Hazardous Homecoming

by Dana Mentink

  Mick moved aside. “Well, help her then.” He obviously did not remember Cooper Stokes, brother of the most despised man in the county. Just as well.

  Cooper bent and resumed his examination. “Here,” he said, pointing to a thin ribbon of blood bisecting Ruby’s creamy skin at the waist. “She’s cut, but it’s not deep. She’s got a bump on her head which might be a bigger issue. We should get her to a doctor.”

  “I’ll do it. Thanks.” Mick didn’t wait for any more discussion. He lifted Ruby from the ground and plunged back down the path from which he’d come. Cooper flexed his shoulder, sore from getting shoved into the tree trunk. He should go back to the cabin, let go of the thought of the red-haired Ruby Hudson, especially after what she’d done. It was clear that if he dared to follow Mick there would be trouble.

  Trouble?

  That was just fine with Cooper. He’d had his share of it, and he wasn’t going to shy away.

  He took off through the dappled woods after Mick and his wounded sister.

  TWO

  Ruby registered two things—the cool wet towel being applied to her head and the worry creases on the forehead of her brother who was taping some sort of bandage to her side. She sat up with a hiss.

  “Ouch. That hurts.”

  “You were stabbed. Not deep, just long,” Mick said. “Taking you to the doctor anyway.”

  She shook the hair out of her face. “No, you’re not. I’m fine, and we don’t need to go to the doctor. We need the police.”

  “I didn’t catch the lady,” said a voice from the open front door. “Sorry, but your well-being seemed more important at the time.”

  Ruby blinked against the sunlight which rendered the speaker no more than a blurry silhouette. “Who...?”

  “Cooper Stokes,” said the tall man.

  “Cooper? You’re...”

  “Peter’s brother, yes. We haven’t seen each other in a long time. I think I was seven to your five when Alice was snatched, if memory serves.”

  Mick’s eyes were cold steel. “You have no business here. Your mother called my sister a liar all those years ago when Alice disappeared.”

  “And your sister accused my brother of kidnapping. Peter’s life was ruined and it seems to me that you all are doing just fine, so who has the bigger right to a grudge, I wonder?”

  “Do you want him to leave?” said Mick to Ruby, “because I don’t have a problem throwing him out.”

  “It would be harder than you think,” Cooper said quietly.

  Ruby was about to answer, but instead she cried out as Mick taped the bandage to her side. “Sorry, Bee.” The tone was gentle until he turned back to Cooper.

  “My sister’s hurt. She needs to be left alone right now. No offense.”

  “None taken,” Cooper said. “I’ll be happy to go with you to the police if you need me. I’m what you call a witness, I think. I didn’t see the attack, but maybe I can tell them about the lady with a bloody knife.”

  “The lady was Josephine Walker, and I’m not pressing charges.” She heard Cooper suck in a breath. From the corner of her eye, his crew-cut blond hair glimmered in the light, and she could feel him tracking her every movement.

  “That was Alice’s mother?” Cooper shifted, eyes darting in thought.

  “Of course you’re pressing charges,” Mick said. “Lady tried to kill you.”

  “She’s not in her right mind. She’s been following me for months, and she saw me find...”

  Both men stood stock still.

  She forced a businesslike tone. “I found Alice’s locket. It was tangled in the branches of the abandoned eagle’s nest.”

  Two sets of shocked eyes stared at her.

  “Are you sure it belonged to Alice?” Cooper demanded, moving closer, hands on his waist. Stylish jeans, she noticed, well-cut shirt that molded to his trim body.

  “I’m pretty sure, but she took it before she stabbed me. We need to talk to the police and get it back. It could prove...” What? Who had taken Alice? Where she had wound up? Or nothing at all.

  Cooper’s lips thinned into a tight line. “Maybe there’s DNA on it that will prove finally that my brother was not the kidnapper.”

  “Your brother was never even charged,” Mick said.

