by Diana Palmer
Morris had things to say to Clancey afterward. He told her that she’d better never interfere again when he was playing video games, and that went double for Tad. Next time, he said ominously, he’d do a lot more to her. And he gave her a look that still made her uneasy years later. It was an adult look, as if he knew what was under her clothing. She’d folded her arms over her chest and left without another word. But after that, she caught Morris watching her sometimes.
Her grandfather had told her, before his disappearance, that Morris was running with a very tough crowd and he thought the boy was using drugs. He didn’t want Clancey and Tad exposed to his friends, who sometimes showed up at the house when Clancey was at work. He’d been going out in the afternoons, after work, to talk to people about the gang Morris was getting mixed up with. He found a man who said he knew that Morris was using, and he also knew who was supplying the drugs. Her grandfather said that he was going to meet the man the next day after work and get the names from him.
Her grandfather didn’t come home from work the next day. They searched, but they didn’t find him. Clancey had bawled when they finally realized he was never coming back. So had Tad. Morris had been stiff lipped and silent, like his father. Clancey was suspicious of both of them. Neither had liked her grandfather. She was certain that Morris, at least, had some idea what had happened to the old man.
The charges against Morris were serious, because, in addition to beating up Clancey and Tad with a weapon, Morris had attacked the police officer who tried to handcuff him, yelling that it wasn’t his fault, that they were framing him. Assault on a police officer was another felony, added to the two he was already being indicted for. Morris only had a public defender who, though eager, had little experience of trying cases. Ben was anguished that he couldn’t afford a classy lawyer to help his son beat the rap.
A year after his arrest, because the court system moved slowly, Morris was found guilty of second-degree assault and battery, and assault on Clancey and Tad, and assault on a police officer, and resisting arrest. He was sentenced to six years in prison after Clancey reluctantly took the witness stand and told the jury what Morris had done to her little brother and herself. There were photos of both of them, taken after the incident, which helped prove the case.
The trial had almost killed Ben, who was a maintenance man for a local corporation and didn’t make much money. He couldn’t afford to even go and see his son, sent to a penal facility hundreds of miles away. It made him even more bitter.
Ben had died soon after Morris went to prison, when Clancey was nineteen, in a freak accident, after he’d gone to some apartments nearby to talk to a man who had some information about the thugs that Morris had been running with. He told Clancey that Morris had been on drugs when he hit her, and that he was going to find out who had been supplying him. If he couldn’t get his son out of prison, he was going to make the people who gave Morris the drugs pay for it.
Ben had been hit by a speeding car when he started back toward the lot where his car had been parked. The driver was never found, despite vague descriptions of the car by a bystander. It went down on the record as a hit-and-run. Ben was buried, with only Clancey and Tad to mourn him. Morris was refused permission to make the long trip to the funeral. Clancey had written to him, explaining what had happened and how sorry she was. Morris wrote back, a terse little note thanking her for her kindness. She wondered if being off drugs had improved him, just a little. His attitude had been a surprise. Perhaps he’d gotten off drugs and was facing his past. Her boss, Cal Hollister, scoffed at her when she said that. Leopards, he told her, didn’t change their spots.
Although Morris was out of the house and Clancey was in possession of it until Morris got out of prison—having more or less taken possession of her grandfather’s half of the estate when he went missing—it didn’t make her any less afraid of him. The incident had been traumatic for her. The doctor who treated her said that she needed therapy. She told him that she’d go to a therapist as soon as she paid off her new stretch limo. He’d laughed, but his eyes were sad.
* * *
BEN’S DEATH AND Morris’s incarceration had put Clancey in the position of head of the family.
It was Ben’s house that she and Tad lived in, which now belonged, on paper at least, to Morris. Half of it was still her grandfather’s, because he’d never been declared legally dead. If Morris got out, Clancey worried about having to live under the same roof with him. Morris had always run with people on the wrong side of the law. Any money he got, he hadn’t worked for, because he didn’t hold down a job. No doubt he’d still be hanging around with the people who got their money in illegal ways. They were dangerous. Clancey didn’t want them around Tad.
She was concerned about herself, as well. Morris had been attracted to her, and she was uneasy about living under the same roof with him. If he was using drugs, as she suspected he was when he’d beaten her, he was capable of even worse violence. She’d always wondered if he had something to do with her grandfather’s death, because his attitude afterward, when the old man disappeared, was odd. He didn’t talk about it and he avoided meeting Clancey’s eyes when she wondered what had happened to him.
The thought of Morris getting out of prison and coming home frightened her. Prison changed men. No doubt he’d learned a lot about getting around outside the law. He’d probably made friends there, who would be even worse than the crowd he’d run with when he lived at home. Despite the nice letter he’d sent her after Ben’s death, she was dubious about any real changes in his attitude. Men could pretend, to get parole. Hollister had told her that, sensing her concern about the future. He’d do what he could for her and Tad when Morris got out. He promised. Hollister could be scary. He had a mysterious past and he was friends with some equally scary people, despite his position with the police. But he was the best friend she had. He helped her get custody of Tad, so that social services wouldn’t take him away, and he got her a small raise, which helped with expenses. It had devastated her last year when he was promoted to captain and moved downtown to a new office. She was happy for him, of course. But Clancey couldn’t afford a car and she couldn’t walk to work—it was much too far for her lungs. Hollister offered to drive her back and forth, but she felt she’d imposed on him enough. She heard about the opening in the Texas Ranger cold case office and applied for the job. Amazingly, she was hired as soon as the lieutenant interviewed her. That had been almost a year ago.
