A Coldwater Christmas Read online

  “You boys okay?” Buck immediately asked.

  No one answered. In Callen’s and Judd’s cases, it was probably because they didn’t want to admit to Buck that they were in an ass-kicking state of mind and get a lecture from him. In Nico’s case, he was probably still trying to decide how he felt about all of this. Just because he was the baby of the family, that didn’t mean he didn’t have the memories that went along with this shitstorm.

  “We were just discussing what we should do about it,” Nico volunteered.

  One by one, Buck gave them each a glance. No doubt using his paternal radar to suss out what was going on in their heads. That might have been slightly easier for him to do in Shelby’s case because she was his biological daughter.

  “You know I never did abide by someone using their fists unless there was no other choice,” Buck said. He paused. “Any of you feel like you don’t have a choice?” His gaze settled on Judd.

  Judd didn’t get a chance to answer because there was a loud baby’s wail just as Jana opened the door. This time, Kace and Buck both got hit because there was no wiggle room for them to get out of the way.

  The reception area was already jammed so Jana stood there in the doorway, giving them all a once-over as Buck had done.

  “Uh, I guess this is a bad time,” Jana concluded. At least that’s what Kace thought she’d said. It was hard to hear what with Marley’s crying. Obviously, the little girl hadn’t stayed asleep to finish out her nap.

  “A bad time,” Kace confirmed, but he was apparently the only one who felt that way.

  Buck smiled at her, and Shelby pushed through the others to give Jana a hug. Shelby even tried to take Marley, but the little girl would have no part of that. She batted away Shelby’s reaching hands, and her irked toddler’s gaze zoomed right in on Kace. Just as she’d done in his office, she reached for him. And just as he’d done in his office, he didn’t want to take her, but the kid practically launched herself at him. This time, it was Jana who collided with Shelby, and Kace scooped up the kid.

  Marley instantly hushed.

  The kid’s lack of wailing definitely got everyone’s attention. They all turned to Kace as if they expected some kind of explanation, but he didn’t have one.

  “Kace, the baby whisperer,” Nico joked.

  Kace gave him a look that could have frozen hell.

  “Tace,” the little girl attempted, causing some “isn’t that cute” awwws from Cleo, Shelby and Eden.

  But it wasn’t cute. It was downright disturbing. There was nothing welcoming about his expression and body language—something that Jana obviously picked up on. However, his brothers and Buck were looking at him in that puzzled WTF kind of way. They probably thought that he’d been secretly seeing Jana and that’s why her daughter had taken to him like this. No secret meetings, though. Best he could figure out, the kid was just a lousy judge of character.

  “I’m sorry,” Jana muttered, her apology apparently aimed at all of them. She maneuvered herself inside and shut the door. “It’s been a long rough day.”

  She went to Kace and pulled Marley out of his arms. Of course, Marley began to fuss, but Jana fished around in the diaper bag on her shoulder and came up with what appeared to be some kind of hard cookie. Marley started to gnaw on it, but she kept her eyes firmly on Kace.

  “A rough day for you, too,” Nico said, going to Jana. He kissed her cheek, then did the same to Marley. “I was sorry to hear about your divorce,” he added to Jana. “Are you all right?”

  Obviously, Nico had kept up with Kace’s ex-wife, but Kace didn’t think his all right query was limited to only Jana’s marital woes. Peter had caused some chaos in her world, too.

  “Things might be looking up,” Jana said, moving her attention to Kace. “I just got a text from my mom, and she said she’s having second thoughts about the wedding.”

  Kace hadn’t expected to get yet another surprise today, but it was darn good news. For Jana anyway. With all the doubts she had about Peter, this might ease her mind a little. But it didn’t seem to be doing that.

  “I tried to call her, but she didn’t answer,” Jana went on after she blew out a long breath. “She’s probably upset, maybe with me for pushing this so hard, but I honestly believe she needed to put this marriage on hold until she got to know the man better. Then, I figured after getting to know him, she’d send him packing.”

