The Ashford Place

by Jean Copeland

  Talk about an offer Belle couldn’t refuse.

  “That would be great,” Belle said. “Let me give you my cell. You can text me when you’re free.”

  Ally and Shirley looked at each other like Belle was a traveler from another dimension.

  “Or we could go to dinner tomorrow and talk,” Ally said.

  Belle’s knees weakened at the invitation, producing an avalanche of beets from the compartment she’d been leaning against. All three of them remained still until the beets stopped thumping to the ground.

  “Whelp, I guess I won’t bother asking my friends about their single sons,” Shirley said in a deadpan and walked away.

  “I’m so graceful,” Belle said as she scooped up the beets.

  “Could happen to anyone.” Ally crouched to help her. “Shirley stacks these bins too high.”

  “I’d have you over for dinner, but the kitchen is still barely habitable.”

  “I’m sure you have better things to do around there than cook for someone. Let’s meet in town. Do you like Italian? Franco’s is fantastic.”

  Ally had this unnerving habit of pausing for a moment and staring before and after she’d made an important statement. Belle couldn’t figure out if it was a cop thing or she was an expert at seduction. Whatever the explanation, Belle reminded herself that, of all the things she needed to accomplish in Danville that summer, falling in love was not high on the list. It wasn’t even on the list.

  “Franco’s sounds perfect.”

  “Great,” Ally said. “I’ll make a six o’clock reservation.”

  “Looking forward to it.”

  Belle forced the smile off her face so she wouldn’t seem too eager. After all, she agreed to dinner plans to gain information about her father’s cousin, and to see if justice was ever served or ever could be, not to hook up with a country deputy—devastating good looks notwithstanding.

  Talk about a cliché.

  After she’d sufficiently reproached herself for getting all riled up over Ally, she paid for her fruits and veggies and headed home.

  ***

  As Belle waited at a cozy corner table at Franco’s Ristorante for Ally to show, she felt the vibration of a text on her phone in her back pocket. Thinking Ally was canceling their date, she was relieved when she remembered they’d never exchanged numbers. The bad news was the text was from her ex, Mary, a robust, grape-cigarillo-smoking cosmetologist with no “inside voice,” who likely texted her because things hadn’t worked out with the woman she’d met on a free dating site the day after Belle broke up with her.

  If you’re getting lonely up at that big ole house, I’ll come up n keep you company.

  Belle wasted no time in replying.

  Gee, as tempting as that sounds…Hell no!!!

  She shook her head in despair. How had an intelligent woman with all other aspects of her life seemingly in check always managed to attract shallow, over-zealous women with zero self-awareness? She had to draw the line somewhere.

  Since turning forty months earlier, Belle was determined to be her best self by becoming the empowered, self-reliant woman she’d so often read about on HuffPost. But first she had to renounce her inner serial monogamist and vow to engage only with women truly worthy of her time.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Ally said before reaching the table.

  Belle’s phone slipped through her fingers and onto the floor as she approached. Ally in civilian clothes was an even more spectacular sight than Ally in her khaki brown deputy uniform. The off-the-shoulder black top showcased her sculpted upper body, and tight white Capri pants showed off everything else.

  “Five minutes doesn’t count as keeping someone waiting,” Belle said as she rose to give her a light kiss on the cheek. “Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to meet me.”

  “No problem. You’re pretty busy yourself, but we have to eat, right?”

  “Right.” Belle smiled warmly. “And women cannot live on carbs alone.” She pulled out the bottle of sauvignon blanc chilling in a bucket. After Ally nodded, she poured her a glass.

  “Thank you.” Ally eyed her all the way through her drawn-out first sip. “How’s it going up there?”

  “It’s coming along. Definitely a much bigger undertaking than I’d anticipated. To be honest, I’m not sure what I anticipated. They make it look so easy on those DIY shows. I’m going to have to hire a few people, especially for the outside.”

  “I can recommend some reputable locals if you want.”

