Murder at the Courthouse (19 page)

“Yeah, I guess we can rule that out. I wasn't all that excited about being your brother anyway. It's just a game I used to
play when I was a little kid, wondering if this man or that man might be the one.”

“Maybe it was Rayburn.”

“I thought about that, but it didn't work with the other stuff he told me.”

“What stuff?”

“All that stuff I told you already.”

They turned the last corner to the log house. Light spilled out of the windows, and a car was parked in the drive.

“Looks like one of your girlfriends is here, Deputy.” Anthony tapped on the window.

“Maybe it's the murderer.”

Anthony laughed. “If you're trying to scare me, it's not working. It's that foxy lady who's visiting Mr. Sheridan.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw her car last night.”

“That's right. You were skulking around Keane Street last night. What were you up to anyway?” Michael pulled the car to a stop.

“I lost a hubcap. Thought I might have lost it there.”

“It was sort of dark to be looking for a hubcap, wasn't it?”

“I've got good eyes.”

“Sure you do. You've been seeing a lot, haven't you?” Michael opened Anthony's door.

“More than you.” Anthony climbed out and stood face-to-face with Michael. Then he gave a short laugh and stepped away from the car. “But then it could be you see it, you just don't want to believe it. People around here want everything to match a pretty little picture of the town they carry around in their head.”

“If that was ever true, the picture's been smeared up pretty
badly the last few days.” But Anthony was right. That did make Michael sad.

When Jasper bounded around the house to greet them, Anthony stopped in his tracks. “Does he bite?”

Michael grabbed Jasper's collar to keep him from barreling into the boy. The dog knew no strangers. “He's just excited to see you.”

“Really?” Something changed in Anthony's voice as he leaned over to rub Jasper. “To see me? I've never had a dog.”

Jasper licked his hand.

“Unless Alex found his dog food, he'll be ready for his supper.”

“Alex.” Anthony gave the dog one last pat, then straightened up to follow Michael toward the house. “Is that her name? What do you think, Deputy? Maybe that old lawyer uncle of hers is my daddy. That would make her my cousin, wouldn't it?”

Michael looked straight at Anthony in the light spilling out of the house's windows. “Reece isn't your father.”

“Maybe not.” Anthony shrugged. “But somebody is. Somebody you think might do me in to keep anybody from finding out.”

When they went in the door, Alex laid aside the thick brief she'd been reading and uncurled from the couch. The table was set for two with white Styrofoam plates and red plastic cups. No sign of candles.

“Checking out the law for defenses against breaking and entering?” Michael asked her.

With an easy laugh, she pushed her silky dark hair back behind her ears and came to meet them. The sight of her sent the familiar rush of pleasure through Michael and started up a little buzz in his ears. Beside him, Anthony's eyes popped open wide.

“You don't see anything broken, do you? Unlawful entry perhaps, but not breaking. The door was unlocked. You have to pay attention to the letter of the law.” She let her eyes touch on Anthony. “Bringing home your work?”

“You could say that.” Michael glanced at the boy. “Anthony Blake, Alex Sheridan.”

Alex held her long, slim hand out to Anthony and smiled. “Do you need a lawyer?”

“I might.” Anthony clasped her hand. “I'm thinking about charging police brutality.”

“Interesting.” Alex flashed her eyes back to Michael.

“Don't get your hopes up, Alex. The kid couldn't afford your retainer fee. Besides, all I'm doing is trying to keep him alive to give me more trouble tomorrow.”

“Bet you're wishing you'd let me take my chances about now.” Anthony sounded very pleased with himself.

Michael ignored the boy's smirk. “Hope you brought enough food for three, Alex.”

“No worry. We have an overabundance,” Alex said. “Malinda called me up. Said she knew you'd be hungry, and since she had some kind of school thing, would I be so kind as to go by Cindy's and pick up the dinner she'd ordered for you and carry it down here? She even ordered chocolate pie. Knew I loved that. She was sure we'd want to talk over old times anyway. How could I refuse her?”

“Nobody can turn down that old lady,” Anthony muttered.

Alex raised her eyebrows, and Michael explained. “She's tutoring Anthony.”

“Consider yourself fortunate, Anthony.” Alex gave Anthony a smile that surely made the boy's knees weak. “Just pull a chair up to the table while I dig out another piece of china.” She turned back to the kitchen area to set out another Styrofoam plate.

Alex took the fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans out of the oven while Michael filled the plastic cups with ice. It was somehow jarring seeing Alex in a kitchen. She didn't fit. She was courtroom drama, romantic restaurants, and walking on beaches at sunrise. Not kitchens.

When she pushed him aside to get a fruit salad and slaw
out of the refrigerator, he said, “You actually seem to know what you're doing here in the kitchen.”

