Bombshell (3 page)

“Is it always this rowdy in here?” she asked quietly, hoping the sick feeling in her stomach would go away. After all, she might be amongst hayseeds, but she still had an image to maintain, and it would not do to have these men see her hunched over a wastebasket.

Calaway handed a stack of paperwork to Calvin Stamp and donned his hat. “Aw, it’s usually not so bad ’til the riverboats come in for the week. I swear those fellas work their fingers to the bone just to keep the saloons awash in cash. ’Bout the only folks with money these days are the bartenders.”

Annalee’s sour stomach worsened. “Would you mind taking me to the service station now?”

The sheriff looked at her with concern. “You don’t look so hot. Why don’t you sit—”

“I just need some air.”

****

It was a short drive back to the bridge. Annalee took in a deep breath of still, humid air and tightened her grip on the cash-filled satchel until the next wave of nausea passed.

Calaway filled the Roadster’s tank with gasoline and wiped the beads of sweat from his brow. “Gonna be a hot one. No wonder you got all green around the gills. Feeling any better?”

“I am now, thank you.”

“That true, what Calvin was saying about you? You some kind of Hollywood star?”

“Don’t go to the pictures much, do you?”

“I got better things to do with my time.”

Annalee wasn’t sure if she liked the way he was looking at her, particularly when his eyes lingered on her belly. Kiddo wasn’t showing too much yet, but Calaway looked at her as though he knew the truth and already judged her a harlot.

Or worse
, she thought.
A washed-up floozy.

“I wouldn’t say I’m a star just yet, but I do all right for myself. I was a WAMPAS Baby Star two years ago, and made seven pictures last year. Did you see
Blue Carousel
?”

“What’s that? Some kind of musical?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“That was my favorite,” she gushed. “I played a college girl who had to choose between the chance for fame and fortune on Broadway or true love and poverty with a handsome young minister.”

“What did you choose?”

“True love and poverty,” she said with a quiet, sarcastic laugh. “Probably should call it a fantasy instead of a musical.”

“Not much of a romantic, are you?”

Annalee laughed and waved her hand as if it were the most ridiculous notion ever conceived. “Romance is for saps.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you.”

Calaway hopped into the front seat of her car and tried to start the engine. He turned the ignition once, but the Roadster remained silent. Furrowing his dark brows, he gave it another try, but the engine was stubborn and refused to turn over. “You’ve got bigger problems than an empty gas tank. Don’t ask me how you made it two thousand miles in this jalopy, but I’d hazard to guess your alternator is shot.”

He might as well have been speaking Greek to her. “The alternator?”

He climbed out of the Roadster and strode purposefully to his squad car to call for a tow truck. “They’ll have to take it to Fish Hook. Charlie Owens up and left town and took his garage with him.”

“Fish Hook?” Annalee’s heart sank, partly at the unfortunate name of the nearest town. Sully would have died laughing. “How long do you think it will take to fix it?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” He called in to the police station, ordered the tow truck, and when he was finished gave her a good long stare. For once, there was no judgment in his eyes, just the look of a man wondering what to do next.

Annalee felt the pressure in her ankles building once more and tried not to show her discomfort. “I don’t suppose you might be so kind as to take me to the nearest hotel,” she began slowly. “And I was hoping you could be of some help to me in another regard.”

Calaway narrowed his eyes ever so slightly. “In what regard?”

She opened her satchel and showed him the stacks of bills, twenties and fifties bundled neatly together with brown bank wraps. The sheriff’s eyes widened. For a moment, it was all he could do to keep from gasping. “It was a gift, come by honest, I promise,” she said quickly. “I just don’t trust banks.”

“Close that satchel, girl, and don’t show it off again,” he warned. “Good God almighty, you’d best not be a bank robber.”

“I told you, it was a gift—”

“Whoever it was give you a gift like that must’ve liked you somethin’ fierce.”

“For a little while, anyway,” she conceded with a shrug. “But I can’t walk around with this kind of money, and I sure can’t leave it lying around...and you look like the honest type. I will pay you a fair wage to look after me as long as I am in town.”

