After All These Years (40 page)

“Hello. I'm a friend of Izz—Isabel Mendoza. I'd like to send her a fax. May I have your number?”

“Sure. Let's see where is that? Oh, here we go.” She gave it to him. “Isabel is here now. Would you like to talk to her?”

“No, thanks.”

“You almost missed her. Tomorrow is her last day working here.”

“Really?” His chest constricted. Should he ask? “Where's she going?”

“Actually, I don't know. I'm filling in for the secretary. Isabel said something about not being cold this winter. Sorry. Are you sure you don't want to talk to her?”

“Yeah, I'm sure. Thanks. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

He sat at his desk, transfixed, imagining Izzy stringing Christmas lights around a crude dwelling under a hot Mexican sky.

It was out of his hands. Is this where God came in?
God, please let it make sense to her.
He typed in the fax number on his computer and sent the article on its way.

After leaving the station Friday afternoon, Isabel stopped in the library, plunked down some change on the counter, and went to the copy machine. A few minutes later she was back in her car, making a mental checklist, choking back tears.

Which was why she hadn't called Tony. Blubbering wouldn't communicate anything, and it seemed that was all she could do since reading the article he had faxed to her. Well, blubber and thank God.

She would start with Brady and Gina. Brady had been the catalyst for Tony's visit to Valley Oaks. He would get the first copy. If they weren't at his house, she would leave the papers stuck in between the doors. Next she would drop a copy off at Celeste and Peter's, and then at Cal's.

After that she would go home and blubber some more. She would reread the beautiful, haunting words of the article he had entitled “Just Come In.” It was an intriguing look at Brady's stories, of their influence on readers. It was a human look at Saint Brady without the innuendoes or details of exposé. It was an honest representation of Christianity. His sister's story was woven throughout.

And it was all written from a broken heart where Jesus surely must be living now.

The wind almost whipped the pharmacy door from Lia's grasp as she shut it behind her last customer. She turned the lock. It was one o'clock on Saturday, the end of a long week. Another long week. It was time to take stock again.

She sat on the stool behind the front counter. Chloe was content in the back room. It didn't seem to upset her the way it did Lia, who had even started parking her car on Fourth Avenue and using the front door exclusively.

She knew Chloe lounged on a new rug with Soot, watching the little television Nelson had sent to make up for missing the father-daughter outing. His excuse had been work, which seemed to satisfy Chloe along with the TV.

The store wasn't what it had been. Merchandise was sparse on the shelves. The gift section was a quarter of what it had been, but she couldn't afford to replace the Christmas items lost in the fire.

She missed Dot. No, she didn't miss Dot. She missed Dot's help with prescriptions. Lia needed to hire and train someone new. Just today one of her regular customers highly recommended a friend who would soon be looking for a job. No, if she were staying, she would hire someone new. For now, she could manage.

Next week a potential buyer planned to visit again. She was comfortable with that, with moving forward on the sale.

They would live in Isabel's house. She would shut down December 31, whether or not the business sold. Between Chloe's school semesters in early January, they would leave
Valley Oaks and move in with her parents. Temporarily. She was comfortable with all that.

This day had been like most of her days in the store. The minutes stretched like a gold chain. Each customer, with a personal story of laughter or tears, was like a pearl or a precious stone attached to that chain. She felt as if she had to return the necklace to the jeweler. She
wasn't
comfortable with that.

Cal had strung a more precious kind of necklace through her world. But…but he would only break it again and again if she stayed. She wasn't comfortable with that.

The phone rang. She scurried to the back of the store, wishing she could afford an extension up front.

“Hello?”

“Lia, is Nelson there?” It was Cal.

“Not yet. We're meeting him at Isabel's at two.” Chloe's dad was coming to take her to Rockville for a movie and dinner. Lia wasn't looking forward to that, but—

“Listen carefully. I want you and Chloe to stay at the store. Lock the doors. Turn on the alarm and don't let anyone in.”

“What's wrong?”

“Lia.” His exasperation came through loud and clear. “Just trust me and don't go meet him. I'm on my way from the courthouse.”

“Cal! I will not disappoint her again—”

“Mitch Conway just confessed that Nelson Greene paid him to discredit you and put you out of business. He wanted evidence that you were an incompetent guardian for Chloe. He's got no business taking her—The point is, there's a warrant out for his arrest. If he shows up at Isabel's, we'll pick him up there. Highway Patrol may find him first.”

Lia's knees buckled. “Cal!”

“Honey, don't panic on me now. I'm 20 minutes away. Just wait for me there. Please!”

“We will.”

“All right.” He hung up.

Lia clung to the counter. Why had Mitch started the fire? Did Nelson want her dead? Chloe had been in Chicago that weekend. How convenient. But why the attack on Cal?

