RAVEN'S HOLLOW (19 page)

“Black belt,” her cousin grunted, and attempted to work Sadie onto her stomach.

“D.C.,” Sadie panted back, and swung the flashlight she still held hard into Orley’s ear.

Orley howled and grabbed a handful of Sadie’s hair. Ignoring the pain in her skull, Sadie took aim at her cousin’s face, then used her fingernails to rake her cheek. When Orley jerked upright, she punched her in the throat and kicked free.

Unfortunately, by the time she scrambled to her feet, Orley was on her knees with the .45 aimed at her head.

“You, Cousin Sadie, are so dead.”

A single shot rang out. Freezing, Sadie squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the rush of blackness. To her astonishment, it didn’t come. Although her pounding heart drowned out almost every other sound, she thought she heard someone calling her name.

Inching her eyes open, she spotted Orley on the ground. Her left arm was outstretched, and she lay facedown in the mud.

Then suddenly, Eli was spinning her into his arms. Before Sadie could utter a sound, he crushed his mouth to hers and for a blissful moment made all her fears disappear.

If the kiss had never ended, she might have been able to erase everything that had come before. Unfortunately, as she’d told Orley, nothing lasted forever. When Eli raised his head to search her face, the horror flooded back in.

She breathed out slowly. “I don’t want her to be dead.”

“I know. I’m sorry, sweetheart, I have to...” Framing her face with his fingers, Eli kissed her again, long and deep. “You don’t have to look.”

“Yes, I do.”

He wasn’t rough, but Sadie suspected he wanted to be. He knew, and so did she, that Orley would have shot her in a heartbeat if Eli’s bullet hadn’t struck first.

The groan that emerged from her cousin’s throat told Sadie she was alive. The blood on her jacket suggested she might not remain that way for long. With her emotions reeling, Sadie walked around to kneel beside her.

“I aimed for her left shoulder,” Eli said. “If she’s tough, she’ll make it.”

Sadie thought of Orley’s confession and worked up a faint smile. “Trust me, Lieutenant, she’s tough. She’s also determined.” As her eyes came to rest on her cousin’s face, she sighed. “And very, very sick.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Being a journalist, Sadie knew she’d put all the bits and pieces in order at some point—but she doubted it would happen any time soon.

Ty showed up within ten minutes. Using his two-way, he relayed a message through Ben Leamer’s hired hand to the Raven’s Cove paramedics. It took a great deal of time and effort, but eventually, Brady and Orley were admitted to the Raven’s Cove Hospital and placed under county guard.

By midnight, everyone at Two Toes Joe’s Bar had heard some version of the story. By morning, Sadie figured, very little of the factual account would remain. How could it in an area so steeped in lore and legend?

As the tale began to build, Rooney plunked himself between her and Eli and looked grimly from one to the other. “If I’m kin to a murderer, I need to hear the details.”

Sadie shook her heard. “You’re a Blume, Rooney. Orley and I are Bellams. You’re not kin to a murderer. I am.”

“Think intent,” Eli told her. “He’s talking about being related to Brady. It’s a fine line between actual and attempted murder.”

She sent him a grudging smile. “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

“Is it working?”

“Not really.” She made herself go back. “In the bog, Orley talked about the night Laura died. Apparently, while Laura was braiding my hair—babysitting me—right outside the window, Brady was watching her do it. Talk about creepy.”

“It’s contemptible,” Rooney spat. “My great-grandson was a Peeping Tom in high school.”

Sadie patted his arm. “He was a lot of things, Rooney, in school and out, but not a murderer. Not even a wannabe twenty years ago. The night Laura died, he was watching her and drinking the coffee that Orley drugged after she ‘accidentally’ bumped into him at the café. In went just enough ketamine to put him under. Orley hid, waited through a few sips outside my parents’ house, then moved in and guided him to an empty lot. A few more sips, and he was out for the night. Knowing that Laura would head back to the Cove as soon as my parents came home, she went to the road that led out of town and waited again.”

