Julie Lindsey - Deadly Cover-Up

“I don’t think so,” Jenna said. “The car spun into the church parking lot, but it didn’t roll and it wasn’t hit. The beat-up old junker went sailing around the curve. A woman got out. She looked fine. We were on the towpath. It wasn’t easy to see from there, but all the honking and engine roaring had gotten our attention. We caught the tail end of it all.”

Wyatt’s limbs ached to run. “When?”

“Maybe an hour ago.”

“Thank you,” he called, turning and diving into a sprint. The call connected and rang against his ear. Pick up. Pick up. Pick up . He willed Violet to answer his call. Prayed she and her infant daughter were okay. Kicked himself internally for letting her go off on her own when everything in him had said it wasn’t safe. That whatever Mrs. Ames had gotten herself into wasn’t over. He should have followed Violet, stuck by her, protected her.

It wouldn’t happen again.

He yanked the driver’s-side door open and swung himself behind the wheel. Pick up . He nearly screamed the words as he shifted into Drive and eased away from the curb.

His call went to voicemail.

VIOLET FORCED HER still-rubbery legs forward as she eased off the hospital elevator and down the long white corridor toward the nurse’s station on her grandma’s floor. Maggie was asleep in her arms, exhausted from crying after their run-in with a lunatic and his demolition derby car. The nurses were all busy when she finally arrived at the desk. Talking to visitors. Speaking on the telephone. Making rounds. None of the ladies in pastel scrubs made eye contact. When Violet had arrived yesterday, her cousin Tanya was one of the nurses. She was a distant cousin, ambiguously related, but neither she nor Tanya had ever questioned the connection. They’d been friends all their lives. Violet waited a long moment, scanning the area for an available nurse, before moving on, too eager to continue waiting. She wanted to see her grandma’s face and take a seat someplace where she couldn’t be run off the road. She’d try the desk again in a few minutes when the rush died down.

Violet hurried down the hallway to her grandmother’s room. The sound of movement inside set Violet’s heart alight. “Grandma?” She rushed through the open door and slid the curtain back with bated breath.

“Hello,” her grandma’s friend Ruth answered, “come on in.” Ruth tidied her stack of playing cards, then cut and folded them together with a scissoring zip. She’d pulled a chair over to face Grandma’s bed and appeared to be playing solitaire on her blankets. “No change,” Ruth reported. Her tanned cheeks were spotted from too many decades in the sun, and her lips turned down at the corners, unhappy with her report. She doled out three cards and placed them near the foot of her bed. “I came after my morning chores.” Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun, accentuating her sharp features and small green eyes.

Violet took the chair nearest Grandma’s shoulder and slid one hand over hers where it rested on the bed. Machines glowed and beeped on stands and poles nearby, monitoring her grandma’s heart rate, pulse and oxygen levels. An IV dripped something into her veins. A wave of grief rolled through Violet and she forced the emotion down. Grandma wasn’t gone. Grandma was a fighter. “Has the doctor been in?”

“Just Tanya,” Ruth said. “She comes every hour or so to say nothing’s changed.” Ruth gave the cards a break and hooked one ankle over her opposite knee. A lifetime of hard outdoor work in River Gorge had left Ruth roughly the color of leather and likely a little tougher. “No news is good news.”

Violet didn’t agree. No news was maddening. She shifted Maggie in her arms and squeezed her grandma’s hand. “Tanya was here yesterday when we got in from Winchester.”

Ruth pursed her lips. “She’s a good kid.”

A twist of guilt wound through Violet. She and Tanya were the same age, twenty-six. Hardly kids. But Violet hadn’t been here for Grandma. She’d left for college, and unlike Tanya, Violet hadn’t come back. In fact, she’d visited less and less these last two or three years. She should have at least stayed the night at the hospital, shouldn’t she? She rested her cheek against Maggie’s head. No. She couldn’t have stayed. She’d spent last night half fearing a second break-in and half curious about what the cowboy-for-hire on Grandma’s couch might’ve done to anyone who’d try.

Her throat tightened at the memory of the fleeing intruder. He’d run straight for her. Broad palms plowing into her shoulders. He’d thrown her onto her backside in the space of a heartbeat. She’d found bruises on her back and elbows when she showered. Marks from where she’d crashed against the hard floors and rolled. Twelve hours later, a car had run her off the road. There was no way that was a coincidence. Even Violet’s luck wasn’t that bad. Her gaze ran back to her grandma’s bandaged head. A near-fatal fall, a break-in, a psychotic road-rager, the hiring of a private security guy. That list definitely added up to something, and it wasn’t coincidence. In fact, Violet needed to contact the local sheriff’s department and make a report about the demolition derby car. Even if the driver wasn’t found, it seemed like a good idea to document the strange and dangerous things happening around her. She’d considered calling the police from the church parking lot, but she and Maggie were too shaken, and the offending car was long gone. All she’d really wanted was to find respite somewhere with witnesses in case the car returned. Could the car’s driver be the same man who’d been inside her grandma’s home?

“Ruth,” Violet began, turning back to Grandma’s friend. “When you found Grandma yesterday, was the front door open to her home? Ajar maybe?”

“No.” Ruth shook her head as if to underline the word. “I knocked. Rang the bell. Door was shut tight. Why?”

“Did you go inside?”

“Sure,” she said. “Wasn’t locked. Rarely is. I let myself in and took a look around. I called for her, but she wasn’t there. I figured she’d run out to the garden to cut some roses, so I went around back. That was when I saw the barn was open.”

“That’s when you found her,” Violet said.

“Yes.” Ruth blinked emotion-filled eyes. “That’s right.”

“Do you have any idea why she was in the barn? Was she keeping something out there?”

“Not that I know of.” Ruth raised a wide gray eyebrow. “Why?” She twisted in her seat to face Violet, a strangely parental look in her eyes. “Why all these questions? Did something else happen?”

Violet slumped in her chair, unsure how much she could say. It was impossible to know her limits without knowing what her grandma had been up to, but she was certain Ruth was a friend. Ruth had been part of Grandma’s life long before Violet was born. Before Violet’s mother, too. “Her home was broken into last night.”

“What?” Ruth gasped. “Are you okay? Is the home? What did they take?”

Violet shrugged. “I don’t know. Nothing seemed to be missing, but I haven’t been here in a while.” Honestly, she’d barely been anywhere since Maggie was born. These last eight months had boiled down to meeting her baby’s needs and trying to calculate how many hours of sleep she might get each night. The answer to the second part was “never enough.”

“A break-in,” Ruth whispered, still clearly baffled.

“How has Grandma seemed to you lately?” Violet asked. “Was she okay, or was something going on with her?” Violet tipped slightly forward, begging Ruth to share something that might help her understand.