Ashes, Ashes, They All Fall Dead (28 page)

She rolled her eyes at whatever her boss was telling her and proceeded to inform him they were following up on a lead. She gave him their location—about fifty miles northeast of Madisonville, plus another six miles through bumpy gravel roads, deep into the boonies off State Road 138.

Stoneyville wasn’t much to look at, with only a handful of buildings that circled a tiny town square. There were no traffic lights, no traffic to speak of. Only five cars were parked in the square, and Matt had yet to see anyone drive by since they’d pulled into the gas station. The few houses they’d passed on their way into town were hidden so far back in the trees, he wasn’t even sure they
were
houses.

He finished gassing up their rental car and waited for Tessa to finish her call.

When she was done, she put her hands on her hips. “Where should we start? We might make better time if we split up.”

“No way. If the killer is somewhere around here, he’d grab you if he found you alone.”

She patted the holster on her side, hidden under her suit jacket. “I’m armed and I know how to use this thing.”

He parted his own jacket, showing her his gun holstered on his belt. “Ditto.”

“Whatever. We might as well question the gas station manager first.”

She grabbed the pictures of Becca and Tonya and headed toward the little store in front of the gas pumps. Matt hustled after her, reaching her just in time to open the door.

“Thanks,” Tessa mumbled before heading inside.

An hour later, they’d found out nothing new. The townspeople they’d spoken to at the gas station, the hardware store with the post-office annex tucked into one corner, and even the little white Baptist church that dominated one end of the square were polite but reserved, as if they didn’t trust anyone who wasn’t from their little town. Even those in the beauty salon, which was the only place teeming with people, seemed suspicious of Matt and Tessa and barely glanced at the picture or the flyer Tessa held up.

The only place left to check was a log cabin restaurant next to the beauty salon. The sign over the door boasted
CHRISTINA SNOW’S BEST FRIED CHICKEN IN THE SOUTH
.

Since it was past noon anyway, Matt and Tessa decided to have lunch before asking the people inside any questions. The restaurant was long and narrow. A countertop with bar stools ran across the left side. A row of booths ran across the right side, next to the wall of windows that looked out over the square.

Tessa chose the booth in the middle. From there she could see the pass-through to the kitchen behind the counter. She noted the three booths closest to the door were full, and there were two lone men sitting in two other booths behind her.

After chatting with the young couple in the booth by the door, the elderly waitress hurried over to Matt and Tessa, her pen at the ready and an order book in her hand.

“Hey folks, I’m Christina. We don’t get too many strangers in here. You passing through, or do you have family around here?” She gave them the same polite but suspicious smile they’d received everywhere else they’d been that day.

Tessa decided it was time for a new approach.

“Hi Christina. I’m Tessa, and this is my husband, Matt.” She enjoyed the look of shock that crossed Matt’s face. He recovered quickly, his face smoothing out as he played along with her deception.

“We just finished visiting our niece at Murray State University,” Tessa continued. “We thought it would be fun to take the back roads and discover some out-of-the-way places before heading back to Ohio. Your sign said you had the best chicken in the South, so we knew we couldn’t pass it up.”

Just as Tessa had hoped, Christina’s suspicious look faded and was replaced with an enthusiastic, welcoming smile.

“Well, you certainly made the right decision. You won’t regret it.” She scribbled in her order notepad.

Tessa belatedly realized there was no way to tell the woman she didn’t want fried chicken without revealing her lie. So much for the salad she’d planned on ordering.

“What’ll you have to drink with that?” Christina asked.

“Sweet tea for me,” Matt said. “Sweetheart, what do you want to drink?”

Tessa batted her lashes at him. “I’ll have sweet tea just like you, darlin’.”

“Comin’ right up.” Christina headed behind the counter and slapped the order page onto the pass-through to the kitchen. “Two fried chicken specials.”

S
TEPHENS CURSED AND
rapped his knuckles on Latham’s front door again. While he waited, he called Latham’s number. What the hell? He could hear the phone ringing. Inside the house. Leave it to stubborn Roy Latham to use a landline instead of a cell phone like everyone else in the current century.

