The Branson Beauty

by Claire Booth

  “Actually, then,” Hank said quietly, “it appears the riffraff was among you.”

  Jeffrey swallowed and his mouth tightened. “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make light of any of this. Mandy was a beautiful girl. This is … this is just horrible. I cannot imagine who would do this.…”

  He trailed off. Hank leaned forward.

  “Did you?”

  Jeffrey’s jaw started to drop, but he stopped it and slapped on his best lawyer face. “My God, sir. Of course not,” he said. He tried to continue, but Hank was rising to his feet. An indignant speech would not be informative. And he didn’t have time. His phone was vibrating with text alerts. Since Patricia Honneffer managed her husband’s law firm, he asked Jeffrey where her office was and dug his phone out of his jeans pocket as he headed down the hall.

  Victim still alive right b4 crash. Hanging out in kitchen.

  Hank’s face split in a genuine smile. Now that was something. That pinpointed things better than the old doc had, that’s for sure. Sam must be interviewing the waitstaff. He stopped in the middle of the hallway and texted back.

  Who says?

  Waiter. Cook up next. Will let u know whats up.

  A very feminine cough had him jerking his head up from his phone. The petite brunette from the lounge stood in front of him. She had been crying. The makeup around her eyes was smudged, and the corner of a tissue poked out from the pocket of her dress slacks.

  She led him into her office, which was as luxuriously appointed as her husband’s, only slightly smaller and with more filing cabinets. She sat behind her desk and waved a hand at the chair on the other side. Hank lowered himself into it, and it was as stiff and uncomfortable as it looked. He was fairly certain he was sitting where her employees did when they were about to be reprimanded or fired.

  She folded her hands in front of her and waited. She still had not said a word. Hank figured she was the type of person who did not like having her time wasted. He dived in.

  “Do you know who killed Mandy?”

  She shook her head.

  “Did you know she was on the boat?”

  Another silent shake.

  “How long had you known her?” he asked.

  She started to speak but choked on the tears she had apparently been trying to suppress. She tried again.

  “Since she started dating Ryan. So I guess about a year and a half. They started dating the summer before their senior year, I think. She was … she was absolutely wonderful. Charming and funny and so kind. She really took to Ashley—that’s my daughter. Mandy would always make time for her, treat her as an equal. Ashley just adored her.”

  Hank’s chest tightened. “How is Ashley doing?”

  That did it. Patricia started to sob. She fumbled for the tissue in her pocket, but it did little good once she found it. Hank waited. Finally, she regained enough control to speak again.

  “My little girl.” Patricia tried to mop up the makeup dissolving under her eyes. “My little girl. She’s devastated. We told her this morning after we confirmed it with Frances. How do you tell a child that happened? How do you explain that a person could be so evil? That a person would want to do that to someone you love? I don’t know how we did it. I don’t even remember the words. Just the look on her face … I remember that.”

  Hank waited a minute and tried to swallow.

  “Ma’am, I’m going to need to talk to Ashley. About yesterday.” Patricia stared at him. Her eyes narrowed, and her hands, which before had been merely clutching the tissue, now balled into fists. There was no clock in this office to break the silence.

  “You have got to be kidding,” she finally said.

  “I wish I didn’t have to,” Hank said. That was certainly an understatement. “She might have seen or heard something important. I know how horrible this is, but, Mrs. Honneffer, I have to. Is she here at the office with you?”

  Patricia continued to glare at him. She shoved her chair back and stood.

  “Since it is a school holiday, yes, she is here with us.” She paused before walking out the office door. “You will be gentle. And I will be here the whole time.” Neither was a question. Hank nodded and she stalked out of the room. Ten minutes later she returned, holding the hand of a crying twelve-year-old with the same petite frame and brown hair as her mother. Patricia led the child around the desk and sat her in the chair she had just vacated. Ashley was wearing a Sooner Track sweatshirt.

  Hank introduced himself and explained why he was there. She looked at him with huge fawnlike eyes, and Hank felt like shit.

  “I need to ask you about the lunch, Ashley. Okay? Can you tell me about it?”

