by Gina Wilkins
“Yeah, well, that’s Riley.”
“And as for you…”
Dan grimaced and pushed his coffee cup away, ready to bolt. “No, thanks.”
“Oh, I know.” She waved a dismissive hand. “You’re committed to being a crusty old bachelor. You know, I actually considered trying to fix you up with Lindsey for a time. But I quickly figured out that you weren’t interested.”
Dan had to clear his throat before he murmured, “I sincerely doubt that Lindsey would have been interested, either.”
Marjorie reached out to pat his clenched hand, almost as if he were a pouting child. “Well, probably not anymore, anyway. She seems to have put her girlhood crush behind her and moved on. Which is why I’ve decided it’s a good time to brush up on my matchmaking skills.”
Someone called Marjorie’s name from across the diner, sounding a bit frantic. Marjorie sighed. “I have got to hire a new employee,” she murmured. “Excuse me, Dan, I must get back to work. Don’t forget my party Saturday evening, okay? Seven o’clock, right here.”
“I won’t forget,” Dan mumbled, though he made no promises about being there. He was still trying to process Marjorie’s implication that Lindsey had once had a crush on him but had since moved on.
Okay, so he’d known she had a little crush on him when she’d been an impressionable kid and he’d been her brother’s teenage friend. But he assumed she’d outgrown that when she entered high school and started dating guys her own age. She’d certainly given him no hints since then that she thought of him as anything other than an honorary big brother.
Or had she?
He remembered a few excerpts from recent conversations they’d had….
“My problem is that I’ve grown up, Dan Meadows,” she had said. “And it seems like just about every guy in this town has finally figured that out—except for you.”
And then there’d been that comment about him finally getting the right idea when he’d danced with her.
And the one at her house, when he’d asked why she’d had him over to fix her pipe when she claimed to have been perfectly capable of fixing it herself.
“If you weren’t such a blind, stubborn, thickheaded male, you’d have figured that one out yourself,” she had declared.
Had he really been blind? Or deliberately obtuse? Or was he even now reading things into her words that she hadn’t meant at all? Had he simply let himself be unduly influenced by Marjorie’s fanciful ramblings so that he was now misinterpreting perfectly innocent remarks?
He’d better get to work, he told himself, standing so abruptly he nearly knocked his chair over. As frustrating as his job had been lately, he still felt more comfortable pursuing clues than trying to figure out what had been going through Lindsey’s head lately. Or trying to define his own convoluted feelings for her.
Lindsey woke with a gasp, her heart pounding, her skin flushed, her tangled nightclothes testifying to her very restless sleep. The numerals on her clock glowed red in the darkness—3:24 a.m.
“Damn.”
She shoved an unsteady hand through her hair, not at all surprised to find it damp and tangled. Her bedclothes were half on, half off the bed, and she didn’t know what had become of her pillow.
She remembered the dream in painfully vivid detail.
If she’d needed any further evidence that she was turning into a neurotic, sexually frustrated bundle of nerves, that erotically detailed dream would have ended all doubt. And if she’d had any remaining hope that she’d finally managed to get over Dan, seeing his face—along with the rest of him—so clearly in the dream had evaporated it.
Why couldn’t she have dreamed about playing rodeo with Bo? she asked herself in exasperation. Or getting wild and wicked with Matt Damon or Ricky Martin or Clay Walker—or one of those other unobtainable stud-muffins other healthy women her age fantasized about? Why did she have to keep experiencing these disturbing dreams of making love with Dan?
When it came to him, she was still the foolishly infatuated, daydreaming adolescent she’d always been. She hated herself for it, but she couldn’t seem to get past it. Not as long as she stayed here in this town, she told herself, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. Not as long as she could see him every day. Work with him. Talk to him. Touch him. Ache to be touched in return.
These weren’t the feelings of a love-struck teenager, she thought with a low moan. These were the longings of a woman who was desperately, hopelessly in love with a man who would never see her as anything more than a good friend.
She had to get out of this town, she told herself again, burying her face in her hands. Soon.
Leaving couldn’t hurt any worse than staying.
Chapter Seven
Dan opened the door of his office Thursday to find Lindsey standing on the other side, one hand raised to knock. She dropped her arm. “Oh, sorry. Hazel isn’t at her desk….”
Dan masked any awkward feelings he might be experiencing about seeing Lindsey so unexpectedly behind a brusque reply. “She had a dentist appointment. And I’m on my way out.”
“Are you going to see Opal Stamps?”
His left eyebrow shot upward. “How did you know that?”
“She called me. She wants me to come with you.”
He sighed. “As a reporter, I take it.”
Her face impassive, Lindsey nodded. “Of course.”
She was dressed in working clothes—bright-blue sweater set, black slacks and boots. The garments looked new, Dan decided. As did the cool, shuttered expression in her eyes.
“What did Mrs. Stamps tell you?” he asked as she turned and matched her steps to his, nodding to the people they passed in the hallway.
“That her son, Eddie, didn’t come home from school Monday afternoon. She thought he’d gone to his father’s house because she and Eddie quarreled all last weekend. But when she called there today, thinking he’d had time to cool off, she found out that he hadn’t been there all week.”
