Last Chance Christmas Page 8

  And wouldn’t you know it? Just as she popped into his mind, there she was—coming out of the Kountry Kitchen engaged in a conversation with Lizzy. Lizzy appeared to be hanging on every blessed word the woman was saying.

  Damn. What was it about that woman? He had kind of hung on everything she’d said this morning, too.

  But, even so, Lizzy was supposed to be at the Cut ’n Curl helping Jane and Momma with Haley.

  He pulled to the corner and rolled down his window. “Lizzy,” he said in his best daddy voice, “didn’t I tell you that I didn’t want you hanging around the Kitchen after school? Your granny and Aunt Jane expect your help with Haley.”

  Lizzy’s sharp chin got just a little more stubborn, and she rolled her eyes.

  “Besides, I don’t want you bothering Ms. Chaikin.”

  “What you really mean is you don’t want me talking to her because you want to run her out of town.” Lizzy flipped back her mane of dark hair and gave Lark one of those wiseass-teenager looks that she’d gotten so good at lately. “You shouldn’t let him push you around.”

  Lark gave Lizzy one of her mischievous smiles. It was hard not to like Lark when she smiled like that. “I don’t ever let guys in uniform push me around.”

  The slight arch in Lark’s brow sent a spiral of heat through Stone. Then Lizzy smirked at him as if to say, See, you’ve met your match. Stone knew right then that he would be in deep trouble if Lark and Lizzy ever really bonded.

  “Lizzy, I told you to go check in with your grandmother. When I tell you something, I expect you to do it.”

  Lizzy didn’t lose the smirk, and he got another eye roll. But, hallelujah, his daughter finally turned and headed down the street toward the Cut ’n Curl. She gave Lark a wave and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” as she departed.

  Stone watched Lizzy for a moment as she crossed the street, walking in that loose-jointed shamble that every teenager in town seemed to have adopted. Then he turned toward Lark.

  “What was that all about?”

  “She wants to be a journalist. She made an appointment to interview me tomorrow.”

  “Well, you can just unmake that appointment.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Stone, don’t be an idiot. I’m not going to harm your daughter.”

  “No? You’re going to talk to her about what you do. And I don’t want you painting some glorified picture of combat for her.”

  “Glorified? Is that who you think I am?” Was he imagining something or did she sound disappointed in him?

  He paused a moment. No, of course not. He’d seen Lark’s photos. They didn’t paint any kind of picture that glorified war. It was worse than that. They showed the truth.

  She stepped up and leaned on the cruiser’s roof. “You know, I get that you were once a warrior. So you know the truth. I know the truth. And knowing that, you can rest assured that I’m not going to make it sound like a picnic, and by the same token I’ll try not to scare the crap out of her either.”

  He looked up into those deep and somber eyes. She’d seen too much war, he realized. And he’d just been an insensitive idiot. Again.

  “Uh, look, I apologize. I just want to keep my daughter safe.”

  “I know,” she said with a nod.

  What was it about this woman? She seemed to be able to look right through him, right into his deepest self.

  Just then, his radio crackled to life and saved him from saying something really stupid and embarrassing. The dispatcher’s disembodied voice said, “Alpha 101 to Lima 101, we’ve got a signal-8 out at Hettie Marshall’s place.” Signal-8 meant a missing person. They got signal-8s every time old man Anderson wandered off, but never associated with anyone in the Marshall family.

  “I’m not happy about Lizzy talking to you. But I guess that’s not your fault,” he finally said to Lark. It sounded really lame.

  Lark backed away from his cruiser. “I admire the fact that you want to keep her safe. But I promised Liz I would talk to her. I’m not going to break that promise.” She turned and headed up the sidewalk with a purposeful stride.

  She wasn’t wearing fatigues anymore, and her butt looked cute in jeans. He really had to admire her. She was a woman who kept her promises, come hell, high water, or idiot fathers and cops.