  “Didn’t have to be. He was a fifteen-year-old kid. The accusation, the looks, the way he was shut out, turned him into an alcoholic.” Ruby looked at the floor.

  “It wasn’t an accusation. Your brother was in the woods that day. I saw him. It was a fact.”

  “He denies it, and he didn’t kidnap that girl, but not one person in this town believed him, especially the two of you. The police questioned you also, Mick, didn’t they? But people believed your story.”

  “Because mine wasn’t a story, it was true.” Mick shook his head. “I had a fight with Alice’s father the night before. I left in a huff. End of story. If Peter was innocent, then he got a bum rap, but turning to alcohol was his choice.”

  “Maybe you should try being convicted by everyone who used to call you friend and see how you deal with it,” Cooper snarled.

  He was face-to-face with Mick, and both looked as though they could easily throw a punch.

  “Enough,” Ruby said. She stood so quickly her head spun and both Mick and Cooper put steadying hands under her arms, which she shook away.

  “Sit down, Bee,” Mick said. “Please.”

  “No. We have to go to town to talk to Sheriff Pickford so he can get the necklace from Josephine. It may finally be the clue that tells us what happened to her.” Ruby was irritated to find that her eyes were wet. After so many years of fear, sorrow and a crushing weight of guilt, the answer might be at their fingertips, the answer to the question that had tortured her for two decades.

  Alice, where are you?

  She would not waste a moment. “I’m going,” she said, reaching for her purse.

  “I’ll drive you,” Mick said, in a tone that indicated he was dealing with a creature he could never hope to understand.

  “All right then.” In spite of the throbbing in her temples, she moved in as dignified a fashion as she could past Cooper to the door. Was it really a wall of anger that seemed to roil out of him like storm clouds, or was it her imagination?

  “Thank you,” she managed. “For helping me in the woods.”

  He gave her a courtly bow. “Anything for a damsel in distress.”

  Even a damsel you believe destroyed your brother?

  Mick grabbed his cell phone. “I’ll call dad on the way.”

  “Your father’s still a private eye?” Cooper asked, arms folded as he slouched against the doorframe.

  “Retired,” Mick said with no further explanation.

  Ruby thought it might be an opening to restore a more civil relationship between them. Whatever he thought of her, Cooper had gone out of his way to help. “Your brother...is he...okay now? I know he’s living in the cabin.”

  “Sober, at the moment, and he’s got a small job of some kind. Always wanted to be a firefighter, but they don’t welcome people with his history into that line of work.”

  Ruby felt her stomach tighten. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too,” he said, watching as Mick led Ruby out the door and to the car.

  * * *

  Cooper would not reveal it for a king’s treasure, but he was reeling inside from the shock as he drove his pickup into town, sick with fear that the Alice Walker incident was abruptly springing back to life. He’d come back to make sure Peter had a home again, that he’d permanently given up living in a car or on the streets. What strange twist of circumstance was it that the whole sordid past should be ripped open now, like a poorly healed wound?

  God, I thought you were on this? That the past was fin
ished and done with? He and Peter had worked so hard to let go of what lay behind them and press toward the future. Wasn’t that what it said in Philippians 3? He felt the old familiar stir of anger, the one he’d fought all his life to crush. He’d decided to read those words, in the tattered Bible left by his father before he’d died in a wreck before Alice was taken. Years later as a twenty year old, he’d eventually listened to a friend and mentor who had encouraged him into a small group where he fit in like a snowman in the Sahara. Slowly, slowly, the peace and comfort in that old book was seeping into his soul, but sometimes there were moments when it seemed too hard to hold on to in a world where there was seemingly no justice or peace.

  He arrived at the sheriff’s office a minute after Ruby and her brother did. They sat in a depressing wood-paneled room that had not changed since the fifties when Cooper guessed it had first been constructed. Sheriff Wallace Pickford was a big man with strong shoulders and the weathered skin of a person who spent time outside and liked it.

  Pickford turned on an iPad that looked ridiculously small under his massive paws. Nonetheless, he opened a file with amazing speed considering he was only using his pointer fingers to type.

