Sidetracked-Kobo (2 page)

I could have stopped this.

Time staggered. Years of pain and fear and loneliness tumbled in my head. Still, despite all I’d lived through, no way could I run from this, leaving Clara here, silent and alone.

Tears came then, washing hot.

Trembling yet determined, my finger punched in the searing digits. Nine. One. One. Blurry-eyed and stricken, I clutched the phone to my ear.

As the number began to ring I prayed for Clara’s family, then begged God to protect me in this. To save me.

But I’d prayed that before, years ago. Little good it had done.

I slumped in a hard chair in an interrogation room at the Redbud Police Station, a rough green blanket over my shoulders. My body couldn’t stop shivering. Bruce Melcher, Chief of Police, sat across the square table from me, recording my story and taking notes. The door to the room stood open. I had no idea what time it was. Hadn’t the energy to check my watch. We must have spent at least an hour at the crime scene, Melcher and two of his officers, Hank Shire and Edna Rankle, showing up. Then the ambulance and the coroner. Not to mention people from up and down the street and blocks away as word spread. Yellow crime scene tape kept them back as Hank snapped pictures of Clara’s body, the surrounding sidewalk, her car. Finally she was loaded up and carried away.

Shock set into me and numbed over my grief. Just like that a life—stopped. Everything on the brink for her now dead. All plans unraveled. My thoughts since then had been jumbled and random. Some ridiculously trite. How would Jerald Allen live through losing his fiancée? Who was the man I’d seen, and why had he done this? What would happen to the wedding shower presents?

What would happen to
me?

I’d followed the Chief to the station in my car. By the time he sat me down I was shivering. I’d never been in the station before. Even in Redbud, where almost everyone was friendly, I avoided cops. Especially Bruce Melcher. The man had a way about him. Macho and ego-ridden. As though the town belonged to him, and if you didn’t believe it, he’d prove it to you. People in Redbud seemed to either love or hate their chief of police. Somehow he kept his position.

I needed Andy. Wanted his arms around me, his love-filled voice telling me it would be okay. He’d been in Frankfort that evening, working on one of his real estate deals. Someone was bound to call him—

“Anything else you can remember?” Melcher sat back, his round face still grim. Our chief of police was in his forties, his brown hair turning gray, hazel eyes small but keen. A stocky man with little humor. Had he ever worked a homicide before? The town hadn’t seen one in over thirty years, so one of the other policemen told me. Redbud, Kentucky lay off Highway 60, eight miles northwest of Versailles and about twenty-one miles from Lexington—which saw a lot of crime. Our little town was a world apart from that city. Our townsfolk who worked in Lexington liked to come home to the quiet, the familiar sidewalks cracked from old oak trees. The safety.

They wouldn’t feel safe anymore.

“Nothing else to tell.” I’d related it all three times now. “Has someone called Jerald? And Clara’s parents?”

“Hank went over to the Crenshaws soon as he could. Tried to beat someone else calling the family. He phoned Jerald first and asked him to be there.”

I winced. What a task for Hank, such an empathetic man. As for Clara’s family and fiancé, I knew the pain they would endure. The stone-cold nights and brittle days.

Up front in the station a phone rang for the dozenth time. Vaguely, I heard Edna’s no-nonsense voice answer. A moment later she appeared at the threshold, receiver cupped in her hand. “It’s Pete Baler, worried about Delanie. Says she’s late coming home and isn’t answering her cell phone, and what in tarnation is happening over on Brewer?”

Pete, my adopted grandfather. Doyen of the cobbled-together family who shared my house. I’d heard my cell ring numerous times in my purse. I should have known he’d be checking up on me. Probably had Nicole and Colleen gathered around him, just as worried.

Melcher sighed. “You want to talk to Pete?”

I shook my head. “Can you just tell him I’m here and safe? I’ll be home soon.” Somehow I’d have to find the energy to explain to him what happened. If he hadn’t heard by then.

Edna nodded and turned away, pulling the phone back to her ear. I heard her arguing with Pete as she walked toward the front. No, she was too busy to fill in all the details for him now. No, I wasn’t hurt …

I stared at the worn wooden table, wondering how I’d gotten here. Where this night might take me.

Nowhere, Delanie. This is different. You’ll be fine.

The station door burst open. I heard the pound of feet, the familiar voice that made my heart surge. “Where is she?”

