Burning Hope

  Also available from Wendy Roberts

  and Carina Press

  A Grave Calling

  A Grave Search

  A Grave Peril

  A Grave End

  Grounds to Kill

  Also available from Wendy Roberts and Harlequin

  Dating Can Be Deadly

  Also available from Wendy Roberts

  Remains of the Dead

  Devil May Ride

  Dead and Kicking

  Dead Suite

  Drop Dead Beauty

  BURNING HOPE

  Wendy Roberts

  For my not so little ones.

  You are my heart.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Excerpt from A Grave Calling by Wendy Roberts

  Chapter One

  When I parked my camper van at the dollar store where I worked, all I wanted was coffee. Murder wasn’t on my mind.

  It was predawn and my day off. Pincher’s Dollarama wouldn’t open for hours, but I arrived hoping to fill my to-go mug from the staff coffeepot in the storeroom. My plan was to get my caffeine, then hit the road and enjoy the day. My cupboards were bare, and my boss told me when I started that I could help myself to coffee whenever I pleased.

  I didn’t bother to turn on the lights, and yawned as I made my way down the dimly lit aisles. My foot connected with a box on the floor and I cursed loudly as I stumbled, nearly colliding with a pen display.

  Then I entered the storeroom and flicked on the fluorescent lights. Immediately my nerves began to ping. Something wasn’t right. The back door slapped against the frame, and a breeze cut through the room. I shifted my travel mug from one hand to the other just as a gust caught the door, swung it wide and then slammed it shut. I rolled my eyes.

  “Dammit, Penny, I’ve been telling you to fix that door for weeks.”

  Papers swirled like autumn leaves around my feet as I made my way across the room to secure the door. I berated myself for my unease but there was something spooky about being alone in a store before the sun came up. The stockroom wasn’t big but it was crammed. Half a dozen rows of floor-to-ceiling shelves with each ledge jammed tight with boxes. Even more containers were stacked on the floor so it was like walking through an obstacle course. I stepped over one box to get to that back door and, as I did, I was hit with the unmistakable coppery scent of blood.

  I peered down the aisle to my right and saw my coworker, Murray, facedown on the floor; his normally greasy snow-white hair was stained crimson. Fresh blood oozed from his wound and pooled on the floor around him.

  A shocked whimper escaped my throat and I dropped my mug. It clattered to the floor and I snatched it up as I took a step back.

  “This just happened,” I murmured. “The blood isn’t even dry yet.”

  I spun in a frantic pirouette, but I was alone.

  Except for Murray.

  My breath was coming in fast jagged breaths as I stared at my gruesome coworker. His hands were up and out to the side as if to break his fall. There was a yellow slip of paper in the creeping red pool next to his right hand. Murray’s bulldog face was turned to the side and held a look of twisted surprise.

  Once again, a gust of wind whacked the door against the frame with a loud crack, and my heart pounded against my ribs. My head said GO but my feet were frozen to the spot.

  Suddenly I heard tires squealing on pavement. I ran to the rear door and stuck my head out. I stared up and down the alley but whoever had been there was gone. My whole body trembled as I yanked the door closed and bolted it behind me.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up as I sprinted from the storeroom and out through the front of the store. Once outside I pressed myself into the shadows of the storefront and stifled a panicked scream as I fumbled for my phone. With sweaty hands I called the police. My words tumbled from my mouth in a frantic and urgent jumble that the operator had me repeat over and over again.

  “A body! At Pincher’s!” I cried.

  Finally I was assured that police were being dispatched.

  As I paced, waiting for the local law, I looked all the way up one side of Main Street and then down the other. The killer was out there. Whoever did this could be watching me right now. Suddenly I felt like an easy target.

  I decided to wait inside my camper van parked only feet away. Hurriedly I climbed inside and locked the doors. I jammed the keys in the ignition and my foot itched to stomp the accelerator at the first sign of anyone other than cops, but the town was eerily quiet. It was still a couple hours before the dollar store was due to open. Even the town coffee shop, diner and grocery store were still dark. My hands were white knuckled as I clutched my empty coffee mug in two hands and waited.

  “Where the hell is the marshal?” I muttered as I nervously cut my gaze left and right.

  It was supposed to be my day off. My boss ordered me to take a rest day since I’d worked without a break for two weeks. But money was tight, I was low on groceries, and I wanted coffee. Now while the town of Hope Harbor slept and dawn had yet to break, I’d stumbled on a murder.

  Again.

  It felt like an hour but was probably only a few minutes before Marshal Joel Cobb’s car raced up beside my camper and screeched to a stop.

  As the marshal approached my van, I rolled down my window and waved my hands frantically in the direction of the store entrance, shouting, “Someone killed Murray!”

  He frowned and raised his eyebrows in a confused question, as if my words could have another meaning, but then he disappeared inside the store. I tapped my fingers impatiently on my dash, waiting for his return. When he came out, he removed his hat, dragged his hands through his short-cropped hair. His eyes were frantic even as he tried to appear all business.

