by Tami Hoag
He had been too long without a wife.
“’Course,” Elizabeth went on as she pulled a bottle of the stolen scotch from the cupboard, “if Jantzen has his way, this’ll all be wrapped up faster than you can spit and whistle.”
She peered into an array of tumblers that had been left out on the counter, selected one that looked mostly clean, and poured herself a hefty dollop of the Highland’s finest. The first sip went down as smooth as the liquid gold it resembled, spreading a welcome warmth through her belly and soothing the ragged edges of her nerves.
“He wants it all wrapped up with a neat little bow,” she murmured, turning around to face the table once again. She leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms in front of her, cradling the whiskey glass against her chest so that the malty aroma teased her nostrils like expensive perfume. “Never mind if justice is done.”
“‘Justice is mine, sayeth the Lord,’ ” Aaron quoted, arranging his pliers to his satisfaction.
“Is that what your people would do? Leave it up to God to punish the killer?”
“‘Stand not in judgment of your fellow man.’ ” He folded his flannel rag neatly and slipped it into its own compartment in the carryall, then turned to face her, sliding his long hands into the deep pockets of his trousers. He regarded her somberly, a certain sad weariness darkening his eyes. “We can’t bring back the dead, no matter what. Gone to God, they are. It don’t make no difference what we do.”
He was thinking about his dead wife, Elizabeth supposed. The idea tugged at her heart. But this was hardly the same thing. “It makes a difference if an innocent man goes to jail,” she said.
He nodded. “And so we let God decide what happens. Es waar Gotters Wille. God’s will. God’s plan,” he murmured almost to himself, his vision seeming to turn inward. “God’s plan.”
He wrapped one hand around the smooth wooden handle of his tool carrier and turned toward the door. “Tomorrow I will be back, Elizabeth Stuart. Plenty of work needs doing here.”
“You’ve done a lot already,” Elizabeth said. The cupboard doors had all disappeared. The faucet had stopped dripping. Someone had cleared the rubble from the table and done the dishes. She had no illusions that someone was Trace. “I feel like I should at least offer you dinner. Would you care to stay?”
Aaron cast a dubious glance at Elizabeth standing beside the stove. The two didn’t look compatible to him. “Danki, no.”
“You’re a smart man, Aaron,” she said with a rueful look. “I never did get the hang of cooking. I was just gonna have me some Chee-tos and a tuna sandwich. If the tuna hasn’t gone bad.”
“It has,” he muttered, turning once again for the door.
Elizabeth followed him out, carrying her scotch against her like a toddler with a bottle of milk. “Thanks again for the work, Aaron. It’s nice to have one person seem neighborly around here.”
Aaron paused at the bottom of the steps and glanced up at her. One corner of his mouth twitched up as if he somehow found her words ironically humorous, but he said nothing. She watched as he walked to his buggy and stowed his box away under the seat. Within a minute the bony sorrel horse was trotting west down the road, the black buggy rattling along behind it. The sun was sliding down in the sky, bathing the rolling countryside in amber. A red-winged blackbird sitting on the telephone pole sang his song, then quiet settled in. The evening breeze brought the scent of new-mown hay from somewhere. The world seemed as still as if nothing at all had happened during the course of the day.
Aaron Hauer would go home and sleep peacefully, separate from the turmoil that had swallowed up Elizabeth’s life. It was the way of the Amish—to let the world go on, to be oblivious to it. But it seemed to Elizabeth that the people of Still Creek weren’t so very different. They were separatists, too, in their own way. They wanted to pin the blame on outsiders and get on with their lives as if nothing had happened.
Sinking down on the top step, she took a sip of her drink and leaned her head against the peeling green frame of the screen door. Maybe Dane was right. Maybe Carney Fox was guilty as sin. Maybe it was a stranger who had brought trouble here. But it seemed to her just as likely that someone else was behind the crime.
Preconceived ideas. That was what it all boiled down to. Dane had decided Fox was a troublemaker, that no one he knew could be a killer. He had lived here almost all his life, had developed his impressions of the townspeople from childhood on. They were friends, acquaintances, relatives. He wouldn’t be able to look at them without having his perception colored by the past.
Just the way he couldn’t look at her without her alleged past rising up to cloud the view, she thought.
Her whole body trembled at the memory of the way he’d kissed her. Her hand was shaking as she raised the glass to her lips and took another sip of scotch to wash away the flavor of him.
The truth. She had come to this town wanting nothing more than to print the truth, like the slogan of the Clarion said. To live without the shadow of lies shrouding her. But as she sat on her back stoop watching the day slip into night, it wasn’t the truth of the crime she confronted. It was the truth inside herself. The truth that had blared in her ears as Dane Jantzen had held her against him, as he had wiped the Jell-O off her face that morning, as he had looked into her eyes after the fiasco at the press conference and asked her if she was all right.
She wanted him.
Somehow that scared her more than the idea of looking for a killer.
