by Kym Roberts
“Think about it. Did you hear anything that would tell us where the suspect went after he attacked you?”
Daddy shook his head. He looked disgusted and ticked off. “Just like now, I heard a bunch of noise from people getting in their cars from the vigil and leaving. I swung at him and made contact with his jaw, but not hard enough. He shoved me into the trash can and we tussled a bit and ended up on the ground. I think Princess was using her head like a battering ram and hitting him. By the time I got the trash can away from me, he was gone and Princess was by my side. Then you opened the back door.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No.”
Mateo looked at Daddy. “A man about your height. That’s all you can tell me?”
Daddy shook his head again. “I can’t say it was a man for certain, no.”
“I’m going to take a look around. You two go inside and wait for the ambulance.”
Daddy didn’t argue as I took Princess from his arms and led him inside to the tearoom. Once there, I got some clean towels and had him apply pressure while I cut the sleeve off his shirt. When he lifted the towel, I got my first real glimpsed of his injury, a five-inch gash traveling diagonally across his bicep. The wound was deep and made my stomach turn sideways.
The paramedics arrived and told us he would need stitches, but Daddy refused treatment and they were gone before Mateo returned.
“How bad is it?” he asked.
“It’s not good,” I told him. “He refused to be transported to the hospital, but he needs stitches.”
“I can drive myself.”
“You’re not driving yourself, Daddy. I’ll take you.”
“You’ve got a weekend trip to pack for.”
“I’m not leaving you!”
“You are leaving me. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
“I am a grown man who can take care of himself.”
“Daddy—”
“No buts, Princess. You haven’t had a vacation since you came home.”
“It’s not a vacation. It’s one night,” I argued.
“Exactly. One night. Go. Sugar works at the store tomorrow and I work Sunday. There’s no reason for you to stay.”
“He’s right,” Mateo added.
My daddy smiled at Mateo. I glared.
“But under the circumstances, I think it’d be better if you asked Scarlet to go with you.”
Daddy scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. Now you sound like Princess.”
Mateo wasn’t daunted. “Did he demand your wallet? Your watch? Anything?”
“No, I was walking back to the Barn carrying Princess when all of a sudden she freaked out and jumped from my arms. I tried to grab her before she hit the ground, but that’s when he cut me.”
“So he didn’t want anything from you. He just attacked you. And if Princess hadn’t lunged from your arms, his knife would have been right about . . . here.” Mateo’s arm was at the height of my daddy’s neck. He looked at my daddy and made sure his message got across. When he saw my face, however, he cleared his throat and dropped his arm. We were all on the same page. Ava may not have been the only one the killer had in his sights.
“Something’s going on in this town, and it’s my job to find out. I’m sorry, Charli, but I can’t afford to leave right now.”
“Mateo—”
It was Daddy’s turn to be shut down by the sheriff as Mateo ignored his attempt to argue. Mateo was too busy trying to talk me into keeping the tickets to the concert. “I’ll take him to the hospital and see to that he gets stitches. You call Scarlet and the two of you go. Have a girls’ weekend getaway.”
I stomped my foot, frustrated that both men thought I should turn tail and run out of town while they stayed to face the boogeyman or whoever was out there sharpening his knife on the residents of Hazel Rock. “I’m not leaving.”
Scarlet interrupted. “Of course you are.” I turned to see her standing at the entrance to the tearoom with the female deputy from the crime scene the night before. “It’s high time we had a girls’ weekend in the Big D. It’s an offer you can’t refuse.” Tweetle Dee and Tweetle Dum began singing again, and it almost seemed as if they thought I should go as well.
But it wasn’t the prospect of a girls’ getaway with Scarlet that made me change my mind. It was the wink that accompanied her proposal. Scarlet knew something, and if the Big D was where she thought we needed to go, then look out, Dallas.
Chapter Fifteen
Daddy texted me after Mateo dropped him off at home. He had twenty-three stitches to close the gaping wound in his arm with ten stitches underneath to repair a small tear in the muscle. He said he was lucky; nothing was permanently damaged. I didn’t think that was lucky: I thought he was blessed. Blessed that he’d been holding Princess. Blessed that the knife hadn’t come in contact with his neck. Blessed to be alive. Stitches wouldn’t have helped if his attacker had been able to finish what he’d tried to do—if a startled Princess hadn’t jumped from his arms.
I looked down at her, in awe of what I owed the little four-legged beast who was so ugly she was cute. “Will you protect him while I’m gone?”
She blinked her beady eyes and I could have sworn she smiled before she rubbed up against my shin.
“She’s got you wrapped around that freaky pink shell of hers,” Scarlet teased.
I bent and scratched Princess behind the ears. “I for one am very happy you have that adorably freaky shell. Without it, my daddy wouldn’t be here.”
Princess snuffled my hand and followed us to the door. I grabbed my suitcase and all three of us left my apartment. I let Princess in the store since it was a couple hours before it opened. I uncovered the birdcage, then fed and watered Tweetle Dee and Tweetle Dum. They seemed fairly content. Princess, however, protested when I headed for the door, but once the door was locked, we watched her go behind the register where we kept a daytime bed just for her.
