Twisted

by Laura K. Curtis

  By Laura K. Curtis

  The Harp Security series

  Twisted

  Lost

  Echoes

  Mind Games

  The Goody’s Goodies series

  Toying with His Affections

  Gaming the System

  For Mike, who was patient, and for Lydia, who was not.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Landmarks

  Cover

  Title Page

  Body Matter

  Chapter One

  When Momma died, Timmy and I ran. The way I saw it, any man who’d stab a woman five times, then slit her throat and leave her lying on the floor, blood soaking into the worn carpet and running in rivulets down the ancient grout between the kitchen tiles, wouldn’t hesitate to get rid of any other little inconveniences in his life.

  from A Bad Day to Die by Lucy Sadler Caldwell [DRAFT]

  Every battle called for a specific weapon, and over the years Lucy had become accustomed to carrying at least one at all times. Now, without the weight of a pistol at her hip or back, the reassuring bite of a sheath at her ankle, or even the knowledge of a can of Mace in her purse, she felt supremely vulnerable. But she could hardly walk into a police station armed to the teeth, no matter how much she might prefer to.

  So instead of checking the bullets in a magazine, she patted the tight bun restraining her wavy hair, spritzed her neck with a touch of eau de toilette, and gave her appearance one last once-over in the rearview mirror. Good to go.

  Sliding out of the Range Rover in a pencil skirt and high heels wasn’t easy, but when she turned to walk up the steps to the station house and caught a man on the sidewalk doing a double take, satisfaction swirled through her. The costume had been worth the effort. As she swung open the heavy iron-and-­glass door, she nodded at the man, who narrowed his eyes and frowned. The disapproval radiating from him almost made her laugh, and she entered the building on a wave of renewed confidence.

  Her first challenge sat behind a long counter directly ahead of her and just inside the door, ostensibly guarding against unauthorized personnel. In reality, the barrier—and guardian—were flimsy.

  Lucy could have vaulted the counter and knocked Marge Bollingham flat on her butt in less than a second. Marge looked up from the crossword puzzle in front of her, and Lucy saw recognition darken her eyes and pale her skin.

  “May I help you?” Marge asked, her voice stiff and decidedly unhelpful.

  “I’m here to speak to Chief Donovan.” Lucy kept her own tone as friendly as possible.

  “He’s busy.”

  Indeed, behind the counter, beyond the six desks that comprised the bullpen of the small department, Lucy could see what had to be the chief’s office. The door was open, and a dark-haired man sat behind a desk talking to a uniformed officer.

  “I’ll wait,” she said.

  Marge’s lips flattened. “I’ll buzz him,” she said at last. And then, as if it had only just occurred to her, “Who shall I tell him is waiting?”

  Games. Why did everyone have to play games? But if Marge wanted to waste time, Lucy would oblige. “Lucy Sadler Caldwell,” she said. Then she glanced ostentatiously down at the nameplate on the counter between them. “Marge.”

  The woman stiffened, but didn’t reply. She pushed some buttons on the phone in front of her and Lucy saw the man in the office pick up his phone.

  “Someone’s here to speak with you, Chief,” said Marge. “Her name’s Lucy Sadler.”

  At the name, the cop who’d been talking to the chief whipped around. Lucy was too far from them to make out anything distinctive, but she was surprised to see feminine features beneath the short blonde hair.

  Donovan must have asked her to come back, because without further word Marge hung up and pushed a button beneath the counter and a section swung inward to let Lucy pass. Lucy carefully closed the barrier behind her and gave Marge a smile before walking back toward the office. The uniformed cop had disappeared, and Donovan was standing when she arrived. Christ, the man was tall. Even in three-inch heels, she had to look up to him, a fact she vaguely resented. Black hair fell in a shock over the front of his forehead and grazed the neck of his khaki uniform shirt, and for a split second furious heat blazed in his green eyes. But it was gone so fast, she might have imagined it.

  He held out a hand. “Ms. . . .Sadler, is it? I’m Ethan Donovan, Dobbs Hollow’s chief of police.”

  “Actually, it’s Lucy Caldwell. Lucy Sadler died a long time ago.” She took the hand, willing her own to stay cool and steady as Donovan’s gaze sparked with interest at her statement.

  The phone buzzed, and Lucy turned to look out at Marge. But Donovan hadn’t released her yet, and he had to have felt the involuntary clench of her muscles when she saw the man standing in the bullpen as if he owned it.

  Donovan let go of her hand, his calloused palm sliding against her own where every nerve in her body had suddenly focused. “Excuse me just a minute,” he said, stepping out from behind the desk and leaning out the office door.

  “I’m busy at the moment, Mayor Dobbs,” he said, his body blocking the doorway. “Can I get back to you in an hour or two?”

  Lucy couldn’t hear the mayor’s response, but it went on for quite some time. Eventually, Donovan nodded. “That’ll be just fine.” A moment later, still blocking her view, he asked Lucy whether she minded if someone else sat in on their meeting. “A precaution, you understand,” he said with a disarming smile that slashed deep grooves in his cheeks. “I’d like to close the door against interruptions, but nowadays that’s not such a smart move, even in small-town departments.”

