Making It Right (Most Likely To #3)

“Yeah.”


“Good to know.” The coach glanced at the stopwatch in his hands and walked away without more questions.





Chapter Nineteen




Nerves swam like a school of fish chasing the leader in circles. Jo left the station early, made sure Glynis had the calls forwarded to her for the night.

Gill had dropped Miss Gina off and pulled in the driveway shortly after Jo.

Jo grilled, she didn’t cook. Outside of a couple of steaks and some vegetables she could toss on the barbeque, they’d have to do without. Doing the whole domestic thing was like trying to wear two left shoes. Uncomfortable.

“I have beer, water, or milk,” Jo announced once Gill had returned from her backyard, where he had heated up the grill.

“Milk is for breakfast.”

Jo handed him a beer, twisted the cap off of one for herself.

“Your dad’s cabin is every hunter’s dream.”

“Are you a hunter?” she asked, wanting to get the pleasantries of his trip out of the way so she could determine what he’d learned.

“No. From what I saw, your dad didn’t dedicate all his time up there to searching for venison.”

“He’d bring back a deer once in a while. It wasn’t a big priority for him. The cabin was more a place to get away without going too far.”

“Because he was married to his work.” Gill’s statement made her pause.

“After my mom, yeah.”

Jo seasoned the steaks while they spoke.

“Does everyone in town know about the cabin?”

She nodded.

“Even the kids?”

“Not sure about those that have grown into their teenage years since his death, but yeah. Growing up, everyone I hung out with knew about the place. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was used by kids hooking up.”

Gill looked at her over the neck of his beer. “But not you?”

Jo’s skin crawled. “That place was always my dad’s. The idea of getting naked there with a boyfriend was about as appealing as having sex at the station.”

She lifted the platter with the food and encouraged Gill to follow her outside. Once there, Gill took the food from her and proceeded to take over the cooking detail.

Jo let him.

“On the report from your dad’s file, it listed more than a dozen names of men he’d been known to go up to the cabin with to hunt.”

“My guess is the list is short. Just about everyone with a shotgun went up there with my dad at one time or another. There were a few regulars, which is what the list is referring to.”

“His death was ruled accidental from the start.”

She nodded. “I made a stink, and because he was the sheriff, they made a second pass at the cabin, but by then there had been so many hands and eyes going through the place the prints they found were all accounted for.”

“Was your father a clean freak?”

“Define freak.”

“Everything has its place, spit shine and polish everything after it’s used?”

“He was neat,” Jo said. “Bleach clean . . . no. Not completely. He hated clutter but wasn’t big on using the vacuum obsessively.”

Gill flipped the steaks, lowered the flame on the gas grill. “That weekend he was up there alone, no visitors?”

“I was living in Waterville at the time. But that’s what Karl gave in his report. He’d asked Luke’s father to join him, but the garage was unusually busy, probably because of the class reunion.”

Gill tilted his beer back and then asked, “Class reunion?”

“Yeah, every year, within a couple weeks of my father’s death, there is a River Bend High class reunion. The ten-year reunions are always at the school gym.”

“What about a twenty-year, or thirty-year?”

Jo shook her head. “The school makes the effort for ten years, it’s up to the alumni to manage anything beyond that.”

“Was there a twenty that year?”

Jo scratched her head. “I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask.”

“Miss Gina didn’t know of a back way in and out from the cabin, do you know of any?”

Jo shook her head.

Gill shuffled the veggies on the grill a few times, kept his eye on their steaks. “At face value, I would have to agree with the original investigation, Jo.”

Her nose flared. “Face value?”

“Yeah. But there is something that bugs me about the whole thing.”

That, she wanted to hear. “Which is?”

“It was too easy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everyone knew when your father took time off, right?”

“Right.”

“And most knew exactly where he was going to go during his time off.”

“Yep.”

“So if your father had an enemy, they’d know where to find him alone and have an easy explanation for his death unless there was a struggle.”

Jo didn’t like the sound of it, but yes.

“There wasn’t a struggle,” Gill said as he removed their dinner from the grill.

“Which means the person who murdered him knew him.” Jo had already come up with that conclusion. “My dad didn’t have enemies.”

Gill gave her a sideways glance. “Everyone has enemies.”

A lack of outside furniture moved them both inside, where they dished up their food and sat at the small kitchen table. “Ask around town, Gill. Everyone loved my dad. Pillar of the community, respected.”

Gill cut into his steak, pointed a piece of meat at her with his fork. “If you believe he was murdered, he must have had an enemy.”

“I haven’t figured out who that is,” she said.

“Someone familiar with that cabin. Someone he trusted completely.”

“That would be just about everyone. Sure, there are a few people in town that stepped out of line over the years that needed my dad to reel them in. Zoe’s father was one of them, but he was in jail at the time of my dad’s death, and he wouldn’t have trusted Ziggy with a second of his time.”

Gill paused, started to laugh. “Zoe’s father’s name was Ziggy?”

Jo waved him off. “Long story.”

He spoke around his food. “What about Zoe’s mom, was she upset about her husband’s arrest?”

“The arrest happened long before my dad died. From what Zoe tells me, right after Ziggy went to jail, her family finally relaxed and learned to smile once in a while. The man was a real dirtbag,” Jo informed him. She took the first bite of her steak, hardly realizing that she wasn’t eating. “You grill a good steak.”

“Meat is my only cooking talent.”

“Great, mine, too. Malnourishment might be in our futures.”

That didn’t stop him from putting more in his mouth.

“I’ll continue looking, Jo. I’m not sure I’ll find anything.”

The fact that he looked was enough for her. “Thank you.”

Gill’s cell phone rang in his back pocket. He swallowed his food with a swig from his bottle and answered. “Hey, Shauna.”

Jo listened to the one-way conversation between Agent Burton and Gill, watched Gill’s body language. His smile moved to a frown, his brows pinched together, and he looked at his watch.

“When is this starting?” he asked.

Jo took another bite.

Gill pushed back from the table.