Rooney gripped his cane a little tighter. “So it was Orley who got Laura to stop, then made her go into the hollow.”

“It wouldn’t have been an easy drive,” Eli remarked. “But at the point of a gun—Orley’s father’s gun, we’ll assume—the difficult became much more possible.”

“That’s the backstory, Rooney.” As she leaned over to kiss his wrinkled cheek, Sadie whispered, “I’ll leave the telling of the present-day version in your capable hands.”

“Let’s call that our cue to leave.” Before his great-grandfather could object, Eli stood and drew Sadie to her feet. “Unless you want to stay and help him rearrange the facts to suit.”

To grin and mean it felt wonderful—until she saw Ty swaying in his chair across the room while Molly nudged a boilermaker toward him.

“What the...?”

“Let it go, Sadie.” Eli set an arm over her shoulders to keep her moving.

“But Ty doesn’t drink. Molly knows he doesn’t drink.”

“Molly’s not Orley, and Ty’s a big boy.”

“I know, but—”

“With a badge.”

Shaking it off, Sadie gave his stomach a poke. “Speaking of, Lieutenant, how is it you managed to find me in the hollow?”

He dropped a hard kiss on her lips. “I knew she had you. I called the
Chronicle
and your assistant told me you’d taken your copy editor’s Bronco to Ben Leamer’s farm.”

“Which explains how you located my vehicle, but not how you found me.”

“If I say I used my instincts, are you going to go all Raven’s Tale on me and suggest I might have been channeling Hezekiah?”

“I would,” she teased, “except that Hezekiah wouldn’t be tuned in to me so much as my Bellam blood, which would mean I’d have to have been channeling Nola—and I really don’t want to go there.”

His lips quirked. “In that case, I used criminal logic. Orley murdered Laura in Raven’s Bog and got away with it. It stood to reason she’d use the same location again.”

“I was looking for the cave when you showed up and shot her.”

“I accessed the hollow through the cave.”

“Spooky, isn’t it?” She caught the hand that dangled over her shoulder and linked their fingers. “As tragic as all of this is, what say we ditch this town, go back to Bellam Manor and make love until Rooney’s birthday?”

For an answer, he motioned her ahead of him through the crowd. Sadie took a last bemused look at Molly and Ty, then gave up and stepped outside.

On the dock, she turned to regard Eli. “Brady said he wasn’t the monster right before Orley knocked him out. I know you sort of talked to him at the hospital. Did he give you any details?”

“He only drank a small amount of the tea she brewed for him tonight. There were traces of the tranq she used on the lid of the teapot, and an album filled with computer-altered photographs on the floor. Brady suspected she’d been doping him, so he let her think he was going to settle in for the night with the tea. As soon as she left, he went across the hall and searched her apartment.”

“And, lucky for me, found what he was looking for.”

“He claimed he was horrified. But under Orley’s eagle eye he’d already consumed enough of the tea that he was also disoriented and starting to slide under.”

Letting her head fall back, Sadie breathed in the ocean air. “Instead of submitting, he fought the drug’s effect, took the Hollow Road and tried to stop her from killing me.” She shuddered. “Before the paramedics arrived, Orley told me she murdered a girl named Lisa Johnson right after Brady’s senior year.”

“Heard that. Brady took Lisa to our senior prom.”

“Worse and worse. Orley also swiped a pair of Brady’s shoes and muddied them up the night she shot at us with a crossbow. Her father’s weapon again. Brady must have thought he was going crazy—or, well, crazier.” Bringing her head up, she met Eli’s eyes. “Is that why he tried to kill you in the woods near the manor?”

“In for a penny, in for a pound. I don’t imagine he thought he had much to lose at that point.”

“So how will Rooney spin it in terms of our conjoined legends? Obviously Brady was Ezekiel, and you were Hezekiah.”

