by Penny Plume
Jenna tried to imagine Garrett working some elaborate plot of murder and framing. She kept getting stuck, recalling how giddy he’d been when he discovered slip-on shoes with fake laces to wear on the job. And he couldn’t even hide cheating on his girlfriend…
She said, “I can tell you this: If Garrett is involved, he doesn’t know it.”
“That doesn’t mean we can trust him,” Cabo said.
Jenna nodded. The “we” made her think of what he’d said at Horizon House. What was it? Ah, right: “Go team.”
The siren suddenly blared and rubber squealed on concrete as Garrett turned into the back alley. Tires skidded to a halt and the siren died.
“Jenna!” Garrett yelled.
“In here.”
He came through the door with his gun drawn, eyes wild. “Hands up! Get on the floor!”
“Who?” Jenna said.
“Everybody!”
“Garrett, stop shouting.”
He scanned the nook, then walked past the checkout counter and across the front of the store, checking each aisle and the lock on the front door. Jenna and Cabo waited, an awkward silence between them now that they couldn’t speak freely.
“No coffee?” Jenna asked him.
“Nope.”
“Does anything sound good?”
“I could use a shower.”
Jenna wrinkled her nose. “Sorry. Don’t have one here.”
Garrett finished his clearance of The Welcome Shoppe and stepped next to the recliner. He holstered his weapon but kept his hand on the butt. “Stop talking about showers. Nobody takes one until I collect some evidence.” He pointed at Cabo’s shirt. “Whose blood is that?”
“Harrison Kavanaugh’s.”
“Where is he?”
“On the floor of his library. He’s dead.”
Jenna put a hand to her mouth. “Oh no. The nice library?”
Cabo nodded, a grim line to his mouth.
Garrett said, “Did you kill him?”
“No,” Cabo said. He looked down at the blood on his hands. “I tried to save him.”
Garrett stepped away to call Detective Olson, then came back in less than a minute and said, “Okay. Everybody up.”
“Where are we going?” Jenna said.
“Horizon House. Olson’s on his way there now, and you’re both coming with me.”
Jenna and Cabo shared raised eyebrows.
“Why?” Jenna asked.
Garrett pointed at Cabo, then Jenna: “Because he’s a suspect, and you’re in danger. Safest thing is for you to stick with me.”
Jenna was slightly irked at being bossed around by Garrett, but this would give her a chance to loiter around the crime scene. Besides, Horizon House was the last place the killer would be with Kavanaugh’s fresh corpse inside.
“I didn’t kill anybody,” Cabo said.
Garrett shrugged. “We’ll see.”
“Am I under arrest?”
Garrett thought about that for a few seconds. He glanced at Jenna, once, and she got the feeling he wasn’t just considering the legal aspects of the situation. She got a tiny dose of guilty pleasure at the thought of Garrett Bower being jealous.
“Not yet,” he told Cabo. “But you’re riding in the back seat.”
“I’ll drive separately,” Jenna said.
Garrett frowned. “Jenna, your car…”
“Bart and Sherri let me borrow a Jeep. Well, they just brought it down the hill. It was someone else’s idea.” She turned to Cabo. “Was it Mr. Kavanaugh who thought of it, or…”
“Yes,” Cabo said.
Jenna thought he was trying not to smile.
Garrett crossed his arms. “Kavanaugh gave you a Jeep? Why?”
“Maybe he felt bad about me almost dying after I left his little party this morning. Maybe it’s a deathtrap. Either way, this is perfect—I’ll drive in front of you, and if the brakes go out or the engine explodes, I’ll just roll back into your car instead of crashing through another wall. Or somebody’s living room.”
Jenna checked with Cabo, who nodded at the logic of it.
Garrett’s mouth was slightly open. “That’s a terrible idea.”
Jenna stood up and twirled the key fob around a finger. “Shall we?”
Garrett insisted on being the one to start the Jeep. His cruiser idled in the middle of Main Street with Cabo in the back seat, watching through the passenger side window while Jenna stood with her arms crossed and Garrett gunned the Jeep a few times.
