Caught Redhanded Read online

  GAYLE ROPER

  Caught Redhanded

  Published by Steeple Hill Books™

  To Chip and Audrey

  and

  Jeff and Cindy,

  we couldn’t be prouder.

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Jim Ford, director, Good Works of Chester County, PA, for taking time to talk with me.

  You and the hundreds who help you have put that which God has put in your hand to service for the King.

  I appreciate you and all the others.

  ONE

  “I need to get in shape,” I said one mid-July day as I sat at my desk at The News: The Voice of Amhearst and Chester County where I was a general reporter. “For the wedding.”

  My wedding was less than two weeks away and I knew that realistically not much could change in that short a time. It was more a case of hope springing eternal. After all, if the women’s magazines could guarantee the loss of a bagillion pounds in one week, why shouldn’t I lose a few by exercising a time or two before I said “I do”?

  Still, I didn’t mean for anyone to take me up on the comment, certainly not for anyone to challenge me to actually do something about it. It was more one of those rhetorical statements I tend to make, and I neither expect nor want a response.

  “You need to take up jogging.” Jolene Marie Luray Meister Samson looked me up and down from her desk across the aisle. “You could use it.”

  Just because she was beautiful and had a figure to die for was no reason to give me that condescending look. I might not be up to her standard of pulchritude, but I was hardly ugly. Curt, my one true love, seemed satisfied, and what more did I need?

  “Thanks, Jo,” I said dryly. “Just the encouragement I need.”

  She nodded, taking my words at face value. “I’ll meet you in the parking lot at Bushay’s tomorrow morning at six-thirty. It’s still cool enough to run at that hour. We’ll take the jogging trail they have through the woods. It’s pretty, too. Goes beside a creek part of the way and through the woods the rest of the way.”

  I’m pretty sure my mouth dropped open, making me look addlepated. I couldn’t decide which threw me more, the hour for the suggested run or the fact that Jolene seemed to be saying she jogged. I wouldn’t have expected one scintilla of physical exertion from her, not even running for her life. And I was supposed to believe she jogged regularly?

  “What?” she asked, somewhat huffily. “You think I got this figure by praying for it? I jog three or four times a week.”

  “Even in winter?” I was overwhelmed at the picture of Jolene in sweats and watch cap, breath pluming behind her.

  “Then I use the track at the Y.”

  “At 6:30 a.m.?” Edie Whatley stared. She was the editor of our family page and a general reporter, a slightly plump, happily married woman with a sixteen-year-old son. She looked as shocked as I did at the twin thoughts of Jolene jogging and the hour.

  “What is the matter with you two?” Jolene demanded, allowing a frown to mar her lovely face. “Just because you always see me when I’m beautiful…”

  She let her voice die, but not because she was embarrassed to have called herself beautiful. She was a strong proponent of truth in advertising, even when it was self-promotion. Rather, she’d just had an idea. I could tell because she narrowed her eyes as she looked from me to Edie and back. The newsroom at The News was small and looking from desk to desk was not in the least difficult.

  “I dare you both,” she said. “I dare you to run with me. Prove you’ve got the guts and the stamina.”

  Edie and I looked at each other with more than a touch of disbelief.

  “You’ve got to stay looking good for Tom, Edie. And you—” Jolene pointed at me with one of her lethal fingernails “—you need to keep Curt interested. You’re not married yet.”

  But soon, I thought joyfully. Soon.

  “Is that how you keep Reilly interested?” I asked, not willing to tell her that I didn’t think a few pounds one way or the other would make Curt lose or gain interest. He was too much a man of principle to be repelled by something as petty as a few pounds. Not that I planned on gaining any weight, but I was wise enough to know that life happened. After all, Mom had once been a size ten.

  “Jolene,” Edie said kindly, “Tom is fine with me the way I am, just as I’m sure Reilly loves you just the way you are.”

  Jolene grinned at the mention of her husband to whom she had now been married for several months.

  “And I must tell you,” Edie continued, “that I gave up dares in junior high school.”

  “Just because you’re well past junior high doesn’t mean you can’t accept a challenge,” Jolene said, either unaware or uncaring that she had just semi-insulted Edie.

  “Look, kiddo.” Edie emphasized the kid in kiddo. Jolene was about my age, which was just-turned twenty-seven. “No jogging. I exercise enough to feel healthy and that’s all I plan to do.”

  I nodded, though I didn’t get any more exercise than running from story to story.

  “You’re afraid,” Jolene taunted, her eyes on me. Apparently she recognized Edie as a lost cause.

  “Get real.”

  “You know I’ll whip you frontward and backward.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Tomorrow morning,” Jo said. “Six-thirty. I’ll be waiting.”

  And that’s how I ended up winded, trying my best to keep up with the lovely Jolene, who was proving herself a more than capable jogger as we traced the trail through the woods behind Bushay Waste Management. She wasn’t even huffing in her Lycra top and jogging shorts, her perfect, long legs eating up the distance, her iPod clipped to her waistband, the wire to her earbuds swaying with each stride.

