Death on a Deadline

staggered like an invisible force had slammed into her. I reached out to steady her, trying to ignore my own trembling legs. Mama put her arms protectively around her granddaughters. “Girls, let’s go in the house.”
    As Hayley and Rachel reluctantly obeyed, I drew strength from the normalcy in Mama’s voice, even though I knew it was forced. If only Carly and I, and especially Zac, were young enough to “go in the house” with Mama, instead of facing the harsh reality on the porch.
    Even at sixty, Daddy stood tall and straight beside Zac and Carly. As a boy, he’d been a swimmer—an Olympic hopeful until he’d torn his rotator cuff in a sandlot baseball game. When we were growing up, he was a deputy sheriff, and though those days were long gone, he still carried himself with the air of a humble president—in control but not arrogant. “Now Ed, listen here. Zac’s not going anywhere without me. I’ll take him and his mom to the station, and you boys can follow us.”
    Ed, the grizzled-before-his-time veteran cop, didn’t seem to mind a bit that his old Little League coach had just referred to him as a “boy.” Instead, he nodded and glanced at his young partner. “Seth? What do you think?”
    “Sure, that’d be okay.”
    As ridiculous as this was, if I kept telling myself that the police officers were only doing their job, maybe I could keep from slugging them.
    Daddy turned to me and pushed an errant strand of hair behind my ear. “Stay with your mama and the girls, honey. We’ll talk to John and get this worked out and call you when we know anything.”
    Unlike Carly, who had butted heads with our parents on a regular basis right up until she ran off with Travis on the night of her high school graduation, I’d rarely ever disagreed with Mama or Daddy. But this was the exception. I belonged with Carly and Zac. “I’ll help Mama get the girls settled, then meet y’all at the station.”
    His eyes widened, and I lifted my chin.
    Without a word, he nodded, then shepherded Carly and Zac into his crew cab truck.

Three

    Twenty minutes later, I rushed into the Lake View Police station. Before I could ask the uniformed desk clerk for information, I spotted Carly slumped on a bench.
    The haunted look in her eyes took me back to the days right after Travis left. Ten years of healing, down the tubes.
    “Daddy wouldn’t allow them to question Zac without a lawyer, but they’d only let one of us stay with him until the attorney gets here.” She shrugged. “I told him to do it. He’s a rock.” She nodded down at the twisted Kleenex in her hands. “I’m a basket case.”
    I sank onto the wooden bench and put my arm around her shoulders. “Why don’t I call Denise?” Sometimes John’s wife was the only one who could get the hard-line chief of police to see reason.
    Carly shook her head. “Daddy talked to John when we first got here. John said he wished there was something he could do, but there’s not. He can’t afford to do us any special favors. Especially in a high-profile case like this.”
    Hank Templeton. Married into one of the wealthiest families in Lake View. And although they despised each other, he and Mayor Byron Stanton, who had married into the same family, had been brothers-in-law.
    John and his department would be under tremendous pressure to solve this case. But surely they wouldn’t railroad an innocent sixteen-year-old. “So you called a lawyer?”
    Carly nodded. “Daddy thought we should get Alex Campbell since he’s back in town.” She looked up at me. “Are you okay with that?”
    I could almost hear the rusty hinges on the corner of my heart where I’d stashed all my unresolved feelings for Alex Campbell. I gave the door a mental shove and was gratified to hear it clink shut once more. “Sure. I’m fine with it.”
    Alex’s dad had been my swim coach from the time I was eight. Alex was two years older but he let me tag along after him. Until I turned fourteen and then he started tagging after me.
    Alex and swimming. My two youthful obsessions. Both lost the summer before I turned seventeen. When I slunk home from the Olympics in need of a friend, Alex left for college and, since his parents moved away shortly after, he’d never returned.
    Until now.
    A door across the hall opened. John stepped out and, studiously ignoring me, motioned to Carly. Maybe I’d gone too far at the park today. But so had he! Tricking me into giving him Hank’s wallet.