Busted in Broken Hearts Junction

by Meg Muldoon

  I went back out into the living room, noticing that the door to the bathroom was open and the light was on.

  Fletcher stood over the sink, submerging his bloodied flannel shirt in water streaming from the faucet.

  He looked haunted.

  My heart ached, seeing him like that.

  I went over, turning the faucet off.

  “I’ll do this,” I said, placing a hand on his. “You don’t have to.”

  “There was so much blood, Loretta,” he said, looking over at me, a raw exhaustion in his eyes.

  “I know, hon,” I said.

  He swallowed hard and those stormy blue eyes of his started to get damp.

  “I should have been there earlier,” he said, looking down. “When Amy called. I should have picked up right away. I should have been there. Maybe then, I could have… and it wouldn’t have…”

  He trailed off.

  “You couldn’t have known this was gonna happen, Fletch,” I said. “None of us could.”

  He leaned forward like he was sick to his stomach, resting his hands on the sink edge.

  “Those things I said to him before… I didn’t mean ‘em, Loretta. I shouldn’t have said them. And now, that’s the last thing he’ll—”

  “Shh,” I said. “It’s okay, Fletch. It’s okay.”

  He kept his eyes lowered. A solitary tear dropped from his cheek into the pink water.

  A sharp pain stabbed through my heart, seeing him so hurt.

  I wrapped my arms around his lean, muscular frame, digging hard into him. His skin was so cold.

  All I wanted to do was rock him back and forth and tell him it was all going to be okay.

  All I wanted to do was hold him close until the hurt went away.

  Knowing all the while that there wasn’t anything I could do to make it better.

  Clay would still be in that hospital. And Fletcher would still be wracked with guilt over it.

  After a while, he dropped his head into my chest, the exhaustion overcoming him. I pulled him to bed then.

  And I didn’t let go of him the rest of the night.

  Chapter 28

  The blood wouldn’t come out of Fletcher’s shirt.

  I’d kept the flannel soaking in the washing machine all night, but when I woke up early the next morning and pulled it out, the soaking hadn’t done much in the way of getting the red out.

  I scrubbed and scrubbed at it until my knuckles were raw. But it only served to make the bloodstain worse.

  Poor, poor kid.

  Not knowing what else to do, I returned the shirt to the washing machine to let it soak some more. Then I washed my hands, letting the hot water obliterate any evidence of Clay Westwood’s blood.

  Waking up this morning, it had all felt like just a bad dream for a few moments. I had let that fantasy play itself out for as long as I could, reveling in the idea that Clay getting shot through with an arrow in The Stupid Cupid Saloon had just been some sort of nightmare. Some farfetched figment that left you scratching your head and saying something like Well, that sure was a strange thing to dream about.

  But of course, it hadn’t been a dream.

  The blood on Fletcher’s shirt proved it.

  I went about making phone calls and leaving messages for Amy and Maggie, and also to the kitchen staff, letting them know that The Cupid would be closed pending further notice. Then I made a pot of coffee and fed Hank, who picking up on my depressed energy, had been slow to waking up this morning. He ate half of his dog food, and then went back to his favorite spot on the couch, curling up and snoring before his head hit the cushions.

  I sat at the breakfast table, drinking a cup of strong black coffee, staring out the window at the icy desert landscape.

  The photo that had been in Clay’s hand when he was shot sat on the table in front of me.

  Maybe I should have given it to the police. Maybe it was somehow important to what had happened to Clay.

  Or maybe not. Maybe it was all just a coincidence, me seeing the woman in the photo in one of my visions. Maybe that arrow hadn’t even been meant for Clay. Maybe it had been meant for somebody else, sailing through the open front door of The Cupid like that. Sailing over the shoulder of Max Dunbar, a regular who was just stepping into the Cupid for the evening. Hitting Clay square in the back.

  Who knew? Maybe the arrow had been meant for Max. Or Dry Hack. Or just about any of the other folks in the saloon at the time.

