LITMIR.BIZ

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checked out her appearance, making a note to pick up some hair color. Her roots were beginning to show. Then she combed her curly shoulder-length hair and fastened it off at the nape of her neck. There were a few more wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth where she smiled, but her brown eyes still danced when she was laughing. Her chin had always been a little too square and with age was beginning to take on a bit of a bulldog look. She frowned, thinking she could lose about ten pounds and get rid of that, and then let the thought go. She was a satisfied widow with no desire to ever marry again. Why bother?

      After changing from her work clothes into a clean pair of jeans and a yellow pullover blouse, she made the trip into Mystic in fine fashion. She was listening to her favorite radio station, rockin’ to the oldies, when a Bob Seger song came on the radio. Grinning from the memories it evoked, she turned up the volume and sang along.

      When she finally drove into Mystic, she glanced toward the police station to see if Trey’s cruiser was there. He had been chief for over five years, and she was proud of what he’d become. He reminded her so much of her husband, Beau, and she wished daily that Beau had lived to see his children grow up. But the cruiser was gone, which meant he was out and about. Maybe she would see him before she left town.

      She shopped quickly, rejecting an invitation to lunch with one of her friends because she was anxious to get home and start the cake. Still, she took time to pull into the drive-through of a local sandwich shop called the French Fry to get a cold drink on the way home. While she was waiting for her drink she finally saw Trey drive by and wondered what interesting stuff was going on in Mystic, and made a mental note to call him later.

      “Here’s your Pepsi,” the clerk said, and leaned out the window to hand the cup and straw to Betsy.

      “Many thanks,” Betsy said, and waved as she drove away.

      She was sipping on the Pepsi and listening to the Rolling Stones when she remembered the eggs and turned right at the next section-line road.

      Dick’s farm was small, but it was a beauty, backing up to one of the many mountains that surrounded their little town. She eyed the climbing roses on the trellis against the side of the house, remembering how Dick’s wife, Marcy, had loved her flowers. She missed Marcy Phillips. She’d been a good friend.

      She parked on the outside of the yard fence and then knocked on the door. When Dick didn’t answer, she looked around to make sure his pickup was out back in the garage, which it was. The front door was unlocked, so she opened it a bit and leaned in.

      “Dick! Hey, Dick, it’s me, Betsy! Are you here?”

      With no answer from inside, she looked toward the barn. She could hear the cows bawling and nodded to herself, thinking that was where he would be. Still focused on the long process of making that cake, she ran back down the steps and headed toward the barn with long strides.

      The barn had been built over a hundred years earlier, in a style similar to Pennsylvania Dutch. The two-story structure loomed against the landscape with a loft as large as the barn itself. It had a fairly new coat of barn-red paint on the outer walls, while the cross-boards on the old shutters had been painted white. The pasture was fenced off from the house and barnyard and spread out toward the trees ringing the mountain at its back.

      “Dick! Dick! It’s me, Betsy! Where are you?” she yelled, but got no answer.

      She was looking toward the pasture as she hurried along, thinking he would come walking out of the trees any minute. Then she heard a dog bark and frowned. Dick didn’t have dogs. She wondered if someone was hunting on his property and turned her head to look.

      Her gaze moved past the breezeway that ran straight through the middle of the barn, and as it did, she saw something swinging in the air above the ground. She stopped, then began to stare, trying to focus on what it could possibly be. No longer interested in the pasture, she began moving toward the barn, but at a slower gait, her mind unready to accept the truth.

      She was about twenty yards away, so close she could see his clothing and his shoes and the awful angle of his neck, when her knees buckled, refusing to carry her another step. She was on the ground, rocking and moaning. Twice she tried to get up, but her legs wouldn’t hold her. She kept trying to make what she was seeing turn into something else instead. But it was Dick Phillips’s lifeless body, swinging slowly in the breeze. The sound that came up her throat was more howl than scream, but it was the impetus she needed to get moving.

      Trey! She had to call Trey.

      She scrambled to her feet and started running back to her car to get her phone, screaming as she went. When she reached the car, she fell into the front seat, grabbing for the cell phone she’d left in the console. Still sobbing and shaking so hard she could barely breathe, she tried to scroll through her contacts and hit three wrong numbers before she finally got through to Trey. The moment she heard his voice, she started screaming again, and this time she couldn’t stop.

      * * *

      Trey Jakes was not in a good mood. He and the officer on duty, Earl Redd, had gone to serve an arrest warrant on a guy they had grown up with. The man had turned into a replica of the father who’d raised him: stealing instead of working. Only this time the theft he’d pulled was caught on tape, resulting in a warrant for his arrest. He’d been out of town for almost a week, and this morning the police department had received a tip from a neighbor that he was back. At least when they knocked on his door to serve it, he went with them without a fight.

      Trey had just finished the paperwork and was getting up to refill his coffee cup when his cell phone rang. When he saw it was from his mom, he forgot about the coffee. The moment they connected, all he could hear was screaming. The hair stood up on the back of his neck, and he began yelling, trying to get her to calm down enough to talk.

      “Mom! Is that you? What’s wrong? Where are you? Mom? Mom! For the love of God, what’s wrong?”

      It was Trey’s voice that finally pulled her back.

      “I need you. You have to come. Oh, dear Jesus,” Betsy moaned, and then got out of the car and dropped to the ground, putting her head between her knees to keep from passing out.

      Earl Redd had already come rushing into the room, alerted to the emergency by what Trey was saying.

      “Where are you? Are you hurt? What’s wrong?” Trey asked, heading for the door on the run.

      “Dick Phillips! Come to his farm! Oh, my God, hurry.”

      “Mom! I need to know what happened so I can dispatch emergency vehicles. Who’s hurt? What happened?”

      “Dick. He’s dead. Oh God, oh God, he’s dead.”

      Trey slid to a dead stop on the sidewalk, and Earl stopped right along with him.

      “He’s dead? Are you sure?” Trey asked.

      “Yes, I’m sure. He’s hanging from the rafters in his barn.”

      The moment those words came out of her mouth, she dropped the phone and started screaming again.

      Trey clenched his jaw as he made a U-turn and headed back into the office with Earl at his heels. He found his day dispatcher, Avery Jones, cleaning dead flies off the windowsill.

      “What’s up, Chief?” he asked.

      “I need you to get on the phone, not the radio, and tell the county sheriff’s office there’s a death at Dick Phillips’s farm. Give them directions and ask if they want you to notify the coroner or if they’re going to do it. Then I need you to call in Carl and Lonnie and tell them I want them on patrol in town until further notice.”

      Avery’s eyes widened, but he didn’t question the orders. “Any details you want me to pass on?” he asked.

      “Tell the sheriff a man was hanged. We don’t know if it’s a murder or a suicide and I damn sure don’t want that to get out. Dick has a daughter who deserves to know all this first.”

      “Yes,

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