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  “The lives of the homeless and high society are woven together in this cleverly plotted mystery. This is a book that will challenge your head and your heart.”

  Fiona Veitch Smith, author of The Jazz Files

  “Richardson-Moore’s latest is a tightly plotted mystery rich with southern grit and replete with twists, turns, and a surprising reveal. Reporter Branigan Powers is an unforgettable protagonist brimming with determination, compassion, and a strong sense of justice. Readers will be glad they’ve met her. Highly recommended.”

  Susan Furlong, co-author of the New York Times

  bestselling Novel Idea Mysteries

  Deb Richardson-Moore is a former journalist, and the pastor of the Triune Mercy Center in Greenville, South Carolina. Her first book, The Weight of Mercy, is a memoir about her work as a pastor among the homeless. She and her husband Vince are the parents of three grown children. To find out more about Deb, you can go to her website: www.debrichardsonmoore.com.

  Also by Deb Richardson-Moore

  The Weight of Mercy: A Novice Pastor on the City Streets

  The Cantaloupe Thief

  Text copyright © 2017 Deb Richardson-Moore

  This edition copyright © 2017 Lion Hudson

  The right of Deb Richardson-Moore to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Published by Lion Fiction

  an imprint of

  Lion Hudson IP Ltd

  Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road

  Oxford OX2 8DR, England

  www.lionhudson.com/fiction

  ISBN 978 1 78264 240 4

  e-ISBN 978 1 78264 241 1

  First edition 2017

  Acknowledgments

  Author photo: © Robert Bradley

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  To Susan, Wanda, Jeanne and Allison,

  generous givers of time and advice,

  and

  to Lynne and Lynn

  brave women, title peddlers

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright

  Table of Contents

  Part One, Chapter One

  Part One, Chapter Two

  Part One, Chapter Three

  Part One, Chapter Four

  Part One, Chapter Five

  Part One, Chapter Six

  Part One, Chapter Seven

  Part One, Chapter Eight

  Part One, Chapter Nine

  Part One, Chapter Ten

  Part One, Chapter Eleven

  Part One, Chapter Twelve

  Part One, Chapter Thirteen

  Part One, Chapter Fourteen

  Part One, Chapter Fifteen

  Part One, Chapter Sixteen

  Part One, Chapter Seventeen

  Part One, Chapter Eighteen

  Part One, Chapter Nineteen

  Part One, Chapter Twenty

  Part One, Chapter Twenty-one

  Part One, Chapter Twenty-two

  Part One, Chapter Twenty-three

  Part One, Chapter Twenty-four

  Part One, Chapter Twenty-five

  Part One, Chapter Twenty-six

  Part One, Chapter Twenty-seven

  Part One, Chapter Twenty-eight

  Part One, Chapter Twenty-nine

  Part Two, Chapter One

  Part Two, Chapter Two

  Part Two, Chapter Three

  Part Two, Chapter Four

  Part Two, Chapter Five

  Part Two, Chapter Six

  Part Two, Chapter Seven

  Part Two, Chapter Eight

  Part Two, Chapter Nine

  Part Two, Chapter Ten

  Part Two, Chapter Eleven

  Part Two, Chapter Twelve

  Part Two, Chapter Thirteen

  Part Two, Chapter Fourteen

  Part Two, Chapter Fifteen

  Part Two, Chapter Sixteen

  Part Two, Chapter Seventeen

  Part Two, Chapter Eighteen

  Part Two, Chapter Nineteen

  Part Two, Chapter Twenty

  Part Two, Chapter Twenty-one

  Part Two, Chapter Twenty-two

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to my writers’ group for their unending patience and encouragement: Susan Clary Simmons, Wanda Owings, Jeanne Brooks and Allison Greene.

  Thanks to my early readers: Lynne Lucas, Lynn Cusick, Madison Moore, Mary Jane Gorman, Elaine Nocks.

  I am grateful to Becky Ramsey, Matt Matthews, John Jeter, Carl Muller, and Susan and Bill Smith for their assorted kindnesses.

  The folks at Lion Hudson in England – whom I hope to meet face to face some day – have been delightful. That’s Jessica Tinker, Jessica Scott, Remy Njambi Kinyanjui and Daniel Haskett.

  At Kregel Publications stateside, I thank Katherine Chappell, Noelle Pederson, Ginny Kelling and Lori Alberda.

  Thanks to my mom, Doris Richardson, for pushing my books at Senior Action. Oh, and for everything else.

  And as always, thanks to my husband Vince and children Dustin, Taylor and Madison, who are always there to assure me I ain’t anything special.

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Charlie Delaney slammed her exam booklet against the desk top, shaking her wrist and forearm to ease the ache of answering three essay questions. She was happy with her discussions of Kurt Vonnegut and Alice Munro, less so with her take on John Updike.

  But it was over, she told herself with a sigh. Over and done until January 7.

  She glanced around the University of Georgia classroom, where another twenty-two students still worked, heads down, finishing one last thought even though the professor had called time. She was the only freshman in the upper-level class in Contemporary American Fiction, due to an error in registration. By the time it’d been discovered, she was a month into her first semester and holding her own. So her academic adviser tapped his pen against his lip and told her to enjoy the only small class she had.