“Back there.”

I struggled up straight, sudden tears biting my eyes. Andy’s broad shoulders filled the doorway, his brown hair mussed and face blanched. He took one look at me and rushed forward, holding out his arms. I pushed up on weak legs and threw myself against his chest, the blanket falling to the floor. Sobs broke from me, deep and helpless, wetting the front of his starched shirt. I could do nothing but cling to Andy—for more reasons than he could possibly know.

“Thank God you’re all right, Del. Thank God.” His hand cradled the back of my head.

“Claraaaa.”

“I know. I’m so sorry.”

Melcher eased past us out of the room.

“Why, Andy,
why?”

“I don’t know. I’m just so sorry you’re the one who found her.”

So was I.

We pulled apart, Andy placing his palms on my cheeks. His deep brown eyes looked into mine, checking, assessing. Sometimes when he did that I’d think,
Surely he must see the lies there …

He rubbed my face. “I heard you saw someone.”

I nodded.

“Any idea who?”

“No.”

Andy shut his eyes. “To think he got that close to you.”

The station phone rang again. The front door opened and closed.

“Did he see you, Del? Enough to recognize you?”

The question froze me. Surely my car had kept me in shadow, even if I’d been near a streetlight. “Does it matter? By now the whole town’s heard.”

Andy looked away, his jaw moving back and forth—the expression that overtook him whenever he processed how to take care of a problem. The look mimicked his dad’s in similar situations. The Bradshaws were the richest, most influential family in Redbud. They were used to fixing things.

“You should stay at my parents’ house tonight.” Andy squeezed my shoulder. “You’ll be safe there.”

“I want to go home.” My relationship with Andy’s parents was tenuous at best. I didn’t fit their picture of the Kentucky belle their son and only child should marry. “Pete and Nicole and Colleen are waiting for me. They’re worried.”

“
I’m
worried.” Our past discussions
tinged the words. Andy never could understand my modern-day “boarding house,” the eclectic trio I’d gathered around me. But then, Andy had always had family.

“I’ll be fine. Besides, Pete has a gun.”

“Pete’s in his seventies.”

“And knows how to shoot.”

Melcher came back into the room, ending the conversation.

“Are you done here?” Andy’s tone said he should be.

The Chief nodded. “For now. If we have more questions, Miss Miller, we’ll let you know.” He retrieved the green blanket from the floor and laid it on the table.

Andy picked up my purse and handed it to me. “You okay to drive?”

No
. “Yes.”

He turned to the Chief. “You need to find who did this
now
.”

Melcher bristled. “We’re working on it.”

Andy stood a few inches taller than Melcher. He looked down and held the chief’s gaze. “Nobody’s safe until you do. Especially Delanie.”

“I’m aware—”

“Especially if he thinks she can identify him.”

The chief’s mouth hardened. “I don’t need you telling me how to do my job.”

“I’m merely worried about Delanie.”

“We’ll do everything we can to keep her safe, Mr. Bradshaw. As well as the rest of the town.”

Andy held the chief’s gaze a moment longer, then nodded.

Melcher put his hands on his hips. The old cop swagger. “We’re going to put the word out that she can’t identify who she saw. It was a shadowed figure in the dark, that’s all. Besides, that’s the truth.”

I managed a nod.

“Of course we still have the main issue. Whoever did this is still on the loose, and in that sense no one’s safe.” Melcher ran a hand across his forehead. “Mr. Bradshaw, see that she gets home. I’ve got a lot of other people to talk to. Won’t be seeing my bed tonight.”

The two men sized each other up. Andy embodied the town, all its citizens who would be pressing for a quick arrest. The chief clearly felt that stress already and wasn’t about to look weak under it.

Andy slid a protective arm around me. “Let’s go.”

Once in our cars he waved for me to get on the road first. He would follow, watching my back.

I drove by rote, my spine not touching the seat. The night, so beautiful and full of promise a few hours ago, now hung heavy with portent. How many people lived without ever stumbling upon the body of a loved one? Now it had happened to me twice.

Was God punishing me?

Surely not this way, involving innocent Clara. But hadn’t I always feared one day it would all catch up to me?

I needed to call Clara’s parents. And Jerald. Tell them how sorry I was. How I wished I could have helped …

Fresh tears rolled down my face.

