by K. J. Emrick
The cement slabs of the parking areas were cracked more often than not, and the metal hookups for the RV service lines were rusty. The lawn, in the light of the setting sun, had spots of brown in places and was unmown in others. Well, this was the only RV park nearby. They could drive another three hours to find another, or they could stay here. After all, the inside of their motorhome was snug and clean no matter where they parked it. Plus, she would be with Jerry. That made any place heaven in her mind.
Looking around through the windshield while Jerry went to rent their space, she shivered. It was odd, she thought to herself, but she got the creepiest sensation from Heaven’s Haven. Like those places in horror movies that were just ordinary places but then turned out to have deep, dark secrets underneath. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen here.
Well. It wasn’t like they were going to move in here permanently. It was only a place to stay for the night. Only that, and nothing more.
Cream jumped up into her lap, huffing and grumbling to himself as he turned around three times and then curled up with his eyes tightly closed, his ears perked up to hear any little sound. He was bothered by this place, too. He only acted like this when he was worried.
The RV rocked gently on its suspension as Jerry came back inside. “Okay, there we go. All set up. We’ll be down on the end and I was promised an amazing view of the sunrise in the morning from down there. Not that I’m expecting too much from this place. I’m pretty sure the office hasn’t been cleaned in a year or more.”
“Interesting. Cream and I were just thinking the same thing. Although,” she said, smiling over at him as he got behind the wheel again, “I don’t remember the last time you got up in time to see the sunrise anyway, Mister Stansted.”
“That’s because you usually keep me in bed until it’s too late, Mrs. Stansted.”
They gave each other one of those special looks that Jerry reserved just for her, and Cookie felt better about things when he did. His good moods always rubbed off on her. When he was happy, so was she. When he was excited, so was she.
When he looked at her with that romantic light in his eyes, she got ideas.
In the middle of a fantasy about what she might like to do to him before they went to bed, he pointed out the windshield, drawing her attention back in that direction.
“Oh, look,” he said. “There’s Stacia and Ernesto’s motorhome right down there. Guess they just decided to jump ahead of the rest of us.”
“So they did,” she said, but now that creepy feeling was coming back to her. Where had those two gone before? Why hadn’t they been at dinner?
Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. All of their friends were travelling separately. There was no reason to think it meant anything at all. If they were supposed to be together every hour of the trip, then they might as well carpool.
And if they did that, it would definitely put a damper on making her fantasies come true on her honeymoon. She was a woman, after all, even if she did qualify for senior discounts everywhere she went. Not young, but still frisky. She snickered at herself. Here she was worrying about everyone around her, when this trip was supposed to be for her and Jerry.
“Do you want to stop in and say hi to them?” Jerry offered. “I know you were worried about them not making dinner.”
Cookie thought about it, but Penny and Franky had probably been right about that. They had probably just got sidetracked on something else. There were no schedules on this trip after all, no place they needed to be or not be. All they had to do was whatever they wanted to. The important thing was they were all here and snug and safe for the night.
Right now, what she wanted to do was very R-rated, and it only involved this man sitting right next to her.
“We can say hello tomorrow,” she suggested, reaching over to put her hand suggestively on his knee. “Right now, I have plans for us. Let’s get parked and get to bed.”
Jerry smiled broadly. “That sounds like a great plan to me.”
CHAPTER 3
T he person who promised Jerry a great view of the sunrise hadn’t been lying. Of course, it did come up right behind the red brick building of the RV park’s bathrooms, but still. It was pretty to look at. The sunrise, not the bathrooms.
Jerry was still asleep when she left for a walk with Cream. She did keep him up pretty late last night.
There weren’t any walking paths here at Heaven’s Haven. Cookie had walked Cream around the grass until he felt comfortable doing his business behind a bunch of knee-high weeds. It wasn’t a maple tree, but it would have to do.