This job paid well, and she had benefits, as she’d had working for Hollister. They helped pay for insurance, and that was a blessing. She could still walk to work. But time hadn’t eased her fear of her stepbrother. Banks had said he was supposed to get out soon. When was soon? And where would she and Tad go when he got out? Would he come after her? Her testimony had put him in prison. Her life could be in danger.
But when Morris got out, she comforted herself, she’d be advised by the victim advocates so she’d know about it. And he’d have a parole officer who would check on him frequently, and at unexpected times, to make sure he was keeping his nose clean. That sounded fine, but Morris could do a lot of damage if he was alone in the house with his stepsister and half brother. Although Tad was nine now, and she was twenty-three, Morris posed a threat to both of them, especially if he wasn’t truly rehabilitated and started running with his old crowd of lawbreakers again.
She shivered, remembering. Morris knew how much she loved Tad, and she knew that if he planned to get even with her, Tad would be his means to do it.
So she worried incessantly about Morris getting out. The sentence had been for six years, but an attorney who knew his public defender told her one day in the office weeks ago that Morris had apparently been a model prisoner and there was talk that he might get out sooner. Banks had just confirmed that rumor.
One of her ideas about finding a home for her and Tad was to apply to the military. She would get a signing
bonus that would provide a lot of new clothes and comforts for her and Tad. In addition, she’d get a place for her and Tad to live, where they wouldn’t have to cope with Morris. There would be free medical care and dental, and insurance. The only downside was whether they’d take her. She had a health issue that she never discussed. But a doctor would spot it right away. Maybe she could find some way to deal with it beforehand.
Sure, she thought miserably, just like I’ve dealt with a better place to live and good clothes for Tad that didn’t come out of thrift shops. Utilities and house payments and medicine and groceries took almost all her salary. Almost everything they wore had belonged to somebody else first. She didn’t mind. She was grateful to have clothes at all. But it sometimes meant squeezing her feet into shoes that were a size too small or too large and jeans that she had to roll up because they were too long. She was luckier fitting Tad.
But he grew like a weed. He was tall now and getting taller by the day. Clothes didn’t last him as long as they lasted her. And he’d been having issues at school that she didn’t know how to deal with.
As a substitute mother, she was pretty much a dead bust, she sometimes thought. She loved Tad and she did everything she could to make him happy. But he got in fights and she didn’t know why. He wouldn’t talk to her about things that bothered him. He put on that sunny smile that she loved and said that she didn’t lay her problems on him, so he wasn’t laying his on her. Once, concerned, she had Cal Hollister come over and talk to him. She never knew what was said, but soon afterward, Tad stopped getting in fights and maintained a good average in his grades. Hollister, she thought, could work magic in one small boy.
Tad knew about Morris, of course. He’d only been three at the time, but he remembered Morris hurting him and knocking Clancey around when she tried to defend her little brother. He was afraid of Morris. So was Clancey. He worried, as she did, what they’d do when their stepbrother got out of prison.
Well, they wouldn’t have to face it today, Clancey thought. And if she could ever work up enough nerve to talk to Banks about it, there might be a solution of some kind. It was just that Banks intimidated her. He was pleasant enough, from time to time, but she knew that he resented her. She didn’t know why. He’d been antagonistic since her first day on the job and he’d tried infrequently to get her moved to another office. That would have been awkward, because she was the only person who applied for this job and he couldn’t find anybody else—mainly, another man—who’d take it on. So he was stuck with her.
It worked both ways. Certainly, she was stuck with him, too! Big, arrogant, irritating Texas Ranger. He was so self-contained that he didn’t even date anybody.
She knew why, of course. There was a lot of gossip about Colter Banks. He’d been in love with his best friend’s fiancée. His best friend, Mike Johns, had been a police officer over in Houston. He was shot to death in an attempted bank robbery, along with his mother. He wasn’t even on duty at the time. He’d just driven his mother to the bank.
Grace Charles, Mike’s fiancée, had mourned him long and hard. Banks had comforted her and would have loved to take Mike’s place, except that Grace suddenly enrolled with a missionary society and went to South America. She was deeply religious, something Banks wasn’t. So he lost his best friend and his love interest. His sister, Brenda, had told one of her girlfriends about it when they came to take Banks for lunch, and Clancey had overheard them talking while Banks had gone to bring the car around. Banks had asked for reassignment to San Antonio to get away from the bad memories. He seemed to have recovered. On the surface, at least.
But it wasn’t Clancey’s business. She put up with Banks because she had to, but he was too abrasively masculine to appeal to her. She’d had more than enough of belligerent men with attitudes.
