Three Weddings and a Murder

by Milan, Courtney

  Charlie did as she asked and followed her into the file area. “What’s a vertical file again? I didn’t catch that.”

  “Sorry, that’s librarian talk. I suppose a lot of libraries don’t have them anymore. But Mrs. Marlowe is—”

  “A sweet old bat.”

  “I was going to say old school. Basically, the vertical file is just a cabinet full of newspaper clippings from the Tangleheart Gazette—stories that were reported before the paper went online. Mrs. Marlowe wants to be sure important articles, especially the ones about town history and locals, won’t be lost to posterity. I’ve been meaning to scan all of the stories in for her and get rid of the clippings, but I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

  “And Simone was digging through the vertical file on Sunday afternoon?”

  “She came in, nodded hello and went straight to the back. I saw her riffling through the file cabinet, and I thought it was odd she didn’t ask me to help her find whatever it was she was looking for.”

  “What’s so odd about that?”

  “Well, I suppose it seemed odd because even though anyone can go through the vertical file on their own, no one ever does. The vertical file is rarely used, and the patrons who do use it routinely ask me to get the clippings they need for them.”

  Propping her hip against an oversized hickory reading desk, she continued, “We don’t allow patrons to refile the clippings. They leave them in this basket.” She indicated a large wire basket. “And then either Mrs. Marlowe or I file them back when we get time.”

  “Lucky for us you haven’t had time.” Charlie winked, snatched the only folder in the file-back basket, and politely awaited her consent.

  A pang of conscience prickled down her spine.

  Simone and Bobby are missing.

  She nodded her permission.

  Charlie opened the folder, displaying its contents. “We’ve got trouble here.”

  There appeared to be at least fifty clippings in the file Simone had pulled.

  Her heart sank. “How are we going to figure out what Simone was looking for with all these clippings to choose from?” This really was turning into a wild goose chase.

  “You know Simone better than just about anyone, Anna. Maybe something will stand out.”

  A lump rose in her throat. Sure, she and Simone were close, but Anna was no psychic. Where the devil had Simone gone, and how could she just up and take Bobby out of the hospital before the cause of his bruising had been diagnosed?

  Simone loved Bobby.

  Simone was a good mom.

  Deep in her heart, Anna knew these things to be true. And yet, Simone’s actions didn’t appear to be in Bobby’s best interests at all. Her mind drifted back to the day her own mother had disappeared from the rehab facility, and to the days that followed—one heartbreaking, terrifying week that had ended with her mother being apprehended by the authorities and charged with drug trafficking. A flash of tears threatened to spill onto her cheeks, but she blinked them back. “The police should be doing the job of trying to find Bobby and Simone, not us. We’re hopeless amateurs.”

  “Agreed. But the police are not trying to find Simone and Bobby. They’re employing a watch-and-wait approach, and I’m not the watch-and-wait type. At least not when it involves a missing mother and child—a child who is technically still under my care. We’ve got to either find Simone and Bobby ourselves, or find some kind of evidence that will compel the police to get involved in the search.”

  He was right. If the police refused to get involved, the only hope of finding Simone and Bobby quickly was for her and Charlie to do the looking. “Let’s go home and put on a pot of coffee. This could take awhile.” Dropping the manila folder full of clippings into her shoulder bag, she said, “I’ll bring the file back in the morning.” She glanced at the wire basket on the reading desk, snapped her bag closed, and then she heard the door scrape open. Her shoulders jumped. “Mrs. Marlowe?”

  Silence.

  Silence at a time like this was both disconcerting and discourteous. “Sorry. We’re closed,” she called out in a clipped tone.

  Again, no answer, and yet she could feel the presence of another person nearby. “I said—”

  Charlie held up one hand in a shush sign, and his eyes darted around the library.

  “Maybe it was the wind.” Why was she whispering?

