by Meg Muldoon
“No, no,” I said, feeling my cheeks grow red. “I’m okay. Just… everybody go back to what you were doing.”
But I didn’t have to tell Clay to go back to what he was doing.
He was already at the bar, slamming back another whiskey.
I felt a quick anger surge up inside of me.
I went over to him and quietly whispered in his ear.
“I need to see you in the back,” I said between gritted teeth. “Now.”
He looked up at me, giving me a smug little smile.
“Look lady,” he said, slurring a little bit. “You’re pretty, but you’re practically a married woman the way Fletcher talks. I think you owe it to him not to hit on his buddies.”
I balled my hands up in fists at my sides to keep from reaching over and grabbing a hold of his neck.
This arrogant little pri—
“You want me to pull you by the ear, too?” I said, giving him a hard look. “Give the folks in this bar some good video to go viral?”
Clay poured himself another shot of Knob Creek, acting like he hadn’t heard me and that I wasn’t there.
Floyd had been right. Clay Westwood may have been a famous country star, but he could also be one hell of an SOB.
“You want me to call Fletcher?” I said.
That caught his attention.
He glanced over at me.
“You wouldn’t,” he said.
I guess despite his bad attitude, Clay still had enough respect for Fletcher to fear what he’d do if he found out he was picking fights in his saloon.
“Try me.”
He stared at me square in the eyes. I held his abrasive, pissed-off gaze like I was made out of stone.
I could beat this kid all day long.
“What do you want?” he finally said.
“Follow me,” I said.
Chapter 23
“Just what in the hell were you thinking?” I said. “You can’t be getting into fights like that here. The next thing you know, all those gossip hounds from your part of the world are gonna be descending upon The Cupid.”
Clay sat in one of the back office’s chair, staring down at his boots. I was pacing the floor.
“He was trying to change my song on the box,” he said between gritted teeth. “‘Sides, I would think that’d be a benefit to your bar – having those gossip hounds descend.”
“That’s not the kind of publicity I’m after, Clay,” I said. “I don’t want anybody getting hurt.”
I crossed my arms and leaned against the desk.
“Look, maybe this ain’t my place to say,” I said. “I don’t know you. I don’t know your life. I don’t know anything about what they do in Nashville these days. But I’ve been tending bar long enough to know when people are headed down a bad road. And you’re running down it like the devil himself is on your tail.”
“I don’t appreciate being lectured to,” he sneered.
“I don’t appreciate having to do the lecturing,” I said, leaning forward. “But I’m only trying to help, kid. Before somebody ends up ordering you to get help.”
I cleared my throat, thinking about the way Clay had been staring at himself in the bar’s mirror this morning.
That look of sadness that had been on his face, clear as day.
“Now, I can see that something’s tearing you up inside,” I said. “What is it, a girl? Something else?”
He laced his fingers together and readjusted his cowboy hat so it sat lower on his head.
But he didn’t answer.
“You don’t have to say anything,” I said. “But I’ve been a bartender most of my life. And I’m gonna make you an offer right now: if you want to talk, I’ll listen. Okay? Just don’t go around picking fights in my bar.”
He still didn’t answer. A cool, icy silence fell over the office.
I wasn’t sure why I was being so nice to Clay Westwood.
He, after all, had been rude to me not ten minutes before. Insulting me. Which, even despite him coming all the way out here to play Beth Lynn’s wedding, wasn’t something I was going to let him get away with just because he was famous.
“Is there something you want to say?” I finally said. “Or are we done?”
He looked down at the ground, still silent as the grave.
This was no use, I realized.
I uncrossed my arms and stood up. I started heading for the door.
“I’m only trying to help, Clay,” I said. “You do what you wa—”
But before I could walk past him, the kid lunged for me, wrapping his arms around my waist.
I nearly gasped.
Then he looked up at me.
A few lonesome tears spilled down his cheeks.
“Don’t go, Loretta,” he said, burying his face in my stomach. “Just, stay for a moment.”
Chapter 24
The look on Fletcher’s face when he walked in the office and saw Clay Westwood holding onto me like that was one of utter confusion that quickly turned into anger.
I had been too stunned myself to say anything. The kid was sobbing hard now, and all I could do was stand there and let him hold onto me like I was a life raft in some stormy sea.
After a few moments, the anger in Fletcher’s eyes turned into one of worried concern when he saw that it wasn’t at all what it first appeared.
“What’s going on?” he said.
Clay instantly let go of me and leaned back in his chair. He stared down at the ground again, the sobs subsiding.
The moment of weakness evaporated faster than rain on hot concrete.
I looked over at Fletcher and shook my head.
“Something’s the matter with him,” I said.
Fletcher came around and kneeled down next to Clay.
“What is it, Clay?”
The kid pulled his hat down farther, and quickly wiped away the tears from his cheeks.
“I’m just drunk, that’s all,” he said.
He stood up abruptly and kept his head down.
“I’m gonna sleep it off.”
“I’ll drive you back to your hotel,” Fletcher said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “C’mon.”
