Stranger in Cold Creek

by Paula Graves

  She sat beside him, daringly close, her hip snugged against his. For a few moments, they sat in silence broken only by the crackle of the fire and the distant hum of the dishwasher at work.

  “Tell me about Delta,” he murmured a few moments later. She felt his fingers play in her hair. Lightly. Undemanding.

  “She was a couple of years younger than I am. Three years behind in school because she failed a year early on, thanks to her dad dragging her all over Texas for a while. She couldn’t keep up with her schoolwork as she went from town to town, so she had to start over fresh the next year, somewhere down near Abilene, I think.” Delta had told the story so matter-of-factly, without a hint of how she’d felt about her rambling lifestyle with her father. “I think that wasn’t long after her mother left them.”

  “So they weren’t from here originally.”

  She shook her head. “You’re probably wondering why they settled in a little place like this.”

  “The question did cross my mind.”

  “Mine, too. Delta never really said what made them stay, but if I had to guess? I think she told her daddy to settle down or she’d call the cops on him.”

  “Really. How old was she then?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Tough little girl.” John’s voice held a touch of admiration.

  “She was. It’s so hard to think she’s gone now. She endured so much. Overcame so much.” Grief tangled around her heart, squeezing hard. She took a deep breath, attempting to relieve the sudden sharp stab of pain.

  “I was hoping for a better ending,” he murmured, his fingers warm against her cheek. He pressed his lips to her temple, a brief, uncomplicated caress.

  Except her reaction to his touch was anything but uncomplicated. Her heart skipped a beat before shifting into a higher gear, and her skin prickled hot beneath his fingers.

  “I wanted to believe we’d find her alive, but—”

  “But you didn’t really think you would?”

  She let herself relax, resting her head against his jaw. “She kept a lot of things to herself, but she’d have told me if she was leaving for this long.”

  With a soft prrrup sound, Ruthie jumped up on the sofa next to her, her tail forming a question mark. She wasn’t hungry, Miranda knew, because she’d fed the cats before John had returned from the grocery store.

  “Hey there, Ruthie,” John said in a soft voice.

  The cat’s ears twitched, and slowly, she turned her green eyes to look at him with a quizzical expression.

  “I had a cat when I was in Johnson City,” John said. “Well, sort of. He was a stray who took up with me. He’d been someone’s cat before—he was tame and had already been neutered. The vet said someone might have accidentally let him out of the car on a trip or something—he was too well behaved to have lived his life outdoors for long. He wasn’t microchipped, though, and my ‘lost cat’ ads didn’t bring his real owners around, so I took him in. Let him live with me until he died.”

  All the while John had been speaking, Ruthie had been watching him, her ears perked as if listening. When he stopped, the tortoiseshell cat walked over Miranda’s lap and reached up, claws sheathed, to touch his mouth.

  “Well, then. Ruthie must like the sound of your voice.”

  “Or maybe she’s trying to make sure I stop talking.”

  Miranda watched with amusement as Ruthie settled in his lap, a low purr rumbling from her throat. “That’s the Ruthie seal of approval.”

  “She must have low standards.” He scratched behind her ears, then under her chin, each stroke earning him a blissful stretch from Ruthie.

  “Not at all. But if you can get Rex to sit in your lap like that, you’re a miracle worker.”

  John stroked the fingers of his other hand lightly over the skin behind Miranda’s ear, sending a ripple of pure pleasure darting down her spine. If she wasn’t careful, she’d end up purring like a kitten herself.

  “Miranda?”

  “Hmm?” She turned her head and found his face inches from hers, his eyes gleaming with desire and intent. But he remained perfectly still, giving her the chance to make the final move.

  Toward him or away from him? It was her choice.

  And then, suddenly, it wasn’t her choice any longer.

  He leaned in and pressed his mouth to hers, his lips somehow both firm and soft. With soft, nipping movements, his kiss deepened, urging her lips apart until his tongue brushed lightly against hers. Lightly at first, then with dark seduction, making her head swirl until she found herself clinging to him just to remain upright.

  His fingers threaded through her hair, holding her in place while he slowly, thoroughly kissed her until she couldn’t find her breath.

  Suddenly, his breath caught and he drew back, hissing with pain. A flash of fur darted from between their bodies.

  John looked down at the three scratches turning red down his wrist. “I don’t think Ruthie approved.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Miranda winced as the scratch marks started to ooze blood. “She likes you, I swear.”

  “Yeah, I know.” John stood up and started toward the hallway. Miranda followed quickly, wondering what he was going to do to poor Ruthie.

  “She was just scared,” she said quickly.

  In the hallway, he turned to look at her, his expression quizzical. “I know that. What do you think I’m going to do, go wring her neck?”

  “I didn’t know. Some people freak out when they’re scratched, and—”

  “I had a cat. Scratches happen.” He went into the bathroom and looked around. “Where do you keep your first-aid supplies?”

  “There’s a kit in the cabinet under the sink.”

