Landry's Law (3 page)

“What do you mean, no trace?” Savannah challenged.

To Seth’s eyes, her body language was screaming retreat. He kept his gaze level. “I mean your social security number had no activity until six years ago. You have no credit history, never attempted to buy a home or an apartment. Nothing. Nada.”

“I didn’t work before college, and—” she paused and took in a long breath “—and I lived with my family, so I had no reason to use my social security card.”

“Let me see it.”

“What?” Savannah asked. He could almost smell her panic.

“I’d like to see your social security card,” he repeated evenly.

“I—it’s back at the cabin.”

Seth nodded. “Okay.” He reached for the telephone. “Then I’ll just call your family to verify your story.”

“You can’t!” Savannah fairly yelled.

Seth lifted one dark brow questioningly. “You do have parents I can call, right?”

He saw sadness glaze her beautiful eyes and realized his little game might backfire.

“They passed away,” she said softly. “Six years ago.”

Seth felt like every kind of fool. “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “You get used to not having them around—eventually.”

“I know.”

Savannah looked at him through her feathery brown lashes. “You lost your parents, too?”

He gave a weak smile. “Sort of, I lost mine
literally.
”

“Excuse me?”

Seth drummed his thumbs against his desktop. “My mother ran off with another man.”

“How terrible.”

“Then my thickheaded father went after her. That was ten years ago. Haven’t seen or heard from either of them since.”

“That’s incredible,” Savannah said in a near
whisper. “It must have been hard on you. But at least you had your brothers.”

Seth rubbed his face. “We all handled it differently. But we handled it, except for Shane. He’s the baby of the family. Runs the day-to-day at Lucky 7, when he isn’t trying in vain to impress Taylor Reese,” Seth said with a quick smile. “He wandered back into town about a year ago and took over.”

“Where was he wandering?”

“You have to understand, Shane and the old man didn’t get along very well. They had a huge blowout when Pop decided he was going to go out and bring back what was his—meaning my mother—Shane was only eighteen at the time and I guess he had to conduct his own search or something.”

“What about you?” Savannah asked. “Why can’t you find them? You’re a sheriff.”

“They don’t want to be found,” Seth said with conviction. “I spent two years contacting every jurisdiction in the country. If people want to disappear, they can.”

Savannah suddenly sat back down in the chair and offered her rapt attention. “Do you really think so? Do you really think a person
can’t
be found?”

Seth added this apparent interest in missing persons to his list. “Sure. If they’re careful.”

“Yes, I guess a person would have to be very careful not to be found,” she mused, her expression
faraway. Suddenly, she returned to the here and now and asked, “Are we finished?”

“For now,” Seth said. “I’ll be out to your place tonight to take a look at that social security card.”

“My place?” she repeated, apparently stunned. “I’ll just bring it to you tomorrow.”

“No,” he said more forcefully, “I’ll come to you.”

Seth moved to the window to watch Savannah walk back to Olive’s. He also watched as she stopped to use the pay phone in front of the post office. He stood in the shadows of the venetian blinds as she spent several animated minutes on the phone. Next, he watched as she put several more coins in the telephone, covered the mouthpiece, appeared to listen for a second, then hang up. She was one incredibly secretive, strange, but very beautiful woman.

Seth moved back to his desk and called the phone company to ask for the LUDs for the pay phone Savannah had just used. If she was going to be secretive, he was going to have to work that much harder to prove—

Prove what?
he asked himself. The answer was simple and immediate. To prove she wasn’t a killer. Because that’s what he wanted.
She
was what he wanted.

“N
O WAY
!” Savannah insisted firmly just after her return to the shop.

“Bill Grayson is an old friend of Junior’s. They went to school together!” Olive argued.

“Olive, the last two times you’ve set me up on a date, the men have become corpses.”

“Oh, pooh,” Olive dismissed with a wave of her gnarled hand. “I know you didn’t kill them.”

“If Bill Grayson is a family friend, then why don’t you set him up with someone else?”

“Like who?”

