A Box Full of Trouble

by Carolyn Haines

  "I've had two fingers of scotch, and I'm hardly drunk. I'm worried about my wife!" He spoke so sharply that Erin took a step back. Jocko came to sit on the floor in front of him and looked up, obviously concerned. Trouble stood at his post near one of the back windows, watching them all.

  "Did you ask her about it, Dad?" She'd shown him the photos she'd retrieved from Julie's when she'd gone to the dealership before heading to the shelter. They hadn't been able to come to any more conclusions or identify the man in the photos. But she didn't tell him about the photo that Trouble had come home with. She still wasn't sure what it meant.

  He shook his head. "No. I didn't ask her about it. Things haven't been right this week. I should've told Abel Bowen the minute I saw that note. I can't believe I didn't, and then when she came back I was just so damn grateful that I wanted to forget all about it. She could be suffering from post-traumatic stress. She's been acting so strangely."

  "Maybe you can drive up to French Lick to be with her tomorrow. Or I can drive you up there tonight.”

  "Hell, who knows if she's even there?" He seemed to blink out of his funk for a moment and stared at her. "Where've you been? You look nice."

  Erin shrugged, not wanting to make a big deal about having dinner at Noah's house. "Just out for dinner."

  "Who with? MacKenzie?"

  It was unlike her father to sound so suspicious. She wondered if it was the scotch. She didn't recall him drinking as much as he'd been the past few days. "Don't worry about me. I'm fine. It's no big deal."

  "First Shelby Rae, now you."

  Erin got a glass and filled it with water from the fountain in the refrigerator door.

  "Were you with Noah Daly?"

  "Does it matter?" she asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

  Her father poured another finger of scotch in his glass, but he didn't pick it up to drink it. Yet. "Abel told me that piece of crap father of his is out of prison. I don't want that man around you."

  "He wasn't even at the house. He's out of town or something, and Annette made us dinner. That's all." Did he think she was stupid enough to want to see Jeb Daly? "Listen, why don't you go lie down for a while? You can go after Shelby Rae in the morning. You know how she is. She could be back before lunchtime with a whole other plan."

  "I just wish she'd answer the damn phone."

  They were quiet a minute. Finally, Erin went to stand near him. "Dad, this isn't right. There's something going on with Shelby Rae. Maybe it was the kidnapping, but I don't understand why she would leave you alone like this."

  Her father looked exhausted. "Maybe I left her alone too many times. Your mother and I worked together all the time for so long, until she wanted to be home when you got off the school bus. She understood how much work it is having a business. But Shelby Rae's young and wants to be out having fun. I'm not saying that's what she's up to now, but she might be punishing me."

  "That's ridiculous. It would be so childish, and you don't deserve it."

  "I don't know about that," he said. "There's no fool like an old fool."

  * * *

  Trouble and Jocko followed Erin upstairs, but once they reached the door of her father and Shelby Rae's bedroom, Trouble darted inside.

  "Trouble! Come on." She wanted to close her bedroom door and preferred to have Trouble inside. After he'd run away from Zach's place, she was wary about him going out through the pet door. Jocko followed her into her father and Shelby Rae's bedroom where she turned on the lights. Trouble wasn't in sight.

  "Let's go, Trouble. I'm tired." She heard a noise in Shelby Rae's dressing room. Shelby Rae would have a fit if she found black cat hair all over her clothes. Very little of her clothing was black. She was much more partial to red and bright whites and light colored leggings and brightly patterned shirts. "Like a party, all by her own self," MacKenzie often joked.

  Erin entered the closet and turned on the lights. The noise was coming from an upper shelf. She looked up and saw Trouble's dark head and one of his paws working together to move something along the shelf.

  "What in the world are you doing?"

  Trouble gave her a chiding meow, as if to say, "I'm doing something important, and could use your help, missy!"

  Before she could chase him off the shelf, he gave a forceful swipe of his paw, and the thing he was pushing tumbled to the floor, bouncing off her foot. Erin blurted out a curse word her father would not be glad to hear her use, and bent to rub her stung toes. Trouble jumped from the shelf to the marble-topped counter running down the center of the dressing room and stood watching Erin.