  Charlie shook his head, and she realized he was right. The wind hadn’t blown the door open. She’d watched him retrieve her keys and pull the door shut tight. A person, not the wind, had followed them inside. Her heart started to race and dip and do all sorts of crazy acrobatics. As the room grew quieter, her breathing grew louder. In order to silence her fear, she held her breath.

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  The beats of the old-fashioned grandfather clock in the corner sounded as ominous as the ticking of a time bomb. She pulled in a fortifying breath. There was nothing to be afraid of. No doubt a passerby had seen the lights on and assumed the library was open. Unfortunately this must be a rather rude passerby who didn’t feel obliged to announce his presence or apologize for startling them.

  She took a step forward. Charlie reached out, grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her to the ground. Her knees cracked against the hardwood floor, and he crouched on top of her, covering her mouth with his hand and her body with his body.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” she hissed through his fingers.

  He tightened his grip on her and touched his cheek to hers. Her heart did a disconcerting little flip-flop, and she stopped struggling.

  Charlie was not the enemy.

  But he seemed to think they had one here with them in the library, and the hairs on the back of her neck were currently siding with Charlie.

  Clunk. Clunk. Clunk.

  Heavy footfalls on hardwood.

  From her vantage point, peering out from under the reading desk, she spotted a pair of boots. Gooseflesh rose on her arms. These boots were downright predatory—made of hand-tooled black leather shafts and hornback alligator vamps. Light reflected off the silver horns of the hide. She shuddered. She couldn’t be more creeped out if the deadly reptile itself was crawling about the room.

  Click.

  What was that? Her body started to tremble, and Charlie shifted his weight.

  He whispered something that sounded like stay down into her hair. But she knew it wouldn’t matter, because the old hickory reading desk they were hiding behind couldn’t stop a bullet.

  A bullet.

  Her heart pounded against her ribs—magnifying her pulses everywhere in her body. Her ears, her wrists, even her elbows buzzed with a terrifying rhythm.

  And then an earsplitting crack rang out. She smelled gunpowder and saw the shattered pieces of wood where the bullet had blasted right through the desk, blasted right past Charlie and her. She reached up and touched her face and felt something wet.

  Tears.

  She tried to scream but her vocal cords were paralyzed. Charlie whispered something again, but she couldn’t decipher his words at all—it sounded like a tuning fork was humming in her ear.

  She watched in stunned horror as Charlie reared up and waved his arms in the air.

  “No!” She found her voice. And then her mind seemed to disconnect from her body. Her brain locked into safe mode—that place where time slows down and fear enhances the ability to plan and act.

  Charlie darted across the room, and his words floated behind him in slow motion, “Over…here…ass…hole.” He hit the opposite wall running, and made it to the library entrance. He dove to the ground, using his arm to swipe the light switches on his way down.

  Darkness enveloped the library, and she knew this was her chance. Charlie had risked his life to buy her this chance, and she’d better act quickly.

  Flipping the shoulder bag onto her back and out of the way, she inched across the floor on her belly. Her shirt climbed her chest, and the floor felt cold and splintery against her skin
. Her pupils hadn’t accommodated to the darkness yet, but once they did, she knew she would be able to see again—and so would Boots.

  For the time being, she couldn’t see either Charlie or Boots or even two feet in front of her. She prayed Charlie had made it outside. He was so close to the doorway. Surely Charlie had made it to safety. Her chest heaved in momentary relief.

  Crack.

  Another shot split through the cotton in her ears. Desperate, she kept moving, scraping her body across the floor with one goal in mind. She might not be able to see her way, but she knew this library well. She put her hand out and patted a tall cabinet—the card catalogue—it served to map her route. Right around the corner and then another few feet. She needed to make it that far if she was going to get out of here alive.

  The lights flared back on.

  Boots.

  She jerked her head up, searching the room for Charlie, praying she wouldn’t find him.

