CHAPTER SIXTEEN
There was a cold rag pressed to my head when I woke up, but my eyelids felt too heavy to open. My head was still killing me, and the smell of vomit made me nauseated all over again. I released a moan and tried to sit up.
“Whoa,” Luke said in a soothing tone as he gently pushed me back down. “You need to lie still.”
“What happened?” I croaked out.
“After your amazing reenactment of Linda Blair’s scene in The Exorcist, you passed out.” The amused tone in his voice made me feel more relieved. He didn’t hate me.
“And Lauren?”
“She ran out screaming, and the rest of them ran with her.”
“That almost makes it worth it.” I cracked an eye, relieved to see he’d changed into a scrub shirt. “You should let your momma see you wearing that,” I said. “She always wanted you to be a doctor instead of a cop.”
“Momma died a couple of years ago.”
I cringed. “Luke, I’m so sorry. I know how close you were to her.”
He didn’t say anything, but I could tell his guard was back up.
“And your dad?”
“Still as ornery as ever.” He paused. “But Momma got her doctor. Levi graduated from med school a couple of months before she died.”
“Was it an accident?” I asked.
He cracked a grin. “We all think he paid someone to take all his exams, so you could say it was an accident.” Then his grin faded. “Pancreatic cancer. By the time she found out, it was too late. It all happened fast.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeated.
He remained silent, then after several seconds he asked, “What happened out there, Summer?”
“I was lookin’ for Otto,” I said, feeling defeated. Sure, I’d found him, but I hadn’t found him in the way I’d hoped. “I have to tell poor Gretchen. She’s going to be so upset.” My voice broke. I’d failed her, just like I’d failed everything else in my life.
“You really care about her,” he said more to himself than to me. “Don’t worry about tellin’ Gretchen. I went to see her as soon as I got the news.”
“Thank you. How’s she doin’?”
“She’s upset . . . and grateful to you for finding him. He could have been out there for a while before someone stumbled upon him.”
I may have found him, but I hadn’t found him alive. It seemed like a hollow consolation.
I turned to look up at him, surprised to see the worry on his face. When his brown eyes caught mine, an electrical current flowed through my veins, filling me with a yearning I hadn’t felt in years. We’d built separate lives, but all it took was standing in his orbit for me to realize no man had ever come close to making me feel what I’d felt with him years ago. Still, I couldn’t ignore that we’d been kids then. What if I’d idealized our connection? And even if I hadn’t, there was no denying we were different people now.
His hand lifted to my face, tenderly caressing my cheek as his eyes searched mine. “Who attacked you, Summer?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I tried to hold his gaze, but my eyelids felt like they had tiny weights on them. I told him everything, including someone chasing me in the woods, then looked up at him, finding it difficult to open my eyes enough to see him. “When I came to, my camera was gone and so was the bike.”
His hand now rested on my arm, and he squeezed it slightly. “What camera? What bike?”
I explained it to him, and his face was so unreadable, I couldn’t tell whether he believed me or not. “I still need to give Deputy Dixon my statement.”
He wove his fingers with mine, taking care with the IV lines sticking out of the top of my hand. “I’ll tell him what you said so they’ll know what they’re workin’ with, but he can get your official statement when you’re feelin’ better. Probably tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow? I’ll be back to work tomorrow.”
“Back to work? Summer, you suffered a serious concussion. The doctor was worried about bleeding in your brain until the CAT scan said you were okay.”
“But we only have two weeks . . .”
“Two weeks to what?”
“To film the show.”
“Summer.” His voice was tight. “That show almost got you killed.”
“I signed a contract, Luke.”
His body tensed. “And again with a fucking contract.”
This was déjà vu from twelve years ago. From when I returned to Hollywood at the end of the best summer of my life.
Part of me screamed to tell him that I was doing this to save the farm, but I knew there were people eavesdropping. I couldn’t risk Meemaw finding out through Maybelline’s Facebook page. Still, his attitude was pissing me off. “Are you kidding me?” I asked, trying to sit up, but my head hurt too much to follow through with the plan. “You of all people should understand the concept of following the law.”
He sighed. “We’re never going to agree on this. You’re going to insist on following through on your contract, and then you’re going to leave. Just like last time.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do when I’m done,” I said. “I’m just tryin’ to make it through the next two weeks.”
“If you survive the next two weeks,” he grunted.
“How did Otto Olson die?”
“They don’t know yet.”
“Surely they have some idea.”
“He had a bottle of whiskey with him. They think he drank himself to death, but we’ll need to wait on the autopsy to confirm it.” His eyes narrowed. “That information needs to stay between the two of us. I only told you because you found him. I know your imagination . . .”
“Runs wild.” He’d always teased me about it when we were together.
“Are you happy out there, Summer?” he asked quietly.
“Do you want the truth or the answer you want to hear?” I asked, sounding more tired than snotty. Oddly enough, they were one and the same, but I couldn’t handle him gloating over my loneliness and unhappiness. “Are you happy here?”
He didn’t answer for several seconds, then he stood. “I’ve got to get back.” He sounded gruffer, and I wondered if he regretted being nice to me.
