Sam counted the flowers. “Nine is an odd number to send someone. Any significance to that?”
“As far as I know, not with daisies,” she said.
He shot her a question with his eyes.
“Trey sent me nine roses once, and he made sure I knew that nine was the number for eternal love. I figured the florist told him.” She shivered. “Maybe my secret admirer doesn’t know that. And maybe it only applies to roses.”
Sam was pretty sure whoever sent the daisies knew the meaning of nine flowers, and if he knew what her favorite flower was, it would have the same meaning as roses. Lead settled in his stomach. “And you don’t have a clue who sent them?”
“I wish I did.”
“Could Trey . . . ?”
“I doubt it. He never sent daisies when we were together—always roses, even though he knew gerberas were my favorite. He said daisies made him sneeze.”
“But you two aren’t dating now so he wouldn’t be around them. Did he always send nine?”
“No. Just that last time, after I broke it off with him. I told him if he’d wanted to impress me, he should’ve sent the kind of flowers I liked.”
It was too obvious for Trey to be their culprit, but then, maybe he was going for obvious. Sam unhooked his cell phone and dialed the sheriff. When he answered, Sam explained about the flowers. “I doubt there are any prints, but I’m dusting for them anyway, so we’ll be late,” he said. “We should arrive at Mount Locust within the hour.”
Once he disconnected, he hooked the phone back on his belt and turned to Emma. “I’ll be right back with my fingerprint kit.”
He retrieved the kit from his SUV and hurried back inside to find Emma drumming her fingers on the counter. “Are there any security cameras set up in or around the apartment?” he asked.
She blew out a breath. “No. There are only four tenants, three upstairs and one down, and she’s gone to visit her daughter, plus the owner, who is out of town as well. We talked about it at our last get-together, but nothing came of it. We should have bought one ourselves after our landlord refused. She’s older and doesn’t want to spend any more money than she has to.”
“How about someone else in the neighborhood?”
“Not that I know of, and their camera wouldn’t be pointed toward this apartment, anyway. I don’t know any of my neighbors very well either,” she said. “Maybe it’s like Greg said and the flowers are harmless.”
“Who’s Greg?”
“He lives in the apartment across the hall. Nice guy.”
“What did he say?”
Her face colored. “That I was pretty and it was probably just someone too shy to give them to me in person.”
That was possible. In fact, he’d like to think it was probable. Still, he wanted to check for prints. He removed the flowers from the vase and handed them to Emma, observing her stiff body. She hadn’t been this tense last night. “So, how are your parents?”
She frowned, then her shoulders relaxed slightly. “Good as they can be. Since you left, Dad became chief nursing officer at Merit, and Mom’s in Jackson. She’s an assistant district attorney and thinking about running for the top position when the DA retires.” Emma put the flowers in another vase and then sat across from him at the island. “I know what you’re doing—trying to make everything normal.”
He grinned at her and continued dusting the vase.
“They divorced, you know.”
“Yeah, I’d heard that, and I’m sorry.”
“When Ryan left, they had different opinions on how it should be handled. Then the strain of Ryan being accused of murder was too much.” She picked at a hangnail. “I think Dad would take Mom back in a minute, but that would mean he’d have to move to Jackson, and that’s the last thing he wants to do.”
His mother had kept him updated on Emma’s family, and he could see her dad not wanting to leave Natchez, just like he could see her mom not wanting to give up her career in Jackson. Even as a teenager, he’d seen the two had been as different as oil and water. Jack was laid-back, and Dina a classic type A overachiever and a workaholic.
He picked up the dark powder and bent over the vase, lightly twirling the side of the camel-hair brush over the surface. “Any chance they might get back together?”
“For a long time, I thought they would if I could find Ryan and bring him home. Looking back, I can see their marriage was shaky years before Ryan disappeared, but I believe that was the tipping point.”
She fell silent for a minute, and Sam looked up.
“You’re pretty good at that,” she said.
“There’s an art to it,” he said, pausing with the brush in his hand, “but I’ve had a lot of practice.”
She nodded and a few seconds later drummed her fingers on the counter again.
“This shouldn’t take much longer.”
Abruptly the drumming stopped. “Sorry. I’m not the most patient person.”
“No kidding.” He glanced her way, sending his heart into overdrive. No matter how hard he fought it, she still stirred his heart.
She hopped off the stool and grabbed a glass, filling it with water. “How about your mom? I see her at church, but we don’t talk,” she said from across the room. The shakiness in her voice told him he had an effect on her as well.
“She’s busy with Jace when she’s not at the newspaper.” His mom was a copyeditor for the Natchez Democrat. “He’s the light of her life.”
“I can understand that. I’ve seen him at church, and he’s a sweetheart.” Emma took a sip of water. “I didn’t see her last Sunday night.”
“She was busy.” Helping his deadbeat dad.
“How about your dad?”
His mouth twitched. “What about him?”
“How is he? He helped me find this apartment. My dad says he’s a really good real estate agent.”
“I wouldn’t know. Haven’t seen him in a while.” He didn’t want to hear anything about him either. Sam straightened up and put the brush away. “Is there anyone else in the picture other than Trey?”
