17.

  Five days until Halloween

  Willow Springs, TN

  The Everly family, minus its patriarch, was preparing to flee the hotel when Sheriff Bob Lee pulled up in his cruiser. Karen Everly was loading some things into the open rear hatch area of a black Mercedes SUV, a vehicle Lee didn’t recognize. It hadn’t been among the cars on the premises at the Everlys’ residence yesterday.

  All the SUV’s doors stood open. As Lee got out of his cruiser and began to waddle over, he caught a glimpse of a teenaged girl sitting in the front passenger seat with her bare feet propped on the dash. It was Eva, the eldest of the two daughters. She had nice legs, an observation Lee pushed aside, recognizing it as inappropriate. The girl had only just turned sixteen. Her sister, Kaelyn, younger by about a year, was standing several feet away from the SUV, with her attention glued to the screen of her phone. Lanky with prominent cheekbones, she looked like the type certain to turn into an absolute knockout in a couple years. The sole male among the Everly offspring was hovering near his mother as she worked at rearranging the travel bags stashed away in the back of the SUV. The boy’s name eluded Lee for a moment, but it came to him as he consulted his memory of the reports filed by his deputies. Blake was the oldest of the Everly kids. The look of grim seriousness on his face as he conversed with his mother in a low voice didn’t hide his handsomeness.

  They were a good-looking bunch all around, there was no denying that. That definitely included the mother of these kids. Karen Everly had long blonde hair and a sexy body, with a pleasant amount of roundness in all the right places. That roundness was maybe a touch more pronounced than a lot of women liked to carry these days, but for Lee only enhanced her sexiness. He couldn’t understand why any man would want to cheat on her with the likes of skinny little Fawn Hightower.

  The whole clan, with the obvious exception of the missing father and husband, exuded a picture-perfect aura of all-American wholesomeness. Looking at them, Lee felt a new stirring of anger at Chuck Everly. He had everything. The man had been living the dream in every way. Nice house, good job, beautiful family, the works. What kind of man would risk throwing all that away?

  A stupid man, seemingly. But Lee knew it wasn’t as simple as that. Over the course of his decades in law enforcement, he’d seen similar scenarios play out countless times, but rarely under such odd or dramatic circumstances.

  “Afternoon, Ms. Everly.”

  Karen Everly jumped at the sound of his voice. She had a hand to her chest when she turned away from the SUV’s open hatch to face him. “Sheriff Lee. What are you doing here?”

  Lee’s smile was strained. “Sorry to startle you, Ms. Everly.” He tilted his head and took a pointed look at the bags loaded into the SUV’s rear compartment before meeting her gaze again. “Looks like you’re going on a trip.”

  Karen grunted. “We’re going home. We brought a lot with us because we’d planned on an extended stay.”

  Lee glanced at the boy, who was still standing nearby with that grim look on his face. “Not sure that’s a good idea, Ms. Everly,” he said, shifting his gaze back to Karen. “I understand you’re upset over the situation with your husband, but don’t forget that someone broke into your house yesterday and did a very strange thing there. Might not be safe to go back yet.”

  Karen rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. That was obviously Fawn’s doing, her way of sending my husband a message. Some kind of messed-up ultimatum. She wanted him to make a choice and he did. He picked that bitch over his family. And now they’ve skipped town together. To hell with it all, sheriff, and the hell with them. I’m taking my kids home, where we belong.”

  Lee glanced again at Blake Everly, tugging at his sagging belt as he did it, an unconscious gesture of mounting nerves. “Could we talk in private a moment, Ms. Everly?”

  “Whatever you have to say about Chuck, you can say in front of my son. He should know all about what kind of degenerate his father has become.”

  The boy groaned. “Dad’s not a degenerate, mom. Something’s not right about all this.”

  Karen cut a glare at him as she said, “No kidding something’s not right. Your father’s a degenerate scumbag.” She looked at Lee. “What is it you need to tell me, sheriff?”

