“What are you doing here?”
A trio of senior girls walked by, their mouths open. One of them was Charla. “Hey, Ben,” she said. “I’m glad you’re back in town.” She blew him a kiss. Ben didn’t seem to notice them.
“I was wondering . . .” Ben said to Trish.
She waited. He didn’t continue. The silence stretched out. She was starting to feel a little awkward.
Finally, he said, “Maybe we could—”
“There’s my girl.” Brandon bumped through the door and crutched his way down the hall toward them. His short-sleeved t-shirt rode up into his armpits from the action of the crutches. He scowled at Ben. “I can’t leave her alone for a second without my own cousin zooming her.” Then he socked Ben in the arm. “Just kidding, man. Bring the truck to the curb. I can drop you at my place before I take Trish to the park for some ‘lunch’.” The way he waggled his brows and emphasized lunch made it clear he was talking about something other than sandwiches and chips.
Trish dropped her eyes. It was embarrassing when Brandon talked like that in front of people. Ben stuck out his hand for Brandon’s keys.
Brandon held them out, then pulled them back and lifted them shoulder high. “You wreck it, you buy it.”
“I’m cool.”
“I know, man.”
Brandon relinquished the keys. Ben stuffed them and his hand in his pocket and folded his shoulders forward. Trish caught his glance as he closed the door, and he shook his head. What was that about?
“Nice jacket.” Brandon closed in on her, easing her back against the cool tiled wall with his crutches on either side of her like a cage. He swooped down for a kiss.
“Let me see some daylight between the two of you,” Coach Lamkin said. “None of that in the school, Trish. My players aren’t rule breakers.”
Blood rushed to Trish’s cheeks. She wriggled out from between Brandon and the wall and looked at her coach. Coach Lamkin was with the guy who’d asked for directions earlier. He looked like he was trying not to laugh. “Yes, ma’am.”
The coach and the man left.
“Yes, ma’am, Coach Lamkin.” Brandon mimicked Trish’s voice softly in her ear.
Trish pulled away from him. “I can’t make her mad. She’s thinking about moving me up to varsity next year.”
Brandon’s eyebrows shot up. “You?”
“Yes. Don’t you think I’m good enough?”
“Yeah, sure. But it’s, like, a lot of pressure, you know?”
“I know. But I don’t mind.” She remembered her note and stuck it in his pocket. “Hey, I have something I need to tell you. It’s bad news.”
“What?”
“I’m basically grounded until this trial is over. My parents have everyone in town following me and watching me, and I’m not allowed to go anywhere but school. Perry, too.”
He scoffed. “Why?”
“They think we’re not safe.”
“They’re such squares. When will I get to see you?”
“School. And after it’s over.”
“Great. I basically have an imaginary girlfriend.”
Charla entered the building. Brandon glanced up. Charla looked straight down the hall, not acknowledging either of them. It made Trish uneasy, especially after she’d been so friendly to Ben. Was something going on between her and Brandon?
To get his attention back, she moved closer to him until their bodies were touching again. If the coach walked back by, she was toast. “I was going to tell you this morning. Where were you?”
“I had to see a doctor about my ankle.”
“My dad?”
“Are you kidding me? My mom would never let me go to him. She wasn’t happy he was the one who took care of it at the tournament. I went to Dr. John.”
That was the truth. Still, her fists balled up. Her dad was a great doctor. The best in the area. But she knew better than to pick a fight with Brandon about his mother. “Is your ankle okay?”
His face grew dark, and his voice was bitter. “It’ll be fine. Just enough to mess up the state tournament and my hopes for a scholarship. I’m supposed to use crutches for a few days, but I’ve about had it with them.”
It wasn’t like Brandon to be this negative. Something was off about him today. She tried to reassure him. “You’ll get a scholarship. I just know it.”
“I’d better. Not all of us have rich parents who can buy our way into whatever school and team we want.”
Trish winced. Her parents weren’t rich. And she was going to get an academic scholarship by working hard. No one was going to buy her way into anything.
