After Caroline (27 page)

Months before. So this other lover wasn’t seeing Caroline when she died—unless it was a repeat performance. “How an affair would end, you mean?”

“Yeah. She dumped him for no reason, or at least no reason she wanted to give him. Just said it was over and strolled away, avoiding a confrontation the way she always did. And he was in love with her, the poor bastard. He’s not over her yet.”

Neither are you
, Joanna thought. So there were at least two men who had been sexually and emotionally involved with Caroline; had there been others? What about Scott? Had he known or suspected that his wife was unfaithful? And if he had, had he cared?

Joanna had no way of knowing. “Adam, do you have any idea if she was involved with anyone just before the accident?”

“No. She may have been—probably was—but I couldn’t say for sure. Only her lover would know.”

“This is a town full of gossip,” Joanna said wonderingly. “How was Caroline able to hide an affair? Especially if she made it a habit.”

Adam shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she never got caught because she wanted to be.”

In a way, that made the most sense to Joanna—if it was true. People with nothing to lose often appeared to have unusual luck, as if fate had a fine sense of irony. If Caroline had indeed wanted—consciously or unconsciously—her
husband to discover her infidelity, perhaps fate had determined that she would have to tell him herself.

In any case, Joanna was left with a great deal to think about.

“Thanks for talking to me,” she told Adam. “And you don’t have to worry. I won’t tell anyone about you and Caroline.”

“Thanks,” he murmured, but not as if he really cared.

Joanna hesitated, wanting to say something else but not knowing what. Finally, she turned and made her way down the aisle toward the door.

“It was a closed-casket.”

Startled, she stopped and turned back to look at Adam. He was staring at the rosebush, but then raised his haunted gaze to her. “The service. It was a closed-casket service.” His voice was matter-of-fact. “The accident was so bad, she looked … there was no way to … fix her. So they kept the casket closed. I never saw her again.”

And never got to say you were sorry
. It also helped to explain, Joanna realized, at least some of the reactions to her here in Cliffside. If only a handful of people had actually seen Caroline’s body, then the grieving process for many had no doubt been delayed or hindered. They hadn’t been able to see her before burial, hadn’t been able to say good-bye in the way so many needed to. Encountering a woman who so resembled Caroline relatively soon after her death must have given rise to even more speculation than Joanna was aware of.

“Talk to Doc Becket, Joanna,” Adam said abruptly. “He knew her as well as anyone did.”

Joanna wasn’t sure if Adam was telling her that Becket had been Caroline’s lover, but she didn’t want to ask; she accepted the advice without comment. “Thank you, I will. Good-bye, Adam,” she said, helpless because there was nothing else she could say.

“Good-bye, Joanna.” He turned his head back and resumed staring at the rose named For Caroline, his pleasant face desolate.

She left the greenhouse and got in her car, just sitting there for a few moments before starting the engine. She had to force herself to shake off Adam’s pain, to push it away from her, and when she had, what she felt most of all was confused uncertainty.

Who
was
Caroline McKenna? A shy woman—a repressed woman. A serene woman—a woman who nervously bit her nails. A devoted mother—a habitually unfaithful wife. A woman who could bequeath millions so that the town clinic could be improved—yet apparently abandoned her lovers without warning or compunction.

A woman whose marriage was made hollow by the indifference of her husband? Or a woman whose own behavior had caused his cold remoteness?

…
you assume I’m at fault. That I’m the ogre, the villain of the piece
.

And are you?

Why, yes, Joanna. I am. Just because everybody says I’m a cold bastard doesn’t mean it isn’t true
.

But was it true? Joanna wondered now. Was Scott McKenna as remote and uncaring as he seemed? Or was he more sinned against than sinning? Was Scott another man Caroline had left in an emotional shambles, a secret he kept well hidden behind an inherently reserved, seemingly uncaring facade?

“Oh, damn, Caroline, who are you?” Joanna murmured, starting her car at last.

“Are you sure?” Griffin asked, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand and holding the phone to his ear with the other. “That isn’t what you told me yesterday, dammit.”

Doctor Becket sighed. “Griff, you know as well as I do that the longer a body is out in the elements—especially during a wet and chilly night—the harder it is to pinpoint the time of death. You say the girl planned to sneak out of the hotel around eleven-thirty, and you ask if she could have been killed closer to midnight than we originally estimated.
Yes, she could have. Anytime between ten
P.M
. and four
A.M
. would probably be a reasonable guess. I really can’t call it closer than that, not for the record.”

“Guesses,” Griffin muttered. “Isn’t science wonderful.”

“It has its limitations just like anything else,” Becket said. “Hey, call on the Portland M.E. if you want another opinion.”

“No, don’t be an ass. Thanks, Doc.” Griffin cradled the receiver and sat staring down at the elegant, leather-bound diary lying open on his blotter. “Son of a bitch,” he said quietly to himself.

“Having a bad day?”

He looked up at the open doorway of his office, then leaned back in his chair and shrugged. “You might say that.”

“I can come back later,” Joanna offered.

Griffin shook his head. “No, it’s all right.”

She came in rather cautiously and sat down in his visitor’s chair. “Um … about what I said yesterday—”

“If you thought I was still pissed about that,” he said, “I’m not.”

“Oh? Then how come it feels a few degrees cooler in here than it ought to be?”

“Okay, I’m still pissed. I hate being wrong.”

Joanna blinked, then smiled slightly. “Tough on the ego, huh?”

Griffin thought about it, then shook his head. “Not so much that as my knowledge of myself. You showed me something I hadn’t seen in myself, and I didn’t like it much. You were right—it
was
easier for me to believe Caroline’s death was no more than a random accident. I didn’t feel quite so guilty when I thought my being there wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“We can’t know that it would have,” Joanna reminded him quietly.