  Marley gnawed on the cookie and then thrust it at Kace, clearly offering him a bite. He shook his head, and that caused Marley to grin at him.

  For some stupid reason, he grinned back.

  Thankfully, not for long, though. That’s because the door opened again, and to make room, it sent all of them scattering. Jana ended up against him. Marley, too. And the little girl used the opportunity to offer him the cookie again. It didn’t land on his mouth but rather his ear. It was wet, mushy and smelled like bananas. It felt like wet, mushy bananas as well and had him choking back what would have been a very unmanly sounding ewww and some profanity.

  Liberty stepped in, and her eyes went a little wide when she saw all ten of them gathered into the small space. “Family meeting,” Liberty concluded in a mumble as her gaze skirted over them. Her eyes finally connected with Kace. “Boss, we need to talk.” She tipped her head to outside, but then the deputy motioned to his ear. “You’ve got something smeared there.” And Liberty did make an ewww, both the sound and with her expression.

  Kace wiped away the gunk, dug out a handkerchief and continued to clean up while he stepped outside with Liberty. He had no doubts, none, that everyone inside was watching them. Everyone from across the street, too. Heck, it was possible that every adult in Coldwater was trying to get a glimpse of what was going on.

  “Please tell me that Peter Laramie isn’t still waiting in my office,” Kace snarled.

  “He’s not,” Liberty quickly confirmed. “That’s because he’s on the way to the hospital.”

  Well, that was yet one more surprise of the day. “What happened?”

  Judging from the way Liberty was dodging his gaze, she knew this answer wasn’t going to please him any more than it did her. “Your father claims someone sabotaged his car and that he’s the victim of foul play.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  FOUL WAS THE operative word.

  The moment he approached Peter’s car, Kace got a whiff of the god-awful scent, a mix of rotten eggs, farts and puke. He didn’t think the car itself was responsible for the stench, but it was hard to tell since it was now smashed into the light pole outside the diner on Main Street.

  Normally, a sight like that would have drawn a crowd, but everyone was pretty much keeping their distance. Kace saw a lot of hands being waved in front of the faces of those milling around outside the diner and in the parking lot. Even baby Marley screwed up her little face and attempted to say “stinky.”

  “Stay back,” Kace said to no one in particular, but his entire family entourage and Jana had followed him to the crash site. Since it had been just up the street, they’d all walked. As he’d instructed, they did stay back, all but Liberty and Judd, who had pinned his deputy’s badge back on.

  Kace did a quick assessment of the vehicle. The front end was indeed bashed in and the air bag had been deployed, but it didn’t look too serious. No broken glass. No blood. Just the stench, and he soon spotted the source of that.

  A stink bomb.

  The remnants of one anyway, and it appeared to have been set on a timer. It was tucked in the narrow space behind the passenger’s seat. Kace gave a heavy sigh. He was betting Peter hadn’t been the one to stink up his own car, but he’d need to question the man to make sure.

  “I can talk to him,” Judd volunteered.

  Kace could practically see the anger still vibrating off his brother. While Judd was a darn good deputy, having him question their good-for-nothing father
when he was in this state of mind wasn’t a wise idea.

  “I’ll do it,” Kace insisted, and he glanced back at Jana and the others. “Why don’t you try to wrap up the family meeting?” he added to Judd.

  Clearly, Judd would have preferred confrontation duty, but Kace thought Judd needed a little more cooling-off time before he came face-to-face with the man who’d fathered him.

  “Peter’s at the hospital?” Kace asked Liberty.

  She nodded. “He called nine-one-one and reported the accident when Ginger answered. He told her where he was and that he was going to walk up the street to the hospital. That’s when he said it was foul play.”

  So if the man could walk, his injuries weren’t that serious. Kace hoped. He didn’t want Peter to have any reason to hang around Coldwater. Of course, if he was marrying Eileen, that would likely involve plenty of hanging around. Maybe even moving there. That reason alone made Kace want to rethink his reluctance to help Jana put a stop to the wedding.

