October Twilight (A Year in Paradise Book 10)

by Hildred Billings

  Sometimes Candace longed for the structure of big city police stations, but then she remembered it meant working with more numbskulls and answering to more dunderheads, and she was fine with the several hundred that called Paradise Valley their home.

  “The kid’s gotta talk,” Peterson said with a shrug. He didn’t thank Candace for the coffee. “That’s all there is to it. We don’t have much evidence to go off outside of his confession. The witnesses are sketchy at best.” He referred to Leigh-Ann Hardy, Carrie Sage, and Christina Rath, three high-school girls who were already up to way too much trouble in their senior year. I saw both Leigh-Ann and Christina grow up around here. Carrie was brand-new to town. Candace kicked herself for believing the rumors about the troublemaking “Rolltide Ruffian” as some had taken to calling her, due to her Alabaman origins. Turned out the closest Carrie had come to involvement was living in the same house as the perpetrator. “What has the mayor’s daughter been saying?”

  Candace sighed, not because she didn’t want to talk about Christina, but because she still couldn’t believe that the mayor’s daughter was wrapped up in something like this. She’s a bit of a moody teen, of course, but you’d think she’d have more common sense after seeing what her mother puts up with. Mayor Rath wasn’t new to her job. She had been the mayor for seven years. Or was it more by now? Either way, it was most of Christina’s life. She knew better!

  “She’s the worst witness, if you ask me. According to everyone, including the Musgrave boy, she had just started dating him a couple of days before. The statements corroborate. Dillon Musgrave told her he had something cool to show her, they drove out to the Connors’ land, and before Christina knew what was happening, he lit the whole thing on fire. No accelerant.”

  “No accelerant! How did it burn so quickly?”

  “Like it says in the marshal’s report,” Candace said with a nod to one of the stacks of paper, “the structure was old and hardly sound. There was enough termite rot in there to bring the whole thing down eventually. We’re lucky we haven’t had kids crushed to death in some of the barns around here.”

  “What were those other girls doing, huh? Absolutely no good, in a town like this.”

  Candace pretended she hadn’t heard that. Like many of the old guard around the county, some only put on airs that they “tolerated” the queer contingent. Paradise Valley had a long and varied history as a lesbian commune-turned “real” small town, but there were still those from other parts that turned their noses and spoke with a sneer. Candace had lived there most of her life. She was used to it. That didn’t mean she indulged it.

  “The other girls confess to a little nookie, yeah.” Candace could hardly say that without laughing. Like I can talk! What do you think I was doing at that age? Making love in a mansion? Everyone, and that meant everyone, knew that if you were a teenager who wanted some private time with your girl, you found yourselves an empty barn for an hour or two. More comfortable than necking in the backseat of a car. We’re not supposed to let them do it, but most farmers look the other way as long as they’re not causing any problems. That had been the silent agreement until Dillon Musgrave and his buddies ruined everything that past summer. Six barns gone in nearly as many weeks. Go figure! I might have lost my own virginity in one of those barns…

  “Nookie.” Peterson scoffed. “That’s one way to put it. Well, can’t stop kids from having their fun, but we have to round up these other firebugs before they burn down this whole town. Who knows? Maybe they’ll take their fun to another town and be their problem for a change.”

  “As long as it’s not in your county, right?”

  “Damn right.”

  Candace sipped her coffee. The buzz continued to throb in her veins. “Maybe it’s time we call in some help, Sheriff. If they’re from Portland, then this goes beyond us, anyway.”

  “To hell with that. I don’t care if they’re from Portland or Timbuktu, if they’re committing crimes in my county, I want to take care of them myself. You know what those Portland boys do? They roll through like they down the damn place. That’s assuming you can convince someone to get their asses down here! They’re stretched thinner than we are. Do you know how many times I’ve asked for another officer in our ranks? Can you imagine if I had a proper detective for once?”

