“What’re you thinking?”
Cole got to his feet and motioned for me to follow him. “First, I want to go back home and check the murder file. Mom said that she told the police about this guy Bishop, but I don’t remember any mention of him in those pages. At the FBI seminar they taught us that no tip goes undocumented, no matter what the source.”
“You think it was swept under the rug?”
“If the detective wanted to make his case stick—that Amber killed Ben? Maybe.”
We arrived at the car and, after getting under way, I said, “You know what’s really weird to me?”
“Besides us investigating our own murders?” Cole said with a wink.
That gave me pause. “Yeah, besides that. What I think is strange is that Ben was shot and Amber was stabbed.”
Cole glanced at me. “Why is that strange?”
“If we think that the same person murdered them both, then why didn’t he just shoot Amber or stab Ben? Why change the method?”
“Huh,” Cole said, tapping the steering wheel thoughtfully. “That’s a good point. Maybe it’s because he wanted to frame Amber, and shooting her would’ve made it look like a murder.”
“True,” I said. “But how did he know that she’d leave a suicide note?”
Cole shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “The only thing I can figure is that she might’ve known she’d end up murdered. Maybe she and Ben were both in on whatever it was that got him killed, so she knew she was in danger?”
I shook my head. “That night, though? I mean, isn’t the timing a little too perfect?”
Cole nodded. “It is, but it’s not the only weird thing that doesn’t seem to have an explanation. I read in the file that the night Amber died, her neighbors said they heard Amber’s dog, Bailey, barking like crazy, and they told the detective that they only heard Bailey bark like that when somebody was at the door, but when they looked out the window of their living room, they didn’t see anybody on the Greeleys’ porch.”
“What about the back door?” I asked.
“Nope,” Cole said. “Paparella asked them that same question, and Greeley’s neighbor—I forget the guy’s name—said he thought of that and went to check his back window, which had a view into the Greeleys’ backyard. He didn’t see anybody there, either, so he assumed that maybe Bailey had heard an animal outside or something.”
“That could’ve been the explanation, Cole,” I said.
“True,” he admitted, “except for one thing. There’s a photo of Bailey from the crime scene. She’s got some of Amber’s blood on her paws, probably from when she went to check on her. But there’s also a spot of blood on Bailey’s right side that I swear looks like a handprint.”
“A handprint?”
“Yeah,” Cole said. “Paparella even had the photographer take a close-up of it.”
I felt my temper flare. “You mean like someone hit Amber’s dog?”
“No,” Cole said. “I think it might’ve been the opposite. I think somebody was trying to comfort Bailey. It looked like they were patting her.”
“Whoa,” I said.
Cole continued. “Paparella concluded at the end of the report that the bloody handprint probably came from Amber. He said it was the last thing she did before she died.”
I looked at Cole. “But you think otherwise.”
“I read the autopsy report. Amber had blood on her hands—one was covered in it; the other had some blood splatter. Know what the medical examiner didn’t find on either hand?”
I blinked, trying to think where he was going with that, and then it hit me. “He didn’t find dog hair,” I said.
Cole pointed at me. “Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner. At FAIT we learned that blood is super-sticky. If Amber had given Bailey a pat before she died, she should’ve had dog hair all over her palm.”
“Golden retrievers do shed like crazy,” I said, seeing his logic.
“Yep, and I know from experience.”
“So the killer got into Amber’s house, murdered her, and when Bailey went crazy, he calmed the dog down?”
“That’s a possibility,” Cole said.
“Without being seen, though?”
“Once the dog calmed down, the neighbors stopped looking out at the Greeleys’ house. The killer could’ve sneaked through the back door without anybody noticing.”
“Do you think that Bailey’s reaction means that she felt comfortable around the murderer?” I asked.
“Like, did Bailey know the killer and that’s why she allowed him to pet her even though Amber was dying on the bed?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Cole took a deep breath while he seemed to consider that. “It’s really hard to say, Lily. My Bailey is friendly with everybody. Mom jokes a lot that if we were ever robbed, Bailey would show them where the valuables are. She loves everyone.”
“It’s the breed,” I agreed. “Goldens are true teddy bears. Still, that handprint is pretty significant, right?”
“It is. And it’s always bugged me,” Cole said with a shudder.
I knew how he felt. How could someone be so sick as to kill Amber, and then pet her dog?
By that time we’d arrived back at Cole’s house. He retrieved the murder file from his room, and laid it out on the kitchen table, where he went through each page, looking for any reference to Mr. Bishop.
Meanwhile, I used his iPad to search for the mysterious suspect, starting with a list of teachers at the school. It was too much to hope that he was still employed at Chamberlain High, but I did find an Internet reference for a David Bishop who’d once worked at the high school and was now living in Bumpass, Virginia. Pulling up a map, I saw that it was a little over thirty-five miles away.
“It’s not here,” Cole said.
“What?” I asked, looking up from the iPad.
“There’s no reference to Bishop and no mention of my gram talking to Paparella about it. The bastard covered up the lead.”
I turned the tablet toward Cole. “I found a David Bishop who used to work at Chamberlain. He lives in Bumpass now.”