On the side of the bathroom building—one side for men and one side for women—there was a barrel for burning dried leaves and cut grass, and another beside it for garbage. Cookie put her bag of doggie mess in the garbage and kept walking.
“Come along, Cream,” she told him after fifteen minutes of letting him run his little legs off. “Time to go back inside. You’ve had your playtime. Let’s go and get some breakfast, shall we?”
He barked his agreement at that, pointing his nose straight back toward their motorhome. Cookie wondered if he would even remember their apartment back home by the time their vacation was over. Well, of course he would. That place had been their home for longer than she cared to mention. Not for too much longer though. Now that she was married to Jerry, they were in the process of moving everything that was hers into his house. There was no reason for them to maintain two homes. She loved that apartment, but it would be a tad small for the both of them, plus Cream, plus her granddaughter Clarissa whenever she was in town.
Renting the apartment out for extra money had occurred to her, but then she wondered if maybe it might be nice to have Clarissa there all the time. She wouldn’t even charge rent. Clarissa had shown a real knack for working at a bakery and her boyfriend was making a name for himself as a chef. If they chose to take over her apartment, that would make perfect sense in Cookie’s mind. Of course, Hamish would be the sticking point in that whole plan. He was living and working somewhere else. It would mean rearranging their lives to come back to Widow’s Rest.
Young people liked to make their own way. Cookie had done that herself. She wouldn’t want to take that away from Clarissa. It would be amazing to someday pass her business down to her granddaughter, but it had to be her choice. It couldn’t be forced on her.
Well. Young hearts ran free. She could talk to Clarissa about it but ultimately it would be up to the two of them, and what they decided.
At Heaven’s Haven the motorhomes were lined up in one long row. Cookie recognized some of them, even the old Airstream that belonged to Humphrey Middlestead. Just their luck that old grump ended up here too. When she came to Stacia and Ernesto’s motorhome, she hesitated. Cream came up short at the end of his leash and turned around, looking at her over his furry shoulder, wondering what the holdup was. Hadn’t there been something said about breakfast?
“Hold on, Cream. I want to go and say hello to my friends. I’ll only be a moment,” she promised. “If I leave you tied up out here, can I trust you not to get into any trouble?”
He cocked his head to one side, letting his tongue loll out of his mouth.
“That isn’t very reassuring,” Cookie mumbled. Nevertheless, she tied one end of the leash to the handle next to the motorhome’s side door and gave it a tug to make sure it was nice and snug. Cream was a good dog, and he probably wouldn’t wander far if he did get loose, but she wasn’t going to just leave him to his own devices. She would never do that to her doggie friend.
Knocking on the door, she waited for an answer. Then she knocked again, and waited, and then she called, “Hello?”
There still wasn’t any answer.
She was starting to get that creeping sensation at the base of her skull again. The same one from last night, the one where she was sure something was going to go wrong.
Maybe they were just out. Somewhere.
Even as she
was thinking it she realized how foolish that idea was. Their vehicle was right here. They might have gone for a nice morning walk, she supposed, but there really wasn’t anywhere around here to walk to. There weren’t any paths like at the other places where they had stayed. There was just the road and the bathrooms and the other motorhomes. That was all.
With a growing sense of dread, Cookie tried the door. It wasn’t locked. She went up and in, poking her head around the corner of the kitchen cabinets to look down the central hallway to the bedroom at the far end. She could see someone under the covers, and a man’s bare foot sticking out over the edge of the mattress.
Whew. Well, that was a relief. They were just sleeping in. She wished they would have locked their door so she hadn’t walked in on them like this, but at least she knew they were all right. She’d forgotten to lock the door on her and Jerry’s motorhome a couple of times, too. It happened.
She was about to back out and close the door like she’d never been here, when she saw the bathroom door start to slowly open. It creaked on its hinges, the fake wood grain paneling catching the lights from the ceiling and reflecting them back in a single flash. This would be Stacia, since Ernesto was over there in the bed. Well, she couldn’t leave now. Stacia would see her closing the door and wonder why Cookie was sneaking around in her RV.
