The New Deputy in Town Page 9

  “Didn’t he mention then that he’d taken the bracelet?” Nick asked. “Surely, he wouldn’t let his mother think you were a thief and not defend you.”

  Maddie began to sob openly in answer. Just as Nick had suspected, Bo hadn’t cleared things up for his mother or his fiancée.

  “Bo’s going to be arrested,” Nick told her. “You might want to rethink your engagement to him.”

  “No, you can’t arrest him,” Maddie cried through her tears. “Can’t you just give him a warning? Arlene will blame me.”

  “Arlene? Why would she blame you?” Laney demanded.

  “She just will.”

  Nick studied the young woman. “Arlene’s the one who put those bruises on your arms, isn’t she?”

  Maddie looked down, plucking at her sleeves to hide them. “I’m just a klutz.”

  “Maddie, stop covering for that family,” Laney said, going to her cousin and kneeling down in front of her.

  “She’s right,” Nick said. “If this is the way they treat you now, trust me, it will only get worse once you’re married to Bo.”

  “But I love Bo,” Maddie wailed. “I can’t live without him. No one will love me like Bo does.”

  Laney handed her cousin more tissues and put her arm around her. “Come stay with me and Laci. We won’t let anyone hurt you anymore.”

  Maddie sounded like a wounded animal, her cries heartbreaking, as Nick left Laney to take care of her cousin.

  * * *

  AT THE EVANS HOUSE, Nick could hear music blaring as he knocked on the screen door. Arlene’s truck was gone, but Bo’s souped-up ride was sitting out front.

  Nick banged on the door frame. “Bo,” he called loudly. No response. He banged again.

  Violet appeared from the semidarkness inside, giving him a start. She must have been sitting in the darkened living room, the drapes drawn. He hadn’t heard the creak of plastic as she’d gotten up. Nor had she made a sound as she’d approached.

  “Mother’s not here,” she said meekly. Her face was paler than he remembered and there were dark circles under her eyes. “She’s at the doctor’s.”

  “She’s not feeling well?”

  She shook her head.

  “Your brother around?”

  Violet seemed to hesitate as if tempted to lie. It surprised him she might lie for her brother. Nick had gotten the impression she wasn’t close to her siblings.

  “Could you tell him I’m here?” Nick said, opening the screen door and stepping in.

  “I’m not sure he’s home.” Violet was forced to take a step back.

  “Why don’t I try his room,” Nick said. He moved past her across the living room and down the hall, following the sound of a heavy-metal band with no talent for songwriting. The monotonous beat made his teeth ache.

  He pounded on Bo’s bedroom door.

  “Go away!”

  Nick opened the door. Bo looked up from where he was sprawled on his rumpled bed. Apparently Arlene hadn’t felt well enough to make her son’s bed this morning.

  “What do you want?” he yelled over the racket coming from the stereo.

  Nick stepped over to the stereo and shut if off.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Bo demanded.

  “Reading you your rights.”

  “What?” He sat up.

  The room had a funky smell. The kid was a slob and it took all Nick’s control not to tell him so.

  “You have the right to remain—”

  “Whoa. Don’t you have to tell me why you’re arresting me first?” Bo demanded, only the slight squeak in his voice giving away his concern.

  “Guess,” Nick said as he pulled out his cuffs.

  “I don’t know anything about that bracelet.”

  “Did I say anything about a bracelet, Bo?”

  “Maddie. She gave it to me. She’s the one who made me do it.”

  “Your mother might believe that story, but it isn’t going to fly with me,” Nick said. “And if it were true, wouldn’t a fiancé try to cover for the woman he loved? You’re despicable. Now get on your feet.”

  He saw Bo look toward the door as if gauging his chances of escaping.

  “Please, try to resist arrest,” Nick said. “There is nothing I would like better than to kick your ass.”

  Bo Evans scowled as he stood and held out his hands. “You’re going to regret this. My mother will have your job,” he said, but his voice broke.

