Falling For The Deputy

CHAPTER THREE

“DID YOU HURT YOURSELF climbing that tree?” Chloe asked.

Mack started. Damn, he’d blocked the extra presence out of the cruiser. “No. I didn’t hurt myself.” He pressed down on the accelerator.

He needed to check back at the office and have a quick briefing with the staff. A heads-up concerning this article, which was becoming more intrusive than he’d anticipated. He needed to see Tanya. And he needed to remember not to call this kid reporter Chloe as she’d insisted. More than the familiarity rattled him. The name itself was unsettling. Feminine and faintly seductive. When he’d said it, it had nearly pulled him out of business mode.

“Where do you live?”

Her simple question caught him off guard. “What does that have to do with your story?”

“Everything has to do with my story until I sort out my notes and choose a central theme.”

“I thought we agreed the focus would be the department. The team.”

“That’s what you want it to be.”

He’d seen how Atherton’s face had lit up while Miss Sarah was talking. Reporters loved to chase human-interest stories the way Buster loved to chase squirrels. So let this rookie reporter humanize Breckinridge’s story, or McMillan’s or Sooner’s. His was confidential. There were some things even the electorate had no right to know. He winced as he thought of Miss Sarah describing him as a war hero.

Atherton reached out and ran her fingers lightly over the instruments on the patrol car’s dashboard, distracting him.

“Don’t touch,” he snapped.

“You or the dashboard?” she asked, pulling her hand back. “Where do you live?”

“Not in one of the expensive new developments,” he replied, ticked at himself for explaining. “So you can stop suspecting misappropriation of department funds.” Make that double-ticked for elaborating.

“Where, then?” She rolled her window down. Then up. Then halfway down. Then settled in to review the photos she’d taken. “The question’s not out of line. A big issue in many metro areas is that teachers, firefighters and police officers often can’t afford to live in the neighborhoods they service. Is it the same in Colum County?”

“Above the office there’s a small barracks. I live there.”

She plunked the Nikon in her lap. “Do the other deputies?” The surprise in her voice warned him to be cautious.

“Not full-time,” he admitted.

“Why do you?”

“Because I’m married to my job.” He wasn’t about to tell her how the sheriff, afraid Mack might backslide into alcohol, had installed him in the barracks. When his life had stabilized, Mack hadn’t seen much point in moving, although his parents kept bugging him about how they kept his room at the farmhouse available, should he ever want to return home.

Thankfully, the bed-and-breakfast came into view. He pulled the cruiser to a head-snapping halt in front.

“Deputy Whittaker?”

Without enthusiasm, he turned to look at his passenger. He could use a drink.

“Your doubts about our working together wouldn’t come from the fact that I’m a woman, would it?” she asked.

He gritted his teeth. Working with women—either in the department or in the army—had never been a problem. But how could he say so now without sounding defensive? “I’m sure we’ll get along fine.”

“Good. See you tomorrow.” She got out of the car, but left her scent behind. Light. Appealing. Like fresh-baked goods. Simpler days.

He didn’t answer her. Didn’t set a time for their meeting again. Didn’t look in her direction. As soon as he heard her door click, he put the patrol car in gear. Automatic drive.

Chloe watched as Deputy Whittaker drove away, not like a cop, but like a hotrodder. The man was as thorny and closed as a pinecone after the rain. Why, back at Ms. Culpepper’s, when Chloe had suggested he call her by her first name, had he not made the slightest, begrudging suggestion she call him Mack? And why had he gone all wooden when the elderly woman mentioned his combat medals? Unless the other deputies proved as intriguing, Chloe was determined to follow Whittaker until she had him—and the pull he exerted in the county—figured out.

Shouldering her heavy backpack, she made her way up the front walk to the bed-and-breakfast, a rambling two-story structure that, despite the rockers on the front porch and the planters still filled with winter pansies, looked as if it might once have been a saloon. Chloe wasn’t sure whether June Parker would be offended or amused by that observation.

Chloe was fascinated by the owner. Part nineteenth-century sweet magnolia and part savvy twenty-first-century businesswoman, Ms. Parker was an exquisitely groomed woman of indeterminate age. As well as running a bed-and-breakfast, she apparently gave comportment lessons to the town children and headed an investment club for retired women—discreet signs at the front desk advertised as much.