  Pickford fixed a heavy stare at Ruby. “Mick says you’re stubbornly refusing to go to the hospital. Do I have that right?”

  Ruby’s cheeks pinked, her coloring like a china doll Cooper’s grandmother used to own. “We have to get the locket from Josephine. It might tell us what happened to Alice.”

  Pickford’s eyes drifted to Cooper. “Hello, Mr. Stokes. You’re back. Joining your brother?”

  “Temporarily,” Cooper said.

  “Hmm. Bad time for both you boys to be back in town,” Pickford said, fingers poised above the keys.

  “Why shouldn’t we be here?” Cooper said. “It’s our property, and Peter hasn’t done anything. He’s got a right to live here and so do I.”

  Pickford shrugged. “Just thinking the climate might not be good, since the Alice Walker case just officially reopened.”

  Cooper was about to tell the sheriff exactly what he thought of the climate, when a silver-haired, mustached man entered. Perry Hudson. Ruby’s father was probably nearing sixty, if Cooper remembered correctly, but his shoulders were still square and his body trim and athletic.

  Pickford’s mouth tightened.

  “Mick told me over the phone,” Perry said, rushing to Ruby and assuring himself that she was unharmed. He raised an eyebrow at Cooper. “I think I owe you a thank-you for helping my daughter.”

  Cooper allowed his hand to be shaken. “Surprised you started with a thank-you.”

  Perry frowned. “I know we’ve got bad blood between us...”

  “Because you tried to prove my brother kidnapped Alice Walker.” Ruby flinched at his tone, but he didn’t let it slow him. No more kid gloves. If Peter was going to claim any chance at a future, it was up to Cooper to lay the groundwork. Cooper’s “live and let live” philosophy would not serve here.

  “I investigated your brother,” Perry said calmly, “because he was the likeliest suspect and he was in the proximity at the time.”

  “Which doesn’t make him guilty. And your son Mick was close in age to Peter and in the same proximity.”

  Mick glared and started to answer, but Pickford cut him off.

  “That’s why we checked him out, too, as well as investigating Lester Walker,” Pickford said. “Can we get on with the matter at hand? My wife has a pot of chili on the stove.” He flicked a glance at Perry. “You know how good Molly’s chili is, don’t you Perry?”

  Perry stared at him. “Yes.”

  Cooper didn’t understand the subtext of whatever was going on between Pickford and Ruby’s father. Hostility? Distrust?

  Ruby detailed the encounter with Josephine Walker. “So we have to get that locket.”

  “All right,” Pickford said, grabbing his radio. “Let’s just go do that.”

  They did not make it farther than the front counter before the door banged open. Josephine clumped in, a shocked silence burying them all for a moment at her wild-eyed stare, her dress bunched and knotted, dirty hem dragging on the floor.

  Pickford recovered first. “Mrs. Walker. Come into my office. We were just making plans to go see you.” They returned to the back and he continued. “Ruby said you’ve got a locket. I’ll need to have a look at that.”

  “He’s coming back,” she said. “He called me a few minutes ago to tell me so.”

  “Who has, ma’am?”

  “My husband.”

  Cooper tried not to look disbelieving, but he knew Lester Walker had taken to acting strangely, convinced that the Hudsons or Peter knew something they weren’t telling about his daughter’s abduction. Days after Alice’s abduction, he’d disappeared, too, though the police had no evidence to suggest he’d done anything to his daughter and had not even been in the county when she was snatched. Indeed the man was grief stricken, according to accounts that Cooper had heard. Lester hadn’t been seen since, that Cooper was aware of.

  Pickford fiddled with the three-hole punch on his desk. “Your husband is coming back, ma’am? Mr. Walker?”

  She nodded, a smile of satisfaction pulling at her thin lips. “Yes, and he’ll make sure my baby is found.” Her eyes slid to Ruby. “You’re going to pay now. For what you did.”

  “She did nothing,” Mr. Hudson said.

