“Thank you.”
She had already thanked him. He answered as he had before, “You’re welcome.”
He watched her—and was watched in return—until the ambulance doors closed between them. Only when the ambulance had driven away did he turn back to the chief of police, prepared to answer his questions.
SORE MUSCLES CLENCHED when Sharon shifted in her seat Sunday evening, causing her to wince. She immediately regretted doing so when the man on the other side of the restaurant table frowned and asked, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
Since it was at least the tenth time he’d asked in the past couple of hours, Sharon had to force herself to answer patiently. “I’m fine, Jerry. Still a little sore, but the doctor assured me that was to be expected.”
Jerry Whitaker didn’t look satisfied. He seemed convinced that her injuries from Friday night’s mishap were worse than the few scrapes and bruises she had told him about.
He’d been out of town for the weekend, and when he’d returned that afternoon, talk of the accident had been all over town—no surprise in Honoria, where rumors zipped from household to household with the frantic speed of a metal ball in an arcade pinball machine. Having lived here since adolescence, Sharon had learned to discount most of what she heard, but Jerry still tended to take the local gossip much too seriously.
“Tell me more about your business trip,” she encouraged him, trying to change the subject. “How was the weather in Charleston?”
Her attempt at diversion failed. “Fine,” he answered automatically, then returned to his questions about her. “Have you talked to Chief Davenport since I called you this afternoon? Have there been any further developments in the investigation of the Porter robbery—any leads on the van that ran you off the road?”
Resigned to rehashing it all again, Sharon looked down at her plate. “Nothing. It’s as if the van disappeared off the face of the earth. If Mr. Cordero hadn’t seen it, I would have wondered if I had imagined it.”
Jerry’s scowl deepened. “Ah, yes. Cordero-the-hero. That’s what they’re calling him around town, you know.”
Sharon wrinkled her nose. “You’re kidding. That’s so corny.”
“Have you heard some of the stories going around about what happened Friday night? Mildred Scott told me you drowned and Cordero brought you back to life with CPR. Clark Foster said you were trapped in the car and Cordero had to break a window to pull you out, nearly drowning himself. And then there’s the version Gloria Capps is spreading—that you cut yourself on broken glass and almost bled to death before Cordero saved you by using his necktie as a tourniquet.”
“That’s ridiculous. He wasn’t even wearing a necktie.” She shook her head. “It’s all ridiculous. I was already out of the car when Mr. Cordero jumped in to help me. I’m sure I could have made it out of the river on my own.”
She didn’t want to sound ungrateful for Mac’s help, but she didn’t like hearing she’d been cast as the hapless victim in so many improbable scenarios. She’d been taking care of herself—and the rest of her family—for a long time. It wasn’t easy to let anyone else take charge, even briefly.
“Of course you would have made it out on your own.”
Sharon didn’t know whether Jerry’s attitude was due more to his faith in her or his jealousy that Mac Cordero had become such a romanticized figure in Honoria. Jerry had lived in this town all his life. He’d taken over his father’s insurance office a few years ago, but an insurance salesman was rarely regarded as dashing or heroic, terms that had been applied to Cordero in the numerous retellings of Sharon’s accident.
She’d been dating Jerry casually for three or four months. They shared several common interests and had passed many pleasant evenings together. She’d been aware from the start that their relationship owed more to circumstance than chemistry—there weren’t many singles their age in Honoria—but she wasn’t looking for romance, only occasional companionship, which Jerry provided without making too many demands in return.
“I really don’t understand all this fuss over the guy,” he muttered, slicing irritably into his steak. “He’s a contractor, for Pete’s sake. Not even a particularly shrewd one, if he thinks he’s going to make a profit on the Garrett place.”
“I’ve heard he specializes in restoring old houses. He must know from experience whether or not the Garrett house is worth renovating.”
Jerry shook his head stubbornly. “That eyesore is going to require a small fortune just to make it livable again. It should have been condemned years ago. The location’s not bad, even if it isn’t close to the golf course, like all the best new homes. Tear it down and start from scratch, that’s what I would do. Maybe even subdivide—it sits on a three-acre lot. That’s enough land to put in quite a few houses and more than pay for the initial investment.”
Just what Honoria needed, Sharon thought. Another tacky subdivision filled with cheaply built, cookie-cutter houses on undersize lots. “Some people love the old, the historic,” she murmured. “The Garrett place was practically a mansion when it was built in the early part of the twentieth century. It must have been beautiful.”
“Maybe it was then, but now it’s just old.” Jerry shook his head in bafflement. “I’ve never understood what people see in beat-up antiques when they can have shiny new things, instead.”
She wasn’t surprised by Jerry’s attitude. He had a taste for flash. He traded cars nearly every year when the new models debuted, and was always upgrading his computers and electronic equipment. The past held little appeal for him—his eyes were firmly fixed on the future. She saw no need to remind him that she had a soft spot for antiques. It was something he just couldn’t understand.
Jerry’s thoughts were still focused on Mac Cordero. “The guy’s just a contractor. I don’t know why so many people around town want to make him into something else. The rumors about him are absurd. Why can’t they just accept that he’s exactly what he says he is?”
The mildest speculation cast Cordero as an eccentric multimillionaire who fixed up old houses for his own hideaways. Some whispered that he was an agent for a Hollywood superstar who wanted a place to escape the press occasionally. The most incredible story she’d heard suggested he was working for an organized-crime family preparing the Garrett house for a mobster who needed to get out of New York City.
“You know how rumors get started around here,” Sharon reminded Jerry. “Because Mr. Cordero chooses not to share information about his personal life, people entertain themselves by filling in the blanks with colorful details.”
“So what do you know about him?” Jerry’s question proved he wasn’t as averse to gossip as he pretended—something Sharon already knew, of course.
“I don’t know anything more than you do. I didn’t exactly have a lot of time for personal chit-chat when I met him. All I can tell you is he seemed very…capable,” she said for lack of a better description.
As much as she hated to admit it, even to herself, she had been in trouble Friday night. Yes, she’d managed to get out of her sunken car on her own, but she’d been shaken and disoriented. She probably would have gotten to the shore on her own—at least, she hoped so—only to find herself stranded on a rarely traveled country road without a car or a phone. As frightened as she had been, there had been something about Mac Cordero that had reassured her. Maybe it was the strength of the rock-hard arms that had supported her until she’d caught her breath. Or the steady way he’d held her gaze when he’d assured her that help was on the way. Or maybe it had been the way her hand had felt cradled so securely in his.
It embarrassed her now to remember the desperation with which she had clung to the stranger who’d pulled her from the water. At the time, she’d simply been grateful to have someone to hold on to.