by Cait London
He hadn’t been safe back then, and he’d already been sexually skilled and “fast with women.” He probably wasn’t safe now, either, and Shelly didn’t want her daughter hurt.
Dani was like Roman—rebellious, passionate, and headstrong. If the two should ever meet, they’d either clash or bond. Either way, Shelly would be the loser.
If they ever met, she wondered how long it would be before either one of them added times and birth dates together and discovered the truth.
THREE
Dozer’s gnarled fingers shook as he tried to open the lock on the chain tethering the old Warren garage on Maloney Street. “Locked it because no one was watching it, and the owner who bought it at auction lives away from here. He didn’t care what happened to it. I keep my lawn mowers in here, the sprays and fertilizers and what-not. I’m going to sell my business pretty soon, so you don’t have to worry about this junk bein’ here no more.”
Mitchell scanned the street, remembering the cars and trucks that once stood outside the old garage, waiting for Fred Warren’s healing touch. He glanced up at the second-story window, a jagged, broken pane mirroring the golden sunlight. That was where, as a boy, he’d taken Grace’s place in managing the garage’s books and discovered he liked business better than ranching. But then, he didn’t like ranching at all, not on a tiny forty-acre ranch where hard work got nothing from the dirt.
At eleven o’clock in the morning, Madrid was quiet; spears of sunlight cut through the shadows of Maloney Street. The city beautification club had not seen fit to treat the street, and the old oaks shading it had littered the ground with leaves and broken limbs. The drugstore had moved to Main Street, and the old two-story buildings were boarded, the sunlight catching broken windows. An elderly woman carrying her black purse and a small bag of groceries hobbled on thick ankles into a building that had once been the town’s seamstress. His rocking chair braced against the front porch of what used to be the candy shop, a tiny, ancient Native American man smoked a hand-rolled cigarette and watched life move around him.
Just around the corner, where Maloney met Main Street, the buildings were still old, but updated with neon signs and flower boxes. Mitchell inhaled slowly—some of the past was worth keeping, and the rest had been shoved away. What was worth keeping in his life?
“That’s Rosy with Kitty and Bernard Ferris,” Dozer was saying, nodding toward the pot-bellied pig crossing the Main Street intersection. There in the middle of the street, while drivers of trucks and cars waited patiently, the elderly couple stopped to allow a little girl to feed the pig a treat. Rosy was obviously treasured by the tiny woman in a flowing dress and a huge straw hat whose gloved hand rested on the elderly man’s bent arm. Once fed and admired, Rosy swayed to the other side of the street on the leash held by the elderly couple, and traffic began moving slowly.
Mitchell noted the friendly waves between the townspeople. There had been few of those when he was growing up. “Leave your lawn care things as long as you like. I don’t have any plans for the building just now.”
“What about that old place? Heard you bought it, too.”
“No plans for that, either.”
“Well, family things are hard to give up, especially land. Seems strange—you coming back here without a job in sight. People are already talking. Talk is that you might be in the mafia, setting up our town for a hideout. They’re wondering how you got the money to buy this place, the Howard house, and the old ranch.”
“I’d saved a bit. I’ll manage.” Maybe he was hiding out—from life. Mitchell gently took the key from Dozer, inserting it and unwrapping the chain securing the two big sliding doors. When they swung open, the musty scent and memories swirled out around him from the dark belly of the past.
His father’s drunken yells once more tore through the shadows, Roman and him arguing violently.
Dozer’s assortment of mowers occupied the space where cars had been parked. The mechanic’s car lift had been taken. Boards, spotted with dust and littered with rubble, formed the workbench, and a pegboard rose above that. Once it held tools, now it was gray with spiderwebs.
“I sprayed for bugs and put some bait out for rats and mice,” Dozer was saying, smoothing the handles of his new riding mower as if caressing a lover. “That’s another reason to lock it tight, so no kids will come in here and get hurt. We had a murder in town about a year ago—a drive-by that killed poor Ms. Howard, sweet woman. She always used to make me Mama’s recipes when I was sick. I missed my Mama’s cooking and it chippered me right up every time.”
