He Loves Lucy

by Ann Yost

  “Sure. I want people to know what I can do.” She heard the defensiveness in the words.

  “What people?”

  “The whole world. Everybody.”

  “You mean everybody in Eden. You worryin’ about that screw-up thing? Honey, you’ve got to learn it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks.”

  She made a face. “You don’t know what it’s like to have people expecting you to mess up, Ed. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had people elbow me in the ribs and say, ‘Lucy, you got some ’splainin’ to do.’”

  Ed smiled. “It’s just because they love you.”

  “Huh. That makes it worse. It makes me feel like a baby, like my screw-ups are cute.”

  “Can’t get no respect?”

  She knew he was teasing her but he wasn’t wrong.

  “Self-respect, Luce,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about. When you figure that out, you’ll be grown up. Just do a good job of covering the story.”

  Lucy’s heart thumped hard. She wasn’t worried about covering the story. How hard could it be? Who, what, where, when, and why, right? She was a tad nervous about stalking Jake Langley. She smiled brightly and picked up the phone. Homer informed her the sheriff was out and wouldn’t be back but he filled her in on everything he knew, except the name of the victim. As soon as she hung up, she called the editor in Hartford and arranged for the freelance assignment. A moment later her phone rang again.

  This time it was Hallie. The sisters-in-law had developed the habit of taking Cam’s daughter Daisy and Hallie’s infant son, Robert to Little Joe’s Tavern and Pizza Emporium on Friday nights to meet Jake’s twins accompanied by Mrs. Peach.

  “Mrs. P. called to say the twins want to see us,” Hallie said, “and Robert’s got a cold. Since the weather’s getting bad again, I don’t want to take him out.” Lucy understood the dilemma. Hallie was fiercely protective of her newly adopted son but she didn’t want Daisy, who was having trouble adjusting to the newcomer, to miss out on her weekly treat. “Think you could take Daisy alone tonight?”

  Lucy wrinkled her nose. She’d just as soon not be reminded of how much she missed Sam and Lillie and their stubborn father but this wasn’t about her. And, anyway, she’d have to start hanging out around Jake tomorrow.

  “Of course I can take her. I’ll pick her up at six.”

  Chapter Three

  Cold winds swept into western Maine on the heels of the thunderstorms and the temperature dipped into the thirties. Lucy threw on a pair of worn jeans and tennis shoes, a paint-spattered U-Conn sweatshirt and a quilted vest. She ran a comb through her short, dark curls and washed her face but didn’t bother with makeup. The kids and Mrs. Peach wouldn’t care how glamorous she looked. Daisy, however, looked adorable in a purple sweater and matching corduroy pants. Her blonde curls danced around a beautiful face only slightly marred by a sulkily, protruding lower lip.

  “I hate Robert,” the five-year-old confided, as Lucy buckled her into her car seat.

  There was no question that Daisy’s world had taken a direct hit with the arrival of the new baby.

  “I’m pretty sure Robert doesn’t hate you. I saw him smile at you the other day.”

  “Asia says that’s just gas.”

  “Maybe. But I know he likes it when he sees you and Wilbur. He always kicks his feet.” Wilbur was Daisy’s extremely pampered potbellied pig.

  “Robert likes Hallie best.”

  “Well, sure,” Lucy said, not thinking. “Hallie’s his mom.”

  Daisy’s small face puckered.

  “I don’t got a mom,” she announced, as if it were news. “Sam and Lillie doesn’t got one neither.”

  Oh Lord. Lucy knew she should have spoken more carefully. Neither Daisy nor Sam nor Lillie had ever known their mothers but that didn’t make the lack less painful. Lucy sifted her fingers through the pale ringlets.

  “Next year I’m gonna take ballet lessons like Lillie,” Daisy said. “And you can put bells on the shoes so I can shoot ’em at everybody. Especially Robert.”

  “Of course,” Lucy murmured, hoping that sometime in the next twelve months Daisy would have adjusted to the baby. She parked on Main Street in front of the eatery and they hurried inside, luxuriating in the warm air, the smell of pizza and the clinking and clanking of pinball machines.

  “Luuucy!”

  Lillie’s piping voice lifted above the din and a moment later she and her brother launched themselves at their former nanny, each of them claiming one jeans-clad leg.

