Gone to Her Grave (Rogue River Novella Book 2)

by Melinda Leigh

  Small town rule #4: Childhood isn’t complete without farm animals and 4-H.

  “I’ll keep looking, but if it isn’t here, Daddy will bring it to you or I’ll go get it from his house.”

  “What if it’s not there?”

  “Then I’ll buy you a new one.”

  “No, Mama. I need that one,” Brianna whined, something else she’d rarely done before the move. But it was hard to blame a little girl when her parents uprooted her entire life. A tear rolled down Brianna’s cheek. “Grandpa gave it to me.”

  The goat bleated, punctuating the sad state of affairs.

  Grief and guilt compounded Carly’s misery until she was tempted to sit down next to her daughter and let them both have a good cry.

  Six weeks ago her father, just fifty-nine years old, had died suddenly of a heart attack. Big Bill Taylor, husband, grandfather, police chief, town pillar, and all-around saint, at least in Carly’s eyes, was gone. His absence was a vast black hole neither the family nor the town had yet fully processed. But while some people found crying cathartic, Carly always felt worse afterward. It didn’t help that she was an ugly crier. No dainty tears for her. A crying jag for Carly was an all-out snotfest that left her looking like she’d contracted pinkeye volunteering at the elementary school.

  She plucked off a work glove, crouched in front of her daughter, and wiped a stray tear from her cheek. “I’m going to call Daddy this morning and get him to look for it, okay?” Even if talking to Seth was the last thing on earth she wanted to do right now. Or ever.

  Brianna sniffed and nodded. Carly used the hem of her shirt to dry her tears, leaving a swath of clean across her daughter’s dusty face. She folded the skinny child into her arms for a hug.

  “Why don’t you check and make sure all the animals have clean water?” Carly looked at her watch. She needed to shower and get to her first appointment by nine, and she’d have to squeeze a stop at the Fisher place into her schedule.

  “Okay, Mama. Prince Eric probably wants to go outside to play anyway.” Nothing made Brianna happier than caring for her grandmother’s motley crew of rejected livestock. Carly stayed close to her daughter. Prince Eric might only be the size of a large dog, but he was horned, agile, and mischievous.

  Once the goat was caught, Carly dialed Seth. His phone went to voice mail without ringing. He was probably on duty. Seth’s unavailability had been just one of the many issues that had ground their marriage down to its sensitive root. In his eyes, his job as an investigator for the Rogue County Sheriff’s Department was always more important than her work. But Carly didn’t believe that. What could be more critical than kids who had no one to protect them?

  “How are my girls?” Carly’s mom, Patsy, stood in the doorway, her petite body silhouetted against the morning sun. Despite a flowy flowered top draped over a loose cotton skirt, Carly could see her mom had lost some weight since her dad’s death.

  “We’re almost finished out here,” Carly said. Taking care of the barn chores was the only way she could thank her mom for providing child care now that school was out for the summer.

  “Thanks for mucking out the pens.” Patsy stepped into the dim barn. Under a wide-brimmed floppy hat, her long, curly hair hung loose around her shoulders. “What happened to your face?”

  Carly touched the bruise on her chin. “It was an accident.”

  “Put some ice on it. Looks like it hurts.” Patsy placed both hands on her hips and turned to Brianna. “Look how healthy Prince Eric looks. You’ve done a fine job nursing him back to health, Brianna. I’m so proud.”

  Brianna beamed as she led the animal toward the barn door. Patsy’s Irish setter bounded into the aisle and wagged her tail at the goat. Patsy caught the dog by the collar. The desire to play was decidedly one-sided.

  The sight of Patsy’s proud smile and her daughter’s happiness cheered Carly. She scanned the pens of discarded animals. Creatures of all sorts found solace in her mother’s care, and providing shelter to those in need seemed to give her mother comfort. She’d done the right thing, coming here. Moving home at twenty-nine hadn’t been easy. There’d been some pride swallowing involved. Admitting failure stung, but she and her daughter needed to heal. And this was the place to do it.

  Carly’s phone vibrated. She rubbed her hands on her jeans and dug the cell out of her pocket. Her sister Stevie’s number showed on the screen.