“To do
what
? Do you know how close you are to me taking you in just on suspicion? For all I know, you could’ve knocked somebody over the head—”

Annalee’s smile was brilliant. “Don’t you trust me, Sheriff?”

“Not as far as I can throw you.”

She linked her arm around his and gazed prettily into his shocked face. “My proposal is fair and valid, and the money is real. It was a going-away gift from a friend, and I am going to use it to secure my future.”

Calaway rolled his eyes and let out a loud breath. “What’s the matter? Is Hollywood a dying town, too?”

“Hollywood and I are experiencing, um, creative differences,” she told him, thinking she should have been embarrassed by the haughtiness in her voice. Something she learned on the dinner party circuit, she supposed. “I do not wish to return to California until those differences have been resolved to my satisfaction.”

“And how long do you expect that to take?”

Annalee dug into her satchel, folded a bill in half, and slowly slid it into the front pocket of his service trousers. “Don’t worry, I won’t impose on your good nature for too long.”

Calaway glanced down at her hand, as she slowly slid it out of his pocket, and cleared his throat. His cheeks flushed red. “So if I have this straight, I get to waltz around town with a gorgeous blonde on my arm for as long as it takes for her to once again hightail it out of town. And I get paid for it.”

“I’m sure you can tough it out for a while.”

“And all you want is someone to make sure you don’t get knocked over the head and robbed, is that right?”

“You’re a quick study, Sheriff.”

“What makes you think I won’t be the one to knock you on the head?”

Annalee’s eyes glittered as she let out a laugh. “There’s not much stopping you, is there? But I knew the second I saw you you’re the decent type.”

“The second you saw me...all of an hour ago.”

“I’m an excellent judge of character.”

John Calaway grinned and leaned in close, as if to tell a secret meant only for her ears. “You already got me, doll. You don’t have to try so hard.”

Annalee raised one artfully-shaped eyebrow and felt her smug little smirk blossom with delight. “I like you already.”

****

Annalee’s room at the Steamboat Inn was dark, dreary, cluttered with old Victorian furniture, and gloomed further by dark brown wallpaper festooned with a gold-leaf fleur-de-lis pattern. The only bright touch was the lace curtain that billowed inward whenever a breeze dared to blow into the room.

And she loved it.

For the first time in her life, she was free, blessedly free of Sully’s constant whining and insults. For once, there were no rehearsals, no ghastly dinner parties with people who left her bored to tears, and no womanizers who lied and made promises they never intended to keep.

Unless one counted Sheriff Calaway, that is.

Annalee almost laughed at her own idle thought.
He’s no womanizer. Handsome, yes. The sort of man a girl could go crazy for, definitely. But no way in hell is that man a womanizer.

He’s a dream. And most likely too good for the likes of me.

She kicked off her heels, sat down on the hard, comfortless bed, and picked up the telephone.

“Sully? I think I found the right place.”

The phone line crackled and popped, but her manager’s voice came through loud and clear. “Great, Toots! Where?”

“Some little hayseed town off the Mississippi River. It’s called Summer Hill.” She glanced at the rotary dial and read the phone number to him. “It’s awful quiet here, once you get past the river. This might take some getting used to.”

“You’ll be home before you know it. Home
here
, I mean.”

“Yeah,” she replied, though her tone was dark, depressed. She fidgeted with the phone cord. “Maybe you should send the rest of my things here.”

“Why? You’re not going to fit in your clothes for much longer, you know.”

“Just send them,” she said. “And my phonographs.”

“Anything else?”

“I brought everything else that mattered.”

“You don’t sound too good. Homesick already?”

“Some, I guess,” she told him. “The people here seem nice enough, though. Especially the sheriff. He pretended to be a real hard case, but I saw right through all the guff. Tell you the truth, it’s not so bad here.”

“The sheriff? Didn’t I tell you to lay low? Keep your head down?”

“My car broke down. He was only helping me out.”

“Yeah, well, just don’t end up going native on me,” he said in a dark, warning tone. “Remember what we talked about. Stick with the program. I’ve got too much riding on you.”

“Yeah,” she said, misery in her voice, and wished she hadn’t called him.

“Gotta keep the big picture in mind. Remember that.”

“Yeah.”