So she waited, smiling pleasantly, coming all the way in to close the door behind her.
“Good morning, Stacia,” she said, loud and clear so they wouldn’t think she was some kind of intruder. “I’m sorry, dear, I didn’t mean to bother you. I just wanted to see if everything was… all right…”
She trailed off as Stacia came stumbling out of the bathroom, holding a hand against the side of her head. Blood was dripping from a cut at her temple. It had already stained her fingers red and now it was running down her arm, inside the sleeve of her pajamas.
“Oh, my,” Cookie gasped. “Oh my, oh my... Stacia, what happened?”
Stacia stumbled into the sink, her arm shaking as she braced herself up. “Cookie? What are you doing here?”
That seemed like a silly question under the circumstances, so Cookie chose to ignore it and instead rushed to her friend, gently and carefully looking at the cut at her hairline. It wasn’t too deep, but it was already starting to bruise. “Do you remember how this happened? My, oh my, we need to all 911. Where’s your phone? Where’s your first aid kit?”
Weakly, Stacia pointed under the sink. Cookie doubted that she meant the phone was down there, so she looked underneath and found the white plastic box with the red cross on it. Good, the first aid kid. It was a start.
“Ernesto?” she called to the back of the RV. “Ernesto, wake up. Stacia’s hurt! We need your help. Ernesto? Ernesto!”
She took out the gauze and pressed it against Stacia’s head. It made her wince, but she weakly put her hand under Cookie’s when she asked and held the bandage there. Her eyes fluttered. She slipped further down the side of the cabinets. She was on the verge of passing out.
Cookie took her own cellphone from her back pocket. Usually she hated these things, but when a friend was in trouble they were very handy to have around. “Hello? Yes, we have an emergency here. I’m at the Heaven’s Haven motorhome park, in space seven, and my friend has been hurt. She’s bleeding. We need an ambulance.”
She stayed on the line to answer several more questions and then finally she hung up when she was told medical help was on the way. She took out more gauze and pressed that against Stacia’s head too. Her blood had soaked the first one through already.
“Stacia, stay with me now.” She kept talking, keeping Stacia from closing her eyes. “I’m going to call Jerry now, okay? I’m going to get him to come over and help us. Stacia, do you have any idea what happened?”
“I was… sleeping,” she answered slowly, her eyes rolling around. “I woke up with… this. Headache. Pain. I hurt, Cookie. Came down… here, to the bathroom. Big cut. Did you see it? It’s right… ow.” She tapped her fingers against the cut and winced, grabbing at the sink counter again.
“You were asleep, in bed?” Cookie looked down the hall, to the bedroom. “You and Ernesto?”
Ernesto was down there, in the bed. He hadn’t moved once since all this had started. Not when she screamed his name. Not when she had been on the phone to 911.
“Ernesto?”
Not now, either.
She made sure that Stacia had her balance, and then she walked down the hall, step by step, until she was standing over the bed.
Ernesto’s face was pale and slack. The clean white sheets were shoved aside and tangled around his body. The injury to the side of his head was red and purple and black.
He was dead. He’d been beaten to death.
POLICE CARS with blue lights on their roof were parked in the driveway of Heaven’s Haven. Cookie stood with Jerry, shoulder to shoulder, watching The County Sheriff’s Deputies in their brown shirts and black uniform pants do their work. A black coroner’s van was with them. Ernesto’s body was already inside.
Stacia was in the ambulance. It had all happened so quickly and now all Cookie could do was watch as it played out.
“Efficient buggers aren’t they?” was Jerry’s comment.
He had been watching the deputies with a clinical eye. He nodded to a few things and grumbled at others. Cookie smiled at him as he did it. She loved to see him in full cop mode. He was in his element. It was like watching a master chef overseeing the workers in a kitchen. Only, when Cookie did that with her baking skills, she turned out amazing confections and foods that tantalized the taste buds. When Jerry used his skills, he created justice. He made right from wrong.
