CHAPTER 24
Everything looked normal as we sped down Dole. The town still stood, so one of my fears got squelched. But as we neared Grams’ street, red and blue flashing lights made my pulse race.
“Oh-no,” Kendall whispered. She unfastened her seatbelt and slid forward to peer over the front seat.
A boulder of cold, hard fear settled into my stomach. “It’s not Grams. It’s not Grams. It’s not Grams,” I chanted to myself.
I turned onto our street and our fears were instantly transformed into reality. Four police cars surrounded our grandmother’s house. Room for only one of them in the driveway meant two others parked on her lawn and the last in the road. Their lights flashed away, and yellow crime scene tape surrounded the tiny property. Kendall let out a choked sob while Gabe punched the roof of my truck hard enough to dent it. I must have switched into autopilot because I managed to park the truck without wrecking. I felt numb from head to toe.
The neighbors stood outside watching. I opened myself up to their feelings hoping the mood of the crowd would tell me things weren’t as bad as they looked. Instead, I felt collective sorrow. My lip trembled and my heart sank.
You cannot fall apart right now, Celeste. Do you understand? I scolded myself. Get out of the truck and get answers. You owe it to Grams to be strong.
The pitiful gasps from the neighbors when I climbed out of the truck didn’t escape my notice. I held my head high, clenched my jaw, and marched toward the house. I closed myself off from the wave of sympathy from the crowd before it could crash down on me. I couldn’t risk crumbling beneath it.
I ducked under the yellow tape perimeter and heard, “Excuse me, Miss? I’m going to have to ask you to stay behind the tape.” I looked up into the young officer’s stern face. He had been at Ella’s house too. When he recognized me, his face blanched. “Oh, Miss Garrett. Go on in. Captain Cooper’s inside.”
“Thank you.” I continued toward the house without waiting for his response.
As soon as I stepped inside, my breath caught. It looked like a tornado tore through the living room. Grams’ glass coffee table had been shattered. The wrought iron base of it ripped in two, the sides strewn to opposite corners of the room. Grams’ curio cabinet leaned precariously against the arm of her leather chair, all its contents broken and embedded in the cushions. The ceramic angels that lived on a shelf above the couch did not survive the fall. Their ceramic limbs and assorted body parts were scattered around the room. Framed pictures of our family lay on the floor, crushed beyond recognition. The wall that divided the foyer and the living room—where Grams measured us when we were little and marked our growth with a pencil slash—sported a deep hole in the plaster. I cringed at the dimensions of the hole. It matched a human body. I prayed that was a coincidence.
Uniformed strangers milled around. They dusted for prints, took photographs, and collected evidence in little baggies, jotted down notes and all that other CSI stuff. A grey-haired man in a tan sport coat stood in the middle of the room, barking orders.
“I want this entire place dusted for prints. Mess like this, he couldn’t have been careful about what he touched.” The crunch of glass under my shoe spun him toward me. His moustache matched his hair. A hefty paunch around his middle strained the buttons on his shirt. His thick eyebrows drew together when he saw me. “Why isn’t anyone patrolling the perimeter? I got people just wandering in!”
“Captain Cooper, my name is Celeste Garrett. I live here with my grandmother, Gladys.”
His expression softened. He pursed his thick lips and inhaled deeply. I followed his gaze as he glanced around for a place for us to sit and talk. The living room window had also been demolished. There wasn’t an inch of the room that wasn’t decorated with glass shards.
Captain Cooper noticed my pained expression. “Why don’t we go sit out on the porch?” He placed his hand on my shoulder and steered me back out the door.
Robotically, I sat in my usual rocking chair and gazed around at the vastly different scenery. It looked like one of those cop shows Grams loved so much. Gabe played the role of the angry family member. He took out his frustrations on a rookie cop that held no answers to Gabe’s bombardment of questions. Kendall sought solace in the arms of a former love. Keith comforted her, our tragedy reuniting them. Alec, the steadfast reporter, nosed around eager to get to the bottom of this. The gawkers watched out of equal parts concern and morbid curiosity. The rocking chair next to me squeaked under Captain Cooper’s weight. This was no show. I couldn’t change the channel or turn it off. Like it or not, I had to sit here and wait for the good captain to tell me if my grandmother was alive or dead.
“Celeste, someone broke into your grandmother’s home today. We think it started off as a simple robbery. A rarity here in Gainesboro, but sometimes people get desperate.” He paused for a moment and took a deep breath. “It seems the intruder didn’t know your grandmother was home. Realizing she was must’ve startled him, and he panicked.”
“What do you mean he panicked?” I asked somberly.
He ran a hand across his mustache and then over his mouth. Beads of perspiration dotted his forehead. “She was attacked.”
The way he was tiptoeing around the details grated on me. “How bad is it?”
His bleak expression caused a lump in my throat I had to choke back. “It’s bad. He roughed her up pretty severely. I don’t know to what degree just yet. But we put her in an ambulance and rushed her to Nashville General. The last update I got was that she was slipping in and out of consciousness. She’s in the ICU.”
Tears threatened to spill from my eyes. I fought them back. I couldn’t cry. Not here. Not now. Instead, I rose from my seat and started down the stairs, headed for my truck.
“Wait, Celeste!” He called after me. “I have a couple of quick questions for you.”
“I have to go,” I barely got the words out. He nodded, the possibility I may never see Grams alive again loomed between us.
“Just tell me,” he pushed on. “Did your grandmother have any enemies that you know of? Anyone that would want to hurt her?”
Besides the three hundred year old demon hell-bent on killing me and destroying the world? Nope, that’s about it.
Of course I couldn’t say that out loud. Instead, I told him what he already knew. “This is a small town, Captain. I’m sure you know my grandmother almost as well as I do. You already know that everyone loved…loves her.” My voice broke when I accidentally referred to Grams in the past tense. He gave no further protests as I walked away.
Back on the other side of the yellow line, Kendall rushed toward me with Keith at her heels. Her eyes asked a million questions. A flush-faced Gabe pushed through the crowd to tower over me while he waited with barely concealed anxiety. Alec’s face belied both his reporter’s curiosity and his genuine concern for Grams and me.
I laid out the only details that mattered right now. “Grams is at Nashville General and she’s alive. They can’t tell us any more than that about her condition.”
“We can be to the hospital in about a half hour,” Gabe declared. He and I started for the truck. Kendall paused to say a quick goodbye to her rekindled love.
“Celeste!” Alec hollered after me as he ran to catch up.
Slightly agitated that he was delaying my rush to my grandmother’s side, I spun on him. Before I could spout off my annoyance, he scooped me up off the ground in a tight bear hug. It would’ve been a nice moment to squeeze him back and revel in the comfort and security he offered. But I didn’t. Instead I bristled at the act that threatened to expose my vulnerability at a time when I needed to be strong.
“I’m so sorry this is happening to you and your family,” he whispered in my ear as he returned my feet to the ground. “If there is anything I can do to help, please let me know.”
“Thank you,” I mumbled.
He gave me a tight smile that didn’t make it to his eyes. “No problem. Listen, I have to go to Memphis for a little
while. Apparently there is some big story there. But if you need me for anything at all, I can be back in a flash. All you have to do is call.”
“I will,” I lied. His involvement with me would only get him hurt. Grams’ current situation proved that. If I cared about him and wanted to keep him safe, I needed to stay far, far away from him.
“Good. Now go!” He prompted. I turned and dashed to my truck.
Gabe and Kendall were already buckled in waiting for me. I threw the truck in gear and sped off. My heart ached with my hope that the Nashville doctors could work miracles, but I slammed the gas pedal down in case they couldn’t.