He caught up on chores, played with the dogs and wondered what Lexie was doing, if she were eating properly. He worried about that. In his short experience with her, she didn’t eat when she needed to. She needed somebody watching over her, making sure she was getting proper nutrition.
Not your job, he reminded himself again and again. She didn’t need him to take care of her, she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself.
Still, by dinnertime that night he broke down and called her cell phone, which resulted in a brief, awkward conversation with her assuring him she was just fine.
By five on Sunday night he was sick of his own company and decided to head into town for dinner. The truth of the matter was the café was the only place in town to eat and he was hoping to see Lexie and her friend there.
Disappointment fluttered through him as he walked in and looked around. There was no sign of Lexie, but he told himself it was still relatively early for dinner. He took a stool at the counter and smiled at Marge.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“My blood pressure,” she replied with a wry grin. “What’s up with you? I see you’ve lost your little side-kick. Did she go back where she came from?”
“No, she’s still here in town. She’s staying with a friend. So, what’s the special of the day?”
Nick had just finished his burger and fries when they walked in and his heart leapt at the sight of her. Lexie was clad in her usual pair of jeans and wore a purple, sequined long-sleeved T-shirt that hugged her curves like a lover. She was with a tall, attractive Native American woman.
In that first initial glimpse of him a smile of what appeared to be unadulterated joy burst over her features, a smile that quickly tempered into something less.
They nodded to each other and then she and her friend walked toward the back where a booth had become available. It wasn’t enough. He realized just seeing her wasn’t enough to fill him up.
He waited until they’d given their order to the waitress and then he got up off his stool and walked to their booth. “Hi, Nick. This is my friend, Amberly Nightsong,” Lexie said.
“Amberly, nice to meet you,” he replied.
“Nick, why don’t you join us,” Amberly said with a friendly smile.
“I’ve already eaten, but maybe I could sit for a cup of coffee,” he agreed. He slid in next to Lexie, breathed in her familiar scent and tried not to notice how she tensed with his nearness.
“Lexie has told me all about you, Nick,” Amberly said.
“And you’re still willing to let me sit here with you,” he said jokingly.
“I’ve told her what a support you’ve been to me,” Lexie replied.
“And I appreciate you taking care of my friend,” Amberly said.
“It’s been my pleasure.” In fact, it had been more than his pleasure. Lexie had brought him back to life, filled him with an excitement that had been missing for too long. “Have you managed to find out anything in the last two days?” he asked in a lowered voice.
He tried to stay focused on what Lexie told him about Jimmy Morano instead of dwelling on how much he wanted to take her back to his house, how much he’d like to wake up in the morning with her back under his roof.
“I know the Morano family. George works at the post office and his wife, Sarah, works at the grocery store. Jimmy is their only child. They’d be appalled if he’s gotten himself hooked up in some drug scheme.”
“Amberly and I have been following him since Friday night, but so far he hasn’t led us anywhere interesting,” Lexie said. “But if he’s like any meth-head, it won’t be long and he’ll be contacting his source for a score. When he does I’ll have another piece of the puzzle.”
“Are you sure it isn’t time to take your suspicions to Gary?” he asked.
“Gary?” Amberly looked at Lexie. “Who’s Gary?”
“Chief of Police Gary Wendall. And, no, I’m not ready to take this to him,” Lexie replied. “I’m not convinced he’s completely innocent in whatever is going on in this town.”
“I just don’t want to see you doing all this alone,” Nick said.
“I’m not alone. I have Amberly with me,” she replied.
Silence reigned and in that silence Nick realized he was making Lexie uncomfortable. At that moment the waitress arrived with their orders and Nick slid out of the booth. “I’ll just leave you two alone to enjoy your meal.”
“I thought you were going to have coffee,” Amberly protested.
“Nah, I’d better be on my way.” He looked at Lexie and was shocked by the wave of sadness that suddenly hit him.
Something had broken between them. When he’d kissed her that last time he could have sworn she’d answered the kiss with a sweet longing. He’d been certain that she wanted him as badly as he wanted her. But she had been right to halt the kiss, to stop whatever might follow.
He stepped out of the café and into the evening autumn air, and a deep depression settled over his shoulders as he headed toward his truck.
He told himself it was for the best, that he had nothing to offer her except a temporary passion. He knew they had been getting in too deep with each other and it was probably a good thing she’d not only called a halt to another night of passion, but also had moved out of his house.
He got into his truck and leaned his head back before starting the engine. She’d blown into Widow Creek, pink hair, sparkly shirts and all, and had turned his life upside down.
Her escape from his last kiss had felt oddly like a goodbye. What shocked him more than anything was how much he didn’t want to tell her goodbye.
Chapter Eleven
“He’s hot,” Amberly said.
The two women were back in the motel room and in their beds. Lexie didn’t pretend not to know exactly who her friend was talking about. “Yes, he is, but that doesn’t matter. He’s unavailable.”
“Such a shame. Still, he looked at you like he wanted to gobble you up for dessert.”
“I didn’t say he was sexually unavailable,” Lexie said dryly. “He’s just emotionally unable to move forward in another relationship.”
