Cold Case Affair. Loreth White Anne
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window of Gus’s house on the neighboring knoll.
He spun around, pacing the floor. What was he supposed to do?
Tell her?
After all these years?
No. He couldn’t. He’d done what he had for a reason—and Gus had helped him do it.
He cursed viciously.
Seeing her pregnant now, back here in Safe Harbor … the irony just made everything more complicated.
Jett poured himself a whiskey in spite of the hour and took a long, hard swig, felt the burn in his chest. He exhaled slowly. He had no choice but to ride out this storm that was Muirinn O’Donnell. If she stayed true to form, she’d probably be gone within twelve months.
He wondered again about the father of her baby; where he was, whether they were married. There was a chance that Muirinn’s husband would suddenly show up next door and join her. How in hell was he going to swallow that?
At least Troy was away at summer camp for a few weeks, because he was the one person who stood to lose the most in this situation. And Jett did not want his boy to get hurt.
He could not allow Muirinn to do that Troy.
There was just no way he was going to tell his son that Muirinn O’Donnell was his mother—that ten years ago she’d simply given him away in a private adoption.
He wasn’t going to tell Muirinn, either, that he’d named their son after her father out of some deep need to connect his boy to his mother’s side of the family.
In retrospect, Jett recognized that he’d probably been trying to tie himself back to Muirinn in some subconscious way, hoping she’d come back.
And now she was back.
Living right next door. Another baby on the way. Another man somewhere in her life. And before too long, she’d surely be gone again.
Right or wrong, the only way Jett could ever tell Muirinn the truth was if she somehow proved herself to him. She needed to show that she was worthy of her own son; that she’d stay, and not hurt Troy.
As she’d once hurt him.
Muirinn awakened to a warm and sunny morning, but inside her gut a tiny icicle of unease was growing. As she poured her morning cup of decaf, she glanced at Gus’s laptop and the envelope of photos that she’d put on the long dining room table.
Could that laptop and those photographs be what the burglars were searching for last night? She’d removed them from the attic and taken them down to her bedroom mere hours before the break-in. Had her grandfather really been poking into the old Tolkin mystery again? Was that why he was at the mine when he died?
Nothing made sense to her.
Muirinn blew out a heavy breath of air and looked out the window at the clear cobalt sky—blue as Jett’s eyes. Her gaze shifted slowly over to his deck, jutting out over the trees next door.
An American flag snapped in the breeze, colorful against the distant white peaks. Jett had found Gus’s body—he could tell her more. But Muirinn didn’t want to talk to him.
Not after last night.
She needed to stay away from him.
Her best option was to talk directly to the Safe Harbor police. She’d go to the station later today, right after she met with Rick Frankl, the editor of Safe Harbor Publishing. She’d already left a message at Rick’s office for him to call her to set up an appointment. But first she wanted to look inside Gus’s laptop.
Muirinn set her mug down, seated herself at Gus’s rustic wood table and powered up the computer. Immediately, a message box flashed up onto the screen asking for a password.
She tried several possibilities, including O’Donnell family names, and the name of the cat.
Nothing worked.
The only way she was going to access this laptop was with the aid of a computer tech who could circumvent the password protection. She also needed a tech to help reconnect the hard drive up in the attic office. Perhaps Rick Frankl could recommend one.
Muirinn reached instead for the brown envelope and slid the black-and-white crime scene photos out. She spread them over the table. Most of the images she recognized from the book her grandfather had written years ago on the Tolkin massacre. But there were a few other images she didn’t think she’d seen before. She picked one up—a shot of bootprints in shiny black mud, a ruler positioned alongside the impressions.
Muirinn flipped it over, read the notation on the back. Missing Photo #3. Bomber tracks.
She frowned. Quickly, she flipped over the rest of the photographs she didn’t recognize, laying them all facedown on the table. On the back of each one was a similar set of notations, all with the word Missing scrawled in her grandfather’s bold hand.
What did this mean?
Surely her grandfather had given up trying to actually solve the Tolkin murders? Unless … she stared at the images strewn all over the table. Unless there was new evidence.
No. It wasn’t possible.
Was it?
She turned the images faceup again, selected a photo of a mining headframe—a rusted A-shaped metal skeleton that loomed over a small boarded-up shack. She flipped it over, read the back: Missing photo #8. Sodwana headframe. Bomber used as entry to mine?
She’d never heard any theory about the bomber using the Sodwana headframe to gain access to the mine. As far as she could recall, the old Sodwana shaft was literally miles from the actual underground blast location near D-shaft. FBI investigators had always surmised that the bomber had been someone working inside the mine that day, someone who’d crossed the picket line with her father.
Muirinn realized that she didn’t even know which shaft Gus had been found in. Had it been Sodwana?
She shot another look at Jett’s deck, inhaling deeply. He would know … but before she could articulate another thought, the phone rang.
Muirinn jumped at the sudden shrill noise, then, clearing her throat, she lifted the receiver. “Hello?”
“Muirinn? This is Rick Frankl, returning your call. Welcome to Safe Harbor—I’d love to meet with you sometime today.”
Smoothing her hand over her hair, Muirinn glanced up at the wall clock. She was nervous about meeting Rick and taking over a small business she knew little about. “How are you fixed for time this afternoon, Rick?”
“Around noon would be perfect.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Looking forward to it—we all are. And I can’t begin to tell you how sorry we are for your loss, Muirinn. Gus was our cornerstone here. We all miss him.”
She swallowed against the lump forming in her throat. “Thank you, Rick.”
“His office is ready and waiting for you. We’ve left everything as it was, apart from some cleaning after the break-in—”
“Break-in?” Her hand tightened on the receiver. “When?”
“Two nights ago. Someone managed to disable the alarm system and come in via his office window.”
“Was anything stolen?”
“Nothing that we can ascertain. Gus’s desk drawers were ransacked and his computer was turned on, but that was it. We did file a report with the police, of course. Apparently there’s not much more they can do in a case like this. The cop who responded said it was