Murder in the Smokies

chapter Six



As tired as he was, Sutton had hoped he’d fall asleep quickly. Anything to keep from lying there, just a few feet from where Ivy Hawkins was sleeping, imagining in vivid detail what it would be like to explore every inch of her curvy little body.

He was used to sleeping wherever he laid his head, in desert or jungle, soft hotel bed or grimy blanket on the cold and stony ground. But he couldn’t relax enough to close his eyes for long, and it took a while to realize that his insomnia was about more than his libido. He was also worrying over the meaning of the evening’s ambush.

Why had someone targeted him? As he’d pointed out to Ivy, not many people even knew he was in town, and even if a few folks had seen him around and recognized the Calhoun boy who’d left town nearly fifteen years ago, how many would know he was investigating one of the murders?

Or was Ivy’s friend John the deputy right? Could the shooter have targeted him for being Cleve Calhoun’s son?

But why not target Cleve instead? As far as Sutton knew, his father didn’t exactly live holed up behind a fortress wall. If someone wanted him dead badly enough, it shouldn’t have been hard to make it happen.

The darkness outside the spare room window had softened, a hint of moonlight drifting through the curtains as it struggled to penetrate the wispy remainder of storm clouds darkening the sky. From where he lay on the sofa bed, Sutton could make out the outline of spiky evergreen treetops, black against the fainter blue of the sky.

Suddenly, a flash of darkness blotted out the pale light. Just as suddenly, it was gone and the light was back.

Sutton sat up in a single, fluid motion, one hand reaching for the Glock 17 lying on the nicked wooden table by the sofa. He padded quietly to the window that looked out on the front yard. The porch was empty, as was the patch of grass beyond. Scudding clouds swallowed the moon again, pitching the night into inky darkness. But Sutton felt, more than saw, movement outside. A furtive, slinking shadow glided just beyond the edges of his vision until it faded into the blackness of the tree line at the edge of the yard.

He heard the front door open with a soft creak. Taking just enough time to pull on his jeans and shove his feet into a pair of running shoes, he hurried out to the front room in time to see the door close with a soft snick.

Had someone come in? Or gone out?

Carefully, he eased open the door. The groan of the hinges made him wince. So much for stealth.

“Stop there.” Ivy’s voice was a low growl in the impenetrable darkness.

“It’s me,” he whispered quickly.

“I saw someone pass by the window.” She kept her voice low, but the whisper couldn’t hide the tension in her tone.

“I did, too.” He realized he was still holding the Glock outstretched. He dropped it to his side.

“I might have seen someone moving out by the trees, but I can’t be sure.” Ivy moved, a dark shape looming toward him in the dark. He felt the heat of her body as it neared his, a potent reminder that the night had grown cold and damp, making him wish he’d taken a moment more to grab a shirt.

Suddenly, her small, dark shape pitched forward with a gasp, slamming into him. He put up his free hand to catch her, and the soft heat of her body burned into his bare skin like a brand.

“So sorry!’ she breathed against his chest, steadying herself by grasping both his arms. “I stepped on something that made me trip—”

Damn, she felt good. Soft in all the right places, and sweet-smelling, like ripe apples warmed by the sun. A few strands of her hair still clung to his face, caught in his beard stubble, the sensation unexpectedly arousing.

He let go of her reluctantly when she stepped away and bent to pick up something at her feet.

“Hmm,” she said, her tone puzzled. He heard a soft click and the beam of a flashlight sliced through the gloom, almost blinding him for a second.

It took a moment for his eyesight to adjust enough to see what she held between her thumb and forefinger. It was a small marble, the stone orb a unique swirl of bright lime-green and darker teal. Sutton’s breath caught for a hitch as he realized he’d seen the marble before.

A long, long time ago.

“This is what I tripped on.” Ivy turned the marble over and over, studying the twists of color as if she could find an answer there. “Looks like a kid’s marble.”

