Trouble in Summer Valley

by Susan Y. Tanner

  But two years later, her father asked her to come into the library—the very room in which they now stood—and, with a beaming Shelby Rae at his side, said, “We have wonderful news to tell you, honey.”

  If only her father had instead taken her out on a walk on the lake trail, or driven her in the boat to dinner at The Captain’s Table on the other side of the lake, and told her, first, without Shelby Rae there. Or he could’ve asked her how she felt about Shelby Rae, and if she thought it was a good idea for him to marry her. She might have understood. She might even have been glad to have her suspicions confirmed. She wasn’t blind or stupid. Her father sometimes stayed out late, and he and Shelby Rae shared significant looks when she came to pick up Erin. If only…

  That’s not what happened, though, and here they were, fussing at each other in the house, instead of mingling out back with the guests attending the Walsh Motors annual employee summer barbecue.

  “Oh, come on. Did you forget you have a tattoo on your backside?” Erin pointed at Shelby Rae’s ample left hip. “You have a snake back there. What kind of person has a snake on their butt?”

  Shelby Rae pursed her lips and stuck her recently altered nose in the air. “It’s an asp. Like Cleopatra. And it’s gold and blue. It’s art.”

  Erin scowled. “I’m nineteen. It’s perfectly legal if I want to tattoo my whole face.” She pointed to her lightly freckled forehead. “I could get butterflies all across here. I could have a freaking butterfly parade, if I wanted to, instead of just an inch-wide one on my thigh.”

  In fact she’d completely forgotten about the new tattoo when she’d taken her shorts off by the pool ten minutes earlier. Seeing the tattoo, Shelby Rae had pulled Erin away from her best friend, Mackenzie Clay, and hurried her into the house, through the kitchen, and into the library. Erin only just now wondered why Shelby Rae had been watching her in the first place.

  “You’re being silly.” Shelby Rae shook her head. “Only criminals have tattoos on their face.”

  “So I guess it would be okay if your Uncle Travis, who’s out back drinking Daddy’s beer and about to eat the biggest steak from the outdoor fridge, gets a tattoo on his face?”

  Shelby Rae crossed her arms over her breasts. Erin knew she hadn’t had to have those fixed like she’d had her nose done. She’d once overheard one of the salesmen at the dealership comment on Shelby Rae’s enormous assets.

  “Why are you so hateful, Erin? I have never done one single thing except be nice to you! This is a very stressful time, with the lawsuit just ended. You haven’t been here. You don’t know what it’s been like. That Owens woman has been hanging around, and I’ve hardly even seen your father for months.” Her high voice stretched into a familiar whine.

  The lawsuit. Erin’s father wasn’t a talker, and so had brushed it off whenever she called him from Lexington. But it had been in the papers. The brakes on Tionna Owens’ car had failed in an intersection, just minutes after she left the dealership’s service department. They’d checked out the car and told her it wasn’t safe to drive, but she’d wanted a second estimate. The service manager even dutifully made a note that she refused service. She died less than two blocks from the dealership. The county didn’t find grounds to prosecute, but the woman’s wife, Bryn Owens, had brought a civil suit against the dealership, which had just been tossed out.

  “He doesn’t even listen when I try to tell him that woman is crazy,” Shelby Rae continued. “Nobody listens to me!”

  Erin sighed. “That’s because you’re a drama queen. Nobody needs your drama, and I’m sick and tired of it. I wish you’d just go away and stay out of my business.” She knew she was being as dramatic as Shelby Rae, but she was beginning to wish she’d kept her apartment in Lexington and picked up a part-time job there for the summer. Bumming around New Belford and hanging around the house—even if she was often with Mackenzie—was turning out to be a bad idea.

  Shelby Rae huffed out of the library, flinging open the door to reveal the startled faces of two women Erin didn’t know. Shelby Rae glowered at them as they hustled away, obviously embarrassed to be caught listening, then picked up Jocko who was barking at her with frantic joy. They disappeared down the hall, Shelby Rae’s heeled mules clacking on the polished wood floors.

  Great, thought Erin. Now everyone would know they’d been arguing. How long would it be before her father was asking why Shelby Rae was so upset?

  Erin walked over to the window. The library had always been one of her favorite rooms. She put a hand on the end of the high-backed sofa, and Trouble, the clever black cat that Tammy Lynn had asked her to look after, nudged her hand with his velvety nose.

