To Love and Protect

by Muriel Jensen

  “And nobody’s noticed? I mean, what’s a town this size doing with a deputy mayor, anyway?”

  Will shrugged. “The mayor had ALS. When he was voted in he brought along Pimental, who had a car agency in Manzanita. The two of them were childhood friends. Since the mayor’s illness has become completely debilitating, Pimental’s been pretty much on his own.”

  Ben was beginning to see the picture.

  “Pimental’s behavior is largely ignored because the rest of the state doesn’t care about Querida. We don’t really produce anything and the landscape isn’t exactly inspiring. The police chief also seems to live far beyond the salary of a small-town cop. There’s so much going on in city hall, I wouldn’t know who’d be safe to report it to if I did have an airtight case.”

  “Wow. I have a friend fighting eviction—”

  “Teresa McGinnis. Cyrus Tyree seems determined to get her out of there,” Fennerty conceded.

  “It doesn’t seem like the house is prime property.”

  “I don’t get that, either. His father left it to him, along with a few other properties in Querida and Manzanita. I think he treats those the same way—never fixes anything and is always chasing the rent.”

  “I understand Corie Ochoa went to the deputy mayor for help,” Ben added.

  Will laughed. “Yeah, that was rich. He tried to get her to pay him to help and she beaned him with her purse. Didn’t take that very well. Just not a nice man.”

  “I understand. And...one more thing.”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you report on the theft of Tyree’s wife’s jewelry?”

  “I did. It happened in Corpus Christi, but he’s well-known around here.”

  “TV news reported that Tyree had surveillance cameras.”

  “Yes. Want to see for yourself what they got?”

  Ben suppressed any reaction, hardly believing his luck.

  Will let Ben in behind the counter, walked around his desk and invited Ben to take the chair beside it. He stabbed in a few commands to his laptop and turned the screen toward Ben.

  “Since it’s from a private security system I had to get permission, but Tyree seemed happy enough to give it to me. It’s clear he was robbed.”

  Ben’s stomach sank. “By whom?” he asked innocently.

  The copy of the film began to play. “That part’s not so clear. It’s impossible to identify anyone.”

  Ben watched shadows moving among the bushes in the dark. The makes and models of the vehicles were impossible to determine, and license plates weren’t visible. That was a major relief.

  He turned the screen back. “Do you suspect anyone?”

  “No. Every other person in Querida and Corpus Christi dislikes Tyree. And his wife has serious pretensions, so any number of people would be happy to see either or both of them taken down.”

  “Thanks.” Ben stood and shook his hand. “I appreciate your help, Will.”

  Ben went to Wolf’s Hardware to buy three strings of one hundred-foot lights, per Teresa’s instructions, several boxes of plain ornaments and a box of bubble lights, thinking the children would enjoy seeing those at work. He also bought an inflatable Santa Claus and Mrs. Santa for the front lawn. If Teresa was horrified by it, he’d just take it home with him—whenever he went home.

  As Ben headed out of town for Teresa’s, he noticed Corie pulling into a parking spot near the restaurant, ready to begin her shift. He punched his horn and she waved.

  * * *

  A SPICY AROMA tantalized him when Soren opened the door at his knock—along with two of the Santiago brothers and all of the Stripe Sisters. “We’re having spaghetti for dinner, and you’re invited.”

  “What did you buy?” Bianca stood on tiptoe to see the contents of the bag he carried. He lowered it to the coffee table so they could look inside.

  “What’s this?” Carlos took out the flat inflatables and unfolded them. “Look! Santa. And Mrs. Santa. And they’re big!”

  The other kids abandoned the bag for the big, red-suited Claus couple. Santa had a giant sack and the missus held a teddy bear and a candy cane.

  “For the lawn?” Soren asked.

  Ben nodded. “If we have a bicycle pump or something for blowing up an air mattress, we can inflate them tonight or tomorrow and put them out. But we should probably ask Teresa first.”

  The Stripe Sisters went into the kitchen to do just that.

  Teresa came to the kitchen doorway, wooden spoon in hand. Soren and Carlos held up the figures. She smiled broadly. “You’re a child-spoiler, Ben Palmer,” she said. “Can you stay for dinner?”

  The atmosphere was different without Corie. Not that she was ever particularly happy to see him, but he was discovering that he wanted to see her. He had thought about going to the Grill for dinner.

  But the children jumped up and down at the invitation. Rosie, who was setting the table, told him Teresa made the best spaghetti. “You have to eat some salad with it, but the spaghetti’s really good. We have garlic bread, too.”

  Ben felt himself relenting. He’d been loved his entire life, and he’d always dealt well with his friends’ children and those he came across in his work, but he’d never experienced this almost-adoration before. He put it down to these children living in a household run by women. He was a new and different experience for them.

  “Please,” Teresa added. “I’d like to repay you at least a little for all you’ve done for us today.”

  “I’d love to,” he said. “Thank you.”

  An argument followed among the children about where he would sit. Teresa settled it by placing him between Rosie and Soren, who were already bickering. “We have a dinner guest,” she said, focusing a pointed gaze on each child. “Soren, please pass him the garlic toast.”