“We could be there in less than an hour,” Cole said, getting to his feet and pulling out his keys.
I blinked. “Wait, Cole, you want to go over there and what? Talk to him?”
Cole looked a little worked up. I could tell the thing with Paparella was upsetting him. “Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.”
“Are you crazy? What if he’s the killer?”
“What if he is, Lily?” Cole said. “By the looks of that picture of him in the yearbook, he’ll be an old man by now. Plus, he won’t know who we are or where we live. We’ll give him fake names, and talk about Ben and Amber and see how he reacts. If he gets upset or says something suspicious, we’ll call Mike.”
“Who’s Mike?”
Cole pointed to the file. “Mike Hasslett, the detective who gave me the file.”
“Can’t we just go to him now and tell him what your mom said and have him go talk to Bishop?”
Cole gripped the back of the kitchen chair. “You gotta know Mike,” he said. “He’s a nice guy, but really lazy.”
“What about one of the other detectives?” I pressed.
Cole laughed. “One of the other…oh, yeah. You’re from Richmond, where they have a full-scale police department. There’re only four detectives on staff in Fredericksburg, and they have to cover everything from car accidents to drugs to murders. They’re way understaffed, Lily. I know from experience that they don’t like to investigate anything they don’t really have to.”
“What do you mean?”
“One of my mom’s ex-boyfriends broke in here a couple of years ago and stole a bunch of our stuff to get even with her for breaking up with him, and the detective who showed up, some old geezer named Cromely, didn’t do anything more than file a report and try to talk Mom out of pressing charges ’cause it was more work for him. He wanted to let the guy off with a warning.” When I stared
at him in stunned silence, he added, “Glad you moved to such a safe community with a top-notch police force, right?”
That made me crack a smile. “They do sound pathetic,” I said.
“Yep.”
“Cole, all kidding aside, what you’re talking about is dangerous.”
“It’s only dangerous if Bishop murdered Ben and Amber. If not, then it’s just talking to a guy who used to teach at our school. Besides, we could both outrun a guy in his seventies, right?”
I wrung my hands together, undecided.
Cole bounced the keys in his hand and said, “I’m gonna go. I can drop you off at home if you want, but I’m heading over there.”
I glared at him. Why was he so stubborn? But I couldn’t very well let him go on his own. If it was a risky mission for both of us, it was definitely riskier for one of us. With a heavy sigh, I grabbed my purse and said, “Fine. I’ll go. But if he pulls a gun, I’m throwing you in front of the line of fire and running.”
“I can live with that,” he said with a grin.
“Not if he has good aim.”
But Cole’s playful grin only widened, so I rolled my eyes and headed toward the door.
We arrived in Bumpass—a gorgeous and obviously expensive community surrounding Lake Anna—in well under an hour. On our way to the address I’d found for Bishop, we drove past huge homes dotting the lakefront.
Finally, we stopped in front of a long drive, which wound up a hill to a picturesque house perched at the top. The house was like something out of a magazine, with a series of gables along the front, a huge wraparound porch, and gingerbread accents all over.
There was something very familiar about it. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear I’d seen the house before.
“Wow,” Cole said as he leaned toward me to look up at the place. “That’s a big house for a former teacher.”
“It is,” I agreed. I wondered how he’d been able to afford it. “Maybe he did something else after he left Chamberlain High. Something that made him a buttload of money.”
Cole frowned skeptically, but then pointed down the road. “There’s a sign for a public boat launch,” he said. “Let’s park there and see if there’s a beach we can walk to get a better look at the house from the back.”
Cole drove to the boat launch and, sure enough, there was a small parking lot, which was nearly full of cars, but we found a slot and got out.
“There,” I said, pointing to the right, where a trail led to the beach. “That might go all the way back to Bishop’s house.”
“Let’s do this,” Cole said.
He walked around to my side, and I was surprised when he took my hand. I hadn’t thought there was any romance going on between us that afternoon, so it was a really sweet surprise.
We walked in silence, and I was glad to see the beach was mostly empty. It was also very narrow in places, and I wondered if we might’ve been trespassing at times. Although the beach was continuous, I didn’t know if the beachfronts were public or private. There weren’t any signs to indicate one way or the other, and Cole walked like he belonged there. His confidence gave me courage.
At last we made it to the beach in front of Bishop’s place. We came upon it suddenly as it was around a small peninsula, and Cole saw it first. He stopped and pointed toward the hill.
“There,” he said.
I glanced up, spotting first the miniature windmill, which stood sentinel halfway up the hill. The staircase leading to the house was built in a zigzag pattern, and there was a large trilevel deck at the top.
And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. “Ohmigod!” I said, feeling my knees go a bit weak. “Ohmigod!”
“Lily?” Cole said. “What’s the matter?”
My breath was coming in short pants, and I felt the beginnings of a panic attack. I closed my eyes and tried to slow my breathing down, but my heart was hammering away in my chest so hard that it hurt.
I sank to the sand on my knees while sweat trickled down from my temples. Cole kept asking me what was happening, but I couldn’t speak. All I could do was grip his hand for dear life.
He put his other hand on my shoulder and began to speak in soft tones.