She gulped a sip of water, and when he continued to wait for an answer, she shrugged. “No. I take it there weren’t any prints?”
“Nope, no prints,” he said and tilted his head. “What happened with you and Trey?”
Her cell phone rang, and she quickly answered it. After a few words, she moved the phone away from her ear. “It’s my volunteer. When do you think we’ll be leaving?”
“Next five minutes,” he replied.
She relayed the information and pocketed her phone. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
In other words, don’t ask her about any wannabe boyfriends. Or maybe she just wanted to get away from him.
“What’s up with you after we finish our investigation this morning?” he asked as they walked down the stairs.
“I’m expecting someone from Jackson to operate the GPR machine when Nate finishes his investigation.”
“What’re you using ground penetrating radar on?” He hurried and held the door open for her in time to see her face light up.
“I’m surprised you know what the acronym stands for.”
“I’ve used the machine on a case or two when we were looking for buried bodies.”
“Oh.” Emma made two syllables of the word as her full lips formed a perfect circle. “I’ve been assigned the task of exploring the area where the slave cabins were. And checking the two cemeteries again for more graves. It was supposed to have been done last summer, but the excessive rain canceled the operation.”
“I helped with the one conducted twenty years ago,” he said.
Suddenly Emma’s foot caught on the threshold and she stumbled. “Ah!” she cried.
Sam caught her before her knees hit the porch floor. “You okay?”
“Yes. Thank you.” She pulled her arm away. “I hate being so clumsy.”
“It happens to all of us,” he said and held her arm, guiding her down the
porch steps.
“Me more than others,” she muttered. “You worked on the Southern Miss project?”
“Yes. I was in the National Park Service Youth Program. Worked as a gofer for the anthropology students when they excavated the site of the cabins and surveyed the cemetery. They even let me use one of the steel probes to locate a burial spot,” he said.
“I didn’t know that. The research I read said they found forty-three graves in the slave cemetery, but from the oral history I’ve researched, I believe there are more. I want to find them, make sure no one is overlooked.”
She stopped by her truck, color highlighting her cheeks.
“You’re excited about this,” he said.
“You bet.” A self-conscious smile tugged at her lips. “I finally get to put my American history and anthropology classes to good use.”
“Sounds like it’ll be interesting. Would you like help? Like when I’m not patrolling?” What was he saying? Had he lost his mind? Sam needed to put distance between them, not manufacture a reason to be around Emma.
“You’d do that?”
He couldn’t think of a way to backtrack. “I don’t want you at Mount Locust alone, at least not until we know more about the shooting and now the flowers.”
“I’ll take any help I can get.”
He opened her truck door. “I have an appointment at Rocky Springs later this morning and will have to leave around eleven,” he said. Something he could comfortably do since Nate would still be on site investigating the shooting. “I’ll be back by one or two to help.”
“Thanks. You do know it’ll be hard work,” she said dryly.
“Evidently you don’t think I’m up to it.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But that’s what you meant. I’ll help this afternoon, and since tomorrow is Saturday and I’m off duty, I’ll help again.”
“You’re on,” she said and slid behind the wheel of her pickup. “See you this afternoon.”
“Actually, you’ll probably see me all morning. The investigation, remember?”
Emma’s face turned somber. “Oh yeah, that.”
He glanced over the white pickup. “Is this Ryan’s old—”
“It was my dad’s,” she said sharply and pushed in the clutch as she turned the key. “Ryan just drove it until he got the Mustang.”
“You’ve taken good care of it.” He seemed to put his foot in his mouth every time he turned around. She pulled away from the curb while he hurried to his SUV. He hadn’t planned to offer his services and was just as surprised as she was when the words came out of his mouth. But it was his responsibility to guard the Trace and anyone on it who might be in danger. And Emma definitely needed someone to watch over her.
Although it would be extremely difficult for them to see through his darkly tinted side windows, he ducked down as the two vehicles passed his parked car.
What was the ranger doing at her apartment? And why was he following her? Jealousy stabbed his heart, and he quickly brushed it away. When Sam Ryker had retrieved a box from his SUV, he’d used binoculars to see what it was. A fingerprint kit. She must have told him about the flowers, but didn’t she understand they were from him?
He removed the windshield sun screen and cranked the car. Emma hadn’t posted her message to him on Facebook yet. That was unlike her. Maybe it was because of the ranger . . . he certainly seemed familiar with her, holding her arm, helping her down the steps. Was the ranger going to be a problem? That bore thinking about.
He shifted his thoughts back to Emma and the flowers. Did she get the meaning of the nine daisies? Forever mine.
He remembered when they’d bumped into each other, the way her hand had lingered on his arm even as she talked about being friends. She was testing him. Her smile sent a different message, one that said she loved him but they couldn’t be together just yet. He was willing to wait.
For a while.
After waiting outside Walmart for Emma to pick up a bag of cat food, Sam followed her to the Trace, then through the gate to the visitor center at Mount Locust. Once she got out, he circled back toward the maintenance building and parked beside the sheriff’s SUV. Nate Rawlings walked toward him from the woods. “What’ve you found?” Sam asked.
