Читать книгу The Cowboy's Secret Son - Gayle Wilson - Страница 13

CHAPTER FOUR

“PE-EW,” Ronnie Cameron said, wrinkling his nose in disgust and drawing the sound out. He hurriedly closed the black garbage bag, pulling the plastic strings tight.

A little late for that, Jillian thought.

“What in the world is in there?” the sheriff asked, carefully laying the bag back on the floor of the front porch.

“It seems to be roadkill,” Jillian said. “Aged roadkill from the smell. Armadillos and a few less recognizable victims.”

Her voice was very quiet. Anyone who knew her well could have told the sheriff that she was exerting enormous self-control. Which she was. Now that it was daylight, her fear had been replaced by anger, and much of it was self-directed because she had let herself be so terrified.

“You’re saying somebody dumped this on the porch and then kicked in your door?”

“The door was open when I got up to investigate,” she clarified. “I’m not sure it was kicked in. I would think there would be some damage if it had been. But it was open.”

“You see who it was?”

“I saw a shape. Nothing else. Certainly not enough to make an identification.”

She didn’t confess that she had been too frightened last night to realize that if she’d turned on the outside lights and opened the door, she might have been able to do exactly that—make an identification. Instead, she had turned the lock and sagged against the door, trembling all over. It wasn’t until the running footsteps outside faded into the distance that she’d even thought about opening it again and looking out.

“I plain don’t know what to tell you,” the sheriff said, shaking his head and looking down again on the foul-smelling bag in disbelief. “I haven’t seen anything like this since I’ve been in office. Never heard of anything like it since grammar school.”

“So who was responsible for this kind of thing back then?” Jillian asked, the edge still in her voice.

“I didn’t mean that literally. It’s just that this business seems so…juvenile.”

That was the perfect word, Jillian thought. Juvenile.

“Any idea why somebody would do this?” Ronnie asked.

“That’s why I called you,” she said. “Because I don’t have any idea. I thought maybe you did. I was also hoping you could get fingerprints off the bag or something.”

“That’s not likely. I can guarantee you that whoever put this together was wearing gloves. And not just because everybody who’s going to commit a crime nowadays knows enough from television to do that, but for sanitary reasons. Trust me, nobody would handle the stuff that’s in there with their bare hands.”

He was probably right, Jillian acknowledged bitterly. She had known that finding usable fingerprints would be a long shot.

“Not much of a welcome home, I guess,” Ronnie said.

“You think that was the message this was supposed to convey? That I’m not welcome?”

“A lot of folks don’t remember your family any too kindly.”

“What exactly does that mean?”

“When your daddy ran off, he left a lot of people holding the bag.” He glanced down at the sack at his feet.

Involuntarily Jillian’s gaze followed his. She wondered if he had meant to suggest there was some connection between that metaphoric “bag” and this.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“He left here owing a lot of people money.”

Reluctantly, Jillian dredged up the memories of that time. She had thought her life was ruined because she had been forced to leave Mark. And her father had forbidden her to even speak his name. Just as he had forbidden her to write or call him.

She had, of course. None of the things her father had threatened her with could have kept her from doing that, especially not after she had discovered she was pregnant.

“My dad left here owing people money?”

The sheriff studied her closely a moment before shifting his attention to the vista that spread in front of them.

“Your old man and Bo Peterson had taken out loans with just about everybody within a hundred miles. By the end, they didn’t own a cow or a teacup that wasn’t hocked or mortgaged.”

“Are you saying my dad took out a mortgage on his ranch?”

That didn’t sound like her father.

“A couple of them, or so I heard. Course, you could hear just about anything around here after your family run off in the middle of the night. Believe me, there were a lot of explanations offered for that.”

“He had lost the ranch,” she said softly.

It was only now that she realized that this loss, and not her relationship with Mark, was the reason her entire life had changed in the course of one night.

“They both did. Lost everything. Bo held on a little while longer, but even when your place was sold at auction, it didn’t bring in enough to pay off both mortgages and the rest of the loans. That’s when they foreclosed on the Peterson ranch.”

“The Petersons lost their land, as well?”

“Bo never got over it. It killed him in the end.”

“I thought Mark was still living there.”

“Not in years. He was in the service for a while. Just came back here a couple of months ago. He’s working for the people who own his daddy’s ranch now.”

That must have been a bitter pill to swallow for someone with as much pride as Mark had always had. Jillian wondered why he had come home at all. But of course, so had she.

“Bo and my dad signed loans together?” she repeated, trying to make sure she understood what Ronnie was saying. “For what?”

This wasn’t something she had heard before. And frankly, it didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Why would her dad and Mark’s father have taken out joint loans?

Ronnie shook his head. “Nobody knew. Maybe they were going in together on some kind of hybrid. Bo was always talking about finding the perfect breed for raising beef cattle up here.”

“So they borrowed this money, and then my father leaves. He ran out on the loans he’d signed. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Peterson was pretty steamed. Musta come as a shock.”

It had come as a shock to her, too. There had been no warning. Her father had simply awakened her in the middle of the night and demanded she get dressed. Her mother was already in Jillian’s bedroom, folding her clothes and putting them into a suitcase.

She had always believed that her dad had discovered what was going on between her and Mark. Although he hadn’t said that the night they’d left, he had had plenty to say when he’d found out she was carrying Mark’s baby. Now the sheriff was implying there might have been another explanation for that midnight exodus.

