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They deserved to have closure, didn’t they?
* * *
HARRISON DREADED THE conversation with his family. Their dinners were meant to keep the family close, although Chrissy’s disappearance had thrown a permanent kink in their relationships.
No dinner, holiday or amount of alcohol could smooth over the awkward tension between the brothers and their mother.
Still, he had to tell his family about Granger’s death. Warn them that even if he didn’t ask questions, others would.
Warn them that even though they might not have liked the man, it was Harrison’s job to investigate his murder.
His phone buzzed just as he climbed inside his SUV. He checked the number. Honey Granger.
What did she want? Answers about her father’s death?
Or maybe news about his body and what to do next?
The phone buzzed again, and he pressed Connect. “Sheriff Hawk.”
Breathing rattled over the line. “Hello?”
“Harrison, it’s me. Honey.”
Her voice sounded shaky. Uncertain.
“Yes?”
“I...have to show you something. I don’t know what it means or if it means anything, but, well, can you come out to my house? I mean, my father’s house.”
Harrison gritted his teeth. He had to deal with her, find her father’s killer. But seeing her was difficult. It resurrected memories he’d tried to forget. And another kind of guilt—he should have stood up for Honey when his mother had judged her.
“Can you come?” Honey asked again.
“I’ll be right there.” Harrison’s pulse clamored as he started the engine and drove toward the Granger’s house. He phoned his deputy and asked him to do rounds around town.
Harrison had to be at his mother’s house for dinner and drop the bombshell about Granger before she and his brothers heard the news from the local grapevine.
In a small town like Tumbleweed, word spread as quickly as butter melting on hot Texas pavement.
Night shadows hovered along the streets as he drove, the gray sky dark and desolate as he veered onto the road to Lower Tumbleweed. The yards were overgrown with weeds, the houses deserted, dilapidated and in need of repairs.
The neighborhood certainly didn’t look welcoming or inviting to an outsider. The place probably held bad memories for Honey. An image of Honey, thin and wearing hand-me-downs two sizes too big for her, haunted him. She’d looked tiny and lost and lonely. She’d also been smart enough to understand the whispers and stares from the other kids.
No wonder she’d left town and never looked back.
He winced at the rotting porch with the brick for a makeshift step, then parked in the drive behind her van. Admiration for her for owning her own business mushroomed inside him. He didn’t know how she’d done it, but he was proud of her for overcoming the obstacles her family had put in front of her. She’d made a success of herself in spite of adversity, an admirable accomplishment in his book.
He glanced around the unkempt yard and at the peeling paint on the weathered house and wondered what Honey planned to do with the place. Sell it as it was or fix it up then sell? Judging from the lack of curb appeal and run-down condition of the homes, the comps would be low.
Curiosity over Honey’s call nagged at him as he walked up to the front door. He raised his fist and knocked. A second later, she opened the door. Anxiety and some other emotion he couldn’t quite define streaked her face.
Alarm bells clanged in his head. “Honey, is everything all right?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, Harrison. I...honestly don’t know.”
He forced his expression to remain professional. “Let me come in and then you can explain.”
She chewed on her bottom lip, then stepped aside and motioned for him to enter. He scanned the living area. A mess. Granger had let everything go. Judging from the number of empty liquor and beer bottles, drinking had been his priority just as it had been when Honey lived here.
When she reached the sofa, she picked up what looked like a child’s jewelry box, and ran her fingers over the rosewood design.
“What’s wrong?” he asked quietly.
She took a deep breath, then gestured toward the jewelry box. “This... I was looking through things after I got home, trying to sort out my father’s stuff and what was left of mine. I have to decide what to do with it all.”
He nodded. “And?”
Misery darkened her eyes. “I found this.” She pushed the jewelry box into his hands.
He narrowed his eyes, confused.
“Open it,” she said tightly.
An uneasy feeling rolled through him. Whatever she’d found had upset her.
“Go ahead,” she said. “I’m not sure what it means, but I had to show it to you.”
He frowned, but slowly lifted the lid to the jewelry box. A slip of bright yellow caught his eyes.
A yellow ribbon. Just like the one his sister was wearing the night she disappeared.
“It was hers, wasn’t it?” Honey asked in a choked voice.
He lifted his gaze to meet hers. The turmoil in her eyes mirrored how he felt at the moment. “It looks like Chrissy’s. My brother said she was wearing yellow ones the night she disappeared.”
“I know.” Honey bit down on her lower lip.
“Did she come to your house that night?” Harrison asked.
Honey’s hand trembled as she rubbed her temple. “If she did, I didn’t see her,” she said in a raw whisper.