“Hey, I can be homey.” Alex sounded offended. “I can even cook if I want to.”

“You? Cook?” Michael gave her a disbelieving look. “What can you cook?”

“Eggs. Toast. Popcorn in the microwave.” She counted off on her fingers.

“You think she'll cook us eggs and toast for breakfast, Deputy?” Anthony settled in the chair against the wall where he could keep his eyes on Alex. He was obviously captivated.

Alex turned cool eyes on Anthony that made red bloom on his cheeks as he dropped his gaze to the table. “I didn't mean anything by that, Miss Sheridan.”

“Of course you didn't.” She gifted him with a forgiving smile.

Michael rescued the boy by changing the subject. “So what's going on?”

“Your friend Karen called. She tried your cell, but as usual, you didn't answer. She said the play last night was great and it was too bad you had to miss it, but of course, she understood.” Alex peered over at him. “Don't look so worried. I didn't talk to her, just eavesdropped on your answering machine.”

“I'm not worried.”

Alex laughed. “Then Judge Campbell left a message.” Her smile disappeared. “Didn't sound like himself. Has he been sick?”

“I don't know about sick. ‘Upset' might be a better word. Miss June said he took Joe's death hard.” Michael poured pop into the glasses.

“People are dead and the judge is upset.” Anthony drummed his fingers on the table.

Michael looked at Anthony. “Have you had a run-in with the judge?”

“Not unless you call us talking to him today a run-in.” Anthony shrugged and sounded bored. “Remember? When I asked him for help and he acted like he didn't hear me.” Anthony looked at Alex. “I don't guess he'd changed his mind about that help?”

Alex watched Anthony, a tiny frown etched between her eyes. “I think he just wanted to know what was going on.”

“Who doesn't?” Anthony said.

Michael ignored him as he asked Alex, “Did you talk to him?”

“I picked up when he said who he was. It tore him up hearing my voice, I can tell you. He called me Karen twice.” Alex gave Michael a sideways glance. “Karen here a lot?”

“Some,” Michael said.

“Thinking about making it permanent?”

“If we do, we'll be sure to send you an invitation.”

“A wedding invitation?” Alex sounded surprised. “Wow! Malinda didn't tell me things were so serious.”

“Neither did I.” Michael smiled a little. “But you're welcome to jump to any conclusions you want.”

“A good lawyer doesn't jump to conclusions. She sifts and sorts through all the evidence to find out what really happened.”

“Nobody around here wants to know what really happened.” Anthony spoke up again.

Michael sat down at the table. He ignored the food and settled his eyes on Anthony. “Okay, kid. So tell me what you think really happened.”

“I've already told you what I know, Deputy. You're the one who has to figure out what happened.”

“Hey, guys,” Alex broke in. “Save the cross-examinations until after we eat. I'm starved.”

Later, the food gone and Anthony asleep, in spite of himself, on the couch, Michael and Alex walked out on the deck. The nearly full moon cast silvery shadows across the yard, and the tree frogs were in full chorus. Jasper padded out of the house with them to lean against Michael's leg and nudge his hand for a pat.

“It's so beautiful here.” Alex gazed out over the moon-kissed lake surface.

“Yes.” Michael's eyes stayed on Alex.

“Karen's a lucky woman to be able to share this with you.”

Michael ignored the implied question. “You'd like Karen.”

“I doubt it.” She sat down on the deck steps and Michael dropped down beside her. Jasper gave up on more pats and curled up on the deck behind them. “And I'm pretty sure she wouldn't like me thinking about holding hands with her guy the way we used to when we were kids. Do you remember that?”

“It sounds like a good thing to remember.” Without hesitation, Michael reached over and captured her hand. It was soft and slender and at the same time strong as she curled her fingers around his.

“Do you ever wish we were kids again with no worries?”

“Kids have worries.” Michael motioned with his head toward the house. “Just ask Anthony in there.”

“What is it with the two of you?”

“He's tired of me being on his case.” It was hard to think about Anthony with Alex's hand in his and so close to him
that, when a breeze sidled up from the lake, a wisp of her hair brushed his face.

“He's hiding something.” Alex turned toward Michael, her face enticingly close in the soft darkness.

“I know. That's why he's here.” Michael made himself look away from her back toward the open door. He could see the top of Anthony's head on the couch. It might be good to keep his mind on Anthony. That might prevent him from doing something foolish, like put his arm around Alex.

She was quiet a minute or two. “Did you really pull his mother's body out of the lake today?”

“It was her car and Justin said the bone structure was right.” Michael stared out toward the lake. So peaceful and beautiful in the moonlight, and yet for years it had hidden the tragic truth of Roxanne's disappearance.

“I remember when she disappeared.” Alex stared back out at the lake too.

“You do?” Michael was surprised.