  I, on the other hand, expected to fall over any moment. My feet had never felt so heavy, my legs so much like jelly. I pressed my hand against the pain spearing my side.

  “Wait for me!” I managed to get the words out between puffs. Why I ever thought this romp in the woods would be a snap was beyond me. You’d think I’d have learned by now that just because Jo looked like a piece of beautiful fluff didn’t mean she was one. Edie had warned me often enough.

  Even yesterday after I’d fallen into Jo’s trap, she’d said, “Merry, Jo never speaks from a position of weakness. If she thought she’d lose this dare, she’d never have made it.”

  I’d waved her wise words away, but I should have listened, especially since Jo sat at her desk with that cat-who-ate-the-canary look of smug satisfaction.

  Even Curt cautioned me when he called to say good-night. “Don’t be too cocky, sweetheart. Jolene likes to win. Always.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I muttered, not the least bit concerned.

  Now I was just hoping to make it back to the parking lot without totally embarrassing myself because it was a given that Jo would ne
ver let me forget if I failed.

  The early morning humidity made everything blur around the edges as I ran. At least I thought it was the humidity and not failing eyesight due to physical over-exertion. I tried to ignore the pains shooting through my shins at every step.

  “Slacker,” Jolene yelled back at me over her shoulder.

  And that moment of inattention to the path threw us both into the middle of another murder.

  I watched in horror as Jolene tripped and went down flat.

  “Jo!” I forced myself to go a bit faster. “Are you all right?”

  Now she was gasping, too, the wind knocked out of her. “Fine,” she managed in a raspy voice as I knelt beside her.

  She pushed herself onto her hands and knees, still struggling for oxygen, head hanging. Bracing herself on one arm, she held out the other scraped and bleeding palm. We inspected it carefully. She turned it over and breathed a sigh of relief. “No broken nails.”

  I’d been more concerned about broken limbs.

  She sank back on her heels and held out her other palm. Scraped and slowly oozing blood, too. She flipped the hand over. A broken nail, the middle finger. She said a few of the words that Edie and I were trying to convince her weren’t ladylike. Obviously we had more work to do.

  She climbed slowly to her feet, looking down at her knees. More oozing scrapes.

  “Now how am I supposed to wear skirts with scabs all over my legs?” she demanded.

  “Wear pants,” I said with an appalling lack of sympathy. Now that I knew she was all right, I was back to being disgruntled.

  She gave her typical snort, always so surprising from someone who looks like her. Clearly she felt a mandate to share her beautiful limbs with the world. How she had become one of my best friends was still a mystery to me. She was even going to be one of my bridesmaids along with Maddie and Dawn.

  “I tripped over something.” Jo sounded as if whatever she had stumbled over had deliberately attacked her. She pushed to her feet with me helping by taking her elbow.

  We turned together to see what had brought her low and stared wide eyed at the foot clad in a gray-and-white running shoe protruding from the chicory and wild phlox lining the path.

  My pulse accelerated to a rate that far outstripped the hammering I’d experienced when jogging. Oh, God, I prayed, unable to articulate all the thoughts that raced through my mind. I don’t want to look. I must look. What should I do if she needs help? If she needs help? Of course she needs help. She’s lying on the ground and I doubt she’s just taking a nap.

  Carefully I leaned over the weeds, following the line of the woman’s body, for it was obvious from the size of her foot and the shape of her ankle that it was a woman. She was lying on her stomach, face turned toward the left, away from us, sleeveless pink scoop-necked knit shirt twisted about her torso.

  It was the gaping wound at the back of her head and the bloody weeds surrounding her that made my stomach heave.

  TWO

  I swallowed and then swallowed some more until the urge to be sick subsided.

  “Martha!” Jolene said in a disbelieving voice. “It’s Martha Colby!”

  I might have known she’d recognize the woman. Jo has lived in Amhearst all her life and knows everyone who lives here—and all their secrets.

  I knelt quickly beside Martha, taking care not to step in the blood, and felt for a pulse. As I looked into her open, staring eyes, I didn’t expect to find one. I didn’t. I glanced at Jo and saw she had lost all her color and was swaying slightly. I understood completely. If I felt this shaky and I didn’t even know the woman, how must Jo feel?

  “Why don’t you run for help?” I suggested quickly. Neither of us had carried our cells as we ran, but mostly I wanted to get her out of here before she passed out.

  “911,” she said vaguely.

  “911,” I agreed. “I’ll stay here with Martha.”

  Jo blinked at me, nodded, then took off, running with remarkable speed. I felt a maternal pride—or what I think such a thing feels like—in her quick reaction. The last time we faced a body together, she’d fallen to pieces. Of course, it had been her ex-husband’s body then.

  I sat down beside Martha’s foot on the path. She looked so vulnerable, so sad lying there. So alone. For some reason I wanted to rest my hand on her foot, on her running shoe. I fought the feeling that she needed attachment, touch, because she no longer did. I was the one who did. Death always brings home the fragility of life.

  But if I touched her anywhere, even if I only touched her shoe, I might inadvertently destroy evidence. Who knew what she might have stepped in and what trace evidence lingered on that surface?

