Bogeyman

by Gayle Wilson

  “Lord, child, what y’all doing in a police car?” The housekeeper leaned forward to pitch the question in through the open door.

  “We’re all right,” Blythe reassured her. “We just need to stay with Grandmamma for a while.”

  Delores looked at Cade, as if she expected him to provide some explanation for that necessity.

  “House fire,” he obliged.

  “Fire at you all’s house?” Delores’s gaze snapped back to Blythe.

  “Everything’s gone, Delores.” It was the first time Blythe had put that reality into words. The concern in the old woman’s eyes drew the admission from her. “There’s nothing left.”

  “Sure there is, baby. We’re left. Me and your grandmamma. And we’re gonna take care of you. Both of you. You get ’em out of the car, Mr. Cade, and I’ll go wake up Miz Ruth. Something told me to get over here early this morning. I knew something was wrong before daylight. I knew it in my bones.”

  The last two sentences, muttered rather than spoken, floated back to them as the old woman hurried toward the front steps. Cade turned to watch her before he, too, bent to look inside the car.

  “I think we’ve been given instructions. You want me to carry her?” He lifted his chin to indicate Maddie.

  “It’s probably better if I do. I think she’s asleep.”

  “I’ll come around and open the door for you. Hang on.”

  He closed the door on the driver’s side. Blythe’s eyes followed him as he walked around the front of the cruiser and then to the back door on the passenger side. He opened it, holding out his hand to help her out.

  She slid across the back seat, trying not to wake Maddie. Once there, she hesitated, for some reason reluctant to accept Cade’s hand. Just as she had been that first day.

  Knowing that getting out with the child in her arms would be awkward, she finally put the fingers of her right hand into Cade’s, allowing him to practically pull them from the car. In the process, the blanket fell off her shoulders.

  As she stepped away from the car, favoring her ankle, which had stiffened during the short ride, Cade reached back inside to retrieve it. He was in the act of draping it around her when the porch light came on above them.

  They looked up as Ruth Mitchell opened the massive front door. She had already stepped back to allow Delores room to enter when she spotted the three of them standing together at the foot of the steps.

  “Lord have mercy. What in the world?” Her grandmother came out through the open door, almost pushing the housekeeper out of her way.

  “We’re all right,” Blythe said again.

  “What’s happened?”

  “A fire,” Cade offered.

  The rehearsal with Delores’s questions seemed to have cemented their roles. Too tired to break the pattern, Blythe said exactly what she had before.

  “Everything’s gone, Grandmamma. There’s nothing left.”

  “Oh, my dear. You come on inside. Bring that baby in here,” her grandmother directed, letting Delores brush by her to enter the house. “You all are the only things that can’t be replaced. The rest of it…The rest of it’s just ‘worldly goods,’ like the Bible says. You put those things right out of your head, Blythe Mitchell, and come inside this house.”

  She had already started limping up the steps when Cade’s hand fastened under her elbow, offering support. Like touching his hat, it was the kind of thing that came naturally to him. Part of his upbringing. Still, the gesture touched her emotions exactly as the other had. Almost unconsciously, she turned her head to look at him.

  Since he was trailing a step below her, they were eye to eye. His were once more filled with concern. Underlying it, was something that sent a shiver through her lower body.

  The sensation his look created was enough to cause her to jerk her gaze away. She focused instead on the open door and her grandmother.

  As soon as she was safely inside, she would have time to examine what had just happened. To sort through the combination of emotions that had caused the surge of what was clearly—again—a sexual response to Cade Jackson.

  An echo of that schoolgirl crush? Or, more likely, she acknowledged, a growing realization that she was still alive. Still a woman. A young woman with all the normal needs.

  “You come on in, too, Cade. Looks like you could use a cup of good, strong coffee. Delores has probably got the pot on the stove by now.”

  Blythe didn’t turn to gauge whether or not he would obey. She didn’t dare. Not once she had realized the interior of the house might not be the sanctuary she’d believed it would be.

  “Thanks, Miz Ruth. I could use some of Delores’s coffee right now, but I don’t have time. I’ve got some things to do concerning the fire.”

  With Cade’s words, Blythe breathed a mental sigh of relief. To hide her reaction, she lowered her head, taking the opportunity to shift Maddie’s weight slightly so that her hold was more secure.

  “I got foam cups,” Ruth said. “You can take it with you. I won’t take no for an answer now, you hear?”

  Ruth Mitchell was not easily put off. Not when she had her mind made up.

  “To go, then,” Cade said, giving in far more gracefully to her grandmother’s iron will than Blythe had ever managed.

  By now they were at the front door. Cade stood back to allow her to enter first and then followed her into the dark hallway. Ruth closed the door behind them before she turned, holding her chenille bathrobe against her thin bosom with one hand.

  “I’ll take Maddie upstairs and put her down.” Blythe needed time to compose herself, and that wouldn’t be possible down here. Not with Cade here. “Which bedroom do you want us to use?”

  “Why, any of them, child. They’re all made up.”

  They always were. With sheets that smelled of lavender.

  Blythe wondered if Delores changed all those every Monday as she had when Blythe was a child and someone had actually slept in those beds. She probably did, she realized, considering that things never changed around here. Right now, that was a comfort.

