Breaker's Reef

  Cade sat on the table. “What is it, Sheila?”

  “I think I might know who killed that girl.” There. She had their full attention.

  Joe pulled out a chair, dropped into it. “Go on.”

  “I don’t know if Blair told you or not, Cade, but Marcus Gibson—the writer—hired me to do some typing for him.”

  “No, she didn’t mention it.”

  “Well, he did. I’ve been typing his dictation and also entering some of his older books into his computer. And as I was typing today, I found a description of a murder that is really similar to Emily Lawrence’s murder.”

  Cade and Joe exchanged looks. “Similar in what way?”

  “A girl was shot, and her body was put into a boat to float down the river so someone would find her.”

  Joe shot Cade another look, and Sheila knew she’d brought them important information. “We need the name of that book, Sheila.”

  “It was Crescent Hill. I probably should have brought it with me, but he was there, and he’s so creepy. Sleeping out all night in the woods, swimming fully dressed, sneaking up on me when I least expect it …”

  “Sleeping in the woods?” Joe stood back up. “He told you that?”

  “Yes. He’s trying to get into the head of his character. But his main characters seem to always be the killers, so that in itself is creepy. I’ll tell you, I don’t know if I can go back there tomorrow. I’m starting to be afraid of him. But I know where his key is, and I can go if you need me to help you with the investigation …” She smiled, trying to work a smile out of Cade, as well. “If you promised me some personal protection, I might be willing to go back and try to see what I could find.”

  Joe shook his head. “Not a good idea. Maybe you’d better stay away until we have time to look into this. We don’t want you to be in danger.”

  Warmth flushed through her. “Well, thank you, Joe. I appreciate that.”

  “He’s right,” Cade said. “We need to look into this before you go back. We’ll take it from here, Sheila. Thanks for coming by.”

  Cade opened the door for her—the perfect gentleman—and she stepped out into the squad room. Blair stood just inside the front door.

  The smile Sheila had been trying to get out of Cade blossomed on his face, and her own heart took a nosedive.

  Sheila recognized the look on Blair’s face too. Her expression held a combination of jealousy, anger, insecurity, and fear—at least that was how Sheila saw it. Blair’s usual self-confidence seemed to slip a couple notches whenever Sheila was around Cade. She should tell Blair she had just come on police business, but she kind of liked the idea of having someone think of her as a threat.

  “Hey, babe.”

  At Cade’s warm greeting, Blair lost that threatened look and smiled up at him. He was a good head taller than she. Like it or not, they looked really cute together. “Bad time?” Blair asked.

  “No, actually. It’s a good time. I need you to go somewhere with me.”

  Sheila’s chest tightened. Cade had forgotten she was there.

  “Where?” Blair asked.

  “The library. I have a book I need to check out, and you’ll know right where it is.”

  “That’s me—” Blair grinned—“Marion, the former Librarian. I’ll help if the Ladies’ Auxiliary hasn’t recataloged everything. They’re liable to have revamped the whole system.”

  Sheila followed them out. “I’ll see you later. Cade, call if you need to ask me anything.”

  “I will,” he said. “Thanks, Sheila.”

  She stood there and watched as they got into Cade’s truck.

  “Are you walking?”

  She looked back at Joe, standing in the doorway. He was tall too, even a little taller than Cade. Sheila had always had a weakness for tall men. “Yeah, trying to get my exercise.”

  “You don’t need it.” He smiled almost awkwardly.

  She grinned. “Joe, are you flirting with me?” She’d known the comment would hook him—she had lots of experience, after all.

  “Maybe,” he admitted on a chuckle. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride.”

  She tossed her hair back. “You’re my hero. I’d love a ride.”

  He walked her out to his unmarked car and opened the door for her. She slipped in, feeling like Cinderella stepping into her pumpkin chariot.

  “Hanover House?” he asked.

  “That’s right.”

