Hidden Witness

Chapter Three

She watched as Chase reached into his pocket, pulled out a ten-dollar bill and handed it to the woman. “Now we’re even.”

The woman threw her head back and laughed. “How’s your good-for-nothing brother?” she asked.

“Still thinks he’s the boss of me,” Chase said.

She laughed again. “Nobody was ever the boss of you, that’s for sure. People round here still talk about some of the stuff you pulled.”

Hmm... Was it possible that there was more to Detective Hollister than his professional attitude let on?

Chase turned toward her. “This is my wife, Raney,” he said smoothly, as if it were really true and he’d been introducing her for a long time as his wife. “Raney, this is Trish Wright.”

“Wright-Roper,” the woman corrected.

“Didn’t realize you were married,” Chase said.

“Widowed,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” Chase apologized, sounding as if he meant it.

The pretty woman shrugged but Raney could tell that the pain was still there. But she lifted her chin and extended a hand in Raney’s direction.

There was a history between Chase and Trish but Raney couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Not lovers. But something. She shook the woman’s hand.

“Been to the old place yet?” Trish asked.

“Nope. Just got into town.”

“You’ll have your work cut out for you,” she said. “It’s gone downhill in the past few years.”

Chase shrugged as if the news didn’t bother him. But Raney saw him swallow hard. “Not planning on staying there long,” he said.

“Well, don’t be a stranger while you’re here,” she said. “I know Summer would like to see you. She works the day shift.” Trish grabbed two menus from the counter and led them to a table in the corner of the café. Raney noticed that Chase didn’t make eye contact with anyone else in the room.

They sat down. “Old friend?” Raney murmured, opening her menu.

He nodded. “I’ve known Trish since I was a kid. My older brother, Bray, dated Summer, Trish’s sister. I always thought they might get married someday but he enlisted in the marines right out of high school and she married some other guy.”

“How long since you’ve been in Ravesville?”

“I came back once, about eight years ago, when my mother died. Other than that, thirteen years,” he said. “What are you having for dinner?” he asked, quickly changing the subject.

So he hadn’t come for his stepfather’s funeral. That was why he hadn’t known whether it was big or small. But he clearly didn’t want to talk about it. She tried to tell herself that she didn’t care. She didn’t need his life story. She just needed a place to stay where she’d be safe. Someplace in the middle of Missouri was as good as any.

When Trish returned, pen in hand, Raney closed her menu. “I’ll take a salad with grilled...” She caught a glimpse of her reflection and almost jerked back in surprise. The change was almost too much to take in. If Sandy had been more forthcoming about the intended results, she’d have probably bolted from the chair.

But she was glad that she hadn’t. She liked the new look. Had never considered going blond but now she might never go back.

One thing she could thank Harry Malone for.

“Actually,” she said. “No salad. I’ll take a bacon cheeseburger. With fries.”

Chase ordered the meat loaf. Once Trish had walked away, he looked at her. “Salad just wasn’t going to cut it?” he asked, obviously trying to think of something to say.

She was going to shrug it off but then decided that if they were going to live together for the next month as husband and wife, she needed to be honest with him. “That would have been BHM. Before Harry Malone. Now I pretty much treat myself to whatever I want, when I want it.”

Come to think of it, maybe that was why she was digging the new haircut and look. It fit the new Raney Taylor. The Raney Taylor that she was molding.

He studied her, then spoke quietly but with conviction. “If it’s any consolidation, the son of a bitch is going to pay. He’s going to go to prison and, trust me on this, there will be somebody there that will make his life a living hell.”

She was counting on that.

When Trish delivered their food, it looked delicious. She picked up her burger, squished the bun so that it would fit in her mouth and took a bite. A bit of sauce leaked out and she licked her lips. And then swallowed too quickly when she realized that he was watching her.

“Ouch,” she said, pressing on her esophagus.

“Careful,” he said.

She always used to be. And look where it had gotten her. “So what did you do to earn your reputation as the town bad boy?” she asked.

He scratched his head. “A little of this, a lot of that.”

“And you became a cop to redeem yourself?”

“I became a cop because the St. Louis Police Department was hiring and I needed a way to support myself and my younger brother. Fortunately for me, it was a good fit. Maybe because of my troublemaking youth.”

