The Heartbreak Sheriff Read online

  Finn stifled a sigh. He shouldn’t be surprised that Valerie was sending his deputy out to fill her drink orders. That woman had more nerve than most people.

  As Max walked to the table and handed Valerie the cup, Finn gave her one last pointed look, then left the room and headed for his office. He was annoyed to find Parsons behind his desk, reading over the report Anna had typed up about yesterday’s rescue.

  Parsons lifted his head when Finn came in. “I thought I made myself clear about keeping me updated on all leads relating to the abduction.”

  “There was no time,” Finn lied. “Cole Donovan’s P.I. called me about the gas station receipt from Holliday while you and Agent Bradley were interviewing Valerie’s coworkers. I didn’t want to interrupt you, I figured it would be a false alarm anyway, so I decided to take my deputies.”

  Parsons saw right through the fabrication. “You decided to take the credit, you mean.” The agent glared at him. “I’m sick and tired of your unprofessional attitude, Finnegan. And just so you know, I’ve been in constant contact with Mayor Williams and I’ve made it clear to him where I stand in regard to your badge.”

  “Whisper whatever you want into the mayor’s ear. The people of Serenade know who they voted for.” Finn stepped forward. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go over some files, and I believe you’re in my chair.”

  Although he didn’t look at all pleased, Parsons relinquished the seat, tucking a file folder under his arm. “I’ll be working at Deputy Patton’s desk. I’m writing up a report for my supervisor about the abduction.”

  “Make sure you mention the part about me finding the baby,” Finn couldn’t help but bite out.

  Parsons stalked out without another word, as Finn grinned to himself. Totally juvenile, maybe, but he liked ruffling Parsons’s feathers. The guy was a narrow-minded ass.

  Settling in his chair, Finn unlocked the top drawer of the desk and pulled out the folder containing the interviews he and his deputies had conducted after Teresa was killed. He retrieved the first sheet, the statement from Parker Smith. Smith was the young bartender Teresa had slept with, the only one whose name she’d revealed to Cole. Five minutes later, Finn reached for the next interview. He read each one carefully, trying to see if he’d missed something, but by the time he closed the folder, he hadn’t learned anything new. Everyone they’d spoken to claimed to have heard Teresa bragging about her lovers, but not one person had a name to back it up with.

  But Finn was certain one of those mysterious men was the key to everything. He was particularly interested in Lucy’s biological father, but unless Teresa rose from the dead and spilled her carnal secrets, he had no clue how to uncover the identities of her lovers.

  Glancing at the clock on his screen saver, he noticed it was past noon. He’d been reading for almost an hour, and now his stomach growled, reminding him he hadn’t eaten all day. When he’d woken up this morning, his appetite had been nonexistent. There had been a painful rock in his stomach since he’d left Sarah’s last night.

  Four years ago, she’d begged him to stay.

  Last night, she’d told him to leave.

  And like the idiot he was, he’d walked out that door for a second time. Why hadn’t he stayed and tried to make her see how sincere he was?

  She’s too scared to see it.

  He released a breath, knowing it was the truth. Sarah was afraid of getting hurt again. And worse, having Lucy get hurt in the process. He knew her resistance to a relationship with him had a lot to do with the fact that she was a mother now, but he had no idea how to convince her that he would never leave her—or Lucy. He was already madly in love with that baby girl. And he was madly in love with her mother, too.

  He just wished Sarah could trust him enough to believe it.

  “We need an ambulance!”

  The shrill shout jolted Finn from his thoughts.

  What the hell?

  Scrambling to his feet, he raced out of the office, slamming into Parsons in the bull pen. Both men exchanged a puzzled look, as Parsons said, “What is going on?”

  The two men hurried toward the commotion, flying into the corridor at the same time Anna and Max skidded to a stop. Both deputies looked shocked and confused, and all eyes turned to the open door of the interrogation room Finn had left Valerie in.

  He rushed to the doorway, his body going cold when he saw Robert McNeil, Valerie’s attorney, down on the floor, bending over his client. McNeil looked up with frantic eyes. “Call the paramedics!” he exclaimed. “She’s not breathing. I came back with lunch and found her on the floor—Jesus Christ, why weren’t any of you people watching her?”