  Charlie stood and shrugged into her backpack, flipping her reddish gold ponytail out of the way. Over her athletic frame she wore the ubiquitous UGA black and red sweatshirt, plenty warm enough for a day in the high 50s. This was her last exam and she was headed home. She could barely suppress a grin as she nodded goodbye to youngish Dr Dorchester with the auburn braid, and walked into the mid-December sunshine.

  She tapped Janie Rose’s number into her phone, singing “I’m finished!” when she connected.

  “Me too,” Janie Rose answered. “I’m at your car.”

  The girls had agreed to forgo lunch so they could be on the road by noon. Charlie had packed last night during a study break, anxious to put academics behind her for awhile, eager to return home and see her parents, grandparents and brother. She’d been surprised when Janie Rose asked for a ride; she figured the off-campus sophomore would want her own car over the three-week Christmas break. But Janie Rose said there was an extra at her house, and Charlie didn’t doubt it. Probably more than one. Janie Rose’s father was CEO of Shaner Steel, headquartered in Grambling. Her mother was a professor at Rutherford Lee College, a private liberal arts school on the city’s edge. Janie Rose
was their only child, and she lacked for nothing.

  The Carlton family had moved to Grambling when Janie Rose was in middle school. She and Charlie hadn’t been close friends, and were a year apart in school. Still, they had several mutual friends and ran into each other occasionally. When they found themselves in a college math class that finished at lunchtime, they began eating together a couple of times a week.

  Trotting toward her dorm, Charlie spied Janie Rose leaning against the faded red Jeep Cherokee Charlie had shared with her brother Chan all through high school. An enormous suitcase sat at the girl’s feet.

  “Looks like you’re ready to go!” called Charlie.

  Janie Rose jumped.

  “Sorry,” said Charlie, coming alongside her. “Did I scare you?”

  “No. I’m just ready to get out of here. Aren’t you?”

  “You bet. My lit exam was a bear. Let me grab my bag and we’ll hit the road.” She unlocked the passenger door. “I could’ve picked you up at your apartment, you know.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll leave my car in your lot.”

  “Then go ahead and load up.”

  Janie Rose glanced around the parking lot, then lifted the Jeep’s rear door. She looked around again before hoisting her suitcase.

  “Just leave it open for me,” Charlie called over her shoulder, but Janie Rose ignored her, closed the rear hatch and hopped into the passenger seat.

  Charlie wondered momentarily at her friend’s watchfulness, then forgot it.

  Five minutes later, she was back in the parking lot, a navy pea coat in one hand, her old soccer duffle bag, stuffed with clean and dirty clothes, in the other. She tossed both into the rear of the Jeep, then climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “I am so ready for Mom’s lasagna,” she said. “And Grandma’s biscuits. And cinnamon rolls. And hot chocolate.”

  Janie Rose smiled – nervously, Charlie thought. “Clearly you don’t have gluten allergies,” she said.

  Charlie tried to make conversation as she turned out of the dorm parking lot. “Where do you guys spend Christmas?”

  “At our house. My grandparents sometimes come for the day.”

  “We bounce around between my grandparents’ houses and ours and my aunts’,” Charlie said. “It’s chaotic.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  “Yeah, it really is.”

  Janie Rose seemed to calm down a little once the girls had left the Athens campus and pulled onto US 441, a meandering two-lane road that would take them to Interstate 85.

  “Is everything all right?” Charlie asked. “You seem a little… tense.”

  “Just tired, I guess. I had four monster exams.”

  Charlie turned on the radio, flipping through two versions of “Jingle Bell Rock” until she found the slightly more palatable “Little Drummer Boy”.

  “I can finally get into the Christmas spirit,” she sighed. “Pah rum pa pa pum.”

  Janie Rose gave a slight smile, and rolled her shoulders and neck. “I am tense. Guess it was all that studying.”

  Charlie glanced into the rearview mirror. Every twenty seconds, she could hear her dad saying. Look in the rearview mirror every twenty seconds. She’d missed her dad this semester. His calmness. His steadiness. He was her greatest cheerleader, even when, as she was learning to drive, she’d spied vultures in the field alongside the road and slid slowly into the ditch. He’d let her, not hollering, not startling her. When she realized what she’d done, she looked over and her dad was grinning. Then he got out and pushed the car back onto the road. “Best way to make sure you don’t do it when it counts,” he’d said matter-of-factly.

  Now, without him next to her, she startled when she looked in the mirror. There was a black car on her bumper. “Where’d you come from?” Charlie said aloud.

  Janie Rose whipped around. “What?” she said.

  “That black car. It’s right on our butt.”

  Janie Rose peered at it for a long moment, her face draining of color. “It’s a hearse,” she whispered.

  “How can you tell?”

  “I can see the length from this angle. Curtains in the back. The old-fashioned kind.”

  Charlie pulled as far as she could to the right, inviting the hearse to pass. With a dotted line and no cars in sight, it would be easy.