“Afternoon, Miss Atherton.” Wearing a large sun hat, hot-pink Crocs, gardening gloves and an apron that read “I’m not old—I just need repotting,” Ms. Parker knelt in a flower bed. “Will you join us for tea at four? Everything on my tea cart is homemade.”

Chloe shouldn’t have eaten so many of Sarah Culpepper’s hermit bars. “Of course,” she replied, unwilling to miss an opportunity to gather information. “Do I have time to freshen up?”

Ms. Parker checked a delicate antique watch pinned to her blouse. “We both do. I’ll see you in the parlor in thirty minutes.”

Chloe retreated to her room, grateful for the small luxuries her hostess had provided. Hand-milled soaps, fluffy towels for a quick wash and a big, sensuously soft bed scented with crabapple blossoms from the gardens below. The April breezes ruffled the sheer curtains by the open window and acted as a narcotic, quickly lulling her into a deep, dreamless sleep when she’d only intended a catnap.

She awoke abruptly, wondering if it might be morning—and time to meet up with that puzzling deputy—until she smelled the pungent bergamot aroma of Earl Grey, mingled with baking spices. She found herself unexpectedly ravenous. Both for food and for information. Hopping out of bed and glancing in the mirror, she ran her fingers through her hair, then dashed downstairs to find Ms. Parker presiding at a silver tea set. Although a three-tiered sandwich and pastry tray held enough food for, if not an army, then a battalion, the innkeeper was the only person in the room.

“I’m sorry. I overslept,” Chloe explained. “Did I miss everyone?”

“Not at all,” Ms. Parker replied, pouring hot tea into a translucent china cup. “We’re only two today. Mondays aren’t particularly busy.”

Chloe accepted the tea and a seat on a chair covered in petit point at a table set with linen and fresh flowers. “And you went to all this trouble.”

“Trouble? I hardly think a civilized break in the middle of the day can be categorized as trouble. If I had no guests at all, I’d do this for myself. Call it part of my mental health program.”

No wonder you couldn’t tell June Parker’s age. She knew how to take care of herself. If Chloe hadn’t moved on to harder news, June would have made a lovely subject for the paper’s Living section.

“But all these goodies…” Chloe indicated the extravagant tea tray.

“At the end of the day I send what’s left over to the sheriff’s office. Those hardworking deputies deserve some TLC.”

An opening.

“About Mack Whittaker…”

“Him especially.”

Chloe was taken aback. If ever there was an individual who appeared able to look after himself, who appeared not to need—or notice—the softer things in life, that was Deputy Whittaker.

“Mack recently served in Iraq,” Ms. Parker explained.

“Ah, yes. Ms. Culpepper said he’d received medals.” Chloe nibbled on a cranberry-orange scone. Heaven. “Can you tell me what they were for?”

“I could. But you should have Mack tell you.” The inn owner fingered the delicate lace edging on her linen napkin. “Applegate is one big family, Ms. Atherton. Of course we talk among ourselves. But unless we know your daddy, granddaddy and great-granddaddy, we’re not going to talk to you behind a family member’s back.”

Chloe’s opened her eyes wide. Well. Now she knew where she stood. Whittaker’s medals she could research. But it intrigued her that this was the third time today she’d met apparent admiration for the deputy, tempered with a reluctance to talk about him.

“Perhaps we could switch to first names,” Ms. Parker said, “and you could tell me about yourself.”

Chloe fidgeted in her seat. Without her backpack and her tools of the trade, she felt exposed. She had made herself strong by becoming an observer and never liked being the object of attention.

“Were you born and raised around here?” June persisted.

“No. I’m from Atlanta originally. My father’s a mathematics professor at Emory and my mother’s an epidemiologist at the CDC—Centers for Disease Control. I’m a reporter, and that’s about all there is to tell,” she finished in one long breath.

June smiled over the rim of her teacup. “I’m sure there’s more to the story than that.”

“We’re a family that sticks to the facts,” Chloe replied with a twinge of discomfort. “To that end…I’m in town to learn about the sheriff’s department. Its procedures. Its personnel.”

“I certainly hope you’re not planning to rummage around in Mack’s personal pain to sell papers,” the innkeeper said, putting her teacup down with a sharp snick.

Chloe didn’t back down. “I’m searching for the right angle. Whether it’s the town itself, the sheriff’s department or the individuals who make up that department.”

“Then you’d better head to the town meeting tonight. There’ll be enough topics there for several articles.”

