The students behind him started chatting.
Mark’s blue eyes darkened with raw heat. “Can I call you later to set it up?”
A thousand reasons she should say no flashed neon in her mind. A thousand neon reasons she chose to ignore. “Okay.”
* * *
Two o’clock that afternoon, Sheriff Adam Harper stopped his black-and-white in front of the white farmhouse about two miles outside of Pearlsville. He’d rather have taken the rest of the afternoon off and gone down to the local watering hole to call it the end of another boring day. But he’d given his word to Detective Sutton that he’d look into this. And while Adam might be the washed-up old sheriff of this Timbuktu county, he was a washed-up old sheriff of his word.
Plus, he’d heard TJ say he remembered all those Reed sisters he’d gone to school with being as pretty as their niece Jennifer, his receptionist. Pretty as sweet apple pie, TJ had said. And they were age appropriate. He found it odd that he didn’t already know them. According to TJ, the Reed clan wasn’t townspeople—sort of stuck to themselves.
Adam ran a hand through his thinning hair. He could use some apple pie in his life.
When Ella died five years before, he’d wanted to follow her to the hereafter. God knew he never dreamed of wanting another woman. Sure, he talked like a rounder, but he was a one-woman man. Losing Ella had sent him to a dark place that still haunted him sometimes.
He had one leg out the door when the voice of Rusty, his one and only deputy, echoed over the radio. “Sheriff? You still there?”
Dropping back into the seat, he picked up the mic. “What’s up?”
“It’s about the ol’ Reed file you sent me to the pits of hell to find. Do you know they don’t air-condition the basement of the courthouse? Do you know how hot it is?”
“You calling in a weather report, or did you find something?” His laugh evaporated in the hot car.
“Looks as if half the file is missing, but I got it.”
“Anything interesting?” Adam stared out at the dogtrot-styled house. The home was probably a hundred years old but kept up. The flowerbeds were filled with color and care.
“Not much more than TJ told ya. It was Sheriff Carter who wrote the file. Girl came up missing on a camping trip at Anniston State Park. Supposedly, they’d been swimming in the lake earlier in the morning, and family thought she might have gone back there.” Rusty paused. “It says the lake was searched, but a body was never found. Since no one other than the family ever saw the girl at the park, Anniston PD asked Pearlsville PD to poke around.”
Adam ran his hand over the steering wheel. “And what did Carter tell ’em?”
“That’s the part that’s missing. But considering there was actually a file on it, it seems something was suspected.”
“Bring the file to the office. I’ll look it over.”
“Will do. Catch you in the morn, if I don’t die of heat stroke first.”
Adam set down his mic on the holder and crawled out of his car. As he stepped onto the dirt driveway, he saw a woman’s face in the window. Before he could decide if TJ’s description of the Reed women was right, the curtain fluttered back into place. Sucking in his gut, he continued to the porch.
His hand had been poised midair to knock when the door swung open. He’d been prepared for a slice of sweet apple pie. Instead, he came nose to nose with the barrel of what looked like a sawed-off shotgun.
Chapter Eight
No!” A female’s voice screamed from behind the woman holding Adam at gunpoint.
Taking advantage of the interruption, he snatched the weapon out of his assailant’s hands.
Thankfully, it’d taken him only a second to realize the barrel shoved in his face wasn’t a sawed-off shotgun but a sawed-off pellet gun. Not that he was altogether thrilled with the idea of having his face pumped with BBs. But it was a hell of a lot better than thinking his deputies would be sweeping pieces of his face off the front porch.
“What the hell are you doing?” he yelled at the gray-haired woman. If she didn’t look frail, and if he hadn’t been bred to be a gentleman, he’d have her eating the carpet right now.
“I’m sorry.” The other woman, obviously the one he’d heard scream, rushed to the doorway. With one hand held over her heart, she put a protective arm around the older woman.
“Is she crazy?” he snapped. “I could have—”
“It’s not a real gun,” the sensible woman said in a sensible tone. “And yes…yes my sister suffers from mental illness. Please, I’m sorry.”
