Sharon Sala - Wild Hearts

He was worse than worried. He’d never heard her like that. And even more upsetting, he was going to have to contact the only woman he’d ever loved and tell her that her father was dead. This day just kept getting worse.

Ten minutes later he arrived at the Phillips farm to find his mother in the fetal position next to her car, her hands over her head as if trying to ward off a blow. He knew what she’d seen was shocking, but this reaction was not like the woman he knew. He got out on the run, then scooped her up into his arms and sat her on the hood of her car.

“Mom! Talk to me. Are you okay?”

She was limp, her eyes wide and fixed, and when he spoke, she didn’t respond. He shook her, then put his arms around her waist and pulled her close.

“Mom, Momma, it’s me, Trey. I’m here. I need you to talk to me now.”

He felt her shudder, then take a slow, deep breath. Relief washed over him when her arms snaked around his neck. She was back.

“Mom?”

She pointed toward the barn.

“He’s in there,” she said. “I saw him. Why would he do that? Oh, my God, why would he do that?”

He could hear Earl’s siren.

“I don’t know, but I need you to wait here. Since you’re the one who found the body, you can’t leave. The sheriff will want to talk to you.”

She blinked. “I need to go home. Tomorrow is your birthday. I wanted to bake—”

“Hey, Momma, you know I love you, right?”

She nodded.

“So don’t worry about a cake, okay?”

She clutched the front of his shirt in panic.

She almost looked like a stranger to him.

“Okay, Mom? You have to stay here, understand?”

“Yes. No cake. Stay here.” Then her face crumpled as a fresh set of tears began to roll. “Poor Dick. My heart hurts for him.”

Trey sighed. “I know, but here’s the deal. No need to hurt for him. He’s past concern. You need to be feeling sorry for Dallas. She’s the one who’s been left to suffer.”

And just like that, the mother in Betsy stepped in.

“Oh, Lord, Dallas. I didn’t even think.”

Trey turned around, wondering what had taken Earl so long, and how much of the crime scene his mother might have disturbed.

“Here comes Earl. We’re going down to the barn, and I need you to stay here, remember?”

“Yes, of course I remember,” she said shortly, and combed her hands through her hair. The hysteria was gone, and she was digging out a tissue to wipe her eyes and blow her nose.

“I need to ask you something,” he said.

“Ask.”

“Did you drive your car down to the barn?”

“No. I was heading toward the trees, looking for him, when I passed and saw him. I didn’t even go all the way in.”

“Okay, good,” Trey said, and then added, “Oh, don’t call anyone. I don’t want any locals out here in the middle of this investigation.”

“I won’t. I understand,” she said, and then slid off the hood, stumbled up to the house and sat down on the porch in the shade.

Trey frowned. He should have told her to go wait in the car, but it was too late now.

“Hey, Mom, don’t go in the house, just stay on the porch. I don’t want anything else disturbed.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t think,” she said.

“It’s my fault. Just don’t go any farther,” he said.

She nodded.

Earl killed the siren and lights as he parked beside Trey, and then they started toward the barn.

“What took you so long?” Trey asked.

Earl looked embarrassed. “Gas gauge was sitting on empty. Had to stop and fuel up.”

Trey nodded, and then pointed to the area in front of the barn. “Look for fresh tire tracks or anything off,” he said.

Earl’s surprise showed. “I thought this was a suicide?”

“Until the investigation is over, nothing is certain. And when you hear sirens, run back to the house and stop the crew from the sheriff’s department from driving down here, too. They’ll want to see the crime scene intact.”

“Yes, sir,” Earl said, and followed Trey down to the barn.

Two

Trey’s gut knotted as he looked up at Dick Phillips’s body. Because of Dallas, he knew this man almost as well as he knew his own family. As his mother had said earlier, it hurt to see him this way.

He eyed the rope tied to the ladder leading up to the loft, then studied Dick’s clothing. The back of his shirt was very dirty, as was the back of his jeans, while the front of both was noticeably cleaner. It would take an autopsy to make sense of this.

The floor of the breezeway was concrete, so there weren’t going to be any footprints. If more than one person had been in here when this happened, it wouldn’t show up that way.

He walked all the way through the breezeway to the back of the barn and saw no sign of any footprints there, then walked back to the front, looking for signs of fresh tire tracks, but the ground was hard and graveled. Then he went into the egg room off to the right.

The shelves and tables were all in place; nothing appeared to have been moved. There was no sign of a fight or a disturbance of any kind. The deep sink where Dick cleaned the fresh eggs before sorting was clean, and the new cartons yet to be filled were all in place. There were at least a dozen large empty plastic boxes, about the same size as a child’s toy box, stored beneath the shelves, with a stack of lids to fit leaning up against the wall. There was nothing out of the ordinary but the body hanging from the rafter. Nothing made sense. He walked farther back into the cooler where Dick kept the eggs, and turned on the light.

There were shelves lined with cartons of eggs, each marked with the date they’d been gathered.

Earl came walking back from checking the perimeter.

“Find anything?” Trey asked.

“Well, if he killed himself, he fed the chickens before he did it. There’s still some fresh scratch out in the coop, and the eggs have been gathered. However, the cows weren’t fed. There’s no fresh hay or ground feed in the troughs.”

Trey frowned. “That’s weird. If he cared enough to feed the chickens before he took his own life, then he would have fed the cows, too.”

Earl shrugged. “Unless he counted on them grazing. The grass is a little short, but it’s still good.”

They began hearing sirens.

“Sheriff’s on the way,” Earl said, and took off toward the house on the run.

* * *

Betsy watched her son walking down to the barn, then mentally rejected the sight of what she’d seen earlier and looked off toward the mountains for solace. She had always felt a measure of peace in being surrounded by the ancient peaks, but today it wasn’t working. Her head was throbbing, her eyes red and swollen from crying, and she felt like she’d been kicked in the gut. She shoved her fingers through her hair, absently rubbing the five-inch scar on the side of her head. Her hair hid its presence, but when she was upset it throbbed with every beat of her heart, and today was no exception. The shock of seeing Dick’s body had created a feeling of déjà vu, which made no sense. She’d never seen a traumatic death before.

She stood abruptly, unable to sit still any longer, and began to pace the length of the porch and back, anxious for the sheriff to arrive so she could give her statement and move on.

When her phone began to ring, she glanced at the caller ID and then let it go to voice mail. It was her daughter, Trina, and she would never be able to hide anything from her.

She heard a phone begin to ring inside the house and felt like crying all over again. Someone wanted to talk to Dick. Would they weep when they found out, or would they feel nothing more than a passing moment of regret for a good man gone, then forget he’d ever existed?