Dangerous Secrets

“Suspicious?”

The low temp was numbing his bare ears. “It’s freezing out. Don’t you feel it?” He tugged her elbow. “Come on. I’ll tell you everything. Let’s just get out of this cold.” He drew her along.

“Tell me,” she insisted, even though she began walking again.

He walked faster, urging her along. “Ginger’s apartment had been ransacked.”

“What? You mean someone broke in?” She slowed, pulling against him.

He tugged her. “Someone tore Ginger’s apartment apart.” His voice turned savage. I wanted to leave in the morning. What’s the chance of that now? “We think the point of entry was a rear window on the back porch.”

“What could they have been looking for?” she asked. “Ginger didn’t have anything worth stealing.”

That only made it more suspicious. Didn’t Sylvie see that?

“Maybe you’ve got it wrong,” Sylvie said. “Ginger might have been looking for something and had everything turned upside down and inside out. Ginger wasn’t always very neat.”

Ridge didn’t want to respond to this excuse. Why not let her come up with ways to avoid the truth? He just slogged on, the relentless cold filtering through all his layers of clothing.

“Don’t you think it could be that? Ginger might just have been unpacking and—”

The sheriff’s words came back to Ridge: “It’s good you were with Sylvie when she found the body. She might have closed her cousin’s eyes without thinking or I might have assumed that she did. But we both know—” Suddenly Ridge had had it. He couldn’t take any more waffling, any more lame explanations. “Ginger’s eyes were closed,” he snapped.

“What does that mean?” Sylvie halted again. “You’re not making sense.”

He urged her along again. His face was stiff not just from the bitter temperature but now from irritation. “It means that someone closed her eyes.”

“Someone…what?”

His patience evaporated. “Sylvie, if a person falls to their death, their eyes will remain open. Someone was there after Ginger fell and shut her eyes.”

Sylvie exhaled—deeply and loudly. And then began breathing very fast.

In the scant light from the streetlamp, he glimpsed her eyes and mouth wide in shock. Then he realized she wasn’t getting her breath. “Sylvie.” He shook her arms. “Sylvie.”

She was beginning to hyperventilate. If he didn’t get her breathing, she’d faint on him.

He pulled her face close to his and, covering her mouth with his, blew into her open mouth. Once. Twice. He shook her again. On and on, he blew carbon dioxide into her mouth. “Breathe. Breathe.”

She shuddered once and pulled away from his mouth. Then she leaned her head against him. She was gasping now, but was getting air. “This,” she whispered, “can’t be happening.”

Not wanting to, but unable to stop himself, he put his arms around her delicate form. “It’s freezing. I’ve got to get you home.”

She raised her pale face to him, visible now in the streetlamp glow. “What happens now?”

TWO

March 5, Saturday afternoon

Sylvie’s insides were descending, spiraling as if she were going down a narrow funnel. For the hundredth time, she pulled herself up from the darkness that was trying to suck her under. Surviving Ginger’s funeral had devoured all her strength. But she was determined to be a support to her family.

The bright fluorescent lighting in the church basement hurt her eyes. She hadn’t slept very much over the past three nights. But neither had anyone else in her family. Now, she sat at a long whitepaper-covered table near the end of the after-funeral luncheon. In the cement-block basement room, the men all wore dark suits. The women had dressed in sober dresses or dark pantsuits. The dark colors matched the mood in the room. Unexpressed grief revealed itself in the tight smiles and lowered voices. Rhinestone brooches on collars glinted here and there in the bright light. Almost everyone in town had turned out for the funeral. Cousins and relations murmured to each other down the length of the family table. Subdued, guarded. This death was different. This was unnatural. Perhaps murder.

Her father sat across from her next to his new brother-in-law, Tom Robson, while her aunt Shirley, Ginger’s mother, sat beside Sylvie. Neither of them spoke though occasionally her aunt forced a smile for her and patted her arm as if trying to make up for the horrible fact that Sylvie had been the one to find Ginger. Shirley’s sorrow appeared still too deep for tears.

“I hope Chad didn’t have trouble finding it,” Ginger’s stepfather, Tom, fretted, glancing at the large wall clock.