Her sincere tone and sweet voice had his fury sobering. But the panic from seeing the gun pointed at his nose still fizzed in his head. He met the soft-spoken woman’s blue eyes and took in her blond hair and attractive features. While the fine lines around her eyes put her in her fifties, her slender shape held a youthful appearance. And just like that, the thought that ran amok in his head was…pretty as apple pie. Taking a breath to chase away any remnants of his anger, he spoke. “I saw it wasn’t a real gun. But—”
“I don’t think it even has BBs in it.” She patted the frail woman’s shoulder, who stood there with an empty, permanently-out-to-lunch kind of look on her face. “Normally, Sarah wouldn’t do this but our brother just died and—”
“JoAnne, if I’m going to get you back to Houston, you’d better get your things.” A man, early sixties, medium height, walked into the room behind the two women. His gaze cut to Adam. “What’s going on?”
The pretty woman turned. “Sarah met the officer at the door with Johnny’s gun.”
The man clenched his jaw. “Put her to bed.” His tone sounded as if it might shatter. Inhaling, as if trying to control his emotions, he faced Adam. “Sorry, Sheriff. My sister’s not…she’s mentally challenged.” His frown deepened. “My name’s George Reed. I…I’ve been meaning to return your call, but we’ve had a death in the family.”
Adam’s leftover grief for his wife raised its head and left his chest feeling empty. “I understand about not returning the call. This”—he held up the gun—“is what I’m having trouble wrapping my head around.”
“Would you like something to drink, Sheriff?” a singsong female voice interrupted.
Adam looked over George Reed’s shoulder to see another woman in the doorway. She had the same blue eyes as the one who’d met him at the door, but she wore more makeup on her face than should have been legally allowed. Between the bright blue on her eyelids, the red on her lips, and the tight red dress—that should have been worn by someone half her age—she brought to mind the expression of “worn hard and put up wet.”
“A glass of tea would be mighty nice,” Adam said.
“Come into the kitchen.” She turned and sashayed into the next room.
Adam saw George Reed’s shoulders tense at the invitation, but he motioned Adam inside and took the gun from Adam’s hand.
Adam followed the crowd into the large kitchen. Another woman, mid-fifties, brunette, sat at the table, her posture spoke of defeat. Of grief. He offered a polite nod.
Leaning against the counter was another middle-aged man who looked enough like George Reed to assume them to be brothers. A ceiling fan hung above the table, tossing around warm, bacon-scented air and filling the room with an electric hum of grief.
“This is Freida Reed.” George pointed to the brunette. “My brother’s widow. This is my younger brother, Sam. And my sister Doris Roberts.” He pointed to the woman in red.
They nodded in a cordial but tense manner. Everyone but Doris. She shot him a smile as she moved—one hip at a time—carrying a glass of tea. The ice in the glass rattled as she moved. When she stopped in front of him, a smidgen too close, she held out the tea. Adam’s next breath caught a whiff of liquor on her breath.
“Thank you.” Another person walked into the room. It was the pretty woman. She had a small suitcase in her hands, and she propped it against the wall.
“My other sister,” George added.
“JoAnne Lakes.”
A beat of silence filled the room and JoAnne asked, “Has anyone seen my phone?”
“Back porch,” Sam answered. “I’ll grab it for you.”
“Did Sarah go down okay?” George asked.
“She’s not asleep, but she’s resting.” Ms. Lakes turned her gaze on the sheriff. “I hope you won’t hold my sister responsible for what happened.”
Adam looked at the ice cubes floating in his glass. Everyone would laugh their asses off if he arrested anyone for holding him up with a BB gun. “Considering it’s just a pellet gun, I can look the other way, but I recommend getting rid of it. Fake guns are supposed to have orange tips on them.”