Chloe cocked her head. Why hadn’t the deputy mentioned the town meeting? For his lack of disclosure alone, she wouldn’t miss it.

FROM WHERE HE STOOD IN the corner at the back of the hall, Mack noticed Atherton, dragging her battered backpack, squeeze through the entranceway.

How did she get wind of the meeting?

Unsuccessfully, she looked around for a seat, then began to mingle with the crowd that always formed at the back of the room. The folks who came to shoot the breeze as if there wasn’t an official meeting going on in the front. Mack took a count of those citizens nearest the reporter who might be counted gossips. Three notorious talkers. Damn.

Making space for latecomers, Myron Hapes stepped closer to Mack. “I hear,” the retired postal worker said, leaning in, “Frank Hudson’s getting up a petition to turn the county dry. What do you think his chances are?”

“Slim to none.” Mack let out a groan as he saw Atherton moving in his direction.

“I know you probably would rather liquor weren’t so readily available,” Mryon said, not bothering to lower his voice. “A dry county would make your job easier. Maybe would have made it less easy for you to turn to the stuff.”

Tearing his attention from the approaching reporter, Mack glowered at Myron.

“Sorry, Mack. I didn’t mean to dredge up ancient history.”

So why did people always do it? And now, especially, with the fourth estate on the prowl.

“I gotta talk to Frank,” Myron said hastily, then retreated into the crowd.

Only to be replaced by Atherton. “Nice of you to mention there was a meeting tonight,” she said, her words laced with accusation.

“It slipped my mind.” He pretended to concentrate on Deputy Darden, who was at the front of the room answering a question on speed bumps.

“I wanted to ask you—”

“Shh!”

“Don’t shush me! I’m not a child.”

“There’s a meeting going on, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

She scanned the groups milling by the door, then rolled her eyes. “As if I didn’t know the real stuff gets done in these back-of-the-room cabals.”

He’d have to look that word up in the sheriff’s crossword dictionary.

He looked at his watch. Tanya was expecting him. “I’ll answer your questions tomorrow,” he said. “Right now I’m off duty.” He could only hope she understood he was entitled to a private life.

But the expression in her eyes was one of disbelief. “When you said you were married to the job—”

“Even married folks need an occasional break.” He inspected her upturned face, suspecting she might be someone else as dedicated to her job as he was. It was his bad luck she regarded him as her job. Without engaging in further chat, he made his way out of the room.

SO WHAT DID A WORKAHOLIC public servant do off duty?

Was that even pertinent to her article? Shouldn’t she stay here and soak in some of the town flavor? Suss out the issues? Meet the residents who were directly affected by the local law?

At the front of the room—in the official meeting—people were hotly debating methods for slowing traffic on the main drag. Yawn. The back of the room wasn’t much better. Talk of feed prices, boundary disputes, the sheriff’s wedding and some investment scheme making the rounds. Double yawn.

She gave him a couple of minutes’ head start, then slipped out of the room. At the entrance to the town hall, she observed him making his way across the parking lot to his cruiser. Not a private vehicle. And the deputy was off duty. Was that by the book? She’d have to check. Something else came to mind. She hadn’t caught all of Whittaker’s conversation when she’d come upon him in the meeting hall, but she thought she’d heard the man he’d been talking to mention something about Whittaker’s having turned to liquor. A joke, or serious? If it had been serious, what did it have to do with the execution of the man’s duties?

If he was on the up-and-up, he had nothing to hide from her investigation.

As she made her way to the Yugo, she felt a twinge of doubt. Was this investigative reporting…or was this creative nonfiction? Had she singled out Whittaker because he was the deputy in charge or because he was an enigma? That fact-finding challenge she so loved. A man the residents of Applegate relied on, respected and worried about. A man who softened—slightly—only when he was up a tree, rescuing a tomcat.

June Parker had warned her not to use Whittaker’s pain to sell papers. But the woman couldn’t have known the personal pain that drove Chloe to uncover the facts and dispel speculation.

As the deputy pulled out of the parking lot, she put her own car in gear. Firsthand observation led to facts. The facts, once they fell into a pattern, would constitute the truth. And the truth, however painful, was the foundation of life.

Following at a discreet distance, she was mildly surprised when he didn’t pull into the sheriff’s office parking lot but continued through town. On the outskirts, where the streetlights ended, he turned left and crossed the railroad tracks. A full planter’s moon provided the only real light.

