Angel Fire, Valmore Daniels [rosie project txt] 📗

“I didn’t see you there.”

“Excuse me, Martin. I may not know much about the law, but I do know about lines.”

“Lines?” The sheriff shifted his eyes to me and then back to my uncle.

Uncle Edward growled. “Yeah, like the one you’re crossing right now.”

“Oh,” the sheriff stammered. “I think you’ve got the wrong idea.”

“Do I?” Uncle Edward asked in a drawl.

In an attempt to maintain his dignity, Sheriff Burke inhaled deeply and affected an affable smile. “Of course! I just stopped by to check in with your niece. It’s my job, you know.”

“I know why you stopped by. Does it make you feel like a big man to push around a girl?”

“Now, listen here!” Sheriff Burke protested.

“If you want to blame someone for not following every letter of your law, then you go ahead and blame me.”

The sheriff looked like he was about to speak, but Uncle Edward put up a hand.

“I kept Darcy too busy the last couple of days working the motel. But I’ll personally make sure we stop by the station later today to fill out your precious little forms. How does that sound?”

There was a history between the two men that stretched back a lot further than when Sheriff Burke was my father-in-law. I had never gotten the whole story, and anytime I fished for a hint from my mother why the two bristled whenever they were in sight of one another, I was shushed and shooed away like a bothersome fly.

As if sensing that to continue pressing his point was not going to result in any positive outcome, Sheriff Burke backed down. “Well, just see that you do. I’ll be waiting.”

“Fine. You’d best be moving on, now.” Uncle Edward folded his arms over his chest.

Indignant, Sheriff Burke pointed a finger at me. “Thin ice.”

With a last glare at Uncle Edward, the sheriff turned on his heel and retreated to his squad car. He peeled out of the parking lot, sending up a shower of gravel behind him.

When the dust finally settled, Uncle Edward was still watching the road. “God-damned bully. Never could stomach the little weasel. Especially when he was family.”

“Uncle Edward, thank you.” There was sincerity in my voice, and that shocked me. I had long since come to the conclusion that the only person I could ever count on in this life was myself. Now, though, someone had stood up for me. It was incredibly comforting to know that, when push came to shove, there was someone at your back.

Uncle Edward growled deep in his throat. “Thank me for what? I can’t have some busybody just come around here whenever they want and disrupt my employees. So just you never mind about it.”

He took two steps away in a huff, but then paused. “I heard the last part of what Martin said. Barry and his friends showed up last night, did they?”

“I can handle Barry,” I said, and I meant it.

“Maybe you can, but you don’t have to handle him by yourself. If he comes ’round again, you give me a holler and I’ll put a load of buckshot in that fat ass of his.”

With that, Uncle Edward stalked off, and when I called out another thank you after him, his only acknowledgement was a slight tilting of his head.

I watched him disappear into the main office without once looking back at me.

Definitely, a tough nut to crack.

 

Chapter Nine

I slinked into the Finer Diner, trying to make myself as inconspicuous as I could, and gasped. I would have turned and run right then, except someone else was entering right behind me and blocked my way.

The place was packed. Indistinguishable table talk, shouted orders from the servers to the cooks, the clanking of dishes, the sizzling of food on hot grills, and the cash register ringing all combined in a loud symphony of noise I had not expected.

I took a step forward to allow the couple behind me inside, and then tried to make good my escape.

A sharp voice pierced the babble.

Standing in the aisle a few tables down, a slender woman my age with jet black hair cut in a bob and dressed impeccably in a pantsuit pointed a well-manicured finger at me.

Everyone in the diner stopped their conversations and turned in my direction as Beth Longson hollered at me.

“Darcy Anderson, you unbelievable bitch!”

* * *

After the fire that killed my parents, Middleton had become a media circus for a while. The story even made the national news. ‘Local woman kills parents in fiery blaze while they sleep.’ Reporters from both Flagstaff and Phoenix swarmed into our small town, interviewing locals and business owners to get their take on what happened.

‘Mentally unstable’, ‘pyromaniac’, ‘murderess’.

I’d been pretty much called them all. Speculation on why I had done it ran to all extremes: greed, wanting to collect insurance money; revenge for abuse; sociopathic tendencies finally manifesting. The list was endless.

For a time, the accusations, the persecutions in the court of the media, and the threats, both veiled and spoken, from people I had grown up with, overshadowed the real horror. My parents were dead and it was my fault.

It was an accident; I knew it deep in my heart, but it was of little consolation. Like a motorist who takes their eyes off the road for a split second and runs over their own child riding a bike, or a construction worker on a high rise who slips and knocks a brick a hundred feet down on a colleague and long-time friend, crushing their skull; how can the knowledge that it wasn’t intentional, that it was an accident, ever make up for the fact that those people are still dead by their hands?

