And There He Kept Her (Ben Packard #1)(8)

Packard stood up and walked Susan back to the reception area. “I’ll make some phone calls and check back in with you later this evening,” he said. “Call me if she shows up. If she doesn’t, I’ll want to come by the house and go through her room.”

Susan walked out without a goodbye. Packard watched her go, hand half-raised, thinking about what else had gone unsaid between them during their meeting. Neither one of them had mentioned Nick.

Behind him, Kelly said, “She’s an odd one. What did she want?”

“Her daughter snuck out last night and didn’t come home.”

“Oh god,” Kelly said, crossing herself and looking up at the ceiling. “I hope we don’t have another one.”

“Another what?”

“Another missing woman. Like the others.”

Kelly was remembering two local women who had vanished without a trace a couple of years apart, the first one almost two decades ago. “Those gals were way before my time,” Packard said. “They hadn’t even crossed my mind.”

Kelly grunted. “Let me tell you, as a woman who was here then, it crosses your mind every time someone is five minutes late getting home. Or doesn’t call when she says she’s going to. Even all these years later. You don’t forget a time like that.”

“Susan’s daughter is with her boyfriend. They’ll turn up,” Packard said.

Kelly seemed doubtful but she changed the subject anyway. “Here’s your reward for coming in today, Big Shot. You get to put your coat back on and go see Gary Bushwright.”

“Now what?”

Kelly picked up her pad and read from it. “Cora shot his garage with a crossbow. This is a quote: ‘Honey, you better tell Packard to get out here and talk to this crazy woman. I’m about to take my earrings out and fight a bitch.’”

“What does he mean, ‘take my earrings out’?”

“It’s what women do before they fight. If they’re wearing hoops or dangling earrings, they take them out before fighting so they don’t get snagged and their earlobe torn.”

Packard grimaced at the image. “For chrissake. What’s Stuart doing? Send him.”

Kelly shook her head. “Stuart’s in court this afternoon. And Roger called in sick this morning.”

Early on, Packard thought being the acting sheriff meant he’d be able to delegate stuff like this. The reality was, in a department this small, there were few people to delegate to and even fewer that he trusted to do the job the way he’d do it.

“All right, I’m going. One more thing. Do you know Ann Crawford?”

Kelly went pffff. “If you’ve set foot in a bar in this town, you know Ann Crawford. She’s either tried to get you to buy her a drink, fought you, or thrown up on your shoes.”

“Does she have kids?”

“Yeah, high schoolers I think.”

“Text me a number for her. I want to find out if her son is Jesse Crawford. He’s the boyfriend in question.”

Kelly shook her head while she made a note. “Gary Bushwright and Ann Crawford on the same day? You really should have stayed home.”





Chapter Four


The cabin Packard’s grandfather had built on Lake Redwing was once the center of all their family activity. The house hummed like a hive May through August, swarmed by friends and relatives, turning over almost daily as people landed or took off. They pitched tents in the yard when the house was too full or too hot. Someone was always going to town for ice or beer or Popsicles.

In the winter, just the immediate family gathered for Christmas and New Year’s. They spent the short, cold days snowshoeing or cross-country skiing. The woodstove gave off a crackling dry heat while they played games or watched movies late into the night.

It was Packard’s favorite place until the year his oldest brother, Nick, snuck out of the house two nights after Christmas and never came home.

Packard was twelve at the time and the last family member to see Nick alive. He’d begged Nick to take him with him. Nick had refused, admitting only that he was meeting a friend and they didn’t want him hanging around. They’d fought at the back door, Nick finally yanking Packard outside and shoving him in the snow in his pajamas so he’d be too cold and too wet to do anything but go inside and change. Nick took off on a snowmobile that divers found three days later in open water after a searcher spotted one of Nick’s gloves frozen at the edge of the ice. It looked like someone had struggled to climb out.

Divers searched underwater for days, and again in the spring, patrolling the shoreline in boats labeled SHERIFF. The lake was over ten thousand acres and more than one hundred feet deep in spots. Nick’s body was never found.

After three years of no answers and a law-enforcement budget that couldn’t afford to spend any more money on the search, Nick’s case was closed. Packard’s family—once racked as tight as billiard balls—spun off in fifteen different directions after that. Grandma and Grandpa did their best to keep up the family tradition of summers at the cabin, but each year it got harder, not easier. People felt the strain and stopped coming. The thought of getting in the same lake that refused to give up his brother’s body had terrified Packard as a kid. He had nightmares about a white, gloveless hand grabbing his ankle while he tried to swim for the shore.