Bet and Rob rode Figure to the cave entrance so they wouldn’t announce their presence as they arrived, and Bet would drive her ATV back. Clayton reported that everything remained quiet. The dirt bike in the lean-to was exactly as they’d left it. Bet decided not to keep watch any longer and sent Clayton home.
Meanwhile, she needed to have a heart-to-heart with her old friend Eric Chandler. She arrived at his house to find him working on his computer in the back room. Now Eric sat in the chair by the window in the living room, looking out at the meadow visible from the Chandlers’ house.
“Hard to believe my old man was still around, let alone that he killed that girl, and tried to kill you.” Eric hung his head as he took in what his father had done.
“I know.”
“And now? You think he died? Down in that cave?”
“Maybe. The registration on the dirt bike we found is expired, but it belonged to your brother; we think your dad must have been using it. It probably wouldn’t still be there unless …”
“Unless he was still underground.”
Bet let Eric take in the news that his father might be dead.
“I wonder what my mother knew,” Eric finally said.
“Do you think that’s why she never divorced him? Was the affair with Lillian real? Or did she just let people think that’s why Michael left?”
“I have no idea. None of this makes any sense to me.”
“Do you think she loved him?” Bet wondered if Tracy Chandler hadn’t bothered with a divorce because she couldn’t find her husband or from a misguided belief he’d come back to her one day.
“I don’t know. I wish I could ask her.”
Eric turned from the window and looked at Bet. In his smile, she could see the boy he had been. His hair had receded and laugh lines bracketed his eyes, but the boy remained, hidden in the skin of a much older man.
“I’ve missed you, Bet.”
“I’ve missed you, too.”
Schweitzer nudged Bet’s hand and rested his head on her knee. She scratched him behind the ears, and he groaned in pleasure. Eric chuckled.
“Looks like you found the perfect man.”
“I did,” Bet said. “It took a long time, but I did.” She fondled Schweitzer’s ears as he leaned his weight against her. A sign she was his person. For better or worse.
She watched Eric and felt something let go inside her for the first time in years. The frozen part she’d carried around in her heart since the moment he’d walked out the door broke loose from where it had been moored. It wasn’t anger she’d kept alive all these years. It was disappointment. Disappointment in herself for not being “enough.”
“What are you going to do with the house?” Bet asked. “I know Dylan likes to come up here sometimes. Brings his kids.”
“We’ll keep it. It’s paid for, and in this economy it would be tough to sell. No one is moving to Collier these days. I’m going to live here for a little while. Write my next book. Find out about the water in our well, in our lake. Then, who knows? I’m not sure what the future is going to bring. Or who will be in it with me.”
Bet didn’t want to know if he meant her; that wasn’t a road she planned to take again. She stood, ready to go. Eric looked out the window, his eyes reminding Bet eerily of Michael’s as she remembered them.
“So you solved the crime.” Eric’s gaze never left the window.
“I solved the crime.”
“Does it make you angry no one will pay?”
“We may still find him,” Bet said. “It’s possible he’s still alive. You will let me know if he contacts you, right?”
Eric shook his head. “I can’t imagine he would—he never has in all these years—but of course I will.”
Bet thought about the idea of justice. She’d gone into law enforcement because of her father, to be like him. She’d gone to LA to make a name for herself, but understood now she could do that here. Bet Rivers, Sheriff of Collier.
It suited her.
Maybe part of her father’s reserve had been because she wasn’t really his child. He’d only ever dispensed advice to her about practical matters; he’d never spoke from his heart. Or had he even known? Maybe it had just been her father’s way. Maybe her mother’s affair had died with her. Or maybe that secret had driven her mother to take her own life, a secret she could no longer live with, Bet a constant reminder of a mistake.
“Have to take care of the living,” Bet said.
“I don’t understand.”
“No. I wouldn’t think so. But I do.”
Bet and Schweitzer stepped out into the perfect late-summer day. The endless blue sky, the leaves of the deciduous trees red and orange and gold, but the air still warm.
“I just wanted you to know,” Bet said, as Eric followed her out onto the porch. “This will be all over town eventually. I’ll be going public with Emma’s death and your father’s part in that.”
Bet didn’t mention Lillian. She and Rob still had much to learn, though that story might have died with Chandler down in the mine. Bet hoped they could discover what happened, even after all these years. There was still another living witness, after all, even if Robert Collier Senior might not want to tell them the truth. Since Jamie Garcia was holding up her end of the bargain, she might get that exclusive too.
“I’m glad you decided I wasn’t involved,” Eric said. “I feel better knowing you chose to trust me.”
“I didn’t,” Bet replied, putting her hat back on and tucking an errant curl back under the brim. “I trusted the evidence.”
She walked away and didn’t look back.
Alma went home while Bet finished up some paperwork. In the silence of the quiet station, she could hear the sound of a cell phone ring. Tracking the noise to the locked cabinet behind Alma’s desk, she opened it to find the sound coming from Dale’s backpack. They’d recovered it from where he’d hidden it in the woods and locked it up for safekeeping.
Digging into the pack, she found a cell phone with a number of missed calls. She didn’t plan to invade his privacy, but the number on the screen popped out at her.
Jamie Garcia.
The phone rang again, same number.
“Hello, Jamie.”
Nothing but silence on the other end.
“This explains who your source was,” Bet said, though she couldn’t blame the woman for wanting to further her career.
“Why are you answering Dale’s phone?” Bet could hear fear in the young woman’s voice and wondered how intimate she was with the deputy. He had been seeing someone new. “Is Dale all right?”
The shooting of a sheriff’s deputy in Collier was newsworthy. “Shot in the line of duty,” was all Bet would say, but she told Jamie what hospital she could find him in. If Dale didn’t like it, he shouldn’t have sicced the reporter on her in the first place.
Bet stuffed the phone into the backpack and locked it up again. The text to her had come from the same phone. At least that tied up one more loose end.
Back in her own office, she looked at the file on her desk. Her findings that Michael Chandler had killed Emma Hunter and shot Seeley Lander and Dale, along with attempting to kill her. His whereabouts unknown. He was either on the run or dead in the mine. She and other law enforcement agencies would continue to look for him, but there was little she could do.
Turning off her computer, she leaned back in her chair, resting it against the wall. She could just make out the glimmer of Lake Collier. The surface was ruffled, silver and orange in the dying light. Twilight was one of Bet’s favorite times of the day. Not yet night, not quite day. An in-between time when anything could happen, the possibilities that lay in darkness hiding trouble from the light.
Bet caught sight of a piece of paper on the edge of her desk. Picking it up, she realized she hadn’t filed the information about Eric’s fingerprint on the flashlight into the case file. Though it had turned out to be a dead end, she had to include it in her final report. Unfolding the sheet of paper, she read back over the information. Something gnawed at the edge of her consciousness. It wasn’t the fingerprint; Eric had readily admitted being there. He’d explained his interest in the mine, and his letter to Robert Collier Senior several months ago—prompting Senior to contact Peter Malone—supported his story. She had no reason to doubt he’d told her the truth.
Except history.
Eric was a perpetual liar. Nothing on Todd’s note changed anything. A fingerprint belonging to Eric Chandler. Check. Blood type B positive.
Sixth grade. Science class. Learning about blood types. Bet and Dylan had discovered they shared the same blood type. Eric’s was the same as theirs. It had meant something to Bet, all those years ago. It made her feel like Dylan and Eric really were her brothers. Their blood was the same.
And Bet’s blood type was not B positive.