by Kym Roberts
I sighed. “Yes. A few years ago one of the coaches was in the booth and his wife brought her own pie . . . with a brick in it. He’d been having an affair with the music teacher. His marriage and his affair ended when the whipped cream got all bloody and the kids were traumatized. Now they pick the teacher with the least amount of drama every year—not the most popular one.”
“And every year it’s you because you have no life.”
“I have a life!” I huffed.
“Really? ’Cause last time I checked, a person with a life has a smidgeon of drama that could stir things up.”
“Trust me, when I get back . . .” I couldn’t help but think I should be saying if I got back. “I’ll be lucky to have a job. Being blackballed off that list for eternity would be too easy a punishment for spending the afternoon in jail.”
“Would that be so bad?” Scarlet asked.
“Being blackballed? No, it wouldn’t be bad . . . as long as I get to keep my job.”
She shook her head. “I never pictured you becoming a teacher.”
“I never expected to become one,” I admitted.
“Do you like it?”
Once again she had somehow ruffled around in my feathers. “Of course—why else would I do it?”
“I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem like something you would do.”
I understood what she was saying, The Charli Rae who Hazel Rock knew was a wild child. Not a bad child, just a free spirit who couldn’t be held down. I wasn’t that Charli Rae anymore. I was just Charli the kindergarten teacher—who’d been accused of murder. I still couldn’t wrap my head around that.
Scarlet pulled off Highway 287 and hit the dirt-and-gravel road that went through the center of town. Main Street in Hazel Rock was everything I’d run away from.
Rustic. Quaint. Heartwarming.
Deceiving as all get out.
Chapter Six
We passed the quilt shop and the barber shop, which hadn’t changed since I was ten years old. The brick facades were bleached from the relentless heat of the Texas sun and their original windows from the 1880s still rippled in the gleam of the moon. When I was a kid, my dad told me the windows were the same as a fun house mirror. I’d believed him until my sophomore year of high school. At the homecoming parade I’d stupidly called for everyone to make faces in the glass as we passed by the picture windows. It was then that I learned the waves weren’t magic but due to the process by which glass was made before the twentieth century. Instead of being humiliated, I’d been proud that my dad had made me see magic in something so simple, and a little irritated with my peers for stealing away the mystic charm . . . almost like when Santa Claus had been stolen from me in my tween years.
Of course all of that was before Dad betrayed my trust and our relationship crumbled.
The diner, on the opposite side of the street, had once been a gas station in the 1950s but had been completely remodeled during my high school years. Along with its heritage from the Golden Era, it added a western flair with a neon cowboy. It was the only building in town that dated after the nineteenth century. The eatery attracted attention from the highway with its glowing “Hazel Rock Diner” sign lighting up the east end of town.
We passed a few darkened boutiques and antique stores, all with a western cow town flair, before my family’s business came into view. Two pieces of yellow crime scene tape crossed over the front doors of The Book Barn Princess. I shuddered. X marked the spot of Marlene’s life ending and my world turning upside down.
Scarlet parked in front of Beaus and Beauties and we got out of her toy car in one piece, a small miracle in and of itself. We turned and looked at The Barn in unison.
“What are you going to do now?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” I felt like a stray dog left in the middle of the road with no food, no money, and no roof over its head.
Her eyes softened. “Where are you staying?”
I hate being pitied. I let my gaze drift away before my eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know.” I sighed and tried to gain control of the emotions threatening to spill out of me.
“Do you have the keys to The Barn?” Her voice faltered, and I caught a glimpse of her swiping away a tear.
Geesh, if she kept this up we’d both look like my students had applied our makeup that morning. I cleared my throat. “No.”
“I have a set of keys your dad gave me in case of an emergency.”
“Really?” Dad had never felt safe giving the keys to anyone. The fact that he trusted Scarlet, of all people, made me wonder if she knew him better than I did. “I’m not sure he’d want me to have them.” I confided.
“Don’t be ridiculous. That’s like saying Cade wasn’t happy to see you.”
I raised my eyebrow. She hadn’t seen him walk out on me. She obviously still believed in my fairytale romance from high school, the one everyone thought would end in a happily ever after for the girl from the wrong side of the oil tracks.
Scarlet, however, was turning out to be the bright spot of my trip. She’d given me the warmest welcome of anyone, and I hadn’t really given her the time of day when I first ran into her salon. I owed her more than I could repay, so I gave her the truth and let her in on my humiliation at the hands of her mayor. “Cade walked away without a word when the sheriff put handcuffs on me.”
“He may have left you with Mateo, but trust me, he was working from behind the scenes. He’s the one who started calling everyone to pull their video footage from our store cameras.”
I shook my head, letting her know I didn’t think that was for my benefit, but she continued. “When some people wanted to have a trial right on the front porch of The Book Barn Princess, Cade calmed the crowd down and told them you’d just arrived and had been unfortunate enough to find Marlene’s body. He said that before I pulled the video. And he stood up, despite Mike Thompson accusing him of defending his piece of a—” She stopped before she confessed what the town really thought of Charli Rae Warren, but continued with her argument for Cade’s affection. “He’s looking for your dad right now.”
