Lone Star Legacy

by Roxanne Rustand

  “I understand.” She listened for moment, then added, “I’ll be there” and hung up. “Your uncle says you’re good with kids and totally trustworthy. Would you mind staying with Sophie for a half hour, so I can go help him? She’s so tired that I hate to get her dressed and take her out again.”

  Time stood still as ice rushed through Joel’s veins and terrible memories crashed through his thoughts.

  The last time he’d watched his daughter while his wife was running errands.

  The absolute, overwhelming panic and fear when he’d gone into the nursery and found his little girl…just a half hour after she’d settled down for a nap.

  She’d lain there peacefully, as if sound asleep, soft music still playing on the tape recorder on her dresser.

  But with that sweet and terrible lullaby, she’d been ushered from this world into the next. And nothing—not his trembling efforts at CPR, nor the efforts of the EMTs—had succeeded in bringing her back.

  If he’d only checked her sooner.

  Checked more often.

  Stayed in the room with her, watching every breath she took. If he’d done everything right, maybe the world wouldn’t have ended for him, as well.

  “I—I can’t. I’m sorry.” He strode to the stairs and descended them two at a time, jogged across the café and let himself out into the cool night air.

  He drove like a bat out of hell, disregarding the speed limit on the dangerous curves five miles out of town. Missed the turnoff to his ranch by a half mile. Tires squealing, he did a U-turn in the center of the road.

  It wasn’t until he pulled to a halt in front of his sprawling ranch-style home that he stopped to consider his actions.

  He should have said something—anything—before taking off. Beth had needed his help, and he’d cut out on her like some foolish hothead of a teenager.

  But he’d been unable to explain his sudden, razor-sharp sense of panic. The crushing weight of memories that had blindsided him at the thought of staying at her place—alone and responsible—for her little girl. And the worst of it was that his reaction had been totally illogical.

  He’d driven as if the devil himself was behind him…yet knew he would never truly escape the past.

  So now little Sophie was probably at the clinic in her pj’s, curled up on one of those uncomfortable reception area chairs and trying to sleep…and he’d blown off something that might be far more serious than his own troubled history.

  The stark look of fear on Beth’s face had not been his imagination. She’d been afraid to answer that phone. Why?

  Setting his jaw, he did a three-point turn and headed back to town at roughly the speed of light.

  BETH STEPPED OUT into the cool night air, with Sophie asleep in her arms. Walt stood behind her in the open doorway of the clinic.

  “Sure you don’t need some help getting home?” he called after her.

  “I’m almost there already. But thanks.” She crossed the parking lot, sidestepped through the wiry bushes marking the property line and wound through the assorted car parts and litter in her backyard. Glancing over her shoulder when she reached her door, she saw that he was still watching her, like a kindly grandfather making sure all was well.

  She waved farewell to him, then shifted Sophie’s weight against her shoulder and reached out to unlock the door.

  Footsteps crunched on the dry grass, approaching from the side of the house.

  Oh, God. Biting back a scream, she fumbled with the key. Missed. Tried again, her heart battering against her ribs and her palms slippery with sweat.

  A tall figure came around the corner of the back porch. “Beth? It’s me—Joel.”

  Her knees went weak with relief, her fear abruptly turning to anger. “You scared me half to death.”

  “Your place was still dark, and the lights at the clinic went out when I pulled up in front of your house, so I figured you were on your way home. Here, let me help.” He lifted Sophie and settled her against his own shoulder, then followed Beth inside to the narrow entry and on up the stairs.

  “Why did you come back?” She knew the tone of accusation in her voice sounded sharp and petty, but she couldn’t help it. “You were certainly in a rush to leave.”

  From behind her, she heard him sigh heavily. “I…was.”

  She kept moving on into Sophie’s room, settled her in bed, then came out to the living room and leaned a shoulder against the wall, her arms folded. “Well?”

  “I—” He fell silent for a moment, his eyes bleak. “I’m sorry. I should’ve stayed.”

  “I managed.” Her voice was clipped. “So you really didn’t need to come back.”

  He moved farther into the room, surveying the dark shadows, then turned back to face her. “Why were you afraid to answer the phone, Beth?”

  His grim expression demanded answers she didn’t want to give. Not if it meant stirring up his interest in her past. “I’ve…had a few prank calls,” she hedged. “I don’t know who—the caller ID always just says ‘unknown.’”

  That part was certainly true, at any rate.

  She pivoted into the kitchen to start a pot of decaf. Part of her wanted to tell him everything, but what could he do, after all? The Chicago police certainly hadn’t been any help.

  “Did the calls start after you moved here, or before?” He soundlessly came up behind her, rested his large hands on her shoulders and gently turned her around.

  “Well…” She sighed. “Before.”

  His eyes were troubled as he studied her face. “Same guy?”

  She shrugged away his concern. “These days, it’s all too easy to find a phone number on the Internet.”

  “Has he threatened you in any way?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of?”

  “He threatened to come after me.” She pulled back and turned to fill the coffeemaker reservoir, then pulled packages of filters and ground French roast from the cupboard. “But he probably doesn’t even know where I live…exactly.”

