Christina Freeburn - Faith Hunter 03 - Embellished to Death Read online

  “I wouldn’t do that.” Bob tapped the screen of his cell and dropped it into the pocket of his white button-down shirt. He shoved the rolled up sleeves further up his amazing biceps. “The police are on their way.”

  I turned myself, and my appraising eyeballs, away from Bob. The Roget men were good-looking guys. Intense green eyes. Nice builds. Red hair that fought to swoop over brows. Bob was more congenial than his brother Ted. Of course, I wasn’t interfering in a police investigation, the way Ted and I usually spent time together. Me investigating, and Ted threatening to throw me in jail if I didn’t stop.

  “I’m not going to touch anything,” I said. “Just looking.”

  “Famous last words.” Steve wrapped an arm around my waist and drew me away from the SUV. “How about you listen to this guy?”

  I wiggled away from Steve. “I have every right to know what’s in there that made him and Ted think I drove this car.”

  “I wasn’t worried that you were driving,” Bob said. “I was concerned about someone pretending they were you.”

  “What?” I gaped at him.

  Bob stood beside me and held out his cell phone. “Here are some pictures of what’s in the vehicle. I’m tracking down an identity thief and have reason to believe they were on the way to the crop at Eagle Mountain Estate Resort. When I saw the contract with your name, and a photocopy of your driver’s license, I got concerned.”

  I examined the pictures. My name and signature were on the documents, along with a photocopy of my driver’s license. I racked my brain trying to figure out when, and how, someone could’ve lifted my license and got a copy of it.

  Steve looked over my shoulder. “You should run a credit check.”

  I leaned back into his strong frame. Great, someone was trying to steal my identity. As if one of me wasn’t trouble enough.

  Bob’s phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen. Worry knitted his brow together. “Ted ran the plates. The car belongs to a Marsha Smith. This isn’t looking good.”

  I wouldn’t have to make numerous phone calls this weekend to cancel credit and debit cards. I walked around the SUV, inspecting the tires and ground. “She’s one of the owners of the Cropportunity scrapbooking retreat business.”

  “Her name is actually Marsha Smith?” Bob pulled out a stylus and typed on the screen of his cell.

  “Yep. She’s partners with Lydia Clement.” Packs of cardstock and patterned paper lay on the ground around the car. Small tubes sparkled from the grass on the hill side of the guardrail. Either Bob searched the car in a haphazard way, or Marsha left in a hurry.

  “There are no flats, if that’s what you’re looking for,” Bob said.

  I halted. “Maybe she ran out of gas.”

  Steve removed his cell phone from his back jean pocket. “I’ll call the resort and see if she’s there. She might have broken down and walked to the resort.”

  “Or—” I began.

  “Let’s not turn this into a mystery you need to solve, Faith.” Steve shot me a hard glare.

  Something I also ignored. When a man insisted I listen to him, I wanted to do the exact opposite. I blamed it on the time I allowed not questioning a man to place me smack dab on the police’s radar as a murderer.

  Frowning, Steve bounced the cell phone against his palm. “No one is answering at the resort.”

  “We should head over and see if we spot her walking along the road.” I gathered up the packs of paper from the ground. I went back to the truck and carefully deposited the items into the small back seat.

  “What are you doing?” Bob and Steve asked.

  “Helping. I’m sure these are items for the door prize table or goodie bags. I don’t want to leave them on the ground.” I retrieved some more items from the road. “They do have the crop’s name on them.”

  “They probably are creating a hazard.” Bob looked at the cars bottlenecking. “But, until we know what happened to the driver of the car, you shouldn’t touch anything else.”

  My cheeks heated. He was right. “Sorry. Want me to inventory what I picked up? I’m figuring Steve and I should go.” We didn’t need to create an accident.

  “Just send me a list.” Bob handed me a business card. “I’ll direct you out.”

  I settled the supplies in the middle of the compact seat behind us. In case we spotted Marsha walking down the side of the road, I wanted the seats near the door empty. Parking on the side of the road would be even harder than on the shoulder, so I wanted to make sure Marsha could quickly get into the truck. I dug around in my tote for my contract. I’d call Marsha’s cell and see what was up.

  Bob walked into the middle of the road and held out his hand in the international signal for stop.

  Steve eased our mobile scrap store back onto the road. “Give me a description.”

  “Of what?” I roved my gaze between my cell, the phone number, and the window. The phone rang.

  “Of Marsha. What else?” Exasperation wound around Steve’s tone.

  The phone continued to peal. “If you see a woman walking along the road, I’d say that’s her.”

  “You don’t know what she looks like?”

  “No, Marsha is the scrapbooking guru of the duo. Lydia Clement is the business person. I met with Lydia to finalize the contracts.”

  “No picture of her on the website?”

  Now who was being suspicious? “Some women don’t like getting their pictures taken. It’s an interesting and sad phenomenon in scrapbooking. Women, who spend countless hours documenting their families’ lives, omit themselves from photographs and their scrapbooks because they’re self-conscious about their appearances.”

