by Tami Hoag
He turned in at the Texaco station, propped his bike against the side of the building, and ducked into the bathroom to check himself for presentability. He had showered at home and he took a quick sniff of his left armpit to see if any of the Ban roll-on had survived the trek into town. He smelled a little bit, but there wasn't much he could do about it now. Even if he stripped off his shirt and washed up in the tiny sink, he would still have to put the same sweaty shirt back on. Didn't seem worth the effort, but then he reminded himself that a man needed to put his best foot forward in a situation like this.
The faucet wouldn't run hot water. Trace gave up on it after a minute and soaked paper towels in the grungy little sink. Cold would probably help him stop sweating anyway. He took off his glasses and laid them carefully on the little ledge beneath the cheap wall mirror, then proceeded to give himself a sponging off. When he finished, he put his shirt back on and tucked it neatly into the waist of his jeans. He fished his comb out of his hip pocket and gave his hair a going-over. Hair was important to employers. They didn't want to see it long or greasy or like it hadn't been combed in two years. Finally he cleaned his glasses and settled them back in place.
He reckoned he looked as good as he was going to under the circumstances. He probably looked as good as anyone who had done odd jobs at Shafer Motors. He sure looked better than the guy he'd seen last night in the Rooster parking lot, who had quit to go to work at a big hog outfit down on the Iowa border. That guy had definitely looked more suited to hogs than cars. Trace figured he could present himself about a hundred times better, and he really wanted this job. To buy himself a car. That would have to count for something with a car dealer.
Working up his confidence, he stepped outside into the warm afternoon sun, climbed back on his bike, and headed down the road toward Shafer's.
AS HE CLEANED AND PACKED HIS TOOLS, AARON LISTENED to Elizabeth's tale about the vandalism of the Clarion office and her encounter with Garth Shafer. He had fixed the barn door as his last job of the day, and they stood beside the weathered old building, Aaron intent on his task, his face its usual grim mask. Elizabeth leaned back against the building and watched him idly as she spoke. She wouldn't have thought of the Amish as obsessive-compulsive, but that described Aaron to a T. A place for everything and everything in its place. His tools were immaculate and arranged meticulously according to their purpose—screwdrivers, pliers, planes, carving tools. He was as bad as Dane with his pens.
She took a deep drag on her cigarette and exhaled a stream of exhaust. She didn't want to think about Dane Jantzen just now. Mere mention of him brought all her nerve endings to aching awareness and stirred old fears she would sooner have left dormant. All she wanted now was a little time to wind down. She dropped the cigarette butt in the long grass and crushed it with the toe of her boot.
“I tell you, Aaron, for a state where everyone is supposed to be so calm and stoic, I've sure run into my share of nut cases.”
He hummed a note of disapproval as he cleaned his hands on a rag he carried for the purpose. “Better to leave things alone, I say.” He gave her a stern look over the rims of his spectacles. “You only are going to get yourself hurt. This will nothing change.”
“I want to find the truth. Doesn't it say in the Bible—the truth will set you free?”
“The truth of God and Christ, not the truth of Still Creek. I'm thinking all that will get you is trouble.” He picked his carpenter's box off the bed of the old hay wagon he had been using as a workbench. “Now I go. Services are tomorrow. There is much that yet needs doing at home.”
A smile pulled at Elizabeth's mouth. She found it kind of sweet the way he translated his thoughts from German to English, not always getting the words in the right order. It made him sound naïve. But he was a man who had lost his family, she reminded herself, thinking of the markers down by the creek. She didn't know if experiences like that could leave a man with much naïveté.
“Monday I put your locks on the house doors,” he said, walking toward his buggy.
Elizabeth fell into step beside him, her fingers tucked into the pockets of her jeans. “Thanks, I'll sleep better.”
He gave her one of his wry looks as he stowed his gear in the buggy. “Locks don't help nothing if you go out looking for trouble.”
“I'll bear that in mind.”
He sniffed in disbelief and disgust. She imagined he didn't know quite what to make of such a willful creature as herself. Amish women were probably much more subtle in how they went about getting their own way.