Chloe knew that in many small towns in the south, “the wrong side of the tracks” wasn’t merely an expression. Despite its new upscale subdivisions, Applegate still had a seamier side, and this was it. Not part of the groomed in-town neighborhoods, but not rural farmland, either. The road meandered between houses too close together and in need of repair.

The evening being mild for April, Chloe rolled her window down. Many of the residents clustered on front stoops—talking, drinking, smoking or listening to music. Although it was fairly late and a school night, kids were everywhere. Adolescent boys with attitude hung with men who eyed the women. The women eyed them right back. The aromas of barbecue and simmering salsa melded with a sweet scent Chloe knew couldn’t be legal. Didn’t Deputy Whittaker smell it? If so, he didn’t stop.

About a mile down the road, as the houses became less regularly spaced, the cruiser slowed, then came to a stop in front of one particular house, its weedy front yard strewn with plastic toys. The deputy got out of his patrol car and walked over to a woman leaning on the front porch railing. Her hair was big…her tank top small. And her jeans looked as if they’d been painted on. In the porch light she looked tired.

Chloe slowed the Yugo as she drove past.

Mack Whittaker pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, took out several bills and handed them to the woman. Stuffing the money in her top, she slid her arm around his back and drew him into the house.

Now what was Chloe to make of that firsthand observation?

CHAPTER FOUR

THE DAY WAS ALREADY HOT as hell. The terrain outside the military tent was dry, sand-choked and godforsaken. Several of the guys in his unit were engaged in a game of poker before heading out on patrol. Mack couldn’t understand the attraction to games of chance. Not here. When every breath you took was a gamble. But who was he to judge? Nate, looking up from his hand, had razzed him for opting for a shower—if you could call it that, what with the rationed water. What’s the point, Nate had asked, when you’re gritty again two seconds later? Maybe Mack persevered because, for a few moments, he could close his eyes and imagine himself back in Applegate.

The explosion rocked the encampment as he was peeling off his T-shirt. Bare-chested, he ran out of the shower area. Plumes of black smoke rose to embrace the relentless Iraqi sun. Rose from the spot where his tent had been. Where the guys had been playing poker minutes ago…

With a howl to wake the dead, Mack sat bolt upright. In the dark and drenched in sweat, he couldn’t tell what was real or what was dream until a door opened and Deputy McMillan stuck his head in. The shaft of light illuminated the wall of lockers, the cots—all empty except for the one Mack clung to, in the barracks room he’d called home for the past six months.

“Whittaker, you okay?”

Mack was shaking so hard he was afraid he might bite off his tongue if he tried to answer.

“The morning shift’s about to come in,” McMillan drawled, feigning nonchalance, Mack knew. “I’m makin’ coffee. Take a shower. You can get a hit of caffeine when you’re done.” The deputy disappeared, leaving the overhead light off, but the door ajar.

Mack put both feet on the floor. He hated that the other deputies tiptoed around him. Hated that they appeared to be waiting patiently for an explanation. Of his continued squatting in the barracks. Of his silence about his tour of duty. Of his night terrors.

His head now throbbing, he stripped and stepped into the shower. Let the harsh stream of cold water sluice over his body, numbing him. When he returned to his cot, a mug of fresh coffee sat on the nightstand. A small act of compassion that compounded his guilt.

He gulped the coffee as he dressed, then headed downstairs to the sheriff’s office. He’d pick up something to eat on the go because he didn’t want to hang around the kitchen for breakfast as the shifts changed and the deputies congregated with stories about family or nights carousing or days off fishing. He might be fit for duty, but he wasn’t up to faking the rest.

As he approached Kim Nash, engaged in animated conversation with…Damn, he’d forgotten all about the kid.

Dressed in penny loafers—he didn’t know they still made them—trousers made of some silky khaki material and a long-sleeved white shirt with a flowing scarf tied at her neck, Chloe Atherton didn’t look as if she belonged in the twenty-first century. She looked like an actress right out of the 1940s. One of those earnest ingenues trying hard to make it in a man’s world. The one who always cracked the hardboiled hero’s shell. God, he’d spent too many sleepless nights watching old black-and-white movies on the barracks TV.

“Good morning, Deputy!” Atherton sang out as she pocketed her notepad. “I’m ready when you are.”

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