A Stoneybrook Mystery Collection

by Eryn Scott

  Hadley didn’t find it funny. And she wasn’t sure if it was because of Suze, or Paul, or even Miranda, but tears sprang to her eyes, and she began to cry.

  19

  Hadley sniffed, running a tissue under her nose for good measure. The tears had only lasted a few minutes, but they’d been enough to convince Luke to pull over and sit next to her on the sidewalk, proffering tissues and asking what was wrong.

  And while she hadn’t been trying to lure him into listening to her problems, she’d spilled everything.

  “I was calling her to see if she wanted to go help me investigate up in Cascade Ridge because we can’t give up on Miranda, and now I don’t know what to do.” Hadley shook her head, finishing up her rant.

  Luke cleared his throat. “I’ll go with you.” He watched her from the corner of one eye.

  “Really?” she asked.

  He bumped his shoulder into her. “Yeah. Come on. I know Suze and Paul are your normal sleuthing buddies, but I’m observant and I’m fantastic company. I might be able to help.” Luke winked.

  She chuckled and then sniffed once more.

  “Unless, of course, you’ve got a secret wedding to go break up,” he said.

  The way his mouth pulled into his signature half smile made it hard for her to get mad at him for the teasing.

  “You’re not making a case for being fantastic company, Fenton,” she said, swatting at his shoulder.

  Luke put his hands up. “Sorry.” But she could see he was still working hard to suppress a grin.

  “Okay.” After a deep breath, she pushed her shoulders back and peeled herself up off the curb.

  “After you,” he said, opening the truck’s passenger door for her. He climbed in as she buckled up, and they were on their way.

  “So what are we investigating?” Luke asked, keeping his eyes on the road as he navigated the rest of downtown Stoneybrook.

  Hadley cringed. “Honestly, I’m not sure. I just … I don’t know. I thought maybe we could go search around in the woods where Miranda went missing, maybe visit Brenda in the hospital.” She shrugged, hoping Luke wouldn’t think she was silly for being without a concrete plan.

  “Sounds good.” He nodded and turned off Main Street, toward the highway that would take them to Cascade Ridge.

  The man didn’t seem too worried about Hadley’s lack of a plan. He turned on some music and sat back into his worn truck seat, looking completely content with going with the flow. That had always been part of Luke’s charm, though. His laid-back attitude had so often frustrated her as an adult, but she remembered it being one of her favorite attributes when they were growing up. She knew there wasn’t much that would ruffle his feathers, push his anger out of control, or throw him into a deep sadness.

  Chewing on her lip in thought, she realized it also meant she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Luke deliriously happy.

  “So … how’ve you been?” she asked. “Are you glad you moved back home?”

  After living in Seattle for ten years after they graduated, Luke had recently moved back to town, citing a need to distance himself from the rush and a desire to be closer to family.

  Luke smiled. “I am. Things are going well. I finally convinced Dad to use my new line of smart sprinklers next summer, and I’m adding a digital monitoring system to the greenhouses.”

  “That’s impressive.” Hadley nodded in appreciation.

  Luke’s company, GroWorks, combined his two loves: farming and technology. His father, Redford Fenton, was just about the most old-school farmer she’d ever met—she once saw the man taste the dirt to decide whether or not it was ready for seed. Luke getting him to concede to using any of his products was a miracle.

  “And how’s the new place coming” she asked. Luke was in the middle of building a new house on his current property, the old tenant house proving too small for him now that he was staying put in Stoneybrook.

  “Can’t complain,” he said, then laughed. “Actually, I can. I’m starting to hear hammering in my sleep.”

  Hadley chuckled. “Well, it’ll be all the more worth it when it comes together, right?”

  “Right.” Luke took the left turn up the hill. “What about you? How’s your new place?”

  A warmth spread through Hadley’s chest at the thought of her home. It had a moss-covered fence that definitely needed rebuilding, a garden that could use a ton of work, and a leaky faucet in the laundry room, but it also had a perfect view of the Cascades, quick access to the river, and all the privacy she could ever hope for. She loved it more than she ever thought possible.

