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MORGAN GAVE A WISTFUL glance at the clinic before driving off. She’d encountered dogs before. She’d never had this kind of reaction, the fierce compulsion, the need to take in a pet. Was it because of what had happened when she was six? Had what the vet said resonated deep in her core. That Bailey was of indeterminate mixed parentage. Were they connected on that level, too?
“Want some company?” Cole asked.
She gave a noncommittal shrug. “I’m not going to be much company, I’m afraid.”
“Sometimes, just having someone else nearby is enough. I can help with whatever it was you were doing at the house.”
Morgan remembered the trunk. Her plans for the evening. She noticed Cole held the takeout bag from The Wagon Wheel. Her stomach begged for an offering.
“You think my sandwich is safe to eat?” she asked.
“What kind?” Cole asked.
“Turkey.”
“It’s been what? Under two hours? You’re probably good.”
“Probably isn’t reassuring enough,” she said.
“Wagon Wheel’s still open. We can get something fresh there.”
She blew out a slow breath. “I wish I had a real place to live. The inn is okay for sleeping, but that’s it. And the house is—”
“Moving along. Things take time. I told you, I’m willing to help.”
She tapped her fingers on the wheel. “Okay. Quick stop at The Wagon Wheel, then back to finish what I planned to do tonight.”
“The trunk?” Cole said.
“Yes. I never got a chance to look inside before Officer Nolan showed up to ask what I was doing in the house. Then I heard Bailey. You know the rest.”
“Are you comfortable with me seeing what’s in the trunk?” Cole asked. “My apartment’s not far. I could get my measuring tape and get a head start on tomorrow.”
Morgan wondered what could be in the trunk she wouldn’t want Cole to see. Nothing came to mind.
“Not a problem either way,” she said.
Cole picked up his phone. “Two sandwiches to go. One turkey, one roast beef. For Patton.” He set the phone down. “Wagon Wheel, then my place, then your house.”
“I thought you had dinner,” she said. “I saw you and your friends when I picked up my food earlier.”
“Slice of pizza and a few wings wasn’t much of a dinner. Our get-togethers at The Wagon Wheel are more for decompressing. It helps transition from work to home, even if we’re going home to ourselves.”
“No girlfriend?” she asked. Was there a point in following up on the way every time she was with Cole, she wanted to be with him more.
“None.”
“Boyfriend?” she asked.
He smiled. “Negative on that one, too. You? Have someone you left behind? Someone who’ll be coming to join you?”
“No to the first part, maybe to the second. If things go right.”
“Oh.” His tone shifted, the disappointment obvious.
“It’s not like that,” she rushed to add. “Not a boyfriend, girlfriend, or significant other material. Just somebody I know who could have a better life away from where he is now.”
“Got it.”
Did he? Morgan wasn’t ready to share her dreams for Austin, not until they were closer to reality.
“I’d like to think of you as a friend,” she said. “At this stage of my life, I’m not ready for anything more.”
“Friend it is,” Cole said, his voice strained.
Was he already thinking of more? She’d lived in a virtual bubble until her parents died and was clueless about how actual relationships developed. Could something take root in three days? Or was he hoping for friends-with-benefits?
He didn’t say anything else as they drove to The Wagon Wheel, and Morgan’s thoughts swirled with worry for Bailey, for Austin, so she made no effort to venture into a what kind of friends discussion.
Inside, waiting at the counter for their food, Cole took her arm. “Come with me. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”
He led her toward a table where a couple sat sharing a pizza. The man, even sitting down, was very tall, and the woman, a petite brunette.
“We shouldn’t bother them while they’re eating,” Morgan said.
“Just a quick hello. He’s head detective, in charge of investigations, one step under chief. He’s the one who can push for committing resources to look into your uncle’s history. He might be more willing to dig if he connects my request with a face. An attractive face.”
Heat rose to Morgan’s cheeks. Reluctantly, she tagged along as Cole made the introductions.
“Morgan, this is Detective Randy Detweiler, and his wife, Sarah. She runs a gift shop.”
Morgan nodded at Sarah, then turned to the detective—who’d risen from his chair, and yes, he was tall. Well over six feet. He stared at her, and the heat that had risen to her cheeks went four-alarm-fire and spread to her toes.
He extended a hand, and she reluctantly accepted it, afraid he was looking to make a psychic connection. “Morgan Tate?” he said.
“That’s right. I’m moving into Robert Tate’s old house on Elm Street.”
He sat. “Forgive me for staring. I swear you remind me of someone.”
No. He couldn’t know.
She composed her features into a friendly smile. “I have one of those faces, I guess. I’ve never been to Pine Hills before, so you’re probably confusing me with someone else.”
“That must be it.”
Morgan turned to see the hostess arrive at her station with their food. “There’s our dinner. We need to be going. Nice meeting you both.”
Trying not to run, Morgan grabbed Cole’s arm and hustled away.
The man. Detective Detweiler. He’d seen her. She hadn’t missed that confused look of recognition. Had she convinced him he’d been mistaken?
~~~
COLE DID A QUICK IN and out when they stopped at his apartment for his toolbox and a flashlight, then ran down the stairs. When he opened the car door, Morgan was eating her sandwich and gave him a guilty nod.