She took another bite, smaller this time. “There wasn’t much you hadn’t seen or done.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Trust me on this. I might have made some people talk here in Ravesville but what I was doing was kid’s play in comparison to what I saw my first six months on the street.”

“So you were just naughty enough to cause your parents some angst.”

His very nice amber eyes clouded over. “Something like that.”

They ate in silence. Trish swung by and picked up their dirty plates and left a check. Chase pulled some bills out of his pocket and tossed them on the table.

“Ready?” he asked.

* * *

WHEN HIS WIFE nodded that she was good to go, he almost said, Hell no, let’s have some cheesecake. Anything to delay a trip back down memory lane.

But he wasn’t going to make it any better by putting it off. He led her back to the car and drove a mile and half farther on the highway before taking a right on Mahogany Lane. The road turned to gravel and he slowed his SUV. He passed the Fitzlers’ house and noticed that there were lights on. Was it possible that Old Man Fitzler and his wife still lived there? Or maybe they’d moved on to one of those assisted-living centers and one of their daughters had moved in.

Damn, he’d envied those girls.

He didn’t think Mr. Fitzler had ever even raised his voice, let alone his hand.

He slowed the vehicle even more and turned into the driveway. His lights picked up the details of the old house.

Over a hundred years old, the two-story white farmhouse looked sturdy enough. It had been the traditional four rooms down, kitchen, dining room, living room and bath, and four rooms up, three bedrooms and a bath, until sometime in the mid-1960s. The owner had pushed out the back wall and added to the downstairs, putting in another large bedroom and private bathroom. They’d done a nice job with the construction and the addition seemed to fit nicely with the rest of the house.

When Chase’s parents had looked at the home some ten years later, it had seemed perfect to the young couple who were anxious to have a family. Chase always figured that once three boys had come along, his mother had been eternally grateful that she could ship them upstairs.

There were a few changes, Chase noted dispassionately. Brick had added green shutters at some point in the past eight years. They hadn’t been there when Chase and his brothers had come home for his mother’s funeral.

The wide wraparound porch looked the same, down to the hammock that was strung in the corner. He’d slept in that more than a few times. Nights when it was warm and he chose to. Nights when it was cold and Brick had banished him from the house. Those were the nights when he’d wanted to keep walking, to wake up somewhere else, but he would not do that to his mother, to Cal.

The bushes near the foundation were wildly overgrown and as he pulled closer, he could see that the paint on the house was peeling and the front steps looked as if they were rotting away in places.

He chanced a glance at Raney. Her eyes were moving, taking it in.

She was probably getting ready to bolt from the car. “Hopefully, it’s better inside.”

She shrugged. “It’s got good bones,” she said. “I love the porch and all the big windows.”

Brick had pushed Calvin’s hand through one of those windows one winter night. That was when Chase and the man had come to a deal of sorts.

He turned off the car and killed the lights. It made him realize how dark the yard was. “Watch your step,” he said when she opened her door.

They each grabbed their own suitcase and picked their way across the patchy grass. When they reached the long sidewalk that led to the house, he stopped. Bray had sent him a text letting him know that the attorney was putting a key in the mailbox. Chase flipped down the rusted aluminum door and sure enough, it was there.

He led the way up the sidewalk and stairs and onto the porch. “Be careful,” he warned again. He unlocked the door, pushed it open, listened for a minute but didn’t hear anything. He reached his hand around to feel for the light switch and, he had to admit, felt better when light flooded the area.

To the right was the living room with a couch and two chairs that he didn’t recognize and to the left, the dining room with his mother’s big wooden table. He glanced down the hallway. In the back of the house, still in darkness, would be the big kitchen. It had a window over the sink and his mother had loved to stand there and watch the deer and the wild turkeys wander through the backyard.

At some point Brick had painted the dark brown woodwork white, but it must have been a poor grade of paint because it was peeling in multiple places. There were cracks in the plaster walls and multiple brown patches on the ceiling, suggesting that rain had leaked into the second floor all the way to the first floor. That wasn’t a good sign.

He flipped on additional lights as they walked. When they entered the kitchen, the first thing he saw was the open newspaper on the table, along with a half-drank cup of tea with the bag still in it. Out of habit, he felt the cup. It was stone cold.

There was a dirty plate in the sink. Brick had had eggs for his last meal.

