I do, and those piercing blue eyes of his calm me.
“Think about things a minute. Why would I tell you about any of this if I did it? Why would I take myself off the case if I did it? I mean, wouldn’t it be easier for me to run the primary investigation so I could hide any incriminating evidence that turned up?”
He has a point.
“I need you to believe in me,” he says, looking deep into my eyes. “I’m out on a very shaky limb here. I’m not sure what’s going on yet but I promise you I didn’t kill Callie. I’m going to need someone on the inside to help me, and right now you’re the only person I trust.”
I suppose I should be flattered, but at the moment I’m too confused and frightened.
“Will you help me?” he pleads.
I shrug his hands from my shoulders and return to the table. I grab my wineglass, slug back several big gulps, and drop into my chair.
“What do you want me to do?” I ask him.
“I need you to keep me posted on the results of the investigation. I’m going to be doing my own, of course, but I want to keep it under the radar.”
“Tell me about the knife.”
“It’s one my father gave me years ago, before he died. I kept it in my boat outside. I checked this morning after I came back from the site and it’s gone.”
“Are you sure the knife is yours?”
He shrugs. “I can’t be one-hundred-percent sure, but I’m at about ninety-nine. It’s a pretty unique piece with a carved ivory handle. My father bought it over in Vietnam when he was in the service there. The man he bought it from was a villager who carved it himself. Supposedly it’s the only one of its kind.”
“Can you describe it in more detail for me?”
“Sure. It’s about nine inches in length. There is a small nick in the blade just below the hasp. And the figure carved into the handle is a dragon.”
“That’s it,” I tell him. “Show me where you kept it.” Hurley nods, picks up his wineglass, and heads for a door across the kitchen. Determined to keep my wits about me, I leave my own wine on the table and follow him. We enter a two-car garage that contains no vehicles and has been done over as some kind of workshop with a large table in the middle of the room and workbenches lining the perimeter walls. Hanging above and stored below the work areas are many sizes, shapes, and colors of sheet metal, and a variety of tools. The walls are insulated though unfinished, and a heater in the ceiling blows warm air onto my shoulders.
“What is all this?” I ask.
“It’s my workshop. I dabble in metalwork on my off time, creating the occasional artsy piece, like wall hangings and some jewelry.” He walks over to a side table, opens a drawer, and pulls out a small square of folded paper. He sets it on the workbench and carefully unfolds it, revealing a pair of filigreed earrings that look like elongated silver lace doilies. “Stuff like this,” he says, handing the earrings to me.
“These are beautiful,” I say, holding them up to the light. “I had no idea you did anything like this.”
“I don’t do a lot of the small stuff anymore. Mostly I do bigger items, like that thing over there.” He points to a piece leaning against the wall. It’s a large rectangular chunk of varicolored metal strips woven together like a rug.
“What do you do with what you make?”
“I sell most of it, at flea markets mainly.”
I try to give the earrings back to him but he pushes my hand away. “Keep them,” he says.
“Are you trying to bribe me?”
“Absolutely.” He smiles at me and adds, “The color suits you. Please take them.”
“Okay, thanks.” I remove the pierced earrings I’m wearing, fold them up inside the paper on the workbench, and put the whole thing in the pocket of my slacks. I then slip the new ones, which are done in a French hook style, through my ears.
“What do you think?” I ask him when I’m done. I turn my head from side to side to show off the earrings.
Hurley doesn’t answer right away. He looks at the earrings and smiles, then his eyes shift to my hair, my face, my throat . . . his gaze softening as he goes. Then, as if someone flipped a switch, his smile disappears and he turns away. “They look great,” he says, his voice catching slightly. Hurley’s signals lately are about as clear as a broken traffic light and I can feel my level of frustration grow another notch. “I’m glad they found a good home.”
There is an awkward moment as Hurley rearranges some tools on the center worktable that were just fine where they were and I try to figure out what the hell just happened. While I love the fact that Hurley has just given me jewelry, I can’t help but wonder if I’ll need Daniel Webster to defend me in the near future.
Hurley has left the earring drawer open and after glancing inside it, where I see neat little rows of folded paper envelopes that I assume hold more pieces of jewelry, I close it. The sound seems to shake Hurley loose and he walks over and opens a door in the far wall. “Come on out here,” he says. “My boat is parked alongside the garage.”
I follow him outside into the cold night air and there, hidden beneath a tarplike cover, is a small jon boat atop a trailer. He pulls the tarp off near the back of the boat and says, “I kept the knife in this little cubby here, beneath the seat.”
I look where he’s pointing and see a hollowed-out area under a metal seat that spans the width of the boat. “When’s the last time you know it was there?”
“The last time I had the boat out, which was in mid-September.”
“Are you sure you didn’t just misplace it? Maybe you stuck it somewhere else and don’t remember doing it.”
“I thought of that,” he says. “Even though I can’t imagine why I would have taken it out of the boat, I spent a good part of today looking in every logical place as well as a few illogical ones. I can’t find it anywhere.”
“You need to tell Richmond.”
Hurley’s jaw clenches, the muscles in his cheeks twitching. “I can’t, Mattie. Not yet anyway. Don’t you see? Someone took my knife from my boat—a unique and distinctive knife, no less—and used it to kill someone I was once close to. I think I’m being set up.”
I shiver, though I’m not sure if it’s because of the cold or his words. “By whom? And why?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I need your help. That’s why I want you to share any evidence you find with me.” He rakes a hand through his hair as he speaks, and as I watch it fall back into place I remember the short, black hair we found in Callie’s wound. I consider telling him about it but something makes me hold back. I’m not ready to share everything with him, at least not yet.
“You’re putting me in a very difficult position, Hurley.”
“I know that. Believe me, if I could think of a better way to handle this, I’d do it. But I can’t. I’m up the proverbial creek with no paddle and I’m taking on water. Please, Mattie, I need you.”
This final plea both heats my loins and melts my heart. As I look into the blue depths of his eyes, I realize I’m helpless to refuse him even though it may mean the premature death of my new career. My gut is screaming at me that it would be a huge mistake to agree to what he’s asking of me, yet my heart is whispering, Go for it.
And go for it I do, though I decide to keep back a little something for myself, just in case. “I’ll help you for now,” I tell him, “but only if we can get back inside. It’s freezing out here.”
“Of course,” he says, flashing me a relieved smile.
With a hand at the small of my back, he steers me back inside. I can feel the heat of his touch radiating through my sweater, and it makes me shiver again.