He put his phone away and peered through one of the door’s glass panes. The light was on in the dining room, and the pile of folders and papers on the table beckoned him like a hunter to a twelve-point buck. Whatever Latham had called about, Stephens would bet everything he had that the answer was somewhere in that pile of paper.

The nearest neighbor was miles away, so he didn’t bother looking for witnesses. Instead, he pulled some latex gloves out of his pocket and put them on. Then he smashed one of the windowpanes out using the butt of his Glock.

It only took a moment to see why Latham had called him—the name circled in red on the top sheet of paper, with a column heading of “Suspects.” The stubborn coot definitely knew more than he’d let on.

He sifted through the rest of the pages until he was satisfied that he knew exactly what Latham knew. How much of a head start did he have? It didn’t matter. Because Stephens would find him. He ran from the house and jumped into his car.

“L
OOKS LIKE YOU’VE
got an admirer, sweet wife.” Matt nodded and darted his gaze behind her.

Tessa narrowed her eyes at the
wife
comment and looked over her shoulder. Three booths down a young man with dark hair—probably Matt’s age, if not younger—sat staring at her, his fork frozen in midair. As soon as his gaze met hers, his eyes dipped back to his plate and he shoved the forkful of spaghetti into his mouth. The sauce dripped down his chin. His skin turned a mottled red and he swiped a napkin across his face.

Tessa turned back around. “It’s the red hair. I swear I should die it brown.”

“Don’t you dare. I like it just the way it is.”

She rolled her eyes, preferring to pretend he was teasing rather than allow the conversation to turn more intimate.

In spite of her reservations about the chicken, it turned out to be just as delicious as promised. And when Matt added his compliments to Tessa’s, Christina’s smile could have lit up the entire restaurant.

“It’s my grandma’s recipe, passed down for generations. I haven’t met anyone yet who didn’t love it. Will y’all be staying for dessert? I made a batch of strawberry pie just this morning.”

Tessa couldn’t have eaten even one more thing, but she still hadn’t gotten any information, so she ordered a piece just to stall for time.

“Christina, before you get the pie, I was wondering . . . you seem to know everyone in town. You certainly knew we weren’t from around here when we came in. Have you happened to notice any other strangers in Stoneyville the past few days? Perhaps a young teenager?” She held up a picture of Tonya Garrett.

Christina’s smile slipped, but she looked at the picture longer than anyone else had in Stoneyville.

“Like I said earlier, we don’t get many strangers around here. I haven’t seen that girl. And the only strangers in here are you two. You don’t really have a niece in Murray, do you?”

“No, ma’am. We don’t. I’m a special agent with the FBI. Matt is a consultant, helping me on a case.”

Christina crossed her arms. “Well, now. I assume you lied because no one else was telling you much when you told the truth, so I won’t hold that against you. We tend to stick together around here and don’t take kindly to people asking nosy questions.”

“Thank you for being so understanding. I assure you we wouldn’t ask questions if it wasn’t important. The girl in this picture was abducted a couple of days ago.”

Christina clucked her tongue in sympathy. “That’s a shame. I hope you find her. But I haven’t seen her.”

Matt pulled out a flyer with Becca Miller’s picture on it. “Have you ever seen this girl? It would have been many years ago, over thirty years.”

“Thirty, well, that’s a long time to be looking for someone, don’t you think?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She studied the picture and shook her head. “I don’t think so. But, Lordy, thirty years is a long time. Why are you looking for
her
?”

He grimaced. “We’re not, actually. She was killed, murdered. We’re trying to find the man who killed her. We believe he’s the same one who abducted Tonya Garrett.” He tapped the picture on the table. “We believe the killer is in his mid-fifties now. He may have lived in this town at one time, or kept to himself and lived up in the hills. Is there someone you remember who fits that description? Someone who has since moved away and maybe recently came back?”

“He would have been reclusive,” Tessa said. “He’s a loner and would have chosen a house well away from anyone else. He probably wouldn’t have come into town except for supplies, and even then he’d stock up quite a bit and limit his trips.”