  He let go of a long sigh and toggled the radio. “I’m on my way,” he told the dispatcher. He gunned the engine as he pulled out onto Palmetto Avenue. And then the adolescent urge to floor the gas pedal came over him. He flipped on his lights and hit it. The Crown Vic made a satisfying roar as he sped through town with lights ablaze. It took real fortitude not to look back to see if Lark Chaikin was watching him.

  Five minutes later, he was feeling kind of foolish as he pulled into the long, circular drive that led to Jimmy and Hettie Marshall’s house. The place wasn’t nearly as old as Lee’s mansion house. Nevertheless, it possessed an impressive number of columns and a portico.

  He recognized Lee’s Town Car in the drive, alongside Hettie’s Audi. Jimmy’s Mercedes was missing.

  Well, it sure looked like Jimmy had finally decided it was time to move on to greener pastures. Between his wife and his daddy and the problems down at the chicken plant, Jimmy’s life had been pretty crappy lately.

  Stone bounded up the brick steps, and the front door opened even before he could ring the bell. Violet Easley answered. Violet was his deputy’s mother, and she’d all but raised Jimmy Marshall, too. She’d been a housekeeper for the Marshalls nearly forever.

  “Oh, Chief Rhodes, I’m so glad you’re here. Miz Hettie is so upset, and Mr. Lee is about to have a fit and a half. They’re in the parlor.” Violet stepped back and directed Stone through the foyer and into the parlor containing antique furniture upholstered in a shiny yellow fabric. Good Lord, how did people live in a room like this? He’d be afraid to touch anything for fear of soiling or breaking it.

  He snatched the hat off his head and turned to face Lee Marshall, who had ensconced himself, with his gouty foot raised, on a gigantic couch that dominated the room. He looked just as old and unkempt as he had on Saturday.

  “Have you run that woman out of town yet?” Lee asked.

  “That’s not why y’all called me out here. There was something about a missing person?”

  Hettie sniffled from her place in a small wing chair that sat beside a thirteen-foot, impeccably decorated Christmas tree. The tree was festooned with golden ornaments and ribbons, its lights twinkling happily as the afternoon light faded from the front windows. “Jimmy’s missing. He hasn’t been home for two nights,” Hettie said, true emotion ringing in her voice.

  “Have you checked Dot’s place and the country club and—”

  “I’ve checked all his usual haunts. I wouldn’t have called you if I didn’t think he was missing.” Hettie sounded more than merely concerned; there was a frantic note in her voice.

  “I understand. I only asked because everyone knows that for the last few months he’s been living down at the river and—”

  “I know, but he’s gotten himself sober, and he’s been going to church, and he’s started to address the issues at the chicken plant. He’s done everything I asked so I let him come home a week ago. He had changed. I know you and Lee think I forced him to run away, but that’s not true.” She glowered at her father-in-law. That was a huge surprise. A year ago she would have deferred to Lee. But Hettie had changed, too.

  Just like clockwork, Lee rose to Hettie’s implicit challenge. “You can spout all the holy nonsense you’d like, darlin’, but I’m sure Jimmy has just gone on a bender and he’ll be back with his tail between his legs the minute he runs out of money.”

  Lee turned toward Stone. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t the one who called you out here about this nonsense. I’m sure this is just another marital dispute. But since you’re here, I want to know when that woman is going to leave.”

  “Not until she gets an answer about her father’s remains.” This came
from Hettie, who stood up and confronted Lee. Her tears were rapidly disappearing. “In fact,” she said, “I have let her use the river house.”

  “What? You can’t do that. That house belongs to—”

  “Me. That house was my daddy’s. And if I want to let Lark Chaikin stay out there for a few days, while we sort out this business about her father’s remains, it’s nobody’s business but mine. After all, I chair the—”

  “Yes, I know you chair that committee. And thanks to you, my son was humiliated last summer. Have you thought about what that did to him?”

  “Yes, Lee, I have. Jimmy learned his lesson last summer, and he’s spent months trying to make a change in his life. And he’s been doing it, bit by bit, with the help of the Lord.”