She carried her wallet, phone, and massive ring of keys, in case anyone else she knew was getting murdered and she needed to get inside to help. They would also come in handy as a ring of steel spikes, should any killing be in progress when she arrived. Hers included.
Garrett pressed the brake pedal, turned the radio on and off, cranked the steering wheel a bit, and checked inside the glove compartment. Jenna perked up—so Jeeps did have them—and leaned into the vehicle to see what was inside a Kavanaugh compartment.
A gun?
A stack of cash?
Nope: A user’s manual and a pen.
Jenna slumped a bit from the disappointment. She had the exact same thing in her glove box, in addition to a stack of semi-used napkins and some foil ketchup pouches.
“Seems okay, I guess,” Garrett said. He turned the headlights on, then the bank of lights along the top, which bathed all of Main Street and the shops in stark white daylight.
“Neat,” he said.
He flicked the wipers across the windshield three times, then got out and adjusted his gun belt. “Just take it slow, huh? I’ll be right behind you in case something goes wrong.” He glanced at his patrol car and cleared his throat. “Is there, uh, anything else I should know about Cabo before I ride up there with him?”
Jenna fought a smile. Someone had just died, and things were very serious. “Like what?”
“Like was he rude to you?”
“Rude?”
“Too forward?”
Jenna couldn’t help the smile now. “Forward? Do you mean did he get fresh with me? Right before we took a time machine back to the 1950s?”
Garrett scowled. “Jenna, don’t give me a hard time on this. I just need to know if I should put a little fear into him.”
Jenna looked through the back window at Cabo. He took up most of the back seat and had to duck his head to keep from putting a bulge in the roof. A significant portion of her wanted to see how it would go if Garrett tried to intimidate Cabo, but that would be selfish.
Maybe even mean.
She tucked it away for later and said, “He’s harmless. And he was perfectly polite to me, not that it’s any of your business.”
“Well, he’s still a suspect.”
“Are we done here?”
Garrett picked at a non-existent clump of mud on the Jeep’s fender. “Yeah, but I’m hoping if we take long enough, they’ll have the body covered by the time we get there. Judging by the blood on Cabo’s shirt, it’s gonna be a messy one. You don’t need to see that.”
Oh yes I do, Jenna thought.
“I’ll be fine, Garrett. Thanks for thinking of me, but that’s not your job anymore.”
“It isn’t?”
Jenna squinted at him. “We broke up. Remember?”
“Well, yeah. But I’m still the sheriff. You know, protect and serve?”
“Hm.”
“Hey!”
Jenna and Garrett both turned. Lawrence and Belma stood outside Winkle’s Fine Chocolates & Sweets, pinned by the floodlights atop the Jeep.
Belma had a damp towel draped over her face. Lawrence covered his eyes with both hands and yelled, “What is this carnival ride doing here? Are we being abducted by aliens?”
“Sorry,” Garrett said. He fiddled with the dashboard until the lights died and Main Street returned to a sane level of illumination.
Lawrence uncovered his eyes, blinked, and nudged Belma. “It’s safe.”
She pulled th
e towel off. Lawrence gave a small scream in mock horror, so Belma shoved him into a lamppost.
“Quit messing around!” Lawrence said. They both walked in front of the Jeep, wary of the lights slamming on again.
Belma poked the Jeep. “Whose is this? Garrett, why are you here? Why is that bull stud in the back of your cop car?”
Jenna said, “Guys, have you seen Wilford?”
“Oh no,” Lawrence said. “Did the bodyguard kill him?”
“We don’t know yet,” Garrett said.
“Garrett!” Jenna said. She turned to the others. “Cabo didn’t kill anybody. But Harrison Kavanaugh is dead.”
Belma’s mouth fell open. “Whaaaaaaat?”
Lawrence said, “Dead? What do you mean?”
“Dead,” Jenna said. “Someone murdered him. We’re going there now.”
“Who is ‘we’?” Belma said.
