by Louise Lynn
Anthony Ray didn’t need any provocation to run alongside her, though he did try to dart into the hedge more than once. It took her a moment to realize the footsteps were following. She heard them pound after her, skidding on the gravel, and her heart pounded in her ears.
She turned one corner, then another, getting herself thoroughly lost. What if she backed into a corner and couldn’t escape?
Well, she’d have to dive into the hedge itself. Much like Anthony Ray was trying to do. Maybe that was a good idea.
She turned another right, and her foot caught on something that wasn’t gravel. She flew forward. A yelp escaped her throat and she crashed into the ground and rolled. Her hold on Anthony Ray’s leash loosened, and he shot away from her, pulling the plastic handle behind him.
Hazel groaned and rolled over, her elbows, knees, and chin throbbing. Her head pounded with the sudden impact. She sucked in several breaths and rolled on her back.
No one was there—yet.
But she heard footsteps.
They were closer, and they’d heard her fall.
She only had one choice now.
Her palms ached as she pulled herself into a crawling position to get around the next corner, then threw herself into the hedge.
The branches scraped and poked her exposed skin and tangled in her hair like angry fingers. She sucked in a deep breath and covered her mouth with her hand in an effort to be as quiet as possible.
Whoever was out there wasn’t trying to be quiet any longer. The footsteps crunched across the gravel, and a grumbling sound emanated from the person’s mouth, an obviously masculine sound.
As Hazel sat there, frozen in fear, her free hand dug into the soil around the hedge. Branches prodded her all over, and she was glad for her coat, which protected her from the worst of it.
Then her fingers brushed something hard and plastic. She blinked, and slowly pulled her hand free. She stared at the slick screen of one of those new oversized cell phones—the kind that looked halfway between a tablet and a phone.
Brandon’s cell phone.
Here in the hedge.
For a moment, she forgot about the footsteps only yards away, and pressed the home button.
The battery was close to dead, but by some miracle, it was unlocked. Perhaps Brandon forwent that security measure in place of speed. She didn’t know.
She carefully turned the screen away from the hedge where her pursuer might see the light, and with shaking fingers, opened the photo app.
Sure enough, there were incriminating photos of Travis and Brandon together, like Amber said there would be, but Hazel wasn’t interested in those.
The ones from the dance. Those were what was important.
There were plenty of pictures of Travis looking somewhere between happy, bored, and annoyed. Then selfies of Brandon and Amber or Brandon and Travis or Brandon and any number of other people.
But the last few photos were something else entirely. There were the pictures of Brandon’s suit pants stained with oil and a photo the oil lamp upside down. When she squinted at it she could see the seal was clearly visible.
The next set were the most incriminating. They were taken from the top of the porch looking down on Tyson Bridger obviously burying the oil lamp.
The final photo was of Tyson’s rage filled face.
Then—nothing.
That last picture had a timestamp that read 1:26 a.m.
Four minutes before the medical examiner’s stated likely time of death for Brandon Sizemore at one thirty.
As carefully as possible, Hazel turned off the phone and slid it into her jacket pocket.
Her dad had made it to the truck. He’d called the police. She just had to wait for them to arrive as she put the final pieces of the puzzle together.
The insurance. The oil lamp. The garden boots. The staircase in the garden, meticulously clean. Brandon’s death.
It all made sense now that she found the phone.
The footsteps came closer and stopped right next to the hedge in which she crouched.
She recognized those gardening boots, the dark green rubber, and the navy pants that brushed the top.
Tyson Bridger was the killer, and now Hazel had absolute proof.
Only, he was less than a foot away, so how was she supposed to escape?
Chapter 22
“Why, it’s Anthony Ray! What are you doing here? And where’s Hazel?” Maureen Hart cried from somewhere far too close for Hazel’s comfort.
She never thought the sound of her mother’s voice could cause her heart to sink even lower.
And yet it had just happened.
“Get his leash, Violet dear. Do you think Hazel woke up and went looking for us? There’s really no other explanation for why he’s here.”
