Anna Denning Mystery Series Box Set: Books 1–3 Read online

  “Jackson, I’m home.” Anna dropped her car keys and purse on the kitchen counter and waited for a sound. Nothing.

  She crossed the living room and started down the hall, calling out for Jackson, telling herself to stay calm. She strained to hear a bark, a whine. Maybe her dog had gotten outside. But he never got outside. He couldn’t.

  At her office door the sight of an overturned chair stopped her cold. Papers were strewn about the office floor and all the CD-ROMs from a shelf above her desk were missing. So were the flash drives she’d left on the desk. Someone had been in the house, and that someone could still be here.

  “Jackson, where are you?” Anna raced for her bedroom, panic rising in her throat. She opened the closet door and began punching in the code for her gun safe, her fingers trembling, slipping over the buttons. She yanked on the safe’s top to no avail then shot a look over her shoulder at the bedroom door. Slow down, she thought. Slow down. Crouched on the floor, helplessly yanking at her gun safe—what if someone came up behind her?

  She entered the code again, pulled open the top, and retrieved her Ruger, checking the cylinder for rounds. “Please, God, not Jackson,” she said, snapping the cylinder back into place. “Not my Jackson.”

  She ran into the hallway and looked quickly into the guest bedroom and bathroom, her heart thudding in her chest, listening, her eyes watching for anything out of place. What if someone took him? she thought. Jackson was gentle, a seventy-pound teddy bear who loved people. He didn’t have an aggressive bone in his body, and he might go anywhere with anyone. She immediately thought of the bird left on her doorstep and chills crawled up her neck.

  Anna hurried back to the living room and stood with her back to the wood stove, turning slowly, her eyes taking in every detail of the room. A glint of silver. She jerked her head around and saw the athame. It hung, a mockery of an ornament, on her Christmas tree.

  “You monsters,” she said aloud. She felt her eyes fill with tears and she blinked rapidly to clear them. Where was Jackson? Why couldn’t she hear him? Outside. It suddenly came to her. He has to be outside.

  She flew to the sliding glass door and bent down to remove the broom handle, her hand freezing inches from the track. The stick was gone. She pushed the door wide with her left hand, stepping out onto the snow-covered patio, calling for Jackson.

  Eyes open, finger off the trigger, she told herself. She moved slowly into the back yard, letting her eyes adjust to the dark. The world was black and white, shadow on snow, snow on pines and the black bark of shrubs. She was aware of her shallow breaths coming rapidly, of the weight of the gun in her right hand.

  Anna heard a faint whine and held her breath. “Jackson?” she whispered. She heard the sound again and followed it into the junipers, her eyes darting from tree to tree, searching the shapes and shadows.

  “I’ve got a gun and I’ll use it,” she shouted. She heard a strangled yelp coming from her right. Jackson. She knew something was terribly wrong. He was trying to call to her without barking. His sounds were choked, cut off.

  She stepped through drifts to her knees, heading for the whines that now came one after another, the same sounds Jackson made when he anxiously waited for her to open the front door on a snowy winter morning.

  She twisted to her left and saw Jackson, still as stone, against the trunk of a large juniper. Instantly she saw the reason for his muffled cries. A thick rope, wound several times about his neck, held him firmly to the tree.

  “Jackson!” She ran to him, afraid of what she might see when she reached him. She laid the gun in the snow and dropped to her knees, pulling at the rope around her dog’s neck. He yelped in pain. “It’s all right, Jackson, it’s all right,” she said, alternately touching his cheek and tugging at the rope where it met the tree. It wouldn’t budge. Something scraped her hands and she saw the reason she couldn’t loosen the rope. A nail. Then another.

  She dug into the snow for her gun and ran back to the house, Jackson’s cries in her ears. She left the Ruger on the kitchen counter, took a butcher knife from a drawer, and made her way back to Jackson.

  Sawing fiercely at the rope, she pressed toward the bark with all her strength. When it broke free, she let go of the knife and pulled her dog from the tree, gently unwinding the rope from his neck. She brushed the wind-driven snow that clung to his side and Jackson shivered with cold.

