The Branson Beauty (24 page)

He cruised into Branson at about 5:00
A.M
. and stayed on 76 as it hooked left and headed up the steep hill from the Taneycomo shoreline, past the electric company and then the Steak 'n Shake. He crossed over the freeway as the road curved to the south and then back around. That was where it turned into the Strip. Technically, it was Country Music Boulevard, but he'd found out quickly that everyone local called it the Strip. And everyone local tried to avoid it. Stoplight after stoplight. Tourists unsure of where they were going. Cars competing for space in the middle turn lane. Median driver age seventy-five. But apparently 5:00
A.M
. was too early even for the early breakfast specials. No one was out. The entire stretch was quiet. Piles of dirty black snow lined the roadsides, hiding many of the theater parking lots, but not the signs. They stood tall and clean, advertising everything from the Boxcar Willie Theatre to an auto museum to go-kart rides.

Hank smiled. Maribel had been crushed to learn when they first moved down here that she wasn't tall enough to ride one by herself. Little Miss Independent had no interest in riding one with a grown-up. They'd told her she only had to wait until the spring before she would probably be the right height. She'd made them measure her every week since then. Kids.

He paused, then tapped the brakes and turned right. A few miles and he was at the Brysons' house. The kitchen light was on. He pulled into the driveway. Mrs. Bryson met him at the door.

Neither one said a word until she had poured Hank a generous cup of fresh coffee and they were seated across from each other at the kitchen table. He took a grateful sip and said, “I just wanted to stop by and see how you were doing. I'm afraid I don't have any news, though. I'm sorry.” He wasn't sure whether it was a condolence or an apology.

She tried to smile. She succeeded in turning one side of her mouth upward, but that was as far as she could get. The tears in her eyes made them look a brighter blue than normal. He wondered if Mandy's had done the same thing.

“Thank you, Sheriff. I … I appreciate it. More than you know. It's nice to have my thoughts interrupted. All I do is sit here and think. About who. And why. Why? Why would anyone do that? How could someone hate that much? How could someone hate Mandy that much? My Mandy? She was so good. So good…”

The tears spilled over. She reached for a tissue from the box on the table. The motion was fluid and automatic. She'd probably done it hundreds of times in the last three days.

Hank asked after her husband, who she said had finally been able to fall asleep tonight. She had not.

“I've been sitting here all night. Safe and warm. Not like my Mandy.” She didn't bother with a tissue this time. The tears fell unimpeded. They and the steam rising from Hank's coffee were the only movements in the room.

“What am I going to do?” The question was so quiet Hank thought he'd imagined it. “What am I going to do now? How am I a person anymore? I'm not a mother. That's what I've been. For eighteen years. That's what I've always wanted to be. I waited so long. We tried and we tried, and we prayed and we prayed. For years. And then—Mandy. This beautiful perfect being”—her hands went out, as if she were presenting her infant daughter for christening—“this blessing. This gift from God.

“And she was so much better than either of us. In everything. A better athlete, a better student, a better person. She was the greatest thing I've ever done. That I've ever even had a small part in. She was my baby … my baby…”

She dissolved, slowly, right in front of him, like salt into water, blending with the grief, becoming a new solution altogether, unpalatable. Hank's coffee grew cold on the table between them.

 

CHAPTER

21

He rolled over, still mostly asleep, and then sensed something. Someone in the room, at the foot of the bed. He sprang out of bed and into a defensive crouch.

“Good grief,” Duncan said. “I just said, ‘Wake up.'”

Hank swore and slowly stood up, his heart pounding, semi-dizzy from the quick movements.

“What the hell are you doing in here?”

“What? You told me to wake you up at eleven. It's eleven. Wake up.”

“I didn't tell you to sneak into my bedroom. You could have just knocked.”

“Oh. I didn't think of that. Hmm.”

Hank sagged against the bed as his father-in-law shuffled out of the room. He was pretty sure that was not the most healthy way to wake up after only three hours of sleep. He almost wished it had been an intruder. At least then he could have gotten a few punches in. He staggered off to the shower.