  “That would be great, thanks. I have to do something radical in that backyard. I’m thinking a stone patio and koi pond.”

  “Awesome. I happen to love flower gardening,” Ally said, absently caressing the tablecloth with her butter knife. “I’d be happy to offer my design services for a very nominal fee.”

  Oh, God. Was she flirting? Was the “nominal fee” remark a clever attempt at sexual innuendo?

  Belle paused for a breath and a sip of wine. She should’ve let it go, and in the spirit of her new, more discerning dating criteria she would’ve, but Ally wasn’t some second-rate woman rallying what was left of her charm at last call.

  She lowered her voice an octave for effect. “What’s your idea of nominal?”

  “Dinner.”

  “Dinner?” Belle’s disappointment escaped before she could apprehend Ally’s meaning. “As in dinner?”

  “Sure,” Ally said. “You can grill me something on your new stone patio when it’s all done. I’m a patient woman. I can wait.”

  “All right. I’ll accept your offer, even though I should be ashamed of myself for taking such flagrant advantage of you.”

  “Just being neighborly.” Ally shrugged. “It’s what we do for each other around here.”

  Belle smiled. Ally wasn’t flirting. She was a good soul—generous and humble, and not the kind of woman she could lure into bed first and find out if they were compatible enough for a relationship later.

  After they’d finished dinner and were on to cappuccinos, Belle contemplated ordering dessert to stay in the presence of such a captivating woman. For once, not only the stunning sex appeal of her companion was keeping her enthralled. Maybe it was the laid-back, bucolic atmosphere, but conversation with Ally was easy and familiar, with no need for affectation and no pressure to impress.

  Ally checked her watch. “Wasn’t I supposed to answer questions about the Ashfords?”

  Belle laughed at how Ally almost seemed able to read her mind. “Yes, you were. See what happens when you add good food and good wine into the mix?”

  “And good company,” Ally said.

  Okay. Now she was flirting, but Belle refused to take the bait so easily. “I’m so curious about them because I found a sort of journal at the house tucked away in a crawl space.”

  “Oh? Is that why you asked me about Marion?”

  “Yeah, but the journal isn’t Marion’s. It was a girl’s.”

  “How do you know? What’s in it?”

  “Some typical kid stuff, but unfortunately, I think Judy was the victim of sexual abuse. I mean, she didn’t use those terms, but she wrote about a man hurting her. I felt safe assuming the worst.”

  “If a child’s writing about an adult hurting her, it most likely was sexual,” Ally said gravely. “Did she write down any names?”

  “Just her own, Frankie, and Annette Funicello.”

  “Given that ‘Frankie’ is probably Frankie Avalon, I can rule him out as a suspect right off the hop. Where’s the journal?”

  “At the house, right back where I found it. I can bring it by the station tomorrow if you’d like.”

  “Would you mind if I swing by after we leave here and pick it up? I won’t get any sleep tonight unless I take a look at it.”

  Belle bit her lip trying to conceal her delight at the thought of Ally coming back to her place in a semi-official capacity. “Sure, that’s fine.” She came off just cool enough to be convincing.

  All
y smiled as she sipped the last of her cappuccino. As long as they were sharing pertinent information, Belle figured she could also ask about Ally herself and, in the process, ascertain her relationship status.

  Just as she was about to inquire, her phone vibrated again with another text. No way was she checking it. It had to be Mary. The universe was sending her a clear, awkward reminder that she was to use only her head and not her hormones when it came to interactions with Ally.

  Ally seemed distracted anyway as she brushed leftover crumbs on the tablecloth into a minute pile. “Now that I know this, so many other things about the Ashfords make sense.”

  “Like what?”

  “Marion’s reclusiveness, the general, strange mystique surrounding them…” Suddenly her eyes flashed with revelation. “Wait a minute. Now I’m wondering that if Judy was abused, did that have anything to do with her untimely death.”

  “Untimely? She was sick, wasn’t she?”