“No,” Clay said, backing away severely. “I’m fine. Leave me be.”
“C’mon kid. You’re too drunk to drive and it’s freezing out there.”
“Leave it be,” Clay said, lifting his eyes and shooting a sharp glare at Fletcher.
Fletcher didn’t say anything, but I could tell he was a little taken aback by Clay’s tone.
“Don’t be stupid, Kid,” he said.
“I ain’t being stupid,” he growled. “I’m leavin’ now.”
Clay brushed past me, heading for the door. But Fletcher didn’t move aside.
“I’m driving you back, Clay, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Fletch,” Clay growled again. “You don’t step aside right now, I’ll be forced to do something I don’t want to do.”
Fletcher’s eyes lit up, a fierceness suddenly taking hold of them. That kind of no holds bar roughness that made him so good at dealing with hot-tempered folks.
“Is that a threat?” he said, stepping closer to Clay. “You threatening me?”
“It sure as hell ain’t an invitation to line dance,” Clay snapped.
Fletcher fell silent for a moment. Letting the kid’s threat linger there in the air for a spell.
“You’ve changed, Clay,” Fletcher finally said, shaking his head. “I don’t know what they’ve done to you in Nashville, but that kid I knew, that one who was hungry to be the best? That ain’t you anymore.”
“You’re right,” Clay said, coldly. “I’m not. I’m not that kid anymore.”
Fletcher shook his head in disbelief.
“Well go ahead on then,” he finally said, his words steely. “Get the hell out of here. ‘Cuz you sure ain’t anybody I know.”
Fletcher stepped aside. The kid elbowed past him, knocking him back a little. Fle
tcher let it go. We listened as Clay’s cowboy boots clattered down the hallway, growing faint as he went into the bar area.
I looked back at Fletcher.
The anger that had been there just a second ago had faded, and was now replaced with worry.
“He got into a fist fight with Floyd,” I said. “I was trying to talk some sense into him back here, and that’s when he just kind of broke down.”
Fletcher just shook his head.
“Something’s eating that kid up insi—”
I gasped mid-sentence as a wave of blood-curdling screams suddenly erupted from the barroom area.
Chapter 25
There was blood all over my hands.
Blood all over Fletcher’s hands.
Blood all over the floor.
I looked down at the body, lost in stunned disbelief.
“Call 911, Loretta!” Fletcher said, kneeling down, pressing his hands around the wound.
I snapped out of my horrified daze, and ran around the bar, grabbing the phone. I dialed in the three numbers with trembling fingers and waited, hardly breathing.
“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”
“I’m at The Stupid Cupid Saloon on Main Street,” I choked out. “Someone’s been hurt.”
I bit my lip, stifling a cry.
“Someone’s been hurt real bad.”
“We’ll get units over there right away,” the woman on the other side of the line said. “Tell me what happened.”
I took in a few deep breaths, my chest feeling tight and heavy.
“He was… he was on his way out of the bar when…” I breathed in hard. “Somebody… somebody…”
“It’s okay, ma’am,” the woman said. “Just take it one step at a time and tell me what happened.”
I swallowed back hard as hot tears brimmed over the rims of my eyes.
I looked back over at Fletcher, kneeling over the face-down body.
“Don’t let go,” he was saying. “They’ll be here soon. Just hold on.”
There was no response from the man on the floor.
The blood kept spilling.
I swallowed again.
“Somebody… somebody shot him,” I rasped. “With an arrow.”
“Okay, apply pressure around the wound. Can you do that, ma’am?”
I nodded silently.
“Do you know the name of the victim?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, my voice shaking more than a dead leaf in fall. “His name…”
I took in another deep breath.
“His name is Clay Westwood.”
Chapter 26
There was nothing but silence in the emergency waiting room of the Broken Hearts Memorial Center.
A couple of police officers stood against one of the walls. Fletcher paced the floor, looking pale. I was sure that if I looked in a mirror, I would have looked just like him.
I had never seen so much blood in all my life.
I sat there on a ripped-up leather bench, staring at a small wallet-sized photo in my shaking hands.
The same photo that Clay Westwood was clutching when that arrow had come flying through The Cupid barroom, piercing him square through his back.
The picture was blood spattered and the blood still hadn’t quite dried. In the photo, a woman and a man stood together against a nondescript brick wall. The man’s face was mostly hidden, as he had it turned, kissing the woman on the cheek. He had a cowboy hat on and had a lean frame.
The woman had black hair and green eyes and a thin nose. Her cheeks were chiseled like a model’s. Her hair was teased in a fashion that screamed 1980s. But by any era’s standards, the woman in the photograph was a beauty.
She looked dead ahead at the camera with the kind of confidence that was rare. A kind of feeling that she was looking beyond just the person taking the picture – like somehow, she was looking into the future.
I bit my lower lip as I stared down at her.
I knew this woman.
Holy mother of Broken Hearts, I’d seen this woman.
Just a few hours earlier, in that vision.The girl up on stage – the back-up singer.
