by B. J Daniels
“Where can we find Melody?” Kate asked.
The man looked wary again. “How should I know?”
Kate shifted to remind him no doubt of the pistol in her lap. “Tammy Holden thought you and Melody were...together.”
K.O. didn’t like the implication. “Watch what you say about Melody. She’s had it worse than anyone in the family.” He looked up and met Tucker’s gaze. “If you’re looking to get even for what Madeline did, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Melody had nothing to do with it.”
When the front door of the bar opened letting in a shaft of sunlight and a gust of wind, everyone turned to see who was coming in. Silhouetted in the doorway was a woman with long blond hair. As she started to step in, Tucker saw her face and gasped. Madeline.
* * *
AFTER HARP WALKED around town, talking to anyone who would give him the time of day, he finally ended up at the bar. It was relatively quiet with only a couple of old-timers at one end of the bar and a wino-looking man at the other end.
He took the bar stool next to the wino, ordered a beer and struck up a conversation. The man looked at him bleary-eyed until Harp offered to buy him a drink. He and Ray became best buddies after that.
“So what’s the deal with the Dunn family?” he asked.
“Kell Dunn was a prick,” the man said without hesitation.
Harp laughed, glad to have someone finally telling him what he really thought. “And the son?”
“K.O.?” Ray shrugged. “Not a bad kid.”
“Okay, what about the girls?”
“There was something wrong there, spooky to see three of ’em looking like carbon copies.” Ray shook his head. “Kell and his crazy wife dressed them alike for years. Those girls were his pride and joy.” The man chuckled. “His downfall, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“They scattered like rain the moment they were old enough. Broke him. Add to that his financial ruin.”
“What about Misty Dunn? I heard she killed herself.”
“Did she?” The man laughed and took a long pull on his drink.
Harp blinked. “What are you saying?”
“Half the people in town think Kell killed her. She apparently was his favorite.”
“And the other half of town?”
Ray rubbed his grizzled chin for a moment, studying himself in the mirror behind the bar. “That it was one of the sister’s done it. Never seen a body put into the ground that quickly. Buried her in the old cemetery before she was even cold.”
Harp frowned. “I heard they didn’t have a funeral.”
“One of the girls came into town for wood for the casket. That’s how cheap Kell was. If you get them in the ground soon enough, you don’t have to have the body embalmed.”
Harp thought about that for a moment. “You know where I can find a shovel?” Ray just happened to have one in the back of his truck.
“I’ll get your shovel back to you.” Harp handed him a ten.
“No hurry.” Ray started back into the bar after giving him instructions to the old cemetery. “I should warn you. People say that piece of land is haunted.” The old wino looked toward the sinking sun. “I’d dig fast if I was you.”
Once at the cemetery, Harp almost changed his mind. The sun seemed to be disappearing fast, casting long shadows through the gravestones and the trees that bordered the cemetery.
But still he got out, grabbed the shovel and headed in through the weed-choked path. As he did, he noticed that he wasn’t the only one who’d been here recently.
On a hunch, Harp followed the fresh tracks in the dust right to Misty Dunn’s grave. He took in the graves and markers. The mother was buried here and apparently the grandmother. So where was the old man buried? Or was he still alive? Ray had said the family cleared out right after Misty went into the ground.
No wonder people thought it was suspicious. No one had seen any of them since, from what he’d been able to find out. Very odd.
With the day cooling down from the waning sun, he went to work and hadn’t dug far when the shovel hit something solid that made a loud thump and sent a shudder up his arms. That alone spooked him. Weren’t bodies supposed to be buried six feet deep?
He began to dig faster. Harp felt his excitement increasing. Everyone in town had told a different story. But what they’d all been saying was that something was wrong about Misty’s death—and burial. He needed to know if Misty Dunn was in this wooden box. Pushing away all his fears of the dead, he shoveled faster.
His shovel struck the wood again. It had rotted over the years. That’s why he should have known better than to jump down onto it. The wood held for a moment, then collapsed under his weight. He grabbed for earth, repelled by the thought of falling onto the body.
Bracing himself for the worst given the odor rising up out of that coffin, Harp managed to balance on one edge. He peeled back a piece of the rotten wood top. Hot, sweaty and filthy with the fine dirt, he tried not to think about haunted cemeteries or the dead all watching him dig up a body.
As he peeled the wood back and looked down at the mummified face, a cry of revulsion escaped his lips. He stared into the dark holes where the eyes used to be, a chill running the length of him just moments before he heard a sound behind him and the scrape of the shovel being picked up off the ground.
His cell phone rang. Vicki. He pulled it out. Saw the text. Vicki was having the baby.
The flat of the shovel blade caught him in the side of the head. Harp fell face-first onto the rotten coffin. He felt his legs drop down onto the body inside. He tried to get up, but as he did, he was knocked down as a shovelful of dirt struck him in the back. Struck by another shovelful of dirt, then another, he couldn’t breathe from the weight of it. A shovelful of dirt landed on his neck. His face slammed into the edge of the coffin, and just before the lights went out, he thought he heard the sound of a vehicle.
