“Look.” She pointed toward the center of the picture, thankfully distracting his perilous thoughts. “The mugger has my mom’s purse and a clear path to escape. Why would he shoot her?”
Noah shrugged. “He was probably afraid she would recognize him.”
“His face is covered.”
Noah looked closer. It was difficult to see the man who was standing at an angle from Wynter’s mother. He was in a shadow from the pumps, but he could vaguely make out that he was a few inches taller than his victim and wearing a puffy coat that made it impossible to know if he was skinny or fat. He could also see what looked like a ski mask pulled over his head.
“That doesn’t mean she couldn’t identify his voice,” he pointed out, trying to keep his tone reasonable. There was a knot forming in the pit of his stomach. He suddenly had a bad feeling about why Wynter had remained in Pike. “Or maybe he was high on drugs. I had a man shoot at me because he was drunk and he didn’t want me to tell his wife he’d been fishing instead of being at work.”
“Or maybe there was no reason,” she agreed. “I understand the picture doesn’t offer answers. Just more questions.”
Noah slowly rose to his feet, his hand brushing the tangled blond hair from her cheek. Wynter was never a sleek, sophisticated woman. She didn’t wear designer clothes or spend hours at a salon having her hair styled or her nails painted. One of his old girlfriends had called her a bohemian and he’d realized that it was a word that captured Wynter perfectly.
She was unconventional, creative, and as ephemeral as a summer mist. She was also as committed to the protection of the environment as he was. He’d been impressed by her decision to build greenhouses on her grandfather’s farm and use the bounty to create her restaurant, along with a farmers’ market. Others in town had mocked her “hipster” style, claiming the good, solid folks of Larkin would never enjoy cherry chutney on their sandwiches or veggie hash for breakfast.
They were wrong.
Within a year, Wynter had a booming business that other restaurants in town could only envy.
It was a success she’d worked hard to achieve. He wasn’t going to let anything distract her.
“Don’t do this, Wynter,” he murmured softly.
“Do what?”
He cupped her cheek in the palm of his hand. It wasn’t a caress. Not exactly. It was supposed to be a soothing gesture, even if he couldn’t resist savoring the feel of her satin skin.
“You’ve accepted your mother’s death. You’ve built a wonderful life and business,” he reminded her. “And more importantly, you’ve become a woman who would make your mother proud.”
She glanced down at the picture clutched in her hand. “You think I should toss this in the trash?”
“I spent years trying to find a reason for my parents’ death. The thought it was just some random accident made me so angry.”
She nodded. “I remember.”
His lips twisted. She was referring to his outbursts during the grief counseling group they’d shared. That had only been the tip of the iceberg. His poor grandmother had endured years of his petulant moods and deliberate attempts to strike out at everything and everyone who tried to get close to him.
“You should also remember that it wasn’t until I accepted that fate wasn’t fair—that good people died and shitty people lived, and that there wasn’t any rhyme or reason to it—that I could put the past behind me,” he said.
“Grim.”
“Actually it’s freeing,” he insisted. “I didn’t have to spend my nights lying awake trying to figure out why I was being punished. Or fearing that if I wasn’t good enough or smart enough, someone else I loved was going to be taken from me.”
Her features softened with regret that she’d forced him to remember his painful past. “I get that. I truly do.” She shook her head. “But this is different.”
Noah battled his urge to continue the argument. Wynter was kind and gentle and stubborn as a mule. “How?”
A sadness touched her face. “I don’t blame myself for my mother’s death.”
“But?”
“But I wonder if there was more involved than just a random mugging.”
“Does it matter?”
She paused, as if truly considering his question. “Yeah,” she at last said. “It matters.”
Noah resisted the urge to grab the photo and flush it down the toilet. There was no way to make Wynter forget what she’d seen. He had to somehow convince her to let it go. “You know, when I first started attending group counseling, I envied you.”
Wynter looked surprised. “Why?”
“Because you grieved your mother, but you’d accepted her death,” he told her. “You weren’t constantly seeking answers to why she was dead.”
“I was four when she died. I didn’t understand for a long time she wasn’t coming home.” She shrugged. “I was too busy learning how to grow up without a mom to wonder why she’d been taken from me.”
“So why look for questions now? It won’t change the past.”
“No, but it might change the future.”
“Not in a good way.”
She heaved a sigh. “Stop being so reasonable.”
His fingers drifted down her cheek, tracing the line of her jaw. “What do you want from me?”
“To listen.”
Noah forced himself to nod. As much as he wanted to insist that nothing good could come from tearing scabs off old wounds, he wasn’t her therapist. He was her friend. And friends listened. “I can do that.”
Wynter stepped back, holding up the photo. “Sheriff Jansen kept this photo for twenty-five years. Why?”
“The criminal was never caught, was he? Maybe he thought it might help to eventually ID the perp.”
She pointed toward the fuzzy outline of the mugger. “Noah, this figure in the photo is nothing more than a dark smear. There had to be better images on the video,” she insisted. “And why the question on the back? He obviously believed there was something strange about the shooting.”
Noah frowned. Did she have a point? This particular image captured the criminal pointing his gun at Laurel Moore, her handbag clearly clutched in his free hand. Laurel had her arms up, as if assuring the mugger that she didn’t intend to cause any trouble. It would have been easy enough for him to turn around and disappear into the surrounding darkness.
“What do you intend to do?” he asked.
“I’m not sure.” She chewed her lower lip. “I wish the sheriff was still here.”
“Why don’t we go back to Larkin and you can think about it?” he urged. Once she was home she might put the past where it belonged. In the past.
She shook her head. “First I want to talk to Tillie Lyddon.”
“Who?”
“She was the cashier at the station the night my mother was shot,” Wynter explained.
“Why would you want to talk to her?”
“When I read the police report—”
“Hold on,” he interrupted, feeling a jolt of shock. “You read the police report?”
She nodded as if it was the most natural thing in the world for her to have seen the intimate details of her mother’s murder.