“Me, Cabo, and Garrett. Can you two stay here in case Wilford shows up? I’m worried about him.”
“Well, if that’s what you need me to do,” Belma said, the relief baking off her like heat from an open oven.
Lawrence seemed in a daze. “Yeah, sure. What does this mean for the Lost Haven Resort?”
“Don’t know yet,” Jenna said. “Right now we need to stop the murders. Hideous casino resorts will have to wait.”
“I suppose,” Lawrence said.
After an awkward silence, Garrett opened the Jeep door for Jenna. “Let’s go, Inspector Hooper.”
Jenna got in. The seat was supple, with a bit of bounce and excellent back support. She tossed her stuff on the passenger seat and gripped the steering wheel. It felt like power.
Don’t smile, don’t smile, she thought.
She kept a straight face and told Garrett, “See you up there.”
“I’m still not sold on this.” He walked around his cruiser toward the driver’s door.
When he was out of earshot, Belma hissed, “Jenna, what the heck are you doing?”
“I’m not sure yet,” Jenna whispered. She squeezed the steering wheel again. “But you two better get inside. I have no idea where this thing is going.”
8
The sound of the Jeep’s knobby tires on Main Street — every street, really — made Jenna think she was literally chewing up cobbles, concrete, and asphalt as she rolled on. She kept looking back to make sure she wasn’t leaving a wake of chunks and dust for Garrett to drive through, and each time Garrett jabbed a finger forward, reminding her to watch the road.
“Serve and Protect,” huh?
How about “Irritate and Patronize”?
Put that on the side of your stupid cruiser.
The Jeep wanted to GO. It didn’t like puttering along through town while Jenna got used to the clutch and shifter, easing into higher gears and downshifting when the speedometer started to creep up. Whenever she accidentally goosed the gas too much, the Jeep’s engine seemed to chuckle with joy. It wanted to show off for her.
She glanced back at the police cruiser again. Garrett was illuminated by the interior dash lights, but Cabo was just a black shape against the rear window. Garrett jabbed the finger again, then actually talked through the car’s loudspeaker:
“Eyes front, Jenna.”
He’s just trying to keep me safe, Jenna told herself. She squeezed the steering wheel and pulled to see if she could tear it off. Just testing, of course.
It held.
They were the only two vehicles on the short, straight road north of downtown that led to the base of the Horizon House hill. Soon she’d be climbing through the curves and mini mansions, along the same route she’d plummeted down just that morning. She relaxed her grip on the steering wheel and decided she should test a few more things out before that happened.
Safety first, right?
The right side of the road was scrubby grass with patches of dune sand glowing in the moonlight, and ahead a large drift of it had crept halfway into the lane. Lost Haven Public Works would brush it back off the asphalt within a day or two, but for now it beckoned like a puddle on a hot day.
Jenna gunned the engine, swerved to the right and hit the sand at an angle that would take her off the road if she kept going straight. The tires gobbled up the sand and kicked it out to the sides in glorious plumes. When she was halfway off the road she cut the wheel to the left, expecting to fishtail through the sand, slew a bit, then correct and continue on as if nothing had happened. It would be just like driving in February (if you live in Michigan and can’t learn to drive on ice and snow, they make you move to Ohio).
But the Jeep didn’t want to fishtail. It gripped the sand, asphalt, grass and anything else that happened to fall beneath it like a magnet to a steel plate and shot her back onto the road, where she crossed the center line and hit the sand on the far side. She cranked the wheel to the right, felt and heard the tires squawk on the asphalt as she got back into her lane, then stomped the clutch to let the beast wind down.
“What the heck was that?!”
The loudspeaker wasn’t quite as loud this time. Jenna glanced back and saw Garrett had fallen behind, navigating through a cloud of dust and swaths of sand she’d left spread across the road. She gave him a thumbs-up, pointed to her eyes, then the road ahead.
Eyes front, buster.