  “We all missed you,” Lillie spoke into the denim.

  “Especially Lucy, Junior,” Sam added. “And Daddy.”

  Lucy knew the child’s comment reflected his own feelings not those of his father but her heart thumped anyway.

  “I missed you guys, too.”

  Lillie let go first. She grabbed Daisy’s hand. “C’mon,” she said. “Let’s go play skee ball.”

  Daisy looked at her aunt. “Can I?”

  “Sure, honey.” Lucy dug into her purse and brought out a handful of quarters. “I’ll just go hang out with Mrs. Peach at the table.”

  “Mrs. P. isn’t here,” Sam said. “We comed with Daddy.”

  Daddy. Lucy felt her breath stop in her chest. She looked across the room and there he was, standing by the table, looking breathtakingly tall and broad-shouldered, his sculpted features molded into a stern mask. Not for the first time she wondered about his late wife. What had possessed the woman to leave a man like Jake, much less her adorable children? Lucy realized, belatedly, that the emerald eyes were focused on her and that the sheriff was not smiling.

  She straightened her spine and tried not to take it personally. Jake had never wanted her around and the mutual awareness that had made her heart sing had been a burr under his saddle. Maybe it was a good thing she looked like a refugee from an all-night study session. He wouldn’t have to be irritated by her presence tonight.

  Resigned to an hour of awkwardness, Lucy threaded her way through the tables of families. It wasn’t until she reached Jake that she realized he had traded in his khaki uniform shirt for a moss-green pullover. The color brought out the gold flecks in his green eyes. He had the longest eyelashes she’d ever seen on a man. Often they had the effect of softening his severe expression. This was not one of those times. She noticed the scent of strawberry shortcake shampoo was gone, replaced by something dark and sexy. Calvin Klein?

  “Good evening, Lucy,” he said, oddly formal. He gestured to a chair then seated himself next to a woman she didn’t know. “This is Marilyn Hart.”

  Lucy felt her jaw drop. He was on a date?

  The woman’s lush mouth stretched wide revealing what had to be double rows of gleaming white teeth. The short, sleek style of her blond-streaked hair had come from somewhere more sophisticated than the Pink Poodle and she wore a form-fitting mauve cashmere sweater that hugged her ample curves. A strand of luminescent pearls rivaled the glow of her teeth.

  “Marilyn just took over Staghorn Realty.”

  Lucy’s eyes widened. “Staghorn Realty? What happened to Hank?”

  Marilyn’s laugh sounded like dozens of silvery bells, light, tinkly, practiced.

  “Hank decided to spend the rest of his adolescence in the Bahamas,” she said. “He’s my ex, you know. Several years back.”

  Of course. Hank’s last name was Hart. He wasn’t a native but he had sold houses in Eden for at least twenty years.

  “You couldn’t have been married long.”

  “Longest eighteen months of my life,” Marilyn said. “Even though it was a long-distance marriage. I stayed in Augusta.”

  A horrifying thought struck Lucy. She gaped at Jake.

  “Oh my gosh! Does this mean you’re selling the house?”

  The green eyes squinted, dangerously.

  “This isn’t a business dinner,” Marilyn said, with a coy smile. “Jake was nice enough to rescue me from a lonely evening with a frozen diet dinn
er of shrimp marinara.” She smiled and the overhead lights bounced off the gleam of her smile. So it was a date. A date with a real-estate-peddling shark. “The evening’s purely social,” Marilyn added, no doubt wanting to make sure Lucy understood where things stood.

  Fantastic. She’d get to spend the evening watching Hank Hart’s ex audition for the role of the second Mrs. Jake Langley.

  “Lucy,” Jake said, baring his teeth at her, “was our temporary nanny.”

  Lucy had to give him credit. He’d managed to marginalize her in five words. More teeth showed and Marilyn’s beautifully lined eyes flashed as she correctly interpreted Jake’s message: No competition here.

  “I was just helping out while Mrs. Peach was away,” Lucy said, through her teeth. “I started a new job this afternoon. At the Eden Excelsior.”

  “Ah, a news hen,” Marilyn said.

  Jake snorted. “News hen? You must be taking over for Tammy Winslow. Homer told me she made J.V.”