Chapter Eleven
DANE WOKE WITH A JOLT AS THE ALARM ON THE stand beside his bed went off. He slammed his fist down on the button, silencing the thing, then lifted his head from his pillow and peered through the slit of one eye. Five A.M. The red zeros glowed at him like a pair of demonic eyes. Three hours of sleep. Three hours of restless sleep, haunted by erotic dreams of Elizabeth. He groaned and slapped the clock away.
He slowly eased himself up into a sitting position. All the old war wounds roused from slumber and grabbed hold of him. Dane grimaced and groaned as his shoulder throbbed and his lower back seized up where bone spurs were digging in their rowels. The name of every defensive back he had ever encountered scrolled across his memory to be cursed and condemned to eternal hell.
Slowly he swung his legs over the side of the bed, stripping away the tangled sheet, and rose, straightening a little more with each step across the hunter-green carpet. He imagined he looked like time-lapse photographs of the progression of man from his apelike ancestors as he made his way toward the oak dresser across the room. By the time he arrived he was upright, but a glance in the mirror told him he looked less than civilized. He slicked his hair back out of his eyes and took in the dark streaks beneath them and the shadow of beard on his cheeks. He looked more like a killer than the sheriff who was out to catch one.
After a quick shower and shave he pulled on a pair of jeans and a shirt and padded down the hall in his stocking feet to Amy’s room. He cracked open the door and looked in, his heart jamming up against the base of his throat as he watched her sleep. In the dim light leaking through the shade her face looked soft, angelic, young. A mix of guilt and panic stirred through him. He had hardly spent an hour with her since she had arrived, and every hour that passed took them nearer to the day she would fly back to Los Angeles.
Silently, he slipped into the room he had let her decorate herself the first time she had come to stay with him. The walls were covered with violet-sprigged paper. The carpet was purple. The furnishings, curtains, bedclothes, were white and frilly, symbols of pint-sized femininity. Dane felt like a giant sliding between a curvy little white iron chair and the foot of the canopied bed.
He eased himself down on the edge of the mattress and reached out to brush a strand of long chestnut hair from his daughter’s cheek. She mumbled a protest in her sleep, rubbed at her nose, and turned onto her side. The next minute, as if she sensed his presence, she opened her eyes, fluttering lashes that were long and delicate
ly curled.
“Hey, peanut,” Dane whispered, smiling softly. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Amy looked up at him, reading the lines of strain in his face even through the sleep in her eyes. “What time is it?” she asked, sitting up and slipping directly into his embrace, too sleepy to deny the childish urge.
“Early,” Dane murmured, rubbing a hand over her hair just as he had done when she had been five. “I have to get to work. I just wanted to stop in and kiss you good-bye.”
She made a pained face and propped herself back against a mountain of lace-trimmed pillows. “You’re working too hard.”
Guilt nipped him a little harder. “I’m sorry, honey. I don’t have a choice.”
“I know,” she said, looking down as she straightened the number on her Raiders jersey. “I just wish you didn’t have to.”
“Me too. I wish I could just take the next three weeks off and spend the whole time with you, but I have to see to this case first.”
“Is it almost over? Mrs. Cranston says you know who did it, you just haven’t caught him yet.”
“We’ll get him. Maybe today. Then I’ll come home early and we’ll toss the old football around. How’s that sound?” he asked, grinning at the prospect.
It was another of their traditions, one Amy had started at the tender age of six, during her tomboy phase, when she had gotten into the trophy case and snuck out his game ball from the 1980 win over the Giants that had sealed the Raiders’ playoff berth. She’d taken it out in the yard to impress the neighborhood boys. A window on the garage had gotten broken and a furious Tricia sent the kids home, leaving Amy on the back step to repent the error of her ways.
Dane could still remember the look of abject misery on Amy’s little face when he had come home. The football sat at her feet, scuffed and dirty. She looked up at him, her chin propped on her hands, her eyes swimming with tears. Her hair was in pigtails, crooked, with one of the ribbons missing. There was a smudge of dirt on her button nose.
She looked up at him, bottom lip quivering and said, “Daddy, I wish I was a boy so you would play with me.”
They played that night until the sun went down, and Amy went to bed with that dirty old football instead of her favorite stuffed rabbit. So had begun the tradition.
Amy saw the anticipation in his face and felt terrible. Then she watched the joy wash out of his expression and felt even worse. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I can’t,” she said, holding up her hands, fingers spread wide to display her perfectly manicured nails. “I can’t wreck my fingernails—I’ve got cheerleading camp as soon as I get back home. If I had to go with broken nails, I’d just die, I’d be so embarrassed. And I have a shot at being head cheerleader for the junior varsity this year. But if I don’t look just right . . .”
She trailed off and dropped her hands to her lap, her heart sinking deeper and deeper as she watched her father’s face. He didn’t understand. She had hurt his feelings and that was the last thing she ever wanted to do. He was so sweet, but she despaired of his ever figuring out that she wouldn’t be ten years old forever.
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she murmured, nipping at her lower lip.
