Beverly Long – Running for Her Life (страница 8)

The hottest summer in fifty-five years. The television weather forecasters droned on about it. In Minnesota, where summers for the most part lasted about two months and a hot day was in the mideighties, fourteen straight days of over ninety-degree temperatures had everyone’s attention. People didn’t talk about anything else.

Except for the past couple of days, they’d squeezed in a little conversation about the town picnic. Held every June fifteenth for the past hundred and ten years, the picnic brought the town together. Over five hundred people would gather at Washington Park, the two acres of land at the edge of Wyattville. Stories would be retold, recipes traded, new babies shown off and massive amounts of food consumed.

Since early morning, she and Janet had been slicing the meat they’d cooked the day before. The Lions Club would have three large roasters available to keep the meat warm so that it could be piled high onto fresh buns and topped with sautéed green peppers. Other volunteers would have fired up a few grills, and there’d soon be hot dogs and hamburgers sizzling. Each family that attended would bring a dish to pass. There would be lemonade and iced tea and big barrels of cold beer. No one would go away hungry.

The parade would mostly consist of tractors pulling hay wagons—decorated with crepe paper and plastic streamers—that could seat the mayor, city council members or anybody else remotely considered Somebody. Each would have a big bag of candy at his or her side, and they’d throw handfuls out along the way, and small children along the parade route would scramble for the loot.

Boy and Girl Scout troops would march, proudly carrying flags. Wyattville didn’t have its own high school. Kids were bused to Bluemond, twenty-five miles away. The payback came at parade time when Bluemond’s seventy-five-person band showed up. The parade started a block north of Nel’s, so for the past half hour Tara had listened to a haphazard medley of blaring horns, whistling flutes and pounding drums as the kids nervously waited to begin marching.

At 10:45 a.m., fifteen minutes before the parade was to start, Tara locked the front door. Normally on a Friday, the last lunch special wouldn’t be served until sometime around two but no one expected that today. Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Labor Day might be national holidays but in Wyattville, it was the town picnic that garnered universal observance.

Under one arm she carried two lawn chairs, one for her and one for Janet. The older woman had left a few minutes earlier to supervise sandwich making.

For most of the morning, Tara had been too busy to worry about broken windows or hit-and-run drivers. Now that her work was done and the rest of the day stretched before her, she was determined not to dwell on what-ifs but rather to focus on sunshine, silly games and the simple pleasure of dangling her bare feet in the spring-fed pond.

At last year’s picnic, she’d been so new and so edgy that the loud, unexpected burps of noise from the tractors had practically had her jumping out of her skin. Janet had been insistent, though, and she’d somehow managed to draw up her lawn chair and while away the afternoon hours with her new customers and neighbors. And looking back, she knew that was the day when the healing had started.

The people of Wyattville had opened their arms and their hearts, and she’d found a place to call home. Day by day, she’d gotten both mentally and physically stronger. She’d started sleeping at night and stopped her steady diet of antacid pills. The small town had healed her.

Tara stopped at the very edge of Washington Park and unfolded her lawn chair. She waved to several customers and they waved back. It wasn’t until she’d sat down that she saw him.

Six feet of pure muscle. Before her nightmare with Michael began, she’d have appreciated this man’s long legs, trim waist, broad chest. She might even have joked with coworkers about his fine rear end and speculated about other attributes. But now, with his pressed uniform, hat and shiny black shoes, he all but screamed cop, and it made her stomach cramp up in fear.

His stance was comfortable as he confronted a carload of teenagers who’d decided that the barricade across the road clearly didn’t apply to them. But she wasn’t fooled. He didn’t carry himself like a cop who’d gotten soft working a desk and doing the occasional crowd control. No, definitely not. And he’d certainly handled his gun last night as if it was an extension of his arm.

Was it as simple as it all sounded? Had he really come to Wyattville to help his old friend? But who had the kind of job that they could just up and leave at any time for six weeks to go work somewhere else? No. There was more to the story.

