by Jodi Thomas
“It looked like the place exploded, then burned,” Paul said as I handed him his coffee. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the sheriff wants to talk to us all.”
Mrs. Deals frowned. “You think someone could have set the fire?”
Paul shrugged.
Timothy stood. “I’m out of here. That sheriff makes me nervous. I swear my dad pays him to check on me. He stops by my place weekly to harass me and give me advice on how to stop wasting my life.” He laughed. “He calls me by my last name, like he’s reminding himself who I am. I get the feeling that if he ever forgets, I’ll find out about unnecessary force personally.”
Mrs. Deals laughed. “I know how you feel. He does the same thing to me. Only he doesn’t frighten me.”
Timothy looked surprised, then winked at the old woman. “Thatta girl. Give him hell.”
Mrs. Deals raised her chin. “Believe me, I do.”
Nana pushed her way through the kitchen door with a platter of ginger pancakes. “This is all I could think to cook fast. Who wants some?”
I closed my eyes. I hadn’t had ginger pancakes in years. My mouth could already taste them. When I looked up, everyone had already helped themselves and the stack was half gone.
We talked and ate as the night aged. When everyone left I stood next to Nana and helped with the dishes. “Did the fire scare you?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I went out on the porch and watched it for a while. It reminded me of that summer I lived with my brother’s wife, Mary. We rented a place on a lake no bigger than this one. She thought it would be cooler than in town, but it was hotter than blazes that July Fourth. Someone started shooting off fireworks and burned half an acre of trees down.”
“Did you watch it with Red?”
I was thinking of the boy named Red who took her to a dance the summer she turned sixteen. Her one summer when she felt young, she once told me. That first summer after Pearl Harbor, when she’d been too young to realize the world had already changed and would never be the same.
Nana grinned. “As a matter of fact, I did. The fire didn’t seem all that terrible watching from across the lake. He held my hand in the dark and once in a while I can still feel his fingers around mine.”
I’d never heard my grandmother say anything so romantic. She might forget who came in the store an hour after they left, but she could still remember the feel of a boy’s hand after sixty years.
She folded the towel and brushed her fingers against the wind chime. As the tinkling sounded, she whispered, “Good night, dear.”
I walked her through the dark café and hugged her before she started up to bed. “I love you, Nana.”
She just smiled and said she knew.
The night had cooled when I walked out to the dock to see if I could still spot the cabin on the north shore burning, but the fire was out. A chill moved over me. Jefferson’s Crossing had been made of the same materials-old wood and rocks. It could burn just as fast.
I didn’t want to think about losing my place in a fire. Better to have the lawyer drive up with papers ordering me out. He’d make some official announcement that he’d found the wrong Allie Daniels and give me two days to be off the property. As I packed, I would remind myself that leaving was far better than losing the place to a fire.
If Nana were here, she’d tell me to stop thinking of trouble coming. She’d say bad times never need to be called, they’ll come on their own. But for me, thinking of what might happen-walking through the worst possible outcomes-helped. Then, I could tell myself I could survive.
A movement caught my eye. I watched as Luke swung his powerful body up on the far end of the dock and walk in my direction. He wore his wrinkled trousers, old work boots, and a black T-shirt. The T-shirt was the first clothing I’d ever seen him wear that looked like it might belong to him.
“You see the fire?”
He nodded as he moved slowly toward me.
“I went over for a closer look.” I wanted to ask where he’d been the past two days, but feared he might say that it was none of my business. “I was worried about you. I thought maybe you’d been there. I thought…”
Without a word, he stopped an inch from me and put his arms around me. For a moment I didn’t react, then I closed the distance between us.
He just held me, secure in his arms. I hadn’t realized how dearly I needed to feel safe. I wrapped my arms around his neck and held on so tightly I was surprised he could breathe.
“You all right, Allie?” he whispered against my ear.
“I am now. I was afraid you’d been in the fire.” I knew I was making little sense, but when I’d been over by the fire I could almost feel him near.
He leaned away from me and tugged my face up. “You were worried about me?”
I realized I’d been a fool to even think he might have been in the old place. But I didn’t know where he lived and his behavior sometimes didn’t make all that much sense.
I thought he was going to tell me he wasn’t my problem, but he brushed his lips against mine as he whispered, “It’s been a long time since anyone worried about me.”
I closed my eyes, waiting for his kiss, but he pulled away gently and disappeared into the night, leaving me turned wrong-side out with emptiness.
Chapter 21
I wasn’t surprised the next morning to wake up to the sheriff pounding on my door. Pulling on clothes as I walked, I managed to button everything before I opened the door.
There stood the law, all three hundred fifty pounds of him. “Good morning, Sheriff.” I squinted as the sun reflected off his badge.
He frowned. “Don’t know what’s good about it.” As usual, he stormed in without waiting for an invitation. Only this morning his son, Dillon, was right behind him. Dillon looked sleepy and bored so I guessed it hadn’t been his idea to ride along in the cop car this morning.
“Have you got any coffee?”
