Home to Whiskey Creek
In retrospect, however, when she examined the details of this most recent attack, she felt he hadn’t been taking any pleasure in what he was doing. Especially once she started shaking and crying and pleading with him not to rape her again. He’d muttered—and she’d only now remembered this—“Stop it! I—that’s not who I am!”
“Adelaide?” Chief Stacy’s voice intruded on her thoughts.
She glanced up. “Yes?”
“I asked if there was anything distinctive about his voice.”
“Oh.” She wiped her palms on her thighs. “No.”
His cup clinked on the china saucer. “Do you know any reason someone would want to harm you? If he didn’t...rape you, what did he want? Did he ask for anything? Demand money?”
“No.” She shrugged. “At first, I—I thought he was intent on rape, but...”
“Looks like you fought tooth and nail. I’m sorry about your injuries.”
His sympathy made her feel guilty for shading the truth, but she had to do what she could to make this go away. “I’m fine now, thank you. It’s all...minor stuff, really. I’ll recover.”
“You forced him to reconsider. I’m proud of you for that.”
Her kidnapper was the one who’d made it possible for her to fight by tying her hands in front of her instead of behind her back. She couldn’t get them loose until she was alone in the mine, but she could use them—like when she’d attempted to remove her blindfold. Such a tactical error gave her the impression that he wasn’t used to abducting people. He’d gone for what was quick and convenient because he was in a hurry and was afraid of getting caught, possibly by Gran. Maybe he figured his threats and the knife he’d brought would keep her cowed.
Anyway, she felt even more uncomfortable at Stacy’s compliment than she’d already been. She wasn’t out to elicit praise. She was hoping to present a degree of believability, to put together a coherent story, so that his curiosity would be satisfied and she could get out of the spotlight as soon as possible. “At one point, he mumbled that he couldn’t go through with it and just...tossed me into the mine.”
She’d fabricated his change of heart. He hadn’t even attempted to rape her. She’d been fighting because she’d been afraid he might. She was so convinced that she was in for more of what she’d endured at sixteen that, once she was away from the house and he couldn’t hurt Gran, she’d let loose with everything she had and nearly caused them to crash. The sound of scraping metal told her his vehicle had sustained some damage. That was when he’d slugged her—hard. Other than that, and when she’d nearly managed to remove her blindfold, he hadn’t hit her.
“Doesn’t mean he won’t try to rape someone else,” Stacy said. “I’ll find this guy, I promise.”
She hoped not. That was all she needed—a string that would unravel the past. Even an overzealous search could spook the man who’d appeared in her bedroom. Then there was no telling what he might do. Fear could push him into taking risks he wouldn’t otherwise take. That was what it had done to her when she’d tried to crash his car.
“Is there anything else you remember?”
She shook her head, but she could probably describe Tom Gibby, Kevin Colbert or any of the others in great detail and Stacy would never suspect them. They’d been athletic, popular, good students—and were apparently successful adults. Tom Gibby was a postal clerk, a steady, devoted family man. And Coach Colbert was married to his high school sweetheart and had three kids. She hadn’t asked about Derek Rodriguez or Stephen Selby. She hadn’t wanted to string those four names together. But she doubted Derek and Stephen would be at the top of Chief Stacy’s suspect list, any more than Kevin or Tom. They certainly hadn’t acted out since high school. Or, if they had, no one knew about it. Gran had visited her regularly all the years she’d been gone, and they talked on the phone every few days when they weren’t together. She would’ve heard if any of the people she’d known had been charged with a crime. She also received the Gold Country Gazette, Whiskey Creek’s weekly paper, at her apartment in Davis. So even if Gran didn’t mention an arrest, the newspaper would. She’d subscribed for that very reason.
For the thirteen years she’d been gone, all had been quiet.
“That’s okay,” Stacy said. “I’ll still get him.”
“I’m praying you will.” This came from Gran, who’d been listening silently but intently.
Chief Stacy scooted forward in his seat. He’d been handed the worst crime to be perpetrated in Whiskey Creek in at least a decade and had just promised her he’d find the man responsible, but he had nothing to go on. “So why you?”