  “That was the story, but whoever saw a death certificate?”

  Belle was drawn in. “What if she had the clap and got it from the perv who molested her? Then it’s murder, isn’t it?”

  “The clap? And I thought I was careening into far-fetched speculation.”

  Belle shrugged innocently.

  “We don’t even have a suspect,” Ally said. “An adult male in the home is usually the first person of interest in these cases.”

  “Eww, you mean my great-uncle could’ve been a molester?”

  “I hope not, but he’s dead, too,” Ally said. “So that would make all this a moot point.”

  “No. It couldn’t have been him,” Belle said. “She was only like five when he died. A five-year-old definitely didn’t write this journal, and it was in present tense, like it was ongoing.”

  “You’re certain an older girl wrote it and not a child?”

  “You can tell by the tone. You’ll see.”

  The waitress appeared at their table with the check. After a brief squabble over who would pay, they settled on going Dutch. This time, anyway.

  Belle was already anticipating their next dinner date.

  Chapter Three

  Belle carried the scroll of papers into the kitchen and offered Ally a glass of Riesling from a bottle she’d left chilling in the fridge. One should always be prepared for spontaneous entertaining, even in the sticks.

  “No, thanks,” Ally said. She looked up from her phone, her eyes dazzling with excitement. “That journal entry was written after her father died. The first Frankie and Annette movie came out in 1963. Your uncle died in ’59.”

  Belle sat across from Ally at the table. “You found all that out in the time it took me to run upstairs?”

  “I’m a cop. I live for this shit,” she said with a grin. “The last mystery I had to solve was five months ago—the case of the demolished mailboxes on Granger Road.”

  “Ooh, a serial vandal,” Belle said with pretend titillation. “Did you nail him?”

  “Turns out the scofflaw was old Mr. Borden, who’d accidentally stepped on the gas instead of the brake and took out his neighbor’s and his own before turning into his driveway.”

  “Phew. I wish I’d known what a crime-infested mecca this was before I moved in.”

  “We’re working on cleaning it up.” Ally smirked and started reading through the pages.

  Belle got up and retrieved two waters from the fridge, then sat back down as Ally read. She watched her eyes float back and forth, her mouth puckering with concern. She was outrageously sexy when she assumed her air of authoritative public servant. And while dressed in that sleek black-and-white evening ensemble? Belle struggled to keep it professional.

  “So what do you think?” she said.

  Ally exhaled as though needing a moment to expunge the visual of what she’d read from her mind. “Like I said before, everyone’s dead. The victim is dead, and so’s her mother.”

  “But what if that pedophile is still alive? He could’ve been preying on little girls all this time. Maybe he still is.”

  “Slow down, Belle. I’ve been a deputy here for almost twelve years. If he was still around doing that, I would’ve known about it by now.”

  “Not if his victims are too afraid to come forward. Judy must’ve been petrified. That’s why she journaled about it and then tucked it away.”

  “We don’t know that she didn’t tell anyone. When I go back to work on Monday I’ll check the records—if the records go back that far. They digitized everything back in the nineties.”

  Belle huffed. “You mean I have to languish in suspense all weekend?”

  Ally disarmed her with a smile. “You’re kinda cute when you whine like a spoiled child.”

  “Don’t try to steer me off topic with flattery.”

  Ally laughed. “What would you like me to do at nine thirty on a Friday night? Besides, I’ll have to go into storage and dig through boxes of files to get records from the sixties.”

  “Let’s go now,” Belle said, and sprang up from her chair. “I’ll help you look. You have a key, don’t you?”

  Ally held up her hands to temper Belle’s enthusiasm. “Look, here’s what I’ll do. Monday I’ll run a computer check for reports of sex assaults as far back as the data goes. If we had a true pedophile in our midst, he would’ve struck again.”

  “Yeah. That’s true,” Belle said. “And for all we know he could’ve been some shadowy drifter with a sinister past, probably worked as a farmhand. He could’ve abused Judy during crop season and then wandered off to the next unsuspecting small town.”

