Memory of Murder

by Ramona Richards

  “He should have had backup—”

  “They were gone! He was alone! I should have—”

  April stood in front of Lindsey, halting her progress. “Stop. This is not your fault. It’s the fault of the guy who broke in and swung a meat tenderizer at a sheriff’s deputy in order to escape. That guy. Not you.” She took Lindsey by the shoulders and pushed her down into a chair. “Now you need to calm down and stop the pity party. This isn’t about you or what you did or didn’t do or could or couldn’t do. I know you’re a control freak, little sister, but this isn’t about you or anything you can control. It’s about him.”

  Lindsey stared at April, her cheeks heating, first with anger. A pity party? Is that what they think?

  Well...listen to yourself.

  Lindsey froze, the heat in her face becoming chagrin. “It has been about me, hasn’t it?”

  June and April exchanged a look of relief. April took a deep breath. “You and your restaurant. You want the case solved, but more than that, it’s been about your keeping things normal and the restaurant open. Clearly that’s been more important than helping them solve the problem of someone who wants to kill you. It’s spreading their resources thin.”

  Lindsey felt ill, her stomach queasy. “I just don’t want to fail. I can’t let this guy make me fail!”

  June sat next to her. “Have a little faith, little sister. If this is what God wants for you, you won’t fail. Look at the response you got this morning. God led you here, back to us. Do you think that was a mistake? If not, then accept that He’ll give you what you need to get through this.”

  Lindsey looked down at her hands. “You think I should shut down.”

  April knelt in front of her, taking both hands in hers. “RuthAnn is missing, and June and I aren’t really cut out for this work.”

  “The customers love you.”

  “Because they know us. They know we’re helping you out. They like that, so they’ll forgive our mistakes. But not for long. You saw the chaos that happened yesterday at lunch. We ran out of food. Orders were delayed. Trying to stay open could create more problems than shutting it down.”

  June joined the argument. “Just close the restaurant for a few days. Give the Schneiders some needed time off, and let the Sheriff’s Department narrow their focus. Give them a chance to do what they do best.”

  “Instead of babysitting me.”

  June shifted in her chair. “They’ll still be doing that, but in a more secure way. It’s the restaurant that’s dividing their resources. Don’t forget that you’re the key to this. Your memory, or whatever it is that cretin thinks you remember. You can’t ferret that out as long as you’re worried about the Salisbury steak for table twelve.”

  Lindsey pulled her hands from April’s and hugged herself, rocking back and forth. Her sisters made sense. Good, logical sense. But the whole thing made her gut churn. She felt tossed about, as if her dream were being tugged from her grasp in a whirlpool of unfortunate events. As if her assailant were winning by making her fail. She closed her eyes. Lord...

  A sharp memory flashed through her mind, and Lindsey stopped moving. Her mother holding her close, rocking. Be still, my child, and listen... They were her mother’s words, whispered as she stroked Lindsey’s face with a cool cloth, following one of her father’s outbursts. Lindsey let her mind drift, remembering those moments. They would wait for him to leave, then her mother would sit in a rocker and pull Lindsey into her lap, whispering, over and over Be still, my child, and listen... Be open to hearing and the answer will come to you.

  The sound of footsteps broke through Lindsey’s thoughts and her eyes opened. Ray stood in front of them, his hat in hand.

  They all stood. “How is he?” Lindsey asked.

  Ray hesitated, then a look of resignation crossed his face. “Not good. He hadn’t really healed from the mild concussion of the first attack. This one has aggravated his condition. Nick has said if he doesn’t rest, he’ll recommend that Jeff be taken off active duty. Instead, I’m going to have to take him off the case—”

  “What if I close the restaurant?”

  Ray stopped, looking startled by the question. “What?”

  Lindsey stepped closer to him. “I’ll close the restaurant until this is over. Jeff and I could work on my background. It’ll be mostly computer work, and we could do it in spurts, so he could rest. Whatever we turn up, y’all could do the follow-up.”

