Murder at the Courthouse

by A. H. Gabhart

  He kept his eyes steady on her. “Is that lawyer speak?”

  “Oh no, that would require more words. Billable words.” She twisted her lips to hide a smile.

  “How about plain old Alex speak?”

  “Okay.” She looked down at the ground. “So, I was young, and I had this idiotic idea you might go to law school with me.”

  “You never told me.”

  Her eyes came back up to his. “No, I guess I didn’t. Would it have made a difference?”

  “A big difference. I wouldn’t have gone to law school, but I might have gotten up the nerve to tell you how beautiful I thought you were.”

  “You can tell me now.”

  “Now’s no good. Now you already know you’re beautiful.”

  “Didn’t you know? Beautiful women are always the last to know.” Alex flounced her hair and laughed. “But we’re talking about your problems, not mine, remember? I asked my question first. What now?”

  Michael turned his attention back to his gear and concentrated on rolling his sleeping bag as small as possible. “I’ll think of something.”

  “Hold everything and don’t think of anything yet. Not until I show you something.” Alex went to Reece’s boat and came back with a large manila envelope. “I hope it didn’t get wet.”

  “A treasure map?” Michael raised his eyebrows as he took it from her.

  “Not exactly. Hank told me to give it to you. Said that if this is what it took to get you back, then he was willing to make the sacrifice. Although he figured he might as well go on and print the pictures since everybody in Hidden Springs already hated him for putting the truth about the judge in the paper.”

  Michael stared at the envelope. “Did the AP pick up his story?”

  “He got his byline, but he didn’t know the whole story, just the latest installment. He guessed about Roxanne, but said he didn’t have enough concrete evidence to print.”

  “He found the gold speck and then didn’t dig is what you’re saying.”

  “Gold speck?” She had a puzzled frown.

  “Hank told me last week that a good newspaperman had a sixth sense about finding the right place to dig for gold. Or news in his case.”

  “Then I guess he decided to let the gold stay buried. He said Miss June could be a pain with her requests for free space for this or that charity event, but he liked the old lady. Plus, he said he had to think about Anthony. That the boy had problems enough without him adding to them.”

  “Has Anthony left town?”

  “Nope.” Alex pressed her lips together and shook her head a little. “Malinda says he was at school every day since the judge’s funeral.”

  “You’re kidding.” He raised his eyebrows at Alex.

  “Nope,” she said again with a smile. “Actually, I ran across him before I came out here.”

  “Where? I tried to find him for three days with no luck.”

  “He wasn’t a bit hard to find. He was sitting right there on your front steps when I drove Uncle Reece’s truck out to your house to put my boat in the water. He gave me a hand getting it in the lake.”

  “Now I know you’re lying.”

  “A good attorney may evade the unfortunate truth from time to time, but she never lies.”

  “Was he okay?”

  “Looked okay to me. Claimed he’d come down to see if maybe you’d broken your leg or something, since you hadn’t been on his case for a few days. I think he misses you.”

  “Misses you maybe. Not me.” Michael snorted.

  Alex pointed at the envelope. “Look at the picture.”

  Michael pulled the picture out of the envelope. Hank had blown it up to an eight by ten. Michael’s gut wrenched as he stared at the judge leaning toward the air, panic twisting his features until, if Michael hadn’t known for sure it was Judge Campbell, he might not have recognized him at all. Michael was grasping the judge’s jacket, but even in the picture it was obvious he had no way to save the judge. Instead, it appeared Michael was about to lose his balance and pitch off the cliff along with the judge.

  He might have fallen except for the third person in the picture. Anthony. Anthony was grabbing Michael’s belt with a look of desperation as he yanked Michael back from the edge.

  Alex peeked over his shoulder at the picture. “Hank says this picture could make him some money. Maybe even win a Pulitzer or something.” She shivered and turned her eyes away from it. “I don’t like looking at it.”

