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  Somebody’s Christmas just got ruined, Branigan thought. Like mine.

  It was past noon, and Branigan was scheduled to meet her friend Liam Delaney at 12:30 for lunch at Marshall’s, a downtown diner. She pulled on a hip-length camel coat, freeing her shoulder-length blonde hair from its collar with a tug. She added a navy and emerald plaid scarf, purchased when the saleswoman exclaimed over the green’s exact match to Branigan’s eyes. Her eyes, an unusually vivid shade of green, often drew comments from salespeople.

  She strode down the sunny sidewalk with the easy gait of a longtime runner, a practice she’d kept since high school more than two decades before. Purple and yellow and white pansies hung in the iron planters on the streetlights, a touch of old Grambling charm. On the other side of the lamp poles were stiff banners of gold sprinkled with glittery white snowflakes. This part of the South seldom saw the real kind.

  She arrived at Marshall’s with five minutes to spare. She found a table near the plate-glass windows, warmed by noon-day sun, and ordered an iced tea. Then she sat back to read the morning’s paper a little more thoroughly than she’d managed at 8 a.m.

  Robbery of a Salvation Army kettle. Sheesh. Was nothing sacred?

  The opening of the holiday ice rink on Main Street.

  In the Style section, a preview of a Moravian love feast on the Rutherford Lee campus. And a production of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever at the Grambling Little Theater. Branigan smiled at that. Maybe she could talk Aunt Jeanie into going.

  The waitress came back, and Branigan looked at her watch: 12:45. Maybe Liam had forgotten. She called his cell phone, and left a message. “Did you forget me? I’m at Marshall’s.”

  She wanted to talk to him about a story that Tanenbaum Grambling IV had requested. “Requested” as in “assigned”, since Tan was editor and publisher of The Rambler. Tan wanted her to revisit the homeless encampment that she and Jody and Marjorie had written about last summer. “People want to know how these folks survive in the winter,” he said; “what they do for Christmas. What are the agencies doing? The churches? Is there any coordination?”

  Branigan planned to start with Liam, her old high school friend and former newspaper colleague, who was pastor of Jericho Road. His church had eighteen beds for homeless men, as well as a soup kitchen, social worker/mental health counselor, art room, music program and growing worship services. She knew a lot about Grambling’s homeless community from her stories the previous summer, but she was hoping that Liam could fast-track her to the best sources for an update.

  Only now he was really late, and she was starving. She signaled the waitress and ordered Marshall’s famous vegetable soup and cornbread. She was just scraping her bowl clean when her cell phone rang.

  She saw it was from Liam, and answered, “Where are you?”

  “The ER. It’s Charlie.”

  “What happened?”

  “She’s been in a bad accident. On her way home from school.”

  Branigan remembered Jody’s police scanner. “Not the one on I-85?”

  “On 441, close to it.”

  “Is she…?” Branigan couldn’t finish the sentence. Her mind spun wildly. They wouldn’t take a fatality to the emergency room, would they?

  “We don’t know anything yet,” Liam said. “Her Jeep flipped. The girl in the passenger seat was killed.”

  “Oh, Liam, no! Who was it?”

  “A friend from UGA. Janie Rose Carlton. You know her?”

  “I know her mother. She teaches at Rutherford Lee. Oh, man. Janie Rose is her only child. Are the Carltons with you?”

  “No, and I don’t know much of anything at this point. Liz is on her way. The doctors kicked me out temporarily and I remembered I was supposed to be meeting you.”

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes. Oh, wait! Liam!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Which hospital? Athens or here?”

  “Here,” he said. “St Joe’s. The paramedics were able to reach me in time to ask.”

  Branigan threw more money than was necessary on the table and ran out.

  Chapter Three

  The chaplain intern, a fluttery young woman who seemed intimidated by the fact that Liam was a pastor, placed Liam, his wife Liz and Branigan in a room for families of trauma patients. Technically, Branigan wasn’t family, but no one was checking IDs. She was the biological aunt of Charlie’s adopted brother, Chan; to both teens, she had always been Aunt Brani.