“Tell me again why we’re leaving at the crack of dawn before I even get to see my dad and make sure he’s doing okay.”
Scarlet looked around like someone might be eavesdropping. I couldn’t help it, I did the same, but downtown Hazel Rock was its normally quiet self. The bakery across the street was the only business in town that was open, and we could see Franz loading his display case with fresh pastries.
“We don’t have time,” Scarlet said before I could even take a step in his direction.
“We have to eat,” I argued.
“I have food in the car.”
I shuddered at the thought of what Scarlet brought us to eat. Between the two of us, she had the hourglass figure men craved and I had the shape of a stick woman. She ate health food and I wanted real food—like donuts for breakfast.
She opened the one door to her two-seater Isetta and crawled in first. How she made it look graceful in four-inch heels and a snug-tight dress was beyond me. I had on a gray vanity T-shirt with I’m just a Poe Book Barn Princess imprinted in pink on the front, jean cut-offs, and my black combat boots, and I still had trouble maneuvering into the little car that seemed like more of a death trap than a vehicle.
“Could you try to make it look like a girls’ weekend getaway?” Scarlet asked as I closed the door.
“I got the distinct impression this wasn’t about living it up on the town in Dallas but more about finding out what the heck is going on.”
“True, but appearances are everything.”
“And this is what everyone would expect me to wear when I’m going to be in an itty-bitty car for several hours eating,” I cringed as I looked inside the bag of health food I had to move onto my lap, “tasteless cardboard.”
“That tasteless cardboard keeps my figure in check.”
“I don’t have a figure,” I argued. “Where are we going?”
/> “Fort Worth.”
“What? But you said—”
Scarlet whipped her car out of the parking spot and we were on the freeway in no time flat. “I said we were going for a girls’ weekend in the Big D to put the men in your life at ease.”
I was pretty sure my daddy was the only man who qualified as being in my life at this point, but didn’t argue.
“I happen to have heard from a reliable source that the police are looking for John Luke.”
“Everyone knows that.”
Scarlet rolled her eyes. “Would you let me finish?”
“Okay, sorry. The lack of breakfast is going to make me crabby.”
Scarlet reached in the bag and pulled out two breakfast bars. “I brought one for each of us.”
I read the ingredients: grains I’d never heard of, nuts I would bypass for walnuts or peanuts any day, and dates. Yuck. The only time I’d seen anyone eat a date was in that old movie my daddy loved, Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the monkey died after eating a date. From the look of the bar I unwrapped, I seriously doubted that monkey’s date was poisoned. It was just nasty.
Scarlet continued with her story while I sniffed and nibbled on the bar of sawdust made gooey from the date. “It just so happens that Mary saw John Luke driving Ava’s car the day of the murder.”
“Didn’t he always drive her car?”
“That’s the point. He was always driving it. Everyone saw him driving it.”
She looked at me like I should be able to figure out what she was talking about. I couldn’t. I shrugged. “And?”
“Annnd,” Scarlet dragged the word out like she was slowing down her conversation for a particularly slow audience, “he hasn’t been seen since . . . Neither has the car.”
“Oh . . . but what does that have to do with going to Fort Worth?” I asked.
“I had Joellen do some checking yesterday on Instagram.”
I grabbed the cooler she had in the back, grateful she’d thought of packing water for me to wash down the grain a cow would hate. “What does having your sister check your social media account have to do with Ava’s death?”
“Focus, Charli. Joellen checked John Luke’s Instagram page.”
I stopped mid-swallow and nearly choked. “What did she find?”
A glorious smile spread across Scarlet’s face. “The girlfriend that John Luke always goes running back to when his relationships bite the dust.”
I thought of Cade. Was that what I was doing with him?
“Did you hear me?” Scarlet asked.
“Sorry, yes, but what does that have to do with . . . ohhh! So we’re going to look for John Luke at his old girlfriend’s house in Fort Worth.” I thought about the implication of that. This was information Mateo would want to pursue, and he wouldn’t be happy that we were horning in on his investigation.
“Why didn’t you tell Mateo last night? This would help him catch Ava’s killer.”
“We can’t do that until after we talk to John Luke.”
Obviously, Scarlet had been smelling too many perm solutions. “I don’t want to talk to John Luke. I want the cops to talk to John Luke. That’s their job. My job is to run my family bookstore. Your job is to make people beautiful. That’s it. I don’t want a side job of apprehending fugitives wanted for murder. I just want to point Mateo in the right direction. That’s it.”
“But John Luke’s not wanted for murder.”
“He will be once Mateo gets a confession out of him.”
“That’s the problem. John Luke has been around the block so many times on domestic violence charges, he knows better than to say a word. He won’t confess. He waits for his victims to recant. Then John Luke skates.”
“How do you know that?”
“I told you. I do Sally Ferguson’s hair, she tells us what men to avoid. John Luke has been on that list since he came to town.”
I thought about that for a moment. Sally Ferguson was a good friend to have in a small town with very few single men to choose from. Not that I needed to worry about it, but who knew what the future held.