  “Hey, did you change your mind about hanging out tonight?” Carly asked.

  “No. I’m still on duty. Sorry to interrupt your morning, but this is a work call.” Two years older, Stevie had recently left her job with the LAPD and moved home to take a position on Solitude’s tiny police force.

  “Hold on a sec.” Carly lifted the phone away from her face. “It’s work, Mom. Would you mind?” She nodded toward Brianna.

  Her mom smiled. “Of course not. Do what you have to do.”

  Carly stepped out of the barn. The morning sun hit her back, its rays penetrating her damp T-shirt with dry heat. “Okay. Go.”

  “I’m at the station. I’m holding one of your kids for questioning. Russ Warner.”

  Carly walked away from the barn. The fifteen-year-old’s father, an abusive lowlife and small-time drug dealer, had been killed in a shootout with police in May. “What’s the crime?”

  “Delivery of a controlled substance.” Stevie paused. “And possibly homicide.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The entire Solitude police station would fit on a volleyball court with room to spare. In the six-car gravel parking lot, Carly climbed out of her Wrangler and smoothed her skirt. Her sister leaned on the outside of the building. Stevie’s uniform looked damp and wrinkled, though she’d been on duty for only a couple of hours. A few curls had escaped her bun. She straightened and met Carly on the concrete walkway.

  “What’s going on?” Carly tightened her still-damp ponytail. She’d taken all of fifteen minutes to shower off the hay dust, don clean clothes, and postpone her first appointment.

  “We’re waiting for Loretta. Russ is inside with Zane.” Stevie rubbed her forehead. A pink scar on her hand was the only sign of the gunshot wound she’d sustained back in May.

  “What happened?”

  Stevie straightened. “Beverly Rollins, age forty, was found unconscious and unresponsive by her teenage son, Peter, Tuesday morning. There was no obvious reason for her state. No signs of a struggle. No history of a medical condition. No prescription bottles nearby. The hospital ran some initial tests with mixed positive results. The doctors suspect she might have ingested C-22. When questioned, Peter admitted to buying two hits on his way home from his part-time job on Monday. He hid one in his room for later. When his mom came home early from work, she caught him with the drug and took it away from him. He doesn’t know what she did with it, but his roundabout answers suggested she ingested it. Peter says his mom had smoked pot she confiscated from him in the past. He claims when he found her and called 911, he tried to flush the remaining paper strip down the toilet. Obviously he didn’t succeed because we found it clinging to the edge of the bowl.”

  “So why is Russ here?”

  Stevie let out a sigh of resignation. “Peter said he bought the drug from Russ.”

  “No.” Carly stared at the building. Damn it.

  “Carly, Russ’s father was dealing C-22,” Stevie said.

  “I know, but . . .” She’d just visited Russ and his mother, Loretta, last week. They’d seemed like they were getting back on their feet. Loretta was working steady hours. No more lost time for black eyes. Russ hadn’t missed any summer school in weeks. There’d been food in the fridge. In Carly’s world, those were all good signs.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Carly pressed her palm to her sweating forehead. “This doesn’t feel right. Russ has had some bad breaks, and sure, he can be explosive, but deep down, he’s a good kid. He just needs a chance.” Sadly, she’d thought he’d finally g
otten that chance when his father was shot by police. Ted Warner had been one mean son of a bitch. Carly had seen the black-and-blue evidence of his temper on Loretta too many times to feel much regret that the man was dead.

  “Who knows?” Stevie lifted a shoulder. “It’s hard enough to be a teenager without an abusive drug dealer for a father. You can’t save them all, Carly. Sometimes kids just spiral downward, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. Happened all the time when I worked for the LAPD.”

  “But this isn’t LA.” And Carly didn’t want to admit defeat.

  “Unfortunately, hard-core drugs have arrived in Solitude. Drugs change everything.” Stevie shrugged. “When we brought Russ in, we found a couple of joints in his pocket.”

  “Ugh.” Carly put a hand to the base of her neck, where the muscles protested this morning’s barn labor. “Remember the good old days, when all we had to worry about was kids sneaking beers after dark at O’Rourke’s Lake?”

  “Longingly,” Stevie said.