  Liz looked unnerved to find Ina Rose and Harry Carlton already in the waiting room. Harry Carlton stared blankly, and Ina Rose said, “They brought Janie Rose to the hospital morgue. We’re waiting to see her.”

  The intern moved a box of tissues closer to Ina Rose, but spoke to Liz and Liam. “We’re waiting for a doctor to take them.”

  Liam nodded. He’d been in the intern’s place during his own Clinical Pastoral Education rotation. Clearly the couple were in shock, so he gently took over. “Is there anyone I can call for you? A pastor? Janie Rose’s grandparents?”

  Harry Carlton looked at him as if he were speaking Hebrew.

  “Why was she riding with your daughter?” He turned to his wife. “Why wasn’t she in her own car?”

  Liz stiffened, hearing the unspoken accusation. Ina Rose spoke to the Delaneys as well as to her husband. “She told me she asked Charlie for a ride, but I really don’t know why. She said she would drive our Subaru over Christmas.” She looked around helplessly. “We have an extra car. Two now, I guess.”

  Realizing what she’d said, she clamped a hand over her mouth to strangle a sob.

  “Was she speeding?” Harry Carlton demanded. “Did your daughter speed?”

  Liz started to speak, but Liam put a hand on her arm. “Mr Carlton, we have no way of knowing yet. The state patrol is on the scene. But Charlie is a good driver, a safe driver. It could’ve been a deer or a dog, or anything. We just don’t know yet.”

  “We are very sorry for your loss,” Liz said, standing and heading for the door. “I’m going to see about Charlie.”

  Darkness had fallen by the time Charlie was stabilized and moved from the trauma unit to a private room at St Joseph Medical Center. Since both her parents and, eventually, all four of her grandparents were on hand, Branigan was careful to remain in the background, fetching coffee, finding powdery creamers, and driving to the Delaneys’ to pack an overnight bag for Liz. In a call from the newsroom, Jody had also given her the unpleasant task of approaching the Carltons to see if they wanted to comment for The Rambler’s story. They didn’t.

  Harry Carlton glared at her, but Ina Rose, with whom she was acquainted through previous stories at the college, attempted a smile.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Branigan told her as they left the hospital. “Some families like people to know who their loved one was. But it’s totally up to you.”

  “Maybe later,” Ina Rose said.

  The couple climbed into a gleaming black Mercedes and drove away. Branigan made her way back to the fourth floor, where Charlie lay with her right arm and leg broken, three ribs cracked. Both eyes were blackened and her pretty face was swollen. Two lower teeth were missing.

  Branigan was about to leave as Charlie woke up. Liam and Liz and their parents crowded around her bed. Branigan hung back, giving them privacy.

  After a few minutes, she heard Charlie ask, “Dad, is… Aunt Brani here?”

  “She sure is.” Liz’s and Liam’s parents, looking relieved, stepped away to give Branigan room. Liz’s mom squeezed her arm, and her dad gave her a quick hug.

  Charlie’s blue eyes, hardly recognizable in her battered face, sought Branigan’s. “Aunt… Brani,” she said, her voice thick and raspy. “It wasn’t… accident.”

  “What?” Liz and Liam exclaimed at the same time. Charlie’s eyes flitted to them, closed briefly. “I need�
� to tell… Aunt Brani…” She was fighting the pain meds the doctors had given her, struggling to stay awake.

  Liz and Liam remained rooted to her bedside. “What, baby girl?” Branigan whispered.

  “The… police,” she said. “Tell… police.” Her eyelids flickered.

  Branigan leaned closer. “Tell the police what?”

  Charlie whispered one more phrase, then fell asleep again.

  “It was whose?” Branigan said. “Janie Rose’s?”

  “What’d she say?” Liam asked.

  “‘It was hers,’ I think she said.”

  “What was hers?” asked Liz.

  Chapter Four

  Malachi Ezekiel Martin scrunched against a wall in the emergency waiting room, as far from the entrance and its blasts of cold air as he could get. From his place there, next to Roger the Dodger who sounded like he was hacking up a lung, he watched Pastor Liam, then Miz Liz, then Miz Branigan race in. A little later, Miz Branigan rushed out, only to return with a suitcase.