“She may have,” Violet said, her voice at least hushed, unlike Hazel’s mother.
Hazel groaned internally and glanced around her hedge prison for a way to escape without alerting the murderer standing inches from her.
Now he knew her mother and Violet were there too. Things couldn’t possibly get any worse.
Hazel really only had one advantage—the element of surprise.
That didn’t feel like much of a weapon when she was curled in a hedge and Tyson Bridger was standing next to her, even if he was unaware of her presence.
She would’ve preferred something sturdy. Or at least something that would hurt.
Speaking of which, the branches tugged at her hair, and she clenched her teeth to keep from making a sound. Unlike her mother and Violet who were having a conversation about why the spirit board hadn’t worked.
“I told you it would only work at the exact time of death and the place of the murder. He obviously wasn’t killed in the center of the maze where his body was found, but somewhere else,” Maureen Hart explained.
Violet sighed. “Well, if they don’t know exactly where he was actually killed, how are we supposed to find it?”
Hazel dug her fingers into the dirt and pulled out a stick. Too flimsy. The next she tried wouldn’t come free. The third was perfect. It was thick, and the end was pointy enough to hurt. And even better, it didn’t seem brittle enough to break on the first attempt.
Still, she’d have to be fast, and the way her muscles ached, she wasn’t sure she could manage.
Well—she had to.
Maureen and Violet’s footsteps clomped closer, and if they came upon Tyson Bridger, she didn’t like to think what he might do. He’d already killed one person for his greed. There was no saying how many he might attempt.
That meant Hazel had to act now.
She lined up the stick with the meaty part of his calf and stabbed at it as hard as she could.
The stick met flesh, and he cried.
Hazel pulled it back and stabbed him again.
Another cry, and this time, he bent forward and grabbed the stick, so she took that as her cue to roll toward him. Hazel thrashed out of the hedge and tumbled right into the bent over Tyson Bridger. Thankfully, he wasn’t particularly large or fit, so he went down like a sack of potatoes.
“I’m here, and I have the killer,” Hazel cried as Tyson Bridger lifted his arms to cover his face.
Hazel frowned at the man crumpled beneath her, and carefully got to her feet.
“Killer? Are you insane? You just attacked me on my own property! What are you doing here?” he cried and backed up on his palms and heels, as if trying to get as far away from her as possible.
However, when Maureen and Violet stepped out of the opening in the hedge maze behind him, he stopped. His expression changed into that same dangerous sneer Hazel saw in the photo on Brandon’s phone.
Anthony Ray pulled free of Violet.
“Hazel! There you are. What happened to you?”
“I fell,” Hazel said and tried to brush some of the dirt and branches from her jacket. “And you can stop lying, Mr. Bridger.”
Anthony Ray trotted up to her and rubbed agai
nst her legs. Then he looked at Tyson and gave him a long hiss.
“Lying about what? Who have I killed? That boy? Why would I bother murdering someone on my own property? For what reason?” Tyson said and let out a joyless laugh.
Hazel gave him a level stare. “I’m glad you asked, Mr. Bridger. You killed him because he caught you planning insurance fraud. I’m not sure how many priceless antiquities you’ve lost in the last fourteen years or so, but I think the first was that yacht that sank during an unfortunate accident at prom. I’m not sure if you actually had anything to do with that, but once you got the check from the insurance agency, you realized that maybe your antiques were worth a little bit more gone than they were actually intact. However, losing the real thing hurt too much, didn’t it?”
He shook his head and slowly climbed to his feet. “This is harassment. As soon as I get the sheriff down here all three of you will be arrested for trespassing.”
Hazel’s mom snorted. “I doubt that. Go on, Hazy. This is getting interesting.”
Hazel grinned at her mother. “So instead of putting the real antique out, you started replacing them with replicas. Only the insurance agency didn’t know that. Because when the appraisers came by, you’d show them the real pieces. Yet when a piece went missing, it was always a replica. But the insurance paid out for the real thing. You couldn’t do too many pieces at once, but you do throw an awful lot of high risk parties at your property. Dances with teenagers. Teenagers who aren’t particularly careful around antiques.”