“Taylor Reese,” Savannah suggested. “I’ve had coffee with her at the university. She’s nice, attractive—”

“Way too young,” Olive said after considering it. “The Landry’s housekeeper is too immature, too flighty. Bill is over forty. Besides, all I’m asking you to do is have dinner with him at the inn.”

“No.”

“Savannah?” Olive pleaded, “Please? How about if I send Junior along, too? He can sit at the bar and watch over the two of you? You won’t have to leave the inn. You just have a nice dinner in plain view of all the patrons. Junior will be there to make sure nothing happens to Bill or you.”

To me?
A shiver danced along her spine. Jasper was supposed to be a safe haven.
Right?
Savannah closed her eyes. She knew her determination was slipping away. Olive and Junior were the closest thing she had to family.

She looked sternly at the shop owner. “First, you have to tell Bill about my last two dates.”

“Already did that,” Olive returned with a smile. “Once I told him what a beauty you were, he didn’t seem to mind.”

“Second, Junior has to stay at the bar the whole time.
And
he has to walk me to my car afterward.”

“Done.”

Savannah blew out a breath. “What time?”

“Eight.”

Savannah checked her watch. She had less than two hours to drive to her cabin, change and be at the inn on time.

As if sensing her calculations, Olive said, “Run along. And wear your new dress,” she added, handing Savannah the neatly wrapped beaded dress.

Nearly an hour later as she entered her cabin, Savannah asked, “What are the chances of it happening again? None? Less than none?”

She stripped off her clothes for a shower, then got ready faster than a trunk-show model. The pale ivory color of the dress complimented her olive-tinged skin. And the drop waist meant she could eat her fill and not have to worry about it showing.

Grabbing a pair of heels from her closet, she stuffed them into a bag. Then she began to switch items from her leather bag to a smaller evening bag. That’s when she came across the social security card and cursed.

It was completely unsullied and looked as if it had never seen the light of day. Quickly, Savannah crumpled it, then set a teapot on the stove to further steam-age the card. She even went so far as to smudge some ink on it.
That should satisfy the handsome Sheriff Landry.

“Stop thinking of him as handsome,” she chided as she pulled on her boots. “Stop thinking of him period.”

Not even daring to use the word
date,
she scribbled a note to Seth explaining that she had other plans, then tacked the card to the front door before she headed back toward Jasper.

Junior greeted her in the Mountainview Inn’s parking lot. He was standing with an attractive man dressed in a Prada suit. Savannah’s expectations rose a notch.

“Savannah, this is Bill Grayson.” Junior introduced them.

She smiled as she extended her free hand. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Grayson.”

“Bill,” he fairly cooed.

I don’t like cooers,
Savannah thought.
They’re almost as bad as grovelers.
But, hey, she was having dinner with him, not children.

Savannah went into the ladies’ room and switched her snow boots for her pumps. As was the custom, she left her boots on the tile floor inside the bathroom to dry during her meal.

When she emerged, Bill was seated at a table near the large window of the A-frame building. In her peripheral vision, she spotted Junior at the bar, watching her reflection in the glass behind the counter.

“I haven’t been back here in almost a year,” Bill said as he pulled out her chair. “But it isn’t like Jasper ever changes.”

“It’s pretty once you get used to it,” Savannah offered.

Bill’s blue eyes roamed freely over Savannah, in spite of her silent rebuke of crossing her arms in front of her chest.

“So, what brings you back to town?” Savannah asked after they had ordered drinks.

“Diamonds and rubies.”

She studied Bill’s expression and determined he was serious. “Real diamonds and rubies?”

He nodded as he took a sip of his beer. “My family made its money in gold mining. I didn’t want to join the family business, so I branched out.”

“Pretty expensive branch,” Savannah commented as an elegant salad of field greens and raspberry vinaigrette was placed before her.

“I used a small portion of my family trust to start my own wholesale business.”

“Why wholesale?” she asked. “Wouldn’t a store have a higher profit margin?”

He offered her a smile full of perfectly capped
teeth at the very instant she noted a familiar silhouette reflected in the window behind Bill’s perfectly coifed hair.

Seth Landry. Damn!
she thought silently.

Bill was explaining something about his business, but Savannah was distracted as she watched Seth join Junior at the bar. Whatever he said to Junior made the shy man laugh.

