Hadley drew in a long breath and took a quick mental trip down memory lane. “When I was a kid, I was feeling down about...something, and Em said we should make a time capsule of sorts. She wanted us to put things in the box that’d made me happy. Then, any time I needed to be cheered up, I could think about the box.”
Hearing it all aloud, Hadley knew how silly it sounded. How caring, too. Em had loved her and had done this silly, caring thing to try to pull her out of a dark mood. It had worked. For a little while anyway.
“I haven’t thought of that box in years,” Hadley admitted. But she certainly thought about it now. Thought about what she’d put in it, too, and she silently groaned.
“What’s in the box that Em now wants you to know?” Leyton pressed.
Hadley tried to visualize everything that Em had added to the stash. “I don’t have a clue. I remember she put in an old 8-track music disk and a peach pit that she thought looked like Elvis.”
She had to hand it to Leyton. He didn’t give her a flat look or good belly laugh. That’s because he knew that Em wasn’t exactly conventional. However, neither an 8-track or a peach pit explained the last line of that note.
Because there are some things about me that you need to know.
Well, unless there was something hidden in those items. That was possible, she supposed, but Hadley certainly hadn’t picked up on any vibes that Em had been trying to hide anything.
“It’s been twenty-one years since that box went in the ground, and until now Em’s never said a word about it.” Hadley paused. “I have to dig up the box,” she added, already heading out of Em’s bedroom and toward the back door off the kitchen.
Of course, Leyton was right behind her, but he took out his phone and made a call. “Cait,” he said to the person he’d called.
Cait Jameson, his half sister. Also his deputy sheriff.
“Ask around and see if anyone knows where Em is,” Leyton told his sister. “She’s not at her place, and the scene looks, well, disturbed.”
Hadley couldn’t hear Cait’s response, but she figured the deputy would jump right on that. Disturbed was the right word. Something had gone on in Em’s bedroom. There’d been clear signs of that frantic rush to either pack or find something. Maybe Em had done that.
Maybe someone else had.
But Hadley quickly pushed that last thought aside. It wouldn’t help her to jump to a worst-case scenario even if the dread and worry were starting to pulse through her.
By the time they reached the barn, Leyton had finished his call, and he took the shovel from her when she plucked it from its hanger on the wall.
“Where’s this box?” he asked, obviously planning on doing the digging himself.
Hadley didn’t argue with him. The truth was she was still feeling a little light-headed. Maybe because of a combination of the wreck, all the stupid talcum powder she’d breathed in, the blistering heat and the fear that something had happened to her grandmother.
She led him to the large oak that still sported a swing, and then with her back to the tree, Hadley started walking, pacing off the fifty steps that Em and she had taken twenty-one years ago.
It’d been much cooler that day. A drizzly March morning when her mother, Sunshine, had taken “Good Girl” McCall and “Funny” Sunny to the ice cream shop to film a scene for Little Cowgirls. Hadley had been grounded—again—so she hadn’t been invited. Em and she had had the ranch to themselves that day.
A rarity.
Hadley had much preferred being at the ranch alone with Em than she had going with the cameraman and producer, who would record an ordinary outing and try to make it into something that would entertain viewers. That meant doing whatever it took to create an embarrassing or memorable situation.
On that specific outing, the writers had scripted that McCall drop her ice cream in her lap. Even if McCall hadn’t gone along with it, Sunshine would have made sure it happened. Made sure there was drama and embellishment, too. Even though Hadley didn’t know all the details of how things had played out, McCall had come home in tears that day.
There’d been lots of tears on lots of days, and her mother had been at the root of so many of them. So many. No happy mother-daughter relationships for Sunshine and the Little Cowgirls. Heck, not between Sunshine and Hadley’s brother, Hayes, either. Hayes was just as messed up as the rest of the Dalton sibling gene pool.
“You okay?” she heard Leyton ask.