  “Come on, baby,” she said. She led him into the house, flicked on the kitchen ceiling lights, and began examining him for signs of injury. There was nothing she could see. She ran her fingers over his neck against the direction of his fur, looking for blood or other marks on the skin beneath. Nothing.

  Anna held Jackson’s face and again the tears came to her eyes. “I’m so sorry. Are you breathing okay?” She studied his face, then hugged his shoulders and brushed away the tears in her eyes. She couldn’t show Jackson her fear. He would take his cue from her emotions. The warmth of the house began to fog her glasses. She grabbed a cotton dishtowel hanging from the refrigerator door and wiped them, then took the towel and wiped droplets of melted snow from Jackson’s fur.

  Jackson trailed Anna into the living room and hopped on the couch when she patted a cushion. She drew a blanket from the back of the couch, wrapped it around the dog, then rose to phone the police before returning to the couch.

  She touched Jackson’s paws, warming them between her hands. How long had he been outside? Had someone broken into her house soon after she left in the morning?

  Anna felt her stomach churn. Jazmin had flagged her down on Summit, and the girl had been late to work because of it. Had that been the plan? Had Darlene sent her as a lookout while someone else entered her house? All the employees had been at the store when Anna arrived, but one of them could have broken in before she walked into What Ye Will—or after she left, when she drove off to meet Tom Muncy.

  And what about Tom? Anna had met him only twice before, but that was enough to know his apology on their third meeting was out of character. It wasn’t likely that he’d made it without having a motive apart from the apology itself. Had he kept her busy at a restaurant outside town knowing someone was breaking into her home and hurting Jackson?

  Anna stared up at the athame on the Christmas tree, resisting the urge to tear the thing from the branch on which it hung. Someone had driven an eye screw into the end of the handle and threaded it with green ribbon, but this was no ornament. It was at least eight inches long, and heavy enough to pull the branch downward, six inches out of place, with its weight.

  Someone had hung it so it would dangle at eye level. Anna walked over to the tree to get a closer look. Like the athame in Jazmin’s couch, this one had a wooden handle, but instead of symbols, a long-stemmed flower had been carved into it, the stem encircling the handle like the stripe on a barber’s pole.

  She smelled patchouli and leaned close to the handle. Was it incense from What Ye Will? Maybe the raw, unfinished wood had been infused with it by lying next to a smoldering incense pot. She put her fingers to her nose and backed away. She hated patchouli, and now she’d never be able to smell it again without thinking of athames and black mirrors. Darlene’s store reeked. Patchouli, sandalwood, woody spices—nothing clean and fresh. Only rotted, dead-leaf odors.

  When Detective Schaeffer knocked at her door and called out “Police,” Jackson jerked upright and barked. Anna gave him a reassuring pat and told him to stay. She was relieved that he was feeling good enough to sit and bark at the door, and judging by that bark, his throat hadn’t suffered any.

  Anna opened the door and Schaeffer stepped in, his expression a mixture of irritation and concern. “Officers Seitz and Banner are taking a look outside,” he said, throwing a thumb over his shoulder. “Tell me what happened.”

  For the next few minutes Anna sat near Jackson and told Schaeffer about arriving home and finding her office in disarray, and looking for her dog and finally finding him in her back yard. She finished by pointing to the a
thame on the tree. “Another one. Only instead of sticking it in my couch, they put it on my tree. It’s obvious who did this.”

  “Maybe.” Schaeffer continued to write in his notebook. Anna noticed the faint discolorations on the back of his hand that hinted at darker spots to come, and the curled strands of dark gray hair above his wrist. He flipped the notebook shut and looked at Anna. “I don’t think we’re going to find fingerprints.”

  “No, they’re not stupid. Not about their criminal pursuits, anyway.”

  He pointed his pen at the tree. “I’m going to take that athame.” He walked to the tree and examined the dagger without touching it. “It looks handmade, and that could be useful. One heck of a stench coming off of it.”

  “It smells like Darlene’s store.”