  Tammy was the deputy’s niece. Eden didn’t really need a newspaper, not with the efficiency of the grapevine.

  “I’ll take on some of Tammy’s duties, of course, but I’ll also be covering the murder out at the rez.”

  Jake scowled but Marilyn spoke before he could open his mouth.

  “Oh, I heard about that. It was a developer from Bangor, right? Nate Packer?”

  Lucy held very still. Nate Packer was the murder victim? Nate Packer, her brother’s partner? She realized she’d never even asked who had been killed.

  “I must say I envy you getting to take care of such lovely children,” Marilyn said, obviously wanting to make the most of her time with Jake and savvy enough to know the kids were the way to his heart. “Sam and Lillie are beautiful.” She flashed a disarmingly flirtatious grin at the sheriff. “They look so much like their father.”

  The realtor exuded come-hither sparks. There was no question in Lucy’s mind that Marilyn Hart wanted Jake Langley. Not a big surprise. Who wouldn’t want the sexy sheriff?

  “I should take off,” she said. “And let you two be alone.”

  “Nonsense.” Jake’s voice was louder than usual. “I’m sure Marilyn wouldn’t want to miss a chance to eat with Eden’s Lois Lane. And, anyway, we’ve ordered enough pizza for an army.”

  The realtor excused herself to freshen up.

  “She seems nice,” Lucy said, after she’d left.

  “Hmmm,” Jake said, noncommittally. He seemed disinclined to discuss his date.

  “Hey, Luce.” Janie Chadwick, Little Joe’s premier waitress, plunked a steaming metal tray of pizza on the red-and-white checked oilcloth. A cheerleader for Eden Consolidated who had graduated a year after Lucy, Janie was short with a trim athletic figure, a blonde ponytail and an oversized personality. “When I saw the big man come in I figured you’d be on his trail so I decorated half of one pie with mushrooms the way you like it.” She turned to Jake. “What’s up with the old broad, Sheriff? You double-dipping tonight?”

  Lucy braced herself for an explosion but Jake’s voice was gently teasing.

  “If you want a tip you’d better watch your tongue.”

  Janie leaned over the man’s broad shoulder until her breasts were against his back and her cute little nose was next to his.

  “I’d much rather watch your tongue, Sheriff,” she drawled.

  “Scamp,” Jake said.

  Indignation rose in Lucy’s throat as she watched Janie’s swishing hips disappear into the crowd. Jake had made it crystal clear that Lucy at age twenty-two was too young for a thirty-five-year-old man and yet he’d been flirting with Janie who was even younger. What a hypocrite!

  Jake focused on separating the pieces of pizza and plopping them onto the paper plates. He didn’t look at Lucy.

  “I know what you’re thinking but it’s different with Janie.”

  “Different how?”

  “You know how.”

  His voice dropped into the low, intimate register that turned her insides into a Ferris wheel. She supposed it was a compliment of sorts. He was free to flirt with Janie because there was no chemistry. Did he feel the sparks with the oh-so-eligible Marilyn Hart? She was certainly old enough, Lucy thought, uncharitably. Probably five or six years older than Jake.

  “Speaking of age, isn’t Mrs. Hart a little long-in-the-tooth?”

  Jake glared at her. “Stay out of my business, Lucy.”

  There was no way to make an early exit because Daisy was having so much fun with Sam and Lillie. Lucy devoted herself to the children as soon as they returned to the table. She tried to ignore the sound of Marilyn’s pleasant small talk punctuated with suggestive hints. It was depressingly obvious that, if nothing else, the sheriff had hit the sexual jackpot.

  Lucy felt a physical pain in her chest when she said goodbye to the twins. She’d opt out from these evenings in the future. It was just too painful to spend time with the family she’d grown to love, the family that would never be hers. She hoped Marilyn Hart was fond of white mice.

  “Lillie thinks her daddy is gonna marry that lady with the teeth,” Daisy said, while Lucy tucked her into bed. “I wish my daddy would marry someone.”

  Lucy kissed the little girl’s cheek. “He will. Just give him time to find the right lady.”

  The child looked solemn. “Then Robert won’t be the only one with a mom!”

