“It was locked. I just opened it to let Miss Grace in. She just left.”
“I had a little talk with her over at Cuppachino when I left here this morning.”
“Well, I hope your conversation with her made more sense than mine did. I asked her about Alice Ridgeway, the woman who used to live in my house. She asked me if Alice was bothering me. As if she expected the woman to still be there. And then she asked me if I’d found any of Alice’s journals. Like she was interested in those.” Vanessa’s hands were on her hips. “I suspect that Miss Grace might have known Alice Ridgeway a lot better than I’d previously thought.”
She paused. “What’s that in your hand?”
“Photocopies of the people we suspect broke into Bling and your house.” He pulled the sheets of paper out of the envelope Hal had given him and laid the photo of Jackie Weston on the counter. “Look familiar?”
“That’s Candice,” she said as she leaned forward. “Her hair wasn’t blond like this-it was brown-but that’s definitely her.”
“And this?” He placed the picture of Edmund Dent next to Weston’s.
“Oh my God, that’s Gene’s cousin.” Her eyes grew wide. “Edmund Dent. That slimy, sleazy little son of a bitch burned my house down. Not that there was anything in there worth saving-I didn’t have very much-but the fact that he thought I was inside-”
“What?”
“Oh, yeah. He thought I was inside the house. That’s why he and Gene’s brother torched the place.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because the doors and windows were all nailed shut. The arson expert testified that there was no reason to do that unless they were trying to trap someone inside.”
“And yet they were still acquitted?”
“The jury couldn’t decide which of the cousins and which of the brothers were involved, even though the circumstantial evidence pointed to Edmund and Gene’s brother, Calvin. I never doubted that it was them. They were both really angry with me for calling the cops on Gene.”
“Well, apparently, Edmund is still pretty pissed at you.”
“I imagine they all blame me for Gene dying in prison.” She leaned on the counter, one hand holding her stomach. “I guess he’s not going to stop until I’m dead, too.”
Grady put his arms around her from behind.
“That is not going to happen,” he told her. “I will see him dead before he lays a hand on you.”
“You can’t watch over me twenty-four hours a day, Grady.” She turned and put her hands on his chest, her fingers toying absently with the collar of his shirt. “Besides, sooner or later, you have a life to go back to. Don’t you have some hikes or something lined up?”
He nodded.
She started to say something else, when she froze momentarily, then looked down.
“Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?” She grinned and pulled up his shirttail. “I always wanted to be able to say that but never thought I’d get the chance.”
“Hal put me on the force as a temporary part-time officer.”
“He can do that?”
“He’s acting chief in Beck’s absence.”
“He hired you just to watch over me?” She frowned. “That’s not a very good use of taxpayers’ money.”
“We didn’t discuss remuneration, and I don’t expect any. He just wanted to be able to give me a handgun. Just in case.”
“I do not like guns, but if Edmund Dent is in St. Dennis, I’m not going to argue.” She picked up Jackie Weston’s picture. “I feel real bad for her. I could be very wrong, but I didn’t get the sense that she was a bad person. I’m sorry she got involved with that family. They’re not nice people. That bad-news gene-and yes, the pun is intended-seems to run in the family. And I believe he’s been abusing her. All the signs were there.”
“I reviewed his criminal history. Their neighbors called the police several times to report screams and loud banging coming from their apartment, but she always insisted it was the television.”
“I knew it. She just has that defeated look about her.” Vanessa sighed. “If her fingerprints were in the database, she must have been arrested before, right?”
He nodded. “About six months ago, for passing bad checks.”
She looked back at the woman’s photo. “I can’t decide whether or not to be mad at myself for having been so nice to her.”
“If it makes you feel better, I don’t think she had anything to do with the break-in.”
“I hope not. There ought to be a law against men like that.”
“Well, there is, but unfortunately, too many women ignore it.”
“Some habits are very hard to break, Grady. Once you start believing that you deserve what you’re getting, it’s real hard to convince yourself otherwise. It took me a long time to realize that I could make it stop.”
“I’m surprised you ever took that kind of treatment from anyone. You are so strong, so self-assured.”
“It was hard-won, believe me.” She smiled. “Just something else I have to thank Hal for.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you’d seen me when I first arrived in St. Dennis…” She laughed ruefully. “Not just the way I looked, which was way inappropriate for anyone other than a teenager-I was just a mess all the way around. Looking back, it’s a miracle Hal even opened his door when he saw me standing on his front porch.”
She stopped and took a drink from the coffee Grace had brought her.
“I was scared to death that someone in Gene’s family would come looking for me-prophetic, huh? I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. Here I was, bunking in with strangers who had no real reason to take me in except the goodness of their hearts, and I sure wasn’t used to people like that. I had no money, I couldn’t pay Hal room and board. I told him I’d get a job, but it was winter and there wasn’t much tourist action. Besides, there wasn’t much I was qualified to do. Long story short, Hal asked me what I would do if I could do anything, anything at all. I told him the only thing I ever dreamed of was owning a little dress shop, since the only job I ever had was in retail. He told me that if I did two things for him, he’d help me to have that little shop. One, I had to take classes at the community college-business classes, math, that sort of thing-and two, I had to go talk to a therapist. He promised me he’d never ask me what we talked about-and he never has, though I often volunteered. Anyway, I went to school and I did really well-surprised the hell out of me, how well I did-and I went to therapy every week for almost two years, which Hal paid for. It helped me to put a lot of things in perspective. Dr. Campbell-she was my therapist-helped me to understand that sometimes, you just have to let certain things go.”
She smiled up at him. “So yes, I am strong now. It took me a while, but I don’t let my past dictate what my future is going to be. That’s one of Dr. Campbell’s mantras, by the way.”
“Smart woman, your Dr. Campbell.”
She nodded. “Very.”
“You really have a lot to be proud of, you know that, right?”
“I got lucky, I had Hal and Beck and Dr. Campbell on my side.”
“I think you’re overlooking the fact that you must have had a lot inside you that you didn’t realize was there. Friends and family and even professional therapists can’t give you what you don’t already have. They can only help you to find what you’ve got and tap into it.”
“That’s what Dr. Campbell always said. Were you in therapy, too?”
He shook his head. “Psych major.”
“I should have known.”
He laughed and looked around the shop. “Speaking of moving on, let’s finish this up so that you can reopen as soon as the glass is replaced.”
“The glass guy should be here soon.”
“Do you have a large trash container? I can get this broken glass up for you while you try to figure out what’s missing.”
“I already made a list for the insurance agent,” she told him. “He took the money and the dress that Candice-excuse me, Jackie-tried on. She must have been with him, for him to have known which one to take.”