  Sucking in a gulp of oxygen, Finn burst into the room and joined McNeil on the floor, where Valerie lay motionless. Her eyes were closed and her face was paler than snow, contrasting with the black hair fanned out beneath her. It was like Teresa Donovan all over again, except this time there was no blood, no sign to indicate what had happened to Valerie.

  Finn shrugged off the attorney’s shaking hands and lowered his head over Valerie, listening carefully. McNeil was right, she wasn’t breathing. As dread snaked up his spine and chilled his chest, he placed two fingers on her neck and checked for a pulse.

  Nothing.

  No pulse.

  Valerie was dead.

  Chapter 15

  Finn was stunned speechless as he staggered to his feet. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Valerie’s lifeless body. She was dead. But how? Why? He’d spoken to her only an hour ago, and she hadn’t exhibited any signs of…well, of going to die soon. Was it a heart attack? A seizure?

  His brain was running a million miles a second as he stepped into the hallway, where Parsons, Max and Anna waited, staring at him in shock.

  “What’s going on?” Anna asked in bewilderment.

  “Valerie’s dead.”

  Both Anna and Max gasped, while Parsons gave him his trademark scowl. “What the hell are you talking about, Finnegan? I spoke to her an hour ago.”

  “So did I.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “And now she’s dead. Anna, call the coroner, tell him to get over here ASAP. We need to find out what happened to her.”

  Anna rushed off with a word, nearly colliding with Parsons’s colleague, Agent Andrews, in the doorway. The blonde federal agent apologized to the deputy, then hurried toward the three men, a sheet of paper clutched in her hand.

  “Sir,” she said to Parsons, her tone urgent. “I just—”

  “Not now, Charlene,” he snapped. “We have a situation here.”

  The woman protested, but Parsons was already turning to glare at Finn. “Who saw Matthews?” he demanded. “Who went in to talk to her today?”

  Finn frowned. “Do you think she was killed?”

  “I’m not ruling anything out.” Parsons swore loudly. “I find it mighty suspicious that she dropped dead an hour after I accused her of having an accomplice.”

  Finn faltered. Parsons had accused her of that? He suddenly recalled his own chat with Valerie, his demand that she give up the names of Teresa’s lovers. Parsons’s accomplice theory wasn’t that far from his own. For all Finn knew, Valerie had been working with someone—her sister’s lover, perhaps.

  He glanced through the open doorway, flinching at the sight of McNeil doing chest compressions on Valerie. The thin man looked shell-shocked as he counted softly to himself. It wasn’t every day a lawyer found his client dead on the floor, and Finn suspected McNeil was in shock, judging from his glazed eyes.

  He was also potentially destroying evidence. Jumping to action, Finn strode back into the room and laid a gentle hand on McNeil’s shoulder. “She’s gone,” he said in a low voice. “You need to step away now, Mr. McNeil. The coroner works right across the street and will be here any second.”

  When the lawyer seemed reluctant, Finn added, “This is a possible crime scene. You need to step away.”

  Removing his hands from Valerie Matthews’s chest, McNe
il allowed Finn to help him to his feet. “Why don’t you fix yourself a cup of coffee and sit down in the bull pen?” Finn suggested. “Someone will come and talk to you soon.”

  The lawyer walked away, looking numb.

  Finn turned back to Parsons, picking up where they left off. “Okay, you and I were both in to see her. McNeil. Anna brought her a glass of water this morning.”

  “I brought her coffee after you spoke to her,” Max piped up.

  “Anyone else?” Parsons barked.

  “Sir,” Agent Andrews began, still clutching her paper. “I have—”

  “Not now, Andrews,” he cut in. “Who else was in that room?”

  “Nobody,” Finn said flatly.

  “I guess Dr. Bennett could have seen her on his way to your office,” Max offered. “Maybe he went in and—”

  “Bennett?” Finn said sharply. “What are you talking about?”

  Max looked confused. “I saw him in the lobby. He said he was coming to speak to you, so I told him to go on back to your office.”

