After You Were Gone

by Alexis Harrington

  He drove along the dusty road that would eventually lead to one of Gila Rock’s paved streets, leaving a cloud of powder-fine caliche in his wake. An occasional lizard darted out from the clumps of grass alongside the trail, but there were no other cars down here. Across the dry arroyo, heat waves shimmered in the distance.

  As for Cade Lindgren, after the first day he had met Mitchell, he’d hung around Bickham’s like a persistent yellow jacket at a picnic. Anytime Mitch tried to talk to Julianne about the work that needed doing, Lindgren would buzz in and out, either to eavesdrop or to just butt in. Annoyance made him long for a rolled-up newspaper or a flyswatter. He didn’t think Julianne was too happy about it, either, but she hadn’t put a stop to it.

  When he got to her place, he was relieved to see that Lindgren’s truck wasn’t there. Whether that meant he was just on an errand or not coming at all, he didn’t know. At least he’d have some peace for a while.

  But coming around to the back door, he stopped in his tracks. All the power lines coming into the building had been cut. The long, severed lines danced and popped on the ground. He grabbed Knucklehead’s collar to keep the dog from investigating, and stepped around them. The short ones on the now-powerless store looked like they’d been neatly snipped with bolt cutters.

  He climbed the steps and tried the doorknob, but it was locked. Since the bell wasn’t going to work, either, he rapped on the door. “Hey, Julianne! Are you in there?”

  He heard nothing, and knocked again. “Julianne, it’s Mitch! Are you okay? Open the door.”

  At last he felt her footsteps vibrate across the floor inside. “You should know I have a shotgun pointed at you, Mitchell Tucker.” Through the door he heard the muffled sound of the pump action.

  Still gripping the dog’s collar, he automatically moved to the side. “I’m not going to hurt you. Are you all right?” he repeated.

  “No, I’m not. I’m sitting in a building with no electricity or telephone, as if you didn’t know.”

  His sigh was impatient. “I didn’t know. I just saw it now. Did you call the power company? Did you call the sheriff’s department? Julianne, please open the door.”

  “What do you know about this, Mitchell?”

  “I don’t know anything, probably less than you do, for God’s sake! I sure as hell would like to, though.” Who was harassing her? How far would it go? And why? He understood why she was suspicious of him, given their past, but he had suspicions of his own.

  A moment of long silence followed. He didn’t know whether she was fine-tuning her blind aim or whether she was going to answer at all. At last the door opened no more than two inches, and he saw the muzzle of her shotgun and a section of her face above it.

  “Where’s Lindgren? I thought he was your guard dog.”

  “I knew he wasn’t coming in. He couldn’t get his sister’s truck today.”

  Despite the grim situation, Mitch chuckled and shook his head. It was so ridiculous he couldn’t help himself. The little man had to stay home because he didn’t have a ride. “Look, Julianne, I don’t know who did this, but it wasn’t me. Do you believe me?”

  Julianne gritted her teeth. On her side of the door, exasperation and the stuffy heat of the building pressed in on her.

  Did she believe him.

  She peered at Mitchell, the man who’d burned her husband alive in their barn, and she struggled with doubt. He had said he’d never lied to her, and when she thought back to their early days, she knew it was true. But now? What a clever ruse it could all be. He’d come to perform “community service” by helping her for no pay. Yet that gave him easy access to her, the opportunity to come and go around here, and to lull her into trusting him. She hadn’t spoken much to him while they’d worked together—she wasn’t all that nervous around him. But she didn’t want to give him the impression that they were friends again. Maybe Cade was right. Maybe she’d made a foolish decision to let him get this close. Did she believe him? “I don’t know.”

  “Will you at least open the door a little wider? You can blow my brains out if you decide I’m guilty—you’ve got the shotgun.” Hesitating, she finally opened the door and saw that he had a real dog with him. When she looked at the shepherd mix, he gave her a wide doggy smile, and his tongue lolled out.

  Mitchell nodded at her Remington. “No offense, but I’m getting kind of tired of having that thing pointed at me.” The dog sat beside him and continued to smile up at her.

