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Focus, would you? “I’ll just fill this out,” she said to Sam, making her way to a chair well away from Dallas.
Stiving followed her. “You might not want to take a new job, just yet.”
Something about the gleam in his eye worried her. “Why?”
“Because it seems you’re an heiress.”
She blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“Just got word that Cora left her house and property to you. Of course, the house is pretty messed up, but the twenty acres of property, well that’s worth a nice tidy sum, I’ll bet.”
Mia realized her mouth was hanging open. “Cora left her property to me?”
“Does that surprise you?”
“Of course it does. I had no idea.”
“That right?” He wiped his thick fingers on a paper napkin. Graying chest hair puffed out at the top of his uniform shirt. “No idea at all?”
“None. What are you implying?”
“Cops, you know, look at these things called motives. Inheriting a nice chunk of land is motive.”
“For what?” Mia managed to squeak out.
“For murder,” he said with a smile.
* * *
Dallas moved closer when it seemed as though Mia was unable to marshal a response. “What do you have that points in that direction?”
Stiving leveled a derisive look at him. “Not that it’s your business, but the coroner’s initial take is that Cora didn’t die from the fire.”
Mia let out a little cry, her face gone deadly pale.
Dallas tensed. “Cause?”
Stiving stretched against the upholstered booth. “That’s as much as I’m going to say right now. You all have a great day. I’ll be in touch. Soon.”
He left. Dallas realized that Sam had been standing just behind them holding a sandwich on a plastic plate. “Uh, well, I’m real sorry and all that, Mia, but maybe Stiving is right. With everything going on, it doesn’t seem like a good time to have you start working here.”
He shoved the plate at Dallas and waddled back to the kitchen.
Dallas dropped money on the counter, no tip, and left the sandwich on the table. By the time he’d finished, Mia had made her way outside, sinking onto a brick planter, oblivious to Juno, who had been watching through the window the whole time, swabbing an eager tongue over her hand.
Dallas sat next to her. Dark clouds overhead promised more rain and dulled the soft brown of her eyes. Or maybe it was the shock that did it. What to say to comfort her in the present situation eluded him, so he went with his gut.
“They don’t have any proof. He’s trying to rattle you.”
The words seemed to startle her. “He thinks she was poisoned with the pills I got for her.”
“Speculation and proof are two different things.”
“Juno knew there was something in those pills.”
“Doesn’t mean you put it there.”
She pressed shaking hands to her mouth. “I can’t believe it. He wants to put me in jail. I can’t go to jail, Dallas.”
Her voice broke and it killed him. “You won’t.”
“But my past...isn’t lily white.”
“Whose is?” He wanted to smooth away the furrow between her brows, the agony in her expression. “It was self-defense before. Totally different. Your ex admits that now.”
Her eyes rounded. “Have you been studying my past?”
Smooth, Dallas. Why don’t you explain how you know every detail of her life? He went for casual. “Heard it somewhere.”
She was too upset to think more about it. “Maybe I should leave here,” she whispered. “Go back to Florida.”
His pulse accelerated the tiniest bit. He said as gently as he could, “Thought you wanted a fresh start.”
“Away from the Sandoval name,” she finished. “I do, but my past seems to have followed me here.”
And did her husband’s past have anything to do with her current situation? He did not see how it could, but it was his job to find out. He’d made a promise. “There was someone else at Cora’s house who could have tampered with the pills. We just have to figure out who the woman in the photo is.”
Mia chewed her lip. “This is a nightmare.”
“We’ll fix it.”
Her eyes flickered at the pronoun.
We? When had loner Dallas Black begun to think of them as partners? The only partner he’d ever really trusted was the kind covered with fur and with a tendency to slobber. “Look who’s just hit town,” he said as Gracie broke away from Tina and ran to them, splashing through the puddles on the sidewalk.
“Hi, Mr. Dallas. Hi, Mommy. I’m here,” she announced, heading straight for Juno to give him an ear rub. “Tina said we could get ice cream.”
Mia recovered herself to give Tina a stern look.
The girl shrugged. “Sorry. I can’t say no to those dimples.”
“I can,” Mia said, her mouth twisting in sadness. “But I won’t. I think I could use a scoop, too.”
