Small Town Angel

by K'Anne Meinel

  “We’ve been over that already,” she pointed out. She’d been asked each question five different ways. “You’d think you all were lawyers or somethin’,” she said with a grin to show she was kidding. “But I thought I had to leave to protect my family,” she said quietly. She was speaking, not in a whisper, but in a sotto-voice so that the children wouldn’t wake up. They had taken their cue from her although they had offered to take her to the new police station for questioning. She’d panicked at that, sure she wouldn’t see Abby again and to calm her, agreed to talk to her at the cabin.

  “We want you to go on with your life as though nothing is out of the ordinary. From what you have said it is possible that one or both of those men are in the area to keep an eye on you. We are going to create a ping on your wanted poster but in the Green Bay area as though you’ve been sighted. From that, we may get them to ‘hurry’ up with their plans.”

  “And what exactly do you intend to do to protect her from those plans?” Abby asked ominously.

  “Mom? What’s going on?” Bailey asked as he opened the door to his room. He could see there were people in the living room.

  “Go back to bed Bailey,” she ordered in a no-nonsense voice. When he hesitated she repeated herself a little louder and more ominously. He closed the door but she knew he didn’t get back in bed.

  “We’re going to have to wrap this up,” she announced into the living room, a little louder than before as they had all tried to keep it down…and obviously failed.

  “And what will you be doing for us Chief?” one of the investigators challenged. He was a cocky son-of-a-bitch and Abby had disliked him from the moment she met him. If it was up to him, and thank goodness it wasn’t, Amy would have been handcuffed and taken to Green Bay before being turned over eventually to other federal officers. Meanwhile she would be in the system and Noah could access that system and who knew what contacts he had.

  “I’ll be keeping Ms. Adams protected. In my personal protection,” she said snidely and gave the jerk a little smile.

  “I think we can be sure that the Chief will keep us in the loop. Don’t forget she’s a member of law enforcement and she did call us,” another of the investigators warned the younger detective. He turned to Abby. “You have my cell number,” he stated.

  She nodded and they both exchanged a look that spoke volumes. Abby saw them out and asked a few more questions before they drove away. She turned back to see Amy looking worried on the front porch, rubbing the chill of the fall morning from her arms. She looked small and fragile and pale, very, very pale from the interrogation. Walking up the steps Abby gently put her hands on her shoulders, “It’s going to be okay,” she promised.

  “You don’t know that. You don’t know Noah or Bobby Ray like I do. They get what they want,” she started to work herself up.

  “Let’s go in the cabin and go to bed. It’s late and you aren’t going to get much sleep if you want to have a normal day tomorrow,” Abby pointed out trying to console her.

  “I have tomorrow off,” Amy reminded her.

  Abby gently steered Amy into the cabin and locked the door behind her. The cabin seemed warmer for some reason with all those people in it, and now it was cold. She put a couple of logs on the fire to hold them over until they got up and returned to walk Amy back into their bedroom.

  “So Angel huh?” she asked gently. She liked the name. She didn’t like the name Sleuter though, not one bit and perhaps it was because of the stories that Amy had told about Noah. Landon sounded nice though and she could tell Amy…loved him. That bothered her.

  “Yep but I haven’t really gone by that except for Grams in a while. I was always ‘Hey You’ to Noah and even Bobby Ray.”

  “What did Landon call you?” she asked curious, as she began to get ready for bed. A few hours of sleep would be helpful at least for her.

  “Landon,” she smiled fondly at the memories of her husband. “He called me Sweetie.”

  Abby wasn’t certain but Amy’s voice had changed as she remembered him. She couldn’t help it but she was jealous of this unknown husband. She hesitated for a moment as she changed, maybe she shouldn’t be sleeping with a married woman. “Did you love him?” she couldn’t help asking, feeling insecure.