  Lee sighed. “Look, Ms. Everly, you’ve got every right to be angry. There’s no excuse for what your husband’s been up to with the neighbor lady. But there’s more to what’s going on than that, and I’m sure it’s tied somehow to Lloyd McAfee’s murder. The two were friends when they were boys. Very tight, from what I hear. And the pumpkins left at your house suggest a connection. They almost had to have been stolen from Lloyd’s stand and put in your house by the killer.”

  Karen frowned and chewed on her bottom lip a moment, staring at the sheriff as she digested this information. A lot of it she’d already known, of course, but it hadn’t quite all been laid out for her this way. While she was mulling it all over, her daughters joined the little group clustered at the rear of the SUV, making Lee nervous as they crowded close.

  At last, Karen let out a breath and said, “What are you trying to tell me, sheriff? That something has happened to Chuck and the Hightower woman?”

  Lee shrugged. “I’m not saying that. Just that it’s curious they’ve gone missing at this particular time. There’s a killer on the loose and there’s a chance he may have some kind of link to your husband. I tried talking about all this with him yesterday and I have to tell you I didn’t like how he was acting.”

  Karen frowned again. “What do you mean?”

  “He was being evasive. And he was nervous as hell.” Lee tilted his Stetson back and wiped sweat from his brow. Though the nights were chilly now, the afternoons were still warm, especially for a fat man in full uniform. “Now maybe some of that had to do with Fawn Hightower, but he got especially jittery when I questioned him about Lloyd and their past together. There’s something there that bothers the hell out of him, something he doesn’t want to talk about.”

  Karen held his gaze a moment longer before sighing and shaking her head. “Sounds like nothing but speculation to me. You’re only guessing at a link because you’ve got nothing else to go on.”

  Before Lee could refute that, a new voice intruded. “We about ready to head out, gang?”

  A tall man with an athletic build joined the group at the back of the SUV. He was good-looking with blond hair. Lee knew he was related to Karen somehow at first glance. The resemblance was striking. Karen confirmed the guess when she said, “Sheriff, this is my brother, Kyle. He’ll be staying with us for a while.”

  Kyle extended a hand and Lee accepted it with some reluctance, doing his best not to grimace at the man’s firm grip as they shook. “Nice to meet you, Karl.”

  “Kyle.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  Karen waved the others out of the way and closed the SUV’s hatch. Once it was shut, she faced the sheriff again and said, “I think you can see we’ll be in good hands, sheriff. And I’m really not worried, anyway. Even if there is someone out there with a grudge against my worthless husband, well, he’s gone now.”

  Kyle smirked. “And good riddance, too. Don’t worry, sheriff. I’ll take good care of Karen and the kids. Anyone who tries messing with them is gonna be in a world of hurt.” He twirled a key ring around an index finger, making the keys jingle. “Pile in, guys. We’ll swing by Sonic for some burgers and shakes on the way home.”

  The kids looked less than enthused by this attempt to pump up their moods, but they obeyed their uncle and got in the SUV.

  Karen lingered at the rear of the vehicle a moment longer. “I learned all I need to know about what’s going on with Chuck when that whore called me last night. Maybe I’ll feel differently later when the anger fades, but right now I don’t even care if anything else has happened to him. Please try to understand. We’re going home and that’s all there is to it.”

  She turned away from him and joined the rest of them in the SUV before Lee could respond. Not that there was anything left he could say. He still thought they were making a mistake by going home, but he couldn’t blame Karen Everly for her current lack of concern regarding her husband’s well-being. Just to be safe, though, he’d station a deputy outside the Everly home for at least a night or two.

  After waddling back over to the cruiser, he got back in behind the wheel and reached for the gearshift. His hand came away from the knob when a squawk of static came over the radio. After taking the mic off the clip, he thumbed the button on the side and recited the usual jargon.

  Deputy Acker told him to hurry on back to the department. There was some strange news out of Hooperville and he would definitely want to know all about it right away. Lee pressed for additional information, but Acker refused to be more forthcoming over the radio.

  Sighing, Lee signed off and drove away from the hotel.

  18.