  “Sorry about that,” she said, scratching the cat behind the ears. “I don’t really hate her. She just gets to me sometimes.”

  The cat purred. Tammy Lynn had told her that Trouble was good at solving mysteries and had saved her more than once. But there were no mysteries to be solved in New Belford. The last disturbance was when two brothers—both drunk—got in a fight about which of them should inherit their mother’s small cottage on the lake. The younger brother had shot the older brother, but when he was convicted, he cried, saying that his brother being dead was a worse punishment than prison. It turned out that there was a second mortgage on the house and neither one of them would’ve owned anything. No mystery there. Just Darwinism at work.

  “We’ll find something to do that gets us away from here.” As she looked out the window, Erin stroked the soft fur on Trouble’s back, and felt rather than heard the ebb and flow of his gentle breath.

  There was a single blue car parked across the road. It was far enough away that its occupant was hard to make out. But she was certain it was Bryn Owens. It was hard not to feel bad for her. Bryn and Tionna had owned New Belford’s only bakery together, and Erin and Mackenzie had liked to go there for coffee. But after Tionna died, Bryn put a closed sign in the window, and never opened the bakery again.

  Erin knew what grief felt like. The pain in her gut had lessened considerably in the last seven years, since her mother had been killed, but it never really went away.

  Trouble snapped to attention, slipping from beneath her hand to stand on his back legs and put his front paws against the window. The cat never missed a thing.

  A rumbling motorcycle had pulled up behind the blue sedan, and shut off. Erin wondered if this was someone she was supposed to know.

  A guy wearing blue jeans and a slim black tee shirt whose sleeves took on the taut, muscular shape of his upper arms and shoulders, put down the kickstand of his motorcycle and took off his helmet to push the sun-streaked hair from his face. Now she recognized his profile. His look was different—a little more relaxed and, frankly, sexier—than she remembered.

  Noah Daly had been two years ahead of her all through school, and he’d been a loner. A bit geeky, but still a loner. A lot of girls thought he was cute, but their mothers made sure they didn’t get too close because Noah’s father, Jeb Daly, was bad news. Jeb had been in and out of jail since he dropped out of McClaren County High School, and everyone thought he’d turned over a new leaf when he married Annette, the teenage daughter of the minister at the First Church of Christ Disciples. He even held a job as a cook at a roadhouse near the county line for a few years. But when his only son, Noah, was about to enter high school, Jeb did the unthinkable: he used a gun to rob the New Belford branch of the Kentucky Patriot Bank.

  It was the same bank that Bruce and Rita Walsh patronized. And the day of the robbery, Rita Walsh was in the building to drop off a dozen of her special mocha cranberry cupcakes to Amber Dawn Berry, a teller, and the sister-in-law of her best friend.

  But it wasn’t Jeb Daly who killed Rita. She’d been shot accidentally by the deputy, Zach Watkins, who responded to the silent alarm.

  Five years later, her father had hired Noah Daly to work in the service department of the dealership. What had he been thinking? And what was Noah Daly doing talking to Bryn Owe
ns?

  Small Town Trouble

  Chapter 3

  “Here, Mom.” Noah Daly handed his mother an insulated tumbler of sweet iced tea. She took the tea and smiled up at him from her chair at one of the umbrella tables by the pool. Only eighteen when he was born, she was younger than the mothers of most of the guys he knew. Her beauty had faded more quickly though: she’d long ago started dyeing her auburn hair to hide the gray, which showed up before she turned thirty, and she was on her feet a lot at her cashier’s job, but didn’t get much exercise, so she carried a little extra weight that she was self-conscious about. But the thing Noah noticed most about her was that her eyes didn’t sparkle like they did when he was little. Still, unlike most of the guys he knew, he’d never once been ashamed to be seen with his own mother.

  “Why aren’t you out on the lake, honey? The jet skis look like so much fun. Didn’t you bring swim trunks?”

  Noah glanced around him. The women near the pool were in sundresses or shorts or bathing suits, and the kids were either in the pool or dripping water as they played close by. Most of the men he worked with—except for a handful who stood around the grill, drinking beer and talking to Junior, the catering chef doing the grilling—were in swim trunks down near the lake. All of their girlfriends were wearing bikinis.