Her mother’s flashlight shone between Tyson, Violet, and Hazel herself. “That makes a lot of sense. More sense than Jay Turner anyway.”
Hazel nodded. “But there was a problem this last time, wasn’t there? You thought Brandon knocking down your Nara era oil lamp was perfect. You had a good reason to suspect it being missing because someone had already knocked it over, but what you didn’t expect was that he would catch you burying it on the property.”
Tyson Bridger shook his head and bared his teeth. “You have no proof. I gave the police evidence of Jay Turner attacking that poor boy. I left the party long before they even did. There is a video of me driving away.”
Hazel’s hand closed around the phone in her pocket, and she slowly drew it out. “There may be, but I have Brandon Sizemore’s phone. And there’s a photo of you minutes before he died. I think this is better proof than your video. As to how you got back? I’m assuming you drove back after everyone had gone home—or you thought everyone had gone home. Of course, there were a few stragglers. Brandon was the last one here. After Amber left him walking back toward the house, she saw a car come up the drive. I assume it was you, and Brandon caught you after he tried the door and found it locked. He was looking for his jacket and saw you instead. Being a teenager of this day and age, he took a photo.”
Tyson Bridger glanced between all three of them. “If you really think I’m a cold-blooded killer, it’s kind of stupid for you to tell me exactly what I did while you’re all alone on my property.” His voice sounded deeper than before—angrier.
Hazel shook her head. “We’re not alone. There are three of us and one of you. After he took the photo of you, you tried to get his phone, but he ran into the hedge maze. He threw it into a bush, and in your rage, you shoved him down the steps near the center of the maze. Brandon fell and broke his neck. He probably bashed his head on the steps as well. You dragged his body to the rosebush and then went looking for the phone, after you cleaned those bloody stairs. In fact, I’d say you’ve been looking for it every night since he died.”
Tyson Bridger opened his mouth to say something, and the friendly wail of sirens filled the air. The whites of his eyes shone in the light of the moon, and he spun on his heel and turned to run.
Hazel was about to sprint after him, but Violet got there first. The spirit board was tucked under her arm, she yanked it free and swung at his back. The man crumpled like a second sack of potatoes, and Violet sat on his back and hit him in the head with the board a second time.
“Violet!” Hazel cried and limped up to the teenager.
“You said it was best used to brain someone. I wanted to try it out, so he wouldn’t escape,” she said with a smile much too broad for that early in the morning after everything Hazel had just been through.
Tyson Bridger groaned, but stayed put until the police showed up.
As Sheriff Cross and his deputies tumbled into the hedge maze, the tension in Hazel’s body released, and she was sure she would’ve turned into a Hazel puddle if not for the strong arm that wrapped around hers.
“What on earth?” the sheriff said and looked between the four of them.
Hazel’s father shuffled behind and pulled Hazel’s mother into a hug.
“It’s not her fault, Uncle Colton. Me and Mrs. Hart wanted to use the spirit board and we snuck in here. Hazel came to find us and caught the killer instead. And then you found us.”
Sheriff Cross touched a spot near Hazel’s chin and she flinched. “Is it bad?”
“You’ve got a bit of a scrape. Let’s get you cleaned up, and you can tell me exactly how this man is our killer.”
Hazel nodded. “Deal.”
Chapter 23
It took the rest of the night and day for all of the evidence of Tyson Bridger’s crimes to be accounted for.
For one, Sheriff Cross sent the surveillance video of Jay attacking Brandon to a friend of his in the SFPD and found that what Hazel said was right. The footage was from earlier that night and the timestamp had been faked.
Brandon’s phone was now in the sheriff’s possession, along with the fake Nara oil lamp and the shirt buried next to it, which happen to have Brandon Sizemore’s blood on it, further incriminating Tyson Bridger.
