by Kym Roberts
I approached my friends and noticed that Scarlet looked like she’d just come out of the beauty salon as a customer. Sugar, on the other hand, didn’t. Her makeup was gone, and even though she was a beautiful woman, tears and stress had taken a toll on her complexion. It was blotchy, and her nose and eyes were as red as Mateo’s had been after being sprayed by a skunk.
She saw me approach and immediately wiped her eyes and nose.
“Have they identified the victim yet?” I asked.
Sugar tried to respond but couldn’t. Only inarticulate noises escaped her mouth as she broke into a fresh set of tears. Scarlet handed her a tissue from a pack she had in her hand.
“Sally Ferguson just told me the victim was wearing a red leather skirt, a white sleeveless blouse, and one red-and-black boot. She had blond hair, but the body was too decomposed for anyone to get a positive ID. The ME will have to obtain that.”
Sally Ferguson was the deputy with the Coleman County Sheriff’s Department. She was also a good friend of Scarlet’s and a major source of information when it came to which men in town were good candidates for boyfriend material. Granted she couldn’t tell us which guys had jerk genes in their DNA, but she could tell us we didn’t want to date those who had criminal records.
I wondered if I’d just earned myself a spot in the do-not-date column in Sally’s book of eligible singles, and if I’d also reclassified myself as ineligible to Mateo. Then I remembered what Maddie was wearing in the bar on Wednesday night and refocused on what was important.
I looked at Sugar, whose face crumpled before my eyes. I said the only thing I could think of, “I’m so sorry,” but my sympathy caused more tears to flow down her face. My words seemed inadequate and a little inappropriate. Sugar and Maddie weren’t friends. They didn’t even like each other, but Sugar loved Maddie’s little boy, and that boy was without a mother.
No child should lose their mom. I knew that better than most. I’d lost my mom to cancer at the tender age of ten, and Maddie’s four-year-old wouldn’t begin to understand why his mom disappeared.
“How is Dean supposed to tell his son that his mom is dead? He won’t understand, and he’ll want to see her even more.” Sugar blew her nose.
“Where is Scotty?” Scarlet asked.
“He’s with Dean’s parents. I’m supposed to pick him up after my shift at the Tool Shed.” Sugar’s eyes widened. “I don’t want to be the one to tell him.” She grabbed Scarlet’s wrist. “I can’t tell him,” she insisted.
“It may not be her.”
Sugar shook her head. “Everybody knows it’s her. She was last seen wearing a red leather skirt and white top and—and—” She hiccupped. “She has blond hair. Blond hair.” Sugar pulled her hair to emphasize the color and enunciated the words one by one as if we didn’t know the details of the description.
“But as long as there’s a smidgen of hope, you can’t tell Scotty that his mom is dead.”
Scarlet agreed, “Charli’s right. You can’t take away his hope that his mom will walk through that door. Not yet.”
“But what will I say? She was supposed to pick him up tomorrow morning.” A fresh batch of tears streamed down her cheeks. “She won’t be there tomorrow morning.”
“But Dean will,” Scarlet reassured her.
As if we somehow cast a spell and conjured him up, a tow truck screeched around the corner and came to a stop in the middle of the street. Dean MacAlister jumped out of the vehicle and ran to Sugar’s side. She threw her arms around his neck, and he held her tight. What they had was special, and I wasn’t sure either one recognized just how precious it was.
Dean pulled back and looked Sugar in the eyes. For a man like Dean, who had always worn an easygoing smile, it was strange to see anything but his boyish grin plastered on his face. He’d reached middle age without most of us noticing. The string of exes he left behind was a mile long, and what he owed in child support was probably more then I earned in a month. But he was a good dad and a Southern gentleman, provided you weren’t married to him. Maddie had been his third wife, and after her, he’d vowed to never marry again. As much as Sugar wanted to change that, I didn’t think Dean would ever take the plunge again. Especially now.
