Here Comes Trouble

by Leslie Kelly

  Which was why it was only right and proper that the clockmaker had paid for his crimes. And why no one in this town had much cared that whoever killed him hadn’t been caught.

  If only Stuttgardt had revealed a useful bit of information before he’d died instead of some foolish, cryptic riddle.

  So go home, it’s pointless.

  Whatever Wilhelm had done with the money he’d stolen from this town during his term as mayor—and from all his employees at the factory—someone else would have to find it. Tom was getting too tired and frustrated to look any longer. Creeping through that house in the middle of the night, he’d begun to feel his age. He’d also started thinking the so-called clue the Feeney sisters had helped him figure out had been a false one.

  For five years, everyone who was anyone in Trouble had been scratching their heads, speculating over what old Willie had meant by his final words, “The money will be found in time.”

  Had he put it in some kind of secured account until a set date? Hidden it in a place so obvious that someone would find it eventually? Left it with a lawyer who’d return it to the town once the old scoundrel died?

  No one knew. And no money had turned up. Not in five years.

  Even Tom had stopped wondering, until Ida Mae made a joking comment about Wilhelm’s famous last words. “Maybe the treasure was hidden in the courthouse clock,” she’d said one day last month, smirking with malicious glee at the very idea, since the bat-infested clock tower had burned down a few summers ago.

  But Tom hadn’t laughed. Oh, no. Instead, something had clicked in him. The clocks. Stuttgardt’s clocks.

  No, they weren’t large enough to hold a few million dollars in cash, but they certainly could hold a key to a safe deposit box. Or a map. Some kind of clue on this treasure hunt.

  So he’d gone hunting. Had been hunting for weeks now, but time was quickly running out.

  If only the hag had made the offhand comment long ago, rather than just days before Potts had moved into the old house. All that time the place had been standing there empty, everything exactly as it had been on the day Stuttgardt died. Well, pretty much as it had been. Some treasure hunters had combed through there in the early days after the murder, until the police had locked the place up.

  Not, of course, until after the chief had searched it himself.

  Eventually, no one had even seemed interested in looking for the stolen money anymore, except drunk teenagers who sometimes threw rocks through a window to get in. But for the most part, folks around here had come to believe Stuttgardt had deposited his ill-gotten gains in some foreign bank account where it would never be found. That his final words were one last malicious trick—a final thrust of the knife to the heart of the town he’d killed with his greed.

  But Ida Mae’s spiteful comment—made when he’d been delivering the hush money she demanded to keep his most shameful secret—had aroused Tom’s curiosity again. It had been enough to make him want to do some searching.

  A year ago, he would have had lots of privacy to do it. He probably would have finished up in a matter of days.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. Because now the house was occupied again, by a rich busybody who thought he could lord over all of them just because he had some money to throw around.

  So for the past few weeks, Tom had been confined to treasure hunting primarily during nighttime hours. Even working furtively under the cover of darkness, he’d managed a basic inspection of most of the clocks—enough to make him think he’d now wasted even more of his life on a lost cause.

  But a suggestion from a friend had made him wonder if it was possible the clue could be accessed only at a certain time of day, when the hour and minute hands were in a certain position. He wouldn’t put it past the wily old German to have made a special device with a hidden cubbyhole to hide his dirty secret. One that could only be accessed when the hour struck two or some such nonsense.

  So each night he set the cursed things, wound them and sat there watching them tick. But he’d found nothing. And every time he went back he grew more afraid that one day the old man or his grandson would come down the stairs and mistake him for a burglar. Which was why he had a gun tucked into his belt.

  The gun was currently digging into his back, so he shifted on the seat. Peering out the streaked window, he waited to see if Potts really was going out today, as he’d heard he would be. While keeping a close watch on the house this morning, he’d seen all of them leave—all except the old man.

  Glancing at his watch and noting the time, he shook his head. His information must have been wrong—Potts was sticking close to home. He’d come out here for nothing.

