by Meg Muldoon
Rage flashed across those stormy blue eyes of his like a lightning bolt. He looked like he wanted to do something violent all of a sudden.
But instead, he let out a ragged breath, and reached for my hand. I felt the rough skin of his mangled and broken playing hand.
“I shouldn’t be helping her, Loretta,” he said. “But if I don’t, then—”
“You’re helping her?” I interrupted. “After what she did to you?”
He sighed.
“I’m sorry, Bluebird,” he said. “I should have told you about this sooner. And I want to tell you all about it. But there’s something else that I want to talk to you about first.”
He reached for his jacket and pulled something from it.
He pushed it toward me, along with a crumpled-up piece of paper. He straightened it out for me and placed it side by side next to the warning napkin note I’d found in the trashcan the day before.
The one that had told Clay to get out of town.
“You see, the handwriting in the note looked real familiar to me,” he said. “But I couldn’t quite place it. Until it suddenly hit me.”
He rapped his knuckles on the wrinkly paper, which I recognized as a drink order Post-it we used here at The Cupid to keep track of orders.
I peered at the scribbly writing on the page. It was for four Budweiser’s, a Cupid’s Slingshot, a Velma the Ox vodka shot, and two Lemon Drop Martinis.
“Now I’m no handwriting expert,” he said. “But there’s a lot similar in these two samples. Look at the way she curls the ‘C’s’ in both.”
He pointed out the curly-cue lettering.
I scanned the bottom of the drink order page, my eyes finally finding the hastily-written initials.
AG
Meaning…
“You’re saying Amy wrote that warning note to Clay?” I said, looking up at him.
He nodded.
“Looks that way,” he said.
I furrowed my brow.
Amy Gibson was one of our bartenders and had been the one to call me in the night Clay got into that fight and later got shot. She was, for the most part, a dependable employee. Though occasionally she’d called in sick times when I had the feeling she wasn’t exactly sick, I let it slide because she was a single mother who desperately needed the job. She was about 24, and worked at The Cupid to pay for her community college classes. She had plans of transferring out to a four-year school, though I wasn’t sure how serious she was about those plans. In the bartending business, plenty of people talk about dreams of getting out. Most don’t plan to stick around for long, but a lot of them do. Years later, they’re still tending bar, talking about those big dreams.
“I don’t know why she wrote that note, or what she knows about Clay getting shot,” Fletcher said. “But I intend to find out, Loretta. I owe Clay that much.”
Fletcher had spent the morning and much of the afternoon at the hospital. He said that when he got there this morning, there’d been a large crowd around the kid’s room. Managers, record executives, and body guards had all shown up. Worried, no doubt, that their golden ticket might not ever recover.
And a girl had shown up, too, Fletcher had said. A girl who they wouldn’t let into the room, at Clay’s request.
She said she’d been Clay’s girlfriend once upon a time, though it was clear now that he didn’t want to have anything to do with her.
I looked at the two notes on the bar in front of me again, analyzing the writing once more.
Fletcher was right: the similarities were hard to deny.
I looked at him and sighed.
We needed to have that talk.
I wanted to know everything about what Christina was doing here. Why he was helping her. Where she was staying.
And maybe most importantly, when she was leaving.
But the conversation would have to wait.
Because a moment later, shafts of sunlight flooded the saloon as the front door opened, a gust of chilly wind winding its way through the bar like a snake.
I looked back at Fletcher.
He clearly already had a plan of action.
Chapter 46
“Damn those reporters!” she said, looking down at her right shoe. “I nearly snapped my heel in half trying to get away from them.”
She leaned down and repositioned her heel in the open-toed four-inchers she was wearing, shoes that were both highly impractical for bartending, let alone for the below-freezing day we were having. But it was a signature look that the 24-year-old hadn’t been willing to let go of so far this winter.
She stood back up, glancing over at us.
“I’m just glad the cops are finally letting the saloon open tonight. I was getting worried there that I’d have to put off taking one of my classes until next term because I wouldn’t be able to pay the tuition.”
Amy took off her fur-hooded jacket and came around the bar, hurriedly sidestepping the yellow tape and bloodstain where Clay fell. She pulled her long brown hair up into a ponytail, not looking at either one of us.
Fletcher cleared his throat as Amy ducked beneath the bar, grabbing stands of mustard and ketchup to place out on the tables around the saloon.
“Amy, there’s something we’ve gotta talk to you about,” he said in a serious tone.
She stood up, raising both of her perfectly-shaped eyebrows.
“Oh no. You’re not laying me off, are you?” she said, her brown eyes growing wide. “I can’t afford to be fired right now, Mr. Hart. I mean, I’m so close to finishing up my Associates. You can’t pull the rug out from under me right now. Not with baby William at home. If you’re going to let anyone go, it ought to be Magg—”
“We’re not firing you,” he said, cutting her off before she launched into full-on begging mode.
She placed a hand over her heart and let out a sigh of relief.
