13

Jude

"Hole in one!" Ronan crowed, holding up his golf club like he'd just beat Tiger Woods to win the Masters.

Jude sighed. He was several strokes behind. There was no way he was going to make up ground on Ronan if his asshole friend kept sinking impossible shots. To be honest, all the holes at the Dino World Mini-Golf course had proven impossible for Jude.

"You can do it, Uncle Jude. I have faith in you." Everly grinned up at Jude.

"Thank you, honey. I'm glad someone does." Jude shot Cope a "so-there" look. Wolf and Aurora were two holes ahead of them with Fitzgibbon. Every so often, he heard Aurora shout with joy when she got her ball in the hole. Jace was back at the motel with Lizbet and Ezra for naptime. He wouldn't be surprised if Jace grabbed a nap for himself.

Jude lined up to take his shot. Standing in front of him was a giant Tyrannosaurus rex. His mouth was opened in a ferocious roar. The hole was shaped like the letter T , with the hole being to the right-hand side of the crossbar. Jude needed to shoot the ball between the dinosaur's legs and somehow get it to ricochet off the wall with a bounce to the right. Ronan had made it look so easy. Standing at the tee now, Jude thought it looked impossible.

Taking a deep breath, Jude swung his club and connected with his bright green ball. It headed for the space under the Rex's legs but clipped the side of a brick and bounced back toward him.

"Geez, Jude. Maybe it would help if you shut your eyes and swung." Ronan cackled.

"Oh, yeah?" Jude shot back. "Maybe it would help if you shut your giant cake hole!"

"Uncle Jude." Everly waved him closer. She smiled when Jude knelt in front of her. "You can't let Dad get your goat like that. He's so annoying." She rolled her eyes in a perfect imitation of her father. "Hit the ball toward the left leg. It will bounce off the brick and roll into the hole, but you gotta hit it hard enough, okay?" Everly patted his shoulder. "You got this."

Feeling more confident, Jude addressed the ball and pictured the shot in his head. He did what Everly advised and hit the ball, which bounced off the brick near the T. rex leg and rolled toward the hole. It hovered on the edge for a second before dropping in. "I did it!" Jude shouted, making the other parents turn to look at him. Several offered him a golf clap.

"It's a kiddie course, dickwad," one annoyed father said a little too loudly.

Jude was ready to take on the asshole and his heavy New York accent when Cope grabbed his elbow and pointed behind them. Standing at the edge of the course and waving was Chet Hines.

"We'll keep going," Ten said, setting up Everly's ball for her next shot.

Jude, Cope, and Ronan stepped over to the reporter, who wore a wry grin on his face. "Looks like a fun day."

"It is when you're winning," Jude grumped.

To his credit, Ronan didn't rub it in. "We've got some information to pass along and some questions of our own for you."

Chet nodded. "Let's grab an ice cream, and we can talk." He headed for a nearby booth selling soft serve. He ordered himself a bubble gum, with Ronan and Cope getting vanilla, while Jude got a twist. He'd found them a clean table and took a seat.

"Have you spoken with Cyrus Longfellow again?" Chet asked after swiping his tongue over his pink ice cream.

"I have tried to reach him," Cope said. "He's still refusing to tell me who killed him, which leads me to believe Cyrus is protecting someone close to him." He pointed to the reporter.

"What?" Hines practically screeched. "I'm the one who came to you . I wanted you to speak with him so I could write an article naming the killer, not so that you could accuse me of being the killer." The reporter looked as if he was ready to make a run for it.

Jude found himself wishing Hines would make a break for the parking lot. He'd enjoy catching and tackling the man who'd duped him into bringing his family to Maine. "Cyrus refused to name his killer."

"What?" Hines said again, sounding not so out of control this time. "Why won't he tell you?"

"Don't know." Cope shrugged, looking as if he couldn't care less. "Ghosts have their own agenda. Cyrus is happy in his afterlife and sees no reason to alter it."

"Why wouldn't you name your killer? Who the hell does that?" Hines grabbed a notebook from his back pocket and started scribbling notes.

"You're not going to publish that, are you?" Jude asked.

Hines looked up at Jude, wearing a look that indicated he thought the detective was nuts. "Why the hell not? This is the only news there's been on this case in the last five years."

"You're going to write about a psychic speaking with the ghost of Cyrus Longfellow?" Cope asked, echoing Jude's earlier question.

"That's the whole reason I wanted you guys up here. I knew if anyone could speak to Cyrus, it would be you. I also know you spent the morning at the Jungle speaking with Samantha Dixon. Did she give you any information you could use to find the killer?"

Jude shook his head. "She said she was pretty messed up on drugs around the time Cyrus was killed. She didn't know of anyone who'd had an axe to grind with him."

"Damn," Hines muttered. "What's our next step?"

It was on the tip of Jude's tongue to let the reporter know there was no next step, but he changed his mind. "What do you know about Alexandria Longfellow?"

Hines shook his head. He wore a sad look. "She's one of the nicest people I've ever met in my life. Just between us, she's got cancer and only a few months left to live."

"That's what she told us last night," Jude said softly. His heart went out to the grieving mother.