  Laughter bubbled up in Lucy’s throat. Was he worried about being accused of sexually harassing her? Her? In this town? Far more likely, she’d be accused of seducing him. But he’d find that out soon enough without her enlightening him.

  “Not a problem,” she replied. “I completely understand.”

  “Excellent.” He waved to someone in the bullpen, and a minute later the same blonde cop who’d been in his office came to the door. It took Lucy a full second to recognize her.

  “Tara Jean!” She leapt from her seat, practically tripping over the blasted high heels in her shock. “Look at you!”

  Tara Jean grinned back at her. “Look at you,” she retorted. “The famous author returns.”

  “Hardly. You don’t get famous writing true crime.” And then the words sank in. “How did you know?”

  “Why don’t we all sit?” Donovan suggested, drawing her attention back to him.

  For a moment, she’d forgotten he was even there, forgotten the whole point of her visit to the police station. “Of course.” She took her seat, and TJ settled in the chair next to hers while Donovan went back around the desk.

  “Shall we start again?” he asked.

  “Sure.” She swallowed. “Would you like me to go first?”

  “That might be best.”

  “You asked my name. When Tara knew me, it was Lucy Sadler. Now, it’s Lucy Caldwell. I had
no idea anyone knew Lucy Sadler of Dobbs Hollow and Lucy Caldwell, true-crime chronicler, were the same person.”

  “I recognized you from the author picture in your third book. In fact”—she broke off and looked at Donovan, who nodded—“I was talking to Ethan about you when you came in.”

  “You were?” Lucy recalled the way Ethan had reacted to Marge’s message, cutting short his meeting and double-checking her last name when he introduced himself.

  “Ellen Wilson recognized you this morning driving through town. She called me to see if I knew why you had come home. I wanted to explain who you were, since Ethan’s only been here a few months.”

  And he’d be getting complaints the minute word got out she’d returned.

  “How far did you get?”

  “Not far. She only called a minute or two before you arrived.” Tara Jean reached over and laid a hand over hers. “I hadn’t gotten past the fact that you used to live here, and now you’re a famous

  writer.”

  “I can’t believe you actually read my books.”

  “Of course I did. They’re incredible. I bet even Ethan’s read them.”

  Lucy glanced across the desk, and Donovan’s lips twisted into a wry smile. “’Fraid not. I surely will, though. But name and occupation aside, was there a reason you came to see me today? Something you wanted to talk about?”

  “Yes.” Lucy pulled a sheaf of papers from the black tote bag she’d laid next to her chair and pushed them across the desk at him. “I wanted to give you these: copies of my permits, the concealed-carry license, and the registration numbers.”

  Donovan didn’t look down. Instead, he held her gaze with his own. In the deep, forest green of his eyes, she saw that same spark of interest he’d shown when she declared Lucy Sadler dead burn even brighter.

  She dropped her eyes, squelching the urge to fidget by spreading the papers across the desk with a fingertip. “The rest are from departments I’ve worked with over the past few years. The names and numbers are for people there who can attest to the quality and legitimacy of my work.”

  She leaned down and reached into her bag once more, pulled out four books, and laid them in front of him, covers up.

  “If you skim them, you’ll get an idea of what I’ll be doing while I’m here.”

  “I’ll read them.” Still, he never even glanced at the books, never took his eyes off her. “But how ’bout you give me a little preview.”

  Lifting her chin, she met his gaze solidly with her own.

  “I’ll be investigating my mother’s murder.”

  Chapter Two

  No one was surprised at Momma’s murder. Lots of folks figured she had it coming. She was, after all, a woman of few scruples and fewer morals. She drank and slept around and had two kids with no fathers. But she was my mother. Mine and Timmy’s. And we loved her.

  from A Bad Day to Die by Lucy Sadler Caldwell [DRAFT]

  “TELL ME.” ONCE Lucy had dropped her bombshell and taken off, Ethan had sent TJ’s partner out on patrol alone. An itch at the base of his neck he’d learned at no small cost to trust warned him his days chasing addicts, drunks, and teenagers had come to an end.

  “Lucy’s mother was . . .well, as they used to say back then, at least in our hearing, ‘no better than she had to be.’ When they thought we weren’t listening, the words they used were less generous. I don’t think either Lucy or Timmy knew their fathers, and Cecile had no visible means of income.”

  “And she was murdered.”

  “You should have asked her about this.” TJ shifted, clearly conflicted about revealing her friend’s history.

  “You know better than that. Once I have a grip on what we’re looking at, I’ll get details from her. But I don’t want her interpretation as my introduction to the case.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Still, she took a minute before she continued. “Cecile was stabbed to death seventeen years ago. When Lucy was fifteen and Tim was around three. We never saw Lucy or her brother again. Sheriff Pike’s daddy was chief then, and he didn’t give a tinker’s damn about who’d murdered the town whore, so eventually the talk died down and the whole ‘unpleasant incident’ was forgotten.”

