Stranger in Cold Creek

by Paula Graves

  “Small towns,” John said with a shrug when she apologized later in the truck, speaking as if from experience.

  “We should probably stop by the hardware store,” she said as he started to turn back toward Route 7. “To tell my dad you’re going to be helping out with the repairs.”

  She felt more than saw John tense up. “Is that going to be an issue for him or something?”

  “No.” Her father wouldn’t have an issue with John helping out, really. But he might find it a matter of curiosity, and that was why she needed to tell him sooner rather than later and explain it in a way that wouldn’t make him run right home and start cleaning his gun.

  “That doesn’t sound like a very confident no.”

  She laughed. “My dad is protective of our relationship. It’s been just the two of us since I was pretty young, and my dad tends to be a little overprotective.”

  “Too overprotective?”

  “Not really—”

  “I just wondered, because of something you said the other night, about wanting to stand on your own two feet.” He paused a little longer than necessary at the four-way stop at Temple and Main, slanting a curious look her way. “Is your dad being overprotective what you were talking about?”

  “Sort of,” she admitted. She nodded toward the intersection, indicating he should keep going. The hardware store was halfway down the next block. The sooner they got this over with, the better. “I’ll tell you more about it when we get back to the house.”

  Her father took the news better than she’d anticipated, though the curiosity she’d seen in his eyes earlier was back. At least he didn’t say anything embarrassing.

  “I’ve got my card game tonight, but I’ll be sure to come help tomorrow night,” he told her with a tight smile, his gaze darting toward John, who was wandering through the power tools aisle.

  “I know you will.” She touched her father’s hand, and his smile loosened up, growing warm.

  “You sure you can trust that fella?”

  “He seems to check out,” she answered carefully.

  “You don’t think it’s odd you meet him the same day someone tried to shoot you?”

  “They tried to shoot him, too.”

  Gil looked at John, who looked up at that moment. John gave a friendly nod and went back to examining the electric sander he was holding.

  “You think I’m a nosy old man.”

  She reached across the counter and gave his work-roughened hand a squeeze. “I think you’re a hardheaded, softhearted daddy who’s still having a little trouble lettin’ go of his baby girl.”

  “You’d think after all this time I’d have it down.” He put his hand over the back of hers. “Call me if you need me.”

  “Always do.”

  John approached the checkout counter with the power sander and an electronic level. “I didn’t remember seeing these things among your tools.” As she brought out her debit card, he shook his head. “I might need them before I’m done at my place as well, so they’re on me.”

  As he was paying for the tools, the bell rang over the front door and Miranda turned to see Rose McAllen enter, her thin hand closed around the plump little fist of her three-year-old granddaughter. She lifted sad eyes to meet Miranda’s gaze, managed a brief, unconvincing smile and headed toward the back of the store.

  “Still nothing on that case?” Gil asked quietly.

  Miranda shook her head. “No witnesses, no trace evidence on the body—everything seems to be a dead end.”

  “A murder right here in Cold Creek?” John murmured as he handed over a credit card for the purchase. “I thought this place hadn’t seen a murder in years.”

  “Technically, it’s not a murder,” she explained as her father rang up John’s purchase. “It was a hit-and-run accident. Rose McAllen, the lady who just walked in, lost her daughter a couple of years ago. Lindy was a teen mom, always a little on the wild side, and she’d sneaked out of the house one night to meet friends. Apparently she tried to cross the highway and misjudged the distance between her and an approaching vehicle.”

  “And the vehicle didn’t stick around to see if she was still alive?” John frowned.

  “The coroner said she was probably dead on impact. She went under the wheels and her neck snapped.”

  John grimaced. “Surely the driver knew he’d hit her.”

  “Depends. If he was drunk or high—”

  “Right.” John glanced behind her and lowered his voice. “She’s heading this way.”

  “Dad, I’ll call you later.” Miranda turned to smile at Rose again, and crouched to look at the little girl by her side, ignoring the ache in her legs and back, remnants of her rollover crash. “Hey there, Cassie. Did you get to play in the snow the other day?”

  Cassie nodded and managed a little smile.

  “She helped me make a snowman,” Rose McAllen said. “A little one.”

  Miranda stood. “She’s growing up so fast.”

  Rose’s eyes darkened with pain. “She reminds me so much of her mama.”

  Miranda put her hand on Rose’s arm. “Mrs. McAllen, we’ve gone through every bit of trace evidence and put out calls for information, but nobody seems to have seen or heard anything that night. But I promise, we haven’t stopped looking. If we come up with any new leads, I’ll let you know.”

  Rose just stared at her a moment, as if she wanted to say something, but finally she just gave a nod and moved on.

  “Poor woman,” John murmured as they got into the truck.

  Miranda buckled her seat belt. “Sometimes I wonder if that’s what happened to Delta. Wherever she disappeared to, she didn’t take her car, because it’s parked in the yard behind her trailer with two flat tires. Which means she either got a ride or took off on foot.”

