Betty Sue didn’t know what to say to this truly wonderful woman who was doing so much for her. Tears came to her eyes again.
The breakfast rush kept them busy for the next hour and a half. They were both resting at a table near the kitchen when Betty Sue happened to look up when she saw movement through the glass door. When she did, she saw Dave as clear as ever standing on the other side of the door glaring at her. Then he smiled an almost evil smile and swaggered off and out of sight.
Betty Sue jumped up and ran to the door. When she stuck her head out, she didn’t see Dave anywhere. She looked down behind her knowing she’d see Trish with Smith in her hand and wasn’t disappointed.
“Was it him? Was it that snake?”
Betty Sue could only nod her head at first. Then she squeaked out, “Yes it was and he was giving me such an evil grin. It was horrible.”
Trish snorted. “I saw it Hon. I just wasn’t sure it was him at first. Here, let’s sit down right here. You look like you’re about to faint.”
Once she had Betty Sue sitting at the nearest table, Trish pulled out her cell phone and called Hal. When she finished, she turned back to Betty Sue and said, “Hal’s on his way over and they’re going to be searching all around here for the guy.”
Betty Sue was thankful that only a couple of customers came in before Hal arrived and Trish took care of them leaving Betty Sue still sitting where she’d been for the last ten minutes.
Hal went straight to Betty Sue’s table and pulled out a chair. “Are you all right Betty Sue?”
She nodded but waited to see what he’d say. When he didn’t speak right away, she said, “Did anyone else see him?”
Hal shook his head. “No, but they’re still out there looking for him. He’s not staying in any of the motels around town, so I’ve put in a call to the Sheriff’s Department and all the local police departments for thirty miles around but nothing yet.”
She sat there staring at him until he said, “Betty Sue, did you know that someone tried to run Matt off the road yesterday after he left his folks’ place?”
She was shocked and her face must have shown it. Before she could say anything, Hal said, “Matt’s all right. It’s a good thing he’s a professional driver. He was able to keep the car on the road at a big drop off. It turned out to be an old pickup that had been stolen. We found it abandoned later.”
Betty Sue was finally able to gain control of her thoughts. “Did he see who it was?”
Hal shook his head again. “No, he said he was too busy trying to keep the car on the road.”
“Do you think it was Dave?”
Hal frowned. “Yeah, it sure sounds like it but we can’t prove it.” He groaned then. “We can’t even prove he’s the one who gave Matt the threatening note either.”
After Hal left, Betty Sue forced herself to get out of her chair and get back to work. Trish needed her help now. She’d just have wait until later to think about all that Hal had just said.
Right after the noon rush, Betty Sue was busy refilling salt and pepper shakers when she looked up to see Matt hobbling in on his crutches. She noticed right away that he still had on the old cast.
He made his way up to the table she was at, pulled out a chair, and collapsed into it. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly before speaking.
“Hi Betty Sue. I’m on my way to the doctor to get my new walking cast on. They said that as soon as it’s dry which won’t take but a couple of hours then I’ll finally be able to walk without these blasted crutches.
She smiled at him. “I’m glad for you Matt.”
He grinned sheepishly at her. “Well that wasn’t what I came in for. I wanted to ask you if you’d go down to that tech school with me this afternoon after you get off work.”
She started to answer quickly then remembered the motel. “I guess I can, but I need to be back in time for Mike to begin training me at the motel at six.”
He grinned as he struggled back to his feet. “Sure, we’ll be back by then. I’ll be back here for you at three then.”
* * *
When Matt left the doctor’s office, he was still using his crutches, which the doctor had said he should do for a couple more hours. The new walking cast needed to dry thoroughly before he could walk on it. So he went home and sat on the couch with both of his legs up on the coffee table waiting for the cast to dry. He sure hoped he’d be able to walk without those blasted crutches when he went to get Betty Sue to go to the tech school.
He must have dozed off for when he looked at his watch, he realized he had to hurry to get to the diner in time to pick Betty Sue up when she got off work.
He struggled to get up with his crutches but then he tried putting his weight on his left foot. There was a thing similar to a crutch tip but bigger and harder on the bottom of his new cast and it seemed to be holding as he applied more and more of his weight on it.
Finally, he walked to the door with his crutches handy but not actually using them. Man was that ever great. Sure, he still wasn’t going to break any speed records but at least he was officially rid of those stupid crutches.
He carefully walked, or limped, out to the rental car that the insurance company had arranged for him and headed to the diner to pick up Betty Sue.
He pulled up in front of the diner and started to get out but she must have been watching at the door for him. She stepped out and was soon sitting in the passenger seat.
She looked into the back seat and saw the crutches lying on the seat there. “Oh Matt, do you still have to use those things?”
“Nope. I’m walking on my cast now, or I should say I’m limping on it. But the doctor said to keep them with me for a little longer just to make sure I didn’t need them.”
She clapped her hands. “Oh, then that’s marvelous Matt.”
The twenty-mile ride down to the school was quiet with both of them keeping mostly to their own thoughts but just as they were getting close, Betty Sue began talking.