  “You must watch a lot of old movies,” Ally said.

  “I do. How did you know?”

  “Just a hunch,” she said with a smile.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get all up in your business. I feel so bad for the girl, and I hate the idea that some creep may never have paid for his crimes.”

  “I get it,” Ally said. “She was an innocent kid and your family. We’d all like to see justice prevail but trust me. It doesn’t always work out that way. I was a patrol officer in Hartford for ten years before I came here.”

  “Really? You left the adrenaline rush of a big city for a gig in Snoresville?”

  “I needed to for my sanity. I got tired of seeing thugs cop pleas and serve a quarter of the sentence they deserved. And then I’d have to face their victims afterward. I like what I do in Danville. I help people every day, in all kinds of little ways, and never have to explain to anyone what it means when an ADA nolles charges.”

  After observing a moment of respect for Ally’s commitment to humanity, Belle thumped her water bottle against Ally’s. “Here’s to small-town living.”

  “And to justice.”

  “To justice,” Belle added. “May she not be so blind here in Danville.”

  “Just don’t get your hopes up too high, Belle. I’ll do what I can on Monday, but the man she’s referring to is probably either dead or not living around here anymore. It’s been over fifty years.”

  Belle took a swig of her water. “Well, if anyone can do something about this, you can.”

  “I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

  She and Ally held each other in a gaze, jolted out of it a moment later by a bark at the back screen door.

  “Red,” Ally said. “So this is where you’ve been keeping yourself.”

  Belle let him in, and he trotted right over to Ally, who engulfed him in a zealous hug.

  “He started hanging around here this week. If someone’s looking for him, I can send him home.”

  “He was Marion’s,” Ally said. “She rescued him when he was a puppy, but when she started failing, folks pitched in to help her.”

  “Nobody adopted him when she died?”

  “Well, he stays with me most of the time, so technically you can say I did. Chloe loves him, but if he feels more at home here, that’s his prerogative.”

  Chloe? Belle’s stomach sank. She should have known a wo
man as fine as Ally being single was too much to hope for. What a kick in the crotch.

  “Isn’t Chloe wondering where Red and you are this late on a Friday night?” Belle’s tone turned ice-crystal cold.

  “I doubt it,” Ally said. “I’m sure she’s having a great time with her friends.”

  This duplicitous fucker. Her girlfriend goes out with her friends for the evening, and she wastes no time calling in backup.

  “So why didn’t you mention Chloe sooner,” Belle asked coolly, desperate to control her attitude.

  Ally seemed confused. “We were talking about other things. My family hadn’t come up.”

  Family? So Chloe was more than just her girlfriend. “Well, if you go out to dinner with a woman while your wife is out with her friends, I’d hope that’s something that would come up right away, like before you even go.”

  “My wife?” Ally said, chuckling.

  Belle stood at the counter and folded her arms in front of her chest. “Partner, spouse, whatever you want to call her.”

  “Why?” Ally said, scratching at her chin. “Is this a date?”

  “Well…I don’t know,” she said, trying not to stammer. “Is it?”

  Ally stood and slowly approached, her eyes smoldering with questionable intentions. “Maybe a kiss will help us decide.”

  Belle’s mouth watered with desire as her inner voice implored her to stop Ally before it was too late to stop herself.

  “Not today, cheater,” she said, shoving her away.

  “Belle, Chloe’s my niece,” Ally said, laughing. “She lives with me, but she’s away at equestrian camp for a few weeks.”

  Gulp.

  “Did I say wife?” Belle said in an exaggerated laugh. “Why would I say wife when I totally meant niece?”

  “Your face was priceless,” Ally said, still laughing.

  “You’re quite the prankster, aren’t you?” She wasn’t even remotely amused.

  “I’m sorry. That was a tacky thing to do on what may or may not be our first date.” She extended her hand. “Truce?”