Murder Comes by Mail

by A. H. Gabhart

  “You could have not shown him,” Michael said.

  “I thought about that, but he is the sheriff. He needed to know, and anyway, I figured Hank would jump him about what was going on since you’d disappeared on the wind. You’re going to have a hard time making up for this.”

  “I’ll bring doughnuts in the morning.”

  “It’ll take more than doughnuts. Besides, you know I’m on a diet.” Betty Jean was always on a diet.

  “Carrot sticks then,” Michael said.

  “I don’t think anything can make up for this.”

  “I know.”

  “Okay. Well, at least you did call.” She blew out another long sigh. “Did they know anything about the pictures up in Eagleton?”

  “They found her body.”

  “Where?”

  “In a church. The Abundant Hope Church.”

  “Abundant Hope,” Betty Jean echoed. “That’s almost too much, isn’t it?” When Michael didn’t answer she went on. “I guess you want me to call your aunt for you.”

  “You’re an angel.”

  “I’m not going all the way out to the lake to feed your dog. Not by myself. Not after those pictures today.”

  “I fed him this morning. He’ll be all right until I get home,” Michael said. “Anything else I need to know?”

  “That doctor called you again. What was his name?” On the other end of the line, Betty Jean shuffled through some papers.

  “Colson?”

  “Yeah. He’s the one treating the jumper, isn’t he?”

  “Right. The Eagleton police were questioning him this afternoon. When did he call?”

  “A half hour or so ago. Left a number, but said you’d have to call him tomorrow, that he was going to be out of his office the rest of the day.”

  “I guess I don’t need the number then. Anybody else?” He tried to say it casually, but Betty Jean could read his mind even with a hundred miles between them.

  “Yeah, she called. Said there’s no way she can meet you tonight. She said she tried your cell, but you didn’t answer.”

  “Guess I was in a dead spot.” That might have been true, but then he couldn’t be sure since he’d turned his phone off. He knew she wouldn’t come if she could talk to him on the phone. So he made sure she couldn’t. “She told me to tell you she’d keep trying to call you. I told her you were probably already on the way.”

  “What’d she say to that?”

  “Oh, I don’t remember. Some general ‘men do the craziest things’ remarks. Gave you a number to call if you called back in. Her cell phone, I think.” Betty Jean rattled off some numbers.

  “Right. I have that already, but thanks, Betty Jean. I promise I’ll be back tomorrow. If another envelope comes, don’t open it before I get there.”

  “Another envelope? You’re just trying to scare me, aren’t you, Michael?” Her voice sounded squeaky in his ear.

  “There probably won’t be another one, but just in case.”

  “Okay. And Michael.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I hope she shows.”

  13

  He tried the cell phone number, but when it went straight to her messages, he didn’t bother leaving a message. Instead he held down the off button on his phone again. Back out on the interstate, he told himself he was crazy to pass up the next exit and drive on east as though he actually expected to find Alex waiting for him at the old Cherry Blossom Inn. In fact, he couldn’t even be sure he’d find the Cherry Blossom Inn. They’d last met there over two years ago. Plenty of time for it to give way to a Motel 6.

  Michael had never thought of himself as impulsive. He thought things out, did the sensible thing, and didn’t expect miracles.

  “Why not?” Alex used to ask him. “You’re practically a walking miracle yourself. Think about it. You were in a coma for weeks and everybody but your Aunt Lindy gave you up for dead and here you are walking around practically in your right mind.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t believe in miracles. I said I didn’t expect them,” he told her.

  Now here he was driving away from the afternoon sun as if he did expect a miracle to happen. Aunt Lindy liked to call him an optimistic realist. Maybe she was right. He never shied away from the facts. He liked being sure of the facts and had been, ever since he came back into the knowing world after the wreck that left dark spaces littering his memory. With Aunt Lindy’s help, he managed to fill in some of the blanks over the years, but not all of them. While it might not matter all that much who his best friend had been in fifth grade, the fact he didn’t know, that he couldn’t remember, made him feel something like a stranger to himself.