  "That wasn't nice, cat." She grabbed the thing Trouble had knocked from the shelf. It was a silver phone, the old-fashioned flip kind often sold as a cheap burner phone. Erin had never seen Shelby Rae use it before. She didn't open it but quickly stuck it in her pocket lest her father see it. Picking up Trouble, she held him against her shoulder and scratched him behind the ear. "You clever, clever cat."

  Trouble began to purr.

  She waited until she was in her bedroom with the door closed to turn on the phone. It blinked to life. There were no sent or received text messages, but the list of calls was long. Calls that went only to and from a single number. Erin didn't recognize the area code, but that made no difference anyway since it was a burner phone, and because people could move to another state and still keep their old numbers. A stream of ideas flowed through her mind. She could try to convince the police to trace the number. But which police? Sheriff Bowen or Zach? No, she couldn't ask Zach. If the photo of the young Shelby Rae had come from his house, as she suspected, he couldn't be trusted with it. Sheriff Bowen would have to be told the whole kidnapping story. No way they could get into that without it becoming a problem. Her father was adamant, as was Shelby Rae. Erin couldn't bear to hand the phone over to her father if Shelby Rae was using the phone to call her lover. How much else should he have to bear? What about confronting Shelby Rae? Now, that was a possibility. Except it would have to wait. She couldn't exactly text her stepmother and say, "The cat and I were snooping in your dressing room and we found a secret phone. Why do you have it, and whom have you been calling, please?"

  Knowing it was her only choice, before she could change her mind she hit redial and listened as the phone on the other end rang. She bit her lip. What would she say if someone answered?

  Finally, the call was picked up in the middle of the fourth ring. But no one said a word, and there were no sounds in the background. She plunged ahead. "Hello?"

  Silence.

  Whoever was on the other end hung up, and a chill ran down Erin's spine.

  * * *

  Erin pulled the duvet up over her shoulder to try to stop whatever was patting her rhythmically. It stopped for a moment but then continued on her head: patpat, patpat, patpat. "Quit!" She waved a sleepy hand in the air near her head and came in contact with a wall of soft fur. "What are you doing, cat?" she said into the pillow.

  Opening her eyes a crack, she saw that it wasn't quite light outside yet. And what was that sound? Over on her desk, her phone was vibrating. What now--and so freaking early?

  Trouble gave her a final pair of patpats on her head, then jumped over her to sit right in front of her face, staring at her with serious green eyes.

  "Why don't you just answer the phone?" Erin sighed and rolled out of bed, shivering in the air conditioning. "All right. All right."

  The phone read "6:05," and it wasn't the phone ringing, but a text notification. From Shelby Rae.

  Don't tell your dad but I'm in trouble and need your help!! I'm at the fishing cabin and have made a terrible mistake but I can't come home and let him see me. Please please bring Jocko. I have to stay away for a while and I want him with me. Sorry to be weird. Will explain!

  Erin had to read the message several times to get it through to her foggy brain. What kind of stupid game was Shelby Rae playing? Telling her father she was going to French Lick, but then going to the fishing cabin. What
kind of trouble could she be in that she would ask her help? Shelby Rae never asked her for any kind of help, unless it was to watch Jocko when she wasn't going to be home. And Shelby Rae didn't want her own husband to know what was going on. As much as Erin wanted to protect her father, hiding this would be an outright betrayal of him. Vulnerable as he'd been lately, he was still an adult, and he needed to deal with his wife—a wife who was obviously in way over her head with something. They had to find out what that something was.

  Erin threw a robe on and, animals in tow, rushed to her father's bedroom to knock on the door. "Dad?"

  The bed was empty. He'd probably fallen asleep on the couch again, just as he had the night Shelby Rae was kidnapped. She prayed he hadn't drunk himself to sleep. The alcohol was beginning to seriously worry her.

  He wasn't anywhere downstairs. She went to the kitchen, where the overhead lights were still on.

  "Hey, Dad? Where are you?"

  Jocko ran to the kitchen door and pushed through the pet door. Trouble stayed close to Erin. There was no sign of her father. The whiskey bottle was gone, and so was the glass. On the island where they'd been was a note clipped onto the wire message holder they sometimes used.