He muttered something in German, shaking his head, and put his foot on the buggy's step. On impulse, Elizabeth reached out and stopped him with a hand on his arm. He looked down at her, eyes round with astonishment.
“Aaron,” she started to say, feeling awkward, not knowing what his customs allowed. “Thanks for caring. It's sweet, really.” She raised up on her tiptoes and brushed a quick kiss on his cheek above his beard. “You're a good friend.”
She stepped back from him, shrugging a little as she tucked her fingers back into her pockets. He stared at her for a few moments, his face betraying nothing of what he was feeling. Then he turned without a word and hauled himself into his buggy. She watched him drive away, listened to the sounds of his departure—the clomp of hooves, the jangle of harness—and thought they blended in with the natural sounds of the birds and the breeze in the trees. Harmonious, peaceful. Nothing like the roar of Buddy Broan's 4x4 as he came tearing past on his way home from town, kicking up clouds of gravel dust that puffed up high and rolled after him as the wind pushed them east.
It might be kind of nice being Amish, Elizabeth thought. Except for not having indoor plumbing. That was more of a sacrifice than she cared to make for any god. She turned and walked back along the side of the barn, toward the woods, wondering what the odds were of Aaron going English for her. She liked talking to him. Unlike most of the men she'd known, he actually listened—or seemed to. Of course, he probably didn't agree with anything she said. He looked at her sideways most of the time, as if he weren't quite sure she wouldn't bite him if she got the chance.
No, they'd be a disaster together, she thought, bending to pluck a dandelion. That he was any kind of a friend at all was probably a miracle. She wasn't attracted to him anyway, even if he did favor Nick Nolte. She shook her head as she walked along the edge of the woods. Dane was the man she was attracted to—strongly and against her will.
What kind of sense did that make for a liberated woman? None. She had to draw the conclusion that her hormones were hopelessly unliberated. Good thing she was too smart to leave them in charge all the time.
She stopped and drew a long breath. The air here, at the edge of the woods, was clean and rich. She could pick out the scent of the damp earth, the trees, the subtle perfume of the wildflowers, and she thought about growing up in West Texas, where the spicy smell of sage and dust had overpowered everything else.
People associated certain smells with home, but Elizabeth didn't feel as if she'd ever had a home, not in the truest sense of the word. She'd grown up in Texas, but “home” had been wherever J.C. hung his hat. There had been no sense of security or comfort. She had tagged after him, wondering half the time if he would miss her if she weren't around. More than once she had thought about running away, but had never carried through on it because of the genuine fear that he wouldn't bother to come after her.
During her marriage to Bobby Lee, she had felt isolated, not by physical bounds but by her youth and motherhood and by the shame of her husband's innumerable infidelities. The house they had shared had never given a sense of home, partly because of its sad state and partly because Bobby Lee had had no compunction about bringing his girlfriends there. It had been more like a nightmare version of a home—close to what she had always longed for, but hopelessly, cruelly twisted. Grim and empty when Bobby was gone to a rodeo, leaving her alone with a baby and no real friends. Full of despair and shattered dreams when
he was there, reminding her with every look, every snide remark, that he resented her for tying him down.
For a long time after the marriage had broken up she had abandoned the idea of a real home. She had concentrated all her energy into school and work, promising herself that she would get something better for herself and Trace as a result. San Antonio had offered them that bright, pretty dream again for a time—a promise of peace and home and love—but that had been snatched away from her too, and she and Trace had moved on.
In Atlanta she had never fit in with Brock's snooty crowd, and Brock hadn't allowed her her own set of acquaintances. He had kept her cocooned in his wealth, isolated by prestige and notoriety, never caring that the Atlanta aristocracy wouldn't accept her as one of them. Cinderella in her glass slippers had also felt enclosed by glass walls, invisible barriers. Never quite accepted, but too rich to be spurned—until the divorce.
She had hoped things would be different here, that she and Trace could settle in and make a place for themselves. Disappointment ached through her as she looked across the yard, bright with dandelions, to the sorry old farmhouse. This was supposed to be home, but they weren't welcome in Still Creek and they weren't wanted. Too bad, she thought, because she was too damned stubborn and too damned tired to move on. She would make this her home or die trying.
