Priceless Marriage

by Bonnie Gardner

  Ruby would have thought Wyla was over it by now, but she was obviously still suffering from a major case of sour grapes. “Good afternoon, Wyla,” she said as pleasantly as she could. “What can I help you with today?”

  “I heard you had some new summer clothes in, and I thought my wardrobe could stand some upgrading,” Wyla said, apparently happy to be the center of attention.

  Honor arched an eyebrow, which, fortunately, Wyla couldn’t see, as Ruby steered the woman toward the ladies’ section. Wyla Thorne had a penchant for tight polyester and Capri pants in garish colors that usually clashed with her flaming, obviously-from-a-bottle red hair, and Ruby was certain that she and Honor had not ordered anything like that. She didn’t know where Wyla got her clothing, but it hadn’t been at the Mercantile since Ruby had become co-owner.

  “This is the latest shipment in, Wyla,” Ruby told her. “Surely there’s something here that will suit your fancy.”

  As Wyla began shuffling through the rack, Ruby drew in a deep breath.

  One could only hope!

  SAM CAME BACK around the corner and hung the phone back on its cradle on the wall. “That was Sheriff McNeil. He wants me to come into town tomorrow morning to help him with something.” Sam didn’t know how much he should mention to Nick about his amateur sleuthing, but figured he’d divulge details on a need-to-know basis only. “Are you going to need my help with anything?”

  Nick looked up from where he was making marks on the stripped-down walls. “Nope. I figure me and the electrician will have our hands full.”

  He didn’t say, “Without you in the way,” but Sam suspected that’s what he meant.

  “Great. I’ll go out in the morning and be back by noon. Later, if necessary. You reckon you’ll be done with the wiring by then?”

  “Ought to be.”

  “All right then.” Sometimes Nick could be a little too silent, as far as Sam was concerned. He glanced at his watch. “Damn, it’s after six. Where the hell is Ruby?”

  “I figure she’ll be here when she’s ready,” Nick said philosophically.

  Well, Sam was ready for her now. He’d thought that moving out to the farm would bring them closer, but he was here and now Ruby was in town, while last week the opposite had been true. “What could be taking so long?”

  “I’m glad to know you care, Sam,” Ruby said from the dining room doorway. She was holding a couple of brown paper sacks that were filling the air with a mouthwatering aroma.

  Sam’s stomach clenched. “Tell me that’s food you have there and you will be forgiven.”

  Ruby waltzed over and pecked Sam on the cheek. “Gosh, I thought I was going to be a hero just for bringing dinner. What did I do to be forgiven for?”

  “Kept me waiting, woman,” Sam growled, reaching for one of the bags.

  Ruby jerked it away. “No, you don’t. You and Nick go get washed up while I put this on the table.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Nick said, straightening. He turned to Sam. “I’ll take the bathroom in the trailer. You can clean up in here.”

  Sam saluted. “Aye-aye, sir!”

  “WYLA THORNE CAME INTO the store while I was there,” Ruby commented as they sat around the formal dining room table and ate their take-out burgers.

  “There’s something unusual about that?” Sam asked, his mouth full.

  Ruby shrugged. “No. But she’s still suffering from a major case of sour grapes, and she didn’t make a secret about it.” And she didn’t find anything in the store that “suited” her, either, Ruby thought sourly. Even if she had taken up at least an hour of Honor’s time.

  “Sour grapes about what?” Nick put down an empty piece of waxed paper and reached into the brown paper bag for another burger.

  Ruby chuckled. “I’m glad I thought to get two for each of you. I should have known you’d be starving.” She popped a French fry into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Wyla is mad because she didn’t put any money in the lottery kitty that week. Said she was tired of throwing good money after bad. And, of course, that was the very week they drew our numbers.”

  “And now she’s mad at everyone but herself because she didn’t follow through,” Sam concluded.

  “Exactly. Dean Kenning made a special trip all the way out to her farm and double-checked to make sure she didn’t want to enter that week before he drove over to Pine Run to buy the tickets. Wyla said no.”

