Search And Rescue: In Safe Hands Part 12

She shrugged. "Whenever I try to give you a hug, you jump away like you're a cat and I'm an ocean wave."

"No, I don't."

"Please." The complete and total lie made her smirk at him. "The last time I tried to hug you, after you gave me Max, you couldn't run away fast enough. Admit it-you're a total hug-blocker."

His mouth hung open. Daisy was tempted to close it with a finger on his chin, but she supposed she'd pushed him far enough for the day, especially since he'd come running over when she'd needed help.

"There are so many things wrong with what you just said. I've never run away from anything," Chris said. Daisy hid another grin. Of course, accusing him of running off was what had tweaked him the worst. "And I'm not a hug-blocker, whatever that is."

"Yeah, you kind of are."

"I'm not-are you laughing?"

"Sorry. I'm not laughing at you. Well, maybe a little, but I'm mostly really happy that I'm not having hallucinations."

His outraged expression softened. "You're as sane as I am, Dais." He finally took a sip of his coffee, his eyes fixed on something over her shoulder as he thought. "What's Rob's deal, I wonder?"

The thought of the sheriff made her stomach start churning again, in a mix of anger and apprehension. "The dispatcher said he wanted to know if I called. Isn't that...weird?"

"It is unusual." His thoughtful frown deepened. "I'll check with...do you know which dispatcher you talked to last night?"

"I didn't get a name, but she had a squeaky voice."

Chris's mouth quirked up in a smile. "Libby. I'll see if she's working tonight. Maybe she'll know why Rob's fixated on you."

Her stomach lurched. "Fixated?"

Refocusing on her face, Chris shook his head. "Wrong word, sorry. I'm wondering if he's thinking Macavoy's going to try some moonlighting again, so Rob's using you as his security system."

Although she tried to smile at his weak joke, Daisy wasn't very successful. The idea of having the sheriff's focus on her for whatever reason was not a pleasant thought.

"Isn't Gabe back yet?" Chris's scowl had returned.

"Nope." She kept her voice light. "The Connor Springs job must've hit a snag."

His grunt was skeptical. "I'm back on nights now, so call me if anything comes up."

"Will do."

"Good." Grabbing one of Gabe's travel mugs from the cupboard, Chris dumped the remaining coffee from his cup into the to-go mug. "And I don't hate it when you touch me."

"Uh-huh."

He rinsed the daisy mug and put it in the dishwasher. "I don't. It just makes it...harder."

Since his back was turned, he couldn't see her confused expression. "What does that mean?"

"Nothing." He blew out a breath and headed for the door. "Never mind. See you later, Dais."

As she locked the inside door behind him, she yelled through the wood, "You are so weird, Deputy Jennings!"

If he responded, she didn't hear him.

"He did what?!" Lou leaned forward, a teriyaki meatball hovering inches from her mouth.

Hearing the horror in the other woman's voice made Daisy hedge her words. "It could've just been a case of not watching where he was stepping, I suppose."

"He's the sheriff," Lou said flatly. "He was looking for evidence. That's pretty sad if he trampled on the very boot prints he was looking for by accident." Eyeing the meatball in front of her face as if trying to figure out how it got there, she popped it into her mouth.

"It does seem strangely incompetent of him," Rory agreed. "He can be hard-edged, but I've never found Rob to be inept."

Ellie frowned. "You don't think Rob did that on purpose, do you? But he's such a sweetheart. Since this whole Anderson King thing started, he's been wonderful about lending me his deputies every time George gets called away. Plus, he organized that search for my father. I just can't imagine him hiding evidence."

"He's always been upfront with me, too," Lou added. As silence filled the room, Daisy shifted uncomfortably. These women didn't know her very well at all. To them, she was probably still that weird shut-in. If she kept pushing, insisting that the sheriff had covered up evidence-either by accident or on purpose-Daisy would not only lose the argument, but she'd probably lose her only chance at friends, too. In a determinedly cheerful voice, she said, "Let's talk about the Gray case."

"Okay." Lou hopped up from the couch and hurried over to the pile of stuff she'd dumped in the corner of Daisy's living room. Daisy got up to help, but Lou already had an easel set up and an oversized pad of paper propped on it before Daisy even reached her.

"Is this the subst.i.tute whiteboard?" Ellie asked, smiling.

"It is." Lou pulled out a set of markers. "Cal volunteered to bring the real one here in the back of the pickup, but with the sleeting-raining thing it's doing outside, I didn't want to risk having the whole thing erased by the time we got here. I needed something whiteboard-like, though. It helps me to see things written down when I'm trying to figure something out."

"Where is Callum?" Ellie asked.

"City Council meeting."