  “It was Gran’s birthday party. There weren’t any other kids. Just adults. And stupid Ryan and his friends. They didn’t pay any attention to me. Ryan only does when he’s by himself. I kept wishing that Mandy had come. She would have talked to me…”

  “Did you know she was on the boat?”

  Ashley shook her head. Her eyes never left Hank’s face. He took her through the lunch and the crash. Nothing she said added to what he’d already heard. Then he asked about the lounge.

  “All the teenagers sat in the middle of the room. They were laughing and talking the whole time. I think they were glad that they were gonna have a cool story about a boat crash that they could tell when they went back to school.”

  “They were like that the whole time?” Hank said.

  “Yeah—wait. No,” she said. “Ryan was way upset when he came back from the bathroom. He pouted over by the windows for a while. I guess Gran musta yelled at him.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because she came back into the lounge right after he did. She wasn’t gone as long as he was, though. I hope she yelled at him. I think something was up with that blond chick. Why did he bring her? Why didn’t he bring Mandy? Was he cheating on her? Do you know?”

  “I’m trying to figure all that out,” Hank said. “Did you ask him about it?”

  “Yeah. I tried to. He blew me off. Said it wasn’t any of my business. That what’s-her-face was his friend and I should stop bothering him. Jerk.”

  Hank hid a smile. “Did you notice anyone else who was upset, or gone for a really long time?”

  She cracked a split-second smile. “My dad. He was so ticked when he couldn’t make those calls he needed to. He even went outside to try, which was stupid, because it was really, really cold.

  “And Gran’s friend Doris. She and her husband—I don’t know his name, but he’s funny, I like him—they were gone to the bathroom for a long time, too. But they’re old.” She shrugged. “Probably takes them a long time to, you know…”

  Hank did smile at that one.

  “And there was Ryan’s friend. The tall one. He left for a while. Kinda the same time as Doris did. I remember, cuz when he came back he asked if there was any coffee left. There wasn’t, and he got all huffy, said he needed some bad. Like he was a grown-up.” She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

  The door behind Hank opened, and Jeffrey came in. Ashley looked at her father and started crying again. Hank knew he’d been lucky to get what he had before she broke down. He leaned forward.

  “Ashley, honey? Thank you for talking with me. If you remember anything else later that you think is important, I need you to call me, okay?” He slid one of his business cards across the desk. Through the sheen of tears, her eyes lit up. The kid just wanted to be treated with some respect. Like Mandy had evidently done.

  She left the room with Jeffrey, and it was once again just Hank and Patricia. He asked his questions as quickly as he could. Nothing she said differed from what her husband and daughter had told him, although she did rat out Jeffrey. He apparently had tried to send a few emails during the lunch itself, while his mother wasn’t looking. Two had gotten through right after they’d said grace at the beginning of the meal, she said, but the rest had failed.

  Hank gave her another of his business cards, t
hanked her for her time, and fought the urge to ask for a cup of coffee to go. She walked him to the door.

  “You will catch this person, won’t you, Sheriff?” she asked.

  He paused with his hand on the shiny brass knob. “Ma’am, I will do everything I can,” he said. “And that’s a lot.”

  She stared up at him and nodded. He stepped outside, yanked his wool hat down over his ears, and strode through the falling snow to his car.

  * * *

  A cup of gas station coffee steamed in the squad car’s cup holder. It tasted particularly bad right after the wonderful stuff Hank had had at the law office. But he didn’t have time to be choosy. He had to get back to Branson. He’d gotten permission from Mandy’s parents to search her car, which was still parked in the lot at the landing where people had boarded the Branson Beauty. The boat, however, remained at the rather rickety down-shore dock it had been tugged to last night. He would need to head there, too.

  If he didn’t have time for decent coffee, there was no way he could justify stopping at the Russell Stover outlet in Ozark. He loved pulling in there with the kids on their trips back from Springfield. It was about halfway home, the perfect place to stop for a bathroom break and some Pecan Delights. He’d have to make due with the crappy coffee and the bag of stale chips he’d found under the front seat.