And she loved a good story. Got jazzed piecing information together. There’d been few who were as good at re-creating a series of events that made sense.

Whether it was covering a political campaign, a murder trial or the transgressions of the big banks, she’d loved being a reporter. Loved seeing the results of her work on the newsstand. Loved the editorial deadlines, even loved the notoriously bad coffee in the break room.

But that was a long time ago. Now she needed to keep a low profile. She needed to stay out of Chief Vernelli’s way and if she couldn’t manage that, she needed to make darn sure that she was at the top of her game. She couldn’t afford to slip up, to give him any reason to look at her closer.

She angled her chair, just enough that he was in her peripheral vision but not enough that he’d catch her eye. She bought a watery lemonade from two young girls and was relieved when the first floats came by. She was clapping for the Wyattville fire truck and volunteer fire department when a shadow blocked out the hot sun.

She twisted her body so quickly that one side of her lawn chair lifted off the ground, and she would have crashed to the side if a strong hand hadn’t steadied her.

“Careful,” he said.

“Chief Vernelli,” she managed.

He glanced at the bandage on her knee. “Bumps and bruises getting better?”

She nodded and prayed that he’d move along. Instead, he spread his legs, shifted his weight back onto his heels, hooked his thumbs in the loops of his belt and watched the parade like it was Thanksgiving Day and he had a boatload of stock invested in Macy’s.

She ignored him, and he appeared as if it didn’t bother him in the least. When the funeral home director and his family rode by on a float decorated as a coffin, the crowd was peppered with wrapped caramels. Jake reached a long arm up and easily caught a piece. He tossed it in Tara’s lap.

“It’s your candy,” Tara protested.

He shrugged. “I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. I’d arm-wrestle you over a bag of potato chips, though.”

More proof that he wasn’t normal. She unwrapped the candy and popped it in her mouth as the last tractor belched and snorted its way past. Tara stood up and folded her lawn chair.

“What’s next?” Jake asked.

I watch to see what direction you go in and make a mad dash in the other. “Lunch. Then we’ll head for the shade and rest our stomachs until the games begin.”

“I saw the dunk tank getting set up,” he said.

“The chief of police would be a big draw,” she suggested.

“Too bad I’m on duty.” He smiled and she felt the answering lurch in her stomach. He was a handsome man. Might even be charming.

She edged away. “Given how hot it is, there will likely be plenty of volunteers. I may even try it myself.” She turned and started walking. “I better hurry. Janet might need me,” she lied.

* * *

FORTUNATELY FOR JAKE, Tara didn’t get into the dunk tank. Breasts and cold beer were both good things. However, when the breasts were covered by a tight white T-shirt that suddenly became transparent, routine crowd control could quickly get ugly.

She did, however, play volleyball. Jake had stood off to the side, made small talk with those who wanted to get to know the new chief and discreetly watched the game. What Tara lacked in skill, she made up for in enthusiasm. Bending, stretching, lunging. She didn’t do anything overtly over the top to attract attention, but when Jake scanned the crowd he saw several young men with their tongues almost hanging out.

Was it possible that her recent trouble had something to do with a rejected lover? He’d asked who she’d pissed off. Maybe the question should have been, Who have you dumped lately?

When the game ended, he watched to see who approached her. Several of the young men did, but with each she seemed casually comfortable. She didn’t do much more than exchange a quick greeting with any of them until one too-thin, long-faced guy approached. He wore faded jeans and a white wife-beater T-shirt that revealed tattoos spread across both biceps. He was smoking a cigarette.

She looked surprised to see him. Then she motioned for the man to follow her, stopping when they were a distance from the volleyball court and anyone else who might hear the conversation. He talked, she mostly listened.

Then the man dropped his cigarette and with more force than necessary, used the heel of his boot to grind it into the dirt. When Jake saw Tara frown, shake her head and turn away, only to be stopped by the man’s hand on her arm, he moved fast.