Cheri on Top (2 page)

Chapter 2

“DeCourcy. Get your butt on over here.”

J.J. dragged his attention from the drama unfolding in the drained lakebed and glanced at his grumpy friend, Cataloochee County Sheriff Turner Halliday. “Any sign of a body yet?” J.J. asked him.

Turner shook his head sharply. Then he gave a wide swipe in the air with his fingers, motioning for J.J. to walk with him. That kind of body language told J.J. all he needed to know. His best friend was not just irritable, he was downright pissed, which wasn’t his style. J.J. and Turner had been buddies since kindergarten, and he could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen his laid-back friend in such a state.

“What’s up?” He joined Turner near a grove of trees on the east bank of what was once Paw Paw Lake. Turner set a slow walking pace, and J.J. matched it. “Everything all right?”

Turner didn’t look him in the eye. “Give me twenty-four hours before you go putting any details in the paper. That’s all I’m asking.”

“Say
what
?” J.J. gave a dismissive snort and stopped in his tracks. “You’re joking, right?”

Turner ignored him. “We don’t know what we’re looking at yet. Since there’s a remote chance were going to find a body, the FBI is on the way. This could turn into a huge fuckin’ mess.”

Well, that certainly explained the bad mood. Turner got testy when the Feds came to town and treated him like some backwoods bozo. Regardless, J.J. decided to point out the obvious. “It’s already a huge fuckin’ mess.”

Turner kicked at the red dirt, saying nothing.

“And you and I both know what we’re looking at here.” J.J. crooked a thumb over his shoulder. “A big-assed hydraulic winch is about to rip a 1959 Chevy Impala from the bottom of Paw Paw Lake, and we’re going to discover it’s been the secret underwater tomb of one Barbara Jean Smoot for the last four decades. Remote chance? Come on, now. We’ve finally found our ‘Lady of the Lake.’”

Turner looked up and narrowed an eye at him. “Sounds like you already wrote your damn story, DeCourcy—pretty words and all. I guess the facts don’t even matter to you.”

“Whoa!” J.J. held his palms out in surrender. “Hold up, Turner. This is the biggest mystery our town has ever laid claim to, and I’m watching it unravel with my own two eyes. It’s my job to report what I see today for tomorrow morning’s edition. Same as always, man.”

Turner’s laugh was tinged with sarcasm. “What you see is a vehicle of unknown age and make that’s turned up in the mud at a construction site. Period.” He scowled at him. “But go ahead. Write about Barbara Jean Smoot tomorrow if you want. I’ll look forward to reading your front-page correction the day after that.”

“Uh-huh.” J.J. tipped his head and studied his friend. Turner was mean as a sack of rattlesnakes today. J.J. had seen him go through hell and back since June died, but that was a personal tragedy of the first order. His wife was only twenty-five when she was killed in a car crash four years ago, driving home to visit her folks in Chicago. But J.J. couldn’t recall ever seeing Turner this jacked over
work
.

Unless …

“So this is personal,” J.J. said. It wasn’t a question. “Mind telling me how?”

Turner looked up at him, his hazel eyes smoldering. “Forget it.”

“Tell me.”

Turner sighed. “Barbara Jean was a pretty white girl who disappeared on a rainy night in June of 1964, right? The only person who ever claimed to know anything was a black man. And, as you might recall, Bigler wasn’t exactly a hotbed of racial harmony in those days.”

J.J. widened his eyes at the understatement.

“You know who that witness was, right?” Turner asked.

“Sure. A man named Carleton Johnston.”

“Do you know what happened to that man?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” J.J. said. Just that morning, when police scanner chatter began buzzing about a possible vehicle found buried in the mud, J.J. asked a reporter to pull a slew of old news clips from the
Bugle
microfiche archives. Carleton Johnston was described as an out-of-town visitor who claimed he’d seen a white man jump from the passenger side of a car just before it drove off the pier into Paw Paw Lake—with someone slumped at the wheel—then watched the man scurry off into the woods. Johnston said he couldn’t swim so he ran to get help. Less than a month later, it was reported that Mr. Johnston passed away of natural causes at his home in Charlotte, and no one was ever charged in connection with Barbara Jean’s disappearance.

According to the clips, the Cataloochee County Sheriff’s Department and North Carolina state troopers dragged the lake four times in the months after her disappearance, but came up with nothing. Johnston’s story was never substantiated, and as the years went by, many people assumed he was responsible for her disappearance. In 1975, Barbara Jean’s family had her legally declared dead.