That last part got my attention. He was looking for my dad? “Why?”
“I don’t know. I suspect he still cares more than you think.”
It took me about two seconds before I realized I was starting to get sucked in by the old Calloway charm—the same way the rest of the town had been and apparently still was. I rolled my eyes.
“I know you don’t believe Cade still has feelings for you and I really don’t blame you. So why don’t you take the keys and sleep on it for a night?” Scarlet dug in her purse for my dad’s keys, but the thought of staying in the apartment attached to the store made my stomach roll.
I shook my head, my desperation leading me to grovel. “Could I stay with you?” I asked the virtual stranger in front of me.
“I live in an eighteen-foot Airstream trailer behind the B&B. There’s one bed and a teeny-tiny shower. I have to keep most of my stuff in the salon.”
“Oh.”
Scarlet pulled out the set of keys and held them out for me to take. Her outstretched hand lingered a little too long and she waggled the keys to get my attention. It was totally unnecessary, but it did pull me out of my trancelike state.
I took the keys and met her eyes. “Why would someone want to kill Marlene?”
Scarlet shook her head. “I honestly have no idea. I’ll come by in the morning to see how you’re doing,” she offered.
I nodded and swallowed down my pride, clutching the keys until the ridges left an imprint on my palm. The apartment was half mine legally. It just didn’t feel like mine. At least it hadn’t before Marlene had called and asked me to sign the papers to sell it. Now I didn’t know what to do. My dad was missing, the Realtor was dead, and I had no idea who the potential buyer was.
I hugged the only friend I had in Hazel Rock and crossed the street toward home.
Chapter Seven
A few accent
lights dimly lit the aged stone courtyard in front of the hospital turned antique shop next to The Book Barn Princess. Stained by acid rain, the gray cut stone looked ominous despite the iron columns at the door painted bright white. The old “Hospital” sign was still displayed in the ironwork that trimmed the roofline of the porch.
In the middle of the courtyard, a gloomy rectangular fountain bubbled from a sunken hole the size of a coffin. At one end of the water feature there was a built-in bench said to have once been a step-down into the holy waters of the old baptismal font. It had been created for patients at the end of their lives who wanted to change their ways so they could enter the Pearly Gates and avoid those fiery pits of hell the old sheriff had always warned me about.
I never doubted that version of the truth . . . until Cade Calloway confided that it was actually a bathtub of ill repute. He told me Hospital was a code word the cowboys used when they wanted to get “nursed” back to health.
To this day, I pictured scantily clothed women hanging out the windows, waving at the cowboys who entered our stable, and now the fountain definitely looked more like a source of debauchery than soul saving.
I continued toward the alley that would lead me to the entrance to my family’s apartment, in the back of the building where I’d grown up. A single bulb illuminated the spiked iron gate, but the alley itself was steeped in darkness. Up until finding Marlene’s body, I’d never thought of the entrance as being spooky.
Now I wished the aluminum hood covering the bulb directed the light toward the alley and not the ornate iron bracket and sign that had more rust on them than white paint. Looking as old as the town, the oxidized sign brought back memories I didn’t want to think about.
We’d moved to Hazel Rock and hung the sign marking the entry to our home when I was eight. The words Eve’s Gate were barely visible now; like everything else, they disappeared into the shadows, but my dad’s housewarming gift to my mother still created a lump in my throat.
I used to secretly believe that sign was haunted by my mom’s spirit. After her death, the motion of the sign swinging in the breeze reminded me of seeing her standing at the top of the steps to our second-floor apartment as she waved good-bye when I caught the school bus out front. Before my mom died, I’d never seen that sign move. I’d probably just been oblivious, but the fact that it moved as it was doing right now was enough to convince a young mind. So even if the noise was a little creaky instead of a singsong like Eve Warren’s voice, I believed it was her.
Especially after it somehow fell and conked Cade on the top of the head the night he tried to get past second base. That sign made a screech and then an ungodly racket as it bounced off the back of Cade’s head and hit the stone pavers. It was as if she wanted to bring my daddy outside to see what was going on. Which of course it did. I believed my mom was on a rampage that night. She gave Cade six stitches and put him out of the game the following week.
That of course was the way the old Charli looked at things. The here-and-now Charli heard the squeak of metal against metal and wished her childhood memories weren’t so bittersweet. I also wished the dadgum sign would shut up because I couldn’t see under the steps that led to our apartment.
I pushed open the surprisingly silent gate. That gate had given Mom a sense of security even though the back of the building was wide open down the hillside to the Brazos River. Right now it felt like I had no way to escape if someone came around the back corner of the barn . . . or, worse yet, if the killer came out of his hiding place in our apartment and made a run for it down the stairs.
“A flashlight would be really nice right about now,” I complained aloud. Not that there was anyone to do anything about my predicament.
“Who needs a flashlight to meet an old lover in an alley?”
Despite my heart skipping several beats, I recognized the nasal voice behind me instantaneously. And he certainly wasn’t any ex-lover of mine. It was Mike Thompson, the guy who’d called me Cade’s piece of... property in front of the whole town.