  Hours later, he saw Miz Branigan, looking mighty uncomfortable, walk out with a slumped couple, the woman all crying, the man like he had a broomstick up his butt. Miz Branigan watched, arms folded, as they got into a big black car.

  Something was up with Pastor Liam’s family. He could stop Miz Branigan and ask. They were friends. Yeah, he’d say they were friends. But everyone looked so serious and so sad he didn’t want to bother them. After he’d gotten Roger the Dodger seen to, he’d bike over to Jericho Road and ask what was up. The dudes there would know.

  Roger the Dodger wasn’t getting the attention Pastor Liam’s family had got. But then the homeless usually didn’t – unless it was a heart attack or stroke or car versus bicycle situation. For casual homeless diseases – Malachi suspected bronchitis from the way Roger was wheezing – a man might die of boredom before the disease got him.

  The bad part was they’d wasted a warm day inside the waiting room. Now that the sun was down, it’d turned cold. Malachi could feel it every time that door whooshed open. Now was the time you wanted to hit the emergency room. Malachi had spent many a winter’s night in these chairs coughing dramatically when a security guard walked by.

  Malachi looked over at Roger, slumped and coughing for real. Malachi didn’t like Roger much. For one thing, Roger was a thief. Hence his name, as in the Artful Dodger. Malachi didn’t hold with thieving, or with begging, for that matter.

  The only reason he was with Roger was that Roger had brought a bottle to his tent last night. So when Roger woke up with a hangover and a hacking cough and a tight chest, he asked Malachi to take him to the hospital.

  Malachi balanced the smaller man on his handlebars as best he could and wobbled him all the way to St Joe’s. And here they’d sat since late morning, the waiting room filled with people coughing and sneezing and even vomiting. Lord, if he weren’t sick coming in, he’d be sick going out.

  “Roger Louis Tompkins,” called a nurse.

  Malachi stood abruptly. “Thas you,” he said. “I’m headin’ back to my tent.” A cold night there sounded better than a warm one in this germ-infested place.

  Malachi slid into the dark night. Within moments, no one could have described the ebony-skinned man in faded camo pants and gray sweatshirt, a black do-rag covering blacker dreadlocks.

  Chapter Five

  Charlie woke with a start, brought to wakefulness by the pain of simply breathing. She saw her leg raised in some kind of trapeze, but she couldn’t feel it. Neither could she feel her right arm lying like a dead weight in the cast beside her.

  She took a deep breath, and shuddered at the knife in her side. She turned her head slowly, cautiously, and saw Liz asleep on a cot.

  “Mom?” she whispered, careful not to expand her lungs more than necessary. Liz was on her feet in an instant.

  “Charlotte? Are you hurting?”

  “Did Aunt Brani… call the police?” she croaked.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie, but she couldn’t figure out what you were trying to say. She’ll be back in the morning.”

  Charlie winced. She wanted pain medicine, but more than that she wanted to pass on information before the blackness overtook her. She licked her lips and tried to swallow. “Water?”

  Liz flipped on the light above the bed, and reached for the filled Styrofoam cup on the bedside table, guiding the straw to her daughter’s mouth. Charlie gulped. Liz flinched as she watched the pain pass over her face.

  “Mom? It was a… hearse.”

  Liz looked at her, uncomprehending. “What was?”

  Charlie swallowed again, nodded to indicate she wanted another sip.

  Liz gave it to her, her eyes never leaving Charlie’s blackened ones. “A hearse… ran me off the road.”

  “Oh,” said Liz, understanding finally dawning. “A hearse. We thought you were saying ‘hers’. As in Janie Rose’s.”

  “Janie Rose,” Charlie said the name flatly. Panic came into her eyes as she looked around the room. “Where is… Janie Rose?”

  Liz hesitated, not knowing how much Charlie could absorb. In the end she said nothing, for Charlie began to fade out. “Tell them,” she said groggily, “Janie Rose… is scared. Tell them… no one… was driving… the hearse….”

  Liz looked at her watch, saw that it would be light in another hour. She’d let Branigan, out at her farmhouse, sleep a little longer. This latest pronouncement from Charlie made no more sense than her first.