“No, but once we accept—once I accept—that something might have happened while she was waiting for me in
the old barn, then it becomes a lot more likely that if I’d been there, the outcome might have been different.”

“Maybe. But you can’t go back and relive that day, not now. So what’s the use of feeling guilty? It won’t change what happened to Caroline, and it sure won’t help you. Let it go, Griffin.”

He wondered if he could, but smiled at her anyway. “Okay, I’ll work on that. But in the meantime, no matter how I feel about what happened that day, it hardly alters the evidence. She was alone, she was driving, and the car wasn’t tampered with or forced off the road. No crime was committed.”

Joanna nodded. “Not a legal crime, I accept that. But what about a moral one? What if somebody did cause the accident by upsetting Caroline?”

“Then I’d like to beat the hell out of him,” Griffin said unemotionally. “But I can’t arrest him.”

Her unusual golden eyes searched his face intently, and he had the sudden feeling that whatever she found or didn’t find there was going to determine not only the rest of this conversation, but possibly something a lot more important. And the hell of it was, he had no idea what it was she was looking for.

She smiled briefly, the searching look vanishing, and linked her fingers together over her flat middle. “Okay. What about Amber? Another accident? Suicide?”

“What just happened?” Griffin asked slowly.

She looked startled, then wary. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do. You came in here with something very definite on your mind and then decided not to talk to me about it.”

“That’s my privilege, surely,” she murmured.

“Agreed.” He heard tension in his voice and knew she heard it as well. “But I’d like to know why you changed your mind.” Her face—very much her own now rather than a mere duplicate of Caroline’s, as far as he was concerned—was not one suited to bluff across a poker table;
she didn’t like it that he was able to read her so accurately. Still, this time that expressive face told him no more than her words did when she answered slowly.

“Look, I found out something today, something that surprised me. I was going to tell you, but decided not to because it really isn’t my story to tell. Besides, it has nothing to do with Amber or your investigation, so…”

“It’s about Caroline, isn’t it?”

Even more slowly, Joanna said, “Not about her death. So it hardly matters, does it?”

“Maybe you should let me be the judge of that.”

Her mouth curved in a faint, odd smile. “No, not this time. The story was confided to me, and as far as I can see, it wouldn’t help you in any way to know it. So it stays with me. Sorry.”

Griffin didn’t like it, and he knew that was obvious in his voice. “Well, since thumbscrews and the rack have been outlawed, I can’t force you to tell me.”

There was a moment of silence, and then she murmured, “So, once again I’ve messed things up and we aren’t pals anymore?”

“Is that what we were?” he heard himself ask.

“I thought so.” She looked at him, awareness in her eyes. “Was I wrong?”

For one of the few times in his life, Griffin was unsure. His feelings were too complex to easily define, and a part of him wanted to shy away from examining them. She had secrets she wouldn’t share, questions she wouldn’t answer, and that bothered him. Who was Joanna Flynn really, and why had she come here?

He had known her only a week—but she was due to leave in another week. That didn’t leave a man much time. “It’s an old argument,” he said finally, “but can a man and woman ever be just friends?”

“I guess that depends on whether they want to be,” Joanna said. “Is a friend what you want, Griffin?”

“I have friends. What about you, Joanna? Is there a man waiting for you back in Atlanta?”

For the first time, she looked away from him, not quite nervous but definitely guarded. “Flirting in the sheriff’s office. There’s probably a town ordinance against it.”

“Not since 1879. Answer the question.”

“All right. No, there isn’t a man waiting back in Atlanta.” The golden eyes that met his were unreadable. “It’s been a couple of years since I was involved with anybody. Satisfied?”

“Almost.” He kept his voice dispassionate. “What ended the last relationship?”

She frowned at him. “I murdered him and buried his body in the rose garden.”

“I’m serious.”

With a sigh, she said, “Call it basic incompatibility. He thought I needed a life. His. Problem was, I sort of like to think for myself—decide what I’m going to wear or do or say. So the second time he suggested that I not wear pants and try not to just blurt out what I was thinking, I told him to take a walk. A long walk. Satisfied now?”

“Satisfied he was an idiot.” Griffin didn’t give her a chance to respond to that comment, but went on immediately. “Aunt Sarah would have been proud of you, I’d say.” He was backing off and he knew it; Joanna was just wary enough to make him cautious.

With a laugh that sounded relieved, Joanna said, “She would have scolded me for getting involved with him in the first place. You, on the other hand, she would have liked.”

He smiled. “Because of my charming ways?”

“Those would have been a plus. No, she would have liked you because she favored dark men with dark eyes. The interesting thing was, none of her husbands were dark. She always said the only really interesting men in the South were blond men.”

“Sounds like blatant prejudice to me,” Griffin decided.

“Maybe so, but she obviously believed it. All four husbands were blonds.”

“And she outlasted all of them. That should have told her something.”

Joanna chuckled again, but before she could comment on that, one of Griffin’s deputies knocked briskly on the open door and came into the office.

“Sorry, boss,” she said, “but I thought you’d want to see this.”

He felt his good humor seep away as he accepted the piece of paper. He knew what it was, but asked anyway. “Bad news?”

“It could have been better,” she returned wryly.

“Okay. Thanks, Megan.”

She left after a brief glance at Joanna, and Griffin read the short message called in by one of his other deputies with a sense of fatalism. As Megan had said, the news could have been better. It could have been a lot better.

“Griffin?”

He looked up to meet Joanna’s concerned gaze. “Sometimes,” he said, “I really hate being a cop.”

After a moment, she said, “I know you told me to butt out of your investigation, but if there’s been some kind of breakthrough, I’d really like to know what it is.”