Kitabı oku: «Shepherds Abiding in Dry Creek», sayfa 2
Elmer jutted his chin out. “All I’m saying is that there are the two kids, and if we haven’t seen them, maybe it’s because neither of them needs to go farther than their driveway for the mail. That’s all.”
“They could even be sick,” Linda added softly. “It’s flu season. They’d stay inside for sure if they were sick. Maybe they have colds.”
“And I can’t see sick kids stealing a shepherd,” Mrs. Hargrove said. “Especially not in this weather. Their mother probably wouldn’t let them go outside if they were sick, and they wouldn’t be able to see the Nativity set from the windows in their house, so they wouldn’t even know the shepherd was there. They can’t steal what they don’t even know about, now, can they?”
Les wondered how long the people of Dry Creek would protect a real criminal if one showed up. He hoped he never had to find out. “Forget the shepherd. Nobody said anybody wanted that shepherd. It’s the bake set that seems to be the goal. If I remember right, one of those names on the mailbox is Becky. Sounds like a little girl to me. Especially since we know the mother’s name is Marla Something-or-the-other.”
“It’s Marla Gossett. Remember, I told you about her? Said it would be a good idea for you to get acquainted with that new woman,” Elmer said as he looked up at Les. “Didn’t I say that just the other day?”
Les grunted. “You didn’t say anything. What you did was break the law by calling in a false fire alarm. That was a crazy stunt. And just to get me over to the hardware store while Mrs. Gossett was there.”
“Well, it would have worked if you’d stayed around to talk. She’s a nice lady. Charley and I both knew you wouldn’t come over if we just said there was an eligible woman we wanted you to meet. When have you ever agreed to do something like that?”
“I have a ranch to run. I can’t be running around meeting people all the time.”
“Wouldn’t hurt you to stop work for a night or two and actually go out on a date,” Elmer muttered. “It’s not like you’re busy with harvest season.”
Les had never known the two old men could be so manipulative. They definitely needed a new checkerboard. And a steak or two to get their blood going.
Les looked directly at Charley and Elmer. “The two of you didn’t take that shepherd, did you? Just to give me a reason to talk some more with this Mrs. Gossett?”
The stunned expressions on the faces of the two men were almost comical.
“What would give you that idea?” Elmer demanded.
Les just grunted. He wondered if XIX was part of the telephone number for a dating service.
Charley grinned a little. “Well, this isn’t like that. We don’t have anything to do with the shepherd being gone.”
Les felt a headache coming on. “Maybe it is the new people, then. I’ll have to go and talk to them.”
“Oh, no, you don’t. You can’t go over there and accuse the Gossetts of taking something,” Mrs. Hargrove protested with an indrawn breath. “They’re new here. We’re supposed to make newcomers feel welcome.”
“They’re not welcome if they’re going to break the law.”
“But it’s only a plastic shepherd,” Linda said as she looked up from the chair she was sitting in. “You said yourself, it’s not like it’s a kidnapping.”
“It’s only a small crime,” Charley added with a glance at Mrs. Hargrove. “The women’s group didn’t even pay real money for it. Just all those soup labels. Hardly counts as a crime, now that I think on it.”
That was easily the third time Charley had looked to Mrs. Hargrove for approval in the past ten minutes, and Les knew what that meant. Not only was the sheriff married and off to Maui, but it looked as if Charley was sweet on Mrs. Hargrove. What else would make a man stop speaking his mind until he made sure a particular woman held the same opinion? No, Charley had either turned in his independence or he owed Mrs. Hargrove more money than he could repay.
Les sighed. He didn’t know which would be worse. A debt beyond a man’s means or one-sided love. Both of them turned a man’s spine to mush. It had certainly done that to Charley. One look from Mrs. Hargrove and Charley would probably vote to send that plastic shepherd to the moon on taxpayer money. And Charley was a Republican who didn’t believe in spending a dime on anything. Nothing should change a man like that. It just wasn’t right. Besides, Mrs. Hargrove looked as if she didn’t even know Charley was twisting himself in knots trying to win her approval.