Wishing this could be over, Addy threaded her fingers more tightly together and searched for an explanation he’d find plausible. “I’ve heard...on various forensic shows that most crimes are crimes of opportunity. I guess...I guess I made it too easy when I left my door open.” Essentially, she was taking the blame. She deserved some of it—not for leaving her door open, but for sneaking out and attending that stupid party in the first place. Gran had told her she couldn’t go.
If only she’d listened...
“There’s got to be a detail, some evidence we’re missing,” Stacy said.
“Nothing I can think of right now,” Adelaide told him. “But...if I remember anything, I’ll give you a call.”
He put his notepad and pen in his pocket. “I did find an interesting object that might help.”
Adelaide’s chest constricted. “What did you say?”
“The man who attacked you must’ve dropped his knife when he was wrestling you out to his truck, because I found this—” he straightened one leg so he could take something from his pocket “—in the flower bed outside the door to your bedroom.”
If it had been a plain pocketknife, Adelaide wouldn’t have paid it much heed. But it had a wolf carved into the handle, which wasn’t something one saw every day.
Her mind raced. “Couldn’t that have been dropped by someone else?”
“I doubt it. With all the watering in the summer and the rain we get in the winter—” he flipped out the blade “—there’d be some rust if it’d been exposed to the elements for any length of time.” He pointed to the shiny steel. “Look at that. It’s perfect. Someone loved this knife.”
Palms sweaty, heart pounding, she sat in silence.
“So you didn’t see him with it?” he asked.
“He—he said he had a knife. But...I didn’t see it, no. And...I—I assumed he had it with him the whole time.”
Stacy studied the carving. “Okay, I’ll keep asking around. See if anyone can identify its owner.”
“He must’ve used that to cut the screen,” Gran said. “Were there any fingerprints on it?”
Adelaide held her breath. Please, no.
“Unfortunately not. I’m guessing he wiped it clean before he came here.”
“He—he was wearing gloves,” Adelaide said. “I remember that from when...from when he was tying my hands. The gloves made it difficult.”
“Gloves.” Chief Stacy sighed in a way that indicated he found this expected but disappointing. Then he lifted the knife. “But...this is very hopeful. We’ll see what turns up.”
The police chief and Gran moved on to other subjects while he finished his coffee and cake. Adelaide learned that he was recently divorced, that he was suing his wife for custody of their two kids, that his ex was “crazy” if she thought she was going to tell their son he couldn’t play football.
At last Stacy got up to leave—with a final promise to see that her attacker was apprehended.
Closing her eyes, Adelaide stayed where she was while Gran showed him out. She was embracing the silence, wishing her return to Whiskey Creek could’ve gone smoothly and wondering what she should do now.
“I sure hope he can catch the man who did this to you,” Gran said as she returned.
“So do I.” Adelaide twisted around to smile up at her, but the prospect of a police capture scared her more than anything—because she knew where it would lead if Kevin, Tom, Derek or Stephen decided to point a finger in her direction.
6
Baxter stood at Noah’s door, looking at him with that odd sort of expression Noah had noticed before, the one that made him so uncomfortable. He wanted to say something about it—had wanted to address the issue for some time because whatever was going on seemed to be getting worse instead of better. But he didn’t know how to broach such a taboo subject without busting up a friendship that had lasted almost since birth. What could he say: “Dude, sometimes you look at me like you’re dying to get in my pants”?
If Baxter wasn’t gay, Noah knew how much that would offend him. He’d be offended if a buddy accused him of sexual interest. That kind of talk was out of bounds between two guys. But Baxter’s look... It was so damn hungry.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” he snapped.
Baxter seemed taken aback. “Like what?”
Shit. Maybe he’d imagined it. That was another thing Noah hated—how he’d begun to second-guess his best friend’s thoughts and reactions. It seemed as if he was always reading more into what Baxter said and did. Suspicion affected people that way; it messed with their minds. “Forget it.”
Baxter seemed more than willing to let the subject go. “Do you know it’s almost noon?”
With a yawn, he scratched his head. “Haven’t looked at a clock. Just rolled out of bed.”
“So Amy opened the shop for you?”
“She was supposed to. She’s there now, isn’t she?” For a moment, he was afraid that his employee hadn’t shown up.
“She’s there. But...I thought she had school.”
