Bunny Elder Adventure Series: Four Complete Novels: Hollow, Vain Pursuits, Seadrift, ...and Something Blue

by J. B. Hawker

The deputy joined her under the light.

  “Looks like that dog must’ve taken a bite out of your prowler, Ma’am.”

  “Thank God for that!” Bunny breathed with relief.

  She would have been consumed by guilt if the brave animal was hurt protecting her.

  “So, what exactly happened here?” the deputy asked.

  Bunny took him inside while describing the night’s events.

  Deputy Williams noticed a hole, high up on the wall next to the fireplace, where a bullet had gone in.

  “That looks like it was fired from near the floor. Seems like the dog had your prowler down and the guy tried to shoot him, but he missed.”

  “I suppose this was the same man who broke in earlier. But what could he possibly be after? I don’t have anything worth stealing. He must know that, by now. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t like to upset you, but seems like the only thing here now, that wasn’t here when he came before, would be you. Can you think of anyone who might want to hassle you like this or harm you? This is starting to look pretty personal.”

  Two more cruisers had arrived while Bunny and Deputy Williams were talking on the porch.

  The officers combed the area in search of the prowler, but didn’t find anyone.

  “There’s a trail of blood drops along the shoulder a couple of hundred yards up the road, Williams. It stops abruptly next to a set of tire tracks,” a deputy whose name badge read “T. Baughley” reported.

  “Our guy must’ve had a car waiting.”

  “At least Reacher got a good taste of him before he got away,” Scott Davidson said, as he stepped up onto the porch.

  “Good boy, good Reacher!”

  “I can’t thank you enough for lending him to me, Scott. I thought I would need him only for moral support, but he was a real hero tonight.”

  “He is that, alright. And I’ll bet he enjoyed every minute of it. The army retired him, but he’s never really resigned himself to being over the hill.”

  “You did a good job of boarding up the broken back door, Pastor, but this guy just came in the kitchen window, instead. He broke it right out, so I don’t think he was trying to sneak in. The creep must have planned to confront Mrs. Elder. He never expected your dog to be here, though,” Deputy Williams chuckled.

  “Yes, that’s worrying. Mrs. Elder can’t stay here, now, obviously. This fellow is persistent, armed and doesn’t care who knows it.”

  It was just sinking in on Bunny the intruder might possibly have meant to use his gun on her. Her knees began to wobble. She felt light-headed and lowered herself onto the steps.

  Pastor Davidson and the deputies stood by their vehicles talking in low voices.

  Bunny listened distractedly to the unintelligible messages and static coming from the dispatch radios.

  She felt detached from it all as she gazed at her front yard, now bathed in the vehicles’ red and blue flashing lights.

  The scene resembled a strangely discordant disco.

  Some of the deputies were photographing the “crime scene,” once Bunny’s cozy home.

  The others drove away as the pale morning sun illuminated the treetops.

  A new day was on the way. Bunny wasn’t certain she was ready to face it.

  She went inside to dress, and then fixed coffee for herself and the men who remained.

  As she sipped from a steaming mug, she knew she could not stay in the cabin another night.

  Fortunately, she had rented the house furnished, so she would simply need to pack her few personal belongings into the car and drive away, but…where would she go?

  She supposed she would get a motel room until she found another place.

  There were so many decisions to make and the landlord and insurance company to deal with, but Bunny felt completely incapable of tackling anything.

  She was standing at the sink, staring vacantly out the window, when the pastor approached.

  “Reacher and I will stay here until you get your things together, Bunny. Then you can follow us to my place. I’ve called Rosamund and asked her to get the spare room ready. You can stay with us just as long as you need to.”

  Bunny was nearly overwhelmed by this act of charity.

  Her reflex was to demur, but she realized she was in no position to be proud.

  “Oh, thank you so much, Pastor Scott. I don’t know what else to do right now. But I’ll get out of your hair just as soon as I can catch my breath, I promise.”

