Last Chance Christmas (Last Chance #5)(2)
Author: Hope Ramsay

“I passed out, didn’t I?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“To the clinic, you’re sick.”

“But my car and cameras and—”

“I’ll make sure they’re safe. You need medical attention. You just rest there for a minute.” He opened the trunk and pulled out an emergency blanket, which he wrapped around her.

“Thanks,” she said through chattering teeth. “I’m so sorry. I never get sick. Really.” Her eyes closed. Her chest rattled ominously when she took a deep breath.

Just his luck. He needed this like he needed a hole in the head. She was the daughter of the most notorious man to ever set foot in Last Chance. What the hell was she doing here?

He slid into the driver’s seat, dropped his Stetson on the seat beside him, and radioed back to main dispatch. He gave them his location and an outline of the situation. Winnie, his night dispatcher, replied that she would give his momma a call to let her know he would be late for supper.

Momma would call Miz Polk, and Miz Polk would call Miz Hanks, and Miz Hanks would call Miz Bray, and pretty soon every member of the Christ Church Ladies’ Auxiliary would know that Abe Chaikin’s daughter had just arrived from New York.

By this time tomorrow morning, the entire county would be in an uproar. And wouldn’t that be fun?

“You think you can stand?” he asked Abe Chaikin’s daughter when they arrived at the urgent care center five minutes later.

The woman tried to push herself up, but flopped back onto the cruiser’s seat. He hopped out of the driver’s seat, opened the back door, and pulled her up into his arms.

She was as delicate as a dragonfly’s wing. Not his type of woman at all. But when she looked up at him out of those glassy brown eyes, something pressed hard against his chest, and he had trouble breathing.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured as her head fell against his shoulder. For some inexplicable reason, the weight of her head against him felt impossibly good.

He needed to run this woman off just as soon as he could. She was big trouble.

Winnie had already alerted Annie Jasper, the night nurse, who directed Stone into one of the half dozen exam rooms. He eased Abe Chaikin’s daughter down to the exam table. “You’ll be fine, ma’am. Do you have your car keys? If you do, I can see about moving your car to a safer place.”

She dug into the pocket of her jeans and handed him the keys.

“Thank you, ma’am. Now, what’s your name?”

“Lark.”

“Lark? Like the bird?”

She nodded and swallowed hard. “Yeah. Mom and Pop were nonconformists.”

Now, there was an understatement. Folks of a certain age in this county still remembered her daddy. They mostly referred to him as that Yankee hippie.

“Is your last name Chaikin, too?”

She nodded. “Who runs the golf course these days?” she asked.

Stone hesitated. “That’s a complicated question. Elbert Rhodes holds the deed to the land, but there’s a committee that has taken over the rebuilding and expansion of the place. Hettie Marshall chairs that.”

Her bloodshot gaze wandered over his face and then down to the name badge on his chest. Her eyes widened a little. “Deputy Rhodes?” she said.

“That would be Chief Rhodes, ma’am.”

“And the ‘S’ is for…?”

He tried not to grimace. “Stonewall. Everyone calls me Stone—Stony if they know me well.”

The corner of her mouth twitched. “And you thought I had a strange name? So, are you related to Zeke and this Elbert guy?”

He didn’t want this interview to get personal, but it was heading in that direction. It wasn’t as if he could lie. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I need to talk to Elbert.”

“About what?”

She closed her eyes, and the shivers took her for a long moment. Stone took off his uniform jacket and draped it over her legs.

He was about to shout for Annie when Lark said through chattering teeth, “My father wants to have his ashes scattered on the eighteenth hole. He died a week ago.”

Holy crap.

“I can tell that I’ve surprised you,” Lark said. The shivering seemed to be passing.

“Well, as a matter of fact, yes, ma’am, you have.”

Lark’s eyes flew open. “Look, I heard what you said, before. But my father didn’t murder Zeke Rhodes. Pop always said he ‘found himself’ on the eighteenth hole at Golfing for God, whatever the heck that means.”

“Really? That’s hardly evidence of his innocence, is it?”

She stared at him like he was an alien. “No, I guess not. But, to be honest, Pop never explained why he used to say that.”

“There you go. There is also the fact that your father left town suddenly on the same day as my granddaddy died.”

“Zeke Rhodes was your grandfather?”

The Last Chance chief of police stared down at Lark out of a pair of oddly familiar green eyes. “Yes, ma’am,” he drawled in a deep voice that sounded like it came right up from the earth itself.

“And you think my father murdered him?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. My granddaddy’s death was ruled an accident. But my daddy always said it was kind of hard to explain how a man gets that beat up by accident.”

She must be having a fever dream because the gorgeous policeman was saying stuff about Pop that made no sense whatsoever.

Just then, a thin, youngish nurse wearing blue scrubs and bearing a badge with the name “A. Jasper” bustled in. The nurse interrupted the mutual interrogation. “Ruby called,” she said to the cop. “She’s holding dinner for you. You need to be getting along home.”

