“All I’m saying is, where the Denny sisters are concerned, I’d be willing to bet the reason has something to do with Daddy. There’s a reason people want or don’t want things. Do you have kids? A husband?”
She sprang up off the bed and I actually flinched. I thought for a moment she was either going for the jugular or upside my head. “Whoa,” she said, jamming her hands on her hips. “Ground rule number one, we’re not going there. Have I asked you how long you’ve been screwing Claire Sellars?”
I could hear my heart beating in the silence. We stared at each other for a long while, each trying to grasp what had just happened. Was she trying to make a point that I had treaded into a topic that was off-limits? Or was the investigative journalist in her curious because she had investigated the senator and his wife? Or was she actually a little interested in who I was sleeping with?
I finally looked away from her and pretended to read Denny’s schedule again. “Okay … it looks like he’s got a Rotary Club meeting tonight. So, um, here’s the game plan. We pick up the tail at the Sheriff’s Department, and stay with him until he’s tucked away nice and safe at home.”
She nodded quickly, then casually sat back down on the bed. “And how long do we do this?” I thought I detected a slight quiver in her voice. Miss Cool-as-a-Cucumber was flustered. It was kind of cute. It took every ounce of restraint I could muster to not comment on it.
“We’ll do it a few nights and if nothing happens, we’ll switch gears and go to plan B.”
“And what’s plan B?”
I grinned. “Well, if plan A works, we won’t need plan B, will we?”
She nodded. “You don’t have a plan B, do you?”
I shook my head. We were easing back into our comfort zones and I liked it. Maybe it was going to be a good night after all.
CHAPTER 20
Sheriff Gaylord Denny left his office at 6:15 P.M. He drove straight home, disappeared inside his comfortable brick ranch-style house and emerged twenty minutes later. He had changed out of his coat and tie and into a pair of ill-fitting athletic pants, ball cap, and a golf shirt that looked like it had been pulled from the bottom of the laundry hamper.
“I don’t think Rotary Club meetings are formal, but it seems he’d at least make himself presentable,” I said.
Sophia didn’t say anything as she watched Denny through the tinted windshield. She was in the passenger seat with her long legs pulled up and feet pressed against the dashboard.
I had parked two houses down on the intersecting street with a clear shot of the Denny homestead just beyond the backyards. Denny left the department-issued vehicle in his driveway and climbed into an older model Cadillac with a busted taillight and scratched rear bumper.
“Peterson’s got something on him.” I cranked the engine and followed the Cadillac out of the neighborhood. He drove about two miles, then picked up the main road and headed back into town.
“Why do you say Peterson has something on him?”
“If he was an active participant, he’d shell out the money to have his car fixed. A man that drives around in a Caddy likes the status that comes with it. They usually have the car in the shop the next day.”
“I still say he’s just a doddering old man with some issues.”
I threw a glance at her and grinned. “Uh-huh. Then why are you tagging along on this ride? It’s not that you simply like my company.”
She glared at me a moment, then turned back to the windshield. “I’m tagging along to prove you wrong.” I thought I saw a hint of a grin.
“He’s turning into that burger joint.” She pointed toward the fast food restaurant on the corner. “He’s going through the drive-thru.”
I pulled into the opposite turning lane and headed into the gas-station parking lot across the street. “Why the hell is he going through a drive-thru? Don’t they have dinner at Rotary meetings?” I pulled the van out of the way of the gas pumps and parked near the curb where I could keep an eye on the restaurant.
“Maybe he doesn’t like what they serve.”
“Or maybe he’s not going to the meeting.” I hoped he wasn’t going anywhere he wanted to make an impression. Not how he was dressed.
A few minutes later, he pulled out of the drive-thru and back onto the main road. I let a few cars pass, then picked up where we’d left off. About three miles later, he turned into Kermit’s definition of a mall and drove around to the south entrance.
“He’s going shopping?” Sophia was as perplexed as I was.
“Maybe he’s shopping for a new outfit.”