  “Please, Bunny, just Scott, remember? And this is no trouble. Rosamund and I will be happy for the company. So get your stuff together. Is there anything I can help you with?”

  It took less time to pack than Bunny expected.

  Before noon everything was in her car and the cabin was cleaned and tidy, just as she’d found it the day she moved in.

  Except for the broken lamp, doors, and kitchen window… and the bullet hole in the wall, of course.

  Bunny was sitting in her car preparing to leave, when her gaze landed on the washing machine and she remembered her beach blanket.

  Pulling the sandy blanket from the washer, she was surprised to see the small sea chest.

  The events of the past couple of days had completely driven it from her mind.

  She shook the blanket, to get it as clean as possible, and wrapped the chest in its folds before stowing the bundle in the back of her car.

  She felt it would be quite a while before she was up to working on the romance novel that little chest had inspired.

  

  “How could you let it out of your sight? You know how dangerous it could be in the wrong hands!”

  “That thing is at the bottom of the ocean. Besides, I was trying to save the crew! I didn’t have time to worry about anything else. After we tossed the cargo and all the containers overboard to lighten the load we still feared for our lives. I was trying to save the ship, but the storm was too strong, the waves too fierce. I put the chest into the lifeboat, as we were preparing to abandon the ship, when suddenly the lifeboat was torn loose and sank before we got aboard. We were desperate, I tell you! It is only a miracle the ship stayed afloat.”

  “So what do you want, that he should give you a medal, just for saving the rabble you call a crew? You should have pitched them overboard and saved the girls. Now, since you’ve lost an entire shipment, we are behind schedule supplying our customers. And that chest could be at the bottom of the Pacific. Or it just might be in the hands of the Coast Guard. If someone finds it, I’d hate to be in your shoes.”

  “No one’s gonna find it. They wouldn’t know what to do with it if they did. And Koslov can’t blame me for the storm, can he? No one predicted such wild weather. You guys set the schedule for these trips, anyway, not me.”

  The two men continued their quarrel as they walked between warehouses in the Port of Songkhla on the east coast of Thailand’s Malay Peninsula.

  Bona Pok, a darkly tanned Cambodian and the smaller of the two men, continued to justify his actions to his companion while struggling to keep pace with the taller man’s stride.

  “Listen, Sergi, you’ve got to stand up to the boss for me. Matvey Kozlov can’t be trusted when he is angry. If you don’t help to soothe him, his rage could burn you, too, you know. You must help make me look good. Hey, losing that shipment and his precious little box could have happened to anyone.”

  “But it happened to you, Pok, didn’t it? Only to you…ah, don’t worry about it. Kozlov needs you to deal with the locals and he knows it. But if he ever learns all the languages or finds another interpreter who he can trust, your luck will run out.”

  “Who knows? Maybe he won’t even be that upset. There are plenty of girls to replace those we lost. I’ve already lined up his next shipment, haven’t I?”

  The men entered a disreputable looking building near the wharf and disappeared up the stairs.

  Chapter Four

  Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.-1 Pet
er 4:9

  Rosamund’s overly solicitous greeting when Bunny arrived was nearly as off-putting as her overbearing demeanor had been after choir practice the evening before.

  Bunny chose to concentrate on the generosity of the woman’s hospitality and forced a smile in response.

  “Thank you so much for allowing me to impose on you and Scott, Rosamund. I promise to find a new place, just as soon as I can. I did offer to go to a motel, but your brother insisted this would be okay.”

  “Oh, you can’t argue with him when he makes up his mind, Bunny. I don’t even try. He’s been rescuing pathetic strays for as long as I can remember. I suppose there’s always room for one more.”

  The pastor stepped up to the door with Bunny’s suitcases, just then, eliminating any chance of a graceful retreat, so Bunny followed him into the house.

  “You can stay in our late mother’s room, Bunny. I’m sure you will be comfortable there. It’s been adapted for the elderly and handicapped.”

