Born in the Valley

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “Do you want to see the bathroom?” Shane asked.

  “I’d love to see the rest of your place, if you don’t mind showing me.”

  He said he didn’t mind, but his movements were stiffer than normal, slower, his speech sporadic at best as he showed her the kitchen, the spare bedroom that was completely empty except for some boxes, the guest bathroom. He spoke only after she did, and then in one or two words, usually just to express agreement with whatever she said.

  Whenever they exited a room, he looked nervously back toward the kitchen.

  “We can go eat now if you’d rather,” she said when they left the guest bathroom.

  Shane shook his head, though his brows were drawn together. “I want to show you,” he said.

  And then, with another glance toward the kitchen, he added, “Just a minute.”

  Leaving her in the hall outside the bathroom, he went to the living room, returning with a notepad and pen. He scribbled quickly, then pocketed both.

  “Okay,” he said, his mouth relaxed again. “This is my room.”

  The bedroom set was obviously masculine, expensive. A king-size bed with little storage doors built into the headboard. There were matching night-stands, a tall dresser, a bench under the window. All in light oak.

  “Did you bring the furniture from Chicago?”

  “Yes.”

  He was standing awkwardly in the doorway, his hands rubbing up and down his thighs.

  Turning back to the room, a space devoid of any color or life, Bonnie couldn’t help imagining the man who’d picked out this furniture, and the life it had witnessed while still in Chicago.

  She felt a pang of envy.

  For the women who’d known him? For the man he’d been?

  For herself because, as much as she’d loved him, she’d never seen him at his best?

  “Bon-nie.”

  His voice was loud. Staccato.

  She whirled to face him. “What?”

  “I want to know—” He tried the next word, but emitted only a breath. And then, with effort, he finished the sentence. “Why I didn’t love you enough.”

  “What?” Bonnie repeated, heart pounding, all too aware of the thoughts she’d just been entertaining. She had no idea how to answer him. Or even to whom she was speaking.

  The injured man-child? The successful businessman? The high-school football star?

  “You and I,” he said, still standing in the doorway. His hands, now hanging at his sides, were clenched. He was frowning, his chin tight, determination in his face. “I know you loved me.”

  Bonnie swallowed. “Yes.”

  “I left.”

  “Yes.”

  “You cried.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t I love you enough to stay?”

  It was a question for which she had no answer. A question that had once tortured her unmercifully.

  Knees unsteady, Bonnie wanted to sink down on the end of that big mattress.

  “How do you know you didn’t?”

  And how could it possibly still matter to her?

  For years she’d comforted herself with the belief that it had been his wanderlust that had taken him from her, not anything to do with her. She’d found some peace in believing that he’d loved her, but his life had forced him to leave Shelter Valley.

  And hers had forced her to stay.

  “I know because I remember.”

  Had the whole thing not been so sad, Bonnie might have laughed at the irony. Here she was, standing with an ex-boyfriend who couldn’t remember to get his mail, but could still remember not loving her.

  “I just don’t know why,” he muttered.

  She shrugged, upset, confused, wondering how to navigate such unfamiliar territory.

  “I don’t know, either, Shane,” she finally said. “I guess I just wasn’t the type of girl guys like you fell in love with. You were going places. I wanted to stay here.”

  She recognized another, more immediate irony. Wasn’t she, in a sense, describing Keith and her today? One of them hearing the call for more than life in Shelter Valley could provide, while the other, with equal intensity, couldn’t imagine ever leaving.

  With the tip of his tongue peeking through his lips, Shane seemed to ponder her words.

  “I think I should serve dinner now.”

  Bonnie was startled. He seemed to be completely unaware of the tension sizzling around them. Between them?

  Or had she just imagined that, for a second there, they’d been ex-lovers trying to recapture what they’d lost?

  Giving herself a mental shake, Bonnie followed him out to the kitchen. She’d let Keith’s paranoia about the man’s intentions get to her. Shane was a handicapped janitor struggling to get through each day, and she, a former friend over for dinner.

  A friend who was there to help him, not to find closure for her own emotional history.

  “AND THE NICE BIG BEAR who forgot a lot wrote himself a note about the dinner waiting in his cave, reminding himself to set the table and get drinks for his guests while the dinner was warming over the fire. That way, he didn’t have to worry about forgetting and having all the other bears laughing at him…”

  Keith stood in the hall outside the nursery Wednesday night, listening to his wife’s sweet voice as she spun one of her imaginative tales for their daughter. Katie had been a newborn the first time Keith had been treated to this side of Bonnie. It had been a 3 a.m. feeding. He’d stood outside the nursery and fallen in love with his young wife all over again as she’d brought make-believe worlds to warm and vibrant life.

  It was late, as Katie had insisted on staying up until Bonnie got home from choir practice; by now, the little girl was probably already fast asleep. Bonnie would be rising soon, gently tucking the quilt around Katie’s shoulders and up under her chin, smoothing dark curls away from her forehead, before leaning down to kiss her cheek.

  Keith walked quietly away.

