What in the world were Deanna and a clown—?
He slowed to an approaching lope. "What's going on here, Ty? Deanna?"
At the sound of a plaintive "Shep!" he elbowed a slow-moving cowpoke out of his way in a protective surge to get to her, rescue her, soothe the tremble in her voice.
There, in the middle of the crowd, purse held over her head as she tried to tear her way out of the rope tangle with the other hand, was the lady in the blue dress and a clown. The latter struggled with frenzied hands to pull up his large baggy pants from around his ankles, while a furious Deanna kicked at him. Suddenly, she brought her knee up under his chin and, taking advantage of the daze suspending his reaction for a split second, batted him with her purse.
"Take that, you nose-honking, purse-snatching bozo!"
It struck Shep that the clown needed more help than Deanna. He sprawled backward, still tangled in the rope, almost taking her with him. Grabbing the sputtering, kicking fury by the waist, Shep yanked her free of Ty's lasso and held her tight as her angry assault dissolved into tears.
"It's okay, darlin'," Shep cooed against the top of her head as she buried her face in his shoulder. Beyond them, the clown tried to staunch the blood trickling from his lower lip.
"He b-broke into the Jeep an... and took my purse!" she sniffed, pointing behind her without looking at the downed perpetrator.
"I tell you, Shep, you got yourself a regular wildcat there," Ty McCain called out from his saddle. "I rode out to help her, but by the time I let go of my rope, she had the varmint by the suspenders, slinging him out of his drawers."
Two of Ty's friends pulled the groggy comic figure to his feet. "I think you need to meet our town sheriff," one said, pulling a large silk handkerchief out of the perp's baggy trousers and handing it to the bleeding man.
"This is a hundred-dollar bag here," Deanna raved, as if trying to justify her uncharacteristic aggression. "I only p...paid twenty for it," she admitted to Shep, "but that's not the point."
She was terrified of horses but thought nothing of running down a thief and recovering her property bare-handed. What a character. "Well, you have it back and everything is okay, right? He didn't hurt you, did he?"
"He..."
Stopping her quivering complaint long enough to pluck the wet towel tucked in the back of Shep's jeans, she pulled away on her own and loudly blew her nose. Before Shep and everyone else, her adrenaline-fueled hysteria swung from helpless and vulnerable back to aggressive and furious again.
"That coward wouldn't dare." Deanna glared at the thief. "You coulda just dropped it, you know."
"You could have just let him have it," Shep chided, the rashness of Deanna's pursuit swinging his initial alarm toward annoyance.
"Maybe that's how you operate out here," she averred, "but in my old neighborhood, you learned to stand your ground against punks like this or be stepped on." Wiping her hands on her hips, she marched over to where the clown stood mute, holding the bloodied wad of silk to his mouth.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" Her admonishment would have done any Irish-Italian mother in Brooklyn proud. "Smoking in front of kids and stealing from honest people like this. Just who do you think you are, Mr. Bozo?"
With that, Deanna grabbed the rubber edge of the clown mask and ripped it off the man's face. The glower of her gaze faltered, as she took in the light brown hair, packed wet against his head by the mask and wig combination. A voiceless exclamation of disbelief parted her lips.
"It's me, Deanna."
Clearly shaken, she reached for Shep, the clown's stony confession tightening her grip on his arm until the pinch became unbearable. Disengaging the death grip, Shep took her into the protective circle of his arms, inserting himself between her and the ghost from her past. Only C. R. Majors could draw the angry blood rush from her face, leaving her white as the paint on his mask.
"But he's dead." Deanna's voice was little more than whisper, a squeak of disbelief. Trembling as though suddenly chilled to the bone, she clutched Shep, unable to climb deep enough into the haven of his embrace. "I don't understand. I saw his car burned up. The detective told me he'd been in it," she rambled against the lightly furred depression of his chest. "He said the people C. R. double-crossed had killed him and he'd protect me from them if I told him where the money was. But I didn't know anything about it. I was innocent and he... he... that lying, conniving—"
"Whoa, there." Shep grabbed Deanna before she flew at
Majors in a resurgence of outrage.