He put his crutches under one arm and limped toward the exit, then turned his head over his shoulder. “Are you coming or not? Ben’s waiting. We need to book.”
Trish thought about what he’d said to Ben earlier, about lunch at the park. She knew she wasn’t supposed to leave the school. Brandon was going to pressure her to go farther than she wanted, she knew it, and, in the mood he was in, he wasn’t going to be happy when she said no. She hesitated for a moment, wrestling with her options, but the worst one was if she didn’t go and he got upset. He might even break up with her.
“Let’s split.” She trotted after him, the too-large letter jacket flapping against her thighs.
Chapter Nineteen: Harass
Buffalo, Wyoming
Monday, March 14, 1977, 1:00 p.m.
Susanne
Susanne pushed her shopping cart toward the meat department in the grocery store. It was already too full, and a wonky wheel made it hard to push. As it wobbled up to the glass display case, she heard an unwelcome smoker’s rasp.
“What’s this I hear about you begging everyone in town to protect you from my family?” Donna Lewis sneered. “That’s rich, since it’s your husband who killed my mama and my brother. Maybe I should get someone to protect my family from yours.”
Susanne fixed her eyes on the rows of meat in the display. She had to be strong and stay quiet. She couldn’t give Donna the satisfaction of a response—the woman would just use it as more ammunition later. It was hard to ignore Donna’s venom and concentrate on her selections, though. Susanne went over her shopping list in her head. Rump roast, hamburger, and a fry chicken. Rump roast, hamburger, chicken. Roast, hamburger, chicken. But there was no one to help her with them. Where was the attendant?
“Excuse me? Is there anyone here?” She dinged the bell on the countertop.
Donna moved in closer and put her hands on one side of Susanne’s cart. “Did you think I wouldn’t hear about it?” She snorted. “Not everyone on your little security posse thinks you’re as special as you do.”
Susanne’s mouth went dry, and she rang the bell again. She needed to swallow, but her throat muscles seized up and the insides of it felt stuck together. Donna’s revelation had rocked her. Someone they trusted had told Donna about the posse. Had she and Patrick put their faith in the wrong people? She couldn’t imagine any of their friends violating their confidence. Yet clearly someone had talked. She had to call Patrick and tell him. But right now, she had to keep her chin up, so Donna wouldn’t see she’d landed a blow.
The gray-haired attendant appeared, tying a soiled, bloody apron around his waist. “Sorry. I was eating lunch. How can I help you?” Susanne’s comprehension was slow with his thick accent. He was clearly of Asian descent.
Donna shook her cart. “Cat got your tongue, Sue?”
Susanne hated being called Sue. Her anger finally overcame her good intentions. She turned so fast that her ponytail swung around and hit her in the cheek. Donna’s smile was smug. She looked like one of the Hee Haw girls, with a clingy shirt tied too high and cut too low. Her hair was teased up like a beauty queen past her expiration date. Years of smoking had carved lines around her mouth. She was still a stunning woman and definitely the source of Brandon’s blond good looks, but in a way Susanne’s mother would have called, “rode hard and put up wet.”
“My mam
a taught me that if you don’t have something nice to say, you shouldn’t say anything at all.” She returned her attention to the attendant. She felt guilty that she didn’t know enough about people from Asian countries to recognize his nationality. Overcompensating for her guilt and the awkward scene with Donna, she gave him her biggest smile and most perky voice. “Thank you. I’ll have a rump roast—the biggest you have—two pounds of lean hamburger, and a large chicken cut for frying.”
“I have those for you in just a minute.”
Donna laughed. For a moment, Susanne was afraid the woman was gearing up for another verbal assault. But instead, she walked away, heels clacking on the floor. Tension ebbed from Susanne’s body, and she sighed. She couldn’t wait for this trial to be over.
“Here you go. Will that be all for you?” The attendant’s voice shocked her out of her thoughts. He was extending three brown wax paper packages across the countertop toward her.
“Thank you. That’s it.” She took the meat. Paper crinkled under her hands.
He held on to it. For a moment, four hands clutched the stack of packages. Susanne’s heart kicked up a notch.
