by Kym Roberts
“It’s fine. What does she eat?” I had no idea what I was going to feed her, or myself for that matter.
“Look in the pantry—it’s full of cat food. Give her one can at night and one in the morning. In between she’ll go outside and eat bugs, and your dad keeps some mealworms in The Barn for a treat.”
“Uuuggg!” My capitulation was complete.
Cade smiled. “Thank you for cleaning up my injury. Get some sleep and we’ll talk about finding your dad in the morning.”
“Cade . . .”
He stopped and waited for me to finish. Probably waiting for me to ask him to stay. But I surprised myself and him by asking, “Do you think my dad could have killed Marlene?”
“No more than he’d be capable of killing his daughter.”
My ex-boyfriend left the apartment and I finally realized I’d left the refrigerator door open. I looked inside and found blackberry jam, a stick of butter, a half-gallon of milk, two Tupperware containers of something that looked like stew, a piece of chocolate silk pie, and a carton of eggs. I’d forgotten his love of eggs. But behind the eggs I found what I was looking for. With the bag of Snickers in my hand, I turned toward the couch.
Princess was about to jump on the cushion.
“No!” I yelled.
She jumped straight in the air. Huh; so that’s how they died on the road, I thought. Straddle one and they’ll commit suicide by jumping into your undercarriage.
“I’ll get your bath and your dinner. Just stay off the couch.” I hurried over and filled both tubs and then her bowl that said “Princess” on the side. She took her time running back and forth between the tubs, making the water completely brown.
It was kind of gross. She stopped and licked her feet and then looked up at me expectantly.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked, then went and got a towel. I dried her off and she rolled and rubbed all over my hands. I had to admit, it was very cute.
Once I was done, I dumped the water off the porch and threw the towel in the hamper in my dad’s room. I washed my hands and grabbed my bag of Snickers before plopping down on the same old leather couch Cade and I had made out on as teenagers.
I thought about the past and about the man who’d raised me. My dad was no more capable of murder than he was of standing up for a cause. He wasn’t a chicken or weak; he just didn’t get riled up over anything. When my reputation had been on the line, he’d told me to walk through town with my head held high and stop letting the gossip tear me apart. He just couldn’t understand how one little slip of gossip could possibly matter. And he’d joined Cade’s daddy in the plot to destroy my relationship with Cade, no matter what the cost.
Those couple weeks when I’d felt like I’d gone from Hazel Rock’s homecoming princess to Hazel Rock’s Jezebel didn’t seem to bother anyone but me. At seventeen, I’d cried myself to sleep wishing my mom was there to bring the fire to Cade’s backside and put the entire male population of Hazel Rock in their place—including my daddy. Because that couldn’t happen, I did what I had to do instead.
Forgiveness was for a better person. I TPed the mayor’s home, The Barn, and then moved on to Hunter’s house and then Bryan’s. After I was finished, I skipped town, taking my daddy’s truck to the bus station in Abilene.
Now, a dozen years later, I sat looking at the photo on the wall of me dancing on my father’s dress shoes while my mom laughed in the background. She’d been the only African-American woman in Hazel Rock, yet she never let the bias or whispers about her marriage to my daddy faze her. She gave me life. Backbone. And the ability to appreciate people for their character, not their skin color. If she’d lived, I have no doubt she would have taught me how to deal with gossip. But she hadn’t, and that young girl in the picture with a spark in her eyes that wouldn’t be denied had lost out on one of the most important life lessons she could have learned.
The picture captured a time when my life was simple. Both my parents were alive. Rumors didn’t bother me, and the only complication in my life was my less-than-tame curls.
Today, however, I was once again faced with forgiving my dad. He’d stranded me in the middle of my own personal hell. Or I could repeat the past and run for the hills.
There was no argument; the mountains of Denver sounded awfully good.
I could even go for some whipped cream pie.
Chapter Nine
“Where are you?”
