Dana Mentink - Hazardous Homecoming

“I’m pretty sure, but she took it before she stabbed me. We need to talk to the police and get it back. It could prove...” What? Who had taken Alice? Where she had wound up? Or nothing at all.

Cooper’s lips thinned into a tight line. “Maybe there’s DNA on it that will prove finally that my brother was not the kidnapper.”

“Your brother was never even charged,” Mick said.

“Didn’t have to be. He was a fifteen-year-old kid. The accusation, the looks, the way he was shut out, turned him into an alcoholic.” Ruby looked at the floor.

“It wasn’t an accusation. Your brother was in the woods that day. I saw him. It was a fact.”

“He denies it, and he didn’t kidnap that girl, but not one person in this town believed him, especially the two of you. The police questioned you also, Mick, didn’t they? But people believed your story.”

“Because mine wasn’t a story, it was true.” Mick shook his head. “I had a fight with Alice’s father the night before. I left in a huff. End of story. If Peter was innocent, then he got a bum rap, but turning to alcohol was his choice.”

“Maybe you should try being convicted by everyone who used to call you friend and see how you deal with it,” Cooper snarled.

He was face-to-face with Mick, and both looked as though they could easily throw a punch.

“Enough,” Ruby said. She stood so quickly her head spun and both Mick and Cooper put steadying hands under her arms, which she shook away.

“Sit down, Bee,” Mick said. “Please.”

“No. We have to go to town to talk to Sheriff Pickford so he can get the necklace from Josephine. It may finally be the clue that tells us what happened to her.” Ruby was irritated to find that her eyes were wet. After so many years of fear, sorrow and a crushing weight of guilt, the answer might be at their fingertips, the answer to the question that had tortured her for two decades.

Alice, where are you?

She would not waste a moment. “I’m going,” she said, reaching for her purse.

“I’ll drive you,” Mick said, in a tone that indicated he was dealing with a creature he could never hope to understand.

“All right then.” In spite of the throbbing in her temples, she moved in as dignified a fashion as she could past Cooper to the door. Was it really a wall of anger that seemed to roil out of him like storm clouds, or was it her imagination?

“Thank you,” she managed. “For helping me in the woods.”

He gave her a courtly bow. “Anything for a damsel in distress.”

Even a damsel you believe destroyed your brother?

Mick grabbed his cell phone. “I’ll call dad on the way.”

“Your father’s still a private eye?” Cooper asked, arms folded as he slouched against the doorframe.

“Retired,” Mick said with no further explanation.

Ruby thought it might be an opening to restore a more civil relationship between them. Whatever he thought of her, Cooper had gone out of his way to help. “Your brother...is he...okay now? I know he’s living in the cabin.”

“Sober, at the moment, and he’s got a small job of some kind. Always wanted to be a firefighter, but they don’t welcome people with his history into that line of work.”

Ruby felt her stomach tighten. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too,” he said, watching as Mick led Ruby out the door and to the car.

* * *

Cooper would not reveal it for a king’s treasure, but he was reeling inside from the shock as he drove his pickup into town, sick with fear that the Alice Walker incident was abruptly springing back to life. He’d come back to make sure Peter had a home again, that he’d permanently given up living in a car or on the streets. What strange twist of circumstance was it that the whole sordid past should be ripped open now, like a poorly healed wound?

God, I thought you were on this? That the past was finished and done with? He and Peter had worked so hard to let go of what lay behind them and press toward the future. Wasn’t that what it said in Philippians 3? He felt the old familiar stir of anger, the one he’d fought all his life to crush. He’d decided to read those words, in the tattered Bible left by his father before he’d died in a wreck before Alice was taken. Years later as a twenty year old, he’d eventually listened to a friend and mentor who had encouraged him into a small group where he fit in like a snowman in the Sahara. Slowly, slowly, the peace and comfort in that old book was seeping into his soul, but sometimes there were moments when it seemed too hard to hold on to in a world where there was seemingly no justice or peace.

He arrived at the sheriff’s office a minute after Ruby and her brother did. They sat in a depressing wood-paneled room that had not changed since the fifties when Cooper guessed it had first been constructed. Sheriff Wallace Pickford was a big man with strong shoulders and the weathered skin of a person who spent time outside and liked it.

Pickford turned on an iPad that looked ridiculously small under his massive paws. Nonetheless, he opened a file with amazing speed considering he was only using his pointer fingers to type.

Pickford fixed a heavy stare at Ruby. “Mick says you’re stubbornly refusing to go to the hospital. Do I have that right?”

Ruby’s cheeks pinked, her coloring like a china doll Cooper’s grandmother used to own. “We have to get the locket from Josephine. It might tell us what happened to Alice.”

Pickford’s eyes drifted to Cooper. “Hello, Mr. Stokes. You’re back. Joining your brother?”

“Temporarily,” Cooper said.

“Hmm. Bad time for both you boys to be back in town,” Pickford said, fingers poised above the keys.

“Why shouldn’t we be here?” Cooper said. “It’s our property, and Peter hasn’t done anything. He’s got a right to live here and so do I.”

Pickford shrugged. “Just thinking the climate might not be good, since the Alice Walker case just officially reopened.”

Cooper was about to tell the sheriff exactly what he thought of the climate, when a silver-haired, mustached man entered. Perry Hudson. Ruby’s father was probably nearing sixty, if Cooper remembered correctly, but his shoulders were still square and his body trim and athletic.

Pickford’s mouth tightened.

“Mick told me over the phone,” Perry said, rushing to Ruby and assuring himself that she was unharmed. He raised an eyebrow at Cooper. “I think I owe you a thank-you for helping my daughter.”

Cooper allowed his hand to be shaken. “Surprised you started with a thank-you.”

Perry frowned. “I know we’ve got bad blood between us...”

“Because you tried to prove my brother kidnapped Alice Walker.” Ruby flinched at his tone, but he didn’t let it slow him. No more kid gloves. If Peter was going to claim any chance at a future, it was up to Cooper to lay the groundwork. Cooper’s “live and let live” philosophy would not serve here.

“I investigated your brother,” Perry said calmly, “because he was the likeliest suspect and he was in the proximity at the time.”

“Which doesn’t make him guilty. And your son Mick was close in age to Peter and in the same proximity.”

Mick glared and started to answer, but Pickford cut him off.

“That’s why we checked him out, too, as well as investigating Lester Walker,” Pickford said. “Can we get on with the matter at hand? My wife has a pot of chili on the stove.” He flicked a glance at Perry. “You know how good Molly’s chili is, don’t you Perry?”

Perry stared at him. “Yes.”

Cooper didn’t understand the subtext of whatever was going on between Pickford and Ruby’s father. Hostility? Distrust?

Ruby detailed the encounter with Josephine Walker. “So we have to get that locket.”