I don’t like someone insinuating a man controls any part of my body—including my behind. My backside didn’t come close to the current trend of luscious lobes, so I wasn’t quite sure why it’d been a topic of conversation at the impromptu town hall meeting in front of The Barn earlier that day.
Needless to say, my fear disappeared. Anger, and the fact that Mike was three inches shorter and weighed almost two hundred pounds more than me, squelched it down to zero. Mike might have a disgustingly dirty mind and repulse me completely, but he was more the sneak a peek, a grope, or even a kiss type of offender—not a cold-blooded killer. Violence wasn’t in his repertoire. Besides, we had a gate between us, and I was pretty confident in my ability to get away.
Shadowed from the light above, I could still see the full beard he wore and that his hair had grown down past his shoulders. His brown, flowing locks were his one good feature. I’d always been jealous of the way he could tame those curls. Even now they glistened in the light from the lone light bulb.
The sign above him began to sway, as if a strong wind was racing through the alley. I squinted at it and wondered before turning my attention back to Mike. “I think we both know there was no love between us,” I said with my arms crossed over my chest.
“Sixth grade, under the jungle gym,” he reminded me.
I snorted. “I was swinging upside down and you came over and put your lips against mine. That’s not a kiss.” Technically, it was my first kiss. If I wanted to count it. Which I didn’t. If any one-way kiss was going to count, then Justin Timberlake was my first kiss. I’d kissed his poster on my bedroom wall many times prior to Mike planting his slobbery wet lips on mine. (For the record, Justin’s a better kisser.)
“It was a kiss in my book,” he replied.
“Then you have a pretty pathetic book.”
Mike ignored my insult and continued as if he hadn’t slurred my name behind my back earlier that day, or just now.
“I dropped some books off at the store yesterday and your dad was supposed to pay me for them today.” Mike held out his hand.
“You’ll have to take that up with my dad.” As if I would pay him a dime. I didn’t even have a dime.
“Your dad isn’t here.” He waggled his fingers.
No kidding, Sherlock. If he was, I’d be long gone, I thought, but for Mike’s sake I stuck to the path of least resistance. “The store isn’t open,” I said. My impatience was dying to spew out of me.
“You closed early.”
“I didn’t close anything; Sheriff Espinosa locked up.” At least I thought he had.
“Either way, you owe me fifty-two dollars and seventeen cents,” Mike persisted.
“I don’t owe you a dime,” I huffed. Seriously, where would I get fifty-two dollars and seventeen cents? The sign, battered by the wind, groaned above us.
Mike wasn’t going to back down. “You own the bookstore.”
“No, it’s my dad’s bookstore.”
“From the way I hear it, you own half, so you’re just as responsible for the debt as he is.”
This was seriously getting old. “Come back when the store is open.”
Mike shook his finger at me and smiled. “You’re trying to skip town without paying me.”
Of course I was. Obviously Mike had gotten a little smarter since high school. “I don’t have any money on me. It was a business deal. Made in a place of business. During business hours. Come. Back. Tomorrow.”
“Is there a problem?” A deep, rich voice broke up our ridiculous argument.
It was a voice that gave me goose bumps . . . and I hated to admit the visceral response it caused in my body. Especially because those vocal cords hadn’t said a word to me after the cuffs clinked around my wrists.
“No,” I said at the same time Mike answered, “Yes.” We both looked at the man who now towered over Mike, his shadow making my view of my short opponent almost disappear.
The only thi
ng that made this whole scene even remotely bearable was the gate still separating me from them. Plus the sign was making enough noise I could claim I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I thought about turning and running up the stairs to the apartment, but unlike Mike, Cade Calloway still looked fit as a fiddle. He could probably catch me.
Drat the man.
My hands flew down to my sides. “If you want to help,” I said and then paused. Cade cocked his head and waiting for me to continue. “Then you can tell this imbecile that if he sold books to my dad, he needs to talk to my dad about collecting the money, not me.”
“Technically, you owe him as much as your dad does.”
I think I may have growled at that point. Otherwise there was a rabid raccoon running around in the alley. “I don’t have any money to pay him!”
“Maybe I should call the sheriff. She seems to be losing her temper and she’s reneging on paying for goods her business received.”
At that point the gate couldn’t save Mike. I yanked it open and was about to grab a fistful of that luscious hair when he backpedaled away from me. Cade stepped in between us and my mom’s sign crashed down upon us.
Well, technically it crashed on Cade’s head and bounced off Mike’s face. I caught it before it hit the ground.
“Son of a—”
“Don’t you cuss in front of me, Cade Calloway.” I pulled the sign close to my chest, afraid one of them would try to grab it. Five-year-olds cussed at me almost on a daily basis, but Cade wasn’t going to break my mom’s rule for a gentleman’s behavior. Not that Cade was a gentleman, but I was beginning to believe once more that the sign really did hold my momma’s spirit within it.
Mike was too busy whining about the scratch on his nose—even though he was lucky my mom had decided to slide down that long slope instead of gouging it off his face—and telling me he was going to sue me for everything I was worth to notice that I was keeping the sign out of his reach. I smirked at both of them. Served them right.