I took a deep breath and said, “I can smell it so Nana must have it ready. We don’t usually open the café for breakfast but I could if you need something to eat?”
Fletcher shook his head. “I’m here on official business. I’ll take the coffee and then I’ll be wanting some answers.”
I started to say that answers cost extra, but I didn’t think he’d see the joke, so I headed for the kitchen. Glancing back, I remembered his shadow. “You want anything, Dillon?”
The boy looked up, surprised I called him by name. He shook his head.
I pushed through the kitchen door, thinking the boy didn’t quite measure up to all his father’s bragging, but then if he had, he’d probably be able to walk across the lake.
Luke and Nana had their heads together at the little table. I could tell they’d been laughing about something.
“Sheriff Fletcher’s here,” I said, knowing they would have had to be deaf not to have heard him. “Why didn’t one of you answer the door?”
Nana giggled. “We were just flipping for it.”
Luke flipped a quarter. “Best ten out of nineteen.”
I frowned at him. “Why don’t you go in and talk to him. He said he had a few questions.”
Luke stood. “I’m out of here.”
“Coward,” I muttered as I watched Luke slip out the back door.
Nana sat down with her coffee and scrambled eggs. She didn’t like the sheriff and saw no need to greet him. I could smell cinnamon rolls baking and knew if the sheriff wasn’t gone by the time they were done we’d be out a few dollars’ worth of them.
So when I went back to the store I suggested we talk in the sunshine of the porch, hoping he wouldn’t smell the food.
He agreed as he pulled out a pad. “I’d like you to start with a detailed account of what you saw last night. I understand from another source that you were there.”
“Not much to tell,” I said as I sat on the newly painted porch swing. “Willie and I saw the fire. We went over in his boat.”
The sheriff looked at the c
hair next to me and decided he’d stand. “Did you see anyone leaving or running away from it?” He set his coffee on the porch railing and prepared to take down my statement.
“No,” I said, thinking I’d pay money to see if the lawn chair would hold under his weight.
He took a minute to write something, gulped his coffee, and asked, “Anyone suspicious at all, beyond the nuts who hang around here normally?”
“No.”
“Do you have any reason to believe it might have been set?”
“No. Willie suggested kids sometimes come out to drink in the summers, but except for a few beer bottles lying around I didn’t see any sign of that.”
The huge man slapped his notebook against his leg as he paced back and forth. Then he stopped suddenly and jotted something down.
While he wrote, I asked, “What did you find?”
“Nothing,” he said a bit too quickly. “I’m turning it in as a lightning strike. Anything else will bring strangers out here and we’ll know no more when they’ve finished poking around than we did before.”
He held his coffee cup up to me as he studied his notebook.
I took the cup, wondering if he did the same thing to his wife when he wanted another cup. If so, and I were his wife, I’d be giving him some serious lumps with his next cup.
I went inside and refilled his coffee, then stood at the door listening to the sheriff talk to Dillon. “There’s nothing but nutcases and losers out here, son. Half these people should be locked away somewhere. If the whole place burned down we could write it off as a beautification project.”
“What about that Miss O’Reilly? She seemed nice enough this morning.”
The sheriff swore. “She’s afraid of her own shadow. Couldn’t take people in town talking about her family. She’d fall apart if she had to deal with half the shit I have to put up with in this job.”
Fletcher lowered his voice. “I’m telling you, son, there ain’t nothing out here but losers and misfits. I could haul every one of them in for being a bother to civilization and no one would care.”
I missed a few words as the Landry boys’ boat puttered by.
“See them two”-Fletcher raised his voice over the motor-“they’re the Landry brothers and they don’t have a brain cell between them.” He laughed. “Some say their mother was a catfish-that’s why they’re both ugly and dumb.”
I heard the sheriff laugh at his own joke, but Dillon remained silent.
Anger boiled in me. Coffee sloshed, almost scalding my hand, but I barely noticed.
It took me a moment to even feel the arm around my waist tugging me backward. Luke lifted me up against his side and walked backward into the tiny office, out of sight, before letting go.
When I turned to face him, his blue eyes were laughing.
“Did you hear what the sheriff said?” I whispered.
He grabbed one of the old towels Nana kept on a shelf to clean up after what she called “leaky fishermen” and blotted at the coffee on my hand. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “But I saw murder in your eyes and I thought I’d better pull you back.” He took the coffee carefully as if it were a loaded weapon.
I smiled, realizing I had thought of crowning Fletcher with a coffee cup. “You’re right. What he says doesn’t matter.”
I reached for the cup.
Luke held it up. “I’ll take it to him.”
“But you…”
“I know, but I’d rather face him than have to break up a fight between the two of you.” He winked. “By the way, if it happened my money would be on you.”
I watched as he walked through the door into the lion’s den on my front porch. Moving close to the window, I watched, feeling like a driver slowing down to see a wreck.
“Allie said you asked for a refill,” Luke lied as he sat the cup on the table beside the sheriff.