  While Liberty and he went up the street, Kace checked again for any signs of blood and didn’t see any. However, the audience he’d had at the diner continued to follow them. Not his family or Jana. Judd had obviously convinced them to let Kace handle this, but others—including Petunia, the longhorn—were moseying along behind Liberty and him. Even Gopher had ditched his cleaning duties to try to get a whiff of what was going on.

  When Kace reached the hospital doors, he shot them all a warning glance to stay put, and Liberty and he went in. Ruby Myerson, the receptionist who was seated at her desk, immediately got to her feet.

  “Your daddy’s in the ER,” Ruby informed him.

  So apparently everyone in the hospital knew who Peter was. Of course, Kace hadn’t thought he would be able to keep that kind of news to himself. Ditto for the stink bomb and the car crash.

  “Why don’t you go back to the car and get started with that,” Kace told Liberty. “Get some eyewitness accounts.” And he was certain there’d be plenty of those.

  Liberty didn’t jump to hurry back out. “I can question Mr. Laramie if you’re not up to it.”

  While he didn’t relish the notion of spending even another second with Peter, Kace wouldn’t dump this on her. He went in the direction of the emergency room while Liberty headed back out.

  Like everything else in Coldwater, the hospital wasn’t that large so it didn’t take Kace long to walk through the waiting area and to the ER. As soon as he was in the treatment area, he spotted Peter.

  Much to Kace’s surprise, there wasn’t anyone else around. Peter wasn’t behind one of the two curtained-off areas but rather sitting on an exam table. His clothes were covered with the white talcum powder from the air bag, and there were some mild abrasions on his face—also probably from the air bag.

  Peter took one look at Kace and eased off the table to stand. “I figured you’d send one of your deputies to talk to me,” he said.

  Kace skipped right over that. He had to do his job, but that didn’t mean making small talk or needlessly verifying that this meeting was damn uncomfortable. “Tell me what happened.”

  Peter nodded and dragged in a deep breath as if resigned to Kace’s brusque tone. Kace wanted to snarl that he could get a whole lot more brusque than this, but Peter started his explanation.

  “As I was driving from the parking lot of the police station and heading back to Eileen’s, something exploded in my car. If you got a whiff of it, you know it was a stink bomb.”

  Kace made a sound to indicate he had indeed gotten the whiff and made a circular motion with his index finger to indicate he wanted the man to continue.

  “It made a loud popping sound,” Peter went on, “and it stank to high heaven. I looked behind the seat to see what it was, and that’s when I lost control of my car. I hit the light pole. I couldn’t get the car started so I walked over here.”

  “Walked?” Kace repeated.

  “No one jumped to offer me a ride,” Peter muttered.

  No. It was like taking sides when he and Jana divorced. Still, someone would have helped had his injuries been serious.

  Before Peter could add anything else, a nurse came moseying into the room. Kace knew her, of course, and he groaned softly. It was Annabelle Mason. She was eighty if she was a day and as slow as a sloth unless it came to gossip. She excelled in that particular area, which meant she would likely repeat anything and everything she heard here. That’s why Kace didn’t say anything. He just stepped back and waited to see what she wanted.

  “I got the eye drops,” Annabelle announced. She stopped midway between them and gave them both long glances. “Did I interrupt something?”

  “No,” Kace said.

  Apparently, Annabelle wanted a tad more info than that, but Kace didn’t give it to her. He just waited until she’d taken her moseying pace the rest of the way toward Peter. Waited some more for Peter to sit so she could administer the drops at a snail-crawling pace.

  “The powder from the air bag irritates the eyes,” she said. “Doc Adams said your dad would be right as rain once he had these.”

  Kace doubted that. Peter didn’t look in a “right as rain” kind of mood. He seemed annoyed, put out and about as comfortable as a freshly branded steer’s rump. Kace figured he could apply all of those emotions to himself as well.

  “All righty then?” Annabelle asked Peter after the drops were in his eyes.