“Did you know that Carleton Johnston was my mother’s uncle, visiting from Charlotte? And did you know that the poor guy had some kind of learning disability? Back then, they just called him slow.”

J.J. raised an eyebrow in surprise. “No. I did not.”

“See—you don’t know everything.”

J.J. yanked a reporter’s notebook from his back jeans pocket. “Why haven’t you ever told me this?”

“Never came up.” Turner scanned the scene, watching the progress of the dozens of recovery and emergency personnel working to extricate the car. “Now listen, Jay. I’m not saying shit on the record. But as your friend, I’m asking you to wait before you go blabbing some half-assed truth all over creation.”

“But—”

Turner cut him off. “If we find human remains—and that’s a big if—nobody’s going to be able to positively ID anyone or anything for a very long time.”

J.J. nodded.

“Whatever we find will only be one piece of a bigger puzzle. When this cold case thaws out, I’m afraid the whole thing is going to stink to high heaven.”

J.J. let out a long and low whistle and began to write. “You’re confirming that Carleton Johnston didn’t die of natural causes. You’re saying somebody killed him to keep him from talking.”

“I’m not
sayin’
anything.” Turner bit on the inside of his lip. “All I know are the ghost stories we heard when we were kids—that and the suspicions of my mother’s family.” Turner glanced over his shoulder at the crane. “But as of right now, for your news story, we don’t even know whose car this is.”

J.J. smiled. “Ah, well, I can help you with that. See that frail old lady over by the fire truck?”

Turner peered through the sun. “Yeah. Who’s she?”

“That’s Barbara Jean’s sister, Carlotta Smoot McCoy, from Maggie Valley. She stopped by to watch the recovery.”

Turner’s mouth fell open. “Did you call her, DeCourcy?”

He shrugged. “I had one of my reporters go over to her place for a quote, and she insisted on coming down.”

“Shee-it,” Turner said, wiping his mouth nervously. “I really don’t want this turning into any more of a damn circus than it already is.”

At that moment, real estate developer Wim Wimbley strolled past, coming within earshot. Turner stopped talking, and his back straightened noticeably. He tipped his hat. “Wim,” he said.

“Sheriff.” Wim acknowledged Turner coolly, giving just the barest nod of his head. Then he caught J.J.’s eyes. “DeCourcy.”

Wimbley walked on by, nose high, hands in his chino pockets, a professionally made crease down the arm of his pale pink, button-down Ralph Lauren dress shirt.

“Little shit,” J.J. mumbled.

“Yeah, well, he’s the filthy rich little shit who owns the property we’re standing on. And if this development takes off it will make him even richer.”

J.J. took his gaze away from Wim and looked at Turner thoughtfully. “Haven’t you ever found it ironic?” he asked his friend.

Turner shrugged. “You mean how Tanyalee’s engaged to Wim?”

J.J. laughed. “Hell, no! That’s not irony, man—that’s a godsend! I’m talking about the fact that Wim comes in here and drains Paw Paw Lake to build a luxury waterfront retirement community. I know what he told the planning commission about his man-made jetties and maximizing lakefront homesites and all that crap, but I still don’t get it. Is our society so removed from nature that we have to re-engineer a mountain lake to make it beautiful?”

Turner wasn’t listening. His eyes had gone huge and now focused directly over J.J.’s right shoulder.

Though he wanted to turn around, something told J.J. to wait. A tingling began way down in his core. It warned him to stay sharp.

“Are the Feds here?” he whispered to Turner, not wanting to turn around and gawk.

Turner shook his head slowly. “It’s worse than the FBI, man. It’s CNN.”

J.J. was about to spin around in disbelief when he realized what Turner was saying. For them, CNN wasn’t just a moniker for a news network. It was their shorthand for Cherise Nancy Newberry, in all her glory.

She was two days late.

J.J. heard a car door slam behind him. He smiled, sliding his notebook into his rear pocket. “She coming this way?”

Turner nodded. “Ooh, yeah.”

“How’s she look?”

Turner shrugged. “Like she’s been living off bib lettuce and Evian water, but other than that, everything seems to be in working order.”

J.J. took a moment to center himself. He pasted a scowl on his face. Their first encounter had to be convincing if this was going to work. It was unfortunate Cheri had shown up in the middle of the biggest news story to hit Bigler in forty-seven years but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about that now.

