by Kym Roberts
Apparently, I didn’t know anything. My mom had told me about the marches her parents had done during the sixties. She’d been a young child, but she remembered the racial tensions and the hatred that was tossed around like it was acceptable to hate her for her darker skin tone. I’d always been proud of the stand my grandparents had taken during a tumultuous time in our country’s history. But this was different. These people didn’t stand for anything but the dollar. What did that say?
Scarlet returned to where Sugar and I stood. With Mateo’s arrival, the crowd was now nearly gone, walking down the street with their signs dragging on the ground.
“Sugar, don’t you go questioning Dean’s loyalty. You know him,” Scarlet said as she climbed the steps.
But Sugar wasn’t listening. Her head was bent over her phone, and her fingers were flying across the screen. Her anger was completely gone, and the worry for Dean had returned. “I blew it. I let my temper get the best of me with her the other night, and I blew it. He’s gone back to her. They have a kid together. They have history. What was I thinking?” Her pretty blond hair fell in front of her face as she stared down at her phone, hoping for a reply.
Nothing came, and Scarlet wrapped her arm around one shoulder, and I wrapped mine around the other. There was nothing to say, because Sugar knew Dean’s track record with women. She knew the man. And if she didn’t trust him right know, how could we?
Mateo sauntered up the steps, his uniform hugging all the right spots as he casually took off his sunglasses and hung them from his shirt pocket. His brow was drawn, but he wore the comfortable expression of a man who wasn’t about to put me in shackles and deliver me to jail. I looked down the street where Liza and her cameraman were trying to turn the picketers around.
“It looks like she missed the real story,” I said, happy that she wouldn’t see Mateo arrest me.
“Looks like we caught a break. Are you ready?”
“Are you going to put me in cuffs?”
Scarlet’s head whipped around. I hadn’t told her about the charges I faced. “What for?” she asked.
Sugar joined in. “You wouldn’t dare!”
Mateo held up his hands in supplication. “I’m just giving her a ride to Oak Grove.”
He wasn’t fooling anyone. The county jail was in Oak Grove.
“For what?” Scarlet asked from her position on his right. She looked like she was about to hold her own protest.
Mateo threw the ball in my court by looking in my direction and lifting his left brow.
“I have some business I need to attend to,” I said.
Sugar looked doubtful, and it was clear that Scarlet also didn’t believe a word I said.
Mateo gently took my arm and led me to his car. “‘Sorry, ladies. I don’t have time to sit around and chat. The health inspector has been ordered to the Inn. It seems a large percentage of their customers have come down with some kind of illness.” He didn’t wait for their response before opening the passenger side of his car and tucking my head down as he helped me inside.
I hated when he did that. Granted, he’d only done it once before, but still.
I waited for him to walk around and get in the car. I looked at the protestors entering the Inn. “What do you think is making them ill?”
Mateo clicked his seat belt in place and started the car. “I wouldn’t begin to speculate. I’m just hoping you didn’t burn something hazardous.”
“I would never!” I exclaimed.
“I never thought you’d sacrifice yourself for Cade either.”
I looked over at the man I’d been dating for several months, and for the first time, I saw real insecurity. Jealousy, even.
“I didn’t do it for Cade.” Did I?
“I can’t see where you benefit from not throwing those books and posters in the trash,” he said.
“It would have been a week before they came to get them!”
Mateo shrugged. “You have a huge backyard.”
“I made a promise to a man who saved my life.”
“A man who wants you…” He let that comment hang in the air as my mouth fell open.
“Are we having our first real fight as a couple?” I asked.
“I believe we are.”
Silence filled the car, and I realized I might not be sitting next to my boyfriend anymore…but I was definitely sitting next to the sheriff.
Fuzz buckets.
Chapter 6
I hadn’t expected Mateo to walk me through the process and take me back home…but I had hoped. Instead, when the desk sergeant pulled him aside and whispered something in his ear, he disappeared with an apologetic look over his shoulder.
Drat the man.
It was hard enough being booked in for a crime, but to not have the support of your boyfriend? Well, that stunk more than the stupid skunk that had caused this whole mess. Except, it wasn’t really the skunk’s fault. It was Liza Twaine’s with her stupid purple pumps and purple telephone. And I was pretty sure Princess wouldn’t appreciate me calling her new beau stupid, who hadn’t done anything but try to warn away his foes and protect himself.
If I as being honest with myself, I couldn’t even blame Liza. I was the one who lit the fire.
I sighed as one of the new deputies, who couldn’t have been much over twenty-one, with his baby fresh complexion and chin that couldn’t sport facial hair if he skipped shaving for a month, held my fingers down over the electronic fingerprint machine. The small box looked like a dated piece of electronic equipment from the 1970s that you would find in a garage sale. The image it displayed of my fingerprints on the computer screen, however, displayed how high tech the system was. It also made the procedure all that much scarier knowing that my fingerprints were permanently imaged into the legal system’s internet skyway. With a click of a button, Moscow could probably have my identity.
