THE PROBLEM WAS, she couldn’t exactly barge into the sheriff’s office and demand to speak to Deputy Hayes.
She could lurk outside the sheriff’s department entrance to the courthouse and hope that Hayes would appear, but the cold snap lingered. Most of the cops and deputies took their breaks at a nearby café, but Julia had never seen Hayes with them. It was lunchtime, though, and just in case, she sauntered past the café, trying not to peer too ostentatiously in the window. Sure enough, Wayne was there, along with a couple of the other deputies. But no Cheryl Hayes.
She couldn’t have gone far. It was too cold, and besides, her break was too short. Julia stuck her head into a bagel place. Nothing. Same with a pizzeria. She almost walked past a tea shop, something new for Duck Creek and entirely too precious for Julia’s tastes, tending toward crocheted doilies and delicate china pots with pastel flowers. But she caught a glimpse of brown uniform through the lace curtains and backtracked just in case.
The door opened as she approached.
“Hello, doll. Fancy meeting you here. I didn’t take you for the tea-and-crumpets type.”
Julia looked into the lopsided grin of Mack Coates.
He let the door close behind him.
Her “I guess I could say the same about you” came a beat too late.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Coates said with the arch, flirtatious tone he used with nearly everyone. Julia thought of him as a particularly beautiful snake, all bright colors and sinuous hypnotic charm, one so seductive you barely detected the flashing strike, the poison seeping through your system.
He chucked her beneath the chin with a leather-gloved forefinger, then strutted away, a laugh trailing behind him.
Julia’s chin burned. She rubbed it, trying to erase his touch, and pushed her way through the door. A bell tinkled daintily. Julia ignored the woman at the counter and looked toward the back corner where Cheryl Hayes sat in her brown uniform, nose deep in a book.
Julia glanced back toward the door. Hayes had attended Coates’s initial court appearance.
Had she been meeting with him here? If so, she’d recovered quickly. Or maybe she was just made of stronger stuff than Julia, whose nerves jangled so after every encounter with the man that she couldn’t have concentrated on a book if she’d tried. But Hayes didn’t even look up.
The woman at the counter cleared her throat.
“A perfect day for a nice cup of tea to warm you through and through. What will you have?”
“What do you suggest?” Julia parried. She really wanted coffee.
“Green? Black? Herbal?”
“Um.”
“Smoky notes or flowery?”
“Um.”
The woman’s lips crimped. “Let’s start with some basics. Caffeinated or non?”
Thank heavens. She was finally speaking Julia’s language. “Caffeinated, definitely. The strongest you’ve got.”
“If it’s caffeine you’re after, you might want to try yerba mate. It’s Argentinian.”
The price would have purchased Julia a perfectly good latte. She glanced back at Hayes, who was still reading, then at her watch. She had, at most, fifteen minutes.
The woman fiddled with something at the other end of the long counter. How long did it take to boil enough water for a single cup of tea, for God’s sake?
She finally returned with a tray, which she handed to Julia with the air of bestowing something precious.
Julia eyeballed a small round pot with a metal straw protruding from it.
“Enjoy!” the woman said brightly.
Doubtful, Julia thought.
She’d thought to fake surprise at seeing Hayes, but at this point, the direct approach was best.
She carried the tray carefully over to Hayes’s table and joined her without asking permission.
“Deputy Hayes. We meet again.”
Hayes put her book aside with obvious reluctance, leaving it open to the page she’d been reading. Julia glanced at it, expecting maybe a procedural manual or a crime novel. Instead—“Dostoyevsky?”
Which, she supposed, was the ultimate crime novel.
“You thought it might be something with a lot of pictures?” Hayes looked tired, and in no mood to entertain company.
“I don’t know what I thought,” Julia said honestly. She put her lips to the metal straw and sipped a mouthful of what tasted like liquid grass cuttings. “Gah! That’s awful.”
Hayes lifted her own cup. It wobbled in her trembling hand, and she set it back down quickly. “There’s nothing wrong with a cup of Earl Grey.”
“If I’d been able to come up with the name, that’s what I would have ordered. I don’t usually drink tea.”
“Then why are you here today?”