  “And you think she might have been hit by a car?”

  “It’s a possibility, but nobody’s found a body. And Cold Creek isn’t the kind of place where it’s easy to hide a body. You can see for miles wherever you look. Even if she were hit and knocked into an arroyo, someone would have found her by now.” She grimaced. “They could just follow the buzzards.”

  “You said she lives in a trailer.”

  “Not much of one. She used to live in a pretty big double-wide, but the tornado took it out last year. She stayed with me a little while, until she could sell what was left of her old trailer for scrap and scrimp together enough money to buy a smaller used trailer.”

  “Where did she work?”

  “Here and there. She never kept a job long, although from what I hear from people, she was a pretty hard worker and she was the one who’d walk away from the job, rather than doing something to get fired.”

  They reached her house and entered with caution, but if there’d been an intruder while they were gone, he’d been as unobtrusive as a mouse. While John carried the new tools to the unfinished room, Miranda checked to see if anyone had left messages on her landline. There were none.

  “Where did she sleep?” John asked when he returned to the living room.

  It took a second to remember what they’d been talking about. “Delta? On the sofa.”

  “Interesting that she turned to you for a place to stay. You said you weren’t that close.”

  “I don’t think that Delta was really close to anyone, thanks to her father.” She sat on the sofa and patted the cushion beside her, inviting him to sit.

  He sat next to her, close enough that his comforting warmth spread over her like a cozy sweater. “Con artists don’t make many friends in the long run. I guess that probably limited her options for friends.”

  “Hal McGraw was a charming bastard, but by the time Delta was old enough to know what was going on, he’d pretty much worn out his welcome in Cold Creek. Delta told
me he’d leave town for days and weeks at a time, going to other places to pull his scams, leaving her alone to fend for herself. And I’m talking about when she was as young as twelve or thirteen.”

  He muttered a low profanity. “Nobody intervened?”

  “From what I’ve heard, nobody knew. It wasn’t like they mingled with a lot of other people, and Delta always got herself to school somehow, at least once she was old enough to do it. She’d learned early how to take care of herself without his help. That’s why she claimed emancipated minor status as soon as she was old enough. She still lived with her dad when he was in town, but she was her own person.”

  “Tough girl.”

  “You’d think so.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  Miranda sighed, resting her head against the sofa cushion. “She was tough in a lot of ways. I guess she can thank Hal for that. But she was also sort of frozen in time. There was part of her that was still that scared little girl whose mama ran out on her when she was little and had to figure out how to keep living without any real help from her dad. That little girl didn’t trust anybody. Not even me. So there was always this wall between us. I could never get over it. And she never tried.”

  “She must have trusted you a little, if she came to you for help after the tornado.”

  “She didn’t come to me. I offered, and she accepted. But she got out of here as soon as she could. She liked being alone.”

  “Do you?” His tone was curious. “Like being alone, I mean.”

  “I don’t know that I like it so much as I don’t mind it.” She turned her head to find him studying her with a thoughtful expression. “I like standing on my own two feet.”

  “Yeah, that reminds me, you were going to tell me why you’re so determined not to stay with your dad.” He arched his dark eyebrows at her.

  “Right.” She looked up at the ceiling, wondering where to start. “It’s nothing that big, really. You’ve met my dad. You know he’s great.”

  “Seems that way, yeah.”

  “I love him like crazy. And he loves me the same. But...you have to know what is was like when my mom died. If you think my dad is crazy about me, you should have seen how much he loved my mom.” She could smile now at the memory, though it had been years before she could remember her parents’ love for each other without wanting to cry at the loss. “When she died, he was so lost. He tried to be my rock, but he was more like a sand castle, crumbling beneath each crashing wave of grief.”

  “And you had to be his rock.”

  “For a while. Until he was strong enough to be mine.”

  “That must have been hard. How old were you when your mom died?”

  “Twelve.” She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly cold, despite the mild March temperatures outside. “I think maybe that’s why Delta and I ended up being friends of a sort. Because we both knew what it was like to raise ourselves in a way.”

  “You’re not comparing Gil to Delta’s con-man father?”

  “No, of course not. But he worked hard to keep us going in good economies and bad ones, and there were lots of times when I had to take care of myself. I knew he wasn’t going to remarry. He still thinks of my mother as his wife. I guess he always will.”

  “Romantic.”

  She smiled. “Who knew he had it in him?”

  They fell quiet for a while, but it was a comfortable silence that left her feeling drowsy and safe.

  When he spoke a few moments later, his soft voice still made her nerves jangle. “Miranda?”

  She opened her eyes to look at him. “Yeah?”

  “Do you think it’s possible the attack on you had anything to do with Delta’s disappearance?”

  John’s question caught her by surprise. “Why would Delta’s case have anything to do with the ambush?”