  “Not going in the water, Mom. Not in the mood. I just didn’t want you to have to be at home today, with him there.”

  She leaned close to him, whispering. “You have nothing to be ashamed of, Noah.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, okay? We’re here, and that’s what’s important.”

  A tall man wearing relaxed khaki shorts and a comfortably faded polo shirt ducked his head beneath the umbrella and laid one of his large hands on Noah’s mother’s shoulder. The hair at his temples was gray, but the rest was what Noah had heard his mother call strawberry blond. With his friendly green eyes, and booming voice, Bruce Walsh always seemed like he was about to share good news.

  “So glad you could make it, Annette. I told Noah I hoped he’d bring you to the party this year.” He nodded to Noah. “Even if young Noah here decides to bring along a sweetheart, you’re always welcome to come, too.”

  Noah’s mother tilted her face to him, and started to rise, smiling. “Mr. Walsh—“

  Bruce Walsh didn’t let her finish. “Please. Call me Bruce, and don’t get up. We get to be the grownups here, right?”

  “It’s a wonderful party,” she said, settling back down in her chair. “Look at all these cute decorations! Even these fancy tumblers are red, white, and blue. And all the children seem to be having a good time.” As they watched, a small girl started down the pool slide, her arms above her head. She shrieked with delight before going in, and when she popped to the surface again, even Bruce laughed.

  “Shelby Rae and I feel a deep sense of gratitude to the people who make Walsh motors successful. It’s a family. I like to take care of that family.” He held out a freshly opened bottle of Budweiser to Noah. “Something cold? Hot day to be out on that Yamaha of yours. You know, the invitation is still open for you and the boys in the department to fish off our docks any time.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Walsh.” Noah took the beer with a nod. “I’ve come out here early a few mornings this spring. But I park over on the access road so I don’t disturb you all. The yellow perch and bass are running big this year.”

  “Oh, that bass,” his mother said. “That’s something special.”

  Bruce agreed.

  To Noah, the most impressive thing about Bruce Walsh was his sincerity. Sometimes he sounded like a politician, but Noah knew that Bruce always kept his word. When he hired Noah on, he said he didn’t expect any more or any less from him than any other employee, but that it would be a great favor to him if Noah would keep his father, Jeb, from coming around after he got out of prison. Keeping the man who was ultimately responsible for Rita Walsh’s death away from his place of business was a promise Noah had been happy to make. Especially because he didn’t want to have anything to do with his loser father, either. He was glad Bruce didn’t know how that promise had already been tested.

  Hearing raucous laughter over by the outdoor kitchen, Noah saw Bruce’s wife, Shelby Rae, surrounded, as usual, by admiring men. She was too old to really appeal to Noah, and he wasn’t into flashy women. The older guys in the service department referred to her as a gold digger because they knew her back when she was just the receptionist, and Rita Walsh was still alive. But after one of her infrequent visits to the dealership, the younger guys would talk about how hot she was. Now, a couple of those guys were checking out the plunge of her tight white top as though they wanted to fall in. She seemed to be enjoying the attention, but when an older man with thinning, dark hair rested his hand on her back, she whipped her head around so fast that her long, curled ponytail hit the man on her other side in the face.

  “Quit it, Uncle Travis!” she said.

  Noah smiled. The guy was creepy and obviously deserved it, but Noah watched as he merely chuckled and chomped down on his unlighted cigar, unfazed.

  A couple of the other men dropped back, embarrassed. It could have been one of them instead of the intrepid Travis. He was her uncle? Talk about awkward.

  Bruce and his mother were still talking. Noah wasn’t sure what he’d missed, but the conversation had turned back to the expensive tumblers the party’s drinks were being served in.

  “Shelby Rae went a little crazy on making sure everything matched. I think she planned on about a thousand guests instead of a hundred and fifty. Everyone gets to take one home, but let me send a couple boxes of the extras home with you.”

  Annette laughed. “Oh, I couldn’t let you do that. They’re so expensive. I’m sure your wife will want to return the rest.” But Noah could tell from the way she was looking at the tumbler on the table that the idea excited her. They had so few nice things at home. She insisted that Noah put half his paycheck in the bank “for college, maybe, or a house of your own someday.” He hated that she worked so hard but couldn’t afford nicer things—even if they were just thick plastic drink glasses.