  Not sure whether he was relieved or disappointed, he reached for the ignition key. But just then, Mortimer Potts exited the house. Tom hunkered down again, watching out the passenger window as Potts strolled along the driveway and walked off toward downtown. For a rich old geezer, the man sure liked to walk a lot. He rarely drove around in his big Cadillac, which was parked in the garage gathering dust.

  If Tom had that car, he’d be cruising all over town even if he just needed a roll of toilet paper. Of course, if he had Potts’s money, he’d have a driver to move him from his front door to his mailbox, as well as getting said toilet paper.

  “The house is empty,” he muttered, not sure whether he was glad for this new opportunity or not. It was risky—he couldn’t be sure Potts or one of the others wouldn’t come back and catch him in the act.

  Part of him had been hoping for an excuse to take the day off, something he hadn’t done since the demand he’d gotten from Ida Mae Feeney last week. The demand had reminded him of what was at stake—why he could not let this go without fighting a little more. Because money didn’t grow on trees and he had to come up with some soon or else risk Ida Mae ruining him by opening her mouth.

  Besides, Trouble might not be much, but it was his home. His family had lived here for generations. Rumor had it his own ancestor had been the one who’d started calling the odd assortment of buildings out here in the middle of nowhere a town. Treble Town, at first, since it sat at the base of a trio of rocky mountains. Then, eventually, just Trouble.

  He couldn’t let it be turned into a playground for a rich old man with time to kill any more than he could afford to ignore the danger from Ida Mae.

  If only someone would come along and drop a house on that old witch. Of course, he couldn’t do it—Ida Mae had told him she and her equally wicked sister had hidden away some proof that would come out if anything happened to them.

  Not that Tom would go around killing old ladies, no, sir. But a man couldn’t be blamed for wishing the right hand of God would come down and slap those two women like it had Wilhelm Stuttgardt.

  Someday he’d be free of them one way or another. Either one of them would drop dead, or he would.

  Right now, he couldn’t say which he wished for more. Because even in his most optimistic of moods, he found it more and more difficult to believe he might ever actually fulfill his dream: find Willie’s stolen money, give most of it back to the town…then take what he was owed and disappear.

  ALLIE LOVED TROUBLE. She’d only been here a few days but she already felt more at home in this small town than she had the entire two years she’d lived in Philadelphia. Or the ones she’d lived in Bridgerton, Ohio.

  It could have been because she’d already made such nice friends here—like Mr. Potts, and Max, who was so far gone over her sister Sabrina he was almost on another continent. And Emily Baker, the nice lady she’d met on the bus, who had invited Allie to come over for lunch Wednesday afternoon.

  She’d had a passing curiosity about whether Emily’s nephew, Joey, the one with the nice smile, would be there, but she hadn’t asked. It just hadn’t seemed an appropriate question considering she was seven months pregnant with another man’s child.

  Peter. She’d managed to put him out of her mind for a couple of days now. Out of mind…and out of conversatio
n. Somehow, that whole talk she’d planned to have with Sabrina about how funny it had been—funny ack, not funny ha-ha—to have run into the man like that, when they all thought he was long gone, uh, just hadn’t happened.

  They’d both gotten caught up in other things—like supposed serial killers and a sweet old man who told funny stories and brewed the most delicious spiced tea. A sexy pilot who had the broadest shoulders Allie had ever seen and who was practically a walking erection around her big sister.

  Not that Sabrina seemed ready to believe that. Which made Allie laugh. Though Sabrina was the older one, she didn’t see men as clearly as Allie did these days and had shrugged off the idea that Max Taylor was dying for her.

  Of course, Sabrina wouldn’t admit she was dying for him, either, which made them both pretty entertaining to watch.

  So, yes, there were lots of other things to talk about. So many other nice things that a nasty topic like Peter Poophead hadn’t even seemed worth bringing up.

  Chicken. There had been plenty of opportunities for her to come clean with her sister, even though Sabrina had not come completely clean with her. For instance, she’d sworn Allie to secrecy about what Sabrina really did for a living. She’d also ordered her to say nothing about their lives that would reveal as much as a hint that Sabrina did not have money to invest in this town.

