Last Chance Bride Part 5

Head home for the holidays...

Last Chance Christmas Please see the next page for a preview.

CHAPTER 1.

Jesus looked like he'd been hit by a Mack truck. The statue of the son of G.o.d lay on its side, its fibergla.s.s infrastructure torn and ragged. Scattered on the gravel beside the bleaching carca.s.s were the remnants of a sign that read, "Golfing for G.o.d."

Lark Chaikin hugged her elbows and tried to keep warm against the December gust that blew her bangs into her eyes. Who knew South Carolina could be so cold. She looked up at the tops of the pine trees, swaying in the wind. She shivered.

She had to be crazy to have driven all the way from New York on this fool's errand. Roadside America was littered with the corpses of mini-golf courses, their windmills suspended in time, their giant Paul Bunyans toppled. And it sure looked like Golfing for G.o.d had gone the way of all the fibergla.s.s dinosaurs.

Pop should have checked before he made his last request. But, of course, Pop had been sick for a long time.

Lark turned back toward her late father's SUV, a giant silver thing that drove like an ocean liner and guzzled gas like one, too. She opened the back door and stared down at the cardboard box containing Pop's ashes. The box was eight inches square with the words "Chaikin, Abe" scrawled across its top.

She pressed a couple of fingers against the ache in her forehead that had been growing all day. "Why'd you make a big mahgilla about being buried here in the middle of nowhere on a closed-up mini-golf course?" She couldn't go on. Her throat closed up, and tears threatened her eyes. She swallowed back the grief that was too new to be expressed yet.

Lark leaned on the tailgate, her gaze shifting from the box to the canvas camera bag sitting beside it. Her fingers itched to pick up the Nikon, maybe shoot a few photos of the broken statue. She might be able to capture the Pica.s.so-like perspective of its smashed face. Maybe shooting a few photos would help her get back the balance she'd lost during the Libyan civil war. She had experienced a lot of heavy fighting during the battle for Misurata.

But she couldn't find the courage to pick up the camera. She slammed the tailgate and turned toward a gravel path clearly posted with "No Trespa.s.sing" signs.

Something violent had damaged the stand of pines growing on the right side of the path. The trees looked as if they had been blasted by napalm or something. A wave of nausea gripped her. Man, she was really losing it. The nightmares were bad. But the waking flashbacks were worse.

She took a few calming breaths and focused on the noise of her feet crunching on the gravel. She looked up. Clouds, heavy with rain, scudded across the sky, and a lone hawk circled, watching and waiting. She felt light-headed. She couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten or slept.

She lowered her gaze. A medium-sized structure resembling Noah's ark loomed ahead of her. Scaffolding had been set up around it, and it looked as if someone was giving the ark a fresh coat of paint. Still, for all that, the place seemed sad and abandoned. A few dead leaves, driven by the wind, swirled across the path.

She turned right and made a circuit of the place, hole to hole, past Adam and Eve, the Tower of Babel, and David and Goliath, feeling as if she'd slipped through the bounds of reality. She stopped at the tee box labeled "Plague of Frogs." Something terrible had happened here. She remembered Pop talking about how the frogs used to spit water over the fairway. But there weren't any frogs left. Just random frog legs stuck onto concrete lily pads.

She turned and walked past the undamaged Jonah and the Whale, then cut through the Wise Men with their bobbing camels and Jesus walking on water, until she reached the eighteenth hole.

She halfway expected this hole to be the much-laughed-about Tomb of Jesus. It would be just like Pop to want to have his ashes installed in the ersatz tomb of a messiah that wasn't his. She could see him laughing his a.s.s off as people putted golf b.a.l.l.s across his grave. After all, Pop had a murderous short game.

But the eighteenth hole wasn't a tomb.

It was a statue of Jesus. The sign beside the tee box displayed a quote from Mark 16: "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature."

Apparently, the eighteenth hole was a celebration of the resurrection.

Stonewall Rhodes, the chief of police for the incorporated city of Last Chance, South Carolina, drove his cruiser south on Palmetto Avenue, taking his second-to-last circuit of the day. It was nearly five o'clock, and the light was fading quickly into dusk. It would be dark by the time he drove out to the edge of town and back.