* * *
SHE LOCKED UP the office and went to pick up Tad at the school he attended. They had an after-school class for students whose parents couldn’t afford day care. Not that Clancey was a parent, but she sure couldn’t afford day care!
“Hi, kid,” she teased, ruffling his blond hair. “Did you miss me?”
“Not since breakfast,” he teased, laughing. He was a tall boy. He came up to her shoulder now. He was beanpole thin and had blue eyes, like hers. He was always smiling. It made her feel good, just to be around him.
“How’d school go?” she asked when they were walking down the sidewalk.
“Better than usual,” he replied. “I made an eighty on my math test.”
“Very good!”
“And a fifty in history,” he added with a sigh.
“We can’t all be great scholars like me,” she said with a haughty smile.
“Ha!”
She laughed and pulled him close to her side. “You’ll do, kid,” she said. “You’ll do just fine. Mama would be proud of you.”
They stopped in at the dollar store on the corner to get Tad another notebook. Across the street, a tall man in a white Stetson was frowning as he watched them. Surely the boy wasn’t Clancey’s son. He scoffed at that idea. A little brother, probably. He’d never asked if her parents were still alive. He knew next to nothing about her, except that she was a pain in the neck at work.
Well, her private life had nothing to do with him, he thought as he continued on his way.
* * *
CLANCEY AND TAD walked the three blocks to the little house that they shared. It wasn’t much, just a one-story shotgun house with three bedrooms and a walled-in porch. When Morris and Ben had lived with them, the men shared the master bedroom. Clancey and Tad had the smaller bedroom. Each had twin beds of an antique sort with metal headboards. The furnishings were bare. Faded curtains, faded sofa and easy chair, and an old rocking chair where her grandfather sat in the evenings while he watched TV with Ben and Morris. There was a fireplace with gas logs, and beside it, the implements that had been used years ago when there was an open fire there. She shivered as she looked at the empty wrought iron holder where a fire poker and a metal shovel had once stood. She remembered the shovel most. The police still had it, somewhere. It had been evidence in Morris’s trial.
She averted her gaze to the rocking chair and the acoustic guitar on a stand in the corner. She smiled at the guitar, remembering evenings when her grandfather played for them. His rocking chair was just as he’d left it. She touched the worn piece of furniture with a loving hand and vowed that one day she’d find out what had happened to the old man. If Morris had anything to do with his disappearance, she’d find a way to make him pay for it. She blinked away the tears and went to the kitchen.
“What’s for supper?” Tad asked, returning after he’d placed his backpack on his bed.
“Whatever we can find that won’t put up much of a fight,” she teased.
“I saw a chicken in a yard down the street,” he said, his gray eyes twinkling.
“We are not chicken nappers,” she said haughtily. Her own eyes began to sparkle. “However, if you can spot a beef steer, I’ll go looking for a big bag!”
He grinned. Beef was rarely on the menu. It was mostly chicken, in a dish to go over rice, or canned salmon made into croquettes. Mashed potatoes and biscuits went with most evening meals. In the morning they ate cereal, because cornflakes lasted for several days. On the weekends, she made bacon and eggs and biscuits for breakfast. It was a frugal lifestyle.
“Oh, I wish we had a cake,” she sighed, picking at her mashed potatoes.
“You could make us one.”
“Dream on,” she said sadly, thinking of the expense that even a pound cake added to the budget.
“Maybe we could get just a slice each at the grocery store,” he suggested. “That’s not as expensive as a whole cake.”
She smiled at him warmly. “We can get two slices of cake when they send the Batmobile home and it’s safely stored in our Batcave.”
He made
a face.
“It’s ours,” she emphasized. “I’m sure of it. Any day now, some smarmy lawyer’s going to come to the door and say they’re bringing it right over.”
“When dogs fly,” he agreed.
“I’m sorry we’re poor,” she said gently. “I wish I had more education, so I could get a better job.”
He went around the table and hugged her tight. “I’d rather have my sister than a Batmobile,” he said huskily. “You’re so good to me, sis. I don’t care if we’re poor. We got each other.”
She bit her lip and hugged him back, tears threatening. “Yes, Tad. We’ve got each other.”
He went back to his place and finished his supper. “Sis, what are we going to do when Morris gets out?” he wondered aloud.
Her heart jumped. The thought terrified her and she didn’t dare show it. “We’ll cross that flaming lava bed when we have to.”
“It’s his house, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. “Well, until they either find Granddaddy or prove that he’s...dead. In which case, I’d inherit his half of the house. But that would take a lot of time.” Her eyes saddened. “Tad, I’ve been thinking about the military. It’s a good job, with great benefits. We’d get to travel...”
“No!”
He looked horrified. She stared at him blankly.
“All my buddies live here,” he said, his face tragic. “We have this house, where we both grew up. Cal Hollister is close by if we get in trouble and need help.” He sighed. “Our family settled here before the fight at the Alamo. You told me that. We can’t give that up to go away to some foreign place. Please, Clancey,” he added, his eyes huge in his face.
Her eyes narrowed. “That isn’t why you don’t want to go,” she said suspiciously.
His thin chest rose and fell. His eyes lowered. “Mostly, the Army goes into bad places overseas. Lots of people in the military get killed.”