“Thank the heavens for that. You scared me real bad there for a—”
“We wanted to ask you about this,” Fletcher said, pushing the napkin with the writing forward toward her.
She peered down at it. I studied her expression as her eyes scanned the words.
Her expression remained completely unreadable.
“I don’t understand,” she finally said, looking up at Fletcher and then at me. “What is this?”
“It’s a note I found in the trash can beneath the bar,” I said. “Someone must have tossed it right about the time Clay Westwood was shot in here.”
“Well, you got me. That’s a strange one, all right,” she said. “What do you think it means?”
Amy pushed the note back toward Fletcher and started grabbing a couple of cocktail shakers from the shelf beneath the bar, practically ignoring us.
“We were hoping you could tell us,” Fletcher said. “That is your handwriting.”
Amy’s brown eyes grew wide again.
“It was busy here that night, but I’m pretty sure I’d remember writing something like that,” she said. “I think you’re mistaken, Mr. Hart.”
“I don’t think I am,” he said, not backing down.
He peered at her, a kind of icy coolness in his stare that would have made my insides tremble if I were on the meeting side of it.
Amy crossed her arms, the way a mean school girl on the playground might right before saying something nasty.
“You accusing me of something? Because if you are, you better just come out and say it. I won’t stand for this kind of treatment. I’ll—”
“Amy,” Fletcher said in a low voice. The kind he used when he wanted to impress upon someone just how far they were pushing him. “You tell us the truth now, or we’re calling the police. And I don’t think they’ll treat you nearly as nice as we’re treating you right now.”
He gave her a sharp look.
“And, uh, they’re not gonna be so forgiving of you lying about this. You’re gonna be spending the night in jail if you don’t tell us what you know. And you can kiss your dreams of gett
ing out of Broken Hearts Junction and to a university goodbye.”
Her lips pushed out into a pout.
“I told you already,” she said, her voice high pitched and whiny. “I don’t know what any of this is ab—”
“I’m done playing games with you,” Fletcher said, raising his voice. “Loretta, call the cops.”
I pulled out my phone and started dialing Raymond’s number.
But then, that prissy, little-girl expression that had taken over her face suddenly gave way. Her eyes grew big, and the mean-girl front crumbled and fell apart in front of our eyes.
And what was left was just desperation.
“Okay, okay,” she said, rubbing a hand through her hair. “Just… put down the phone, Bitters.”
She let out a long sigh, not looking up at either one of us.
“I don’t even know why I’m lying for her,” she said, putting a hand up to her face. “I mean, she paid me to do it and to keep it between us. But hell, it ain’t worth my job.”
“Who paid you?” Fletcher said. “What are you talking about?”
She let out another sigh, then looked around, as if paranoid that someone was watching her.
“Look, the night of that wedding reception, she came up to me and asked if I could deliver a message to Clay Westwood on my next shift. She gave me $200 to do it and to keep it between us. You know how many extra credits I can take with that money? I didn’t think he was going to get shot before I could give him the message.”
“Who, Amy?” I said.
She sighed.
“Maggie,” she said. “Maggie asked me to do it. Though I don’t know why she didn’t just do it herself.”
I glanced at Fletcher, confused.
Maggie? Our 56-year-old bartender, who’d been feeding Clay drinks all night during Beth Lynn’s wedding? Why would she ask Amy to deliver a message to Clay?
What compelled her to do that?
She had to know that something bad was going to happen to him if she wanted that note delivered to him. But how?
“But I swear, I don’t know nothing more beyond that,” Amy said. “I threw the note away when he got shot. I didn’t do anything. I haven’t even heard from Maggie since.”
I could tell that Fletcher was thinking the same thing as me.
We had to talk to Maggie.
Fletcher grabbed his jacket from off the counter and pulled it on. I got up too, following his lead.
“Where are you all going?” Amy asked. “We’ve got to open in a few hours.”
“No, Amy, we’re not,” Fletcher said. “You oughta get out of here.”
She swallowed hard, that look of desperation in her eyes again.
“You don’t mean for good, do you?”
Fletcher glanced at me. He looked angry. Like he wanted to fire her right then and there, but wanted to make sure that move was okay with me.
I bit my lip.
Not that Amy didn’t deserve to be fired for lying to us just now. But I knew that she had a kid at home to worry about, and for that reason, and that reason alone, I didn’t give him the go ahead.
Fletcher seemed to understand.
“We’ll get back to you on that,” he finally said.
Her mouth dropped open in surprise, and she didn’t say anything more.
A moment later, Fletcher and I were out the back door, going so fast that none of the reporters crowding around The Cupid knew that we were gone.
Chapter 47
Maggie wasn’t home.
She wasn’t answering her phone, either.
Fletcher let out a sigh as we stood on her porch, waiting on an answer from the other side of the door that wasn’t going to come.
Maggie lived about 10 minutes east of downtown Broken Hearts. She lived alone in a small, paint-chipped farmhouse situated on a few acres of dusty sagebrush and juniper land. High desert land that wasn’t all that useable in terms of growing anything, but that was sure pretty to look at. Especially as the winter sun sank beneath the horizon, spilling an ethereal shade of pink across the snowy landscape.