  John found the kit, a small metal box full of adhesive bandages, individual packets of antiseptic pads, antibiotic ointments and pain reliever tablets. He selected the antiseptic, ripping the packet open and dabbing the antiseptic on the three scratches. “All better now.”

  She was relieved that he’d handled Ruthie’s reaction with such levelheadedness. She’d dated a tough cowboy once who’d nearly cried when Rex had reacted to his relentless teasing with a claws-extended swipe, despite Miranda’s warnings to stop. She’d had to restrain the idiot from going after her cat, and that had been the end of that relationship.

  Of course, she and John weren’t really dating, were they? They were just temporarily sharing a house. With kissing benefits included, apparently.

  “I’d better go apologize to Ruthie,” he said after he’d finished treating the scratch. “Don’t want to get on her bad side.”

  She watched him head down the hall in search of her miffed cat, trying to ignore the melty feeling in the center of her chest.

  * * *

  “CAN YOU TELL if anything looks any different?” Tim Robertson had remained in the doorway while Miranda took a slow circuit of Delta McGraw’s tiny trailer. She’d been there a few times over the past few months since the tornado had wiped out Delta’s previous home.

  “Someone’s been here,” she said, taking in the disturbed places in the dust that lay in a thin layer over everything in the trailer. “They took their time, though. Nothing like the search at my place.”

  “Wonder why they didn’t just toss this place like they tossed yours?”

  “Maybe because they had more time,” she suggested. “There was a narrow window of time at my place to do any sort of search. Even if I’d died in the wreck, someone would have been there within a few hours to check on the cats.”

  Tim nodded. “You have any idea what they were looking for at your place?”

  She thought about what she and John had agreed to earlier that morning over a breakfast of instant oatmeal and the fresh strawberries he’d bought at the market the night before.

 
“I’m not going to tell the others at the cop shop about our suspicions that Delta’s death and the attack on me might be connected,” she’d told him. “Because the last thing I want is to be put on leave for my own safety. I need access to the department’s resources.”

  “Don’t you think they might figure it out on their own?” John had asked.

  Miranda looked at Tim, who remained near the doorway, leaning against the wall with his arms folded over his chest. He was a good deputy, she knew. Smart and resourceful.

  Would he figure it out on his own?

  Maybe. But she wasn’t going to help him put her own investigation in cold storage, which would surely happen if the sheriff thought her life might be in danger.

  “I don’t know what they were looking for,” she told Tim. That much, at least, was true. She might have a pretty good idea why they’d been searching her house, but she had no idea, yet, what they’d been looking for.

  On closer inspection, she found plenty of signs that the place had been carefully searched, but if they’d taken anything, she had no way of knowing what it was. Even if she’d been Delta’s closest friend, she couldn’t pretend she knew that much about Delta’s life outside their limited interactions. The handful of times she’d been in this trailer had been brief, usually when she stopped by to say hello after too many days, even weeks, of not hearing from Delta.

  The woman had been a loner at heart. Probably the result of the kind of life she’d had with her pariah of a father.

  In the end, she found the money by accident. As she walked into the kitchen one last time to make sure she hadn’t missed anything, her foot caught on the edge of the linoleum in the door, sending her sprawling forward. She caught herself on the edge of the narrow counter inside the tiny kitchenette and felt it give.

  Regaining her footing, she gave the counter an upward tug, and that small section of the counter lifted up on a hinge.

  Underneath, a shallow square space was empty except for a thick manila envelope bound shut by a couple of rubber bands. She opened the envelope and sucked in a sharp breath.

  Inside the envelope were several fat stacks of plastic-wrapped one-hundred-dollar bills.

  * * *

  THE FLOOR OF the unfinished room had been framed atop the existing concrete foundation, sheathed in plywood awaiting the installation of final flooring. Miranda and her father had framed the floor and the walls, she’d told John earlier that morning when they’d been discussing the next part of the building project, but they’d had professional builders handle the roofing, siding and insulation. Heating, ventilation and air-conditioning ductwork had also been added by the pros, but the rest of the work Miranda intended to do herself, with help from her father and now from John, as well.

  Next job up—installing the drywall. Sheets of the plasterboard stood against one of the walls, ready to go. Miranda had already measured and cut the boards to fit the walls, helpfully marking each one with a corresponding framing board in the wall. She’d left him with her power screwdriver, a bucket of drywall screws and the smiling admonition to avoid screwing any body parts to the wall.

  He started installing the drywall top to bottom, working up a nice sweat despite the mild day. Within an hour, he’d managed to screw up an entire wall and had started the next when something in the fiberglass insulation near the floor caught his eye.

  Was that a split in the fiberglass batting?

  He found a pair of work gloves in the toolbox in the corner. They were snug but covered his hands, protecting them from the scratchy fibers of the insulation batting as he pushed his fingers inside the split.

  There was something in there. Hard and rectangular, like a box. Or a book? It moved a little when he touched it, though it seemed to fit snugly into its hiding place. He didn’t want to make the slit in the fiberglass any worse, but being too careful wasn’t going to make it possible to get the mystery item out of the recess.