I dropped the bomb he wouldn’t believe. “I’m in Hazel Rock.”
“Get out!” My cousin Jamal said exactly what I wished I could do. Get Out.
“Does my mom know?” he asked.
“No. I didn’t want her to make a bigger thing out of it than what it really is.”
“What is it?”
“I came home.” Uncomfortable with my choice of words, I rephrased my answer. “I came back to sign papers to sell The Book Barn.”
“Get out!”
If Jamal said that again, I’d pull him through the phone connection and let him take my place. I closed my eyes and pursed my lips, trying to keep my temper and mouth in check.
“Why are you still there?” I could hear chips crunching in the background and pictured him sitting in front of the TV with a bag of Doritos on his lap, a beer in one hand, and a game control in the other.
“The Realtor was murdered.” I explained. Poorly.
“Get out.”
I sighed. Jamal was my Aunt Violet’s only child and was more like an older brother to me than a cousin. He was also the exact opposite of me: never caused my aunt a day’s trouble. He was smart. Studious. Self-sufficient. His social life consisted of people he met through the internet gaming system he had in his living room. He was socially awkward in person but an extrovert online.
Someday he’d make a horrible husband.
“Listen, I could really use a little—”
“Hey, Char, you know I love you—get him before he gets away!”
“What?” He couldn’t possibly know about the kiss with Cade. Could he?
I heard the game in the background from his TV and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Sorry. I was talking to one of my teammates. I would love to be able to help, but if you’re going to ask for money, I have to tell you I just invested in a new app that’s gonna be killer.” He grunted, and I knew he’d died during his game. He always grunted when his character died. “When are you coming home?”
“I–I don’t know.”
“Well, call me. I’ll pick you up at the airport and we can take Mom out to dinner. She’d love to get together with the two of us.” He hissed, and I pictured him narrowly escaping another death.
“Sure, tell Violet I’m fine,” I said.
“Catch up with you later, Char.” He disconnected and I wondered if I should just call my aunt myself.
But then she’d worry. Offer me money she didn’t have. And I’d feel worse than I already did.
Stuck with nowhere else to go for now, I found a power cord in my dad’s room and moved it to the kitchen counter to plug in my phone, happy he had the same type of cell I did. After stupidly eating a whole bag of Snickers for dinner, I found my energy levels were quickly dropping and a record-setting sugar crash was making the trip to my bedroom difficult.
Crossing the threshold was like walking back in time. Nothing had changed from the day I left. The white iron bed was covered with a hand-quilted bedspread in shades of lavender with matching pillows. My dad’s military trunk sat at the foot of the bed, filled with more hand-stitched quilts made by my grandmother. The French doors leading out to the balcony were covered with the same light purple sheets that had faded in the summer sun. My antique oak dresser stood against one wall and the attached mirror still had darkened edges in the silver. It made me think of all the history, including my own, that had been reflected in that looking glass.
Toenails clicking across the wood floor alerted me to Princess following me into the bedroom, but I immediately s
hooed her back out and closed the door. I turned off the light, got undressed, and crawled into bed, letting the chocolate withdrawal do its magic. By morning the jumble of dreams I’d experienced about Marlene and my dad, her death, and the lost sale of the store made me develop a plan. I’d call Marlene’s real estate company and request they contact the buyer to strike a deal for a reduced cost on The Barn. Then, with the sale of the store out of the way, I could focus on locating my dad, clearing his name, and getting back to my real life—the one that didn’t involve murder.
One phone call later and my plans were shot to hell in a handbasket. In between her tears, the receptionist at Yellow Jacket Realty told me the real estate contract had expired at the end of business hours the previous day. Our buyer had already called and said the deal was off; he had another property that would work out much better—and it wasn’t the scene of a homicide.
That brought up option number two: open the bookstore and make it profitable, which had always been a challenge. All I needed was short-term success; no career changes, just get the store out of the red and show that it was an investment purchase.
