Confessing to the Cowboy

by Carla Cassidy

  There was a definite touch of arrogance in Manning’s voice that set Cameron’s teeth on edge. It was no wonder the man had made no friends since arriving in town. He might be able to sit in the café for an hour to eat and make nice with the waitresses, but there didn’t seem to be much pleasantness beneath the surface.

  Thomas stood and shrugged on his coat, carefully buttoning each and every button as Cameron sat and watched. When he was finished he looked at the lawman and offered him a faint smile. “If you have any further questions for me, I’ll be more than happy to give you the phone number of my lawyer. And now I’m finished here.” He turned and walked out the door.

  A half an hour later, Cameron sat at his desk writing notes to himself. A knock on the door sounded and Ben came inside the small office and sank down across from him. “Nothing from the local professor?” Ben asked.

  “I don’t know,” Cameron replied truthfully. “We certainly don’t have any evidence that he had anything to do with the crimes, nor can we tie him in any way to McKnight, but there’s no question the man is an odd duck.”

  “So, he’s still a person of interest?”

  Cameron went through the high points of the interview with Ben and then hesitated a moment and slowly nodded his head. “Yeah, he’s still a person of interest. Something about his flat affect just seemed off to me. He talked about his wife like he was talking about a stranger he bumped into on the street. I don’t know, maybe he’s on some kind of medication.”

  “Or maybe he’s just so much in love with himself there isn’t room for love or passion for anyone else in his life,” Ben said drily.

  “In any case, he told me if I wanted to talk to him again I could get in touch with his lawyer.”

  “Lawyered up already?” Ben frowned. “That’s a little odd.”

  “And Denver still hasn’t delivered any paperwork to me to show that his sudden windfall is from any inheritance,” Cameron said, his mind whirling. Did they have the killer in their sights or were they completely off track?

  He’d talked Mary into staying here, but had he talked her into staying in a place that would wind up to be her grave?

  * * *

  At four, Cameron entered the café not only with Matt in tow but with Jimmy along with them, the two boys asking Mary if Matt could spend the night at Jimmy’s house.

  “But it’s a school night,” Mary protested as she looked at her son. “You know we don’t usually do sleepovers on school nights.”

  “Mom always makes me go to bed on time on school nights, even when I have guests over,” Jimmy said. “She really wants Matt to stay with me tonight. She’s got a bunch of work to do at home and she tells me when I’m there by myself I’m always in her hair.”

  Jimmy held out his cell phone to Mary. “She said for you to call her and she’ll tell you she wants Matt to spend the night with me.”

  “Sheriff Evans isn’t some taxi service to be running you boys wherever you want to go,” she said.

  “I don’t mind,” Cameron replied, his voice brisk and businesslike.

  Mary took Jimmy’s cell phone and a quick call confirmed what Jimmy had said. With both boys and Jimmy’s mother’s pleas echoing in her ears, Mary reluctantly agreed to the plan. “Get clean clothes for school tomorrow and make sure you brush your teeth tonight before bed.”

  “Will you kiss Twinkie for me tonight?” Matt asked.

  Mary rolled her eyes and grinned. “Don’t push your luck. Go on, get out of here.”

  “And I’ll be back here at closing to take you back to my place,” Cameron said as he ushered the two boys toward the front door. “Oh, and I just heard an updated weather report. It seems there is a bit of sleet forecasted for the evening.”

  “I thought we were in for a warm-up,” Mary said, wishing there wasn’t any distance, any strain between them, but there was and she knew she’d put it there by not being able to accept what he’d offered to her with his heart.

  “You know those weather guys, they don’t always get it right. I’ll see you later.” And with that the three of them headed out the door.

  Instantly what flew through Mary’s mind was that without Matt at Cameron’s this evening there would be no buffer. The chasm between them would be more obvious, more uncomfortable than ever.

  It was around six that the last of the workers, Brandon, Jeff and John Taylor, two of her off-duty waitresses and Junior left the backrooms. “By tomorrow the paint should all be dry and you will be good to move back in,” Brandon said.

  They all looked happy and tired, with their faces speckled with beige paint.

  “I can’t tell you all how much I appreciate what you’ve all done for me today,” Mary said, her heart once again filled to capacity. “However, I can tell you that you’re all my guests for dinner. Anything and everything you want is on the house.” She’d already fed them lunch, but they deserved another meal and so much more for their hard work and thoughtfulness.

  They all gathered around one of the large tables in the center of the room and both Mary and Lynette took their orders, while other waitresses worked the other tables and the dinner rush. All around them people were dining and visiting with each other.

  Laughter rode in the air and the warmth and friendship that filled the room once again humbled Mary. This was her place, among these hardworking, good people, not running from town to town, trying to stay one step away from a man who wanted her dead.

  The sleet that Cameron had mentioned appeared just after seven, pinging against the café glass windows and shooting a restless energy through the place. People began to eat a little faster in order to get home before it got too slick outside.

  By eight-thirty the last of the diners were preparing to pay up and leave and it looked like it was going to be another early closing night. She sent all of her waitresses home and then called Cameron on his cell phone and let him know that she’d be ready for him to pick her up anytime after nine.

