I’d been sitting there, staring at the sky and listening for dangerous squatty men when I noticed the steady crunch of twigs and leaves growing louder.
I hunkered down, pressing myself flat in the grass. Would that scary thug spot my broken bike and follow my trail to this ridiculously exposed patch of grass? Should I stay? Should I run?
All I knew was that I didn’t want to die out here in the middle of nowhere, especially not before I found out what was going on.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Tru!” Jace’s voice seemed to echo through the forest.
Two weeks ago, anyone suggesting I’d ever be happy to hear the detective’s voice would be a stinking liar. Today, the sound of his voice made me downright giddy. I jumped up and waved my arms. “Over here!”
Jace hurried over with two uniformed officers following cautiously behind him.
“Did you see the car that was following me? Was it parked at the road?” I asked.
He plucked a stick from my bike helmet. “It’s all pretty deserted out here.”
“Usually is,” one of the officers said. “Ain’t nothing out this way but soybeans and corn.”
“And trees,” I added. The thick canopy of trees had felt so disorienting.
Jace took my arm and helped me step around the blackberry brambles. “Let’s get you and your bike out of here. You can give a statement about what happened back at the station.”
He nodded to one of the officers. “Do you mind carrying her bike?”
The officer grunted. “Pardon me, ma’am, but if you were being pursued, why in sugar-honeyed-iced-tea didn’t you ride toward town instead of out toward the boondocks where there’s no one to help you? Makes no sense to me.”
“I—” Why didn’t I head back toward town? Or back toward my dad’s house? “Actually, I didn’t think about where I was headed. I just went. No one has ever chased me before.” And apparently my Nancy Drew skills weren’t as sharply honed as I’d hoped they’d be.
“Officer Franks teaches a self-defense course at the community center,” Jace explained. “I think you should take it.”
“I’d say you should, ma’am,” Officer Franks said with a nod. “With all the mistakes you’ve made, you’re lucky to still be alive.”
“Well, that is, if anyone was actually chasing the girl,” the other officer grumbled.
“You think I made this up?” I demanded. “You think these scraped knees were just for show?”
He looked me up and down and shrugged.
“Easy now.” Jace guided me toward the trail. “I’ll get your story when we get back to the station. Do you think you need to get medical attention first? You told me on the phone you weren’t hurt. But you look—”
“I’m okay. I just want to get this over with and get back home.”
Officer Franks picked up my broken bike. That’s when I noticed that the water bottle Tori had given me was missing from its carrier.
“Did you happen to see an aquamarine bottle on your way in?” I explained how it was an insulated bottle with a book-themed pattern. I hated to lose it.
I started to poke around in nearby bushes searching for it. But there was no sign of the bottle.
“Tori gave me that bottle. I loved it.” I looked forlornly at the empty carrier on my bike.
“I’m sorry, Tru.” Jace put his arm around me. “We can keep an eye out as we follow the trail back to the road.”
Even though I’d sworn I wasn’t injured, I limped back to the road as sharp pains shot up from my right ankle.
Jace let me ride in his car—a new green Jeep—which I was grateful for. Otherwise, I would have had to ride in the back of the marked police car like a criminal.
“This all started at Duggar’s house. Something odd is going on there,” I told Jace. “I think it was being robbed.”
But when we approached Duggar’s house, I saw right away the driveway was empty.
“The front door was wide open,” I said. “Charlie came out with boxes.”
“You mean the new guy opening a used bookstore?” Jace turned toward me.
“I’m beginning to wonder about him.”
“You think he was robbing the home of a dead man? In broad daylight? On a Sunday?”
“When everyone is supposed to be in church,” I pointed out. “Anyhow, he wasn’t alone. Grandle was with him. You know, the scary-looking guy from Vegas I already told you about?”
Jace frowned. “You think they were robbing the house and then chased you when you just happened to see them?” He glanced up and down the road. “Sunday or not, the roads circling the lake can be quite busy on the weekends, especially on a nice day like this. Anyone could have driven by and seen them. Would they have chased any random person, or do you think they would only chase you?”
“They were—” I started to argue that their behavior was suspicious. But Jace had a point. The two men weren’t acting sneaky. They’d been taking their time, acting as if they had every right to be there. But still, it was suspicious that Charlie would be there with Grandle. He didn’t have anything good to say about the loan shark.
“After you told me about the connection between this bookseller and Luke, I talked with our newcomer. He seems fine. He gave me as much information about Grandle as he was able.”
“He’s got plenty of charm. I’ll give him that. Mrs. Farnsworth is half in love with Charlie. And Tori is in love with him.”
“Add the mayor to his fan club. He vouched for Mr. Newcastle,” Jace said. “He sees him and others like him as a vital part of his grand plan to bring new life to our downtown.”
“I am excited about the bookstore. Truly, I am. And he does seem knowledgeable, but I do wonder if he isn’t . . .” I hesitated, unsure how much to tell Jace.
“Yes?” Jace asked.