He opened the refrigerator. Not full by any means, but there were small packages of cheese and lunchmeat, some half-used bottles of salad dressing and ketchup, and a quart of milk. Something, he wasn’t sure what, had spilled at some point on the top shelf and dripped down, leaving remains all the way to the bottom. It smelled sweet.

Brick had gotten sloppy in his old age. Or maybe he’d always been a pig and Sally Hollister had managed to cover up for him.

He turned, realizing that Raney had ventured off into the direction of the downstairs bedroom. He followed her, his chest feeling tighter with each step. He didn’t want to look at Brick’s bedroom, didn’t want to have that intimate of a connection to the man.

Raney stopped in the doorway. Chase stood behind her. There was a regular-size bed, made up with an ugly shiny green bedspread. The matching drapes were drawn tight, giving the room an eerie feel. The gold paint on the walls made the room look dirty. The door to the bathroom was open. With its dated green fixtures, it looked exactly like he remembered.

He sure as hell wasn’t sleeping down here. “Let’s take a look upstairs,” he said.

The wooden steps creaked as they made their way upstairs. He saw Raney flick her hand over her hair and realized she’d disturbed a large cobweb. The carpet in the hallway was threadbare and all the doors were closed.

“I don’t think your stepfather was up here much,” Raney said.

He nodded and opened the first door. This had been Bray’s room. He felt for the light switch and flipped it up. The room was completely empty.

He walked down the hall a few steps toward his old room. He turned the handle of the door, expecting it to open, but it didn’t.

The door was locked. And for some crazy reason, that irritated the hell out of him. Without conscious thought, Chase lifted his good leg and kicked the damn door. It flew back, breaking the top hinge. He heard Raney’s gasp but he ignored it. He felt for the light switch, flipped it and, when nothing happened, he stepped back so that light from the hallway could filter in.

The room was completely empty. He looked up at the ceiling light fixture. Even the lightbulb had been removed.

“Do you think perhaps there’s an air mattress somewhere?” Raney asked, her tone light.

There was only one bedroom left to try. Cal’s. The door swung open and the light worked. In the middle of the room was a queen-size mattress, still with its plastic wrapper, without any bedding or even a bed frame. The mattress and box spring sat directly on the wood floor. There was a bedside table with a lamp. There was no other furniture in the room.

Why the hell had Brick bought a new mattress and put it upstairs in Cal’s old room? And never put sheets or a blanket on it? Based on the layer of dust on the plastic, the mattress had been up here for some time. It wasn’t as if Brick had done it recently and just hadn’t finished the project.

Well, whatever the reason, it wasn’t great but it was better than sleeping on the wood floor. “You can sleep in here,” he said. He pulled a pocketknife out of his jeans, sliced open the plastic and ripped it off the mattress. Dust flew into the air and she sneezed.

“Sorry,” he said. “We can get some sheets tomorrow.”

She sat down on the edge of the mattress. “Where will you sleep?” she asked.

“Downstairs. On the couch. There’s no reason to believe that anybody knows that Lorraine Taylor is in this house. But if anything scares you, just yell. I’m a light sleeper. I’ll hear you.”

She looked around the room. She sighed a little dramatically. “All these years and I never ever envisioned my wedding night would go exactly like this.”

For the first time since Chief Bates had announced that he and Lorraine Taylor were posing as husband and wife, he felt like smiling. She was being a good sport. Her last safe house had no doubt been better.

He wanted to promise that everything would look better in the light of day but based on what he’d seen tonight, he thought the opposite was probably true. He would not have volunteered to bring her to Ravesville if he’d known the house was in this bad of shape.

“Good night,” he said.

He stuck his head into the bathroom that was across the hall. Ran the water in the faucet until it turned clear and flushed the toilet a couple times. There was toilet paper but it was covered with a layer of dust. He unrolled several sheets, ripped them off, and threw them in the small empty garbage can. There were no towels so he ran downstairs, got several clean ones from the cupboard in the downstairs bathroom and took them back upstairs.

It wasn’t camping but it was close.

Finally, he went back downstairs and, still fully dressed, stretched out on the couch. It was too short for him and his feet hung over the edge. He was so damn tired. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d told his brother that he’d been awake for more than a day. He had managed to grab some sleep after he’d talked to Dawson but the knowledge that the chief was counting on them had weighed heavily on his mind.

