Running for Her Life

by Beverly Long

  They drove the short distance to her house in silence. He barely had the car stopped before she opened the door and got out. He followed her up the steps and waited while she opened the screen door and unlocked the wooden door.

  She turned. “Thank you.”

  He was being dismissed. And he didn’t like it. She was pale and her hand wasn’t quite steady. “Maybe I should come in. What if you fall over in the shower?”

  “I won’t.”

  Given that he’d already forced his way into her house once, he stepped back and sat down on the cement step. “If you’re not out in fifteen minutes, all bets are off.”

  She chewed on her lower lip. “Fair enough.” She pushed open the door. “Since you’re going to be here and all, could you make sure nobody else comes in while I’m in the shower?” It was an offhand request, made casually. Too casually, perhaps.

  “You’re expecting someone?”

  “No. But once Gordon gets to town, he might tell the story, and it wouldn’t be that odd for someone to come out and check on me.”

  It sort of made sense. But there was something that wasn’t right. “Okay. Nobody gets past me.” He didn’t miss the relief in her eyes before she turned away.

  Chapter Four

  Thirteen minutes later, she unlocked the door and came out onto the porch. She was dressed in a blue jean skirt that showed off her tanned, well-toned legs—the bandage on her knee and the fresh scratches couldn’t even distract from their appeal. She wore a long-sleeved cotton shirt. She looked young and fresh and innocent, and it made him think that maybe he was crazy for suspecting that she was hiding something. His experience with Marcy had warped his judgment.

  “Have a seat,” he said, motioning to the step. He separated her silky hair to take a look at the cut. Her skin, her hair, something, smelled like raspberries and he was afraid to breathe too deep, afraid that it would be a scent that he wouldn’t be able to easily shake.

  The cut was a half-inch long. It had stopped bleeding and looked clean. “I think it’s okay.”

  “Good.” She stood up. “I need to get to work. Janet has got to be going crazy.”

  “While she and I didn’t have much time to get acquainted, I got the impression that Janet is pretty competent. Couldn’t she handle the place for a while so that you could rest?”

  “I don’t need to rest. And you’re right. On a normal day, Janet could probably take care of the place with one hand tied behind her back. But we’re short a dishwasher and, more important, tomorrow is the town picnic. The Chamber of Commerce provides the meat and pays Nel’s to make the sandwiches. We’ve got over a hundred pounds of roast beef that needs to be cooked today so that we can slice it tomorrow for Italian beef sandwiches.”

  Town picnic. Chase must have been really worried about his mother to have forgotten to mention that. A hundred pounds of beef meant a lot of sandwiches. Which probably meant that a whole lot of people were expected. “So what happens at this event?”

  “Everyone gathers for a parade. Then there’s lunch in the park, some games for the kids, maybe some volleyball for the adults. By late afternoon, people drift off. There are lots of people in this community who still have milk cows, so they don’t have the luxury of missing chores.”

  Cows. Chores. Town picnic. He was in the middle of a Norman Rockwell painting. All his debts to Chase were definitely going to be paid in full. He couldn’t wait to get home to his apartment, where he knew his neighbors by sight but he sure as hell didn’t spend any time talking to them.

  “Any more thoughts about who might have been driving that car?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “It strikes me as somewhat of a coincidence that you get a baseball through your window last night and this morning you’re almost run off the road. Are you sure there’s nobody pissed off at you?”

  She stared at him. “Look, I appreciate the help. Both last night and this morning. But I can’t imagine the two things have anything to do with one another. Last night was petty vandalism, and this morning it was an accident. The driver lost control, swerved, probably didn’t even see me. Now I really have to be going.”

  Without another word, she walked to the garage and pulled her van out. When he motioned that he’d shut the garage door, she shook her head sharply, got out and did it herself. Then she waved her hand, making sure he understood that she expected him to leave first.

