COLD CASE AT CAMDEN CROSSING by Rita Herron Page B

senior class.
    J.J. McMullen.
    Yes, Peyton had been dating him around Christmastime.
    Did he still live around town?
    She used her smart phone to look up his number and found a James McMullen living right outside town. She punched his number but a woman answered. “Hello?”
    Tawny-Lynn wiped dust from her jeans. “I’m looking for James McMullen.”
    “He’s at work. Who is this?”
    A baby’s cry echoed somewhere in the background.
    “Where does he work?”
    “At the meat market in town. Now who is this?”
    Tawny-Lynn didn’t reply. She hung up, trying to picture the dark-haired boy who Peyton had once dated butchering meat all day, but the image didn’t fit.
    But his father had owned the place so he must have gone to work with him.
    She finished cleaning out the closet, then stripped the dusty bedcovers and stuffed them in another bag. The notebooks and papers went into the trash. When she finished, she dragged the bags downstairs.
    “I’m finished down here,” Jimmy said. “I’ll check the windows upstairs.”
    “Thanks.”
    She hauled the bags of clothes outside, tossed them into the pickup truck and headed to the church. She dropped the bags with the secretary, thinking the woman looked familiar, but she didn’t take the time to introduce herself.
    Ten minutes later, she parked in front of the meat market and went inside. Glass cases held dozens of cuts of beef, pork and chicken while shelves to the side were filled with homegrown vegetables, sauces and spices.
    An older man with a receding hairline stood behind the counter, his apron stained.
    “Mr. McMullen?” Tawny-Lynn asked.
    His reading glasses wobbled as he peered over the counter at her. “What can I do for you, young lady?”
    “I’d like to talk to your son, J.J.”
    The man frowned, but yelled his son’s name. A second later, J.J. appeared, looking more like his father than she remembered. Maybe it was the receding hairline or the nose that was slightly crooked. The bloody apron didn’t help.
    “Tawny-Lynn?” J.J. said, his eyes widening in recognition.
    She nodded, then removed the note and gestured for him to take it. He rounded the counter and leaned against the potato bin as he read it.
    “You were the last guy I remember dating Peyton before she disappeared.”
    His sharp gaze jerked toward her. “You think I had something to do with that?”
    “No,” Tawny-Lynn said, although the anger in his tone made her wonder. Had he been questioned seven years ago?
    “In the note, you were asking her not to leave you. What happened?”
    He cut his eyes toward his father, then shoved the note back in her hands. “She dumped me, that’s what happened. She found someone else.”
    “Did she say who it was?”
    He shook his head, his anger palpable. “No, but I got the impression it was an older man. She kept saying that it was complicated, but that he was sophisticated and he’d take care of her. That one day they’d get married.” His gaze met hers. “Hell, when she went missing, I thought maybe she ran off with him.”
    Tawny-Lynn had heard that rumor. But the sheriff had found no evidence to substantiate the theory.
    It was complicated .
    What if her sister had been seeing an older man, maybe a married man? If she told J.J. her intentions of marrying, maybe Peyton had pressured him to leave his wife.
    Would he have hurt her sister to keep their affair quiet?

Chapter Nine
    Chaz should have been relieved that the messages had been written in animal blood instead of human blood, but the fact that someone had threatened an innocent woman in his town infuriated him.
    He parked in front of the bank and strode in, then headed straight to his father’s office, but the secretary stopped him on the way.
    “He’s not here. He went home to have lunch with your mother.”
    That was a surprise. But it probably meant that he’d found some discrepancy in their finances and wanted to interrogate his mother. Gerome Camden was a control