Twisted

by Laura K. Curtis

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Her smile was half-mocking, half-bitter. “Then we’re even. I’m sorry you’re caught up in this. It’s not your fight.”

  “Why don’t you explain it to me. Let me decide whether I want to take it on.” He didn’t. He was no knight in shining armor. He’d moved to a small town to be chief of police to get away from the troubles and battles of the city. Why should he involve himself in a fight neither side seemed to want his help with? And yet, the same sensation he’d experienced in the diner, the call of anticipation and adrenaline, still coursed through him. And now it was laced with a protectiveness he didn’t much like but couldn’t deny. The cold case intrigued him, but even more than that, Lucy needed him. In a town where most of the crimes involved addicts and dealers, he’d forgotten how good that could feel.

  Josh Edgar himself came over to take their order before Lucy so much as opened her mouth to reply. It wasn’t an interruption; she hadn’t spoken for the full two minutes between Ethan’s request and Josh’s arrival.

  Josh’s arms were covered with prison tats. When Ethan introduced them, she held the big black man’s hand in her own as she traced the inked spider web between his thumb and forefinger with one delicate, pink nail. Transfixed by the sight, Ethan took three quick sips of water to ease the sudden dusty dryness of his throat.

  “What happened?”

  Josh raised one eyebrow so high it would have disappeared under his hair had he not shaved his head perfectly smooth on a regular basis.

  “Now, usually, pretty ladies like yourself don’t ask me that.”

  “Oh, I bet ladies ask you all kinds of questions, Mr. Edgar.” Lucy flashed him a coy smile from under thick, sooty lashes, and Ethan took another swallow from his glass. Who could have guessed the woman could flirt? He couldn’t decide whether to be offended or relieved that she chose not to practice her wiles on him. Josh laughed, the rolling boom drawing both attention and censure. One more strike against Lucy: she’d chosen to befriend the only recognizable convict in town.

  “No bets, ma’am. None at all. And you can call me Josh.”

  Once Josh left, Ethan set his elbow on the table, propped his chin on his hand, and, without taking his eyes off Lucy, began to hum. He’d have preferred to whistle, but the picnic benches had no backs to them, and whistling while sitting straight up didn’t feel right.

  Lucy stared at him as if he were crazy for about two bars, then she burst into laughter. He hadn’t been certain she’d recognize “A Policeman’s Lot Is not a Happy One” from The Pirates of Penzance, but the sparkle in her eyes, and the all-out laugh that heated his blood and made the muscles in his stomach clench, were worth the chance of being thought insane. When she quit grinning, however, the sparkle died, and her whole expression went still and watchful.

  “What are you doing here, Chief Donovan?”

  “Ethan. And I’m taking a pretty lady to lunch.”

  “I didn’t mean here at the restaurant; we can get to that in a minute. I meant here in the Hollow. You and your show tunes and your willingness to sit down with the likes of me and Josh Edgar don’t belong.”

  “How ’bout we make a deal. I’ll tell you how I got here if you tell me why no one wants you to stay.”

  She cocked her head and studied him far less kindly than she had Josh’s tattoo.

  “Artie called while Tim and I were rehanging the diner door this morning.” She looked as if she expected an answer, but Ethan remained silent. “Between what he told you and what I said about my reasons for coming back, you should be able to figure out why at least one person, or one group of people, doesn’t want me around. As for the rest . . .” She shrugged. “I suppose I remind them life isn’t all sunshine and roses. My mother’s very existence posed a threat to the clean, conservative image Hollow residents held of themselves and their town. Just by living in a nice house and feeding and clothing two kids, she reminded them that people have secrets, that spouses stray, and that attending church of a Sunday, which we always did, was no guarantee of righteousness.”

  “The sins of the mother are visited on the daughter?” Not according to TJ, but she’d also warned him Lucy might not be aware of what had been said about her. But then, why the vague and evasive answers? He couldn’t push, not yet. But there was more to the story than she was telling, and he’d find it out sooner or later.

