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Wilhelmina Parker had her portable DVD player propped up on her desk. The screen was paused—from his angle, Sly could’ve sworn it was frozen on a pair of dancers dressed at cat for some reason, but Willie did so love her musicals—and she had the binder with HSD’s time sheets flipped open.
Slipping his arm through the second sleeve, he left the jacket unzipped as he approached her desk.
He might be the sheriff of Hamlet, but as his administrative assistant, Willie was basically in charge—and everyone in Hamlet knew it. She was a mother figure to all of the deputies, and as she peered at him through her trademark cat’s eye glasses, Sly almost felt a little guilty for ending his shift an hour earlier than usual.
Taking the pen she offered him, he nodded. “Maria was going out to that big art supply store in Montgomery. She decided to make a whole day of it, talking to a couple of vendors for the wedding, and I offered to take her out to dinner at the coffee house when she got back.”
Willie’s eyes lit up. “It’s Monday. Gus does a real nice stew on Mondays in the fall.”
After initialing his page, Sly laid the pen down. “I’ll bring some for you.”
“Oh, sug. That would be so kind of you.”
“Don’t worry about it, Willie. And Kade’s coming in to do a little paperwork in a few minutes. When he gets here, why don’t you go home to your kids?”
Taking back the time sheet, she nodded up at him. “I’ll do that. My Bev just started her last year at Hamlet High and I want to spend as much time with her in case she decides she’s done with small town life after she graduates.”
Sly made a non-committal sound in the back of his throat. He wasn’t so sure if he was the best to comment on that. After all, he left his hometown shortly after he got his diploma, joining up with the Marines. He never went back to California after that, instead following his Marine buddy to his hometown instead on the east coast.
In his experience, most people who were born in Hamlet, stayed in Hamlet. Rick Hart—Sly’s fellow Marine—was a rarity in that he left to enlist; from the way he tells it, it caused an uproar when he did, and an even bigger one when he returned a decade later. Same thing happened when the town’s only doctor moved out of Hamlet three years ago to marry an outsider woman he met when she got caught in a rainstorm and stumbled upon the small town.
Lately, though, with how dangerous living in the village had become… well, there was a reason why Maria was repainting the “Welcome to Hamlet” sign more frequently these days. With the population dropping far faster than the rare transplant or new birth could balance out, the town council insisted on updating the count so that it was accurate.
She didn’t just repaint that sign, either. As the seasons changed, his fiancée enjoyed redesigning the one that stood in front of her bed and breakfast. With summer winding down and fall almost there, she needed new autumnal paints to update the flowers around the wooden sign.
It was well past six. She should be back by now, and as Sly said goodbye and went out to the cruiser that he drove around in whether he was on duty or not, he expected to find Maria’s mint green couple parked along the curb when he arrived at Orchard Street.
He didn’t, though. As he coasted up along the curb, taking the spot that usually belonged to Maria, he frowned as he parked the cruiser.
Where was she?
Maybe something happened to her car. It was a few years old now, a used car back when Lucas bought it for her, and it had been giving her trouble lately. Knowing Sly was on patrol and not wanting to bother him, she might have dropped the coupe off with Franklin Carter—Hamlet’s only mechanic—and driven back with Bailey, Franklin’s younger sister and the fiancée of one of Sly’s deputies, Ethan Oliver.
She’d done it before. After living so long under her older brother’s shadow, there were times when Maria was determined to prove how independent she could be. This might be one of them—
—and Sly believed that up until the moment he jogged up the steps that led to Ophelia’s porch with its banisters and its swing. Because it was before nine, he knew that the locking mechanisms wouldn’t be engaged; because this wasMaria, he knew the door would be wide open.
Pushing it in, he peeked inside, hoping she would be waiting for him on the couch. One of her favorite things to do was sip a mug of hot cocoa while curled up in one corner of the couch, her nose buried in a book.
The couch was empty. There was no mug in sight—no Maria, either—and the book she’d been reading yesterday when he stopped by to visit was sitting in the center of the coffee table.
That wasn’t all.
Sly moved into the room, brow furrowing when he saw that there were three new tubes of paint laid out next to Maria’s book. One was a burnt orange color, another a golden shade, while the third was a pale brown.
The colors of fall—just like Maria said she was going to buy when she went out earlier.
Positioned near the orange paint, Sly saw a small white rectangle. Hoping it was a note from Maria, perhaps telling him that she had to postpone their date, he reached for it.
There was definitely writing on it. Curious, Sly picked up the card and read:
Little girl, little girl, did you step out of line?
I went out of Hamlet, to buy paint for my sign.
Little girl, little girl, what will you do?
Pray they find me before I am through…