  “No? Reverse lookup on the Internet will identify the address and name connected to almost any listed number. How did you list your new phone?”

  “Crystal’s Café, with the street address.”

  “Not your first and last name?”

  “Nope.” She measured out the coffee, then shut the lid on the coffeemaker and flipped the switch on.

  “But information on property ownership is online, too. Public county records, in most states. He could probably figure out the address, since you and your sister have owned this place for a number of years.”

  “Five,” she whispered, bracing her hands on the counter and bowing her head.

  Joel shook his head slowly. “So we’ve established that this guy called you even before you moved here. He has made threats. And, with a little work, he could trace you right to your door.”

  A shiver ran down Beth’s spine.

  “Which then brings up the big question—who is he, and why would anyone want to bother you?”

  SHE MANAGED TO HEDGE with vague replies and nonchalance, and breathed a sigh of relief when Joel finally left. The dark look in his eyes promised that the subject was far from over, but what could she say? She didn’t know who her caller was. The big-city cops hadn’t been able to find him—and she’d seen the doubt in their eyes at any rate. Most of them probably figured the story was a weak cover for all the money Patrick had supposedly embezzled and hidden away.

  And worse, her amateur investigation into Patrick’s activities had apparently triggered her stalker in the first place. So now, if the guy caught wind of someone asking too many questions of people back in Chicago, there might be a chance that he could panic. And until she found what he was after—if the items even existed—she just couldn’t risk it. Not for her sake, and especially not for Sophie’s. What would she do if he arrived at her door and forced his way inside?

  Just a few months of work on the café and the sale of the property, then she a
nd Sophie would be on their way to Montana. And with that move, she’d be smarter. She’d rent a post office box, get an unlisted phone number and figure out a way to avoid leaving any other sort of trail someone could follow.

  Too tense to think of sleeping, she called Melanie to discuss her progress on the remodeling, then she quietly tackled the remaining wallpaper, soaking it with a sponge and trying to pry up the edges with a scraper. It came away in slimy, thumbnail-sized bits, a painstaking process that kept her hands busy but her mind free to dwell on all the troubles ahead.

  By three o’clock in the morning her arms and fingers ached, and bed was a welcome thought. So much for that, she muttered to herself. Bracing her hands at the small of her back, she ambled to the windows facing the street and lifted one for a breath of fresh air.

  A dark sedan idled on the street, the dim glow of its instrument panel just visible, though its headlights were turned off.

  Across the street and to the north, there were only empty lots, and Canyon Street ended just a hundred feet past her house at a pasture fence. To the south, the vet clinic was closed. So why would anyone be out there at this time of night?

  A minute later, the car eased away from the curb and disappeared into the darkness without ever turning its headlights on.

  There was no basis for calling the cops—just a couple anonymous phone calls. An idling car that may have just held two lovers talking into the wee hours.

  Beth sat at the window and kept watch until she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer, and then she drifted off into a troubled sleep.

  IN THE MORNING, Beth awoke bleary-eyed but with new resolve. While Sophie slept, she found her to do list, and rewrote every one of the twenty tasks in order of revised importance for opening the café as soon as possible.

  With the kitchen cupboards done, Joel had promised to tackle the plumbing problems next, followed by the installation of a small, commercial dishwasher. After that, she’d paint the kitchen a bright off-white and he could put down the vinyl flooring.

  And when she wasn’t working at the vet clinic or taking care of Sophie, she’d be scrubbing, painting and wallpapering the dining area itself. But first thing today, a local rubbish hauler was scheduled to stop by with his hulking son to finally clear out the junk in the yard.

  Whistling, she opened the windows so she could hear if Sophie awakened and called her, then she hurried downstairs to survey the project one more time.

  She opened the front door of the café to find the man and his son leaning against their truck, scowling.

  “So what did you do,” the older man growled, jingling his truck keys in one hand, “empty out the place and dump it in your yard?”

  Mystified, she stepped outside onto the porch. “I know it’s a big job…”

  “Lady, this wasn’t our deal.” He motioned for his son to get back in the truck.

  “Wait—” She hurried down the porch stairs. He snorted and climbed behind the wheel. “Please!”

  And then she got a good look at her yard. From day one, there’d been the old VW car parts. A rusted-out car frame. Assorted junk thrown everywhere. She’d picked up most of the smaller things already, and had piled them neatly to one side.

  But now, the yard was awash in garbage. Countless bulging black plastic bags filled with garbage, many of them ripped open. A brisk breeze sent old newspapers flying down the street.

  The stack of refuse that she’d so carefully collected had been strewn across the yard, and in the center of her sidewalk was a pile of what could only be fresh cow manure.

  Her hand at her mouth, she turned slowly…only to find the front of the café had been spray-painted with graffiti, in bright red.

  The words were in Spanish, but even with her lack of fluency in the language, she knew the perpetrator had described her in the most graphic terms.

  Backing up, she sank onto the porch steps, wavering between tears and anger. Her caller had given her ten days, and this just wasn’t his style at any rate. So who else would want to cause her harm?