  “Possibly.” But her eyes shifted from his face. “So, Ch—Ethan, what brought you to lovely little Dobbs Hollow?”

  “A bullet.” He could do half truths as well as anyone. “I took disability retirement from the Houston police three years back after knee-replacement surgery left me incapable of working on the street.”

  “And then you just happened to look in the help wanted section of the Dobbs Digest?”

  “According to Artie Buck, you’d know that’s not how it works. Mayor Dobbs put out the word when his last chief retired, and someone gave him my name.”

  “Not to be crass, but why would he give the job to a man with a handicap?”

  “Sweetheart, you figure that out, you let me know.” She’d probably think he was handing her a line, but he’d never been more serious. Half the town mistrusted him because he’d been recruited from Houston when they thought the job should have gone to Ellen Wilson’s nephew, Johnny, who was Sheriff Pike’s chief deputy.

  Josh brought their burgers, and Ethan bit into his, the rhapsody of hot meat and cold ketchup bursting on his tongue, a reminder that he’d skipped breakfast. If it had been polite, he would have groaned with joy.

  “What does Dobbs have on you?” Lucy asked.

  He swallowed wrong and choked. Struggling to draw breath, he wondered whether Lucy would perform the Heimlich maneuver or let him suffocate. When he regained control, he gestured to Josh to bring him an iced tea and glowered at Lucy until it arrived. After a long draught, he spoke.

  “What the fuck are you accusing me of?”

  “Not a damned thing.” She matched him glare for glare, a fact he had to respect. She took a deep breath, then laid out her opinion in a clinical, detached tone. “But I know Andrew Dobbs, and he would never hire a man he couldn’t control absolutely. So he bought your gambling debts, has pictures of you with an underage girl or a prostitute, knows about your drug habit. You don’t want to tell me, that’s fine.”

  “For crying out loud—”

  She held up a hand. “But let me get this over with: you’re trying to help me now. I get that. I really do. But sooner or later, it may very well come down to the Madges, the Dobbses, and the Pikes of this town versus me, and when it does, the mayor will turn whatever screws he has. It’s only fair you understand up front that whatever he can do to you is nothing compared to how far I am willing to go to find out who killed my mother.”

  The words were emotionless, cold, but over the red rage that filled him, Ethan noticed the rise and fall of Lucy’s chest, how her breath came faster and her chin rose even as she half flinched, expecting the violence in him to take physical form. Why would she deliberately provoke such a reaction? Did she even believe what she was saying? He already knew she didn’t trust him, so perhaps this was nothing more than another test.

  Artie had been right. Lucy’s single-mindedness would get her into trouble in an inhospitable town with secrets to hide. She might not want a protector, but she was going to need one. Why Ethan felt drawn to the duty himself, well, that was still up for debate. He gritted his teeth and forced the anger down.

  “For the record, if Dobbs has blackmail material on me, he hasn’t seen fit to share it.” But she’d put an end to his curiosity; Ethan now understood exactly why Dobbs had hired him. What he would do about it was another matter.

  He nodded to the corner where Dobbs and his companion sat. “Maybe I should ask him.”

  • • •

  OH, LUCY WAS so tempte
d to call his bluff. Nothing in Ethan’s direct gaze indicated he was being less than perfectly truthful, but Lucy had spent half her life around cops and recognized their masks. The flat eyes, the complete lack of emotion told her he was lying, either in fact or by omission.

  He hadn’t reacted to her accusations, which only meant she probably hadn’t hit on the right one. Who are you, Ethan Donovan? She should have looked into his background before she left Dallas, but involving the police in a sinkhole of corruption like Dobbs Hollow had never crossed her mind. When she got home from the library, she would go online and dig into Police Chief Donovan’s background.