“I was starving. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” That must’ve been why she was so eager to get out of The Wagon Wheel. He buckled up.
She put her unfinished sandwich in its box, and drove off.
“What first?” he asked once they were inside the house.
“I’m going to check the trunk. If you want, you can do your measurements.” She paused, as if she wasn’t sure how to broach the next topic.
He figured he’d made as much personal progress as he was going to tonight when she’d said they could be friends. “That’s fine.”
“It’s just—”
“Just what?” he asked, waiting.
“You’re putting in all this time and effort, and I haven’t committed to how much work I’ll be doing, at least right away, or—”
“Or whether you want me to do it. I understand. I’m a cop with construction experience, but I’m not a licensed contractor in Oregon. If you want to hire a construction company, I’m okay with that. But I’m here, so why not let me give you an idea of what I think you need to do?”
“The woman who lives behind me says her husband’s a firefighter and he’s part of a handyman service. Do you know anything about that?”
Cole dragged a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I do. I’ve worked with them a few times.”
“Are they any good? Do you think between you and them, I could get this place into semi-decent shape in a reasonable amount of time?”
He heard the hope in her voice, saw it in her fawn eyes. “Depends on what you mean by reasonable. I’ll finish my assessment, and then I can help you decide. I know these guys are all licensed to do what they do.”
“You’re licensed, just not in Oregon, right?”
“That’s right. Licenses don’t carry over from state to state. Working for the firefighter crew would be a way around it.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” she said. “Tomorrow. Right now, there’s a trunk that needs my attention.”
Cole watched her retreat toward the stairs, admiring the view. She wore jeans tonight, and they clung to her round bottom as if they’d been custom-tailored. Maybe they had. He picked up his tablet of graph paper and tape measure and set to work.
He’d finished the downstairs and moved upstairs. Morgan hadn’t brought a lamp for the second story, he discovered.
He went down for his flashlight and the living room lamp. In the master bedroom, he paused and stared at the graffiti. Did dead really mean dead? People made idle threats all the time, but rarely did they mean them literally. Heck, for all Cole knew, the message could have been written in reference to a role-playing game. Characters died all the time, but the players themselves never got hurt.
Cole set his thoughts aside. Once he had the information he needed to ballpark costs, he took the stairs to the attic to see how Morgan was faring. At least there hadn’t been any screams this time.
He found her sitting on the floor, leaning against a wall, her legs stretched out in front of her. A stack of colored notebooks in a variety of colors, with the familiar speckled covers Cole remembered from his college days sat by her side. She held one open on her lap.
Whatever it was must be engrossing, because she didn’t glance up when he stepped into the room. He backed up and tapped on the door jamb.
She turned her head and smiled.
“Interesting reading?” he asked. “Any connections to your uncle?”
“Yes to the first, no to the second. These are journals. They appear to have been written by one of the renters, a kid. A boy. One of the last people to live here, judging from the dates in the last book. But they go back a lot earlier.”
Cole moved to her side. “Okay if I look at one?”
She picked the top one off her stack and handed it to him. “Be my guest.”
He moved to the other side of the lamp and glanced around the room. The trunk sat open, with winter outerwear draped over the edge, some piled on the floor. “That was all that was in the trunk?”
“Yep. Old clothes, and these journals on the bottom. My guess is whoever wrote them wanted them safe, so he stuffed those clothes on top, then locked the trunk. Maybe the renters forgot about it and never came back.”
Like a bolt of summer lightning, a thought flashed through Cole’s mind. What if whoever it was couldn’t come back? What if he was the Now You’re Dead person?
Fascinated, he opened the journal.
The date on the first page was eight years ago. Around the time Morgan’s uncle moved to the Villas. Coincidence?
Had Morgan stacked them with the oldest or newest on top? “Where am I looking in the chronology?” he asked.
“That’s the last journal. The most recent. The first one was twelve years ago.”
“While your uncle was still living here, then. The one you gave me starts eight years ago, which would’ve been around the time he left. You’re sure these weren’t written by your uncle?”
“Unless he was writing a novel, I doubt it. The entries in the first journal talk about going to school. They start with him looking forward to middle school, hoping he’ll be able to find new friends who shared his interests. Sounds like he was being picked on.”
“Bullied?” Cole asked.
Morgan pursed her lips. “Not exactly. He hoped to find more kids who were into the things he liked. From what he’s written, he wasn’t into sports. More of a bookworm and a movie buff.”
Cole did some quick calculating, drawing a mental timeline. “So, what we have is a four year span, starting with the beginning of middle school. How old would that make him?”
“No idea,” Morgan said. “I was home schooled after third grade.”
Cole filed away the new piece of information about Morgan and did the backward math based on how old he’d been when he’d graduated from high school. “Eleven or twelve, give or take, I’d say.”
“I can go along with that. Maybe he’ll recount a birthday party somewhere and we can pin it down more precisely—if it matters.”
Cole wasn’t ready to share his wild speculation with Morgan yet. If whoever kept these journals was the person referenced in the graffiti, they’d have a gender and approximate age.
What if whoever wrote the journals was responsible for the graffiti?