Page 11 of Steal My Heart
Hilliard shrugged. “All my past relationships started out hot, and look how they turned out. The last one crashed and burned when I found out Alan was screwing every younger guy he could get to bend over his damned desk.” He took a deep breath to try to calm himself down. Brian stepped back as Hilliard felt the anger washing off himself. It was not a good feeling. “I think I need a chance to get over him.”
“I see.” Brian turned back to the stove. “I understand that. Not everyone is ready to date or that sort of thing. We can keep our dealings professional. That’s perfectly fair.”
“Oh poo,” Beverly said from the other room. “Hilliard is saying he needs to take things slow, not push you away. God, sometimes you men don’t know how to communicate for crap.”
“That’s enough from the peanut gallery in there,” Brian snapped without any heat. “You were the one who was supposed to be making dinner, you know.” He took pots off the stove and began mashing potatoes and putting butter on veggies.
“Maybe, but your gran is right. We don’t need to rush into things. I have a lot of the mess from Alan to clean up. He might have bought me out of the practice, but I still need to figure out what I am going to do professionally, and I think I need to get to a place where I don’t want to wring the bastard’s neck every time I mention his name.” Apparently he had a lot of unresolved anger and resentment issues that he needed to figure out.
“I’m usually right,” she added, and Brian rolled his eyes as he got out bowls and began getting the food ready to serve. “I’d like a beer with dinner.”
“You know what the doctor told you,” Brian said.
The most undignified sound came from the living room, and Hilliard smiled. “She’s something else.”
“Try living with her,” Brian retorted with a gentle smile.
“I’m over eighty, and one beer is not going to kill me. And if it does, then I’m a lot closer to the jumping-off place than I think I am.” She pushed off the blanket and got up out of her chair, grabbed her cane, and headed slowly to the table. Hilliard helped Brian bring in the food, with Brian placing a glass of beer at Beverly’s place. Then they all sat down to what looked like the best home-cooked meal he’d had in years.
“SO HOWdo you propose to help prove that Brian didn’t rob anyone?” Beverly asked over a piece of her to-die-for cherry cobbler.
“I’m not sure. The easiest way would be to try to verify his alibi. I’m assuming the police tried to do that when the case was first investigated.”
Beverly snorted. “This place may look like Cabot Cove, but there most definitely is no Jessica Fletcher in this town. Heck, as far as the police are concerned, it’s more like Mayberry and all the cops are Barney Fife. They saw what they wanted to see and then didn’t go any further. They figured they had enough evidence and that was that.”
Hilliard looked to Brian. “If that’s the case, then I think we need to recreate the road trip you and your grandfather took. See if there aren’t cameras, receipts, someone who remembers the two of you. Anything to help us prove your story.”
Brian shook his head and shrugged. “He and I went up and down the coast. It was just a road trip where we stopped at anything that caught our fancy.”
“Then we’ll divide it up. Go north one day and then south another. If there is a way to provide you with an alibi, then it will be out there somewhere. I’d also like to look into whomight have really perpetrated the burglary. We all believe that it wasn’t Brian, so that means it was someone else, and we can assume it wasn’t some random stranger, because they would not have the knowledge to try to pin it on Brian. This was someone from town, someone who knew Brian was away.” He leaned over the table. “Someone close enough to be aware of what was happening in your lives.”
“Great,” Beverly said. “Now we need to be looking at all our friends.”
“Or enemies,” Hilliard supplied. “Who would have access to the burglary site? Who knew what was there?”
Gran sipped her beer. “That’s easy. Any of the family. Violet comes from a bunch of money-grubbers. They would all sell each other out for a dime if they thought they could get away with it.” She took a moment to think. “That year the historical society did one of their fundraisers. Violet and a number of others opened their homes for historical house tours. They sold tickets and everything.”
Hilliard groaned. “So any one of the people who came through could have seen what she had and returned to rob the place.” Great. That meant their chances of finding the thief were between zero and nothing.
“Gran, Violet would have put away anything she didn’t want people to see. We went on that tour, and the house looked bare, remember? You remarked that Violet seemed to have stripped the house to the walls, which you thought was an improvement because her place was usually cluttered to the gills.”
“Okay, let’s look past the home tour, because that isn’t going to get us anywhere. It is possible that someone may have scoped out the house at that time, but why only that one? There were others on the tour, I’m sure. Why was only that house targeted, especially if all the valuables had been put away?” He was prettysure the house tour had little bearing on the burglary. “It’s likely the thief was closer to home.”
“But how do we figure it out?” Beverly asked.
“That’s pretty easy. We need to talk to the people involved. Get closer and see what we can find out. Do you think you can arrange it so we can talk to Violet? I’d like to get a look inside the house and maybe see where the things that had been stolen were kept.”
“I don’t know. Violet loves to have people over. She thinks of herself as the queen of the town. Nothing happens here without her knowing about it, and she loves to talk, but maybe not to me. Before all this business, she used to call every now and then, and I was lucky if I could get her off the phone after an hour. We’ll have to see on that front.”
“Okay. You work that angle, and maybe on Saturday, Brian and I can take a road trip and see what we can find out.” He ate the last bite of his cobbler and sat back in the chair. It had been a long time since he’d had a meal like that, and it had been amazing.
Brian began clearing the table, and Hilliard got up to help carry the plates and things to the sink. “You don’t need to do that.”
Hilliard finished helping Brian clear the table while Beverly settled in her chair with the dogs curled at her feet. “I should get going, but thank you for dinner. It was bellisima.”
“You’re welcome,” Beverly said from her chair, and Hilliard took her hand. She smiled at him. “Come over any time. Brian is a really good cook.” Was this one of those “let the matchmaking begin” kinds of situations? He wasn’t sure.
Brian walked Hilliard outside and down to the front gate, then opened it for him. “I’m glad you could come, and I really appreciate you helping me. I had no idea where to start, and it sounds like you have a plan.”