  Amy immediately nodded. “He saved me. He made me go to school, he was patient with me, and he kept Bobby Ray away. He couldn’t keep Noah away though and I avoided him as much as I could. I think Noah got impatient which was why he got meaner.” She paused for a long moment. “He was my best friend,” she said softly.

  Abby nodded. She respected this unknown Landon for the admiration and obvious loyalty he engendered in Amy but she had to wonder, now what?

  “You’d like him,” Amy continued, unaware of the thoughts swirling in Abby’s head. “He is sweet, kind, and he’s very wise and tender. Even when I lost the baby, he said it didn’t matter. He didn’t need no son. He was just happy if we remained married and friends.”

  Abby swallowed and watched Amy get into bed. She sat there reminiscing about her husband. He wasn’t even her ex-husband. He was still alive. That meant she was legally married to him. She looked across the room at Amy.

  “What happened to Lori?” she asked, wondering at the first woman her girlfriend was attracted to.

  “Now that there was a real accident and I think what really unhinged Noah. She was the little princess in that house. Everyone adored her. She was hit walkin’ home one night by a drunk driver and everyone seemed to go crazy,” she remembered. “My in-laws died a year later, each within a month or so of each other…from grief,” she said sadly. “I think that’s when Noah began to realize he was the head of the family and the power that came with that position.” She got really quiet after that for a while as she remembered how scary it had become.

  “Are you coming to bed?” Amy asked looking suddenly worried as she realized Abby was too quiet.

  “I don’t know if I should,” she confessed. “You’re married,” she pointed out.

  Amy smiled sadly. “It weren’t like that,” she told her. “Landon didn’t even like doing the deed. He weren’t good at it from what I can tell and once I was pregnant he never touched me like that again.”

  “How long have you been married?”

  “Twelve yars now,” she answered reminiscently. “I lost my baby six yars ago. That is probably why Noah were gettin’ impatient.”

  “How long has Landon been incapacitated?” she tried to sound professional but it was for herself. She’d heard some of this when the two investigators arrived, two others came along but she wasn’t quite sure of their function.

  “Two yars before I left. He done told me to clear out. Noah was acting mighty peculiar and I think that’s when I knew that Noah had something to do with Landon’s injury.”

  “Did he tell you how he got injured?”

  Amy shook her head. “I got a call one night from the police in a neighboring town. They said they had found someone with the identification of Landon Sleuter on them but he was beaten so bad they couldn’t identify him from his license.” She started to cry. “They beat him so bad. He was so beautiful and he looked like Frankenstein then with all them stitches. He’ll never walk much less be a whole man again,” she said as she emphasized what she meant, gesturing downwards.

  Abby hurried to get into bed with the redhead so she could wrap her arms around her. “I’m sorry, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” she comforted, rubbing Amy’s back consolingly.

  “I have to talk about it. I never could. Grams didn’t understand. She just thought them Sleuters were no good. I couldn’t tell her everythin’, she wouldn’t understand. She wouldn’t understand about Landon lovin’ other men. She just knew I needed to be gone and she and Landon made sure I had an out. One day I just up and left. I packed my suitcase, my backpack, my new life and left. I meandered for a while. But someone left a tourist book on a bus bench in Fort Wayne, Indiana and I began to r
ead about Wisconsin. Livin’ on the water again appealed to me so I took the bus up the east coast of Wisconsin and you know the rest,” she said sobbingly.

  “You know you can tell me anything don’t you?” Abby said earnestly. She couldn’t imagine not being able to share the burden of the things Amy had been through.

  “I almost stayed in Port Washington. It shore was purty, but I got curious about what else was up here,” she said with a little smile. She inhaled, but it was unsteady as she still tried to stop her tears.

  “I’m glad you did,” Abby said as she looked down into the face she so adored. She sent up a silent prayer of thank you to whomever left the tourist book on the bench and set Amy on this path.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you anything sooner. I was too scared,” she admitted.

  “I suppose me being a cop didn’t help things either,” she guessed ruefully.