  “It’s amazing.” She beamed. “The cats have officially claimed the deck. They won’t put more than a paw on the actual ground, but they love that big deck. They run around it as if standing on it somehow makes them king and queen of the whole valley.”

  Luke nodded. “Once the new place is complete, I’ve been thinking of getting a pet. It just wasn’t an option in my apartment in the city, but I think it’d be nice to have a little company.”

  Hadley raised an eyebrow. “A cat?” she asked hopefully.

  He clicked his tongue. “I think I’m more of a dog person, not to sound like an awful cliché.” Luke shot her a playful grimace.

  “That’s okay.” She waved off his worry. “I maintain people who say they aren’t cat people just haven’t met the right cat. I’m sure the same goes for dogs as well, though.”

  The truck climbed higher into the foothills and Luke cleared his throat. “So where are we going, exactly?”

  “Right, um … just go ahead and park at The Ridge,” Hadley said.

  “The Ridge?” Luke let out a low whistle.

  Even though Stoneybrook teens usually didn’t dare venture into Cascade Ridge territory, the popular make-out spot was well known in the valley.

  Cringing as she realized how it had sounded, she said, “It’s where Miranda and her boyfriend were right before he dropped her off on the side of the road. She went missing somewhere between The Ridge and Grande County General.”

  Luke toned down his grin, but Hadley could still see whispers of it lingering at the corners of his mouth. The idea of the two of them at The Ridge together made her feel flustered in a way she hadn’t for a long time. To combat this, she decided to distract herself with the particulars of the case, and she explained what she knew so far to Luke, aware he wouldn’t be up on all of the clues she was.

  He listened as she told him about Brenda’s drug problem—the whole town knew about her close call at that point—about Jaxon’s drug dealing, and Hadley’s conjectures about why Miranda had resorted to stealing from Dennis’s shop.

  “And you’re sure the boyfriend isn’t hiding something more?” Luke asked, his blue eyes narrowing as he synthesized the information.

  Hadley shook her head. “No. I’m not sure at all, but as of now, I don’t see a motive for him to hurt her.”

  Luke snorted. “No motive? He thought she was using him for drugs? I think you might be wrong, Had.”

  “I don’t know. Sure, I can see him being upset, but this doesn’t fit.” Hadley chewed on her lip for a moment before going on, unsure of how Luke would take the next part. “There’s another suspect who just doesn’t make sense.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Dennis.” Hadley felt simultaneously awful and relieved as the name left her lips. She’d been as convinced as anyone the moment they’d found out he’d left town, but the more she pondered the situation, the less and less it seemed like a sure thing.

  Luke didn’t make fun of her or make her feel like she was being naïve to trust a man because she’d known him her whole life. He simply said, “Why?”

  Luke pulled the truck onto the gravel road leading to The Ridge.

  “Even if it was a large chunk of money, even if he felt completely betrayed by her, I just don’t see it as being grounds for kidnapping or … more.” Hadley swallowed the word murder, unable to think that way just
yet.

  They bumped along the primitive road until they reached the lookout point, and Luke parked.

  Sighing, he ran a hand through his hair. “I dunno, Had. I mean, Dennis has always struck me as a deeply depressed individual. Take it from me, that kind of mental space can make bad things seem so much bigger. It’s possible it doesn’t seem bad to someone else, but Dennis could’ve definitely seen the stealing as something more than a simple betrayal.”

  Hadley froze, focused on what Luke said. “Why’d you say take it from me, just then?”

  His tanned cheeks flushed a little. “What?”

  She knew he was pretending not to have heard her correctly, but she pushed on anyway. “You said you understood the kind of mental space he was in, a depressed space. Luke, have you been depressed?”

  Clicking his seat belt free from its holder, she thought he was going to bolt at first. But then he exhaled and dipped his chin in a nod.

