Chapter 21
Cheri woke with her heart about to rip through her ribs. She knew if she didn’t concentrate on breathing she might faint. The dream had been so real.
The girl with the ponytail had walked alone in the mist, back and forth on the pier of Paw Paw Lake, wringing her hands as she looked into the black water.
Cheri felt such sadness for her, because she knew poor Barbara Jean would never find what she was looking for, no matter how long she searched. It was futile. Heartbreaking.
Then Cheri was Barbara Jean. Her eyes stared into the depths. Her nervous hands pulled and tugged at each other. Her thoughts were frantic. And she knew with certainty that she must keep searching …
And suddenly, there had been a sound like an explosion of glass as Tanyalee’s face soared up through the depths of the lake, glowing with an eerie light, breaking the surface and coming right at her …
Now fully awake, Cheri shook her head to drive away the image. With a quick check on the soundly sleeping J.J., she slipped from the bed, put on her sweats, and headed for the front porch. She needed air.
Cheri walked out onto the front lawn in her bare feet. The cool night grass tickled the tender skin between her toes. The breeze cleared her head. She looked up and took in the sight of the sky above her—a big black bowl filled to the brim with cosmic glitter.
That’s when it occurred to her—it wasn’t Tanyalee’s face that had burst from the dark water of her dream.
It had been her mother’s.
She wiped her eyes and went back to bed.
* * *
J.J. bolted up from a dead sleep, unsure of his surroundings until he heard the sound again.
“Chit! Chit! Keek! Keet!”
Cheri sat up, too. She clutched at his arm. “Ohmigod, what’s that?”
“Stay here.” J.J. had barely thrown the covers off his legs when the sound of shattering glass made him jump.
Cheri screamed.
“Call Turner on your BlackBerry.”
“Okay. Okay. But be careful!”
J.J. pulled on his jeans and ran into the hallway. He pressed himself against the wall in the shadows, feeling pretty damn useless without anything to protect himself or Cheri. He fell to his hands and knees and crawled toward the fireplace, grabbing the poker and crouching behind the far end of the couch. It had sounded like the breaking glass had come from the kitchen, but he didn’t see anyone.
“Keet! Chit!”
The squirrel squatted not three feet away, her little paws rubbing together in nervousness, staring right at him in the darkness. Even if he’d managed to hide himself from the intruder, his cover had just been blown.
Or maybe there was no intruder. Maybe this damn squirrel …
That’s when J.J. saw that the room had been trashed. Papers were everywhere. A side table was smashed. A loud bang! echoed from the back of the house, followed by the slam of the lean-to’s screen door. He raced toward the kitchen but skidded to a stop when he saw broken glass all around his bare feet. He looked up to see that the kitchen window had been smashed.
J.J. turned and exited the front door, went down the porch steps, and ran around the side of the house. Loose gravel cut into the soles of his feet. The poker was clutched in his hand.
“Keet! Keet!”
The squirrel was at his heels.
“Dammit!” J.J. hissed, spinning around trying to get his eyes to adjust to the dark. He heard no car leaving. He saw no one on foot. Whoever had broken in—for whatever reason—had gotten away.
* * *
“What the hell is all this?” Turner stood in the open front door of the lake house and gestured to the papers tossed all over the living room. “Everybody okay?”
Cheri nodded from her place on the floor, where she sat cross-legged and slumped over.
“Come on in and join the party,” J.J. said.
Cheri watched Turner take careful steps into the room and assess the situation in seconds—broken kitchen window, vandalized personal belongings, family photographs tossed in the smoldering ash of the fire.
Turner whistled long and low when he noticed that last bit.
Cheri fessed up. “I probably shouldn’t have touched anything, but I pulled the picture frames out of the heat. I wanted to save them.”
“Understandable,” he said. Cheri didn’t miss the silent exchange between J.J and Turner.
“Anything missing?” Turner asked.
“Not that I noticed,” she said.
“Time this occurred?”
“I’d say about two-fifteen, ” J.J. said.
“Did you see anyone?”
“The breaking glass woke us up,” J.J. said. “I heard the door slam out on the lean-to, but by the time I got outside no one was there. No car, that was for sure.”
“We would have heard a car,” Cheri added.
Turner wandered into the kitchen, stepping over glass. He examined the drainboard and the windowsill, then tapped his boot against the large creek rock sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor.
He turned toward them, an eyebrow raised. “Looks like whoever stopped by wanted to make some noise and a mess. Looks like they were leaving you a message.”
“No kidding,” Cheri muttered.
Turner walked back into the living room and smiled down at Cheri, still sitting cross-legged by the fireplace.
“You know you got a rabid squirrel on your property?”
“She’s not rabid. She’s pregnant.”
“I stand corrected.” Turner tugged on his gun holster and obviously tried to suppress a smile. “But if you’re gonna be living all the way out here on your own you might want to get yourself some protection other than a pregnant squirrel. The sheriff’s department sponsors gun safety classes for citizens.”
She groaned. “I hate guns.”
Turner squinted, trying to get a better look at what Cheri cradled in her hand.
“Oh,” she said, sighing. “Yeah. I found this on the floor. Whoever broke in must have dropped it.”
Turner came closer and peered at the lustrous mother-of-pearl hair comb in Cheri’s hand. “Very pretty. Looks antique. You recognize it?”
“Sure,” Cheri said, figuring that was a rhetorical question she didn’t need to answer. “Any suggestions on what I do now, Turner?”
He pulled off his ball cap and sat down on the couch, leaning his elbows on his knees. “Well, I can call in the evidence techs to dust for prints on the rock and on the picture frames and such, and I can head over to get a statement from—the suspect—and see if they can account for their whereabouts, but the real question is, do you want to press charges or do you want to handle it more, uh, privately?”
Cheri glanced at J.J.
“I don’t want to press charges,” she said.
Turner shrugged, hopped up from the couch, and put his cap back on. “Then, as long as no one is hurt, I’d say y’all get the window fixed and set about having a little heart-to-heart with your … uh … the suspect.”
“Thanks for coming over,” J.J. said, giving Turner a quick man-hug.
“I do love my job,” Turner said with a dramatic sigh. “But I gotta be honest, with the threatening letters and the break-ins, y’all at the Bugle are making my life a living hell.” He winked. “’Night.”