  But as much as I tried to explain it away, deep down in my gut, I knew that it wasn’t just any coincidence.

  I looked down at the photo on the table again. The pretty woman smiling back at me.

  The feeling of that vision had been something akin to the feeling I got when I’d been having visions of Dale Dixon last year shortly after he’d been murdered.

  They weren’t ordinary matchmaker visions, these.

  They felt different, somehow. There was an urgency to them. Something that needed saying. Something that needed finding out.

  I took another sip of my black coffee and stared out the window. I looked out at the frost-bitten junipers, twisting up into the sky like haunted souls trapped in ice.

  But all I could really see was Clay lying there face down on the floor of The Cupid, Fletcher clutching the kid’s hand as the blood pooled around him.

  Don’t let go. They’re almost here. Just hold on.

  Poor Fletcher.

  I’d never seen him so pale and speechless.

  This had shaken him up pretty bad. And Fletcher was the type who didn’t get shaken by much.

  I think he considered himself a kind of older brother figure to Clay. Someone who looked out for him back in the days when the kid didn’t have a penny to his name.

  There wasn’t anything Fletcher could have done. But he felt responsible – I could see that written all over his face the night before.

  Please, God, I thought. Please make Clay okay. Please don’t make him die like thi—

  I was jarred out of my thoughts by the high pitched ringing of my phone on the kitchen counter.

  I swallowed hard, a sudden fear gripping me.

  What if it was the hospital?

  What if Clay had…

  The thought was too terrible to entertain.

  Chapter 29

  “Lawrence, am I glad that it’s you,” I said, letting out a sigh of relief into the phone.

  It hadn’t been the hospital on the other side of the line, thank goodness.

  “Look, Bitters, I got Fletcher’s message this morning,” Lawrence said, an unusual strain to his tone.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It was terrible last night. Just real terrible.”

  “I need to talk to the two of you,” Lawrence said, his rough, worn voice cracking a little bit. “It’s… imperative.”

  “Is everything okay, Law Dog?” I asked, sitting forward in my chair.

  Lawrence was old. Really old. And not all that well health-wise.

  He sighed, his breath crackling the line.

  “I just think the two of you need to get on over here,” he said. “I’ll explain everything when you do.”

  “Okay, Law Dog,” I said, nodding. “We’ll be right over. Just sit tight.”

  “Thanks, hon,” he said before hanging up the phone.

  I put down my coffee mug and placed the phone on the kitchen counter. I turned around, ready to head to the bedroom to wake up Fletcher.

  But he was standing there at the kitchen bar, staring at me.

  “Is the old man okay?” he said.

  He was still looking distressed and pale.

  I guessed that the night of sleep hadn’t done much to ease his troubled mind.

  “He said he got your message. And that he needs to see us right away.”

  “Did something happen?” Fletcher asked.

  “He didn’t say,” I said. “But I think we best be going.

  Fletcher rubbed his face.

  “Okay,” he said. “We
can stop by on the way to the hospital.”

  I nodded.

  I started heading for the hallway, but he grabbed me and pulled me to him for a second, wrapping his arms around my waist.

  He looked down, searching my eyes.

  “When we get a quiet moment, there’s, uh, there’s something I need to tell you,” he said. “It’s something important. Real important.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  It felt like I’d been hearing that a lot lately.

  “You can’t tell me now?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “It’s not the right time,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Okay, then,” I said. “Okay. Don’t forget.”

  “I won’t.”

  He put his arms around my shoulders and kissed the top of my head. I breathed in deeply, the smell of his sweet and salty skin making my heartbeat quicken.

  “You saved me last night, Bluebird,” he said. “If it hadn’t been for you, I seriously don’t know—”

  “Shh,” I whispered, kissing his forearm. “That’s what I’m here for, Fletch. That’s what I’m here for.”

  Chapter 30

  Lawrence sat at the kitchen table, looking as guilty as a dog that had just scarfed down a row of chickens.

  A guilty look that I had never seen on the old timer’s face before.