When Baxter’s gaze once again strayed to Noah’s bare chest, Noah grabbed the football jersey he’d left on the couch sometime in the past few days and put it on. It wasn’t as if he’d answered the door nude. He’d donned a pair of basketball shorts, but his state of undress seemed to be a distraction, which added to the creeping sensation that all was not as he’d believed with the kid who’d grown up next door. “She graduated in June, remember?”
“I forgot. Does that mean you’re off today?”
“No, but this time of year weekday mornings can be slow. There’s no rush. I’ll walk over in a bit, spell her for lunch.”
“I can spell her if you’re sick.”
“I’m not sick. Just tired.” He yawned again. “I got in late.”
Baxter glanced beyond him, into his small bungalow. “Do you have company?”
“You mean a woman? No.”
“Then where were you last night? I came by a couple of times.”
Noah ignored the apparent subtext of that sentence—the possessive “where were you?”— because he wasn’t even sure it existed. “Believe it or not, I was rescuing someone.”
“You always wanted to be a superhero,” Baxter joked.
“Now I just need the cape.” Relaxing slightly, Noah held the door. What was wrong with him? This was Bax! They’d been on lots of double dates together. Noah knew for a fact that Baxter had slept with a number of women—at least when they were younger.
His friend grinned as he came in. “Who’d you rescue this time? Yet another chick from the confinement of her clothes?”
See? When Baxter said stuff like that, as if he was just another one of the guys, Noah wondered if he was simply being conceited or...or paranoid to think Baxter was attracted to him.
But there was always that indefinable something, like the feeling that had triggered his desire to pull on a shirt.
Whatever was going on was so damn contradictory and confusing....
“Is that the kind of rescue mission you’d like?” he said with a laugh.
Baxter didn’t rush to convince him. “Now and then. There are too many risks and complications that go with sleeping around to do it very often.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t get naked with anyone last night.” He had seen—and touched—Adelaide’s bare ass. That was memorable. But, in deference to what she’d been through, he wasn’t going to mention it. Maybe the rest of the circumstances surrounding her ordeal would go public. The incident was too sensational for word not to spread. But nobody had to know about the private hour he’d spent in Milly’s home, removing slivers. “Do you remember Adelaide Davies?”
Baxter’s gaze lighted on everything that was out of place. He’d been a neat freak since he was a little kid. “Adelaide who?”
“Went to high school with us. Would’ve been a sophomore when we were seniors.”
“I don’t recall anyone by that name.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. We were at San Diego State by the time she graduated, and she left town right after.” Noah dropped onto the couch and dangled one leg over the arm.
Baxter sat in the opposite chair, but he did so with his usual decorum. He wasn’t wearing one of his hand-tailored suits. He worked at a brokerage house in San Francisco Monday through Thursday, but his hours were flexible. Maybe he was taking two days off this week instead of one. Anyway, even his casual jeans and shirts came with expensive labels. He was stylish, well groomed, always had a perfect haircut and smelled like the men’s department at Macy’s.
But Noah tried not to file any of that under the “gay or not gay” headings going on in the back of his mind. He refused to define Bax—someone he was supposed to know better than anyone else—according to stereotypes. He was still hoping his so-called gaydar was wrong....
Actually, he didn’t care if his best friend preferred men. He’d deck anyone who had anything to say about it. He just didn’t want Baxter’s preferences to include him. Any admission along those lines would be far too weird.
“She’s back?”
“Just returned.”
“And you didn’t sleep with her? You’re falling off your game, bro.”
Noah scowled. He wasn’t that big a player. Living in a small town made it impossible to screw around very much—and maintain any respectability. It wasn’t as if he went out looking to get laid. Not very often, anyway. Women had always sort of...come to him. “Why do you keep bringing everything back to sex?”
“Isn’t that what you usually want to talk about? How hot your latest conquest was?”
Maybe he did talk too much about the women in his life. But he was trying to convince himself that the loneliness that had begun to plague him in recent years wasn’t going to taint his whole existence, that the life he led was fulfilling and would continue to be fulfilling even if nothing changed.
Besides, he couldn’t think of a better way to put Baxter on notice that he wasn’t about to get intimate with another man.
“She was beaten up! Of course I didn’t sleep with her. If you’ll listen, I’ll tell you what happened.”
“Fine.” Baxter spread out his hands. “Let’s hear it, then.”