  Money to invest? That was the biggest laugh of all. Because if Sabrina had an extra dime, she’d have spent it on a baby rattle, of that Allie had no doubt.

  But Allie hadn’t argued. In fact, when wandering around town on Monday, she’d quite enjoyed dropping hints that she was the sister of a rich woman. Everyone she met had just been so impressed and kind. The manager of the charming little tavern where Allie stopped for lunch had told her she was so pretty she ought to compete in the Miss Trouble pageant at the Founders’ Day carnival this weekend.

  Not that she would in her condition—but it was awfully nice to have someone think of her as Miss Trouble rather than Miss in Trouble.

  “So you’re sure you don’t need a ride home this afternoon?” Max asked from the front seat of his car on Wednesday as they drove toward Miss Emily’s house.

  “I’m sure. Your grandfather said he’d come by and pick me up,” she answered. Mr. Potts hadn’t exactly offered—Allie had asked, mainly because Miss Emily was such a nice old lady and Mr. Potts was such a nice old man, and nice old people deserved to be nice together, didn’t they? She had asked for the ride precisely so she’d have the chance to hook them up.

  Allie might not be able to make a love connection for herself, but she liked the idea that she had some skill as a matchmaker. She only hoped Mr. Potts wouldn’t forget. She’d asked yesterday morning and he’d kindly agreed, but he’d also been scarce since then. She hadn’t seen him at all and hoped whatever was keeping him so busy wouldn’t make him forget his promise.

  She wasn’t about to tell Max and Sabrina that, however. Knowing her overprotective sibling, Sabrina would insist on coming to get her, cutting short whatever plans Max had lined up for this afternoon. “I feel bad enough about having to ask you for the ride there,” she added. “I’m sure you have lots to do.”

  That was another reason Allie had accepted Miss Emily’s invitation—to give these two a chance to be alone. By the time she’d realized what they were up to yesterday at that broken-down old park, it had been too late to turn around and pretend she’d never been there. Besides, having seen a dirty, dingy car parked half hidden in the woods on the other side of the house—away from the park but in sight of the tent—Allie had felt the tiniest bit nervous about going back to the house alone. She could have sworn she’d seen someone sitting in the driver’s seat, hunkered low. Considering there were no other houses anywhere near Mr. Potts’s, she couldn’t understand why someone would have been hovering around like that.

  Probably, though, her imagination was just playing games with her head. It did that a lot. Especially now that she was pregnant. She had, in fact, begun suspecting that there was a secret message saying, “Go eat ice cream” flashing every two-point-eight seconds during Entertainment Tonight, because she was always digging into the Chunky Monkey by seven-thirty p.m. these days.

  “It was no problem,” Sabrina insisted. “It’s nothing important. As a matter of fact, you’re welcome to come with us if you’d rather not go to lunch.”

  Ha. She was making excuses, as if trying to avoid being alone with Max.

  Well, that wasn’t going to happen. If Sabrina needed a little push out of the nest, baby bird was ready to shove with both wings and her beak.

  “No, thanks. But again, Max, I really appreciate you giving me a ride,” she said. “I know you two probably have tons to do. Miss Emily offered to come get me, but it seemed like such an imposition after she’d already invited me to come over.”

  “It’s nothing, Allie,” Max said.

  “You’re sure you don’t want to come with me? She did invite all of us,” she said, knowing full well Max would never let that happen.

  He didn’t disappoint her. “Sorry, I’m planning on dragging your sister out with me all afternoon.”

  “To go flying?” she asked with a tiny smile.

  Allie wasn’t stupid. She’d caught the sexy innuendo between these two and knew what Max was really asking for every time he asked her sister to fly off into the sky with him.

  Frankly, Allie wouldn’t have been able to say no if a man like Max Taylor asked her to go shop for antifungal cream. So she had absolutely no idea how Sabrina was resisting a blatant invitation to the kind of sex most women only dreamed about.

  Max met her eyes in the rearview mirror and winked, even as Sabrina glared at her from the front passenger seat.

  Allie didn’t care. She hadn’t seen her sister this happy in a very long time. Not since long before the ruthless bastard who’d hurt them both so badly had come into their lives.