  Lawrence, the former owner of The Stupid Cupid Saloon, was notorious for his honest, no-nonsense ways. During his time as boss, he let nothing slide. He did not tolerate fights, brawls, or arguments of any kind. He didn’t tolerate any other kind of misbehavior either, and wasn’t afraid to enforce the rules, thereby earning him the nickname Law Dog.

  I had never once seen the old man look guilty. Because short of pushing a few Skip-Bo cards up his sleeve now and again, the old timer hadn’t so much as told a lie in all the years I’d known him.

  But looking at him now, sitting there hunched over the kitchen table the way he was, the man looked like he had something pretty big on his conscience.

  Fletcher peered at his grandfather.

  “What is it, Law Dog?” he said tenderly, patting the old timer’s wrinkled hand. “What’s got you so upset?”

  Law Dog rubbed the back of his neck and looked down at the cold cup of coffee in front of him.

  “So, uh, Clay was hurt pretty bad last night?” he said.

  Fletcher nodded.

  “Tell me again how it happened?”

  Fletcher swallowed hard, then told him in blunt terms.

  Law Dog’s eyes widened as he listened, then he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

  He laced his fingers over the top of his head and closed his eyes.

  “My lord,” he said, keeping his eyes closed. “My lord, it can’t be.”

  I looked over at Fletcher.

  He was just about as worried as I’d ever seen him about his grandpa.

  “What is it, Law Dog? What’s going on?”

  Law Dog opened his eyes.

  “It’s happened again,” he said, the color having drained right out of his face. “Same thing. Right there in The Cupid.”

  “What do you mean, Lawrence?” I said, leaning forward.

  He glanced over at me, looking as though he’d seen a ghost.

  “25 years ago. Valentine’s Day. I can’t believe it.”

  His voice trembled.

  “My graces, it’s happened again.”

  Chapter 31

  Lawrence clasped his hands on his temples, looking like he was in the middle of a roller coaster ride and wanted nothing more than to get the hell off.

  It’s happened again.

  What had he meant by that?

  Fletcher cleared his throat.

  “Lawrence, if you’re not feeling up to this right now, you don’t have to—”

  “No, I do have to,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “This is too important.”

  Fletcher pat the old timer’s shoulder.

  “Just take your time, then,” he said.

  I reached out for the old man’s hand, squeezing it.

  “It’s okay, Lawrence,” I said, reassuringly.

  Lawrence nodded, pulling at the neck of his white t-shirt.

  He took in a deep breath.

  “I don’t have any special powers,” he said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “Not like you, Bitters. But I knew that night, 25 years ago... I knew as soon as Jake Warner walked into The Cupid, he was headed for trouble. One way or another, I had a feeling he was gonna leave this town hurting.

  If he ever got to leave at all.”

  I felt my mouth drop a little at the mention of that last name.

  Warner. That name was familiar. Very familiar.

  Wasn’t that…?

  “Law Dog, you don’t mean…?” Fletcher said, his words trailing off, his brow fixed in an expression of disbelief.

  Lawrence nodded.

  “I do,” he said. “That’s exactly what I mean.”

  I let out a short, muffled gasp.

  Though it wasn’t common knowledge, the three of us knew that Clay Westwood was a stage name.

  The kid’s real name, before he had hit it big on the country music charts, back when he was a nobody asking Fletcher for a chance to play, was Clay Warner.

  Meaning…

  “You’re talking about Clay’s father, Law Dog?” I said. “Clay’s father was here, in Broken Hearts Junction 25 years ago?”

  Lawrence nodded sadly.

  Fletcher shook his head in disbelief.

  “I knew Jake Warner before he came here that winter,” Lawrence said. “Back when I lived in Nashville. Jake was one of those young guitar players on the circuit back then. Pretty good at it, too. We used to call him The Cowboy because none of us once saw him without his Stetson. But he never got his break. He sort of disappeared from the game after ‘86, or so my friends still in Nashville told me. The way I heard it, he was living on the outskirts of the law. People said he came into a lot of cash that couldn’t be accounted for.”

