by Beverly Long
The door opened and Toby Wilson walked in, taking the next seat at the counter. In addition to the pie he ate every day, he also put away a big breakfast every morning. “The usual, Toby?” Tara asked. The man ate two eggs, sunny-side up, with bacon, fried potatoes and toast every day. Her cholesterol had probably gone up just from carrying his plate.
“Wait a minute on putting the order in,” he said, stirring the coffee Tara poured. “Chief Vernelli is supposed to meet me here.”
Tara knocked the coffeepot against the counter and hot liquid splashed onto her hand.
Nicholi frowned at her. “Better be careful,” he said.
He didn’t know the half of it. “Just let me know when you’re ready,” she said. She put the coffee back on the burner and turned to escape to the kitchen.
She got two steps before she heard the door open. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Andy Hooper and Jake Vernelli walk in. Andy sat next to his grandfather. Jake took the stool next to Toby. His hair was still damp from his shower and his skin, which had looked red the day before from his time in the sun, had already turned to a deep tan. His shirt was stretched across his broad shoulders and his cop belt rested nicely on his hips. In food terms, he was a prime cut. Well-seasoned.
And probably just as addicting as a turtle cheesecake. Which she had also been known to crave from time to time.
“Coffee?” she asked, and was immediately grateful that she sounded almost normal.
“Is the Pope Catholic?” Jake asked.
That set Nicholi and Toby off. They laughed like little kids who’d gotten their feet tickled.
Tara rolled her eyes and Jake smiled. “How’s my truck?” he asked Toby.
“Besides having a good-sized dent in the right fender and a busted-out windshield, she’s a beauty. The glass for the window is coming today, and I got my best guy already working on the dent. Another day or so, she’ll be back to good as new.”
Andy leaned around his grandfather. “Toby, why do you always refer to vehicles as shes?”
“Because they can be temperamental and expensive and sometimes even difficult to start, but every man still wants one.”
It was an old joke but it set Nicholi and Toby off again, with Andy joining in. Jake continued to sip his coffee, looking at her over the rim of his cup.
With a good-natured smile, Tara refilled all the coffee cups. “When you all get done amusing yourselves,” she said, “I’ll be happy to take your orders.”
“I’m ready,” Jake said.
She pulled an order pad out of the pocket of her khaki skirt. “Pancakes and bacon. By the way,” he added, his voice much lower, “after I left your house last night, I had a conversation with Donny Miso.”
“Why?”
“He left the picnic just before the egg toss. I wanted to know what he did after that.”
Donny didn’t have any reason to harm her. Heck, she’d even paid him cash just to help him out. If she’d paid him by check he’d have lost his unemployment benefits. The guy was down and out on his luck. She knew what that felt like.
“And?” she prompted.
“I found him at the Double-Pull Tap. Evidently he likes his lemonade with some vodka mixed in. He’d had a few before I talked with him. Said he’d come straight from the picnic. Bartender vouched that he’d been there since about the time I saw him leave. He wasn’t at your house.”
“I hope you didn’t scare him. He seems pretty fragile right now.”
“The man is a drunk. You’re better off without him.”
She didn’t think so. Donny probably did drink too much and he’d been acting erratic lately, but still, she needed a dishwasher. And Donny had left a message on her voice mail just that morning, asking if he could come by that afternoon.
* * *
THREE HOURS LATER, Tara was stirring the cream of broccoli soup when Alice Fenton popped back into the kitchen. The woman who had been first her landlord, then her friend, wore a flannel shirt, blue jeans and scuffed loafers. She was four inches taller than Tara and probably carried another thirty pounds, making her an imposing figure, even at the age of sixty. Her face was lined, but her eyes were still clear and sharp. Not for the first time, Tara wished it could have worked out between her and Bill. Alice would have been a great mother-in-law.
“Nice plywood on your door window,” Alice said. She hugged Tara and ignored Janet, who stood at the grill making the last of the day’s pancakes before they switched over to lunch. Janet turned slightly, so that her back was to Alice.