“It is,” Sutton said, his mind reeling through the implications of this particular marble showing up here on this particular night. His gaze slid back out to the dark tree line where he thought he’d seen movement earlier. The darkness was still and silent now. If someone had been out there before, he was long gone now.

But there was no if about it, was there? Someone had been here. Someone had left that marble.

And he knew who.

He realized Ivy was looking at him. He met her curious gaze in the ambient glow of the flashlight. “It’s mine,” he added. That much wasn’t a lie. The marble had belonged to him once, many years ago.

Ivy’s brow creased a little more deeply. “You carry a marble around? What, like a good luck charm or something?”

He took the marble from her fingers and dropped it in his pocket. “Guess it didn’t turn out so lucky for you. Sorry it tripped you.”

Her puzzled expression didn’t clear right away. “No harm done.”

“You know, if we saw anyone,” he added, already moving toward the door, “it was probably some kids or something. Maybe they’d planned to play a prank until you scared them off.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Ivy followed him slowly back inside, still looking thoughtful. “You go on back to bed. I’m going to check all the doors and windows before I hit the sack again.”

He should offer to go with her, to make sure the place was locked down securely, but the green marble seemed to be burning a hole in his pocket. He gave in to his roiling curiosity and went back to the spare room, closing the door behind him so he could figure out in peace what to do next.

He checked his watch. Almost midnight. Which would make it eleven back in Chickasaw County. Late, but not egregiously so. He picked up his cell phone and dialed Delilah Hammond’s cell number.

She answered in a sleepy growl after two rings. “Damn it, Sutton, just because you can’t sleep doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t.”

“I know you said you never hear from Seth, but do you ever hear anything about him? Maybe what he’s doing these days or where he is?”

She was silent a moment. “What makes you ask that now?”

He considered telling her about the marble, then remembered she hadn’t known anything about Seth’s con job back then. Sutton had been suckered out of that marble thanks to his own stupidity as much as Seth’s duplicity, and he hadn’t wanted to admit his mistake to anyone.

“I guess it’s just being back here in Bitterwood,” he answered instead. “Makes me nostalgic for the old days.”

“Seth hasn’t been your friend in a lot of years.” She sounded more puzzled than defensive.

“I know. I just wondered if you had any idea where he was these days or what he was doing.”

She paused again before answering. “He’s in Maryville now. At least, that’s what he told me when he called this afternoon.”

Sutton sank onto the edge of the bed, his gut tightening with dismay. Maryville was a short, easy drive from Bitterwood. Not far from Clingmans Dome, either. “He called you this afternoon? Out of the blue?”

“Yeah. Said he’d been thinking about me and wanted me to know where to find him if I ever needed him. Says he’s got a real job. Legit.” Her hopeful tone made Sutton’s stomach ache. Even though Delilah was a smart, sensible woman who knew her brother as well as anyone, there was a part of her that wanted to believe he’d changed, as unlikely a possibility as it might be. Sometimes love was more free with second chances than was wise.

“Where’s he working now?”

“Some trucking company there in Maryville.” She stifled a yawn. “I wrote it down—wait a sec—here. Davenport Trucking in Maryville. You thinking of looking him up?”

Sutton looked at the green marble nestled in the curve of his palm. The teal threads of color inside the green marble seemed to glow with light. “Yeah,” he answered, closing his fist over the marble. “I think I will.”

* * *

ALL OF THE WINDOWS and doors were safely locked. Ivy wasn’t sure why she’d made such a big deal of double-checking them. She’d just had a strong feeling she should. To be sure.

As she slid between the sheets again and reached for the switch to turn off the light, her gaze fell on the folder lying on her bedside table. It was closed, which surprised her for some reason.

She dropped her hand from the light switch and picked up the folder. Balancing it on her knees, she opened it and looked at the photos and notes inside. April Billings’s photo was on the top of the stack. Not the crime scene photo but a recent posed photo of the pretty young college student provided by the family. “I want you to remember her as a person, not just a body,” April’s mother had told Ivy when she handed over her daughter’s photo. It had been the day she’d talked the captain into letting her join forces with Antoine Parsons on the murders.

