Rooted in Murder

by Emily James

  “There’s blood frozen in her hair,” Mandy’s voice said, a higher pitched sound than anyone her size should have been able to make. “I’m sure she’s bleeding. You need to call an ambulance.”

  “I already called an ambulance.” Russ’s face swam into view. He held something up in front of my face that I could only assume was his phone. “They’re on the line, and they’re on their way.”

  “Tell them.” My words were audible this time, but every one hurt. “Ashley Jenkins.”

  21

  Time passed in a blur after that, with small pieces standing out.

  Mandy and Russ arguing over which one of them would ride in the ambulance with me—Mandy won.

  Passing through a crowd of familiar faces as they wheeled me from the ambulance into the hospital on a stretcher. Elise and Mark’s mom hovering by the sides for as long as the staff would let them.

  And then they must have put me out to clean and stitch my head wound. Or I passed out. The next thing I remembered was opening my eyes in what had to be a private room, based on its size, but it was anything but private.

  Mandy sat in the chair next to my bed. My hand must have been in hers a long time because it felt moist and hot. I eased my head to the side to look at where our hands lay. Dirt still caked her cuticles and under her fingernails. I hadn’t imagined that part, then. Mandy had actually gotten down on her hands and knees to dig the dirt off of the top of me.

  Russ stood behind her, trying to touch as few things as possible, a little bottle of hand sanitizer clutched in one large fist. Mark’s mom sat in another chair on my other side, and I could see the tops of Elise, Megan, and Grant’s heads over the tips of my toes as they all sat on the floor, lined up along the wall.

  Physically, I felt like I’d been run over by a lawn roller, but the smile inside of me was huge. It was official. I was a Cavanaugh. They’d all turned out for me even without Mark around. Presumably, Mr. Cavanaugh had all the kids, and Erik—I hoped—was finding Ashley Jenkins.

  “You’re awake.” Mark’s mom leaned forward and kissed my forehead. “You’re going to be fine, and I’ve already called Mark and your parents. Mark’s on his way home, but I told him not to speed, that we’ve got you until he gets here.”

  A warmth filled my chest. Any time in the past when I’d woken up in a hospital room, I’d had to ask if I was okay and where everyone was. Mark’s mom made sure that—whatever else might be the case—I didn’t need to worry about those things. I would attribute it to her mom training except that I’d woken up in a hospital room with my mom before and I still had to ask for details. Then again, my mom tended to think that she only had to mention things to me if they were a problem I needed to deal with personally. If everything was fine, she felt no need to talk about it.

  Considering that Mandy and Russ dug me out of a shallow grave, they were all going to have a lot of questions for me. I wanted mine answered first. “How did you find me?”

  Nothing else mattered quite as much as that one. Had they not found me when they did, I wouldn’t have made it.

  “Mark,” Elise and Russ said at the same time.

  A smattering of laughter trickled around the room.

  Elise came to the end of my bed and rested her hands on the foot railing. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Russ cringe. He hated hospitals and germs so much that it spoke to how much he cared about me that he was still here.

  “Mark got worried when he couldn’t reach you,” Elise said. “So he called me.”

  She would have tried calling and texting me as well. Wherever my phone was now, I’d have a list of messages to get through.

  She ran a hand along the bed rail. “When you weren’t at home, either, I called Russ to see if you were with him.”

  “Which of course you weren’t,” Mandy piped up, “because he was with me. We said we’d meet Elise to help look for you.”

  I glanced toward Mandy, making sure my head didn’t move. Russ had been with Mandy. He hadn’t told me that. I thought he was at a Rotary Club meeting.

  Mandy squeezed my hand. “Mark remembered he’d helped you install the Phone Finder app on your new phone, so I logged into your account.” There was pride in her voice, but almost a touch of shame as well.

  Mark had my login information, but the way Mandy said it make me think she’d hacked my account. I wasn’t going to ask. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. Whatever she’d done, I’d forgive her because I’d be dead if she hadn’t.

  Russ’ chest puffed out, making him look a bit like a penguin, squatty but proud. “I recognized the spot it showed as Mr. Huffman’s field.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Which I told them you shouldn’t be out in alone after dark.”

  I tried to hide my smile. I should have known I’d get a lecture from Russ at some point. “I didn’t know anyone else would be out there.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said with a grumble.

  “Anyway,” Elise said, “we headed that way, but your phone started moving away from the field. When we saw your car was still there, I said I’d follow it and Russ and Mandy decided to head out to the planting sight just in case.”

  My lungs felt flattened in my chest. Ashley had taken my phone. If they’d all followed it instead…

  I couldn’t even go there.

  Elise’s hands tightened around the bed rail, as if she’d mentally gone there as well. “Mark called me again to say someone had texted him from your phone saying they made a mistake moving to Fair Haven and getting married and that they’d be gone by the time he came home. Don’t try to find them.”

  Elise’s phrasing made it clear neither of them believed I’d sent the text. Still, if there’d even been a moment that Ashley made Mark wonder if I loved him—my throat felt too thick to speak.

  I had to force the words out. “How did he know it wasn’t from me?”