“Hey,” he said. “Lily, it’s okay. You’re okay. Hang on. Just keep breathing and hang on to me.”
Every one of my limbs was trembling, and I bent at the waist, feeling like I was going to melt into the ground. This was by far the worst panic attack I’d ever had. It was like a tsunami of fear and anxiety washing over me. I was drowning in it.
“Breathe, Lily,” Cole said. I focused on his words. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
His free hand gripped my arm to steady me. Tears leaked out of my eyes, and when I opened them I got so dizzy that I had to close them again.
Please! I thought. Please don’t let me pass out!
“Lily,” Cole whispered. He was very close to my ear and there was something urgent about his whisper. “Listen, I’m gonna pick you up and carry you, okay?”
Feebly, I shook my head. If I moved, I’d black out.
“I have to,” Cole said, easing his hand from mine and placing it across my back.
I was about to shake my head again when I heard, “You there! You kids all right?”
My eyes flew open as Cole carefully pulled me close and picked me up. I caught a glimpse of an old man making his way down a long staircase. A staircase I’d seen in an old photo album at my grandmother’s house. There’d been photos of my dad as a young boy in those photos. They’d even been captioned. The Lake House. And, if there was any doubt about who’d owned it, I remembered one photo in particular of a boat parked at the dock with the windmill in the background. The boat had been named Maureen’s Folly after my grandmother.
“We’re fine,” Cole said, hugging me close. “She forgot her inhaler.”
I put my head against Cole’s chest and gripped his shirt. The effort to keep air in my lungs was quickly exhausting me.
“Should I call someone?” the old man asked. He sounded closer.
“No, sir,” he said. “She’ll be okay. Just gotta get her home. Thanks!”
I felt the rocking motion of Cole carrying me across the soft sand. It wasn’t helping me fight back the wave of dizziness.
I closed my eyes again and tried to think my way out of the panic attack. I focused on the smell of Cole’s freshly laundered shirt. The feel of his arms supporting me. The pillow his muscular chest was lending my head, and the beat of his heart.
Like a tonic, the method began to work. I felt less dizzy, and I could keep air in my lungs for longer each time I breathed in. Finally, he stopped and eased to the ground with me still held in his arms. By then I was almost back to breathing normally. Cautiously, I opened my eyes.
“Hey there,” he said when I looked up at him. “How you doin’?”
I swallowed, which was hard because my mouth was very dry. “I think I can stand,” I told him.
“Good to know,” he said. “But how about we hang out here for another minute?”
I managed a small smile and a mock eye roll. “Okay. If we must.”
He chuckled. “So what happened back there?”
“That house,” I said. “The one Bishop is living in…”
“Yeah?”
“My grandparents used to own it.”
Cole’s brow furrowed. “Your…what?”
I wiped the sweat from my brow and leaned against Cole’s chest again, exhausted by the panic attack. “Bishop’s house. I recognize it from an old photo album my grandmother has.”
Cole looked over his shoulder toward where we’d just come from. “Bishop bought the house from your grandparents?”
I rubbed my temples. I’d asked Grandmother about the house in the photos. She’d said that it’d been taken over by a friend of the family. I remembered how she’d paused when she’d said “taken over,” as though it was something done grudgingly. I distinctly remembered the note of bitterness in h
er tone, only I’d chalked it up to her general demeanor. Now I wasn’t quite so sure.
“I don’t think they sold it to him,” I said. “I think my grandparents gave it to him.”
Cole looked confused. “Why would they give a house that’s gotta be worth a million dollars to some schoolteacher from Chamberlain High?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea,” I said, easing my way out of Cole’s arms to get shakily to my feet. “But I think we need to find out.”
I STOOD IN THE HALLWAY shaking from head to toe. I’d gotten out of my last class a little early by faking a headache and asking to go see the nurse, and I’d come to this classroom to confront Mr. Bishop and find out the truth.
I’d never had him as a teacher, but I’d heard he was mean. The freshmen always complained about what a prick he was and how hard his math class could be. His reputation made me even more nervous about confronting him, but it was the only way I could get to the truth.
Spence wasn’t talking about what was going on with him, but whatever it was, it was tearing him apart. He was moody and distant, wasn’t eating much at lunch, and he’d stopped working out with his friends after school. All he did was come to class, say very little, then go home to mow lawns until dark. We hadn’t spent any real time together lately because he was always either exhausted or busy working. For the first time in our relationship, we were struggling, and it was killing me.
And then there was the lasting tension between him and Jamie, who’d been his best friend since elementary school. All of it had me worried enough to confront Bishop and find out why he’d threatened Spence. I couldn’t prove it was Mr. Bishop on that porch when Stacey and I had come back from shopping, but I was ninety percent sure it’d been him.
At last the bell sounded and the classroom door burst open. Kids came pouring out, and I stuck close to the wall to wait for the room to clear. Finally it appeared empty, save for one figure earnestly erasing the chalkboard.
Gathering my courage, I stepped into the room and said, “Mr. Bishop?”
The figure turned. I blinked. The man standing in front of me was much younger than Mr. Bishop and looked nothing like him.