  In a town this size, someone surely must have an idea about who could’ve done it. And this time, she was calling the sheriff.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  DAN TALBOT, the new sheriff, arrived a few hours later after being held up with a multicar accident on the highway in a distant part of the county. He appeared weary, dusty and not terribly impressed by the gravity of her problem when Beth gave him a tour of her yard.

  She didn’t blame him. After dealing with a fatality, this had to seem like a frivolous call.

  His deputy, an older man named Randy with hard eyes and a belly that strained the buttons of his shirt, kicked through the piles of garbage and bent down now and then to survey certain pieces. “I’d say someone got this out at the landfill, boss. Lotsa different addresses on the envelopes. As for the manure, that could be from any one of a dozen ranches in the area.”

  “I want you to ask around town, Randy, and check with the neighbors,” Talbot said. “Maybe someone saw something peculiar.”

  “There was a dark sedan parked out front early this morning with its lights off,” Beth said. “But I couldn’t see the make and model. And anyway, a car couldn’t have held all this trash.”

  He looked up from his clipboard, his pen poised. “Got any enemies in these parts? Anyone who might hold a grudge?”

  “Not here. I haven’t been here that long.”

  “Anyone who isn’t happy about you opening this place? Neighbors, who’ve been angry over the condition of the property?”

  “If they didn’t like the mess, why would they make it worse?” She shook her head. “Walt is my closest neighbor and he’s all for seeing this place cleaned up. There really aren’t any other neighbors back here, and I haven’t met many people yet. Just Walt, his nephew and the ladies at day care. I…just don’t know anyone else.”

  She looked up to find Sheriff Talbot studying her intently. “Think of someone, ma’am?”

  “I—I’ve had a crank caller…twice, since I moved here. But I have no idea who it is.”

  Talbot’s gaze sharpened. “Is he threatening you?”

  “Sort of, but I don’t think it has anything to do with all of this.” She debated about telling him the whole sordid story about Patrick, the embezzlement and the subsequent investigation, but there was really no point. “I think it’s a guy who called a couple times when I was still in Chicago, but since the last call I don’t think he could’ve made it down here that fast. And coming all that way to trash my yard just isn’t plausible.”

  “People have done crazier things, ma’am. If this guy has a real vendetta going he could even find a way to hire someone. Do you have caller ID? Have you tried recording his calls?”

  “Caller ID, yes—but he’s always just used pay phones.”

  Talbot nodded thoughtfully. “I’ve got a gadget in my car—you can route your phone cord through it and attach a tape recorder, just in case he calls again. Not to say that he’s the only suspect today. We’ll do some checking with some high school boys, too. Maybe some of them had a little too much to drink and thought this would be a lark. I’m afraid it’s happened a time or two before, though I thought most of the troublemakers here were grown and gone.”

  Frustration and rising anger made it hard to speak. “A lark? All of this would be a lark to them?”

  “Stupid, I know.” He wrote a few more notes. “If I find the responsible parties, you can bet they’ll be facing charges and paying restitution.”

  If they were found, which seemed highly unlikely. “So in the meantime…”

  “Loraine Gilbert doesn’t live too far out of town, and I’ll bet she has a tractor and a big hayrack you could use. I’ll call and see if she’ll have her hired man bring them into town so you can haul this stuff to the landfill.” He studied the perimeter of her yard, where sections of an old wrought-iron fence had twisted and fallen from decades of neglect. “If I were you, I’d consider getting my
fence up, then I’d invest in a good dog. At least you’d have some warning next time, before things go too far.”

  Next time? The thought of facing something like this again sent a shudder down her spine. Beth mentally added fence fixing and dog shopping to her to do list. “And that’s it? That’s all you can do?”

  Talbot shrugged. “If we find out who did it, we’ll arrest them for trespassing and vandalism. Maybe one of them will brag about it, or someone saw something suspicious, and word will spread. But honestly, don’t count on it.”

  “That’s just depressing.”

  “Most people don’t even lock their doors around here, but maybe you’ll want to look at a security system.” He studied her for a moment, then shook his head. “Someone went to a lot of trouble here. That tells me it was probably more than just a teenage prank—and ups the likelihood that they just might come back.”

  TALBOT HELPED HER attach a tape recorder to the café phone, and the tractor and wagon appeared by late morning, parked in front of her house. After sending Sophie to Gina’s house for her play date with Olivia, Beth donned a pair of leather gloves and got to work. When Walt arrived with a half-dozen teenagers to help, she could have kissed his feet.

  “Saturday mornings are quiet around here,” he said with a benevolent smile as he watched them tackle the mess. “And jobs are hard to come by. Don’t worry, though—I promised fifty bucks to their youth group at church, and they were more than happy to help.”

  “I’ll pay them, Walt. I’m just thrilled that you were able to get them here.”

  He waved away her offer. “Consider it a gift. I’ve got to get over to the clinic for my Saturday morning appointments, but I think you’d best stay here and supervise.”

  “Gladly.” She nearly gave in to the temptation to give him a hug of thanks. “By the way, have you seen Joel? He was going to install my dishwasher.”

  “Nope.” Walt glanced at his watch. “He had to run up to Austin early this morning after some light fixtures for my office. He won’t be back until evening.”