  She found the enemy instead. His feet were planted no more than a yard away, toes of the alligator pointing toward her. Her gaze climbed the silver, horned vamps, up the black shafts with the inlaid star of Texas. Her throat closed as she forced herself to keep going. She saw a baggy pair of stonewashed jeans, black jacket, ski mask.

  Gun.

  A crash sounded on the other side of the room.

  Boots whirled and fired a flurry of shots at the noise—too many and too fast to count.

  Her heart seemed to split in her chest when she saw Charlie pop up and swipe the lights off again.

  Charlie.

  She should have stayed the night.

  Under cover of darkness again, she refocused on her goal, kept dragging her body forward, arms shaking from the stress of her combat crawl. When her palms started to itch, she knew she’d reached her target. With her back pressed against the wall, she inched up, up, up. She felt around with the palm of her hand until she found the cold metal handle she sought.

  The lights flared on.

  Boots raised one arm and pointed his pistol directly at her. Her heart stopped. She felt the sudden absence of its beat like a blow to the chest. A gloved hand jerked, but she heard no thunder, saw no flash.

  No bullets.

  She yanked the handle.

  The fire alarm rang out so loud the wall vibrated behind her back, and Boots, without a loaded pistol in his hand, quickly turned from deadly swamp predator to spooked rabbit and bolted for the door.

  Tuesday Night

  NO ONE HAD FOLLOWED when he and Anna had peeled out of the library parking lot—Charlie was certain of it. Having put a good ten minutes between them and the scene of the crime, he checked the rearview mirror once more and then guided his Camaro to a stop on the wide, soft shoulder of the road. Flexing and unflexing his hands to shake off the jitters, he turned to Anna. “You okay?”

  She nodded, but her body was trembling like a feverish child’s. He reached in the back, tossed yesterday’s Tangleheart Gazette off his crumpled lab coat, and then dragged the coat up front and draped it around her shoulders.

  “Thanks. I—I don’t know why I’m cold on a night like this.”

  “Most likely you’re a bit shocky.” He pulled his arms back to his sides, and his muscles went weak, as if he’d just bench-pressed twice his weight instead of lifting a cotton coat. “Me too, I guess.”

  His arms felt anchored at his sides, and maybe that was what stopped him from grabbing her and holding her close. Likewise his mouth had gone dry and his tongue felt thick, and maybe that was what stopped him from telling her what an ass he’d been—how he wished he could turn back the clock twelve years and not walk out that door on her.

  Their gazes met and held. Moonlight drenched her skin and lit catch lights in the bottomless blue of her eyes, which were still dilated with fear. The realization of how close he’d come to losing her tonight settled like an anvil on his chest, making it hard to fill his lungs. He didn’t know what tomorrow held for Anna and him, or even if there would be a tomorrow after a night like tonight, but he did know this: He’d give his life if need be to keep her out of harm’s way.

  “Anna, I…” He swallowed hard.

  “What?” She laid her palm on his knee, but then pulled it back just as his clumsy hand reached for hers.

  “I…wanted to tell you…nice work pulling the fire alarm.”

  Her expression brightened, and that amazing smile of hers appeared. “Nice work killing the lights—twice.”

  When she smiled at him like that he could almost forget that a psycho assassin had their names on his to-do list. “We make a good team.”

  “Ya think?” she practically chirped.

  “I do.” He did his best to match her overly cheery tone. Whatever worked for her was fine by him.

  Headlights appeared on the road behind them. He grabbed Anna’s hand and held on tight. She didn’t pull it away until after the car had moved safely past them on the road. That was a good sign, wasn’t it?

  But they couldn’t sit here on the side of the road all night and sort out their feelings. That passing car was a warning bell to get the hell out of Tangleheart. “We need to make some decisions,” he said. “I know what the nine-one-one operator advised, but I don’t think we should drive to the police station.”

  “Agreed.”

  “You’re not going to put up an argument? We’re not going to weigh the pros and cons? Anna Kincaid is going to defy authority—just like that?”