Dozer looked around the gloomy building. “The first place I checked was here in case someone was using it for a hideout. Weren’t no one here. I never saw Ms. Uma get so het up and angry at the law for not finding the killer, for not doing more. She went to Tulsa, went through the mug shots, and even hired a private detective. She’s usually the nicest woman, but then there was pure fire in her. Ms. Lauren was shot down right in front of her and Ms. Pearl. Ms. Pearl came unglued and holed up, afraid to get out, I guess. But not Ms. Uma. She starting hunting that murderer right away.”
It’s your mother in you, Fred had yelled at Mitchell. Grace didn’t like good hard work and the land, and neither do you. One day you’ll turn your back on me, on what my people left to me, and walk away, just like her.
Mitchell glanced at the stairs that led upward to the office, and the echoes of his dying father’s sobs whispered around him. He remembered the desperation with which Fred had hugged him. You’re all I’ve got left of her. You and Roman. I loved that woman with all my heart.
Mitchell rubbed the ache in his chest, the tightness clenching his heart. Then he turned and walked out into the sunlight, breathing heavily, fighting the storms in him.
Later, as Mitchell stood on the old ranch, the hot dry wind carried more dark memories—Hell, no, you can’t have a bicycle. Those are for city boys, and they cost too much. Warren men ride horses, Fred had said harshly. Just like your mother, always wanting things that cost too much.
The old windmill turned silently, and the crows peered down at him, feathers blue black in the bright sunlight.
Mitchell noted the padlock on the old garage. It was rusted, but relatively new, gleaming in the hot sunlight. He remembered the relentless sun, the hours spent trying to eke a living from the worn-out earth.
He might as well see it all today, chew on it, and settle what he could. Mitchell lifted a broken crowbar from the rusted debris against the garage, placed it into the lock, and pushed. The lock held firm, but the metal plate holding it broke free from the weathered wood.
He pried open the old sliding door. From the shadows, a rat scurried past him and Mitchell used the crowbar to swipe away cobwebs. A heavy stench curled out into the fresh air.
The car filled the shadows, a big, powerful Chevrolet hardtop, dusty and laced with cobwebs.
The slice of sunlight bit through the space between weathered boards and skittered across the dusty windshield. Mitchell eased through the shadows and, disturbed, a bird fluttered out into the daylight.
In the driver’s seat, head back against the seat, yawning with bared teeth and eyeless sockets, was a skeleton.
“The town has been quiet since you Warrens left—up until that shooting last year,” the investigator said as the crime team worked within the perimeter of the yellow crime-scene tape around the garage.
Mitchell watched the men carry the black body bag to the ambulance. He recognized several of those who’d collected in a crowd nearby. Older, they were the people who’d expected the worst from him, the son of Fred Warren. They reminded him briefly of vultures waiting to pounce, waiting to destroy.
He smiled at them. Mitchell had learned a thing or two in the tough business world, and one of them was to smile in the worst times. Let them wonder what was behind that smile. He was here to stay until it suited him to leave. He’d been driven from town once, and it wasn’t happening again.
He smiled bri
efly at Lonny James, the current police chief, who’d been a deputy at the time of the ranch fire. With skin the color of his Cherokee ancestors, heavy jowls, and a good-sized belly, the beefy mountain of a man was a longtime friend of Fred’s; Lonny did more than his share in keeping the boys and Fred out of legal trouble—and right now, from his meaningful look at Mitchell, the police chief wasn’t appreciating the “city boy” invasion.
“Don’t leave town,” the investigator was saying as he snapped his notebook closed.
Mitchell recognized the prick of suspicion lifting the hairs on his nape. “Am I a suspect?”
The man’s smile was cold and professional. “Someone had to put that bullet hole in his head. Just don’t make any plans to leave Madrid, okay?”
