Find Her
A Lacey James Mystery Book 1
by Chris Patchell
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Sadie Gibbons knew
trouble when she saw it, and it was right there in aisle four. Born and bred in
Sweet Home, Oregon, she knew all nine thousand eight hundred and fifteen souls
in town, and the man standing in front of the hammers wasn’t from around here.
She did know that he’d been standing there way too long. Professional
carpenters who treated their hammers with the same reverence that her second
husband, Jimmy, lavished on his prized jigsaw didn’t take this long to make a
decision. There were only four models to choose from for god’s sake.
But that wasn’t all.
There was something about the way he acted that made the fine hairs on the back
of Sadie’s neck rise. He stood there like a zombie, totally zoned out, as her
grandkids would say. It just wasn’t right.
Oh, he was pretty
enough. The oversized sweatshirt, ball cap, and sunglasses he wore couldn’t
hide the fact that he was a good-looking man. Hell, her first husband had been
pretty too, and he was a sneaky sonofabitch, god rest his poor departed soul.
Like this guy. He avoided eye contact at all costs. And what was worse, he
moved like he knew where the security cameras were placed and avoided them.
This wasn’t one of
those fancy Home Depot’s where there were more security cameras than potted
plants. That said, they weren’t entirely without eyes. Half a dozen cameras
were placed at high traffic points providing a bird’s eye view of the store
because in this day and age, you couldn’t trust anyone. Especially strangers.
Why just a few months ago they caught a guy stealing a chainsaw. A goddamned
chainsaw. Not exactly the kind of thing you could hide under one of them
hoodies.
Sadie kept her eyes
pinned on the stranger, not wanting to miss a single thing. But then the
telephone rang. She heaved a heavy sigh. The phone was on the other side of the
counter, and she couldn’t very well answer it and still keep the hammer guy in
her sights. Where the hell was Jimmy? Probably out for a smoke or fooling
around in the paint aisle. Never in her life had she met a man more obsessed
with paint.
A few rings in, it
became obvious that Jimmy wasn’t gonna answer. Swearing under her breath, Sadie
crossed to the end of the counter and picked it up. Apparently, her old bones
didn’t move fast enough. By the time she answered, the caller had hung up. What
was wrong with people anyway? Always in a rush. Like she didn’t have better
things to do than stand by the phone waiting for a call.
Slamming the phone
down, Sadie hurried back to her post, where she’d spent the last fifteen
minutes watching the hammer guy, only to find that she was too late. He was
gone. Her gaze ricocheted off the mirrors perched in the corners of the store,
checking the aisles to see if she could catch sight of him, but as her father
would have said, he disappeared like spit in the wind.
Dammit.
Sadie hustled her bulk
around the corner of the counter and down the aisle where they kept the
carpentry tools. Sure enough, a hammer was missing—one of the twenty-ounce
Eastwing rip hammer jobbies with the leather grips. Just yesterday morning, she
had refreshed stock in this aisle and knew that since then, not a single one
had been sold.
“Jimmy!”
Where in the blazes was
that man?
“Hold your horses,
woman,” Jimmy groused.
Sadie shook her head
impatiently. With a stir stick in one hand and paint swatches in the other,
Jimmy emerged from the rows of paint cans.
“Jimmy, the guy in
aisle four.”
“Who?”
Jimmy craned his head
around toward the front of the store. The white strands in his caterpillar
eyebrows caught the light, and Sadie huffed out a breath. He was clueless. The
hammer guy was long gone.
Frustration rose from
the pit of Sadie’s belly and clawed its way up her throat. She let Jimmy have
it.
“He walked right by
you. Didn’t you see him?”
Jimmy lifted his ball
cap and scratched at the stubborn tufts of white hair that clung to his
freckled crown. That man was useless. Worse than useless. If it weren’t for
her, she didn’t know what would come of him or the store. Jaw clenched; Sadie
marched down the aisle as fast as her arthritic knees would carry her. She
grabbed the phone and dialed 911.
“What’s the nature of
your emergency?”
“We’ve been robbed.”
Sadie tersely relayed
the details to the 911 operator and slammed the phone down, wondering how long it
would take the local yokels to arrive. Jimmy wagged his head at her, as if
she’d lost her mind.
“Woman, you’ve been
watching too many true crime shows. You think everyone is the Son of Sam.”
“That guy didn’t look
any more like David Berkowitz than I do, and I sure as hell didn’t need any
barking dogs to tell me that he was a thief. Besides, I placed an order for
those hammers just last week. There were three of them in Monday’s order and
now, there’s only two. I may not have graduated high school, but I sure as hell
can count.”
For once, Jimmy didn’t
argue.
Chris Patchell is the award-winning, USA Today Bestselling author of five novels. A former tech worker turned author, Chris Patchell pens suspense novels set in the Pacific Northwest.
Her novels have been praised by Kevin O’Brien and Robert Dugoni, and her rich complex plot lines and well-drawn characters will keep you turning pages well into the night. When she’s not writing books or watching football, Chris is hanging out with her husband, kids, and two crazy dogs.
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This book sounds good.
ReplyDeleteSounds interesting
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the excerpt.
ReplyDeleteintriguing
ReplyDelete