  “We’ve already given Nate and the nine-one-one operator a full account of everything that happened tonight. Nate should have no problem getting the police involved in the search for Simone after this. But if we go to the police station they’ll take the file, which will most likely be of no use to them at all. Like you said, I know Simone better than just about anyone. The police won’t have any idea which of those clippings would have meaning for her, but I might be able to figure something out.”

  Anna was right. Once they turned the file over to the authorities, their opportunity to sort through the newspaper clippings would be lost.

  “And besides, someone did try to kill us tonight. I don’t feel comfortable marching into the station, filing a complaint, and giving the bad guy a chance to get back on our tail in the process. Whoever he is, he obviously followed us to the library. We’re looking for Simone, and to my way of thinking, so is he. He’s probably expecting us to drive straight to the cops.”

  “We’re on the same page. He or she might very well be staking out the station waiting for us.”

  “He or she? Are you serious?” A flash of surprise widened her already huge eyes.

  “The guy was not so big he couldn’t have been a woman.”

  “Boots was kind of skinny for a man.”

  “Boots—that’s what we’re calling him?” He busted a grin. “Boots, to my recollection, was well under six feet. I never heard his voice. Did you?”

  She shook her head. “I guess you’re right. Boots could have been a tall woman—but I still think he was a man.”

  “Probably right, but I’m just saying we need to be on our guard. We don’t have one damn clue who’s after us or why.”

  “Maybe the clue’s in here.” She patted her purse.

  It was a stroke of luck that Anna had stuffed the folder full of clippings in her bag and had it on her shoulder the entire time. In all the chaos, he never would’ve remembered to grab the file, and if earlier in the evening he’d doubted they would find something important among the clippings, getting shot at while looking for them had convinced him otherwise. “Okay. So if we’re not going to the police station, where are we going to go?” He’d been away so long, no place immediately sprang to mind.

  Anna tapped her chin only a moment before her face lit up with an idea. “Someplace safe and out of the way. Someplace where we can look at the clippings without worrying about getting shot at—my Uncle Joe’s cabin. It’s an hour’s drive, but Simone and I spent time there as kids, so there’s also a cha
nce she could’ve taken Bobby to the cabin. That’s a long shot, I guess, but at least the place is isolated. I think we’d be safe long enough to get our ducks in a row.”

  He hated to burst Anna’s bubble, but rows of ducks might not be enough to stop a killer. “I don’t suppose there’s a gun at your Uncle Joe’s cabin?”

  She fished a bobby pin out of her purse, twisted her hair and fastened it out of her eyes. “Will a .45 Colt do?”

  “NO SIGN OF SIMONE.” Anna didn’t try to conceal the disappointment in her voice. She hadn’t really expected to find Simone at the cabin, but she had hoped, more than she’d realized, that they would be lucky enough to find her here. She wanted desperately to keep Simone and Bobby safe from Boots, and frankly, she wanted desperately to ask Simone what the hell was really going on. Playing cat and mouse with an armed gunman in the Tangleheart Library wasn’t exactly her idea of a good-time Tuesday night.

  She paced to the window and peered through the curtains and breathed out a relieved sigh. She saw no one creeping around the cabin and no suspicious headlights coming up the road—only Charlie’s Camaro parked in the drive, showing off its custom wax job under the spotlight of a full moon. “I hope the police are having better luck than we are.”

  “We’ll find her soon,” Charlie said. Even in summer, the nights grew cool in the hilly areas surrounding Tangleheart, and Charlie had built a small fire in the hearth. He generally accomplished everything he set his mind to, and that was presently manifesting itself in the way he kept poking one particular log. He didn’t give up until it flamed to life and filled the cabin with the smell of cedar and homespun memories.

  Uncle Joe’s cabin was one of the few places she’d felt happy as a child. In the first few months after her mother went to prison, Grandma and Uncle Joe brought her here nearly every weekend to escape the taunts of the neighborhood bullies. Of course, not every neighbor was a bully. There was gentle Simone.