  He told her he was currently working a two-car accident and might be a few minutes late. She assured him she would be fine until he arrived.

  At nine she went into the kitchen where Rusty had already shut down the grill and was seated on a stool drinking a cup of coffee. “You might as well head home, too,” she said as she pulled up a stool next to him. “I’ve put the Closed sign on the door and locked up for the night. The sleet is accumulating on the roads and I don’t expect anybody else to come in.”

  “You sure Cameron will be able to come and get you?” Rusty asked.

  “If he doesn’t I can always crash on my new sofa.” She shook her head. “I still can’t believe you all did that for me.”

  “You have no idea what you mean to the people of this town,” Rusty replied.

  She cocked her head and stared at him for a long moment. “Why aren’t you dating? Why don’t you have some nice woman in your life?”

  He gave her his crooked half smile. “Who’d want to date somebody with such an ugly mug as mine?”

  “Oh, Rusty, you have no idea how handsome you are. You can cook, you’ve got a soft heart and any woman would be proud to be with you.”

  “I don’t know... I just don’t think about it much.” He took another sip of his coffee and stared off into the distance.

  Mary guessed that he was probably thinking about the family he had lost in a home fire years ago. It had been an electrical fire that had taken place while Rusty was at work and it had killed his wife and son. It had also destroyed whoever Rusty had once been.

  “They wouldn’t want you to grieve forever,” she said softly.

  “I know. I’m working on it.” He got up from his stool and drained his mug. “You want me to hang around until Cameron does arrive?”

  “Nah, I’ll be fine. I’ll just lock up everything tight and maybe make myself a quick cup of hot tea. You’d better get to the cabin before you have to ice-skate yourself there.”

  Rusty gave her a flash of a smile. “I never was m
uch good at skating. Oh, by the way, the kid left his cell phone here.” He pointed to Junior’s cell phone on the counter. “I imagine he’ll be in early in the morning to get it.”

  “I’ll just lock it up in the register,” Mary replied.

  “Then I guess I’ll see you in the morning.” He pulled on his big coat and disappeared out the back door. Mary locked up behind him and then placed a kettle on a burner to heat water for tea.

  As she waited for the water to boil, she stood in the entry to the back living quarters. The new sofa was beautiful, made more so with the knowledge that her friends and customers had chipped in to buy it for her and Matt.

  The walls were pristine and the smell of fresh paint permeated the air. One more night at Cameron’s and then she and Matt could resume their life here. She knew Cameron wanted them to stay with him until Jason was behind bars, but she couldn’t bunk in with him indefinitely. There was no indication that Cameron and his team would solve this case anytime soon.

  The whistling kettle pulled her back into the kitchen where she fixed a cup of tea and carried it into the main café area. She placed Junior’s cell phone on the counter near the register to lock up before she left for the night and then sat at a table in the center of the dimly lit room and looked around.

  Violet Grady had not only been a member of the founding family of Grady Gulch, but she’d also been Mary’s personal angel. The old woman had not only taken in Mary and Matt when Mary was destitute, but she’d also provided the means for Mary to give Matt a future.

  She would dishonor Violet if she chose to run again. She would dishonor all the people who had worked here all day long today to give her back her home.

  Where are you, Jason? How she wished she had the answer. How she wished Cameron and his men had some kind of clue to get her ex-husband behind bars.

  She wanted this over. She wanted to be able to move back into her rooms, run her café and throw herself back into the life she’d had before murder and a monster had stolen away the joy.

  She took a sip of her tea and then frowned as she heard a sound coming from one of the bathrooms. Was the women’s restroom toilet running again? She set her cup down with a sigh of irritation. It had been a chronic problem over the past couple of months.

  Remaining seated, she decided she’d finish her tea and then go in and jiggle the handle and if that didn’t work then first thing in the morning she’d call Steve Taggart, the local plumber to come in and fix the darned thing for good.

  As she sipped her tea she tried to keep her mind empty of thoughts of murder or Cameron. Both topics made her anxious in completely different ways.

  Thinking about the murders and Jason created a block of ice inside her stomach where thoughts of Cameron created a pit of fiery heat.

  She was too tired to entertain thoughts of either emotions. She just wanted Cameron to pick her up and take her to his place where she would withdraw into his pretty and peaceful guest bedroom until morning.

  Once again she heard a strange noise, a whirring noise that didn’t belong above the soft hum of the refrigerator unit or the rhythmic faint click of the large clock that hung on a nearby wall.

  Shoving her chair back she stood as she tried to identify the sound that appeared to be drawing closer. She gasped in surprise as Brandon Williams wheeled around the corner from the bathrooms.

  “Brandon! Oh, my gosh, I didn’t realize you were still here,” she said.

  He rubbed his stomach and smiled ruefully. “Apparently something didn’t sit quite right with me.” He looked around with a frown. “Looks like you closed the place down for the night.”

  “I did. It’s sleeting outside, Brandon. Maybe you need to sit with me and wait until Cameron picks me up and we’ll see if he can get your scooter in his trunk or something. I don’t know if you can go in the scooter on the ice that is accumulating.”