I turned onto my street, and soon my rambling brick house came into view. It had never looked so comforting. I pulled into the garage, Andy parking his BMW in the driveway. He followed me into the garage, making sure I closed the door. We’d barely stepped into the kitchen before Pete appeared. “She’s home!” he yelled over his shoulder. Pete’s voice was gravelly, his back stooped. He’d worked out West as a locomotive engineer most of his life, and his body bore the toll the stressful work had taken.

Pete hurried toward me with his hitched gait and slapped gnarled hands on my shoulders. “You all right, Del-Belle? I heard it all from Tucker, you know he lives three doors up from where you found Clara?” Pete’s cheeks were red, at the least the part I could see around the unruly gray beard that spread down his neck. His small blue eyes glistened with concern. “We were so worried ’boutcha, started hearin’ things ’bout somebody dead. Can’t believe it’s Clara, I just can’t believe it.”

Clara had been in our house many times.

Andy eased into the kitchen and shut the door to the garage. “Hi, Pete.”

“Hi, Andy.” Pete didn’t take his eyes off me. “You okay, Del-Belle, are ya?”

My throat knotted. I raised my chin.

Colleen appeared, trailed by Nicole. In her mid-fifties, Colleen was big-chested and stout. Despite her odd ways she was the mother I wished I had. Always there for me, with a wise word and a soft touch. Colleen loved to run around the house in fuzzy multicolored socks that reminded me of Dr. Seuss. Her short brown hair was never quite in place, her hands always moving when she talked. At dinner she was known to take out a glass or two.

She hugged me hard. “I’m so sorry about Clara. Don’t know what this world is coming to. In
our
little town.”

I hugged Colleen back, even as I felt Andy’s distance from the scene. He never knew quite how to fit into my “family.” And they weren’t quite sure what to think of him, either. Except that any future I built with Andy would mean the breaking up of our household.

Nicole was shaking as she stepped up to me. At twenty-one, she’d seen too much, lived too much. I knew what that was like. She’d lost her parents in her teens. They’d been abusive. She came to Redbud to live with her grandmother, who ended up needing Nicole’s care when she became an invalid. The elderly woman died last year, leaving her house to Nicole. But Nicole needed a
home
. She needed love. I’d invited her to come live with us.

I wrapped my arms around her. “Shh, don’t worry now. We’ll get through this.”

She shook her head. “I was
there
. I should have stayed and helped you clean up. Maybe if I’d left when Clara …”

Faulting herself was something Nicole did well—in all circumstances. I attributed it to her difficult childhood. But Clara’s murder would give her the perfect opportunity for self-blame. Hadn’t I been doing the same thing?

“You couldn’t have stopped this, Nicole. Any more than I could. It just … happened.”

The question was why.

Andy took charge, herding us all to sit down on the couch and chairs in our large “gathering” room. He talked with Pete about keeping his gun loaded and ready—a task Pete was more than eager to do. Andy tried to reassure Nicole, Colleen, and me, telling us to look out for each other.

“We do that already.” Colleen waved a hand.

My heart pinged. Some things Andy just didn’t understand. But then again—how could he?

“Well, do it more.” Impatience tinged his voice. He pulled his head back, his tone lightening. “Sorry. I just … I’m really worried.”

Pete ran a hand down his beard, an old habit. “We all are.”

Andy’s cell phone rang. It was his mother, who’d heard what had happened. He said he was with me and would call her back. Apparently she wasn’t too happy about being put off.

Phyllis and Doug Bradshaw lived on the outskirts of town in a huge Southern mansion. White pillars, long porch, and green shutters. Ancient oaks in the yard. They were of the country club set, born and bred. Phyllis stood tall and lithe, her Kentucky drawl as much a part of her as her perfectly groomed eyebrows. Her husband, a college football star, had founded a real estate company in Lexington years ago that now housed over one hundred realtors. Andy worked in that firm.

Andy slid the phone back into his pocket, shooting me a wry look. He loved his parents. He loved me. But the three of us were oil and water.

My own cell phone rang. I checked the ID, and when I saw it wasn’t a policeman, didn’t answer. Intermittently it went off again and again. This friend and that, surely wanting to know if I was all right. And no doubt seeking details. I didn’t want to talk to any of them. At the fourth call I looked helplessly to Andy. I just wanted the world to go away.