  Nick shoved Bo toward the door. Violet watched as Nick took her brother away, her gaze unreadable.

  As he shoved Bo into the back of the patrol car, Charlotte Evans drove up. She glanced at her brother in cuffs in the backseat, then at Nick. With apparent disinterest, she got out and started toward the house.

  “Charlotte, do you know where I can find your mother?” Nick asked her.

  “At the hospital,” she said, sounding surprised. “Didn’t Bo tell you? Mother took a nasty spill down the basement stairs last night. She broke her arm and has a concussion.”

  * * *

  IT RAINED THAT SATURDAY, the day of Geraldine Shaw’s funeral. Laney stood on the hillside overlooking Old Town. Only a few black umbrellas huddled around the grave site as Titus stood with Bible in hand and said a few kind words over Geraldine’s grave.

  The low turnout could have been because of the gray rainy day. But Laney knew it had more to do with the fact that most everyone didn’t know Geraldine well.

  “Dust to dust...” Laney’s grandfather’s words were lost to her as she noticed Deputy Nick Rogers standing back in the darkness of the trees some distance away. He seemed to be watching the people around the grave.

  All of the women of the Whitehorse Sewing Circle were there either out of respect or because Geraldine had left them her house and property. It wouldn’t amount to a lot of money in this part of Montana, but the sentiment was definitely there.

  Even Arlene Evans had shown up wearing a cast on her broken arm like a badge of honor. Her bruised face had healed to purple and yellow. She’d told everyone in the county how the top step on the basement stairs had been loose and with Bo in jail for a crime he didn’t commit and her husband too busy with farming to fix it, she’d fallen.

  Most everyone knew Arlene had fallen before Bo had been arrested. But Arlene had ridden the story like a dying horse.

  Flanking her on each side were her two daughters. Violet in a black cape reminiscent of Dracula. Charlotte in a little black dress and heels with a knitted shawl draped around her as if on a fashion runway. Arlene wore a hat with a short black veil that hid most of the damage to her face. She sniffed loudly every few minutes. Laney suspected the sniffing had more to do with her son’s arrest than Geraldine Shaw’s funeral service.

  Laney noticed that Arlene had made a point of not standing anywhere near Maddie. Instead Maddie stood at the edge of the grave next to her cousins. She cried softly, her head down, her reddish-blond hair wet from the rain. Laney had tried to get her to stay under the large umbrella she’d brought, but Maddie wouldn’t hear of it.

  She stood in the rain as if it would wash away her pain.

  “I can’t live without Bo,” she’d cried whenever Laci or Laney had tried to talk to her about his arrest and the engagement. “You don’t understand. I’ll never find anyone who loves me as much as Bo.”

  Laney had argued that if Bo loved her, he wouldn’t have taken Geraldine Shaw’s diamond bracelet and pawned it, letting Maddie take the rap.

  “He wanted the money for our wedding,” Maddie had cried.

  “If he needed money, he should have gotten a job,” Laney had said.

  Maddie had burst into tears and run from the room.

  “You could have been a little more diplomatic,” Laci
had said to her and gone to Maddie.

  Laney wanted to shake some sense into her cousin, but she feared that love was truly blind, deaf and painfully stupid.

  The thought sent her gaze in the direction of Deputy Sheriff Nick Rogers. She hadn’t seen him in days. Maybe more troubling was the fact that he hadn’t even tried to kiss her the night they’d gone to dinner.

  He’d walked her out to her car and they’d stood under a canopy of stars, a breeze stirring the leaves on a nearby tree, the summer evening rich with warmth.

  She’d given him every opportunity and yet he’d hung back as if, as he’d said, he was afraid. Afraid of what? she wondered as she studied him. He didn’t seem like a man who scared easily.

  Her grandfather closed his Bible, his words dying off.

  “If anyone would like to say a few words...” Titus looked around the small group. “Then—”

  “I want to say something,” Maddie blurted out. She swallowed, her eyes wet from the rain and tears, her face red and swollen from all the crying she’d been doing. “I didn’t know Geraldine, not hardly at all. But she was nice to me. I’m sorry she’s dead.” With that she began to cry harder.