Elmer was the only one who looked as if he was holding on to his common sense.
That was another thing Sheriff Carl Wall had warned Les about. The people of Dry Creek couldn’t always be relied upon to see things in an objective manner. For one thing, many of them couldn’t bear to see anyone punished. That’s why it was so important that the law stood firm. It was for everyone’s protection.
“Today it’s a plastic shepherd. Tomorrow who knows what it will be,” Les said. “We have to stop crime where it starts.”
Elmer nodded. “That’s right. The law needs to have teeth to it. If the women’s group hadn’t collected all those soup labels, that Nativity set would have cost five hundred dollars. Who around here has five hundred dollars to throw away?”
There was a moment’s silence. Five hundred dollars went a long way in a place like Dry Creek.
“Well, at least take some doughnuts with you if you’re going to go over to that house this early in the morning,” Linda said as she stepped over to the counter and took the lid off the glass-domed tray that held the doughnuts.
“And be sure and invite the children to Sunday school,” Mrs. Hargrove added. She seemed resigned to the fact that someone needed to ask the hard questions. “I’ve been meaning to go over there with an invitation myself. It just always seems to be snowing every time I think of it, and you know how slippery the streets are when that happens.”
“This is a criminal investigation. I’m not going to invite anyone to Sunday school.”
Mrs. Hargrove looked at him. “It’s the best place for someone to be if they’ve been stealing. I noticed you weren’t in church yourself last Sunday.”
“One of my horses threw a shoe and I needed to fix it. You know I’m always there if I can be.” Les had come to faith when he was a boy and he lived his commitment. Quietly, of course, but he figured God knew how he felt about public displays of emotion. And even if he didn’t dance around and shout hallelujah from the rooftops, he was steady in his faith.
“We miss you in the choir.”
“I haven’t sung in the choir since I was sixteen.”
Mrs. Hargrove nodded. “You still have that voice, though. It’s deeper now, but it’s just as good. It’s a sin to waste a voice like that.”
Les had quit the choir when people started to pay too much attention to his singing.
“The Bible doesn’t say a man needs to be in the choir.” Or perform in any other public way, Les added to himself. “It’s okay to be a quiet man.”
“I know. And you’re a good man, Lester Wilkerson. Quiet or not.”
He winced. “Make that Les. Lester sounds like my father.”
The church had been a home for Les from the day he decided to accept a neighbor’s invitation to attend. It was the one place his parents never went, and Les felt he could be himself there.
“I don’t know why you never liked the name Lester,” Mrs. Hargrove continued. “It’s a good old-fashioned name. It’s not biblical, of course, but it’s been the name of many good men over the years.”
“I like Les better. Les Wilkerson.”
How did he tell someone like Mrs. Hargrove that he had loved his parents, but he had never respected them? He had never wanted to be his father’s son, so he saw no reason to take his first name as well as his last.
Les was a better name for a rancher than Lester, anyway, he thought. He’d changed his name shortly after he’d signed the deed for his place. He had been twenty years old, and that deed had marked his independence from his parents. The name Les helped him begin a new life.
Linda handed him a white bag filled with doughnuts. “I put in some extra jelly ones. Kids always like the jelly ones.”
“I wonder if that XIX on the note is the edition number on that bake set,” Charley said.
“Maybe it’s a clue,” Elmer offered. “Is there something that is ten, one and then ten?”
“An X sometimes stands for a kiss,” Linda said. “You know when people sign their letters XOXO—kisses and hugs.”
“I doubt anyone was thinking of kisses.” Les figured he didn’t have all morning to guess what the numbers meant. Not when he had people to question.
“You might ask the woman to come have dinner with you some night here,” Mrs. Hargrove said as Les started to walk to the door. “Just to be sociable. Sort of show her around town.”
“Nobody needs a map to get around this town. There’s only the one street.”
Ever since Charley and Mrs. Hargrove had managed to match up their two children, they had been itching to try their new matchmaking skills on someone else. Well, it wasn’t going to be him.
