1 Sunshine Hunter

by Maddie Cochere

  My hair was sticking out in all directions from around the bandage wrapped around my head. I looked at my hands and arms. There were a lot of scratches, and I could see bruises starting to form.

  I was staring at myself in the restroom mirror of the emergency room. The nurse who prepped me had been wonderful. She carefully sectioned and pinned my hair to expose the gash in my head. She cleaned it and did a minimal amount of shaving around it. She patted my hand, smiled at me, and said, “I have daughters. They never let me forget to be thoughtful about a patient’s hair when I can.”

  The doctor arrived to stitch the wound. “You’re a lucky girl,” he said. “The racquet missed your temple by less than an inch. You could have had a much worse injury here. I’d like to keep you overnight for observation so we –”

  “No,” I cut him off before he could say anymore. “I’m going home. I have a headache, but I feel fine, and I want to go home.” He looked at me indecisively. “I promise I’ll come back if anything changes.”

  “Well …” he looked at me and saw my steadfastness. “I’m advising you to stay, but I’ll send the nurse in with forms for you to sign and a prescription for pain.”

  I was now in the restroom looking at my frighteningly thrashed appearance and waiting for a cab to arrive. My head was throbbing. The fatigue was overwhelming. The fight with Wicker had taken all of my strength, and it was an effort to move. I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. A few tears slipped out, but I had no energy to really cry. I thought I had seen Mick at the club before the ambulance arrived, but he wasn’t here, so I must have been dreaming. I pushed the restroom door open and made my way to the emergency room lobby. Hopefully, the cab I had called would arrive soon.

  The cabbie deposited me at the back door of my apartment building. It suddenly dawned on me I didn’t have my purse; it was still at the club. I started to plead my case with the cab driver, promising to find him tomorrow and pay him, but he looked at my bandaged head and overall sorry state and said, “Forget it, lady. It’s on me.”

  Inside the building, I trudged up the three flights of stairs. My feet hit the top floor, and I looked up to see Mick sitting with his head in his hands on the floor outside my door. “Mick,” I said surprised but happy to see him, “what are you doing here?”

  He jumped to his feet and rushed to me, putting his arms around me and pulling me close. “Susan,” he whispered my name as a sigh of relief, “I was so worried about you. Why did you leave the hospital?”

  “I wanted to be home in my own bed,” I said. It seemed like an eternity since I had slept in my own bed. “I just wanted to be home.”

  “Come on, let’s you get you inside,” he said. He looked at me for my key. I pointed to the top of the door frame.

  “You’re kidding, right?” he asked as he gave me an amused smile.

  It was embarrassing to admit to having a key on the door frame. Who does that in this day and age? But I had locked myself out of my apartment enough times that not only did I have a key on the door frame, but Darby held a spare for me, too.

  He unlocked the door, picked me up, and carried me over the threshold. I was gently deposited onto the sofa and a pillow tucked behind my head. He covered me with the afghan from my grandmother and went to the kitchen to put on a kettle for tea. This was Mick. Always considerate, always caring. I was grateful for the afghan. The apartment was cool from the air conditioning, and I felt cold from fatigue. It was 4:00 A.M, and I had been up for 24 hours now.

  “Mick,” I said softly. I had so many questions but didn’t know where to start, so I started with the obvious. “What happened at the club? How did you wind up there, and why was I in the locker room?”

  He came in from the kitchen and sat down at the other end of the sofa. “Well, let me tell you the whole story. At least the part that I know,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “I had to run to a job site this morning, so I didn’t have time to look into Wicker Barnes until this afternoon. I did a search, probably like you did, and saw his picture and bio with the Marshall Community Theater. But I kept searching. I wanted to see if I could find out anything more about him.”

  I nodded again. The kettle whistled.

  He went back to the kitchen and made a cup of hot tea with honey for me. I sat up, pulled the afghan over my lap, and gratefully took the tea. He sat down beside me and continued, “I found a news article about a guy named Ted Burns who was arrested three years ago in Indiana for swindling a woman out of her life’s savings. It seems Ted had a bad gambling habit and a lot of gambling debts, so he worked out a scheme to use the local theater to find an unsuspecting woman to give him money. I think he only served jail time for a year. The reason this matters is because Ted Burns used a stage name when he performed.”

  “Wicker Barnes,” I said.

  “Yep,” Mick nodded.