  “Nope, nor with you being a woman,” she added with a grin. “Landon would understand though. He wanted me just to be happy. Noah wants to own me,” she added bitterly.

  “I’ll do my best to make sure he doesn’t come near you,” she promised.

  “There might not be much you can do,” Amy pointed out.

  “We’ll see about that!”

  They continued on for a while until Amy drifted off to sleep in Abby’s arms. Abby too drifted in and out but any little noise had her coming awake and by the time the kids got up for school she slipped out of bed to leave Amy sleeping, carefully closing the bedroom door behind her.

  “Isn’t Amy getting up to make us breakfast?” Heather asked surprised.

  “What? You can’t handle me making cereal for you?” Abby teased as she let Toby out the back door. She watched interested as he sprinted for a corner back by the garage. She made a mental note to check that out later. There was nothing there now and he snuffled at the fallen leaves.

  “Can you do that without spilling the milk?” Bailey teased back as he slung his backpack on an empty chair.

  Abby laughed with the kids as she distracted them from why Amy wasn’t there to see them off. She quickly had three bowls of cereal and let them pour their own milk on it. She’d knocked a full gallon of milk off the table once in clumsiness and they all hadn’t let her forget it for an instant. She watched as they got on the bus to take them to school and then she called in her deputy to take her morning shift so she could climb back into bed with Amy for some cuddling time.

  * * * * *

  Amy woke up a few days later with a gasp and tried to get her breath back. It was morning and while they had gone with their lives, trying to remain normal, she had begun to have nightmares.

  “What, what is it?” Abby asked as she too got up quickly in case she had missed some noise. She’d been sleeping light these days, especially after finding men’s booted foot prints behind the garage. Someone had been there…often. He smoked Marlboro unfiltered cigarettes too from what she could see. These had been turned over to the Feds for their lab and possible DNA.

  “Nightmare,” she admitted as she rubbed her face. Since making a clean breast of it, they had returned. She frequently worried that Noah grabbed her or that Bobby Ray was yelling at her, telling her she had to return to the bosom of her family. It was her obligation to give the Sleuters a child. If Landon wasn’t up to the job, he was sure that Noah would do fine. Besides, Noah cared for her. She knew every argument he would use before he even uttered it. In her nightmares, they went through all of them. How dare she thwart their plans?

  “We’ll find them,” Abby tried to reassure her, rubbing her back. The extra feds were stationed around town as locals, but the locals were uneasy, reporting these ‘watchers’ frequently for loitering. They stuck out like a sore thumb and it was obvious they weren’t tourists. Abby had her hands full with her regular duties much less as liaison between the feds and her citizens as well as watching out for Amy.

  “If they don’t want to be found, they won’t be found,” Amy assured her. “You don’t know those backwoods like they do.” No one could find either her brother or her brother-in-law who had taken a leave of absence from his job. Supposedly the last anyone heard was they had gone hunting.

  “I’m sure they can’t hide out on an island the rest of their lives. What was it called, Baseman?” she tried to console her.

  “Bateman Island. With all that water around it too they can be in and out before anyone knows they are there. You got the Atchafalaya River and Sweetbay Lake as well as Bayou Schaffer and Halfway Bayou…thars plenty of places for them to hide and disappear.”

  Abby loved how those names rolled off Amy’s tongue effortlessly. She wished she could take her worries away. The dark circles under the redhead’s eyes weren’t becoming to her pale white face. Her summer tan was long gone from her skin. It seemed paler these days and with her dark red head, it made it almost glow in the pre-dawn light. “Let’s try to sleep,” Abby offered as she rubbed Amy’s back. She leaned over to kiss her, not trying to push it, but letting her know she was loved.