“No, it’s okay.” Dane jolted out of his state of shock, embarrassed by the look of sympathy on his daughter’s face. He made a face and mussed her hair to cover the awkwardness. Inside, he was reeling, stunned by how much it hurt to have that one stupid ritual taken away from him.
“Fingernails,” he scoffed. He got her in a headlock with his left arm and tickled her ribs with his free hand, sending her into a fit of shrieks and giggles, while he tried to gloss over the raw feeling inside with indifference. It didn’t matter. It was just a game. Hadn’t he had enough football to last him?
“I knew we should have traded you in for a boy at the hospital,” he said.
“Oh, yeah?” Amy bounced away from him on the bed. She got up on her knees and held a pillow in front of her like a shield. “Well, I’m a million times better than any dumb boy.”
“Oh, yeah?” Dane answered, taking a little comfort. This, too, was ritual. “Says who?”
“Says my old man.”
She tossed the pillow at him. Dane caught it and dropped it on the bed as he stood, sobering. He sighed and combed his hair back with his fingers. “I have to go.”
Amy stood up on the bed and walked across the mattress to kiss her father’s cheek. “Catch him today, Daddy. Tomorrow we can go riding.”
Dane kissed her back and left the room, wondering what his constituents would think if he told them that was as strong an incentive for him as seeing justice done.
“GOOD MORNING.”
Elizabeth looked up from the mountain of paperwork on her desk, surprised that anyone would be walking in at seven-thirty in the morning. She had come into the office at seven to take advantage of the quiet and work on the books while she waited for Jo to return from Grafton. Problems with the press had backed up the schedule and the special edition hadn’t been run until after midnight. Jo had called to say she would be spending the night in Grafton and driving back early in the morning.
Rich Cannon stood on the other side of the wooden counter, trying to look like an aspiring politician as he waited for her. Crisp white shirt. Tie, neatly knotted—bloodred. An interesting color choice, Elizabeth thought, arching a brow. He waited expectantly, freshly groomed and clipped, mustache trimmed, phony smile firmly in place. Despite the spit and polish, Elizabeth doubted he would go very far in politics. He looked too much like what he was—an aging former high school jock trying to skate through life on laurels that had long ago dried up and blown away.
She sat still for a long moment, just looking at him across the dim, dusky expanse of the high-ceilinged old room, her expression stony, waiting for his facade to slip.
His mouth tightened a little, twitching his mustache at the corners. “Is Jolynn here?”
“No.”
Slowly she rose from the ancient creaking desk chair and closed the distance between them with an insultingly laconic stride, the heels of her Italian pumps beating a slow tattoo across the battered wooden floor as her olive calf-length pleated skirt swished gracefully from side to side. Rich wasn’t long on patience. She could see the muscles of his jaw clench as he waited for her, and she smiled inwardly, a nasty sort of smile.
“She’s on her way back from Grafton with the special edition of the paper,” she said, resting her arms on the countertop beside the flowering fuchsia plant she’d bought to brighten up the place. “In case you’ve been too busy looking in the mirror, trimming that crumb duster under your nose, your wife’s daddy met a most abrupt end the other night.”
“I’m aware of that, yes,” he said sardonically.
Elizabeth batted her lashes in mock surprise. “Oh, my, I suppose that leaves you in charge of Big Daddy’s affairs, doesn’t it?”
“I’ll be managing the construction business until we can find someone to take over,” Rich said. He had practiced and polished that line for the press, wanting to sound properly grave, yet official and in control. Jarrold’s death was providing him with a good opportunity to establish his public image. “It’s more work than I care to take on, what with my campaign just beginning.”
“Even without it, from what I hear.” Elizabeth flashed him a smile that held not one ounce of amity. Rich’s smile vanished altogether. She chuckled. “Aw, that’s all right, sugar. The capacity to deftly avoid real work is one of the first requirements for politics. You ought to just shine like a new penny.”
He drew a quick breath in a manner that suggested his shirt was a little too tight in the chest. “Will Jo be back soon?”
“Why? You fixin’ to have a little morning quickie?”
His patience cracked like thin ice. Color rose into his face as he automatically glanced around to see if anyone might have stepped into the room in time to catch her words. His eyes narrowed, showing a hardness he wouldn’t have wanted the general public to se
e. He leaned across the counter, lifting a short, thick finger in warning. “Now, look here,” he growled, the practiced tone of control gone, “maybe that’s the kind of thing people just blurt out in Georgia, or wherever the hell you come from—”
“No,” Elizabeth snapped, batting his hand away from under her nose. Her temper rushed to the fore, ever ready to do battle for a just cause and damn the consequences. Jolynn wouldn’t appreciate her interference, but then, Jolynn wasn’t here to stop her.
“You look here, Richie.” She leaned toward him, eyes flashing silver. “Why Jolynn hasn’t clipped your wings for you, I don’t know. But so help me, I’ll do it for her if you come sniffing around here expecting—”
“I just wanted to talk to her,” he said in exasperation, lifting both big square hands in surrender. “I don’t know what she’s told you about me, but—”