Love and Suspicion

by Marti Talbott

  Tiffany’s expression was one of pure innocence when she looked at Ben. “Did I say something wrong?” When everyone laughed, so did she.

  Ben playfully put his hands on his hips too. “Jeffery? I thought his name was Stanley James Hunter.”

  “Oh that?” she mumbled and she started to walk back to the table.

  Tiffany didn’t mean to, but she was the one who started the yearly argument between Michael and Jerry Terrell. Michael was staring at Tiffany and it was impossible to tell if he wanted to smile or frown. That didn’t last long. When Michael noticed Jerry Terrell roaring with laughter, as if what happened to Gloria was the funniest thing he’d ever seen, Michael narrowed his eyes and began to march that direction.

  Just as he promised, Ben pulled Tiffany out of the line of fire, dozens of others quickly moved back, and before anything could possibly prevent it, Michael socked Jerry in the eye. A taller man than Michael, Jerry lunged for Michael’s knees, forced him to the ground, and began pounding the hot headed Michael with his fists. Alex jumped on Jerry’s back to protect his father, and Jerry’s son grabbed Alex by the back of the shirt and easily tossed him aside. Naturally those who worked for both companies felt obliged to either break it up or join in. Unfortunately, the latter happened. Fists flew, men yelled, women screamed, and even Gloria came back and stood behind the crowd trying to see what was happening.

  It seemed that every man there was involved somehow – even Crazy Eddie left his pickup long enough to record the fight on his cellphone. Tiffany might have gotten her first good look at him, but she was too busy watching the fists fly and staying out of the way.

  Rod pulled his fire arm and was about to shoot it into the air when the Sheriff beat him to it. “KNOCK IT OFF BEFORE ONE OF THE LADIES GETS HURT!” the sheriff yelled. Slowly, men who were suspicious that the others might still throw a punch, backed away from their opponents. Relatives and friends helped others off the ground, and a doctor, who would much rather be taking a nap, grabbed his well-stocked medical bag.

  Aside from cut lips and bruised faces, no one seemed to be badly hurt. Two of the men had Ben’s beans all over their shirts, and by the time Tiffany remember to look, Crazy Eddie and his pickup were gone.

  The picnic was over, and more than a few people began the mad dash to get in their vehicles and leave the campground. Tiffany wondered if Beverly had been right – the beans, a possible fight, and to see what Gloria was wearing were the only reasons some of them came.

  As soon as Michael left, Jerry took his family home.

  Others stayed to swim and to have another helping of whatever was left of the free food, but in time most of them went home as well. Ben encouraged people to take the rest of his beans so he wouldn’t have to, and mentioned to Tiffany that he volunteered to stay and help clean up. That was okay with her.

  While Ben talked to his mother and some other friends, Tiffany drifted away to take the daily call from her detective father. She assured him she was happy and well, and mentioned he missed a good fight. Their conversation lasted nearly half an hour and by then, Beverly and Earl had accepted a ride home with a friend. Alex, she noticed was still hanging around. She suspected Alex stayed in support of his little sister who quietly sat beside him on the top of a picnic table. Gloria’s propensity for shameless flirting was over – at least for that day.

  Before Nancy and Rod left, Nancy suggested the four of them get together to play cards the next time Rod had a night off. They all agreed. Rod carried the empty ice cream maker and a sleeping Willie back to Nancy’s car, and waited until she drove away. He waved goodbye to Ben and Tiffany, and then set out to finish what was left of his shift.

  After most of the people were gone, it was obvious what needed to be done. There was trash everywhere. With the help of two other men, it took Ben and Tiffany nearly an hour to clean up and load three big trash barrels onto the back of a truck to be hauled to the dump. By then, the teens had grown tired of swimming and gone home, leaving just them and two other young couples that were sitting on rocks near the shore talking and watching the approaching sunset.

  Ben held out his hand and smiled when Tiffany put her hand in his.