Les would find his own wife when he wanted one and he would do it when no one was watching. He might even have gotten around to asking the new woman out eventually if people had left him alone. She seemed quiet and he liked that. Her brown hair was a very ordinary color. No streaks of auburn. No beauty-parlor waves. It was just always plain and neatly combed when he saw her. She didn’t even wear those dangling earrings that always made him feel a woman was prone to changing her opinions from one minute to the next. All in all, he believed, she would be predictable and that was good. Les didn’t want an unpredictable wife.
Yes, Marla Gossett might very well have suited him.
Now, of course, he couldn’t ask her out. It would be pointless; she’d never accept. Not when he was going to be knocking at her door in a couple of minutes to ask if her daughter was a thief. Only a fool would ask for a date after that, and one thing Les prided himself on was never being a fool.
It was a pity, though. These days Les didn’t meet that many quiet women who looked as if they’d make sensible wives. He’d noticed when he saw her in the hardware store that she was a sensible dresser, right down to the shoes she wore. Because of his father, he paid particular attention to a woman’s shoes. They told a man a great deal. Still, everything about Mrs. Gossett had seemed practical that day, from her washable cardigan to her well-worn knit pants.
Most men liked a lot of flash in their women. But Les figured the quieter the better. He never really trusted a woman with flash.
Les wondered, just for a moment, if it would be worthwhile to let Mrs. Gossett know he was single, just in case she ever started to wonder about him the way he was wondering about her.
Then he shook his head. He didn’t want to chase after an impossible dream. He didn’t even know Mrs. Gossett and she didn’t know him. What he did know were the reasons he wasn’t likely to get to know her. He had to just let the thought go.
Chapter Three
Marla moved the hanging blanket slightly so she could look out the window of her new living room. The sun would be coming up any minute, but the small town of Dry Creek was still dark and quiet. Snow had fallen during the night and there was just enough light in the small circle from the one street lamp to see that there were no fresh tire tracks on the road going through town.
That didn’t mean she could relax and remove the blankets, though. Down the street there was a glow in the window of the café and she could see several figures through the big window. People had obviously come into town from the other direction and any one of them could decide at any minute to drive down the road toward her. If they did, they would soon be able to see inside her front window if she moved the blanket, and she didn’t want anyone to look into her place until she was ready.
The words of her neighbor back in Los Angeles were never far from her mind.
Marla had cleaned her windows with vinegar yesterday and she could still smell the cleaning solution as it mingled with the scent of the mothballs from the blanket. The panes in the windows rattled because the putty was all worn away, but at least they were finally clean.
Today Marla planned to wash the walls. The paint was peeling away and she’d feel better if she knew the walls were brushed down and ready to go when she could afford to buy paint.
In a strange way, she was grateful for the necessity of scrubbing this old house. If it had been less filthy when she arrived here with her children, she might still be brooding over the change she’d made. She’d been nervous the whole trip up here, but now the peeling paint and thick dust called her to action and she had no time to fret.
She had not given any thought to the house until she arrived. If she had not been desperate, she would have turned around and driven away after she first looked inside the door. The house was set back from the street a little and there was a nice white picket fence around it. That part was how her husband had described the house to her. Marla had been okay with the idea of that white picket fence, but nothing Jorge had said had prepared her for the inside of the house.
Of course, her husband’s memories of the house had been from thirty years ago. Jorge wouldn’t have recognized the house today, either. Even in their cheap apartment in Los Angeles, the paint had managed to stay on the walls.
Marla didn’t want anyone from this small town to look past the fence and into her windows until she was ready. There wasn’t much inside her house and, what was there was shabby. On the long drive up, she’d promised herself she would make a proper life for her children in Dry Creek, and she didn’t want her relationship with the town to start off with the people here pitying them.
Somewhere around Utah, she’d realized that the ethnic difference was only part of what she needed to worry about. After all, her parents had raised her to be more Anglo than Hispanic, anyway. They’d even given her an Anglo name. She and the children might be able to fit in that way eventually. The fact that they were also poor was another problem. She knew that from the welfare days of her childhood. A lack of money would be harder to hide than anything.
