Ripped Apart (A Ripple Effect Cozy Mystery, Book 5)
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Ripped Apart
A Ripple Effect Mystery, Book Five
Jeanne Glidewell
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Copyright © 2020 by Jeanne Glidewell All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
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eBook ISBN: 978-1-947833-44-9
Contents
Samantha McCary
Foreword
Introduction
Characters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Afterword
Before You Go…
Ripped Off
Acknowledgments
Also by Jeanne Glidewell
About the Author
To all of the victims of Hurricane Harvey―from the animals at the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, whose home was severely damaged; to the resilient citizens of south Texas; to the folks in Houston―and everyone and everything in between.
Samantha McCary
Rockport, Texas
Foreword
by Samantha McCary, Rockport, Texas citizen
On August 25th, 2017, my hometown of Rockport, Texas, got hit by a little storm named Hurricane Harvey. And it hit Rockport with a vengeance! Lives, cars, houses, campers, boats, and everything else in Harvey’s path got turned upside down. What twenty-four hours earlier had been a quiet, peaceful little drinking town with a fishing problem, now looked like ground zero in a war zone. Houses, apartments, businesses, schools, and structures of every kind were just gone. As people made their way out of the rubble and evacuation locations and back to what had been their homes, the true desperation of the situation began to sink in. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Rockport citizens had no home to go back to and no place to turn. That is where my part of the story began.
I had a house and three acres at the edge of town, and although Harvey leveled Mermaid’s Kitchen, my catering business, my house was nearly unaffected by the storm. As soon as we discovered we had a place to come back to, my family and I started a donation drive to bring back items we knew people would need. As a cook, I knew people would need to eat. What grew out of that first sixteen-foot trailer load of supplies, including twelve tents and two outdoor showers, is a story in itself. But I will tell you that in the following two years, I saw the very best and the very worst of humanity. At one point, there were at least one hundred and thirty-five people living in tents in my yard, some for a few nights and others for many months. Most were displaced locals, but at least a third were volunteers; people who came from as far away as Tennessee and Alaska to try to help get Rockport cleaned up. As to be expected, there were a few who just showed up to take advantage of the situation.
I watched lives change, a few for the worse, but so many more for the better. I don’t consider myself a philanthropist or a hometown hero, as Jeanne Glidewell refers to me in Ripped Apart. I was merely following the golden rule, doing what I’d hope someone would do for me if our situations had been reversed. As the late Canadian writer, Charles de Lint, said, “I don’t want to live in a world where we don’t look out for each other. Not just the people who are close to us, but anybody who needs a helping hand. I can’t change the way anybody else thinks, or what they choose to do, but I can do my bit.”
Introduction
Even though I have injected some humor into this fictional story, please do not think I am making light of an event that was both tragic and catastrophic. Hurricane Harvey was devastating to many of our family, neighbors, and friends. We didn’t escape its wrath, either. Our waterfront condo was destroyed by the storm.
“Rockport Strong”, “Houston Strong”, and “Port A Strong”, among others, were not just new mottos thrown about because they made good media sound bites. They were declarations made by the Texas citizens of those towns to persevere, to conquer whatever obstacles they were faced with, and to rise to the occasion no matter what. From the moment Harvey finally abated, the citizens of Texas vowed to make certain the recovery and renewal of their towns resulted in them becoming bigger, stronger, and better than ever before. From what I’ve witnessed in the past two-and-a-half years or so, those promises have been kept. Most of the businesses have reopened and are flourishing, the majority of damaged homes have been repaired or rebuilt, and even a few of the destroyed landmarks are being replaced.
Tourism, one of our primary sources of income, suffered a crushing blow following Harvey. Amongst many other activities, there’s great art-gallery browsing, tremendous bird and dolphin watching, delicious restaurants, unbelievable fishing, fascinating beachcombing, exciting boating, and every other water sport you can imagine. I could go on and on until I’ve used every complimentary adjective in the dictionary, but I’d rather you come and check it out for yourself. We are open for business once again!!! You won’t be disappointed, I promise.
As always, I hope you enjoy my story and forgive me for the words I have made up in the telling of it.
Feel free to send messages to JeanneGlidewell@epublishingworks.com. I respond to every message I receive.
Happy reading,
Jeanne
Characters
Rapella Ripple - seventy-year-old amateur sleuth who's determined to discover the truth behind Reilly Reynolds’s mysterious disappearance.