She wanted to throw a fist in the air and hoot, but they were heading to a murder scene. Celebration was inappropriate, most likely. Not as bad as Sherri’s mannequins in the café windows, but still, not cool. She settled for a tiny pat on the dashboard to let the Jeep know she was impressed.
“What should your name be?” she said.
Then caught herself: this baby wasn’t hers, it was on loan from the Kavanaughs.
“Well, shoot. My first one-night stand.” She patted the dash again. “Much better than I’d expected it to be.”
The climb up to Horizon House was much different than it had been that morning.
As soon as the grade began to angle up, Jenna forgot about Garrett and his loudspeaker. The mansions, so stunning and luxurious (if a bit gaudy) in daylight seemed to loom a bit more, the curtained windows and walled yards hinting at secrets that must be kept rather than status that must be conveyed.
The curved, climbing road felt narrower, even with the Jeep’s high beams knocking the darkness back. Jenna drove along the centerline to keep from hitting the gates and pillars tilting toward her.
She shook her head, chiding herself:
Stop it. So you had a little accident here, what’s the big deal?
Well, it wasn’t an accident. Someone tried to kill me here.
Hm. That’s true.
Someone who might try again.
I see your point. Let’s panic.
She didn’t panic, but her stomach did tighten when the headlights swept across Ingrid’s front gate and the road glittered with a million tiny pieces of glass. These were slivers and pebbles from her car too small for the wrecker’s broom to collect. A puddle of clumpy gray sand showed where her poor car’s oil had bled out.
The driveway across from Ingrid’s was still missing a gate, and someone had put two sawhorses with a ladder across them to serve as temporary security. She made a mental note to send the family an apology letter, or a gift certificate toward a new gate from…the gate store?
Maybe flowers?
She’d have to look up the etiquette.
“Jenna, you okay?”
Garrett’s loudspeaker snapped her thoughts. She realized she was stopped in front of the crash site, staring at the scarred asphalt and bits of glass, sparkling like a miniature reflection of the stars above.
She threw another thumbs-up over her shoulder, blinked the nighttime dew out of her eyes, and rolled forward over the glass and oil. The Jeep’s tires didn’t even notice, which was exactly what she needed.
She drove the rest of the way up the hill trying to ignore Garrett’s headlights in her rear-view and the tour guide narration running through her head.
> This is where Jenna tried the emergency brake, which also failed.
Yeah, yeah.
This is where Jenna thought about driving through shrubbery. See the burning bushes? How lovely.
Shut up.
This is just about where she first noticed her brakes didn’t work, when she tried to—
The voice cut off. The gates to Horizon House stood wide open. Security lights from the hill above bathed the area in a harsh white glow, nearly blue, leaving everything outside of that aura behind a curtain of black.
Jenna crept up to the gates. The LCD screen was dark, and if the camera embedded in the post was on, she couldn’t tell. This, for some reason, unsettled her more than her own accident site.
A Kavanaugh estate unguarded, open to anyone who wanted to stroll in—or, even more dire, one that needed help from anyone who could come—meant there had been a significant change in the order of the world.
Harrison Kavanaugh was dead.
Lost Haven would be reeling.
And who would be next?
Jenna punched the gas.
There was no time to waste.
The driveway and parking area were glowing under the same harsh security lighting as the open gates. It gave everything the eerie effect of having no shadow, since the lights came in equal intensity from every direction.
The spot where Jenna parked that morning was blocked off with cones and police tape—a slight reassurance someone actually was looking into her attempted murder—and she let the Jeep rumble to a stop nearby, next to what had to be Detective Olson’s sedan. Behind her, Garrett pulled to the base of the stairs and turned on his cruiser’s red and blue light bar. Slightly dramatic, but she had to allow this was a dramatic day.
Jenna slipped her phone into her pocket and considered the wallet and splayed ring of keys. She couldn’t think of a reason she’d need either, yet, but someone was obviously comfortable skulking around Horizon House, so she didn’t want to leave them out in the open. She popped the glove compartment, dumped the wallet and keys in, and tried the small key on the Jeep’s ring to lock it.