  As they drove, Sheila told him about Marcus Gibson’s quirks. He hung on every word, laughing at her descriptions, occasionally looking at her with a smile in his silver eyes. It had been a long time since a man had looked at her that way.

  Maybe her crush on Cade had been misplaced. Maybe she should give Joe a little more consideration.

  CHAPTER 12

  Blair understood Cade’s reason for not wanting to check out Gibson’s book himself. His very presence in the library during a murder investigation would attract undue attention and invite a million questions he didn’t have time to answer. It might also give someone the idea that Gibson was a person of interest before Cade had time to talk to him.

  She stepped into the small library, and a flood of nostalgia washed over her. She’d spent so much of her life here before her competence had been called into question by some of the City Council members. She had thrown the job back in their faces and boxed up her belongings. The Ladies Auxiliary, who was behind the complaints about her, had arrogantly agreed to “take over” the running of the library until a replacement could be found. But none had been found yet.

  Blair went to the shelves of reference books and breathed in the dusty scent of those old volumes, gently running her fingers over some of their spines. The books were like old friends, welcoming her with their riches. She’d missed this place, but she would die before she admitted it.

  Her shoes clicked on the old hardwood floor as she crossed the room to the fiction section. She stopped and perused the G s. There, right before John Grisham’s collection, she saw the dozen books Gibson had written.

  Sue Ellen Jargis must have heard her footsteps, because she emerged from the back office. “May I help you, hon?”

  When Blair turned around, Sue Ellen caught her breath. “Oh, it’s you.”

  Blair gave her a saccharine smile. “I’m fine, Sue Ellen. And how are you?”

  The woman bristled. “What can I help you with?”

  “I don’t need help.” Blair insisted she’d forgiven the woman for edging her out of her job, but now as she stood face-to-face with her, she found herself hoping Sue Ellen felt oppressed by the dimly lit room and the dust floating on the air in the rays of sunlight coming through the front windows. Did they ever dust the place? When she ran the library, she’d dusted a different area each day, and managed to keep it relatively fresh, in spite of the age of some of the volumes. “I’m assuming you haven’t reorganized the fiction section. You haven’t done anything outrageous, like categorizing it by subject matter, or the names of the characters, have you?”

  The woman’s chin came up. “Of course not. They’re exactly as you left them.”

  Blair decided not to respond to that, so she pulled the books off of the shelf until she had an armload. “I’ll take all twelve of these.” She dumped them into Sue Ellen’s arms.

  The woman stared at her, mouth agape. “Blair, you know you can’t have twelve at a time. Ten is the limit.”

  Blair sighed. “Since when? I never had a limit.”

  “Well, you should have. If not, the college kids who come in here would take all kinds of advantage. They would hog all the research and reference books for themselves and keep them for who knows how long.”

  “If the college kids need the books for research, then what’s the harm? I never had any problems. If they were late, I usually knew how to get in touch with them, and I reminded them to bring them back. Simple as that. And you know where I live. Right next door. If I’m late returning the books, you can cross the yard and
come get them.”

  Sue Ellen huffed out her distaste at the plan, but took the books to her desk and began checking them out.

  “So, do you work here every day? I thought your ladies were taking turns.”

  “I do Mondays and Thursdays.”

  “Any closer to finding a qualified librarian?” She knew the answer already. As mayor, Jonathan had made a valiant effort to find her replacement, but the Ladies Auxiliary frightened most of the candidates away.

  The woman slammed one of the back covers and jerked open the next one. “We have some things in the works.” She clearly didn’t want to talk about it, and Blair couldn’t help her amusement at the woman’s plight. Sue Ellen was a socialite and a world traveler. The last thing she probably wanted was to be stuck in a library all day. But since she was the one who’d gotten the city into this mess, Blair knew she was determined to serve whether it killed her or not.

  Blair sneezed. “You know, you should dust these shelves more often. I’m getting a sore throat just standing here.”

  “We dust plenty, thank you very much.”