Marie.
“Are you all the folks who brought in Clay Westwood?”
Fletcher stopped pacing and turned around abruptly.
“We are,” he said. “How is he?”
The doctor rubbed his hair forward nervously.
Oh no. I thought. Oh no.
The dour expression on the man’s face wasn’t promising.
“He’s lucky to be alive. The arrow missed his heart by barely an inch,” he said, sighing. “But the arrow did a lot of damage. I’m afraid it did a good amount of internal damage to his left lung. He lost a lot of blood. Now, we’re doing everything we can for him, but there are no guarantees at this point.”
My heart sank down to my shoes.
How could this have happened? How could something like this happen at The Cupid?
“What does that mean, doc? No guarantees,” Fletcher said.
The doctor massaged his tired face, which was a shade too grey for my liking. The man looked like he was coming to the end of a double shift.”
“I mean I’d give your friend a 50-50 chance on a good day,” he said.
On a good day.
I shuddered to think what the odds were on a bad day.
“Where are Clay’s folks?” the doctor said. “We need to notify them of what happened.”
“He doesn’t have any,” Fletcher said. “He was raised by his aunt. And she passed on this fall.”
“So you two are the extent of what this kid has?” the doctor asked.
Fletcher looked back at me.
“I guess we are,” he said.
The doctor shook his head.
“I guess money and fame don’t buy you much these days,” he said, writing something down on the clipboard in his hand. “Well, we’ll keep you posted about Clay. We may need to transfer him.”
“You’ll let us know if anything changes?” Fletcher said.
His voice sounded different than I had ever heard it sound before.
Fletcher was worried.
The doctor nodded.
“Anything at all, we’ll call you.”
He turned on his heel, and wandered down the hall, stopping at the nurse’s station for a long while.
I looked back at Fletcher.
He looked positively crushed.
Chapter 27
I drove us home to my house.
It was a quiet, silent drive. The snow tires hummed across the compacted snow on the road and the sound of the blinker clicking at every turn was deafening.
There was nothing neither one of us wanted to say.
After the doctor had told us Clay’s prognosis, we had spent the next hour and a half talking to the police. They’d asked us the same questions over and over in different ways. Asking what we saw, what we’d been talking about, what Clay was doing in town, and finally, what had happened in the altercation that the other witnesses said took place between Clay and a young ranch hand.
When I asked them, they told me they didn’t have any leads yet as to who shot Fletcher. But that they were going to use every resource at their disposal to see that the criminal was brought to justice.
It didn’t exactly go much of a ways toward easing my mind.
I couldn’t help but notice that Raymond Rollins was nowhere near this investigation, the chief probably keeping him to traffic duty rather than risk his investigating skills in a case of this magnitude.
I answered all their questions honestly and truthfully, until my voice was hoarse. Then, they’d given us their business cards and asked us to keep quiet about the details of this case as best we could in the coming days. Because, they’d said, things would start getting crazy around here as soon as news hit that a high profile country star had nearly been killed at The Stupid Cupid Saloon. And that kind of madness could interfere with their investigation.
After the cops left the hospital, I convinced Fletcher that we needed to go home.
There was no use in spending the night in a chair, the way I saw it. Not when my house was just a few minutes away from the hospital.
Fletcher hadn’t been too keen on the idea of leaving at first. But eventually, he agreed to it, and I drove us the five miles to my house in complete and heartbreaking silence.
I couldn’t stop thinking about that photo Clay was holding when he’d been shot. The one that was now safely tucked away in my jean pocket.
I couldn’t stop thinking of that woman.
And why I had seen her in a vision earlier that night.
The thoughts I’d been hearing… had those belonged to Clay? Had I been hearing Clay’s thoughts in the vision?
Somehow, that idea didn’t feel right. The woman and man in the photo looked dated. I would have bet money that photo was taken in the 80s or 90s. Meaning the woman would have been in her 50s at least by now.
But who were these two? Clay’s parents? Fletcher had said something about the kid practically being raised by his aunt, and his parents being passed on.
But if that was the case, what was the significance of the vision?
I felt goose bumps break out on my arms as I thought back to Dale Dixon’s murder the year before, and the visions I’d had surrounding his death.
This latest one I’d had felt similar to those somehow.
I shivered.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that the dead were talking to me with this one.
Again.
I pulled up into my driveway and killed the lights. I got out of the truck, waiting for Fletcher as he slowly got out of his side. We walked up the porch. I unlocked the door, and like always, Hank bombarded me with wet kisses. I pet the St. Bernard’s soft head, but walked past him without giving him much attention. Fletcher barely registered that Hank was there wanting pets from him – which was unusual. Most of the time, Fletcher doted on the dog.
“I’m just gonna feed Hank,” I said.
Fletcher didn’t answer.
I took off my jacket and went into the kitchen, grabbing a can of Hank’s dog food. I opened it and dumped it into his food bowl. The dog, seeming to notice our glum energies, sashayed over and ate at it without much enthusiasm.
