Holding Out for a Hero

by Pamela Tracy

  * * *

  “WHY? WHY WOULD THAT make you worry?” Oscar passed a car driving too slow. His headlights swept an empty field. Next to it, a house stood. The inside lights were on, and Oscar could see a family gathered around a table. He glanced over at Shelley. She’d noticed, too.

  Then she took a deep breath, and the words seemed to burst out of her. “I thought maybe Candace was pregnant. And if that was true, I couldn’t live with myself knowing I’d done nothing about seeing him there.”

  “Who? Who did you see?”

  “When I looked in the window that morning I saw my ex-husband standing over Candace’s body.”

  Oscar slammed on the brakes.

  What!

  Words he shouldn’t say in front of Ryan simmered below the surface. He looked in the rearview mirror, checking how close the car behind him was. Nowhere close. Quickly Oscar pulled to the side of the road. “Larry Wagner was there? Your ex-husband? You saw him?”

  Even in the darkness, he saw Shelley nod. He also saw the haunted expression in her eyes, the set of her lips, the way she clasped her hands in her lap. He reined in his anger. “Why didn’t you tell us, tell the police?”

  She fished her cell from her purse, punched in a code, waited and then handed him the phone with a text message showing. It took him about three seconds to fill in the missing pieces.

  “Did you block his number after this?”

  “Yes, but he seemed to find other phones to use and—”

  It took him less than a second to pull her into his arms and tell her that no way was Larry Wagner getting close to her or making anyone that Oscar loved disappear.

  Loved?

  Well, sure he loved her. She reminded him of his sister.

  Right?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  SHE SPENT MOST of Saturday at the police station, answering questions. Riley wasn’t happy that she hadn’t shared Larry’s appearance. Sunday she met with the state police as well as the FBI.

  If Larry was watching, there was no turning back.

  Monday, Oscar Guzman slowed his motorcycle down right beside her after she dropped Ryan off at preschool.

  “Hey, there.” He wasn’t in uniform, and she realized how used she had become to seeing him in dark blue, with a badge. Today he wore a white T-shirt and jeans, reminding her of the morning she’d met him—right before she’d seen Candace Livingston lying dead on her living room floor.

  With Larry Wagner standing over her.

  “Hey, yourself. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”

  “First day off in almost two weeks. And my hours changed. I’m on days now. As you know, Riley agrees that right now my main job is watching over you.”

  The look in his eyes invited her to believe him. Trust me, it seemed to say. Yeah, she’d seen that look before. A little over a year ago, Larry Wagner, pretending to be a nice guy. Maybe Oscar was pretending, too.

  “Actually,” he said, “I came here purposely to see you.”

  “Why?”

  “I could tell you it’s because I’m worried and that I noticed you now sleep with every light in your apartment on. Or I could tell you that I’m here on behalf of my aunt, who wants to order chocolate muffins.”

  “I’ll make the muffins.”

  “Shelley, it’s not just your baking I’m here to talk about.”

  For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out if she was his inspiration or if what she knew was his inspiration.

  Either way, she lost.

  “I stare at my phone,” she said. “Terrified I’m going to get a text.”

  “We want a text. Then we can try to trace it.” The cops had verified that Larry used a different phone every time he texted. The texts he’d already sent were no longer traceable.

  “My baking is the only thing I’m willing to talk about. I can’t talk about Larry anymore. I’m talked out.”

  “Okay, I can understand that. You want me to give you a ride back to your apartment and we can talk, or—”

  “No, nowhere near my apartment.” This morning, Sarasota Falls was enjoying a beautiful May morning. The sun shone and the world seemed especially bright. Yet Shelley couldn’t enjoy the view. Her ex could be hiding behind a tree or a car or even pretending to be one of the parents standing by the four-and five-year-old preschool room.

  He was a master at blending in.

  “How about coffee at the Bean Stop?”

  Shelley shook her head. “Here is fine. Let’s just sit on the bench.”

  He easily swung his leg over his bike and in a few steps was beside her.

  After she sat down, he joined her. “Look.” He pulled a piece of paper from his back pocket. “Aunt Bianca found a blank order form of your mother’s and filled it out. I’ve even got a check to pass on to you.”

  Why did Bianca of Bianca’s Bed-and-Breakfast have to be Oscar’s aunt? Shelley needed the money; she couldn’t turn the woman down. After delivery of the child’s birthday cake, she’d recorded a whopping ten-dollar profit.

  Her mother always said, “Whatever you sell should be double the cost it took to make it.” But Shelley’d had to buy eggs, milk, flour, baking soda, pretty much everything except the cake pan. She’d kept a few of her mother’s essentials.

  This morning when she’d dropped Ryan off at preschool, she’d been stopped by two moms wanting to order cakes fairly identical to the one she’d just made.

  Too bad she’d need more ingredients, because one mom wanted a lemon cake and the other marble. Both wanted the Lego design.

  She looked at Oscar. She’d regretted telling him about seeing Larry the minute the words were out of her mouth. This past weekend, she’d known she’d made a mistake.

  Larry always kept his promises.

  These past few weeks, her ex had known her every move, it seemed. How could Oscar compete?