Mitchell didn’t like the swelling anger within him. In the old days, the Warrens were accused of any misdeed, and that still chafed. “I just got here last night. The coroner suspects this murder is almost a year old.”
“Just stay put, sir.”
He moved away and Lonny spat a high-flying perfect arc into the hard-baked ground. “Dufus there had to run his little toy siren through town. It lit up all the dogs and when they howl, I get phone calls. Oswald Page just turned sixty-five and he was pretty upset last time the deputy used his siren and the dogs howled. Oswald’s Viagra had just kicked in. Man, I do not want to listen to him harp on that again, or Mrs. Puckett worried about the invasion of space aliens. And I was up at midnight, listening to Myrtle Hawthorne scream about Edgar MacDougal’s peeing off his back porch. After I got done calming her down, I felt I had to do Edgar justice and peed off my own back porch. Irma thinks Ralphie, our little Chihuahua, is turning her rose bushes brown anyway.”
Lonny gathered up spit and sailed another high-gleaming arc into the air. “I been running some buffalo on your place, hope you don’t mind. Their instincts tell them this is an old run. It was hard keeping them off.”
“That’s fine. Someone may as well get the use of it.” Mitchell watched a late-model dark green Toyota come to stop a distance away. Uma burst from the passenger side, running toward the garage. Everett followed more slowly, his expression one of concern.
They were a good match, Mitchell thought, both with the same gentile background, and he wondered what had gone wrong—they seemed to care about each other.
Mitchell allowed the hard grip of Uma’s fingers on his forearm, her eyes searching his. “Mitchell? Is it true? Do they think this is the car?”
“She identified the car in the drive-by shooting last year,” Mitchell said to the investigator. He noted how Everett, no longer a boy, and dressed in a white business shirt and slacks, came to place his arm protectively around Uma. With black hair and blue eyes, he was well bred and successful in his travel agency, according to Dozer. They suited each other, and Mitchell looked away. He didn’t know why, but the image of them together nettled him.
But Uma was ducking under the yellow crime-scene tape, hurrying toward the garage. She stopped suddenly as if frozen in place, her hand over her mouth. The hot wind tugged at her long dress, pressing it against her slender body, causing the hem to flutter at her ankles.
Everett and the investigator moved at the same time, and Mitchell settled back to study Uma and Everett. She leaned against him slightly, his arm around her again as the investigator spoke to her and she nodded quickly. Clearly, Everett knew how to comfort her, and Mitchell wondered when he had ever given a woman as much. Comfort wasn’t a thing he’d learned in Warren 101 class.
While Everett helped Uma back to the car, the investigator returned to Mitchell. “I’d like to continue this discussion at the police station. Would you mind coming with me?”
“Am I under arrest?”
“We’d appreciate your cooperation for this investigation,” the man said. “It seems you don’t have exactly a good past with the people here in Madrid. There was a fire some years ago, right here, and your father died. You could have your reasons for coming back. I’d like to talk with you about that.”
Mitchell inhaled slowly and thought that things really hadn’t changed in eighteen years—
The interview in the police station was intense and pointed—with a suspicion that Mitchell had come back to settle old scores and that he’d been in Madrid when the shooter was killed. Mitchell slowly traced the rim of his coffee cup with his finger. “If I were you, I’d check out those bullet holes on the windmill to see if they match the body’s.”
“Windmill?” The investigator looked blank.
Lonny looked up at the ceiling and rocked on his heels. His too-innocent expression said he’d noted the bullet holes, but the city boy had a few things to learn about treating a small town police chief nicely.
“Dufus” picked up his cell phone and quickly punched the keys. “Seth? Get someone up on that old windmill and check out the bullet holes. Get back with me right away and send one of the paddles to ballistics.”
“Your boy better have a receipt handy,” Lonny stated quietly. “That’s personal property.”
Dufus snorted, as if anyone would care about an old windmill.