"Why?" she demanded of the man who'd not only betrayed her heart, but framed her for a crime she didn't commit. "Why did you do this?"
All Shep's training was put to the test as he held the woman scorned at bay Arms and legs flailing, vying with each other to get at the crook who'd victimized her, it was like trying to calm two cats with their tails tied together.
"Check him for a weapon," Shep ordered in exasperation, "and somebody find the sheriff, wherever he is." With Ty's rope pulled tight about Majors' hips, he wasn't likely to get away, but he could have a concealed weapon, not to mention a kitchen sink, in that getup.
Where in blazes were Voorhees and Kestler? They weren't supposed to take their eyes off Deanna.
"Shepard!" Esther shoved her way toward Shep, her eyes as wide as her glass frames. "We have them."
Have them? Shep's thoughts echoed as Deanna gave up her struggles.
"Easy, Miz Lawson," one of her former students said, steadying the older woman, while she made a gasping recovery from her run across the field.
"Have who, Esther?" She wasn't making a lick of sense, but at least her appearance had a sedating effect on Deanna.
Still breathless, Esther waved her hand in a frantic bid for more time and then pointed to the community hall. "Them... wait." The retired teacher drew in a deep breath and closed her eyes, reminding Shep and doubtless others, of her time-proven cure for hiccoughs or an overdose of excitement. Everyone waited as she let it go until it was completely expended.
"Two men... been following Deanna... all day," she managed. "Maisy and... and I... locked in the food pantry."
"They locked Maisy in the pantry!" Deanna exclaimed, as bemused as Shep.
Esther shook her head. "Maisy gone... to get sheriff. Me..." she said, clasping her chest. "To get you."
"Wait a minute," Deanna said. "You're saying that you and Maisy locked two men who were following me in the pantry?" The puzzled furrow of her brow deepened. "But why would—" She looked at Shep, searching for the answer to her question. Then, as if she'd spotted it, her eyelashes fluttered and her eyes rolled upward beneath them, chasing the raw terror it invoked into the oblivion of unconsciousness.
Shep caught the full weight of her body in the circle of his arms before she slumped to the ground, and with the help of a bystander, he managed to hoist Deanna's limp figure in his arms. This whole operation had turned into a three-ring circus. The perp was a clown, tackled by his victim, and roped with her by a cowboy on a horse. Shep's elderly ex-schoolteacher and the town gossip locked two DEA agents in the food pantry.
Rising above her discomfort, Esther Lawson took immediate charge. "Shepard, bring Deanna into the community hall where it's cool. We keep a first-aid kit with smelling salts there." Turning to lead the way, the older woman clucked like a mother hen to herself. "Bless her little heart, at least the worst is over for her now."
Shep fell in behind Esther, not nearly as relieved. The worst might be over for Deanna, but something told him it was just beginning for him—in the third ring.
Twenty-seven
Deanna stirred by the time Shep had her firmly in his grasp.
"Easy, Slick," he said against her forehead. "I've got you. You're safe."
"I'm not usually a swooner," she mumbled, still a bit woozy. "It's not every day a gal sees a ghost."
"But it wasn't a ghost that I was worried about. All I could think about were those faceless men who wrecked my cond
o— the ones who wouldn't give me a chance to even say I was innocent."
"Excuse me. Excuse me." A paramedic from an ambulance on duty for the affair broke from the crowd and came straight for Deanna and Shep. "Have we got a heat stroke here or what?" He found a pulse on her wrist and watched his watch.
"I'm okay re—"
"Quiet please, ma'am."
Deanna waited until the young man got his reading.
"You wanna put her down, buddy, so I can check her out?"
"No, I don't want to be checked out. I'm fine." She couldn't be finer—in Shepard Jones's arms.
The young man shrugged. "It's your call. Pulse is good."
"And I can walk," she told Shep.
"I imagine you can, but there's no need to." His gaze testified without question that they were of the same mind on that subject. In his arms was exactly where Deanna belonged.
"It's okay, folks," the paramedic announced. "You can start again anytime."
He parted the sea of onlookers clustered between the church and the hall ahead of Shep and Deanna. Curious faces swept past in fast-forward, so that if any were familiar, Deanna had no time to recognize them.