  “Does it?” Schaeffer took another sniff then backed away. “I’m surprised she has customers. Smells like an old hippie.” He took a plastic bag from his jacket pocket, lifted the athame by its ribbon using his pen, and dropped it into the bag.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said. He took the bag outside then returned without it, taking a seat near Anna and looking from her to Jackson and back again. “Have you had trouble with any of your neighbors? Say, someone who didn’t like your dog?”

  Anna started to roll her eyes then checked herself. “No.”

  “I have to ask. I can’t overlook anything.”

  “I know. I’ve never had problems with any of them. We all get along.”

  “Why do you think your neighbor didn’t hear your dog?”

  “Helen? Because she’s eighty,” Anna said, rubbing the back of Jackson’s neck. “Anyway, Jackson’s a growler, not a barker, and if someone talked gently to him, gave him a treat, led him outside, then took him by surprise with the rope, he couldn’t have barked. They had him tied so tightly he could barely whine.”

  “And all that’s missing are your computer CDs and two flash drives?”

  “It didn’t look like they touched anything but my office, and there are only papers, CDs, and flash drives in there.” She looked around the living room and toward the kitchen. “Nothing’s missing in here, either. I don’t think there’s anything missing from the kitchen.”

  A terrible thought came to her mind. Had they left something behind before they took off—in a cabinet, a drawer? Something she couldn’t see? Another athame, maybe. Or a small, dead creature. “But I haven’t looked in the kitchen drawers, or under the beds,” she added.

  “I will,” Schaeffer said. “Before I leave I’ll check everything—the beds, the closets. Mind if I get myself some water?” He motioned with his head toward the kitchen.

  “The glasses are in the cabinet over the sink.” Anna turned to see a light passing over the curtain near the front door. One of the officers was near the door, directing his flashlight on the ground, moving it left to right and back again. She could see Schaeffer from the corner of her eye, watching the light over the rim of his water glass.

  Anna liked him standing in her kitchen on this winter night. The truth was, she’d like almost any man standing in her kitchen. She’d rent one if she could. Now there was great idea, she thought, renting out men to widows. All the men would have to do is stand in the kitchen, sit by the fire, read a book in a chair. They wouldn’t have to do or say anything, just be there. She scratched Jackson’s shoulder. He was longing to get up, she could tell, but he lay there for her, accepting the extravagant attention.

  The front door popped open. Liz Halvorsen stood on the threshold, staring at Anna. “What happened? There are police out there.”

  “And one in here.” Schaeffer raised his chin.

  “This is Detective Schaeffer,” Anna said.

  Liz shut the door and headed for the couch. “What happened?”

  “Someone broke in,” Anna said as Liz sat down. “They stole my CD-ROMs and left one of those grotesque athames on my tree. And they tied Jackson to a tree out back, hard.” Her voice cracked. “By his neck.”

  “Oh, my God.” She looked at Jackson. “But he’s—”

  “He’s not hurt.”

  “He’s doing better than you,” Schaeffer said. “Look at him.” He walked to Anna, glass in hand, and sat on an armchair opposite Liz. “Mrs. Denning, the bad news is whoever’s doing this has upped the ante, from a chalk drawing to a dead bird and now an actual break-in. The good news is they didn’t hurt your dog, and they could have. The other bad news is we don’t know what they might do next, and you’re here by yourself.”

  Anna looked hard at Schaeffer. “I’m not going anywhere, so let’s not even start. They dare to break into my home, and I’m supposed to leave?”

  “Listen to me. I think it’s a mistake to—”

  “The only mistake I made was leaving Jackson alone in the house.”

  “Let me finish. It’s a mistake to let anger screw up your thinking. I’m not saying you should go to a hotel, though that’s not a bad idea. But you could stay with a neighbor for the night. Or have someone stay with you. Either way.” He took a sip of water then continued. “Think about it. For now, keep your lights on, inside and out, and tell your neighbors to do the same. Or I’ll tell them. I’ll talk to them before I leave.” He took another sip of water, and Anna realized he was giving Liz time to break into the conversation.

  “That’s it, I’m staying tonight.” Liz looked from Anna to Schaeffer and slipped off her coat. “Problem solved.”