Would they take my DNA too? I thought of those spy movies where some innocent shmuck was framed for a crime he didn’t commit with files hacked out of systems like this one. Then I reminded myself that Mateo had taken my fingerprints once before when I was suspected of murdering my real estate woman. If I was going to be framed for the fall of democracy, that ship had already sailed well before today’s pleasure cruise.
The next step was to fill out some paperwork and sign my name on the dotted line promising to show up for my appointed court date in four weeks. I walked out the door the deputy held open to the lobby and found Cade sitting on the bench in his lawyer attire. His tailored suit fit well and didn’t hold any creases when he abandoned the bench, stood and held his arms open wide.
I didn’t hesitate; I took the hug he offered. He at least knew me well enough to know that despite my lifted chin, I was more than disturbed by this whole ordeal. Jail was not my favorite place to be.
“It’s going to be alright,” he said as he kissed the top of my head.
Mateo chose that moment to walk out the same door I had, and he stopped and looked at us. I immediately pulled away, but it was too late. The hurt in his chocolate eyes was caused by me. I hoped he saw the same pain in mine.
He glanced around at the empty lobby and desk clerks sitting behind the bulletproof glass before he approached us. “The deputy told me you were done.”
“Yeah,” I responded.
Mateo nodded and rubbed his chin in a manner that said he was debating whether to say something. He dropped his hand and said, “I suppose you heard about the health inspector going to the Enchanted Inn?” When Cade nodded, Mateo continued, “They just found the cause of their guests getting sick.”
Wanting to be a part of the conversation, and not be ignored, I asked, “What was it?”
Mateo looked at Cade and then answered my question, “They found a body in the water cistern on top of the Inn.”
Cade’s eyes closed as if the
worst possible news had slapped him in the face, and he was afraid to hear anymore. Not only had someone lost their life, but that hotel was his baby. His pride and joy. His political hothouse of success…that had just crumbled to the ground.
“In the water cistern?” I asked, thinking about the rainwater collection system Cade had sold to the hotel owners. He didn’t have a direct link to the actual sale, but he’d pitched the idea to the Enchanted Inn’s owners and was trying to use it as a selling point to other businesses in town. Collect rainwater and save on your water bill. It was instrumental in his push to make the town have a smaller environmental footprint.
“Yeah. The body has been in there a couple days.” Mateo spoke to Cade, as if I hadn’t been the one to ask the question. I didn’t get angry. I was surprised he was giving as much information as he was. Although I suspected it was because the town’s mayor standing at my side deserved more information than a small business owner who had a propensity for ending up in the slammer.
“Who was it?” I asked as a sense of dread washed over me, and I thought of Tiny’s accusing finger pointing in Sugar’s direction.
“There’s no ID on the victim yet,” Mateo responded, yet something in his eyes told me that despite the lack of ID, Mateo knew exactly who the victim was.
“But you know who it is,” I said.
“We have an idea. According to the Texas Missing Persons Clearinghouse there are only five women who have disappeared in the past few days throughout Texas.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Only five?”
Mateo gave me a sad smile. “There’s a reason I worry about you. Most of the victims have high-risk lifestyles though. We’re working with Oklahoma too, just in case we don’t identify the victim, but I think we will.”
I asked the question he was evading, “Are any of the missing women local?”
“One.”
“You’re not going to tell us who it is, are you?”
Mateo shook his head. “Mayor, I’ll update you when I get more information. I’m heading out there now.”
Cade shook Mateo’s hand. “Of course, Sheriff. Thank you.”
“Can I come?” I asked. I knew it was a harebrained idea, but I needed to know the identity of the victim. Not for myself, but for Sugar. I had a feeling Tiny and his family weren’t going to take the news well.
Once again, Mateo gave me a sad smile. It was a smile I didn’t like very much. “No.” He turned to walk away and then hesitated. “I can drop you off at the Barn, if you’d like?”
Cade interrupted before I could answer. “That’s not necessary. As her attorney, I’d like some time to talk to her. I can take her home.”
Mateo nodded as he and Cade had some type of silent male-to-male eye conversation. I had no idea what was said, but they each gave a short nod at the end. Mateo hesitated, and I thought he was going to lean forward and give me a kiss, at least on the cheek. He’d announced to Liza that we were a couple by putting his arm around me. Surely, he’d do it with Cade too.
But if he’d been considering it, he changed his mind and said, “Make sure her doors are locked,” as he walked away.
I turned all my pent-up frustration on Cade. “I don’t need anyone to check my doors. I can check them myself.”
“I know you can. Come on, I’ll take you home.”
“I’m not going home,” I told him.
“Princess.” His voice held that don’t get yourself into any more trouble tone. He sounded too much like my daddy. It was creepy.
“Don’t ‘Princess’ me. I have a vested interest in finding out who died at the Enchanted Inn and so do you.”
“I think I can wait until the sheriff tells me,” Cade argued as he led me across the parking lot to a brand new, very sleek, black, four-door sedan.
“Who does this belong to?” I asked.
Cade opened the front passenger door to a dark interior with white leather seats and black wood-grain trim. “I bought it.”
“You sold your Camaro?” Cade had had his vintage Camaro since he turned sixteen. It was his baby. The thought of him selling it seemed almost sacrilegious.