The parking lot was nearly empty. Denny parked, got out, and strolled inside. I parked a row over. “Can you follow him?” I asked Sophia.
She looked at me with a tiny amount of fear in her eyes. “Me?”
“I’m going to tag along behind you but I’m afraid we’re going to lose him if you don’t go now. I’m still kind of hobbling.” My voice took on an urgent tone as Denny neared the entrance.
Sophia hurried out of the van, giving me a look like she didn’t know if she should trust me. What did she think I was going to do? Drive away and leave her there? She sprinted toward the same entrance Denny had just gone through. Damn, she looked good in shorts.
I climbed out of the van, then pulled a crutch from the back. When I finally got to the entrance, I called Sophia’s cell. “Where are you?”
“At the Dollar Movie Palace.”
“He’s seeing a movie?”
“Toy Story 3.”
“Seriously?”
“Ah … yeah.”
He’s meeting someone. “Buy two tickets and I’ll be there in a minute.”
Before she could respond, I clicked my phone off and hobbled inside. She was standing at the theater entrance and didn’t look happy.
“The least you can do is buy me popcorn.” She handed me the tickets.
I happily obliged and even bought her a drink. The movie was showing on screen six of six, which meant it was at the farthest end of the theater. By the time we made it down the hallway, my foot was throbbing.
The trailers for upcoming attractions were already playing so the theater was dark, illuminated only by the flickering on the giant screen. The theater was stadium seating with a few clusters of people scattered here and there, no one wanting to invade anyone’s space. Denny was sitting by himself on the third row from the back. I gritted my teeth and struggled with the crutch until we made it to the back row. From this vantage point, we had a great view of the back of Denny’s head.
There was a couple sitting on the opposite end of the top row and three teenagers in the middle of the next row within whispering distance to Denny. Other than these few, we had the top half of the theater to ourselves.
“Did you see one and two?” Sophia asked in a hushed voice.
“One and two what?”
“Toy Story.”
I glared at her, then shook my head slowly. “No, I’m afraid I missed those.”
She stared, mesmerized, at the trailer for a romantic comedy, slowly moving individual pieces of popcorn to her mouth. “They were great,” she said between bites.
“Uh-huh. I try not to make it a habit of lurking around kiddie movies. Especially if I don’t have a kid with me. Otherwise people look at you weird—kind of like we’re looking at Denny right now.”
She lifted her chin and looked at the back of our subject’s head. “Maybe he just likes great animation. You know, people with dementia or Alzheimer’s do sometimes revert back to childhood.”
“That’s true, but he drove himself here. He dressed in comfortable clothes and knew exactly where he was going when he left the house. And ten to one, Mrs. Denny thinks he’s at the Rotary meeting.”
“Probably.” She turned her attention back to the screen and settled in for the movie.
It was obvious by her interest in a plastic cowboy named Woody that I was going to be the one to keep an eye on Sheriff Denny.
“This movie’s about
talking toys?” I asked, thirty minutes into the movie.
“Shhh.”
I went back to watching Denny and let her watch the movie in peace. When it was over, Denny wandered the mall for half an hour, then bought an ice cream cone and sat on one of the benches. Sophia and I pretended to be interested in a cell phone display a few stores down from where Denny sat enjoying his melting ice cream. I popped a pain pill and took a swallow of Sophia’s watered-down soda to wash it down.
“Did you like the movie?” she asked, in all seriousness.
I shrugged. “Not really.”
She looked taken aback. “How can you not like Toy Story?”
“That doll with the messed-up eye gave me the creeps.”
She stared at me a moment, her lips puckered in question. Finally, she pointed a finger at me. “There’s a named phobia for that. I can’t think of it at the moment, but fear of dolls is a real phobia. Probably goes back to something in your childhood.”
I couldn’t help but grin. “Don’t try to analyze me. You’ll die of frustration.”
Denny stood up, wiped the chocolate from his mouth with a napkin, then dropped the napkin in a wastebasket. He glanced around the mall, then headed out.