That was met with a chorus of groans from everyone except Daisy.

"I a.s.sume that's bad?" she guessed.

"So boring," Lou agreed. "If I hadn't already had this planned, I would've had to make up something so I could get out of going. Speaking of that, Ellie, don't you have search and rescue training tonight?"

"Nope. That's George's thing. I'd just get myself lost if I tried to find someone in the wilderness. I help him with his reports, but that's about it."

"Does Ian have night shift tonight?" Lou asked Rory, who nodded.

"Where's your guy?" Ellie asked Daisy.

She blinked at the woman in confusion. "My...guy?"

"Please." Lou chucked a marker at her, and Daisy ducked out of the projectile's path just before it connected with her forehead. "We all saw how Deputy Chris was showing off for you on Sat.u.r.day." Her voice lowered. "'Me big strong man, do many pull-ups.'" She finished her imitation with a grunt.

"Oh no!" Despite herself, Daisy felt her cheeks getting red. "We're not... Chris and I are just friends." Ellie and Lou snorted laughter, making her face even hotter. Even Rory looked like she was holding back a smile.

"Friends," Lou said, "do not look at their friends like your cop looks at you."

"She's right." Ellie reached over from where she was sitting in one of the armchairs and squeezed Daisy's hand. "Chris couldn't keep his eyes off of you. And his expression goes all...smooshy when he's looking at you."

Daisy was pretty sure she'd be able to toast a marshmallow on her face, it was burning so hotly. "No, really. We've never stepped out of the 'friends' box. He doesn't even like it when I give him a hug."

"Maybe he likes it too much." Lou was doing something weird with her eyebrows as she said it.

"What's wrong with your face?" Rory asked, squinting at Lou.

"Can we talk about dead people now?" Daisy asked quickly.

"Fine." Lou didn't sound happy about it. "But trust us on this-Deputy Chris wants you."

Shaking her head, Daisy let it drop. It was too embarra.s.sing to tell them about all the times Chris refused to let her touch him. A subject change was definitely in order. Besides, it would be nice to think about something other than her own drama for a while. "Could you recap what you've learned so far? Chris gave me the highlights, but he's not really able to share much."

Lou grabbed a blue marker and uncapped it with a flourish. "Sure. It helps to go over everything again, anyway. I see new connections that way." She sketched a line of blue spikes.

"What are those?" Rory asked.

"Waves." She drew some stick people next to the squiggly lines.

"Really?"

Lou glared at Rory. "Yes. I accept that I am not an artist, okay? If you are going to be judgmental, then you can be the draw-er."

"Why are you drawing pictures?" Ellie asked. "We're all literate. You can use, you know, words."

"Fine." Lou sighed, scribbling beneath the feet of the stick people. "Everyone's a critic. So, Willard Gray was a Vietnam vet who lived by himself in a run-down cabin at the edge of Simpson. According to town gossip-which is kind of hit-and-miss as far as accuracy-he kept to himself, except when the Esko Hills home development was about to be built next to his property a few years ago. He de-hermit-ified long enough to attend a few City Council meetings to protest the new construction, but the homes were built, and he retreated back to his cabin, shaking his angry fists." Lou picked up her gla.s.s from the coffee table and took a drink. Placing the water back on its coaster, she looked around at the other women. "How am I doing so far?"

"This matches what I've heard about him," Rory said.

"Good. So, sometime between last fall and this past January, someone kills Willard, cuts off his head and hands, and tosses him into Mission Reservoir. In early March, a lucky, lucky dive team volunteer manages to find the body during an ice-rescue training exercise."

With a cough that might have been disguising a laugh, Rory interjected, "She kicked him."

Frowning, Lou turned her glare onto Rory. "Ian is rubbing off on you, and not in a good way."

Widening her eyes in mock-innocence, Ellie asked, "So, you didn't kick poor Willard's corpse?"

"Not really relevant." Lou sent all three women a warning look, which Daisy didn't feel she deserved. Until that moment, she hadn't known about Lou's method of corpse-discovery. "Moving on. We didn't have a name for the victim at first, since his...um, missing parts made identification tricky. I felt sort of responsible for the poor dead guy, since I...discovered him-don't say it!"

Ellie and Rory gave her innocent looks.

"So, I started trying to find out who this guy was. Once Cal and I figured out the 'Willard' part, Chris was able to ID him as Willard Gray, Simpson's resident grumpy hermit."

"I think more than one person qualifies for that position," Rory said dryly. "The town is made up of about seventy percent grumpy hermits."

Lou laughed. "True. Once we knew who the victim was, though, we couldn't figure out a possible motive, much less narrow down the suspect pool. No one knew Willard well enough to hate him, at least that we've been able to find out. I mean, his Esko development protests were really minor, as far as irritations go."