“Why did you really come, Luke?”
“I wish I knew.” Then he turned and walked out the door.
I’d been moved to a hospital room on the second floor by the time Dixie came by. She’d already heard about my barf-fest.
“Who told you?” I asked. “Lauren?”
“Nah, I read about it on Maybelline’s Facebook page.”
I groaned. The whole damn town knew. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
She laughed, but she seemed nervous. “You know how gossip flies here in Sweet Briar.”
“I guess. Tell me what you found out at the lake.”
She grimaced. “Not much.”
Still, her expression didn’t look disappointed, exactly. I got the impression she had some news she didn’t want to share with me. “What?”
“Have you talked to Deputy Dixon yet?”
“No. Luke said he’d be by tomorrow. Why?”
“Well . . . I saw him out in the hall, so maybe he’s gonna talk to you today.” She made a beeline for the door. “Sure enough, he’s at the nurse’s station and heading this way.”
“What’s going on, Dixie?”
“I think Deputy Dixon should be the one to tell you.”
That sounded ominous, and I would have argued with her, but the deputy walked into the room with a sweet but guarded expression—the kind you’d give your grandmother with dementia.
“How are you feeling, Summer?” he asked as he moved close to my bed.
“I’ve been better.”
“I need to get your official statement about what happened at the lake.”
“Okay, but why am I suddenly worried to give it to you?”
His smile turned more compassionate. “The memory is a tricky thing. Especially with head injuries.”
The back of my bed was already elevated to a near-sitting position, which made it easier for me to sit fully upright. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, Summer. Just tell me what you remember.”
I repeated the story of someone chasing me, but this time I felt like my every word was being weighed for truth. And this time I more distinctly remembered someone hitting me on the back of the head. When I finished, I glanced over at the grim-faced deputy. “Am I a suspect in Otto Olson’s death?”
“I wouldn’t say that . . .” He shifted in his seat, looking like he’d developed hemorrhoids. “Can you tell me when you got into town?”
My eyes darted to Dixie, something I instantly regretted—one, because pain shot through my head, and two, she had a weird expression too.
“What’s goin’ on here?” I demanded, realizing I’d slipped into a full-on Southern accent. Dammit.
“Summer,” the deputy said, looking up from his notebook, “I just need you to answer my questions so we can get this all cleared up.”
“What cleared up?”
“They think you did this, Summer,” Dixie blurted out.
“You just said I wasn’t a suspect!” I cried out to the deputy.
“No,” Dixie said. “He said he wouldn’t say that.” She used air quotes for emphasis.
I scooted back a bit in the bed and wrapped my arms across my chest, dragging my IV lines with me. “Do you think I injured myself on purpose too?”
Deputy Dixon lifted up his hands. “Summer, calm down. Gettin’ all excited and flustered won’t help anything.”
“Gettin’ excited and flustered? You’re accusing me of murderin’ some poor innocent man!”
“I’m not accusin’ you of murder,” he said, getting to his feet. “But some things aren’t adding up, which looks a little suspicious given the way he was found. Now tell me when you got into town.”
I swallowed hard, feeling nauseated again, but for an entirely different reason. “Yesterday morning. I flew into Atlanta, and Karen—the producer’s assistant—picked me up from the airport. We arrived around ten, I think, and got right to work.”
“And how long did you work yesterday?”
I shot another glance at Dixie, who now looked furious, before returning my attention to the deputy. “Nine? I left the office and headed to Meemaw’s house, and they filmed our dinner. It’s all kind of fuzzy right now.”
He gave me a look that said, How convenient.
“I have a head injury!” I protested. “And besides, I have people who can account for what I was doin’ up until around nine o’clock last night.”
“And who are these people?”
“The crew . . . then Officer Hawkins saw me in the afternoon. He hung around Becky’s house, and we saw him again around five when we went back to the office. Then Bill, one of the cameramen, took some footage of me and Dixie working. After that, I left and went to the farm.”
“With your cousin?”
“No. Alone.”
He pursed his lips and nodded.
“The chief of police pulled me over on the way home. He can account for some of that time.”
“You sure had a lot of encounters with the Sweet Briar police in a very short period of time. Why did the police chief pull you over?”
I frowned. “It’s personal.”
He gave me a look of surprise.
“That’s all I’m gonna say about that. If you want to know the details, then you should ask him if he filed a police report.”
He studied me for a moment. “You went straight to the farm after that?”
I doubted he needed a minute-by-minute play of my activities, but just to make sure he knew I wasn’t hiding anything, I said, “I stopped at the family cemetery to pay my respects first.”
“Respects to who?”
My mouth dropped open. “It’s a family cemetery, Deputy.”
“So you stopped to pay your respects to some guy who died a hundred years ago?”
“No! I stopped to see my grandfather and my aunt and uncle. This is the first time I’ve been back to Sweet Briar since the fire.” My voice clogged with tears. “Not that that’s any of your business.”
“Actually, it is my business,” he said, not unkindly. “I’m trying to make sure you have an alibi.”