“Mr. Dallas, come on,” Gracie said, tugging on his hand. “We can get some for Juno.”
Mia’s look was enough to discourage him. “I’ve got to go right now, Gracie. Maybe another time.”
Mia’s slight nod affirmed he’d made the right choice, so why did his heart tell him otherwise? He moved close to Mia, talking low in her ear and trying not to breathe in a lungful of her shampoo-scented hair. “I’ve got a friend who works at the police department. I’ll go see what I can find out.”
She put a hand on his biceps. “I don’t want to ask you to do that for me.”
“You didn’t ask.”
He heard her sigh, sad as the sound of a blues song, as she led Gracie away without looking back, her shoulders hunched against the storm-washed sky.
* * *
Mia tried to keep Gracie occupied with the ice cream parlor and the park, but all the while her mind was racing. The police thought she’d killed her dearest friend. How could it be happening? And to inherit when Cora had blood relatives to whom she could pass her estate? The only spot of comfort was Dallas, and she had to steel herself against any connection, no matter how much she craved it. Still, she thought she could remember the feel of his hard muscled arm under her fingers—strong, solid, the steady warmth in his eyes.
You’ve seen eyes like those before, remember, Mia?
Rain began to fall a little after five, and she zipped Gracie’s jacket and insisted they return to the car where a nasty surprise awaited her. Her rear tire was flat all the way to the rim.
“Great. I must have driven over a screw or something.” With a heavy sigh, she gave her purse to Gracie to hold and got the jack and lug wrench from the trunk. Two gentlemen and a young couple out walking their dog stopped and offered help, but Mia waved with a cheer she did not feel and finished the job herself. The effort took much longer than it should have and it was nearly sundown when she cleansed her grease-stained hands with one of her endless supply of disinfectant wipes and took the road toward home.
Gracie sang “Where Does the Ladybug Live?” as the miles went by and Mia even joined in for a while, but, as darkness fell, her stress returned. No job, no way to pay the rent and now a replacement tire needed to be purchased.
Gritting her teeth, she forced the worry down deep.
“I’m hungry,” Gracie announced as they pulled into the garage.
“How can you be hungry when you ate two scoops of ice cream?”
Gracie twisted a strand of hair while she thought about it. “Dunno, but I am.”
“Mac and cheese?”
The little girl nodded as she helped Mia unbuckle her car seat straps.
Mia mentally inventoried the pantry cupboard, hard to keep stocked with a voracious babysitter and child. Fortunately, there was one box left of nature’s most perfect food. She helped Gracie from the car and hit the button to close the garage door.
Mia noted the interior door was unlocked, probably because Tina simply could not be induced to lock it. Mia sighed. Oh, to be an innocent eighteen-year-old again. Gracie pulled out her step stool and disappeared into the pantry.
Suddenly, the burdens of the day crashed in on Mia and she felt much older than her twenty-eight years. And why shouldn’t she as the ex-wife of a drug runner and now the object of suspicion for her friend’s death? Murder, murder, the word crawled through her mind. Tears threatened, but she would not allow them, not for a moment. Mothers did not have the luxury of folding up like tents. A shower. A quick five minute shower would wash off the grime from the day.
Hanging her purse on the kitchen hook and plugging in her cell phone to charge, she headed for the bedroom, removing her jacket. Finger poised on the light switch, she froze. A shadow was silhouetted in front of the window, just for a second before it slithered behind the cover of the drapes. Someone was in her bedroom.
Fear rushed hot into her gut, firing her nerves as she ran down the hallway. Behind her she could hear the swish of fabric as the intruder detached from the curtains. Feet thudded across the carpeted floor, her own clattering madly on the wood planked hallway as she raced for the kitchen, sweeping up her purse and grabbing Gracie who was shaking the box of macaroni and singing.
She seized her daughter with such force she heard the breath whoosh out of her, but Mia paid no heed. The man was in the hallway now, only a few feet behind her. Mia burst into the garage, hit the button and dove into the driver’s side, shoving Gracie over onto the passenger seat and cranking the ignition.
The interior garage door opened, and the man appeared—thin, white, crew cut. She saw him reach for the button to stop the door from opening. She would be trapped, she and Gracie, at the mercy of this stranger.