  “Stay put,” he told me through my rolled-up window.

  I nodded and watched him make a call. The marshal was probably in his early thirties, five foot ten, fit, and sported a neatly trimmed mustache. He usually had a toothpick bobbing in his mouth, but it was absent at the moment. Cobb was known to be friendly to most everyone in town, but he and I weren’t exactly besties.

  While he was on the phone I went further into my van and put my kettle on for tea, then used my washroom. I stared at my reflection in the mirror as I washed my hands. My hair was still uncombed and the jagged short layers of my red hair stuck out comically. I splashed cold water on my freckled face that looked even more pale than usual with the shock.

  While my tea brewed, I ran a brush through my hair, aware of the bristles as they scratched at the long scar that snaked across my scalp beneath my shoulder-length hair. As I filled my travel mug with a tea bag and hot water, I glanced at the picture of my grandmother taped to the wall above the sink.

  “It’s another murder, Nan,” I whispered. “Why does this keep happening to me?” Her gentle smile frozen forever in the photograph had no reply. I kissed the tip of a finger and pressed it to her face, then returned to the driver’s seat to wait.

  “You got this,” I assured myself with a whisper of encouragement.

  But still my hands shook, and my stomach churned as Marshal Cobb approached my window.

  “Okay, Sheriff Duthroyd is on his way. Tell me everything, Red,” he ordered. “And don’t leave out a damn thing.”

  After a deep breath I described every detail. I told him that I unlocked the front door of Pincher’s Dollarama and made my way to the back storage room that was also the store’s office and staff room. I informed him the purpose of my visit was only to get some coffee to go and I held up my travel mug as if that proved it.

  “Did you hear anything? See anything different when you walked in the front door?”

  “No, but I hadn’t turned on the lights in the storefront and I tripped on a box of school supplies in the aisle.” I frowned. “That’s probably what did it.” I nodded and blew out a jagged breath. “The killer heard me make that sound and took off because—”

  “Leave the investigating to me, okay. Just tell me facts.”

  “Fine. When I entered the storage room, the back door that opens onto the alley was slamming in the wind. The door frame has some rot and needs replacing. I mentioned that to Penny before, but she always just shrugged and said she’d tell Murray to put it on his list.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. When my boss told me she’d get Murray to do it I thought at the time that the doughy old stock boy, who moved at the pace of a snail, would never get around to fixing anything. Now I realized that if Murray hadn’t been so lazy, he might’ve saved his own life. “All I wanted was coffee.”

  I thought about the oozing hole in the back of Murray’s head, and nausea washed over me.

  “Go on,” the marshal snapped.

/>   I described what I saw: the papers scattered all over the floor and, otherwise, nothing unusual. Except poor dead Murray.

  “The staff coffeepot and artificial creamer are in the back corner next to Penny’s desk.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and continued. “So many boxes around. School supplies, and now the Halloween decorations have arrived. The room is jammed so I didn’t see him at first.” I swallowed thickly. “When I rounded the corner and stepped over a box, well, that’s when I saw him.”

  “Think carefully.” Marshal Cobb wagged a finger at me. “Did you hear or see anyone? Did you look out the back door and check to see if anyone was running away from the scene?”

  “I heard a car squealing away.” I briefly closed my eyes before I added, “But when I looked outside, I didn’t see anyone at all. They were gone.”

  “You’re absolutely sure?” Cobb’s eyes were hard marbles, and I could tell he was trying to look in charge as he took down everything I said, but this had to be way above his pay grade in this tiny town.

  “I’m positive.”

  An hour later I was still sitting in my van but there was now crime scene tape across the door of Pincher’s Dollarama, and Marshal Cobb was standing on the sidewalk talking to my boss, Penny. I sat frozen to my seat with a front row view as the small crowd of locals continued to grow. Wouldn’t be long before all 534 residents of Hope Harbor were standing out front with eyes wide and mouths tsking and tittering. Previously the locals I encountered seemed polite and kind, but now I looked at each and every one of them like a person who could’ve shot Murray in the back of the head.

  The sunrise had the onlookers casting long, ghoulish shadows. I trembled and retreated to the back of my van.

  From my bed in the back, I could still view spectators between a part in the drapes. Whenever a new person joined the group, there was a collective turning of heads and nodding of chins in the direction of my van. My rear window was open slightly and I could hear snippets of conversation. The discussions were about poor Murray being killed and that odd new girl who lived in a van covered in bubble decals who found his body.

  I had news for them. This odd new girl couldn’t wait to burn rubber out of their creepy little town.

  When I moved back up to the driver’s seat I saw Penny standing in front of the store looking lost as the marshal talked to her. Abruptly she began sobbing and Marshal Cobb just turned away with his phone pressed to his ear. I couldn’t stand to see my elderly boss in such distress, so I climbed out of the van and went to her. Penny pushed past the marshal and fell into my arms, pressing her rosy and puffy face against my shoulder.

