Honor Code

By Cathy Perkins

In a small southern town where everyone knows each other’s business, veteran detective Larry Robbins must solve the disappearance of eighty-year-old widower George Beason.

When evidence arises that Beason may have left town on his own, it would be easy for Robbins to close the case, but his gut instinct tells him more’s at stake. As he uncovers clues about Beason’s deceased wife and his estranged daughter, Robbins must untangle conflicting motives and hidden agendas to bring Beason home alive.

With HONOR CODE, award-winning author Cathy Perkins delivers a mystery NOVELLA linked to her mystery novel, THE PROFESSOR.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cathy Perkins
• Release date: May 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311978356

Cathy Perkins

An award-winning author, Cathy Perkins works in the financial industry, where she's observed the hide-in-plain-sight skills employed by her villains. She writes predominantly financial-based mysteries but enjoys exploring the relationship aspect of her characters' lives. A member of Sisters in Crime, Romance Writers of America (Kiss of Death chapter) and International Thriller Writers, she is a contributing editor for The Big Thrill and coordinated the prestigious Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense.When not writing, she can be found doing battle with the beavers over the pond height or setting off on another travel adventure. Born and raised in South Carolina (the setting for CYPHER, HONOR CODE and THE PROFESSOR), she now lives in Washington (setting for the Holly Price mysteries) with her husband, children, several dogs and the resident deer herd.

Book preview

Honor Code

Cathy Perkins

HONOR CODE

In a small southern town where everyone knows each other’s business, veteran detective Larry Robbins must solve the disappearance of eighty-year-old widower George Beason.

When evidence arises that Beason may have left town on his own, it would be easy for Robbins to close the case, but his gut instinct tells him more’s at stake. As he uncovers clues about Beason’s deceased wife and his estranged daughter, Robbins must untangle conflicting motives and hidden agendas to bring Beason home alive.

With HONOR CODE, award-winning author Cathy Perkins delivers a mystery NOVELLA linked to her mystery novel, THE PROFESSOR.

***

Published by Red Mountain Publishing, Smashword Edition

Copyright © 2012 Catherine Perkins

ISBN-13: 978-1480220720

Cover design: Gwen Phifer Campbell

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This book is available in print at most online retailers.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

***

For Caroline

Chapter 1

The old man startled at the noise.

Forehead furrowed, he tried to place the sound, but heard only the familiar ticks of the house.

Darkness pressed against the windows, shrinking the pool of light cast by his reading lamp. Shadows lurked in the corners of the room and spilled from the kitchen.

He fumbled his glasses on and squinted at his watch. After midnight. He’d fallen asleep in the recliner again.

Another dull thud.

Wood hitting wood.

A loose shutter. His shoulders loosened. That’s good. Get Jarad to fix it. The boy needs a job. Somebody to teach him the value of work.

He moved his Bible from his lap to the side table and pushed the lever to lower the footrest. It creaked along with his knees. Everything in the house creaked. The furniture, the floor, him. He stretched. Pushed long arms and gnarled hands as high as he could reach.

Dog raised her head and turned eyes filmed by cataracts toward the kitchen.

You hear something, girl?

A tinkling sound of breaking glass answered him.

The old man sat up, his stretch forgotten. A broken window was a different story.

The back door opened, a familiar rasp.

Who’s there? He shuffled toward the rear of the house.

A figure appeared, darker than the kitchen’s shadows.

What you doing –

Give them to me.

The old man sighed and shook his head. We already talked about this.

I ain’t asking. I’m telling.

Dog growled. A low guttural note that raised the hair on the old man’s neck. You go on home.

No. Anger sparked in the rigid set of shoulders.

A long arm rose. Moonlight caught the length.

Not an arm.

A baseball bat.

You put that down. The old man took one step back, then stopped. Wouldn’t do to show weakness.

The figure rushed forward. Give them to me.

Dog surged past him, the growl a deep-throated snarl.

The wood bat thumped again.

And again.

***

Detective Larry Robbins stopped the unmarked in front of a small wood-frame house. He checked with Dispatch—right house—as if the Newberry, South Carolina patrol car hadn’t clued him in. After working these neighborhood for over twenty years, he recognized the street. Used to be a nice place. Poor. But nice. Now it was transition houses, sliding from bad to worse, as the old people died. Scum moving in dragged the area down even faster.

He wasn’t sure why he was there. No obvious violence. No one yelling. No one in the back seat of the patrol unit. Dispatch had said the on-scene officer requested assistance. He’d half expected a domestic or a drug bust.

The patrol officer, a veteran Robbins recognized named Ellis, stood on the porch with an older African American woman.

Another person Robbins recognized.

He climbed from the vehicle. Miz Rose?

He’d picked up and dropped off dozens of foster kids with her over the years. That had been at the bungalow next door, though. Not the shotgun house in front of him. A hold-over name, the term referred to style, not violence. The house’s rooms lay in a straight line, one behind the other, with a central doorway leading into the next room. Story was, you could shoot at the front door and the buckshot would fly out the back without touching the walls. The houses were all over the South, usually in poor neighborhoods because they were cheap to build.

Everything okay with… What was the kid’s name? Child Services had taken the toddler from her drug-addicted mother. A mother who fed her addiction before feeding her child. He’d accompanied Child Services, bringing the little kid, big-eyed and clutching a new teddy bear, to Rose Nelson’s sanctuary.

Tasha’s just fine, Detective Robbins. She’s up to the church at pre-school kindergarten. It’s Mr. Beason I’m worried with.

Another older couple stood on the porch across the street and Robbins was aware of other eyes at windows, behind blinds. The visible ones seemed more concerned than angry or afraid. He wondered if the hidden eyes had something to do with the Newberry cop’s presence.

He headed up the driveway. What’s the problem?

Maybe you can talk some sense into him. She tilted her head at Ellis.

He shifted his attention to the patrol officer.

Guy’s gone. Ellis summed up the situation in two words.

George Beason wouldn’t just go off in the middle of the night. And he shore would’ve told me he was going if he did leave.

Rose Nelson wasn’t given to wild flights of fantasy. She looked at the cold face of reality every day. That she chose to meet it with love was a different story. He left last night?

Must’ve. He always up early, out on his porch reading the paper. I went down to the store at ten and his paper’s still sitting on the stairs. She pointed at the steps he’d climbed. "I knocked on the front door and he don’t answer. I went ‘round to the back and seen the window on the door broke in. That’s when I