There had been three homicides by that time—the two earlier cases Antoine had been investigating and the newer one Ivy had taken the lead on. She was convinced the three cases were related, and Antoine had agreed. Only the captain thought differently, and he’d been reluctant to combine the investigations.

She’d expressed curiosity to Antoine about the captain’s recalcitrance, but Antoine had told her it was all about turf. The captain didn’t want the TBI or the feds nosing around the Bitterwood Police Department, asking inconvenient questions about how they did things in the sticks.

“You think there’s corruption going on?” Ivy had asked.

“I don’t know, and I’ve learned not to ask any questions,” Antoine had answered flatly. “I just do my job and make sure the cases I work don’t get corrupted by office politics. I suggest you do the same.”

She moved on past April Billings’s files and found the next victim. Amelia Sanderson. Age thirty. Mousy brown hair worn in a messy short bob. In the crime scene photos, she was lying faceup in bed, half-open eyes staring, sightless, at some infinite point beyond the camera’s range. A pair of wire-rim glasses lay on the bedside table. No blood on them, no fingerprints but Amelia’s found when the crime scene unit dusted them. Like April Billings, she’d been killed elsewhere and returned, nearly bloodless, to her bed.

Ivy flipped past the photo and read over the short bio Antoine had compiled. She was a bookkeeper, working for a trucking company in Maryville. Davenport Trucking.

She paused, an image flitting through her mind. A word scrawled on the inside cover of the manila folder.

Davenport.

She flipped back to the front cover and looked for the handwritten note, but the folder was bare. Checking the back as well, she found it also empty.

But the image was so vivid in her mind now. Those nine letters, written in sprawling ink across the folder.

By the killer.

Her hand trembling, she closed her eyes, searching the image that seemed imprinted on her mind. Saw the hand moving down to the open folder, watched the pen strokes form on the manila and realized, with a little shiver, that while the hand was large and male, the handwriting was her own.

Her subconscious sending her a message?

She moved forward to the third victim, Coral Vines. Coral’s murder had been Ivy’s case, and if she hadn’t been following Antoine’s investigation of the other two murders out of sheer curiosity, she might not have made the connection between those deaths and that of Coral Vines. Of the four women killed, Coral lived in a seedier part of town, her lifestyle one that might lend itself to random homicide more easily than being a college student on summer break or a retired high school librarian with no enemies outside of a few disgruntled former students with big late fines.

Coral Vines, twenty-eight and widowed, drank too much, according to friends and family alike. The death of her husband in Afghanistan a few years earlier had sent her over a ledge, it seemed, and she eased her pain with whiskey and classic Southern rock played at ear-bursting decibels on a bad drinking night. Whatever job she’d once had she’d lost and was living on welfare and the kindness of friends.

But she’d worked at some point, Ivy thought, flipping back through the bio. She vaguely remembered someone mentioning a job and how she’d lost it because of the drinking.

There. She found it jotted on the margin of the typed-up bio. “Worked as a billing secretary—Davenport, Maryville.”

Davenport Trucking again?

She flipped back to the bio Antoine had compiled on April Billings. Most of the notes were about her college career. No mention of whether she’d picked up a job this summer while she was home from college.

But April’s brother had hired Sutton Calhoun to look into her murder. Would Sutton know?

She grabbed her threadbare robe and wrapped it around herself before she ventured down the hall to the spare room. She paused for a moment, listening for any sounds from within.

Suddenly, the door whipped open and Sutton almost walked right into her. She stumbled backward in surprise, bumping her head hard against the wall across the hall. “Ow.”

His look of surprise settled into mild concern. “You okay?”

She rubbed the aching spot on the back of her head. “Yeah, you just surprised me. Do you need something?”