Decision made, I took a bath in the claw-foot tub that looked like Dad hadn’t used it in ages, which he probably hadn’t because my snooping revealed a newly added bathroom in the other bedroom that had a shower. My snooping also alerted me to the fact that Dad clearly hadn’t been living in the apartment. His bedroom was clean, with the bed made and the closet mostly empty. He had a few shirts, a couple of ties, and his only suit—the same one he’d worn to my mom’s funeral. A lone pair of black dress shoes collected dust on the floor.
Clean and wrapped in a towel, I padded to my bedroom and rooted through the few items of clothing that hadn’t fit in my suitcase twelve years ago, which I was dang glad to have now. They smelled like cedar balls, but that was better than putting on the same dress I’d worn to jail. The bad part? There was a reason I’d left these clothes behind. Except for the cutoff jeans shorts that had seen better days, they were all associated with Cade. He’d bought me the matching panties and bras, which, unfortunately, still fit. And all the shirts had Cade’s old football number on them in one way or the other.
Ugh.
I chose the shirt with the smallest number thirteen on the upper left-hand section. While identifying me as Cade’s number-one groupie had been cute as a teenager, it was nauseating as an adult. Luckily, if anyone asked, the number and the color of the shirt also matched the current quarterback for the Denver Broncos.
At least one man would know differently, but I planned on avoiding him.
I put on my boots and assessed the look in the mirror. My curls were piled on top of my head in a messy ponytail and the entire outfit embraced working on the farm—something I’d never done, but that didn’t matter. There was work to be done in The Barn.
I pushed Princess outside because she had no desire to leave the oversize doggy bed in the living room and locked the apartment. I swear, Princess was glaring at me.
“You can’t stay in the apartment while I’m gone.”
She blinked, then sat down. Who knew armadillos could sit down?
“Go play.”
She shook her head and snuffled.
If she were human, I’d think she was saying, No way.
“I know you don’t stay in the apartment all day. If you want in The Barn, just scratch on the door. I have work to do.” I headed down the stairs, gave a final glance at my dad’s pet, who hadn’t moved an inch, and made my way past the silent iron bracket. It was freaky not having the sign swinging in the wind above my head as I went through the gate, but I wasn’t in a rush to rehang “Eve’s Gate.” I was seriously thinking about taking it back to Colorado with me, so I left it on the coffee table in the apartment.
Pushing the key into the lock on the side door, I just about peed my pants when the door opened without me turning the handle. The girl screaming from the inside didn’t help much either.
I jumped and then stared at the frozen young couple standing in the middle of The Barn. A few frightening beats of my heart later, we both demanded in unison, “Who are you?”
“I work here,” said the girl with curly blond hair styled very similarly to my own. She had on a pair of low-rise shorts with a T-shirt and flip-flops.
“Nobody works here.”
The boy—young, blond, and athletic-looking—stepped in front of her. “I don’t know who you think you are, lady . . .” His chest was puffed out like a gorilla. Any minute he was going to start pounding on it and tell me not to mess with his woman.
“I get it,” I said and waved his macho-protection attitude out of the way so I could talk to the girl. “I’m Charli Rae Warren. And you are . . . ?”
She breathed a visible sigh of relief and held out her quivering hand. “Aubrey Buchanan. You met my mom yesterday at Beaus and Beauties.”
I vaguely remembered Scarlet asking if Aubrey was supposed to work yesterday. Obviously this was the girl in question. “You do work here,” I said.
“I did, before . . .” She stopped, visibly upset by what had happened to Marlene.
“Aubrey . . .” the boy started.
“How did you get in?” I asked, not giving him a chance to go all ape crazy on me.
“I’ve got a key.”
That explained the unlocked door. I’d been about to give the sheriff a piece of my mind for leaving it unsecured.
“Were you scheduled to work today?”
“ No, I . . . I . . .”
Her response irritated me. I didn’t need nosy kids sneaking into The Barn when they shouldn’t. “You came to see where Marlene was murdered,” I said.