“Whoever he was meeting didn’t show.” I nudged Sophia in Denny’s direction and we tagged along at a safe distance.
“How do you know he was meeting someone? Maybe he was just observing, keeping an eye out for trouble. He is the sheriff.”
“How can you keep an eye out for trouble in a dark theater?”
“Okay, with him being the sheriff, would he actually meet someone in a public place like a mall?”
“Dark theater, dear. He just spent two hours in a dark theater alone watching a kid’s movie. Now that’s creepy.”
It was dark when we got outside the mall. We climbed back in the van and followed Denny back to his neighborhood. I drove by the entrance street and circled back around. The Cadillac was parked in the driveway beside a black Lexus I assumed was Mrs. Denny’s. I drove around the neighborhood a couple times to make sure Sheriff Denny was home for the night.
“So much for the Rotary Club.” I turned back on to the main street and headed to Rhonda’s.
“So what do we do now?”
“The same thing tomorrow night.”
“I’m telling you he’s just a doddering old man.”
“And I’m telling you he was meeting someone.”
And whoever that someone was, was one of the reasons Denny’s daughters lived out of state. But I wasn’t going to broach that subject again. Not yet anyway.
She glanced at me and shook her head, a tiny smile playing on her lips. Damn, she could read my mind.
At Rhonda’s, we climbed out of the van and stood in the driveway a long moment. I caught a glimpse of the blind in the living room pull aside, then drop back in place. Eat your heart out, Rodney.
“Same time tomorrow?” Sophia asked.
I nodded. “I’ll check the movie schedule and see what’s playing.”
She threw her head back and laughed, then said, “I still don’t understand how anyone could not like Toy Story. It’s a classic.”
“No—The Godfather, one and two, are classics.”
“It’s the doll thing, isn’t it?”
“I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll have nightmares.”
She laughed hard again, and then a comfortable silence settled on us like a setting sun. I wanted to kiss her so bad I could already taste her.
“Okay … same time tomorrow,” she said, then hopped into the Mercedes. She gave me a little wave, then disappeared into the darkness.
I stood there for a long time staring at the spot at the end of the street where I lost sight of her. I wondered whom she was going home to. Lucky bastard. I wondered if she lived in an apartment. A condo? Maybe a house with a yard.
I could find out everything I wanted to know with one click on the laptop, but somehow, it felt like an invasion of her privacy. Of course, in the grand scheme of things, it was. It just didn’t seem right where she was concerned. She’d tell me everything I needed to know in time.
Inside, Rodney and Rhonda hurried away from the window and headed into the kitchen as soon as I opened the front door.
“Y’all are so busted,” I said.
“What?” Rodney turned around and looked at me with this goofy expression that made me want to laugh rather than kill him. “What do you mean we’re busted?”
“We were just going into the kitchen to grab a beer,” Rhonda said. “You want one?”
I slowly shook my head and grinned, following them into the kitchen. Beer my ass. Rhonda hadn’t had a beer since high school when she threw up all over the floorboard of my Camaro.
“How’d it go?” Rodney asked. “Anything out of the ordinary?”
I eased myself down into one of the chairs and propped the crutches against the wall. “Depends on what you call ordinary, I suppose. He was supposed to go to a Rotary Club meeting but ended up at the movies instead.”
“He went to the movie alone?”
I shrugged. “Personally, I don’t think he intended to be alone. But whoever he was meeting was a no-show.”
“How do you know he was meeting someone?” Rhonda asked. She handed me a beer, then handed one to Rodney.
I unscrewed the cap and downed half the bottle in one swig. “He was seeing some kiddie movie. Grown men usually don’t go to kiddie movies by themselves.”
“Really?” She looked to Rodney for confirmation.
He shrugged. “Unless they’re a movie critic, it is kind of weird.”
“What movie?” Rhonda asked.
I took a smaller swallow of the beer. “I don’t know, something about talking toys.”