  “I know I don’t look like Sherlock Holmes, sir, but I’m not too bad at puzzling things out.” Candace hoped he knew. They had been working together for as long as she had a badge.

  “You want to take responsibility for this case, Greenhill?”

  “Now, I didn’t say that…”

  Peterson snorted into his coffee. “Between this mess and the serial flasher over in Erin’s Drop, I’m having a helluva year. Except that flasher isn’t destroying property and acting a proper menace. Just landing himself on the sex offenders’ list.”

  Candace’s cell phone rang. She was about to send it to voicemail when she saw her wife’s name. “One second, sir,” she said. “I have to take this.”

  He waved her off as she stepped away. Candace didn’t have a chance to greet her wife, however. Sally was already on it.

  “When are you coming home?”

  Candace had to stop and collect her bearings. “Hopefully soon, hon. We’re kinda tied up here investigatin’ the arsons.”

  “Come home soon, for the love of God. The kids are driving me nuts and they really need their other mom to run them breathless so I can get dinner started.”

  “I…”

  “Please, Candy. I’m going nuts! Do you know what they were doing in the store? Throwing oranges! We’ll be lucky if I’m ever allowed to shop there again!”

  Five minutes later, Candace returned to the table, where her boss finished his coffee.

  “What your kids do this time?” he asked.

  “Something about throwing oranges.”

  “Better than apples, I guess.”

  Candace sat down. Instead of mulling over her own children’s actions, she focused on the misdeeds and issues of other’s.

  Chapter 3

  SALLY

  The kids did not go to bed quietly. One would have thought that, after tearing up half the town and eating a large dinner of carbs, the twins would have fallen asleep on the couch long before they made it to their baths. The baby was the only one who conked out as soon as Sally put her down. Tucker begged to stay up an hour later since it was Saturday night and he wanted to finish a movie on TV, but Candace hit the “Record” button on the remote and told him it would be waiting for him the next day. He knew the drill: he couldn’t stay up later on the weekends until he was ten. Only a little over a year to go for the resident third grader.

  Aside from giving the final word on their son’s going to bed, Candace’s big contribution to bedtime was checking in on the twins to give them kisses. By then, they had already been bathed, dressed in their PJs, and dragged to bed by the birth giver. Me. That’s me. I’m the one who carried these kids and squeezed them out of my hoo-ha! Candace had paid for the honor, much like she paid for everything around there, but in the true fashion of a parenting-dichotomy, she got the “easy” part of managing their behavior.

  “Sorry to hear they were such hellions today.” Candace slumped on the edge of the bed, the mattress sagging beneath her muscular body. “Must be that change-of-season feeling. People act really weird around this time of year, especially those that don’t know how to control their behavior so well. Kinda amazing we haven’t had a bunch of arrests lately. Usually, I’ve got at least two people in lockup by early October.”

  Sally climbed out of her flannel pants and reveled in standing in front of the oscillating fan in the corner of the room. The backs of her sweaty thighs demanded some moisture-free reprieves before they finally hit the shower. I get a whole ten minutes of hot water by this time. Hardly enough time to properly bathe after a long day of child-wrangling and errand-running. I’m going to bed stinky. That’s all there is to it. Candace hit the sho
wer as soon as she came home. Then the kids took their turns, including a rush for the baby as Sally held her head out the bathroom door and yelled at Candace to check on dinner. The garlic breadsticks were half-burnt because Candace hadn’t heard her.

  “The kids act like that all the time,” she said, turning to her wife to dry off the backs of her thighs. “The older the twins get, the more ramped up they get. You ask me, they’ve completely realized that they’re different genders and are internalizin’ that our culture expects them to treat each other differently because of it!”