  “Then she doesn’t have a leg to stand on,” Nick said, eyeing Ruby’s uneaten fries.

  Ruby shoved the cardboard carton of fries in Nick’s direction. “Here, go ahead. I don’t want them.” She dusted the salt off her hands and wiped them on a paper napkin. “I know that, you know that, even Wyla knows that she has no claim on the money. She’s just really, really put out with herself that she didn’t put her dollar in that week.”

  “And she’s taking it out on everybody else,” both men concluded at the same time.

  “That’s it in a nutshell,” Ruby said. “And it wasn’t as though she was easy to get along with in the first place.”

  Nick polished off the last bite of his burger and shoved a fry into his mouth. “I’m off. You two don’t need me here.”

  Ruby started to protest, but decided she was glad that he was leaving her alone with Sam. They had a lot to work through. Although Ruby wasn’t sure how much of their reconciliation would really be work.

  She’d never stopped loving Sam, even if she had tried her best. Now she just had to figure out how to let Sam think he’d won her back without seeming too eager.

  She was pretty sure her stubborn pride had made her jump to conclusions without hearing Sam’s side of the story, and now that she knew more about what had really happened, she regretted her hasty decision. She was certainly embarrassed that their marital problems had become the talk of the town.

  SAM ARRIVED at the city dump at the appointed time, but no one else was there. What business they had there, he didn’t know, but maybe the sheriff just wanted to be sure that there was no one around to listen to them talk. It wasn’t exactly the garden spot of Jester, Montana, and even the early morning breeze couldn’t disguise the stench of the garbage.

  Luke was a few minutes late, and Sam waited impatiently, rubbing his early morning stubble and drumming his fingers against the steering wheel of the SUV he’d borrowed from Ruby. He had to admit that the big vehicle handled a lot better than the sports car did on these rutted country roads.

  It was still far from certain if Ruby would let him stay. After all, she’d left him to sleep all alone in the spare bedroom last night. What would it take to convince her that he was finally home for good?

  Sam looked up as he heard the sound of an approaching vehicle and recognized the dark-colored sport utility with Sheriff’s Department markings that Luke McNeil drove when on duty. Sam stepped out of Ruby’s SUV and waited while Luke drew to a halt beside him.

  “What’s up?” Sam said as soon as Luke got out of the car. “Haven’t you already gone through all the garbage out here?”

  “Yeah, I have,” Luke said, shrugging. “I just wanted to be sure no one was listening.”

  Sam looked around at the bleak landscape and the malodorous mounds of trash. The only signs of life were the birds pecking around in the debris. “Can’t see that we’d be overheard here,” he said. “What have you dug up?”

  “Not a hell of a lot past the engineer’s report on the pavilion collapse,” Luke said. “My face is too well known around here. I don’t have the anonymity to listen at doors that I need.”

  “And you think I do?” Sam commented archly.

  “More so than me,” Luke said. “And I sure would like to find out who’s been feeding all the gossip about everyone in Jester to the Pine Run Plain Talker and their ‘Neighborly Nuggets’ column.”

  “I’m thinking it might be that Thorne woman. Ruby commented yesterday that she’s been grumbling about being cheated out of her part of the money,” Sam said. “I don’t kn
ow the woman, but from what Ruby said about her, it sounds like just the kind of thing her type would do.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised, either,” Luke agreed, looking around as if he expected Wyla to be lurking behind a pile of trash. “But I have no proof. Hell, I talked to the gossip columnist in Pine Run. She said she has no idea who’s been calling her. Just that it’s the same woman all the time. Apparently, the reporter’s come to recognize the caller’s voice.”

  Sam leaned back against the red SUV and drew in a deep breath. “I don’t suppose the paper has caller ID?”

  “Yeah, they have it. It’s one of the first questions I asked. All of the calls have come from pay phones in Jester.”