* * *
KATE SAW THE blonde’s gaze lock with K.O.’s an instant before the woman spun around and tore out of the bar. Tucker seemed too shocked to move. Kate grabbed her purse, slid off her bar stool and went after the woman.
She caught up with her before Melody Dunn reached the street. “Melody?” She grabbed her arm and spun her around to face her.
Shock made her let go of the woman’s arm. She stared into Melody’s blank blue eyes, her heart pounding. Behind her, she heard the bar door bang open. Tucker and K.O. joined them. Several other men came out, as well.
“Go back inside,” K.O. ordered the men. “I have this under control. Now!” He dropped his menacing tone at once as he saw how upset his sister was. He reached for her hand. “It’s all right, Melody. No one is going to hurt you.”
“I wanted a cola.” She choked out the words like sobs in a little-girl voice. “You said I could come in and have a cola as long as I was careful and didn’t go out into the street.”
“You did great. I’m sorry you got scared. Come on back inside. I’ll get you a cola. You can sit in your favorite booth and drink it while I talk to these people.”
Melody turned empty blue eyes on them for a moment. “A big cola with lots of ice and a cherry. Don’t forget the cherry.”
“I won’t. I’ll make it just the way you like it.” He looked at Kate. “I’ll be out in a minute.” With that, he ushered his sister into the bar.
Kate’s gaze shifted to Tucker. He looked as if he’d been hit by a truck. Melody Dunn was beautiful and clearly damaged. Kate had seen that the moment she’d looked into the woman’s eyes.
K.O. came back out looking like a whipped dog. “I hope you have what you came for. You know now why I’m protective of Melody.”
“What happened to her?” Tucker asked.
“A car accident shortly after we left Clawson Creek. The doctor says she has the mind of a five-yea
r-old.” K.O. looked up, grief in his eyes. “Like I said, my family is cursed.”
“Why did you leave Clawson Creek the way you did?” Kate asked.
“I had to get Melody away from Madeline.” His voice broke. “I didn’t know what happened to Madeline and Misty. My father had made some bad investments and lost everything. I would imagine he left because creditors were chasing him. I didn’t know what happened to Madeline and Misty.”
“Inside the bar, when you heard that the woman we believe was Madeline had been murdered, I got the feeling that you suspected who might have done it,” Kate said.
“I told you. I wasn’t involved in my sister’s...business.”
“But you knew about it,” Tucker said.
“I knew she conned men out of trinkets, yes.”
“You also knew about the water trick she pulled,” Kate said.
“Madeline was like a fish when she was little. She loved water and climbing trees and doing crazy things. Nothing scared her. We were the ones who were afraid of her. Our father said she’d been chosen by the devil. He tried to exorcise the evil out of her.” K.O. shook his head. “If anything, it only made her worse.”
“What about Misty?” Tucker asked.
K.O. shook his head. “I hadn’t seen her before I left with Melody, but I knew she would do whatever Madeline told her to do. I couldn’t save her, but I thought I could save Melody.” He looked like he might cry. “Instead, I almost got her killed.”
“So Misty could have helped Madeline with her cons?” Kate prodded.
“I suppose so,” he said. “Look, Madeline was very persuasive. Who knows what she talked anyone into.”
Kate looked over at Tucker, wondering at how persuasive Madeline had been.
The door of the bar opened. Melody stuck her head out tentatively. “I ate the cherry. It’s all gone.” She sounded close to tears.
“I have to go,” K.O. said. “I’m coming,” he called to his sister. “Go wait for me and I’ll bring you two cherries.”
Melody broke into a huge smile, making the years vanish and giving Kate a glimpse of what Madeline had looked like when Tucker had loved her. Beautiful but also damaged. She wondered if that was a combination that her brother had also found irresistible.
The door closed. The wind picked up some trash along the front of the building and sent it whirling into the air.
But Kate hardly noticed. She’d seen Tucker’s expression when he’d looked at Melody as if he was seeing Madeline. She felt her heart break for him and for herself.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The bruised sky had darkened ominously. “Just one more thing,” Tucker said. “We were at your old house outside Clawson Creek yesterday. Someone took potshots at us.”
“It wasn’t me. I was here all day. You can ask around. Why would you go there?” K.O. asked, sounding horrified. “I haven’t been back to that house in almost twenty years. You couldn’t get me to go back there, even at gunpoint.”
“Did Madeline ever break her leg? Her left leg?”
K.O. frowned. “No, that was Misty. Madeline pushed her down the stairs. Why are you asking me this?”
Tucker swore under his breath. The body in the creek wasn’t Madeline’s. It was Misty’s. Was it possible? Was Madeline still alive? “If Misty was the one who broke her leg, then the body in the creek is hers—not Madeline’s.”
Kate couldn’t miss K.O.’s shock. All the color drained from his face. He took a step toward the bar, then another. He looked as if he wanted to take off running and never stop. But he had Melody waiting for him.
He hesitated at the bar door, looking back at them for a moment. From inside came Melody’s plaintive call to him. He seemed to take a deep breath and entered, the door closing behind him.
Kate looked at Tucker. “It wasn’t Madeline in the creek?”