  Titus signaled that the funeral service was over and everyone dispersed like dark seeds blown to the wind.

  Laney watched them go. All except Nick. He seemed to be waiting for her. She walked to where he stood, his western hat catching most of the rain, that and the heavy boughs of the ponderosa pine he stood under.

  “Hello,” she said feeling strangely shy.

  “Hello.” He smiled at her. “I thought I should warn you, I think Arlene is going to get Bo sprung from jail.”

  Laney groaned.

  “Maddie still determined to marry him?”

  She nodded. “How can she not see what kind of man he is?”

  Nick shook his head. “People see what they want.” His dark eyes were intent on her. “I’ve missed you.” The admission seemed to come hard for him. “Any chance I could take you to town for an early dinner and a show?”

  “What’s playing?” she asked.

  “Whatever the Villa is showing this week. Does it matter?”

  It didn’t.

  * * *

  NICK HAD NEVER LIVED IN A TOWN that had only one theater. Not only that, the old-time theater screened only one show, and even that for only a few nights a week. But he loved the Villa. It was big and classic and reminded him of when he was a kid and his uncle Cosmos used to take him to matinees in a huge neighborhood theater with a balcony.

  Those kinds of theaters were gone. Whitehorse’s was one of the few left in Montana.

  “It would be like a real date. I’d pick you up and take you home. I’d even buy you popcorn,” he said, warming to the idea, hoping she would say yes.

  “Buttered popcorn?” she asked.

  He grinned. “You are a woman after my own heart.”

  “I guess it’s a date then.”

  He felt as if the sun had come out as he walked through the rain with her to her car. They agreed on a time and he stood in the downpour and watched her drive away, wishing things were different.

  But the truth was he could be leaving any day.

  Not to mention the fact that he was lying about who he was, where he was from, what he was doing here. Guilt pricked at his conscience. With each passing day, he hated that he was living a lie. It was why he’d made a point of avoiding Laney.

  He didn’t want to lie to her anymore.

  But he also couldn’t tell her the truth.

  Just the thought turned the day gray and rainy again as he walked to his patrol car. He couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t tell anyone. He was on borrowed time. Any day he could get the call. Any day might be the last he ever saw Laney Cavanaugh. Or the day he came face-to-face again with Keller—and a bullet.

  Chapter Nine

  The rain had stopped as he’d started out of town. Nick couldn’t believe how many accidents there’d been in the last few weeks in Old Town Whitehorse.

  Arlene Evans had fallen down her stairs. Alice Miller had wrecked her car on the way out of town. Muriel Brown’s house had caught fire. If her dog hadn’t started barking, she might have died in her sleep. Fortunately, the fire had started in a trash can on her back porch and she’d been able to put it out before it had done any real damage.

  There’d been too many near accidents for the size of the near ghost town. If he and Laney were right about Geraldine Shaw not being the intended victim, then maybe the killer was playing havoc with the town. Nick had the bad feeling it wasn’t over. That the killer wouldn’t be done until Old Town Whitehorse had another dead body on its hands.

  He spotted Chaz and his dog Prince walking up the road near the Evans place. He drove down, turning around in the Evans yard, and rolled down his window as Prince came bounding over. The dog licked his hand, tongue lolling.

  “Stolen any chickens lately?” Nick asked Prince.

  “No, sir,” Chaz answered for the dog. “I’ve been keeping a close eye on him. Just like you said.”

  Nick had seen the boy walking the dog most every day he’d been down here. New to the area, Chaz probably didn’t have many friends. For one thing, there weren’t a lot of kids his age around. The residents were older; the next generation had left. The few who had come back here were young, their children still in diapers.

  Chaz put a protective hand on his dog’s head as Charlotte Evans came roaring down the road to swing into her yard. She got out of her car, spotted Chaz and Prince and made a beeline for the dog. She was still dressed in her funeral outfit, black high heels and a skinny little black dress, but she’d ditched the shawl.