  The man blinked, nodded and wiped the excess drops from his cheeks. He thanked her and nodded again when Annabelle didn’t budge. The woman just stood there as if she expected to be privy to the conversation that was about to follow.

  “I can leave now?” Peter asked her.

  “Oh sure. Just stop by the front desk and pick up your paperwork.” Still no budging and since Kace was tired of waiting, he motioned for Peter to follow him.

  There weren’t going to be a lot of private places for them to have a conversation in the hospital, but Kace didn’t need to clear up a lot right at this moment.

  “You’ll need to come into the police station and give Deputy Cassaine a statement,” Kace informed him.

  “You won’t be doing that?” Peter asked. Kace couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or just confused.

  “The deputy can handle the official interview.” He would ask Peter just a handful of questions to get things started, and then go about putting this—whatever the hell this was—behind him.

  “Is Eileen coming to pick you up?” Kace asked. Because there wasn’t anyone by the vending machines, where Kace stopped.

  Peter shook his head. “I didn’t want to tell her about the wreck over the phone. Best to do that in person.”

  Kace figured that ship had already sailed. “I suspect someone’s called her.”

  “Someone’s probably tried to do that.” Peter checked his watch. “She wouldn’t have answered her phone, though. This is her yoga and meditation time.” He paused. “But I should get out to her house soon. She’ll be worried if she catches wind of what happened.”

  Maybe. But if Jana was right about that text, her mother was having doubts about this marriage. That still wasn’t Kace’s concern though, especially since he did have a problem standing right in front of him.

  “What exactly do you think happened? How do you believe that stink bomb got into your car?” Kace asked.

  “Someone obviously planted it there,” Peter answered without hesitation. “A person who wanted to get back at me, maybe even hurt me.”

  Kace couldn’t completely dismiss that last part. Hurting might have been what the culprit had in mind, but if so, it was a stupid weapon of choice.

  “Planted,” Kace repeated. “How’d the person get into your vehicle?”

  Peter sighed. “I forgot to lock it. I noticed that when I left the police station and got back to my car. I forget to lock my car a lot,” he
added.

  Which meant the stink bomb might not have been put there recently.

  “I saw a timer,” Peter went on. “That means the person didn’t want to be around when the bomb went off, but I think it’s pretty obvious who would do something like this.”

  Hell. The father of the year was about to sling some slime at Kace or one of his brothers. “My brothers were with me when you wrecked,” Kace pointed out. “Before that, Judd wasn’t even in town. He was out at the McCall Ranch where he lives. Callen and Nico were at their offices.”

  Of course, none of those were really solid alibis—which only proved their innocence in Kace’s mind. If one of them was going to do something like this, they would have made sure they could account for their whereabouts.

  Peter blinked as if doing a double take. “I didn’t think you or your brothers would pull a stunt like this.”

  Oh. Well, that was something at least. Kace wasn’t going to have to drag them into the investigation.

  “I think we both know who’s responsible,” Peter went on. He looked Kace directly in the eyes. “Jana did this, and I can prove it.”

  * * *

  JANA HAD NEVER thought to use a stink bomb as a bargaining/wake-up tool, but she thought she could get this particular angle to work with her mother.

  Since bargaining with Eileen often involved arguing, Jana left a sleeping Marley with Bessie Tarver, the woman who’d once been Jana’s nanny and was now Eileen’s household manager. Marley would be in very good hands with Bessie, and since Bessie’s quarters were at the back of the house, the baby wouldn’t be in hearing distance of any possible shouting.

  Jana steeled herself up and marched into her mother’s office. Actually, it was much more than that, what with a large sitting area complete with a massive fireplace, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and artwork jammed along every single inch of wall space.

  Bad artwork.

  Her mother had always had a notion of finding the next Picasso, Dalí or Pollock, but what she ended up buying was bad stuff that a monkey could have painted. And in one case that was literally true. The splattered and smeared painting over the fireplace—titled Primitive Urges—had been done by Charles, the Capuchin Monkey.