  She couldn’t have made it any clearer. I don’t need or want you watching over me.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME Tara locked the restaurant’s door that afternoon, she was almost shaking with fatigue. She wasn’t surprised when she closed out the cash drawer that receipts were up almost twenty percent. The broken window had sparked plenty of interest, and by the time Gordon had told his tale around town, the lunch crowd had swelled to standing-room only.

  Yes, I’ve got someone coming to fix the window.

  Yes, I did take the ditch this morning.

  I’m not sure either what this world is coming to.

  Tara had refilled coffee cups and offered thick slices of strawberry rhubarb pie. One of her regulars offered her a dog. Said that he had a pit bull that could protect Nel’s and her, but then again, maybe not, because he wasn’t sure if the dog was a jogger.

  Midafternoon, Janet had called her back to the kitchen because Chase Montgomery was on the phone. He’d expressed his concern about both the vandalism and the troubles on her morning run. Said that he’d spoken to Frank Johnson. She’d been touched that Chase had taken the time to call when clearly he had his own issues to deal with. She’d assured him she was fine and asked about his mom. “Tough days ahead” was all he’d said. He’d switched the topic quickly and had passed along the news that Chief Wilks was continuing to recover from his bypass surgery. That had led him to Jake.

  “I’m grateful that Jake’s there to take care of things. I don’t know a better cop. Nothing gets past him.”

  The words had rattled around in her head for the rest of the day. She needed supercop to look past her, to direct his attention on something else.

  When she’d started imagining how convenient a bank robbery might be, she’d returned to the dining room and wiped off tables and trays and counters as if a health inspector had been spotted outside.

  Now, hours later, she’d progressed from tired to truly exhausted. Her feet hurt and a dull pain had lodged itself in the middle of her back. The kitchen had been extra hot from the big ovens being on all day, making her shirt stick to her back and sweat gather between her breasts. When she cleaned the floor, the mop weighed a hundred pounds. To top it off, when she and Janet washed up the last of the pans, the normally taciturn woman surprised her by initiating conversation. Tara almost dropped the soup kettle on her foot.

  “What do you think of the new police chief?” Janet asked.

  “Seems nice,” she said. She turned on the water and rinsed the large pan again. She grabbed a clean white towel and vigorously rubbed dry the dull stainless steel.

  “He was Johnny-on-the-spot to go looking for you this morning.”

  And that had been nagging at her. In less than twelve hours, after Jake Vernelli had arrived in town, her business had been vandalized and she’d almost been killed. Could it really be as simple as just a streak of bad luck? Or had her luck truly run out? Had Michael found her? And was he somehow connected to the new police chief?

  Nobody in Wyattville knew about Michael. When she’d first arrived in town, the trauma had been too fresh. Then, as her body healed and her mind cleared, she’d decided that the only way to protect herself was to make sure that no one, especially not the police who had betrayed her once before, could know the truth.

  And up until now, it had been easy. Joanna Travis had vanished and Tara Thompson had appeared.

  But Jake Vernelli made her nervous.

  At midmorning, he’d shown up at the restaurant and had coffee with Frank Johnson. It had rattled her to have him at
the counter. He’d watched her. Hadn’t mentioned the accident again, but she’d known that every time another customer had asked about it, he’d listened to her answer.

  Had he been trying to see if her story would change?

  It hadn’t. She’d told him the truth. The car had swerved, she’d reacted and hit the ground hard. The impact had stunned her, taken her breath away. She’d sat up as quickly as possible but by then the car was already over the next hill.

  She’d caught only a glimpse of the driver before taking the ditch; he or she had worn a hat pulled low over the face. Maybe it had been an elderly person. Maybe someone coming home from third shift at the county hospital, and they’d fallen asleep and awakened at the last moment. There was no way to know if it had been Michael.

  Michael Watson Masterly, the third. Of the New York Masterlys. Old money. Politically connected. Mean.