Only this time, they weren’t creating anything, either of them. They were on the sidelines watching. There was nothing for them to do here. Jerry was far outside his jurisdiction, and they were both on vacation.
One of her friends had been killed, and another had been badly beaten. She had only known Ernesto and Stacia for a matter of days, but she still considered them friends. Cookie wouldn’t just stand by and let this go. She wasn’t made that way.
Another mystery had found her. She would do everything she could to see that it was solved.
An officer came rushing over to the parked patrol cars next to where Jerry and Cookie were standing. She saw him coming and when he got close enough, she put on her most endearing smile. “Excuse me, sir?”
“I’m in a hurry, Ma’am.” He had a stern expression on his blocky face. He never even looked Cookie’s way. “We’ll make a public statement later today when we know more.”
“I understand,” Cookie said. “I do. But, the victim is a friend of mine. I’m actually the one who found him and his wife in the RV.”
“Then I’m sure my sergeant will want a statement from you,” the officer said in a routine sort of way, leaning in through his open driver’s door to retrieve a camera he must need to process the scene. “I’ll find you again before we leave if he does.”
He was locking his door and already about to leave, probably already putting Cookie out of his mind.
“Officer,” Jerry said, in a voice that stopped the man midstride. “My name is Jerry Stansted. I’m the chief of police in a little town called Widow’s Rest. I know you have your procedures to follow and I’m not trying to step on anyone’s toes.”
The officer snorted. “It’s been my experience that whenever someone says they aren’t trying to interfere, that’s exactly what they’re trying to do.”
Jerry smiled stiffly. “Have your guys found anything yet? A motive? The murder weapon?”
“I can’t talk about that,” was the answer, but it was obvious just from the way he said it that his agency hadn’t found anything of the sort. They were clueless, quite literally, and that included a lack of any information about what weapon had been used to beat Ernesto to death, and strike Stacia unconscious.
“I just want to offer my help,” Jerry said. “Like my wif
e told you, we’ve been travelling with the victim and his wife for several days now. We probably have a lot of information your department will need for this case. Stuff you don’t even know to ask about.”
“It’s good to meet you, Chief,” the deputy said, dismissively. “It’s just not the best time right now. I’m sure you understand. Look. I’ve got to get back in there or my detective will have my head. Right now, you’ve got no standing to be involved, okay? Leave it at that. I’ll have someone come over and take your statements, like I said.”
“Look, son—”
“Not your son,” the officer said bluntly. “I really hate it when people use that phrase with me. I’ve told you how things are, and that’s all there is to it. Now. Stay back from the scene, or I’ll have to have someone escort you off the premises.”
He waited to see if Jerry was going to argue about it. He didn’t. Cookie kind of wished that he would. She wanted him to bully his way into the crime scene and find out everything that was going on, but she understood why he didn’t. If he pushed too hard, they’d be out of the picture entirely and that would only keep them from helping Stacia.
Stacia. She was in the back of that ambulance parked at the far end of the patrol cars. The paramedics had been attending to her wound for a long time now, but they hadn’t left screaming down the road for the nearest hospital. Cookie took that as a good sign. Her injury had been so severe. Someone had certainly taken a hard swing at her with something. Worse than that, they had killed Ernesto. It all brought up some very interesting questions in Cookie’s mind.
Like, where was the murder weapon? There wasn’t very much in a motorhome that could be picked up and used to club someone to death. Everything was bolted down and secured so that if the vehicle took a sharp curve or God forbid rolled over in an accident, heavy objects wouldn’t become flying projectiles of death. Unless the weapon was one of Stacia’s frying pans, which Cookie had noticed were all still in place, so no. Whoever did this must have brought the weapon in with them and taken it with them when they left.