But he would never be fully independent, would never quite fit in, and might never have a career—no matter how much brilliance was trapped inside.

A wave of gratitude washed over Nick. It could have been Hannah. There had been a few days after a bullet struck her head when brain damage had been a possibility. Christ, they were lucky.

Nick buried that thought and peeked under the bed, looked out the window, pulled open some drawers. Last, he stepped over to an old armoire.

“Sticks,” Calvin said, to no one in particular. “Sticks-sticks-sticks.”

Nick pulled on the door of the armoire. It stuck. So, Calvin
was
paying attention. He turned back to the armoire and gave it a tug, then another, and the door came open.

And there it was.

R
UMOR TRAVELED LIKE WILDFIRE.
By afternoon, only a few hours after the sheriff was seen sharing
brötchen
with Sims, the possibility that Jack Calloway had a secret past was the talk of the town. Rebecca Engel told everyone who walked in, and everyone who walked out carried it to someone else. Countywide, the reaction was the same:
Jack Calloway? Couldn’t be.

Stupid, blind fools. People believed what they wanted to believe. They made it easy to keep up an image.

Except Rebecca Engel. She was dangerous now, and the weight of that knowledge was like a cement block pressing down. She’d
seen.
She
knew.
She didn’t know the significance of what she knew yet, but it was only a matter of time. The longer she was out there, the more dangerous she became. The Angelmaker could
feel
her watching.

And someone else. Strange, in all the years, there had never been more than one angel at a time. Sometimes, months and even years passed without feeling the weight of their censure. But now, the Angelmaker had to face the fact that it wasn’t just Rebecca.

Erin Sims? Nick Mann? The minister at church?
Maybe. Or maybe it was the scrutiny of the town, in general. Everybody involved in everybody’s business.

Have to think about that. Whoever it was, the Angelmaker had to be ready.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil
.

The Angelmaker would make sure of it.

Rosa gasped. Nick pulled a gallon container of red paint from the floor of Calvin’s armoire.

“Calvin?” Rosa said, her voice a study in confusion. She walked over to the bed and snatched the headphones from his ears. “Calvin, what is that paint doing in here?”

“Rosa,” Nick said, “don’t do that. Don’t ask him anything here. Not without a lawyer.”

Her eyes filled with betrayal and Nick felt as if he was tearing off his own limb. Still, there was no choice.

They took Calvin to headquarters for questioning. Pastor Carl Whitmore was waiting there. He started toward Nick the minute he walked in, but Valeria saw her daughter and grandson and barged in front of him.

“What’s this?” she asked.

Rosa leaned in and spoke in Spanish. Valeria turned to Nick with horror in her eyes.

“No puede ser. No.”

“I’m sorry, Valer—”

“I need to talk to you, Sheriff.” Whitmore. His hand was on Nick’s arm.

“Go ahead, Nick,” Quent said. “I’ll take care of Calvin.”

Nick snapped his fingers. “Attorney.”

“Of course.” Quent gestured for Calvin and Rosa to precede him down the hall. Valeria glared at Nick, and he nodded.

“You, too,” he said, then saw the Post-it note stuck to her fingers. “Is that for me?”

It took a second, then she remembered and held out the note. “A call for you.” Nick took it and looked at the name: Luke.

“Goddamn it,” Nick said, then glanced at Whitmore. “Oh, sorry.” He fired Luke’s note into a trash can. “Come on, Reverend.”

Whitmore looked relieved not to be put off. He’d been the pastor at Ebenezer Lutheran Church for fifteen or twenty years. Nick didn’t know him well. Nick’s parents had belonged to a Methodist congregation to which they’d hauled the Mann kids, but it didn’t stick. Church was one of the few places in town Nick didn’t frequent.

Still, as reputations went, Whitmore was an okay guy. Just now, he looked like Job.

In his office, Nick said, “Something on your mind, Pastor?”

“Jack Calloway is a parishioner at Ebenezer.”

“I know.”

“This is awkward, Sheriff, but in light of the accusations that were made last night, I thought you should know.” Whitmore wrung his hands. “Jack is a good man.”

He tithes generously,
Nick thought. “But…?”

“But he
is
a man, and he has certain needs.”

“Ah,” Nick said, as if he understood. He didn’t.

“Sex isn’t a sin, Sheriff. It’s the way God created man.”