  “Let me carry her for you.”

  Cade’s offer stopped her at the foot of the stairs. Narrow and steep, their tread was worn with the countless footsteps that had gone up and down them during the past century. Carrying Maddie up them would be hard enough in the best of circumstances. With a sprained ankle—

  Before she’d had time to make it, Cade took the decision out of her hands. While she hesitated, he had moved to her side, reaching for the little girl.

  She was conscious of his closeness, just as she’d been in his office. Tonight the acrid smell of smoke clung to his uniform instead of the scent of laundry starch.

  And that particular memory reminded her of the question she still had no answer for. Despite her lack of knowledge about Cade’s marital state, when he took Maddie from her arms, just the accidental brush of his hand against her stomach caused the same reaction she’d experienced earlier. As soon as the transfer had been made, Blythe stepped back, putting a more comfortable distance between them.

  Maddie turned her head against Cade’s shoulder, looking at her. Not asleep, Blythe realized.

  And yet not protesting the fact that she was being carried by a stranger. Blythe wasn’t sure that was a good sign. Maybe the little girl was just exhausted. Or traumatized.

  And who wouldn’t be?

  “Mama?”

  “I’m coming. I’m going to tuck you in, safe and sound.”

  Please God, no nightmares. There had been enough for one night. For Maddie and for her.

  “Are we going to live here now?”

  “For a while,” Blythe said, following Cade up the stairs.

  At least until I can figure out where the hell we go from here.

  Cade stepped out on the wooden porch, closing the front door behind him. He held the promised cup of coffee in his hand, its heat welcome against the bite of dawn’s cold.

  Blythe Mitchell.

  It was
n’t until he’d seen her daughter that he’d fully made the connection to the little girl who had never quite fit in with her relatively rowdy schoolmates. Mostly what he remembered about her was the straight blond hair and downcast eyes. And the same delicate features reflected in her daughter.

  He had noticed her watching him a couple of times when they’d been in school, but it had evoked nothing but a passing curiosity. She must have been…What? Five or six years younger than he was. Maybe more, since the county school at that time had served all grades. Young enough in any case that she hadn’t made an impression on him.

  Which was no longer the case. Her hair had darkened through the years, although there were still streaks of blond. He wasn’t knowledgeable enough to know whether they were natural, but he didn’t suppose it mattered. They were becoming. As was the style in which she wore it, little different than when they’d been in school. And the makeup she’d worn the afternoon she’d come by the office had been subtle, something else he liked. Of course, she had looked pretty damn good this morning wearing no makeup at all.

  If Blythe Mitchell’s appearance is all you got to think about right now, you ought to look for a different line of work.

  Still, it was hard not to speculate. When Blythe had come home a couple of months ago, there had been plenty of talk. About her husband’s death. Her daughter. The fact that she had refused to live in Ruth’s house.

  Now she’d be forced to. By circumstances that were, at the very least, tragic. And at the worst, dangerous.

  As he came down the steps, Cade looked up at the sky. By the time he got back to the scene of the fire, it would be full daylight. If Doug had done what he’d been told, Cade would be able to examine the area where Blythe claimed to have seen someone watching her house.

  He wasn’t sure that was the case, but he was sure she believed it. That fear had been in her eyes, underlying both the exhaustion and her own need to deny its reality.

  Her house had burned down to the ground. She’d had to take her daughter out over the roof. And she thought someone had been standing at the edge of the trees watching everything unfold. Enough to generate the look he’d seen in her eyes.

  A look he had wanted to erase. An emotion that had far less to do with duty than it ought to.

  He opened the door to the cruiser and climbed in, setting the coffee down in the center console’s cup holder. Before he did anything else, he sat in the quietness of the car a moment, trying to put his impressions of tonight’s events into context.

  What he saw instead were earnest blue eyes lifted to his. There was someone here. Standing at the edge of the woods.

  If there had been, there would be some sign. Some evidence to back up her story.

  And if there wasn’t…?

  Then the stress of what she’d been through would be enough to explain away what she thought she’d seen. Still…

  He believed her, he realized. As unlikely as it seemed, he believed that someone had been lurking on the edge of the property.

  Watching the fire? Given the circumstances, that was the only thing that made sense.

  Ignoring the coffee, he picked up the radio and punched the call button. When Logan Medders answered, Cade didn’t have to think twice about the instructions he gave.

  “Put in a call to the state fire marshal’s office. Tell them we’ve got a house fire down here I’d like them to take a look at. Ask them how long it will be before they can get an investigator out here.”

  “You think the Wright place was arson?” Logan sounded surprised.

  “I believe it’s possible. Verifying whether I’m right or not is their job. And tell them we need someone out here sooner rather than later.”

  “They ain’t gonna like that,” Logan said with a laugh.

  “Yeah? Well, I’m not real fond of somebody trying to burn down a house in this county with a family inside. I guess me and the investigator will both be in the same frame of mind when he gets here.”

  “You coming in?”

  “I’m going back to the scene. I’ll be there if you need me.”

  Without giving Logan time to respond, he flicked the switch and put the radio back into its stand. Then he touched the key that was still in the ignition.