  Once when Michael told Alex how those lost memories bothered him, she laughed and told him she could fill in the blank on that fifth grade best friend. She was his best friend when he was in the fifth grade. She had always been his best friend and she would always be his best friend.

  That was what he was counting on as he turned in to the Cherry Blossom Inn. He was relieved to see the building looked the same. He parked his Hidden Springs sheriff’s car near the road where she couldn’t miss it and looked at his watch. He’d wait an hour, then turn his phone back on. He wasn’t ready to hear the messages proving how foolish he was to be sitting there waiting for her. He wanted to believe she would come. The waiting wasn’t hard. He was used to waiting. Even in Hidden Springs, a police officer spent a lot of hours waiting and watching.

  Across the street, cars threaded through a fast-food restaurant’s drive-thru window the way the events of the last week ran through his mind. Funny how something that seemed good could turn bad so quickly. Michael hadn’t been caught up in the hero bit. Heroes ran into burning buildings or jumped into shark-infested waters to pull people to safety. Catching the jumper teetering and yanking him back from the edge hadn’t been heroic. Lucky, maybe. Or perhaps, as things turned out, not so lucky.

  Still, in spite of the way the man’s words had echoed ominously inside Michael’s head all weekend, Michael had felt good about giving somebody’s son or father a second chance. As it turned out, the second chance he’d given him had been to kill.

  Two girls, maybe thirteen or fourteen, came out of the restaurant across the street carrying ice cream cones and laughing. Wet ponytails feathered out over the towels draped around their necks, and wet spots darkened the blue knit shorts they’d pulled on over their almost identical neon orange swimsuits. The taller girl had a trace of that white stuff across the bridge of her nose to protect it from the sun. As they walked away down the street, Michael had the urge to pull out and trail along behind them to make sure they reached their destination safely.

  He gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles went white as the before and after photos of Hope flashed in his mind. She should be walking down a street somewhere, licking ice cream and going home to a mother who would yell at her for throwing her wet suit on the floor. But instead Hope had ventured out into the world and met a monster.

  Michael shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead hard with the tips of his fingers. If only he could shut out Hope’s image and do like Chekowski said. Change her into nothing more than a number on somebody’s case list. It would be easier not to think about her begging the monster to let her live, but her last panicked screams echoed in his imagination. And the monster had enjoyed the sound. A monster who would be dead but for him.

  Michael blew out a long breath and looked at his watch. Fifty-three minutes had slipped away with the sun that was disappearing in the west, and his stomach was letting him know he’d skipped lunch. He picked up his phone and stared at it. If he turned it on, it would tell him where Alex was. After a couple of minutes, he slipped the phone into his shirt pocket and kept waiting.

  Out on the street, people driving by spotted his bubble lights and braked to match the speed limit. Some of them stepped on the gas again when they read the logo on his car.

  Thirteen minutes past Michael’s final dea
dline for giving up on Alex showing, the black sports car turned into the parking lot and slid up beside his, a sleek panther next to a spotted hyena. The tinted window glided down and Alex peered out at him. “Well, Michael, did you get them to hold our favorite table?”

  He always forgot just how gorgeous she was between the times he saw her. He’d think he remembered, think he had her pictured exactly in his mind, but then she’d show up and blast all those past images to smithereens. A few strands of dark hair escaped the twist on the back of her head to curl around her face. Eyes just a shade darker than her blue jacket smiled over at him. When she stepped out of the car to stretch after the drive, her skirt inched up to show a lot of thigh. Nothing about her outfit was flashy. Instead, it was quietly elegant down to her small gold earrings. Her firm believed in conservative dress. She was what put the zing in whatever she wore.

  “I hate these long drives.” She gracefully smoothed her skirt back to its mid-thigh length.