Marla planned to get the house in shape before she did more than say a quiet hello to anyone. She didn’t want her children to feel shame for either their heritage or their lack of possessions. First impressions were important.
That’s one reason she had hung the plain khaki-colored blankets over the windows and left the Mexican striped blankets as coverings for the sleeping bags.
Maybe if Sammy had had neighbors who expected good things from him back in Los Angeles, he wouldn’t have been drawn to the 19th Street gang. Of course, the neighbors were only part of it. She knew she hadn’t given him what he needed, either. She had been so preoccupied with taking care of Jorge that she hadn’t paid enough attention to Sammy.
It was Sammy who most needed a new start.
Marla took a deep breath of the cool winter air. Despite the fact that the air was tinged with the scent of vinegar and mothballs, it still smelled clean and fresh when she compared it to what she’d breathed down south.
Dry Creek promised a new life for all of them and Marla intended it to go well. Even though she’d had car problems on the way up and hadn’t had much money left after she’d paid for the repairs, she was determined she and her children were not going to be charity cases. Charity was never free; one always paid the price by enduring the giver’s pity. She didn’t want that.
She wanted her children to feel proud of who they were.
Besides, they didn’t need charity. Any day Marla expected to get a check in the mail refunding the deposit on their apartment. Her rental agreement gave the landlord twenty days to refund the money and he’d probably take all that time. Once she had that check, she would have enough money to buy paint for the walls and a good used sofa. And that was after she put aside enough money to support her family for a few months while she looked for a job. She knew she needed to spend some time with her children before she started a new job, though. Too much had happened too fast in the past year for all of them. They needed time to be together.
At first Marla had worried that she would not have enough money to support her and the children for those few months. It seemed as if the cost of heating the house would take what little money she had, but then she had discovered that the fireplace in the living room worked and that there was a seven-foot-high woodpile half-hidden in the trees behind the house.
At last, something was going her way.
It looked as if, during the years when the house had stood empty, the trees had grown up around the towering stack of log chunks back there. She hadn’t paid any attention to the stack until the children told her about it one day and she had gone out to look it over. The pile had good-sized logs meant for long winter fires. If need be, on the coldest nights, she and the children could camp in front of the fireplace to sleep.
At least heat was one thing that wouldn’t require money for now.
Which was a good thing, because the refund check was going to total only around a thousand dollars. There wouldn’t be much money left for extras. Christmas this year would be lean. She’d explained the situation to Sammy and Becky and they seemed to understand. Wall paint and a used sofa might not look like exciting Christmas presents, but it would make their house more of a home. She was letting each child pick out the color of the paint for their bedroom and she was hoping that would be enough of a Christmas present.
Besides, they could make some simple gifts for each other this year. That could be fun for all of them. And she’d make the sweet pork tamales that were the children’s favorite. It was her mother’s special recipe and that, along with the traditional lighted luminaries, always meant Christmas to Marla.
Marla had brought dozens of corn husks, dried peppers and bags of the cornmeal-like masa with her when she moved to Montana. She remembered the words of the neighbor who had bought her lamp and she didn’t want to take any chances. Christmas without tamales was unthinkable, and not just because of the children.
By the time Christmas was here, she hoped to be able to take the blankets off the front windows of her house and welcome any visitors inside. By then, she might even be comfortable offering visitors a tamale and explaining that she and the children had a Hispanic heritage.
Marla saw movement and stopped daydreaming about the future. The door of the café had opened and a man had stepped out. She had recognized the pickup parked next to the café when she first looked out the window, and so she figured the man standing on the café porch was Reserve Deputy Sheriff Les Wilkerson. He was probably getting ready to patrol through Dry Creek and had stopped at the café for coffee. Marla had seen the deputy walk down the street of Dry Creek every morning since she’d moved here and it made her nervous.
She hadn’t heard of any criminal activity around, but she kept the children close to the house just in case. She’d called the school when they’d first arrived in Dry Creek and they had agreed, since it had been almost time for the holiday break, that Sammy could start his classes after Christmas. Becky was even more flexible. When she’d first noticed the sheriff patrolling the town, Marla had been glad she’d arranged to have Sammy close by for a few weeks, but maybe if the children were in school she’d at least know more about what was going on.