  “I’m thinking of coming back next year just to see what happens,” she said. “I might even bring my whole family. Picnics back home are tame compared to this one.”

  “Providing either Michael or Jerry aren’t in jail for murder by then.”

  “There is that possibility,” she agreed. Slowly, she walked beside him around the edge of the lake, stepping on rocks and jumping over a small stream before reaching a log they could sit on. “I was too hard on Gloria, wasn’t I?”

  “Well, you might be the talk of the town for a few days. I doubt anyone has ever seen something like that before.”

  “How come?”

  “Because despite Michael and Jerry’s shortcomings, a lot of people work for them, and because both companies pay well, others hope to get hired someday. They wouldn’t dare confront Michael’s daughter. You’re an outsider, so you will probably get away with it.”

  “If I don’t mind being talked about?”

  “Do you?”

  “Not especially, I’m used to it.”

  “They talk about you at home?”

  “Oh, all the time. Mother says I’m not very good at keeping my mouth shut, but she loves me anyway.”

  “My mom likes you too. Know what she said?”

  “What?”

  “She said the guy who marries you will never get bored.”

  Tiffany rolled her eyes. “That’s me, Miss Entertainment.” When he put his arm around her, she snuggled closer and put her head on his shoulder. “Ben, what do you think of Rod? I saw the way he looks at Nancy and since she is your cousin, I wondered...”

  “You and Nancy are more alike than you know. She doesn’t let any grass grow under her feet either. I like that about her and I like that about you too.”

  “Yes, but...”

  “Believe me, Nancy knows how to dump a guy when she discovers a flaw she can’t put up with, and I completely trust her decisions.”

  Tiffany was quiet for a time before she said, “Dad wants to know when I’m coming home now that my car is fixed.”

  “And you said?”

  She giggled, “Later.”

  Ben put his other arm around her. “Are you sticking around for any special reason?”

  “I can’t go until I find out how much you’re going to charge me.”

  He pulled back to look her in the eye. “If I said no charge, would you be gone tomorrow?”

  Tiffany lifted her head off his shoulder. “I can’t go tomorrow, I promised Mariam I’d give notice before I quit.”

  “How much notice?”

  “A day, at least.” She put her head back on his shoulder. “However...”

  “What?”

  “I would like to stick around until Rod finds out who took Earl’s daughter.” She could feel Ben physically relax and it served to confirm what she was coming to suspect – Ben was falling in love with her.

  “That could take a while.”

  “Another week or two, at least.” Tiffany said. “Have the falls turned blue yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  Tiffany Clark didn’t really care what color the water was, or the color of the entire world for that matter. It felt better to be in Ben’s arms than she’d felt in the arms of any other boy she’d dated. Of course, there hadn’t truly been that many. She was like Nancy, too discerning for her own good. If Ben had any faults, she was not aware of them. So far, he was kind, strong, loving to members of his family, a friend of nearly everyone at the picnic, and...come to think of it, she didn’t see anyone who didn’t like Ben, except perhaps Alex Woodbury.

  Thinking a guy was nearly perfect could be dangerous. A girl should never fall in love until she knew all about a guy’s faults. Yet, not falling in love with Ben might be more of a struggle than it had been with Jamison White, her a
ll-time favorite boyfriend – the one she knew better than to tell Ben about.

  When Ben lifted her chin with his finger tips and lowered his lips to hers, Tiffany closed her eyes. Suddenly, all her cautions fluttered away like a gentle breeze.

  AFTER HE DELIVERED a plate of food to Millie at the office and stayed to keep her company for a while, Rod went to talk to her father at the restaurant.

  With everyone’s stomach full to the brim at the picnic, the place was empty, so Jake Jacobson brought Rod a cup of coffee and then took a seat in the window booth opposite him. “Millie likes you.”

  “I think she’s pretty special too.”

  “That she is.”

  “If she ever needs anything...” Rod started.