“She not someone you want to make angry.” He nodded at the figure of Donna Lewis, now far away down the back aisle of the store.
Susanne jerked the meat from him. “Thank you.”
She tripped over her own feet in her rush to get away and would have fallen if she wasn’t leaning on her hard-to-handle cart. It jerked her to-and-fro as she hurried toward checkout. She found herself longing for the familiarity and community of her Texas home. For people she could trust. For her mother and her sister. It had been Patrick’s dream to move to Wyoming, not hers, and she’d struggled to fit in here. For a while, she’d begged to move back home. She didn’t fit in, not really, with her Southern ways and her aversion to horses, camping, hunting, and the cold. She didn’t even like to quilt, which is what the local women did all winter. That, and drink, which she wasn’t big on either. But Patrick and the kids loved it here so much, she’d relented when he offered her a chance to buy her dream house. Lately, she’d finally started making friends, too, which was a miracle.
But now, with this trial and the divided loyalties of people in town, she was feeling a renewed urge to leave. Buffalo had never felt more foreign to her.
Checkout and the walk to the Suburban were a blur, as was helping the bag boy load the groceries. She tipped him on autopilot, not even glancing at his face. Her mind was fifteen hundred miles south. She climbed into the big vehicle—only then noticing her boots were sopping wet from the melt—and pulled out of her parking space.
Just before she exited the lot, a blue Volkswagen bus cut sideways in front of her and stopped. She slammed on her brakes, accustomed to winter conditions and expecting to slide, then grateful for the sun and slushy snow when she didn’t.
The other vehicle didn’t move.
Susanne peered into it at the other driver. It was a man, pasty, with a stringy dishwater mustache and shoulder-length hair that matched. Like a sickly lookalike for Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees. What was the matter with him?
He said something. She couldn’t hear him, but she was still able to read his lips. “Go home to Texas.” His lopsided smile was sinister.
Then he sprayed slush from beneath his tires and cut into traffic heading west. Horns honked, and one truck had to cut sharply away to avoid hitting him.
Susanne gripped her steering wheel, hands trembling and her breathing shallow. This couldn’t have been random, could it? It had to have been one of Kemecke’s people. Forcing herself to breath deeper and more slowly, she calmed herself down. Behind her, a horn blared. She had planned to turn west toward home, but that was the same direction the van was headed. She would go east instead, toward downtown.
She accelerated and turned left. The honking stopped. She had no idea where she was headed, but she turned onto Main and saw an open space in front of the Big Horn Café, the only coffee shop and bakery in town. Coffee always helped. She parallel parked. After turning off the engine, she did a visual search around the Suburban, looking for signs of more trouble. There was no one around, so she got out and darted inside the shop, closing the door behind her and leaning against it.
The shop was small and poorly lit, holding only three round tables in front of the pastry display and cash register. Brightly colored community event posters covered one wall, and a collection of paintings on sections of tree trunk covered another. The paintings were whimsical—homages to coffee in loopy cursive strokes over bow-lipped women holding steaming mugs. Behind the counter, a tea pot whistled. The scents of coffee, cinnamon, and fresh-baked cookies wrapped her in a comforting embrace. Susanne exhaled. Coming here was the right decision.
“Susanne Flint?” The female voice addressing her was friendly.
Once bitten, twice shy, though. Susanne raised her eyes warily. At the pastry display stood a sturdy woman with a low bun, twenty years Susanne’s senior. She recognized her. The woman worked as a nurse at the hospital. Susanne didn’t know her very well, but Patrick spoke highly of her, which wasn’t the case with all of his co-workers. In fact, the bad blood between the Flints and Donna Lewis hadn’t started with her brothers or even the death of her mother. It had arisen when Donna had been fired from the hospital. Patrick had caught her stealing painkillers and turned her in. She’d never forgiven him for it.
Susanne wracked her brain for a name. Katie. No. Cora. No. Dang it. It was on the tip of her tongue. She was going to think Susanne was nuts, though, standing unspeaking at the door like she was barricading it from a horde of marauders.