Her heart squeezed tight in her chest. The last person she wanted to talk about at the moment was Nick. The sight of him in the café had been almost more than she’d been able to bear. And when he’d slid in next to her in the booth she’d wanted nothing more than to melt against him in utter surrender.
“I can’t believe we’re no closer to finding out who Jimmy’s source for drugs is,” Lexie said in an attempt to change the subject. She rolled over on her side in her bed and looked at Amberly in the bed next to her.
“Maybe Jimmy wasn’t tweaking when we saw him Friday night. Maybe he’s just a hyper kid with bad skin who isn’t fond of good hygiene.”
“Maybe, but he looked like he was tweaking to me,” Lexie replied.
“Lexie, we followed that kid through the weekend and he didn’t do anything more exciting than pick his nose when he thought nobody was looking.”
It was true. They’d shadowed Jimmy Morano as he’d left his house on Saturday morning, raked leaves at a neighbor’s house for two hours and then hung out with friends in front of an empty store lot. Today had been much the same with them tailing Jimmy as he did nothing out of the ordinary for a teenager. He’d gone to church with his parents then had played a game of tag football with a bunch of other kids in an empty lot and finally had returned home.
Lexie released a deep sigh. To make matters worse, a few minutes earlier Amberly had received a call and needed to return to Kansas City the next day.
Thoughts of Nick once again filled Lexie’s mind, just as they had every other minute since she’d left his house.
He haunted her in ways she’d never been haunted before, invading her dreams when she slept and filling her head with memories of their time together.
Driven by grief and need she’d slept with him and now she found herself wishing she’d made love to him one l
ast time with only her love for him driving her into his arms.
Besides seeing him in the café that evening he’d called her the day before, resulting in a brief conversation that had made her feel bereft when they’d hung up. The mere sound of his voice had caused her heart to ache.
“So, what are you going to do about Nick?” Amberly asked, as if she’d been able to read Lexie’s thoughts.
Lexie rolled over on her back and stared up at the ceiling. “Nothing. There’s nothing to do. He has no desire to be with another woman and, besides, I wouldn’t be right for him anyway.”
“And why is that?”
Once again Lexie turned to face her friend. “Aside from the fact that he lives and works here and I live and work in Kansas City, Nick is a small-town, traditional kind of man. He’d never really consider a long-term relationship with an offbeat woman like me.”
“Lexie, you’re the only person who thinks you’re offbeat. That’s the identity you gave yourself to be different than Lauren. The truth is you’re no more offbeat than any other person on this planet.”
“You aren’t offbeat,” Lexie protested.
“The hell I’m not,” Amberly exclaimed. “I’ll only sleep on the left side of the bed. I make Max wear a necklace and I worry that if he ever loses it or it comes off his neck something bad will happen. I only like mac and cheese if it’s burnt and I’m addicted to red licorice. We all have little quirks that others find a little strange.”
“But Michael told me I was too weird for him when he broke up with me,” Lexie reminded her.
“Lexie, Michael was a dirtbag. He would have tried to convince you that you were an alien if it served his own selfish needs.”
A giggle escaped Lexie and for the next hour the two talked about every dreadful date they’d ever been on. It was only when Amberly fell asleep that Lexie’s thoughts once again went to Nick and tears burned behind her eyelids.
Maybe she should just leave Widow Creek tomorrow when Amberly left. Maybe she should just accept Lauren’s death as an accident and get back to her life in Kansas City.
It wasn’t her job to clean up any problems that might exist in Widow Creek. It wasn’t her duty to try to do Gary’s job. She could go to him with all her suspicions, lay it out on the table and then leave town.
But the next morning she was more determined than ever to get to the bottom of the case. “Call me if you need anything,” Amberly said as she got into her car to leave. “And don’t try to be a hero. If you need backup, ask for it.”
Lexie watched as Amberly’s car disappeared down the highway and then she went back into her motel room. Jimmy would be at school until three that afternoon so there was really nothing she could do in the meantime. She still believed he was her ticket to finding out who was the source for the drugs.
She tried not to think about the fact that she was truly on her own now in a town where she didn’t know who to trust. At three o’clock she was parked down the street from Jimmy’s house, waiting for the teen to get home from school.
Maybe today would be the day the kid would lead her someplace where she could get a handle on who might be selling drugs in Widow Creek. Once she had that person in her sights she could work up the chain of command to find the person behind it all, the person she believed was ultimately responsible for Lauren’s death.
Unless you’re making this all up, a little voice whispered in the back of her brain. As long as she was thinking about drug connections and nefarious characters, she wasn’t thinking about Lauren and she wasn’t thinking about Nick.
It could be argued that there was a logical explanation for everything that had happened. Lauren really could have slipped and fallen to her death on the rocks by the creek and Lexie simply hadn’t seen her body on the night she’d searched.
The shooting could be nothing more than stupid teenagers performing a daring drive-by at the house of a dead woman and that Linetta Stone could have passed on nothing more than malicious gossip.
She sat up straighter in her seat as the high school bus lumbered into view. And maybe Jimmy Morano really was just a teenage kid with bad hygiene and acne.