  To her relief, the car pulled into the left lane. As it pulled abreast, she saw that Janie Rose was right: it was an old hearse, its black paint faded to iron gray. Short black curtains hung the full length, stopping at the front seat. Or what Charlie supposed was the front seat: the passenger window was tinted, so she couldn’t see anyone or anything inside.

  But now, instead of speeding past the Jeep, the hearse began to edge to the right.

  “Hey!” Charlie shouted. “Look out!” She took her foot off the accelerator, trying to fall behind. But the hearse did the same. It inched closer and closer to Charlie’s door. Anxiety rising, breath quickening, she sped up, but so did the hearse. Side by side, the cars drove like hitched horses down the rural stretch. To her right, flat soybean fields flashed by one minute, a stand of trees the next.

  But this was northeast Georgia, and now the road rose. Beyond the shoulders, the fields gave way to thick forests lower than the road bed. To swerve off now would be to slide down an embankment and into the trees.

  Charlie looked frantically in her rearview mirror, hoping to spot another car. But the road was empty behind and ahead. She stomped her foot to the floor. The old Jeep hesitated for several counts, then shuddered and leaped ahead. The hearse momentarily fell behind.

  What was going on? She chanced a look at Janie Rose, who was plastered against the seat, eyes wide, face white, one hand clasping the handle above her door, the other planted on the dashboard.

  The hearse caught up with them, accelerated into the left lane and began nudging toward Charlie again. “Stop it!” she screamed, looking toward the car’s darkened interior to no avail. “Stop it!”

  Any driver behaving so aggressively would have been terrifying. Somehow it was scarier that Charlie couldn’t see anyone inside the eerie old hearse.

  Worse yet, she was going much too fast. She clenched the steering wheel, knuckles straining against skin, heart pounding. “Stop it!” she shrieked again.

  The hearse, flying alongside the Jeep, finally stopped its sideways inching toward Charlie’s door. She barely registered the change, then realized the reason for it. The hearse’s nose now swerved toward her, leaving Charlie no choice but to yank violently to the right herself.

  The top-heavy Jeep began to flip, side over side, down a shallow embankment, toward the tree line. Inside, Janie Rose’s screams joined hers.

  Chapter Two

  Branigan Powers was thinking about eggs. Not cooking or eating them. She wasn’t a fan of the poached, fried, boiled or scrambled egg, and kept them on hand only for rare cookie baking. In fact, she sometimes threw them out because she went so long between baking stints.

  So, No. 1, she was wondering if there were actually any eggs at home in her fridge. She needed to bake cookies for tomorrow night’s staff party.

  No. 2, she was thinking about the economy of eggs in northeast Georgia. What had once been an area rich in chicken farmers was now rich in egg farmers. That might sound like the same thing to the uninitiated. But Branigan’s grandfather had raised chickens in two long, low heated houses – bringing in loads of fluffy yellow baby chicks that squeaked and peeped and scurried to one end of the long house. Months later, he’d barely be able to get into the houses because the grown white chickens took up so much room. He entered carefully, cautioning Branigan and her twin brother against making any sudden moves, so the chickens wouldn’t stampede and smother each other. Chickens, Pa said, weren’t the brightest animals on the farm. When they got to that house-filling adult size, big trucks
came in and loaded them up. Branigan didn’t like to think about that part, about what came next.

  But now Pa’s chicken houses sat empty, and a lot of the neighboring farms had the word EGGS written in giant letters over wide, two-story buildings, complete with parking lots. MASON EGGS. SHIPLEY EGGS. EDGAR EGGS. Chickens were presumably somewhere around, but it was eggs that the trucks loaded and shipped to grocery stores all over the South.

  That was the story Branigan was writing for The Grambling Rambler, part business story, part holiday feature. How an upturn in holiday baking affected egg sales. While there wasn’t enough Hanukkah baking so you’d notice in Grambling, there was in nearby Atlanta and the other cities served by Grambling’s egg farms. So she included challah bread and the double-baked Mandelbrot along with the sugar cookies and gingerbread men and coconut cake she was writing about.

  She typed a final paragraph mindlessly. She’d had about all she could take of this Christmas baking cheer. She was not looking forward to making Crunchy Jumble cookies – the secret to the crunch being Rice Krispies. She was not looking forward to the newspaper’s annual staff party. She was not looking forward, even, to Christmas.

  The events of the previous summer still weighed on her. She’d covered the murders of several homeless people, and it had ended badly. Trying to get into the Christmas spirit was agonizing to contemplate. Branigan wished she could circle December 26 on the calendar and be magically transported. The only bright spot was her nephew Chan heading home from Furman University later in the week, and his sister Charlie coming in from the University of Georgia.

  Branigan stood and stretched, her back and shoulder muscles stiff from hunching over a laptop. Across the largely empty newsroom, she could hear the familiar sound of the police scanner squawking irritably to life. Jody Manson, the paper’s police/court/government reporter leaned in closer. He jumped up and grabbed his jacket, calling to the city editor, “Fatality out near 85. You want a photo?”

  “How far away?”

  “Thirty, thirty-five miles. Sounds like the Athens exit.”

  “I’ll call the stringer in Athens,” the editor said, reaching for his phone.