Red Hair, Black Secrets

He wore his tan uniform without a wrinkle, as if the day had not dragged him through dust and bad news. His hand rested near his belt, not on his weapon. That was supposed to make her feel better.

It didn’t.

“Bar’s closed,” Scarlett said.

Mercer glanced at the empty tables. “I can see that.”

“Then your eyesight’s holding up. Congratulations.”

“I need to ask you some questions.”

“You need coffee. There’s a diner in town.”

“About your first husband.”

The ice machine clicked off. Silence filled the room where its noise had been.

Scarlett reached beneath the counter and pulled out a glass. She set it upside down, though there was nobody to serve. “His name was Ray.”

“I know.”

“Then you know he’s been missing since 1999.”

“I know that, too.”

“Twenty-five years,” she said. “You came all this way to tell me arithmetic?”

Mercer moved closer. Dust clung to the cuffs of his boots. “His remains were found under the abandoned Haskins barn this morning.”

Scarlett’s fingers tightened around the rag in her hand.

She had imagined Ray dead before. In a ditch. Across the border. Drunk beneath a bridge. She had imagined his bones picked clean by coyotes and his belt buckle rusting into the earth. Imagination was cheap. It asked nothing but a little darkness.

The truth cost more.

“Found by who?”

“County work crew clearing the property.”

“Wasn’t their property.”

“Doesn’t matter now.”

“It matters to whoever buried him.”

Mercer watched her carefully. “You seem remarkably interested in the burial.”

“I seem interested in a dead man being found under a building people have been ignoring since before you grew your first mustache.”

His jaw shifted. “Where were you the night Ray disappeared?”

Scarlett folded the rag once. Then again. “At home.”

“Alone?”

“Mostly.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one I’ve got.”

“You were married to him.”

“Briefly.”

“Eleven years isn’t briefly.”

“It is when you spend the last three wishing you’d spent the first eight with a locked door between you.”

Mercer took a notebook from his pocket. The cover was black and unmarked. “Did Ray come to this bar that night?”

“No.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Did you see him after ten o’clock?”

Scarlett looked at the liquor shelves. Bottles gleamed beneath the dim track lights - cheap bourbon, warm tequila, whiskey that tasted like varnish. Ray had liked the expensive stuff and hated paying for it.

“No,” she said.

Mercer wrote something down.

The scratch of his pen scraped against her nerves. She stepped out from behind the bar, boots striking the warped floorboards. “You got a warrant for this conversation?”

“I don’t need one to ask questions.”

“You need one to search.”

“I haven’t searched.”

“Yet.”

His eyes lifted from the notebook. “You planning to give me a reason?”

Scarlett smiled without warmth. “Sheriff, I’ve been giving men reasons since before you learned how to shave. Most of them survived.”

A truck groaned past on the highway. Its tires hissed over loose gravel, then the sound faded toward town.

Mercer said, “You reported Ray missing?”

“I called the sheriff’s office.”

“Three days later.”

“He was gone before. He came and went when he pleased.”

“Not according to the report.”

“Reports are where people put the version they can live with.”

His pen stopped.

Scarlett felt the mistake land between them.

Mercer closed the notebook. “What version did you give them?”

“The one they wanted.”

“And what version was that?”

“That Ray walked out.”

“Did he?”

She looked toward the front windows. Beyond the glass, the highway shimmered beneath the afternoon heat. The abandoned barn was somewhere past the bend, its dirt floor opened by a shovel. Beneath it, Ray had waited while Scarlett carried a secret through three marriages and twenty-five years.

“No,” she said.

Mercer’s expression sharpened. “You just said - ”

“I said the report claimed he walked out.”

“You knew he didn’t?”

Scarlett reached for the rag again, but her hand found empty air.

The night came back in pieces she had spent years grinding dull. Ray’s truck beneath the pecan trees. The passenger door open. A light moving inside the barn across the field. Not a flashlight. Something yellow and steady, swinging once through the gaps in the boards.

And a second vehicle.

Black. Long hood. Silver horse emblem on the grille.

She had seen the driver step out. Had seen the pale shape of a hand press against the barn door. Had heard Ray say one word before the gunshot.

Not a plea.

A name.

Scarlett had never told anyone that part.

Mercer leaned against the bar. “Who killed him?”

The question struck harder than it should have.

“I didn’t.”

“I didn’t ask whether you pulled the trigger.”

“That’s what you’re asking.”

“I’m asking what you know.”

“You’re asking like you already decided.”

“I’m asking because you’re the last person who admits seeing him alive.”

“Twenty-five years ago.”

“Still counts.”

“No. It counts for a history book. Not a murder case.”