  “Doesn’t seem like Marge has forgotten. Or Ellen Wilson.” He touched the papers on the desk. “And given the amount of firepower your old friend brought with her, it doesn’t seem as if she expects other people to have forgotten, either.”

  TJ took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Small towns are all about family and family names.” She chewed a thumbnail as she spoke. “Mine’s good, so it can take a beating. People even forgave me for taking a real job when I should have been home baking cookies and making babies. But the Sadlers couldn’t do anything right. More than that, no matter what they did, they couldn’t escape their name.

  “Marge’s niece, Ginny, got pregnant when she was sixteen. We’re talking”—she stared off, lips moving slightly, silently, as she counted back in time—“eighteen years ago. Ginny told her mother she’d been forced to sleep with her boyfriend, because if she didn’t, he’d . . .” Her mouth twisted.

  “He’d find someone else.”

  “One of the Sadlers. The threat was pretty common back then, and Lucy and Cecile were interchangeable.”

  “Jesus, TJ! You were what, ten? And Lucy was fourteen?”

  “I was twelve. Two years behind her.”

  “How did you even hear about a thing like that?”

  “Middle school and high school shared a building here up until seven years ago. Anything that went on in the high school, the younger ones found out. Plus, I heard Drew pull that same shit on his girlfriend once.

  “But that’s neither here nor there. Marge, and everyone in Marge’s family, blamed Lucy for Ginny’s ‘disgrace.’ It was easier than shunning Ginny, who was super popular and whose family owned the only bookstore in town. A lot of other women Ginny’s age did things in those days they’d rather not take responsibility for. Since Lucy wasn’t here to defend herself, she became the scapegoat for all of it.”

  Ethan tapped his fingers against the desk. “Huh. And now?”

  “I wish I could say for sure. Some people are likely happy to have the sacrificial lamb back in

  town, while others probably don’t care for the reminder of what they did years ago. What happened back then . . . parts of it aren’t mine to tell. But the day—the week, really—of Cecile’s death was one of those times you never forget. For me, it was like realizing I’d been living in Stepford all my life, that people I’d thought were mildly annoying were actually evil and the others went along because it benefited them in some way. The Pikes, my own family, the whole damned town. I was happy Lucy had escaped.”

  “Whatever it is you’re not saying, Lucy doesn’t seem to have held it against you, though she certainly doesn’t care for your father. You should have seen her face when he walked in demanding an audience. What does she think of your brother, Drew?”

  TJ laughed, her troubled blue eyes suddenly cold and flat. “If he had a heart, she’d probably put a stake through it. But if he turns up dead, I’ll swear on my mother’s grave I never said that.”

  Ethan’s curiosity clamored, but long-unused instinct warned him he couldn’t press without TJ shutting down entirely, so he changed the subject. He touched the books on his desk.

  “You knew she’d written these, even though she didn’t use the name Sadler.”

  “Strictly coincidence. I picked up Seven, Eight because it was recommended reading in my criminal justice class. I didn’t realize till I saw her picture inside the cover that Lucy Caldwell and Lucy Sadler were the same person. There was no missing it, though. Her father must have had weak genes, ’cause Lucy could be Cecile’s clone. Once I discovered she’d started writing true crime, I knew sooner or later she’d try to find out what happened to her mother.
”

  “I’ll have to take a look at the file. Cecile Sadler?”

  “Aside from a couple of photos and the autopsy report, the file’s only two pages long. There’s some physical evidence—bits of blood and hair—but they never came up with a suspect to match it to. Like I said, her murder wasn’t high priority. Most common belief was that a stranger did it, some man she’d picked up in a bar. But I never believed that. I always thought Lucy took off out of fear the guy would do the same to her and Timmy as he had to Cecile, then changed her name to stay out of sight.”

  “And you just happen to know the report is two pages long?” Just how deep did TJ’s relationship with the enigmatic Lucy Sadler Caldwell go? And despite Lucy’s anger and determination, would her arrival actually change anything? Seventeen years was a long time for a case to be cold. Not that even older cases hadn’t been closed. Perhaps her killer had been caught for some other crime in the meantime, his DNA logged into the system. If there was anything left to test from Cecile’s case, he could check.

  “You remember how when I came on board six months ago I went through the files to . . . uh . . . familiarize myself with how everything in the department worked?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well, I familiarized myself with Lucy’s case, too.”

  “You went back a ways to do that. I checked the last ten years myself when I was hired. In all that time, we have five unsolveds. You know what they are?”

  “One homicide, when the Gas ’n’ Go clerk got shot; one missing person; an arson; and two armed robberies. If you’d gone a little further than that, you’d have found another arson—though Al Pike insisted it was an accident, cause unknown—Cecile’s murder, another missing person, and two rapes. I went back twenty years.”

  “Good job. I knew you were thorough when I hired you, but that’s above and beyond.”

  TJ blushed a little at the compliment. “Of course, unless Lucy finds a way to connect them to her mother’s murder, none of the other unsolveds are apt to matter, so there’s no reason to review them. But when Miz Wilson called, I knew it was all about to start again. And, to be blunt, it scares the hell out of me. If Cecile’s killer is still in town, I could lose a friend all over again. This time for good.”