  He tossed the chip bag onto the seat next to him and looked out the window. As he drove south, the relatively flat and open land around Springfield started to fold up into real mountains. Highway 65 rolled up and down, over and over, as the trees filled in the valleys and clung to the jutting limestone cliffs.

  He usually did this drive as quickly as possible, on his way to or from somewhere. Today he was forced to creep along on the barely plowed roadway. The view coasted sedately by, making him feel guilty he’d forgotten it was there.

  He remembered the first time he’d driven to Branson, with Maggie, to meet her folks. It had been a two-lane road then. You had to go slowly, or risk your neck trying to pass someone in all those hills. They’d risked their necks a lot as they sped south that day, laughing and talking as she regaled him with stories of growing up in the Ozarks.

  She’d spent her summers swimming in the lakes and playing in the woods with a pack of neighbor kids. She was always the first to try something—climbing a particularly tall tree or leaping over a wide creek no one else wanted to cross. Which meant she was also always the first to end up in the emergency room, where she became known as a regular. Hank had wished for a second that he’d known her then—his playmates didn’t sound half as fun—but then again, no. If they had grown up together, they’d be good friends. And as he rode with her down Highway 65, her long, sun-streaked hair blown by wind from the open window and her smile crinkling the flawless skin around her bright brown eyes, he did not want to be her friend. He wanted to take her face in his hands and kiss her until …

  He’d spent the rest of that drive trying to redirect his thoughts by staring at the scenery. And it had worked, at least a little bit. He’d been astonished that within a ten-mile stretch, you could go from standard rolling Missouri farmland to these craggy, ancient rock formations splitting the earth like some geologist’s dream, and forests that seemed determined to one day overgrow them.

  They had only been living in Branson for six months, he chided himself, and he’d already let his senses numb to the breathtaking landscape. And then, a twenty-foot-high hillbilly burst out of the snow at him. That, he thought with a sigh, is why the natural beauty has faded to the background. The huge billboard had survived the snowstorm and continued to advertise ONE OF THE STRIP’S ORIGINAL SHOWS! It was followed by dozens of others, on both sides of the highway, that trumpeted country singers, celebrity impersonators, magic shows, Chinese acrobats, and some museum that had memorabilia from the Titanic, which made absolutely no sense in landlocked Missouri, as far as Hank was concerned.

  No wonder he didn’t pause to admire the mountains and valleys anymore. The commercialization was easy to blame, so he’d stick with that for now. He needed to start thinking about the case again. He limited his attention to the road in front of him and carefully made the turns toward the boat landing, where Mandy’s car would hopefully tell him something about why its owner had been strangled to death just short of her nineteenth birthday.

  There were a fair number of cars still in the parking lot as he pulled in, and it had been plowed enough so that the cars might be able to get out. He guessed they all belonged to customers on yesterday’s ill-fated voyage who had not yet bothered to come down and get them after they were picked up at the emergency docking point last night. Mandy’s little Ford sat close to the boarding ramp. Made sense—she had been one of the first to get there. Bright crime-scene ribbon was draped all over it, and evidence tape covered every door handle. Thank God Sheila thought to stop here before she went back to the office last night, he thought, as he got out his pocketknife.

  Ideally, he’d have the car towed to a nice warm garage somewhere and have it gone over for fingerprints and forensic evidence at the same time. But there were no tow trucks available, and he needed to at least assess what was inside right now. Potential clues could not wait however many hours it would take to get the car somewhere.

  A loud crunch of ice had Hank turning from the car to the parking entrance, where he saw a car even smaller than Mandy’s trying to get over the bump of snow into the lot. The tires spun uselessly as the car came to rest half in a drift. The driver hit the gas, which only rocked it further into immobility. The engine whine finally stopped, and Kurt managed to get his bulk out of the car and over the drift. He had his camera with him, at least.

  “Whew,” the crime-scene tech panted as he staggered up to Hank. “I thought I’d never make it.”

  Hank had thought the same thing. He made a mental note to lay off the Pecan Delights.