Christina frowned. “I suppose it’s possible you could be talking about Don Hargrove. Years and years ago, my daddy worked the mines, like just about everyone else’s daddy did until they closed them down and took the business farther back east. There were a lot more people here back then. Hargrove was one of them, but he left when the mines left. Haven’t seen him in, oh, twenty-two, twenty-three years.” She scratched her blue-white hair with the tip of her pen. “Yep, twenty-three years. That sounds about right.”

Tessa shared a look with Matt. Twenty-three years put them right about the time of the accident when her mother had been shot. If the killer was worried the police might track him down somehow after the accident, he might have left Stoneyville around that time. Could Hoffman have changed his name to Hargrove and for some reason back to Hoffman just three years ago? Why would he do that?

“Christina, where did Mr. Hargrove live?”

“Up in the hills, in one of the old logging shacks the company built for the workers. They’re all falling down on themselves now. Nobody lives up there anymore.”

Matt grabbed his computer again and keyed something on the screen. He turned it around. A detailed map of the area was displayed. “Can you show us where those old shacks were?”

Christina studied the map, then touched a spot on the screen. A red circle formed around the spot on the map she’d touched. “That’s my best guess. I never went to his house. No one did. He kept to himself and didn’t really have any friends. His shack was a ways off from the others.”

She stepped back to allow the man who’d been eating spaghetti to pass by as he headed toward the door.

“Have a nice day, Owen,” Christina called after him.

He mumbled something and raised his hand in the air but didn’t turn around as he headed outside.

A group of people came in, and another one behind them. Christina smiled and nodded, obviously familiar with all of them, as they headed to the booths in the back.

“Goodness, looks like the whole town’s coming in for lunch today. I need to take their orders. I’m assuming you aren’t having pie after all?” She gave them a half smile.

“Uh, no,” Tessa said. “But thank you for your help. And the chicken really was wonderful.”

Christina patted Tessa’s shoulder. “Thanks, honey. Any time you have a mind to travel through Stoneyville, make sure you stop back in.” Her smile faded. “Good luck finding that young girl.”

I
T HAD BEEN
years since Sheriff Latham had been up in these hills—decades—but he still remembered the last time as clearly as if it were yesterday. He pushed a low-hanging branch out of his way, following the well-worn path through the woods that the miners had used back in the mine’s heyday.

Yep, this was where he’d come up that last time, when every able-bodied man within fifty miles had been called in to help. The explosion, the fire that killed three miners and ended the livelihood of half the people who used to live around here, had never been adequately explained.

But Latham had his suspicions.

There’d been no proof. And since the miners had scattered to the winds, moving to other towns, taking up brand-new careers, there wasn’t much he could do.

Until now. Now, he knew. The man who’d started that fire was the same one who’d killed his Jane Doe, the same one who’d taken that young girl from Savannah. He’d bet his life on it. He just wanted to be sure before he called that fancy FBI agent. He wanted to see for himself whether anyone had been up here recently. Because if they had, Latham knew that
he
was back, and the girl must be up here, somewhere close.

The path ended at a clearing, with one of the old mining shacks sitting at the end. He pulled out his old service revolver, his trusty Smith & Wesson. He’d never been comfortable with those semiautomatics all the young men raved about. His revolver shot straight and true and had never failed him.

He paused in front of the shack. The door was open, hanging at an awkward angle because the top hinge had pulled out of the rotted wood. There, in the entryway, the wooden floor still bore the burn marks he remembered from when he’d questioned all the miners.

The story behind those burns had never rung true to him. He was more inclined to believe the man who’d lived in this shack had accidentally spilled some accelerant on the floor while planning his attack in the mines. It didn’t make sense that a grease fire would cause those marks, not when the kitchen was so far away and none of the flaming grease had spilled out on any parts of the floor near the kitchen while the pan was rushed through the house to the outside.

No, the man who’d lived here loved fire, worshipped fire. He’d used it that day at the mine. He was using fire, according to the profile, to kill others. And he’d use it to kill that girl.