Susanne roused herself and walked toward her. “Hello. How are you?”
“Can’t complain. Just treating myself to a sugary late lunch on my afternoon off. Isn’t this weather beautiful?”
“It is. I’m so ready for winter to be over.”
The woman winked. “I think we can enjoy a short break from it, anyway. I was just about to sit down. Would you care to join me after you order?”
Susanne didn’t usually socialize with women from the hospital, but she didn’t want to leave the sanctuary of the shop. It was too small to stay if she rebuffed the offer. “Thank you. That would be lovely.”
The woman walked to a table. Susanne eyed the selections. Streusel muffins, chocolate chip cookies, lemon scones. Cinnamon rolls. Pound cake. She smiled. She could never resist pound cake.
“May I help you, dear?” A flour-smudged face smiled over the case at her. Apple cheeks, pink lips, and pearly white pin curls under a jaunty black beret. “I just brewed Earl Grey if you’d care for some.”
“Coffee and pound cake for me.”
“Cream and sugar?”
“Yes, please.”
“Plain or chocolate marbled?”
“Chocolate marbled.”
“Will that be all?”
Patrick and the kids would enjoy cinnamon rolls for breakfast tomorrow. She ordered a dozen. “How much?”
The woman mouthed figures as she calculated in her head. She named a total, then wiped her hands on a dirty white apron and adjusted her hat. After she’d taken Susanne’s money, she brought a teacup and saucer to the counter along with a bear claw on a bright green Fiesta Ware plate. “Kim, your order’s ready.”
Kim! That was it. Susanne stuffed a dollar in the tip jar. Kim ferried her drink and pastry to the table, and Susanne joined her a few minutes later with her own.
“Wes told me he’s helping you guys with security.” Kim ripped off a hunk of bear claw and popped it in her mouth.
Susanne cut a bite of cake. Did everyone know about their posse? There was no point in denying it. Besides, Patrick thought of Kim as one of the good guys. “Um, yes.”
Kim chewed, swallowed, then sipped her coffee. “I figured that was why he was parked outside.”
Susanne looked out the window, which was hard to do through floofy white curtains and lettering painted on the glass. Sure eno
ugh, Wes was parked in front of the Suburban in the big green International Harvester Travelall that he called “Gussie.” Gussie was the closest thing Wes had to a long-term relationship with a female. He saw her looking at him and waved.
Seeing him there restored a little of her peace, and she waved back. “Yes. He’s good people.” She ate her bite of cake. The texture was perfect—moist and dense—and the butter flavor layered with dark chocolate was so delicious she had to stifle a moan.
“He’s been so kind to me ever since Jeannie died.”
Susanne covered her mouth. “Jeannie Renkin?”
“Yes. She and I have been best friends since Sheridan College. She was a nurse, before she married the judge, although he wasn’t a judge yet back then.”
“I didn’t know. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” Kim leaned in. “I know you have to testify in his courtroom, and I’m sorry.” She wrinkled her nose like she smelled a polecat. “I tried for Jeannie’s sake, but I can’t say I like him much.”
Susanne thought about the way the judge had treated Patrick, the blackmailer conversation Patrick had overheard, and her own impression of Renkin. She wasn’t going to talk out of school, but she didn’t think much of him either. “Oh?” She sipped coffee, ate more cake, and gave Kim a chance to elaborate.
“He wasn’t a good husband. He cheated on Jeannie, over and over.”
“Really?” Susanne was honestly surprised. “With whom?”
Kim lowered her voice. “Well, last year it was Donna Lewis, but you didn’t hear that from me.”
Donna Lewis. Susanne already knew the woman had low moral standards, so she wasn’t shocked, although she was a little scandalized. She couldn’t stand cheaters. A nurse in Fort Washakie had made a play for Patrick a few months before, and Susanne had been tempted toward violence. Luckily for her, Patrick was ten times the man Harold Renkin was. “While Donna was still working at the hospital?”
“Yes. And it was hard for me to keep my thoughts about it to myself around Donna, let me tell you.”
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