  Lee scowled. “The Lord helps those who help themselves. You’ve turned him into a pussy-whipped nothing of a loser with all that religion you’re always spouting.”

  Hettie put her fists on her hips, glared at the nasty old man, and said, “Lee, you can get your fat behind off my couch. Go on back home because you’re not being any help here.”

  The old man didn’t budge.

  Hettie turned toward Stone. “It’s not like Jimmy to disappear. I know we’ve had our problems, but he wouldn’t just walk out on me. He wouldn’t. Something’s happened to him.”

  The dumb old angel was at it again. It looked like Haley was going to need Santa’s help to get the angel back to Heaven after all.

  Especially since Doc Cooper couldn’t fix Daddy’s heart.

  The angel was in her usual place tonight, hovering in the corner of Daddy’s room watching him sleep and making so much noise it was a wonder, really, that Daddy could sleep through it.

  But Daddy was snoring pretty loud tonight, and Haley reckoned that was better than the discussion he and Lizzy had had at the dinner table over that lady who wanted to bury her daddy at the golf course. Lizzy and Daddy were mad at each other.

  And Haley hated it when they argued.

  Haley tiptoed into Daddy’s room. “Would you be quiet, please,” she whispered to the angel.

  The angel shimmered, just like the Christmas tree angel on top of the town tree. Only that angel was gold and had wings. This angel was kind of see-through and appeared to be wearing a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.

  Haley had never actually noticed that before. It was like the angel was getting more solid or something. Did angels wear sweatshirts?

  Haley put her fists on her hips like Granny did sometimes when she meant business. “I mean it,” she muttered. “I can’t sleep.”

  The angel looked down at her, tears running down her face. Then the angel kind of bent down, just like Doc Cooper had done. “Your daddy needs to make some changes,” the angel said.

  “Changes? Like what?”

  “Like everything. He’s stuck in a rut.”

  The angel stood up again and started sniffling.

  Haley was fit to be tied. She glared at the angel and said in a too-loud voice, “If I make some changes, will you stop caterwauling in the middle of the night?”

  “Haley, what in the Sam Hill are you doing in here?” Daddy sat up in his bed.

  “Uh, nothing,” she lied. If she told Daddy she was talking to the angel, he would get mad. And he was already mad at Lizzy.

  “Go back to bed. It’s two in the morning.”

  “ ’Kay.”

  Daddy flopped back onto his bed and started snoring again. Whew, that was a close call.

  The angel continued to sniffle, only now she was giving Haley a meaningful look. Then she nodded.

  “Do you really mean it?” Haley asked. “If I make some changes, will you go back to Heaven?”

  “Haley, are you talking to the angel?” Daddy asked, his voice muffled by his pillow.

  “Uh, no, um, well, maybe.”

  “Go to bed. This has got to stop.”

  “But, Daddy, the angel said—”

  “I don’t care what the—” Daddy stopped in the middle of what he was about to say. He swung his feet over the side of the bed. “I’m sorry. What did the angel say?” he asked.

  Well, that had to be a first. Daddy was never interested in what the angel had to say.

  And that’s when Haley realized that something had just changed. The angel realized it, too, because she stopped weeping.

  Haley stared hard at Daddy’s face in the darkness. “Daddy,” she said, “the angel wants us to make some changes around here.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what she said. She said we were in a rut. You got any ideas of how we can get out of our rut, Daddy?”

  “Honey, I’m too tired right now to talk about how we can make changes to get out of our rut. But I will think about it.”

  “Okay, that’s good. I’ll think about it, too,” Haley said.

  “Good. Now you go back to bed, okay? Tomorrow is a school day.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

  Haley walked back to her bedroom and tried to figure out if Daddy meant that he was going to bawl her out tomorrow or if he would really talk about making some changes. She climbed back into her bed and pulled the covers up. He would probably bawl her out. That’s what he usually did.

  CHAPTER

  8

  Lark sipped her morning coffee on the bungalow’s porch. She was sort of waiting for the chief of police to arrive for some dawn fishing. She had hoped they could talk some more. Or maybe just stand around being quiet.