  But she hadn’t known any of that the night she’d met Michael at the governor’s fundraiser. She’d been working. He’d been friendly and funny, and when he’d relentlessly pursued her for weeks afterward, she’d been naive enough to believe that she was living a fairy tale. Six months after they’d met, they were living together and she’d been planning their wedding. Three months later, she’d been running for her life.

  If Jake Vernelli was working with Michael, then he’d stop at nothing short of killing her. If he wasn’t, he was still dangerous. If he looked too close, he was going to see that her life was a house of cards, and she was only one pull away from having it collapse.

  * * *

  AT NINE THE NEXT MORNING, Tara wiped her face with a paper towel. On her way to work, she’d enjoyed the clear blue sky and brilliant sun. Now, just three hours later, the temperature outside had soared to ninety and was well over a hundred degrees in the kitchen.

  The hottest summer in fifty-five years. The television weather forecasters droned on about it. In Minnesota, where summers for the most part lasted about two months and a hot day was in the mideighties, fourteen straight days of over ninety-degree temperatures had everyone’s attention. People didn’t talk about anything else.

  Except for the past couple of days, they’d squeezed in a little conversation about the town picnic. Held every June fifteenth for the past hundred and ten years, the picnic brought the town together. Over five hundred people would gather at Washington Park, the two acres of land at the edge of Wyattville. Stories would be retold, recipes traded, new babies shown off and massive amounts of food consumed.

  Since early morning, she and Janet had been slicing the meat they’d cooked the day before. The Lions Club would have three large roasters available to keep the meat warm so that it could be piled high onto fresh buns and topped with sautéed green peppers. Other volunteers would have fired up a few grills, and there’d soon be hot dogs and hamburgers sizzling. Each family that attended would bring a dish to pass. There would be lemonade and iced tea and big barrels of cold beer. No one would go away hungry.

  The parade would mostly consist of tractors pulling hay wagons—decorated with crepe paper and plastic streamers—that could seat the mayor, city council members or anybody else remotely considered Somebody. Each would have a big bag of candy at his or her side, and they’d throw handfuls out along the way, and small children along the parade route would scramble for the loot.

  Boy and Girl Scout troops would march, proudly carrying flags. Wyattville didn’t have its own high school. Kids were bused to Bluemond, twenty-five miles away. The payback came at parade time when Bluemond’s seventy-five-person band showed up. The parade started a block north of Nel’s, so for the past half hour Tara had listened to a haphazard medley of blaring horns, whistling flutes and pounding drums as the kids nervously waited to begin marching.

  At 10:45 a.m., fifteen minutes before the parade was to start, Tara locked the front door. Normally on a Friday, the last lunch special wouldn’t be served until sometime around two but no one expected that today. Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Labor Day might be national holidays but in Wyattville, it was the town picnic that garnered universal observance.

  Under one arm she carried two lawn chairs, one for her and one for Janet. The older woman had left a few minutes earlier to supervise sandwich making.

  For most of the morning, Tara had been too busy to worry about broken windows or hit-and-run drivers. Now that her work was done and the rest of the day stretched before her, she was determined not to dwell on what-ifs but rather to focus on sunshine, silly games and the simple pleasure of dangling her bare feet in the spring-fed pond.

  At last year’s picnic, she’d been so new and so edgy that the loud, unexpected burps of noise from the tractors had practically had her jumping out of her skin. Janet had been insistent, though, and she’d somehow managed to draw up her lawn chair and while away the afternoon hours with her new customers and neighbors. And looking back, she knew that was the day when the healing had started.

  The people of Wyattville had opened their arms and their hearts, and she’d found a place to call home. Day by day, she’d gotten both mentally and physically stronger. She’d started sleeping at night and stopped her steady diet of antacid pills. The small town had healed her.

  Tara stopped at the very edge of Washington Park and unfolded her lawn chair. She waved to several customers and they waved back. It wasn’t until she’d sat down that she saw him.