“Oh Matt, I’m so glad you decided to at least check out this school. I just know you won’t regret it.”
He smiled. “I hope you’re right Betty Sue.”
He thought for a moment then remembered something. “You said Mike is going to start training you to run the motel. How do you feel about that? I mean do you think you’ll like running the motel for Trish.”
She giggled. “Oh Matt, I feel like a little kid with a new toy. I’m so excited. It’s not that I don’t like waitressing, especially working alongside Trish, but my back is really hurting all the time now. And I just have to do something else and the motel has a two bedroom apartment behind the office for the manager. It couldn’t possibly be more perfect for me right now.”
Once they arrived at the school, it was easy to find the office and soon they were inside talking to the admissions director. The man was so thorough that when Matt and Betty Sue left the office, he had a stack of brochures and a copy of the application he’d filled out.
As soon as they were back in the car, Betty Sue clapped her hands and said, “Oh Matt, I’m so excited for you. Isn’t it just so wonderful that you’re going to finally get to work in heating and cooling like you’ve always wanted to do?”
Matt could only grin at her enthusiasm as he steered the car toward Strawberry.
He thought about what he could say to her for a few minutes then decided to go for it. “Betty Sue, I don’t know if I’d ever have pulled myself out of all the bad stuff I’ve been in for the last ten years if you hadn’t come along when you did.”
He waited for her response to that statement and finally looked over at her when she didn’t say anything. She had big teardrops sliding down her cheeks. He panicked at first and was about to apologize when she finally spoke.
“Matt, I don’t know if you realize it or not, but if you stop to think about it, my life has changed so drastically in every possible way in the past two weeks that I’m just totally confused. I don’t even know what to thin
k next much less say.”
He waited, sensing that she wasn’t finished.
She blew out a sigh. “So, what I’m trying to say is this. Although I’m glad that you are changing your life, I just don’t know what to say to anything else right now. I need to sit down and think or at least slow things down some so I can get a hold of everything that’s going on around me. Sometimes it seems like I’m going in circles.”
When he didn’t respond, she made a strange sound and said, “I do like you Matt.” She snorted. “In a way, that’s one of the things that is making me want everything to just slow down so I can understand exactly what’s going on.”
She turned to look at him as he stopped at a stoplight. He looked back at her and said, “I understand Betty Sue. Believe me I do. It’s kinda like the way my dad suddenly seems to be treating me so much different from before. I don’t quite know how to handle it.”
“That’s it exactly Matt. Do you think that sometimes we can get a little too much of a good thing and we have to stop and just try to figure it all out?”
He laughed. “That’s the way I feel too Betty Sue. I’m almost afraid to think about what may happen next.”
She let out another big sigh. “Thank you for understanding Matt.”
He looked ahead and saw a restaurant, looked at his watch before saying, “I think we have time to stop and have a bite to eat before you have to be at the motel. Would you like to?”
She nodded emphatically. “Yes, Matt, I think that would be nice.”
Once they were back on the road again, Matt noticed that a car pulled out right behind them. He didn’t think much about it at first but after a while, he tried speeding up then slowing down and the guy was right there all the time.
He finally turned to Betty Sue and said, “I think we have a car following us.”
She turned around immediately and watched for a moment. “I can’t really tell if it’s Dave or not. He seems to be shorter but he could be slouching down. And with those big dark sunglasses and the ball cap, I just can’t really tell.”
Matt continued to watch the other car but when they were a few miles from Strawberry, it turned off on a dirt road.
“Well, I guess it wasn’t the guy after all. He just turned off down a country lane.”
* * *
Matt dropped Betty Sue off at Trish’s house at five thirty, which gave her just enough time to freshen up a little then drive the pickup in to the motel.
Her mind was still on the car that had seemed like it was following them before. Could it have been Dave and he’d turned off so they wouldn’t know it was him? She was getting more worried all the time. It wasn’t like Dave to wait this long after finding her to do something drastic.
When she walked through the door at five ‘til six, Mike was standing at the counter writing on some papers scattered out there. When he didn’t even look up or say anything, she decided to have a seat in one of the chairs by the door and wait until he finished.
Mike never looked up at her until five after six then he said, “Well, what are you waiting for. You can’t learn how to run this place sitting out there, can you?”
After an hour, Betty Sue thought she was beginning to get the hang of things when Mike stepped back and said, “Have you done this sort of thing before?”
She shook her head then remembered. “Well, I took some correspondent courses in accounting six or seven years ago. Maybe that’s helping.”
He shook his head with a frown on his face. “Maybe.”
They continued working for another hour in which time he let her check in a few guests and she was starting to enjoy it, especially interacting with the guests.
Mike looked at her over the tops of his glasses. “I need to run an errand for a few minutes. You think you can handle things by yourself that long?”
She nodded emphatically. “Oh yes, Mike, I’m really enjoying this especially talking with the people who come in here for a room.”
He looked at her as if he didn’t quite believe her but he left without saying anything else.
Now she was all alone and she was at once frightened and excited.