Now, even though his body craved rest, he lay awake, staring at the ceiling, his mind trying to wrap itself around the fact that he was back in Ravesville, back in the house that he’d left thirteen years ago, swearing that he’d never return.

On the drive here, he’d wondered if he’d feel Brick in the house. Or even his mother. But the house just felt empty, so empty it seemed as if there had never been life here.

But that wasn’t true. There had been life and love when Jack Hollister had been alive. His father would have despised Brick, would have hated what had become of the family.

As odd as it seemed, he could feel his father in the house. He hadn’t been able to do that when Brick was alive and living here. But now it felt very different. It was almost as if he could see him standing in front of the big windows, waving at him and his brothers to come in for dinner. Could see him walking through the house, a fishing pole in one hand and sack lunches in the other, yelling for his sons to hurry up, that the trout were biting.

As if he’d conjured up old spirits, he heard a noise. Something soft. Outside. He eased off the couch, used a finger to pull back the heavy drapes and watched the yard.

Nothing moved in the darkness. He waited, continuing to watch. Five minutes later, a dark shape, low to the ground, crossed the gravel.

A groundhog. He let out the breath he’d been holding. He’d been spooked by an animal.

He lay back down, rubbed his sore thigh and closed his eyes. Upstairs, he heard a door open and close, then the sound of water running through the pipes as Raney turned on the shower. She’d had a hell of a day but had seemed to handle it well. She’d been shot at yesterday, hustled out of Florida this morning, pushed into a fake marriage and had ended up here, in a house of neglect.

He’d clean up the place tomorrow, at least get the top layer of dust off. Then he would pitch everything in the refrigerator and make a quick trip to town for food. If the dinner Raney had eaten tonight was any indication, she had a good appetite. Which was surprising considering she was pretty slim.

But the curves were there. He’d seen that firsthand in the wedding dress. That image had stayed with him the entire drive from St. Louis to Ravesville. That and the memory of the feel of her mouth.

He heard the water shut off. Let himself have the guilty pleasure of imaging Raney’s wet body stepping over the edge of the old tub. Of her drying off on the threadbare towel.

He heard the door open and the floor creak as she crossed the hall. He wondered if she’d brought pajamas or if she slept naked.

He let out a breath, happy to let that image rest on his brain.

* * *

WHEN HE WOKE UP, the sun was low in the sky. He checked the time. A little past seven. He sat up, stretched and went in search of coffee.

There was no coffeepot on the counter. He opened cupboards. Not even a jar of instant. It was another reason to despise Brick.

He walked up the stairs and muscle memory kicked in, making it easy for him to avoid the same squeaky boards that had been there thirteen years ago. Raney’s bedroom door was closed. He considered knocking but decided against it.

She probably needed her sleep.

He opened the door and stopped. The woman knew how to take up a bed. She slept on her stomach with her head at ten o’clock and her feet at four o’clock. She wasn’t naked but her sweet little body was plenty sexy in her lime green shorts and white-and-green-striped T-shirt. She was breathing deeply.

She’d tossed the clothes that she’d been wearing the night before into a pile. On top was her bra and panties, a silky pale yellow with lots of lace.

His face felt warm and when she stirred, he thought maybe he’d moaned.

Dawson was right. He needed to get more regular sex.

He took a step back, carefully closing the door. He could run into town, pick up some coffees and pastries from the bakery and be back before she ever woke up. Maybe that would make up for stashing her in this dump.

He left the house, making sure that he locked the door behind him. The drive to town took just minutes and when he walked into the bakery, the first thing he saw was the cakes in the display case.

It made him remember how the birthday/wedding cake had amused Raney. He debated buying another one just to see her reaction but instead got six doughnuts and a coffee cake along with two extralarge coffees.

He sipped his coffee on the way home. When he pulled into the yard, he did not notice anything amiss. Which was why, when he opened the door and looked down the hallway into the kitchen, he got caught short.

He saw the man. Catalogued his dirty blue jeans and dark sweatshirt and the greasy hair that hung to his shoulders.

Saw all that but what Chase focused on was the knife that the man held. It had a shiny six-inch blade and was raised and pointed.

At Raney.

Still in her pajamas, she had her back pressed up against the sink. Her face was pale and her eyes were big.

The man leaped toward her. Chase pulled his gun but knew that he was going to be too late.

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