  Removing his hand, he sat back, trying to figure out if the rectangular object might have something to do with the wiring or the HVAC system. After reassuring himself it couldn’t be, he pushed his hand through the opening in the insulation and tried to grab the object again.

  This time, he caught it firmly between two fingers and wiggled it until it popped free. Turning it sideways, he pulled it out through the fiberglass and dusted strands of the glass fiber away from it.

  It was a small, hard-backed book, wrapped in clear plastic, the end pieces of the wrap taped together at the back side of the thin book. It wasn’t a novel or anything like that; the dark blue cover was made of fabric and had no title or any writing at all on the front or back.

  The sound of keys rattling in the door sent a light shock through his system, and he almost lost his grip on the book. He pushed quickly to his feet, bracing himself until he heard Miranda’s voice down the hall. “John?”

  “In here,” he called.

  Miranda’s footsteps rang down the hallway, moving at a fast clip. She stopped in the doorway for a second, taking in the newly installed drywall. “Wow. You’ve been busy.”

  “I have,” he said, “and I may have—”

  “Guess what I found at Delta’s trailer this morning.” If she noticed the book in his hands, she didn’t give any sign.

  “What did you find?”

  “Ten thousand dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills.” She looked both excited and troubled, and she walked back and forth in front of him, the emotions warring in her storm cloud eyes. “I have no idea where she could get her hands on that much cash, but there it was, hidden in a secret compartment in her kitchen counter, of all places.”

  Hidden, John thought, glancing at the book dangling from his gloved hand. “Wrapped in plastic?” he asked.

  She stopped her restless pacing and turned to look at him. “Yes. How did you know?”

  He lifted the book in his gloved hand and motioned toward the partially finished wall. “I was putting in the drywall and noticed there was a split in the insulation. I reached inside and found this.”

  Miranda took a couple of steps closer to get a better look at the book. “It looks like a journal or a diary. Maybe a ledger?”

  “I didn’t want to touch it with my bare hands, in case you need to process it for fingerprints.”

  “Good idea.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a pair of latex gloves, probably spares from her search of Delta’s trailer earlier that morning. She donned them quickly and took the book from his hands. Carefully she unstuck the tape holding the plastic wrap in place. “Can you go to the kitchen and get me a gallon bag out of the box over the stove? Bring the whole box.”

  He retrieved the box of gallon-sized resealable bags and handed her one. “Here you go.”

  She passed him the book. “Gloved hands only. And try not to touch it much. I’m not sure we can get prints off that fabric surface, but you never know.”

  As he balanced the book flat on his gloved palm, she carefully folded the plastic wrap she’d removed from the book and slipped it inside the gallon bag he’d supplied, sealing it up and setting it on the top of the toolbox by the door. “Now let’s take a look at that book.”

  He handed over the small blue book. She took it in her gloved hands, trying to touch only the edges and the corners as she opened it. John moved to look at the contents over her shoulder.

  Small, neat writing filled the pages, but they didn’t form any sort of journalistic narrative. Instead, they were line after line of notes. Names. Places. Short commentary on one or both. Never pull a con in Vegas. Everybody already knows all the tricks.

  “This must have belonged to Delta’s father,” John said.

  Miranda nodded, flipping through the pages slowly, giving him time to make out the neat writing. “It’s almost like a how-to book on pulling cons.”

&nb
sp; As they neared the later pages of the book, some of the notes changed. Still names and places, but now notes such as “Does his wife know he’s bedding boys?” and “One more DUI and he loses his license.”

  “And now we have blackmail,” John murmured.

  About ten pages from the back of the book, the writing changed abruptly from the neat, almost printlike writing to a larger, more looping cursive. “That’s Delta’s writing,” Miranda said.

  John looked down at the book. “So you’re saying...”

  “I’m saying Delta McGraw was following in her father’s footsteps.” Miranda looked down at the journal. “And this may be what got her killed.”

  Chapter Twelve

  One of the small back rooms at Duncan Hardware served as Gil Duncan’s office. Inside, he’d crammed filing cabinets, a computer and a multifunction printer. One of those functions was copying, and Miranda spent a couple of hours that afternoon making two sets of copies from Delta McGraw’s journal.

  “I have to take this book to the sheriff’s department,” she’d told John earlier, after a second read through had convinced her that the journal might contain a clue that would help the department solve Delta’s murder.

  “Don’t you want to go back through it again a few times first?” John had asked. He’d sat quietly enough across the table from her while she gave all the journal pages a more thorough reading, but she hadn’t missed the impatience creasing his forehead and feathering fine lines from the corners of his eyes.

  He was right. She did want to go back through it a few more times. Once the book was in the hands of the sheriff’s department, it would be off-limits to her, since Miles Randall had made it clear he wasn’t going to let her be part of the investigation.

  So she’d just have to run her own investigation on the side, and to do so, she was going to need the information in that journal.

  She finished copying the last page and slipped the journal back into the plastic bag. After removing her latex gloves, she took the paper from the copier and bumped the stack against the top of the copier a few times to straighten the pages into a neat sheaf. She bound them together with a couple of rubber bands.