In my case, no one believed it was an accident. It could have been the bad choices I made in my late teens. It could have been disbelief that there was no meaning in that horrific event. Or it could have been the overexposure of the news hounds looking for a hot topic that week—if you hear a story enough times, you might start to think there is truth in it. After all, where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

Whatever their reasons, or lack of reasons, the folks of Middleton did not show me very much kindness after the accident, nor throughout the trial, both in public and in court.

During my incarceration, I never received a word of encouragement or support from anyone in Middleton—other than my aunt and one other person: my best friend growing up, Beth Longson.

I don’t know why I’d avoided telling her I was out and home again. Middleton was a small town and big news travelled fast. I was certain by now everyone knew I was back and working at the Lazy Z. Maybe it was just that gut fight-or-flight instinct everyone had, those butterflies you got just before going up on stage at a school play, or delaying when you had to deliver bad news. It’s not that I didn’t want to contact Beth, because I could have really used a friend, but there was always that nagging feeling at the back of my mind that, despite her assurances to the contrary, she didn’t completely believe me either. My uncle was right: my argument for my innocence was not very convincing.

Not only had I been avoiding calling Beth or dropping by, but I had also avoided going anywhere but the Lazy Z.

Five days of virtual solitude, however, and I had grown tired of microwave lunches, and felt guilty for sponging dinners off Aunt Martha. It was past time to go out in the world, and my first stop was to get a hamburger at the Finer Diner. I had hoped to get in and get out without being noticed. Wishful thinking, I know.

The last person I expected to see was Beth.

* * *

For a moment, I was completely shocked into immobility. The sudden attention from dozens of sets of eyes unnerved me.

Beth was oblivious to the spectacle she had made of me, and her mouth broke out into a wide smile as she ran up and threw her arms around me.

“You evil woman! Why didn’t you tell me you were home?”

“Uh,” I answered, more than a little self-conscious from the sudden attention. Looking around, I saw most of the diners resuming their lunches and individual conversations as they realized there wasn’t going to be any drama. There were a few lingering looks as people struggled to recognize me, and I’m sure I heard a few people whisper my name.

I forced a smile back at Beth. “Well, I didn’t want anyone to make a fuss. I guess I just wanted to try and blend in somehow.”

Beth clucked her tongue. “Is that any way to treat your best friend? Here, come sit with us.”

“Us?”

She led me back to her table. Her husband, John, was shaking a rattle to amuse their baby. In a car seat on the table, the infant gurgled with delight. John puffed out his cheeks and then blew a raspberry at his son, who squealed with pleasure.

Beth flicked her hand at him as if shooing away a fly. “John, push over, let me in.”

John glanced up. Both his cheeks and the top of his balding head were flushed with the effort of entertaining the baby. “Oh, hey, Darcy! The guys down at the office said you were back. Why didn’t you come by and say hello?”

Beth slapped him on the shoulder, and he reacted as if it really hurt, but the look of agony on his face was clearly for dramatic effect.

Shaking her head, Beth admonished, “Don’t be so damned rude!”

“It’s all right,” I said as I slid into the booth opposite the two. “So this is John Jr.?”

I tried to pull a funny face for the baby, who didn’t know how to react to a stranger suddenly mugging in front of him, and seemed on the verge of throwing a fit.

Beth quickly shoved a bottle in his mouth. “Six months old. He’s finally sleeping through the night, thank God.”

“He’s a darling.”

A waitress I didn’t recognize stepped up beside us. “Can I get you anything, hun?”

Beth spoke up. “Anything she wants, and put it on our bill.”

I shook my head. “Oh, Beth, you don’t have to—”

“Don’t be stupid, Darcy. It’s the least we can do, after you cheated me out of throwing you a welcome home party.”

“Well, if you insist.” I smiled. To the waitress, I said, “I’ll have a Burger Blaster and fries. And a coffee, please.”

She jotted down the information and retreated to the kitchen to place my order.

“Thank you,” I called after her

Beth made an indelicate snorting sound. “Blaster Burger, huh? Already tempting fate? That beast has been blamed for more than one coronary in town.”

“I need the taste of civilization, even if it kills me.”

John grunted. “Anything beats prison food, I guess.”

Beth whacked him on the shoulder again. “Jerk!”

“What?” John protested innocently as Beth rolled her eyes.

Watching the two of them banter like that made me smile. At the same time, I felt a pang of envy. During my brief marriage to Barry, I can’t remember a single time there had ever been any playful fighting. It had always been very real.

By the time my burger showed up, Beth had almost completely caught me up on town gossip; who was dating who, who was cheating on who, who was new—all the juicy stuff. I was thankful she never prodded into any details of my time in prison. I had always been sparse in my phone