  She suppressed a gasp. Even though she’d been thinking about how she hadn’t seen him extremely happy in a long while; the man was so generally goofy, laid-back, always joking, it seemed impossible he was going through something like depression.

  “I’m getting better,” he said quietly after a moment of awkward silence. “I promise. Coming home has made it better.”

  Hadley’s eyebrows knit together with worry as he fidgeted uncomfortably.

  He coughed. “Well, shall we?” He had his door open, and his boots hit the ground before Hadley even had a chance to answer his question.

  They met at the tailgate of the truck before walking in the direction of the road. Hadley watched her shoes as they tromped through millions of crinkly, dried, golden leaves. Despite the many leaves underfoot, the trees surrounding them still had most of their foliage, the color change looking like someone had blown gold dust over the forest. Hadley pulled in a lungful of the crisp, wood smoke-tinged air, smiling a little.

  Luke did the same. “That’s one of the things that’s helped,” he said. When she shot him a questioning glance, he added, “The fresh air. Being someone who grew up outdoors, who spent almost all of my time outside, those ten years stuck in an office behind a desk affected me more than I thought they would.”

  Hadley shoved her hands in her pockets as she listened.

  “You can go outside in Seattle, sure. There are a ton of parks, and you don’t have to drive too far to find hiking, but there’s just something different about the air around here.” He took another deep breath, closing his eyes.

  The sudden urge to hook her arm through his came over Hadley, but she quickly quashed it as they came to where the dirt road they were on met up with a paved main road. Looking both ways, they turned, walking along the right side as it wound up the hill toward the hospital.

  “Are we sure she didn’t walk along the other side?” Luke asked, glancing across the two empty lanes of roadway.

  “No, but Jaxon said he pulled his car over to let her out. If that’s true, she would’ve been on this side of the road. Whether or not she stayed on this side, I don’t know. It was late and dark, so it would’ve been dangerous for her to cross, I would think.” Hadley eyed the other shoulder.

  “I think it would’ve been just as dangerous for her to walk over here, honestly,” Luke said, pointing to their right.

  Hadley’s gaze followed his gesture. Next to them was a long guardrail, curving alongside the road. On the other side of it, a two-hundred-foot drop down into a wooded ravine.

  20

  A low cloud had settled at the bottom of the ravine, making the place feel eerie as Hadley stared down at it from the road above. She shivered.

  “She wouldn’t have ventured from the roadway, though,” she said, her voice a whisper.

  Miranda had grown up in the valley; she knew as well as anyone not to go wandering off into the woods.

  “Not on purpose,” Luke said, his deep voice sounding all too loud in the quiet of the deserted road.

  Glancing down the long drop once more, Hadley’s stomach sank. Had Miranda fallen in the dark? “But there have been search parties out here for days. If she’d fallen, they would’ve found her”—Hadley gulped—“her body by now.”

  Luke nodded, but she could see in the way he clenched his jaw that he didn’t agree. “They would’ve found something, for sure.”

  Needing to compartmentalize because she couldn’t seem to stop picturing the girl hurt at the bottom of the ravine, she moved on. “Let’s assume the police and their dogs would’ve found some evidence if it had been an accident.” They kept walking up the hill. “We’re looking for clues of a deliberate abduction.”

  “Like Dennis following her all the way up here after their fight and—” Luke stopped short. “You’re right. That’s just not ringing true to me. If he was so mad, why didn’t he take her right away? Why didn’t he chase after her when they finished their fight? She had time to go over Cassie’s, meet Jaxon, and come up here for a while.”

  “Right? It just doesn’t make sense.” She ran her teeth across her bottom lip. “But if Dennis had nothing to do with it, then why did he disappear?”

  Luke ran a hand over his chin as he seemed to ponder the same thing. A whooshing sound in the distance grew louder, and a car came around the bend, speeding past them and kicking up fallen leaves in its wake.