  Liam was the first one in Charlie’s room after dawn, bringing coffee to Liz.

  “Did you call Chandler?” she asked, taking the cup gratefully.

  “No, his last exam is this morning, then he’s headed home. There wasn’t anything he could do except get upset and flunk it. He’ll know soon enough.”

  She nodded. “You’re right.”

  “Doctors been in yet?”

  “No, but she woke up…” Liz checked her watch, “two hours ago. She said a hearse ran her off the road. Hearse. That’s what she was trying to say yesterday.”

  “A hearse? That’s crazy.”

  At that moment, two Georgia state patrol officers knocked on the open door. Liam, who’d met them briefly in the emergency room the previous afternoon, greeted them. “Have you found out anything?”

  “All we found was the Jeep,” said the muscular one he remembered as Officer Langreen, his blue shirt straining against massive arms and chest. “No skid marks. No witnesses. Miss Carlton’s side hit a tree. She died instantly.”

  Both Liz and Liam’s eyes went to their sleeping daughter, instinctively wanting to protect her from this news.

  “But there was something odd.” The Delaneys’ attention swung back to the officer. “The Jeep’s hatchback door was up and the girls’ luggage had been thrown out. A large black suitcase was open, with clothes all over the site. We’ve seen this before with an impact like that.” He hesitated.

  “So what was odd?” asked Liam.

  “There was also a duffel bag, like maybe for a softball or soccer player.”

  “I’m sure it was Charlie’s,” said Liz.

  “Well, it was unzipped, and the clothes from it appeared to be scattered too. No impact did that.”

  The four adults were silent for a moment. Finally Liz spoke and her voice sounded hoarse to her ears. “Do you think someone came by and went through their things rather than call for help?”

  Officer Langreen shrugged. “Could be. Or someone did both. We got an anonymous 911 call about the accident. But no one was there when we arrived.”

  The second officer, shorter and slimmer than his partner, spoke up. Officer Montrelle, Liam recalled. “Did I overhear you say that a hearse ran your daughter off the road?”

  Liz nodded. “She woke up a couple of hours ago, and that’s what she said. But I’m not sure she wasn�
�t dreaming. She said no one was driving the hearse.”

  “We’ll need to talk to her as soon as she wakes up,” said Officer Montrelle.

  “We understand,” said Liam. “Will she be charged?”

  Liz looked at her husband in horror.

  Officer Montrelle shook his head. “Too early to tell. There are no signs of drinking or texting. So someone may have forced them off the road. We just can’t know until we talk to her.”

  Liam nodded gravely, ushering the officers politely from Charlie’s room. Only when he returned could Liz see his face, blanched and pale, every freckle standing out like a tiny circle of dried blood.

  Chapter Six

  For once, Branigan rose before Cleo, the regal, tan and black German shepherd that shared her farmhouse. It wasn’t that Branigan owned her exactly. She and the dog both knew better than that.

  Cleo came from a line of shepherds raised on this land fifteen minutes outside of Grambling, and she and Branigan shared the brick ranch that had belonged to Branigan’s grandparents. Once a working farm where Pa Rickman raised cattle and chickens, and where Gran canned the plentiful tomatoes, okra, beans and corn it produced, it was now owned by Branigan’s mother and Uncle Bobby. Aunt Jeanie and Uncle Bobby owned the adjoining farm, and let their cattle roam between Pa’s pastures and their own, occasionally using Pa’s barn for their gorgeous Angus.

  Branigan wasn’t much of a farmer, but in the summer she did grow a few cantaloupes and watermelons among the flowers surrounding the house. She liked the smell of the cantaloupes as much as their taste – a smell she identified with home.

  “We may not have time for a run tonight,” she told Cleo, “so you get your own exercise today.” She poured dog food into Cleo’s bowl, cereal into her own, then brewed a four-cup pot of coffee. After eating, she showered quickly, washing and drying her hair, and dressing in slim-legged black pants, a cropped houndstooth jacket and slouchy suede boots. She grabbed her black leather satchel, letting Cleo out to roam the farm.