  BONNIE WENT IN to work Thursday with Lonna on her mind. She’d just spoken to Keith’s grandmother that morning, and preliminary reports on the meal program were good, but she had a feeling that things could quickly get out of control. Already Lonna was hearing from others in the community who wanted to be added to the list of meal recipients. So far, she was taking anyone who expressed a need, but had said this morning that qualification guidelines would have to be established.

  Some kind of donation system or funding plans would have to be initiated, too.

  Bonnie moved through the quiet rooms, Katie trotting beside her. Turning on lights, glancing over the children’s art, which was plastered to walls, reading over charts filled with names and stars, Bonnie worried that she’d unleashed an avalanche in her attempt to lighten Grandma’s load.

  “Katie wants to color,” her daughter announced, pulling her hand free to scamper into the three-year-olds’ classroom.

  “Okay, but only with these crayons on this paper,” Bonnie said, setting the little girl up at a toddler-size desk with a box full of jumbo crayons and several sheets of white art paper. Over the past few months, Katie had made several attempts to cover the walls with her artistic expressions.

  “Okay, Mommy.” The child nodded with utter seriousness as she climbed into the tiny chair and set to work.

  “Come show Mommy what you’ve made when you’re done.”

  “Okay, Mommy.”

  With a grin, Bonnie continued her opening rounds, checking to be sure each room was ready. She loved these early-morning times alone in the day care with Katie.

  She’d hate to lose them. Ever.

  Rounding the corner into the nursery, she flipped on the light, her gaze automatically seeking out the cribs to ensure that the linens were fresh.

  She stopped in her tracks.

  Inside the nursery, the floor was covered in a pile of crumbled plaster and dust. Looking up, taking in the two-foot-square hole in her ceiling, she could hardly believe her eyes. The pile on the floor
was wet, as was the area around it, as though there’d been water gathering above until the weight of it had forced the ceiling panel to give way.

  “Must have used quality materials when they built this place,” she said aloud. This was not a problem, just a nuisance. A phone call and it would be taken care of.

  Except that she’d been making an awful lot of phone calls of this sort lately. With one mishap after another, it really was as though the fates were trying to tell her something.

  But what?

  That it was time to move on? Or just move out?

  Or was it just a series of completely unrelated mishaps with coincidental timing?

  By the time Jennifer, Sharlyn and the other teachers began to arrive, the mess in the nursery had been swept away and deposited in the trash bin out back. And although the ceiling had not fallen near any of the cribs, for safety’s sake, Bonnie had wheeled them all out of the nursery and into the little room by her office. It was generally used only on the rare occasions they had a sick child at Little Spirits.

  That was when Katie presented her with three pieces of paper covered with dark little splotches of bold color and told her they were apples.

  And the parents who started to drop off their children began to express concern about all the incidents at Little Spirits. Even Phyllis Sheffield and Randi Foster, Bonnie’s friends, made pointed jokes about leaving their children in a facility that had been racking up a fair number of insurance claims.

  Time was apparently running out. Either Bonnie had to get serious about staying put and having the place gone over with a fine-tooth comb while she launched a public-relations campaign to diminish public fear about the unsolved fires—or she’d better begin making other plans.

  “WHAT DID YOU FIND?”

  Greg stood as Deputy Burt Culver came into his office, a file in his hand. Greg had continued to follow up every lead, half lead and non-lead on the two fires at Little Spirits and had come up completely empty.

  After the casino trip, he’d given Diamond to Culver. Culver was the best investigative detective he knew.

  “All those trips Matilda Diamond takes to see her ailing sister…” Culver began. He tossed the file on Greg’s desk, dropped easily into the chair in front of it.

  “Yeah?”

  “She’s not visiting her sister. For the past three years she’s been checking herself in and out of a mental institute in Phoenix.”

  His deputy named the high-priced hospital and Greg whistled. “Checking herself in?” he asked, brows raised as he picked up the folder.

  “Yeah.” Culver sat forward, elbows on the arms of his chair. “She’s accumulated one hell of a lot of medical bills, Sheriff,” he said, using the more respectful title for his superior, as he always did now. The days of “Greg” and “Burt” had ended months before when Greg had held Culver’s career, his life, in the palm of his hand. And given it back to him.

  Greg glanced through the folder. “Insurance is covering them, right?” he asked.

  The uniformed deputy shook his head. “Admittance isn’t prescribed.”

  Standing, his gun a reassuring weight against the thigh of his uniform slacks, Greg settled on the corner of his desk. “Has she got an addiction problem?”

  “No.”

  “What, then?”

  Culver shrugged. “Depression, I guess, although that’s not official. Either no one knows or no one’s talking.”

  Patient confidentiality could be a barrier to information. If the investigator wasn’t Burt Culver.

  Always a remarkable sleuth, Culver had a sixth sense that had been honed with impressive results over the past months. Probably his way of atoning for the lapse in judgment that could have cost him his career.

  Greg met his deputy’s gaze. “The man gambles at the high-stakes tables, has huge medical bills to pay and an unstable wife.”

  “Classic ‘first crime’ evidence.” Culver slid naturally into the deduction process.