  Which reminded her…she really did need to talk to Sabrina about Peter. But not now. Not today, when it was so lovely and sunny and she had a lunch invitation with a kind lady with a cute nephew.

  No cute nephews for you. You’re going to be a mommy, she reminded herself.

  “So where are you two going?” she asked.

  “To the theater,” Max replied.

  Boring. “Like, a musical theater with the nine-thousandth touring company of Cats?”

  Max grinned. “Nope. To the dusty theater with the ninety-thousandth rerun of Smokey and the Bandit.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  Sabrina and Max exchanged a quick glance, both of them laughing. Just like two parents ignoring the chattery kid in the back seat. Even though the chattery kid was the one who was about to become a parent.

  Allie didn’t mind. Seeing Sabrina this happy and full of excitement made anything okay. Even holding on to the secret of Peter Prescott’s return to their lives for just a little while longer.

  MAX HADN’T BEEN EXAGGERATING about the condition of the Trouble Movie Emporium. When he unlocked the door and led her into the abandoned place, Sabrina immediately waved a hand in front of her nose to try to clear away the musty odor of age permeating every molecule of air. And promptly sneezed.

  “Sorry, it’s pretty dusty,” he said as he reached around the door and flipped a wall switch.

  She half expected the lobby to remain dark and shadowy, illuminated only by whatever sunlight managed to sneak through the warped, discolored panes of glass in the front windows. But a weak, yellowish glow slowly flickered to life above them, bathing the tired old lobby in equally tired old light. “I’m surprised the power’s on.”

  “It’s good to be the owner’s grandson,” he said.

  “Ah. Throwing your weight around?”

  “Hey, they were happy I wasn’t bitching about the power to the old amusement park this time. And the local utility company is used to lighting this place up, since it opens for business one Saturday a month.”

  He’d m
entioned that the morning they’d met. “So, does this mean we are on a date?” she asked, remembering more of that conversation.

  He obviously remembered, too. “Why, ma’am, we hardly know each other.”

  “Save that innocent boy-next-door act for somebody else. I’m not buying it,” she said, swatting his upper arm.

  Sabrina ignored his start of surprise—as if he hadn’t realized she’d figured out he was not as harmless as he’d appeared to be at first—and walked across the dusty, cracked linoleum floor. Dingy green and dented with the impression of shoes that had probably ceased to exist twenty years before, it looked like the skin of an enormous, pitted lime.

  The place was standard 1960s issue movie-theater with none of the charm of an old-fashioned movie palace and none of the slick glass-and-brass look of more recent years. It had a basic lobby with a caged-in ticket window and a squat, plain glass snack bar long emptied of Sno-Caps and Milk Duds. Sad, decrepit and abandoned. Just like the rest of the town.

  “What killed this place?” she asked softly.

  “Ishtar? Gigli?” he said. “Wait…I know this one. DVD players.”

  About to swat him again, she saw the laughter in his eyes. Warmth rushed through her, making her quivery inside. She liked being teased by him. Liked seeing him laugh. Liked the way his eyes crinkled up at the corners when he smiled.

  Damn. She liked him. Really liked him. On top of wanting to wrap him around her whole body and wear him like an overcoat.

  Realizing he was watching her stare at him, she quickly glanced away. “I mean, it’s like all of Trouble shriveled up and died of ennui.”

  “Big words, ma’am,” he said as he rubbed a plate-size clear spot on the dirty glass countertop. “I’m just a flyboy, remember?”

  A flyboy who’d been on nearly every continent on the planet and was the grandson of a famous millionaire. He wasn’t fooling her with that self-deprecating act. “Yeah, right. Seriously, tell me what happened to Trouble.”

  Turning, he leaned one elbow on the counter, his arm and shoulder flexing attractively beneath the tight blue T-shirt he wore. Sabrina forced herself to focus on his words. Not on his thick shoulders and strong arms. Not on that chest. Not on the memory of the way those shoulders, arms and chest had felt pressed against her twenty-four hours ago.