Mitchell hadn’t come to Madrid to be pushed. He jotted down names and addresses, then stood, tossing the pencil onto the pad. “I never met Pete Jones. I wasn’t in Madrid until yesterday. I liked Lauren Howard when we were teenagers, and I remember her fondly. I had nothing to do with her murder or the man found in the car. These are my references, where I lived, my employer for the last ten years. This is my attorney in Seattle.”
He gave Dufus time to recognize the law firm before continuing, “What I want to make clear to you is that I will not tolerate slander, or the public release of any personal information. I want to settle into this community with as little problem as possible. What I did before coming here is my business. Research all you want, but you do not have my permission to release anything about my life, that I was a top manager for Rogers Building and Supply. I am in Madrid on personal business—basically, I’m retired. That’s all anyone here needs to know.”
The investigator leaned forward, eyes narrowed, picking at details, ready to pounce. “And that personal business is?”
Mitchell wasn’t letting anyone know that he wasn’t exactly certain what he was doing in Madrid, but trying to make some sense of his life. He stood slowly and nodded to Lonny. “I’ll call my attorney and tell him to give you what you need. Meanwhile, I’m not going anywhere. But I will not tolerate slander, suspicions, or the release of any information on my private life.”
He caught Lonny’s quick, pleased smile before it was replaced by an impassive mask. Lonny had been the only person in the department back then who’d believed that the Warrens hadn’t set the fire for insurance purposes.
Lonny followed him outside to his pickup and clapped a big paw on Mitchell’s back just as he had done years ago. Mitchell had listened to more than one lecture about “keeping on the narrow path.” “Seems you’ve learned a few things, like how to hold in that temper—it used to get you in trouble years ago. You know how to back up what you say and not with your fists, either—the times I had to pull you boys out of scuffles…. glad you’re back.”
“You might be the only one. Things haven’t changed much when it comes to my family and Madrid’s best.”
“Your dad was a good man in a hard place. He wasn’t a rancher, but he was trying his damndest. And there wasn’t a better mechanic. He could make a dead motor sing. If you want it quiet about what you did before coming back, that’s the way it will be. I’ve got a little pull around here, and higher up in the state. ‘Hot-shot’ back there needs to learn some manners. Welcome back to Madrid. See you around.”
As Mitchell drove home, slowly cruising Main Street, lined with shady oaks and old two-story buildings, he noted the stealthy stares labeling him as a troublemaker. It was a look he’d known since childhood. “Uh-huh. Madrid is really happy that I’m back. And I’m not leaving.”
“I’m sorry if I d
isturbed you. I had to come to be with her tonight,” Uma said quietly at nine o’clock that evening when Mitchell opened his house door. She knew he’d been grilled for hours at the police station, and the shadows and lines of his face said he still carried those hours with him. She could feel the defensive shell around him, the vibration of his anger. It quivered in the fresh flower bouquet she held, the flowers Lauren had loved best. “It’s late, I know. Please tell me if you’d rather not have me here.”
He nodded and opened the door wider, and the smell of fresh paint matched the butter-cream spots on his bare shoulders, face, and hair. Unused to the certain raw masculinity that was Mitchell’s, Uma looked away from the spots clinging to the hair on his chest. Mitchell inhaled impatiently, rubbing his broad hands on his jeans, also mottled with paint. “I’ll get a shirt.”
While she waited in the foyer for him to return, she angrily noted Lauren’s beloved wooden tile, ruined by water stains. Billy had often left the door open, careless of the rain storms. It had been Lauren’s duty to keep everything safe—
Mitchell returned, wearing a T-shirt. “Go ahead,” he said quietly, watching her. “Can I get you a drink? The bottled water is top notch. If you like, I have something stronger.”
Uma shook her head and searched his face. The lines were deeper now; the day’s stubble covering his jaw also bore paint spatters. “Lauren loved fresh flowers. I hope you don’t mind…you’re tired. The discovery this afternoon, and all the time with the investigators, must have been draining. I’m sorry I broke down like that at the scene. Just seeing that car in the shadows with the crime people working around it was enough to bring back that night.”
“Forensics people will be working on that bullet hole, trying to match it to a gun.”