  “That narrows things down some,” Sam said, not trying to disguise his sarcasm. “We have a woman who has access to pay phones in Jester.” He laughed dryly. “It does eliminate about half the population.”

  “More than that,” Luke said. “There are the targets of her little news flashes. That eliminates most of the millionaires. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most of the stories have dealt with them.”

  “Well,” Sam said, “I’ve got the morning off, since Nick is working on the wiring. I’ll just do some skulking around in town and see what I can hear. The good news is that I don’t know that many people around here.”

  “And our chief suspect doesn’t know you.”

  “I’ll try to keep it that way, Sheriff. Anything else you need to tell me?”

  Luke shook his head. “Nope. You won’t have any trouble spotting Wyla Thorne. She looks like she buys all her clothing at a cut-rate polyester outlet. And her hair is a phony shade of red that never appeared in nature. You can’t miss her.”

  “What do you want me to do if I find anything?”

  “Just come back to me. I’m still trying to figure out how to handle that one. It isn’t slander if the news is true.”

  “You just don’t want her to get away with it,” Sam concluded.

  “No,” Luke said emphatically. “And I want her to stop.” He climbed back up into his official sheriff’s department vehicle and started the engine. He chuckled over the roar of the engine. “Of course, it would make my day if we could figure out some way to put the fear of prosecution into her.”

  SAM LET HIMSELF into the empty apartment over the Mercantile. He had left some dirty clothes there when he’d hastily moved his things out to the farm, and now he was happy that he had. He figured they’d be just what he needed to become less noticeable as he made his rounds through town.

  He hadn’t shaved this morning, and he’d started to let his hair grow out of the short military cut he’d worn for so many years. That would certainly help in his undercover assignment.

  He pulled the shirt and crumpled jeans out of the hamper and wrinkled his nose at the sour odor coming from them. He made a face. If he wore these, no one would get close enough to get a good look at him.

  Shaking them with the hopes of dislodging some of the dust and odor, Sam wondered what else he might use to further his disguise. It had been easy enough to skulk around in the shadows a few weeks ago when he’d come into town, because no one had been expecting him.

  Now, though he was still a stranger to a good many of the townspeople, he was known, especially since his “date” with his wife a few nights ago had been the subject of the gossip column in the Pine Run Plain Talker. He hoped, though, that people would be thinking about the lucky man with the good-looking woman in the red dress and not about the shabby bum he was going to try to become.

  Sam laid his clean clothes carefully on the bed and put on the dirty ones. He would definitely have to shower before he went back to the farm. He wasn’t sure he would be able to stand himself in this getup for long, much less show himself to Ruby.

  He chuckled as he glanced at himself in the mirror. “One look at me and Ruby would be sure to send me packing.” And Sam was not about to let that happen.

  He rummaged around in the storage closet he’d yet to clean out and found a scuffed and dusty pair of combat boots. He’d be more in place in boots of the cowboy variety, but the ones out at the farm were too new. Necessity was the mother of invention, so he was improvising as best he could.

  “Yeah. That’ll do it,” Sam said to himself after one last inspection in the mirror. Not exactly military spit and polish, but that had been the object.

  Now all he had to do was get out of the store without anybody noticing him.

  Sam slipped out the back door and down the outdoor stairway without being seen. Not that he expected much traffic in the alley behind the store. The only obstacle might have been a delivery truck, and even then delivery people would probably not have paid a moment’s attention to him. Still, it was better this way.

  There was a fresh oil stain on the parking lot and Sam rubbed his hand in it, then worked the grease under his nails the best he could, smearing some across his stubbly cheek. It would be tough to get it off tonight, Sam thought, but he’d been dirtier than this before and lived. He wiped his hands on his shirt, scuffed his boots in the gravel by the curb and figured he was good to go.

  He tucked in the front half of his grubby T-shirt, leaving the tail hanging out, then sauntered out of the alley onto Big Draw Drive.

  James Bond, he was certainly not.

