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10
GAFFER'S RIDGE
Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith wanted some sleep after the best Reuben sandwich he’d ever had in his life—well, the best since the Reubens Jenny had made him back when they were students at Penn State years before.
Maybe he’d take a nap after he walked back to Jenny and Aimée Rose’s house on Cedar Lane, but for now, walking and breathing in the sweet clean mountain air felt fine. He took a look back at Jenny’s Café, always bulging with tourists in the summer and with locals year-round, from 7:00 a.m. when the doors opened. She closed at 2:00 p.m. most days because, she’d told him, she and Aimée Rose wanted a life and she didn’t want to lose her chef in training, Alfredo Smith, who wouldn’t deal well alone with a dinner crowd. Griffin stretched tired muscles, rubbed his neck, saw Kyler Park ahead, and thought about curling up and zoning out on one of the wooden benches. It had been a long drive from Washington, but he’d made it in under four hours even with all the traffic, thanks to his new Range Rover with enough horses under the hood to start a ranch. Savich had insisted both he and Ruth take some time off after they’d closed a particularly bizarre case with the small police department in Picken’s Creek, Arkansas, an hour south of Little Rock. It had been a hairy case—he’d nearly lost Ruth to a crazed, drug-addled teenager, but they’d managed to take him down. He wondered if she’d told her husband, Sheriff Dix Noble of Maestro, Virginia, and her two teenage stepsons about what had happened. Knowing Ruth, she probably hadn’t.
“Hey, gorgeous! Wait up, you forgot your tablet.”
Griffin turned to see Jenny’s partner in business and in life, Aimée Rose, striding through a knot of happy tourists toward him, his red-leather-covered tablet in her outstretched hand. He’d been showing them shots of his new condo in Capitol Hill. Aimée Rose’s very feminine, soft name made him smile, since she was tougher than a heat-seeking missile, brooked no nonsense, and was as full of dreams as Jenny. She loved to tease and she loved to dance, and with a skillet and a stove, she’d whip up an omelet to make the angels weep. She was dressed in skinny jeans and a light blue T-shirt that said GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME SPAGHETTI, neither rhyme nor reason to that, but it got a laugh.
Aimée Rose gave him his tablet, patted his face, sighed dramatically, and placed her hand over her heart. “It’s started, Griffin. Already two local girls and a tourist want to know your name and cell number. I told them, alas, you were gay. Maybe I was trying too hard not to smirk, so I don’t think they believed me. Since you’ll be with me and Jenny most of the time, we should keep you safe from roving packs of teenagers, or worse, the cougars. But beware of anything moving in the shadows, one might jump out and tackle you, take you right down.”
Griffin rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right.”
Aimée Rose punched his arm. “Jenny told me you never even noticed, even in college when girls would nearly throw themselves in front of you.” She gave a laugh. He knew she was having fun, so he twirled a nonexistent mustache and said, “How about I start a line, lead them right into the café.”
She laughed again. “Nice offer, but really, we don’t need any more business. Be back to the house by seven, okay? Jenny’s making you her never-to-be-forgotten spaghetti and meatballs and crunchy garlic toast you said is as good as Agent Sherlock’s.”
She gave him a wave over her shoulder as she strode away, a tall woman with a long step. Jenny had told him Aimée Rose never merely walked, she always moved out fast, as if she had to put out a fire.
He’d known Jenny Wiley since their freshman year at Penn State, and Aimée Rose Wallberger since their senior year when she’d transferred to Penn State from Dartmouth. It had been love at first sight for Jenny and Aimée Rose.