  “Hey, don’t jump on me. I’m just suggesting—”

  “I don’t need your suggestions.”

  Blair took the books, uttered a syrupy sweet good-bye, and made her way back out to Cade’s car. He got out and relieved her of the load. “Why so many? I only wanted one.”

  “I thought it might be helpful to look at his other murder scenes. Plus, I took a little pleasure in aggravating Sue Ellen. That woman makes me forget the Golden Rule.”

  “Uh-oh. She was working?”

  “If you want to call it that. She has a limit of ten books now.” She smiled. “I got twelve.”

  Cade tried not to grin. She knew he didn’t want to encourage her.

  McCormick was pulling back into the department parking lot when they got back. They went in and looked up the scene Sheila had mentioned.

  Cade read it aloud. “It is very similar.”

  Joe took the book and scanned the scene. “So the question is whether Marcus Gibson is involved in the murder.”

  “That would be pretty stupid,” Cade said. “Why would he describe the murders to a tee, then perpetrate them in real life, and think he’d get away with it?”

  Blair shrugged. “Maybe he’s just crazy. Sheila thinks so.”

  “Or maybe it’s a copycat crime.”

  “I still say we need to dig into Gibson’s life, see what we can find out,” McCormick said. “Put him under surveillance. Especially if he was sleeping in the woods on the same night the Lawrence girl was murdered.”

  Cade nodded. “You’re right. We can’t ignore the obvious. But meanwhile, we need to read this whole book and see if there are any other similarities. Whether he’s our man or not, we might get some insight into what really happened.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Cade used his new computer system to gather all the information he needed on Gibson in a matter of minutes. The man had no criminal background. Before his work had hit the New York Times bestseller list, he’d worked as an English professor for a small college in Maine. He’d started out with a couple of short, literary novels. Critics had hated them. One review called his books “complicated to the point of being obscure.” Another one wrote that the “depth of his thoughts, and the convoluted concepts therein, came off as superficial and shallow—the pompous efforts of a man who thinks more highly of his intellect than he should.”

  In articles about Gibson’s life, old colleagues and former students commented that he had taken those reviews hard and stolen around campus with a bitter, distant look on his face. He’d been described as a man “tormented by his own misunderstood genius.”

  Then one day he decided to do what his colleagues disdained, and “sold out” by writing a crime novel. But not just any crime novel. This was from the point of view of the killer, a dark, macabre look at the inner workings of a murderer. He sold it to a new publisher, who heavily promoted it with a major ad campaign months before its release and booked him for a twenty-city tour. The novel debuted at number one on the New York Times list. He subsequently signed a multibook contract for millions and quit his job, ignoring the turned-up noses of his fellow academicians, who accused him of writing drivel for the masses.

  Since that time, he’d been a virtual loner, by all accounts. He’d never married, and reports said that he did meticulous research on every book, even to the point of living as a homeless person on the streets of Atlanta’s inner city for months at a time.

  Cade found a death certificate for Gibson’s father, who had died two months after Gibson’s birth. His mother, who’d also worked as an English professor, raised him alone. He had very little contact with her now.

  “Excuse me, Chief?”

  Cade looked up to see Scott Crown leaning in his doorway. “Yeah, Crown. What is it?”

  He came in. “Here’s the paperwork you asked for. I’m knocking off now. I switched shifts with Bruce.”

  “Okay, see you tomorrow night.”

  Scott glanced down at the books all over Cade’s desk. “You a Gibson fan?”

  Cade shook his head. “No, not really. You?”

  “Yeah, I’ve read almost everything he’s written.”

  Cade turned from his computer and looked up at the young man. “Did you notice that the victim in Crescent Hill was killed and disposed of exactly the same way that Emily Lawrence was?”

  Crown picked up that book and paged through it. “Now that you mention it …”

  Maybe this was a chance for the kid to redeem himself. “I want you to do me a favor, Crown. Can you spare another hour or so?”