For the first time, I realized the sheriff looked a little uncomfortable. “Haven’t seen much of you around here lately.” Fletcher straightened slightly.
Luke kept his head down, not looking at Fletcher.
“Didn’t you tell me last time we talked that you were only here for a short time?” When Luke didn’t answer, the sheriff raised his voice. “Seems to me that short time should be about up.”
Luke stood, staring at the planks in the porch. His body was as still as stone and his hands hung loosely at his sides, but I sensed he waited, not frightened at all. It occurred to me that he looked like a man playing a role. A role he wasn’t naturally born to play.
Nana interrupted the interrogation by stepping outside with a tray of hot cinnamon rolls. They were as big as a man’s fist and dripping with icing.
“Good,” she said to Luke. “I was hoping you were still here. Would you mind taking a few of these out to the Landry boys? I told them they’d be ready a little after dawn and they said they’d be waiting at the end of the dock.”
Everyone, including me, looked down the dock at the two old men in the tiny boat. They sat at either end waiting.
Luke took two of the rolls, wrapped them in waxed paper, and walked out toward the water.
The sheriff started to object, but Nana stepped in front of him. “Now, Sheriff, you have to try one of these.”
He didn’t look like a man who often turned down food. He tugged a hot roll away from the others and slipped it onto a square of paper.
Nana offered the boy one, but Dillon shook his head.
About the time Nana stepped back inside, I looked down the dock and noticed both the Landry boys and Luke had disappeared.
Fletcher frowned. “You know where that man lives?”
“Nope,” I said honestly.
The sheriff licked his thick fingers. “I’m going to have a long talk with him one of these times. That fellow’s got trouble written all over him.”
“You think he’s a criminal?” If so, that was probably higher on Fletcher’s list than the rest of us Nesters.
“I don’t know. There’s something that don’t set right with him.” He looked over at Dillon. “You learn to tell the make of a man when you’ve worn the badge awhile. I can tell a druggie a mile off and a thief, he holds his hands out of sight. Before you leave for college next year, I’ll teach you a few things you’ll never learn down at Sam Houston University, not even if you get your doctorate in Criminal Justice. There’s some things only experience can teach.”
He turned back to me. “You know where Willie Dowman is?”
“Nope,” I answered a bit too quickly.
He stared at me a moment. “You’re just a wealth of information, aren’t you? Who else did you see out by the fire last night?”
“It was dark. I couldn’t see much.” I couldn’t believe I was lying, but suddenly I didn’t want to help. I might be switching to the arsonist’s side, but in some strange way it seemed better company.
He must have figured out I would be little help, so he downed the last of his free coffee and headed toward his car. Halfway there, he turned around. “Old Man Jefferson told me once that his niece was bright. He must have not known you well, girl.”
“I’m not a girl.” I stared at him. “Size doesn’t make a woman any more than volume makes a man.”
He opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to notice Dillon standing a few feet away.
To my surprise, he tipped his hat and said simply, “Later.”
I crossed back into the store thinking I didn’t like the sound of that word.
I stood next to Nana and watched the sheriff’s car pull out of our drive.
“He’s puffed up worse than three-day-old roadkill,” she whispered. “My pa used to say a sheriff is only your friend when he’s running for office. I never believed him, until now.”
Chapter 22
Sunday
September 29
0930 hours
Luke walked the path back to his cabin, frustrated that he couldn’t deal with Sheriff Fletcher the way he’d like to.
But after last night it was more important than ever to let everyone believe he was just a fisherman on vacation. Someone who knew the lake well was picking the spots for the meth labs and the sheriff would never catch anyone.
Luke had seen Fletcher’s kind of cop before. Go for the easiest answer. Keep the paperwork short. Don’t ask questions if you don’t want to hear the answers.
One theory was starting to make more sense every day. Jefferson must have learned something about the illegal activity going on. He was the one person who knew everything about the place. He could have watched trouble rolling in like a storm. And, if the drug dealers found out he knew something, or even suspected, they might have helped him make that final step off the dock that sent him to heaven early.
One clue had been echoing in his mind since the day he went into Jefferson’s apartment. Why would a man who quit taking his medicine keep the bottles around for months? Why would he even bother to go to town to pick them up? Luke had asked everyone close to Jefferson and none of them had picked them up for him. It was a tiny detail that didn’t make sense. A puzzle Luke needed to find the answer to.
Luke stared out at the water, wishing he could see what Jefferson must have seen. Not only seen, but prepared for. It was like he got all his world in order just in case something happened to him-like he knew what was coming. Knew and couldn’t stop it.
If he’d only left a clue.
Luke felt a sudden adrenaline rush. What if Jefferson had left something? He’d have to hide it good, someplace whoever killed him wouldn’t think to look. But where?
The only logical place was Jefferson’s Crossing, and looking for a clue wouldn’t be easy with Allie and Nana around. Allie was just starting to trust him.
Smiling, he remembered their kiss. She might not fully know him, but she was attracted to him. He could play that fact to his advantage.
Mumbling an oath, he thought of the problem in his logic. He was also attracted to her.