Tara didn’t expect any different. She knew there was no love lost between the two women—they’d had an argument some fifteen or twenty years earlier and neither seemed inclined to put it in the past. Janet had a son about the same age as Bill Fenton, and Tara thought the issue had something to do with the two boys.
Shortly after arriving in Wyattville and seeing the animosity, she’d discreetly tried to get the details. Neither had been forthcoming, and it drove her crazy that the two people she cared about most in Wyattville couldn’t stand each other. She’d contemplated asking someone else about it but hadn’t wanted either Alice or Janet to think that she was stirring up gossip about them.
“Welcome back,” Tara said. Fifteen minutes earlier, through the service window, she’d caught a glimpse of Alice and Henry in the dining room and had assumed the woman would make a beeline back to the kitchen at her first opportunity. Henry, knowing he’d get the lowdown from Alice on the way home, had stayed in the dining room, talking with other farmers.
“You should have called us before we went out of town that morning to see Bill. We would have stopped in to help you clean up the mess.”
It wasn’t an empty promise. Over the past fourteen months, Alice and Henry had both been very helpful. When the dish machine had sprung a leak, Alice had made sure that Henry was there to fix it. And when rain had soaked through the roof, and then through the ceiling tiles, leaving puddles throughout the restaurant, Alice had been on her hands and knees, right alongside Tara, mopping up the mess.
“What exactly happened?” Alice asked.
She had no doubt heard a couple versions by now. One of the few negatives about Alice was that she liked to gossip. In her favor, she did try to have her facts straight.
“Some kid was sharpening up his throwing arm,” Tara said.
“Is that what the police say?” Alice picked up a tomato and squeezed. Evidently it met inspection because she put it next to the others waiting to be sliced.
“Yes,” Tara replied. “That’s the only reasonable explanation.” Of course, they didn’t realize that Michael Masterly didn’t have a reasonable bone in his body. Irrational. Temperamental. Judgmental. Those were all better adjectives. And he was a master at hiding it.
She shifted over and stirred the sauce that was bubbling in the large pan on the burner next to the soup. Today’s special was spaghetti and meatballs. Janet’s parents had brought the recipe with them from the old country, and Tara had almost passed out from pleasure the first time she’d tasted the dish. She wasn’t the least bit offended that Janet didn’t trust her to do anything but stir.
“That teenage hoodlum should have to pay to replace the window,” Alice said.
“The window is getting fixed this afternoon. But maybe the hoodlum,” she said, winking at Alice, “could mop my floor for a month. That would be a nice trade-off.”
“I heard the new interim police chief helped you clean up the mess that night. What’s he like?”
Decisive. Maybe even bossy. Sexy as heck. “He’s a big-city cop who is helping out an old friend. I get the feeling that the pace here is a little slower than what he’s used to.”
“I thought I might have him over for dinner. With Chase gone, the man is probably knocking around in that empty house. And I thought it might be a nice opportunity for him to meet Madeline.”
Now, that made more sense. Bill’s twin had moved home after her divorce last year. For a coupl
e months, both adult children had been living in the house with their parents. Based on a few of Bill’s comments, Tara had always thought he sought refuge at Nel’s to avoid Madeline.
For Alice and Henry’s sake, Tara had tried on several occasions to have a conversation with Madeline but the woman hadn’t given her the time of day. Alice wasn’t the only person who gossiped in Wyattville, and Tara had heard several versions of Madeline’s latest exploits with a married man who lived just outside of town.
Madeline liked men. Tara bet she’d really like Jake. “Matchmaking?” she asked, trying hard to keep her tone light. The idea of Madeline getting her claws into Jake was disturbing.
“What if I am? But I’d like you to come, too.”
