Work in Progress
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Murder Revisited: A Detective Hardrock Mystery
Chapter One
"Leona's disappeared!" exclaimed the frantic voice on the phone.
In the darkness, I reached across the night stand and turned on the bedside lamp. Sir Edward meowed his complaint at being disturbed. As I swung my legs over the side of the mattress, I glanced at my wristwatch. Green LCD numerals glowed. It was 3:00 a.m.
The desperation I heard in my brother's utterance, plus my own adrenalin, forced me wide awake. My cop antennae went up, my fingers tightening on the cordless receiver I held to my ear. "Jonathan, slow down! What are you talkin' about?"
Jonathan noisily drew in a long, deep breath that trembled when he exhaled. He repeated loudly, "Leona has disappeared. Can't you hear what I'm sayin'?"
After twenty-five year on the force, I, police detective James Hardrock, have learned to deal with frenzied, excited people...but my training fell short when it came to dealing with my own relatives.
Calmly, I said, "Start from the beginnin' and tell me what happened." My hypothesis being that if I remained calm, my brother would do the same. And it worked.... For awhile.
"You know we'd planned on being there for your birthday next Saturday," he declared.
Jonathan, a retired Navy man, decided he wanted to come home for a visit. In the twenty-eight years since he'd left Virginia, he'd returned only once. And that was before he was married. His wife Leona always made up one excuse after another as to why she wouldn't or couldn't come to Hopewell.
"Uh-huh," I mumbled sleepily. His impending arrival was something we'd discussed last week.
"You know how Leona is afraid to fly, so I told her we'd drive. Well, that suggestion went over like a lead balloon. I heard complaint after complaint, but this time I was adamant and she finally gave in." A slight note of smug satisfaction crept into his voice.
I waited. In my job, a big part of solving a case is to just listen to what people have to say. Eventually, they'll tell you something worthwhile.
Jonathan sucked in a shaky breath. I could envision worry lines furrowed across his forehead. "She's been edgy and jumpy the last few days," he said, his bewilderment clearly evident even over the phone.
"Do you know why?" I asked, stifling a yawn.
There was a long pause. Again, I waited. Patience has its own reward, I reminded myself. Few people can withstand a prolonged silence, but my brother wasn't one of them.
"She told me it was because she was returning to Hopewell," he quietly stated.
I knitted my brow in confusion. "Returning? I thought she was born and raised in Colorado." Jonathan had met Leona on leave in Denver twenty-five years ago.
"That's what she'd always led me to believe. And as far as I know, she's never been to Virginia, much less Hopewell."
"Did you ask her what she meant?" I asked.
"Hell, yeah!" he swore loudly. "I questioned her until I was blue in the face. She kept sayin' she didn't want to talk about it."
The volume of his voice increased with each word. Hoping to avoid permanent damage to my eardrum, I held the receiver at a respectable distance. "When did Leona go missin'?"
"We were goin' to leave first thing in the morning, so we went to bed a little early tonight. Later on, somethin' woke me. I don't know what. Leona's side of the bed was empty, so I went lookin' for her. On the kitchen table, I found an envelope addressed to me."
I didn't know if he paused for effect or to take breathing lessons. The excitement in his voice made it sound like he'd been running. "Jonathan, am I gonna have to reach through the phone lines and pull the rest of the story out of your mouth?"
Maybe my words came out a bit too strong, but I was anxious and a tad impatient. Small hairs prickled at the base of my neck Undefined jitters spread through my midsection. Signals of bad news.
"I'm sorry, James," Jonathan apologized. His speech mirrored his apprehension. "The note said, 'I can't go back to Hopewell. He'll kill me!'"
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