  “Thanks, but we’ve got her covered. We watch over Nancy and the boy too, although it is a challenge sometimes not to hurt Nancy’s pride. We make a big deal out of birthdays and holidays so we can give her what she might need. By the way, next time you go out there, can you see if her appliances are working. Millie says her freezer is making a strange noise. You know anything about fixing appliances?”

  “Not a lot. She invited another couple and I over to play cards next week, so I’ll take a look.”

  “Another couple?”

  “Ben and a new girl in town, Tiffany Clark.”

  “Excellent, Ben can fix anything. You repaired Nancy’s porch, I hear.”

  “I just jacked it up and added a few cinderblocks. It’s not a permanent fix, but it’ll hold for a while.”

  “Millie said it’s solid as a rock now.”

  Rod paused before he asked. “Mr. Jacobson, were you here when the Woodbury baby was kidnapped?”

  “I was. I helped with the search – everyone that could get away did. It was the 4th, you know, and people had a farmer’s market to run, but many of us searched the first day and several days after.” Jake sadly bowed his head. “By the third day, most of us thought it was probably too late to find the baby alive.”

  “Did you know Earl’s wife?”

  “Not well. She was not the overly friendly type. I don’t remember her ever coming in here for a meal, but then the Woodburys had a housekeeper who cooked for them. My wife said Shelley went to Des Moines to buy maternity clothes and baby things. That’s about all I know about her.”

  “Did you go to the funeral?”

  “We did.”

  “Do you recall ever meeting a man by the name of Charles Hadley?”

  Jake took a moment to think about that. “No, Sir, I don’t recall anyone by that name.”

  “What about Lyndell Fagan?”

  Jake chuckled. “Now there’s a story for you. He’s still in prison and probably always will be. He’s been saying for years he knows who took Earl’s daughter. No one believes him – that kid hasn’t told the truth one day in his whole life. If a lie worked better, which he always thought it did, it was the first thing out of his mouth.”

  “He’s in for assaulting an officer?”

  “Yes, but he claims the officer hit him first and that made it a fair fight. He should have been out of prison long before now, but he gets in fights with the other inmates and the judge keeps extending his sentence. He nearly killed a guy once.”

  It was Rod’s turn to smile. “He tried to rob a bank?”

  Jake chuckled a second time. “The one right here in town too. Lyndell wasn’t even smart enough to rob a bank where no one could recognize him. You’ll have to ask the sheriff, but that charge is probably still hanging over Lyndell’s head.”

  “So, you don’t think he actually knows who took the baby?”

  Jake gave that some thought. “I’d be surprised if he does, but he might know something that could help. He had it bad for Birdie in those days and even hung around Michael trying to impress her. A lot of guys would have liked to date Birdie, but Michael had the inside track on that one.”

  “Birdie at the Bed and Breakfast?”

  “That’s the one. A few weeks after the kidnapping, Birdie tried to kill herself and we almost lost her too.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “I can guess. Birdie was forced to put her baby up for adoption when Michael married Pamela, and I suspect the loss of Earl’s baby hit her pretty hard. You know how women are, they imagine all sorts of horrible things happening to their children. In Birdie’s case she didn’t know where her child was either. Her parents made her give her baby away so Birdie wouldn’t embarrass her congressman father. Everyone already knew, so what was the point? Anyway, after Birdie came back from the home for unwed mothers, her parents bought her a rundown motel that she somehow turned into a Bed and Breakfast. Of course, Birdie was expected to pay them back. Nice of them, don’t you think?”

  An obviously resentful Jake got up and came back with a cup of coffee for himself. “The very next month, our esteemed congressman lost his election and her parents moved away. That had to feel like the worst double-cross in the world to Birdie. I doubt she’s talked to them since and I also bet she’s still paying off the Bed and Breakfast they saddled her with.” He took a sip of soda before he finished. “Go easy when you talk to her, okay? She’s a lot more fragile than other folks around here think.”

  “I’ll remember that. Can you think of anyone else I should talk to who might remember something about the kidnapping?”