"Shep, you want me to fill in for you?" a young man with a handlebar mustache called out from the throng.
He nodded. "Appreciate it, Vic."
"You need me?" Reverend Lawrence called down from the roof. He seemed torn between his responsibilities as minister of the church and foreman of the roofing crews.
"Everything's under control," Shep assured him.
With a "You take care of our little lamb now" the good reverend signaled the man at the wheel of the flatbed to honk the horn.
It was still blowing amid the cheers of the volunteers and their supporters as Shep stepped into the cool of the air-conditioned hall where Sheriff Clyde Barrett, flanked by a grim Maisy O'Donnall, removed a chair that had been wedged under the doorknob of what appeared to be a closet.
"You voted for me to be sheriff, Maisy," the man chided, "so what on earth possessed you to take over my job?"
"Esther and me didn't have time to go gallivantin' all over the plaza," she declared in their defense.
Deanna grabbed Shep's arm as the sheriff, gun still holstered, slid back the deadbolt and opened the door. What if the men were armed?
"Sorry about this fellas," the officer apologized. "The ladies meant well."
Surely she'd escaped one bizarre situation and landed in another. Instead of the sleazy thugs she expected, the geologists from Shep's ranch emerged, soaked in sweat from their confinement in the non-air-conditioned enclosure.
"These guys aren't thugs," Deanna told her friends, warmed by their benevolent intentions, despite the mistake. "They're the guys who have been doing geology tests or something at Shep's ranch."
"Oh, my word." Esther looked stricken, but Maisy wasn't as easily convinced.
"If they're geologists, I'm a rocket scientist," the diner waitress declared. "What does a geologist need with a gun, 'cause the pudgy one has one. Saw it right off at the drink stand when he reached in his jacket for his wallet."
"Mrs. O'Donnall is right," the man Shep referred to as Voorhees admitted. "But the sheriff can vouch for us that we are special investigators for the government. That's all anyone here needs to know," he said with an authority that nipped in the bud the questions forming in Deanna's and likely everyone else's minds.
The government? Deanna glanced at Shep, disconcerted. Had he known these men were government agents? His schooled expression held no answer for her.
"Well, I for one am so sorry, sir." Esther clapped her hands together as though praying for forgiveness. "We were just trying to keep Deanna's abusive boyfriend from finding her, and we thought—"
She'd only told the two women that she'd left a bad relationship, so what possessed the dears to think she needed protection? Had Shep said something to them behind her back?
"What I'd like to know is how in kingdom come did you two federal boys get hoodwinked by two of our finest senior citizens?" The sheriff's poorly concealed snicker brought a flush of color to the men's faces.
"Who are you callin' a senior citizen?" Maisy railed, throwing the sheriff in the same fire as the agents.
"Now that was just a figure of speech, Mai—"
"They must have seen us tailing the suspect—" Jon started at the same time as the sheriff, stalling both.
"Excuse me." Deanna took advantage of the pause, not certain she'd heard right. "Did you say suspect? Like in me as a suspect?" The possibility that the police called in the FBI or whatever to track her down sent a shiver down her spine.
"I'm afraid so, Miss Manetti," Agent Voorhees confirmed.
"Sheesh, am I on the Most Wanted show, too, just for taking a colleague's bank bag to the bank for him?"
"Anyway" Jon picked up, "the ladies called us in to help get a heavy box down off the top shelf in the pantry. Next thing we knew, the door was locked and the lights went out."
"You could have kicked it down." Shep's derision curled one side of his mouth.
"That's a solid wood door, buddy," Voorhees pointed out, "not to mention church property. We beat on the wall and shouted until some kids overheard us and promised to find the sheriff."
"Giving this guy a clear path to get his hands on Deanna," Shep shot back as Voorhees brandished a pair of handcuffs from his coat and walked over to the mute clown in the custody of Ty McCain's associates.
Deanna's thoughts tripped in confusion. Were the geologists the guys in high places that Shep told her could help her?
"Looks to me like Majors was in more peril than our Miss Manetti."