FOURTEEN
JOLYNN SAT AT HER TINY KITCHEN TABLE IN HER TINY white kitchen, ostensibly going over her notes for the Jarvis case. But her mind was going over the supper she had shared with Bret Yeager. She had run into him in the church basement after the funeral. He was standing in a corner, hunched over a plate of coconut cream pie, the end of his tie lapping up cream filling like a long, synthetic tongue as his eyes scanned the crowd. Not having any desire to mingle with the Jarvis entourage, Jo had struck up a conversation with him about a paper she had read on the requirements for forensic cases. The next thing she'd known, they were sitting across from each other in a booth at the Coffee Cup, sharing French fries and talking shop.
He was a sweet guy. She liked his square, honest face, his rumpled shirts and goofy dog. He seemed amazed that she not only didn't mind talking about things like latent fingerprints and DNA identification, she actually knew something about them. She had impressed him. The idea had pride and pleasure rising like a giddy tide inside her.
The back door swung open and she looked up, half expecting to see him standing there. But the smile died on her face as Rich walked in.
“Not tonight,” she groaned, tunneling her fingers back through her thick hair as the good feelings inside her deflated like a burst balloon. “I have a headache.”
He didn't comment on her sarcasm, nor did he pull up a chair. He leaned back against the counter and folded his arms across his chest. Maximizing his height advantage, Jo thought. There were few things Rich liked better than being able to look down on people. He was still dressed in his funeral garb, though he had shed the jacket and loosened his tie. The starch had gone out of his white shirt, taking most of his “young congressman” image with it. It clung limply to his brawny shoulders, making him appear more like overdressed mob muscle. He had rolled the sleeves up to his elbows, revealing forearms that were tan from weekends ramming his powerboat up and down the Mississippi and liberally dusted with rusty gold hair.
“I would have thought you'd be consoling your poor grieving wife tonight,” Jolynn said dryly.
Rich took a pack of Pall Malls from his shirt pocket and shook one out. “She's busy consoling her poor grieving mother. I've had about all the grieving I can stand for one day myself.” He lit up, wreathing his head in smoke, and tossed the match into the sink. “Jesus, I can't believe the show Helen put on at the funeral.”
Jolynn shook her head and shoved her empty ice cream dish across the table at him in lieu of an ashtray. “You're the soul of sympathy, Rich. What an advocate for the common folk you'll make.”
“It's just so much bullshit,” he said derisively. “Nobody feels bad that Jarrold's dead.”
“I wouldn't make that comment in front of the wrong people if I were you.” She gave the ice cream dish another nudge. “You know, technically, you have to be considered a suspect.”
He laughed and choked on a lungful of smoke. “By who?” he asked hoarsely. He picked a fleck of tobacco off his tongue and flicked it away. “Miz Stuart, Bitch Queen of the South?”
“Among others.” Yeager had asked her a question or two about good ol' Rich. Whether his interest was genuine or just a cop's way of making conversation, she wasn't sure. She wanted to suspect the latter, not for Rich's sake but for her own.
“Like who? You?”
“No. You were too comfortable leeching off him,” Jolynn said bluntly. “Besides, I don't think you've got the balls to kill anybody.”
Rich's eyes narrowed and hardened. He pointed at her with the filter end of his cigarette, raining ash down on the dingy linoleum. “You know, I think you're spending too much time with that boss of yours. Your mouth is worse than usual.”
“Yeah, well, if you find me so intolerable, you know where the door is,” she snapped. “I didn't exactly invite you in. And use the goddamn dish, will you? You're getting ashes all over the place. Christ, you're such a pig,” she complained, stretching out her fingers to catch the edge of the bowl.
Treating her to a wounded look, Rich grabbed it before she could fling it at him. “Jesus, you're cold tonight. What are you, on the rag?”
He held the dish away from himself and made a great show of tapping his cigarette as he leaned over the table to snoop at her notes.