“That’s what she told me when she called. She was half-hysterical. I told her I’d send an officer to take the report, but she insisted I come myself. There was something else I had to finish here first, but it’s only been half an hour since she called.”
“She must have called me immediately after she hung up with you. She was a little more than half-hysterical by the time I talked to her. She said you aren’t taking her seriously, that you don’t think Eddie is really missing. She knows about me because Eddie used to do odd jobs at the newspaper after school, and he and I always got along well. She wants me to come with you to make sure the information makes the papers. She wants Eddie’s picture and description circulated so readers will help her find him if the police don’t pay enough attention to the case.”
“As I explained to Mrs. Stamps, Eddie is eighteen years old. If he’s decided to quit school and move out on his own, there’s not much we can do about it.”
“And what if something really has happened to him?”
“Doubtful.” Stepping out into the parking lot, he spotted her car in one of the spaces. He motioned toward his truck. “Since we’re going the same way, we might as well carpool. I’ll bring you back here to your car afterward.”
He read the momentary hesitation on her face before she shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
They’d shared rides dozens of times in the past, he reminded himself. Neither of them had ever thought twice about it before.
As fond as he was of Marjorie Schaffer, he wished he’d never had that conversation with her on Tuesday. That friendly chat had planted the doubts that had haunted him ever since. Had Lindsey once harbored feelings for him? Were the changes he had sensed in her somehow related to those feelings, or was he totally off base?
Lindsey waited until they were both belted in to the truck and Dan had started the engine before asking, “Why do you think it’s doubtful that anything has happened to Eddie?”
“It isn’t the first time Eddie’s taken off li
ke this. Every time he gets into a quarrel with one of his parents, he runs away. We usually find him staying at a buddy’s house.”
“Mrs. Stamps said it’s different this time. She said he’s never stayed away this long without calling. She’s talked to the friends he usually goes to when he’s angry, and none of them knows where he is.”
“Not that they’re admitting, anyway.”
“So you really don’t think there’s any reason to worry about him?”
“I’m taking his mother’s report seriously. But I expect we’ll find him with one of the pals who’s denying any knowledge of his whereabouts now.”
“I hope you’re right.” She watched him drive for a few moments, then asked, “How’s Polly?”
“She’s fine. Not real happy to be the subject of so much speculation, of course, but the rumors seem to be dying down.”
“Have you tracked the owner of the notebook she found?”
Dan very nearly let the truck swerve on the road. Tightening his fingers on the steering wheel, he demanded, “How the hell did you find out about the notebook?”
“I have my sources. I’ve been told that Polly found a notebook at school and asked several students if they recognized it. The next day you and she spent a lot of time together. The following Monday you went to the school, going from classroom to classroom showing something to the teachers. Some people think the notebook contained a clue to the arsons—a confession or an eyewitness report or something along that line.”
Lindsey had obviously been busy chasing leads since he’d last seen her. “There was no confession in the notebook. No eyewitness account, either.”
“But there was something?”
“All I can say at this time is that we don’t really know if we’ve found anything significant.”
She sighed. “You needn’t sound quite so cautious. I promised you I wouldn’t print anything about your investigation until you gave me official confirmation, and I won’t. I don’t report rumors.”
“But you pay very close attention to them.”
“That’s part of my job,” she answered evenly. “Just as it’s part of yours.”
Trying to ease the tension between them, he offered, “I appreciate you being so careful about what you print.”
“That’s part of doing my job well.” The coolness of her tone let him know he hadn’t made much progress in restoring harmony between them. Of course, when it came to their respective careers, they’d always butted heads. He wished he believed that was all that was going on between them now.
“Speaking of rumors,” he said, keeping his eyes focused on the road ahead, “I heard you’ve decided to put your house on the market.”
“That isn’t a rumor, it’s fact. I’m having a few repairs made, and then it goes on the market.”
The confirmation made his jaw tighten. But all he said was, “That must have been a difficult decision for you.”
“It wasn’t easy.” The words were simple, but her tone spoke volumes about how hard it had been for her to decide to sell her childhood home. He wished he could understand a bit better her reasons for coming to that wrenching decision.
He wished he could be convinced the decision had nothing to do with him.
There was no more time for personal conversation, as they had reached the somewhat isolated, ramshackle house in which Opal Stamps and her son, Eddie, lived. A rusty car sat in the rutted gravel driveway. The yard was trampled down to dirt and sparse patches of winter-dead grass. Three rickety wooden steps led up to a front porch littered with broken pieces of furniture and a few flowerpots holding dead plants.
After helping Lindsey up the broken steps, Dan knocked carefully on the front door, feeling almost as if a too-firm thump would knock the flimsy sheet of wood off its hinges. The place would have been a snap for even an inexperienced burglar to break into—but there was probably little inside to tempt anyone to try to make a quick buck that way.
Opal Stamps, a fortyish woman with bitterness etched on her face and abandoned dreams hovering like ghosts in the air around her, ushered them into her home. Some effort had apparently been made at housekeeping, but the house was still cluttered and shabby. Opal directed them to sit on a lumpy couch that was covered with a faded plaid throw.
