River Road(57)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

“Turns out that Chief Whitaker is not the only concerned citizen who knows that we spent the night over on the coast. Evidently, it’s all over town.”

“You know as well as I do that there was bound to be talk.”

“Well, yes, but geez, you’d think people would have something better to gossip about.”

Mason smiled. “Now, see, as far as I’m concerned there isn’t anything better than what happened between us over on the coast.”

Lucy turned the same shade of pink as the screwdriver cases. “That’s not the point—”

“Hold that thought.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m leaving.”

She unfolded her arms and looked suspicious. “Why?”

“I came in here to do some thinking.” He started toward the door. “I have now had a genuine thought. Your meeting with Jillian has inspired me.”

“Where are you going?” she called after him.

“To talk to Quinn Colfax. I’ve got a few questions for him.”

Deke looked up from some paperwork at the counter. “You two finished arguing?”

“For now,” Mason said.

“Too bad,” Deke said. “It was just getting interesting.”

“Keep an eye on her. I’m going out to the Colfax Winery.”

Lucy emerged from the stockroom. She had one of the bright pink screwdriver cases in her hand. “Maybe I should come with you, Mason.”

“Nope,” Mason said. He kept moving. “The conversation I plan to have with Quinn is going to be one of those man-to-man conversations. You don’t want to be there.”

“I thought you didn’t communicate well,” Lucy called after him.

“I know how to do this kind of talking.”

He had his hand on the doorknob when Lucy spoke again. But she wasn’t talking to him.

“Deke, how much are these screwdriver sets?” she said. “I’d like three of them. One for myself and two more for my friends back at Brookhouse Research.”

35

Deke waited until he heard the outer door close behind Mason before he turned to Lucy.

“Don’t know what it is about those pink screwdriver sets,” he said. “Women love ’em. Gave one to Becky for her birthday. You’d have thought it was a diamond necklace.”

“Are you kidding? It’s the perfect gift. Practical and stylish at the same time.” Lucy smiled. “But I hope you gave her some jewelry as well.”

“Oh, yeah. Nice set of earrings. You can never go wrong with screwdrivers or jewelry, I always say. You’re welcome to three screwdriver sets. Take them as a thank-you gift.”

Lucy looked bewildered. “What are you thanking me for?”

“Mason’s been brooding around the store and the cabin ever since he landed on my doorstep a couple of weeks ago. Figured he’d come around in time, but it was taking a while. Everything changed the minute you showed up, though.”

She blinked a couple times, assimilating that information, and then she smiled. “I think he just needed a job, something that required his kind of talent and energy.”

She understood, Deke thought. Not every woman did.

“Right,” he said. “He needed a mission.”

She shrugged. “A job, a mission, whatever. And as it happened, I needed an expert like him.”

Deke searched her face, looking for the truth.

“A win-win situation for both of you, is that it?” he asked, keeping his tone neutral.

“I certainly hope so,” Lucy said. “Because if it doesn’t work out that way, I have a horrible feeling that someone is going to get away with murder.”

“You’re talking about Sara and Mary?”

“The deeper Mason and I go into this thing, the more I’m convinced that they were deliberately forced off that bad curve on Manzanita Road.”

“I’m not arguing the point. Mason told me about the bloodstained rock. I agree with you, the timing of their deaths is damn suspicious. But there’s no one better at figuring out what’s going on in a situation like this than Mason.”

“I believe you.”

“He’ll find your answers for you,” Deke said. “You know, I was away when that business with Brinker went down all those years ago, but Mason emailed me that night to tell me that there had been some trouble at the park and that he’d had a confrontation with Brinker. I emailed him back, telling him to be careful. Brinker sounded like the kind of guy who would come looking for revenge. Mason contacted me again to tell me that Brinker had disappeared and that the police had come to the hardware store asking questions. I knew that Brinker’s dad had the local chief of police in his pocket. I started making arrangements to get back here. But before I could leave, the cops concluded that Brinker had been the victim of a drug deal gone bad. Whatever the case, there were no charges against Mason.”

“I didn’t know until recently that Mason had been a suspect.”

“Person of interest is how the cops put it.”

Lucy studied him intently, her eyes very green. “Did you ever wonder if Mason had something to do with Brinker’s death?”

“Sure. It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that Mason had been forced to defend himself, killed Brinker in the process and then decided that it would be best to make the body disappear.”

Lucy’s mouth fell open. “You thought he could manage that kind of thing at nineteen?”

“I’d taught him pretty much everything I knew by then.”

She swallowed hard. “I see.”

“But Mason told me that he hadn’t had anything to do with Brinker’s disappearance.”

“And you believed him?”

“Mason wouldn’t lie to me. He might not tell me something if he figured I’d be better off not knowing, but he wouldn’t outright lie to me. Besides, there would have been no reason for him to tell me anything but the truth.”

“He knew that you would have kept his secret,” Lucy said.

“Sure. We’re family. Besides, in my opinion, sooner or later someone would have had to do something of a permanent nature to Brinker. But Mason was off the hook as far as the law was concerned. That was all that mattered to me. The search-and-rescue operations were eventually called off. Brinker’s father spent a fortune on private investigators, but they all came up empty. Then Jeffrey Brinker died of a heart attack, and that was the end of the investigation.”