The police also got a warrant to search the Rockwell Manor and found all sorts of cases of insurance fraud over the years. Hazel had been right. He always kept the pieces he’d claimed had been stolen or broken. He just put them in hidden safes throughout the estate to fool the insurance company to pay out.
And he only did a small piece every few years to avoid rousing suspicion. If Brandon Sizemore hadn’t caught him in the act, Tyson Bridger probably would’ve gone on doing it who knows how long.
According to the sheriff, the man cracked after a good hour of questioning. Probably since he realized the case against him was much too strong. He’d confessed to everything.
Hazel herself got cleaned up at the local ER, then her mother drove her home. She even left an early-morning message for Michael to run the shop by himself, if possible, and promised her mother she’d sleep in.
With the killer found, the dust started to settle around Cedar Valley once again, like it always did.
That Friday, the memorial service for Brandon was held, and nearly the entire town attended. Travis cried and gave a lovely little speech, standing next to, of all people, Amber. She actually held his hand, and the whole thing brought tears to Hazel’s eyes.
Robbie Smith put an arm around Travis when he got off the stage, and Jay rustled his hair. At least he had a good support system. He’d get through this.
Travis gave Hazel a watery smile as the service ended. “Thanks. For finding the killer and clearing Jay. I told you he didn’t do it.”
Hazel nodded. “You were right. Sorry I doubted him. What are your plans after graduation?”
Travis shrugged. He wore an oversized sweatshirt with the Cedar Valley High logo on it. She had a suspicion it had been Brandon’s. “I don’t know. Scholarship, maybe. I think I might want to go to Sacramento State, if I can.”
“That’s a good plan,” Hazel said and gave him a hug.
As Travis excused himself, Jay made an appearance. “Hey. I, uh, needed to thank you for proving I was innocent. Otherwise…”
Otherwise, he may have ended up in prison. Hazel shrugged. “Not a problem. But, try not to get into any more fights. Celia has a high opinion of you. It’d be nice if you lived up to it all the
time.”
Jay clenched his jaw but nodded. “Okay. You’re right. I need to settle a bit. I’m not eighteen anymore. Hey, if you ever want to come by the Taproom, drinks are on me. Even Shirley Temples.”
“Get some decent wine, and I’ll take you up on it,” Hazel said with a smile.
Esther was looking more frazzled than earlier in the week and glowered as Hazel approached the table of food. “I can’t believe all of you going off in the middle of the night like that,” she said for the hundredth time.
“Do you want us to wake you up next time?” Hazel said and plucked a cupcake from the rack.
“I hope there isn’t a next time. And I’m glad you’re all safe and a killer is behind bars. And that this week is over. I need a full night of sleep,” she said and smoothed her hands over her sensible black dress.
Hazel nodded. A week ago, they were having an entirely different conversation just a few hours later at the Spring Fling Dance. Now, they were at a memorial service. Things changed much too quickly. Opportunities slipped away.
Hazel intended not to let anymore pass her by. “Ask Raj out. If you like him, go on a date. You guys have been beating around the bush for months.”
Esther gasped. “You’re one to talk.”
Hazel ate the cupcake in four bites, wiped her lips, and shook her head. “I’m going to dinner with the sheriff tonight.”
Esther chuckled. “Good luck. I’m glad. And, maybe I will. Ruth and Ripa could have a play date.”
Hazel smiled and ducked out.
When she got outside she found Violet sitting cross-legged in the back of her truck reading a library book. This time it was Crime and Punishment.
“Haven’t you had enough murder for this week?” Hazel asked and leaned against the side of the truck.
Violet shrugged. “I guess. But it was next on my to read list so here it is. I hear you have a big date tonight with Uncle Colton. It’s about time. Where are you two going?”
Hazel took a deep breath of the cool spring air. She hadn’t broken anything in her tumble, but the scrape on her chin was apparent and she had plenty of bruises to show for it. Still, even that couldn’t dull her spirits. “Mexican, I think. I want tacos.”