The line went silent for a moment, save for a soft crackle. “You sure you’re all right?” Sully asked again.

“I’m just tired. It was a long trip.”

“Two thousand miles? It sure was. Get some rest.”

Annalee unwound the telephone cord from her fingers and stared at the slight indentations it left in her fingers. “Sully, has anyone been asking after me?”

“Oh, sure. Just got a call from the king of England wondering where the hell you are.”

“Sully...”

“Look, you know how it is, Toots. Unless you’re screwing Jack Warner or Louie Mayer, you’re replaceable.”

“A little late with the career advice, Sully.”

“But I’m laying the ground work, don’t worry. I’ll send a note to
Variety
—you’ve gone home to help some poor relations before they lose their farm or some such bullshit.”

“Nice.”

“You just keep your head down and leave everything to me.”

****

While Annalee Harrison was settling in at the Steamboat Inn, John Calaway called every police station along Route 66 from Los Angeles to St. Louis to find out if there had been any bank robberies in their jurisdictions. Aside from a few committed by the usual folk-hero suspects, none of whom had platinum blonde gun molls in tow, he came up empty-handed.

“She don’t seem the criminal type, Boss,” Calvin Stamp told him between telephone calls. “You saw her. Nothing shifty-eyed or suspicious about her.”

“Yeah, them’s the ones who are always guilty of something,” Calaway cracked, and picked up the phone once more, certain he’d forgotten a town or two. “She didn’t seem desperate to you?”

“Ain’t a desperate bone in that girl’s body,” Calvin said with a laugh. “But if you’re looking to figure her out, I ain’t gonna be much help. I gave up tryin’ to figure out women a long time ago.”

“Well I ain’t you,” Calaway grumbled. His head was starting to ache.

Stamp sat down on the corner of the sheriff’s desk and eased the phone out of his hand. “You also ain’t rich, Boss. A girl like that... If you had that kind of money, you’d shower it on her, too, for no other reason than you like lookin’ at her. Or maybe if you got tired of lookin’ at her. There’s no figuring those Hollywood types, you know. Hell, why’d she bother showin’ you that money if she didn’t come by it honest?”

“Ass off the desk, Calvin.”

Deputy Stamp leaped off the desk and gave a goofy grin. Calaway reached out to pick up his hat, but the telephone rang before he could reach it. Sure enough, the lousy bankers had just one more foreclosure for him to oversee before the day would come to an end.

“One more, Calvin,” he said. “At least Abner Green’s a small fella.”

“We have to turn ol’ Abner out?”

“I don’t like it any more ’n you do.”

He reached for his hat and started out the door, only to be swamped by a frazzled-looking woman and her seven skinny children, all under the age of ten. The infant in her arms started to wail.

“Where’s Earl, Sheriff?” the woman demanded. “Where did you take him?”

Calaway’s headache was going to split his skull wide open, he was sure of it. “Gettin’ set to see the judge, Molly. Go see your pa. He’ll be good enough to take you in.”

“My pa ain’t no better than that dumb son of a bitch you got locked up,” she wailed. The child in her arms shrieked now, though tears failed to materialize. “He told me to put my babies in the orphanage and for me to go stand in the soup line!”

He dug into his pockets and fished out the money Annalee had given him. He thrust the twenty-dollar bill into her free hand and tried to give her a comforting smile. “I can’t say when Earl’s gonna get out, but take this. It’ll keep you until we get things sorted.”

Molly Brown glanced at the money in her hand, then cast a shocked, wide-eyed gaze at the sheriff. Before she could thank him, he was out the door.

Chapter Two

Summer Hill, Illinois was nestled in the crook of land between the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, a town that prided itself on its contribution to the river trade, a town that might have escaped the ravages of the Depression had Pike County not depended so heavily on its surrounding farm country for sustenance or taxed its businesses out of existence.

A new administration promised to bring the jobs back to the county, but folks who had a mind for business remained skittish. After all, most of the riverboats sailed right on past Summer Hill and crossed the river to Missouri, where folks were more inclined to provide goods and services at lower prices. Even the sailors who found their way into Summer Hill were already impaired from their revelries across the river; most of the business they brought to town was handled by Sheriff Calaway and his understaffed office.