  Then she would decide how far to trust him. Usually, she wouldn’t second-guess her own judgment; she’d honed her evaluative skills to scalpel sharpness over the years and rarely mistook foe for friend. Those instincts told her that, despite his caginess, Ethan was more ally than enemy. But Dobbs Hollow had a way of clouding her mind, and she didn’t dare rely on Ethan until she knew for sure where his loyalties lay. Not when he worked for Andrew Dobbs and couldn’t be completely honest about his past.

  So she ate silently, watching him over the enormous cheeseburger Josh had brought her.

  After lunch, Ethan dropped her back at the library. Eulie’s attitude had not improved, but there was nothing she could do to prevent Lucy from viewing older issues of the Dobbs Digest. Originally, Lucy had planned to begin with the murder and work her way backward a few years, looking for items mentioning Cecile or anyone involved with her. As her mother had always met her “dates” out of the house, Lucy had no idea who the men were. She’d been hoping the gossipy nature of the Digest would reveal a few clues.

  Maxie’s revelation about Cecile’s origins, however, had altered Lucy’s strategy. Now she wanted to know exactly when her mother had arrived in Dobbs Hollow, where she’d come from, and how she’d chosen this particular spot to settle. So she began the year before Maxie estimated Cecile to have arrived. If a specific event had drawn her, Lucy hoped she’d recognize its importance.

  Like many small-town papers, the Digest’s staple fare consisted of births, deaths, weddings, and school-sports scores. It also featured a page of gossip, one of local politics, and a “crime beat” column. Cecile’s arrival had made the gossip section. The writer of the day, one Marcia Stillman, inserted the information as an “item of interest to young local men.”

  Lucy stayed longer than she expected in the library, but that often happened when she was researching her books. Only when Eulie flicked the lights and announced the library’s imminent closing did she look up from the screen. Stuffing a huge pile of printed sheets into a file folder—another habitual problem, as she never knew at the beginning of her research what might turn out to be pertinent—she grabbed the three books she’d found before lunch and approached the desk. Naturally, Eulie objected to her checking out the Hollow history books.

  “Those are irreplaceable. They don’t leave the building.”

  “Then why do they have checkout cards in the back?”

  “That’s library policy. All books need inventory numbers. Even those not to be removed from the premises.”

  Lucy sighed. “You know, if you won’t let me take these home, I’ll have to spend a lot more time in your personal little demesne here.” Apparently, the pleasure of hamstringing Lucy’s investigation surmounted the pain of having her so close, however, because Eulie remained firm.

  “Well, then,” Lucy said with determined cheer, “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.” She even managed a little wave as, slinging the bag full of papers over her shoulder, she left.

  Lucy had parked a mere hundred feet from the library, but as she approached her car, the distinct lean told her the precaution hadn’t been enough: both the driver’s side tires were flat. Part of her wanted to scream. Part of her wanted to cry. All of her was hot and tired and severely tempted to call a cab and come back and deal with the car in the morning. But leaving the Rover on the street overnight would only invite further vandalism.

  She looked up and down the street, but no obvious culprits lurked in the vicinity. Should she call the police? No, TJ had been at her house far too early that morning. She’d surely be off duty by now, and Lucy didn’t trust anyone else on the force. Besides, if she called in a complaint over such a trivial event, everyone might consider her helpless.

  The library was only a few miles from her house. She could walk it with no problem, and the exercise would be good for her after having been so long cooped up in the microfiche lab. Once there, she could look up a tow company to come and deal with the car. She called Tim and explained the problem, then set out along the road.

  She’d been walking only twenty minutes when she heard a car slowing behind her. She stepped off the asphalt and reached into her satchel for her pepper spray. No sense making herself an easy target for a hit-and-run, though the game was still in its early stages, so she didn’t expect violence. Her grip tightened on the spray.

  “Which is it,” an amused voice asked as the car pulled even with her, the window rolling down with a hiss, “the Glock or the S and W?”

