by Unger, Erin;
I better do something. But before I got up to give the teen a quick hug, Isabelle plunked into the seat beside me and covered her face.
Good. When Isabelle didn’t start to talk, and several minutes had passed, I turned my chair to be face-to-face with Isabelle and rested my forearms on my knees. “Tell me what’s going on. I’m guessing you heard Tony was arrested, and this meeting must have something to do with him.”
A heavy sob escaped the girl. “It was me.”
I almost careened out of my seat. “You? You what? I know you didn’t kill Mr. Gary Newen.”
The girl’s head bobbed up and down vigorously. “I started the fire. It’s all my fault.”
I could’ve fallen to the floor, and I worked to keep my jaw from unhinging.
I sputtered, but Isabelle stopped me. “I’ve been having a bunch of trouble with Tony. He always teased me and made fun of me in front of the other people in our tribe.” She wiped her nose on the edge of her hoodie sleeve. “And he was mean—really mean. He even scared me a few times when he followed me home. It gave me the creeps, and I was tired of being terrified.”
I checked around the room for tissues. Toilet paper from the bathroom would work.
Isabelle continued, “I knew he’d been back in the drug business because he tried to sell to me one time. And no way was Queenie going to believe me about it.” For the first time, she peered at me.
“Please don’t stop now. I’m dying to hear what you did.”
The tears started again, and Isabelle let them fall onto her jean shorts. “I—I followed him one night, and when I saw all of his plants, I waited for him to leave. It took him a long time to go, and I was so scared because it was getting close to my curfew.” She raised her hands. “There was a rundown shack by the plants, so I went in and found a can of gasoline. I happened to have one of my friend’s lighters on me, so I lit up the place.”
It took a good amount of discipline to school my face. “How many plants were there?”
“I don’t know. Two hundred?”
Tony had lost so much more than I’d imagined. No wonder he was furious and ready to keep the us at bay.
Another sniff rocked through Isabelle. “I never thought the whole forest would go up in flames. And I couldn’t tell anybody.”
This kind of secret could’ve gone to the grave with Isabelle, but to add Gary Newen’s murder to it could make the girl have a nervous breakdown. “I’m so glad you were able to tell me what happened. And I hope you understand you had nothing to do with Mr. Newen’s death. Someone else hurt him and left him where the fire got to him.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am.” I put on the best reassuring smile I could muster. “I hate to say it, but we have to tell the officials about this.”
Isabelle bolted out of her seat. “You can’t tell anyone. I thought I could trust you.”
I stood and grabbed the girl’s arms. “I’ll be with you the whole way. They’ll understand that it was an accident, and you didn’t intend to burn down the forest. But we have to inform them.” What would be Isabelle’s fate? Could we exchange the information about Tony’s past drug farm to leverage minimum sentencing for Isabelle? “But first, we need to go talk to your mom.”
A new bout of tears sent the teenager into a frenzy. She fell back into the seat and sprawled across it. “I can’t face her.”
I stooped in front of Isabelle. “She’ll know how to help you best. Now, let’s go to the village and get this over with.” Taking out my phone, I held it up. “You don’t mind if I get the rest of the investigators to meet us there, do you?”
Isabelle wailed even louder.
47
Shauna
How was Queenie going to react when she found out her daughter was responsible for over 1,000 acres of destruction? Queenie’s office may have the central air running to cool it, but I still had to brush away a bead of sweat.
Even Jillian couldn’t sit still but paced back and forth and around the room while we waited for Queenie to meet us.
Isabelle did her best to ball up in the chair in the corner.
When the chief came through the door, she halted, and looked from Isabelle to the rest of us, a grim frown forming. “I guess it’s right to assume this is worse than the disappearance of the statue my daughter was responsible for taking?”
Ava eyed Jillian and I to get us to stop pacing.
“Isabelle has something she needs to tell you, and it’s going to be a little hard to hear. We just need everyone to remain calm and to allow her to talk.”
The chief’s eyes got big, and she tilted her head a little as if she wasn’t used to taking orders from another person. “OK.”
Isabelle peeked at her mother then unfolded herself from the chair and stood. “I started the fire.”
I didn’t know if Queenie was going to explode or crumple into a crying mess.
We all gave Isabelle a chance to tell her side of the story, and she managed to get it all out with minimal amount of tears this time.
When she finished, Queenie stood and held her arms open for Isabelle to step into. Not the reaction I imagined, but a much better one. If it was me, my brothers would have consoled me with a drop-kick to the ground and then the beating of my life. And Dad would’ve said I deserved it.
I leaned over the desk. “Unfortunately, the officials have to get involved in this.”
Putting her daughter at arm’s length, Queenie looked from her to me. “Why didn’t you come to me about Tony?”
As Isabelle dropped her head, her arms also went limp. “You never listen to me. And when I do manage to talk to you, you blame me instead of listening to what I have to say.”
Now Queenie dropped eye contact.
We looked from one to the other before Ava gave a little wave to Queenie. “Why don’t we let you two talk? We’ll be outside if you need us.”