  Finn’s body stiffened. “The doc never came to see me, Max.”

  “What? But he said—”

  “Can you people just listen to me?” came a piercing female voice.

  Finn gaped at the petite blonde who’d yelled at them, noticing for the first time just how panic-stricken she looked. And she was holding on to that piece of paper as if it contained state secrets or something.

  “If you’d all just quit ignoring me, I might be able to shed some light on this situation,” Agent Andrews said stiffly.

  Parsons had the decency to look repentant. “What is it?”

  “I followed up with Walter Brown like you asked me to.” She turned to Finn, adding, “The man who hosted the party in Grayden, his gun was stolen? Anyway, he gave me a list of the people at the party, the ones from Serenade.”

  She shoved the paper in Finn’s hands. “Most of them were older men who worked at the paper mill with Brown and didn’t have any connection to Teresa. But look at the second-to-last name.”

  Finn stared at the neatly handwritten list, his eyes narrowing when he saw what she indicated. Dr. Travis Bennett.

  “He was at that party the night the murder weapon was stolen?” Finn demanded.

  Andrews nodded. “And get this, Brown remembers giving Bennett a tour of the house, a tour that included the study, where Brown showed Bennett the gun. Bennett even admired it, said he wished he had one of his own.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Finn muttered.

  Travis Bennett had attended Brown’s party, the same night Brown’s gun was stolen. And Bennett had been here just now, claiming he’d come to see the sheriff—yet he never found his way to Finn’s office.

  “Who’s this Bennett?” Parsons demanded, furrowing his pale eyebrows. “The name never came up in the case files.”

  “Because there was no reason to connect him to any of this,” Finn replied. “Travis runs the clinic, you probably walked by it when you were at the lab—it’s in the same build—” Finn spit out a curse.

  Bennett’s clinic was in the same building as the lab. The lab where the trace evidence from the Donovan crime scene had been stored. The hair found next to Teresa’s body, the fingerprint on the coffee table. When the tech had run the evidence, Sarah’s DNA and fingerprint had been flagged.

  “He framed her,” Finn mumbled. “He switched the results. He must have gotten into Tom’s computer and somehow changed the real results, so that Sarah’s DNA, which was already in the system from that stupid high school project, would pop up.”

  “What are you muttering about?” Parsons grumbled.

  “Or…or he could have switched the samples,” Finn realized, growing sicker by the second. “He’s her doctor—he could easily get her DNA, a fingerprint, and pin the murder on her.”

  “Finnegan,” Parsons said sharply. “Fill us in here.”

  Finn rubbed the sudden ache in his temples. “I think Bennett framed Sarah for Teresa’s murder. He must have been one of Teresa’s lovers.”

  “That’s a pretty big assumption,” Parsons retorted.

  “It makes sense. Bennett had access to the crime scene evidence, he could have easily tampered with the results. And he had opportunity to steal the murder weapon from Brown’s house.” He cursed. “And I think you were right—Valerie had an accomplice. It must have been Bennett, and he killed her to shut her up.”

  “Unless she died of natural causes,” Parsons pointed out.

  “She didn’t,” came a grim voice.

  Len Kirsch, the coroner, briskly exited the interrogation room, unsnapping a pair of white gloves from his hands. Finn hadn’t even seen the man arrive, but then again, his mind had been somewhere else.

  “I believe Ms. Matthews suffocated to death,” Kirsch announced, tucking the gloves in his medical bag. “I found petechial hemorrhages in her eyes, which is a sign of—”

  “Petechial what?” Finn interrupted.

  “Hemorrhages,” the coroner repeated. “They’re tiny red spots caused by areas of bleeding. It’s usually indicative of suffocation.”

  Finn wrinkled his brow. “So she was smothered to death?”

  Kirsch shook his head. “I’ll run tests at the lab, but I don’t think so. It looks like an internal suffocation, maybe induced by a drug. I found a small pinprick on the right side of her neck. I think she may have been injected with something.” He clicked his tongue. “Most likely phenobarbital—it’s used in physician-assisted euthanasia, stops the breathing reflex and causes death by suffocation.”

