Chapter 44
Chapter Forty-Four
W hen Rose woke the next morning and checked the weather, she groaned.
The predicted forecast was a bad one. Three days of high winds and too much rain.
Storms this severe usually dissipated before they hit Evers Hollow, but everyone had to be ready.
The radio and news stations broadcasted warnings for flash floods and landslides.
Crews were out clearing the drainage grates when Rose pulled off Sixth Street to park at the grocery store.
It took her forty minutes to buy groceries. The shelves in the bread aisle were empty. All that remained in the dairy section was pumpkin spice coffee creamer, on sale. The line to check out stretched to the back of the store.
Her phone chimed as she left the store. A text. She looked down. It was Reggie. Her fingers tightened.
Reggie
George Hindley’s out. Over twenty-four hours ago. Be careful.
Twenty-four hours. The poem on her door. It could have been him.
She looked up and froze. Reggie meant to warn her, but the information was too late.
She could see for herself that George Hindley was no longer behind bars. He stood on the driver’s side of her Jeep. He wasn’t looking her way, but the shock of white hair was hard to miss.
Was his presence random? Or did he know the Jeep belonged to her?
Rose turned around and went back inside the grocery store.
A furtive glance out the sliding doors told her he was still there.
She wasn’t about to walk back out alone.
Biting her lip, she moved toward customer service.
Carina Wellington, malicious town gossip, stood behind the counter, her hair bleached to almost white.
She hesitated. Word would circulate that she needed help to her car. So what? She lifted her chin and approached the counter. “Hello Carina.”
The woman looked her up and down. “Rose Finch, as I live and breathe—all grown up and famous now.” Her face sobered. “I’m so sorry about your gran-mama. She was a leader in our little community.”
“Thank you.”
“What can I help you with?”
“Can I get someone to walk me to my car? There’s a man lurking about my Jeep.”
Behind metal-framed glasses, Carina’s eyes flashed with suspicion, perhaps a bit of glee as well. “Of course. We women can’t be too careful these days, especially in the broad daylight.”
Rose heard the dig, the lack of sincerity. Yes, it was late afternoon. People were all around, but during the Cracked Egg incident, only the staff helped her. Others who’d witnessed the incident had taken photos and video. Carina put the call out over the loudspeaker for carryout assistance.
While she waited, Louise Winston, the mayor’s wife, approached the counter, carrying a grocery bag.
Rose felt the woman’s eyes on her, the sneer the woman offered to most townsfolk. She wondered if the woman knew how to smile.
“Rose Finch,” Louise said. “You should be more careful spreading rumors about innocent men.”
She opened her mouth to respond, but Louise sliced her hand through the air. “No excuses. You’ve always been a pain in this town’s derriere.”
By the time Rose took a breath and counted to ten in her mind, Louise had effectively dismissed her. The snooty woman stepped forward, immersed in conversation with Carina, over a return.
A tall, gangly teenage boy in a blue apron appeared. He insisted on carrying her two bags to the car. George was gone. Every parking space around her Jeep was empty. The young man put her bags in the back. She thanked him and handed him a tip.
It wasn’t until she sat in the driver’s seat that she noticed the piece of paper beneath the windshield wiper. She hoped it was a flyer for a car wash. The local high school had them all the time. As soon as her fingers touched it, she knew—it wasn’t a car wash.
In black ink, pressed into the paper hard enough to rip in some places, she read:
Maggie, your white nightgown’s my favorite.
A drawn, crude angular heart with an arrow through it underlined the sentence. Dread encased her.
How was this her every day?
She drove straight to the police station. Sheriff Hutchins laughed when she handed him the note.
“You expect me to arrest someone because of a note with someone else’s name on it?”
She wasn’t that na?ve. She wanted it entered into evidence. “Maggie could be short for Magnolia. George Hindley was next to my car at the grocery. I heard you released him.”
“Of course I released him. A judge set his bail, and someone paid it. You ought to be ashamed of yourself—destroying a man’s future after he’s done his time.
I’m of the mind to think you wrote those poems yourself, you being a writer and all.
Gotta be lonely there at the house with your granny gone. ”
It took everything inside her not to use every curse word in her memory against the sheriff. He’d throw her in a cell if she did. She moved to the door and turned back. “I guarantee you that if I were to write poetry and stick it on my own door, that it’d be better than that crap.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to call my deputies. You’re wasting taxpayer’s money.”
“Maybe you should assume you won’t have my vote next election. This town deserves better.”