I hurried to Isabelle and handed her my card, whispering, “Call me…if you need anything. I’ll come faster than you can light a match—uh…” That had to be the worst analogy my brain could’ve come up with on the fly. I winced but she laughed a little through her tears.
When we exited the shop, Christopher moved away from the wall where he leaned. “Did it go OK?”
I wanted to hide from the world in my room, to decompress from all the emotional shrapnel I’d just gone through with Isabelle.
Something in my eyes must’ve cued Christopher. He walked over and put a hand on my shoulder. “At least we know how it all started.”
Christopher guided us to a picnic table nearby. A cooler full of deli sandwiches and drinks was a welcome sight. I lowered myself onto the bench and smiled up at him. “You are wonderful.”
By the time we finished eating, Queenie headed our way. Had she worked things out with her daughter? I hoped the best for the mother and daughter.
“Thank you for taking care of Isabelle. This has been a long and difficult few months for her and all of us. I’ll call the right authorities and a good lawyer to work out the situation.” The chief rubbed her back as if to get a crick out of it. She looked hard at each one of us. “I know you all are wondering about Tony and what he did to my daughter, as well as his arrest for the drugs. I can assure you I will stand by my daughter through this whole thing.”
But there was one thing still bothering me. “How do you explain the alibi you gave Tony? The police found evidence to prove he murdered Gary Newen.”
Her mouth tightened into a straight line. “I hadn’t heard about it yet.” Another sigh. “The time of death has to be wrong. If you take into account more than just the environment, there has to be an explanation. I’m telling you I am not lying. The only mistake I made was trusting that he had reformed.”
Leona would have to do more digging to figure out if the time of death could be adjusted to fit what we knew about Tony’s whereabouts. I had to admit there was a good use for her.
48
Shauna
/> In my room, I took a few moments to do fifty push-ups and grumbled as the last ten barely counted. So many changes so fast. Was there something to Queenie’s idea of the death timeframe? But it would take testing and waiting on official reports to get the truth. For now, the chief was only being questioned by the police, not arrested as Tony had been.
I threw my hip holster into my suitcase. Who’d guess I wouldn’t only solve a case, I’d also find a great guy this week? Of the few men I’d dated, Christopher was the only one I’d take home to my brothers, and he’d hold his own in every way.
Grabbing a couple pairs of pants off the back of a chair, I stuffed them into my army duffel bag. And what of my brothers? They’d poked and jibed me since I got home. And when I thought I’d re-enlist, it was to be the end of their persecution. Now I wasn’t leaving. But if I had to wrestle them to the ground and give them a what for to shut them up, I would. It was my life, and I had to take control of it. And I had to stop questioning my own decisions. They had to accept that God had led me in this direction, and that it wasn’t up to them.
I stuffed the duffel bag of dirty clothes into my suitcase and arm wrestled it into submission, zipping it all the way.
Maybe the military was never meant to be my purpose but a preparation for my true life’s work—investigating. And it took this case to see what God had been trying to tell me.
Wait a minute. Where was my favorite multi-tool knife? I perused every pocket of my weapons bag. Not there.
Grousing, I struggled to open the suitcase. Its guts spilled onto the floor. No way was I leaving a hundred and twenty-dollar specialty knife up here. No knife in there either.
No, no, no. I scoured every corner and under the bed.
When was the last time I remembered having it on me? At the stand and souvenir shop. It must’ve fallen out of my pocket. But we did a very thorough search of the land with a metal detector. It had to have gotten lost before that. Maybe on the Monacan property behind the stand?
Taking my phone out, I called Jillian. Her ringtone reminded me I better fess up at some point about her SUV. I shoved away the guilt. “Hey, I lost my utility knife. You know, that one you didn’t want me to waste money on?”
“I knew it was going to be a waste of money.”
“Yeah, yeah, I hear you. But I still want to try and find it before we leave. I need to check the land behind the souvenir shop. It’s gotta be there.”
Jillian’s breath echoed through the phone. “What can I do to help?”
I plunked on the bed and swung my feet back and forth. “I’ll be down in a minute.” I stopped short. What about the initial video Ava took of the property? “Can you ask Ava to find the video of the back property? I want to take a quick look.”
I hurried to meet them and parked myself beside Ava. Leona lounged against the desk, but I tried to ignore the glare radiating at me from the ME. “Did you find it?”
Ava fast forwarded until she discovered the one I wanted. “Here. What’re you looking for?”
As I pinched my lips together, I hit the play button. “My best utility knife. You know the black one? Just wanted to see if anything stands out back there.”
Holding up her tablet, Jillian scrolled through a few online photos of Monacan villages and their traditional dances. “You won’t believe what I discovered about Monacan traditions. I just bet that land Queenie got from Stan Grayson has something to do with them. They have very interesting burial traditions. Wait a minute. Let me pull up the picture of a burial site.” She stopped perusing the website. “Sorry you don’t care about that. Let me think.” She set the tablet aside. “You believe it fell out of your pocket up there? There were a lot of brambles and twigs that could’ve caught on your pocket.”
I paused the recorder and hurried over to Jillian. “Do you see it? My tech eyes aren’t as good as yours.”