  “It would solve the problem of everyone being overworked,” June said. “And give Jeff the chance to get the rest he needs, without being taken off the case.”

  Ray looked from his wife to each of the sisters in turn. “You’ve been plotting again.”

  April smiled. “We just want to help.”

  “Hmm.” After a few moments, he nodded. “I’ll talk to Jeff and Nick.” He headed back to the treatment area, then paused. He looked back at the three sisters and opened his mouth to speak. Then he changed his mind, shook his head and walked away.

  “What was that about?” Lindsey asked.

  “He’s never seen sisters in action.” June grinned. “We’re a formidable team when it comes to forging workable solutions.”

  “Workable.” Lindsey sank back into a chair. The setback of closing the restaurant felt like a weight settling down on her shoulders. “It doesn’t exactly feel that way to me. Feels like I’m giving up. Failing.”

  “Only if you let it.” June stood in front of her, feet apart, hands on her hips. “In fact, a little setback might be good for you.”

  Lindsey stared at her sister, stunned. “What?”

  April touched June on the arm, and the petite brunette relented a bit, dropping her arms to her sides. “Look, we all came from the same horror show. It worked on us to make us who we are. We’re survivors. But when we got out, our horrors continued. When Mother died, you went into foster care—a good home, from what you’ve said.”

  Lindsey nodded, still hurt and not sure where June was headed with this.

  “You had a chance to dream. To have a bit of a normal childhood. A chance to develop a long-range plan. Yeah, that plan may have come out of you going to work at fifteen, fighting for cash to help that family. But you love what you do. You planned, saved, went to school for it. In fact, since you went to work, your setbacks have been minor. You’re determined, good at what you do and an amazing woman.”

  June took a deep breath. “But how you handle life when it doesn’t go your way is as important, if not more so, as how you handle success.”

  A surge of anger shot through Lindsey, and she stood up. “So I should just embrace the fact this guy is ruining my business as well as trying to kill me?”

  “No,” said June, refusing to back down. “You should be able to see that this is a wise move in the overall scheme of trying to stop him. Success isn’t always about plowing forward no matter who it hurts. Sometimes it’s about taking a few steps backward so you can see the bigger picture.”

  Who it hurts.

  Jeff. In her mind, she saw the two security guards watching over her while the rest of the Sheriff’s department trickled away, already spread thin, leaving Jeff to clean up the remaining forensics tasks. Jeff should never have gone in the cellar without backup...but there was no backup.

  “Also,” April said softly, “the restaurant has become a weapon.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s turned it against you. He’s using it to hurt you, to draw you out and to hurt Jeff. It’s your point of vulnerability. Shutting it down closes off one of his ways of getting to you. I know you’re worried about what will happen when you reopen. But this is a small town. The people love you. They’re loyal. They’ll be back.”

  “You sound convinced.”

  “We are.”

  Behind them, Ray
cleared his throat. They turned, looking at him expectantly.

  “They are keeping Jeff overnight for observation. This one’s pretty serious, and Nick’s worried about what could happen if he gets hit again. Depending on what the CT scan shows, Nick’s agreed to release him on limited duty. Desk only. No patrols. No crime scenes. In the meantime, I’m going to send a small army with you to close up the restaurant, then to your house if you need to pick up anything else. Then it’s over to April and Daniel’s until we get to the bottom of this. Right?”

  Lindsey nodded. “Backing up in order to move ahead.”

  Ray paused, looking from Lindsey to his wife, then back to Lindsey. “June’s been talking to you.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Fall back and punt is my wife’s favorite football play. She’s the queen of second chances.”

  June harrumphed, then stopped, looking from Lindsey to Ray.

  “What is it?” Lindsey asked.

  “The book. The one in the glove compartment. We didn’t get a chance to talk about it before.”

  Ray froze. “What about it?”

  “What book?” asked April.