  “How did he end up out here?” Fletcher asked. “Broken Hearts is a long way from Tennessee.”

  Law Dog stared out the kitchen window, a faraway look in his eyes.

  “Jake wouldn’t tell me for the longest time,” Lawrence said. “He got here in January of 1990. Spent all his nights at The Stupid Cupid Saloon, drinking himself under the table. He wasn’t exactly a talkative type, neither. He’d just sit there alone, drinking. I’d tried to talk with him half a dozen times, seeing as we were on familiar terms. But he never told me what brought him to Broken Hearts.”

  Law Dog rubbed his face, pulling at his wrinkled skin.

  “I started thinking he was here to pull a job of some sort. But then one night, after a few too many whiskeys, he gave away a small clue. He left this photo at the bar. Photo of him and this young lady. I kept it safe, and when he came back the next night, I returned it. He gave me a look like I’d snatched it off of him. We had some heated words, but he backed down later when he sobered up.

  And that’s when he told me the real reason for his stay in Broken Hearts.”

  The photo.

  I wondered if it was the same one that Clay had been holding onto when he got shot all these years later.

  “Jake was here looking for his woman. She ran off, leaving him and their two-year-old son.”

  I dug into my jacket pocket and pulled the blood-spattered photo, laying it on the table.

  “Is this the photo, Law Dog?”

  Law Dog turned white as a sheet when his ancient eyes fell on the picture.

  He was quiet for a long, long moment, his old, shaky hands gracing the top of it. Then he pulled them back, as if he were afraid to touch it.

  “That’s the one,” he said. “That’s the one I mailed back to Jake’s sister when he was killed. The same one he’d been carrying around in his wallet that whole month.”

  Damn.

  I ran a hand t
hrough my hair, letting out a long breath.

  “This is the photo Clay was holding when he got shot,” I said.

  Lawrence shook his head.

  “My lord,” he mumbled, looking up at the ceiling. “My lord.”

  He sighed again.

  “See, Jake Warner was cut from the same kind of cloth as those old-time cowboys,” Law Dog said. “A man like that don’t go around advertising the fact that his woman left him. Instead, he goes after her on his own. That’s what Jake Warner was here in Broken Hearts to do. He was gonna bring her back home. So his son didn’t grow up without a mother.”

  I swallowed back a glob of spit that had settled at the base of my throat.

  “Did he, uh, did he find her?”

  Law Dog shook his head.

  “I don’t know about that,” he said. “If he did, he never told me. Alls I know is that on that Valentine’s Day, Jake Warner was drinking at the bar, the way he always was. Maybe a little more depressed than usual, on account of the holiday. And after a little while, he stands up and shouts ‘It’s over!’ and ‘I’m leaving, Law Dog.’ And while he’s pulling out his wallet to settle up his tab, out of nowhere, this arrow comes flying through the front door of the barroom. Hits Jake right in the back. I know because I saw it.”

  He shook his head.

  “It was terrible, kids,” he said. “Just… the way he fell…”

  I suddenly felt ill to my stomach, thinking back to the night before, and Fletcher’s bloody shirt.

  “I grabbed my rifle and went running out in the direction the arrow had come from,” the old timer continued. “But all I saw was a pickup truck squealing away in the dark. Couldn’t even get a plate.”

  He sighed heavily.

  “And when I got back,” His voice began quivering as he struggled to finish the rest of his story. “When I got back, Jake Warner was… dead.”

  He rubbed his face.

  “The arrow struck him right through the heart, poor devil.”

  “Did they catch who killed Jake?” Fletcher asked, leaning forward in his chair.

  Lawrence shook his head.

  “Never did,” he said. “Some folks thought it was his woman. And that she moved onto another town after shooting him. But there wasn’t much evidence to go on. And since Jake was a stranger around here, the authorities weren’t exactly feeling much pressure to solve the crime. All Jake had in the world was his sister back home and his son. And since she was taking care of him at the time, wasn’t like she was in much of a position to do more than call the police around here from time to time.