  “He needs a large amount of money.”

  “The property deal in Phoenix is legitimate. And lucrative.”

  “He could easily have reached the point of being desperate to see it go through,” Greg said.

  “A gambler, lying about his wife’s illness. It’s an MO that fits amateur criminal activity.”

  Greg nodded.

  “Diamond gets rid of Little Spirits and the deal goes through.”

  Leaning back, Culver rested an ankle across his knee. “Either he scares Bonnie into leaving, or the fires worry her clients enough that business drops off….”

  It made sense, except…

  “He’s not going to damage the property that’s his meal ticket.”

  “There wasn’t that much damage.”

  “Only because we got lucky. The Kachina Fire Department hit the scene in record time. Things could’ve been much worse.”

  Greg told Culver about the fallen nursery ceiling. “And a bathroom flooded not too long ago,” he added.

  “Any sign of tampering?”

  “None that I know of, but Bonnie had both fixed before calling me. Paul Belango did the jobs for her, and while he said he didn’t notice anything, he hadn’t been looking for evidence, either. The bathroom was the result of a clogged toilet and the ceiling had been holding water due to a loose pipe joint. Both things could be just normal wear and tear.”

  “So, back to the fires. What if the building burned down? Diamond could still sell the property to his Phoenix developer. There’d be insurance money, too.”

  “Insurance is only going to cover the cost of the original building—surely not as much as the sale that’s already pending. And a property sale isn’t going to net nearly as much as the current deal.”

  Dropping his hands, Culver peered up at him. “You got any other ideas?”

  His deputy already knew the answer to that.

  “What about Bonnie?” Culver asked.

  “What about her?”

  “You said your sister doesn’t want to sell. Could she be doing this to make the building less desirable, losing Diamond his sale?”

  “Forget it.” Greg stood. “In the first place, Bonnie would never do anything like that. She’d lose her business first.

  “Second, she was in Phoenix the night of the craft-room fire. And third, her business is as much at risk as Diamond’s sale. Parents are starting to get uneasy.”

  Greg could have added a fourth. He wasn’t sure his sister cared enough about Little Spirits anymore to keep it going, even without Diamond’s threat. She certainly wasn’t desperate enough to resort to criminal activity to save it.

  Which left him with a crime against a member of his own family, and no leads.

  Adéja` vu experience he could have done without.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SHE COULDN’T SLEEP. Bonnie tried to sink into the mental image that normally relaxed her—the field with soft cool grass, trees rustling, a blue sky overhead and a light breeze against her skin. But she couldn’t lie still.

  The alarm clock LED screen glowed red in the darkness of the master bedroom—1:33 a.m.

  Eyes closed, she tried counting sheep, but had trouble picturing the sheep jumping over hurdles. Sheep didn’t do that very well, did they? They didn’t really do much of anything that she knew of, except mill around and it was hard to get an accurate count of a bunch of milling sheep.

  Keith was behind her, on his side of the bed. A million miles away. A stranger.

  And little Katie. God, how she loved that child sleeping so innocently in her bed down the hall. She’d be sprawled sideways in her bed by now, with the covers kicked off.

  If the classic sheep-counting maneuver wasn’t going to work, were there any faraway places she could escape to? At least in her mind? She’d always wanted to go to France. But not without Keith.

  New England was beautiful. Rolling hills. Huge old trees. The homes and the history. The water.

  But what would she do there? She had mo
re beauty than she could ever behold right here in Shelter Valley.

  The LED display changed again. She had to be waking Katie up in less than four hours. Get her fed and dressed—which took at least an hour because she didn’t like to rush her daughter—and then off to another day of watching her teachers work with blessedly happy little kids.

  Mike Diamond’s secretary was trying to pin her down to an appointment. Probably because Bonnie wasn’t responding to the landlord’s letters.

  She wondered what Greg had found out about the fires.

  How about Geneva? She’d heard there were beautiful mountains there. There were beautiful mountains surrounding Shelter Valley, too, and if she drove a little bit north, toward Sedona, the mountains were spectacular. She didn’t need to go to Geneva for mountains.

  And the long flight would be daunting….

  Keith moved and she held her breath, hoping she hadn’t disturbed him.

  He’d been working extremely long hours. And still helping her out with Katie and the house. And running back and forth between their home and Grandma’s. He’d even done a meal delivery that night. She’d delivered the other two. But then, she was a regular driver on Grandma’s list now.

  She was also a huge pain in the butt to her wonderful husband. She absolutely could not let her restlessness disturb his sleep.

  But did he have to be so damned perfect? Didn’t he know that by being so perfect he’d set up a standard that was impossible to live up to? Even if he didn’t have a meaningful job right there in Shelter Valley, he’d still find a way to be satisfied with what he had.

  Why in hell couldn’t she be just as satisfied? Lord knows she was doing her best.

  Ireland had fantastic rolling green hills. Great accents. And bars. With free-flowing taps of interesting ales and lagers.

  Still, there was that long flight to consider….

  Though, if she was going for accents, Australia would be the place. Then again, that was halfway around the world….