  Instead of starting the car, he again sat in the relative darkness of its interior, thinking about the woman he’d just brought home. He’d always been a sucker for a hard luck story. Based on town gossip, Blythe Wyndham would already have qualified. For something like this to have happened to her in Crenshaw…

  Meant that she’d probably pack up and head back up North. Something that might be better for his peace of mind, he admitted.

  With that acknowledgment, Cade wrapped his fingers around the key, turning it with more force than was necessary. The engine roared to life.

  Before he put the car into Drive, he glanced back at the front door of the Mitchell house. In that upstairs bedroom he’d carried her little girl to, Blythe would be putting her daughter to bed. Singing to her, maybe. Reassuring her, just as Ruth had reassured Blythe, that everything was going to be all right.

  And as long as she was living in Davis County, making sure neither of them was wrong was up to him.

  8

  B lythe stopped in the kitchen doorway before she entered the room. Delores and her grandmother were seated at the table, hands clasped and heads bowed. An open Bible lay between them.

  She wasn’t sure whether this was their normal morning devotion or if their prayer had been prompted by the events of last night. Probably the former, considering the role religion played in their lives.

  She had promptly broken her own vow not to offer any more prayers to the Almighty while she’d been trying to get Maddie out of the burning house. The old saw about there being no atheists in foxholes was obviously true.

  “Amen,” her grandmother said, raising her head to meet Delores’s eyes. She squeezed the frail black hands clasped within her own before she released them.

  The housekeeper glanced up, finding Blythe in the doorway. “You get that angel to sleep, Miz Blythe?”

  “Finally. And I could really use that cup of coffee you were offering earlier. If there’s any left.”

  She was relieved to find Cade wasn’t still here. Although she was sure he intended to follow through immediately on the things they’d talked about, she was also sure the coffee’s warmth and anticipated kick would have been as tempting to him as it now was to her.

  “Plenty,” Delores said, pushing her chair back. “And plenty more where that came from.”

  “I’ll get it,” Blythe said quickly, stepping through the door and walking toward the stove.

  “Not in my kitchen, you won’t, missy. You sit down by your grandmamma. I remember just how you like it. White and sweet.”

  Although Blythe had given up milk and sugar years ago, the remembrance of her first sip of creamy, sweetened coffee, which had taken place here at this very table, was suddenly in her head. It was those kinds of memories that, like the people who lived here, made this house a sanctuary. One she needed more than she ever had before.

  “Thank you.” Changing course, she pulled out a chair from the side of the table and sat down. As she did, her grandmother’s fingers wrapped around hers.

  “It’s gonna be all right, baby. Don’t you worry about a thing. There’s plenty of room here for as long as y’all need to stay.”

  Blythe leaned over and pressed a kiss against Ruth’s cheek. Her grandmother’s skin smelled faintly of the lavender that scented the sheets she’d tucked around Maddie. “Thank you.”

  “This is what families are for. Times like these. If your mama was here, she’d tell you the same thing.”

  Blythe’s mother had died three years ago from a rare and virulent pneumonia. She’d been gone almost before anyone had realized she was ill.

  Blythe’s father had been killed in a hunting accident when she was only a toddler. That was why she and her mother had moved
in with Ruth. That and her mother’s depression, brought on by her father’s untimely death. It was an illness she had never completely shaken.

  What families are for…

  Were she and Maddie about to repeat that pattern? That had been one of the reasons Blythe had been so adamant about their having their own house. Now…

  The plan she’d so carefully constructed before she’d moved back was unraveling. And it seemed there was nothing she could do to prevent that from happening.

  Of course, maybe the fire at the rental house had been a blessing in disguise, given what had been going on out there. And with what she’d learned from Cade this morning…

  “Did you know the house Maddie and I were living in had once belonged to Sarah Comstock’s grandmother?”

  “Miz Eula Wright,” Delores said, setting a cup down in front of her.

  Despite the generous portion of cream the old woman had added, the heady scent of the chicory-flavored coffee made Blythe’s mouth water. Ignoring her grandmother’s gaze, she lifted the cup, taking a sip.

  “Her girl’s the one that married that Comstock man,” Delores added as she slipped into her place across from Ruth.

  “Abel,” her grandmother supplied. “Some folks say he’s the one that done it. That he killed his own baby.”

  “His wife said he didn’t leave the house that night,” Blythe said, remembering the articles she’d read in the Herald. “Would you lie for a man who was capable of doing that to your daughter?”

  “Maybe. If I was scared he’d do the same to me,” Delores said.

  “He beat her,” Ruth verified. “I know that for a fact. Saw the bruises myself.”

  She was talking about Sarah’s mother, Blythe realized. “You knew her?”

  It was a stupid question. In Crenshaw, everyone knew everyone else. Still, given the difference in their ages…

  “Little old washed-out mouse of a woman,” her grandmother went on. “Wouldn’t say boo to a snake. Sure wouldn’t have said it to Abel.”

  “I can’t believe any mother would be capable of that.” Blythe took another draw of her coffee, feeling the caffeine begin to work its magic. “Of lying to protect a man who could do that to her child.”