  But it didn’t look like he was coming today.

  Too bad. Stone Rhodes might have distracted her from real life. Instead, she found herself checking e-mails, watching the Twitter feed roll by, and wondering how the hell she was going to get herself prepared for her next assignment.

  It was December nineteenth—just six days before she had to leave for Africa.

  She needed to force the issue. She studied the near-jungle that grew on the opposite bank of the Edisto River. The morning light was magnificent.

  She picked up the topographic map she’d purchased at Lovett’s Hardware the day before and studied it. There was a swamp not too far away. According to the guys at the hardware store, the area provided habitat for all kinds of migratory birds. It was supposed to be incredibly beautiful.

  She wasn’t a wildlife photographer, but maybe shooting something different would get her out of her funk.

  Half an hour later, she parked Pop’s SUV at the end of a red clay road by a path that was supposed to lead to an abandoned hunting lodge. She pulled a telephoto lens from her camera bag and fixed it to the camera body. Then she slung the camera over her shoulder and headed down the weedy trail.

  The morning was cool and dewy, but the sun, still low on the horizon, promised another unseasonably warm December day. The wood’s thin canopy provided a little more light than she would get in midsummer, but still the forest was surprisingly dense and overgrown.

  She followed the path for a short while, past an abandoned house, until she reached a swampy place ringed by cypresses. She stood quietly, watching a great blue heron fishing in the shallows. How cool was it to be able to watch a heron in the middle of December?

  There was other wildlife, too. A snake, some turtles, and frogs. No alligators, thankfully, but she suspected they lurked someplace close by. Alligators didn’t scare her. The camera around her neck was something else again.

  She adjusted the camera’s shutter speed and aperture, then aimed the lens at the heron, adjusting the focal length and focus. Her heart kicked as she concentrated on framing the shot.

  There is nothing to fear here.

  She wasn’t in a war zone. There were no armed insurgents lurking in the shadows. An artillery barrage was not about to start. She didn’t have to do the usual risk calculation that accompanied every trip to a dangerous destination.

  None of that applied here.

  So why the hell were her hands shaking? Why was sweat trickling down
her back? Why was she so afraid to press the shutter?

  She took a breath and held it as she squeezed off a shot. Then another. And then she pressed down on the shutter and kept it there as the heron looked up at her.

  And that’s when the gunfire erupted.

  The bird took flight. Lark hit the muddy ground and covered her head.

  And suddenly she was back in Misurata.

  “You’re insane, Jeb,” she had called to the correspondent from International Television News as he sprinted across the street and hunkered down along a concrete wall. He was exposed.

  “Yeah, but I’ve got the angle on the shot,” he shouted back as he hoisted his video camera and trained it on a group of rebel soldiers firing rockets from a truck-mounted launcher.

  Damn it. She should have beaten him across the street; she had no angle on the shot. She settled down behind a pile of rubble and trained her camera on Jeb. The afternoon sun painted his helmet in gold; his face was dirty and sported a couple of days’ worth of stubble. He was completely in his element, living out there in the invincible zone.

  Lark’s finger hovered over the shutter. She held her breath and squeezed.

  And all hell broke loose.

  The incoming rocket hit a spot along the broken wall between Jeb and the rebels. The explosion was so loud that her world went silent. Time stopped. But her finger stayed glued to the camera’s shutter.

  She captured the entire moment of Jeb’s death. The instant before the rocket hit, the impact, the flying shrapnel, and the blood. Oh, my God, there was so much blood. She hunkered there, her finger paralyzed on the shutter until Erick Frey from Getty Images found her.

  “Hey, you okay? I didn’t hit you, did I?”

  “Erick?” Lark lifted her head, momentarily confused by the dense jungle surrounding her. She looked up at the man towering over her. It wasn’t Erick Frey. This guy was African-American and about sixty years old. He was carrying what appeared to be a shotgun and wearing hunting clothes.