The spoon slipped out of Tara’s hand and sank in the heavy sauce. Janet turned to look at her—she was frowning. Tara hastily grabbed some tongs and used them to fish the spoon out. All the while, her brain was scrambling to think up a way to refuse. Was she really expected to watch Madeline flirt with Jake all night? Unfortunately Alice didn’t take no well. That might also have been what led Bill to hide out at Nel’s.
“I’m pretty busy here, Alice. And I’ve got a stack of paperwork to go through.”
“Nonsense. You need to eat. And I don’t want it to be too obvious, you know. Please.”
Act normal. She couldn’t make this a bigger deal than it needed to be. And Alice had helped her so many times. “Okay. Just tell me when.”
“Tonight. I already stopped at the police station and he’s available. I took the liberty of telling him that you’d be joining us. We’ll eat around seven.”
It took everything Tara had to keep a smile on her face. “Great. See you tonight.”
The woman was almost out of the kitchen when Tara stopped her. “Hey, Alice, did you and Henry happen to stop by my house late yesterday afternoon?”
“Why?” Alice asked. Her neighbor appeared a bit startled, and Tara wondered if she’d been too abrupt in switching topics.
“When I got home after the picnic last night, my front screen door wasn’t closed. The latch doesn’t catch quite right. I thought maybe you’d needed to come inside for something. I know Henry has some old tools in the basement still.”
Alice smiled. “Honey, we didn’t get back into town until late.”
“That’s what I thought. Never mind, then.”
“I’ll just have to make sure Henry gets that door fixed for you.”
“No problem.” She didn’t want the door fixed. She needed all the early warning signals she could find.
Chapter Seven
Jake cruised through Wyattville. It didn’t take long. Main Street was less than three blocks long. There was Nel’s, Frank Johnson’s drugstore, a hardware store, a resale clothing store, another restaurant about the size of Nel’s, Chase’s law office, a bank, a decent-sized grocery store, the Double-Pull and a smaller bar. Flanking each end of town was a church. If you were Catholic, you headed south. The Methodists went north.
If you needed a doctor, a dentist or an accountant, you drove to Bluemond. There was a smattering of retail on the side streets, mixed in with residential housing. A day-care center, a tailor, a couple gas stations and a psychic. He smiled at that. Maybe he should get an appointment and find out what he was going to do when he left Wyattville.
His boss expected him back. He’d been okay at hearing that Jake needed a little more time off, but he had made it clear that he wanted Jake back in the saddle. “You did the only thing you could have,” he’d said.
Maybe that was true. He’d worked side by side with Marcy for almost eight years. He had trusted her, admired her work ethic and enjoyed her quirky sense of humor. He’d listened to stories about her nieces and nephews and mowed her lawn when she’d sprained her ankle. He’d helped her drag home a Christmas tree and patched a hole in her ceiling when the rain was leaking in. He’d given her dating advice and she’d done the same for him. He’d had at least one beer with her most every Friday night.
There’d never been anything sexual between them. He’d considered her a friend, and if there’d been warning signs, he’d ignored them.
Nobody had any idea that she was part of one of the bigger illegal drug distribution rings in the city—that she’d been on the inside, providing information to the bad guys, making it easy for them to always be one step ahead of the police.
Then, somehow, she’d fallen out of favor. Maybe she’d gotten greedy or maybe her loyalty had been in question. For whatever reason, the bad guys had set her up, had made sure that information was passed on to Jake and others that put her square in the crosshairs.
It could have been an easy bust. She’d had the drugs on her. But she’d decided that she wasn’t going to make it easy. Maybe had known that from the beginning it might turn out this way—after all, prison was no place for a cop. Her first shot had killed Officer Howard, her second had damned near killed Jake, had come inches from nicking a major artery and he’d have bled out. But inches mattered, and he’d gotten his own shot off and then it had been over.
But it hadn’t really been over. He’d been left to make sense of the whole mess. And maybe he’d accepted this assignment because he’d known that he needed a place to hide out. A place to heal.