The woman was certainly direct, her question brisk and saturated with irritation, at odds with the tremor Julia had seen. Julia looked again, but she’d tucked her hands beneath the table.
“I thought I might find you here. Not here, necessarily. But somewhere downtown during lunchtime.” She’d thought to ask the woman straightaway about Ray’s case. But—Coates in a tea shop? “Were you meeting with Mack Coates?”
Hayes ignored her question about Coates and responded with one of her own.
“And you wanted to find me because …?”
“Because you’re working the case—the cases—of Billy Williams and Miss Mae. I’ve heard some things that don’t add up and wanted to run them by you.”
Hayes picked up her book and snapped it shut.
“You’ve come to the wrong place. And definitely the wrong person. I’m not working those cases.”
“But I saw you at the crime scene. The first one. You were …” She didn’t finish the sentence. Kneeling by the spot where Billy died. It seemed too personal.
“I saw you there too. Should I make something of that?” Hayes rose and thrust an arm into her parka.
“Wait. Please. Could we have an off-the-record conversation? I just want to know whether I’m crazy to think this case is bogus. Or, if not bogus, whether they charged Ray with way too little evidence. Is there something I’m missing? Something that might help him?” Grasping at straws, even though Wayne had implied to Marie that whatever Hayes was withholding might convict Ray.
Hayes chugged the last of the tea from her pretty little cup and set it down so hard Julia feared the delicate china would shatter.
“Oh, there’s plenty missing. But maybe you didn’t hear me when I said I’m the wrong person. Wayne Peterson is your man. You guys are friends anyway, right? So you should have your off-the-record conversation with him,” she said, giving the term a twist of disgust. “But you probably already know that nothing in this goddamn town is ever off the record, so good luck with that.”
Hayes zipped her parka to her chin. “You’re right about one thing. This case is about as bogus as it gets.”
She wrapped Julia’s forearm in a mittened hand, squeezing so hard Julia nearly yelped.
“Never mind what I said about nothing being off the record in this town. That thing I just told you? About it being bogus? Repeat it and you’ll find yourself in shit so deep your eyeballs will turn brown.”
A comment that left Julia so shaken she finished her yerba mate without even noticing the taste.
At least she knew where to find Wayne. She trailed the group of deputies from the café to the courthouse and called to him just as they were about the enter the building.
“Wayne. A word?”
“Darrell, start my car for me? Otherwise I’ll be halfway up the mountain before my ass thaws. I’ll be there in a few.” He tossed a set of keys to one of the other deputies and turned to Julia. “Child abuse case. When it’s this cold for this long, people cooped up together—you know how it goes.” She did, and she hated those cases, the way it took everything she had to dredge up empathy for the defendants.
“Just wanted to pick your brain again about Cheryl Hayes.” No need to mention that she’d just hunted the woman down, especially not after Hayes’s warning. “Is there something she knows about Ray’s case? Any idea what it is?”
“What’s this? You and Ree double-teaming me now?”
He jammed his hands in his pockets and stood hatless in the wind, grinning.
“C’mon, Wayne. It’s too cold out here to screw around.”
The grin vanished. “Thought I warned you about Hayes.”
“You did. But I don’t know why.”
Wayne started in the direction of the parking lot beside the courthouse. Julia hustled to keep up with his long strides.
“Listen, Julia. I can’t talk about an ongoing investigation, but that woman is trouble. Everything she touches turns to fuck.”
“What ongoing investigation? Into the killings? Also—turns to fuck? What does that even mean?”
Wayne stopped so fast she nearly ran into him.
“Spend much time around Hayes and you’ll know exactly what it means. Take anything she says with a whole shakerful of salt.”
Hayes had said she wasn’t on the case. Julia had just asked Wayne flat out if she was. A simple no would have sufficed. He hadn’t offered one.
“And …” He was off again, nearly jogging now, heading toward a black SUV whose tailpipe belched a stream of exhaust.
Julia sprinted to catch up. “And?”
They were at the car. He opened the door, releasing a blast of warm air, and scooped the keys from the seat. Julia took a step toward the heat.
“Can’t talk about an ongoing investigation. Whether it’s the homicides or …” Another long pause, in case she didn’t already get that he was messing with her. “Internal.”
He waved as the car slid away. His grin was back, wider than before.