  Michael felt down in the envelope and pulled out the memory card. “Hank could have already downloaded it on his computer.”

  “He knew you’d think of that. So he said to tell you that sometimes friends had to trust one another. Especially in a little town like Hidden Springs.”

  “Huh.” Michael stared at the memory card. “Everybody’s full of surprises.” Then he studied Anthony’s face in the picture again. “Did you show Anthony the picture?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” Michael tore the picture in two, then again and on until it was a handful of glossy squares of paper. He dropped them and the memory card on what was left of the campfire.

  After they melted into the ashes, he looked up at Alex. “I guess I owe Hank one.”

  “Don’t worry. He’ll be collecting for years.” Alex reached for his hand. “Are you ready?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s time to go. You’ve still got people to get out of jail, and I’ve still got people to put there.”

  And kids to pull back from trouble’s edge. He didn’t say that last aloud. But maybe that was what he’d been hoping to find here on the island. A reason to keep playing the game of life.

  Michael didn’t know what was going to happen next, but he had the feeling there would be other kids. Other Anthonys. Other Hallies.

  Alex looked up at him. “Your boat or mine? Or each in our own boats?”

  “Mine. We’ll tow Reece’s.” He wanted her in his boat. In his life. “You are beautiful, you know.”

  Her smile was tinged with sadness. “I can’t live in Hidden Springs.”

  “I know.”

  “And you can’t not live here.”

  “I know.” He soaked up the sight of her. “But right now, you’re here and I’m here.”

  “Are you saying not to worry about what next? Just grab what now?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “And to me.” She tiptoed up to kiss his cheek. Then she took his hand and let him help her into his boat.

  Sneak Peek of the Next Book

  1

  When he was a little boy, his mother told him a drunk jumped off this bridge and survived. Jack watched the swirling brown eddies in the river far below him while his toes curled inside his shoes to get a better grip on the narrow strip of roadway on the air side of the railing. He didn’t see how anyone could walk away from this jump, but his mother, who didn’t believe in idle gossip or idle anything for that matter, never told stories unless they were true. She said Jack’s father was one of the men who went out in a boat to fish the drunk out of the river below. The man hadn’t even broken a bone, or maybe he’d broken all his bones. Jack couldn’t remember for sure.

  Jack stared down at the muddy water until there didn’t seem to be anything but the water and him and wondered if that could happen to him. He supposed not. For one thing, he wasn’t drunk, although he’d have bought a bottle of something as he came through Eagleton if he’d had the money. Money. He was tired of thinking about money. Maybe he should say tired of thinking about not having money. Tired of doing things he shouldn’t because of money.

  A tremble started in his legs, and he ordered his hands to let go of the railing to get it over with. But his mind no longer seemed to have any real connection with his body.

  His eyes riveted on the water again. It was mud-puddle brown. Not the nice bluish green he’d visualized on the way here. Even when he was a little kid and lived here in Kentucky close to the river, he’d never gone swi
mming in water this nasty. A person could get sick swimming in the river during the dog days of summer. At least that was what his mother used to tell him.

  He shut his eyes for a second. He had to quit thinking about his mother.

  Besides, he wasn’t going swimming. Everybody said the fall killed you when you hit the water. He’d be dead before he swallowed any of the filthy water, and what would it matter if he did? Dead people didn’t have to worry about germs. About anything.

  His knees practically rattled inside his skin as the trembling spread through him, until even his scalp shivered under his hair. Only his hands weren’t trembling as they kept a paralyzing grip on the stone railing behind him.

  All he had to do was turn loose and it would all be over.

  How did he get into these things? Michael Keane wrestled with the steering wheel of the old bus to keep it rolling on a fairly straight course down the road. The bus could have gotten an antique vehicle tag when the First Baptist Church of Hidden Springs had acquired it for church outings ten years ago. Since then, the only thing that held it together was Pastor Bob Simpson’s constant entreaties to the Lord. Michael was pretty sure the words stringing silently through his head as he fought the old bus around the curves down toward the river might not be the exact same ones the reverend used to keep the wheels rolling.

