by Kym Roberts
I shuddered with the thought, and prayed she was safe. If anything happened to her…Cade would never forgive me. The town would never forgive me. But most of all, I could never forgive myself.
“Penelope!” I yelled.
Leaves rustled to my left, and I jumped, wanting it to be Penelope, but afraid it was a killer with an ax instead. A bushy tail twitched at me. The squirrel flattened his ears, then barked his anger as if he was scolding me. He was not happy with my intrusion. I was in his territory, not the other way around, and in his opinion, I needed to leave.
“Sorry, buddy. I’m not leaving until I find her.”
Mateo’s voice called out a short distance away, but again, Penelope didn’t answer.
I scanned the area around me and looked down the path before me. Nothing looked out of place; everything looked normal. Maybe that’s what scared me most of all. The recent rain caused the damp forest floor to smell a bit moldy, almost like old socks. I pushed forward looking for the slightest detail that didn’t belong and I finally found it.
A scuff in the dirt. A shoe print that appeared fresh. And a broken branch leading off the trail.
“Mateo,” I called. “I’ve got something.”
I heard him breaking through the twigs and branches, pushing his way through vines that were undoubtedly tearing at his arms. When he finally reached me, I ignored his angry scowl and pointed out what looked like a path made by a frantic descent away from the parking lot.
“I need you to go back to the car,” Mateo ordered.
“I’m not leaving Penelope.”
“Charli, I don’t have time to argue with you, and we don’t know what we’re going to find.”
He didn’t have to say it. I knew he thought we’d find her dead, but I wasn’t giving up. Penelope was out there, and I was going to find her. Because the alternative of giving up and calling Cade to tell him his mom was dead, was not something I could accept. I pushed harder than I should have, but I felt strongly about finding her.
“The only way you’re going to get me to leave is if you handcuff me and drag me back to the car. Otherwise, I’m staying with you.”
Mateo worked his jaw. I was pretty sure I was the only one who challenged his temperament on a daily basis, yet somehow the man still stuck around.
“Fine. But you’ll stay behind me. No arguing. No going off on your own. You are my shadow. And the sun is in front of me. Got that.”
I nodded, afraid to say anything lest I tick him off and he drag me back to his patrol car. He spoke to the other officer on his radio and told him he would keep him updated if we found anything on the east trail. We pushed forward, shoving branches out of the way that had grown over the path so seldom used. We followed foot tracks that appeared as if someone was stumbling as they ran. But they were running away from the shelter house, not toward it, and the last we knew, Penelope was making her way to her car.
We called out to Penelope several more times with no response. The young officer sounded as if he was getting farther and farther away, and I wondered if we’d be able to hear him much longer. The mud was getting deeper, thicker, and harder to travel through. My shoes were once again ruined, my pants a muddy mess. Up ahead, I could see the edge of the cliff. Dread began to sink in. The footprints were leading straight to the edge of the cliff I was familiar with. As teens, we’d carved out skeletons on the face of it. The soft sandstone made a perfect sculpting surface and was covered with skulls with mouths open and eyes hallowed. Silent screams never heard in an imaginary graveyard of mystical bones. It was the graveyard of teenagers with macabre imaginations who hadn’t experienced enough life to know how frighteningly awful it could be.
Mateo called out again, “Penelope! It’s the sheriff …Mateo. I’m here to help you.”
“Sheriff? Is that you?”
Mateo took off first with me hot on his heels, our footsteps crunching across the tracks we’d carefully avoided earlier. Knowing her voice was no longer a memory to cherish and Penelope was still alive made preserving the footprints seem irrelevant—if they took us to a living, breathing woman.
“Where are you? Come out so I can see you,” Mateo yelled.
A little tuff of gray hair pushed up over the edge of the cliff, and for a moment, my heart nearly sank. We reached the edge and found Penelope hanging onto a root. Her feet were on a ledge but it was a man-made ledge—from the looks of it, the eyebrow of what was undoubtedly the largest skull carved into the side of the sandstone cliffs I’d ever seen.
“Don’t move, Penelope. I will get you up.”
“Thank the Lawd in heaven above. I thought I was done for. I’ve been reconciling myself with every sin I’ve ever committed. I asked for forgiveness for things I did when I was a teenager. I asked the Lawd to watch over my son and keep him safe and to let his grief be short-lived.”
As we got closer, I saw dusty tear tracks running down her cheeks. I had never seen Penelope cry about anything. She was a strong Texas woman. Sturdy, with broad shoulders that may not seem very feminine but belonged to the classiest woman I’d ever known. When people called Penelope a pillar in the community, it wasn’t just because of how much she did for the people in our town; she became a pillar when she led causes that were against her husband’s political campaign. When she fought for my idea that stray kittens should be spayed before being sold back into the community. When she organized the Cowboy Ranch Invitational which raised money for injured rodeo stars who faced career-ending injuries and could no longer make ends meet, yet still needed healthcare. She was the very thread that held together the fabric of Hazel Rock.
And at one point in my life, I had thought she would be my mother-in-law. I no longer believed that, but I loved her just the same.