“Just a glass of water.” His expression was a neutral mask, impossible to read. She didn’t know if he was telling the truth or hiding something—by design, she suspected. Her gaze wandered down to his bare chest, and all thoughts of truth or secrets flew out of her head for a long, heart-fluttering moment.

Since when was she so vulnerable to lean-muscled pecs and a flat, well-defined belly?

Since Sutton Calhoun brought his bad-boy self into your house, reminding you of how it feels to be fifteen and madly in love with the juiciest piece of forbidden fruit to ever grow in Bitterwood, Tennessee.

“What were you doing outside my door?” he asked when she didn’t say anything else.

She jerked her attention back to the case. “I was looking through the case files on the murders, actually,” she said, nodding her head toward the kitchen. She walked with him down the short corridor into the kitchen, pointing him to the water glasses over the stove. “I came across something I’d missed before.”

“Yeah?”

“Two of the victims worked at the same place, as it turns out.” She started to tell him about Davenport Trucking, then remembered Captain Rayburn’s warning not to try to bring Sutton into the investigation. She was going to be in enough trouble as it was, once the captain heard about her Clingmans Dome adventure. Better keep the details to herself for now. “Anyway, I was wondering if maybe April Billings’s brother had mentioned whether she’d taken a temporary job this summer while she was home from college.”

Sutton turned away from the refrigerator, withdrawing his glass from the water dispenser in the door. He took a long drink of water, then shook his head. “Stephen didn’t mention a job. I can ask.”

“Thanks, I’d appreciate it. It may be nothing—this is a small rural area with limited job opportunities. Still, it’s curious.”

“Yeah.” He drained his glass of water and put it in the sink. “I’ve got another lead to follow tomorrow, but I’ll give Mr. Billings a call and let you know.”

She walked with him to the spare room. “Another lead?”

“May be nothing. I want to follow it through before I say one way or another.” He paused in the open doorway. “Get some sleep, Detective. You look beat.” He closed the door behind him.

She stared at the solid rectangle of wood, releasing a sigh. Great. While she’d spent the past few minutes trying not to salivate over his bare chest, he thought she looked beat.

Nothing quite like abject humiliation at—she checked her watch—twelve twenty-five in the morning.

* * *

SUTTON HADN’T EXPECTED to sleep that night, but he must have drifted off at some point, because the next time he opened his eyes, his room was bright with morning sunlight. He glanced at his watch lying on the bedside table. Already after eight. He’d overslept.

Tugging his dirty jeans on, he checked the house and found a note from Ivy written on the back of a business card she’d pinned to the refrigerator with a black bear magnet. “Gone to work. Help yourself to eggs or anything else you want for breakfast.”

Finding the coffeemaker on the counter next to the stove, he made himself a couple of cups of strong black coffee and cracked a couple of eggs into a skillet for an omelet. A shower and shave later, he dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and set out in the Ford Ranger for Maryville, the small city about twenty minutes southwest of Bitterwood. He’d looked up the address for Davenport Trucking on his phone and arrived on West Sperry Road to find the trucking company was a sprawling warehouse-style office complex in the middle of an otherwise rural area just outside the city. From the parking lot, the rounded peaks of Chilhowee Mountain formed a velvety blue horizon to the east.

Sutton stood by his truck for a moment, gazing at the mountains, struck by a powerful ache that settled in the middle of his chest. He hadn’t called Bitterwood home in years, but the Smokies still had the power to steal his breath with their sheer blue beauty.

He dragged his gaze away and crossed the parking lot to the glass door marked Main Office. As he entered, a bell on the door clattered overhead. A slim black woman in her thirties looked up and smiled. “Can I help you?”

Before he could answer, the bell rang over the door behind him. He turned at the sound, his eyes widening at the sight of the newcomer.

Ivy Hawkins stood in the doorway, staring at him. Her expression shifted from surprise to suspicion, her dark eyes snapping. “What the hell are you doing here?”