  “When should Loretta get here?”

  Stevie checked her watch. “Soon. She was at work.”

  “Hope she doesn’t get fired.” Jobs weren’t plentiful in town, and women with Loretta’s reputation rarely got the few that became available. She’d gotten pregnant with Russ in her freshman year of high school. Carly moved toward the steps. “I’ll go inside and sit with Russ. He shouldn’t be alone.”

  “Zane is in there with him.”

  “You know what I mean.” Carly pushed open the door and went inside. The temperature hovered near sauna.

  “Hey, Sheila.”

  “Hey, Carly.” Behind the reception desk, Sheila looked up from her computer screen. Fiftyish, the police department admin was as thin and energetic as a whippet. Skinny fingers hovered just above her keyboard. Her bright-yellow nail polish matched her eye shadow.

  “How about turning on the air conditioner?”

  “It is on.” Sheila nodded to the ancient brown unit in the window next to her desk. She raised a sweating can of Diet Coke to her forehead. “This isn’t right. If I wanted to live with this kind of heat, I’d move to frigging Arizona.”

  “Amen.” Carly turned into the wood-paneled interview room, which was also the break room, lunchroom, and storage closet. An oscillating floor fan blew a stream of hot air in her face. She pointedly did not look at the old pictures of her dad hanging on the walls. Her mom spent her nights with the family albums in her lap, turning pages and touching her favorite photos as if she could feel him. But Carly wasn’t ready.

  Her father’s replacement as the chief of police, Zane Duncan, sat in one of the folding chairs that surrounded a scarred table. He was a good-looking man. Nice, regular features. Hot body. She should probably feel some sort of attraction to him. But she didn’t. Maybe there was something wrong with her. Maybe the sting of her failed marriage was just too raw yet for her to move on.

  Across from Zane, Russ stared at the floor with angry, shell-shocked eyes. The teenager was a bony kid, with the edgy and feral look Carly saw too often. He hunched over in the plastic chair, arms tight to his sides, fingers gripping the edges of the seat. His rigid posture and pent-up energy suggested he could shatter into a million pieces, like a sheet of tempered glass.

  Carly went to the mini-fridge in the corner and pulled out two bottles of water. She put one on the table in front of Russ. He didn’t look up and he didn’t say hi.

  “Where is he?” Loretta shrilled from the outer room. She burst through the doorway a second later. Her denim miniskirt, baby T, and platform sandals belonged on a teen and made her look older than thirty. Mascara lines tracked down to her chin, and the humidity had frizzed her bottle-blonde hair into a fright wig that was a poor advertisement for the hair salon where she worked. “You okay?” she asked Russ.

  He nodded. His jaw shifted as he fought for control.

  Stevie followed Loretta into the room. Instead of taking the empty chair next to Zane, she closed the door and leaned on it. Tension bounced between Stevie and Zane, but then, between the heat and the anxiety level, the room had reached pressure-cooker status.

  Loretta zeroed in on Zane. “What’d he do?”

  “I didn’t do nothing.” Russ surged to his feet. The chair screeched as it slid a few inches back on the linoleum.

  “Russ, sit down.” Zane’s tone sharpened. “You too, Loretta.”

  “I took my lunch hour early. I gotta get back to work. I can’t afford to get fired.” She dropped into a chair, pulled out a lighter and a pack of Marlboros, and tapped a cigarette out of the pack. Zane pointed to the No Smoking sign on the wall. Her frown lines deepened. She put the lighter down but kept the cigarette between her fingers.

  Zane laid out the situation.

  Loretta turned to Russ. “You do it?”

  Russ’s jaw jutted forward in defiance. “No. Don’t matter though. Pete says I did it. Everyone will believe him.”

  “You got any proof?” Loretta asked Zane.

  “We have Peter’s statement, and we know Ted was dealing this drug,” Zane said. “Did you know where your dad kept his supply, Russ?”

  Russ shook his head.

  “I told you a dozen times.” Loretta rolled the cigarette between her fingers as if she could absorb the nicotine through her skin. “Ted didn’t tell us nothing.”

  “Where were you day before yesterday—Monday—after lunch?” Zane asked Russ.