Maybe her mind had subconsciously tied all these things together in a big bow of desperation so that she’d have something to focus on other than the grief that was never far from the surface. Not to mention the loneliness that she knew awaited her when she finally went back home.
She watched as Jimmy got off the bus with what looked like a younger girl. The two didn’t talk and Jimmy made a direct beeline to his house while the girl walked in the opposite direction.
Lexie settled back in her seat, knowing it might be hours before he left his house again…hours when she’d have nothing to do but think.
And as always, when she had a minute to herself, she thought of Nick. She’d spent most of the day trying to convince herself that she didn’t really love him, that her feelings for him had gotten confused because of her fear and grief about Lauren.
But no matter how hard she tried to convince herself that what she felt for Nick wasn’t love, but rather some combination of gratitude and friendship, she couldn’t.
She knew what was in her heart, what was in her soul, and she knew it was the kind of love she’d always dreamed of, the kind that might have lasted a lifetime if given a chance to flourish.
But she was no match against a dead woman who had been perfect in every way for him. She couldn’t battle the guilt that would keep Nick a victim, tied to a tragedy that would forever resonate in his soul.
She sat up straighter in her seat as a car pulled into Jimmy’s driveway. She couldn’t tell who was driving from the distance she was parked away from the house, but Jimmy came running out of the front door and hopped into the passenger seat.
As the car backed out of the driveway Lexie started the engine of her own vehicle. She waited until the car she intended to follow turned right on Main Street and then she put her car into gear.
Tailing somebody without discovery in a town the size of Widow Creek wasn’t an easy feat. There were rarely enough cars on the road to get lost in a crowd. It would have been much easier in Kansas City where the traffic was busy.
Still, she got lucky. When she turned onto Main Street there were two cars between her and her quarry, making it easy for her to keep some distance.
It was possible they were headed to another friend’s house, or just taking a drive. She told herself not to get excited, that this might just be another exercise in futility.
She slowed a bit as she lost one of the cars between them, not wanting to draw any attention to herself. Hopefully the two boys in the car weren’t savvy enough to worry about anyone tailing them. Besides, the road was straight and she had no trouble keeping the vehicle in sight.
A burst of adrenaline torched through her as the car left the city limits, heading in the direction of Nick’s place and Lauren’s house. Where were they going?
They passed both Lauren’s and Nick’s houses and continued on. Then, to her stunned surprise, they turned into the lane that she knew led to Clay Cole’s place.
She drove on past, her heart pounding a million beats a minute. Clay Cole. Of course, why hadn’t she and Nick thought of him?
The expensive furnishings, the plethora of toys and electronics inside his house all spoke of money to spare, money that Nick didn’t think came from Clay’s ranching efforts. Was it possible that the money came from selling drugs?
She found a place to ease her car off the road and parked, adrenaline spiking through her as she realized she might be getting closer to identifying the person who had killed her sister.
Once she’d parked, she pulled her cell phone from her purse.
Lexie wasn’t a fool. She knew she was teetering on dangerous ground and she suddenly realized she wanted somebody to know what she was doing and where she was. The only person she knew to call was Nick.
She was aware of the fact that she’d been fairly cool to him the
night before and as the phone rang a second time she hoped he wasn’t avoiding her calls.
He answered on the third ring, his voice slightly breathless. “I just had the dogs out for a run,” he said. “It’s good to hear your voice, Lexie.”
Her heart squeezed tight, but she kept focused on the reason for the call. “I just wanted somebody to know that I followed Jimmy Morano and one of his friends as they drove out of town a little while ago.”
“Lexie, where are you? Where’s Amberly? Is she with you?” His voice was low and vibrated with sudden tension.
“Actually she was called back to Kansas City this morning and I’m sitting in my car just down the road from Clay Cole’s place. I’m parked in a grove of trees so nobody can see I’m here from the house.”
“You should have called me when she left town. Get out of there, Lexie. You shouldn’t be out there all alone. Come on back here to my place and we’ll sort it all out here.”
“Don’t worry. Nobody knows I’m here and I’m not unarmed,” she assured him. Her mind whirled with a million thoughts a minute. “I’m just going to sit tight for a little while and see if the boys come right out. When I get to your place we need to do a little computer research on Clay Cole’s finances. We should have seen the red flags when we saw the inside of his house.”
“Just get out of there,” Nick exclaimed.
“I’ll call you back when I’m leaving. Give me thirty minutes or so.” She didn’t wait for his response, but ended the call and dropped her phone back into her purse.
She wasn’t about to do what he’d asked. This might be the first real break they got. She felt perfectly secure in her car with her gun in her purse next to her.
She tapped her fingers impatiently on the steering wheel, trying to decide what to do next. It was possible the boys had gone to Clay’s to play some of his games, to just hang out in there where the electronics were nothing short of amazing.
She rolled down her window and tried to listen for any sounds coming from the direction of the house. If there was something screwy with Clay’s finances, she’d find it. That’s what she did; that was part of her expertise. She could make a computer dance and sing with personal information about somebody if she wanted.
Scene of the Crime: Widow Creek Page 14