Stella grinned. “After my husband died, I lived with my daughter and her husband for a while. Believe me, I understand. A body’s got to have her own space sometimes, and the right to change it even if she doesn’t. Let me see.” Pursing her lips, she tapped one finger against them for a moment. “Of course, there’s the apartments where your sister lives—”
“No vacancies.” Hallie had called that morning, when she’d decided she didn’t want to spend three weeks in a room where she couldn’t walk barefooted for fear of sticking to the carpet.
“Yeah, there usually aren’t. You know, Marlene Tucker’s mother-in-law passed on a few weeks ago. Doctor said she died of heart failure. Well, of course she did! She was a hundred and one years old! Her poor old heart just wore out. Let me call Marlene and see what they’re planning to do with her house.”
While she went to the desk in the back of the shop, Hallie began wandering around. She was looking at some serving platters that matched the pitchers she’d bought when a Greyhound bus pulled to a stop in front of the store and opened its door.
The driver got off first, followed by a passenger. Scowling as if angry with the world, the teenage girl stepped up onto the sidewalk and waited while the driver retrieved her bag from the luggage compartment—one dirty army surplus duffel bag. With a battered backpack slung over one shoulder and the duffel bag leaning against her, she took a long look around.
When she noticed Hallie in the shop window looking at her, she made an obscene gesture. Hallie was tempted to stick out her tongue, poke her thumbs in her ears and waggle her fingers at the girl, but she restrained herself. Barely.
“Lord, would you look at that?” Stella made a clucking sound.
“What about her?”
“That hair. Those clothes. All them earrings.” Then she chuckled. “I forgot I’m talking to Miss Beverly Hills. I bet you see weirdos like that all the time out there in California, don’t you?”
“There are some strange people out there.” She glanced again at the girl, who was walking away. Purple-haired, clothes that were one breath away from indecent, combat boots with a mini-skirt—that was nothing in Los Angeles.
It stood out in Buffalo Plains.
“I talked to Marlene, and she said they haven’t decided what to do with the house yet, but you’d be welcome to rent it for a while. Here’s her number. Give her a call anytime you want to go look at it.”
“Thanks, Stella. Do you happen to know where it is?”
“Oh, it’s easy to find. When you go out of town south on Main, the last street you’ll come to is Cedar, and the Tucker place is the first house on the left after that. It’s white, neat as a button—and, of course, the mailbox out front says Tucker.” With another grin, Stella planted her hands on her hips.
“So…what did you decide about that oak table?”
“Can you hold it for me?”
“Sure can.”
“Then I’ll take it. And these, too.” She picked up several platters, then followed Stella to the checkout counter. A few minutes later, she was walking out the door, her platters in a bag and a Sold sign planted in the middle of her table.
She took the bag to her car and locked it in the trunk, then checked her watch. She still had a few minutes before she was supposed to meet Brady. Time enough for a quick walk through one more store.
Then lunch. With Brady. A part of her felt almost as giddy as a teenager going on her first date, but this wasn’t a date. A date would have been dinner, picking her up at the motel, taking her back there—or to his house—when it was over.
This was just lunch. Between friends. Innocent.
Exactly what she wanted, she assured herself.
The little voice inside her head didn’t agree, whispering a childhood taunt.
Liar, liar, pants on fire….
After a morning on patrol, Brady parked in his reserved space behind the courthouse, entered through the back door, then went into the sheriff’s department and headed for his office. He was almost there when the dispatcher stopped him.
“Someone to see you, Brady.”
He glanced at the cramped space set aside for a lobby, where the dispatcher gestured, expecting to see Hallie, a few minutes early for their lunch. The only one there, though, was a teenage girl. Though there was something vaguely familiar about her, he was sure they’d never met. Purple hair was hard to forget.
So were enough holes in her ears to make the wind whistle through. There was a gold bar and chain through her right eyebrow, a stud through her nostril and another in her navel, around which a circle in what appeared to be a Celtic design was tattooed. He didn’t even want to think about where else she might be mutilated.
He backtracked a few steps in her direction. “Can I help you?” he asked brusquely.
She was sprawled on one of the molded plastic chairs, her long legs stretching halfway across the room. Her boots were clunky, black and scuffed, her skirt was too short and rode low on her hips, and her lace top had been too small a year ago. A pair of headphones dangled around her neck, she wore way too much makeup, and her expression was 100-percent whiny adolescent pout.
Her insolent gaze started at his feet and moved up. By the time it reached his face, she’d curled one lip in complete disdain. “You Brady Marshall?”
“Yes.”
“A cop. Jeez, what a loser.” She stood up, her thin body looking like a stick figure unfolding. She was about five foot ten—not a bad height for a young woman. Not a great one for a barely-a-teenager girl. “Well, there’s my stuff.” With a hand that bore rings on every finger, she pointed in the direction of a duffel bag. “Let’s get out of here.”
Clomping on the wood floor, she got as far as the door before realizing that he wasn’t following. “We-ell?”
“Who are you?”
She clomped back to stand in front of him and sneered.
“Don’t you recognize me? Why, I’m your own little girl, and I’ve come to stay with you.”
Behind the counter, a clipboard clattered to the floor, and over by the coffeemaker, someone muttered, “What the—” Brady didn’t look at either eavesdropper. He didn’t take his gaze from the girl.
He never thought of himself as a father, not even as having been a father for a few short months. Even though he’d paid child support without fail for the past fourteen years, it was testament only to how desperately he’d wanted out of the marriage. Sandra had wanted money, and he’d agreed to give it in exchange for a quick divorce and escape to go off and lick his wounds.
Even after she’d admitted to sleeping with any man who was willing.
Even after she’d taunted him with the fact that he wasn’t the father of her little girl.
Even after she’d stripped him of even the slightest hope that the baby whose birth he’d been awaiting so anxiously could possibly be his.
He studied her, trying to reconcile this tall, skinny, odd-looking child with the tiny, cuddly baby he’d fed, rocked to sleep and changed diapers for. That baby had smiled sweetly and cooed whenever she saw him, and she’d clung to his finger every time he’d held her.
This one…
This one was waiting for some sort of response from him. So was everyone else in the squad room.
He moved a few steps closer to her. “What’s your name?”
“Les Marshall.” Then she rolled her eyes as if he were making unreasonable demands.