Page 12 of Bait and Switch (Subtle Deceptions #2)

NINE

Gabriel

Around lunchtime, Tuesday

The Geoduck Inn was a mile or so down the highway. The funky aging restaurant was housed in a long, low one-story building and had been constructed with lumber that had darkened to almost black over the years. Gabe vaguely remembered driving past it the day he’d arrived.

“Elton! It’s been too long!” A slender woman with long dark hair, who looked to be possibly in her late forties, greeted them when they stepped inside out of the storm that had rolled in.

“Hello, Elton’s friend,” she added with an engaging smile.

“Sit anywhere you like. Coffee? Your usual or are you going wild today?”

Gabe smirked. Of course, Elton knew the host. The question was, who didn’t he know?

“Always lovely to see you, Livia, it has been too long. Two coffees and two standard breakfasts. Unless there’s something you can’t eat?” The last words were intended for Gabe.

“Nope. I’m hungry, a hot breakfast sounds amazing.”

Except for Elton, Gabriel, and three damp bikers sitting morosely around a horseshoe-shaped bar that jutted from the kitchen out into the room, the restaurant was basically empty.

There was a single retirement-age couple sitting at a tall table against one wall, enjoying pints of beer and a basket of fries, but it was too early to be playing pool or darts, and the jukebox was quiet.

The bare wood walls were hung with stuffed hunting trophies, mostly elk and deer—Gabe thought anyway. These shared the space with neon signs advertising lite beer and what appeared to be a signed poster of Wayne Gretzky. Huh.

Shrugging out of his damp parka, Gabriel followed Elton across the large space to one of several tables placed next to floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows.

“I bet this has a great view in nicer weather,” Gabe commented.

“Eh, the view’s not bad right now.”

Elton was right, the view was stunning. Past the drop-off of a large outside deck, there was a marsh or wetlands. Disheveled cattails and drooping tall grasses grew in hummocks, and after one hundred or so feet, the land gently descended to the saltwater below.

“I suppose you’re right.”

“I know I’m right.” Elton mimicked Gabe by taking off his coat and hanging it on the spare chair next to him. “Now, tell me what happened in there,” he said when he was seated.

“Here’s the coffee, food’s on the way.” Livia plopped two dark brown mugs full to the brim and a saucer loaded with creamers down in front of them.

“Thank you, Livia,” Elton said as she started back toward the kitchen. “Now, tell me what Emmett wanted.”

Gabe was tempted to tease him a bit, but instead he ran through the one-sided conversation he’d had with Deputy Spurring, finishing with the fact that Peter Vale was, in fact, not a Vale but a Stevens.

“Stevens?” Elton repeated, frowning and leaning back in his seat to stare outside for a second. “That’s not an uncommon name. But…” He stared hard at Gabe, the sides of his mouth pointing downward. His expression made Gabriel uneasy. Very uneasy.

“What about Stevens? What do you know about the name?” he demanded when Elton had paused for too long.

Setting his elbows on the table, Elton leaned in again, as if he was about to share a secret. Gabriel did the same.

“I had the sense that the dead man seemed familiar to me when I saw the body,” Elton said quietly, “but it seemed far-fetched, so I dismissed it as an old man’s imagination. But now I’m thinking I was right, and your Peter Vale was John Stevens’s boy.”

“Oh?” There was a twist Gabe hadn’t seen coming. “Remind me, who is John Stevens when he’s at home?” The name sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

“He’s retired, was the Twana County Prosecuting Attorney for years. He was the prosecutor for Mickie Lundin’s trial, among other things. He’s the person I called to ask if he knew of a property lawyer, but he didn’t.”

Huh. Gabriel maybe have been the New Guy, but he was aware that John Stevens had been involved in putting Casey’s brother behind bars.

Casey had told him as much when Elton went missing and also had made it clear that his brother, and the case, were not up for discussion.

The subject was not something Gabe ever planned on bringing up with his surly neighbor—but he could get information from Elton.

“I think that was him just now,” he told Elton.

Elton glanced around the restaurant. “Where?”

“Not here,” Gabe clarified. “Back at the station, the guy in the Mercedes. I didn’t recognize him, but now that you’ve connected the dots, I can see where Peter got his profile from.”

“Huh. I didn’t see him but you’re probably right. I know he drives a flashy car.”

Setting aside the flashy car comment, Gabe tapped his bottom lip while gathering his thoughts.

“Let me put this all together. Casey’s brother is in jail for murder and was put there by John Stevens, who is the father of my ex, who was killed and dumped on a boat at the marina where I am currently living? Have I got this right?”

Elton shrugged. “A bit of a run-on sentence, but I think that sums it up.”

“Begs the question, did Peter really show up at the marina to talk to me? Or to Ranger Man but chickened out when he saw him? Or was it for some other reason entirely? Additionally, why didn’t Casey recognize him?”

“Peter’s around your age. Left the island after graduating and I don’t think he ever returned. Not that I know of anyway. Don’t know if Casey ever met him.”

“So that would’ve been over twenty years ago. I assume you mean graduating from high school?”

Elton nodded. “Stevens and I were never friends, so I don’t know what happened between him and his son. But Mickie’s arrest and conviction hit Casey hard.”

“Obviously. I can’t imagine.”

“Mickie’s about eight, ten years older than Casey?

Something like that. When he was arrested for the murder of his girlfriend, Casey’s whole world was turned upside down.

The result is that Casey’s not a fan of John Stevens or, as you know, Sheriff Rizzi.

He—Casey—still thinks his brother’s innocent. ”

Gabe had to ask. “Is he?”

Elton waggled his head. “In here”—he tapped his chest with two gnarled fingers—“I think he is. It’s hard for me to imagine that twenty-one-year-old kid doing what they said he did.

Mickie was a gentle soul from what I knew of him, but they had the circumstantial evidence to convict him.

It also seemed to me that everything went almost too fast. Mickie’s arrest, the trial—it all happened really quick. ”

The flutter of wings outside the window caught Gabriel’s attention.

A great blue heron rose into the air and flopped awkwardly across the marshy area before landing on a log overlooking a pool of water.

Then the big bird tucked its wings in and hunched its shoulders upward, looking very much like a disgruntled old person caught out in the weather.

“Huh. So. Do we think Peter’s murder has anything to do with what happened in Seattle? Or was he killed because of some ancient history here on Heartstone?”

What was that saying, Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark ?

It sure seemed to him that Heartstone Island was not the happy-go-lucky place it was advertised as.

It also nagged at Gabe that Peter had been related to someone Ranger Man hated.

What were the chances? In his line of work, he didn’t trust chance.

He wanted to ask Elton if he thought Casey could possibly have had something to do with Peter’s murder.

An eye for an eye sort of thing. He opened his mouth, intending to ask.

But as luck would have it, Livia returned with two plates piled with scrambled eggs, pancakes, and thick slices of bacon.

Gabe set the question aside for later—or never.

He was fairly sure he knew what Elton’s answer would be.

And Gabe would have to agree with him, even if it meant admitting Lundin was a power for good. Ranger Man was not the type to resort to murder.