“What were Charlie and Grandle doing at Duggar’s house? Why would they be together? What was in those boxes? I don’t know. I do know, however, that they shouted at me, and I’m pretty sure Grandle chased me in his car.”
“I’ll talk to Charlie again,” Jace said with a sigh. “I’ll ask him about his connection with Grandle again.”
“But . . . ?” I definitely heard an unsaid “but” in that sentence.
He put the Jeep into gear and pulled away from Duggar’s house. “But you have to admit that you’re not giving me much to work with here. Why would Grandle, a man you don’t even know, chase after you?”
Why indeed?
I sat back and turned the bicycle helmet in my lap over and over. “When I asked Charlie about what job he had in Las Vegas, he evaded the question. Tori said he did the same with her. Have you heard anything about Charlie’s background?” I asked.
“Charlie mentioned he was recently retired from law enforcement.” We were halfway to the police station. He paused to turn a corner. “He was vague with details.”
“Huh.” Law enforcement? That didn’t make sense. “But he’s rich. And well traveled. And well read. That doesn’t sound like a retired cop to me.”
“I take offense at that last jab,” Jace grumbled.
“What? You mean about being well read? Why?”
“Cops aren’t vapid meatheads, you know. We have to think in creative ways in order to solve crimes.”
“Sure, I’ll give you that. Police officers aren’t without brains. But I’m talking about books. You rarely opened a book in high school,” I pointed out.
“After messing up my leg in college and losing my spot on the football team, I found time to start reading.”
“Really?”
“Really, but we’re not talking about me.”
“We’re talking about Charlie and his obvious wealth. You don’t get that from law enforcement. Not unless—”
“You’re not going to suggest that he was on t
he take.” Jace groaned at the thought.
“He was in Vegas.” That had to mean something.
Jace sighed. “I’m sure not everyone from Vegas is crooked.”
“Not everyone. Just one rich ex-cop.” Had Charlie given me the copy of The Maltese Falcon because he wanted me to think a femme fatale was behind Duggar’s murder? Perhaps he wanted to drive a wedge between Tori and me. Perhaps he was worried that if we combined what we knew about him, we’d figure out that he was a clever master criminal pretending to be a charming, suave booklover.
“Okay. I see I’m not going to convince you,” Jace said as he turned another corner. “And maybe I shouldn’t convince you that Charlie is a good guy. I don’t know him. Let’s just wait until we get to the station to talk about what happened today.”
We spent the rest of the ride into town in an awkward silence. Blessedly, it was a short drive.
Cypress’s police station wasn’t much to look at. It was located three blocks north of Cypress’s marble-clad town hall. The rather grand town hall had been constructed at the same time as the library, in the early 1900s. The police department, on the other hand, was built in the late 1960s when money in town had already become scarce. The one-story, flat-roofed brick building had very few windows. And the windows it did have were the tall, narrow kind that let very little light into a building. The eaves were rotting. The trim desperately needed painting. Before today, I’d never been inside the police station. Never had a reason.
As I’d expected, the inside was even less impressive than the outside. Water stains created interesting mosaics of brown and yellow on the sagging drop ceiling. In the reception area, yellowed wallpaper with a fake wood pattern was peeling at the edges and seams. The floor was made of old asbestos tiles. Some were loose here and there. Some were missing altogether.
I glanced back over my shoulder at the officer who’d insinuated that I’d made up being chased. I felt compassion for him. The library had just received an impressive renovation, and it was a beautiful building to begin with. This place was simply awful.
An officer I didn’t recognize sat at a tall, pressed wood–paneled desk. He nodded at the four of us as we entered but didn’t say anything.
“Would you like something? Coffee?” Jace asked as we headed through a locked door marked “Staff.”
“I’m fine. Let’s just get this over with,” I said.
He led the way down a narrow hallway and then opened a door to a small conference room.
“Good heavens, Tru, what happened? You look an absolute mess,” the coroner, Krystal Capps, squealed as she stepped out of another room down the hall.
I explained—very briefly—what had happened.
She wagged her finger at the detective. “You can’t let our girl bleed all over the place. You should have taken her to the urgent care center. At the very least, she might need a tetanus shot.”
“I asked her more than once if she wanted medical care,” Jace argued.
“I just want to go home and get into a bath.” That was the honest truth.
Krystal clucked her tongue. “Let me grab a first aid kit and patch up her knees. I’ll take a look at that wrist while I’m at it. It looks swollen. Honey, don’t you dare protest. Joey, who does maintenance around here, will thank you when he doesn’t have to mop up a puddle of blood off the floor.”
She was exaggerating, of course. I wasn’t bleeding that badly. Perhaps a few rivulets of blood had oozed down my leg and stained my already muddy socks, but that was a far cry from bleeding out all over the floor.
She helped clean up my knees, slapped some oversized bandages on them, and then told me to get my wrist, ankle, and the bump on my head checked out by the local urgent care center. Cypress’s rural hospital had closed its doors nearly a decade earlier. She stood up and looked me over from head to toe before declaring that I was healthy enough to give a statement.