There must be something happening if a lawman was doing foot patrol. In Los Angeles that happened only in high crime areas. She hadn’t heard any gunshots at night, so she doubted robberies were the problem. The deputy must be worried about drugs.
Marla had briefly met the man last Friday when she was at the hardware store looking for paint, and she had wanted to ask him about any local drug problems. But he had stayed only long enough to scowl at everyone and do something with an ashtray.
The two older men sitting beside the woodstove talked about Les after he left. They made it sound as if he was somebody special. She supposed the older men wanted to reassure her that her children were safe here in Dry Creek with a lawman around, but, truth be told, the reserve deputy didn’t make her feel better about the isolation of the small town.
She was used to lawmen, even reserve volunteer lawmen, who had a certain amount of swagger to them. Les didn’t strut around at all. He looked strong enough, but he wasn’t exactly brawling material. Not only that, he didn’t even carry a gun.
She doubted there were any lawmen in Los Angeles who didn’t carry a gun. There were certainly none the few times she’d visited her aunts and uncles in Mexico. Marla supposed Les would have to talk a criminal down, but when she’d been introduced to him, he hadn’t seemed to be much of a talker. He’d only nodded and mumbled hello to her that day. He was even quieter than she was, and she was perfectly able to carry on a conversation. She’d do fine with talking when she had her house ready for visiting.
Of course, no one else seemed to be worried about Les’s lack of conversational skills, and they knew the town and him much better than she did. Maybe he was one of those people who shone in emergency situations, but who didn’t appear to be of much use at other times.
Les wasn’t even wearing a uniform that day. He’d had cowboy boots on his feet and a plaid flannel shirt on his back. The only thing that had marked him as a reserve deputy sheriff was a vest and, from what the other men said, he didn’t even always wear that. Of course, everyone must just know he was the lawman on duty; it was such a small town.
Marla watched Les step off the café porch and start walking down the street. He must be making his usual morning patrol. Fortunately, the sun was starting to lighten up the day, so he might even be able to see while he did it.
Les felt the snow crunch beneath his boots as he moved down the one street in Dry Creek. Usually he thought it was an advantage to have only one street in town. Today, though, he would have liked a million other directions to turn.
He stopped when he got to the church. The Nativity set was still all lit up even though the sun was beginning to rise. The wise men stood to one side with their hands overflowing with gold baubles. The blond angel was hanging from a wire attached to the rain gutters of the church. Les took a minute to look closely at the rain gutters and note that whoever had written the note was right. Someone did need to add another wire or the angel would eventually fall.
Les looked back at the wise men and wondered why one of them hadn’t been taken instead of the lone shepherd. They certainly looked more exciting than the missing figure. Everyone he knew, except himself, would pick flash over something drab any day. Strangely, it didn’t make him feel any easier in his mind about the theft.
When he could delay no longer, Les walked farther down the street and then started up the path to the Gossett house. Until Marla and her children moved to town, the house had been closed up. Old man Gossett had spent some time in prison before he died and no one had taken care of the house. Someone had enough civic pride to paint part of the picket fence that faced the street so the property looked somewhat cared for if an outsider happened to look at it on a casual drive through town. None of the people in Dry Creek liked to see the town buildings look neglected and Les couldn’t blame them.
As he walked up the path, Les saw how the weather had started to flake the white paint off the house until there were large sections of exposed gray boards. Even the snowdrifts couldn’t disguise the fact that the yard had gone to seed. Only the pine trees in the back of the house had flourished, growing together in thick clumps of muted green.
Les was halfway up the walk when someone turned off the light inside the house. For the first time, Les thought maybe the little girl really had stolen the shepherd. What else but guilt would make someone turn off the lights when a visitor was coming to the door? Usually people turned a light on when someone was walking toward their house.
When Les stepped on the porch, the door opened a crack. It was just enough for Les to see a small portion of a woman’s face. There was one brown eye and a hand holding the side of the door. The hand covered up most of what face would have shown in the crack. The room behind the face was in darkness. Les wouldn’t have recognized the woman even though he had met her that day in the hardware store.