  Bunny ignored her snide inference and followed Rosamund down the hallway to a small room situated between the kitchen and laundry porch, at the back of the house.

  Scott stepped into the room with her cases and looked around at the dark, overcrowded room.

  “Why not put Bunny in the guest room upstairs, Rosie? It’s so nice and sunny. No one’s used this room since mother died.”

  “The guestroom is not made up, Scott. Besides, Bunny doesn’t want to tackle all those stairs, at her age.”

  Bunny resolutely overlooked the pointed comment.

  Scott was obviously Bunny’s contemporary in age and Rosamund was at least a few years his senior.

  Bunny was probably the youngest person in the room, but she was determined to give the older woman the benefit of the doubt. Besides, after being up nearly all night she felt about 100 years old and probably looked it.

  “This will be just fine, Scott. I’m sure I will be very cozy. It will be only a day or two, anyway.”

  “Well, if you’re sure. We’ll leave you to get settled, then. I need to go to the church, but I’ll see you at dinner.”

  “Yes, after what you’ve been through, you probably need a little lie down, Bunny. Don’t even think about looking for another place to stay before you’ve had a chance to catch your breath. Tomorrow morning will be plenty of time,” Rosamund offered sweetly before closing the door and leaving Bunny alone in the murky space.

  A large rhododendron bush outside the room’s only window allowed very little light to penetrate the interior gloom.

  Slumping down on the sagging bed, Bunny felt like crying.

  Instead, she squared her shoulders and offered a prayer of thanks for this family’s offer of shelter.

  She decided not to bother to unpack for the night or two she would be here, and to absolutely resist the impulse to criticize the old folks’ home décor or the musty smell.

  She could well believe the Davidson’s mother had died in this room and that it had not been touched, since.

  It had all the ambiance of a crypt.

  Now, stop that, Bunny! She silently admonished herself.

  As she sat there, trying to come to terms with her situation, she gradually became aware of dampness seeping through her jeans.

  She jumped up and pulled back the bedding, draping it in layers across the bureau and chairs to air out.

  In this coastal climate, damp can accumulate quickly, especially in absorbent fabrics in closed up rooms.

  Bunny struggled to open the window and finally got the swollen sash to move far enough to allow some warm air to circulate.

  It would be ungracious to make an issue about the clammy bedding. She hoped everything would dry out before nightfall.

  Fearful the upholstered chair was in much the same condition as the bed, Bunny sat on a painted wooden bench at the dusty, flounced and beruffled vanity table, where she tried to sort out her jumbled thoughts.

  First of all, she needed to let her sisters know she was moving.

  Of course, they would want to know why.

  She wasn’t sure just how much she wanted to tell Linda and Jean about her prowler, though. It would worry them, needlessly, now she was safely out of that cabin.

  Bunny had already convinced herself the cabin, or rather the former tenants, must be the real target of all the vandalism.

  She had no valuable property and no enemies, so she was an unlikely target for so much mischief.

  Downplaying the worst aspects of unpleasant events was one of Bunny’s preferred coping mechanisms.

  She could deal with random acts of vandalism, but the thought of an armed man breaking in to do her harm was unimaginable.

  Bunny cleared a space on the table by tucking the array of dusty bottles and containers into a drawer and then opened her computer to send her sisters an email.

  She discovered, although the Davidson’s had Wi-Fi, she needed a password to access the network.

  Rather than face Rosamund again, Bunny decided to phone Linda and let her relay the news to their older sister, Jean, in California. Jean tended to become alarmed more easily than Linda and Bunny wasn’t quite up to reassuring her, just yet.

  She was just finishing her conversation with her sister in Idaho when Reacher nosed the door open. He came to sit beside Bunny and put his head in her thigh.

  “Oh, of course I’m all right, Linda. It’s just an inconvenience, that’s all. I will be careful to find a place right in town and everything will get back to normal in no time. Give my love to Jean when you speak to her. I’ll send you both my new address, as soon as I get settled...You, too. Bye.”