“It counts when the missing husband turns up buried under a barn and the wife has been lying about the last night he was seen.”

Scarlett’s mouth went dry. She poured herself two fingers of bourbon and did not offer him any.

Mercer watched the pour. “You drink during an interview?”

“I own the bar.”

“That doesn’t answer me.”

“It answers everything.”

She took a swallow. The liquor burned down to her stomach and steadied nothing.

Mercer reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a photograph in a clear evidence sleeve. He set it on the bar between them.

The picture showed the barn as it had looked in 1999, before the roof sagged and the paint surrendered. Ray stood beside the open doors, younger than Scarlett remembered him and already looking like a man who owed somebody money. His face was turned toward the camera, but his eyes were not.

“Found this in an old property file,” Mercer said. “You recognize it?”

Scarlett did not touch the sleeve.

“Ray,” she said.

“Who took it?”

“Not me.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know.”

“You were married to him.”

“You keep saying that like it makes me his biographer.”

Mercer slid the photograph closer. “There’s a second vehicle reflected in the window behind him.”

Scarlett looked despite herself.

The reflection was warped by old glass, but the grille showed clear enough. A dark hood. A silver horse.

The bar seemed to tilt.

Mercer saw it. Of course he saw it. He had the patience of a man who preferred doors locked from the outside.

“You know that vehicle?” he asked.

Scarlett lifted her bourbon. “Texas has a lot of trucks.”

“Not many with that emblem.”

“Then you should have no trouble finding it.”

“Maybe I already have.”

Her hand paused halfway to her mouth.

Mercer tucked the evidence sleeve back into his pocket. “I’m placing you as a person of interest.”

“There it is.”

“That means I’ll need a formal statement.”

“You’ll need a court order.”

“I’ll come back with one.”

“Bring two. One for the statement and one for the whiskey you’ll spill on my floor.”

His face hardened. “Don’t leave town.”

Scarlett laughed once. “I own the building.”

“Don’t leave the county.”

“I’ve got a delivery in Abilene tomorrow.”

“Cancel it.”

“No.”

“Scarlett.”

She set the glass down. “You don’t get to walk into my bar, dig up a husband I buried in my mind, and start giving me orders.”

“You’re not in control of this anymore.”

The words landed cleanly because they were almost true.

Scarlett moved before she could think better of it. She took the photograph from his pocket when he turned toward the door - not the evidence sleeve, just the edge of it, catching beneath his fingers. She snatched it, stepped back, and held it against her chest.

Mercer stopped.

For one long second, neither of them moved.

“Give it back,” he said.

“No.”

“That’s evidence.”

“It’s a copy from a property file.”

“Give it back.”

Scarlett tore the photograph in half.

The sound was small. The consequence wasn’t.

Mercer’s hand dropped to his belt. “You just destroyed evidence.”

“I destroyed your copy.”

“You’re making this worse.”

“I’ve been married three times. I’m familiar with worse.”

She tore the halves again and let them fall onto the bar.

Mercer stared at the pieces, then at her. “I’ll have a warrant by sundown.”

“For what?”

“Your house. Your records. Whatever else a judge thinks you’re hiding.”

Scarlett felt the old secret stir beneath her ribs, not guilt exactly. Guilt had a shape. This was more like a locked room with somebody breathing inside it.

Mercer opened the door. Sunlight spilled across the floorboards.

“One more thing,” he said. “The barn is secured. Don’t go near it.”

Scarlett’s eyes narrowed. “Why would I?”

“Because people who have secrets like to check whether the ground is still holding them.”

Then he left.

The bell above the door gave a cheerful little jingle after him.

Scarlett stood alone in the red light of the dying sign. On the bar, the torn photograph showed half a grille and one black window. Enough to remind her what she had seen. Enough to tell her somebody else might have seen it, too.

She locked the front door, pulled the blinds, and went into the office.

The floor safe sat beneath a stack of unpaid invoices. Scarlett knelt, twisted the dial, and opened it.

Inside lay three hundred dollars, a spare pistol, and an old photograph wrapped in wax paper.

Not the one Mercer had taken.

This one showed a black vehicle parked beside the Haskins barn on the night Ray disappeared. The silver horse emblem caught the flash. In the driver’s seat, barely visible through the windshield, sat a pale hand wearing a ring shaped like a crown.

Scarlett had kept the photograph for twenty-five years.

Now the sheriff knew she had something.

She slid it into the pocket of her ripped jeans and reached for the pistol.

If Blaine Mercer came back with a warrant, he would find an empty house and a woman who had finally run out of reasons to wait.

End of chapter one. 17 more chapters in the full book.