I dipped my chin. “Ma’am.”
A black bird called out from the tree above as I stepped outside into a single beam of sunlight already burning the sidewalk. I didn’t have time to worry about curses, witchcraft, or supernatural powers, or the fact that Hazel was the second person including Colson to tell me to leave the scrolls alone.
21
JAGG
It was eight-thirty in the morning by the time I reached the “only house” down County Road 3228, north of Shadow River. I’d already called the art investigator, Briana Morgan, twice, and left two voicemails. I decided to wait again until after lunchtime. Mainly because my battery was already low.
The road to Sunny’s house was long and lonely, desolate, surrounded by miles and miles of dense forest, wilted under the heat. It was tough to imagine a woman living out there alone. Assuming she did, anyway. I had no idea what, or who, I was going to find at her house. I prepared myself for another man.
I braked at a rusted mailbox at the end of a rock driveway flanked by wooden fences. New fencing, I noted, and wondered who’d built it. Then I wondered why I immediately assumed she hadn’t. Sunny was capable of holding me off in a physical altercation. Building a fence was something she could likely do in her sleep.
I squinted at the house a hundred feet from the mailbox.
I’d expected a sprawling “Harper Construction”mansion, or given its location, maybe a fancy ranch house of sorts. What I got was a small, weathered, A-frame cabin with a wraparound porch and picnic table out front. The cabin was a freshly-painted evergreen color, with deep red shutters that reminded me of the color of Sunny’s lips. Soaring cedar trees enclosed the home. Barely a yard. All trees.
It was quaint. No way an heiress to a real estate fortune’s house.
Hesitating, I glanced in my rearview mirror, then back at the little house. The underbrush had been trimmed, but much like the drive to it, endless woods surrounded the cabin. No fields, no rolling hills. Just trees that sloped down to Shadow River somewhere behind the house.
I flicked my turn signal, then laughed at myself and flicked it off, then turned into the driveway. As I inched closer to the house, a blazing red caught my eye, where my dream car from the night before, a 1972 Chevy Cheyenne, was parked under the cedars.
I parked next to a blooming lilac bush, careful not to graze the purple petals. I always liked lilac bushes. The sweet scent carried like a perfume as I climbed out of my Jeep. The woods were vibrant with energy. Birds singing overhead, grasshoppers chirping, and in the distance, the sound of river water rushing over rocks. A magnificent blue butterfly flittered past my face. I couldn’t explain why, but a sudden feeling of warmth ran over me, more than the beams of sun shooting through the cedars.
It was peaceful out here.
Real country.
A warm breeze whispered through the trees as I crossed the driveway and stepped onto the porch. A scent of vanilla wafted out of the open windows and screen door. My browcocked. Sunny jogged with a nine millimeter in her pants but left her windows and door open in the middle of the woods.
The porch was small, enclosing the cabin, with a few slats recently replaced. Two rocking chairs sat to the side and based on the wearing beneath the legs, were used frequently.
Two chairs.
Two.
Potted begonias lined the porch, their red and pink petals overflowing in a hodgepodge of brightly-painted clay vases that seemed to go together despite their obvious mismatch. Enormous citronella plants sat at the edges of the porch, and hanging from the corner, the biggest electric bug zapper I had ever seen. Thing could fry a squirrel.
Nowthat’sthe girl I knew.
I glanced into the trees, lingering a moment on the wind chimes.
I looked in the front window. Lights off. Dark inside. I knocked on the door. The screen wobbled on its hinges. No answer. I searched for a doorbell with no luck.
“Hello?” My voice sounded deep and gruff against the stillness of nature. Old. Like I didn’t belong there. Like no one did.
“Miss Harper?”
When she didn’t show, I did another quick rapping on the door before pulling it open.
Vanilla enveloped me. Vanilla—and leather.
The place could have been a post card for ‘cozy log cabins,’ or ‘smallest houses on the planet.’ It was one, large room with a loft overhead. The A-frame ceiling had gleaming, exposed beams running along the top. A rustic chandelier hung from the center. Box fans hummed in thewindows, pulling in the fresh summer air, which somehow felt cool under the shade of the house. Did she not have air-conditioning? Or did she choose to keep it off? A night without air-conditioning in the dead of a southern summer was almost unbearable, so I assumed the latter.
The main living room—otherwise known as the only room—was separated by a U-shaped brown leather couch over a Navajo rug facing a rock fireplace. At least a dozen plants—real, not fake—lined the walls, their leaves turned to the sweeping windows that overlooked a deck with more blooming flowers.
I noticed a few handcrafted wooden statues that I’d seen in Mystic Maven’s, making me wonder if the two were closer than Hazel had led me to believe. One was kneeling in prayer, another in some sort of meditation position, and the third had a distended belly and was holding a small child who kind of looked like an alien.