"So there haven't been any suspects at all?" The Gray case was much more interesting than the tiny bit of information that Chris had given her had suggested.

"A few." Lou shot an amused glance at Rory. "Ian was arrested for a minute."

"It felt like much longer than a 'minute' at the time," Rory grumbled.

"Ian?" It shocked Daisy to think that her neighbor had been a suspect.

"His pendant," Lou said, "which is not to be called a necklace-at least not in front of Ian or he'll get p.i.s.sy-was found in the reservoir, attached to the weight holding down the body. The cops theorized that he'd lost it while disposing of the evidence, but Rory managed to prove that he'd still had possession of his pendant long after the body was dumped."

Scowling, Rory added, "Someone stole the pendant while he was showering at the clubhouse, then planted the evidence."

"Whoa." This was better than any mystery novel.

Ellie gave her a wide-eyed look. "I know, right? Isn't this just crazy?" Daisy nodded before turning back to Lou, who'd flipped to the next sheet of paper on the oversized pad and seemed to be scribbling some sort of timeline.

As she wrote, she kept talking. "The main suspect right now is Anderson King, a local drug dealer."

Rory explained, "When the Liverton Riders-the local motorcycle club-started falling apart, Anderson was right there trying to fill the criminal void. He came to talk to me at my shop one day about buying-" She stopped abruptly, swallowing the rest of what she'd been about to say and looking so discomfited that Daisy's curiosity shot through the roof. "Uh, buying guns. He killed the guy who headed up search and rescue, and now Anderson is after Ellie and her dad."

"I was just getting to that part," Lou jumped in. "Willard's one friend, Baxter Price-"

"My dad," Ellie interrupted.

"The one who's missing?" Daisy instantly regretted asking when the woman's face dropped.

"Yes. He checked himself out of a mental-health facility north of Denver almost a month ago. I haven't heard from him since then, though we've been looking everywhere. He's schizophrenic."

It was Daisy's turn to reach for Ellie's hand. "I'm sorry."

Ellie gave her a watery smile before turning back to Lou.

"He's okay, El," Lou said firmly, as if she could will her words into being. "He's tough and wily."

"I know." Ellie gave a quick nod and then gestured for Lou to continue.

"When Baxter doesn't hear from his friend, Willard, for a while, he comes to Simpson to investigate." Lou frowned. "Ellie, this part gets a little confusing. Would you mind taking over?"

Ellie's laugh was a little shaky. "Sure, although I don't know if I can make it any less confusing. My dad called me out of the blue one night and told me that someone was after him, so he was headed to my grandpa's old cabin to hide. I didn't take him seriously about the someone's-after-him part, but I didn't want him wandering around the mountains alone, so I went searching. It ended up that two men were trying to kill him-Anderson King and his...uh, his brother." She ducked her head for a moment, her expression tight with what looked like sadness and guilt. Before Daisy could ask Ellie what was wrong, she continued. "They are-were-local meth dealers who were informed by someone else that Dad had witnessed a sale. I overheard Dad saying the informant had lied to the dealers, sending them after him because Dad knew this person had killed Willard."

"Chris really has been holding out on me," Daisy breathed, trying to take in the story. All this had been happening while she was shut up in the house, unaware of the drama. Frustration surged through her, surprising her with its strength. She wished so badly to be normal, to be able to grocery shop and visit someone else's house and follow the local gossip and date...

Shutting the mental door on the unexpected flood of self-pity, she refocused on Ellie. "What happened?"

"Anderson's brother was killed"-Ellie swallowed, her gaze dropping to her lap again-"and Anderson...got away. He tracked me down in the woods outside of George's cabin. That's how I got this." She tugged at the top of her thermal shirt, revealing a bruise in various shades of green, yellow, and purple. Daisy winced in sympathy. "They're still hunting for him, but the sheriff's pretty sure he headed to Mexico and won't be seen again."

Just that quick mention of the sheriff made Daisy shiver, and she quickly refocused her attention on Ellie.

"With my dad, it's hard to know what's real and what's not. Plus, I think he was trying to protect me by not telling me who Willard's murderer was. We thought Joseph-the search and rescue guy who was killed-might be involved." She shot Daisy an apologetic look. "Or maybe even Chris."

"What?!" Daisy straightened abruptly. "Chris? Why? He's the most ethical, kindhearted, nonmurderous-"

"I know! I know!" Ellie waved her hands as if trying to calm Daisy. "Now, at least. Once I spent time with Chris, I knew he couldn't have been involved. It was just, after he left me alone at the cabin right before Anderson arrived..."