by Lee Hollis
Hayley knew he meant it.
“You okay, boss?”
It was Curtis King. Wade’s bodyguard. Built like a Mack truck.
And at this moment, a gift from God.
Mickey stopped advancing on Wade.
He glanced at Curtis.
He might have been able to take down Wade.
But Curtis?
Not in a million years.
“We’re fine, Curtis,” Wade said, never taking his eyes off Mickey.
“Yeah, no problem here, Curtis,” Mickey said. “Just going to pack up my stuff, since my services are no longer needed.”
And then he reached down and picked up Hayley’s picnic basket. He reached in and grabbed a chicken breast and took a big bite.
“Now that’s good chicken. You can consider this my severance pay” he said, before stalking off into the night carrying Hayley’s basket of country fried chicken.
Chapter 10
“Should we call your brother’s fella and have Mickey arrested again?” Wade asked Hayley.
Hayley shook her head. “No. Let’s just forget the whole thing. Thank God you showed up when you did.”
Hayley was shaking.
She was fighting back tears.
Wade stepped forward and wrapped her in his strong arms and hugged her.
“I’m so sorry, Hayley,” Wade said. “This is all my fault. I brought Mickey here with me. I had no idea he was so out of control.”
Hayley rested her head on Wade’s broad chest.
She was feeling better already.
“You’re not to blame, Wade. You were just being nice. Trying to give him a break.”
As hard as it was to do, Hayley pulled away and smiled at Wade. “Now, I’m going to get out of your hair so you can enjoy your dinner.”
“You’re not going to join me?”
“No. I need to get home. Kids to feed. Column to write.”
“But you have enough food here to feed the state of Mississippi.”
“You should see what Billy Ray already took inside. I thought you might want to share it with your band and crew.”
“They’re out scarfing down mussels and beer at some seaside hangout. I’m here all alone,” Wade said, offering a pathetic, fake sad face.
Hayley wanted to stay.
Deperately.
But she was still shaken up by Mickey and feeling a little vulnerable and didn’t want to burst into tears and sob like a little girl in front of Wade.
No. It was best she go home.
There were still a couple more days left before Wade performed his two concerts and left town for good. Maybe she would have another opportunity to spend some more quality time with her country idol.
Hayley hugged Wade. “I’m going to go. Luckily I made some extra fried chicken just in case your crew wanted some.”
Hayley reached into the backseat of her Subaru and handed Wade a plate with tin foil wrapped around it. Then she handed him a plastic container. “And here’s some southern mac and cheese to go with it. I tried a new recipe so I’m curious to see if you like it.”
“I’ll be sure to report back,” Wade said.
She looked up at him and he was smiling down at her.
Wade leaned down and kissed her on the lips.
Not hard.
Very soft.
Their lips brushing against each other very gently.
Hayley was shaking again.
But this time, it wasn’t out of fear.
It was a good thing Wade was still holding her, because otherwise she would just have fainted dead away and probably chipped a tooth when her face hit the pavement.
There was an interminable silence before Wade finally spoke. “I sure hope that wasn’t out of line.”
“No, of course not.”
“You going to sue me for sexual harassment?”
Hayley laughed. “No, you’re safe.”
Wade looked out at the fishing boats rolling with the waves in the harbor as they stood in the parking lot of the Harborside Hotel. He suddenly seemed very shy and awkward. “I’m very attracted to you, Hayley. From the moment you crashed my hotel room pretending to be an entertainment reporter.”
“Don’t remind me,” Hayley said, cringing. “But Wade . . .”
“My least favorite word. But.”
“It’s just that I’ve been seeing someone else.”
She couldn’t believe she was saying this to Wade Springer.
“And his name is Lex and he’s a good man,” she continued. “Actually, I’m not sure how serious it is or where we stand, but I need to figure that out before I start anything else.”
“That’s very admirable. In show business, we’re not as respectful of others when we see something we want,” Wade said, grinning. “I promise to behave.”
“Thank you,” Hayley said, resisting the urge to grab him and thrust her tongue in his mouth.
“At least, until you figure things out,” Wade said, giving her a wink. “Good night, Hayley.”
“’Night, Wade,” Hayley said, watching him turn around and amble inside the hotel.
God, look at that butt.
Definitely one of the seven wonders of the world.
Hayley reached into her pocket, fumbled for her car keys, and opened the door. She sensed someone watching her and turned back around.
It was getting dark outside and there was a light on in one of the rooms on the second floor.
A man stood at the window staring down at her.
It was Mickey Pritchett.
He was wearing a white wifebeater and a pair of blue jeans. He pointed at her with a chicken leg, which at this point was nothing but bone. He seemed to be sending her the message that they had unfinished business and that he was watching her.
He had a sick, evil grin on his face.
Hayley jumped in her car and drove straight home. She wondered if she had been mistaken not calling Sergio and having Mickey arrested for attempted sexual assault. If Wade hadn’t shown up when he did, she feared that’s exactly where it was heading.
When Hayley walked inside the house, Dustin was in the living room sitting in the recliner with the TV remote, channel surfing.