“Mrs. Gossett?”
The woman nodded.
Les wished she would open the door wider. Regardless of what he’d told himself, he was looking forward to seeing more of the woman’s face. He hadn’t taken a very good look at her the other day in the hardware store and he’d like to see her better. There was no particular reason to ask her to open the door wider, though. Especially because it was cold out and she was probably just keeping her heat inside like any wise Montana housewife would do.
“I brought something to eat,” Les said as he held up the white bag. “For the kids. And you, of course.”
He had a feeling he could express himself a lot better if the woman didn’t keep eyeing him as if she was going to slam the door in his face any minute now.
At his words, her face stiffened even more. “We have enough to eat. You don’t need to worry about us.”
Les had coaxed frightened kittens out of their hiding places many times and he reminded himself that patience usually won out over fear.
“It’s only a few doughnuts,” Les forced his voice to be softer. “Linda, at the café, thought the kids might like them.”
The woman’s face relaxed some. “Well, I guess doughnuts are different.”
The woman opened the door and Les gave her the bag. He waited a minute in hopes she was going to ask him inside. It would be easier to talk to her if she was relaxed and not looking at him through the crack in the door. But once she took the bag, she closed the door so it was back in its original position.
“Please tell the woman—Linda—thank you for us. We haven’t had a chance to get over to the café yet, but it’s a very nice gesture.”
Les was afraid the woman was going to think he had just come by to bring her the doughnuts, so he said his piece. “I’m doing a search of houses. We’ve had some property stolen from the church.”
The woman frowned. “We don’t go to church.”
The woman turned a little as if she heard something inside the house.
“You don’t need to go to church to take something.”
The woman snapped back to look at him. “Are you accusing me of stealing? From a church?”
“No, ma’am.” Les ran his finger around his shirt collar. “It’s just that I did think that maybe your daughter—well, do you know where your daughter was last night?”
The woman turned again to look inside the house.
Les figured it was one of the children who had been distracting the woman, so he wasn’t surprised when he heard her whisper to someone. “Just be patient. Mommy will be right there.”
The woman turned back to look at Les. In all of the turning, the door had opened a little farther. “Becky was here with me last night.”
The woman was wearing an old beige robe that was zipped up to her neck and she didn’t have any makeup on her face. She had strong bones, Les noticed. And a weariness to her that made him think she’d come through a long patch of hard times. He couldn’t let his sudden sympathy for her change what he needed to do, though.
“Was your daughter with you for the entire night?” Les could see into the rest of the large room behind the woman. The windows were all covered so the room was in shadows, but he could make out most of it. Not that there was much to see. Except for a wooden sitting chair, there was nothing there. Maybe the family’s furniture was still coming on a moving truck.
“Of course, all night. Where else would she be?” The woman was looking straight at him now. “I don’t even know why you’re asking me these questions. You came straight to my door. I saw you. You’re not asking everybody. Just because we don’t have blond hair and blue eyes like everyone else around here, it doesn’t mean we stole something.”
“No, of course not.” Les was bewildered. Did everyone around here have blond hair? He hadn’t noticed. Still, he’d come to do a job and he might as well get it done. “I’m talking to people because someone stole one of the Nativity figures from the set in front of the church.”
“That has nothing to do with us.”
Les nodded. “I just wondered, because whoever took the figure wanted to trade it back to the church for a Suzy bake set.”
A little girl’s squeal came from behind the door. Les couldn’t see the girl, but he could hear her as she said, “A Suzy bake set! The one with the cupcakes?”
“No, dear, I don’t think so,” the woman said with her face turned to the inside of the room.
Why was it that the line of a woman’s neck, when she turned to look over her shoulder, always reminded him of a ballet dancer? Les asked himself. Marla—well, Mrs. Gossett—had a beautiful neck.
The woman turned back to look at Les. She even gave him a small smile, which made the knot in his stomach relax. No one who was guilty would smile. But then, maybe the mother didn’t know what the daughter had done.