“And you were Nola. Not sure how he’ll work Orley in. As an even darker version of Ezekiel maybe.”

Sadie summoned a half smile. “Orley’s not a Blume, Eli. She’s my cousin. I honestly can’t believe I’m talking about her like this. My own cousin tried to kill me. Legendwise, she’d have to be Sarah.”

“There’s a Sarah Bellam?”

“In history, yes. In the family archives, not so much. Sarah was Nola’s sister. Pretty sure sanity wasn’t her strong suit. Oh, and as long as we’re tidying this up, Orley also told me that in the process of searching for various chain saws to use on the fallen pine, Brady snuck into the maze and pinned the envelope I found to Hezekiah’s cloak. As soon as he saw me go in, he loaded up the chain saw he’d come to borrow and left. He made the call that scared the living hell out of me while he was driving away. That was the same day Orley stole Ben’s gun. As for the spike strip, she made that herself, because, well, hey, who hasn’t watched cop shows on TV? We both know the rest of the story. And what we don’t know really doesn’t matter since we’re standing here together—with no idea where our lives are headed, but still—standing.”

Catching her arm, Eli swung her around and trapped her between the outer wall of Joe’s Bar and his body. “We can work on the where, when and how, Sadie. But the with who’s not open for debate.”

“No?” Hooking her arms around his neck, she stared into his eyes. “Then I guess it’s a good thing I love you, Lieutenant Blume. Be warned, however, I’m still a Bellam female. Very high-risk as relationships go.”

“Still a cop on this side, Sadie. That’s an even higher risk.”

She ran a teasing finger over his cheek. “Leaving us with the rather intriguing where, when and how.”

Lowering his head, he covered her mouth briefly with his. “Raven’s Cove hasn’t had a police chief of its own for quite some time. Could be an interesting change of career.”

“Okay...” Sadie drew the word out while she played with the ends of his hair. “In that case, and while we’re on the subject of interesting, why don’t we see what kind of magic we can conjure between us? Think ravens, Eli, and you and me soaring through an autumn night sky. Picture the fog being sucked down into the hollow where it belongs. Then imagine us above it all at Bellam Manor, making love under a gorgeous harvest moon.”

He grinned. “I don’t have to imagine, Sadie. We’re halfway there, and I haven’t even formed a thought yet.”

“Which in noncryptic language means?”

Only his eyes moved, first to the soft orange moon overhead, then toward the Hollow Road, currently shrouded in layers of filmy white.

“What do you know?” Sadie laughed. “You said I had a knack for predicting the weather. Guess you were right.” Smiling, she reached for his mouth. “Might want to brace yourself, Lieutenant.” She gave his bottom lip a bite. “The mood I’m in, you never know what else I might have a knack for.”

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from BLOOD ON COPPERHEAD TRAIL by Paula Graves.

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Chapter One

The trail shelter wasn’t built for cold weather, but
the three girls occupying the small wooden shed were young, healthy and warmly
tucked inside their cold-weather sleeping bags. Overnight, the mercury had
dropped into the mid-thirties, which might have tempted less-determined hikers
off the trail and into their warm homes in the valley below. But youth and risk
were longtime bedfellows.

He depended on it ever to be so.

Overhead, the moon played hide-and-seek behind scudding clouds,
casting deep blue shadows through the spindly bare limbs of the birch, maple and
hickory trees that grew on Copperhead Ridge. The air was damp with the promise
of snow.

But not yet.

His breath spreading a pale cloud of condensation in front of
his eyes, he pulled the digital camera from his pack. A whimsical image filled
his mind. Himself as a mighty, fierce dragon, huffing smoke as he stalked his
winsome prey.

The camera made a soft whirring sound as it autofocused on the
sleeping beauties. He held his breath, waiting to see if the sound was enough to
awaken the girls. A part of him wished it would wake them, though he’d have to
move now, rather than later, cutting short his plans. But the challenge these
young, fit women posed excited him to the point that his carefully laid plans
seemed more an impediment than a means to increase his anticipation.