“Aunt Lia, what's the matter?”

“Oh, Chloe.” How was she supposed to explain this to a child?

Isabel jumped at the crack of thunder. Out here at the studio in the middle of acres and acres of farm fields, storms were always wild. It could be frightening, but she loved the intense display of God's power.

The lights flickered. No problem. The generator would kick in if the power went out. She knew her way around the workings of the station. The only problem was her own energy. She had been there since five that morning. If she wanted to drive she was free to go, leaving everything automatically programmed. But she wanted to stay. Even without the storm as an excuse, she probably would have stayed. It would be a good last day on the job, long hours of howling wind and talking into her microphone to familiar listeners. And she felt like talking since she couldn't dance on the wind.

The impact of Tony's article still burst like the thunder and lightning. It was another type of an intense display of God's power. She hadn't been able to call Tony yet. She truly did not know what to say to him. She hoped he would call.
But maybe he didn't know what to say either. Perhaps it was all said in the unsaid.

Lia had moved the stool to the front window. She sat as if glued to it and watched the storm. The bare trees in the town square across the street were almost bent double. The rain battered against the sidewalk, bouncing crazily. Streams ran along the curbs. An hour had passed since Cal called. He said he was 20 minutes away. She shivered. It was past two o'clock, the time they were to have met Nelson.

Chloe had reacted badly. She yelled that Cal was making it all up; her daddy wouldn't be mean. Lia had not told her details, just that Nelson was in trouble and wouldn't be coming today. Cal had told them to wait at the store. She ran upstairs then, and Lia had heard her footsteps pounding into her bedroom.

She wrinkled her nose now, thinking of Chloe burying her face in bedclothes that still smelled of smoke. Lia reconsidered going up to console her. Maybe she had calmed, but…she needed time alone to deal with it as best a nine-year-old could. Lia would step in later for damage control. Quite honestly, at the moment she didn't think she was up to it. How could she have ever trusted Nelson? She knew better. She knew all along. She had known ever since Kathy became involved with him. He had promised he would always take care of Kathy, that he was leaving his wife. And then, while Kathy was being sick in the bathroom, nauseous in her pregnancy, he put the moves on her little eighteen-year-old sister out in the living room. Revulsion swept through her at the memory. There had been other occasions, Lia crushing his ego every time. The man probably truly hated her.

To top it, he understood how to play the Neumans as the fools. “Fools for You, Lord. Where are You in this?”

“Lia!”

She cried out and leapt from the stool.

Cal was striding up the center aisle, rain dripping from the rim of his deputy's hat and short jacket. “I told you to lock the doors and set the alarm!”

“I did!”

“Well, I just walked right in. Where's Chloe?”

“Upstairs.” Their eyes met.

Cal beat her to the staircase and flew up them two at a time. “Chloe! Chloe!”

They frantically raced through the small apartment. Chloe and Soot were gone. Only her favorite stuffed animal—the red teddy bear she and Cal had won—remained, lying on her bedroom floor.

“Oh, Cal! He took—”

He grabbed her and held her tightly, the rain from his jacket soaking her lab coat. “No, no. We picked Greene up at Isabel's. He's in the back of a squad car on his way to Twin Prairie. He can't harm her now. Was she very upset?”

She nodded against him.

“She knew how to turn off the alarm. She's just run off, mad at the world. She can't be far. Maybe she's back at Isabel's. Or my house. She knows where I hide the key. Let's go.”

In less than five minutes they had roared in his cruiser halfway across town while he radioed in the situation and a description of Chloe. “Is she wearing her red jacket?”

“And blue jeans. Black boots.”

Together they dashed into Isabel's house. Lia's voice grew hoarse from shouting Chloe's name.

Cal grabbed a raincoat from a closet and draped it over her. “Come on. Let's try my place.” He held her arm as they ran, sloshing through puddles that dotted the back yards.

His two-story house took longer. There were more closets, more nooks and crannies. At last they huddled together in the kitchen and asked each other, “Where would she run to?”

Lia said, “Mandy's? I'll call the Suttons and other—”

“The phone lines are down.” He grasped her by the shoulders and leaned over to make eye contact. “Honey, the phone lines were down when I called you.”

“Huh?”

“God let me get through. He's here. He's in this. He protected you from going to Isabel's. Are you with me?”

She nodded.

“We'll find Chloe. All the fire volunteers heard the report. They're out looking.”

“In this storm?”

“Yes. Listen, I want you to wait back at Isabel's.”

“Where are you going?”

“To Chloe's favorite place.”

Lia couldn't think straight. “Where's that?”

“It's behind the Suttons.”

“I don't know—”

“She told me once, over checkers. I'm sure that's where she would go.”