“It’ll keep. I need to ask the patient a couple of—”

“Your questions can wait.” The nurse advanced with a digital thermometer, which she pressed into Lark’s ear. It beeped inside of thirty seconds.

“Uh-huh, you see? One hundred and three.” Nurse Jasper looked down at Lark. “You take any medicine?”

“A couple of aspirin about four hours ago, when the headache started.” Lark sank back into the pillows. Her head felt like an anvil. Every muscle screamed in agony if she so much as twitched, which was problematic because she was twitching all over with the shivers.

“All right,” Nurse Jasper said. “Let me go get Doc Cooper.”

“I’ll just stay here and ask a few—”

“I told you, Stony, the questions can wait. Now, you go on home to your girls.” Nurse Jasper’s voice knifed through Lark’s head and sent pinpricks of pain shooting behind her eyes.

The chief folded his big arms across his chest. He didn’t look very impressed with Nurse Jasper. “Can she drive?” he asked.

The nurse gave the cop an imperious stare before replying, “The patient has a hundred-and-three fever. She isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. What’s the problem?”

“Y’all gonna keep her here, then?”

“Depends on what Doc Cooper says. He’ll either send her up to Orangeburg or see if Miz Miriam can nurse her.”

Lark was not entirely sure, but this news didn’t seem to make the chief of police happy. Truth to tell, it didn’t make her happy either.

“Um, no hospitals. It’s just a virus,” she managed between her trembling jaws. “And as soon as I’m feeling better, I’d be happy to leave. Is there a hotel nearby with room service?”

The nurse and the cop laughed. Lark’s head pounded.

“This ain’t like New York,” the cop said.

The nurse put on a professional smile. Lark would give her points for her bedside manner. “Honey, don’t you worry,” Nurse Jasper said. “We’ll take good care of you.”

Then the nurse turned toward the cop. “And you quit harassing her. What’s she done, anyway?”

“She’s Abe Chaikin’s daughter.”

That stopped the pretty nurse right in her tracks. “You’re kidding?”

Chief Rhodes glanced toward Lark. “Am I kidding?”

Lark shook her head.

Big mistake. Her stomach roiled, and her brains rattled. She must have made some kind of gagging noise, because when her stomach heaved an instant later, Nurse Jasper was there with a basin.

“Aw, honey,” the nurse soothed, “there aren’t any hotels worth staying at around here. So I reckon you’ll be sent to the nursing home in Orangeburg. Or maybe Miriam Randall and the Ladies’ Auxiliary will look after you. But don’t you worry. And don’t you listen to Chief Rhodes, now, you hear? Because there are plenty of folks in town, like Nita Wills, who think your daddy was a hero.”

Chapter 2

Stone and his family sat at Momma’s dining table. Elbert, Stone’s father, sat at one end, and Ruby, his mother, at the other. Stone and his two daughters, Haley and Lizzy, occupied space in the middle. Stone and his girls actually lived in a small rented house down the block, but they always took their meals with Momma and Daddy. Momma had been helping Stone raise his girls ever since Stone’s wife, Sharon, had died in a car wreck six years ago.

Predictably, the dinner conversation turned to the stranger in town.

“She wants to do what?” Daddy said. He looked up from his plate of pot roast and gave Stone his pale-eyed, scary-Daddy look.

Stone was impervious. Daddy might look scary, but he was about as gentle as a kitten. Today he wore his “Global Warming Is Nothing Next to Eternal Damnation” T-shirt. The garment was black with white block letters and hot-rod flames curling across the chest.

“Well, I think it’s nice that Abe Chaikin’s daughter wants to scatter his remains out at the golf course,” Ruby said.

“What’s nice about it?” Daddy asked as he scooped up a fork of butter beans and rice.

“Well, it’s nice that a person of the Jewish persuasion would want to have his mortal remains scattered at the feet of Jesus. You think he accepted Our Lord as his savior before he died? You know if he did kill Zeke, but accepted the Lord, we ought to forgive him, because I know the Lord has.”

“Uh, well, I don’t know, but I reckon it’s something to think about.” Daddy chewed for a few moments as if giving the matter serious thought. “Nope, I don’t think I can forgive him for beating up my daddy.”

Like a bass rising to the bait, fifteen-year-old Lizzy leaned forward in her seat, her long dark hair hanging down over her face as if she were trying to hide herself behind a veil. “Granddaddy, you don’t actually know that this man killed Great-Granddaddy. I mean the official cause of death was accidental, wasn’t it?”

“Who knows what the official cause of death was. The fact is that Andy Bennett made the official ruling. And you can’t ever trust a Bennett.” Daddy gave Lizzy one of his scary stares. It bounced off Lizzy, too.

“And besides,” Elbert continued between chews, “that Yankee hippie was the last person to see my daddy alive.”