“It’s my grandson’s,” Sam Reed spoke up, walking back into the room. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Good.” Adam paused and awkwardness crowded the room. His mouth was dry. He sipped at the tea. The sound of the fan whirling grew louder in the beat of silence. “The reason I called and stopped by is because there’s been some questions—”
“We know why you’re here.” Frieda Reed, the widow, lurched up from her chair. “Isn’t it enough that we have to deal with my husband’s death? Now you want to drag us down by reminding us of another tragedy?”
How did they know? Adam wondered.
George placed a hand on Frieda’s shoulder and pushed her back in her chair. “What my sister-in-law is saying is that we’re not certain why this is important. Why would the police want to bring this out now?”
Adam’s gaze went from one face to the other. A mixture of emotions played across their expressions. Anger. Grief. Suspicion. The grief, he got. The anger? Yeah, he remembered the fury he’d carried around with him for months after the unexpected heart attack took his Ella. But the suspicion? That puzzled him.
The cold glass in his hands grew colder and so did the awkwardness in the room. “I’d think you’d want the case reopened if it brought the killer to justice.”
“Jennifer said the detective who called was from Anniston,” Doris Roberts snapped and scowled at her two brothers. “Is that true?”
By damn, Adam thought he’d made it clear when he spoke to Jenny. His department was just like Vegas—what happened there, stayed there. Now he’d need to call Sutton back and tell him his department had leaked info.
“We don’t know anything,” Ms. Lakes added, her tone no longer soft. “A lot of people live in Anniston.”
“Stop it,” George snapped, and took an angry step toward the two women.
Adam shot in front of him. “I think everyone needs to calm down,” he said, not liking the way George Reed clenched and unclenched his fist.
Before he cemented his judgment in his mind, he recalled those weeks following Ella’s death. Recalled the night he’d sat at the kitchen table staring at her picture. He could still feel the weight of the gun in his hand, the cold feel of his barrel pressed against his temple. If his daughter hadn’t called…Grief made people crazy.
“Are you reopening this case?” Sam bit out.
“It depends what we learn. I was hoping you could fill me in about what happened.”
Sam clenched the back of a kitchen chair so hard his knuckles turned white. “Either our niece was kidnapped by some lowlife motorcycle thug or she drowned in that lake. It was the cops’ job to find out which. They never did their job then, and I can hardly believe that you’ll do any better now.”
Adam let the verbal dig roll off his back, but made a mental note of it. “We won’t know until I’ve gotten all the facts in.” He looked back at the door, which led to the bedroom where Sarah Reed slept. Sarah? Then he remembered Rusty said he thought the missing girl was the child of a mentally challenged woman. “Your sister Sarah, she’s the mother of the child who came up missing?”
His question met dead silence. The fan’s whirling became loud again.
“Did someone report something about the case?” the pretty blonde asked in a tone that told him she wanted him to refute the fact.
“Sometimes they just reopen cases,” Adam said and it was true. Sometimes they did. Just not this time.
“Well, we’ve already been through hell over this,” George spoke again. “Is it necessary that we go through it again?”
Yeah it was. But the timing wasn’t right. Adam sent JoAnne Lakes one last look. Of all of them in the room, she appeared the most normal. “I’ll be back later.”
Later, after he knew exactly what this friend of Detective Sutton’s had to say, and after he’d read the file, then he’d return with his questions. But one thing was for sure. This family had secrets. He just didn’t know if one of them was murder.
* * *
Annie arrived home that afternoon, bypassed her apartment, and went straight to Isabella’s. Tiptoeing on this side of panic, Annie neglected to knock and just stormed in. Her friend, sitting on her sofa, bolted up.
“I’m an idiot!” Annie blurted out.
Isabella, hand over her heart, calmed immediately. “Why are you an idiot?”
“I agreed to go out with Mark Sutton. What the hell was I thinking?”
“Detective Sutton?” She squealed when Annie nodded. “Oh. Ahh. I think I know what you were thinking. I’ve seen him on TV.” She smiled.
Annie plopped on her friend’s sofa then covered her face with her hands. “He had my panties.”
“What?”