  June turned to her older sister. “They found a book in the glove compartment of the GTO. An old, waterlogged copy of Catcher in the Rye.”

  April paled. “Oh, no.”

  Lindsey felt as confused as Ray looked. “What about the book?”

  June moved closer to her younger sister. “You don’t remember it. You went out with Daddy one day, and when y’all got home, you had a copy of Catcher in the Rye tucked under one arm. You picked it up wherever y’all had been. Daddy went off and beat the living daylights out of you. Called you a thief. Said you were too young to read such filth. He threw it in the toilet. You fished it out, and dried it on the windowsill. You carried that book everywhere.”

  Lindsey dropped down in one of the chairs. She didn’t remember any of this. Didn’t remember the book. Didn’t remember that incident. She shook her head. “I don’t...” She looked at June. “If I carried it everywhere, what happened to it?”

  Lindsey barely heard April’s quiet reply. “It disappeared when Mother died. You asked me about it at the funeral.”

  “So the book...” Ray said coldly.

  June finished it. “Is a message.”

  * * *

  Hospital rooms are never completely dark. Or quiet. Ever. Jeff decided long ago this was by design, so that no one got comfortable enough to want to stay. The longer you stayed, the more often nurses and techs made their rounds, gathering to talk outside your partially open door, occasionally dropping pens. If you stayed long enough, they graduated to dropping charts and clipboards, possibly arranging for housekeeping to overturn carts or start the floor waxer at midnight.

  “Your blood pressure is still elevated.” The nurse, a practical, efficient and chatty woman named Deb, had tucked, fluffed and tended to Jeff, all the while letting him know that even though she had four grandchildren she was only forty-five, and that two of those grandbabies belonged to her middle son, who was a police officer in Charlotte, so she definitely had a place in her heart for law enforcement officers.

  Without appearing to even breathe, Deb continued the patter as she typed his vitals into a laptop, then scribbled the results on a whiteboard near Jeff’s bed, ending with, “Any idea why it’s still up?”

  “Probably lack of sleep.”

  Deb grinned. “How’s your pain level on a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst?”

  “It would be a ten only if I could shoot the drummer in my head.”

  She nodded. “I’ll check with the doc about your painkillers. Don’t want to dose you too much.”

  Jeff returned the nod, but winced. Deb’s mood turned somber, and she went silent as she peered at him a few moments. “How’s your memory of the event?”

  “Nada.” Jeff still remembered nothing between talking to Ralph about changing the cellar locks and awakening in the ambulance. “But I don’t stop in the middle of sentences anymore.”

  Deb smiled again, although not as broadly. “I’ll take any progress. But you do need to get some rest.”

  “I thought y’all didn’t let concussion patients sleep.”

  “Went out with putting butter on a burn.”

  “Ah, that’s what the scan is for.”

  “Gotta love progress.”

  “How long before the goose egg goes down?” He pointed at the swelling around his stitches.

  “Couple of days.” She finished her work and paused. “Do you need anything?”

  “A Wayback machine?”

  “Fresh out.”

  “Some ice water?”

  “You got it.”

  With that, Deb strode out of the room, pulling the door shut.

  Jeff let out a long sigh and lowered the head of the bed a bit. The room reminded him of every other patient’s room he’d been in, especially the empty ones his mom had someone stash him in when the babysitter hadn’t shown up. Always cold and strangely unfriendly, no matter how “homelike” the designers tried to make them.

  No, not just unfriendly. Remote. Alien. As if they had all been equally designed to make people feel as if they were strangers in a strange land. The nurses could make you feel welcome, as comfortable as whatever illness you had would let you be. But the rooms...you didn’t really belong.

  Like me in Lindsey’s world.

  Jeff shifted uncomfortably in the bed and adjusted the pillow. Six months. They’d known each other just over six months. For a long time he hadn’t wanted to admit, even to himself, exactly how interested he was in her. He thought it revealed a lack of professionalism. After all, their friendship was based on work and their nightly runs to the bank.