  “You told me the other day that you were out on Route 7 that day because of a tip about Delta, right?”

  “Right.” She sat upright, her gaze moving suddenly around the room. “We’ve sort of been assuming the wreck and what happened here were connected in some way, but...”

  “But what?”

  She pushed to her feet and paced around her living room, looking at each empty space in the room through narrowed eyes, picturing what had been there. At first glance, the destruction had seemed almost malicious. But thinking back, the things that had been destroyed were pieces of furniture or bric-a-brac that could have hidden something else inside it. Even the mess in the kitchen had been caused by someone searching inside containers and canisters.

  “Miranda?”

  She turned to look at John. “If the whole point of running me off the road was to keep me away from my house long enough to search it, what exactly are they searching for?”

  Chapter Nine

  Before John could answer, a pounding knock on the door rattled the house and made Miranda jump. With a sheepish smile, she checked out the front window before opening the door. “The plumber,” she said.

  A burly man with dark skin and black hair entered, grinning at Miranda like an old friend. “Hey there, Mandy. Heard you got a mess on your hands.”

  “I do, Garrett. I really do.”

  Garrett entered and stopped briefly as if surprised to see John in the living room. “Oh, hey.”

  “Garrett, this is John Blake. John, this is Garrett Navarre, plumber extraordinaire.”

  Garrett grinned as he gripped John’s hand with his massive paw. “My wife would say I’m very ordinaire indeed. Nice to meet you.”

  “If you can fix that mess in the kitchen, you’ll go straight to the top of my superhero list,” Miranda said with a laugh. “I’ll show Garrett what we’re up against. John, could you get a fire going? I think it’s supposed to be cold again tonight.”

  So was she expecting him to stay again tonight? he wondered as he added kindling to the logs in the hearth. There wasn’t much reason to stoke a fire otherwise, was there?

  Or was he assuming too much?

  “Garrett seems to think he can fix things without forcing me to take out a second mortgage.” Miranda came back into the living room as he was touching a match to the kindling.

  “Good.” He rose to face her and blurted out what was really on his mind. “I think I need to stay here a while longer.”

  Her eyes widened slightly at the abrupt change of subject, but she gave a nod. “I think maybe you should, too, actually. Because I go back to work tomorrow, and I don’t want to have to clean this place up again anytime soon. Having you here might, at least, discourage someone breaking in again.”

  “I don’t remember anyone saying—were there tool marks on either of your doors? To tell how the intruders got inside. I don’t remember seeing any broken windows.”

  “Nobody said.” Her look of consternation suggested she hadn’t thought to ask. She pulled her cell phone from her pocket. “I can find out.”

  While she made a call to the station, John crossed to the front door and examined the lock and door handles. There were no telltale marks of anyone trying to jimmy the lock, but some locks could be conquered easily enough without leaving much sign of what had happened.

  “They checked all the doors and windows. All the windows were locked, and there weren’t any signs of a break-in on the front or the back doors. The shed lock had been forced, though,” Miranda told him after she’d finished her call.

  “Could someone have a key to your front door?”

  “Obviously my dad does.”

  “What about Delta? You said she stayed with you a while. Did you give her a key?”

  Miranda pressed her fingers to her lips briefly. “She did have a key to the house. Not the shed, though. She didn’t have a reason to need one.”

  “Did you get it back from her?�
�

  She looked up at him. “Are you suggesting Delta did this?”

  He almost wished it was what he was suggesting. “Actually, I was thinking about the fact that she’s gone missing.”

  Miranda’s face went pale.

  Garrett came into the living room, carrying a large plastic bag. “Here’s the stuff from the sink and drain. Can I just dispose of it, or is there any reason you’d need to keep it?”

  Miranda glanced at John. “Could be trace evidence, I guess.”

  He grimaced. “I’m not volunteering to go through it.”

  A smile touched the corners of her mouth but got no farther. “Put it on the front porch,” she told Garrett. “I’ll take care of disposing of it.”

  Garrett complied with a cheerful nod and returned to the kitchen.

  Miranda stepped closer to John, keeping her voice low. “You think maybe whoever trashed this place got the key from Delta, don’t you?”

  “It’s possible, isn’t it?”

  “Probable, even.” Using her fingers as a comb, she pushed her hair away from her face, wincing when her fingertips brushed against the bandage on her forehead. “I don’t think she’d have given the key to someone willingly.”

  “Your dad made her sound a little on the flaky side.”

  “Flaky doesn’t mean traitorous.”

  “I know. But could she have been duped into doing it?”

  Miranda appeared to give the question a moment’s thought before shaking her head. “No. She was really savvy. Really cynical, I guess. She wouldn’t have fallen for it. If someone else has the key I gave her, I think they took it against her will.”

  She didn’t finish that thought, but the conclusion was hard to miss. If someone took the key from Delta by force, what else had they done by force?

  “You think she may be dead, don’t you?” Miranda’s pained question broke the silence.