  “You’d be doing me a favor.” Bruce gave her a wide smile, and his eyes were kind.

  Noah’s mother blushed.

  “Erin, honey?” Bruce called to his daughter, who was sitting beside Mackenzie Clay at the opposite side of the pool. “Can I get you to come here for a minute?”

  Erin Walsh said something he couldn’t hear to Mackenzie, who’d been in an economics class with him during his senior year of high school. Then she gave her father a small smile and lifted her long legs from the pool, and stood, taking her reflective gold aviators from her hair and putting them on so that her hair swung free. Unlike her stepmother, she was dressed down, wearing cream-colored shorts that rested softly on her narrow hips, and a heathered purple Allman Brothers Band t-shirt tied into a knot, briefly revealing a triangle of pale, flat stomach. The glimpse of her skin put a different kind of knot in Noah’s stomach, and he glanced away.

  He and Erin had never been friends, but they were always aware of each other. Neither of them had been allowed to come to his father’s trial, because they were too young, but New Belford wasn’t a very big town. He saw more of her when she started at the consolidated high school as a quiet freshman. People referred to her as “Erin Walsh, that girl whose mother got killed.” But Noah thought of her as something more: the girl whose life his father had ruined. It didn’t matter that Jeb Daly had been bluffing with an empty gun during the robbery, and it was Deputy Zachary Watkins who actually shot and killed Rita Walsh. His father was still responsible.

  It wasn’t until last Christmas that Noah started to think of Erin in a much different way.

  She’d come into the dealership with Shelby Rae to be surprised with a spanking new Challenger that her father had ordered her for Christmas. It was a Hellcat, with a 700 horsepower HEMI engine that only had 42 miles on it—but Noah had put twelve miles on the en
gine himself after the service manager told him to take it out to make sure it ran perfectly before she arrived. The sleek black car was a beauty, with sports suspension, and paddle shifters on the wheel that meant the driver could switch to manual without even touching the stick.

  Driving that car on the highway and a couple back roads he knew well had been among the sweetest fifteen minutes of Noah’s life up to that point.

  But the day only improved when, an hour later, Bruce Walsh called back to the department himself to ask that the car be brought around. Almost everyone was gone for the day, so Noah started the Challenger with the special red fob that engaged the full 700 horsepower (instead of the black fob that gave you only 500), and drove it around to the front of the dealership.

  Erin stood on the sidewalk, her blond hair tucked into a knitted cashmere beret, her mittened hands covering her eyes like a little kid. Her father’s arm was around her shoulders. When she uncovered her eyes, Noah saw pure delight and surprise come into them. She turned and hugged her father. When she finally pulled away, a lock of her blonde hair fell from her beret and brushed her lightly freckled cheek. It was in that moment Noah knew that, given half a chance, he could fall in love with her.

  End of excerpt from Small Town Trouble

  by Laura Benedict

  Familiar Legacy #5

  Trouble’s Double Contest Winner

  “Shortly before my dog passed away from cancer, we noticed a little black cat that was little more than a kitten running around the neighborhood. One night, I happened to look out our front door to see a little black face with big green eyes looking in at us. I went to the door and, of course, she ran away. When my dog passed, I swore I would never have another dog because she was what I call my soul dog. A few weeks passed and I missed having an animal and noticed the black cat was back so I decided to feed it. She started coming every day and my sister and I decided to try and get her to come in the house using wet food. After a couple of weeks and leaving the back door open, (she was living under my neighbor’s deck) she started coming in to eat the wet food and then beat a hasty retreat outside. Then one day, while eating lunch I hear a big bang at the back door and there she was wanting in! She would stand up at the back door and look in, sliding from side to side -- she looked like she was cupping her face with her paws looking into the house to see if she could see someone. From then on, she started staying in longer and longer, and now she only goes outside at night in the summer and sometimes stays in all night when it gets colder. She has made us laugh with her antics, sometimes looking like a gymnast jumping and rolling and running. She loves to have her neck scratched and insists on us petting her before we set her food down. While she can be sweet, she is full of sass and vinegar. She has the "stink eye" down pat when we say "no!" to her. She investigates everything: closets, under the bed, dressers and chest of drawers. She is very different from my beloved dog, but Buddie has quickly stolen our hearts.”