Maybe he’d picked up on the fact that she was doing more than counting paces and was reliving a thing or two that shouldn’t be relived. The past could be a mean, bitter bitch. So could her mother. That was the reason Hadley hadn’t seen her in over a decade. It’d been longer than that for her father, who’d left after Little Cowgirls had gotten canceled when Hadley had been fifteen. Not only had he not returned, he also hadn’t bothered to contact any of his kids.
Hadley now thought of herself as a self-orphaned orphan. Still, the estrangement had its benefits. Along with not having to see or speak to her folks, she didn’t have to worry about picking out Mother’s and Father’s Day cards. Good thing, too, because it would have been pretty hard to find one that conveyed the sentiment of “you don’t have a single parental bone in your entire bodies.”
“I was just thinking about greeting cards,” she muttered.
Not exactly a lie, but Hadley didn’t want to open a vein when she already had so much weighing on her mind. She needed to keep the emotional bloodletting to a minimum.
Hadley stopped at the fifty paces and glanced around, hoping this was the right spot. There’d been no trees or shrubs back then, but there had been a large landscape boulder, and it was still there.
Next to it was a birdbath, and the base was a concrete statue of, well, something. A squat little creature with a winking eye and an extremely large butt. A bare butt that revealed dimpled cheeks. And its nose was missing. It’d been lopped off, maybe by design or Mother Nature.
“What is that thing?” Leyton asked, tipping his head to the noseless figure.
Hadley shook her head. “Your guess is as good as mine.” Which applied to so many of Em’s decorating choices.
“I think we buried it here,” she said, pointing to the right of the birdbath. “It’s a green metal fishing tackle box.”
Unlike twenty-one years ago, the ground wasn’t soft today, but Leyton jammed the shovel into the grass and dirt in one strong, fluid move. A reminder that he wasn’t just a sheriff but that he also worked on his family’s ranch. It was no doubt the reason he had all those muscles to flex and remind her that he was a well-built cowboy.
She watched as he hefted a shovel full of dirt, tossing it to the side before he went back in for another.
“We didn’t bury it deep,” she added. “Maybe a foot down, so if you don’t hit it soon—”
Hadley broke off when she heard the crack of metal against metal. She dropped to her knees for a better look. It was the fishing tackle box all right, but it was no longer green. It was now a rectangle of flaking rust. Leyton loosened it from the ground, and together they pulled it out.
She immediately went for the latch. It wasn’t a lock, but the rust had fused it together, so Hadley couldn’t open it. Leyton helped with that, too. He motioned for her to move back and struck the latch with the point of the shovel. It popped right open.
And they both groaned.
Because the white packing paper that Em had put on top of the contents was now a mess that resembled dirty clots of lard.
“The water leaked in,” Leyton grumbled, causing Hadley’s stomach to drop to her ankles. She hadn’t been sure what they’d find in this box, but it’d been their best bet for figuring out what had happened to her grandmother. Well, if Em’s note had been accurate.
Leyton put the shovel aside, took out his pocketknife and began to flick out the
packing paper blobs. When he’d cleared the path, she saw the peach pit. It didn’t look any more like Elvis now than it had way back then, but it was still intact. There was also a plastic sandwich bag that contained an index card with a handwritten recipe for Sweetie Pie, a chocolate pecan concoction.
Despite this situation, Hadley did indeed smile about the recipe. “It was my favorite. I wanted her to add it to the box.”
Hadley took out the bag, flipping it over so she could see if Em had written anything on the back, but it was blank. No cryptic messages to decode anything that might be going on now.
Leyton took out the next sandwich bag. The water hadn’t into gotten to it, either, but the flower inside had definitely seen better days. It was dried and flat. He looked at her, his eyebrow lifted to let her know he was waiting for an explanation. But Hadley didn’t give him one.
“I don’t remember what this is,” she lied. She took the bag from him, putting it behind her, and reached for the next one.
But Leyton beat her to that, too, and like the recipe, it was in pristine condition in the baggie. Not a drop of moisture had gotten on the picture.
Of Leyton.