  “What about Dan?” Anna asked weakly. “Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve.” It was all the opposition she could muster. She wanted Liz to stay. She needed her best friend tonight.

  “He’ll love it.” Liz waved a hand. “He’ll have the remote control to himself, he can eat nachos all night long. He’ll be in paradise.”

  “He’ll be worried about you,” Anna said.

  “No, it’s settled.” She hooked her coat over the back of her chair. “Besides, we need to talk genealogy tonight, and I don’t want to drive home in the dark.”

  “Genealogy,” Schaeffer said. “Should be a fun night.”

  “You’d enjoy genealogy,” Anna said. “It’s detective work. You start with your basic facts—the few names, dates, and places you know for certain—and you hunt for clues. The smallest clue can lead to a new name or date—or a whole branch on a family tree.”

  “My grandmother was the genealogist in my family,” Schaeffer said. “That’s how I found out about all the Shirleys in my family tree.”

  “Shirleys?” Liz said. “Is that a euphemism?”

  “Unfortunately, no. It’s a name. But not for the women in my family, for the men. Including me. Joseph Shirley, William Shirley, George Shirley.”

  “So your name is Lonnie Shirley?” Anna asked.

  “Lonford.” Schaeffer grimaced. “Lonford Shirley Schaeffer.”

  Liz laughed.

  Anna realized that Schaeffer was chatting genealogy, and allowing himself to be the butt of a joke, to take her mind off what had happened. He must have wanted to leave, to go home to his family. The more she learned about him, the more she liked him.

  “Shirley’s not an uncommon name for men, believe it or not,” Schaeffer said.

  “The French give male children the name Marie,” Anna said. “Like Jean-Marie, Paul-Marie.”

  “I’d take Marie over Shirley,” Schaeffer said. “But enough about the naming habits of the Schaeffer clan.” He stood up and took his glass to the sink. “I’m going to have a look around the house and a talk with the neighbors. I’ll have an officer drive by a couple times late tonight, maybe park for a while, so don’t be surprised if you see a patrol car.”

  The front door opened. A police officer stood on the porch, holding an object in his hands. Wooden, about a foot long, crushed in the middle and caked with snow. “Ma’am, do you know what this is?”

  He held it higher and Anna’s heart lurched. Sean’s mandolin. Its neck missing, its center caved inward, wounded. She felt a sharp stab of pain and rushed to
the door to take it in her hands. “Why? Why would someone do this?” The mandolin’s case was still in the living room. She hadn’t opened it to see if it was still there.

  She turned the instrument over and scooped snow out of its mangled sound hole with her fingers. The strings were gone, along with the plate below the sound hole that held the strings taut. It looked to her like someone had broken off the neck then stepped on the mandolin’s center before discarding it. Someone had found her most precious possession and destroyed it. Deliberately, cheerfully, in the name of what ye will. They knew about Sean and they knew how to hurt her. They knew.

  “Anna, I’m so sorry.” Liz was at her side, touching her shoulder. “It’s her late husband’s mandolin,” she said to the officer.

  “We found it in the back yard.”

  “Did you find the neck?” Liz said. “It’s missing its neck.”

  “The back yard’s where they put Jackson,” Anna said. She felt her eyes filling with tears. She couldn’t bear it. This pain was private, between her and Sean. It was not meant for anyone else. She clutched the mandolin to her chest and headed for the hall. “Let her go,” she heard Schaeffer say.

  Anna shut her bedroom door and sank onto the bed, cradling the mandolin. Her tears began to fall, and she brushed them from the instrument. She lifted a corner of the bedspread and wiped away the melted snow. For an instant the mad idea that she might dry and repair the mandolin flashed through her mind. But it was beyond repair. Without its neck and strings, its center no more than mangled wood, it was hardly recognizable as an instrument.

  Where was the neck? She let out a sob and her hand flew to her mouth. Lord, wasn’t it enough that you took him from me? Where are you? Do you care at all? Did you ever care? She laid the mandolin on the bed, her tears falling faster, and dropped her head into her hands.

  16

  “Jackson’s still sleeping,” Anna said, looking toward the couch.