The agent's wry observation failed to amuse Shep. Deanna could almost hear his teeth grating under the pressure of his twitching jaw muscles.
"Gentlemen," Voorhees said to the men who turned C. R. over to him, "I thank you for your help, but I'd just as soon clear the room of all parties not directly involved in our investigation. It'll all come out eventually, but for now, the less you know, the better. That goes for you as well, ladies," he added for Esther and Maisy's benefit. "Just keep what you've seen under your hat until the investigation is over. Some of you could be called as witnesses later, and we don't want any slip of the tongue to invalidate someone's testimony or harm the prosecution."
The clamor of emotions in Deanna's mind numbed her to Esther's kindly, "Keeping you in prayer, sweetie," or Maisy's wink as they followed the other good citizens out of the hall. The geologists—no, government agents—had shown up right after her arrival at Hopewell.
"As for you, Bozo," Agent Voorhees addressed C. R. "you are under arrest. You have the right..."
Shock numbing her ability to sort out her confusion, Deanna became distracted as the man in charge read C. R. his rights. Jon left to get their vehicle, instead of taking the sheriff's offer to hold C. R. in the local jail. Low profile was the aim. His chief wanted them to wrap this thing up without word leaking out that could jeopardize other investigations. First on the agenda was picking up their partner and the tech trailer at the ranch. Then they'd be on their way
"On your way where?" It was too much for Deanna to take in. The geologists were government agents and C. R. was not only alive, but had followed her to—to what, steal her purse? "So since you have C. R., does this mean I can go free?"
As long as she was cleared, she didn't have to understand. God sent her to Shep. Surely He wasn't going to take her away now that she'd found happiness.
"You're still suspected of collaboration, Miss Manetti." The senior agent gave her an apologetic look. "You did make the deposits."
"But I didn't know what was in them." Deanna jumped to her feet heading for C. R. The least he could do was clear this thing up. "Tell him, C. R. You owe me that after the stunt you pulled. Tell him I didn't know anything about the blooming money... that you snookered me big time."
"Deanna didn't know anything about it," he said, expressionless.
"Now
that was real convincing," Deanna quipped with a dour look. "Sheesh, I know it's the truth and I wouldn't believe you."
There had to be a way to resolve this. But how? Question after question stirred in her mind, overlapping with flashbacks of all she'd been through. No one would believe her. "Wait a minute. How did you even know where I was? Even I didn't know where I was."
"He put a tracking device on your car," Voorhees explained. "Something like the fancy models have standard that can be used to trace a stolen vehicle."
"I know what a tracking device is." Deanna glared afresh at the man who got her into this mess. After what he'd done to her, he was lucky she'd just busted his lip. "You have got some nerve, Majors. Do you have any idea what I gave up to move out here? Or worse, what I've been through since I listened to your puff and nonsense about opportunity for success and romance? Hah!"
"If Miss Manetti had nothing to do with your scheme, Mr. Majors, then why did you go to so much trouble to find her?" Agent Voorhees asked.
"Yes, exactly," Deanna chimed in.
C. R. looked at Deanna. "She's one of the most passionate women I've ever met. Can you blame me?"
Deanna gasped. "You take that back!" He made it sound like they'd been intimate.
"Of course, I had no idea she was so violent." He ran his tongue over his tender lip.
"Violent? I'll show you violent." In two short steps, she gave him a sound slap. "Now you tell the truth, you lying, conniving, thieving son of a gutter rat."
"Hey, what about my rights?" C. R. demanded of Agent Voorhees. "Keep her away from me."
"I thought Miss Manetti's passion is what brought you here."
Deanna felt validated by the agent's cryptic turn of phrase. "So why did you really hunt me down? I certainly don't have the money Somebody tore apart my condo looking for it, and the police blamed me." Just recalling it made her want to grab C. R.'s lower lip and pull it up over his head. "And I've been mucking stables and wearing this Lucy dress and psychedelic handoffs just to earn my room and board. I was afraid to use my credit cards. Cut off my arm, why don't you!" she exclaimed. "So if my wanting to rip off your head and spit down your neck is passionate, then I admit it. I'm very passionate. I'm so passionate I could—"
Winsor, Linda Page 24