  “Get used to it because no one is exempt.”

  Absently, he rubbed at a scar on his right arm. “It’s not the best way to live—on the defensive all the time.”

  “Yes, I know, but I’m not sure who my enemies are. That’s not a good feeling, either.”

  He considered her and released a breath. “Yeah. I can understand that. Do you want to let me in so we can get this straightened out? If you really think you need to call the sheriff on me, well, get him on your cell phone.”

  “Tsk.” She stood aside to let him and the dog come in.

  The fresh-paint smell was still faintly detectable, although Julianne had bought low-VOC paint to guard against volatile fumes. It would be worse if she hadn’t.

  “Wow, it’s hot in here.”

  The plastic drop cloths had all been removed, and the empty space was ready for shelving. Between her loss of security and her worries about turning the store into a going concern, her stress level had climbed into the red zone.

  She put down the weapon and pulled her hair into a ponytail. “Of course it is. The air-conditioning runs on electricity,” she said, more sharply than she’d meant to. “I can’t even turn on a fan. This has been a horrible morning.”

  She explained that she didn’t know the power was out until she woke up and realized that her clock radio hadn’t gone off. “The sun was way too high, and it was getting stuffy in here. I didn’t think I should open the windows upstairs—that would only make it hotter up there. And down here, alone, I didn’t want to leave the doors open.” She glanced at the dog. “Who’s this?”

  He reached down and scratched the animal’s ear. “Knucklehead. He was hanging around the mobile home when I got there, but no one was taking care of him, and I think Darcy was kicking him around some. Since I have to share my bed with a dog, I thought I’d better look out for him.”

  “Knucklehead. That’s an insulting name. It’s demeaning. He looks more like—like a Jack.” She held out the back of her hand to him, and he sniffed her whole arm.

  “Jack? He’s a dog.”

  “It works. If he were mine, that’s what I’d name him. Is he a good watchdog?”

  “As good as any, I suppose.”

  She rubbed Knucklehead’s soft fur and smiled. “I’ve thought about getting a dog since this trouble started.”

  “You’ve already got Lindgren.”

  She gave him a sour look. “Mitchell, that isn’t even close to funny.”

  “Yeah, I know. He watches every move I make and tries to order me around. But, really, he’s your PITA, not mine.”

  “Pita?”

  “Pain in the ass.”

  She straightened her shoulders. “Cade has worked for me for a long time. I can trust him. He knows what I’ve been through.”

  He didn’t have a quick, smart-ass answer for that, she noted. After a beat, he replied in a winter-dry voice, “I don’t think the last ten years have been good for any of us.”

  It crossed her mind to ask, Whose fault was that? But it wasn’t so simple. She’d played a part in it, too. Her fault. Mitchell’s fault. All the things done wrong. Changing the subject, she said, “The power company is coming to turn off the juice to the live wires, but I had to call an electrician to get the building hooked up again. Another expense I don’t need.”

  “I’d bet you didn’t get coffee or anything to eat yet,” he said.

  “No.”

  “All right. I’ll go pick up breakfast for you.”

  “Really, you
don’t have to do that. I can make a peanut butter sandwich—”

  He went on over her feeble protest. “I’ll leave Knucklehead with you. He’s a good dog—it might make you feel better to have him around. When I get back, we can start putting some of the displays together. We don’t need power tools for all of them, and anyway, there might be a little life left in the cordless ones.”

  After years of looking out for herself and having to direct others, it was so tempting to lower her defenses against someone who said all the right things. Tempting, but dangerous and out of the question.

  He was out the door, and she found herself making friends with a dog who was still smiling at her. She crouched down beside him and studied him. “Yeah, you’re a ‘Jack.’”

  Mitchell walked into Do-Nut Delite to order something for Julianne. The pink-and-white walls with black trim suited the aromas of eggs, yeast, sugar, and fresh coffee that filled the place. Though they sold only coffee, doughnuts, and—in a radical update—bagels the rest of the day, in the mornings they also served breakfast. He placed a double take-out order of ham and eggs for Julianne and himself, then sat with a cup of coffee at an empty table to wait for it. He scanned the pages of a USA Today while people came and went, an electronic ding-dong sounding every time someone opened the door.

