Cold Case Connection. Dana Mentink

       FIVE

      Sergio played “horsie” with the girls while Betty had some overdue time to herself. This meant he spent a good half hour on his knees crawling around making neighing noises with Laurel and Lucy perched on his back. He’d perfected the art of bucking just enough to make them squeal but not quite enough to throw them off.

      At first when he’d taken over as their guardian, he’d longed for the day when they weren’t such delicate infants, but as they’d grown, he realized he had no idea how to play with small children. He’d eventually learned the secret. Do whatever you can to put a smile on their faces. That often meant leaving his dignity at the door, but he’d grown comfortable with that over the years. The only thing he stoutly refused to do was play with dolls. A grown man had to draw a line in the sand somewhere and pretending to make a plastic man doll with perfect hair chatter on was intolerable.

      He’d tried hard to honor what he felt Fiona would have wanted, not to spoil them with toys and treats, but to lavish them with as much time as he could free up. There was never enough of that commodity, not with having to earn a living and the hours it took to track down the scant leads on his sister’s murder, leads that had taken him nowhere until recently.

      After he colored with the fat crayons Helen had left and made Play-Doh doughnuts and pretended to eat them, he considered what had happened in the woods. He’d already placed a call to the police and left a message.

      He made a mental note to thank his pseudo informer, an interior designer, whose parents were family friends with his folks when they’d lived in Driftwood. He’d seen her business ad on Facebook while searching about all things Driftwood related, and contacted her after she’d announced she’d been awarded the contract to redecorate the Driftwood Police Department headquarters. Connections, he’d learned, were how a private eye got things done.

      When he’d asked her to keep her ears open around the police department, she’d been surprisingly eager to tell him about Helen’s arrival there the week before with Trish’s mysterious note. She had no qualms about divulging private information, it seemed, and he was happy to overlook that transgression if it got him closer to nailing Fiona’s killer. Amazing what a fly on the wall could take note of.

      As soon as he got the girls settled in he would pay some important visits, the first to Chief Farraday and the second and third to Gavin Cutter and Justin Dover, the other two people who had been in the tunnels the night Trish O’Brian was murdered. None of the visits would involve Helen.

      The doorbell rang, and he opened the door, surprised to find Helen standing there holding a tray, her face suffused with cotton-candy pink. She was dressed in an immaculate silk blouse and jeans that showed her long legs to advantage. There were no signs of their dangerous adventure in her outward appearance anymore. Gorgeous, he thought before he shut that unwanted observation down.

      “You didn’t have to bring it yourself,” he finally said.

      “I was out and about anyway.” She offered him the tray.

      He admired her pluck since he’d made his feelings perfectly clear. Laurel peeked around his leg. He realized he should have introduced them before. “Laurel, this is Miss Helen.”

      She smiled. “Hi, Laurel.”

      “We’re gonna sit at the table for breakfast,” Laurel said, looking at Sergio. “Can she sit too?”

      “Oh, I’ve got to get back to the lodge. I’m...”

      “Too busy,” he said. He had not intended it to be a recrimination, but it might as well have been. Her flush deepened and he felt a prick of regret at paining her. She’d been kind and had gone out of her way, even if it was probably born of guilt. Stop being a jerk, Sergio.

      “I...” Helen straightened and seemed to come to a decision. “I could stay for a minute,” she said.

      More courage. Her gleam of determination kicked his pulse up a notch.

      Without warning, a blur of motion across the grass startled them all. Helen sighed at the approach of a white dog with crooked ears and amber eyes, a floppy cone stuck around his neck.

      “Jingles,” Helen said, “sit.”

      The dog promptly dropped into an awkward sit, legs sprawled out to one side. “I’m sorry. This is my brother’s dog and he’s here at the lodge while Liam is on his honeymoon. He doesn’t know what to do with himself while Liam’s gone. They’re very bonded. Jingles is my guard dog at night. He bunks in my room in the main building.”

      Both girls were now peeking around Sergio’s leg, staring at the strange sight.

      “Owie?” Lucy said.

      Helen smiled. “Oh, he got stuck in a barbed-wire fence and had to have stitches.” She realized that was too difficult an explanation and added. “He wears that until his owie is better. He’s supposed to get it off today.”

      Lucy blinked gravely.

      “I’ll keep him outside,” Helen started, but Lucy was already scrambling past, plopping down on her knees to stroke Jingles’s sides. The dog’s eyes rolled blissfully.

      Sergio shook his head. “Well I guess they’re friends. He might as well come in too.” He stood aside, and Lucy and Jingles made their way to the kitchen. Sergio hastily gathered up the stack of mangled Ocean Life magazines. He caught her amusement.

      “The girls like to cut out the fish pictures. Sometimes they get started on that before I have a chance to read them.” He added them to the pile of crumpled parenting magazines.

      Helen smiled. “I remember cutting up my brother’s comic book one time, and boy did I hear about that.”

      Laurel climbed up into the wooden chair, her sister beside her, and carefully tucked a paper napkin on her lap.

      “What good manners,” Helen said, sitting in the farthest chair away from Sergio.

      He scooped Lucy up and set her in the seat next to him, smoothing the