And while it wasn’t perfect, it wasn’t terrible, either. He felt bad about how he’d discounted the assignment initially and the jokes he’d made with his family about how he’d be writing parking tickets and getting stray cats out of trees.
Since arriving in town, he’d busted two teenagers who were shoplifting from Frank Johnson, responded to a domestic disturbance where the estranged husband was violating an order of protection and attended a tricounty gathering of law enforcement to discuss the status of meth production in the region. Tomorrow, he’d be meeting with the bank to discuss security because smaller banks were becoming bigger targets for thieves. Next week, he’d be meeting with the principal of the grade school who had asked him to assist in developing a stranger-awareness program. Evidently an eight-year-old in a neighboring community got approached right before school let out for summer.
It was kind of fun actually. In the city, he’d become pretty specialized—working a lot on drug- and gang-related crime. And for every idiot he put away, five more took his place. The game went on.
He could see how in a smaller community a cop retained his skills because the assignments were all over the map. In fact, when Alice Fenton had come to the station this morning with the look of a woman on a mission, he’d been prepared to take a complaint of some kind. Had already pulled out a blank report in anticipation. When she’d invited him to dinner, he’d been so surprised that he’d said yes without even trying to think up an excuse.
Of course, maybe that had something to do with the fact that she’d mentioned that Tara would also be in attendance. Last night, when Tara had come to the station, calling out Andy’s name, her tone almost desperate, he’d thought the worst. And for a brief second had contemplated firing the young man. Then he’d realized the absurdity of that action. First, he was merely the interim chief. He didn’t have the authority to make unilateral personnel decisions. And second, how was he going to explain it?
I was jealous of his relationship with a woman who won’t give me the time of day.
Yup. That had a nice ring. It was a good thing he might be giving up police work, because when it got out that he’d lost his mind, nobody would touch him with a ten-foot pole.
When Tara had explained why she needed police assistance, he’d been skeptical. Hell, a monkey would have been skeptical. But she’d been so damn adamant about the door. But then, once they were inside, she’d seemed to readily accept that she’d either imagined the whole thing or somehow been wrong.
Something wasn’t right. He’d known her for only a few days, but he’d bet that she didn’t have a flighty bone in her body. She was solid. She ran her own business and appeared to be doing a bang-up job. He had stopped in the
other restaurant in town and had been unimpressed. The food had been okay, the service fine, but there’d been no warmth, no feeling of inclusion that was ever-present at Nel’s. The difference was Tara Thompson.
He hadn’t been as intrigued by a woman since…since never. It was just one more thing he hadn’t expected to experience in Wyattville. And really rotten timing. What did he have to offer? About as far as he could see into the future was next week.
He’d spoken to Chase this morning. His friend had apologized and said he’d likely be out of town longer than he’d expected. His mother was refusing to do her physical therapy and barely eating. He didn’t want to leave her just yet.
Jake had assured him that he was doing fine. Chase had said that he’d spoken to Chief Wilks and the man was recovering. Then he dropped the bombshell that Chief Wilks, who had turned sixty-two the previous year, was talking about retiring. Jake had quickly reminded his good friend that he’d agreed to do this only temporarily, and Chase had confirmed that he understood.
Jake pulled the squad car into his designated parking spot at the municipal building and got out. Frank Johnson and his wife, Ginny, who watched Lori Mae’s boys when she was working, were standing next to their car. They’d parked around the side of the building. Riley and Keller stood next to them. Riley held a cake box and Keller had his fist around a wad of balloons. Jake figured it was just seconds before the cake hit the ground and the balloons went airborne.
It was Lori Mae’s thirty-fourth birthday and her family intended to surprise her. They’d asked for his help. Lori Mae didn’t normally work weekends and he’d had to invent an excuse to get her to come in on a Saturday. He’d told her that he needed help with the stranger-awareness program—had figured that would resonate with her. It had, and when he’d checked in with her just an hour ago, she’d been cruising the internet, identifying resources.