“Forget it.” Flipping him off for being so damn facetious, Noah got up and headed to the kitchen.
Baxter chuckled as he followed. “Now you’re clamming up?”
“You don’t really want to hear.”
“That’s not true. I’m dying to learn every sordid—or not so sordid—detail. Did you punish the guy who was giving her trouble, or what?”
Noah turned to face him. “She was in the mine.”
At this, Baxter sobered. “What do you mean ‘in the mine’? What mine?”
“The one we used to party in at the end of our senior year.”
“The Jepson mine? She couldn’t have been. They closed it off after—” his voice softened “—after Cody.”
Noah didn’t want to think about his brother. Ignoring the reference, he once again shoved away the memories of the June morning he heard his brother had been found. “That’s what I thought, too,” he said.
“But...”
He pulled a carton of orange juice from the fridge and shook it before offering some to Baxter.
“No, thanks.” Baxter’s lip curled in disdain. “I wouldn’t drink from one of your glasses to save my life.”
“Because you’re OCD.”
“Because you barely rinse them before you use them again.”
Just to bug him, Noah drank from the container. “Wasn’t enough for you, anyway,” he said, and tossed the empty carton across the kitchen and into the trash can.
“Nice shot.” Baxter transferred a stack of dirty dishes to the sink before leaning against the counter. “Back to Adelaide Davies. How’d she get into the mine? And how did you find her?”
“I was riding past the entrance when I heard a woman call for help.”
“That must’ve freaked you out.”
“Yeah. It was twilight and cooling off, so it’s an odd time to run into someone up there. I certainly wasn’t expecting to perform a rescue mission.”
“That entrance is no longer sealed off?”
“It is. This was an ancillary opening. Someone had torn away the boards and, after beating her up, threw her down into the hole.”
Baxter blinked several times. “You’re kidding.”
Noah could understand his surprise. Nothing like that ever happened in Whiskey Creek. There’d been rumors that Sophia DeBussi’s husband, the wealthy world-traveler Skip, knocked her around once in a while, but that was the only hint of violence that had occurred in recent years. “No. And get this...she’d been taken from her bed.”
“Kidnapped? That’s what she said?”
“She didn’t have to say. It was obvious. She had rope burns. And she was in her underwear.”
Baxter whistled. “That’s serious. How badly had she been beaten up?”
“One eye was swollen shut, and she was all scraped and bruised.”
“Who did it?”
Noah shrugged. “Who knows?”
Baxter pushed away from the counter. “Wait a second! When I stopped at the Gas-N-Go last night, I heard that Chief Stacy was asking about a woman who’d gone missing. It’s Milly Davies’s granddaughter, right?”
“That’s right.”
“You found her?”
“I found her.”
“Milly must be relieved. But—” he hesitated briefly “—had she been raped?”
“Claims she wasn’t, and I’m inclined to believe her.”
“Because...”
“Her panties were...you know...on and intact.”
Baxter looked baffled. “So...what was the point of taking her?”
Noah sighed. “No idea. Maybe he intended to rape her, but she fought too hard and he gave up.”
“Wow. After that welcome home, I bet she’s ready to leave town again.”
“She can’t.”
“Why not? She left before, didn’t she?” Baxter started cleaning up the kitchen, which he’d probably been itching to do from the second he got there.
“Milly’s getting too old to run her restaurant. That’s the reason Addy came back.”
“It’s a good thing you were there and that you heard her. The Jepson mine’s not stable. She could have...”
He let his words trail off, but Noah knew what he’d been about to say.
Instead of following up with a comment about Cody, Noah focused on the mundane. Avoidance was always easier than trying to cope with the loss he still felt. As far as he was concerned, that was private. “Stop doing my damn dishes!”
“Why?”
“Because it makes me feel like a slob.”
“You are a slob,” Baxter joked, but there was no real energy or accusation in the statement. Noah could tell he was thinking about Cody. The three of them had been inseparable as children. Baxter wasn’t a stellar athlete, but he’d joined all the same teams Noah and Cody had been on, even if he didn’t get to play on game day.
“Compared to you,” he said. “You iron your sheets and underwear.”
“Makes them feel great. You should try it sometime.”
Noah rolled his eyes. “No, thanks. I have better things to do with my time.” He rinsed off a plate, but Baxter took it and put it in the dishwasher as if Noah would only put it in the wrong slot.