  “Well, let me see. Some died, some moved away, and some wouldn’t talk even if you put a gun to their heads.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because there is nothing they can do to save the baby now, and they think they could get into big trouble if they talked.”

  “You mean for something like obstruction of justice?”

  “That’s part of it. Another part is the way folks would talk about them if they spoke up after all this time.”

  Rod took another sip of his coffee before he said, “I see. Care to suggest who some of these people might be?”

  Jake pulled a napkin out of the holder, took a pen out of his apron pocket and wrote down three names. He handed the napkin to Rod and then put his pen away. “These might help. Also, Jason might tell you what Michael had to say about the kidnapping.”

  “Michael’s brother?”

  “That’s right. I suppose if Michael talked to anyone about it, it would be Jason.”

  “Do you think Michael was behind it?”

  “Behind it? Maybe. Took part in it, no.”

  “Did he go to Earl’s house after he heard what happened?”

  “That I don’t know, but he did organize a team of searchers the next day and was one of the last to give up. He even bought a bunch of portable phones so the teams could keep in touch. I don’t know what more he could have done.”

  “What about the next night when Earl dropped off the ransom. Do you know where Michael was then?”

  “No Sir, I don’t know where he was after they called off the search that night. Do you suspect him?”

  “Not particularly. I’m just eliminating the ones I can.” Rod drank the last of his coffee, picked up his hat and stood up. “I better get back to work.”

  “You want a sandwich to take with you.”

  “No thanks, I’m stuffed.”

  “Worst night of the year,” Jake complained. “Can’t even sell a sandwich to a cop.”

  Rod laughed and walked out the door. In his cruiser, he opened his notebook and jotted down the things he learned from Jake. Once more he looked at the names on the napkin and committed them to memory. Rod tucked the napkin inside his notebook and then drove out of the empty parking lot.

  CHAPTER 8

  “HE WHAT?” MICHAEL NEARLY shouted, forgetting all about his injuries. Suddenly feeling the pain, he put a hand over his deeply bruised jaw and tenderly worked his mouth up and down trying to relieve the soreness. The bruise on his jaw was nothing compared to the way the swollen tissue made his left eye look like little more than a slit.

  Alex was not the least bit intimidated by his fath
er’s outburst. He had a bruised cheek bone and a fingernail scratch on his neck, but other than that he hadn’t suffered too much during the fight. “That’s what Tiffany said.”

  “That crazy old man won’t say a word to me, but he lets a stranger live in his house?” Michael strummed the fingers of his right hand on the desk. “You know, he’s just crazy enough to think she is his long-lost daughter.”

  “You think he talks to her?”

  “He doesn’t talk to anyone, not even the housekeeper. If he wants something, he writes it down. He has pads and pens all over the house just for that reason, or at least he did last time I was there.”

  “I never did understand why he stopped talking or why he’s never once set foot in our house...not that I remember anyway.”

  “He hates the sight of me.”

  Alex wrinkled his brow. “Yet, he lets you run the company.”

  “He didn’t exactly let me take over. After the baby was kidnapped, Dad stopped caring about it and since I was vice-president, I just stepped into his shoes. I expected him to throw a fit over it someday, but he never has.”

  “You think he would have reacted the same way if someone kidnapped me?”

  Michael drew in a deep breath. “I don’t know. He married Shelley before I even knew he had a thing for her. Sometimes I wonder if he’d been seeing Shelley before Mother died, but I never could picture that. He loved Mom, I know he did, and back then he was totally obsessed with keeping the family’s reputation clean. Not old Earl Woodbury - he wouldn’t dream of having an affair before his wife died for fear the whole town might find out.”

  “So you didn’t know about Shelley?”

  Michael stood up and walked to the window. Traffic was light on the Interstate, what he could see of it now that the Terrell Office Supply Company obscured most of it. “Not until they ran off to Vegas and got married.”

  “You never told me they got married in Vegas. Everything I know I learned from Mom.”

  Michael frowned. “And there’s a lot your mother doesn’t know either.”