No, she thought savagely, flipping the brights on. He flinched, throwing a hand over his eyes. The door was nearly half open now. Only a few more inches and she could get out.
Terror squeezed her insides as she saw him recover and reach for the button again.
Hurry, hurry, she commanded the groaning metal gears.
This time when he reached for the button, he succeeded and the door stopped its upward progress.
He pressed it again and it began to slide down, sealing off their escape.
FOUR
Dallas listened to the rain pounding down on the metal roof of the twenty-nine-foot trailer he rented. It was a gem of a unit as far as he was concerned, far enough away from the other trailer park residents that he enjoyed the illusion of solitude. That and the fact that the river just at the edge of the property had already persuaded many folks to temporarily relocate to another trailer park on higher ground. He wasn’t completely familiar with Colorado weather patterns, but he’d give it a good couple of days before he needed to grab his pack and head for another spot.
Dallas sprawled on his back on the narrow bunk, Juno snoring on his mat on the floor. His thoughts wandered back to Mia and the fire. His police contact hadn’t been able to tell him much, but he knew that circumstantial evidence could convict a person in the eyes of the law and the community.
Motive and means. Mia had both.
He got to his feet and took up his guitar from the closet. Juno burrowed deeper into his mat as Dallas strummed out a few chords on the instrument that was a gift from his brother, Trey. So, indirectly, was Dallas’s damaged spleen and knee, but he did not hold that against his brother anymore. Dallas got into gang life to emulate Trey, but no one had forced him.
He’d gone in willingly and come out so damaged he would never realize his dream of being a Marine like their father.
He tried to remember his sixteen-year-old self, armed and patrolling the ten-block territory as a sentinel of sorts, a lookout for Uncle, the older leader of the gang who pedaled dope, which kept the wheels rolling. He’d admired Uncle, feared him even, yet watched him hand out new shoes and Fourth of July fireworks to the kids who couldn’t afford either. They were the same kids who would be members one day, looking for that combination of belonging and protection that Uncle provided. Sixteen years old, carrying a gun, drinking and protecting a hoodlum’s drug business. He cringed at the memory. What an idiot. What a coward.
How many trailers had he stayed in over the years? How many apartments or cabins had he called home until people got to know him a little too well and he felt that restless urge to move on? Was he still looking for that place to belong?
Or was it more cowardice? Probably, God forgive him. It was safer not to get to know people and to prevent them from knowing him. Safe...with a helping of sin mixed in. His grandfather’s favorite baseball player, Mickey Mantle, said gangs were where cowards went to hide. Maybe they sometimes went to trailer parks, too. He fought the rising tide of self-recrimination with a muttered prayer.
The clock reminded him he hadn’t eaten dinner. The fridge didn’t offer much so he grabbed a rainbow of hot peppers and an onion. Armed with a perfectly balanced knife, he allowed himself to be soothed by the precision of the slices as they fell away onto the cutting board.
Juno surged to his feet, ears cocked.
Company.
So late? And in the throes of a pounding rain? He put down the knife and sidled to the window, peering through the blinds. Nothing. No cars visible, but then his windows faced the tree-lined creek so he wouldn’t see one anyway. Juno was standing in front of the door, staring with laser-like precision, ears swiveling, as if he could see beyond the metal if he just worked hard enough at it. With hearing four times greater than a human’s, Juno was not often wrong about what he heard.
Dallas tried to peer through the blinds again, but the angle was wrong. Still no one knocked. Juno maintained his ferocious intensity, which told Dallas someone was out there. The slightest sound or scent telegraphed to a dog just as strongly as a stiff-knuckled rap on the door.
Okay. Let’s play. Dallas gripped the door handle. Juno’s whiskers quivered, body trembling, sensing a game in the offing. Juno, like every great SAR dog, had an intense play drive that never wound down.
Dallas did a slow count to three and yanked the handle.
Wind barreled in along with a gust of rain, and Juno charged down the metal stairs onto the wooden porch. He turned in circles looking for something that wasn’t there.
Dallas kept his fists ready and gave the dog the moment he needed to get his bearings. Moisture-laden air confused Juno’s senses, but not for long.
The dog shoved his head in the gap under the trailer and began to bark for all he was worth, tail whirling.