  Five days until Halloween

  Willow Springs, TN

  The single wide trailer Jimmy Martin called home was located on an isolated patch of rural property about five miles down the road from the McAfee farm. Until about ten years ago, a decrepit, uninhabitable old house dating from the early twentieth century had occupied the same patch of land. The land and the old house had belonged to Jimmy’s Uncle, Irwin, who passed it on to him when he died. Renovating the house would have been impossible. It was rotten throughout, from its frame down to its foundation, so he had it razed. Not having the funds necessary to rebuild, he bought a used trailer for a fraction of the cost, saving himself the bulk of the monetary portion of his inheritance.

  A house would have been nice, of course, but all that really mattered was he had a place of his own to call home, one he owned free and clear, with no rent to pay a landlord or mortgage owed to a bank. The patch of land itself was a scraggly clearing in the middle of nowhere that no one but himself cared about, least of all the local government, which meant his property taxes were only a few hundred bucks a year.

  It all added up to a pretty sweat deal for Jimmy, who’d managed to make the cash left to him by Uncle Irwin last for years. He was a simple man with simple needs. Cable TV, Internet porn, and a large enough supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon to float him through each day without feeling anything other than the most surface, meaningless emotion was all he needed. His monthly disability check from the federal government for his morbid obesity was just icing on the cake. He’d only ever worked in construction and had managed to convince the powers-that-be that he was no longer physically capable of performing that kind of labor, thus they should pay him money.

  Which they did, the gullible cocksuckers. Jimmy figured he was only about a hundred or so pounds overweight. Not that big a deal, really, and he could actually get around just fine on his supposedly bum knees, though they did get awful sore sometimes if he stood for too long, which, thank the lord, didn’t happen too often.

  As Jimmy drove his Ford pickup past the McAfee farm that day, he took his beefy right hand off the steering wheel and thrust an upraised middle finger in the direction of the property. The farm was too far off the road for anyone to take notice of this, but Jimmy got a nasty bit of visceral satisfaction from it, anyway. He’d heard about Lloyd’s murder, of course. Even for a shut-in like him, the news was kind of hard to avoid. It was the talk of the town. The boys down at Coogan’s General Store had been jawing about it when Jimmy stopped in to pick up his daily case of PBR. Recalling Jimmy’s former association with Lloyd, old Bert Coogan had asked him what he thought about the news.

  Jimmy mumbled something about it being a terrible tragedy and got the hell out of there. In truth, he wasn’t at all unhappy to see Lloyd take his leave of this mortal realm. The guy was a mean son of a bitch who’d picked on him when they were younger and had cajoled him into doing some pretty shitty things he didn’t like to think about now, like when they’d done that terrible thing to little Elliot Parker. He’d gone along with it, the way he always did back then, and he’d put on a pretty good act, making Lloyd and Ricky think he was as into all that evil shit as they were. But he wasn’t. Not one damn bit. He’d been sick about it for months afterward, plagued by insomnia and often physically ill from the memories. Not long afterward, he’d stopped hanging around with those assholes for good.

  Once the McAfee property was in his rearview mirror, Jimmy lowered his hand and tore open the case of PBR, which was resting on the passenger seat. The truck swerved a bit on the narrow back road as he pried a can out of the big carton and popped the tab. A bit of foam rushed out of the opening and he blew it off his fingers as he straightened the wheel and got the pickup back on a relatively straight track. He’d finished off the first can and was reaching for another when he turned down the little dirt drive that led to the clearing where he had his trailer.

  His hand came away from the carton, though, when he saw the sheriff’s department cruiser parked alongside the trailer. An open pack of gum sat in the tray beneath the radio, just like always. Jimmy was a big believer in being prepared for situations like this. He rarely drove out anywhere without at least a mild buzz going, so having some means of covering up beer breath handy was an obvious necessity. Slowing the truck as he continued up the drive, he worked at keeping his torso as motionless as possible while furtively removing a stick of Big Red from the pack.