“Toy Story 3,” they both said in unison.
“Ah, man … we wanted to see that,” Rodney said. “I didn’t think it was still playing.”
I stared from one to the other. Had the world gone completely mad? I pushed thoughts of that creepy baby doll with the bad eye out of my head before a nightmare became a real possibility.
The only doll baby I wanted to dream about tonight was Sophia.
“So he skipped out on a Rotary meeting to see a movie,” Rodney said. “Maybe he’s just a member of the Rotary but only attends a couple meetings?”
“Could be. But as an elected official, you’d think he would want to rub elbows with as many constituents as possible.”
Rodney finally took a drink of his beer. Rhonda hadn’t touched hers.
“What do you want to do about Averitt McCoy?” Rodney asked.
“Bring him in for a formal interview. Hopefully, he’ll roll over on Peterson and everything will be hunky-dory.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“We’ve got the evidence. Evidence doesn’t lie.”
“And what are you going to do about Denny?”
The beer and the painkillers were doing a tango in my head and my thought process was moving in slow motion. “Tail him again tomorrow. Peterson’s got something on him and I want to know what it is. The more evidence we have against Peterson, the better.”
And the sooner I knew how everyone was connected in this sick game, the sooner I could move on to a paying job.
* * *
The next morning, the sound of a car engine woke me. I fumbled for the alarm clock and was surprised to see it was after nine. I rolled over and peered out the bedroom blinds in time to see Rhonda’s car heading down the street. Today was volunteer day at the adult enrichment center, which meant she had Gram with her.
I sat on the edge of the bed a moment and examined my foot. It was only about a quarter size larger than normal now so I took that as a sign the swelling was going down each day. Another couple days and I might be able to wear something other than sandals.
I hobbled into the kitchen to find Rhonda had left the coffee on. Hot coffee, a quiet house, no Gram. It was starting out to be a pretty good da
y. I poured a cup of coffee, then took it and my phone out on the back deck. I scrolled to Claire’s number in my contact list, then punched send.
“Good morning, gorgeous,” I said when she answered.
“Good morning to you, too. How’s the foot?”
“Better. Still a little swollen but at least I can tell I have five individual toes now.”
She laughed, then asked, “Feel up to lunch?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“Can you drive yet?”
I thought it best not to mention last night’s surveillance work. “Oh, yeah. I’m good. Where and when?”
“Well, if I remember correctly, we had plans for a picnic here at the ranch.”
“Yeah, we did, didn’t we? Around noon?”
“I’ll see you then. When you come in, drive past the main house. My house is about a mile and a half past Daddy’s.”
“He’s not going to come out and shoot me, is he?”
She laughed. I was serious. I touched the scar on my lip.
“He won’t even know you’re here. Just like old times.”
She hung up and I sat staring at the phone for a minute or two after. I wasn’t sure yet how I was going to approach the subject of the money transfers or her connection to Mark Peterson. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. But I wasn’t stupid.
I finished my coffee, then grabbed a shower.
CHAPTER 21
I was purposely ten minutes late. I didn’t want to give her the impression I was sitting around watching the clock, counting off the minutes until I saw her again. The games Claire and I played with one another’s hearts and minds were sometimes beyond comprehension. I didn’t understand why we did them, and I didn’t think she did, either. I loved her more than life and I know she loved me the same, but we didn’t trust each other further than we could see one another. And sometimes, even when she was within sight, in full view, I trusted her even less. That’s when she was the most dangerous. At least when she wasn’t within arm’s reach, I could push her out of my mind.
I drove through the wrought iron gate welcoming me to the K-Bar Ranch. The main house was about two hundred yards past the entrance. It was an eight-thousand-square-foot, two-story colonial with a front porch and a manicured lawn. Claire’s bedroom had been upstairs, the last room on the right. The bedroom window faced the side lawn and there used to be a massive tree close enough I could climb and sneak in. Kinley got wise and had every tree within a hundred feet of the house cut down.
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