Page 12 of The Witch’s Orchard

EIGHT

T HE COPS ARE WAITING out front, beside Honey.

Both men are wearing brown Marley County Sheriff’s Department uniforms. The taller one is probably mid-fifties, narrow-waisted and broad-shouldered with a grim mouth and a hard gaze underscored by dark circles.

He looks like he stays up late, wakes up early, has been getting by on three hours’ sleep for most of his life and is just now feeling the effects.

“Annie Gore,” he says, more a barked statement than a question.

Dealing with cops in this job is usually smooth.

They want a case solved, but they don’t have the time or the manpower to work it once all the leads have been exhausted and all the obvious pieces have been put together.

Mostly, in those times, they’re happy to let you go about your business as long as you aren’t shooting up the place and causing problems. Sometimes, though, cops get aggressive about their turf.

And cases like this one? Cases with kids involved? They stir emotions.

I run my eyes over his set jaw and the subtle splotches of angry red in his cheeks and figure this isn’t a situation where I can smooth-talk my way into an easy investigation.

“That’s right,” I say.

“I understand you’re a PI. I need to see your license.”

I take out my wallet and hand him my driver’s and private investigator’s licenses and my concealed-carry permit.

“You armed?”

“Yes.”

He squints at my various forms of ID and then hands them back to me with a low grunt.

I get the feeling he was hoping I wasn’t on the level.

Hoping I was just some chick waltzing around with a four-thousand-dollar gun strapped to my belt for shits and giggles and he could tell me to get out of town with a warning.

That course of action having failed, he changes tack.

“Need to have a word with you.”

I look him up and down and then shift my gaze to the other guy.

The shorter one—too young to be sheriff so probably a deputy—with warm pecan skin and bright brown eyes is stocky in the way college athletes gone to seed often are.

I remember Leo calling it “hard fat,” and the corner of my mouth ticks up at the memory.

“That right there, Gore,” Leo had said, pointing at a Security Forces staff sergeant trudging across a base on the edge of a sweltering jungle, sweating like crazy and not complaining for a second.

“That’s hard fat. Man’s been hitting the cafeteria extra hard, but he’s got some power in him. Like a bull.”

“A bull?” I snorted.

“Sure,” Leo said.

“Okay, so what are you?” I asked.

He grinned.

“Me? Hell, Annie, I’m a hawk. I go where I want, hunt what I want, do what I want.”

“And what am I?”

“Don’t you know?” Leo said, a deep laugh escaping his throat.

I shook my head.

“Girl, you’re a crow.”

A laugh, instinctive and raw, had escaped my throat. I felt myself smiling, matching Leo’s grin, but inside I felt some powerful truth in the label. Almost like holding a real, living, oil black crow in my hands, the notion felt both familiar and dangerous. Soft and sharp at once.

“A crow?” I said, nudging him with my shoulder to get more of an explanation.

“Damn straight,” he said. “Always sticking your beak into the messes others shy away from. Raising a ruckus no one wants heard. Digging out truths no one wants seen.”

Now, on the street, I look back at Night Owl Cop, clearly in charge, probably the sheriff. He’s got the attitude of a guy who looks at my height and weight and thinks I can be pushed around. But, like Leo said, I’m a crow. And crows are wily.

I puff up my invisible feathers, spin my keys in my hand, and say, “I’m a little pressed for time.”

Night Owl steps in front of me, arms crossed, and says, “We can do it now. Or we can do it down at the station.”

“Okay,” I say. “What’s the word?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said you need to have a word with me. What is it?”

Behind Night Owl, I see Hard Fat press his mouth into a tight line. The color in his cheeks deepens. He’s got a pair of very defined dimples when he smiles. They make him look too sweet to be a cop.

“You’ve been going around town asking questions,” Night Owl says.

“Correct.”

He takes a step closer to me, says, “About a ten-year-old case.”

I match his move. Then, hands on hips, I stare up at him and say, “I’ve been asking questions about three little girls who disappeared one summer ten years ago, two of whom were never seen again and one of whom—”

“One of whom is my niece. ” The word comes out like a hiss.

“Oh,” I say. I finally get around to reading the name tag on his chest.

Sheriff Jacobs. So, obviously related to Kathleen and her daughter, the once-missing Olivia Jacobs. Great.

“My niece is a vulnerable young woman,” he says. “Whatever she went through—”

“Which she won’t talk about.”

“She can’t —” Jacobs growls.

“Either way. Max Andrews hired me to look for his sister. That’s what I’m doing.”

“You think we haven’t looked?”

Hard Fat steps up, puts a hand on Sheriff Jacobs’s shoulder.

“Sheriff, she’s just doing her job.”

I’m still matching Jacobs’s glare but, in my peripheral, I see Hard Fat shift his attention to me. “Ms. Gore, did you actually question Olivia?”

“No,” I answer, still looking at Jacobs. “I just talked to Kathleen.”

“Well, there ya go,” Hard Fat says.

Jacobs narrows his eyes at me.

I hate to break up this fifth-grade staring contest with Jacobs but someone’s got to do it. I blink, shift a step back, lean against Honey’s front fender, cross my arms over my chest.

I take a deep breath and say, “I told Max Andrews that by now, all this time later, it’s unlikely I’ll turn up any new leads, that the only thing I might find is a lot of frustrated, angry people with hurt feelings and old suspicions about those kidnappings.”

Sheriff Jacobs opens his mouth to say something else, but I keep on going. “I told him all that but he didn’t care. People can get pretty emotional when it comes to family, can’t they?”

Jacobs lets out a breath. He says, “Kathleen told you all she’s gonna say. You got no right to talk to Olivia without her say-so and she says no. That girl’s been through enough.”

“Sure,” I say.

He narrows his eyes at me and then turns to Hard Fat and says, “Keep an eye on her, AJ.”

Then he stalks off, swings open the door to Shiloh’s, goes inside. It’s hard to make waltzing into a bakery look edgy and badass, but Jacobs just about manages it. Hard Fat, actually apparently AJ, shrugs his great big shoulders and says, “Where you staying, ma’am?”

His voice is smooth, gentle, very country. I suppress a sneaky grin.

I’ve always had a soft spot for corn-fed country boys who call every woman over the age of twenty “ma’am.”

“Max Andrews’s cabin.”

He nods.

“I live right down the lane from there. I’ve known Max since he was little.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Back before everything happened, I was his scout troop mentor,” AJ says.

I bark out a laugh, “That tracks. You look like you’ve been in uniform your whole life.”

“Can’t deny it,” he says with a chuckle. He has a soft smile and a gentle laugh and I feel like being the Sheriff’s Deputy of Quartz Creek, North Carolina, is both the best and the worst possible job for him.

“I’ve tried to keep an eye on him through the years. He mentioned a few months back he was finally going to hire a PI. I’m glad you’re here.”

“Even though I’m already stepping on your toes?”

“Sheriff Jacobs can be protective of Kathleen and her daughters. You understand.”

“Yep.”

“Look, Max may only be eighteen, and eighteen-year-olds can be pretty difficult, but he’s a good kid. And I consider him a friend.”

He pulls out a genuine cop notebook, just like in the movies, and writes down his number, rips out the page, hands it to me. I slip it into my pocket.

“If you need anything,” he says, “let me know. I want to help if I can.”

“Sure.”

“And try to steer clear of Sheriff Jacobs.”