  Slept a couple of hours. Driving up to French Lick to see if Shelby Rae's okay. Will call you later. Love, Dad

  It was less than two hours from the house to French Lick. She wished she knew what time he'd left. If this was how complicated and awful marriage could be, she knew she never wanted any part of it. Whoever she eventually married would have to be completely honest with her. Always. Could Noah always be honest with her? She wasn't sure.

  What she needed to do right then was get dressed, feed the animals, and get out to the other side of the lake and her grandfather's old fishing cabin to talk to Shelby Rae. She could call her father on the way and get him to turn around, if he hadn't reached the hotel already.

  * * *

  Noah got out of the shower, still thinking about his time with Erin. He felt a rush of happiness when he pictured her face, so soft and beautiful in the summer evening light. After they kissed, she’d rested her head on his shoulder like it was the most natural thing in the world, and they’d sat like that for several minutes, rocking on the glider until his mother came out bearing cups of decaf coffee. Erin had quickly lifted her head, but Noah took her hand, not at all embarrassed. His mother didn't comment, but just asked if they wanted more pie. Erin stayed another half hour and he had kissed her again, out by her car.

  "Breakfast in five." His mother gave two brief raps on the bathroom door. "Good morning."

  "Hey. Out in a minute." When he was dried off, Noah went to his room and put on his jeans and T-shirt. The morning was cool and pleasant, but he hadn't gotten up early enough to go fishing. If he was honest with himself, he knew that the last time he'd gone, he'd mostly just wanted to be close to Erin. But look what that had gotten him. He'd discovered Julie Berry's body, and the police had told him they’d probably want to talk to him again. Was it because he'd been the one to find the body, or because of who his father was? He suspected it was a mix of both.

  Thanks again, Dad.

  His father would be home that afternoon, and as brave as Noah had been the day before, he was still a bit afraid of him. Jeb Daly was known to be a sneaky, clever man. And even though Noah knew he could take care of himself, he also knew he would die before he let something happen to his mother.

  Boots on, he reached for his phone. There was a message notification, but he didn't remember hearing the phone buzz. Maybe he'd been asleep, or in the shower? He smiled to see Erin’s number, but his smile faded as he listened.

  She said she was headed out to her grandfather's fishing cabin, where Shelby Rae was hiding. She'd called her father and he was also coming to the cabin, but she wanted to let Noah know. Then she gave a nervous laugh. "Does that sound silly? Maybe that sounds silly. Anyway, I don't really know what's going on, but if I end up staying up there with Shelby Rae, I didn't want you to think I, you know, disappeared. It's off of Walsh Fork Road—clever, huh? There's an old sign at the beginning of the driveway, well it's kind of a crappy, rocky road rather than a driveway. Right after the big curve, you’ll see a sign with a turtle wearing a sailor hat. I can't believe nobody’s stolen it. Okay. I just wanted you to know. I had a great time last night. Bye."

  It was a strange message, but the most significant thing about it was that she sounded nervous. He looked at the time. She'd left it nearly an hour earlier.

  * * *

  “Find another body, did you? Or you just going to work part-time, now that you're dating the boss's daughter?" Earl sounded disapproving.

  "I'll be in later this morning. Promise." Then Noah told a lie. "Funny you should say that. It's actually something I'm doing for Mr. Walsh, right? I'm sure he'll tell you about it later."

  "Mr. Walsh going to come in and do the oil changes while you're gone?"

  Noah laughed. "Come on. You haven't had me doing oil changes in three months. You've got Andrew on them."

  Earl gave a little grunt. "Just be here by eleven. We got a full afternoon."

  Noah hung up wondering what he would find at the cabin. Erin said Shelby Rae was hiding. What did that even mean? From whom was she hiding?

  It took him twenty minutes to get to Walsh Fork Road, but the area was familiar because he spent so much time riding the backroads on his bike. Somehow he'd never connected Walsh Fork Road and the old turtle sign with Bruce Walsh and his family, but it made sense. On a wall of Bruce Walsh’s office there were photos of Erin’s grandfather as a teenager, dressed in his sailor's uniform on the deck of a WWII destroyer.