  Bunny scratched the dog behind the ears and he climbed half-way onto her lap.

  “You’re too big for a lap dog, Reacher. But, you sure are good to have around. Thanks for taking such good care of me last night.”

  Bunny missed having a pet of her own. She was forced to leave her elderly cats, the calico, Betty, and Veronica, the Siamese, with her friend, Emily, when she moved from Northern California.

  She thought they were too old to adjust to her move to the potato farm with all its barnyard cats and dogs.

  She still missed her pets terribly, but Emily assured her that “her girls” were thriving in their new home.

  After dinner that evening, Bunny was helping Rosamund clear up the dishes, when Scott stuck his head into the kitchen.

  “What’s with all the shrouded furniture in your room, Bunny?”

  “Oh, I was airing out the bedding, Scott. That’s just a little peculiarity of mine, I guess, I can’t sleep unless I air the bedding in a new room,” Bunny improvised.

  “Omigosh! Did I forget to change the bed linens? How silly of me. Let me get you fresh bedding, Bunny.”

  Rosamund seemed genuinely chagrined as she went to get fresh sheets.

  Perhaps Bunny had misjudged her.

  Bunny got the network password from Scott at dinner, so before she climbed into the, now dry, bed she sat at her computer browsing for rental listings posted on the Internet.

  Surprisingly, her search returned very few furnished apartments in her price range. She thought Bannoch was enough of a vacation destination to have a good supply of summer rentals.

  Getting moved quickly might be more difficult than she hoped.

  After shutting her computer down, she sat and prayed quietly for several moments before feeling a measure of peace.

  Later, her head resting on a lilac scented pillowcase, she mentally placed all her daunting tasks and difficult decisions into an imaginary box labeled Tomorrow, handed it to God and drifted off.

  Chapter Five

  …holding on to faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and so have suffered shipwreck with regard to the faith. - 1 Timothy 1:19

  Another storm was brewing when Bunny awoke. She could hear the wind whistling around the window frame and thumping the rhododendron’s blousy purple flower heads against the glass.

  Bunny dressed
for the weather in corduroy jeans and a flannel shirt and stuffed her short list of possible rentals into her jacket pocket.

  She grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl on the kitchen counter, left a note for Rosamund, scratched Reacher behind the ears and went out the back door.

  She was determined to find someplace to rent before returning to the parsonage that day.

  Even though the Davidson siblings were being very gracious, she did not want to impose on their kindness a moment longer than absolutely necessary.

  Bunny began her search at a local property management office situated in a converted Victorian house two blocks off the highway.

  When she opened the door, an unmannerly gust of wind rushed in ahead of her, blowing papers around and tipping over a vase of artificial flowers.

  The reception area was empty when she entered, but a tall woman soon appeared from the back room in response to the tinkle of the bell over the entry door.

  “Yes?”

  She looked at Bunny over the rim of her coffee mug as she slipped behind her desk and switched on the computer.

  She seemed to be annoyed at Bunny’s early arrival.

  The woman’s curly strawberry blond hair was twisted carelessly into a knot on the back of her head, in contrast to the severe business suit she wore.

  “My name’s Bunny Elder and I’m looking for a furnished rental in town. I was hoping you could help me.”

  “Good luck with that! It’s the start of tourist season. The furnished rentals are already booked. You should have planned ahead.”

  The agent was obviously not a morning person.

  “Well, what rentals do you have? If the price isn’t too steep I might manage an unfurnished place.”

  “Oh, all right. Sit down. Let me get my computer booted up and we can go through what is available. How many bedrooms were you looking for?”

  As Bunny sat down she read the name plate on the desk, “Naidenne Grinager”.

  “I can make do with a one-bedroom place. Thank you, Ms. Grinager.”

  Naidenne’s coffee seemed to be kicking in.

  She looked up at Bunny and smiled apologetically. That smile transformed her and Bunny noticed the intelligent spark in her eyes for the first time.