He got about halfway to the Allenberg County line before he saw the silver Cadillac Escalade parked in the lot at Golfing for G.o.d. The New York tags caught his attention.

Cars with New York plates didn't come through this neck of the woods very often-unless the folks in them were lost tourists searching for the road to Hilton Head or people making a pilgrimage to Golfing for G.o.d.

At one time, Golfing for G.o.d had attracted a fair number of pilgrims. The place was listed on RoadsideAmerica.com and had made it into a couple of tour guides. But it had been closed up for more than a year-ever since its propane tank had been struck by lightning.

Of course, Hettie Marshall and the Committee to Resurrect Golfing for G.o.d had just hired a contractor to begin fixing up the place. They were aiming for a big reopening in the spring. In the meantime, though, the "No Trespa.s.sing" signs were designed to keep the pilgrims and the pranksters away.

Stone pulled his cruiser into the golf course's parking lot, the gravel crunching under its wheels. He eyeballed the Cadillac. It appeared to be unoccupied, but appearances could be deceiving. Before getting out of his car, he keyed the plate information into his cruiser's computer. An instant later, the Cadillac's history came back to him. There were no outstanding warrants involving the vehicle, which was registered to one Abe Chaikin of Kings Point, New York.

Stone stared at the name for a long moment as the little hairs on the back of his neck stood up on end.

The past had come back to haunt his town.

He snagged his Stetson from the pa.s.senger seat and dropped it on his head as he left the cruiser. He pulled his heavy-duty flashlight from his utility belt as he cautiously approached the vehicle. He shone the light through the driver's side window and confirmed that the car was unoccupied.

The SUV was a late model, clean and fully loaded, with a GPS system and satellite radio in the dashboard. A well-worn canvas bag in army green occupied the cargo area, loaded with what looked like expensive camera equipment. The SUV was locked.

He turned away from the car and walked up the charred remains of the main walkway. He saw the woman as soon as he turned the corner by the first hole. She sat on the wooden bench at the feet of the resurrected Jesus on hole eighteen, with her head bowed as if deep in prayer. For a brief moment, it appeared as if the Savior's hand moved outward toward the praying woman, as if He were trying to comfort her.

A shiver inched down Stone's spine, and he blinked a couple of times. Only then did he realize that the deepening dusk had played a trick on him. A little sparrow sat in the hand of Jesus. It turned its head this way and that and gave the appearance of the statue's hand in motion.

The woman was as tiny as a bird herself, with short-cropped dark hair that spiked around her head. She wore jeans and a peacoat. A stiff wind might blow her away.

She looked up, turning a pair of dark, hollow eyes in his direction. All the breath left his lungs as he found himself caught up in her stare. For an instant, he felt as if he might be looking at a ghost from some forgotten past. Her face was oddly gray in the fading light, the skin beneath her eyes smudged with the purple of exhaustion.

She looked hopelessly lost, like a small waif or street urchin.

A hot, tight feeling slammed into his chest. The unexpected intensity of the emotion was tempered by the immediate clanging of alarm bells in his head. She was trouble.

She had arrived in a car registered to Abe Chaikin-a man who had so upset the balance of things in Last Chance that practically everyone still remembered the incident.

He couldn't shake the feeling that the woman was here for the same purpose. This tiny person was going to rend the daily fabric of life in his town, and he couldn't let that happen.

She looked up at him, and he recognized his doom right there in her hollow eyes, just as he recognized something about her that he couldn't even put words to. He had the odd feeling that he had known her for a long, long time.

Lark gripped the edge of the bench and stared at the fibergla.s.s Jesus. This had to be the Excedrin headache to end all headaches. Was this Pop's idea of a joke?

The sound of boots on gravel drew her attention to the walkway by the ark. A policeman came into view.

Holy c.r.a.p, she was in trouble now.

"Ma'am," the cop said. "What part of *no trespa.s.sing' do you not understand? Golfing for G.o.d is not in business, and I'd be obliged if you would move on."

She stood up, feeling dizzy and disconnected as she focused on the cop's face. She recognized the green eyes, dimpled chin, and meandering nose. c.r.a.p. She was going crazy.

"Carmine?" she asked. Her throat hurt.