  Marsha’s voice mail clicked on. “Hey, Marsha, this is Faith Hunter. Spotted your car on the side of the road. If you’re walking to the retreat, be on the lookout for a trailer with a toilet painted on the side. That’s me and my boyfriend. We can give you a ride.”

  I disconnected the call. Why wasn’t Marsha answering her phone? If I was hiking up a mountain, I’d be answering on the first ring.

  Unless I couldn’t.

  TWO

  A large sign with an eagle stretching out one wing pointed the way to the resort. Steve turned down the road. The truck and trailer plodded up the hill. The road leading to the main part of the resort resembled a race track. Around and around we went.

  I bobbed and weaved my head to see between the trees standing straight and tall like soldiers at attention. I strained my eyes, searching for any sign of movement in the woods lining the roadway. Where was Marsha? We should’ve seen her by now unless she got another ride, or was no longer in the area. I called again. It went straight to voicemail.

  “This is one long driveway.” Steve maneuvered around a turn and then another.

  On the left side was a small day spa. A huge banner announced weekend specials for retreat attendees. Some of the women would spend part of their “scrapbooking” money there. Not that I blamed them. If I had time, I’d find a way to add a massage into my weekend. I did have a partner. Marsha had one also: Lydia.

  I found Lydia’s cell phone number and punched it in. Come on, answer.

  The trailer jostled as Steve went around a sharp curve. I feared our scrapbook supplies would end up in the parking lot of the small day spa. I held onto the leather handle above the passenger side door.

  “Lydia Clement.”

  “This is Faith Hunter. I’m a vendor for Scrap This.”

  “I know who you are.” She sounded brusque. “What do you need?”

  “Have you heard from Marsha Smith?”

  “Is she not at the retreat?” Her voice tightened.

  “I don’t know. We’re heading there right now, but—”

  “Then why are you asking about her?”

>   I explained about the abandoned car and no sighting of Marsha.

  Lydia sucked in a breath. “I’ll get a hold of her.”

  “I tried calling her cell. No answer.”

  “You go to the resort.” Something clanked in the background. “I’ll call the manager and tell him to let you in. You’re in charge until I arrive.”

  “In charge?” I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Someone has to be until I get here.” She hung up the phone.

  I guess that settled it. The road continued on as far as my eyes could see. I dropped my phone onto my lap. “Lydia will go hunt for her partner. She wants me to handle the retreat until she gets there.”

  “Hopefully we get there soon. I’m starting to think we missed a turn. We’re not going to have a lot of time to set up the store,” Steve said.

  “The spa had a welcome croppers sign. We’re on the right track.”

  “I wished we arrived yesterday. I was cleared to take an extra day off,” Steve said.

  I shook my head. “Lydia said the resort wouldn’t let us set up until this morning as they had another event taking place Thursday night. There’s no way I was going to let all this merchandise sit in a parking lot all night.”

  “The trailer’s secured. I doubt someone would’ve hotwired the truck.”

  “Doubt and reality are two separate things.”

  I fidgeted in the seat. Another reason had weighed on my mind—sleeping arrangements. I had insisted on two rooms. Steve wouldn’t push me into anything I wasn’t comfortable with, but he was a little confused and hurt. Steve usually understood not wanting to spend the night together at home, as my grandmothers were old-fashioned and believed a wedding should happen first. Out of their eyesight, he wasn’t quite sure why I stuck to the rules, and why I was becoming more conservative with my affections the longer we dated.

  I wasn’t rethinking our relationship. But the debate in my head over whether to tell him about Adam, my once-upon-a-time husband who accused me of murder, grew louder and more insistent each day. The longer I waited the harder it was to explain, and I pondered if it was already too late.

  I didn’t want to lose Steve, but adding sex into our relationship right now would complicate it more.

  “There it is!” I flailed my arm at the windshield. A huge building quadrant off into three sections stretched across five acres.

  “Thanks. I would’ve missed it.” Steve rolled his soulful brown eyes.

  We pulled into the equally massive, and strangely arranged, parking lot. The parking lot stretched in a rectangle shape from one end of the resort to the other. The designs of the spaces were in an erratic tic-tac-toe pattern, some faced east and west, others north and south. Concrete dividers separated the east-west facing spaces from their counterparts.

  I didn’t envy Steve getting through this maze. “The crop is located in the conference center section.”

  “Next time bring less stuff.” Steve drove our store through the parking lot obstacle course.

  Bold white letters proclaimed what each segmented area contained: fitness and pool, hotel, and conference center. Two vans and a car filled the unloading zone in front of the conference center. I judged the metal awning over the area. I knew the truck would go under it, but I wasn’t quite sure about the trailer. It had a few inches on the extended cab four-by-four truck.

  Steve placed the truck in park and studied the lot. “Now what? There’s no way I can turn this thing around with all these dividers everywhere.”

  “We can unload here. The trailer might not fit.”

  “It’ll make it under,” Steve said. “We got a lot of product to unload and the closer we are the less time it’ll take.”

  “We can’t do anything until the doors are open. I’ll go find the manager, and you sweet talk them into moving.” I opened the door and slid out.

  Two women—one wearing a pink t-shirt and white capri pants, and the other in denim shorts and a t-shirt with a multi-colored peace sigs—looked over at me.

