Brenda Novak - Home to Whiskey Creek

Baxter’s gaze lighted on everything that was out of place. He’d been a neat freak since he was a little kid. “Adelaide who?”

“Went to high school with us. Would’ve been a sophomore when we were seniors.”

“I don’t recall anyone by that name.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. We were at San Diego State by the time she graduated, and she left town right after.” Noah dropped onto the couch and dangled one leg over the arm.

Baxter sat in the opposite chair, but he did so with his usual decorum. He wasn’t wearing one of his hand-tailored suits. He worked at a brokerage house in San Francisco Monday through Thursday, but his hours were flexible. Maybe he was taking two days off this week instead of one. Anyway, even his casual jeans and shirts came with expensive labels. He was stylish, well groomed, always had a perfect haircut and smelled like the men’s department at Macy’s.

But Noah tried not to file any of that under the “gay or not gay” headings going on in the back of his mind. He refused to define Bax—someone he was supposed to know better than anyone else—according to stereotypes. He was still hoping his so-called gaydar was wrong....

Actually, he didn’t care if his best friend preferred men. He’d deck anyone who had anything to say about it. He just didn’t want Baxter’s preferences to include him. Any admission along those lines would be far too weird.

“She’s back?”

“Just returned.”

“And you didn’t sleep with her? You’re falling off your game, bro.”

Noah scowled. He wasn’t that big a player. Living in a small town made it impossible to screw around very much—and maintain any respectability. It wasn’t as if he went out looking to get laid. Not very often, anyway. Women had always sort of...come to him. “Why do you keep bringing everything back to sex?”

“Isn’t that what you usually want to talk about? How hot your latest conquest was?”

Maybe he did talk too much about the women in his life. But he was trying to convince himself that the loneliness that had begun to plague him in recent years wasn’t going to taint his whole existence, that the life he led was fulfilling and would continue to be fulfilling even if nothing changed.

Besides, he couldn’t think of a better way to put Baxter on notice that he wasn’t about to get intimate with another man.

“She was beaten up! Of course I didn’t sleep with her. If you’ll listen, I’ll tell you what happened.”

“Fine.” Baxter spread out his hands. “Let’s hear it, then.”

“Forget it.” Flipping him off for being so damn facetious, Noah got up and headed to the kitchen.

Baxter chuckled as he followed. “Now you’re clamming up?”

“You don’t really want to hear.”

“That’s not true. I’m dying to learn every sordid—or not so sordid—detail. Did you punish the guy who was giving her trouble, or what?”

Noah turned to face him. “She was in the mine.”

At this, Baxter sobered. “What do you mean ‘in the mine’? What mine?”

“The one we used to party in at the end of our senior year.”

“The Jepson mine? She couldn’t have been. They closed it off after—” his voice softened “—after Cody.”

Noah didn’t want to think about his brother. Ignoring the reference, he once again shoved away the memories of the June morning he heard his brother had been found. “That’s what I thought, too,” he said.

“But...”

He pulled a carton of orange juice from the fridge and shook it before offering some to Baxter.

“No, thanks.” Baxter’s lip curled in disdain. “I wouldn’t drink from one of your glasses to save my life.”

“Because you’re OCD.”

“Because you barely rinse them before you use them again.”

Just to bug him, Noah drank from the container. “Wasn’t enough for you, anyway,” he said, and tossed the empty carton across the kitchen and into the trash can.

“Nice shot.” Baxter transferred a stack of dirty dishes to the sink before leaning against the counter. “Back to Adelaide Davies. How’d she get into the mine? And how did you find her?”

“I was riding past the entrance when I heard a woman call for help.”

“That must’ve freaked you out.”

“Yeah. It was twilight and cooling off, so it’s an odd time to run into someone up there. I certainly wasn’t expecting to perform a rescue mission.”

“That entrance is no longer sealed off?”

“It is. This was an ancillary opening. Someone had torn away the boards and, after beating her up, threw her down into the hole.”

Baxter blinked several times. “You’re kidding.”

Noah could understand his surprise. Nothing like that ever happened in Whiskey Creek. There’d been rumors that Sophia DeBussi’s husband, the wealthy world-traveler Skip, knocked her around once in a while, but that was the only hint of violence that had occurred in recent years. “No. And get this...she’d been taken from her bed.”

“Kidnapped? That’s what she said?”

“She didn’t have to say. It was obvious. She had rope burns. And she was in her underwear.”

Baxter whistled. “That’s serious. How badly had she been beaten up?”

“One eye was swollen shut, and she was all scraped and bruised.”

“Who did it?”

Noah shrugged. “Who knows?”

Baxter pushed away from the counter. “Wait a second! When I stopped at the Gas-N-Go last night, I heard that Chief Stacy was asking about a woman who’d gone missing. It’s Milly Davies’s granddaughter, right?”

“That’s right.”

“You found her?”

“I found her.”

“Milly must be relieved. But—” he hesitated briefly “—had she been raped?”

“Claims she wasn’t, and I’m inclined to believe her.”

“Because...”

“Her panties were...you know...on and intact.”

Baxter looked baffled. “So...what was the point of taking her?”

Noah sighed. “No idea. Maybe he intended to rape her, but she fought too hard and he gave up.”

“Wow. After that welcome home, I bet she’s ready to leave town again.”

“She can’t.”

“Why not? She left before, didn’t she?” Baxter started cleaning up the kitchen, which he’d probably been itching to do from the second he got there.

“Milly’s getting too old to run her restaurant. That’s the reason Addy came back.”

“It’s a good thing you were there and that you heard her. The Jepson mine’s not stable. She could have...”

He let his words trail off, but Noah knew what he’d been about to say.

Instead of following up with a comment about Cody, Noah focused on the mundane. Avoidance was always easier than trying to cope with the loss he still felt. As far as he was concerned, that was private. “Stop doing my damn dishes!”

“Why?”

“Because it makes me feel like a slob.”

“You are a slob,” Baxter joked, but there was no real energy or accusation in the statement. Noah could tell he was thinking about Cody. The three of them had been inseparable as children. Baxter wasn’t a stellar athlete, but he’d joined all the same teams Noah and Cody had been on, even if he didn’t get to play on game day.

“Compared to you,” he said. “You iron your sheets and underwear.”

“Makes them feel great. You should try it sometime.”

Noah rolled his eyes. “No, thanks. I have better things to do with my time.” He rinsed off a plate, but Baxter took it and put it in the dishwasher as if Noah would only put it in the wrong slot.

“Do you think Chief Stacy will catch the guy who kidnapped Milly’s granddaughter?” Baxter asked, returning to their conversation.

“Not if she doesn’t give him some sort of description.”