  The cabin was at the end of the gravel road, only about fifty feet from the lake. Its porch had been jacked up and the roof looked new, but its worn gray logs and narrow porch marked it as having been built many, many decades ago. Beyond the building and its moss and dirt yard, mist floated inches above the water's surface. A mated pair of mallards just offshore quacked softly, uninterested in Noah’s arrival. The only anomaly was a small satellite dish pointed at the sky in the clearing behind the cabin.

  Erin’s Challenger was parked right beside the cabin on one half of a tidy rectangle of fresh gravel.

  Noah parked his bike and ran to the car. Not only was it unlocked, but Jocko and the black cat, Trouble, popped up from the backseat. Jocko barked frantically at him and backed up into a corner of the seat. Trouble came forward and jumped neatly to the ground and licked a paw. Then he looked up at Noah, waiting.

  "Guys, where's Erin? I can't believe she left you out here with the car closed up." It made him worry. The air was mild, and the car was in the shade, but in no time it could've become an oven. No way would Erin have left the animals that way. Also, Erin's keys sat in the console.

  He turned around and called, "Erin! Where are you?"

  Jocko finally scrambled from the car and ran to the porch to scratch at the front door. But before he could get a real scratch in, the door drifted open at his touch. He dropped his small forelegs to the ground and ran inside. Trouble and Noah followed.

  The inside of the cabin was dim with pale morning light, but it was bright enough that Noah could see that some sort of altercation had taken place. Three wooden chairs, as well as a table, had been overturned. Broken glass lay scattered over the floor so that Noah had to call Jocko back before he cut himself. The coffee table between the couch and the giant television had a half-filled wine glass on it, along with a plate of stale-looking cheese slices. But the wine bottle lay near the television, its blood-red contents soaked into the tawny Berber rug. Still, there was no sign of Erin.

  He went into the tiny bedroom. There was definitely evidence of a woman, probably Shelby Rae, having been here. A filmy satin robe lay half off the bed, and a messy pile of lingerie sat atop the dresser beneath the window. There was even one of those silly, lace-trimmed sleeping masks on the bedside table.

  A sound behind him made Noah jump.
He turned around to see Trouble pawing around inside an open bag resting on a chair. The colorful bag looked familiar, and Noah walked over to examine it. He picked up Trouble and set him on the bed. Trouble jumped off immediately as though the bed were on fire and stood resolutely on the floor. "Suit yourself," Noah said. He bent to examine the bag. Where had he seen it? He put his hand inside and grasped a rubber-banded stack of bills. Then another and another. It was the bag the man on the four-wheeler had carried away from the barn. No doubt there was fifty thousand dollars in the bag if the criminals hadn't yet removed some of the money.

  There was something else in the bag—a half-dozen photos. In five of them, Shelby Rae sat in the driver's seat of her car with a man wearing a ball cap beside her. But in one, the man was embracing her. The cap he was wearing was a Bengal's ball cap, and Noah was certain the man was Zach Wilkins. These had to be the photos Erin had described to him on the way to Zach's house, but she hadn’t said anything about the hat. Had she brought these to the cabin to show Shelby Rae?

  Erin's message said she was on her way to the cabin because Shelby Rae texted that she needed her, but had the fight in living room been between Erin and her stepmother? It seemed too bizarre. Erin's was the only car parked outside. Where was Shelby Rae? How was Zach involved?

  Noah tried Erin's phone, but it went straight to voicemail, which meant it was probably off. He ran outside again, shouting for Erin, but got no answer. The only place he could think to look for the two women was at Zach's place. A sick feeling bloomed in his gut when he thought about taking Erin. What if he’d put her in danger?

  When he hurried to his bike and got on, Jocko and Trouble ran after him. "No, guys. Not gonna work.”

  Trouble leapt onto the motorcycle and looked forward, ready to ride.

  "Fine. Get in the car. Erin wouldn't want me to leave you guys here, anyway." Picking up Trouble, he carried him to Erin's car and opened the door. He deposited the cat in the front seat and tried to get Jocko into the back. But Jocko immediately clambered up front, so he could ride shotgun with Trouble.