  “Just pepper spray.” Unreasonably relieved, she halted and faced the cruiser.

  The creases beside Ethan’s eyes smoothed out as the smile slid from his lips. “I’m glad you have that. Word’s out you’re a bit of a sharpshooter. I’ve gotten half a dozen calls from businesses asking whether it’s a violation of state law to post ‘firearms prohibited’ signs.”

  “Including the library?”

  “Including the library. I went by there to tell you, but Eulie’d closed up early.”

  “She what?”

  “It’s Saturday. The library’s usually open an extra half hour. Common practice, you understand, nothing mandatory, so the kids have extra time to get their books. But I was there at ten after six, and the place was locked up. I saw your car and called your house. I also called Brad and had him order you new tires; the old ones are slashed, so they can’t be repaired. He’ll tow the car and change them out tomorrow morning. I told him you’d stop by the Gas ’n’ Go tomorrow to pick it up.”

  Lucy wasn’t sure how she felt about him taking charge of the car repair, but decided to focus on the more pertinent question. “You called my house?”

  He winked. “Got the number when you gave it to Eulie for your library card. Your brother said you’d be home in about an hour, so I figured you’d be walking. Hop in, I’ll give you a lift.”

  Lucy closed her eyes and sighed as she sank into the air-conditioned interior of the cruiser. If she’d known she would be walking home, she would have worn shorts rather than jeans.

  “I’m going to have to remind Tim not to give out information like that when I’m working. My research tends to irritate people.”

  “Could be he’s decided I’m trustworthy.” One beat. Two. “There’s nothing wrong with the kid’s judgment.”

  The slight emphasis on the last word told her Artie had explained Tim’s condition. The betrayal stung, especially after a day under the weight of Eulie’s bitter scrutiny, followed by the vandalism of the Rover and Tim’s disregard for her privacy. Was there no one left she could trust?

  “Dammit. He had no right.” She reached for anger to combat the tightness in her throat, the burn at the back of her eyes, but she couldn’t summon it.

  “He cares about you. Both of you. That gives him the right.”

  Kindness could be her undoing. She pushed it away. “No—”

  “Yes. Wouldn’t you reveal Tim’s secret yourself if that’s what it took to protect him?”

  She had no answer and wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  “If it helps, he didn’t give me any details, and he checked me out first. I’ve gotten calls from three guys I worked with at HPD. Your friend was very thorough.”

  “But not thorough enough to uncover whatever you’re hiding.�
��

  • • •

  ETHAN DEBATED JUST telling her and getting the whole mess over with. But if he did, he’d lose any ground he might be gaining. Hell, he barely trusted himself, how could he expect anyone else to rely on him once they knew the truth? Especially Lucy, who already considered him a candidate for the mayor’s blackmail. No, better she suspect him of holding back than she know the details.

  “We all have secrets. I promise, mine won’t hurt you.” He hoped.

  Lucy stared straight ahead, as if riveted by the view of the flat, Texas landscape. She didn’t speak, and as they pulled up in front of her house, he saw her lower lip tremble slightly. Unable to stop himself, he reached over, grasped her chin between his thumb and forefinger, and turned her to face him.

  “Maybe your brother and Artie are smarter than I am. Maybe they knew before I did I’d end up on your side in this war you’ve got going.”

  She swallowed hard, blinked rapidly, and he hoped with an emotion akin to desperation she wouldn’t cry. He’d never been able to handle women’s tears. One drop and he’d probably do something colossally stupid, like pulling her close and making promises he didn’t have a prayer of keeping. But she took a deep breath and, letting it out slowly, stiffened her spine.

  “You don’t understand the stakes.”

  “Because you won’t explain them. But that’s okay. I can figure them out on my own. Besides, I have an edge: I know things you don’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re too hung up on your mother to see what’s right in front of you.”

  “That’s what you call taking my side? My mother was murdered.” Her eyes flashed blue fury, and he relaxed. Anger, he could handle.