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Walker singsonged. “Oh, yes.”

  Cooper saw delicate patches of color deepen on Ruby’s cheeks.

  “I did not hurt Alice, Mrs. Walker. She was my friend, and I’ve grieved every day since she disappeared.” Her voice hitched, and she cleared her throat. “You need to give Sheriff Pickford the locket so he can have it DNA tested.”

  She glared at Ruby. “It’s at home. My husband is on his way to get it. He told me when he called.”

  The chief held up his hands to soothe her. “All right. We’ll just call your husband to talk it over. Okay? What’s the number?”

  “He doesn’t have a cell phone. He called from a pay phone on his way to our house. He must have felt deep in his soul what was happening with our Alice, and he called just at the time we needed him the most. I told him about the locket.”

  “We’ll go talk to him in person, then, at your place.”

  “That’s a good idea, before anything happens to the locket.” Ruby strode to the door.

  “Not to be rude at all, Ruby, but this is a police matter now. You’re not to tag along.” The sheriff shot a glance at Perry. “Or any of the clan.”

  Cooper knew he was included in the directive, as well. Stay away. Let the police handle it. The last time he’d trusted the police to handle things, his brother had been brought in for questioning, turned into the object of hatred by the whole town. He wasn’t going to intrude on an investigation, but he was not going to be the mild-mannered bystander either.

  Ruby’s expression was a blend of anger, determination and exasperation. He was struck by the fact that as much as he did not have fond feelings for the Hudson family, he could not deny that it was hard to tear his eyes away from Ruby. Her hair was the kind of rusty red found in autumn leaves, skin creamy and porcelain, but she was certainly not fragile. Ruby was dainty and graceful, but he knew there was steel running along her spine.

  “He’s right. Let’s take you to the doctor and see to your injury,” Perry said.

  Pickford focused again on Josephine. “You’re very fortunate that Ruby wasn’t injured badly and isn’t pressing charges, but that doesn’t mean I won’t take action if I believe you’re intending to hurt someone. I’m going to insist you go speak to one of the doctors at the hospital right now.”

  Josephine frowned.

  “Let’s have you all wait outside for just a minute,” Pickford said. �
�I need to make a phone call.”

  Mick was already heading to the door, looking relieved that he’d been sprung from the tiny, crowded room.

  Perry thanked the sheriff and nodded to Cooper before he exited, as well.

  Considering the Hudsons were low on the list of his favorite families, he could not explain why he took a step toward Ruby when Josephine walked by. Maybe it was the memory of Josephine standing over her, triumphant. Or the feeling that something about Lester’s well-timed phone call felt wrong, like the scream of a chain saw cutting through a silent forest morning.

  Josephine surged close and Ruby backed into Cooper’s steadying arms.

  “Now you’re going to get what’s coming to you,” Josephine said, her breath stirring the hair around Ruby’s face, one side of her mouth drooping slightly. “You’ll be punished, just like you should have been all those years ago for hiding the truth about what happened to my girl.”

  Ruby’s cheeks flushed and went pale as milk. He tightened his sideways embrace. “Accusations can ruin people, Mrs. Walker.”

  She peered at him. “Peter and the Hudsons. Both of them worked together to ruin my life. Lester said it was a conspiracy all along. But no more. Now it’s time to pay.”

  He was unsure how to respond as she moved by and passed out of sight into the lobby.

  Ruby broke from his grasp. “My family had nothing to do with this,” she said, turning blazing eyes on his.

  He felt the flush of anger and pride. “And neither did mine. Feels rotten when someone thinks you’re a liar, doesn’t it?”

  He expected an acid response to match his own bitterness. Instead he saw her falter as the barb struck home. For a moment, he wished he could retract the words. No one escaped unscathed from that long-ago moment. No one.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was...”

  A shout from the receptionist interrupted his apology. Ruby and Cooper charged through the reception room and out the front door to find Josephine lying on the steps, eyes half-closed, Perry kneeling beside her.

  “She collapsed,” Perry said.