Met Her Match (Summer Hill 2)

He put himself up as a candidate for election, gave gung ho pep talk speeches, and he won.

Within a month he’d found out that a small-town sheriff had little power—at least not the kind he needed. He couldn’t get a federal investigation going, couldn’t get the Big Boys with all their money and tech equipment to get involved.

Frank had done the second-best thing. He’d started gathering local info. He interviewed people who’d known Leslie, people who could have seen something that night. He went through old newspapers and collected data.

As the years went on, he started spreading out to include people Leslie’s disappearance had affected. Namely, Terri.

One year she’d had trouble with a couple of boys at school. As sheriff, Frank had stepped in. It wasn’t really his job but Terri was like a daughter to him. Unfortunately, she was as stubborn as her father was. She refused to tell Frank everything that had happened with those boys. He had an idea but without Terri’s word on it, he could do nothing. “You’d lock them up?” she’d asked. “Put them in jail?”

“I’d enjoy doing it,” Frank answered.

Terri clammed up and said nothing. He knew she was protecting the boys. An early indictment could affect their entire lives.

Terri never complained about the harassing she received in school and in town that he knew was aimed at her. When she broke up with Billy Thorndyke at the end of high school, she’d refused to tell anyone what had happened. Maybe if Elaine had been there then, Terri would have confided, but she wasn’t.

When Jake died unexpectedly right after Terri graduated from college, Frank had gone into full battle mode. He told Brody he could not—NOT!—let Terri give up her life to help out at the lake.

“Let her have some fun!” Frank had shouted. “Give her some freedom. Let her travel. Let her meet some guy who didn’t grow up in this town.” Frank never mentioned that Terri needed to get away from Leslie’s reputation hanging over her head, but they both knew what he meant.

But to keep Terri from returning, Brody would have had to order her to stay away. And he couldn’t do that. Terri was all he had left and he missed her fiercely.

Through all the years, Frank kept investigating Leslie’s disappearance. It wasn’t as though Summer Hill was a hotbed of crime and he had too much other work to do. When he got nowhere, he tried to solve the mystery of the Thorndyke family’s abrupt move out of town. He even called the family in Oregon, but all Mr. Thorndyke would say was that he’d received a job offer from his brother and had taken it.

Frank had even swallowed his pride and once a month he’d listened to Della Kissel’s hateful gossip. He’d drink tea in her cluttered little house and sit through endless hours of her heavy-handed flirting. “I’ve always liked sheriffs,” she’d purr.

Frank would act as though he was having trouble holding himself back. While it was true that her snooping had helped him solve several petty crimes, he felt that he’d paid a heavy price to get the information.

Everything Frank learned, did, heard, he recorded and put in the “Leslie file.” He kept the boxes at home in a fireproof container and had never let anyone see them, didn’t even let anyone know he had them.

Until Nate Taggert arrived in town. And right now, Frank hadn’t decided whether or not that was a good idea. Nate had left behind anger and resentment, and Terri was a ghost of her usual self.

Reluctantly, Frank got out of the bed, took a shower, then pulled on clean clothes from his duffel bag. It was about noon and he was ravenous.

* * *

When Frank stepped out into the hall, so much anger ran through him that he thought he might explode. There the two of them were, calmly sitting at the fancy glass table and eating pizza. Taggert had a beer and Kit’s kid had a glass of wine.

Frank felt rage come up from his toes to reach his hair. “You lazy bastards!” he yelled. “I came all this way to give you those files and look at you. Sitting there getting drunk. Did you two rich kids even open the boxes?”

As he spoke, he was stomping down the hallway. Neither of the young men moved or changed expression. They didn’t look the least guilty or ashamed of their laziness.

“I o

ught to—” Frank began, but then Rowan nodded toward the far wall.

Frank glanced to his right, then back at the two of them. “I nearly had a wreck getting here and—” He stopped, blinked a few times, then turned back.

The two couches had been shoved up against the wall of windows, and the upholstered chairs had been placed on top of them. The two solid walls were covered with papers pinned on them. Side tables had more papers piled high. Above the couches, photos were taped on the glass. Hand-lettered signs had been put up. Terri and the football boys. Leslie’s last days. Garden Day. The storm. Chain saw. Dock.

Slowly, Frank went to the first wall. A copy of Leslie’s driver’s license had forgery written on the bottom, and a note saying Leslie Brooks didn’t exist before she arrived in Summer Hill, Virginia. He knew a lot of it, but there were new details. What did the local florist shop have to do with anything? There were several headings that he knew nothing about. One was “Cabin twenty-six.”

There was a computer screenshot of an underwater chain saw. In the background was a reflection of the Kissel clubhouse. Frank put his hand on it and turned to look at Nate and Rowan. “I’m not sure but I bet this is the one my brother accused me of borrowing and losing. He kept the box as a reminder of something that I didn’t do.”

Nate swallowed his mouthful of pizza. “I found the empty box when I cleaned out the motor shed. I think that saw might have been used on the posts of the old dock. When I was down there, they didn’t look broken but cut.”

Frank had been working on this for over twenty years and he’d never been able to get anyone interested in what he thought. For a moment, he was so overcome with emotion that he felt tears welling up. He got himself under control. “Get up and tell me everything. Don’t leave out a word. Taggert! Get me a beer.”

It took over an hour for Nate and Rowan to explain what they’d discovered. Nate had called a man at the lake and he’d taken a few underwater photos, including the one showing the chain saw. He’d said it was too deep and too murky around the old dock to see clearly, but yes, it was possible that Nate had seen the roof of a car. To be sure, they’d need divers with scuba gear.