Detective Youngblood approached us with a look that we all recognized. He had bad news, and he had questions that he wanted answers to.
Dean didn’t beat around the bush. He turned toward Detective Youngblood and asked, “Is it Maddie?”
“We don’t know for sure but…”
“But I reported her missing,” Dean said.
We all look at Dean. Not one of us had been aware that he’d reported Maddie missing. Even Sugar was shocked by the news.
Detective Youngblood nodded. “Yes, she’s the only female to be reported missing in the county for the past several weeks.”
Sugar began sobbing and pressed her face into Dean’s shoulder as he held her tight.
“Does the clothing description I gave you match what you found tonight?” Dean’s question was worded slowly. Softly. Carefully. As if he wanted to make sure he didn’t say anything wrong.
Sugar looked up for a moment and saw Detective Youngblood nod. Then she closed her eyes and snuggled into Dean a little tighter, but her tears were gone. Dean absently kissed the top of her head before looking up into the sky. I wasn’t sure if he was praying or saying goodbye to the mother of his child.
Detective Youngblood opened his steno pad. “You said that Maddie had a room at the Inn the last time you saw her. Is that correct?”
Dean stiffened. Suddenly he looked extremely uncomfortable holding Sugar, and she no longer felt the need to hold on tight to her man. She stepped away, creating a gap that couldn’t have been more than a foot, but appeared as big as the Grand Canyon.
“Yeah. The management team was allowed to use one of the rooms in the back of the Inn. The only time it was booked by guests was when the Inn was totally full.”
“So why wouldn’t it have been booked last night when the protesters arrived?”
Dean shook his head, honestly perplexed. “I have no idea. That’s something you’ll have to ask the hotel. All I know is that I walked her in and she spoke to the desk clerk and I walked out. That’s the last time I saw her.”
“You didn’t walk her to her room?”
Dean hesitated. It wasn’t long, but it was long enough to create doubt about his answer. “I walked her to the stairwell, and I got a call that someone needed a tow. I left her there.”
Dean wasn’t telling the truth. It was obvious to me, and I was pretty sure it was obvious to everyone in our little circle. Including Detective Youngblood. The reason for Dean’s deceit stood right next to him staring off across the street at the Brazos River as the sun set in a beautiful mixture of colors only found on an artist’s palette and the Texas sky.
Sugar swallowed hard, as if she could make Dean’s grizzly secret disappear without anyone being the wiser. But secrets were never secrets in Hazel Rock, Texas, and I had no doubt Dean was going to learn that the hard way.
“I’d like for you to come down to the station and give me a statement, if you don’t mind,” Detective Youngblood said. He may have worded it like a request, but he expected Dean to comply.
Dean didn’t hesitate. “Sure thing.” He touched Sugar’s shoulder, but she flinched out of his reach. “Could you pick up Scotty on your way home?” he asked.
“You know I will,” Sugar replied. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Charli.”
Dean waited for her to look at him, but when Sugar walked away, Dean looked like a man who’d lost his best friend. Maybe he had.
He and Detective Youngblood walked toward their cars. I thought it was a good sign that the detective allowed Dean to drive his tow truck to the station.
“He’s lying,” I said.
Scarlet hustled me by
Cade and Mateo who were giving a press conference to a horde of media gathered in front of the hotel. Liza Twaine was in the front row proving exactly what kind of pain in the rear she could be. Scarlet ignored the reporters and was walking faster on her four-inch heels than I could in my tennis shoes.
“Are you telling me you don’t think he was lying?” I whispered.
Scarlet turned and grabbed my forearm, dragging me into an alcove for the bakery. The ground to ceiling display windows were full of everything I loved. But what caught my attention, what drew me in faster than a moth to a flame, were the cupcakes Franz had on display. There must’ve been five dozen decorated all the same: deep chocolate cake rising above metallic pink cupcake tins and smothered in white creamy icing with one square of dark chocolate sticking out from the middle of each cupcake. It was like that chocolate had my name written on it.
