AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Something that wouldn’t be necessary if Wayne had arrived on time. With a sigh, Lia returned her attention to the computer screen, where she’d downloaded the portfolio of an online retailer who was trying to attract new investors. Lia was interested. She preferred putting her capital in businesses just starting out. Getting in on the ground floor meant she would make the most profit. But she was still reviewing the business model and debt-to-equity ratio before she agreed to meet with the founder.
High risk/high return didn’t mean recklessly tossing her money around. She devoted weeks and sometimes months in research before she agreed to invest. That had been her motto since she’d taken the trust fund she’d inherited from her grandparents at the age of twenty-one and invested it with a local carpenter who wanted to flip houses. Her mother had been horrified, but soon she was making a profit, and she’d taken that money to invest in another company. And then another.
Within five years, she had tripled her trust fund and proved that she could not only support herself but could build a large enough nest egg that she didn’t have to worry about her future. It’d also given her mother the opportunity to concentrate on her own life. Within a few months, the older woman had married a man who’d loved her for years and whisked her away to a secluded cabin in Colorado.
Lia had been delighted that her mom could find happiness, and she hadn’t minded taking over the store that had been in their family for over a hundred years. It was as much a part of Pike as the surrounding dairy farms and the stone courthouse down the street. It rarely made a profit, but the store wasn’t about creating money. It was keeping the tradition that her great-great-great-grandfather had started, as well as providing much-needed provisions for the older citizens who didn’t feel comfortable driving to the larger town of Grange. Not to mention offering the necessities during the winter months, when the roads could be closed for days at a time.
Scribbling a few notes she wanted to double-check before continuing her interest in the potential investment, Lia heard the familiar tinkle of a bell. Someone had pushed open the front door. She glanced toward the monitor, watching the tall, lanky boy with short, rust-brown hair and a narrow face enter the store.
Wayne Neilson was a seventeen-year-old boy who’d asked for a job the previous summer. Lia already had a part-time helper who’d been there for forty years, but Della was getting older and her health wasn’t always the best, so Lia had agreed to give Wayne an opportunity. He was being raised by a single mother just like she had. She understood the need to earn extra money.
He’d proven to be remarkably dependable, arriving right after school to put in a couple of hours and on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
Until this Saturday morning.
Rising from the desk, Lia headed out of the office and firmly shut the door. Only her mother knew about her investment skills. And that was how she wanted to keep it. Pike was a small town where everyone was always snooping into everyone’s business. It was even worse for someone like her. She’d always been different. She didn’t have a father. She didn’t mix easily with the other kids. And now she’d vaulted past her scary thirtieth birthday with no marriage proposal in sight. It made people study her as if she was a puzzle that needed to be solved. Or maybe fixed.
She wanted something that was just for herself.
She entered the main part of the store and walked toward the front counter, where Wayne was hanging his heavy parka on a hook drilled into the paneled wall.
“Hey, Ms. Porter. Sorry about being late,” he said, his narrow face flushed and his blue eyes sparkling with an intense emotion.
“Is everything okay?”
“Fine.” He shifted from foot to foot, as if he was having trouble standing still. “At least for me.”
Lia studied him with mounting concern. Usually he was shy and subdued to the point she could barely get more than two words out of him. This excitement was completely out of character.
“What’s going on?”
He glanced around the store, as if making sure it was empty. Then, he sucked in a deep breath.
“Drew and Cord found a body.”
“A body of what?”
Wayne leaned toward her; his voice lowered to a harsh whisper. “A human body.” He grimaced. “Or at least a skeleton.”
Lia snorted. She knew both Drew Hurst and Cord Walsh. They were known around Pike as the local bullies. Clichéd but true. And their favorite target was usually Wayne.
“Are you sure they weren’t messing with you?”
Wayne grimaced, no doubt recalling a thousand different insults, humiliations, and even physical blows he’d endured over the years.
“Yeah. They’re usually being jerks. Especially to me,” he conceded. “But they aren’t smart enough to set up an actual prank. They just shove people into lockers and steal stuff out of backpacks.” He shrugged, the bones of his thin shoulders visible beneath his T-shirt. “Besides, they couldn’t fake looking pale as ghosts when they climbed over the bridge railing. Or Drew puking up his guts when he told me what they’d seen. For real, I thought he was going to pass out.”
Lia jerked, as if she’d just touched a live wire. And that was what it felt like as the shock zigzagged through her.
“What bridge railing?” She had to force the words past her stiff lips.
Wayne was thankfully oblivious to her tension. Like any teenage boy, he rarely noticed anything that didn’t affect him directly.
“The one over the railroad tracks.”
“The railroad bridge,” she breathed, battling back the image that had haunted her for the past fifteen years. “I thought the whole area was closed off while they put in new railway tracks.”
“It is. That’s why they were there. It’s a perfect time to sled down that steep hill without worrying about a train coming by and squashing them.”