  Lucy went down the back staircase intending to head out to her apartment but she stopped when she noticed the strip of light under the door of her father’s study. Baz and Hallie were upstairs with Robert. It had to be Cam. She knocked on the door.

  Cameron Outlaw, a decade older than Lucy, was a hair over six feet tall, broad-shouldered but slender. His eyes were the same sky-blue as Lucy’s but his were more striking because of his natural tan, his lean face and his angular features. His sudden warm smile spelled danger to any nearby female heart.

  Tonight there were dark crescents under his eyes and grim lines bracketed his thin lips.

  “I heard about your partner,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks.”

  Cam had stood when she entered, an example of the excellent manners they’d both learned from their father’s housekeeper, Asia. He motioned for Lucy to take a seat on the old leather sofa that sagged in the middle where their late father had taken so many catnaps, while he settled himself behind the big walnut desk and dropped his head against the backrest of the leather-padded chair. Just for a moment he closed his eyes. He looked exhausted.

  “I’m working for Ed Stiles,” she said, knowing Cam would wonder if Ed had lost his mind hiring Calamity Lucy. “He’s letting me cover the murder.”

  Cam’s eyes snapped open and he sat up abruptly. She braced herself for the inevitable protest.

  “Good for you, Squirt.” He slid long fingers through his thick, black hair, “guess you’ll be writing about me.”

  The warm pleasure triggered by his initial reaction disappeared as sarcasm entered his voice.

  “I wasn’t just his partner, you know,” Cam went on, “I was the last person to see him alive and thus, the chief suspect.”

  Lucy’s heart jumped into her throat and she jumped out of her chair. “Is that what Jake said? That’s just plain ridiculous, Cam. You’d never kill a man. I mean, you’re a father for goodness sake.”

  “Calm down, Luce.” He motioned her back to her seat. “I haven’t been charged or anything. But there’s only a forty-five-minute gap between when I argued with him outside the Tribal Council meeting and the time he died. Whoever killed him had to have worked fast and been more than a little lucky.”

  “But you were on your way home. You wouldn’t have had time to kill Packer. All you have to do is have Hallie or Baz tell Jake what time you walked in the door.”

  She waited for him to agree with her but he was silent.

  “Cam?”

  “I didn’t leave the rez right away,” he said. The words were quiet and his sentences uncharacter
istically disjointed. He was obviously reluctant to explain. Why?

  “I was angry because Packer had signed contracts for inferior materials. I kept imagining the whole structure caving in from the weight of snow on the roof. We yelled at each other outside the community center and then I took off. I drove around the rez for a while, trying to decide what to do. Finally I got sleepy and pulled off into a lay-by of some sort. It was dawn when I woke up.”

  She stared at him.

  “You didn’t come home? You always come home. Because of Daisy.”

  Color flared on his razor-sharp cheekbones.

  “Asia’s here, as well as Baz and Hallie.”

  Lucy searched her memory. She’d lived in the house for several months after college and she couldn’t remember even one instance of Cam staying out all night.

  “You said you got sleepy but the rez is only fifteen miles from here. Surely you could have made it.”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t want to risk an accident.”

  “So you slept in the car all night.”

  He said nothing.

  “Cam, that’s a horrible alibi.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  She tried to think. “It won’t matter in the long run. I mean, Jake will find out who did kill Packer. You can’t be a serious suspect. Shoot-a-mile! You’re a pillar of society, Eden’s golden boy. Probably Jake won’t even ask for an alibi.”

  “Calm down, Squirt. You’re right about one thing. Jake won’t be able to prove I killed anyone. I’m not worried about it.”

  “Of course not,” Lucy said, bracingly. “I’m not worried, either.” But she was worried. Cam was lying about something.

  “How did Packer die, anyway?”

  Cam’s blue eyes were level on her face.

  “He was shot. With a bow and arrow.”

  Lucy’s heart jerked as she held his gaze. Neither bothered to mention the fact that, at one time, Cam had been one of the best archers in New England.

  “A bow and arrow.” Lucy frowned. “That’s an unusual way to commit murder.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was the fight really about inferior building materials?”

  Her brother let his head drop back again. He closed his eyes. “That was part of it. The jackass was dealing with mob-connected subcontractors, too.”