Mateo reached the edge before me and immediately lay on his stomach. With his hands outstretched, he grabbed both of Penelope’s arms.
“Hold onto me, Mrs. Calloway. I’ll pull you up.”
“I don’t think…I…can.” Penelope’s sobbing became real. Her shoulders hitched, her bottom lip quivered, and tears flooded down her cheeks. “I’ve been trying not to look but he’s there…” Her voice trailed off in despair.
“Who’s there?” I asked. No sooner had the words left my mouth than I saw who she was talking about. Penelope had somehow run back to the scene of the crime, because down below her was the bloody body of a man.
The rocky surface below my feet was in direct contrast to the soft sandy ground that displayed the crime scene like a movie set. The man’s arms were spread wide like he’d taken a Nestea Plunge in a pool.
But the pool wasn’t a concrete hole in the ground filled with water, the pool was created by the victim’s own blood failing to soak into the sandstone…while an ax protruded from his chest as if someone had tried to split him in half like a log.
It was a sight I didn’t want to see. Especially when I caught the faint image of a waxing moon over the treetops. Like a white cloud in the light-blue daytime sky—it was barely visible, yet it taunted me to make a connection between the body below and Jamal’s app. I didn’t want to read anything into it, but the image was eerily similar to the cover of Lucy Barton’s latest Midnight Poet Society Mystery. I just hoped it was coincidence.
Except, I didn’t believe in coincidences…and by the look on Mateo’s face, neither did he.
Chapter Ten
Penelope couldn’t say if she had been chased or not. She’d told Mateo her imagination may have gotten the best of her, and when she saw the damage to her car, pure panic had set in. She ran to the cliff and hid over the edge. She was lucky she didn’t fall to her death.
J. C. Calloway arrived shortly after the ambulance personnel were done checking Penelope over. He was an imposing figure—the kind of man who made little kids hide behind their momma’s leg. The kind of man that other men moved off the sidewalk to avoid.
He exuded power over our small town like a mob boss. Not that he was one, but that was the type of fearful respect and wide berth people gave him. Yet they also liked the old codger with the political grin and confident swagger of a man dressed in money. I could count on one hand how many times I’d seen him wear something other than a navy suit with a white shirt starched stiffer than a dead cow in the Texas sun.
The only weakness he had was his son, or rather his desire to see his son become more successful than him. It was fuel to his fire. But for those of us who knew J. C. on another level, we were also aware of his second weakness—cigars. And for some reason, I seemed to make J. C. Calloway want to smoke even more cigars. He didn’t smoke them around anyone else. In fact, he quit smoking twelve years ago, but when I came back to town, my daddy bought him a Cuban cigar and since then, the man seemed to always have one in his hand when I saw him. Daddy thought it was funny.
Cade didn’t understand my daddy’s joke. I also wasn’t sure if it was funny or not, considering I’d left town amid false rumors of being pregnant with Cade’s baby. J. C. had always told Cade I was bad for his career. Whether it was high school football or college J. C. was determined to make sure I didn’t mess with Cade’s path to an NFL career. His determination worked, I’d been long gone by the time Cade entered the NFL, and I hadn’t been around for his first election as mayor either. During his re-election campaign his daddy had wanted me gone from our little town. It didn’t matter what I did to change his opinion—I was bad news as far as J. C. was concerned.
I imagined he had some influence on Cade when it came to running for political office, as well as staying away from me. I understood it, to a point, but for me everything went back to J. C. We clashed worse than oil and water. We were like gasoline and fire. We exploded when we came into contact with each other. Not visibly, just on the inside where no one could see, or feel, or hear… No one but me and J. C. felt the blast.
So of course, I got to smell his disapproval up close and personal as he lit up a cigar right in my face when he arrived at the scene. J. C. was not happy his wife was sitting in Mateo’s patrol car. She was filthy and exhausted and still shaking from her ordeal. She’d refused the ambulance, but I knew J. C. would take her to the doctor. I was completely okay with that. Penelope wasn’t in the best of shape. J. C. wasn’t in the best of shape either, and, judging by the color of his face, I wouldn’t doubt if he was working himself up to a heart attack as we spoke.
“This is your fault, Charli Rae.” J. C. blew smoke in my face.
“I understand, sir.”
I started to walk away but he grabbed my arm.
“J. C. Calloway, you let that girl be,” Penelope called from the backseat of the car. She may have been shaken but she hadn’t lost her spunk.
J. C. released my arm with a parting shot. “You’ve always been a wild child, Charli Rae, and trouble always follows you.”
I walked around to the other side of the patrol car, biting the tip of my tongue so hard I was lucky I didn’t have a slice of it for dinner.
I thought of the last twelve years. The years I’d run away because of the way this man made me feel. There was no way I’d let him see how much his words hurt. I understood what he meant to Cade, and I knew he was Penelope’s world, and out of respect for them, I refused to engage J. C. He’d have to argue with himself.
And from the looks of his beet-red face, he had enough anger to fill the high school football field. He was holding it together for Penelope, but just barely. If he got me away from her, there was no doubt in my mind he would chew me up one side and down the other. Then he’d spit my remains out for the animals to eat—but I’d be hog-tied in knots before I’d ever stand in front of that man and let him berate me like that again.