“No!”
I wasn’t going to let her off that easily. Call me mean, but it felt like an invasion of my privacy and Marlene’s. “Would you like me to show you where her body was? Where she lost her fight to live? Is that what—”
“I came to quit!” she yelled.
“Aubrey, you don’t mean that,” said her boyfriend. Then he turned to me. “She left . . . her . . . her term paper here, but we can’t find it.”
“Yes, I do mean it. I do, Darrin. I can’t work here.” On a sob, Aubrey burst into tears and Darrin pulled her into his arms. He looked as if he might join her any minute as he murmured in her ear.
Well, crap. I moved from one foot to the other. I’d done this to them.
Before I could apologize, Darrin beat me to it. “I’m sorry, Ms. Warren. We were trying to do the right thing.”
“No, I’m sorry. Marlene’s death has been hard for everyone. If I find the paper, I’ll bring it by the beauty shop, okay?”
He nodded. Aubrey sniffed and murmured, “Thank you,” before they walked out the door I’d just entered hand in hand.
Only then did I really see the interior of The Barn. The sight in front of me left my mouth hanging open.
“Fuzz buckets!” I wasn’t talking to anyone in particular. Just myself. And the buzzing fluorescent light bulbs. And the rows upon rows of books. And the mess the sheriff had left me.
Black powder covered everything outside the tearoom. It was smeared over the cash counter and register. The pink princess merchandise was sprinkled with black polka dots. It spilled over onto the floor and left smears across the stained concrete. Even the glossy white doorframe leading to the back room hadn’t been spared.
I slowly poked my head into the area where Marlene’s body had lain. New fiction releases were strewn across the floor and I could almost see the fight she’d put up to stay alive. The covers on some of the mystery paperbacks were ruined. The same gritty powder dulled vibrant images and authors’ names. Pages were bent and spines torn, as if the books themselves had fought, and lost, right alongside Marlene.
A shiver ran down my spine and I backed away. Then I realized I could follow the leads the police had observed and moved forward. Started at the point of discovery. They’d fingerprinted the books on the floor, a few of the shelves on either
side. Boxes appeared to have been moved, but I couldn’t be sure. The only thing I’d really focused on when I’d opened the curtain yesterday was Marlene’s body.
They’d fingerprinted the doorway, the counter, the register. But when I opened it up, the drawer still contained money. I couldn’t help but smile.
It was my first real clue. If there was money in the register, it couldn’t possibly have been a robbery. I thought of Marlene’s purse and stopped patting myself on the back. I didn’t see it yesterday, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been under the counter, in the tearoom, or in the back room. The police would have taken all personal property belonging to the victim.
I went upstairs, but beyond the railing it didn’t look as if there was any fingerprint powder anywhere. Of course there wasn’t anything to put powder on, unless you chose one messy stack over another to decide to dust for prints. Obviously the police had decided nothing of consequence had occurred upstairs.
I returned to the lower level and looked around. Fingerprints and photographs. That’s all I could see coming out of the crime scene. I supposed they could have taken DNA, but where, I had no idea.
I returned to the tearoom and opened the refrigerator. I breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of a pitcher filled with tea and a bowl of lemons on the shelf next to it. I poured myself a tall glass of sweet tea and dropped in two tart lemon wedges. Then I got to work doing my least favorite thing—cleaning, starting with the front counter.
Almost two hours later, I’d thrown away a trash bag full of merchandise, photographing and cataloging each item to take a loss on inventory. It amazed me how quickly the business was coming back to me, yet at the same time I wasn’t sure I cared for it sticking around in the recesses of my brain. I raided the petty cash fund, thinking my dad owed me for my time and everything else he’d put me through, and headed out the side door to get some real food at the diner down the street.
Scarlet met me in front of the fountain, her gaze straying to the number thirteen on my shirt.
“Quarterback for the Denver Broncos,” I explained.