  “What’s your dog’s name?” she asked with more enthusiasm than Nick had ever seen in her.

  “Prince,” Chaz said shyly.

  “Prince,” Charlotte repeated and smiled. “I like that. Can I pet him?”

  Chaz nodded. Nick saw that the boy was taken with Charlotte. Not that he could blame him. A boy his age would see Charlotte as an attractive older woman.

  “How’s your mother doing?” Nick asked Charlotte.

  “Fine. Violet had to take her back to the hospital. She has some kind of infection.” She dismissed her mother and turned her attention to the dog. “Prince seems real nice,” she said as the dog licked her hand and leaned against her leg. “We can’t have a dog. Bo is allergic. He’s allergic to everything.”

  Especially work, Nick thought.

  “Would you like a glass of iced tea?” Charlotte asked Chaz. “Prince can have some water on the porch.”

  “Sure,” Chaz said as he and Prince left Nick without a backward glance. As Nick pulled away, he saw both Chaz and Prince go into the house. So much for Bo’s allergies.

  Nick wasn’t surprised when he returned to his office to find a call from the town judge.

  “Arlene makes a good argument,” the judge said when Nick returned his call. “She needs her boy at home right now. She can’t drive and her husband is busy in the fields.”

  Nick realized he’d never seen her husband. He was beginning to wonder if Floyd Evans even existed.

  “What I’m getting at,” the judge continued, “is that this is Bo’s first offense. I’m inclined to let him go home. He’s promised to make restitution.”

  “You realize that the woman he stole the diamond bracelet from is dead and that Bo’s fiancée inherited the bracelet,” Nick pointed out. “I really doubt he’ll make restitution to his fiancée.”

  “That’s neither here nor there. I think the boy has learned his lesson,” the judge said. “I’ve known Floyd and Arlene Evans all my life. Arlene’s pretty much had to raise those kids by herself. You probably don’t know it, but Bo used to be quite the athlete. He took the school to state
both his junior and senior years.”

  Nick started to argue that the judge wouldn’t be doing that family any favors releasing Bo.

  “Arlene needs her son at home to help her,” the judge said cutting him off. “Since this is Bo’s first offense, I’m going to give him fifty hours of community service.”

  Nick heard in the judge’s voice that it wouldn’t do any good to argue further. Bo was a local boy. Nick wasn’t. Bo was a good-looking kid who’d ride those two years of fame in high school as long as he could.

  “I’ll see that he gets home,” Nick said.

  “No need. His fiancée is here to pick him up,” the judge said.

  Maddie. Apparently Laney hadn’t had any more luck convincing her that Bo wasn’t the love of her life than Nick had.

  * * *

  “HOW IS THE INVESTIGATION GOING?” Laney asked as she dredged a French fry through a lake of ketchup.

  Nick looked up from his bacon cheeseburger. “Slow.”

  They’d picked up burgers, fries and shakes at the Dairy Queen and taken them to a picnic table in Trafton Park near the Milk River. The leaves of the huge cottonwoods rustled overhead.

  “I did some asking around about cyanide,” she said between bites. “I guess they use it in mining.”

  “One use,” he agreed. “Unfortunately, cyanide is used in everything from photography to metal cleaning. If you grind up enough chokecherry seeds, the cyanide in them will probably kill you. Cyanide is too common to probably ever track down the source.”

  Laney couldn’t help but be disappointed. She didn’t want this hanging over her sister’s head. Or her cousin’s. They had to find out who had killed Geraldine Shaw and why.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to quit looking for the killer,” he said as if reading her expression.

  She smiled at him, wanting to reach across the table and cup his strong jaw. She knew the skin would feel warm and dry, a little rough with just the hint of his beard. She shivered.

  “If you’re cold we could—”

  “No, I’m fine.” She concentrated on her burger for a few moments. “You must find Montana very different from Texas, especially our area of the state.”