She looked. “Nope. But see the mound? They used to bury people on top of each other, and that’s why the mounds would get so high. They could be over twenty feet tall. And the Monacans were kind of like the Egyptians who buried belongings and items for the afterlife with their people. It makes sense why Queenie would so readily accept the land behind the souvenir shop if there’s a burial mound back there. I’m sure that’s what it is.”
“There was something weird about that perfectly round hill in the woods behind the store.” I checked the other picture she studied. “It’s kind of gross to think we might have been standing on dead people piled on top of each other. But that mound wasn’t as tall as you say.”
Jillian set the tablet on her lap. “Well, you can imagine that it’s been more than 200 years since anyone’s been buried there or anything’s been done to the land. Isn’t it possible that over time it has shrunk and eroded? Or it was a mound they hadn’t buried a lot of people in yet when it was abandoned.”
Leona pushed off the desk and scurried to press between us, her gaze narrowed at the screen. “Sounds reasonable to me.”
After Leona returned to the desk, Ava took the tablet and studied the photos. “I’m on board with your idea. The ground does tend to shift and sink over time. I wonder if the Monacans are even aware of the mound. You’d think they would’ve cleared it off and cut down all the trees that were growing on it to pay homage to their ancestors.”
The idea of another investigation put me in a frenzy. I nearly shook. I might find something that hadn’t been discovered in over 200 years and my best knife. “I want to go back and see it. Maybe a treasure and my knife are there. It’s a piece of history, and I want to know if it’s what we think it is. Then we’re going to Queenie to ask her if she knows of its existence. Christopher, can you take me?”
Ava waved her hands in the air. “I wish I could go, but I’ve got to pack. Corey’s waiting for me to get home and agree to this live band he has in mind for the wedding.”
I handed back the camera. “But…”
Pointing at her heels, Leona said, “I don’t do the outdoors. Let me know what you discover.”
Great, one more girly woman in the group.
Even Jillian wasn’t as interested as I was in braving the heat to check the mound. “Take lots of pictures, and I’ll do an analysis on them when you get back. I need to pack, too.”
“Fine. Christopher and I will uncover this monumental discovery on our own.” I didn’t give him a chance to decide whether he wanted to go or not. I glanced in his direction. He didn’t seem to mind my bossiness.
We headed down the highway. But I couldn’t take the silence. “I can’t believe none of them wanted to see this site or help me. We could be on the brink of discovering something amazing.”
He turned onto the next road that led to the small souvenir stand. “We’ll enjoy it without them, but we’ll take lots of pictures to show them.”
He parked behind the shop and pulled out a couple waters to carry along the way.
I took one from him and strode through the tall grass. For once, the sun didn’t beat down in a harsh frenzy upon my skin. But the clouds overhead brought a strong breeze with them. It was interesting that a storm decided to clamor as a mark of the end of a very difficult case.
Christopher took my hand in his and our arms swung back and forth as we hurried. As the trees grew closer and closer, I hated to think of leaving the mountains. Not the heat. The heat needed to stop being so intense up here. But there would be plenty of future opportunities to go hiking and camping with Christopher.
Once again, he held the branches out of my way and helped me over the big logs. I let him, even though it was only a gesture of good faith. He needed to feel wanted as much as I did. And if being the protector was his modus operandi, then I’d accept it.
49
Christopher
The heavy scent of coming rain and the idea of finding treasure invigorated my senses. “You know, I never told you about my mom, did I?”
She shook her head.
“I’m realizing now that not talki
ng about her didn’t change the fact that it really did a number on me. But I think I can forgive her now. That was the problem all along, you know? The forgiveness. And it took you showing me to realize how much I needed to deal with her leaving me.”
She gestured for me to sit beside her for a moment on a fallen log. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose a parent. I still have both of mine, and I love them so much.”
I drank a sip of water. “I blamed God this whole time just as much as I blamed her.”
How could I explain to her the vastness of the hurt that occupied so many parts of my heart? But maybe the hurt would heal a little now. “And I don’t ever want to project what my mother did to my father and me onto you. But I’ll be the first one to admit there might be some hard times up ahead while I learn how to deal.”
Shauna braced herself against the log and leaned back a bit. “Well, that’s what I’m here for.” She laughed. “To show you all your faults.”
I laughed too. “Right, that’s why you’re here.”
Everything within me screamed to kiss her.
“I hope you know I’m kidding. I wouldn’t want to do that.”
I leaned in and pressed my lips to hers. A spark zinged between us, and I pulled back, but Shauna wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me in again. “You’re electrifying.” I could joke too.
She snickered and pressed the softest lips against mine. Time stopped. The air stilled as our embrace tightened and I breathed in her essence as we kissed, our bodies entwining.
I better back off. Being alone out here with Shauna was dangerous, and now more than ever, I wanted her purity to remain intact. I had to get it right this time. With a huge sigh, I put some space between us. Our ragged breaths echoed.
Something vulnerable existed in her eyes when we pulled apart. Something I never wanted to hurt.
I could stay there forever with her sweet lips against mine, but the crack of thunder overhead warned us we’d better get a move on if we wanted to view the mound before it rained.