  Amy hadn’t felt like making love since she confessed who she really was. She enjoyed the closeness they now shared, and being held was a comfort, but the constant worry of how and when they would strike was wearing on her. To her it wasn’t a matter of if, but when. She cuddled into the closeness of Abby’s long and muscled body. She felt safer with her but what Abby didn’t know is that Amy worried Noah would go after her because he was jealous. She tried not to think too much of what he could do to her. What he had done to Landon. Landon hadn’t said it was Noah but she knew, deep down she knew. What he would do if he got a hold of Abby made her daydreams a horror she wouldn’t share.

  * * * * *

  Amy knew as soon as Abby entered The Emporium a couple of days later that something had happened. She had kept a cheerful face up to her customers, answering questions, but only a few knew something was going on. There was something in the air.

  Abby nodded her head towards the back office.

  Amy dreaded what she had to say but was relieved to see her alive and well. She excused herself and sent an employee over to help the customer as she followed the brunette to the back of the store and her office. “What’s up?” she asked.

  Abby looked at her sadly, she hated that she had to be the one to tell her. One of the Feds had offered but Abby knew it was her place. “Landon is dead,” she told her without any preamble.

  Amy had known it wouldn’t be good news but she hadn’t expected…this. She’d known he could die at any time and then she wondered… “Was it natural or…?” she asked bravely, trying not to let Abby see how much it hurt inside. Her best friend was dead!

  “We don’t know yet but there will be an autopsy,” she informed her, watching her carefully.

  Amy closed her eyes and shook her head. “No, there won’t. The Sleuter’s won’t allow it. It’s against their religion or somethin’,” she informed her.

  “Because it might be murder, there will be an autopsy,” the Chief of Police informed her knowingly.

  “You don’t realize the power this family wields. It’s why they were able to buy me to marry their queer son,” she explained, trying to emphasize certain things. “I been tellin’ you all but you don’t hear me!” She was exasperated. “These people don’t think the laws of this ole United States apply to them!”

  Abby was beginning to understand. She had a much broader view of things as Amy had repeated them and little tidbits were explained. She couldn’t fathom that Amy had basically been sold for her child-bearing abilities to hide their son’s queerness. That the other brother had lusted after his sister-in-law and failing to get what he wanted and desired had possibly killed his own brother to get it. The Feds weren’t too convinced of Amy’s story but they were checking into it.

  “Now Noah will think the way is clear,” Amy said mournfully, knowing he was coming now.

  “Then we’ll get him,” Abby answered convinced.

  “It won�
��t be like that. He won’t do it all legal,” she tried to explain.

  “You are never alone. We have people watching the store; I’m home when you are home…”

  “You don’t think he knows all that? That’s why he sent that private investigator. He probably had him tip me off to make me run so they could catch me easier. I wouldn’t be surprised to find they got some trackin’ device on my SUV!”

  Abby didn’t tell Amy that they had indeed found a tracking device on the vehicle. They also found one on Toby’s collar, how they had put one on there no one would ever know but they’d accidentally found it when they were checking out the SUV with a handheld scanner and the curious dog came over to see what they were doing. She didn’t want to frighten her so she hadn’t told her. “Would you like to go into protective custody?” she asked, knowing she might not see her again for a long time. She’d be magnanimous about it, if it meant keeping Amy safe.

  “No, I ain’t gonna let them run me off again. With Landon gone they are gonna come for me. Let ‘em come!” she said defiantly.

  Abby couldn’t tell Amy now but every time she displayed the little redheaded spitfire she was, she fell more in love with her. Then, thinking it was never too late to tell someone something of such importance she pulled her into her arms. “I love you,” she said simply.

  “You don’t want me to leave do you?” a muffled Amy asked against her shoulder.

  Abby pulled back to look down in horror at Amy. “Leave me? Hell no!” she answered vehemently. “Don’t you ever leave me!” she said almost frantically as she pulled her close again. She’d lost one woman in her life, she wasn’t losing another!

  “I thought maybe you might want to leave ‘cause I lied to you,” she said, again muffled as Abby was holding her tight against her, almost too tight, it was getting hard to breathe.