“You think whoever put this here,” she asked, touching the bag with her shoe, “is angry because my father owed him money?”

“It’s a possibility. You think of any other reason somebody would want to harass you?”

“Is that what you call this? Harassing me?”

“I figured that’s what you’d call it,” Ronnie said with a grin. “What I’d call it is a sack full of dead varmints. You want me to get rid of ‘em for you?”

Jillian hesitated, not wanting to be in Ronnie Cameron’s debt. And that sounded like something her father might have said, she realized. He never wanted to be beholden to anyone. Which made the story the sheriff had just told her even more bizarre.

“I’d really appreciate that, Ronnie. If you don’t mind,” she said. The tone of her agreement sounded grudging and ungracious, despite its surface politeness. “What about my door? You think it’s possible someone has a key to the house?”

“Anything’s possible, I suppose. You just bought the place. You have the locks changed?”

“I never even thought about it. Not out here.”

She would have in the city, of course. She had foolishly thought that because her family had never had to worry about crime while she was growing up, she wouldn’t have to, either.

“You can do that,” Ronnie said. “Or you can just get yourself a dead bolt. A big one.”

The sheriff picked up the garbage bag, holding it gingerly. He walked down the steps and over to the patrol car he’d parked in the yard. When he reached it, he opened the trunk and dropped the sack inside, closing it quickly. Then, still standing behind the car, he looked back at her.

“Maybe this has nothing to do with that money. But it looks to me like somebody isn’t too happy you’ve come back. You know how folks are around here. Memories are long, and grudges are held even longer. But one thing’s for sure, whoever did this was trying to get your goat. If I were you, I wouldn’t make too much of it. At least not in public. Don’t give them the satisfaction of knowing they’ve succeeded in making you nervous. Or they might try it again.”

She nodded, realizing he was probably right. But it made her furious not to have any recourse. Ronnie touched the brim of his hat and walked around to open the door of the cruiser. He settled into the seat, again making that brief radio report before he turned the car around and drove down her road.

Despite yesterday’s rain, she could track his progress for quite a way by the plume of dust that followed the cruiser. She stood on the porch and watched it for a long time, maybe because she wasn’t sure what she should do next.

One thing she was sure of was that this stunt wasn’t going to make her do what her father had done. If they expected her to leave in the middle of the night, they had better think again.

As she stood there, she realized that the aroma from the sack still permeated the air. She’d put some disinfectant in a bucket of water and mop the porch, even though the contents of the bag hadn’t touched the wooden boards.

With that thought, she acknowledged that this all could have been much worse. Those poor, long-dead creatures could have been dumped on the porch itself. Or even inside the house, which would have been a real pain in the neck.

That hadn’t happened. Apparently, somebody wasn’t thrilled there was a Salvini living here again, but as pranks went, this one was relatively minor. She could only hope that whoever had done it had gotten whatever animosity that had precipitated it out of his system.

* * *

“MOM,” Drew whispered, tugging on her elbow.

“What?” she said absently, trying to decide between the only two brands of coffee that the small rural grocery store carried, neither of which she had heard of before.

She would have done much better—especially pricewise—to have gone into town. Exhausted from losing sleep last night and from another long day spent unpacking boxes and trying to get their belongings into some sort of order, Jillian had instead opted for shopping at Herb Samples’s convenience store, which had been here long before she’d been born. She planned to pick up only enough to tide them over for a few days, and then she would drive into town to stock the pantry and the freezer.

“It’s him,” Drew said, still sotto voce.

“It’s who?”

She selected the more expensive of the two brands, reasoning that cost might be some guarantee of quality, and reminding herself that after Violet’s legacy, she didn’t have to be quite so diligent about looking for bargains anymore.

As she put the red foil package into the child-seat section of her shopping cart, she turned to look at Drew. His eyes were focused toward the back of the store. With her worries about getting the shopping done and something fixed for supper, his words had barely registered. As soon as she realized who he was talking about, she wished they had.

Mark Peterson was considering the array of items in the freezer cases, his back to them. Like Drew, she recognized him immediately. There was something about the set of his head and the way he carried himself that was unmistakable, despite the changes the years had wrought.

She pulled her gaze away from those broad shoulders, which stretched the chamois-colored twill shirt he wore tightly across his upper back. During that brief examination she had also managed to notice that he was again wearing jeans, either the same ones he’d worn yesterday or a pair that was equally worn and faded. And equally snug across his narrow hips and thighs.

Although she hadn’t finished selecting her purchases, she turned and began pushing her buggy toward the front. The decision to put as much space between them as possible was automatic. Unthinking. She was too tired to deal with another meeting. Too proud to put up with his cool disinterest.

“Aren’t you going to speak to him?” Drew asked.

Her son hadn’t moved. Instead he had raised his voice to carry across the distance she had put between them. She glanced back at him, intending to gesture him to silence. As she did, Mark turned his head, his eyes meeting hers. She felt as guilty as if she’d been discovered in some clandestine act. Maybe running away from the past couldn’t be considered clandestine, but it was certainly cowardly.

The hazel eyes held hers for a long heartbeat, and then they moved, without seeming to hurry, to focus on Drew. Her son’s beaming smile of greeting was answered—a little reluctantly, she thought. But it was answered nonetheless. She would have to give Mark credit for that. Just then, his gaze came back to her.