The Murder in Skoghall (Illustrated) (The Skoghall Mystery Series Book 1) (43 page)

“Beckett, why is all of this so hard for you?” She kept her eyes on the road, but felt him studying her.

“I was adopted,” he said at last.

Jess looked at him then back at the road, deciding not to say anything about her surprise, about her wonder that she didn’t know that already.

“My parents didn’t tell me I was adopted. Then when I was a teenager and started acting out—you know, stupid boy stuff, nothing extreme—they freaked. They started treating me like a budding criminal and put me in therapy and all kinds of weird shit. Instead of helping me, they escalated the problem.” Beckett sighed and met Jess’s gaze before she had to turn it back to the road. “Look, I see now how I was messing up my life by choosing to fulfill their prophesy, but back then, I was just raging.”

Jess remained quiet, afraid to accidentally divert the conversation.

Beckett pushed his hair back on his head, then let it fall toward his face. “I wound up in a rehab, then a halfway house. We had arts therapy. One of the things we got to do was pottery. Pottery saved my life. Well, the potter saved my life. When he put clay in my hands… First, he let me wedge the crap out of ball after ball of clay. Then he let me build things with my hands. When I saw that I could actually create something, I was fascinated. I’d never experienced that before. And he was proud of me. When I was ready, he put me on the wheel. The wheel takes patience. You can’t be aggressive on the wheel. You’ll just crash your pots. He totally saved my life.”

“What was his name?”

“Huh?” Beckett pulled out of his reverie to look at Jess. “Wesley Shannon. Wes.”

Jess nodded, glad she now knew the name of the most important person in Beckett’s past.

“A while ago, my dad got ALS. Lou Gehrig’s Disease. There was panic in the family. Then my mom announces at dinner one night, like it’s no big deal, that I won’t have to worry about it. My sister, the baby they weren’t supposed to be able to have, their cherished darling, is another story, but
I
won’t have to worry about ALS—as far as they know.” Beckett returned to staring out the window.

After some time had passed, Jess ventured a question. “Why all the prophesy stuff when you were a teen?”

“I found out who my biological parents are. They were teenagers with drug problems, in and out of juvee. My mother was in a halfway house for most of her pregnancy, so I was born clean, but after she gave me up, she got fucked up and wound up stabbed to death in a squatter’s dump.”

“Beckett, I am so sorry.”

“Yeah, well. I’m sorry I’ve been so rough on you about this whole thing. The stuff with Johnny, having his whole identity ripped out from under him, was just too close to home.”

“Thanks for finally telling me.”

“Now you know about my messed up youth.” He shrugged. “Guess I’m damaged goods.”

Jess turned off the River Road onto Skoghall’s Main Street, then climbed the hill to park in front of the hardware store. They had left Shakti and a case of beer with Dave before heading south to the funeral. She shut off the car and settled her full attention on Beckett. “From what I’ve seen,” she said, “you’re no more messed up than anyone else.”

They faced each other and embraced over the car’s middle console. Their lips found each other. Beckett’s hand cradled the back of Jess’s neck and hers stroked the flat of his shoulder blade. By the time they separated, the car was stuffy with heat. They smiled at each other, their eyes confirming something good, before they climbed out of the car.

Beckett waited for Jess to come around to the passenger side and took her hand, turning her to him for another kiss. “I’m glad this ghost thing is over,” he said.

“Me, too.” Before completely turning away, Jess glanced across the street. In the second-story window of the antique store, Isabella watched through a parted curtain. She waved to Jess. Jess brought a hand up next to her cheek and wagged her fingers before pushing her hand into her hair. She turned quickly and bounded up the steps to the hardware store.

“Get a room,” Dave growled when they came in. He relaxed his faux scowl and his face widened into a massive grin. He thrust a hand over the counter to grab Beckett’s hand in a congratulatory shake. “It’s about time you two act like a couple. Really. I saw this coming the day we moved that stove.”

“That far back, huh?” Jess was blushing, and there was no point trying to hide it this time. Even if she could un-color her cheeks, the broad grin across her face was unmistakably pleased by Dave’s support of their…relationship.

Shakti had been sniffing around the paint section until she heard her mama’s voice. Jess heard her claws scrabbling on the old vinyl floor before she saw her tearing down one of the aisles at a full run. Shakti skidded on the smooth floor and toppled onto her face, the spill barely slowing her down. Jess knelt and held her arms open, bracing herself for impact. Shakti leapt at her, all wagging tail and lapping tongue. Jess laughed and laughed. The day had suddenly turned around.  

As they stepped out of the hardware store, Jess talked over her shoulder to Beckett, saying how she couldn’t wait to change out of the dress she was wearing and he was agreeing, though he’d removed his tie, loosened his shirt collar, and rolled up his sleeves as soon as they got in the car back in La Crosse. Shakti tugged at the end of her leash, forging ahead as always. “You have no idea what it’s like to wear heels…”

Parked across the street sat a large, shiny, black pick-up. Jess and Beckett stopped and stared at it from the top of the porch steps. A man bent at the door, his back to them, his head inside the truck’s cab. Jess’s heart raced, hoping against the odds that it wasn’t who she thought it was.

Tyler straightened up, stepped aside, and a large golden retriever hopped out of the cab. It wore a blue backpack with logo patches on it.

Shakti pulled frantically at the end of her leash, dragging Jess behind her. Jess’s ankle buckled under her at the bottom, thanks to her heels. She hobbled awkwardly with the shoe half-off, until Beckett caught up to her and picked up Shakti. While Jess repositioned her shoe, Tyler came across the street to meet them. His dog walked calmly beside and a little in front of him, tail wagging furiously, grin apparent, despite the obvious good manners.