  Chapter Twelve

  Since Sam had gone into Jester to play detective and Nick was busy with the electrician, Ruby had to find something to keep herself out of the way. As excited as she was about seeing the new kitchen come together in front of her very eyes, she knew that hovering would not help the work get done any faster.

  She’d spent so much time working to get the house livable and to get the farm sheds ready that she’d neglected the yard around the house. Yes, she’d kept the weeds that passed for grass mowed, but they’d have to put a real lawn in sooner or later. And the flower beds had all but been ignored.

  “I guess now is as good a time as any,” Ruby said to herself as she gathered up her gardening equipment from the toolshed and hurried around to the front of the house. The sun had moved to the west, so the unkempt flower bed was in the shade.

  Ruby drew in a deep breath, set her basket down beside her and took a good look. Just like the yard, there were more weeds than anything, but oddly enough, two brave yellow blossoms seemed to shine out of the brushy mess. Two yellow roses. Funny she’d never noticed them before.

  She hadn’t even thought to look at this neglected bed of flowers before today. And now that she had, she’d found the roses. Sort of like the cloud with a silver lining, she thought.

  She began to pull weeds from around the leggy, thorny shrubs. The bushes seemed healthy in spite of their overgrown condition. With a little tender loving care, she could return them to their former vigor.

  Could she possibly do the same thing with her marriage? Could this be a sign that maybe the mess between her and Sam was not as impossible as it had once seemed?

  “You were unfair to him, you know,” Ruby told herself as she tugged at the weeds. She hadn’t even let him give his side of the story until recently. Due process, it was called.

  She’d been judge and jury without giving Sam a chance to tell his version of events. Of course, she knew that now, but it seemed as if too much water had gone under the bridge for them to go back to the way things were before.

  No, she wasn’t going to think of that. She had never really stopped loving Sam. And she would do everything she could to put their marriage back together.

  If she could bring this garden back from weeds, surely she could save her marriage. It hadn’t been neglected as long.

  SAM’S STOMACH GROWLED as he pretended to browse through the selections in Ex-Libris, Amanda Devlin’s bookstore. There was a tempting array of cookies and pastries baked by Gwen Tanner from the boardinghouse on a table near a coffeepot, but considering his current state of disreputability, he thought it best to stay away from the tray. The store’s pretty and uptight pr
oprietor had been watching him like a hawk since he’d come in, not unlike most of the business owners in places he’d visited today.

  If he were running the place, he’d probably do the same thing. He glanced at the clock on the wall above the cash register. Nearly four. The store would be closing soon, so he might as well leave.

  Hell, he might as well call it a day. With the exception of the Heartbreaker, Jester pretty much rolled up its sidewalks by six, anyway. It appeared as if he wasn’t going to learn anything new today. Sam blew out a frustrated sigh and headed for the door.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” he murmured, touching the grubby ball cap he’d traded a trucker for at Tex’s Garage. Sam pushed through the door.

  Amanda nodded in acknowledgment, but so slightly it barely caused her light brown hair to move. The bell over the door tinkled a cheerful farewell, but Sam was pretty sure he would not hear an invitation to “come again.” Not that he expected one.

  He chuckled. Might as well hurry back to the apartment and get cleaned up. After all, he and Ruby had a dinner date, even if Nick would be coming along to chaperon. The good news was that Nick would not be coming back to the house with them.

  As long as Sam got some time alone with Ruby, he was certain they would eventually work through whatever reservations were still holding Ruby back. He just didn’t know how much longer he could bear to wait.

  He passed the Jester Savings and Loan Office and paused at the corner in front of Kenning’s Barber Shop. There wasn’t a lick of traffic on Main Street, but old habits died hard, and Sam stopped to look and listen. And it was fortunate that he did.

  A woman who had to be Wyla Thorne darted across the street from the Crowning Glory Hair Salon into Cozy’s Drug Store. Surely there couldn’t be two people in a town as small as Jester who wore such tacky clothes! And her bright red hair looked more like it belonged on a circus clown than a human being.