In the distracted haze they were all in today, Tom had forgotten to bring his wallet and he wanted to give Pastor Ray the check he’d already written him for doing the funeral service. Chad, Shirley’s teenage foster son, had gone to fetch it.

The gathering was about to break up. The forced-air furnace was having trouble keeping away the encroaching chill that penetrated the basement room. Small children were starting to whimper and whine, rubbing their eyes as it neared time for their afternoon naps. And the church women who’d put on the luncheon were in the kitchen, chatting, clattering, washing casserole dishes and coffee cups. The homey sounds comforted Sylvie. Here she was surrounded by friends and family. It was at times like these that the ties of blood and faith meant the most.

Sylvie surreptitiously massaged her sore hip. She’d played the organ for the funeral and then done a lot of walking through snow and standing at the interment. Her hip had no cartilage to keep bone from rubbing on bone. At home tonight she’d have to use an ice pack on her hip to bring down the swelling.

Aunt Shirley lowered her voice and spoke into Sylvie’s ear, asking about another cousin. “Rae-Jean’s still coming home on Monday?”

Sylvie nodded. Rae-Jean had just finished a term at the Chippewa Drug Treatment Facility and a few months in prison. “Dad’s going to drive down to get her.”

“Her parents still haven’t forgiven her?” Aunt Shirley asked.

Sylvie shook her head.

Aunt Shirley lowered her chin, frowning. She didn’t have to say the words. Sylvie understood the unspoken message. Rae-Jean’s parents should be grateful that they still had their daughter alive and breathing. No matter what she’d done.

Sylvie watched Tom fidget, glancing at the clock again. What was taking Chad so long to get back? Tom and Shirley’s house wasn’t that far away. Sylvie felt her patience dissolving, fizzing away like a cold tablet in water. Come on, Chad. We can’t leave till you bring the check.

Once again, flashes, images from the evening when she’d found Ginger ricocheted in her mind. Ridge hadn’t come today. Nor his parents. Which had been the usual for them. And no one could blame them. Ridge had been busy most of every day working with the sheriff, sifting the evidence collected at Ginger’s apartment. Audra Harding had represented her husband, the sheriff, and was in the kitchen washing dishes.

Sylvie couldn’t get Ridge out of her mind. They’d been so close the night he’d walked her home. For just those few dark moments, the past hadn’t weighed them down. She’d needed comfort and he’d offered it. She could still feel his warm breath reviving her, his strong chest under his woolen coat supporting her. For that instant, he’d let her come close, so close.

Wild-eyed, Chad appeared at the bottom of the stairwell and stood gasping as if he’d run all the way.

Sitting at his parents’ kitchen table, Ridge tried to get a word into the phone conversation. But his boss, Matt Block, in Madison hadn’t finished with him yet. “Harding has a good rep. He’s had a couple of tricky cases that he solved since he took over as sheriff.”

Ridge was aware of this but he couldn’t butt in and say so. One didn’t do that with Block. Ridge heard himself grinding his molars to keep from interrupting his boss.

“Don’t hurry back,” Block continued, “until Harding thinks he can handle it on his own. Let him decide.”

While listening to Block fill him in on what was going on in Madison, Ridge moved the salt and pepper shakers closer together and glanced at his watch. The funeral luncheon should be winding up about now. His ward, Ben sat, staring at him from the opposite end of the table. Didn’t the kid ever blink?

Block repeated that he wanted Ridge to stay in Winfield. Ridge forced himself to speak in an even tone. “That might take some time.”

“Like I said, nothing pressing here now,” Block said, infuriating Ridge further. “And we want to keep our funding at the same level for the next fiscal year. Every time our people go out to work with local law enforcement, it’s good PR. This close to the state house we’ve got to think of politics, next year’s budget. Keep me posted.” And Block hung up.

For a moment, Ridge wanted to toss the cordless receiver into the garbage disposal. And grind it to dust. I don’t want to stay here.

“What did your boss say?” Ben asked.

Ridge made himself look the kid in the eye. It wasn’t the kid’s fault that he had his mom’s blue eyes and his dad’s cowlicky hairline. “I’ll be staying for a while longer.”