He walked through Kyler Park, forced himself not to sit on one of the welcoming wooden benches and take a snooze. He stopped to watch kids playing tag football, and walked again with couples strolling along the paths shaded by cedars and walnut trees and the ever-present oaks, basked in the colors and scents of wildly blooming flowers. He came out on Winchester, stopped and admired the row of Victorian houses lining the street, and as always, the backdrop of the towering Appalachians in the distance. Gaffer’s Ridge had been turning into a picture-perfect postcard town for hikers, campers, and antique shoppers alike over the past fifteen years. B&Bs sprang up every month, according to Jenny, and small boutiques had nearly filled up the three-block downtown. Local merchants were happy to welcome the tourists, upgrading their shops and stores to take advantage. The town was picturesque, hilly, and thick with oaks, chestnuts, and a dozen white wooden church steeples spearing into the blue sky. There was even talk about founding a community college. And now they had Jenny’s Café. Jenny joked she and Aimée Rose were getting so rich, even with their shortened hours, they might have to retire at thirty-five and move to the South of France. Griffin imagined they’d grow tired of fun and games after six months and open a restaurant in Cannes.
He saw Beauregard’s Antiques across from the park and thought of Anna, her face clear in his mind, how she loved eighteenth-century English antiques, hiking, and white-water rafting as much as she enjoyed bringing down drug dealers. She would have enjoyed Gaffer’s Ridge, but now she’d never see it. She’d left for Seattle months ago. She was no longer his fiancée, she’d broken it off. My mom has Alzheimer’s. I’ve got to go to her. I’m transferring to the DEA, Seattle division. I’m sorry, Griffin, sorry for everything.
He knew her mother’s condition wasn’t all her breakup with him was about. He knew what the real reason was, and there was nothing he could do about it. And he’d tried. Over the months, Anna, his tough-as-nails DEA agent, had become over-the-top jealous of any woman who came within ten feet of him or even nodded to him. She hadn’t believed his promises that he loved her and no one else, and their arguments had escalated. She’d never accused him of sleeping around on her, but Anna was convinced that one of the many women she saw with him would be the first one. She questioned him constantly about the women agents in the CAU—all three of them married, one of them, Lucy, now pregnant, but none of that seemed to matter.
When she’d left for Dulles with three suitcases and a cat carrier, a moving van set to follow her with all her superbly wrapped antiques to Mercer Island, Griffin had realized he felt sad but also relieved. There would be no more accusations, no more questioning the women he’d spoken to or met that day, no more inevitable fights, no more dreading to go home. He felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. And now, standing across from an antique shop, he realized he didn’t miss her. To be honest, it was Miss Exxie he missed, her three-year-old soft-as-silk Himalayan who slept on his chest, purring loud as a tank.
He’d walked all over Washington for weeks, looking for a place to call home, and finally found what he wanted, a condo on Capitol Hill, three blocks from Garfield Park, where he could run every morning.
Now, six months later, he’d driven to Gaffer’s Ridge for a short vacation, to rest and relax, and maybe nap away some afternoons. Griffin began to walk again, tried not to torture himself anymore with Anna’s jealousy—That face of yours—women line up to get close to you, and don’t try to tell me you don’t love it.
He closed his eyes a moment, shut out her angry voice. No, he was going to think about the furniture he wanted for his still nearly empty condo, nothing fancy, since the down payment had taken a sizable bite out of his savings. He turned onto Berger Lane, running northeast toward the mountains. The houses thinned out, the yards grew bigger, and everywhere, trees crowded in—he recognized some poplars, elms, cypress, and oak, but there were so many more he didn’t recognize, vivid greens against the blue sky. And there were the mountains, always the mountains, in the background. He didn’t see a single B&B or tourist this far from the center of Gaffer’s Ridge. The day was warm, the sun bright overhead. He filled his lungs with the clean sweet air, no trace of a car or factory.
HE’S HERE! THE PIPE, I HAVE THE PIPE. I’LL FIGHT!
Griffin jerked around at the woman’s panicked voice. What? She had a pipe? He realized her yell hadn’t come from the street, it was almost as if she were next to him, but where was she? He looked at the ancient gray clapboard house to his left. He saw no sign of anyone, no car in the driveway.
He waited, but she didn’t yell anything more. Had he imagined her voice? He had been tired when he’d arrived in Gaffer’s Ridge, both Ruth and him worn to the bone from their case. No, he hadn’t imagined anything. He ran to the front door of the gray clapboard house, pounded on it. He didn’t hear anyone. Or anything. He turned on the sagging wooden porch, stared toward the yellow-painted cottage catty-corner from him on the other side of the road.