“I’m going to take my wife to the hospital, Sheriff. You can talk to her after that.”
“Don’t be a horse’s petunia, J. C. I’m fine.”
J. C. wasn’t having any of it. As Penelope tried to stand, he grabbed her to lend her support, because despite her determination to show a stiff upper lip, Penelope needed every last bit of J. C.’s strength.
Mateo hopped out of his patrol car and stopped me from helping Penelope with a shake of his head. “I got this.”
He was around the patrol car in what seemed like a couple long steps and assisted J. C. in walking Penelope over to his Hummer.
“There was a reason I didn’t want that monster,” Penelope complained. “Getting me inside that thing is going to take a tow truck.”
“You’re light as a feather, darlin’. Ain’t nobody going to need any assistance with my hands on your body.”
Mateo was fighting hard not to smile as Penelope blushed. It was nice to see J. C. actually did have a heart—too bad he hadn’t shown it to his son, or me. Once J. C. lifted his mass into the driver’s seat, Mateo stepped back and watched them drive away.
“J. C. gives me hope,” he said.
I snorted. I couldn’t help it. “How is that?”
“Because of you.” When I looked at him with a blank expression, he explained. “You have to consider whether or not you can stand spending holiday dinners with J. C. if you get back together with Cade.”
The image was more than frightening. I couldn’t fathom sitting at the elegant dining room table with J. C. scowling on my left and Penelope chatting about the Women’s League on my right, as I stared across a fancy spread of holiday trimmings at Cade…looking for some kind, any kind of support that would never come.
Mateo beamed. He knew he’d made his point loud and clear, yet he continued the rub. “J. C. could live another thirty years. Can you imagine him sitting back and letting the two of you be happy? J. C.’s a plus in my column, not Cade’s.”
* * * *
Several hours later, as the two of us sat in the tearoom of the Barn with my Aunt Violet and Jamal, I had another hard decision to make. My cousin didn’t quite see eye to eye with Mateo.
“I’m not closing down my app, Sheriff. Over eight hundred people have downloaded my app since the murder.”
“Jamal Keynon Harris!”
My cousin cringed at his mom’s use of his whole name. For a moment, he looked like the young teen who got dropped off at the house by his friends at the age of seventeen. He’d been caught throwing up in the driveway from the one beer he’d inhaled moments earlier. It wasn’t his shining moment. Nor was this.
“Mom…”
“No, sir. I did not raise a blood-thirsty, self-centered man.”
“No, ma’am, you didn’t. But you also didn’t raise a man to be browbeaten into submission because someone believes they know the truth of a situation without any evidence.”
Violet’s bottom lip rolled in. I could tell she was debating the validity of his argument, and in the end, she chose to question Mateo.
“Why do you think the murder was related to my baby’s app?”
“Really, Mom.” Jamal began to protest her endearment but she shut him down immediately.
“Shush, baby.”
My cousin shrunk back into his role of a minor.
Mateo wasn’t about to back down, but he was honest and I respected him for that. “All we have is the murder occurring at the location of one of the app’s books.”
Violet pushed. “At the exact location?”
“No.” Mateo wasn’t one to beat around the bush. He believed they were connected. That was enough for him.
As a retired beat cop, my aunt understood his belief, but she also understood what it was like to be put in a corner. She wasn’t about to let that happen to her baby. “The body wasn’t in the location of the book?”
“No, it was on the path to the observation dock.”
She pushed for more details. “So, that man wasn’t killed where a book could be grabbed and put on someone’s bookshelf?”
; “No, but that doesn’t discount the method of death.”
“Which was?” Aunt Violet didn’t expect an answer. She didn’t get one either.
“I can’t tell you.”
“But it had something to do with Ms. Barton’s mysteries…”
Mateo stood his ground. “It was similar.”
“Similar.”
“Yes.”
“But not exact?”
“No.”
Their back and forth was giving me a headache.
“Do you have any evidence to link the murder with the app?” Aunt Violet was willing to pin Mateo down if that was what it took.
“No.”
“Any witnesses in the park?”
Mateo shook his head.
“Cameras?” Violet wouldn’t give up.
Again a shake of Mateo’s head.
“Then, I’m with my son. There are some similarities, but that doesn’t create a connection. Baby, you keep your app running.”
“Did I hear that woman correctly?” J. C. Calloway was standing in the side door of the Barn with my dad. They’d entered without any of us hearing a sound.
Jamal was the first to get his feathers ruffled and unfolded his large body from the wire chair in the tearoom. “That woman is my mother and she has a name.”
J. C. was unfazed by my cousin’s irritation. He’d seen his fair share of unhappy people in his day as mayor when he’d lost the election over a tax break he refused to give a major retail store. Jamal standing up and showing off his skinny six-foot-eleven height, meant nothing to J. C. Mateo, on the other hand, saw the writing on the barn wall and placed himself between Jamal and J. C.
“Son, are you telling me that you’re not going to shut down your app?” J. C. asked.