  As Ben accepted the deliciously garlic-scented platter, he took a minute to appreciate how different the moment was from where he’d normally have been just a week ago—thanks to Corie.

  * * *

  AFTER DINNER, BEN helped Teresa rummage through the shed for her bicycle pump. The children were gathered around the television with Soren in charge.

  Teresa finally found it under a three-legged chair lying on its side. The box that held the pump was ancient.

  Teresa laughed. “I was a cycling freak in my twenties, so this is pretty old. I hope it still works.”

  “The principle is pretty basic.” Ben carried the pump out to the front yard where they’d left the inflatables.

  Teresa peered at the children through the front window from the veranda, and then joined him on the lawn. “The kids are glued to Nickelodeon, so we should be good for a little while.”

  Ben inserted the pump pin into the port in the large Santa Claus figure while Teresa unfolded it to allow the air to fill it. They weren’t sure the pump was working at first, but soon the inflatable began to very slowly take shape.

  “Corie’s going to love this,” Teresa said. “When she first came to live with me, we had inflatable reindeer on the roof. She was almost thirteen. She pretended to be embarrassed by them but she used to go out and look at them all the time. I don’t think there’d been much fun in her life before she came here.”

  He nodded as he pumped. “She told me her stepmother was nasty.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” Teresa said gravely. “When Corie was born, her father had been her birth mother’s drug dealer.”

  “Yeah. Jack told me a little about him.”

  “A nice enough man, I guess, but with terrible taste in women. When he left Corie’s mother, he spent time in Mexico then in Texas, and married Juanita, who had two daughters of her own.”

  “Right. I heard about the Easter dresses they got but Corie didn’t.”

  “When Corie’s father
died, Juanita gave up all pretense of caring about Corie.” Teresa looked into Jack’s eyes, her own dark with angry pain. “Are you ready for this?”

  “You mean that her stepmother sold her to her friend?” Ben stopped pumping. “Yeah. She told us about it when Jack came to find her.”

  “And you want to know what Corie was worth?”

  He didn’t, but he had to. “What?”

  “One hundred and fifty dollars and a seven-year-old microwave.”

  For a long moment he had simply no words. Well, he did, but none that could be said out loud in front of Teresa. “And no one went to jail?” he finally asked.

  “A lot of things happen in this area that people know about but no one wants to report because they’re illegals and can’t take the chance. Others don’t want to get involved. Sometimes good deeds bite you back.”

  He started pumping again because he had to do something or explode. He thought about his carefree childhood and how, all that time, Corie had had to deal with people who hadn’t cared about her and sold her like garage-sale goods. How did someone recover from that? It made the foster home stories sound almost cheerful.

  Teresa stopped him from pumping. “Okay. You can’t look like that next time you see her or she’ll know I told you.”

  “Right.”

  “No pity.”

  “Of course not.”

  “But tolerance of her self-sufficiency would be nice.”

  Yes. He could certainly see where that came from.

  * * *

  CORIE FILLED SALT shakers while Polly followed her with sugar. It was almost closing time during a quiet shift and they’d done all the housekeeping chores that made the often busy breakfast shift more serene.

  The aroma of Hector’s to-die-for fajita casserole, which had been the special tonight, lingered among the freshly set tables and the empty chairs. Beyond the window where she stood, she could see two streetlights and the lights left on at night in the buildings across the street. Craning her neck a little brought the bed-and-breakfast into view. Ben’s rental was parked in front. A tingle ran along her spine.

  She told herself firmly that it wasn’t excitement. It was interest, at the most. But interest didn’t tingle; what she felt was excitement.

  Okay, she was excited that Ben Palmer was only a block away. What was to become of her?

  She remembered him confronting Gil Bigelow. He’d been calm, but he’d given the impression that nothing in this world could move him from his protective stance in front of her, Teresa and the children.

  She didn’t remember anyone ever protecting her from anything before—except for her brother, Jack, and she’d been four at the time. That was a long twenty-three years ago.

  It was odd how vulnerable Ben’s protection made her feel—how soft—and unsettling to the woman who’d learned to depend on herself.

  Ben had told her to her face in the past that he didn’t like her, didn’t trust her, and yet... She wiped off the few grains of salt she’d spilled and moved on to the next table. She had to keep reminding herself that Ben had defended Teresa and the kids, not her.

  “Want me to finish?” Polly asked. She set her container of sugar on the table with a thud. The small funnel that simplified pouring went down beside it. “You don’t seem focused.” She put a companionable arm around Corie’s shoulders. “You having trouble with the brother who isn’t your brother but your boyfriend?”

  Forced out of her thoughts by the sincerity of her friend’s concern, Corie bumped her teasingly with her elbow and picked up the salt container to move on to the next table. “I’m just...tired. And he’s not my boyfriend.”

  Polly followed her. “Are you sad because he’s going home?”

  “I’m not sad, because he’s not my boyfriend. And he’s not going home.”

  “He’s staying? With you?”

  Giving her a mildly impatient look, Corie picked up the shaker. “No, he’s not staying with me. He has a room at the B and B. He’s staying to help Teresa.”

  Polly frowned at that. “You mean, help her with the children?”