  Rubbing her stomach, she thought about how good it had been to bake. Stirring the batter, she’d remembered almost twenty years ago and her mother’s hand on hers counting the beats: more than a hundred in just over a minute. Shelley’d learned to put in dry ingredients last. That long-ago kitchen had been huge, while the one she had today was small. Didn’t matter the size, though, because when Ryan crawled up in the chair beside her and she’d handed him a spoon and started counting, she’d felt a connection to her mother that brought tears to her eyes.

  She’d have told her mother about what Larry had done.

  She’d have trusted her mother.

  “I am excited,” she told Oscar, hoping he couldn’t hear the break in her voice. “I’ll think about it. I need to work, and part-time baking would allow me to be home with Ryan and get some things for Isabelle.” Shelley hesitated. “It’s just there are a few logistics I need to work out.”

  “I can understand that.” He stood, stretched and jutted his chin toward his bike. “Come on. I’ll take you to my aunt’s. She can talk to you about what she wants and when. I know you need the money.”

  Her eyes swept the landscape. Surely Larry couldn’t be everywhere. And the preschool wouldn’t release Ryan to anyone but her.

  “Have you ever been on the back of a Hog?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?” He sounded doubtful.

  “In college, but I wasn’t pregnant.”

  The sun went behind a cloud, and although it was a warm day, she shivered. The places where she imagined Larry hiding now seemed cast in shadows, and the words Better the enemy you know than the enemy you don’t sprang to mind.

  The real saying used the word devil, but she couldn’t think of Oscar that way.

  She felt like walking again and stood. She wanted to talk to Bianca, and she figured if Larry Wagner was nearby, right now she�
��d rather face him with Oscar by her side.

  “I’ll leave the Hog here and walk with you. But you have to promise me that someday, soon, after the baby is born, you’ll let me take you for a spin.”

  They started off and had taken only a few steps when Oscar slipped an arm around her shoulders.

  Now she wished he had more on than a white T-shirt. She could feel his skin through the material. He walked slowly, as if she were something precious, and she almost lost her breath before they got to the stoplight.

  At the one intersection they had to cross, she found herself chuckling. The light turned green and she struggled. Just his arm around her felt too intimate. She didn’t mind, though. She’d needed this because it got her mind off her problems for all of seven minutes.

  To her delight, he steered her to her old neighborhood, only two blocks and a lifetime away from where she lived now. Together they perused her once-upon-a-time home.

  “I remember it as being bigger,” he said.

  “I would never have painted it this color.” It was now orange with green trim instead of blue with white trim. The fence around it needed fixing. That was nothing new. The yard hadn’t been tended in a while.

  “It looks a little empty,” Oscar observed.

  It did. Shelley moved up the walk and went through the gate. “My mother never wanted a new home,” she said. “She wanted something that had history. I think that’s why I always did the reenactments. They meant so much to her.”

  “Which do you prefer,” Oscar asked, “the newer adobe homes that are being built on the west side, or do you like this side with all the older stuff.”

  She didn’t hesitate. “Definitely the older stuff. It’s got character.” She nodded toward the Folk Victorian. “It was built in 1887 and made to last.”

  Oscar laughed. “I grew up in a house built in the fifties. It was made of blocks and had these strange pocket doors. Mom used to close the one in the kitchen so we couldn’t sneak food when she was cooking.”

  “So it wasn’t just you making me sneak food from my mother,” Shelley teased. “You did it to your own mother.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Oscar protested. “Remember, I was the oldest. I made my little brothers do it.”

  “There’s a word for that.”

  He smiled, and her heart fluttered. He followed her up the walkway and to the front porch that stretched from one end of the house to the other.

  “We had three rocking chairs up here,” she shared. “One for each of us.” She bent, peeked in a window and felt a slight catch in her throat. “It’s completely empty. There’s no furniture. Not one piece.”

  “When did you sell it? And to who?” Oscar laughed.

  “Larry sold it. He said to a family with five kids.”

  Oscar looked around. “I don’t think they’d tear this house down to put in a business. It’s not zoned for business.”

  Shelley thought a moment, then walked around to the back. He followed. “I’d forgotten,” he said. “I’d forgotten your backyard.”

  “A full acre and then some. Big enough for four houses. You don’t think...?” Her words tapered off.

  “I do think,” Oscar said.

  “This is just one more of the mistakes I’ve made.” She walked to the front, peeking in the windows again, noting the windows that stretched from ceiling to floor, noting the ornate wooden edgings and the hardwood floor.

  “The kitchen was the only room my mom modernized,” she told Oscar, “since that’s where she worked. We had an extra stove because one wasn’t enough. They were across from each other, and Mom would stand in the middle sometimes, multitasking.”

  Oscar was staring at her, and she knew he didn’t know what to say. “Come on,” she told him. “We need to get going.”

  The rest of the walk lost some of its joy. Finally they approached the bed-and-breakfast.

  “That was fun,” she said. She stumbled a bit, and he caught her elbow. First she’d enjoyed his fingers on her cheeks, the arm around her shoulders, and now she liked his hand on her elbow. Must be the pregnancy hormones, because no way was she feeling attraction for the man who was keeping tabs on her because it was his job.