"You spoke with Cyrus's mother? How did you manage that? She hasn't given any interviews in at least a decade. I send her a letter every year asking if she'll meet with me. This year, she wrote back and told me about her diagnosis. She wants the case solved before she dies, which is why I went to such extreme measures to get you up here."

"I wish you'd led with that instead of tricking me," Jude muttered, still feeling pretty salty. "Anyway, we didn't get in touch with her; she called Jake Powell, who put us on the line with Mrs. Longfellow. She said the same thing you did, that she wanted the killer found before she died. We asked if there were any possible suspects we should speak with, and she basically told us Cyrus's lovers were too numerous to name and that she didn't know a lot about the people he spent time with here in Maine."

"So, another dead end." Hines shook his head. "Does Cyrus know that his mother doesn't have very long left?"

"We don't know," Cope said. "I've been trying to figure out if I should reach out to him one last time. Maybe if I tell Cyrus finding his killer is his mother's dying wish, he'd be more willing to reveal the name."

"What if it's someone close to him, and he doesn't want that person prosecuted?" Chet asked.

"We thought of that as well," Ronan said. "We also wonder if Cyrus thinks his death was karma."

"What do you mean?" Hines looked back and forth between the detectives.

"Maybe Cyrus somehow wronged this person, and being murdered was his just rewards?" His idea sounded better in his mind. It sounded pretty thin saying it out loud.

Hines was silent for a few seconds, looking lost in his thoughts. "I get where you're coming from, but there are so many people in this world who blame others for their problems. It would take a pretty big man to admit he got what was coming to him."

"Death has a way of bringing important things into focus," Cope said. "You've got limitless time to go over your faults and mistakes, which can lead to some pretty enlightening conversations with yourself."

"And you think the enlightening conversations Cyrus had led him to believe he deserved to be murdered in this run-down, no-tell motel?" Hines sounded dubious at best. "I just don't buy it."

"Stranger things have happened. Why are you so all fired up to solve the murder?" Jude asked. "Yeah, I get that it's the one that got away, and you want to win a Pulitzer or something, but I get the feeling there's more to it than that."

Hines sighed. He stared out at the ocean and was silent for a moment. "The case wasn't the one that got away. Cyrus was."

Jude's eyes widened. Cope and Ronan wore similar looks. Now they were getting somewhere. "You were in love with Cyrus?"

Hines hesitated for a few seconds but grudgingly nodded. "Cyrus was the love of my life. He didn't want to be tied down. Wanted to be free to live his life as he saw fit. He was gorgeous, rich, popular. I didn't care about those things. I just wanted to be with him. He didn't want to be with only one person. He wanted to be with them all. I figured as time moved on and he got older that Cyrus would change his mind and decide he did want to settle down, but that day never came."

"That's not the whole story." Cope prodded, his eyes bright. "What aren't you telling us? There's so much guilt surrounding you that I can't see through it to what's causing you to feel this way."

Jude knew Cope was onto something. He watched as Chet Hines battled his inner self, knowing that he was going spill his guts as soon as he worked up enough courage to speak his truth. Maybe he was the killer.

Hines shook his head, looking as if he'd lost the argument with himself. "We had plans that night."

"The night Cyrus was murdered?" Ronan asked.

"Yeah. We were supposed to have dinner at a posh steak house a few towns over. We both knew dinner would turn into a nightcap back at the motel, and the nightcap would turn into a night of…sex," Hines said. "I knew I would say something stupid to make him love me, or worse, I'd beg him to love me. The night would be fun, and he'd fuck my brains out, but when the sun rose the next morning, it would all be over for another year. After getting my hopes up and my heart broken so many times, I decided enough was enough and saved myself the pain. I sent him a message canceling our plans. I spent the night at home with a bottle of cheap whiskey. Maybe if I'd been there that night like I should have been, I could have stopped the killer."

"Or you'd be dead too," Ronan said. "Or the killer would have come back another time. There's no way of knowing what would have happened if you hadn't canceled your plans that night."

Jude still wondered if it had been Hines who'd killed Cyrus. He turned to Cope, who shook his head, as if he could read Jude's mind. "Okay, so if you didn't kill Cyrus, who did?"

"That's the question, isn't it?" Hines shrugged. "I've been searching for the answer for the last fifteen years. You and your husband were my last hope."

"I'm willing to give it one last try," Cope said, his eyes on Jude as he spoke. "I'll send the kids to watch a movie with Ten and Ronan tonight, and I'll see if can reach out to Cyrus one more time. We've got an ace in the hole that I'd rather not use, but we'll see what happens."

Ronan nodded as if to agree with Cope's plan. "We'll be in touch tomorrow morning at some point. Checkout time is noon, so we'll reach out before then."

"Thanks, guys," Hines said, looking a bit more optimistic than he had minutes earlier. "I'm sorry again for the trouble I caused in getting you up here under false pretenses. If you speak with Cyrus, can you please tell him that I love him?"

Cope nodded. "I will."

Without another word, Hines got up from his seat and headed for the pier. Moments later, he disappeared into the crowd of tourists heading the same way.

"This case ends tomorrow whether we know the killer's name or not." Jude didn't like the idea of leaving the murder unsolved, but if the victim was unwilling to reveal the killer and there was no new evidence pointing to the person in question, there was nothing else they could do here, even with a pint-sized super-psychic at the ready.