  “What are you on about?” Candace pulled on her house socks, the ones with the little nubs on the bottom that kept her from slipping on the hardwood floors. Their Victorian-inspired house on Florida Street was purchased with all the original fixings, including hardwood floors, wood stove, and brick fireplace. They had planned on putting in some cozy carpeting before Tucker was born. After his appearance, however, they were grateful to have such easy-to-clean flooring. Toddler-Tucker threw up. A lot. “They’re kids! The only thing they’re internalizing is their hunger for more tussling. I’m telling you, Paige is gonna be a helluva track star one day. Maybe cross-country, if we get her outside more. Dunno about Gage yet. Clark High has really revitalized the co-ed soccer program in recent years. I should start kicking the ball around with them more often…”

  Sally rolled her eyes. She loved her wife. Truly, she did. Candace was the epitome of good people. She was as strict as she was soft-hearted when it came to dealing with messes, be they the townsfolk getting into trouble, or their own kids banging each other’s heads into the wall. She was good with money and wasn’t afraid to ask for promotions and raises – or, Heaven forbid, better benefits for her family. She had proposed to Sally by taking her hand on the sidewalk and declaring, “There is no one I want to make a family with more than you, Sally Reynolds. Be my wife, and let’s do this thing.”

  Candace had her frustrating sides, of course. She was a single-minded woman. Some would say that made her simple, but that was an insult to her overall intelligence. You have to be single-minded doing her job, I guess. Focus. That’s what it was called. Candace could turn on her tunnel vision as easily as she turned on the sirens to her cruiser when she saw a drunk driver weaving across Main Street. (Which happened more than the sheriff’s office wanted to admit.) Yet what good was that when Sally tried to tell her what was going on with their kids? When she said, “They’re internalizing shitty gender norms,” she meant that the twins had gone from playing with the same toys to Gage declaring he didn’t want to touch a Barbie again. Which greatly upset Paige, who was counting on him to help in the Barbie Doll Hair Salon last week.

  It was inevitable. Sally knew this, because she saw the way kids played with each other. She saw the cartoons they watched and heard what the other parents told their own children. For every mom who said, “There’s no difference between pink and blue, Johnny! Just be you!” there was another who totally rolled over when the mother-in-law screeched that Johnny should never, ever play house!

  Did Candace see that, though? She saw some of the end products when she rounded up rowdy teens at the overlooks, or when they went to high school softball games where some of the boys still made fun of the star female players for “throwing like girls.” Granted, with Clark High’s championship team, that meant a softball to an asshole’s face…

  “I’m so tired.” Sally shuffled toward the bathroom, her underwear sagging against her thighs and her pullover drooping against her shoulders. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do once the baby is running around.”

  “Tucker is all about minding the others. He’s gonna take over your job one day!”

  Sighing, Sally slumped against the master bathroom door. “He’s not gonna be interested in that once he’s a little older, and right now the twins are as likely to get him wrapped up in mischief as he is to tell them to knock it off. Plus, the twins are getting good at undermining authority. Even their kindergarten teacher has told me that…”

  “What do the teachers around here know about twins, huh?” Candace scoffed, her body hitting the bed. “How many of them do they get, hm? Like one pair every generation? Get outta here. Twins have different dynamics. They got their own language.”

  “They get plenty of twins in an IVF-town like this one, Candy. There’s a pair of twins in Tucker’s class.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Triplets in the middle school. Gay moms who used IVF. It’s the new age.”

  “Huh.”

  Sally finally took off her sweater and tossed it into the hamper across the room. She missed, and the fabric crumpled against the wall.

  “By the way,” she continued, “we need to talk about the party next weekend.”

  She heard Candace sighing all the way in the other room. “I told you I’d get the day off, promise! Peterson knows it’s the twins’ birthday!”

  Sally turned on the shower. The water was cold, although she cranked up the hot. This is what I get for going last in a family of six. “It’s not only about you gettin’ the day off. I need to make sure I’ve got all the ingredients for the cake! That means going to Wal-Mart and gettin’ some pans, because I gotta make them some Falcon fighter or whatever it is from Star Wars!”

  “Millennium Falcon?”