  Hadley’s breath quickened as the incline they were scaling increased. After close to ten minutes of walking, however, they had yet to find a break in the guardrail and the opposite side of the road was just trees and a fifteen-foot-high bank of soil.

  If this was where Miranda had been, there was simply nowhere else she could’ve gone than forward, especially if she thought she was going to meet Cassie at the hospital. Hadley tried to think like a seventeen-year-old girl who’d just fought with her boyfriend. She knew Miranda to be a kind girl, empathetic—maybe even to a fault, she thought, remembering how she was probably buying drugs to help her mother—but also emotional at times.

  There were a few instances when a tourist had gotten upset in the candy shop and had taken it out on Miranda. Hadley had stumbled in after one such occasion, and the girl had been almost inconsolable.

  Even if she were emotional, Hadley thought, she would’ve known to get to the hospital where there were other people and Cassie could meet her. She would’ve been scared out here all alone, in the middle of the night.

  Luke cleared his throat, interrupting her thoughts. “Okay, hear me out. I know you don’t think the boyfriend did it, but what if he didn’t actually drop her off like he claimed to?”

  “But he did.” Hadley shook her head. “Miranda called Cassie right after he did.”

  “Okay, but he doesn’t have an alibi for that time, right? So he could’ve come back for her after driving around all angry for a few minutes.”

  “True.” Hadley conceded. “But Paul and the sheriffs already had to let him go because of a lack of evidence once. If they have any hope of pinning this on him, we need something more than his lie.”

  Luke picked up his pace as if he suddenly realized how quickly they were running out of time.

  Around the next bend, a blue sign for the hospital came into view. A white arrow pointed forward. The hope Hadley’d been holding on to since this morning flitted away. One more curve in the road and they’d be at the hospital, they’d be by cameras and lights, and Miranda would’ve been safe. If something went wrong, it had to have happened before the hospital.

  She stopped, letting out a defeated sigh. “Sorry for dragging you along, Luke. There’s nothing here. I don’t know why I thought we might be able to find something when the sheriff’s department hadn’t been able to.” Her shoulders slumped forward and she turned around. “We can go home now.”

  Luke didn’t say anything, but he did turn to follow her, and he did wrap an arm around her shoulders, just like she’d wanted him to before. She sank into him, and they walked back down the hill toward his truck.

  Bir
ds sang and chirped while the wind rustled through the papery, dry leaves providing a canopy overhead. While the valley had its fair share of evergreens, there were a decent number of maples, oaks, birch, and madronas as well. This road seemed to be primarily oaks and maples, and their golden hues looked almost fake in their vividness. It was almost peaceful walking along the road with Luke.

  Almost.

  Amid her calm exterior, Hadley’s mind was ripping through the clues and time lines and possibilities surrounding Miranda’s disappearance like a frustrated burglar, searching for something, anything, of value in a house.

  She could tell by the way Luke’s eyes would narrow every once in a while, that he was going through a similar search in his brain. And sure, they could’ve talked it out since they were likely thinking through the same things, but there was something wonderful about walking with someone and not needing the clutter of words. It was a privilege, Hadley was sure, only afforded to people who’d known each other for a long time, so long that simply being near each other was enough connection.

  As they crunched their way down the dirt road leading back to The Ridge, Hadley became instantly thankful for the silence, for their ability to listen, watch, and ponder. She was sure if they’d been talking, if they’d been at all distracted with something else, Luke wouldn’t have spotted what he did as he walked around the front of his truck after letting Hadley in to the passenger side.

  He stopped, studying the lookout point. Hadley tapped her finger on her leg impatiently. Sure they’d just wasted time walking up and down a mostly deserted back road so they obviously weren’t in a rush, but this really wasn’t the time for sightseeing either.

  Luke took a step closer to the overhang, and it was then Hadley realized he wasn’t looking out at the mountainous landscape, but down at the grass. She opened her door and poked her head out.

  “What?” she called out, placing a foot on the truck’s running board.