“Everything that happened that summer your parents got killed has stayed burned in my memory. Maybe because before that I hadn't honestly realized bad things like that could happen to me or anybody I knew.”

Michael shifted a little on the porch to look at her face in the moonlight. “Tell me what you remember.”

He was sorry he had asked when she pulled her hand away from his to run it through her hair. He'd seen her do that a thousand times. Her way of gathering her thoughts. But even though he wanted to know what she remembered, he wished her hand was still in his.

“I didn't know you were away at camp until I got here that summer. I was so disappointed, but Uncle Reece said you'd
be home in a week and he'd made plans for us to go fishing. Just the two of us. But even that fell through when Roxanne disappeared and he had to work out custody arrangements for Anthony. He was county attorney then.”

“I'd forgotten that,” Michael said.

“His term was up the next year and he didn't run again. Politics don't suit Uncle Reece.” Alex made a face at him. “You know how he is. Doesn't want anybody upset with him. Anyway, Aunt Adele was outraged by the idea that a mother, any mother, no matter what else she did, could just go off and leave a little child alone like that. That was all she talked about.”

“Everybody thought Roxanne just took off?”

“Nobody suspected foul play, if that's what you mean.” Even in the moonlight, Michael could tell Alex's look had sharpened on him. “Do you now?”

“It's a definite possibility.”

“Anything to do with these other murders, you think?”

“That is the question.”

“A question in need of an answer, but some answers take time.” She shifted over a little to lean against the deck railing.

If only she'd shifted over to lean against him instead. He tried to keep his mind on the questions in need of answers, but the question of what he was going to do about how he felt about her had a way of pushing all sensible thought out of his head. “And some never get answered.”

“Right.” She clasped her hands around her knees and stared back out at the lake. “Actually the talk I heard was more about her little boy. Anthony, I suppose, although I didn't remember his name. I was only fifteen at the time, an innocent in Aunt Adele's eyes. So she was careful about what
she said about Roxanne around me. I heard whispers, but the rumors about Roxanne would not have been fit conversation for my young ears.”

“Okay, so what did she say about Anthony?”

“Everybody talked about taking him in, even Aunt Adele, but it was mostly just talk. Except with your mother. I think she meant it.”

“My mother?” Michael turned to stare at Alex, but she kept her eyes on the lake.

“Yes, your mother was such a lovely woman. That very first day after they found Anthony alone at Roxanne's place, she was waiting when Uncle Reece got home. They stayed shut up in his office forever. Later, Uncle Reece told Aunt Adele that your mother wanted him to appoint her Anthony's guardian until Roxanne could be found, but I always had the feeling there was more to it than that. They both looked so serious when they came out.”

“Maybe Anthony's right. Maybe we are brothers.” Michael made an attempt at a laugh, but it sounded sort of hollow even to his own ears. Alex's words were dragging up too many sad memories.

Alex scooted around close to him on the step and touched his hand. “You don't remember your father very well if you can even think that might be true.”

Michael curled his fingers around hers. “A lot of blanks never got filled back in after the wreck.”

Alex squeezed his hand a little, then pulled it away again. “I know, but trust me. Your father worshiped your mother. His eyes never strayed from her. Anyway, after the wreck, everybody sort of forgot about Roxanne and what might happen to Anthony. They had a new kid to feel sorry for. You.”

“Did you?” he asked. She was so close, her face inches from his.

“Did I what?” Her breath whispered toward him.

“Feel sorry for me.” Michael's fingers tingled with the desire to brush a stray strand of hair back from her cheek, but he curled his hands into fists instead.

“I did.” Alex's smile faded as the lake captured her gaze again. When she went on, her voice was soft. “Not just for you. For me too. I was devastated. They said even if you lived, you might never regain your faculties. ‘Faculties.' What kind of word is that to talk about a teenage kid? I had to ask Uncle Reece what that meant. It wasn't good.”

“They were wrong.”

“I know.” Alex looked at him, then quickly away again, as though she were having an attack of shyness. “But there was no way I could know that. Not then. That summer. I spent hours standing at the window staring at your house and wishing you'd suddenly appear on the porch and wave at me the way you used to. I wanted to run out and meet you halfway, but of course, you were in the hospital.”

Michael didn't say anything. He was afraid if he did, she'd stop talking, and in fact she did pull back from him to hide her face in her hands. “This is embarrassing.”

“I think it's fascinating.” He leaned down in front of her and pulled her hands away from her face.

“You would. You don't have any juvenile memories to confess.” She looked up at him. “Just keep in mind I was fifteen and thought I was in love with you.”

“In love with me?”

“I told you it was embarrassing.” She fanned her face with her hands and laughed a little. “Actually I thought you were
in love with me too, and that we would get married someday. After all, you'd asked me to marry you every summer since we were six.”