“If you don’t think I murdered him, then what on earth do I need an alibi for?”
“He thinks you moved Otto’s body,” Dixie said, sounding even more pissed.
Deputy Dixon turned to face my cousin. “Miss Baumgartner, you need to leave.”
Dixie was at my side in an instant, snatching up my hand and clinging to it. “I’m not leavin’ my cousin.”
His back stiffened and he pressed back his shoulders, puffing out his chest. “I can make you leave. This is official business.”
“And Luke said you weren’t gonna question her until tomorrow. In fact, I’m pretty doggone sure he told the nurses not to let you in to see her today, so if you kick me out, I’ll be calling 911 and askin’ him to come over and get this all sorted out.”
“You realize this is makin’ you all look guilty.”
I shook my head, instantly regretting it. “Guilty? Why would I move poor Otto’s body, and where would I have found it in the first place?”
He pressed his lips together. “What happened after you left the cemetery?”
“I went to the house, and the crew filmed a family dinner. I was tired after it was over, so I went to bed.”
“At nine?”
“Around there. I slept until six thirty, then took a shower and headed into town with Dixie so we could meet our eight-thirty call time. I’ve been with the crew all day.”
“And no one can account for your whereabouts from nine last night until six thirty this morning?”
“I was sleeping.”
He scribbled something in his notebook. “Uh-huh.”
“You seriously think I moved his body? I barely saw the guy, but there’s no doubt he outweighs me by a good fifty pounds.”
He pursed his lips and shrugged. “Maybe you had help.”
“Maybe you need to up your dose of antipsychotics,” I snapped back.
Dixie dropped my hand, moved between us, and started pushing the deputy toward the door. “My cousin’s suffered an ordeal. Maybe you should question her later.”
Deputy Dixon dug in his heels.
I leaned to the side, facing him, as a new thought struck me. “If you think I moved his body—which insinuates I faked the whole thing—then how do you explain someone chasing me?”
His eyebrows rose. “Did someone chase you? You admitted that you ran into a tree branch.”
“And how do you explain the lump on the back of my head?” I asked, getting furious. “You think I grabbed a tree branch and hit myself?” I was becoming hysterical. “And where’s the camera? And the bike?”
“Was there a bike? And we only have your word that you had the camera in the first place, not to mention you freely admit your recollections are still hazy.”
“Dixie knew I had the camera.”
The deputy turned to Dixie. “Did you see her take the camera into the woods?”
Her silence was answer enough. She’d been sitting on the pier with Bill.
A wave of fear washed through me. I wasn’t sure what they’d found in those woods, but they clearly had it out for me. “Do I need to hire a lawyer?”
“I don’t know, Ms. Butler. Do you?”
Dixie had had enough. She resumed her mission to shove him out of the room. “Get the hell out of here, you Yankee bastard.”
“Yankee! Who the hell are you callin’ a Yankee?”
“I can sniff out your bad accent a mile away,” she said, giving him one last shove into the hall. “And if you come back in here, I’m calling the police!”
“I am the police!”
Dixie spun around to face me, putting her back to the door to hold it shut. “A lot has been goin’ on while you’ve been sleepin’ and barfin’.”
I sank back into the pillows. “Oh, my God. Do you think Lauren had anything to do with this?”
“If she did, Bill doesn’t know anything about it.”
“Are you sure you can take his word for it?”
She gave me a cocky look. “I’m like a human lie detector.”
“Yeah, right.”
After glancing back at the door, Dixie walked toward the bed. “No. Seriously. I can figure out bullshit faster than you can shake a stick.”
I narrowed my eyes. “How?”
She shrugged. “I dunno. But why do you think I’ve never stayed with a guy for very long? I always know when he’s bullshittin’ me.”
Terrible cousin that I’d been, I hadn’t known that—any of it. Still, I had serious doubts about the whole bullshit-meter thing. I suspected she could just read through a guy’s crap, but then again, it probably came down to the same thing. “Well, then, I obviously have the best assistant in the world for a job like this.”
She grinned.
“I wonder if I should hire an attorney.” Dammit. I didn’t have money for that kind of thing. “Maybe Lauren moved the body. Who knows? She could have convinced the janitor to tell me about the bike.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I was with Bill when he talked to her, and I’m sure she was just as surprised by the accusation as we were.”
“So they think Otto was murdered?”
She shook her head. “No. They’re sure he died from alcohol poisoning.”
“Did they have time to run his blood alcohol level?”
“They’re still working on it, but I heard them say there weren’t any signs of trauma.” She paused, moving closer and lowering her voice. “But none of this make sense, Summer. I saw a bottle of Jim Beam sticking out of his jacket pocket, and he hated Jim Beam.”
“Maybe he wanted to be drunk bad enough he didn’t care.”
She shook her head. “No way. He almost died from Jim Beam once. He swore he’d never drink it again. Just ask Fred and Al.”
Ugh. I’d rather not. “So why would he have a bottle of Jim Beam?” I asked. “Did he commit suicide?”
“And move his own body?”
She had a point.
“I think someone murdered Otto Olson, and they’re settin’ you up.”