Hayley plopped down on the couch. “I have some extra chicken left in the fridge. I could make that chicken and stuffing casserole you like so much for dinner.”
“I already ate. I was starving when I got home. And Gemma made a salad because she’s dieting again. At least until ten o’clock, when she gets hungry and raids the fridge for cold leftover pizza.”
Hayley felt incredibly tired.
She stretched out on the couch.
Leroy scampered in and hopped up, snuggling in next to her.
Mark Harmon was on TV throwing out orders to his crack crime-busting team on a repeat episode of NCIS on USA.
Hayley’s eyes were heavy.
She couldn’t even focus on Mark’s chiseled, handsome face.
That had to be a first.
She always snapped to attention when Mark Harmon was on TV.
Wade Springer was definitely having a serious effect on her.
She ran her fingers through Leroy’s white curly coat of hair and then closed her eyes and fell into a deep sleep.
Hayley heard a loud crackling sound.
And then voices.
Then another crackle.
More voices.
She slowly opened her eyes. It was pitch dark. Leroy snored softly, his head buried in her shirt. Dustin must have turned off the TV and gone to bed long ago.
She focused on the cable box clock.
It was 12:02 A.M.
The crackling sound started again.
She slowly sat up, a little disoriented, gently lowering Leroy’s drooping head, which rested on her, to the couch.
She heard voices again. It was the police scanner she kept on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen. That’s what she was hearing.
Something was going on.
Hayley stood up and went into the kitchen, raising the volume on the scanner.
The dispatcher was talking to some officers. “We got a report of a vehicle on fire at Albert Meadow. Fire department is on the way.”
“Roger,” replied the officer. “We’re about two minutes away.”
“Make of the vehicle is a 2011 CJ Starbus. Looks like it’s one from the Wade Springer tour.”
Hayley grabbed her car keys off the counter and dashed out the door.
When Hayley arrived at Albert Meadow, a wide-open lawn and picnic area just off the town’s iconic shore path, the fire department had already doused the flames.
The tour bus was just a shell of itself, black and charred and smoking.
There were only a handful of gawkers since it was so late at night. Hayley assumed they all owned scanners like she did. The rest of the town was sleeping.
She saw Sergio conferring with the fire captain and a few officers poking around the bus, checking out the scene.
Hayley was stumped as to how the bus got to Albert Meadow and just how it caught fire.
Buses just don’t spontaneously burst into flames.
Did Wade know what was happening?
One of Sergio’s officers began cordoning off the area with yellow police tape.
So it was a crime scene. Sergio and the fire chief probably suspected arson.
“Didn’t expect to see you down here,” a familiar voice said.
It was Bruce.
Obviously there to cover the story for the paper.
“Any idea who set the bus on fire?” Hayley asked.
Bruce rubbed his eyes. He looked tired and irritated from having to be up so late.
“Nope.” Bruce sighed. “Might’ve been the body they found in the bus.”
“What?” Hayley said, twisting her head away from the smoldering, twisted-metal bus to look at Bruce.
“You didn’t hear? Cops don’t know yet if this was an accident, a suicide, or a murder. What they do know is somebody was inside the bus and he or she is now a smoking charred corpse. Forensics is on their way down here from Bangor.”
“Do they know who it was? Do they know anything?”
“Like I said, Hayley, the body’s burned up pretty good. There’s no way of identifying it yet.”
Hayley’s mind raced.
A dead body inside the bus?
Who could it be?
And how did the bus get here?
“Oh, I have heard one interesting rumor,” Bruce said, yawning. “I was eavesdropping and heard Officer Earl talking on his cell, and I could’ve sworn he said they found something in the corpse’s mouth and it looked like a chicken bone.”
Hayley’s heart nearly stopped.
She knew of two people directly connected to the tour who were eating chicken last night.
Her chicken.
Mickey Pritchett.
And Wade Springer.
Chapter 11
Even though it was an early Sunday morning, Hayley knew a news story of this magnitude would require the Times’ staff to immediately report to work. When she reached the office, word of a charred body found inside the burned-out tour bus of Wade Springer in Albert Meadow had hit the town like a tsunami. Within an hour, all the TV reporters from the network affiliates in Bangor were in their cars, racing over the Trenton bridge onto Mount Desert Island to ask questions and get to the bottom of just whose body was inside the bus.
Rumors flew fast and furious all morning.
It was Wade!
No, wait, it was his publicist, Billy Ray Cyrus.
No, wait, it was the famous Billy Ray Cyrus, who came to make a surprise appearance at Wade’s charity concert.
No, wait, it was Trace Adkins!
No, Jimmy Buffett!
No, Johnny Cash! No, he’s already dead!
The names flying about just got more and more ludicrous.
Hayley received a call from Liddy, who was driving by the Harborside Hotel on West Street on her way to an open house and swore she saw Wade Springer alive and well being escorted out of the hotel toward a waiting limo. But she wasn’t absolutely one hundred percent positive it was him.
Hayley held her breath.
Please don’t let Wade be the body on the bus.
Please.
