Stranger in Town

CHAPTER 24





“When you said ‘take you to breakfast,’ I was thinking more along the lines of a diner, preferably one with a fireplace,” I said.

Cade inhaled the cool mountain air and glanced around at the landscape surrounding us. “I can’t imagine a more beautiful place than this. Besides, you got your very own fire right there.”

He walked to the truck, lifted up the seat in the back, and pulled out a blanket. A minute later, it was wrapped around me.

“Don’t you live in Park City?” he said. “I thought you’d be used to this kind of weather.”

“I have no problem with winter. I just think it’s a season best experienced indoors.”

He shook his head.

“You know,” he said. “You’re just about the farthest thing from a country girl that I’ve ever met.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know what it is. You’re different.”

“Different good or different bad?”

Instead of answering, he stirred some eggs in a thick black pan with a wooden spatula. The more he mixed them around, the more little black flecks of what appeared to be pieces of the pan mingled with the eggs until it resembled pepper. I tried not to make a face and instead wrapped the blanket tighter around me.

“So, what did you want to talk to me about?” I said.

He placed a finger in front of his lips and pointed across the meadow. “Do you see it?” he said in a hushed voice.

I saw nothing but trees and various kinds of sagebrush. “See what?”

“Here, look through my binoculars,” he said, handing them to me.

I held them in front of my eyes. “I can’t see a thing out of these; it’s blurry.”

He reached over, messing around with a knob in the middle. “You gotta adjust them a bit. Turn this dial until you can see clearly.”

I tried what he suggested and gasped when I looked through the lenses again. The animal was far off, but viewing it through the binoculars made it seem closer. Too close. “That’s the biggest deer I’ve ever seen!”

Cade smacked the side of his pants and laughed so hard I thought he’d fall off the log we were sitting on.

“What’s so funny?” I said.

“That’s no deer, woman. It’s a bull elk.”

Woman?

I shrugged.

“Deer, elk, same difference,” I said.

“Actually, they’re not the same at all. Elk are about three times bigger than deer, and their hair is yellow. A deer has brown hair.”

The elk seemed to notice our presence, even though it didn’t seem likely given our distance. It glanced around and slanted its head upward, making a noise Cade later explained as “bugling.” Then it camouflaged itself inside a group of trees. I tried to find it again, but it was gone.

Cade scooted a little closer to me. “Would you look at that?”

The sunrise was among the prettiest I had ever seen and worth every moment I’d spent whining about the chilly temperatures. Just looking at it made me feel warmer.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

Cade scooped the eggs onto two paper plates and handed one of the plates to me along with some hash browns that he’d mixed with pieces of bacon. I took a bite. They were surprisingly good.

“What do you think?” he said. “Does it meet your standards for breakfast?”

I nodded. He tossed a couple pieces of wood, stoking up the fire.

“I, uh, wanted to apologize for getting angry with you the other night,” he said.

“You had every right. I would have done the same thing in your position.”

“I was frustrated and tired, but not just at you,” he said. “Coming back hasn’t been easy. The guys at the station make me feel like an outsider even though I grew up around here. And when the chief announced I’d be filling my father’s position, it didn’t go over well. I suppose I understand why, but I went to school with some of these guys, and they’re being completely ignorant.”

“Have you talked to them about it?”

“Tried to, but they haven’t been very receptive,” he said. “Chief Rollins and my dad go way back. They lived next door to each other when they was boys. Rollins is more like family to me than anything else. The other guys know it, think he’s playing favorites. And maybe he is, but they don’t know how qualified I am for the job or how many years I’ve been at it. They don’t care, neither.”

“In many ways, I know how you feel,” I said. “It’s not easy being a private investigator. I have a love/hate relationship going on with the police department in my town. It doesn’t matter how much I’ve helped them over the years, they don’t want me around. Not really. They probably feel like I make them look bad when I get something right that they couldn’t.”

“The truth is, I know a lot more about you than you think,” he said.

I pulled my knees up in front of me, resting my chin on top. Then I repositioned the blanket. “Like what?”

“For starters, you’ve solved every case you’ve taken.”

“How did you know? Did Maddie tell you?”

He shook his head.

“I looked into your background the day you met with Tate,” he said. “Impressive. But what I don’t understand is why’d you become a PI instead of a cop? You would have made detective by now.”

“I don’t like people,” I said.

He raised a brow. “Care to explain yourself?”

“I don’t possess the works-well-with-others gene. Never have. I like being on my own with no one to answer to but myself.”

The look on his face let me know he could relate.

“The chief ran the paper Tate gave you.”

“And?” I said.

“I’m not sure.”

“About what?”

“The guys won’t tell me if they got anything off of it. Right now, I’m not a member of their ‘club,’ but that’s fine. If they’re gonna continue actin’ how they are, I don’t wanna be.”

“What about the envelope?” I said. “I’m guessing you handed it over too.”

“Nope. Your friend Madison has it.”

“Maddie? Why?”

The envelope had gone from Mr. and Mrs. Tate, to me, to Maddie, to Cade, and back to Maddie again. It would be a miracle if it produced anything useful at this point.

“I’ll explain later, but right now, I was hopin’ you’d tell me more about what you know about the case. You said a few things at Tate’s house, and I have some questions.”

I set my plate down and stood up. “Is that why you invited me out here, so you could get me to tell you what I know? I don’t think so.”

I considered walking back to the hotel, but I had no idea where we were.

“Calm down, would ya? It’s not what you think. I want us to work together.”

I almost spit out the mouthful of eggs I had been chewing. “What? Still?”

“You heard me,” he said.

“No one in law enforcement has ever wanted to work with me—not when they had another choice.”

“Maybe they’re intimidated because you’re a woman, or maybe it’s because you don’t wear a badge,” he said. “You’re feisty as hell, but I don’t scare easily. And besides, this is my dad’s case. If anyone else is going to solve it besides him, it’s going to be me.”

There it was—the motivation behind why he wanted to work together. Cade knew the other guys were keeping things from him, doing all they could to make his job harder. They wanted him to fail. Either that or for him to reach a breaking point and leave, giving one of them his father’s job. But Cade didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who got pushed around. He wanted to find Savannah for his father, but he also had something to prove.

“Is that why Maddie has the envelope?” I said.

He nodded.

“No one besides the three of us knows you found it.”

“And you’re not concerned about—”

“I only care about one thing right now: finding out what happened to Savannah any way I can.”

He sounded more like me all the time.

I told Cade about the other missing girl and her parents who had also received a coloring page in the mail. I told him about my visit to Maybelle’s Market and about meeting Todd, the only person to have seen the kidnapper. I told him about meeting Kris and Olivia’s stepdad and the two old coots who thought Terrence was somehow involved in Olivia’s abduction. Talking about it to someone else made me feel like I hadn’t been such a failure, but it still wasn’t much to go on.

Cade remained silent until I finished, and then he stuck his hand out. “You interested in tryin’ this again?”

It seemed silly, but I shook his hand anyway.

“What now?” I said.

“Now you go back to the hotel and say goodbye to your friend. She said she needs to get back to her lab in order to process the envelope.”

“And then?”

“Then you’re going to meet Chief Rollins.”