Dropping her hands from her face, she looked at her friend. “I lost my panties in his car the day we went for coffee.”
Isabella’s eyes rounded. “I think you skipped that part when you told me the had-coffee-with-the-detective story.”
“We didn’t…The panties were in my purse when I tossed it in the backseat. They must have fallen out.”
Isabella dropped onto the sofa and cracked up laughing again. “Seriously?”
Annie nodded. “I’m an idiot.”
“Wait,” Isabella said. “Is tonight a…I-found-your-panties kind of date, or is it a let’s-talk-about-the-case date? Or is he even going to look into your missing cousin?”
“I think it’s the panty kind of date.” She exhaled. “But he did find out there was a missing Reed girl.”
“Shit,” Isabella said. “So it’s true, you really saw your cousin being buried?”
Annie sat up, emotions taking laps around her heart. “All he knows is there is a missing girl. He’s looking into it.”
Isabella reached over and squeezed Annie’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Her sinuses stung. “No. I’m an idiot, remember? What am I going to do? I’m not ready for this. Not for a relationship and not…My mom is going to kill me when she hears what I’ve done!”
“No. When she learns what you saw, she’ll understand.” Her friend got a worried look on her face. “You don’t think that…that she’s behind this, too, do you?"
“No,” Annie said. Except why did the entire family pretend Jenny never existed? Was that why her dad moved them away? Why he wouldn’t allow her to ever see the Reeds? Did both her mother and father look the other way and let someone get away with murder? Didn’t that make them both as guilty as the one who did it?
Isabella appeared puzzled. “Have you talked to her since the funeral?”
“No. I’m afraid she’s upset. I figure when she comes for the car, we’ll talk.”
“So she’s still with her family?”
“Yeah. I’m sure she’ll come home soon. She volunteers at the hospital every Friday.”
A heavy silence filled the room. “Wait,” Isabella said as if she could see Annie sliding into a dark place. “Let’s stop thinking about the bad part and go back to the good part. The date.”
Annie shook her head. “I told you that’s not good, either. I’m not ready.”
“Hey, you said yes. So there’s a part of you that’s ready.”
“Or maybe I’m just horny.” Annie hated saying it, but there it was. Since she’d laid eyes on the hot cop, she’d started missi
ng things. She missed being touched. Missed feeling protected and pretty, wanted, and a little wild. Missed sleeping on a man’s shoulder. Feeling him on top of her, inside her.
“Oh, God. That’s it. I’m just horny.”
“So. You’re going to beat yourself up over that? You’re human. Half the population is horny. I’m horny.”
“I’m scared,” Annie countered.
“Which is also part of being human,” Isabella said. “You want a glass of wine?”
“Right. Get me drunk, then send me off on a date.”
Her friend laughed. “What time is he showing up?”
“Seven.”
Isabella grabbed her phone to check the time. “It’s six. Go get ready.”
“Yeah.” Annie stood up.
“Wait. I have something for you.” She took off down the hall. Returning, she placed an object in her hand.
Annie rolled her eyes when she saw it was a condom packet. “I’m not sleeping with him.”
“Just in case.” Isabella smiled.
“You’re terrible.”
“You deserve some fun.”
“What about you. How long have you had this and haven’t used it?”
Isabella pushed her toward the door. “Go get beautiful. And enjoy yourself. I’m going to my aunt’s in Malcomb for the night, but I expect all the dirty little details tomorrow afternoon.”
Isabella was still hanging on the doorjamb when Annie’s phone rang.
“Maybe it’s him canceling.” She answered without checking the number. “Hello.”
“Shut up bitch! Keep your mouth shut!” the voice said. Then the line went dead.
“Shit,” Annie said.
“What?” Isabella asked.
“Someone knows.”
“Knows what?”
“That I went to the police. How could they know?”
* * *
Mark pulled into a parking spot at Annie’s apartment. He turned his engine off, cut his gaze to his car clock, and slowly slid his hands over the steering wheel. Seven on the dot.
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