Slow and steady wins the race,
he
thought. The experience
would
be better for having
waited.

He snapped off a series of shots from different angles,
relishing each composition, imagining them in their finished state. Despite the
quick flashes of light from his camera, the princesses slept on, oblivious.

He stepped away from the shelter, punching buttons to print the
shots he’d just snapped. They came out remarkably clear, he saw with surprise.
He hadn’t been sure they would.

Or maybe he’d been hoping he’d have to sneak over to the
shelter again.

A clear acrylic box, cloudy with scuff marks from exposure to
the elements, stood on a rickety wooden pedestal outside the shelter. It housed
a worn trail logbook similar to those found farther east on the Appalachian
Trail. The latest entry was dated that day. The girls had recorded their arrival
and their plans for the next day’s hike home.

He slipped the snapshots into the journal, marking the latest
entry.

A snuffling sound from within the open-faced shelter froze him
in place. He couldn’t see the girls from where he stood, so he waited, still and
silent, for a repeat of the noise.

But the only sound he heard was the cold mountain breeze
shaking the trees overhead, the leafless limbs rattling like bones.

After a few more minutes of quiet, he slipped away, a dark
shape in the darker woods, where he would bide his time until daybreak.

And the girls slept on.

* * *

“I’
M
NOT
THE
ENEMY
.”
Though Laney Hanvey was using her best “soothe the witness” voice, she couldn’t
tell her efforts at calm reassurance were having any effect on the dark-eyed
detective across the tearoom table from her.

“Never said you were.” Ivy Hawkins arched one dark eyebrow, as
if to say she saw right through Laney’s efforts at handling her. “I’m just
saying I don’t know whether anyone besides Glen Rayburn was on Wayne Cortland’s
payroll, and the D.A. sending a nanny down here to spank our bottoms and teach
us how to behave ain’t gonna change that.”

Laney didn’t know whether to laugh at Ivy’s description of her
job or be offended. “The captain of detectives killed himself rather than face
indictment. The chief of police resigned, an admission that he wasn’t in control
of his department. Surely you understand why the district attorney felt the need
to send a public integrity officer down here to ask a few questions.”

“We have an internal affairs bureau of our own.”

“And I know how well police officers admire their internal
affairs brethren.”

Ivy’s lips quirked, a tacit concession. “Why did you single me
out?”

“Who says I did?”

Ivy looked around the airy tearoom of Sequoyah House, then back
at Laney. “You’re telling me you bring all the cops to the fanciest restaurant
in town for pretty little cucumber sandwiches and weak, tepid dishwater?”

Laney looked down at the cups of Earl Grey in front of them and
smiled. “You’re laying on the redneck a little thick, aren’t you?”

Ivy’s eyes met hers again. “I’m not the one putting on airs,
Charlane.”

Touché,
Laney thought.

Ivy’s expression softened. “You’ve gotten better at your poker
face. I almost didn’t see you flinch. You’ve come a long way from Smoky
Ridge.”

“I didn’t bring you here to talk about old times.”

Ivy leaned across the table toward her. “Are you sure? Maybe
you thought invoking a little Smoky Ridge sisterhood might soften me up? Make me
spill all my deep, dark secrets?”

“I don’t suspect
you
of anything,
Ivy. I just want to pick your brain about whom
you
might suspect of being Glen Rayburn’s accomplice.”

“And I told you, I don’t suspect anyone in particular.” Ivy’s
mouth clamped closed at the end of the sentence, but it was too late.

“So you
do
think there may be
others who were on Cortland’s payroll.”

“I think the possibility exists,” Ivy said carefully. “But I
don’t know if I’m right, and I sure don’t intend to toss you a sacrificial lamb
to get you off my back.”