  The little place did a pretty brisk business, and eventually the constant ding-dong worked its way into his head. Since he couldn’t tune it out, he turned his attention to the Texas Rangers’ early-season stats in the sports section until the bell rang again.

  “Well, look who washed up on the bank. Mitch Tucker.”

  He looked up. Oh hell. “Hey, Cherry. Here for breakfast?”

  She wore a variation of her usual clothes: tight jeans and a snug, sparkly white top that showed off her cleavage, and high-heeled sandals to display her red-painted toes. Looking at her was like staring into the face of a blazing noon sun that could melt a person’s eyes. “No, I finally convinced Ernie to upgrade some of the crap we sell at the Captain Gas. So we get our doughnuts from here now. But Gila Rock is in luck—we still have day-old hot dogs and fossilized bubblegum.”

  She pulled out the chair across from him and sat. “I thought I’d hear from you again long before this. You pretty much left me hanging in Lupe’s parking lot.”

  He ran a hand across the back of his neck and concocted a lie on the spot. Just because he wasn’t a liar didn’t mean he couldn’t if he needed to. “Yeah, I’m really sorry about that. I was in the john when I got a call from an old friend. Like I said that night, I had to split right away. I’ll make it up to you.” He didn’t expect to do that, nor did he think she’d wait for the day. In fact, he had the feeling she would go on hounding him until she had him lassoed to her bed in four-point restraints, even if she had to find a way to get him there herself.

  “When?” She leaned forward, almost purring like a mountain lion, and he felt cornered. “It’s Friday; let’s plan something for tonight. I get off at three. Maybe we could drive over to Marfa for dinner at that fancy-ass place in the hotel, Jett’s Grill, and then . . .” She waggled brows at him, suggesting just about everything under the blue yonder.

  “It sounds great, Cherry, but not tonight. I’m working.” The lies were mounting.

  She sat back, purr off. “Working—at what? I didn’t think you’d had anything to do since Benavente canned you.”

  “I’m busy with odd jobs around hereabouts.” He was getting pretty damned tired of people asking about this. He wasn’t going to tell her about helping Julianne, and no one knew about his part-time job in Alpine. It had to stay that way.

  “At night?” she demanded.

  “Yep, tonight anyway. Sorry.”

  “Look, Mitchell, if you don’t want—”

  “Cherry, here are your doughnuts, honey,” a woman called from behind the counter. She held two big pink boxes.

  Cherry got up and took them. “Thanks, LaDeen. Send the bill to Ernie at the store, as usual.” She turned back to Mitchell and looked him up and down. “I’ll catch you out one of these times, darlin’. Darcy told me all about you.” She smiled when she said it, but her tone implied something dark.

  He took a sip of the coffee he’d ordered before he sat down, mostly to hide his sense of unease. “I wouldn’t put too much stock in what he says. He loves the sound of his own voice almost as much as he does cheap beer.”

  “Hmm, I think he’s right this time. You just don’t know it yet. See you later.” She winked at him and walked out, making the bell ring.

  Mitchell drew a deep breath. What the hell did that mean? Darcy was right—his brother was rarely right about much of anything. What did he know? That Mitch was in touch with Julianne? He needed to settle this business between Julianne and him, and be gone.

  Just then, LaDeen, the counter girl, brought out his order in a big white paper bag. “Careful of the coffees. They’re hot.”

  “Thanks.” He gave her a dollar tip and headed out the door.

  “What’s the good word, Cherry?” Darcy lazed beside Cherry in her bed, thin bands of sunlight coming through the slats of the partly closed blinds. He blew smoke rings, trying to aim them at the ceiling fan to see if he could encircle the center of it. But the wall-mounted air-conditioning unit sent them flying to the other side of the room. Cherry held the ashtray on her belly.

  Where the sun hadn’t freckled and baked her like a dried apple, she had a redhead’s skin—cream-colored and unmarked, except for the tattoos, one of butterflies on her butt cheek and another of one of those horses with a single horn on its forehead, near her hipbone. “What the hell is the deal with that horse, anyway?” He poked at it.