A woman’s scream cut through the storm.
“Sit,” Dallas yelled to Juno, who complied with a reluctant whine.
“Whoever you are under the trailer, come out.”
No answer.
“If you don’t come out, the dog is coming in.”
Now there was movement, a raspy breathing, a set of slender fingers wrapping around the edge of the trailer, the impression of a face.
“He’ll bite me.”
Dallas called Juno to him and held the dog by the collar, more to assure the woman than out of fear that Juno would disobey. Juno didn’t bite people. He was more interested in getting them to throw a ball for him to fetch. “Come out.”
She emerged, soggy and mud streaked, her hair plastered in coils against her face. Red hair.
“You were there at the fire.”
She didn’t answer, trembling in the falling rain.
“Come inside. We’ll talk.”
She didn’t move. “Are you a friend of Cora’s?”
“Are you?” He could see the thoughts racing through her mind as she chewed her lip without answering. “All I can tell you is I won’t hurt you.”
“How do I know I can trust you?” she said through chattering teeth.
“Guess you can’t. You came here to find me and here I am. If you want to talk, we do it inside. Don’t want the dog to catch cold.”
After another long look at Juno, the woman ran up the steps.
He tossed her a towel, which she wrapped around her shoulders before she sank onto the kitchen chair. Juno did his thing, sniffing her muddy shoes and the hem of her sodden linen pants.
Dallas studied her while he heated water in the microwave and flung in a tea bag which had come with the trailer. Some sort of fruity herbal stuff. Her clothes had been nice at one point, ruined now. A light jacket was not up to the task of keeping her dry from the pummeling rain. No purse.
“Who are you?” he asked as he handed her the tea.
She clutched it between her shaking hands, her knuckles white.
“Susan.” She swallowed. “I was going to meet Cora, and I saw the house burning. I tried to get inside to help her.”
Nice story. “Why were you meeting her?”
“She was...looking into something for me.” She locked eyes on his, hers a pale gray. “Is she all right?”
Dallas considered. Time to find out if Susan really was a friend to Cora. “Dead.” He gauged her reaction.
The woman did not move, as if the words were lost in the steam from the mug she held to her lips. “Dead.”
“So why were you going to see her?”
She gazed into the tea. “How did the fire start?”
“Maybe I should be asking you that.”
She jerked. “You think I set it?”
“So far I’ve seen you running away from a fire and sneaking outside my trailer. Puts your character in question.”
A glimmer of a smile lifted her lips, but there was something under the trailing wet hair, behind the gaunt lines of her mouth that revealed a hardness he hadn’t seen at first. “So you’re wondering if you can trust me?” she said.
“Not wondering. I’m not going to trust you, not until you give me the truth.”
“You’re a hard man.”
He sat opposite her. “I’ve got peppers to sauté. What are you here for?”
She held his eyes with hers, a slight lift to her chin. “Justice.”
“Not easy to find.”
“I know. But I’m going to have it. I’m going to get back what belongs to me.” The last words came out as a hiss.
“What were you doing at Cora’s?”
“Meeting her there. She was trying to help me unmask a villain, so to speak.”
“Who?”
“It’s private.”
He rapped a hand on the table. “We’re wasting time. Cora was likely murdered and you were there at the scene.”
“If I was going to kill someone, or burn a house in this town,” she said, after drinking deeply of the tea, “that’s not the one I would have picked. And by the way, you were there, too, at the scene. Did you have something to do with Cora’s death?”
Dallas resisted the urge to raise his voice. “If you thought I did, a quick phone call to the police would take care of it. You came here for another reason.”
“I wanted to know about Cora, and I’m not asking the police for personal reasons.”
Very personal, judging from the flicker of emotion that pinched the corners of her mouth. Impasse. They’d gotten there, he could tell. Whatever her motives, he wasn’t going to pry them out of her. Women didn’t work that way, he’d learned. Instead he sat back in the chair and waited.
* * *
Mia’s mouth went dry as the garage door stopped with a groan, halfway up. The man hopped off the step and ran to the car. He was coming to drag her out. The old car had no automatic locks so she slammed the button down and realized in a hot wave of panic that he was not headed to her side, but Gracie’s.