Clyde “Rip” Ripple - other half of the full-time RVing couple who’s an unsung hero for not only putting up with his wife’s impetuous actions and single-minded obsession to bring criminals to justice, but also for occasionally assisting in her often dangerous pursuits.
Regina Moore - fifty-one-year-old daughter of Rapella and Rip, whose home on Key Allegro Island has been damaged by the hurricane.
Milo Moore - Rapella and Rip’s son-in-law who owns MC Hammerheads Construction Company and is in the business of remodeling and flipping houses.
Reilly
Reynolds - Regina and Milo’s newlywed next-door neighbor who goes missing during Hurricane Harvey and is presumed dead, a victim of the storm.
Walker Reynolds - Reilly’s husband, who reports that he watched her chase their dog, Scrappy, down to their pier in the midst of the storm. He’s convinced she was blown off the pier by the high winds, never to be seen again.
Jessie Garza - general contractor who takes on the job of repairing his friend, Walker’s, home following the hurricane.
Bruno Watts - diminutive and diabetic drywall sub-contractor hired by Jessie to assist with the Reynolds’s home restoration project.
Anthony “Tony” Torres - owner of TNT Demolition and another one of the sub-contractors hired by Jessie to help restore the Reynolds’s home.
Suzanna Pandero - the neighbor on the opposite side of Regina and Milo’s home, who has two rascally creatures to contend with; one is a pet chinchilla, the other a straying husband.
Percival Pandero - the deceitful husband of Suzanna, who has even more immoral tendencies then she realizes.
Barlow Barnaby - another resident on the Moores’ cul-de-sac who has a habit of “seeing things” and calling the cops on his neighbors. He’s not well-liked among his neighbors on Flamingo Road.
One
“Your daughter doesn’t have the sense God gave a day-old boll weevil.”
“My daughter?” I asked my husband, Clyde Ripple, better known as Rip. “I could’ve sworn you were present when Regina was conceived. I guess it was the milkman after all.”
“Why would she and Milo ignore a mandatory evacuation order?” Rip was too tense to appreciate my attempt at levity. “It’s not like Mayor Wax would issue one for no reason.”
“When I spoke to Regina on Friday, I literally begged her to flee the coastal area.” My mood turned on a dime and my eyes grew misty as I spoke. Rip and I were currently visiting friends in Rockdale, Missouri, and the news of a major storm along the Texas Gulf Coast had been disheartening.
“Well, at that stage of the game, it was probably best they stay put rather than risk getting caught up in the storm while traveling in their vehicle,” Rip replied.
I swallowed hard at the thought Regina might have reconsidered my pleading advice and, in order to appease me, convinced Milo to evacuate too late, placing them at even greater risk. Our fifty-one-year-old daughter, Regina, and her husband, Milo Moore, lived on Key Allegro Island in Rockport, Texas.
Late in the evening on August 25, 2017, Hurricane Harvey had made landfall in our quaint little hometown of approximately ten thousand people, causing massive, catastrophic devastation, according to the latest weather report. Regina had informed me just hours before the storm hit that they planned to ride it out in their waterfront home. I saw no particular honor in their decision to “go down with the ship” if the hurricane was as destructive and life-threatening as anticipated, and I told her so. Three or four times, in fact!
But, unfortunately, my words appeared to fall on deaf ears. Just a few hours later, the hurricane came roaring into Rockport with all its pistons pumping, and wreaked havoc on everything in its path. It’d been reported that all of the town’s utilities had been put out of commission indefinitely. This included cell phone and Internet service, leaving us no way to contact our daughter to see if she and Milo had survived the storm. If they did, I’d be tempted to strangle them both for causing us such angst by behaving so recklessly. Rip had just recovered from triple-bypass surgery. The last thing he needed was to be stressed out about Regina and Milo’s safety.
Just after noon on the twenty-seventh, Rip and I were in the parlor of the Alexandria Inn with Lexie Starr and Stone Van Patten, who owned and operated the renovated Victorian bed and breakfast facility located in Rockdale, Missouri. We’d been glued to the TV for hours, watching The Weather Channel and anxiously waiting for updates on the progress of the still-churning hurricane and the devastation it was leaving in its wake. We gasped in unison as meteorologist, Jim Cantore, predicted Hurricane Harvey would inundate the Houston area with over fifty inches of rain. Fifty inches of rain! I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the idea of over four feet of rain falling in one storm!