“Fair enough.” Laney sat back and sipped the warm tea, trying
not to think of Ivy’s description of it. But the image was already in her mind.
She set the teacup on the saucer and forced down the swallow.

“The cucumber sandwiches weren’t
too
bad,” Ivy said with a crooked smile. “But I’m going to have to
grab something from Ledbetter’s on my way back to the cop shop, because I’m
still hungry. Want to join me?”

An image of Maisey Ledbetter’s chicken-fried steak with milk
gravy flooded Laney’s brain. “You’re an enabler,” she grumbled.

Ivy grinned. “I’m doing you a favor. You’re way too skinny for
these parts, Charlane. People will start trying to feed you everywhere you
go.”

“Laney, Ivy. Not Charlane. Even my mama calls me Laney these
days.” Laney motioned for the check and waved off Ivy’s offer to pay. “I can
expense it.”

They reconvened outside, where Ivy’s department-issue Ford
Focus looked a bit dusty and dinged next to Laney’s sleek black Mustang.

Ivy grinned when Laney started to open the Mustang’s driver’s
door. “I knew you still had a little redneck in you, girl. Nice wheels.”

Laney arched her eyebrows. “Can’t say the same about
yours.”

Ivy didn’t look offended. “Cop car. You should see my
tricked-out Jeep.”

The drive from Sequoyah House to Ledbetter’s Diner wasn’t
exactly a familiar route for Laney, who’d grown up poor as a church mouse and
twice as shy. Nothing in her life on Smoky Ridge had ever required her to visit
this part of town, where Copperhead Ridge overlooked the lush hollow where the
wealthier citizens of the small mountain town had built their homes and their
very separate lives.

The Edgewood part of Bitterwood was more suburban than rural,
though the mountain itself was nothing but wilderness broken only by hiking
trails and the occasional public shelter dotting the trails. People in this part
of town usually worked elsewhere, either in nearby Maryville or forty-five
minutes away in Knoxville.

Definitely not the kind of folks she’d grown up with on Smoky
Ridge.

Ivy hadn’t been joking. She pulled her department car into the
packed parking lot of Ledbetter’s Diner and got out without waiting to see if
Laney followed. After a perfunctory internal debate, Laney found an empty
parking slot nearby and hurried to catch up.

All eyes turned to her when she entered the diner, and for a
second, she had a painful flashback to her first day of law school. A
combination of academic and hardship scholarships had paid her way into the
University of Tennessee, where she’d been just another girl from the mountains,
one of many. But law school at Duke University had been so different. Even the
buffer of her undergrad work at UT hadn’t prepared her for the culture
shock.

Coming back home to Bitterwood had proved to be culture shock
in reverse.

“You coming?” Ivy waited for her near the entrance.

Laney tamped down an unexpected return of shyness. “Yes.”

Ivy waved at Maisey Ledbetter on her way across the crowded
diner. Maisey waved back, her freckled face creasing with a big smile. Her
eyebrows lifted slightly as she recognized Laney, as well, but her smile
remained as warm as the oven-fresh biscuits she baked every morning for the
diner’s breakfast crowd.

“I don’t come back here to Bitterwood as often as I used to,”
Laney admitted as she sat across from Ivy in one of the corner booths. “Mom and
Janelle have started coming to Barrowville instead. Mom likes to shop at the
outlet mall there.”

“Never underestimate the lure of a brand-name bargain.” Ivy
shoved a menu toward Laney.

Laney shoved it back. “Maisey Ledbetter never changed her menu
once in all the time I lived here growing up. I don’t reckon she’s changed it
now.”

“Well, would you listen to that accent,” Ivy said softly, her
tone teasing but friendly. “Welcome home, Charlane.”

The door to the diner opened, admitting a cold draft that
wafted all the way to the back where they sat, along with a lanky man in his
thirties wearing a leather jacket and jeans. He was about three shades more
tanned than anyone else in Bitterwood, pegging him immediately as an outsider
and one from warmer climes at that.