  The word physician stayed in Finn’s mind. Bennett would have access to drugs like that. And Bennett had been here, less than an hour ago, without visiting Finn’s office like he’d told Max.

  “Damn, Finnegan, I think you’re right,” Parsons said in a grudging tone. He turned to Andrews. “Take Bradley and go to Bennett’s office, try to bring him in without a fight. Say we just need to ask him a few questions and—”

  “He won’t be there,” Finn interrupted, a sick feeling creeping up his chest.

  Parsons frowned. “You think he skipped town already?”

  “No.” He swallowed down the bile lining his throat. “I think he’s going to tie up loose ends. He’s going after Sarah.”

  When the doorbell rang, Sarah experienced both a burst of joy and a pang of dread. She knew it must be Finn, here to deliver news about Valerie’s questioning, but a part of her was terrified to look into his eyes and see that dull expression he’d donned yesterday. She knew she’d hurt him by refusing to jump headfirst into a relationship with him, but she wished he could see where she was coming from. They had so much baggage, she and Finn, a rocky history punctuated by him abandoning her in her darkest hour.

  He’d accused her of being scared—well, of course she was scared! Not only of getting her heart broken again, but of letting her daughter grow used to Finn as a father figure. If he could have just offered to take things slow, really slow, she might have given him that chance he’d asked for. But with Finn, it was always all or nothing.

  And so he’d forced her hand, pushed her into a decision she wasn’t ready to make, and as a result, got the answer he hadn’t been looking for.

  With a sigh, she picked the baby monitor off the kitchen counter and headed to the front door. Lucy was sound asleep upstairs, after the busy morning they’d had in the backyard. They’d enjoyed the sunshine, Lucy wiggling around on a flannel blanket while Sarah just lay there, staring at her daughter, afraid to take her eyes off her for even a second.

  The doorbell chimed once more, and when she opened the front door, she was startled to see Travis Bennett on her porch. “Travis? What are you doing here?”

  “Can I come in?” he asked.

  She hesitated for a moment, bothered by his appearance. He was normally perfectly kempt, his suits starched and pressed, not a hair on his head out of place. Right now, though, he looked extremely agitated. His tie was off-kilter, hi
s sleeves rolled up haphazardly, and nervous sparks flickered in his dark eyes.

  “Are you okay?” she asked cautiously.

  He shifted in his feet. “Not really.”

  Never one to turn away a friend in need, she opened the door wider and gestured for him to come in. It wasn’t until he stepped inside that she noticed he was holding something at his side. A large metal can.

  She furrowed her brow. “What is that?” Her eyes narrowed as she stared at his hand. “Is that a gas can? What’s going on, Travis? Why did you come here?”

  “I’m here for my daughter.”

  Sarah’s mouth fell open. “What?”

  His eyes were wild as he repeated his statement. “I’m here for my daughter. Lucy.”

  She gasped, overcome by a surge of shock. What on earth was he saying? And why had he brought a gas can into her house?

  Before she could speak, Travis lunged at her. He pushed her against the wall, his wrist pressed against her throat, making her gag. “I don’t have a lot of time here, Sarah, so please, don’t make this harder for either one of us.” His voice came in ragged pants. “I just want my daughter.”

  “Your daughter?” she choked out. “Lucy’s mine, Travis. I adopted her—”

  “Because that whore gave her away!” he boomed. “She never even told me that I had a child! If I’d known, I never would have approved a damn adoption!”

  Sarah tried to squirm out of his grip, but he held her against the wall, his face hard. “Teresa never gave me a choice,” he hissed. “But I have a choice now, and I choose to be a father to my child.”

  She couldn’t believe she was hearing this. Travis had been involved with Teresa? Travis was Lucy’s father?

  And then an even more terrifying thought occurred to her.

  “You killed her,” she gasped.

  Regret flickered in his gaze. “That was a mistake.”

  Sarah gaped at him. “You mistakenly shot her in the heart?”

  “I only brought the gun to show her that I meant business, to scare her into telling me what she did with our daughter. I gave her a chance to make amends, to tell me where Lucy was, but she just stood there and gloated about giving our child away. So I shot her.”