Jolynn swept the papers into a heap with her arm and bent across them the way a schoolgirl guards her test paper from the class cheat. Utter disgust squeezed her face into a sour knot. “You know, I'm not sure when I hate you more—when you're being your true obnoxious self or when you're playing the obsequious, ass-kissing politician. I am not ‘on the rag,' as you so tactlessly put it. Maybe I'm tired, Rich. Since you've never done a full or honest day's work in your life, I'm sure the concept is foreign to you, but I've been putting in some long hours.”
“For what?” he sneered.
“For the truth. For an ideal.” She ground her teeth and clamped her hands on top of her head as if to keep her brain from exploding. “God, I might as well be speaking French.”
He shuffled up to her chair and traced a finger down the side of her throat, his gaze capturing hers. A cocky smile tipped up one corner of his mustache. “You can speak French to me if you want,” he said, his voice rumbling low as heat rose in his eyes. “In bed.”
His hand trailed down to massage her shoulder, and Jo shrugged him off. Three days ago she had gone to bed with him without a word. Tonight the idea of letting him touch her made her angry. Maybe it had something to do with watching him play the dutiful husband all afternoon. Or maybe Elizabeth had gotten to her with one of her little speeches about independence. Or maybe it was the novel idea that she could have a nice time with a man without having him use her. Whatever the reason, she was in no mood for Rich's antics. She scraped her chair back from the table and went into the living room to put a record on the stereo. With a flick of a switch blues drifted out of the speakers like smoke.
The living room was no better than any other room in the little house. Cramped and cluttered, it was in need of paint and more imagination than Jolynn cared to devote to the task of decorating. A single lamp cast a dim, dusky glow around the room as night tried to creep in through a gap in the drapes. The couch and chairs were the same brown tweed set she had shared with Rich once upon a time, but the upholstery had gone nubby and the cushions were shot. The shelves that held television, stereo, and haphazard piles of books were standard lumberyard issue she had never gotten around to staining. The one spot of life and color in the room was a silk screen print by a New Mexico artist, a cactus flowering in the desert. It hung above a table that held an array of dead and dying potted plants.
Rich propped hi
mself in the doorway between the two rooms and watched her as she stood with her head down, pretending to read the album notes. She could feel his gaze on her, cool and speculative.
“So why don't you believe Fox killed Jarrold?” he asked casually.
She shot him a glance askance. “I didn't say I didn't believe it.”
“Your boss has some cock-and-bull idea about some book of Jarrold's.”
Jo shrugged. “If he kept names in it, it stands to reason someone might not have been happy about it. Maybe he was blackmailing someone. He certainly had leverage over a few people who owed him money. What's so fantastic about the idea that one of them wasted him?”
“It's stupid, that's all,” he scoffed. “Have you found this famous book?”
She answered him with another shrug.
He rolled his eyes and waved off her theory. “Fox killed him. He's a piece of shit.”
“So are you, but that doesn't make you a murderer.”
He sauntered across the room with his hands in the pockets of his charcoal trousers. He looked relaxed, but Jo caught the predatory gleam in his eye. She sidled away as he lifted a hand to touch her hair.
“I mean it, Rich. I'm not in the mood.”
“Come on, Jolynn,” he cajoled, backing her toward the couch. “You're always in the mood.”
“Not tonight.”
She started to make a break around a coffee table that was heaped with magazines and dust. He cut her off, catching her by one wrist and pulling her up against him. Her shin hit the table, sending a month's worth of Newsweek sliding to the floor. Her breath caught in her throat and she looked up at him, not quite certain whether she should let anger or fear take control. Rich stared down at her, heat in his eyes and a hint of cruelty curling the corners of his mouth.
“We both know I can make you want it, Jolynn,” he threatened softly.
She started to deny the charge, but the words wouldn't come because they weren't the truth. The truth was, he could. He had. Time and again. And she'd let him. She let him use her. She let him degrade her. That was the truth. It churned in her belly, sour and acidic. It was old news, but for some reason it struck her anew as they stood there in her shabby living room with Colin James in the background asking the musical question— “Why'd You Lie?” It struck like a revelation, like a horrible epiphany, knocking down what self-esteem she had. What did she think she was doing, fantasizing about a nice guy like Bret Yeager when she was nothing but Rich Cannon's whore?