She watched for a few more seconds as anger formed and grew in the pit of her stomach. Seth and Junior seemed to be having a fine old time. Surely Junior had told Seth what he was doing at the bar. So why hadn’t Seth turned in her direction? Worse still, why did she want him to? The guy had her brain all twisted.

“…must be boring you,” Bill commented, his cheeks stained a pale pink.

Savannah regrouped and gave him her very best smile. In a feline fashion, Savannah reached out and touched Bill’s hand, then made breeze-soft circles on his palm. “Not at all,” she assured him. “I was just distracted for an instant. Please, continue.”

Bill’s fit body seemed to swell inside his designer silk jacket as a result of her suddenly rapt attention. And Bill wasn’t the only one to notice. In the reflection she could see that both Junior and Seth had swiveled on their bar stools and were openly watching them.

Bill, thankfully, was oblivious. He continued his
mostly one-sided conversation even after their entrées were served. “At first I was going to go the jewelry store route, but if you grow up in a small town, you either love it or hate it,” he explained.

“I’ll guess you hated it,” Savannah said.

Bill nodded and then waved in the direction of the bar. To Savannah’s utter mortification, Junior was leaving. Actually, the mortification was because, apparently, Seth was staying. Nothing like having the sheriff as your babysitter on a date.

“You’re nice to Junior,” Savannah opined with genuine admiration.

“He had it rough,” Bill said. “He’s always had that lisp and those glasses. The kids were cruel to him growing up, which was exactly what he didn’t need. Especially after his dad died in a hunting accident when he was about thirteen.”

Savannah remembered that there were no photographs of Olive’s husband around. Perhaps losing someone she loved suddenly had been so painful, Olive preferred not to display them. “Children can be nasty to one another.” She repressed her desire to recall some of the hateful things she and her siblings had said to one another over the years. All chances for her to apologize had ended six years ago.

“Don’t look so depressed. Junior took most of it in stride and he always had Olive to rebuild his self-esteem.”

“Still,” Savannah commented, “it must have hurt to have every kid in town ragging on him.”

“Not every kid,” Bill corrected. “Seth made sure of that.”

“Seth—as in Sheriff Seth?”

Bill nodded, but his mood seemed to sour. “The same Seth who is sitting over there watching us.”

It was Savannah’s turn to blush. “I think he thinks he’s doing his job.”

Bill snorted dismissively. “I had a couple of reservations about this evening, but now that I’ve met you, I can’t believe for one minute that you’re some sort of serial killer.”

“Thanks. You’re a minority, though.”

“That’s why I left town as soon as I could. The gossip mongering in this town makes Peyton Place seem like the friendliest community on earth.”

They both laughed. Then Savannah asked, “Were you ever the subject of gossip?”

“Sure. When I was seventeen, the whole town knew I lost my virginity before I did.”

Savannah laughed again. She was beginning to relax. Bill’s sense of humor was a wonderful salve on her frazzled nerves. “I think you’re exaggerating.”

“A bit. But I got labeled as a—” he made quote signs with his fingers “—pillager of Jasper’s crop of young women.”

“Seventeen is pretty young.”

Bill made a noncommittal move with his shoul
ders. “I got lucky all of two times when I lived here. The pillagers were the sainted Landry brothers. But no one dared disparage a Landry. Not in Jasper.”

Based on his sudden frown, she realized Bill wasn’t fond of their lookout. “I guess boys will be boys,” Savannah quipped, hoping to lighten the tone of the conversation.

“They weren’t boys, they were a herd,” Bill countered with open hostility. “It wasn’t like you could have a beef with one of them. If you made one Landry mad, they all showed up to dole out some attitude adjustment.”

“I’ve met Sam and his wife. They seem awfully nice.”

Bill downed the remainder of his drink. “I don’t know why I’m complaining about them now. That was more than twenty years ago and they all seem to have settled down. At least, that’s what my mother used to claim in her letters.”

“Enough about Landrys,” Savannah insisted. “Since there’s no jewelry shop in Jasper, I’ll assume you just stopped for the night for old times’ sake?”