The conference room had molded plastic orange chairs that had been old-fashioned when I was a child. The one I took had a crack down the back that had been patched with duct tape.
Jace sat across from me. He fussed with a tape recorder and his notebook for a while before asking me to tell him, from the beginning, what had happened.
I described every detail about my wild bike ride and crash. He took notes and asked probing questions. He leaned forward, his eyes filled with compassion. It seemed as if he was taking it all very seriously. That is, until he closed his notebook and sat back in the orange plastic chair. His chair squeaked.
He broke eye contact and frowned.
“What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“You never looked behind you?” He sounded disappointed. “You never saw the car that you thought was chasing you? Not even once? Not even out the corner of your eye?”
I hadn’t. “I was too worried about getting away. I’d read in a book once how coaches tell track stars that if you start to look behind you, you’ve already lost.”
Unfortunately, I could see by the tense expression on Jace’s face that by not looking behind me I’d lost all credibility. “You don’t believe me,” I said.
“I believe you believe it happened like you said it did,” he said kindly.
That didn’t make me feel better. I bit the inside of my cheek. Not that I was going to cry or anything. Tears were the farthest thing from my mind. Something was going on that I didn’t understand, something potentially dangerous. And the police seemed unwilling to listen to me, which made me feel angry enough to scream.
But screaming would make me appear unstable. Besides, librarians didn’t scream.
I closed my eyes and drew a couple of deep breaths, while desperately clinging to my inner Nancy Drew. Stopping the troubles happening in my beloved small town was my main focus. I needed to find Duggar’s killer. I needed to figure out why someone would attack Luke in the middle of the library. And I needed to find out what Charlie was up to.
Jace could ignore me or think I was hysterical. I didn’t care. Well, I shouldn’t care.
Right.
I opened my eyes. “You told me my life could be in danger,” I reminded him. “You told me you didn’t think Luke killed anyone.”
He reached over and turned off the tape recorder. “We’ve already had this conversation.”
“Not really. Remember Dewey was playing with that piece of paper in the media room? The one you picked up and put in your pocket?”
Jace’s hard expression softened. “He is a scamp.”
“When you joined us at Perks that night, you dropped the paper. I thought it was trash. But when I looked at it, I found something interesting on it. It looked as if it’d been torn from a formal price quote for books. From what you told me Friday morning, I suppose the police have the rest of the price quote sheet.”
He raised his brows. “Were you planning to hand over this . . . this evidence?”
“Of course.” Eventually.
“You saw me on Friday. We talked about it then.”
“I hadn’t looked at Dewey’s treasure that carefully yet.”
Someone knocked at the conference room door. Jace pressed his lips together before calling out, “Yeah?”
The door opened. Officer Franks poked his head into the room. “Dude, Fisher wants a word with you. Pronto.”
“Tell him I’ll be right there.”
“Oh . . . kay . . .” Franks said slowly. He gave me a hard look before leaving.
“That guy doesn’t like me,” I said.
“He thought you killed Duggar,” Jace said with a shrug. “Before Luke’s arrest, half the police force thought you pushed over the shelf. Some still think you stink of guilt.”
That was a chilling bit of information I didn’t need to know.
I straightened my spine. “Look, I know you said Chief Fisher considers the case
closed. You have your man. I’m glad. But what I saw today—”
“We have someone in custody for the murder.” He sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “That takes the heat off you. Why not enjoy it?”
“You told me yourself that you were afraid I might be in danger. Not just me, but everyone who was at the library that morning, because the killer is still at large.”
“I did. But what I want to know is why you’ve suddenly changed your mind. Why do you suddenly think I might be right? Is it because you think your girlfriend’s new beau is robbing the dead?”
“No.” I crinkled my brows. “Not exactly. Friday afternoon, Mayor Goodvale came into the library looking to talk with Mrs. Farnsworth. When I offered him my sympathies about his son, he told me that Luke would be released in a matter of days.” I pointed to the door. “When that happens, all those cops out there that you say think I’m guilty will shine their spotlight of suspicion right back on me.”
Jace eased forward again. “Wait. What exactly did the mayor tell you?”
“That his son wasn’t guilty. He didn’t act at all worried that Luke had been arrested for Duggar’s murder.”
Jace chewed on that tidbit of information before saying, “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Well, after talking to me, the mayor spent quite some time with Mrs. Farnsworth. Perhaps in a day or two she’ll recant whatever it was she had miraculously remembered. Fisher’s closed case might find itself flung wide open again.”
“Hmm . . .” That news seemed to trouble Jace.
“Why does that worry you? It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? You told me yourself you didn’t believe Luke was guilty.”
“And you reminded me what a lousy detective I was,” he shot back without even blinking.
“I didn’t say you were incompetent. So why don’t we talk for a minute about the investigation and why we both think the mayor is, for once, right? His son is innocent.”
The Broken Spine Page 21