“Don’t lie to me, Honey. I know you wouldn’t have hurt Chrissy, but if you know something about your father...”
Tension escalated between them. “I don’t. And if I did, I’d tell you. I want to know what happened to Chrissy, too.”
The agony in her voice tore at him.
Of course the questions over Chrissy’s disappearance had ripped her life inside and out, too.
“You really want the truth?” he asked gruffly.
She nodded. “We all deserve closure,” she said softly.
That was one thing they agreed on.
“I’m sorry, but my fingerprints are on the ribbon,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking at first. But I’m sure you want to analyze it. If my dad’s are there...”
Then that would mean that her father had touched the ribbon. That he’d either found it or taken it after he’d killed her.
He’d send it to the lab ASAP.
Two scenarios entered Harrison’s mind. The first—Granger killed Chrissy and hid her body at the bluff. Then he’d returned to visit her.
But where had he hidden her? And why revisit her body now after all these years?
And if he had, who had killed him? Someone who’d discovered what he’d done?
Scenario two—Granger had been at the bluff and either stumbled on Chrissy’s body or he stumbled on the killer, and the killer murdered him to keep him quiet.
* * *
HONEY COULD BARELY look at Harrison.
“Thank you for calling me, Honey,” he said quietly. “I appreciate your honesty.”
Honesty?
More guilt bombarded her. She hadn’t mentioned that she’d been at the bluff that night, too. That if she’d been home, she’d know if Chrissy had come by. And she’d know if her father had done something to Chrissy or if he’d been passed out all evening.
His jaw tightened. “What if I find out that your father killed Chrissy?”
Honey sucked in a sharp breath. She and her father hadn’t been close, but shame engulfed her. “Then we’ll know.”
The darkness in his eyes, a darkness filled with anger and pain, was a reminder that he and his family blamed her for his sister’s disappearance.
If her father had killed Chrissy, he had a right to blame her.
Harrison shrugged. “The search parties never found anything belonging to my sister. Not her backpack or the pink jacket she was wearing or any clothing.”
Honey thought back to the gossip after that night. “Some people thought that was a good sign. They thought she ran away and—”
“She didn’t run away,” Harrison said. “Chrissy may have argued with me and my brothers but she was afraid of the dark and wouldn’t have gone out that night if Brayden hadn’t convinced her to sneak out.” He swallowed hard. “She was also attached to a stuffed doll that she won at a rodeo with my parents. She couldn’t sleep without that rag doll.” He paused, pain riddling his face. “If she was going to run away, she would have taken the doll.”
Now that he mentioned it, Honey remembered the rag doll with the big blue painted eyes and red braided pigtails.
Honey had envied that doll because Chrissy had something Honey didn’t—the innocence of childhood, which allowed her to play with dolls like a normal little girl.
Only Chrissy had lost her innocence—and maybe her life—that night.
“If you find any of those things, let me know.”
“Of course,” Honey said.
“Do you mind if I search the house?” Harrison asked.
Honey stiffened. “Go ahead. I’m not hiding anything.”
His stormy gaze met hers, then he carried the ribbon to his SUV and returned with a flashlight.
Honey’s phone buzzed just as he stepped back inside.
Her business partner, Jared.
She couldn’t stand to watch Harrison comb through her father’s house and her own personal childhood belongings, so she stepped outside to answer the phone.
“I have to take this,” she said as he started to search her father’s dresser drawers. She said a prayer he wouldn’t find anything else belonging to Chrissy as she rushed outside to the front porch.
“How are things?” Jared asked.
“Not good.” Honey bowed her head and fought the panic setting in.
“What happened?”
She hadn’t shared her past with Jared, and she didn’t want to now. “I just don’t like being in my father’s house.”
He murmured that he understood. “When will you be back?”
A heaviness weighed on her. She’d felt trapped here as a teenager. She felt trapped now.
She couldn’t leave until she had answers, until she knew who’d murdered her father.
Until she knew if he was a killer.
Chapter Five (#u244747f7-4056-50ea-9982-5a2b658f93e0)
An hour later Harrison met Honey on the porch. “I’d like to come back during the day and look around the property.”
Honey paled. “You think my father killed Chrissy and buried her here?”
Harrison shrugged. “I don’t know what to think, Honey. But considering you found one of her ribbons, it’s possible.”
Honey clenched her hands together. She couldn’t argue that point. “All right. Just let me know what time.”
“I will.” He studied her for another moment. He wanted to comfort her, but he had to do his job and it involved investigating her father. That was reality.
Just as reality meant that he had to talk to his family. Tonight.
For both their sakes, he hoped her father hadn’t buried Chrissy on the Grangers’ property.