  “Well, how does that story connect to Jenny?” I asked. “He kept telling me I ruined everything, and I took you away from her. He wanted to fix things and make it right. What was that all about?”

  “I didn’t know at first,” he said. “All I could find out was that they had performed together in a couple of plays, and the rumors about Jenny seeing someone romantically, well, she was seeing Wicker. I knew I had to ask her about him. Do you remember I told you I was chaperoning a school dance for Alex tonight?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, Jenny dropped him off at school before I got there, so when I took him home around 11:00, I went in to have a talk with her. I asked her about Wicker. At first she was defensive and didn’t want to say anything, but I got Alex’s laptop and showed her the news article about him. She broke down then and told me everything.”

  He stood up. There was sadness to his demeanor and a look I didn’t understand. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what he was going to tell me.

  “Mick,” I stopped him. “You don’t have to tell me any of this. If it’s too personal -”

  He cut me off and said, “No. No. It’s not too personal. I just wish I would have known about this sooner, or would have paid more attention. I might have seen it coming.” He started to pace. “Jenny said Wicker gave her a lot of attention. He was nice to her; he helped her with her lines and gave her acting tips. They really hit it off.”

  I could see his discomfort. Was he jealous of Wicker hitting on his soon-to-be ex-wife? I felt uncomfortable.

  “We aren’t wealthy, Susan, but you know I make a good living. Most of my focus is on work, so Jenny pays the bills, and I don’t pay much attention to the money. Everything is always taken care of, everyone has what they need, and I’ve never worried about how she handles our finances. I look over my investment portfolio from time to time, I see she’s depositing the money I’ve asked her to, and that’s that.”

  He went to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water. “Jenny has rental properties in New York. I told you about that,” he said. “A management company takes care of everything for her, and she gets a pretty healthy check each month from rents. I know she puts some of the money into our college fund for Alex, but it’s also her mad money.”

  He took a couple of swigs from the water bottle. I didn’t want to break his thought process, so I was quiet.

  He spoke as though it pained him to say the words, “Wicker eventually talked her into giving him money. Money for a better apartment, money for a better car, money for acting lessons. He told her he had connections on Broadway. In return, he would continue to help her and share his theater knowledge with her. She didn’t have any idea the money was going for gambling and gambling debts.” He looked at me and asked, “Are women really that gullible? Do women really give men money just so they will pay attention to them?”

  “I don’t know, Mick,” I told him sympathetically. “I’m sure most women don’t, but you do read about it online all the time.”

  “She admitted to giving him thousands of dollars. Almost all of the New York rent money for the
last eight months has gone to Wicker. Last Saturday she gave him another $3,000.” I could see his jaw set in a tight line. “She’s given him money from my paycheck.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Because we’re getting divorced, she’s selling the New York properties and putting most of the proceeds into a trust for Alex. She also won’t have access to my salary after the divorce, so she let Wicker know that very soon she wasn’t going to have any extra money for him.”

  It was starting to make sense to me now. By Mick and Jenny divorcing, Wicker’s golden goose was drying up. If he could keep them together, he could keep the money coming in, and he was desperate to do that.

  Mick continued, “I finally asked her where he was. She said she didn’t know. She hadn’t heard from him since she gave him the check last Saturday.” He sat down beside me again, “Susan, I knew right then what you told me about seeing him in Florida had to be true, and I knew you were right about being in danger. Serious danger. I called the police, and they put me in touch with Detective Bentley. It wasn’t easy to get him at midnight, but I was persistent. I finally talked him into taking a few officers and going to your apartment, but when we arrived, you were gone. Darby stuck his head out to see who was banging on your door, and he told us you were closing the club. He wanted to come along, but Detective Bentley told him if he saw him at all, he would have him arrested for obstruction of justice.”

  I couldn’t help but to let out a little smile. Poor Darby.

  Mick continued, “It was after 1:00 when we got to the club. Everything was dark - even the parking lot. But I could see your car, and it has four flat tires.” I rolled my eyes. Nothing would surprise me now. “The front door was unlocked, and the officers went in first. Detective Bentley was threatening me if I didn’t stay outside, but there was no way I wasn’t going in. One of the officers found the switch for the lights, and Susan, my heart stopped. We could see where the two of you had struggled. A couple of chairs were turned over, one of the sofas was shoved up against another, and there was blood on the floor.” He stopped, his voice catching from emotion in his throat. He coughed and continued, “There wasn’t much blood in the hallway, but there was enough to know someone had been dragged to the women’s locker room. I had to wait outside the door while the officers went in with guns drawn.

