he still blame her father for what had happened two decades before?
“Gideon.” The name dropped from her lips in a lifeless whisper. What was he doing here, anyway? “I thought you were the sheriff.” Her eyes narrowed as her fear-frozen brain started working again. But no, she’d heard people talking…
“I was. Two weeks ago when I called you with the news about your father, I was the sheriff. I’ve stepped down pending an investigation into my involvement in a meth production ring that was operating out of Holyoake County.”
That was what she’d heard about him. Everyone had been talking about it at the funeral. “Did you do it?” The question escaped before her stunned consciousness could hold it back.
While she watched, Gideon’s full lips bent upward in an amused expression, chasing the hardness from his face until he smiled right up to his eyes. A chuckle burst from him, surprising her. “You know, I think you’re the first person who’s ever actually asked me that. Everyone else just assumed I’m guilty.”
Maggie tittered nervously along. The man didn’t look quite so intimidating when he smiled, though she could see how he’d make a great lawman. Probably scared the daylights out of the bad guys.
Gideon’s laughter faded quickly, and he explained, “Actually, I didn’t do any of the things they’re accusing me of. I knew there were drugs coming out of this county, but I had no idea my brother was the person behind their production. And to my shame, I was oblivious that he was using me to get the information he needed to make sure his operation went undetected.” The smile disappeared, replaced by a much more frightening jaded expression. “Not that my innocence will make one bit of difference against the evidence he’s stacked up against me.”
“So, you don’t think you’ll get your job back?” Maggie tried to keep the uneasy shiver out of her voice. She almost succeeded.
“Doubt it. I’ll probably go to prison instead.” He stepped back and looked around him, obviously done discussing the subject. “Where do you want to start?”
Maggie followed his lead and looked around, feeling lost in the midst of the multitude of projects the house would need to have finished before it could be sold. New plumbing, new walls, new…everything. She gulped.
Gideon spun back around from his survey of the foyer and faced her. “Unless you don’t want an accused man working on your house. You can tell me to get lost. I’d understand.”
He’d somehow ended up closer to her, and Maggie could see the pain behind his brown-black eyes. Up until she’d recognized him, she’d been praying with all her might the handyman would be willing to work on the house. Now she wasn’t sure what she wanted. “You’re not just offering that because you don’t want the headache of taking on this project, are you?” she asked him directly. “I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to have anything to do with this place.”
His dark eyes glinted as he looked down at her, obviously trying to size up whether she was being straightforward with him or playing some kind of game. Yup, the bad guys would be shaking in their boots right now.
Maggie didn’t feel too brave, either, but she’d faced a lot of frightening situations in her job as a nurse in the pediatric ward. Gideon Bromley didn’t scare her—too much.
Gideon’s stony face softened slightly. “Do you realize I’m the man who found your father’s body?”
The backward step she took toward the door was completely involuntary. “You did?” Her confidence in his innocence wavered slightly. What if this man really had done all those illegal things people accused him of? But she’d known Gideon Bromley since junior high school.
He’d been intimidating even then.
“Yes. How much have you been told about what happened?”
“I—I—” Maggie faltered, looking around, trying to think. What had Gideon been doing at the house on Shady Oak Lane that Saturday morning? “They haven’t told me anything, really, just that he had a broken neck. I wasn’t looking for details.”
That seemed to censor him. “Sorry to bring it up. I just didn’t want there to be any awkwardness if I’m going to be working here with you.”
Maggie told herself to resume breathing. “It’s okay. Obviously reminders of him are everywhere.” As if to make her point, her eyes traveled toward the back of the house, where the door to the cellar where her father’s body had been found was located just out of sight.
Gideon turned to glance in the direction where she was looking. “Have you been to the basement?”
“Only once.”
“Would you like to start there?”
Maggie felt her heart give a little squeeze. Did she want to revisit the place where her father had died? No. She wanted her father back alive, but that wasn’t an option. She looked up at Gideon and was surprised by the less-than-fierce expression on his face. Was that kindness behind his eyes?
She took a gulp, stepped toward the back of the house and tried to interject a casual tone into her voice. “Sounds like as good a place as any.” Judging by the way the words faded before she finished her sentence, she knew her attempt at nonchalance had failed.
Maggie led Gideon through the cavernous rooms to the narrow back stairwell that descended to the basement. They stepped down into the musty dark. Two sets of stairs led into the subterranean space. The narrow stairs they’d used came down from inside the house near the kitchen. The other set came in from outside the house in the backyard. A sliver of light marked the opening to the wide cellar doors that led outside—the stairs where her father had died.
With a pull on the chain of the lone lightbulb that dangled from the low ceiling, sickly yellow light filled the room. Unable to look at the door or the floor, Maggie turned her attention to Gideon.
He seemed furious. “They didn’t even clean up?”
Maggie glanced down at the broken pieces of porcelain tiles that littered the floor. She understood her father had been carrying a box of tiles when he’d fallen, which had split open and shattered upon impact with the floor. “Who?”
“The investigation team. They should have at least swept up the pieces of tiles once they were done with the site. That’s just common courtesy.”
“What investigation team?”
“From the sheriff’s office.” Gideon bent down and started scooping broken tiles into a pile.
Maggie bent to help him in slow motion, her mind stuck on what he’d said. “Why did they need an investigation team?”
“To determine whether his death was an accident or—” Gideon’s hands swept close to hers, and he looked up at her. His mouth clamped shut.
“Or what?” Maggie looked at him quizzically. She’d never heard that there was ever any question about how her father had died. “Gideon?”
He looked down at the pile of tile pieces between them, the shiny fragments a stark contrast to the dull cement floor. Slowly, he let the last few chips in his hands drop into the pile with tiny clinking sounds. “Was your father’s death ruled accidental?”