Fletcher pounded on the door one last time. But once again, there was no answer.
My heart sank.
“I guess we should head back before it gets dark,” Fletcher said.
I nodded, following him down the steps, which hadn’t been shoveled, to the truck.
We got in, and he put the keys in the ignition. He was just about to twist it when I placed a hand on his.
He looked over at me.
“I want to know,” I said. “Not when the time’s right or after we find out who shot Clay, Fletch. I need to know now.”
He dropped his hand from the ignition, taking in a deep breath.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, Loretta. I’ll tell you everything.”
Chapter 48
I sat on the sofa beneath a heavy blanket, watching embers shoot up into the chimney from the flames crackling in the fireplace.
Hank lay across my lap, his heavy dog elbows digging into my thighs as he lifted his head back and leaned into my arm. His own sign language for “I need more pets.”
A pile of used-up Kleenex lay on the coffee table in front of me, all of them having accumulated there in the last hour.
I grabbed another one from the box next to the pile and wiped beneath my eyes, the skin starting to feel raw and pink.
I rubbed the top of Hank’s head, doing as he requested, but he could tell my heart wasn’t in it. He grumbled and rested his head on the sofa cushion next to me.
I let out a ragged sigh.
Less than 72 hours ago, Fletcher and I were dancing in The Cupid on Valentine’s Day, whispering sweet nothings to each other.
Him telling me how much he loved me.
Me thinking that he might propose.
And here we were now, just a few short days later, having hit a roadblock the size of Texas. Me wondering if there would be any way around it.
I let out another ragged sigh, the sadness in my heart getting the better of me.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it all.
Christina, Fletcher’s ex-girlfriend, the girl who had broken his heart, among other things, had called him the day after Valentine’s Day, saying she was scared, desperate, and didn’t have a soul she could depend on.
And that’s why she had tracked him down and was now in Broken Hearts Junction, looking for him.
That part about her not having a soul to depend on didn’t surprise me much, considering the way she’d treated Fletcher.
Her boyfriend, the drug dealer she’d been with since high school, hadn’t gotten much better treatment than Fletcher, as it turned out. She told Fletcher that she’d gotten into a jam with the police a few months earlier, and that the only way she could save herself from a jail sentence would be if she ratted on her boyfriend. The cops promised her a spot in witness protection if she did it, being that her boyfriend was a wanted drug trafficker in three states with some pretty strong ties to the mob down there. She ratted on him, and the boyfriend got sentenced to thirty years behind bars.
Only thing was, the cops didn’t hold up their end of the bargain.
There was no spot in witness protection – no protection at all, in fact.
Christina told Fletcher that she’d been on the run for two months. That she was running low on money, and feared for her life.
She didn’t have a soul in the world to turn to, she said. Nowhere that she could run that the men after her didn’t already know about. Nowhere off the radar where she could hide out for a while.
And then, she remembered Fletcher.
The thought that she’d come here, after all that she did to him, enraged me.
And unlike some folks, when I got angry, I had trouble hiding it.
For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why Fletcher would help this woman after what she did. Not that he’d done much up until now except keep quiet about where she was and find her a room at the Wagon’s Hote
l on the outskirts of town. But she needed money, and she needed a plan, and I was sure she was trying to get Fletcher to help her on both of those counts.
Not to mention the fact that she had shown up on my porch the night before, lying about who she was, getting into my house with intentions that scared me even to think about.
I didn’t want Fletcher helping her. I didn’t want her to go near him. I wanted her to move her skinny ass down the road, and I didn’t much care if that road led her right to those men who were after her.
I didn’t give a flying ox horn what happened to Christina Grayson.
Maybe that was cold of me. Fletcher certainly seemed to think so.
“You don’t owe her a thing,” I had said as we sat there, watching the sun go down over Maggie’s property. “Why would you help that woman, Fletch? Why would give her the time of day after all she put you through?”
He had paused then, looking out the window. Unable to look at me.
“Loretta,” he finally said. “I know better than anyone just how bad she is. I’ve laid awake nights, before I ever knew you, wishing that I’d never met her. Thinking about what she took from me.”
Then he turned toward me.
“But I can’t have her blood on my hands,” he said, his words stern. “I won’t let her do that to me. Don’t you understand that?”
I didn’t.
“What are you gonna do?” I had said.
“What can I do?”
“You could tell her to get out of here,” I said. “That you’re not gonna help her. That she doesn’t deserve a thing from you.”
He shook his head, then.
“Can’t do that, Loretta,” he said. “That’s not who I am. I can’t…”
He trailed off.
“I can’t afford to hold onto hate like that. Don’t you get it?”
I had bit my lip, then, until I tasted blood.
Then I had asked him to take me home.
She was playing him. And here he was, letting himself get hustled like a bad pool player.
Maybe I wasn’t seeing things right, but I knew how I felt.
And what it felt like was that he was choosing her over me.