The magnitude of this forceful hurricane, which had strengthened for days in the Gulf of Mexico before making landfall in Rockport, was unprecedented and expected to become one of the costliest, if not the costliest, tropical cyclone on record. Through it all, we had no way of knowing how Regina and Milo were faring, or if their beautiful home was still standing. Rip and I were nearly a thousand miles away and felt helpless, knowing it was unlikely we’d be able to get to our daughter’s side anytime soon.
The damage reports were not exactly encouraging, either. Local airports, and nearly every thoroughfare leading from Houston to south of Corpus Christi, were closed and were apt to remain so for days. Thousands of power poles had been snapped in two. Downed electrical lines, uprooted trees, debris, and various other hazards were making every road in the vicinity impassable.
I shook my head in despair. “Even if the kids survived the storm, I doubt their fancy-pants house did.”
“Let’s not borrow worry, Rapella.” Rip tenderly stroked my back. “We need to hope for the best, even as we prepare for the worst.”
Just then our cell phone rang. “It’s Regina!” I exclaimed. Flustered, I grabbed the phone, accidentally disconnecting the call.
“What the ̶ ?” Rip looked at me as if I’d just hung up on the Pope. When the phone rang a second time, he snatched it from my hand. “Sweetheart? Are you kids all right?”
I nervously watched as Rip strained to hear Regina’s response. As usual, he’d left his hearing aids in the safety of his toiletry bag, a habit that was a constant source of irritation for me.
“Give me the blasted thing!” I snatched the phone back.
“Mom?” Regina sounded on the verge of hysteria. Her voice was cutting in and out. “I___ ___ one bar___ ___ ___first time___ ___get out all___.”
“I can’t understand you, honey. Are you and Milo okay?” I asked.
Her barely audible reply sounded like, “I’d prefer banana pudding on my radiator.”
“Your what? Did you say radiator?” Between a terrible connection and her obvious distress, I was unable to make out much of what she said. I took comfort in knowing if she was able to speak, she was at least alive and conscious.
“All roads closed___ Milo ___ ___the roof___ ___ the terribly strong wind___ ___ ___ dead___ ___ ___ripped apart___ ___ the pier___ dog___ ___ big mess___ ___ ___what to do.” That’s all I could make out before the call dropped.
I immediately tried to call her back, but it was to no avail. Everyone who’d gathered in the parlor stared at me in trepidation. I was so choked up, I could barely speak. “I, um, I think she was trying to tell me that Milo’s dead. And something to do with the dog making a mess.”
“What?” Rip asked. He was clearly perplexed.
“Then again, maybe it was their dog that died.”
“They don’t have a dog!” Rip said loudly. “What exactly did Regina say?”
“I think she might’ve said Milo fell off the roof due to the strong wind.” I was desperately trying to make sense of what few decipherable words I’d heard. “There was definitely something said about a dog, too. And something, or someone, was ripped apart.”
“No doubt a lot of things were ripped apart, but even Milo’s not foolish enough to stand on the roof in a hurricane. Did Regina specifically say he’d been killed?” After a career in law enforcement, Rip was more focused on facts than emotions.
“I’m not sure. There was a lot of static on the line.”
“I reckon all we can do at this point is wait for Regina to contact us again,” Rip said after a heavy sigh. His voice was composed, but his expression was anything but. “So far they’ve only reported one death in Rockport related to the hurricane.”
“Oh, good! That’s very comforting.” After I spoke, I looked around
at the expressions on everyone’s faces and amended my statement. “It’s not good, or comforting, that someone lost their life, of course. I’m just thankful no other deaths have been reported.”
Although I was extremely relieved to have heard Regina’s voice, I remained distraught the rest of the evening. With all forms of communications down, it was possible something had happened to Milo, and Regina had been unable to report it to the authorities.
Just then my phone beeped. It was a text from my friend, Gracie Parker, who was in my old bunko club when we lived in Rockport. Gracie, a widow, lived just a block or two down from Regina and Milo. As I read her message, my expression must have been alarming.
“What is it?” Rip asked, a catch in his voice. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s from Gracie. It says ‘I just heard someone on Flamingo Road was swept away in the storm and has been classified as missing and presumed dead. Have you heard from Regina and Milo? I know they live on that street. I’m sending you a text because I can’t get a strong enough signal to call.”