“Is that him?” Laney asked Ivy.

Ivy followed her gaze. “Well, look-a-there. Surfer boy found
his way to Ledbetter’s.”

Laney stole another glance, trying not to be obvious. Sooner or
later, she was going to have to approach Bitterwood’s brand-new chief of police
in order to do her job, but it wouldn’t hurt to take his measure first.

Her second look added a few details to her first impression.
Along with the tan, he had sandy-brown hair worn neatly cut but a little long,
as if he were compromising between the expectations of his new job title and his
inner beach bum. He was handsome, with laugh lines adding character to his
tanned face and mossy-green eyes that turned sharply her way.

She dropped her gaze to the menu that still lay between her and
Ivy. “I haven’t been able to set a meeting with Chief Massey yet.”

“He’s been keeping a low profile at the station,” Ivy murmured.
“I get the feeling he wants to get his feet under him a little, scope out the
situation before he has a big powwow with the whole department.”

“He’s pretty young for the job.” Doyle Massey couldn’t be that
much older than her or Ivy. “He’s what, thirty?”

“Thirty-three,” Ivy answered, looking up when Maisey
Ledbetter’s youngest daughter, Christie, approached their table with her order
book. Ivy ordered barbecue ribs and a sweet tea, but Laney squelched her craving
for chicken-fried steak and ordered a turkey sandwich on wheat.

When she glanced at the door, Chief Massey had moved out of
sight. She scanned the room and found him sitting by himself at a booth on the
opposite side of the café.

“Maybe you should go talk to him now,” Ivy suggested. “While
he’s a captive audience.”

Laney’s instinct was to stay right where she was, but she’d
learned long ago to overcome her scared-squirrel impulse to freeze in place if
she ever wanted to get anywhere in life. “Good idea.”

She pushed to her feet before she could talk herself out of
it.

He saw her coming halfway across the room, his deceptively
somnolent gaze following her as she approached, like an alligator waiting for
his dinner to come close enough to snap his powerful jaws. She ignored the
fanciful thought and kept walking, right up to the booth where he sat.

She extended her hand and lifted her chin. “Chief Massey? My
name is Laney Hanvey. I’m an investigator with the Ridge County District
Attorney’s office. I’ve left you a couple of messages.”

He looked at her hand, then back up to her. “I got them.”

She was on the verge of pulling her hand back when he leaned
forward and closed his big, tanned hand around hers. He had rough, dry palms,
suggesting at least a passing acquaintance with manual labor.

He let go of her hand and waved toward the empty seat across
from him in the booth. “Can I buy you lunch?”

Not an alligator, she thought as she carefully sat across from
him. More like a chameleon, able to go seamlessly from predator to charmer in a
second flat. “I’m actually having lunch with one of your detectives.” She
glanced at the corner where Ivy sat, shamelessly watching them.

Chief Massey followed her gaze and gave a little wave at
Ivy.

Ivy blushed a little at being caught staring, but she waved
back and then pulled out her cell phone and made a show of checking her
messages.

“Good detective, from what I’m told.” Massey’s full mouth
curved. “She’s the one who broke the serial-murder case a couple of months
ago.”

“She didn’t have much help from her chief of detectives.”

Massey’s green-eyed gaze snapped forward to lock with hers.
“Let’s just get things out in the open, Ms. Hanvey. Can we do that?” His accent
was Southern, but sleeker than her own mountain twang she’d worked so hard to
conquer. He’d come to Bitterwood from a place called Terrebonne on the Alabama
Gulf Coast.

“Get things out in the open?” she repeated.

“You may think you’re here to ferret out the snakes in our
midst. But you’re really here because your bosses in the county government have
been wanting the Ridge County Sheriff’s Department to swallow up small police
forces like Bitterwood P.D. for a while now. Ridge County could justify the tax
increase they’re wanting to impose if they suddenly had a bigger jurisdiction to
cover.”