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“Any activity from Kelly Paul?”
“No cars in or out and no sightings of any humans, though I did see a black bear and what I think was a beaver.”
Sean rolled down the window and sucked in the clean, chilly air. “My bladder is telling me I need to do something.”
Michelle pointed to a spot across the road. “I already did my business.”
He was back in a few minutes. “I think it’s time we had our face-to-face with Kelly Paul.”
Michelle started the Land Cruiser. “Okay, but let’s hope there’s some coffee in the house.” She turned down the gravel road. “What if Paul won’t talk to us?”
“Then I think we have to insist. We came all this way, after all.”
“And we tell Paul about Bergin?”
“If Kelly Paul hired Bergin, then his death might make her more likely to help us. How all of this connects to what happened in Maine I don’t know. But I have to believe that unless Bergin had some dark secret in his past, his death and his secretary’s death are connected to Roy. And that means Paul is connected too.”
“Despite what you said earlier I could have been the one to kill Hilary Cunningham.”
“Is that the real reason you didn’t sleep last night?”
“She was an innocent old lady, Sean. And now she’s dead.”
“If you did it you sure as hell didn’t mean to do it. Someone was shooting at you. You shot back. That’s instinctual. I would’ve done the same thing.”
“She’s still dead. What do they tell her kids or grandkids? ‘I’m sorry, she’s dead because she was accidentally shot’? Come on.”
“Life is not fair any way you cut it, Michelle. You know that and I know that. We’ve lived that stuff too often to recognize it any other way.”
“That can’t stop me from feeling guilty. From feeling like a piece of shit.”
“You’re right, it can’t. But keep this in mind. Somebody brought Hilary Cunningham to that house against her will in all likelihood. And if you did shoot her I don’t believe it was accidental, at least on their side.”
“What, you mean they wanted me to shoot her?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Hilary might have known something that certain people didn’t want to get out. And if you shoot her then the police are all over us. That puts us out of commission, or so they think.”
“If that’s the case these are some pretty sick people we’re up against.”
“We’re always up against psychos, Michelle. It’s what we do. But I want these sons of bitches more than I’ve wanted anybody else.”
CHAPTER
25
THE HOUSE WAS A WHITE SINGLE-STORY clapboard with a black shin
gle roof in need of replacement. The porch was wide and inviting, with a couple of beat-up-looking rockers moving slightly to and fro in the breeze. The sun was coming up to the left of the house, but the reach of a monster oak blanketed it in shadows.
The front drive was more dirt than gravel. The lawn was cut short, there were a few flowers in pots, and a rooster strutted in front of the Toyota as Michelle braked to a stop. The bird cocked its head in their direction, rustled its feathers, gave the pair a withering one-eyed gaze, and crowed as they got out of the Land Cruiser.
The edge of a chicken coop could be seen sticking out from behind the rear of the house. Beyond the coop a red barn rose up about a hundred feet from the house and at an angle to it. A clothesline hung in the right side yard, and the few garments strung on it lifted lazily with the dull movement of air.
“Okay,” said Michelle. “Five gets you ten that a fireplug of a woman in either bib overalls or a cotton print dress and work boots is going to answer the door smelling of chickenshit. And she’s going to be holding a shotgun pointed right at our guts.”