It was a photo Hadley had taken of him by the corral when he’d come over to do some work for Em. He wasn’t looking directly into the camera, but Hadley had still managed to catch him grinning in that cocky way that only a thirteen-year-old boy could grin.
Once again, Leyton’s eyebrow came up, and once again, Hadley didn’t want to explain it. She just snatched it from him, dropping it with the dried flower, and she pulled out the 8-track. The water had definitely done some damage here, but the label was still easy enough to make out. It caused Leyton to groan.
“My father,” Leyton grumbled in a “toenail fungus” tone.
It was indeed music from his father, Marty Jameson, who’d once been a country music star. Well, sort of a star anyway. He’d had some hits and successful tours. He’d also abandoned his family and slept around enough to produce many offspring. Three from his marriage, and many, many others born on the wrong side of the sheets. Leyton was one of those.
“Em loves his music,” Hadley commented while she looked on the back of the 8-track and then down into what she could see of the actual tape. Nothing there, either. “Maybe one of the songs means something. Or the album title, Running Ragged. Any idea if your dad wrote a song for Em?”
“Not that I know of,” Leyton said almost idly.
That’s because like hers, his attention was no longer on the 8-track, but the envelope that had been beneath it. It, too, was in a bag, but it wasn’t completely dry. The moisture has smeared the writing on the front, but she still had no trouble reading it.
For Hadley.
“I don’t remember her putting this in there,” Hadley said, taking it out. “But I left the box with Em when I went to the barn to get a shovel. Em could have slipped it in there then.”
Hadley’s hands were a little unsteady when she opened it and pulled out the single page of paper that’d been inside. Like the writing on the envelope, the ink had smeared here, too. In fact, there were huge ink blotches over most of the paper. It was anyone’s guess as to what the first paragraphs said, but Hadley could make out the line below it.
“‘I had a life before here,’” Hadley read. “‘I used to be somebody else.’”
Hadley’s mind did a little mental stutter, and she read it again. And again.
“Somebody else?” Leyton asked. Obviously, he was also having a hard time figuring out what it meant.
Hadley continued to study the letter. Or rather the nonsmudged parts she could make out, but she could only get a word here and there. Love. Safe. Sorry. She finally looked at Leyton to see if he had gotten more of it than she had, but he just shook his head.
“Maybe Em had a different name before she moved here,” Leyton suggested.
She thought about that a moment. “It’s possible, I guess.” And it frustrated her to realize that she knew so little about a woman she loved. “Em moved here from East Texas after she met and married my grandfather. This was his family’s ranch.”
“And what about her family?” Leyton pressed.
Hadley tried to shuffle through the memories she had of Em, but she didn’t come up with much. “She didn’t talk a lot about her past, but I remember her saying her folks died when she was very young. I never met any of her relatives.”
The sound of a car engine got their attention, and Hadley lifted her head to see an SUV pull to a stop in front of the house. Leyton’s sister, Cait, got out. Like Leyton, she had a badge clipped to her belt, and she made a beeline toward them.
“Please tell me that’s not where Em buried the dead skunk she found on the road when we were kids,” Cait remarked.
“No,” Hadley assured her. But she remembered the incident. Despite the horrible stench, Em had indeed buried the critter in a Dick’s Sporting Goods shoebox.
“Thank God.” Cait went to her and pulled her into a hug. “Heard you had a run-in with Rosco the Rooster. You okay?”
Hadley nodded and tried not to go stiff from the hug, but she didn’t quite manage it. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Cait, she did, but it always felt weird to be welcomed in a place where Badly Hadley had done so many unwelcoming things.
“Rosco?” Leyton asked, standing.
Cait let go of Hadley and turned back to her brother. “Yep. It belongs to Delbert Watley. He’d brought it into town with him to do errands, and it jumped out of his truck window when he was parked behind the hardware store. I gave him a warning and told him if he didn’t want to leave Rosco alone, then he should look into getting a rooster sitter.”