  Sally threw her bra out the bathroom door. “Yeah, the Harrison Ford and Chewie thing.” She could feel Candace shuddering in the bedroom. The woman was enthralled when A New Hope came out, and she cried when Disney brought a new trilogy for their kids to grow up on.

  The hot water finally arrived. As soon as she felt it, Sally leaped into the shower. Instead of waiting for her shower to end before continuing their conversation, she yelled her side.

  “Can you go online and find us a pinata from Star Wars? I tried looking for some on Amazon the other day but didn’t know what was actually Star Wars or the other Star thing.”

  “The other star thing?” Candace shouted back, voice carrying through glass walls.

  “You know what I mean! The thing with Spock!”

  “How the hell did I end up in a marriage with you, woman? Can’t keep your Star Wars and your Star Trek apart!”

  “I ain’t talkin’ about no Star Trek!”

  “You just were!”

  Sally snatched her bar of soap off its ledge. “Could you please help get some stuff for the birthday party? I’m gonna be up to my ass in sequins making their Halloween costumes! You ain’t gonna be around on Halloween so I have to do all that myself.” Her anxiety peaked from thinking about it. At least Halloween was understandable. Candace worked nonstop on that day. When the kids weren’t pulling vandalistic pranks, the adults were drinking too much and getting behind the wheels of their cars.

  Except that meant Sally needed help with the twins’ party. Candace wasn’t completely absolved from menial parenting tasks because she worked a tough job. She could get out a couple times of year, like for Halloween and St. Patrick’s Day, but she better put in the time in between!

  “I will take care of it, don’t worry!”

  Sally barely had time to rinse off the soap before the cold water hit. She hurried to turn off the shower before she started shaking. Only then did she realize she forgot a towel.

  “I’m gonna make you a list,” she insisted, as soon as she saw Candace lying across their bed. Sally stepped into the bedroom, naked and wet, and fished for a towel from the hamper. I plan on heading to Wal-Mart around Wednesday while the kids are at school and I only got the baby to worry about, so…”

  “Yeah, no worries.”

  “I’m serious.” Sally wrapped the towel around her and flopped down next to her wife. “I’m up to my ass in kid crap. When Daisy starts running around, I… I dunno what I’m gonna do. I’m not getting any younger. I’m already winded by the time we leave the store. I…”

  Should she say it? Should she say what she had been thinking for the past few months?

  “I’m st
arting to wonder if having a fourth baby was the right thing to do.”

  “Now, now…” Candace turned toward her, that tousled, graying hair making her look an age older than she did in her uniform. “You said so yourself when we decided to have one more baby. You said that you could handle it, and that God told you it was the right thing to do. You always wanted four kids, Sal. I’ve always been on board with four and no more.”

  Lord, it always tickled her that it rhymed…

  “Daisy’s gonna be the baby forever. It’s gonna be fine. You took care of twin toddlers, you can take care of one more.”

  At least she didn’t say, “You kinda signed up for it, and she’s here now, so do it.” That’s what Sally told herself when she stared at her know-it-all son, her wild-thing twins, and her screaming baby. Half the town ran in the other direction when they approached. Sally barely noticed it anymore.

  Did Candace know how bad it got sometimes?

  No, she had to stop thinking like that. Candace had a tough, dangerous job that paid their bills and allowed Sally to stay home and have her dream existence. Dreams aren’t always rosy, though. They’re always work. You gotta keep working. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. Tucker would get more mature with age and take up the mantle of strong, big brother. The twins would mellow out when they reached grade school. Everyone was so used to babies now that Daisy was hardly a problem. The worst they had to worry about was her being too spoiled!

  We are a unit. We have our roles. This is how it works. Even though Sally was exhausted. Even though it felt like the whole weight of the family was on her shoulders. Even though there were people in that town who saw Candace more than her own family did. Even though people gave Sally crap for the behavior of her children, not that she could do much more than she already did.