  “Sure. I have a date tonight, but I have some time left.”

  Cade didn’t tell him he knew who his date was with. “Since you’ve read all these, could you give me a rundown on the plots, paying careful attention to the way the murders are committed, who is killed, the motive, that sort of thing?”

  “Sure. I’ll just need to refresh my memory on some of them, but it shouldn’t be too hard. Is this part of the homicide investigation?”

  “Could be.”

  Crown’s eyes widened. “Then you think Marcus Gibson may be our killer?”

  Cade didn’t want to go that far. “I didn’t say that. Maybe it’s a copycat. Just in case, though, we’re putting him under surveillance. He has some odd habits. The night of the murder we know he spent the night in the woods.”

  “Can’t they bring him in, before he kills anybody else?”

  “Nope.” Cade rubbed his eyes. “Until we gather enough evidence for probable cause, we’ll just be watching him to make sure he stays out of trouble.”

  Scott stacked all the books from Cade’s desk. “I’ll get right to work on this, Chief. I’ll have it to you before I leave.”

  Before Scott left his office, Alex Johnson leaned in. “Cade, you got a minute?”

  “Sure, whatcha got?”

  “The state just faxed this over. It’s the initial ballistics report on Emily Lawrence.”

  Cade took the report and read about the bullet lodged in Emily’s chest. It was from a .40 caliber Glock—the same weapon he carried.

  Crown stood there, holding the books and watching Cade read. Ignoring him, Cade turned to his computer, pulled up his database on registered weaponry, and typed in Gibson’s name. One entry came up.

  He sat back hard in his chair. “Marcus Gibson owns a .40 caliber Glock.”

  Crown balanced the books under his arm. “That the probable cause you need?”

  “Not yet. But if I could get that gun, then we could match it to the bullet. If there was a match, it would be a slam dunk. But to get the gun, we’ll need a search warrant, and the DA won’t issue it until we show probable cause.”

  “Kind of a vicious cycle, huh? Maybe you could just question him and ask for the gun.”

  Cade’s phone rang, and he heard someone in the outer room answering, then Alex came back to the door. “F
or you, Chief.”

  Cade picked up the phone. “Chief Cade.”

  “Hello, Cade. I hope life is well for you today.” He recognized the Pakistani accent of Zaheer, the jeweler in town.

  “It is, Zaheer. How about you?”

  “Very, very good,” the man said. “And I wanted to tell you that the ring is ready. It is quite radiant, if I do say so myself.”

  Cade glanced up at Crown, wishing he’d leave. “Thank you. I wonder if you could do one further thing for me.”

  “For you, anything.”

  Crown kept standing there, straining to see the report. Cade put his hand over the receiver. “Close the door on your way out, will you?”

  Crown nodded and, since his hands were full, pulled the door closed with his foot. It didn’t close all the way, but it would do.

  Cade lowered his voice. “Could you somehow put it in an oyster shell?”

  “An oyster shell?”

  Cade knew the jeweler thought he was crazy. He glanced at the doorway again. “It’s part of my plan, Zaheer. I was thinking that I might take her snorkeling at Breaker’s Reef Grotto. It’s one of our favorite places. I wanted her to find it there, in the cavern.”

  A deep, low rumble of laughter rolled in the Pakistani’s throat. “Ah, very romantic. Yes, I will see what I can find. I enjoy being your confidant in this matter. I will call you as soon as it is ready.”

  Cade hung up the phone and sat staring at it for a moment. He hoped he wasn’t jumping the gun. Marriage was something he and Blair had not yet discussed. All he knew was that she was the one he wanted to wake up next to every morning for the rest of his life. And he didn’t see any reason to put that off any longer.

  He only hoped Zaheer could keep a secret.

  CHAPTER 14

  Emily’s funeral service was both tragic and celebratory, a memorial to her life even as the mourners wept over the suddenness of her death. Her family stood strong from eulogy to burial, breaking Sadie’s heart with their courage and faith.