  Russ dropped his gaze back to the floor. “Home. Summer school ends at noon.”

  “Alone?” Zane asked.

  Russ nodded. His shaggy hair fell across his eyes. “Yeah, alone.”

  Zane pounced on the boy’s hesitation. “You sure about that?”

  “Yeah,” Russ said. “I’m sure.”

  His statement sounded defensive to Carly, as if he protested too much. But why would he lie? If he had a ready alibi, why not tell Zane?

  “I was working,” Loretta said. “I can’t watch him all the time.”

  “Carly, can I talk to you outside for a minute?” Zane inclined his head toward the door. Carly followed him out of the interview room and through the station to the exit, leaving Stevie in the sweltering room to babysit.

  Outside, the breeze hit Carly’s face, too warm but welcome.

  Zane paced to the end of the walkway and back. “Look. All we have is one kid’s word against another’s. We searched the house and came up empty. But I want to send him to county anyway. We can use the marijuana possession and his history as cause.”

  Carly bristled. “You can’t be serious. You want to lock him up for possession of less than an ounce of pot? It’s a misdemeanor. That’s hardly worth sending him to jail, Zane.”

  He held up a hand. “Hear me out.”

  She closed her mouth and crossed her arms. Kids didn’t have the same rights as adults in the legal systems, but law enforcement was supposed to keep the best interests of the child in mind.

  “The kid who says he bought drugs from Russ is well liked. Russ isn’t. The Rollinses are a solid, churchgoing family. Beverly Rollins sings in the choir. Peter is an honor student. He’ll get a public opinion pass for one bad decision. Not Russ. He’s been in trouble before. And whether he’s guilty or not, people are going to blame him as an extension of his father’s crimes. Folks will be angry, and angry people are prone to stupid acts in volatile situations. Throw Russ’s temper into the mix, and it’s a bad situation all the way around.”

  Carly knew Zane was right, but Russ wouldn’t understand. His emotional state was already precarious. “He has a right to be presumed innocent. It’s not fair.”

  “I know it isn’t. Something is going on around here, and we don’t have a good handle on it yet. Loretta isn’t around to provide supervision. Russ spends a lot of time alone. Beverly Rollins is in a coma. Her chances are iffy. And someone local is making and distributing a dangerous drug. For now, guilty or innocent, the boy is
probably safer in juvenile detention.”

  “It’s a crappy place, Zane, full of kids who are actually violent and dangerous.”

  “I know.”

  She gave in. “Okay. I’ll call ahead and recommend a psychological assessment based on the recent traumatic death of his father. That should give you a couple of days. But you’ll have to charge him or let him go.”

  “I know. Friday is a holiday. That might buy us some time.”

  Carly agreed with a short nod.

  “You know he could be guilty, right, Carly?” Zane asked quietly. “His dad was bad news. He was raised in a violent home. Russ and Loretta need money. Maybe he thought he’d sell off his dad’s stash and help out.”

  But Carly couldn’t see it. “I believe him. I think he wants to be the polar opposite of his father, but he doesn’t know how.”

  Zane’s doubtful eyes weren’t convinced. “I’m pretty sure he was lying about being alone. Makes me wonder what he was really up to.”

  Damn.

  “Where is Peter?” Carly couldn’t imagine being a teen, screwing up, and possibly getting your mother killed in the process.

  “Peter is at the juvenile detention center on a forty-eight-hour suicide watch. He freaked out after admitting to buying the drug that might kill his mother. I have no idea what the judge will do with him.”

  “The poor kid.” Carly sighed. “I can’t imagine what he’s going through.”

  Her gut told her Russ was innocent, but was that just wishful thinking on her part? Why would Peter lie about getting the drugs from Russ? Why would Russ lie about where he’d been at the time of the drug buy?

  She pressed her fingers to her temples. Teenagers were so damned hard to figure out. Impulsive and illogical behavior was their normal.

  Seth was always telling her she was a dreamer, that most of these troubled teens were hopeless. She didn’t want to believe that. But if Russ was guilty of selling his father’s drugs, that meant there were more of them somewhere, and Russ knew where they were hidden. Even if he didn’t know, someone might think he did. That alone could put him in danger.