Betty Sue had just finished checking in a new couple and they had slipped out the door when it opened again and there stood Dave. She froze. The phone was only two feet away on the counter but she couldn’t get her hand to move toward it.
Dave just stood there with that same evil grin on his face. When she finally came to her senses and reached for the phone, Dave was across the room and had her wrist in a painful grip before she could reach the phone.
Their faces were only inches apart now and she could smell alcohol on his breath. That really scared her. She remembered all too well that the beatings he’d given her had been much worse when he had been drinking.
With the grin still in place, he brought his left hand up and squeezed her chin causing pain to shoot through her jaw. “I just wanted to give you a message, Sweetheart. If you don’t want your new boyfriend hurt real bad, then you’d better stay away from him.”
Before she knew what was happening, he turned and ran out the door but he threw over his shoulder as he did, “I’ll be back. And it’ll be when you don’t expect me, Darling.”
She was shaking so badly that she took three tries to dial 911.
When a police officer she didn’t know rushed through the door, she didn’t know what to say. But he took that worry away from her when he started talking.
“It’s okay Ms. Farris, the chief has all of us up to date on your ex-husband. There are several more officers out there right now looking for him. We have photos of him.”
When he reached the counter, he said, “Did he hurt you?”
She didn’t realize it but she was holding her right hand up in the air near her face and the officer saw it.
He reached out and pointed to her wrist. “You have a bruise there. Do you need to go to the hospital? It could be broken.”
She looked down at her wrist like it belonged to someone else. Then she seemed to awaken as if from a dream and shook her hand. “No, it’s okay. He didn’t twist it. He only squeezed it.”
Just then, Mike came back in and yelled, “What’s going on here?”
The officer seemed to know Mike well, for he pulled him aside near the door and in a calm manner explained the situation to him.
When the officer finished, Mike came around the counter beside Betty Sue. He pointed at the counter and said, “Look under here.”
When she did, she saw a red button attached to the bottom of the counter. “That’s our panic button. If you push that, an alarm goes off down at the police station.”
All she could do was to stare at the little red button and say, “Oh!” Then she got mad. “Why didn’t you tell me about that before?”
Mike just leered at her. “Didn’t get that far yet.”
When he walked to the back of the office, Betty Sue looked at the officer who merely shrugged his shoulders.
Before either could say anything else, Hal came in wearing jeans and a denim jacket over a knit shirt. He rushed up to her and looked at her wrist immediately.
“Are you okay Betty Sue? Is that wrist bothering you?”
She shook her head and tried to smile back at Hal. “Yes, I’m okay Hal.” She shook her hand again in the air between them. “And my wrist is just bruised and a little sore. That’s all.”
Hal motioned for the officer to follow him outside. While they were gone, she just stood at the counter staring at the door. Mike stayed at the desk in the back of the office.
A few minutes later, Hal came back in alone. “Well, Betty Sue, that ex of yours has finally done something we can arrest him for. I put out a bulletin on him and hopefully we’ll be able to have him in jail before the night’s over.”
Hal soon left but not until he again made sure she was okay and reassured her that they were going to get Dave now.
As soon as Hal left, Mike came back to the counter and beg
an showing her some new things.
By the time she left at ten o’clock, her head was spinning from all that Mike had thrown at her that night. There sure had been an awful lot in just four hours. She snickered when she thought about how much more he might be showing her tomorrow night.
* * *
After dropping Betty Sue off at Trish’s that afternoon, Matt had gone home and spent the evening just sitting on the couch staring at the TV without even knowing what he was watching. He had a lot of things to think about and he was having a difficult time keeping only one of them in the front of his mind at a time.
He picked up the brochures on the class he was going to take. The more he read, the more he knew that this was what he wanted to do now and for the rest of his life too. He looked at the photos and specs of all the different kinds of heating and cooling units there were and he suddenly couldn’t wait to get started.
When he finally turned the TV off and went to bed around ten, he lay there in bed staring at the ceiling for a long time before he finally fell into a restless sleep. One of his last thoughts was that his body wasn’t used to going to bed before morning . . . yet. But he was determined to keep it that way.
He must have eventually fallen into a deep sleep for when the doorbell rang and then someone began pounding on the door a minute later, it took him some time to shake off the sleep and realize what was going on.
He grabbed his 9mm off his bedside table, struggled out of bed pulling on his jeans, and hobbled to the door to look through the peephole.
When he saw that it was Hal, he placed the gun on a table near the door, opened it, and stepped aside as Hal stormed in.
“Turn on a light Matt.”
When Matt did, he stepped back toward the kitchen part of the room leaving Hal between him and his gun. Another police officer followed Hal in and they both stood there glaring at Matt.
Finally, Hal said, “Have you been anywhere tonight Matt?”
Matt shook his head. “No, Betty Sue and I went to check out that tech school yesterday afternoon and I dropped her off at Trish’s house about five-thirty. After that, I came here and I’ve been here ever since. Why?”
Walking Straight (The Walking Together Series Book 1) Page 15
