Refuge Cove (New Americana 2)

That kiss yesterday had got him believing they had the start of something good. But they’d both been burned by relationships, and they both had trust issues. All it had taken was a small misunderstanding—like her failure to tell him about David—to set off all the old alarms. Emma was everything he’d ever wanted in a woman. He loved her courage, her tenderness, her quirky sense of humor. And the more time he spent with her, the more beautiful she appeared to him. But unless they could learn to have faith in each other, their relationship was doomed.

Maybe he should have called her this morning. It was too late now. There was no phone service this deep in the bush. Maybe tonight, when he got back to town, he could do some fence mending. But he didn’t want to stop by the restaurant if David would be there. And tomorrow he’d be flying the mail run. Most of that time, he’d be out of touch.

Never mind. He’d sort things out when he got back to town. One way or another, he needed to make things right with her.

Three hours after leaving the highway, he sighted the clearing, with the burned frame of the trailer, through the trees. The place appeared quiet, but just to be sure, he parked the Jeep thirty yards away, behind a stand of devil’s club, and approached on foot with his pistol drawn.

There were no boot tracks in the bare, wet earth and no other signs that anyone had been here since the last rain. After checking around, John holstered his gun and got out his phone to take photos of anything he found.

He took a few shots of the trailer, a black skeleton with the charred remains of bath fixtures, kitchen appliances, metal pipes, and broken glass inside. The cast-iron pan where Emma had poured kerosene to start the fire lay next to what was left of the stove.

The exploding propane tank behind the trailer had likely done most of the damage. If Boone had been inside when it blew up, he wouldn’t have survived.

Reminding himself that he was here to find incriminating evidence against Boone, John moved in closer. Right away, he noticed two metal gasoline cans, barely scorched, lying empty some distance from the trailer. What if Boone had put out Emma’s fire, then, after failing to recapture her, gone back and burned the trailer himself? Anything he had to hide from the police would have gone up in flames, and Emma would have been blamed. The delay between the first and second fires would explain why neither he nor Emma had noticed any smoke.

Boone’s burns could have been caused by either blaze. Whichever way he might have come by them, he would have blamed Emma.

John photographed the gasoline cans and continued his search. Emma had mentioned that she’d left her luggage inside the trailer. But John could see no remains, such as locks, hinges, or metal framework. And there was no trace of any personal items that might have belonged to her. Again, that argued for the case that Boone had removed them before starting the second fire.

So what was he looking for now? After taking a few more photos, John began walking in a slow, outward spiral around the trailer, his eyes on the ground. He couldn’t afford to miss anything—not when the tiniest object could provide a vital clue.

A bobby pin—it didn’t mean much by itself, but he took a picture. The metal cap off a lipstick tube—interesting, but no proof of anything.

He had reached the edge of the clearing without finding anything that would’ve made the long drive worthwhile. He was about to give up when his gaze caught a glint of something under the edge of a blackberry thicket. If the sun hadn’t been shining overhead, he would have missed it.

Crouching, he used the barrel of his gun to raise the prickly branches. What he saw caused his breath to catch. He stared at it as if he’d found the Holy Grail.

It was a pair of glasses—big and round with harlequin frames and thick lenses lying half-buried in the dirt.

. . . plain as a mud fence. Big thick glasses . . .

Sherman Philpot’s words shot to the surface of John’s memory. Sam Traverton had suggested that Boone’s earlier bride might have left on her own. But she wouldn’t have left without her glasses.

Knowing he mustn’t touch anything, John used a stick to prop the branches out of the way while he photographed the glasses. He took several distance shots to show the location, then close-ups from every possible angle. One lens was cracked, and the frames looked twisted, as if they might have come off in a struggle.

John had little doubt that the woman was dead or that Boone had been responsible. Maybe she’d died accidentally or been killed by an animal—such things happened out here in the bush. Maybe she’d been killed while trying to escape. Or maybe her murder had been planned from the beginning.

So far, there was no way to be sure. But John was already imagining what Emma’s fate might have been if he hadn’t come to her rescue.

He finished his search, went back to the Jeep, and started the long, slow drive home. He’d found a few odds and ends, but only the glasses stood out as evidence. If Philpot could identify them in the photos, surely that would justify a search of the area and hopefully lead to Boone’s arrest.

The question now was, would Philpot cooperate or was the fake reverend a closer friend t

o Boone than he’d let on?

* * *

David had shown up for work at his regular time. He was his usual cheerful, friendly self, leading Emma to suspect that Marlena had exaggerated her son’s emotional state. But she knew better than to mention his mother’s visit, or to meddle in a volatile situation that was none of her making.

Business had been brisk all day. Pearl had mentioned that this might be the last of the nice weather before the cold autumn storms moved in. Everyone who came by seemed to feel the same urgency to be out and about, getting things done and enjoying a pleasant meal before battening down the hatches for harsh Alaskan weather.

By late afternoon the flow of diners had trickled off. But the restaurant was still busy. Emma was getting tired. She was functioning on autopilot when a new customer, wearing a sweatshirt and a red baseball cap left over from the Trump campaign, came in and sat down at a table with his back toward her.

Pen poised over her order pad, she walked around the table. “Hi,” she said. “Welcome to The Silv—”

The words died in her throat as the man smiled up at her.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” the man she’d known as Reverend Sherman Philpot said in a ringing voice. “If it isn’t Mrs. Boone Swenson, in the flesh.”