“Jess,” he said.

“Hello, Tyler.”

“Beckett.” He nodded his head, but no hands were offered to bridge the gap between them.

Shakti scrambled and leapt out of Beckett’s hold, leaving a long red scratch on his forearm. She began sniffing the bigger dog, bowing and whining, moving from the head to the belly. The older dog watched her, sniffed her back, sat on its haunches and raised a paw to bat her on the head. At the thump, Shakti whined in surprise and rolled onto her back, offering the superior hound her pink belly. The patches on the dog’s pack read “Service Dog,” “Do Not Pet,” and “PTSD.”

Jess looked up from the pack to Tyler, too many questions forming in her head.

He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. It was the kiss of a close friend—maybe it was hopeful of something more. Jess couldn’t fathom what she was seeing, then she felt Beckett’s hand on her waist.

Tyler took a step back, then another. He pushed his hand through his hair—perhaps thinking better of the kiss—and Jess saw the pink line of his scar. “Across,” he said, and the dog left Shakti to put himself between Tyler and Beckett. Tyler reached down to touch the dog’s head and the tension of a moment ago seemed to evaporate. “This is Bruno,” he said.

Shakti pursued Bruno and rose to put her paws on his haunches. He turned his head to snap at her, a friendly warning to a junior dog. Beckett lifted Shakti and held her wrapped in his arms until she stopped wriggling.

“A PTSD dog?” Jess said.

“I want to thank you.” Tyler stooped over his dog, his hand thumping Bruno’s shoulder.

“Thank me?” Her voice filled with disbelief, “For what?”

“If it wasn’t for what happened…between us.” His eyes shifted to take in Beckett’s glowering face. “I wouldn’t have gotten Bruno. I was planning to cancel my application, to tell the organization that they should give the dog to someone who really needed him. Then I…” Tyler squatted to wrap his arms around Bruno’s neck. He took a deep breath and freed one hand to push his dark hair away from his brow, again exposing the scar. “After I hurt you, I got the call a dog was available and I could go in for matching. I went. Jess, this dog is…um…he’s saving me.” Tyler kissed the top of Bruno’s auburn head before standing again to face her and Beckett.

Shakti started whining, a high-pitched squeak, desperate to connect with the other dog. Beckett let her down and she rose up to wrap her front paws around Bruno’s neck. Tyler smiled at them, the crooked half-smile of someone with a newly acknowledged vulnerability. “Release,” he said to the dog. Bruno lifted his chin to look at Tyler, his eyebrows raising one side then the other. His tongue fell out of his mouth as he cracked that goofy Retriever grin before turning to pin Shakti under a paw and bite at her ruff of neck fur. Shakti panted with excitement. “Maybe we can get them together soon. Let them play,” Tyler said.

Jess smiled, baffled by the number of surprises one day could hold. “I’d like that.”

Beckett’s fingers danced against her ribs.

Tyler held his hand out to Beckett across the wrestling dogs. “Congratulations, man.” Beckett accepted his hand. “I have to check on my café. Good to see you both.”

Jess was so stunned she barely remembered to speak. “You too,” she said as Tyler turned away.

“Bruno. Let’s go.”

Bruno immediately disentangled from Shakti. Shakti leapt at his shoulder and he responded with a sharp nip before walking away, taking his place slightly in front of Tyler.

Jess watched them cross the street and enter the garden, only shifting her gaze away from Tyler’s broad shoulders when they disappeared behind the line of the building.

The sun was still high, though already west of the river. Jess stood out in the yard, her hand on the charred bark of the sugar maple while Shakti circled its base, sticking her nose into the scar that now marred its lower trunk. Jess felt sorry for the tree. It had become a casualty of her failure to help Bonnie quickly enough. She decided to hang a bird house against its trunk, inviting new life to the branches and helping it to heal.

The sound of gravel crunching under tires signaled Beckett’s arrival. He rolled his cargo van down her driveway, bouncing over one rut after another. When Shakti saw Beckett emerge from the van, she sprinted excited laps around the yard. Jess walked over the drive to greet him and they kissed hello.

“Look.” She pointed at her house. It had a warm glow about it, just as it had when she first laid eyes on it. “Have you ever seen a more inviting home?”

“Um…”

“Doesn’t it look calm? Tranquil?” She faced Beckett. “See? No ghost.”

“Thank goodness for that.”

Jess let her hand fall against Beckett’s chest and brought her mouth close to his neck. “Did you bring it?” she whispered.

“Uh-huh.” Beckett slid away from her hold and went to the back of his van.

Jess watched him open the cargo doors, excitement mounting.

Beckett slammed the doors shut and faced Jess before swinging a long-handled sledge hammer up into the air and over his shoulder. Jess took a moment to admire him standing there, the sun glinting off the head of the hammer, her own Paul Bunyan.

With Shakti leashed to the sugar maple, Beckett handed her the sledgehammer. The head fell to the ground with a thud, heavier than she had expected. Jess grinned sheepishly at him. Beckett shook his head; the gesture said all it needed to. He fit a pair of safety goggles to her face, gently stretching the elastic around the back of her head. “We have to protect those pretty eyes.”

She lifted the sledge hammer over her shoulder.
Like a baseball player,
she thought as she wound up her body for the first swing. When she released, she put her shoulders and waist into it, building power with momentum. The head of the hammer snapped the board that framed the doorway, and the brick that took the brunt of her blow broke into pieces, flying like scattershot. It looked like someone had taken a bite out of the wall.

One down.

Jess smiled as she swung the sledgehammer up onto her shoulder, readying for the next blow.