  “Are you guys lost?” The woman with the peace sign on her shirt pointed at our truck. “Or is the conference center having some issues with the plumbing?”

  The other woman groaned. “That explains why we can’t get in.”

  “No. We’re here for the scrapbooking convention,” I said. “I’m Faith, one of the vendors for the weekend. Scrap This.”

  “I’m Ellie. And this is Pauline.” She motioned toward the other woman. “We’re the embossers. We’re waiting for the doors to open.”

  “I’m going to find the manager to let us in. One of the organizers broke down this morning so they’re running late.”

  “Ladies, I was wondering if you’d mind giving up your spot for a moment.” Steve lounged very attractively against the side of the truck. The women looked over my shoulder, plastered smiles on their faces, and thrust out their chests. “I have to unload this beast.”

  His body was braced against the passenger door. Ever so casual and sexy. The sun gleamed off his shaved head and the sunglasses covering his eyes. His muscular arms were crossed across his equally muscular chest.

  The stance tightened the bright red t-shirt with white swirly letters encouraging croppers to Scrap This, and showed off the fact there was no body fat anywhere on the man’s stomach.

  Not too many men, hot or otherwise, showed up at cropping events. Usually the only men “attending” were ones keeping nursing babies in rooms, or trying to entertain toddlers in meltdown mode while mom scrapped. When they made an appearance in the crop room, their frantic gazes scattered around the room in a desperate search for the mother of their children.

  Ellie batted her eyes at him. “We’d love to, but there’s no way we can lug our machines across the parking lot.”

  “How about I unload it and place it by the door?” Steve smiled at her.

  Pauline and Ellie looked down at the sidewalk and then at each other. Ellie bit her lip and raised her eyebrows. Pauline shook her head no.

  “After we unload, I’ll have Steve help you get your items from your van.” I hoped I made an offer they couldn’t refuse. “He can use our handcart to transport your embossing machine.”

  Pauline grinned and pointed over my shoulder. She fluffed her hair around her shoulders and sent a welcoming beam of a smile toward Bob. “If you can get him to help too, you have a deal. We have our cropping totes that also need brought in.”

  Bob had parked in front of the hotel portion of the resort and motioned for me to come over. Sadly for Pauline, her plan to catch Bob’s eye wouldn’t work as Steve was more his type.

  “Sure. He’ll help,” I said.

  Pauline high-fived her friend. “I’ll move ours. You can move the tote gal’s van.”

  Ellie dangled a set of keys. “She left her keys in case her vehicle needed to be moved. Considerate girl.”

  I made a mental note to show my appreciation by buying something from the tote gal. I jogged toward Bob, cutting through the parking lot as I didn’t want to misjudge a jump over one of the dividers separating one parking lot from the other. Hopefully, whatever favor he wanted was a large enough request, he wouldn’t be annoyed at me for filling up his dance card.

  A woman screamed.

  An engine hummed. I paused and turned. A beige car bore down on me. My breath locked in my throat. I felt like a deer during hunting season, did I feint left or right to get out of the way?

  Strong arms wrapped around my waist and made the decision for me. My rescuer met the hard asphalt and I came in contact with his muscled body. The car whizzed right past us, the breeze it created pushing my hair off my face.

  The man’s grip relaxed from around me.

  Feet pounded toward us.

  “Are you two okay?” Bob’s voic
e came from the vicinity of the hotel.

  I eased off my rescuer to get a look at who risked life and limb to get me out of the way. Steve. Not a surprise. Placing a hand on his chest, I leaned down to kiss my knight. I froze.

  His eyes were closed. He wasn’t moving.

  Tears rushed into my eyes. I gently shook his shoulder. The sleeve of his shirt had ridden up, exposing the feet of the anime angel tattooed on Steve’s arm. It was an image he preferred keeping private. I tugged down the sleeve and shook his arm. “Steve?” No response. “Steve!”

  He remained quiet. Still. Fear gripped me. My body shook.

  “He’s not okay!” I sent a panicked look at Bob.

  “The car’s going to hit her!” Ellie screamed.

  A woman charged toward the resort. She had her head lowered, fists clenched, and her eyes fixed straight at the door.

  The car that almost ran me and Steve over swung around at the end of the row of parked cars and raced for the only exit out of the parking lot. It zigzagged through the area, squealing tires as it made sharp turns around cement shoulders and planters. Burnt rubber filled the air.

  “Look out!” Bob ran toward the woman in the path of the hit-and-run vehicle, waving his hands frantically over his head.

  I hated leaving Steve unprotected but I had to try and help the woman. I had a better chance of reaching her than Bob. Launching to my feet, I raced forward. I gestured widely, hoping to get the attention of either the oblivious brunette woman or the driver of the car.

  The woman finally shook herself from her anger. Sun glinted off the car, sending sparkles of color through the air right before impact. Surprise flashed across her face. Her body hit the windshield, flipping off and landing on the asphalt on the driver’s side of the car.

  The vehicle made a sharp turn. Then it drove over the injured woman. The tires squished the woman’s feet and calves to the pavement.

  Two hotel employees rushed out.