"Ma'am?" The cop went on alert. His shoulders stiffened, and his body coiled in that ready-for-action pose she'd seen in the marines patrolling the streets of Baghdad.

She blinked a couple of times, trying to clear her vision. He wasn't Carmine, of course. And she was not losing her mind. She cleared her dry throat. "I was wondering if you could tell me where I might find Zeke Rhodes. I need to speak with him about something."

"Ma'am, Zeke Rhodes has been dead for more than forty years. I would have expected you to know that."

"Oh," Lark said as she fought a wave of disappointment. "More than forty years? Really?"

"Yes, ma'am. He died the day Abe Chaikin left town."

Her head throbbed, and her face went from hot to cold. "You knew my father?" That seemed unlikely.

"No, ma'am. But I've heard the stories about him. He hightailed it out of town the same day Zeke Rhodes died. They found Zeke's body right where you're standing now."

She took a reflexive step backward, as if to avoid the long-dead body of Zeke Rhodes.

"Of course, not everyone thinks Zeke was murdered. There's a big debate on that topic."

"But you think he was."

The cop's shoulders moved a little. "Maybe. It happened before I was born. So you're Abe's daughter?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm his daughter." The world started tilting sideways.

"Well, ma'am, some folks think your daddy murdered Zeke."

All's fair in love and literature...

Last Chance Book Club Please see the next page for a preview.

CHAPTER 1.

Savannah White pulled her twelve-year-old Honda into Aunt Miriam's driveway. She set the parking brake and studied the old Victorian house through the windshield. It had seen better days. Mauve and gold paint peeled from the shingles and trim, the porch steps sagged, and the azaleas along the front porch were overgrown, even if they were in full springtime bloom.

She studied the azaleas for a long moment. Savannah had visited Aunt Miriam only in the summertime, so she had never seen the azaleas in bloom before. The bright pink blossoms were a reminder that she was taking a huge risk. Savannah had no idea if she would even like living in Last Chance year-round.

Of course, no one knew yet that she planned to stay. If she had announced her plans, her ex-husband and his parents would have done everything in their power to stop her from leaving Baltimore with her son, Todd. But leaving for a few days to attend a funeral was acceptable. A death in the family trumped everything.

She turned toward Todd. He sat in the pa.s.senger seat, completely engrossed in a video game. His brown hair curled over his forehead, and the tip of his tongue showed at the corner of his mouth as he concentrated. His eyelashes were still amazingly long for a boy, but his skin was so pale that he looked like one of those teen vampires from Twilight, albeit a slightly chubby one.

"It's time to put the game away," Savannah said.

Todd didn't acknowledge her request. Tuning her out had become a pattern.

"We have to go now. It's time to meet Aunt Miriam."

No response.

She reached over and took the game from his hands.

"Mom," he whined, "I was just about to win that level."

Savannah turned the d.a.m.ned thing off and tucked it into her oversized purse. "Sorry, kiddo, we're here. It's time to join the real world."

He rolled his pretty brown eyes. "Aw, couldn't I just stay in the car?"

"No."

"But I didn't even know Uncle Harry, and I'm sure Aunt Miriam is just some dumb old lady."

Savannah ground her teeth. "You will show respect to Aunt Miriam, is that clear?"

"Yes. But I hate it here."

"You've been here for five minutes, during which time you've done nothing but zap zombies."

He rolled his eyes. "Mom, Semper Fi doesn't have any zombies. I was shooting members of the imperial j.a.panese forces occupying Iwo Jima."

Savannah stared at her son. "You know that World War II is over and the j.a.panese are our allies now, right?"

Todd crossed his arms over his chest and sank back into the seat. "I'm not going to some dumb old funeral."

"The funeral isn't until tomorrow. And you will get your b.u.t.t out of this car and go be nice to your Aunt Miriam or I will put your PSP in a microwave and nuke it."

"You wouldn't. That would kill the microwave and blow up the apartment."

"Don't bet on it, kiddo."

"If you did that, Dad would buy me another one and Grandmother would yell at you."

And that was the problem, right there.

She drew herself up into full-out mommy mode. "I don't care what your father or grandmother might do. You are with me right now, and you will get out of this car. Right now."

He gave her a sulky look and then opened the car door.