  Six feet of pure muscle. Before her nightmare with Michael began, she’d have appreciated this man’s long legs, trim waist, broad chest. She might even have joked with coworkers about his fine rear end and speculated about other attributes. But now, with his pressed uniform, hat and shiny black shoes, he all but screamed cop, and it made her stomach cramp up in fear.

  His stance was comfortable as he confronted a carload of teenagers who’d decided that the barricade across the road clearly didn’t apply to them. But she wasn’t fooled. He didn’t carry himself like a cop who’d gotten soft working a desk and doing the occasional crowd control. No, definitely not. And he’d certainly handled his gun last night as if it was an extension of his arm.

  Was it as simple as it all sounded? Had he really come to Wyattville to help his old friend? But who had the kind of job that they could just up and leave at any time for six weeks to go work somewhere else? No. There was more to the story.

  And she loved a good story. Got jazzed piecing information together. There’d been few who were as good at re-creating a series of events that made sense.

  Whether it was covering a political campaign, a murder trial or the transgressions of the big banks, she’d loved being a reporter. Loved seeing the results of her work on the newsstand. Loved the editorial deadlines, even loved the notoriously bad coffee in the break room.

  But that was a long time ago. Now she needed to keep a low profile. She needed to stay out of Chief Vernelli’s way and if she couldn’t manage that, she needed to make darn sure that she was at the top of her game. She couldn’t afford to slip up, to give him any reason to look at her closer.

  She angled her chair, just enough that he was in her peripheral vision but not enough that he’d catch her eye. She bought a watery lemonade from two young girls and was relieved when the first floats came by. She was clapping for the Wyattville fire truck and volunteer fire department when a shadow blocked out the hot sun.

  She twisted her body so quickly that one side of her lawn chair lifted off the ground, and she would have crashed to the side if a strong hand hadn’t steadied her.

  “Careful,” he said.

  “Chief Vernelli,” she managed.

  He glanced at the bandage on her knee. “Bumps and bruises getting better?”

  She nodded and prayed that he’d move along. Instead, he spread his legs, shifted his weight back onto his heels, hooked his thumbs in the loops of his belt and watched the parade like it was Thanksgiving Day and he had a boatload of stock invested in Macy’s.

  She ignored him, and he appeared as if it didn’t bother
him in the least. When the funeral home director and his family rode by on a float decorated as a coffin, the crowd was peppered with wrapped caramels. Jake reached a long arm up and easily caught a piece. He tossed it in Tara’s lap.

  “It’s your candy,” Tara protested.

  He shrugged. “I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. I’d arm-wrestle you over a bag of potato chips, though.”

  More proof that he wasn’t normal. She unwrapped the candy and popped it in her mouth as the last tractor belched and snorted its way past. Tara stood up and folded her lawn chair.

  “What’s next?” Jake asked.

  I watch to see what direction you go in and make a mad dash in the other. “Lunch. Then we’ll head for the shade and rest our stomachs until the games begin.”

  “I saw the dunk tank getting set up,” he said.

  “The chief of police would be a big draw,” she suggested.

  “Too bad I’m on duty.” He smiled and she felt the answering lurch in her stomach. He was a handsome man. Might even be charming.

  She edged away. “Given how hot it is, there will likely be plenty of volunteers. I may even try it myself.” She turned and started walking. “I better hurry. Janet might need me,” she lied.

  * * *

  FORTUNATELY FOR JAKE, Tara didn’t get into the dunk tank. Breasts and cold beer were both good things. However, when the breasts were covered by a tight white T-shirt that suddenly became transparent, routine crowd control could quickly get ugly.

  She did, however, play volleyball. Jake had stood off to the side, made small talk with those who wanted to get to know the new chief and discreetly watched the game. What Tara lacked in skill, she made up for in enthusiasm. Bending, stretching, lunging. She didn’t do anything overtly over the top to attract attention, but when Jake scanned the crowd he saw several young men with their tongues almost hanging out.

  Was it possible that her recent trouble had something to do with a rejected lover? He’d asked who she’d pissed off. Maybe the question should have been, Who have you dumped lately?