“Stay cool, Halliday,” J.J. said through gritted teeth.

“Scout’s honor.”

J.J. turned. It was all he could do not to fall to his knees at the impact. He hadn’t laid eyes on her in over five years. He had to make sure she wouldn’t see the relief in him, the hunger. He checked her out from tip to toe at lightning speed. Her dark, lustrous red hair was cut in some kind of trendy layered style and it skimmed above her shoulders. She wore a skirt that was real short, which was real thoughtful of her. Right then, J.J. decided that he may have been a lot of places and met a lot of women since he’d graduated from high school twelve years before, but it still held true: Cheri Newberry had the best set of female legs on the planet.

Unfortunately, her sexy four-inch heels were turning out to be a spectacularly bad choice for a visit to a drained lakebed, and J.J. watched her wobble and cuss under her breath as she stepped over deep ruts in the earth.

Except for the methodic
click-click
of the winch, everything had gone silent. The recovery crew had stopped talking and yelling. Every set of male eyes was on Cheri. And why not? Cheri Newberry stood out like a Thoroughbred in a field of pack mules.

Focus,
he told himself.
Don’t smile. Don’t laugh. And for God’s sake, don’t stare at her legs.

Cheri wobbled over to the two men. She used an index finger to nudge the big, dark sunglasses up the bridge of her nose. “Hello,” she said, her hands nervously smoothing out the contours of her skirt. “I just drove into town. I decided to pull off the road when I saw all the commotion. What’s going on?”

J.J. said nothing. He simply scowled at her. It struck him as amusing that she’d chosen that getup for her big entrance. It was still about image management for her, he supposed. His guess was that she’d driven most of the way in shorts and flip-flops, then hit the Tip-Top truck stop to change her outfit and freshen her lipstick before she rolled into town.

He had to give the girl an A for effort.

Turner took it upon himself to break the awkward silence. “Sure is wonderful to see you, Cheri.” He gave her a hearty, but quick, hug. “We’re happy to have you back home.”

“Oh.” She laughed uncomfortably, as if she were surprised by the friendly greeting. “Well, thanks. That’s nice of you to say, Turner.”

J.J. was aware that the rules of social intercourse would require him to say something immediately. If he didn’t speak now, the window for a polite welcome would slam shut. So he stayed silent. Cheri’s eyes flashed from behind her dark glasses, aware of his rudeness.

Excellent.

Turner, however, was too much of a gentleman to let the uncomfortable moment continue.

“Did you have a nice drive up?”

“Oh! Sure…” She looked back at her car and laughed nervously. “I decided to leave my Audi down in Florida and drive my old car up here—you know, save on wear and tear and all that.”

Turner nodded but kept a straight face.

J.J. did his best not to roll his eyes.

“So how’s Candy Carmichael doing these days?”

“Uh, she’s great,” Cheri said, smiling stiffly at Turner. “You know, crazy busy, like always. The Florida real estate market is really starting to rev up again and we’re juggling all kinds of deals, but she’s fabulous. I’ll tell her you asked about her.”

Turner nodded. “Great. Well, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to work. It’s crazy busy around here, too. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you get settled.”

“Wait.” Cheri reached out for Turner’s arm. She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, and that’s when J.J. noticed she still had the same short, pink nails she’d had since high school. “Candy and I were so very sad to hear about June. You’ve been in our thoughts and prayers. I am so sorry.”

“That’s quite kind of you. Take care, now.” Turner nodded quickly and turned away, not comfortable with talking about June, J.J. knew. But before he could take two steps, the ground shook and the air vibrated as the winch revved up for another tug at the car. As everyone watched, a loud squelching noise exploded from the muck and a pair of mud-covered chrome fins poked up from the goop like a perky set of boobs in an all-girl mud-wrestling match.

“I’ll be damned,” Turner said, just before he broke into a jog.

Cheri spun around and whipped off her sunglasses, staring at J.J., her mouth open in shock.

“Is that—” Cheri stopped herself. She gasped. She pointed behind her. Her voice went high and squeaky. “My God! What’s the name of that missing woman from back in the fifties? The one we told all those ghost stories about—the ‘Lady of the Lake,’ right? Barbara Jean Something? Was it the fifties? The sixties, maybe? Is that her car? After all this time?”