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Part Three
The Present
Twenty-three
Claire, Claire, Claire.
Kane gritted his teeth as he sat at his desk, forcing himself to concentrate, but the words on the monitor blurred and Claire’s face, haunted and beautiful, burned into his brain. No matter what he did or how he tried to occupy his mind, she was always there, just beneath the surface of his consciousness, ready to appear to him at any given moment.
It was a damned curse.
“You stupid son of a bitch,” he muttered under his breath as he snapped the lid to his computer shut and reached for his bottle of whiskey. His investigation into the night that Harley Taggert had died was stalled, his interest sidetracked. All because of Claire. That same white-hot desire that had gotten into his blood sixteen years ago had been dormant for years, but now was heating up again, distracting him, causing his mind to slip from its single-minded purpose of revenge against Dutch Holland.
There were reasons Kane hated Dutch, reasons that ran true and deep. Benedict Holland had single-handedly ruined his life. Now the tables were turned. Kane had a chance to give Dutch a taste of his own medicine.
Except seeing Claire again muddied the waters a bit, clouded his purpose. Christ, he was pathetic. How could one woman turn around his thinking?
Holding the neck of the bottle with two fingers, he walked through the cabin, now clean and painted, a few pieces of new furniture scattered around to take the place of the broken-down rose-colored sofa and scarred metal table. Frustration gnawed at him. Never before had he not been able to concentrate, to focus on a project. His best traits were his clarity and dogged determination. He’d always known what he wanted, went for it, and, like a dog at a bone, wouldn’t let up until he won the prize.
Until now.
Shit!
With difficulty, he forced his thoughts back to the stormy night sixteen years ago, the night Harley Taggert had lost his life, the night when so many questions had been left unanswered.
Not that he’d found out much. Kane had spent the past week spinning his wheels. He’d tried to talk to the deputies and witnesses who had seen Harley in his last few hours or been on the scene when Miranda’s car plunged into the inky waters of the lake. But a lot of years had passed, and in that time memories had been lost, perceptions altered, the incident a closed police file collecting dust in some locked cabinet somewhere.
Sheriff McBain, the officer in charge of the investigation was dead of liver cancer, and the other deputies, none of whom were still with the force, were tight-lipped, their memories fuzzy. They seemed sincere enough, just older and tired, and not much interested in reopening a case that had been ruled an accident. There had been rumors to the effect that the entire investigation had been hushed up, either by Neal Taggert or Dutch Holland and their ability to pay.
Kane was betting on Dutch.
He walked back to the old wooden desk he’d bought at a used furniture store. Glancing at his notes, he scowled and cracked his knuckles. Not only had Harley died under suspicious circumstances that night, but Jack Songbird had fallen to his death off the Illahee Cliffs only days before. Hunter Riley, apparently involved with Miranda Holland, had up and disappeared while rumors swirled through town about him knocking up some younger girl and stealing a car. Riley had blown the country, worked for Taggert Logging in Canada somewhere, then disappeared from the face of the earth. Kendall Forsythe, distraught over Harley’s death, had ended up marrying Weston Taggert.
“Think!” he ordered himself, and flipped through copies of the original police reports. Harley Taggert’s official cause of death was drowning, but he’d either bashed his head on a rock or some other sharp, jagged object after falling off the boat, or someone had clobbered him before pushing his unconscious body overboard.
When the police had dragged the bay, searching for clues or perhaps a murder weapon, all that had been discovered in the refuse and sludge was a small pistol.
Was the pistol related to the crime? Or was it just a coincidence that the gun was near his body?
Kane found a glass on the desk, wiped out the dust with the edge of his shirt, and poured himself a stiff shot. The key to finding out the truth was talking to as many people as possible and checking their stories, playing one against the other.
He wanted to start with Claire. Not because she was the logical choice, but because he wanted—needed—to see her again. Christ, she was becoming an obsession. Think, Moran, think! Use that blasted brain of yours!
So much had happened in sixteen years. He’d spent the past few months chasing down leads, trying to find all of the people—or were they suspects?—who were involved.
Sitting on the edge of his chair, he opened a spiral notebook filled with the names of all the players in the tragedy.
Neal Taggert, after suffering a near-fatal stroke, had stepped down as the president and CEO of Taggert Industries. Weston was now filling those executive slippers. Daughter Paige took care of her ailing father most of the time.
As for the elder Taggert son, Weston was married to Kendall Forsythe and had one child, a daughter, Stephanie, who was fifteen. They had married soon after Harley’s death, had no other children, and from all accounts their marriage was as rocky as the Illahee Cliffs. Neither Weston nor Kendall had alibis for the night Harley drowned, but the sheriff’s department had dismissed them as possible suspects. Just as they’d dismissed everyone. As far as the official records were concerned Harley Taggert’s death had been an accident. Nothing more.
Hank and Ruby Songbird were retired and still living in Chinook, where they ran a mobile home park. They’d moved from their house shortly after Jack’s death, and Ruby had never gotten over her only son’s demise. She’d become a grim, thoughtful woman, who was known to talk in her native tongue at a moment’s notice and who forever gazed out her window to the cliffs where Jack had lost his life.
Crystal had left Chinook after that summer, finished hig
h school and college, and was now married to a doctor in Seattle. She rarely visited her parents and seemed to have no happy memories of this tiny town on the coast.
As for the Hollands, they were an interesting lot. Miranda had never married, rarely dated as far as Kane could tell, and was totally devoted to her career, a career that could well be derailed if it were proved that she was somehow involved in Harley’s death.