  Behind him, nineteen members of the Senior Adult Ladies Sunday School Class chattered and fanned themselves furiously with folded church bulletins they must have stuffed into their purses for just this occasion. Nobody suggested putting the bus windows down. They were going to a play in Eagleton, and a few beads of sweat were a small price to pay to keep their beauty-shop curls intact. Aunt Lindy was the one exception. She had sensibly lowered her window as soon as she boarded the bus and thus turned her seat into an island of wind all the other women avoided.

  Michael met her steady blue eyes in the mirror. She was the reason he had given up his day off to ferry the women to Eagleton for the matinee performance in place of Pastor Bob, who had been called to do a funeral this afternoon.

  “You’ll enjoy it,” Aunt Lindy had all but commanded him that morning when she called.

  Michael had sighed and looked out the window of his log house at the perfect blue of the lake where he planned to spend the day out in his rowboat drowning worms.

  “Besides, Clara’s first husband’s niece is in the play. You remember Julie Lynne. The two of you dated when you were in high school, didn’t you?”

  “One date.” In those days Julie Lynne Hoskins had been too tall, with a frizzy brown mop of hair that she was continually hacking at with a brush to keep it off her face.

  Aunt Lindy had pushed him to ask Julie Lynne to the homecoming dance. She said they’d have fun together. They didn’t. At the dance, the two of them sat in a pool of awkward silence amid the thumping music. He tried to get her to dance a couple of times, but she just shook her head, her hands clenched in her lap. That was the last time he’d listened to Aunt Lindy’s advice about girls.

  Shortly after that, Julie Lynne’s family had moved away from Hidden Springs. At their tenth high school reunion, one of the girls reported spotting her in a store catalog, modeling underwear. Now here she was onstage in a play that some of the ladies on the bus weren’t too sure was proper. He was kind of looking forward to seeing how Julie Lynne had changed.

  He wasn’t so sure he was as interested in her seeing how he had changed, or maybe how he hadn’t changed. After all, here he was still in Hidden Springs, not having done much of anything yet, just passing the days being a deputy sheriff in a place that hardly ever needed a deputy for anything but directing traffic and collecting property taxes.

  That was fine with Michael. Arresting people wasn’t on his list of favorite things to do anyway. He liked having plenty of time to fish and read about the War Between the States and keep Aunt Lindy happy. She wasn’t looking very happy at the moment as she glared at Edith Crossfield across the aisle from her.

  Edith had been talking nonstop since they’d met at the church thirty minutes ago. Michael tuned her out after the first mile, but now he tuned in again to see what had Aunt Lindy riled.

  “There are just some things you shouldn’t do as a church,” Edith was saying. “I mean, we have to have standards.”

  A couple of seats back, Clara James flushed red and muttered something to her seatmate, but Clara wasn’t about to take on Edith head to head.

  Aunt Lindy had no such reservations. “If you’re that worried about your sensibilities being insulted, Edith, you could always get off the bus and go back home.”

  Michael slowed the bus a little to add emphasis to Aunt Lindy’s words.

  “Well, I never, Malinda.” Edith flapped her makeshift fan double quick. “I’m not one of your high school students. I’ve got a right to say what I think, and I think we should have been more selective about which play we’re seeing. Even if Julie Lynne is Clara’s niece and all, that doesn’t mean we have to support something indecent with our attendance. But I mean, since the Sunday school class was going, I thought it my bounden duty to come along. I always support the doings of the church. You know I do, Malinda. Better than you most of the time, I might add. Not that I’m keeping count or anything, but . . .”

  She was still droning on as Michael wrestled the bus around the final curve to the bridge spanning Eagle River. They might actually get the rest of the way to Eagleton without incident. That is, unless Aunt Lindy tired of Edith’s harping. Who knew what might happen then?