  “I’ll just go in and talk to your aunt.” Anything to avoid being alone in the apartment. Anything to get away from him.

  He didn’t seem to understand that he made her nervous.

  Before she could move, three serious barks sounded. “Peeve thinks we should just come in and stop wasting our time when we could be petting him,” Oscar remarked.

  “I didn’t know dogs could talk or that you were well versed in their language.”

  “You’d be surprised,” he told her, “what I’m well versed in.” He led the way through the back door and into a kitchen to die for.

  “Oh,” she breathed.

  Peeve sat somewhat patiently on the smooth floor, his body shaking with joy, his tail sweeping back and forth, and the expression on his face saying Notice me.

  “Why do you have a motorcycle if you have such a big dog?” Shelley asked.

  “I have a detachable sidecar. He loves riding in it.”

  Shelley wanted to see that. Even more, she wanted Ryan to see it.

  “You haven’t been in Aunt Bianca’s kitchen?”

  “Not in a long time.”

  “Aunt Bianca serves a full breakfast every morning and supper on Fridays and Saturdays. She’s even had a few people show up to her table just for the meal.”

  “My mom said Bianca made the best meatballs.”

  “Nope, she makes the best fried chicken.” Oscar sat in a hard chair and patted his knees, and Peeve hurried over to lay his head on Oscar’s hands. Shelley knew a look of contentment when she saw it.

  Bianca came through the door then, smiling at Shelley and saying, “I thought I heard Peeve and then voices. I take it Oscar’s told you I want to place an order? I’ve got a full house coming up in about two weeks. Hunters.”

  “He’s even given me the check.” It didn’t escape her notice that these last few days, Oscar had been the glue holding her together. She very much doubted anyone else could have inspired her to trust.

  But for some reason, she trusted Oscar.

  Next thing Shelley knew, she was sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of milk in front of her, Peeve sitting at her side and a rough draft of the kind of ordering Bianca would do for the next month. “Unless you have the baby,” she said. “Then we’ll make do until you’re back in the kitchen. When are you due?”

  “Could be any day. The doctor says I’m right on schedule.”

  “And you’ll have the baby here?” Oscar looked doubtful.

  “Just because the hospital is small doesn’t mean it’s inadequate,” Shelley said. “Twenty-three years ago, I was born in it.”

  “It was even smaller then,” Bianca added.

  Before anything else could be said, Oscar’s phone pinged. He stood, excusing himself, and exited out the back door. Shelley focused on the giant bulletin board that took up almost one whole wall. There were a few photos as well as a calendar with names written on almost every day. Near the top left was a blueprint. Shelley wished she hadn’t noticed because she knew what it was.

  Bianca had hired Larry Wagner to build her a guesthouse in the backyard. She’d made a substantial down payment and hadn’t received so much as a nail in return. No, wait—Larry had provided the blueprint. Stolen, probably.

  Shelley put a hand on the table. She needed to get home, make a supply list and figure out how to open a checking account her ex-husband couldn’t hack, because it was time to earn a living, take care of both her children. What little she’d made off baking these last few days had gone toward essentials: milk, eggs, a new pair of shoes for Ryan.

  Be
fore she could push herself up, someone entered the room and cleared his throat. Jack Little stared at Shelley, his eyes hungry. She knew what he was hoping for. He wanted information that would lead to his daughter’s killer.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  BY THE TIME Oscar got off the phone, Shelley was gone. Bianca sat at the table frowning at Jack, and Jack looked angry.

  “What did you do? Say?” Oscar accused him.

  “I just told her I wanted all of the truth and that I wasn’t sure she was providing it. I don’t know that you can trust her. I’ve read about her ex-husband. How can you be married to a criminal and not know it?”

  Peeve whined a bit, and Oscar refrained from bringing up the absent Tiffany. His wife might not be a criminal, but what she was doing seemed criminal. Oscar knew better, but the difference in character between Jack’s second wife, Valerie, and Tiffany rankled him. His sister had mentioned time and time again how Tiffany seemed to think spending money was a social skill.

  “I fell for Larry Wagner’s spiel,” Aunt Bianca said. “I believed every word. Can you trust me?”

  Jack let out a low growl. “What a mess, and I don’t know who to trust or believe.” He looked at Oscar. “Tell me what you’ve learned since the last time we spoke.”

  The police weren’t ready to go public with what Shelley had shared about Larry Wagner’s part in Candace’s death. Not until they were sure they could keep Shelley safe. Oscar shared what he could. “The medical examiner says Candace died between midnight and eight.”

  “And Shelley found her just after eight, so it was probably a bit earlier,” Aunt Bianca put in. Oscar worried once again that giving her the job of keeping track of the neighborhood’s activities was going to make her a detective wannabe.

  “We know,” Oscar continued, “that Cody spoke to her at ten, told her good-night and hung up.”

  “He should have been there. He never should have left my baby alone.”

  Bianca got up, poured a cup of coffee and set it in front of Jack. “Candace would have hated that. She was very independent. Cody was doing what he thought was right. Providing for her, thinking about the future. Don’t you dare make that boy feel any guiltier than he already does.”