  “Oh, Red,” she sobbed. “It’s Murray! They say he’s dead. Shot in the back of the head.” She lifted her tearstained face to look into mine. “Joel said you found him. Oh, no, poor you.” She pressed against my shoulder again, shaking with renewed sobs.

  Penny was in her midseventies with a soft round face and a head of gravity-defying teased and lacquered silver hair that added a few inches to her original five feet. I patted my boss’s back and made “There, there” noises while I strained to look around her to watch the crowd for anyone suspicious. Suddenly a sheriff’s department vehicle pulled up and the marshal fast walked toward it as the sheriff and two investigators climbed out.

  Penny peeled herself off my shoulder to look and, as she stepped away, was surrounded by a gaggle of local women who took turns hugging her while trying to pry her for details. Information was currency in Hope Harbor and these women wanted to be supportive but also get any gruesome tidbits. I could hear Penny tell them that I’d been the one to find Murray.

  Whenever one of the locals attempted to walk toward me, I held up a hand to stop them. I felt too sick about what I’d seen and wasn’t participating in this next level gossip. My name would already be on the lips of everyone at all the stitch-and-bitch coffee klatches. I only wanted to give my statement and, hopefully, point my bubble van far away from Hope Harbor.

  Marshal Cobb brought the investigators inside Pincher’s. Before the door closed behind them, he narrowed his eyes at me and mouthed Stay. I couldn’t help but sigh. I’d been in town less than a month and the marshal didn’t like me or my van and treated us like a blight on his picturesque town.

  It wasn’t long before Cobb was back on the sidewalk, leaving the investigators inside the store.

  “Who could’ve done such a thing?” Penny asked the dozens of onlookers. She pulled a wad of tissue from her ample cleavage and blew her nose.

  “Let’s get someone to give you a ride home, Penny.” Marshal Cobb put a gentle hand on her arm. “You don’t need to stick around. Go home and rest and I’ll be in touch later.”

  “I’ll give you a ride,” I offered Penny. “You’re too upset to be driving yourself. One of the others here can take your car back to your place.”

  “No, you need to talk to the sheriff next.” Cobb pulled a toothpick from his pocket and wagged it in my direction before putting it in his mouth. “Someone else can drive her.”

  Half a dozen ladies wrangled for the privilege of driving Penny home, and once that was settled Cobb told the remaining crowd they needed to get off the street and let the police do their work.

  “Go home. Or go to work.” He made shooing motions with his hands. “Let the police do our jobs.”

  After a bit of hesitancy, most of the crowd dispersed. The diner and coffee shop were now open down the road. Some groups went together to huddle over their mugs and still keep an eye on Main Street. Others only moved to the other side of the street, and some locals defied the marshal entirely by only taking a couple steps backward. I told the marshal I’d be in my van until I was needed.

  “Fine. But don’t you even think of putting your key in the ignition,” he warned.

  “I won’t,” I protested and hated that those words slid out with a tiny bit of a whine.

  Inside, I made myself another cup of tea just to keep my hands busy. Once seated at my small kitchen table, I could watch things unfold in front of Pincher’s Dollarama. The medical examiner showed up from a neighboring, much larger town. The few remaining chatty townsfolk grew so quiet you could hear the wheels of the gurney on the pavement. A lump formed in my throat a few minutes later when the body bag got wheeled out.

  Eventually Marshal Cobb came knocking with another man at his side. I opened the sliding door and allowed them inside. The investigator introduced himself as Sheriff Duthroyd. He had a stocky build, was in his fifties with deep grooves around his pale blue eyes that seemed to say he’d seen worse than a dead guy in a dollar store.

  “You’re Scarlet Hooper, is that right?”

  I nodded. “People just call me Red.”

  “Okay. Red.” He smiled kindly.

  The sliding door to the van remained open, and the crowd that had crossed to the other side of the street now inched closer and did not hide their curiosity. Some brazenly stepped forward toward my door, hoping to hear what was said.

  “We need you to tell us everything from the beginning,” Cobb announced with a puff of his chest.

  Sheriff Duthroyd shot him a warning glance and Cobb’s mouth snapped shut into a tight, thin line. He stepped around the table and lowered himself onto the passenger seat of the van while Duthroyd took the seat at the table across from me. It was obviously time to let the big boy handle things and I could tell Cobb didn’t like that one bit.

  “There’s not much for me to tell.” I cleared my throat and gave a nervous shrug. “I just found him there.” My voice shook as I added, “There was lots of blood and I knew...” This was not my first time seeing a body, but it never got easier. I swallowed thickly. “He was dead and it looked like it had just happened.”

  “I talked to the owner of the store and she mentioned you weren’t expected to work today.”

  “I, um...” I felt color creep up from my T-shirt and flood my face. “I came in to use the coffee maker. I was out of coffee and—” I hastily added, “Penny doesn’t mind. She told me I could help myself whenever I wanted so I was just going to make some coffee and take it to go.” I lifted my travel mug that was filled with tea.

  “Okay.” The sheriff smiled sympathetically. “Describe the scene to me.”