  I blinked as I realized I was assuming murder. Why?

  My eyes swept over the area. There was no limb lying nearby that might have fallen on her. In fact, there were no trees close to the path where we were. Also Martha couldn’t have stumbled and struck the back of her head, nor could the soft earth beneath the chicory and phlox and wild mustard have made that horrid gash.

  The scene said foul play as clearly as if the weeds themselves could speak.

  So I sat by Martha’s foot, careful not to touch her, feeling she deserved someone acting as honor guard or some such thing, though we were obviously too late to shield her from whomever had harmed her.

  Suddenly it struck me that her neck had still been warm when I felt for a pulse. My back muscles contracted as I quickly scanned the edge of the woods that stood back about twenty feet from the trail. Dogwood and mountain laurel, their blossoms now gone, mixed with poplar, beech and oak. Whoever had struck Martha might still be nearby. Maybe they were watching me from behind the thicket of bushes? The summer foliage was dense enough to hide a small army if it chose to secret itself behind the trees. Certainly one murderer could be hiding there easily.

  Oh, Lord, if he’s there, make him go away! I remembered my manners and quickly added, Please!

  “They’re on their way,” Jo called as she raced back.

  I breathed a relieved sigh. Help was coming and there was safety in numbers, even if the number was only two at the moment.

  Jo shoved her picture phone at me. “Here, take a few shots before the crime-scene guys arrive and we won’t be allowed near Martha again.”

  “I hate this part of being a reporter.” I climbed to my feet and took the phone.

  “Mac would kill us if we missed the opportunity.” She heard herself and made a distressed noise as she looked down at Martha. “Poor choice of words.”

  “Yeah.” Trying to be the uninvolved newspaper professional, I took several pictures. When the police arrived, I’d take a couple more of them at work and it would be one of those that actually got printed in the paper. We certainly wouldn’t print Martha, so defenseless, lying here. The pain that would give her family was unimaginable. But we would use them as a reference for whatever we wrote.

  Jo stayed carefully on the path, but continued to stare at Martha, looking sad. “I went to school with her younger sister Tawny.”

  “Tawny? Like the color of a lion?” It’s amazing the strange things your mind sticks on when reality is too terrible to contemplate.

  “Yeah.”

  “Interesting. Martha is such a traditional name, biblical and all. Tawny is one of those cutesy modern names.”

  “Different moms. Martha’s mom took off when she was about three. Left her with her father. He remarried a couple of years later, and Tawny and Shawna come from the second marriage. Martha was four or five years ahead of Tawny and me, but I always thought she was so cool. She was a cheerleader, the real perky kind who does splits and tumbles. Mac was her tosser.”

  “Mac?” I squeaked. “Our Mac?”

  Mac Carnuccio was our editor at The News, and he was also Amhearst born and bred. He might be many things, but I’d never in a million years have pictured him as a cheerleader. The secrets that lurk in people’s pasts are amazing.

  Jolene nodded. “Our Mac. H
e and Martha went together from high school until well into college. Then when he came back to town to work at The News, they dated again, sort of off and on when he wasn’t chasing someone else. He sort of broke her heart.”

  That sounded like our Mac.

  Jo shrugged and looked thoughtful, always a circumstance guaranteed to bring an unexpected insight. “Or maybe she broke his. Who knows? She dated other guys a lot.”

  Now there was an interesting thought. Mac, a ladies’ man through and through, reaping his own whirlwind.

  “And in a fit of frustrated passion—” she waved her arm in the air like she was banging something against the back of a head “—he…”

  I frowned at her. “Don’t even go there, Jolene Marie. You know Mac is changing. And even the old Mac would never have done something so violent.”

  Jo actually blushed. “Yeah, you’re right.” She leaned over Martha, I thought because she was too embarrassed to look at me. Accusing one’s boss, even in thoughtless speculation, isn’t the done thing.

  Jo tensed. “Look. She’s got a tattoo on her left shoulder.”

  I looked. Sure enough, sticking out from under the edge of her sleeveless running shirt was the curve of one side of a red heart.

  “It has a name in it,” Jo said. Before I realized what she planned to do, she reached over and slid the shirt to the side.

  “Jo! Don’t touch!” I could picture the unhappy face of Sergeant Poole of the Amhearst police.

  Jolene ignored me just as she ignored anything she didn’t want to hear. “It says M-A-C. MAC.” She looked at me. “Our Mac?”

  Yikes. The very thought made me uneasy.

  “Even if it is, it doesn’t mean anything anymore,” Jolene hastened to say, obviously trying to undo her previous suspicious thoughts. “He’s going with Dawn Trauber now.”

  He wishes. Dawn was the director of His House, a residential ministry to teen girls in trouble, most of them unwed mothers. She was also a strong Christian and Mac wasn’t. I didn’t think he was any kind of a believer, strong or weak, committed or un. Therein lay their problem. In spite of mutual attraction, Dawn was holding tough against too deep an emotional attachment. At least she was trying hard. It was a case of unequally yoked.