“So how do you know his ex-girlfriend—what’s her name?”
Scarlet’s grin lit up her face once more. “You’ll love this.” She glanced in my direction to make sure she had my full attention. “Abbey Norma Parson.”
I repeated the name, wondering if I should recognize it from high school, but couldn’t come up with a face.
Scarlet’s smile along with her shoulders dropped with disappointment. “Everyone on Instagram calls her Ab. Think about her name. Ab Norma Parson—abnormal person.”
A laugh sputtered from my lips before I could cover it. “It can’t be real. It’s a joke, right?”
“Nope. No joke.”
I tried to hold the giggle, but Scarlet’s grin didn’t help. “That’s just cruel. What parent would make a kid go through school with that name?”
Scarlet shrugged. “The same kind of parent that would give a girl the name Femall Watson and spell it F-e-m-a-l-e.”
It was impossible to stop giggling. “What? You’re lying.”
Scarlet laughed. “Maybe, maybe not. Anyhoo, Abbey lives in Fort Worth.”
I took a bite of my bar and washed it down with water before the taste killed me. “She actually lists her address on her account? That’s stupid.”
“No, it’s not listed.”
“Then how do you know she lives in Fort Worth?”
“I had Joellen check the longitude and latitude from a picture John Luke posted of the two of them last year.”
“Last year! We’re chasing an address from last year?”
“No. She verified it with a recent photograph Abbey posted on her page of lasagna she was cooking last week.”
“How can you check the longitude and latitude of a photo?”
“It’s actually really easy. Unless you disable the location services on the camera on your phone, every photo has the longitude and latitude embedded into the photo. You download the photo and extract the GPS coordinates from the properties of the photo. What you should watch for is that it extracts the coordinates from the location of when the photo was uploaded to Instagram. Then you run the coordinates online and boom! You got their location.”
“That’s freaking crazy. How did you know that?” I pulled my phone out of my pocket and began scrolling through my settings.
“I saw it on an episode of 48 Hours.”
I pulled up my location services on my photo app. Fuzz buckets. Every photo I’d ever posted had listed my location to every Tom, Dick, and Scary out there. I immediately changed my setting from WHILE USING THE APP over to NEVER. Then I texted my dad for the gazillionth time since I’d rolled out of bed.
Are you doing okay?
Yes, I’m fine. Sugar says the store is fine. Princess is fine. Hazel Rock is fine. Have fun.
How could I have fun? I was worried sick something would happen to him.
I texted back. I love you.
I got a string of heart emojis back from him and laughed. My daddy was using emojis.
Scarlet reined me back in. “There’s just one problem.”
Of course there was. I clicked my phone closed and listened.
“She lives in an apartment complex. We have the building location, but not the apartment number.”
I nearly gagged on my last bite of breakfast bar. Tree bark would have gone down easier than that thing. “How do you propose we find the apartment? Knock on every door until John Luke answers the door?”
“But that’s the best part.” Scarlet looked like she was going to jump out of the car with excitement. “We’re going to conduct a stakeout.”
My best friend had lost her ever-loving mind. “A stakeout?”
“Yes, ma’am. I checked it out on Google Maps an
d Google Earth. We can park around the corner and watch for Ava’s car. It’ll be a piece of cake.”
I thought about my favorite cop show. Steve McGarrett and Danno were great at stakeouts and Kono Kalakaua kicked butt. Charli and Scarlet—we didn’t quite have their skill set. And I was talking about the actors, not the characters. But still, this could be fun. My lips turned up at the corners as I warmed up to the idea.
Scarlet’s eyes sparkled. “I see your mind working. You know you’re just as excited to be on a stakeout as I am.”
I reeled in my emotions. “What do we do when we find him? How do we approach him?”
“We’ll have to play that by ear.”
“By ear? We’re going to go in without a plan?”
Scarlet took her hands off the wheel as if to say, what’s wrong with that?
Everything was wrong with that, but when I was going seventy-five miles an hour down Interstate 20 toward Fort Worth with my best friend on my side, it sounded like an adventure I couldn’t pass up. Especially if it kept my daddy safe and put a killer behind bars.
Besides, what could go wrong?
Chapter Sixteen
“I’m dying over here.”
“O.M.W. You’re not dying.”
“I feel like I’m dying. It’s a hundred and twenty degrees in this car, there’s not a breeze to be found, and my stomach is killing me.”
“You’re probably backed up from all that toxic food you eat.” Scarlet’s voice didn’t hold the excitement it had earlier. Now she sounded tired of listening to me.
“I’m probably going to explode from all the fiber you’ve put into my body. We’ve been here all day and Ava’s car hasn’t moved an inch. How do we know John Luke is even here? He could have dumped the car and headed for Colorado. That’s what I would do.” I grabbed my stomach as it rolled for the umpteenth time.
“Because Abbey Norma Parson posted that her man has returned.”
“There’s a picture of him?”
Scarlet held up her phone with Abbey’s page filling the screen. “She posted it on one of those pink hearts backgrounds.”