  She craned her neck to look down at the tat. “It’s a unicorn. They’re magic.”

  “They aren’t real.” He lifted his arm to show off the viper on it. “At least a snake is real. If I had to go around all the time with a thing like that sticking out on me, I’d be cross-eyed.”

  She lifted the sheet and glanced at his deflated dick. “I wouldn’t worry. It hasn’t happened yet,” she observed.

  He frowned and tapped his cigarette on the edge of the ashtray. “You’re a smart-mouthed female, y’know that?”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s one of the reasons you like me.”

  His laugh was smoke-rough and eroded into a cough. “Could be.”

  “These things are gonna kill you.” She plucked the cigarette away from him and took a long pull.

  “Not me. Bullets bounce off me.”

  “Uh-huh. I saw Mitchell at Do-Nut Delite this morning. I was picking up stuff for the Captain Gas, and he was there sitting at a table.”

  “That’s not exactly a news flash,” Darcy replied.

  “It might be. I left first, but I was still sitting in my car when I saw him come out with a big to-go order. I got curious, so I tailed him. I stayed back far enough so he wouldn’t see me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He went to Bickham’s.”

  He propped himself on his elbow and stared at her, now alert. “Bickham’s! You mean the dime store?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’ll be damned.” This was a news flash. “What’s he doing there?”

  She gave him that flat, dry look that could wither a man with less juice. “Since I left my X-ray vision glasses on the kitchen counter, I wouldn’t know. But he carried that order inside.”

  “He’s gone a lot, but he’s been pretty tight-lipped about what he does with his time. We can’t get him to come out partying with us, or do any of the stuff we did in the old days.” He flopped to his back again and sucked down another lungful of smoke while he pondered the problem. “Jesus, I wonder if he’s working there. I saw that flyer the Boyce bitch plastered all over town. Naw, he wouldn’t do that. It would go against everything the old man taught us, everything Mitch went to jail for.”

  “Maybe you should go ask him yourself.”

  “Not there. I’ll have to catch him a
t home. We’ve pulled a few pranks on Julianne that weren’t really anonymous. I’m sure she knows we did it.”

  “What else have you done?”

  He wasn’t about to tell all, not even to Cherry. “Just a dumb-kid stunt—burning dog-shit bags. Nobody got hurt.”

  A whoop of laughter exploded from Cherry. “Really? Really? That’s the best you could come up with?”

  “It was good enough to get her to call Gunter. He rolled by the trailer that afternoon and wanted to know what the hell we were thinking. Naturally, we denied everything. But he lit a pretty hot fire under Earl. I haven’t seen the old man that wound up in years. Gunter threatened to put him in the back of the patrol car unless he went inside to his recliner.”

  “Gunter blamed your dad? He can hardly walk.”

  “He blamed all of us, but Mitch wasn’t there when Gunter stopped. He’s trying to lay low after that seven-year hitch with the state prison. It was almost like he knew Gunter was coming.” A gap of silence opened, and he slid his gaze to Cherry’s. It was as if they both considered the same possibility at the same moment.

  “You don’t think—”

  Darcy studied the ceiling. “He’s changed a lot, but . . . pfffft, no, he wouldn’t do that. Mitch is blood, by God, he’s a Tucker. He might not be the same fun hell-raiser he used to be, but he can’t have changed so much that he’d turn against us and in favor of her.” He ground out the cigarette in the ashtray. “He just can’t have.”

  With the power restored, Julianne and Mitchell spent time organizing stock and working on a display for the front windows. She wanted something attractive and welcoming, not just a pile of sun-faded junk like Uncle Joe had put there, then forgotten. She also wanted window boxes on the outside, planted with red geraniums. Cade finally had gotten his cast removed, but the doctor had told him he still couldn’t do any heavy lifting. So he remained at his post on the computer, and he was there every day now. Because he had to commute from Cuervo Blanco, he’d again hinted broadly about sleeping on a cot in the storeroom. She’d ignored it—that was at the bottom of the list of last things she needed.