“Lock the door, Gracie,” Mia shouted.
Gracie sat frozen, staring at her mother.
Mia dove across her and hammered the lock, the back door, as well. The man banged his palms against the glass.
Gracie screamed. “Stop, stop!”
Mia nearly screamed too until the man stepped away suddenly. He picked up a metal bucket and swung it hard at the passenger window with a deafening crash until the glass was etched through with cracks.
“Get down onto the floor,” Mia yelled to Gracie, “and cover your head with your hands.”
She yanked the car into Reverse. After one quick breath, she stomped on the gas. The car shot backwards into the garage door. There was a terrible moment when the roof met the unyielding mass and she thought she had made a fatal error. Groaning metal, the sound of breaking glass and then quite without warning the car punched through, shearing the garage door into a crumpled mess, exploding onto the rain-slicked driveway.
Mia was oblivious to the damage. Only two facts remained, her car was still functioning and they were free from the garage. She reversed down the slope, cranked the car into Drive and sped off down the road, putting as much distance between the man and Gracie as she possibly could. One mile, two, her stomach remained in a tight knot, fingers clenched around the steering wheel.
She forced several breaths in and out before she could coax her voice into action. “Gracie Louise, are you hurt?”
Gracie’s tiny voice floated up from the floor. “Scary.”
“You’re right,” she said, relief making her voice thick. “But it’s okay now. You can climb back on the seat. Be careful of the glass.”
Gracie emerged like a hare having narrowly escaped the fox. Her lips were parted, eyes wide and wet. “Mommy, that was a bad man.”
Mia gave a shaky laugh and took her daughter’s hand. “Yes, he was.”
“Why was he in our house?”
She swallowed. “I don’t know, but we’ll go someplace safe until we find out, okay?”
“Where?”
The million dollar question. The nearest hotel was an hour away, and they didn’t have the money to stay in one for long anyway. Rain splattered through the side window that had broken when it impacted the garage door. She felt the bitter tide of anger rise as she contemplated her own helplessness. Mia risked a quick stop, engine running, to move Gracie to the backseat and buckle her into her booster. She kissed her and caressed her daughter’s plump cheeks. “I’m going to figure out something, okay?”
Gracie nodded, shaking the box of macaroni she still clung to. “But I’m hungry.”
Mia smiled as she climbed back into the driver’s seat, but worry soon overwhelmed her. She didn’t even have a cell phone to call the police. The storm intensified as she drove along, rattling the sides of the car. If she could call her sister for advice...
Your sister who is busy with her new husband and her new life. They were tight now, together again after all the anguish Mia had caused, but still there remained in the shadows between them, a heavy weight of guilt. It stemmed from the fact that her sister had been right about Hector when Mia refused to hear a bad word about him, a feeling that burgeoned during her time in jail with all its horrors. Because of Hector, Antonia was almost killed and there was nobody to blame for bringing him into their lives but Mia. No, she would not call Antonia.
“Why not call Hector?” her derisive thoughts chided her. He was sitting around in prison with nothing much to do and a reach that seemed to exceed the metal walls that caged him. She could grovel even more and throw herself on Dr. Elias’s mercy. Was there any pride left to salvage? Self-pity gave way to a hot flood of determination.
Stand on your own two feet, for once in your life.
Mile after mile gave her no clarity, no better sense of what to do. Only the instinct to keep going, to get away from whoever had violated their home, kept her pressing the car forward. She’d made up her mind to stop at the next town she came to and call the police when she realized where she was, at the entrance to the trailer park where Dallas lived. She’d given him a lift there once when his truck had engine trouble.
She saw the silhouette of his vehicle, and she pulled her car next to it, motor still running.
“Where are we?” Gracie said, unbuckling her strap.
“Nowhere, I was just stopping to rest my eyes for a minute.” What was she doing? She would not go to Dallas for help, the man who already seemed to have a strange influence over her pulse. An image of long-stemmed yellow roses floated into her mind. It was followed by a vision of Hector, the man whom she’d loved desperately, blindly, the husband who lied to her from the first kiss and right on until his arrest for drug dealing and later for the attempted abduction of her sister. Fool, fool, fool. Tears brimmed, captive in her eyes.