*   *   *

The hot water hadn't helped his bruised shoulder at all, which hurt like hell whenever he moved. And his shins were almost as purple from the chair Chad Sorenson had thrown at him in the coffee shop. He sat, slouched and sullen, at his desk, occasionally stabbing at the keyboard as he searched the internet for information. The only good thing going on was the Pecan Delight that Sheila had left for him. Apparently getting attacked during a patrol shift was what it took to get any sympathy from her. Good to know.

Gallagher Enterprises had a very snazzy website, but it told him nothing about the actual state of the company's finances. It was not a publicly traded company, so it did not have to file with the SEC or anything like that. As far as he could tell, it was strictly a family business. He clicked on a few newspaper articles.

Gallagher had made his money in real estate. He told reporters he'd visited Branson on vacation and fallen in love with the area. The first thing he bought was the
Beauty
—which Crazy Otis's nephew was trying to unload—for dirt cheap. After that came two different hotels on the Strip, the nice resort a little ways out into the country, and one of the outlet malls in town. Hank wondered why he'd bothered when most of the stores in it had shut down after the economy tanked. Apparently a reporter had asked the same thing, but Gallagher batted the question away. “I am confident that the market will rebound. Branson is a well-known and prized tourist destination, and I am investing in its long-term future.”

Hank rolled his eyes. He drove past that place all the time, and he guessed there were ten or twelve stores hanging on in a development built for sixty. But, on the other hand, even if all those businesses went under, Gallagher would still own the land and would only have to pay a couple of guys to maintain the buildings so they didn't fall into too much disrepair. Maybe that wasn't such a bad deal after all.

Not like the
Beauty
. Unlike the mall, the boat had some significant local sentiment attached to it. Maybe those feelings hadn't been clear to Gallagher until he tried firing the very old, unproductive, and expensive staff. He had done a pretty quick about-face on that one. Hank wondered why public opinion was so important to Gallagher. It was after that backlash that he'd funded the new county animal shelter, which had worked like only cute kittens could. Gallagher had been named Citizen of the Year by the
Daily What's-It
and gotten an honorable mention of some kind in the bigger Springfield paper.

That reminded him. He dug around on his desk until he found the kid's number and dialed.

“Good afternoon,
Branson Daily Herald
, this is Jadhur. How may I help you?”

Hank identified himself and answered a few questions about the status of the murder investigation. Then he asked if Jadhur was going to have anything on the boat fire in Friday's edition of the paper.

“Yeah, we'll have that. It'll be short. There's no new art—uh, I mean pictures—to go with it, cuz we couldn't get down to the dock after the fire, so it won't be on the front page. I talked to the fire marshal, so we'll have the cause and everything.”

Hank counted to ten. “Really? The cause, huh? What'd the marshal say?”

“Oh, same thing he told you, I'm sure. That due to the damage caused by removing the paddlewheel, fluid leaked and ignited, starting the fire. That is what he told you, right?”

Hank gripped the phone tightly. “That is what the fire marshal thinks, yes.”

Jadhur was no dummy. “So, what do
you
think?”

Hank decided not to think, and spoke instead. “It's awfully coincidental that an old boat, badly in need of updating and with significant personnel expenses, suddenly caught fire in such a way that no real investigation of it can take place.”

Jadhur pounced. “So you're saying it wasn't an accident?”

“I'm saying I don't know what it was, and I don't think they do, either.”

After a few more questions, Hank hung up the phone. He swiveled in his chair and caught a glimpse of his computer screen, which still showed the web page with Gallagher's Citizen of the Year article. He smiled and bit into his candy bar.

*   *   *

“We're coming to you live from the Branson Events Center, where the grieving small-town community has gathered for a prayer vigil after the shocking murder of homecoming queen Amanda Bryson. The eighteen-year-old was found strangled to death Sunday on the showboat the
Branson Beauty
. Police have not made an arrest.”