“Do you think Chief Stacy will catch the guy who kidnapped Milly’s granddaughter?” Baxter asked, returning to their conversation.
“Not if she doesn’t give him some sort of description.”
“Maybe it was someone who followed her here from wherever she lived before.”
Noah remembered how reticent Addy had been after he’d pulled her out of the mine. Wouldn’t most women be shaking and crying and begging to go to the police?
She’d wanted to pretend the whole thing had never happened.
“It has to be someone she knows.” He couldn’t get around that. She’d said it wasn’t her ex, but...was she lying?
“Why?” Baxter spoke above the sound of the kitchen faucet.
“Because she acted strange, wouldn’t give me any details. She wouldn’t even let me take her to the hospital or the police.”
“There could be other reasons.”
“Like...”
“Maybe she hit her head, wasn’t in her right mind. Or...it’s possible that she was raped and she’s too embarrassed and humiliated to talk about it.”
Noah doubted she would’ve allowed him to remove those slivers if she’d just been violated. “That’s not what happened. I believe she’ll try to play it off as if it was a stranger. But...”
“What?”
He rinsed off another plate. “I got the impression it wasn’t.”
Baxter kept loading the dishwasher. “I’m not sure that makes sense. If she knew him, why not point the finger?”
“My guess? She’s afraid.” Actually, it wasn’t a guess. She’d said as much, hadn’t she?
“That he might get to her before the police can get to him?”
“Absolutely.”
“If she wasn’t raped, what could her abductor have wanted? Was it a robbery?”
“No.” Noah felt certain she would’ve said so if that were the case.
His cell phone vibrated on the counter, but when he saw the incoming number, he ignored it. It was a woman—a tourist he’d met when he’d stopped for a drink at Sexy Sadie’s during the summer. She’d come through town with her sister, they’d spent one night together and she’d been calling him ever since.
The noise caught Baxter’s attention. “You’re not going to get that? Why not? Don’t tell me Shania’s been calling you again.”
Noah wrung out the dishrag so he could wipe down the counters. “No, I think she’s finally accepted that I’m not going to take Cody’s place in her life. It’s Lisa. Again.”
“I thought you liked her.”
“As a friend.”
“She wants more?”
“She hasn’t asked for a commitment, but she sure wants to see me a lot.”
“She’s the one who took off your clothes in the car.”
Noah could easily remember that night. Few women had come on as strongly as Lisa. And yet she’d seemed almost straitlaced when they were talking in the bar. “That’s the one. She’s been hounding me ever since.”
Baxter’s smile shifted to one side. “I guess you’re just that good in bed.”
Was there an undercurrent to that statement, too? It felt as if maybe there was, but Noah couldn’t figure out why there would be. What was Baxter feeling? Jealousy? Envy? Or was there some criticism in those words? “Very funny.”
The buzzing of his phone stopped but started up again a second later.
“You’re right,” Baxter said. “She is persistent. Maybe you should answer it and tell her you’re not interested.”
“I don’t want to hurt her feelings. I don’t mind seeing her now and then.” As long as they were in the company of others. He was growing bored with the kind of sexual encounters that didn’t mean anything, and had begun to think he was missing out on a whole other dimension. Actually, after seeing how happy and in love Gail and Cheyenne and Callie were, he knew he was missing something.
“Of course not. You’re always up for a good time.”
Noah studied his friend, searching for clues as to the correct interpretation of that line. But Baxter’s benign expression suggested he should take it at face value and Noah felt it was in the best interest of their friendship to let it go. “You like a good time, too, don’t you?”
“Sure,” he said.
Noah grabbed a bowl from him. “Good. I’ll tell her to come this weekend, and bring a friend.”
Baxter met his gaze. They were only a few inches apart and Noah got that odd feeling again, but he refused to step away. He shouldn’t have to. This was his best friend, damn it.
“Why would you have her bring someone?” he asked. “Now you’re into threesomes?”
“No. The friend is for you.” Noah clapped him on the back and smiled, waiting for him to beg off. These days, that was what he normally did. He’d say he had to work, he was in the middle of a project at home or he’d be out of town. Noah had started hanging out more with Riley and Ted, especially if there were going to be women present.