  Elise shrugged, and the look on her face said she thought Mark and I might be weirdos, even for Cavanaughs. “He said it didn’t sound like you. Something about the syntax?”

  I snorted and covered my mouth. Mark and I spent most of our early friendship texting. If anyone would know how I wrote, the cadence of my sentences and the words I did and didn’t use, it would be him.

  Elise was still shaking her head, but it was slower now, like it carried the weight of what might have happened if he had believed it. “I called Mandy and Russ and told them I thought someone stole your phone and that you had to still be out there somewhere. Your phone disappeared from the app shortly after that.”

  “We must have walked a quarter of the way back to Sugarwood through the bush looking for you,” Russ said. “We had to check every one of Mandy’s theories. What if they covered your body with leaves? What if they’d tied you up in a tree?”

  Mandy wrapped her second hand around mine. “What if they buried you alive?” Her voice caught.

  I added my second hand to the hand pile we now had. I never would have expected one of Mandy’s crazy theories to be the thing that saved me.

  “I told her the ground was too hard for anyone to bury you alive.” Russ ran his hands over his face and up into his hair. It stood on end, and he didn’t bother to smooth it down. “She said we’d dug holes for the trees. Someone could have put you in one that was already dug. She wouldn’t leave until I counted the holes and the remaining trees because the numbers should match.”

  They didn’t. They’d found one more tree than hole.

  So many things could have gone wrong to keep them from finding me.

  Heat burned in a little ball at the base of my neck. It hadn’t been enough for Ashley to interfere with our land purchase to buy herself time to find whatever she’d lost out there all those years ago. It hadn’t been enough for her to try to kill me even though I didn’t have any solid evidence against her and she couldn’t even be sure I’d seen her face. She’d then taken my phone and sent Mark that message.

  From the perspective of a killer trying to c
over their tracks, it was a smart move. If everyone thought I’d taken off of my own free will, they would be less likely to look for me. I wouldn’t be a missing person if I told them I was leaving.

  But I wasn’t sure that was the only perspective Ashley was working from. If I’d gone missing, Mark would have kept hoping and hunting for me for years, maybe for the rest of his life. By making it look like I’d left him, Ashley had to be hoping she’d still have a chance with him.

  It was sick and twisted in a way that made me simultaneously want to hit something and throw up.

  “Did they find Ashley?”

  Elise dropped her gaze to the end of the bed. “They did. She didn’t have your phone.”

  “I can give my testimony to Chief McTavish and have her arrested for attempted murder.”

  For a full two breaths, Elise continued to stare at the bedding. She finally lifted her gaze to mine.

  Right. I got it. We couldn’t have her arrested for anything. Chief McTavish could bring her in for questioning based on my testimony that she’d been in the area. But I hadn’t seen who hit me or threw me in the hole and buried me alive. It was possible someone else did it. A good defense attorney like either of my parents would argue that proximity to a crime doesn’t make someone a criminal. Ashley could have been out in the woods for any number of reasons, and I saw her leave before I was hit.

  We had one chance. “Ashley was looking for something in the woods. I went out there because I forgot my phone”—I directed a see-I-had-a-good-reason-for-being-there look at Russ—“and saw her searching. I think she delayed the sale of the farm because she wanted to find it before one of our workers stumbled on it. I suspect whatever it is will connect her to Lee Mills’ murder.”

  Elise’s hand was already moving for her cell phone. “I’ll call Erik. The chief should be able to hold Ashley at least while they search.”

  22

  Mark and my doctor were discussing the results of my latest CT scan the next day when Chief McTavish knocked on the doorframe.

  “My apologies for interrupting,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it.

  My doctor slid the scans back into the envelope. “I’ll start the paperwork for getting you out of here, but I want you back in a week for a follow-up scan.”

  Mark shook his hand again. “I’ll make sure she gets here.”

  My scans had shown a microscopic bleed, but it hadn’t grown any larger, suggesting it’d sealed itself. Unfortunately, I was banned from driving until the doctor could be sure my brain was absorbing the blood—a sign that everything was well and healing.

  Mark motioned McTavish to the chair next to my bed. “I’ll go sign for your release so we can get you home.”

  I thought about blowing him a kiss, but in some ways, Chief McTavish was his boss. I could hear my mom’s voice lecturing in my head about professionalism even as the thought of blowing kisses formed.

  Chief McTavish sank into the chair next to me, his back stiff. He held out a pale green envelope, the size of a card. “From my wife.”

  I slid it open. It was a beautiful card signed with only their first names. No message. But I saw it for what it was. In the few exchanges I’d had with Mrs. McTavish, she’d seemed lonely. Now that Chief McTavish was staying on permanently as Fair Haven’s chief of police, this must be her way of reaching out. As the wife of the county medical examiner, I probably seemed like her safest bet for where to start making friends.

  I’d make sure to give her a call once I was back home. And once I got my phone back. Presumably Ashley had tossed it.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Chief McTavish nodded like he wasn’t entirely comfortable with changing our roles, but he loved his wife, so he likely didn’t have much of a choice.

  He rested his hands on his knees in a casual-professional posture. “We found what Ashley Jenkins was looking for.”