  After working the wrapper free with a quick exercise in practiced one-handed dexterity, he popped the stick of gum into his mouth. The deputy stood leaning against his cruiser with his arms folded across his chest, but he was facing the trailer rather than the approaching vehicle. He’d spared the truck only a fleeting glance upon hearing its engine. Thankful for the man’s nonchalance, Jimmy gave the wad of gum an energetic chewing, swishing around the flavorful juice this produced. He flattened the gum by pressing it against the roof of his mouth and then worked it across his tongue. Once he’d coaxed all the juice out of it he could, Jimmy took a moment to ensure the deputy still wasn’t looking his way. Then he turned his head and spat the wad of gum out the window. Or he attempted to, anyway. It hit the doorframe instead and stuck there.

  Jimmy grimaced.

  For fuck’s sake.

  He left the thoroughly masticated wad of gum where it was as he slowed to a stop, parked behind the cruiser, and got out of the truck. The beer stayed where it was, too. No point in letting the deputy see that the carton was already open. After throwing the door shut—it closed with a squeal of unoiled hinges—he ambled over to where the deputy stood.

  “Help you with something?”

  When the deputy’s head turned toward him, Jimmy saw that he was very young, probably somewhere in his early twenties. He was tall and fit, but one glance at the young man’s face told Jimmy he lacked the self-assuredness of more experienced lawmen. Despite his lazy posture, there was something hesitant and uncertain in his demeanor.

  He tipped back his Stetson and removed the mirrored sunglasses covering his eyes. “That beer on your breath?”

  Jimmy snorted. “That peach fuzz on your cheeks? How old are you, boy?” He laughed. “Are you a real lawman or are you just playing dress-up for Halloween?”

  The deputy tried for a tough scowl, but he couldn’t quite pull it off and gave up the effort almost immediately. “You’re Jimmy Martin, right?”

  “That’s right. What do you want with me, son?”

  The deputy pushed away from the cruiser and stood up taller, again trying hard to seem more imposing than he actually was. It worked about as well as the aborted scowl. Jimmy almost felt sorry for him. “I’m Deputy Lucas with the sheriff’s department. Just wanted to follow up with you on something I heard this morning. Some old gossip. Could be related to an investigation. You know about the pumpkin stand murder down the road, I take it.”

  Jimmy nodded. “You know I have. Whole town’s talking about it.”

  “Right. Well, I heard you and the victim used to be tight.”

  “A long time ago. I ain’t talked to Lloyd McAfee in almost twenty-five years.”

  The deputy’s expression turned thoughtful as he scratched at his peach fuzz. “That may be, but I also heard you boys used to be real troublemakers, that you got up to no good all the time. You and the rest of your little group.”

  Jimmy just managed not to roll his eyes. The young deputy’s source for all this was obvious. He’d been hanging out at Coogan’s, listening to those old farts flap their gums. “That’s the truth So what? It’s got nothing to do with what happened to Lloyd.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Jimmy heard the eagerness in the man’s voice. He was obviously out here on his own initiative, hoping to blow the case wide open all on his lonesome and accomplish something big early in his career. “Because it was so goddamned long ago. Did you not hear the part where I said I ain’t talked to the son of a bitch in twenty-five years? I reckon we made some folks hate us back in those days, but nobody holds onto a grudge that long. Nobody in their right mind, leastwise.”

  The deputy looked like he was about to disagree, but whatever he’d been about to say went unsaid because in the next moment both men were distracted by the sound of another vehicle turning down the tree-shrouded drive to the clearing where Jimmy’s trailer sat. A mud-splattered silver Honda Civic with tinted windows pulled to a stop next to Jimmy’s truck.

  Deputy Lucas frowned. “Friend of yours?”

  Jimmy shook his head. “Don’t think so. Nobody I know drives those Jap cars. I don’t get too many visitors way out here, anyway. Place is starting to look like the parking lot outside a football stadium on Sunday compared to usual.”

  The Civic’s driver’s side door popped open, but the driver did not immediately emerge. Judging by what Jimmy could make out through the tinted glass, it looked like this new visitor was reaching for something on the floor. For the first time, he felt a tingling of alarm, which caused him to glance toward the closed door to his trailer. A strong urge to get inside the trailer and get his hands on his shotgun intensified with each passing second.