My stomach growled, and I realized I’d missed lunch, and it was well past the dinner hour. I would kill for a cupcake. But the bakery was closed, and I was already facing one misdemeanor charge. I didn’t need another for burglary.
“You look like you’re about ready to commit a B and E,” Scarlet said.
“I’m hungry, not stupid.”
“You could’ve fooled me.”
“What’s that supposed mean?” I asked.
“You got caught burning books.” When I looked at her, Scarlet tore into me like never before. “Never, in all my days, would I have thought that Charli Rae Warren would burn books. And if that wasn’t bad enough, oh no, you didn’t do it for yourself. You weren’t trying to cover up for your dad. You weren’t even trying to save a little money. You did it for Cade. Cade!”
I scowled at her as I looked back at the reporters, hoping they didn’t hear her tirade.
“And you got caught by Mateo,” she said. “Are you trying to ruin the best thing that has happened to you since you came back to Hazel Rock?”
“I hardly think the best thing that has happened to me is a man. I have my daddy back in my life, and no one is going to take that from me ever again.”
“I love you too, Princess, but I happen to agree with your friend.”
Scarlet and I jumped at the same time. She let out a little squeal, and I released a grunt. Together we sounded like a baby pig having a nightmare. Daddy just laughed.
Scarlet grabbed her chest. “O.M.W. Bobby Ray Warren you are worse than your daughter!”
“I should be. I’ve got a twenty-five-year head start.” Daddy leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “What are you two doing over here whispering in the corner? You look like a couple of teenage girls conspiring to do something they shouldn’t.”
This time I could plead not guilty, because we hadn’t got to that point yet. If he’d come about five minutes later, we would’ve been guilty. As it was, Scarlet and I had just been bickering.
“Scarlet was lecturing me.”
Daddy looked to Scarlet to explain.
“She’s ruining a good thing, Bobby Ray. I’m trying to stop her from making a mistake she’s going to regret.”
“You must be talking about Mateo.”
I rolled my eyes. “Not you too.”
“It seems to me, that you have a good friend here who’s trying to give you a good piece of advice. I suggest you listen to her, Princess.”
I agreed, so I could get the two of them to change the subject. “Of course, Daddy.” We had more important things to worry about other than my love life. “Did you hear what they found at the hotel?” I asked.
Daddy nodded. “Detective Youngblood spoke to me and Joe over at the Tool Shed.”
I was all ears. I wanted to know what the detective knew before he approached us, but I didn’t want Daddy to know that I planned to put my nose where it didn’t belong. I didn’t need lecture number two for the evening. “What was he wanting to know?”
“He was looking into the disappearance of Maddie MacAlister. He wanted to know the last time we saw Maddie and who she was with. I wasn’t much help since I wasn’t at the bar Wednesday night. The last time I saw Maddie was Wednesday morning at the Book Barn for the Mystery Moms Book Club meeting.” Daddy shook his head. “I’m afraid I wasn’t much help. Joe was able to give more information.”
“What did he say?” Scarlet asked.
Despite all the bad stuff going on, inside I was smiling. Scarlet had joined my quest for the truth—through my method of meddling.
“He described what Maddie was wearing Wednesday night and said that Maddie got into a verbal altercation with Sugar. But Dean took her home.”
I winced. That statement didn’t look good for either of them. Sugar looked like she had motive, and Dean looked like he was the last one to see Maddie alive. Both of our friends were in trouble.
I wasn’t sure what else we could do, especially when I saw Detective Youngblood talking to Dean at his tow truck, and his partner stopping Sugar before she got in her car. The two detectives may have had small-town experience, but they knew their job well and had a drive for justice just as strong as Mateo did. They would get their man—or woman.
I just had to make sure it wasn’t Dean or Sugar who ended up spending the rest of their life behind bars.