  Michael made himself stop staring at her before he did something stupid like tell her how beautiful she was. “Nice car,” he said.

  She laughed a little as she clicked a button on her key ring to lock the doors and set the alarm. “It’s a cop car magnet. See, it’s even cozied up next to one here in the parking lot.”

  “Maybe it thinks that will keep it safe.”

  “I don’t think many people around here will worry about the Hidden Springs police force.”

  “Then they don’t know the deputy there.”

  She smiled and tucked her hand under his elbow. “They will if they see him. It appears you didn’t have time to change out of your uniform either.”

  “I like yours better.” The touch of her hand was enough to make his heart start beating faster.

  “I’d be a lot happier in blue jeans.”

  “I’m glad to hear you’re just a country girl at heart.”

  Walking into the inn together, they made as odd a pair as the two cars out front. Nothing matched about them. She drove in the fast lane; he poked along in the slow. She liked Chinese; he liked Mexican. She liked tennis. He liked baseball. She liked philosophy. He had an obsession for Civil War histories. To her, the law was something to be used to her and her clients’ advantage. To him, the law was something to be respected and enforced. Yet somehow they had no problem being easy with each other, even if it had been months since they’d last gotten together.

  Maybe she really had been his best friend in the fifth grade, but he had the suspicion that even then he’d been in love with her and afraid to admit it for fear it might spoil their friendship.

  A young girl, who looked as if her sixteenth birthday might have been yesterday and this was her first day on the job, let them sit at the table Alex pointed out to her, gave them menus, and promised a server would find them even if none of the other tables in that section of the restaurant were being seated right now. Michael slipped the girl a five-dollar bill, and she flashed him a smile that slammed the picture of Hope, excited and smiling, front and center in his mind again. He was glad Alex had her eyes on the young girl moving away from their table instead of on him.

  “Do you think you should find the owners and arrest them for violating the child labor laws?”

  He pushed thoughts of Hope away. He was going to tell Alex about her, but not yet. He managed a smile. “You’re just trying to drum up business. You’d be handing them your card before I could get the handcuffs on.” Coming up with reasons for him to arrest people they saw was a game they’d been playing ever since he’d first pinned on a badge.

  “I need some way to turn this trip into billable hours. Of course, the depositions I reviewed on the way down here should make for a few billable hours.” She opened the menu.

  “I guess your client is innocent as always.”

  “At least until proven guilty.” She looked at him. “We can agree on that, can’t we?”

  “Every person is entitled to his or her day in court, but do you guys have to find so many ways to get around the law?” He didn’t pick up his menu. He preferred looking at her.

  “We don’t get ‘around’ it. We use it, and you’d want us to if you were the client.”

  “And wouldn’t want you to if I was the victim.”

  “Sometimes our clients are the victims.”

  He let her have the last word. “Whichever way, I pity the poor opposing attorney. You look great.”

  She smoothed back a loose strand of hair. “Nobody can look great after a day in court and a four-hour drive right in the middle of three cities’ rush hours.”

  “You do.”

  “You always were a great liar.” She touched his hand lightly and turned her eyes back to the menu. “What used to be good?”

  “The blackened chicken or the steak fajitas.”

  “Maybe a salad.” Alex didn’t look up. “And don’t I remember that they have pie to die for?”

  They gave their order to the tired middle-aged waitress who found them. A frown lurked under her “I can’t afford to blow a tip” smile. As she took the menus, she checked their hands for signs of wedding rings, and by the time she brought their drinks, she’d forgiven them for making her walk too far.

  “I hope you brought a lot of cash for a tip,” Alex said.

  “No doubt it will cost me six months’ worth of my expense account.”

  “You have an expense account?” She raised her eyebrows at him. “Uncle Reece said Keane County was coming into the modern era. Next thing I know, you’ll be saying Lester is on the take.”

  “A dedicated deputy sheriff like Lester Stucker would never be on the take.” He wanted to reach across and capture her hand but he didn’t. “But the place is growing. Lots of lawyer work.”