Propping her hands on her hips, Cait tipped her head to the metal box. “I’m guessing that has something to do with Em...and with you?” she added for Leyton when she saw his picture in the plastic bag. Cait frowned. “And our worthless excuse for a father.”
Hadley quickly scooped up the plastic bags and the 8-track. No way did she want to explain Leyton’s picture to his sister. Or to Leyton.
“This was a memory box that Em and Hadley buried,” Leyton explained. “Any news about Em?”
“Maybe,” Cait answered. “Late yesterday afternoon, Howie Hargrove and Hildie Stoddermeyer saw a black car with Louisiana plates. They think Em was in the passenger seat.”
Howie was the mayor and Hildie owned the diner so they were reliable when it came to this sort of thing. Still, Hadley had to shake her head. “I don’t know of any family or friends that Em has in Louisiana.”
And that caused Hadley’s worry to soar.
Maybe Em had been kidnapped.
“Did Em look scared?” Hadley blurted out.
Cait shook her head. “Nope, but Howie and Hildie only got quick looks. The car was heading toward the interstate. Any idea where she’d be going?”
Hadley looked down at the items from the tackle box. Em had said there’d be answers in these things, and maybe there was. Maybe in the smeared portions of the letter. Or in some portion of the 8-track. Since it’d been one of Em’s favorites, it didn’t feel right to toss the 8-track on the ground and stomp on it so the plastic would crack and she could see inside. However, it might come to that.
“No idea,” Hadley told Cait. “But I need to take a better look at these things. A better look at her room, too.”
Cait and Leyton started walking with her when she headed toward the house. “Keep asking around town,” Leyton instructed his sister. “Press to see if anyone remembers any of the numbers on the license plate of that black car.”
“Will do,” Cait said. “You want me to do something about the wrecked Jeep? I can go ahead and call for a tow truck.”
Hadley hadn’t forgotten about the Jeep, but it wasn’t a high priority right now. “Yes, please. But ask around about Em first.”
; Cait repeated her “will do,” and she gave Hadley’s hand a quick squeeze before she peeled off to go to her SUV.
With Leyton right behind her, Hadley carried the items from the tackle box inside and spread them out on the kitchen counter. She zoomed right in on the smeared letter, trying to make out the words. Beside her, Leyton appeared to be doing the same thing.
I had a life before here. I used to be somebody else.
Those were still the only clear sentences so she moved on to the 8-track, taking out a butter knife so she could pry open the plastic case.
“Why’d you put my picture in that box?” Leyton asked.
Hadley’s hand slipped, and she almost stabbed herself with the knife. Huffing, Leyton took both it and the 8-track from her. “Why?” he repeated.
“Because I was twelve.” When she’d still believed that she could have something good.
Or rather someone good.
Someone with a hot face to go along with the goodness. And the hot face had been pretty important to her back then. All that dark brown hair and those smoky gray eyes. Even that cocky grin had been on her list of reasons to lust after him. The DNA gods had sure been generous when it came to the Jameson brothers, and Leyton had gotten more than his fair share of hotness.
Once, they’d come very close to being lovers. A lifetime ago when she’d been fifteen and he sixteen. Then, teenage life as she’d known it had come to an end when one of their make-out sessions had been secretly filmed by the camera crew. They’d been clothed, but there had been full-body fondling with lots of tongue kissing. And sounds. Moans and grunts of pleasure. Whispered wants.
Hickeys.
Things that teenagers definitely hadn’t wanted a camera to record.
Well, not most teenagers anyway. Leyton and she hadn’t been into the whole “let’s get stupid and film ourselves so we can watch” thing.
All in all, the recording wasn’t as revealing as it could have been. Other times when they’d made out, Leyton’s hand had made it into her pants. And vice versa. They could thank pollen and perhaps hay for being alerted before that had happened on this particular night. The cameraman’s allergies must have gotten the best of him, and the loud sneeze blast caused Leyton and her to fly apart and notice the camera that had been aimed at them.
Chasing Trouble in Texas Page 33