  “That’s not going to be a problem, Samantha.”

  Samantha?

  Mary stared in horror as Brandon stood up from the scooter and pulled a long knife from the side pocket of his motorized chair. “I don’t think there’s going to be much of anything left here for Cameron to pick up.”

  Chapter 16

  The traffic accident was a nightmare of whirling cherry lights, stinging sleet and rescue workers and accident victims slipping and sliding on the icy road.

  This particular sharp curve just outside of town was treacherous under the best of conditions. It had been here on a rainy night that Courtney Chambers had missed the curve and flown off the ridge and into the trees below. Of course, she’d been drugged at the time by somebody who had wanted to kidnap her baby.

  He shoved aside thoughts of that particular crime, glad that at least it had been solved with a happy ending and the sick woman responsible for the accident was behind bars.

  He needed to focus now on the two screaming men who had been the drivers of the two cars and were now each pointing fingers at the other with blame. Wilma Simpson sat sobbing in the front passenger seat of one of the cars. She refused to leave the vehicle even to allow the emergency workers to check her for injuries. “I just want to go home,” she sobbed over and over again.

  Two people had already been taken from the scene, both injured but not anything life-threatening. The cars had hit almost head-on and surprisingly it had been the people in the backseat that had been injured.

  Neither of them had been wearing seat belts and one’s head bounced off the front headrest while the other had banged knees against the front seat. Thankfully the people in the front seat had been wearing their seat belts. It was a damned miracle that nobody had been killed.

  Each driver was accusing the other of being in the wrong lane, and unfortunately both had moved their cars from the point of impact and off to the side of the road before Cameron had arrived.

  The sleet and freezing temperature were only adding to the issues as he silently cursed the weatherman for missing the forecast on this band of icy mix that had moved into the area. The forecast had said a brief icy shower, but there had been nothing brief about the sleet that had been ongoing and appeared to have parked overhead.

  He stalked over to one of the raging drivers and pulled him away from the other before they began to take swings at each other. Ed Ganger and Blair Simpson were both hotheads, and Cameron knew it wouldn’t take much more before this escalated from a traffic accident into a brawling fistfight.

  When he had Ed at a safe distance away from Blair he began a quick interview of his view of the event. Larry Brooks moved to Blair and began his own discussion with the irate man.

  Cameron knew how this worked. They would both have different stories and someplace in the middle of those stories would be a semblance of the truth.

  What he’d like to do was get out of the nasty weather and head to the café to pick up Mary. He’d like to be curled up on the sofa in front of a roaring blaze in the fire place at his house with her in his arms.

  But it was just another one of his foolish fantasies. He couldn’t leave the scene of an accident and he had a feeling the last place in the world Mary wanted to be was in his arms again.

  As Adam Benson took photos of what appeared to be the point of impact between the two cars, which initially indicated that both drivers were hugging the center line, Cameron took the two driver statements with him to his car and sank into the warmth of the blowing heater.

  He gave each of the statements a cursory read to make sure they had all the information needed. The reports, along with the photos they had of both cars and the road, might allow them to be able to reenact the accident to see if blame needed to be placed. At this point he considered it a weather-related accident with no specific driver to blame. They could each contact their own insurance companies and figure it all out.

  He got back out of the car, grateful that both vehicles remained drivable, thus negating the need for a tow truck.

  With the sleet getting more intense, he sent both drivers
on their way, one heading to the hospital to check on their passengers and the other, with the sobbing Wilma, home.

  All the other men who were on traffic duty left to patrol the streets while Cameron headed back to the office. He’d write up a quick report and then head to the café to pick up Mary and get her back to his place.

  A half an hour later he was seated at his desk, his report written, but his thoughts drifting into painful territory. He couldn’t be the son that his parents wanted. He couldn’t be the man for Mary and he couldn’t be the sheriff who caught the bad guy. Talk about feeling like a failure.

  He tried to turn his thoughts around. He could twist and turn himself inside out and he would never be Bobby. It wasn’t his fault that his father was trapped in an abyss of grief even after two years. He could only hope that with more time his father would eventually come around and realize Cameron’s worth as a son...as a man.

  Mary was a heartbreak that would take some time to heal. He’d entertained dreams of her for so long, and when his fantasy of making love to her had finally come true, it had been far beyond his best fantasy. But that didn’t mean he was the right man for her.

  He should have never gotten intimately involved with her in the first place. It would have been much easier if she’d remained just a fantasy, a vision to fill his dreams at night.

  He had to figure out a way to get her out of his heart. She’d become his addictive habit...thinking about her, dreaming about her and ending almost every night of the day sitting with her across the counter at the café.

  She was definitely a habit he had to break and ultimately she was a citizen of his town who he had to protect from an unknown perpetrator.

  Where in the hell was Jason McKnight? And if he wasn’t committing the murders himself, then who had he hired to do his dirty work? Although he’d managed to pull Denver Walton’s and Thomas Manning’s finances and background records based on probable cause, the judge had known that it was more of a fishing expedition and wouldn’t be so lenient the next time Cameron came to him.