  “I expected you to be here already,” he said.

  Kurt nodded and spoke more quickly as he got his breath back. “Me, too. Took forever to dig my car out. Whew. And then getting out here. Good golly. I’ve never had to drive through that much ice.”

  Obviously. Hank turned back toward the Ford, which looked kind of festive, if you didn’t read what was on the ribbons fluttering in the wind. He moved toward it, pulling on latex gloves as—

  “Um, sir? Sirs?” The voice cracked and rose sharply, which made sense as Hank turned to see a boy who couldn’t have been more than sixteen standing behind them. Even the thick parka couldn’t disguise the gawky limbs that were shaking as the kid stood there, clearly petrified to be confronting two strange men, one of them holding an open pocketknife.

  “I … I need to ask you … ask you not to do that. Sir. Sirs. The police … they came and put all that stuff on it.” He raised a shaking hand toward the Ford. “You can’t … can’t…” He trailed off, and his hand fell to his side.

  Hank looked at the Gallagher Enterprises name tag pinned to the parka.

  “Ezra? Ezra. Hi. My name is Hank Worth, and I’m the sheriff.” He slowly raised his hands. The one with the knife stayed up, and the empty one reached into his pocket for his badge. When he saw the badge, Ezra heaved a sigh so big that his breath formed its own little cloud and floated away.

  “Thank the Lord,” he said. “I didn’t … I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

  Hank didn’t know what Ezra would have done, either. They were the only people for miles around, and he was fairly certain the kid didn’t have any self-defense tricks up his parka sleeve.

  “You’re the parking lot attendant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m going to need to talk to you as soon as we’re done here with the car, okay?”

  Ezra nodded and didn’t move.

  “I’ll come get you when we’re ready,” Hank said, probably too gruffly. Ezra flushed red and slunk off toward the hut at the other end of the lot.

  Hank sliced through the tape on the driver’s side d
oor handle and pulled it open. Here we go, he thought.

  A crumpled receipt in the center console—$23.76 for gas and coffee at a Conoco in Norman early Sunday morning. A half-full cup of coffee—frozen solid—in the cup holder. A hairbrush and a couple of CDs on the passenger seat. A Beginning Psychology book on the passenger-side floorboard. A necklace or some kind of chain hanging from the rearview mirror. In the glove box, her registration and insurance—both in her parents’ names—and an emergency flare, tire pressure gauge, and one of those special hammer things to break a car window if you were trapped. Her father had equipped her well.

  The driver’s seat was too close to the steering wheel for Hank to fit. Instead, he kneeled in the snow outside the door and stuck his hand under the seat. A lot of crumbs, two gum wrappers, and an unsealed envelope. Hank lifted the flap and stared at a stack of twenties. Two hundred dollars. In an envelope carefully hidden under the seat. What the hell? He carefully tagged it and moved around to the passenger side as Kurt took photos of everything. Once Kurt was done, Hank lowered himself into the seat, carefully lifting the psychology textbook off the floor. Was that what she had planned to major in? Was that one of her tests next week? He fanned through the pages until his gloved thumb caught on a piece of loose-leaf paper. He slowly pulled it out and unfolded it.

  Dearest Mandy,

  I have been waiting for so long. I know that you need me. I know that you want me. I have waited for you and you have not answered me. You are mine. Not his. Not ever his. No matter how far away you go, you will always be mine. You will come back to me. It is almost time. You are mine only. You need to start acting like it. I am getting tired of the waiting. It is almost time.

  —A (SQUIGGLE)

  CHAPTER

  9

  It was a single sheet of paper, and it felt like it weighed a thousand pounds as Hank sat there with it in his hands. He read it again. Typewritten. No spelling mistakes, but no big words, either. He flipped it over. Nothing on the back. It was folded in thirds. There were none of the little headers at the top like you get when you print out an email. It must have been mailed. The creases were still crisp. She hadn’t unfolded it much. Why? This wasn’t a toss-off letter. This was something that should have been noteworthy. More than a bookmark. This should have scared her.