  He pulled out a photo and handed it to me.

  The image was a close-up of one of those gold name necklaces. The cursive script spelled out Ashley. Rusty flecks covered it.

  I handed the picture back. “Is that blood?”

  It seemed almost impossible that there would still be blood evidence on it after so many years and exposure to the elements. Rain and snow alone should have taken care of any DNA.

  One side of McTavish’s mouth lifted. “No, but she didn’t know that.”

  Nice. Ashley had proved that she was scared of that necklace. She wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble otherwise. It wasn’t a stretch that she could be convinced it still had Lee Mills’ blood on it and that the police could get a DNA match from it.

  I shifted myself up further in bed. I was already dressed and ready to go, but Mark had insisted I rest until I was officially able to leave. Now having to sit here felt restrictive. My body wanted to move.

  “Did she confess?”

  The half smile slipped from McTavish’s face. “Not entirely. Apparently, Mr. Mills stole a rather large sum of money from her car when he broke into it. Ashley didn’t report it missing because she didn’t realize it at first, and”—he glanced back over his shoulder in a way that made me think he was sharing more than he technically should have been—“she acquired it through means that weren’t entirely legal.”

  Oh my. That could mean drugs, but my instincts said it was more like prostitution. I didn’t know what she’d looked like before she had all her plastic surgery, but she must have been truly desperate to go to those lengths to get it.

  “She went to Lee Mills’ regular spots that night, looking for him,” McTavish continued. “She found him alone in the field, drunk and surly. Their argument turned physical, according to her. He knocked her down, and she grabbed the closest thing to defend herself—an empty beer bottle.”

  I gingerly touched my fingers to the stitches in my scalp. I’d always have a scar there. “I’d be more likely to believe her story of self-defense if she hadn’t hit me in the head and tried to bury my body.”

  The expression on McTavish’s face actually looked sad, and my stomach clenched.

  “She’s not claiming self-defense. She’s claiming he was alive when she left him. After she hit him, he grabbed for her neck. He missed and got her necklace, tearing it off. She was scared enough that she ran away.”

  A jury wasn’t likely to believe her any more than I did. “And what’s her excuse for me?”

  “She admits to being out in the bush, but she says she heard a sound and didn’t stick around to see what it was.”

  In other words, she claimed she wasn’t the one who hit me and threw me in a hole. “What about my phone and the text she sent to Mark? That connects her directly to what happened.”

  Chief McTavish’s pointy chin and red hair normally reminded me of a fox. The droop in his expression now made him look more like a basset hound. “We got a warrant for her car and apartment, but your phone wasn’t there.”

  “What about the shovel or whatever she hit me with?” There was a frantic note to my voice that I didn’t like but couldn’t seem to control.

  “It was a shovel. We found it nearby. We couldn’t get any useable prints off of it.” He glanced at my shoulder as if he were considering patting it. “I’m sorry. For now, we’re letting her go.”

  23

  Mark maneuvered out of his parking space in the hospital parking lot. “What does that mean for Case?”

  I’d never been so glad that Mark was driving. After my conversation with Chief McTavish, my head was hurting for a reason other than the blow to the back of my skull. The police were going to investigate Ashley, but unless they found something, she might get away with killing Lee Mills and attempting to kill me.

  One good thing had come out of it all. “Chief McTavish is asking the district attorney to drop the charges against him. He no longer believes Case is the most likely suspect, and Ashley created more than enough reasonable doubt for a jury. And they won’t be pursuing charges against Daphne, either.
Ashley saw Lee alive after Daphne left him.”

  Mark barely brought the car up to speed limit. With the doctor’s warning that I needed to be extra-careful about any further head trauma until I healed, he’d probably be driving me around like he was an eighty-year-old man for the next week.

  “We know that Ashley saw him after Daphne left because Ashley described him as drunk,” he said, never taking his eyes off the road.

  I nodded. Hopefully he’d catch the movement in his peripheral vision. “That, and McTavish said they found a witness who saw Daphne walking back to town around the same time that Ashley said she was confronting Lee.”

  Mark smiled, complete with dimples. “Then I think that means your favor to Grady Scherwin is officially paid.”

  Paid with interest, if he asked me.

  Elise had promised me that she and Erik would walk the route Ashley probably took from the field to her apartment and see if they could find my phone. It was a long shot, and an even longer shot that she wouldn’t have wiped her fingerprints off after texting Mark, but it was all we had.

  We grabbed a burner phone for me on the way home. I hadn’t given up hope on getting my real phone back, and to replace it, we’d have had to leave Fair Haven anyway. Mark wasn’t keen on me going very far from the hospital where the doctor knew my condition. I figured I had to give him that one. After all, I had almost died. Again.

  I texted all the people who’d need my number in the interim. If I hadn’t been sure that I now had a whole tribe of people who cared about me, I would have been after I finished sending out my number. My fingers were tired.

  I’d just sent the final text when Russ called.

  “I wasn’t sure if I should say anything,” he said after grilling me about how I felt. “Wayne Huffman called.”

  There couldn’t possibly be more trouble, especially now that Ashley knew we were on to her. She wouldn’t be tampering with anything in the near future.