Free 44 Cranberry Point by Debbie Macomber Page A

according to Dan. They’d massacred men, women and children. The event had forever marked him. He couldn’t live with himself any longer. Or so the letter had indicated.
    Grace had been beside herself, not knowing what to do with the information. Roy was afraid he hadn’t been much help. He couldn’t really advise her; whatever became of these facts was her decision and hers alone.
    Shortly afterward, Beldon had repeated the story Dan had written about in his suicide note. He’d mentioned Dan-they’d been two of the four men wandering through that jungle. He’d told Roy that afterward he and Dan hadn’t seen each other for almost thirty years. When Bob had come home to Cedar Cove, they’d completely avoided each other.
    It seemed too much of a coincidence that Roy would hear this grisly tale from two different people within such a short period of time. On a hunch, he’d gone to Troy Davis and suggested the sheriff check out the other two men who’d been with Dan and Beldon that day.
    Sure enough, one of the men-Maxwell Russell-had been reported missing. The unidentified body had turned out to be his. Why he’d come to Cedar Cove and why he’d carriedfalse identification couldn’t be explained, though, any more than his death.
    Not until later was it discovered that Max Russell had actually been murdered. Poisoned. There’d been evidence in the water bottle found in Russell’s rented vehicle.
    Once Russell had been identified, his daughter had visited Cedar Cove to collect her father’s ashes. Davis had set up a meeting between Hannah and the Beldons, and as a favor to Bob, Roy had been at the house when she came by with the sheriff. Roy learned then that Hannah’s mother had died in a car accident, the same one that had badly burned her father. The burns were the reason for Max’s plastic surgery and quite possibly why Bob hadn’t recognized his old friend.
    The circumstances surrounding the car crash led Roy to believe it hadn’t been an accident. He’d probably never be able to prove that. The accident report blamed Russell, but Hannah’s father had insisted the steering had disconnected. There was nothing to verify his account.
    The door to Roy’s office opened and his wife walked in with a tray of coffee and freshly baked cookies. Corrie seemed intent on fattening him up, not that he was making much of a fuss. He certainly wasn’t turning down homemade cookies.
    “Let me guess what you’re reading.” That know-it-all glint shone in her eyes. “Could it possibly have something to do with the Beldon case?”
    “Smarty pants,” he said, grinning up at his wife.
    “You’re going to solve this if it takes the rest of your life, aren’t you?”
    Roy was close to the answer; he could feel it. He didn’t know what he’d missed, if anything, but eventually his instincts would lead him where he had to go. All he neededwas patience but that, unfortunately, seemed to be in short supply.
    Corrie poured coffee into the mug, added cream and gave it to him. “I get suspicious when you’re this quiet.”
    Roy leaned back in his chair, the mug in his hand. “I’m sifting all the facts through my brain.”
    “Do you still think the Beldons might be in some kind of danger?”
    Roy didn’t know how to answer. He shrugged. “Two of the four men are dead. One was murdered and the other committed suicide.”
    “What about the fourth man?”
    “Apparently Davis has talked to Colonel Stewart Samuels. He told me he didn’t think Samuels is involved-but who knows?”
    Corrie looked down at the file and picked up the top sheet. “It says here he’s up for a Congressional Committee assignment. If news of what happened in Nam got out, it could be disastrous to his career, don’t you think?”
    “True.” Roy was well aware of that, but Samuels’s military record was impeccable. And he lived on the East Coast. His whereabouts were accounted for during the time around Maxwell Russell’s death. To be on