  “I’m sure. Uncle Reece has probably updated three wills in the last month and done two deed searches, one estate probate, maybe an adoption. Probably not a divorce. I mean, we are talking about Hidden Springs.” Her eyes danced with amusement.

  “People get divorced in Hidden Springs same as anywhere else.” He sat still and watched her, hardly able to believe she was right across the table from him.

  “Nobody I know, I hope.”

  “Some of us would have to get married before we could worry about getting divorced.”

  She rearranged the salt and pepper shakers between them. “Oh, is that what this is all about? Somebody getting married?” She looked up at him, the smile gone from her eyes. “Are best wishes in order for you and your preacher friend? Karen, isn’t it?”

  Michael laughed. “Not likely. I’ve been gun-shy ever since I asked this girl to marry me when I was fourteen or fifteen and she said no.”

  “I don’t remember saying no.” She leaned back, her smile dazzling now. “The trouble is, you went out and banged your head and forgot you asked.”

  “But you told me I did. Some years later.”

  “Hearsay. Not permissible in the court of love.” A faint blush colored her cheeks.

  He couldn’t stop himself. He reached over and captured her hand. “What is permissible?”

  “It’s hard to say. It all depends on the kind of judge you draw. Fairytale romantic or ‘this is your life’ practical.”

  Alex pulled her hand away as the waitress approached with their orders, and Michael retreated. One of these days he was going to ask. He just hadn’t figured out the right way yet. Besides, if he never actually asked, then she couldn’t actually say no. That way he could keep believing that maybe someday they would find a way to be together.

  While they ate, she talked about some of her recent cases. One had netted her clients a million-dollar settlement. Another hadn’t gone as well. She kept away from actual names and skirted sensitive information, but she had a way of making the courtroom scenes come to life.

  Michael listened to her talk, drinking in her presence. He’d needed to see her. Asking her to come had little to do with getting an expert contact. He could have done that over the phone in t
hree minutes. He needed someone to talk to who would see the issue clearly. Yet here he sat, letting her do all the talking.

  She savored every bite of her lemon meringue pie. “Almost as good as the one Aunt Adele used to make.” She put down her fork after the last bite and gave him a long considering look. “But as delicious as that was, I’m guessing you must have had some other reason to command my presence.”

  “I didn’t command. I just asked.” Michael paused a second before he added, “And hoped.”

  “You knew I’d come. How could I turn down Hidden Springs’ own hero, after all?”

  The word “hero” stabbed through him, brought forth the pictures in his mind, and robbed some of the pleasure of the night. He looked around. They were the only customers left in the restaurant, and their waitress was hovering in the background while the little hostess upended chairs on the tables in the front section.

  “I think they’re rolling up the carpets.” He peered at the check and tossed down double the amount. “Let’s go find a bench out in the garden.”

  Shadows played across the garden paths as the heavily leaved trees blocked out most of the light from the streetlamps. When they found a secluded bench, he wiped the dew off it with his handkerchief. The summer night wrapped warm arms around them and gave off the faint fragrance of roses from somewhere in the garden. It didn’t seem the best place to talk of murder, but he told the whole story from beginning to end.

  She stopped him three or four times with a quick question or two. When he was through, she was quiet for a long minute. At last she said, “What could you have done differently, Michael?”

  “I don’t know. But because of me that girl is dead.”

  Alex put her hand on his cheek and turned his face toward her. In the dim light, he could still see the shine of her eyes. “No, not because of you. Because of him.”

  “Maybe so, but what can I do, Alex? He’s going to send me more pictures.”

  For once in her life, Alex didn’t have an answer.

  14

  By the time he got home to his log house by the lake, it was that deep of night when even Aunt Lindy might see monsters in the shadows under the trees. Since monsters had been stalking Michael all day, armies of them swarmed in the darkness around him now.