“Someone hot-wired the backhoe, and the hole is bigger than I thought it was,” Nate said. “I’ll show you.”
Sam followed him through the woods and saw the yellow backhoe long before they reached it. Beside it was a mound of dirt. He stopped at the edge of a hole. His chest tightened. A few feet deeper, and it could pass for a shallow grave. “Did your techs find any prints?”
“No, not even any footprints. Found a scrap of newspaper, though. He must have laid paper on the floor of the backhoe. Trey just got here and is digging a slug out of the post at the inn.”
“Reckon what the intruder was digging for?”
“Good question. One of my deputies is bringing a metal detector to go over the ground. Thought I’d ask Emma to use that fancy machine to see what’s beneath the ground. But it’s not likely anything of value is buried here.”
“Do you think the intruder found what he was looking for?”
“Hoping that GPR machine will tell us.”
Sam stared at the hole. No one trespassed at a federal park in the dark and hot-wired a piece of equipment to dig a hole this size for nothing. Or fired at someone coming to investigate. He followed Nate to the Mount Locust Inn, where they found Trey working at the back of the cabin. The chief deputy acknowledged him with a nod as he inserted a laser rod in the bullet hole.
“Find anything?” Nate asked.
“Just got started.” Trey nailed a string beside the rod. “How’s Emma today?”
“Fine until she received a bouquet of daisies this morning,” Sam said, watching for a reaction.
“You mean I have competition?” the chief deputy said. “Who were they from?”
“The person didn’t leave his name on the card,” Sam said. “Thought they might be from you.”
“It wasn’t me. I would have signed my name if I’d sprung for flowers. Do you suppose it had anything to do with this?” He jerked his head toward the post.
Sam shrugged. “At this point, I don’t have enough information to tell.”
Trey let the string drop and stepped off the porch. “It should be easy enough to track down the sender. Whoever sent them must have ordered them from a florist since daisies don’t grow around here this time of year.”
“True, and I’ll be checking that out.” Sam had to admit Trey’s reaction didn’t fit a guilty person, but maybe he was a good actor—he certainly had a ready answer about the daisies.
8
Several cars were already parked in the visitor center parking lot, including a couple of Adams County deputy vehicles, when Emma pulled into Mount Locust. After realizing she would be late, she’d contacted Guy Armstrong, the head of maintenance, and asked him to unlock the gate.
Emma parked and scanned the grounds for the gray-and-white tabby that had showed up last night. It was probably hiding out from all the activity buzzing around the visitor center. When she entered the building, her volunteer was circling a Trace map for a visitor. Sheila was helping out this winter while Emma worked on the mapping project.
“I’m sorry, the Mount Locust Inn is off-limits today, but be sure to stop here,” Sheila said, pointing to the Sunken Trace. “It’s twenty-six miles up the road.”
After the tourist left, she turned to Emma. “What’s going on? Nobody will tell me anything.”
That was a first. Sheila could usually worm information out of a scarecrow. “We had a little disturbance here last night.” Emma set the bag of food on the counter. “Have you seen a cat around here?”
“Cat? No,” she said. “Must have been more than a little disturbance. Half the sheriff’s department is here. And since I’m having to turn visitors away, it would help if I could tell them why.”
“I’m afraid it might frighten them instead. Someone shot at me last night when I came back to Mount Locust for a file.”
“You’re kidding.” The volunteer’s voice dropped. “Who was it?”
“It was too dark to see. I just hope whoever it was doesn’t come back.” Emma poured the dry food in the bowl she’d bought.
“Do you think it was someone messing with that machine that came yesterday?”
“No, the intruder was fooling around with one of the backhoes.”
“You think someone was trying to steal it?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t want to destroy evidence, so we didn’t look around last night. I’m going now to check on the GPR machine and see if the sheriff has discovered anything.” She stopped at the door. “If I’m still with the sheriff when the GPR operator arrives, send him on up the hill.”
After Emma shut the door, she rattled the bowl of dry food.
“Come here, kitty,” she crooned, setting the bowl against the wall on the back side of the building. Almost immediately, the tabby rounded the far corner and made a beeline for her. Emma’s relief surprised her.
“There you are,” she said as the cat wound around her ankles. She didn’t want to forget to take the little thing home at the end of the day, but hopefully tonight no one would be shooting at her. She knelt and stroked the cat’s back. “You’re not very old. And we have to get you fattened up, but right now I have work to do,” she said and set out for the inn, leaving Suzy to her eating.
The sun felt good in the fifty-degree weather as she walked to the inn. Maybe they would have a return of warmer weather. Voices came from the back side of the cabin, and she climbed the steps and walked through the dogtrot to the back porch, where she caught sight of Trey.
Rats. She’d hoped he would not be here. Emma was tired of repeating that she only wanted to be friends. Just as she started to backpedal, he looked up.
“Emma,” he said with a nod.
“Did you find the bullet?” she asked.
“Yes. Judging from the position, even if you’d been standing on the porch, it would have missed you. Way too high.”
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