  But, finally, he had to admit that the protectiveness he felt ran deep, deeper than a professional relationship could account for. She’d been on his mind a lot even before that guy showed up in the GTO. Now she occupied almost every waking thought—and most of his dreams.

  Should he push those feelings away and go back to a professional relationship? He’d failed to protect her, so could he even go back to that? Would she trust him?

  “Hey.” Her voice was so soft he barely heard her.

  Jeff blinked twice, not really believing he was seeing Lindsey’s blond hair and blue eyes peeking through the door. “Hi.”

  “Can I come in?”

  Jeff scrambled for the bed control and raised his head up. “Sure.”

  Lindsey entered and crossed the room slowly. “How are you doing?”

  “All right, I guess.”

  “Ray said you still had some problems with your memory of the attack.”

  “I have no memory of it.”

  She winced. “That’s part of the concussion?”

  “So they say.”

  Her eyes brightened with tears. “Jeff, I’m so sorry.”

  “So you’re the one who whacked me with a meat tenderizer?”

  She hesitated, looking puzzled a second, then she straightened. The tears vanished. “Smart aleck. But you shouldn’t have been in the cellar alone. If there had been backup—”

  “My choice. I went alone. Just because I don’t remember doesn’t mean that Ray hasn’t filled in the gaps for me. And properly chewed me out in the process.”

  “I closed the restaurant.”

  Jeff froze, not quite believing what he heard. “You did? Why? Because of me? Because of this?” He couldn’t believe the surge of anger he felt.

  She held up her hand. “Yes, and no.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Yes, in part because of the attack. But mostly because of me. I’ve been focused on the wrong thing. The restaurant. We’ve been attacked. He’s still thr
eatening us. Normality should stop. We can go back to it later.” With a sudden move forward, Lindsey grabbed one of his hands, holding it in both of hers. “And I think we’ve both been dancing around the edges of something we feel. That there’s something between us. Whether it’s love or an indelible friendship, I don’t know. Right now, I don’t know if I want to know. Right now, we just need to stop him. Does that make sense?”

  Jeff looked at her, wishing suddenly that he could spend a lifetime doing just that, gazing at those eyes, her high cheekbones, those rich, full locks of hair that flowed over her shoulders. But he also recognized that they had been divided in their attention, with both the restaurant and each other. They needed to focus.

  He nodded. “More sense than you may realize. But before we take this new tactic, there’s something I’d like for you to do.”

  “What?”

  “Kiss me.”

  Lindsey’s eyes widened a bit, and she hesitated. Then, unhurriedly, she leaned toward him. He met her halfway, and their lips met with a lingering kiss that was soft and sweet. As they parted, neither spoke for a few moments, then Jeff cleared his throat. “Tomorrow, we’ll be all business. Until it’s done.”

  Lindsey licked her lips, then nodded. “Tomorrow.”

  * * *

  Jeff stood in the cellar, but the room spun around him, a fuzzy vertigo that made it seem as if the room shifted instead of him. He turned slowly, trying to keep his balance as he examined everything around him. Shelves of equipment undulated, as if made of seawater. Light faded on and off, illuminating then darkening areas of the cellar and casting ghostly shadows all around him.

  There it was, near the steps, movement that wasn’t shadow. Man-shaped. The room spun faster, and as the light dimmed again, the figure moved, rushing at Jeff.

  They grappled, tumbling on the floor. His strength surprised Jeff; he hadn’t appeared strong. They rolled, with shades of black and white engulfing them. Too late, Jeff saw the mallet in his upraised hand.

  “Ah!” Jeff jerked awake, a cry of alarm bursting from him. He looked around, head thudding with pain. The empty hospital room greeted him only with beeps, and the distant chatter of the night shift. Sweat covered his body, and Jeff thrust the covers aside, pushing down on the bed and swinging his legs over one side.