  He glanced at her in the mirror, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes now. She was staring studiously out the window. Her lips were set in a thin line that made Michael cringe, but Edith Crossfield prattled on.

  Michael was so busy waiting for the explosion from Aunty Lindy that he didn’t notice the man perched precariously on the wrong side of the bridge railing, leaning toward the river below, until one of the ladies behind him gasped. After a shriek, even Edith fell silent.

  The man had picked the middle of the bridge for his jump. People always picked the middle of the bridge. While he was working in Columbus, Michael and his partner, Pete Ballard, had talked down a few jumpers, but they’d lost a couple too. Michael’s stomach lurched at the memory.

  Michael braked to a stop about fifty feet away from the man, who kept his eyes on the water and didn’t seem to note their presence.

  On the bus, the ladies found their voices with Edith speaking up first. “What’s he trying to do?”

  “I think he means to jump,” another lady chimed in.

  Aunt Lindy looked toward Michael. “Do something, Michael.”

  “I’ll try.” Michael winced at the noise the doors made when he slowly creaked them open. Who knew what might spook the man into answering the pull of the water?

  “Aunt Lindy, call Betty Jean. Tell her to get the sheriff or somebody out here, and better have her send an ambulance.” He spared a glance back at the wide-eyed ladies. “Everybody, stay on the bus.”

  He could only hope they would listen as he climbed down to the ground. Behind him, Aunt Lindy’s phone beeped as she punched in the number.

  “I hope this doesn’t take too long,” Edith Crossfield said.

  “Why, Edith! What a thing to say!” her seatmate responded.

  “I don’t care. If a fellow wants to do himself in, he should choose somewhere it wouldn’t bother other people instead of coming out here and messing up everybody else’s plans . . .”

  Michael was glad when the woman’s voice faded away behind him. If he had to listen to much more from her, he might be crawling over the railing to join the poor sucker who suddenly jerked his head around to stare at Michael.

  “Stop!” he shouted. “Don’t come any closer or I’ll . . . I’ll jump.”

  “Okay, buddy. Take it easy.” Michael held up his hands and slid two steps closer before he stopped about ten feet away from the man. Still too far to lunge and grab him if he turned loose of the r
ailing. Besides, even if he could grab him, he might not be able to hold him. The guy wasn’t too tall, but probably weighed in at over two hundred pounds.

  Michael inched a bit closer, and tried to remember his suicide intervention training. “What’s your name, buddy?”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “None, I guess, unless you don’t want to end up a John Doe.”

  The man jerked back from the words as though he’d been struck.

  “Easy, guy.” Michael kept his voice calm. “I was just asking your name.”

  “Jack.” The man hesitated a moment, then added, “Smith. Jack Smith.”

  A fake name for sure. That held out more hope of talking the man back over the railing. If he was intent on killing himself, he wouldn’t mind Michael knowing his real name.

  “I’m Mike.” Michael leaned against the bridge railing as if they had all day to shoot the breeze. “You from around here, Jack?”

  “You don’t know me, do you?” The man looked worried.

  “No, should I?” Michael shifted on the rail and took a step closer to the man.

  “No. Nobody knows me.” The man looked back down at the water. “I expected it to be bluer.”

  “Been a lot of rain upriver the last couple of weeks. Keeps the river sort of muddy. But Eagle Lake’s nice and blue. Maybe you’d like to go fishing out there. I’m a big fisherman myself. It’s a good way to relax and get back to nature.”

  The man glanced over at Michael with a dumb-joke kind of grin. “I was thinking of getting back to nature on a more basic level. You know, dust to dust.” He looked back at the water. “Or maybe mud to mud.”

  Michael eased another step closer. He could almost reach out and touch the man now. Sirens wailed in the distance. The man’s head jerked around, the dumb-joke grin gone. Michael should have told Aunt Lindy to ask them to come in quiet.

  “Cops. They’re always trying to spoil a party,” the man said.

  Acknowledgments