“I’m glad you came,” she said, directing the comment to Lindsey. “I need you to find out what happened to my boy.”
“Chief Meadows and his staff will investigate your son’s absence, of course,” Lindsey replied smoothly. “My job is simply to get your information out to the public.”
“You make it clear that no matter what the police say, my boy wouldn’t have run off like this unless something happened to him. He always goes to his dad or one of his friends when he needs a break from me, but none of them have seen him since Monday.”
Trying to keep his tone patient and sympathetic, yet still reassuringly professional, Dan asked the woman to repeat the entire story, beginning with her quarrel with Eddie during the weekend.
Still directing her comments to Lindsey, who took notes as carefully as Dan, Opal explained that the quarrel had actually been building for some time, finally coming to a head during the weekend. It seemed that Eddie had become increasingly more difficult to handle ever since his eighteenth birthday a few months ago. Skipping school. Drinking. Defying authority—both hers and her ex-husband’s.
“He left here for school Monday morning without saying nothing to me,” she added. “When he didn’t come home, I figured he’d gone to his dad’s since he’d threatened to do that all weekend. I told him to go ahead, see if he had it any better over there. I decided I’d give him a couple days to cool off and then I’d tell him to come home and see if we could work things out. So yesterday afternoon when I figured he’d be home from school, I called his father’s house. Merle said he hadn’t talked to Eddie since last week.”
“And you believe him?”
Though Dan had asked the question, Opal kept her eyes on Lindsey when she answered. “Merle wouldn’t lie to me about that, even if he’d been drinking. Even if Eddie asked him to. Merle knows I worry about my boy. He wouldn’t deliberately let me suffer this way.”
It was beginning to annoy Dan that the woman was obviously ignoring him, but he kept his voice cordial when he asked, “What about Eddie’s friends? He’s hidden out with them before.”
Opal’s sullen look deepened at the reminder that this wasn’t the first time she’d called Dan to report her son missing. “I called every one of them,” she said defiantly. “I made it real clear that I’d be calling you and that you wouldn’t be pleased if you found out they were helping him waste your time.”
That threat should have accomplished some results, Dan mused. He’d had dealings with most of Eddie’s friends in the past and they were well aware that he expected full cooperation when it came to his job. Even though Eddie was eighteen and could well be hiding out for reasons of his own, Opal Stamps was filing an official missing person report, and Dan would take it very seriously. The taxpayers would expect nothing less from him. “His friends still deny any knowledge of his whereabouts?”
Opal nodded. “In fact, they all said he’s been acting strangely toward them lately. Avoiding them. Holding them at a distance.”
Dan couldn’t have explained why Eddie’s disappearance suddenly took on a new significance to him. Why hadn’t he considered this before? Polly had found that notebook Friday, had received a strange phone call about it Saturday, and Eddie Stamps had disappeared sometime Monday. What were the odds that there was some connection between Eddie and the notebook?
He really had to stop letting himself get so distracted from his job, he thought with a sideways glance at Lindsey, who was still quietly making notes.
“Mrs. Stamps, do you mind if I take a look in Eddie’s room?”
She looked a bit startled by his request. “You think you’ll find a clue about what happened to him?”
“I have to start som
ewhere. You’re welcome to stay with me while I look around, of course.”
Twisting her fingers in her lap, Opal looked at Lindsey, as if silently seeking advice.
Lindsey gave the older woman a bracing smile. “It’s the logical place for Chief Meadows to start. Eddie could have left some hint of where he was going.”
“I’ve looked through everything,” Opal confessed. “I couldn’t find nothing helpful. But y’all are welcome to look around if you think it will help.”
“Are any of Eddie’s things missing?” Dan asked as he and Lindsey followed Opal through the small house.
Without looking back at him, Opal replied, “Not that I could tell. But he keeps clothes and stuff at his dad’s house, too.”
Eddie’s room was tucked into the back corner of the house, behind a door that was decorated with a battered stop sign. Dan sighed when he saw it, wondering why so many teenagers seemed to believe that highway signs were free for their decorating purposes. The room itself was surprisingly tidy, in contrast to the rest of the house, a bit Spartan but almost obsessively neat. “Did you clean this room when you searched for clues?” he asked Opal.
“Oh, no. Eddie cleans his own room. He’s always been kind of a neat freak. Weird for a teenage boy, huh?”
“Mmm.” Dan stepped over to a small, cheaply constructed desk pushed against one wall. It held an inexpensive desktop computer, a stack of textbooks that looked as if they’d rarely been opened, a couple of yellow wooden pencils and an empty ashtray. “Eddie’s a smoker?”
Opal scowled. “I blame his father for that. Merle smokes three packs a day.”
“Does your son keep a journal or a diary?”
“A diary? Eddie?” She shook her head, seemingly bemused by the question. “No way.”
That didn’t sound promising. Nearly every page of the notebook Polly had found had been filled. Wouldn’t Opal have known if the boy spent that much time writing? “What does Eddie do in his spare time?”
She shrugged. “Sits behind that computer a lot, playing games and—what do you call it?—swimming the Internet?”