The Springfield Channel Twelve reporter cut to video of a group of middle-aged women, hands clasped in prayer as a portly man in a clergy collar railed against the encroachment of evil. Then came a shot of a bunch of teenagers holding candles and singing. Then it was back to the reporter, strategically positioned in front of the building, so that the emotional crowd was clearly visible in the background.

So far, Hank hadn't seen anyone actually connected with the case—except a plain-clothed Sam, at the corner of his TV screen, trying to nonchalantly circle the crowd. He wasn't doing a very good job, slouching quickly from person to person and constantly swiveling his head from side to side. Fortunately, it didn't appear anyone was paying any attention to him. He'd told Hank that he'd never “gone undercover” in all his years with the department. Hank hadn't pointed out that the kid had only been a deputy for four years or that actual undercover work involved a lot more than not wearing a uniform. He hadn't wanted to quash Sam's enthusiasm, which had been considerable. So instead he'd just said yes, he knew Sam would do fine and no, it wasn't a good idea to wear a fake mustache.

Hank was glad to see Sam had listened and was his normal clean-shaven self. He grinned and put his feet up on the coffee table as the reporter interviewed a sobbing teen who said she'd been in Mandy's algebra class two years ago and was “totally freaked-out” by the killing. Hank took a sip of his beer. And then sat up straight, adjusting the ice pack on his swollen shoulder.

“Also with me tonight is Branson County Commissioner Edrick Fizzel. Commissioner, you are the one who organized this vigil, correct?”

Fizzel's nose was not nearly as red as it had been when he visited Hank on Tuesday. And he'd obviously anticipated a TV appearance—his porcupine hair had been tamed with enough gel to nicely reflect the camera's spotlight. Since Rudolph's nose could no longer guide the sleigh home, his hair apparently was picking up the slack. Hank leaned toward the TV.

“Why, yes, Tom, it was my idea. I thought it was important to allow the community a chance to grieve. And,” he added, turning from the reporter to face the camera directly, “I want to assure y'all watchin' tonight that Branson is perfectly safe and you should keep comin' on down here. We are the Ozarks' vacation destination.” His smile oozed snake oil and backwoods smarm. Hank was pretty sure he saw hair gel dripping onto his collar.

“I also want to take the opportunity to assure everyone that we are doing all we can to find the murderer. This was not a random act. Poor Amanda Bryson was being stalked. She was targeted, hunted down. You can be sure, Tom, that we will hunt down her killer. I have been told that there will be an arrest very soon.”

Hank's jaw dropped. He hadn't told Fizzel that Mandy had a stalker. And he certainly hadn't said he was close to making an arrest. He glared at the TV.

“And,” Fizzel said, twisting his face into an expression of almost comic concern, “anyone with any questions or concerns about this can call the new sheriff. After all, protecting us is his job.”

Hank almost threw his beer at the television. That pompous jerk. That was all he needed—a swarm of freaked-out, candle-waving vigil-goers hounding him about the case.

His cell rang. He snatched it off the coffee table and saw it was Sam.

“Please tell me you have something good.”

“Uh, not really,” Sam said. “There was nobody important here—no suspects, I mean. The only person I recognized from the boat was Tony Sampson. He was with a group of girls that I think are from the track team.” Hank heard Sam flipping pages. He'd sent the Pup with last year's BVHS yearbook.

“It was just here…” Sam muttered. “Aha. Okay, yeah. That one, that's his sister. Alyssa Sampson. Her and two others, a tall one and a short one. They were all here. Just saw them drive off in a newer Ford Fusion. Black. My bet is it's the tall one's mom's car. She was driving.”

“What'd they do while they were there?”

Sam thought for a moment. “The girls were into it. Went right up front, got their candles, did the prayer circle, everything. Tony stayed in the back. Kept taking his phone out, fiddling with it. Didn't really seem like he wanted to be there.”

Hank heard the yearbook close.

“Oh, and Chief?”

“Yeah?”

“I just think you should know that the commissioner dude was going around to everyone and handing out business cards. At first, I thought they were his business cards, which would have been weird. This isn't a business meeting, right? Why would…”