He pulled at the collar of his shirt. “No. It’s at home in the garage.”
I looked at the manufacturer’s symbol I didn’t recognize as I got inside. “What is it?”
“It’s a Tesla,” he said as he closed the door. The airtight seal gave a soft thunk, much different from the sound of the doors on my daddy’s three-year-old truck. The smell of new car enveloped me in the luxurious interior. I’d always known Cade had money. He came from money. Made big money in the NFL before he injured his knee. After that, he’d made good business decisions, and still did. He may not have owned the Enchanted Inn, but he was a major investor in the finished product of the quaint hotel that was making a name for itself as the greenest hotel in Texas. The Calloway name was synonymous with deep pockets and power. But when we’d dated as teenagers, we hung out at the Barn, not the Calloway Estate that made the Ewing spread on the television show Dallas look like a ranch hand’s bunk house. He always drove his truck or his Camaro, which was in great shape, but it was old when we were kids. It was ancient now.
This car meant a level of money that I couldn’t relate to.
“What made you buy this?”
“I thought it was time to get something grown-up.” He turned on the vehicle, and the engine didn’t make a sound. No rumble. No purr. The exact opposite of his Camaro.
I grinned. “You got it because it’s electric.”
Cade tried to hide his embarrassment, but I saw the slight shade of pink touch his ears. “That was one of the selling points.”
Then I remembered why having an environmentally friendly car wouldn’t matter as much today as it did yesterday. “I’m sorry. You’ve been doing everything right to advance your career, and I screwed it all up in one morning.”
“There’s a dead body in the cistern of the hotel I funded. I don’t think a few posters are going to matter after that. Especially since a whole group of protesters became ill from the water.”
“How could someone have dumped a body in the cistern?”
Cade glanced at me as he maneuvered the vehicle through the streets of Oak Grove. “Mateo didn’t say it was a homicide. He said it was a dead body. For all we know someone got drunk and decided it was a perfect place to go swimming.”
I didn’t think there was a positive spin on this scenario, but Cade made it sound less sinister. Even if the woman had decided to go swimming…her body had been there long enough for the officers not to be able to identify her, and her remains floating in that cistern was the source for the numerous people becoming ill. I thought about what that meant. It wasn’t the most pleasant thought to have racing through my head.
I shuddered.
Cade talked about my charges and his strategy for defending against them during the rest of the way back to Hazel Rock, but I could tell he was worried. Worried about the victim’s identity and if it was someone we knew. Worried about the hotel and its guests. And to round it off in a great big bundle, was his concern for his career. Life as the mayor of Hazel Rock wasn’t as easy as it appeared.
The Enchanted Inn had been a major part of his success. It’d been recently renovated and had only reopened about a month ago. The owners and Cade had given a tour before it opened to showcase not only the design, but the energy efficiency of all the fixtures, windows, appliances, and the water saving features. It was the tallest building in town and had state-of-the-art technology with an old-world charm. The top three floors we’re made of brick, but the first floor had a concrete facade with arched openings leading to a paved courtyard and the front doors. The back of the building had a branch coming out to form a T that had been added in the early 1900s.
Before the renovation, the Inn had been an apartment building and had shown it
s age. Since the renovation it looked brand new. The floor-to-ceiling windows on the second and third floors mirrored the arches to the courtyard and were a main draw to most visitors. The views of the Brazos River from the front and Hill Country in the back, were spectacular. When the sun set, they were a sight to behold.
Even the water tank located on the back wing of the hotel didn’t detract from the charm the Enchanted Inn possessed. The tank had been designed with the same charm as the rest of the building. Except now, as we approached the scene, emergency responders and the Medical Examiner’s Office personnel could be seen on top of the roof. The water rescue team had been called in to retrieve the body, and even though we couldn’t see the solar panels on the roof, it was obvious that everyone was having to work around them.
Police tape was replaced with temporary barriers keeping hordes of reporters back as the police filtered hotel guests toward a bus that had been brought in to transport those individuals who weren’t seriously ill. The entire scene looked macabre with a crowd of onlookers watching and being interviewed by news sources from across the state. Among them I recognized Scarlet with her arm around Sugar’s shoulder.
Cade winced as we drove by. Even the local reporters didn’t recognize his new car, which had windows tinted so dark, they couldn’t possibly see us inside. It gave Cade a break that would allow him time gather information before speaking to them. I didn’t envy the job ahead of him.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I thought I’d park down at the Barn, make a few phone calls, and head down to the Inn once I had a little bit more information.” He grabbed his phone from the dash and made sure Bluetooth was turned off. He wanted privacy, and I was going to give it to him.
“Thank you for the lift. I appreciate all your help.”
“I know you wouldn’t be in this mess it wasn’t for me. We’ll get through it together.” Cade smiled but it wasn’t real.
I could’ve said the same thing to him, but I didn’t. Instead I opened the door and headed toward the crowd where I’d seen Scarlet and Sugar standing outside of the hotel. I squeezed my way through some of the same people who had been protesting outside the Book Barn earlier that day. Apparently harassing me had become low on their list of priorities.