  “No.” Corie had told Polly and Hector about Teresa’s problems with Tyree. “The police chief tried to evict her this morning.” She couldn’t help the smile that formed at the memory of Bigelow’s shocked expression when Ben informed him that he was wrong. “Ben stopped him in his tracks. He knew all about the process and it turns out Bigelow couldn’t evict her at all. Teresa’s safe for another couple of months.

  “It was great to see Bigelow so rattled. He arrived with a swagger and left with a definite slump to his shoulders.”

  Polly smiled then said with concern, “I hope Ben’s careful. Those guys are vindictive.”

  “Yeah. But he can be tough, too.”

  “He looked like he likes you. Maybe even more than likes. And he picked you up here last night.”

  “That was just because I’d lost my car keys.”

  Polly shook her head and went back to sugar duty. “You just don’t want to admit that someone cares about you. Someone male. You don’t want to have to bother with that, do you?”

  “Bother?” Corie wasn’t sure what Polly was talking about.

  “You know, act like a woman acts when a man has feelings for her. You don’t have to act weak, or let him win at poker, or anything, but you have to be...receptive. Willing to learn more about him, let him learn about you. You have to stop hiding who you really are.”

  Offended, Corie put a hand to her hip. “I’m not hiding anything.” She stabbed a finger at her own chest. “This is me.”

  “No, it’s not. When Teresa or the kids, or Hector or me needs you, you’re the kindest, most right-out-there friend in the world. But when you’re dealing with anybody else, particularly a man, you become a five-foot-one-inch thistle.”

  “One and half inch.”

  Hector wandered out of the kitchen to survey the empty restaurant and then lock the door and turn off the neon open sign. He looked from one to the other. “What’re you fighting about?”

  “We’re not fighting,” Corie denied, turning her attention back to her work. “Polly’s just trying to tell me that—” she spread both arms in exasperation “—this isn’t the real me. But it is.”

  Hector looked puzzled. He picked up the shaker she’d just filled and held it up to her. “Then the real you just put salt in the pepper shaker.”

  * * *

  CORIE AND POLLY left the Grill together, Hector locking the door behind them. Polly squeezed Corie’s arm on the dark, quiet sidewalk. “Try to relax, Corie,” she said quietly. “I think he’s staying because Teresa and the kids are important to you.”

  Corie wanted to tell her she was crazy, but it was late and she was tired. She gave her a quick hug. “Good night, Pol. I’m going straight to bed. The kids are going to be wild tomorrow while we finish decorating the tree.”

  “Good luck. Glad it isn’t me.” Polly headed up the street to her little VW bug.

  The night was absolutely silent, except for the sound of the rope on the American flag in the park in the next block hitting the flagpole. She drove home, putting thoughts of Ben out of her mind. She had been fine on her own all this time and she would be fine in the future. Corie pulled up in front of her house and turned off the headlights. Lights were on in the house across the street, but every other house around her was dark. She started up the narrow path to her front door and heard the deep bark of the neighbor’s vigilant Lab. He sounded more agitated than usual.

  She stopped, a weird fluctuation in the air catching her by surprise. It wasn’t exactly a sense of being watched, it was—

  The front door exploded outward and something flew at her with such force it knocked her down. She lay there stunned as the missile fell on her then righted itself an
d tried to stand. For a nonsensical moment she was reminded of her experience with the Christmas tree and Ben Palmer.

  Her heart thumping, her brain finally responding to the threat, she grabbed at the body lifting off her, caught a piece of fabric and heard a tearing sound as the person gained footing and ran. She lay quietly for a minute, letting her heart settle down, wondering idly if she had footprints on her face.

  “Corie!” Ben knelt beside her and helped her to a sitting position. “Are you okay? What happened?”

  She pointed into the darkness. “A man. He went that way.”

  Ben looked in that direction and listened for a minute. Except for the agitated dog, there was no sound. “He’s long gone. Did you see his face?”

  “No.” She grunted and held on to his arm as he hauled her to her feet. “But he was in my house.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “Yeah.”

  He wrapped an arm around her and led her past the broken door and inside. She flipped on a light. Her sofa cushions were on the floor, the rocker was turned over and her pictures were askew on the wall. The only thing still in place was her small flat-screen TV.

  She resisted Ben’s encouragement to sit and walked through to the kitchen. She breathed a sigh of relief that her computer sat on the table where she’d left it.

  Ben followed her, dialing his cell phone. “Hopefully there’s someone at the police department besides Bigelow?”

  “Chris Norton is on the night shift.” She smiled grimly. “We had English Lit together senior year. He was a nice guy. Couldn’t get through Macbeth but I lent him my notes.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. That had been a strange aside, considering her house had been broken into, but she wasn’t thinking clearly.

  “Something else you should know, though.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He’s dating Bigelow’s daughter.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. Geez. Well, that doesn’t mean he’s like him. What’s in your hand?”

  She’d been holding the scrap of fabric so tightly, she no longer felt it. “I tore this off the guy,” she said as she opened her fingers. Ben reached for the swatch of blue cloth, the shape suggesting it was a shirt pocket. It was chambray; probably from a work shirt.