“My brother told me that one of the leg bones had an old fracture. I think there is a good chance it was Misty on the bridge that night, not Madeline.”
She shook her head, reeling from the implications. Tucker looked as if he’d been coldcocked with a bat. “But we saw Misty’s grave at the old cemetery outside Clawson Creek. If the woman in the creek was Misty, then who is in that grave?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THUNDER BOOMED CLOSER. The temperature dropped. Lightning splintered nearby. Before Tucker could move, the sky seemed to open. Huge droplets of rain swept down like bullets.
Only moments before, he’d been rooted to the ground, his head spinning. Of course that had been Misty on the bridge that night. The fear. The hesitation. Not Madeline. Not the woman who’d conned him for so long before getting her sister to finish it on the bridge.
Goose bumps had rippled over his skin. To think that Madeline might be alive... The duffel bag in her old house. The perfumed notes. She’d been trying to tell him all this time to back off.
The rain brought him back to earth with a jolt.
He and Kate made a run for his pickup, both getting soaked before they could slide inside and slam the doors. The storm, which had been hanging over them ominously since this morning, now roared around them. The raindrops turned to sleet and then hail before his eyes.
Gale-force winds rocked the pickup as hail pinged off the hood and cab. “I’ve heard about storms in this area,” Tucker said, having to yell to be heard over the racket. “But I’ve never seen anything like this.” He glanced over at Kate. She looked just as good soaking wet as she did dry.
“I’ve never seen anything like this, either,” she said, staring out at the storm. But he could tell she was more shocked by what they’d just learned.
“This could be a problem.” Tucker watched water run down the center of the dirt road they’d just driven in on for a moment before starting the pickup’s engine.
“What do you mean?” Kate asked, looking over at him.
“These roads turn to gumbo. We need to get out of here—if it isn’t already too late.” He backed out, but the moment he pulled onto the already-muddy road, he realized it was too late. The top layer of dust that had churned up on their way to Hell Creek was now greasy slick. The tires fought to find purchase. “I’m just hoping we can get back to that convenience store.”
The drive was less than a half mile, but the pickup was all over the road as he tried to get there. By the time he pulled into the convenience store gas station, the tires were thick with mud. It was clear they weren’t going any farther until the road dried back out.
“We’re not getting out of here until the weather changes,” he told Kate as they sat in the truck, waiting for a break in the rain to go inside. The hail had stopped. Now the rain fell in a torrent, running like a river into every low spot and pooling on the road. Low clouds scudded past on a wind that rocked the pickup.
“How long will that be?” she yelled over the noise of the pounding rain.
“Once the sun comes out, the gumbo will dry hard as concrete. Until then, though, we’re here.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” Kate asked after a few minutes of nothing but the hammer of the rain on the truck cab.
“No.” But he knew that wouldn’t stop her.
“Is it true? Is Madeline alive somewhere?”
“I don’t know. But I suspect she is.”
Kate shook her head. “She could be the one buried in Misty’s grave.” She sounded as if she was hoping that was true.
Neither of them spoke as the rain pounded the pickup with no sign of letting up.
“I think we should make a run for it,” Tucker said as he saw another vehicle fighting its way up the road. “You can stay here, but I’m going to see about getting us a couple of cabins until we can drive out of here.” He opened his door and ran, with Kate at his heels, of course.
* * *
KATE STOOD IN the center of the s
mall cabin and shivered as she watched Tucker get a fire going in the woodstove. Not long after they’d entered the convenience store, two pickup loads of fishermen had shown up. The owner of the place had given each group one cabin of the three she had left and told them to make the best of it because, according to the weather, it would be a day or two before anyone was getting out of there.
As they were headed through the rain to their cabin, another truck had pulled up with a boat on the back covered in mud. Looked like the two fishermen would be waiting in their truck, Tucker said. “We’re lucky we got a cabin. Don’t worry, you can have the bed.”
She looked at the bed now. A double that sagged in the middle covered with a worn comforter.
“Not your usual accommodations,” Tucker said now as he caught her looking at the bed. The fire flickered in the woodstove, spitting out the promise of heat.
“I can rough it with the best of them,” she said, taking offense.
He laughed. “You roughing it with the best of them, huh? Guess we’ll see about that since we’re stranded here for a while. I’m going to run over to the store and get us something to eat before those fishermen clean the place out. You want anything in particular to eat?”
She shook her head, just imagining what the small out-of-the-way convenience store might offer. “I’m not hungry.”
It was true. The only thing she wanted was sleep. She’d been all worked up on the way here, excited about the possibility of finally putting an end to her search. Now, though, after meeting K.O. and Melody, she felt confused and simply tired. Madeline might be alive? Wasn’t that what she’d hoped, that she would get the chance to confront the woman?
But that was before she met Tucker. Before she started falling for him. Now she never wanted to hear Madeline’s name ever again.
“I believe K.O. that he wasn’t working with his sister,” she said, feeling the need to talk about it rather than think or, worse, cry. “But I got the feeling that he had some idea of who might have killed her. Killed Misty, I guess.” She looked at him.
“Kate, I don’t have any answers. I need to call my brother so he can look into it.”