By noon, the body had been transported to the county coroner’s lab, and was finally identified from dental records that had been e-mailed from Nashville.
It was Mickey Pritchett.
Hayley felt a sudden jolt of elation knowing the body wasn’t Wade.
Then she felt a twinge of guilt.
She despised Mickey. But nobody deserved to die like that.
Wade issued a statement just a few minutes later expressing his deepest condolescences to Mickey’s family, not mentioning that Mickey and his mother were estranged. He also announced that the charity concerts would be postponed for a few days but would still go on because Wade had made a promise to the college and he intended to keep it.
Hayley couldn’t imagine what had happened to Mickey. Wade had fired him. She had seen Mickey still hanging around the hotel eating the fried chicken he snatched from her when she left just a short while later.
Did he steal the bus?
If so, why did he drive to Albert Meadow?
And how did it catch fire?
Was Mickey a smoker?
Had he been drinking too much and then passed out with a lit cigarette in his hand?
She was dying of curiosity.
She picked up the phone and called Randy.
He picked up on the first ring.
“Randy, it’s me. I was just wondering . . .”
“Sergio won’t tell me anything.”
“Damn. Well, I guess he’s busy interviewing people on the tour.”
“I’m sure you’re going to hear from him before I do. He’ll probably want to bring you in for questioning.”
“Me? Why?”
“Hayley, I heard you were one of the last people to see Mickey Pritchett alive. Last night at the hotel. When you took your fried chicken over to Wade.”
“Oh God, you’re right.”
Here we go again.
This wasn’t the first time Hayley found herself smack dab in the middle of a police investigation.
“I just wish we knew more about what happened,” Hayley said. “There are just so many unanswered questions.”
“Everything will come out eventually,” Randy said. “It always does. But if you want a heads-up, you know who you can call.”
Hayley knew exactly who Randy was talking about. Sabrina Merryweather.
The county coroner.
And Hayley’s arch-nemesis in high school.
They loathed each other back then, but now Sabrina apparently had amnesia about her mean-girl tactics from yesteryear and considered Hayley a close friend. Hayley, on the other hand, had never forgotten even one single nasty slight or vicious comment.
But Sabrina was an invaluable source of information when it came to the cause of death and other interesting tidbits about a corpse.
It was just the idea of calling her that made Hayley sick to her stomach. Sabrina could be so catty and annoying.
Still, she had to know.
“I’ll call you back, Randy,” Hayley said.
“You go, girl!” Randy said before she hung up on him.
Hayley called the coroner’s office. Normally the office would be closed on Sunday but Hayley was betting someone would be there because of the Mickey Pritchett murder. And she was right. Hayley asked the woman who answered if Sabrina was there. The woman said rather haughtily that Dr. Merryweather was in the middle of something and would most certainly have to return her call. Hayley begged the woman to tell Sabrina she was on the phone. Hayley could hear the woman scoffing, but finally she agreed to check with Sabrina just to make sure.
Hayley didn’t hav
e high hopes. She presumed Sabrina was busy examining Mickey Pritchett’s corpse and would probably have to call back later.
“Hayley! I’m so happy to hear from you! You never call me anymore!” Sabrina came on the line and said.
Hayley only remembered having called her once since high school. And that was to find out information on another dead body, last year.
“I know. Look, I’m sure you’re super busy and I hate bothering you . . .”
“Oh, hell, that barbecued boy in the other room isn’t going anywhere. You wouldn’t believe how gross he looks. I often wonder why I got into this business. I just figured if I became a doctor, I might meet one. A really cute one. Talk about irony. Instead, I met a banker who decides to quit and become a so-called artist who likes to paint landscapes that nobody wants to buy, and now I’m the one supporting him! I really miss the days when our moms stayed home and our dads went to work.”
Hayley couldn’t remember a day when her mother didn’t go to work. Unlike Sabrina, she didn’t come from a wealthy family.
“So, Sabrina, this guy you’re examining, Mickey Pritchett. I was wondering if you could tell me . . . ?”
“He works for Wade Springer. You know him, don’t you, Hayley? Of course you do. I saw you two canoodling on the front page of both papers. Really, Hayley. Have you no shame?” Sabrina said, bursting out in a fit of giggles. “What I wouldn’t do to be you! Is he really as cute in person as he looks in the papers?”
“Well, he certainly is handsome, but I’m just working for him . . .”
“I guess I’ll see for myself in a few days. I got front row seats at both concerts.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful, Sabrina. So, about Mickey . . .”
“It’s like you’re psychic, Hayley, calling me today, because I was going to call you. After I saw your picture in the paper, I got all sad and frowny, and you want to know why? We never see each other! Ever! We are so overdue for a night out. So what I was thinking is, why not go on a double date?”
“Lex is out of town for a couple weeks.”
“Who’s talking about Lex? The guy is a hunk and nice to look at, but about as boring as a downed oak tree! I mean, seriously, what’s he going to talk about? How many leaves he raked in one day? Yawn!”
“Then who . . . ?”
“You and Wade!”
“But we’re not . . .”