Chapter 7
I met Scarlet at the Hazel Rock Diner for breakfast before the store opened. She had the day off and was ready to get down to business. We didn’t know the cause of Maddie’s death, but the Inn had been closed for business, and the police were at the scene that morning. Not only was that bad for Cade, it didn’t bode well for Dean and Sugar either. If Maddie had been on the clock and had gone to check the tank for some reason but fell in, the police would have cleared the scene. As it was they didn’t look like they were going to be clearing out anytime soon.
“Did you hear from Mateo last night?” Scarlet asked me.
“No, I’m sure he’s still working.”
“You’re sure?”
I took a bite of my French toast and ignored the question. Heck no, I wasn’t sure. But I was pretty sure we were just fine. The fact that he hadn’t even texted me didn’t sit well, but the man was dedicated. That had to be the reason for his lack of communication.
The front door opened, and Reba Sue entered with Liza, Daisy, and Betty. All four were wearing their black T-shirts that had Mystery Moms imprinted on the front in pink letters. They looked around, saw Scarlet and me seated in the back of the restaurant, and headed our direction.
“That can’t be good,” Scarlet said into her coffee cup.
“It’s too early in the morning for this. Maybe if we ignore them, they’ll leave us alone.” I dug into my scrambled eggs with catsup. Scarlet took a bite of her yogurt.
It didn’t work. The ladies approached our table, and Liza slammed a newspaper down. “Have you seen this?”
We looked at the paper. The Dallas Morning Daily’s headline was an eye catcher. “Life Imitating Art” was plastered across the front page in bold script with a picture of the Enchanted Inn’s water tank.
“O.M.W.,” Scarlet said.
“How is it that I was out-scooped by a Dallas newspaper?” Liza complained.
I ignored Liza’s complaint and scanned the article as the women pushed their way into our booth. Luckily it was big enough for four comfortably, six if you wanted to squeeze in together. We were crammed in together, and somehow, I’d drawn the short straw and had Liza crowding my immediate space. The woman had a spine stiffer than Princess’s shell. I would never have dreamed of throwing someone under the bus one day and then cuddling up in a booth with them at the local diner the next. There was a steak knife at my disposal, for Pete’s sake.
Scarlet saw my eyes stray toward the utensil and kicked me under the table.
I took a deep breath and returned my attention to the article, well aware that Liza was working the Mystery Moms angle to her
advantage. I wouldn’t put it past her to have a wire on under her clothes and a van parked at the curb listening to every word we exchanged.
Everyone waited patiently for me to finish the article about the body being found in the water tank being eerily familiar to the murder plot in Nathan Daniels’s book Woman Scorned, and how it was the second time in recent history that Hazel Rock had been the scene of a serial copycat killer. It was an unfair comparison to an earlier murder mystery we’d had in our town. Unfortunately for Cade and Mateo, they pointed out that each crime wave—they actually called them crime waves—occurred while Cade was mayor and Mateo was sheriff. They went on to state that the dedicated duo would be better suited for the television show America’s Sexiest Catch than civil servants.
“Holy crap.”
“I take it you got to the part about Cade and Mateo?” Liza said as she grabbed a biscuit from my plate and took a bite.
I wanted to hit her. I just wasn’t sure if it was from her casual tone or because she stole food off my plate. “Yeah.” I didn’t finish the article. I’d seen enough.
“What’d they say about Cade and Mateo?” Scarlet asked.
I handed the newspaper to her.
“What are we going to do about this?” Reba Sue asked. I had no doubt she was anxious to be Cade’s hero.
Everyone looked at me for an answer, and I found myself in the role of leader of the pack. Mateo wouldn’t like it.
“Where do you think they got the information?” I asked.
“If you read on to page two, you’ll see that the reporter interviewed Nathan Daniels.”
Scarlet flipped to page two and showed me a picture of Nathan Daniels. He wasn’t a bad-looking guy, a little on the nerdy side with messy brown hair, glasses, and a bow tie. He appeared to be around forty, wore a tweed suit jacket, and a serious expression—no smile for the camera.