  Detective Bentley told me they were able to surprise Wicker. He had turned on the whirlpool, which was actually a good thing, because it kept him from hearing the officers enter the room. He was holding you by the ankles and was preparing to fix everything by drowning you in the whirlpool.” He closed his eyes for a moment as if to shut out the image. “Once they had him in cuffs, they couldn’t keep me away from you.”

  He sat back down close beside me. He looked intently at me, yet with tenderness in his eyes, and said, “Susan, I was so grateful you were alive. I couldn’t believe I almost lost you – when I had just found you.” He reached over and gently brushed my cheek with his fingertips.

  “If you were at the club, why didn’t you come to the hospital?” I asked him.

  “I did,” he said. “By the time I got there, they had already taken you back to stitch you up. A nurse told me they would be keeping you overnight for observation, and she would let me know when you were in a room. I went down to the coffee shop for a cup of coffee. When I went back to emergency to ask for your room number, they told me you went home. I rushed right over, but you weren’t here. I didn’t know what to think.”

  I smiled and said, “The cab took forever to come, and I was in the restroom for a while checking out my head bandage and my scratches and bruises. We must have just missed each other.”

  “There’s more,” he said. “Detective Bentley stopped by the hospital to see you, but we both thought you were already gone. He said to tell you that Wicker Barnes, a.k.a. Ted Burns, was at the station blubbering like a baby and admitting to everything, including accidentally killing Jerry when he meant to kill you.

  He also said a few things I didn’t understand. He said Wicker simply walked out of the police station in Charlotte when no one was paying attention to him. He used his real name to fly back to Ohio, which is why none of the airlines had him flagged as a no fly. He said he’d be making a couple of calls to help someone named Johnny.” He looked at me with a puzzled look. “And he said he’s stopping by tomorrow to pick up some evidence you have. Do you know what he’s talking about?”

  Oh my gosh! The powder! It was still in my pocket. Wicker must have confessed to planting it in my bag. “I do know,” I told him with a smile. “And I’ll fill you in on all the things you don’t know tomorrow.”

  “That sounds like a plan,” he said as he returned my smile. He stood up, threw the afghan back, and scooped me up into his arms again. I nestled my head on his shoulder. He moved toward the bedroom door. “But for now,” he said, “I think it’s time I put you to bed.”

  ###

  Easy-breezy reading from Breezy Books!

  Big Apple Hunter, A Susan Hunter Mystery #2 - Working in a weight-loss center by day and a racquetball club by night, Susan Hunter enjoys her life, the sport, and her friends. … But now she has life-changing decisions to make. Should she accept the new position with Slimmers Weight Loss? Should she give in and move the relationship with Mick to the next level? . . . When Darby has business in New York City, Susan jumps at the chance to tag along intending to indulge in a weekend of shopping. It doesn’t take her long to realize she’s being hunted in The Big Apple. And what does the stalker have to do with Darby’s new client? It becomes a matter of life-and-death when the stalker shows up in Carbide City demanding something Susan lost in New York. … Humorous, sometimes ominous, Big Apple Hunter is entertaining and perfect for summer reading.

  Sin City Hunter, A Susan Hunter Mystery #3 – Working in a weight-loss center by day and a racquetball club by night, Susan Hunter enjoys her life, the sport, and her friends. … She’s in Las Vegas for ten days of work and play. Her parents come in from Dallas to spend some time with her and have their own fun. But fun turns to terror for Susan when a magic act goes wrong. … When a man is murdered, Susan knows who did it. Unfortunately for her, the killer knows that she knows. Her actions in Sin City ultimately put not only her own life on the line but that of Mick’s as well. … Humorous, sometimes ominous, Sin City Hunter is entertaining and perfect for summer reading.

  Big Easy Hunter, A Susan Hunter Mystery #4 – Working in a weight-loss center by day and a racquetball club by night, Susan Hunter enjoys her life, the sport, and her friends. … When Susan is accused of being a cat burglar, and a serial rapist is on the loose over by the mall, she takes off for New Orleans to attend a wedding and finds even more trouble in The Big Easy. … Humorous, sometimes ominous, Big Easy Hunter is entertaining and perfect for summer reading.

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