One Summer (5 page)

Rachel hated to be called cute. It was a word for toddlers and puppies, not grown women. Even if it was accurate, she considered the description mildly insulting. But of course Rob had no way of knowing that, and she hadn’t told him. He was a nice man, and he had only meant to compliment her. He had a good income—he was a pharmacist and owned his own drugstore—and nice manners, and he was reasonably good-looking. She was sure that he would be a good father. And she was starting to want kids.

It was time she married. If Michael’s defection had killed an elusive something inside her, well, such was life. She did not delude herself that she was the only woman who had ever been dumped. Her broken heart had long since healed. Certainly she no longer ached for Michael. Age had given her the wisdom and determination necessary to make a marriage work. If she was hesitating because she remembered the fiery excitement of her passion for Michael and found it lacking in her relationship with Rob, she had only to remind herself that she was no longer the naive, starry-eyed girl who had loved with a whole heart and unbounded confidence in her future happiness. She had grown up and wised up.

“Rachel! Rachel, come down here this minute!”

For her mother to yell up the stairs like that was unusual enough to snap Rachel to attention. Turning away from the mirror, she opened her door and hurried toward the kitchen. Elisabeth stood at the bottom of the stairs, a long-tined fork clutched in one hand. From her expression Rachel could tell she was upset.

“There was a call for you,” she said before Rachel could ask what the matter was. “It was Ben from the store. He said you’d better come down right away. The police are there. There’s been some trouble with that Johnny Harris.”

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T
wo police cars were parked in front of the hardware store. A half-dozen or so bystanders milled around outside, kept from entering by a uniformed officer. That officer was Linda Howlett, Rachel saw as she got out of the car, whose younger sister had been in Rachel’s class two years before. Linda spotted Rachel and waved her on past, and Rachel hurried into the store. The scene that greeted her was so appalling that, just inside the entrance, it momentarily stopped her cold.

Two men were sprawled on the floor, one prone, one supine, and three uniformed officers were crouching over them. Greg Skaggs, son of Idell and older brother of Jeff, had joined the Tylerville police force just the year before. One of his knees was pressed into the center of a broad, white T-shirted back, while his drawn pistol was nuzzled into a head of unruly black hair. Another officer, Kerry Yates, was kneeling as he held the prone man’s arm twisted up hard behind his back. Rachel needed no more than a glance to identify Johnny Harris as the man being thus detained. A few feet beyond him, the identity of the other downed man was more problematic. Chief Jim Wheatley bent over him, his posture indicating that he perceived little threat as he pressed two fingers to the pulse in the man’s throat. Behind the counter, Olivia
Tompkins, the nineteen-year-old who worked in the store part time, watched, her heavily mascaraed eyes huge. Ben Zeigler, the store manager, emerged from a rear stockroom as Rachel hesitated. Clearly none of them were as yet aware of her presence, and Ben, perhaps blinded by the late afternoon glare that was pouring in through the windows, did not immediately see her standing there.

“Mrs. Grant said Rachel’s on her way,” Ben said to Chief Wheatley.

“Good.”

“Get the hell off me, asshole! You’re breaking my goddamned arm.” The snarl came from Johnny, who made an abortive movement to free himself that was halted by a hard jerk on his twisted arm. He responded with language so filthy, it made Rachel blink. It occurred to her then that however innocent Johnny might have been when he was tried and convicted, prison might have changed him so that he was now truly a threat to decent society. Certainly he had been less than a gentleman with her earlier. Whatever had gotten him into the position he now occupied must have been dreadful to merit such a reaction on the part of Tylerville’s usually laid-back police force.

“Keep fightin’, scumbag, and I might just get to blow a hole through your thick skull yet today.”

This threat, drawled by Greg Skaggs, roused Rachel from her momentary disbelief. Whatever Johnny was or was not, she was not going to watch him get shot before her eyes.

“What in the name of heaven is going on here?” she demanded, stepping forward.

Chief Wheatley, his officers, Ben, and Olivia all looked up at the same time.

“Rachel, there just wasn’t anything I could do!” Olivia wailed. “I was already real nervous because that Johnny Harris had come into the store when Ben had promised me that he never would while I was here, and then Mr. Edwards came in and I just knew there’d be trouble, and
there was! There was an awful fight, with them tumblin’ all over the place and chokin’ and punchin’ each other, and I called the police, and a good thing, too! That Johnny Harris smashed Mr. Edwards in the throat with his fist and knocked him unconscious. It’s a wonder it didn’t kill him!”

“Apparently Carl heard that Harris was here. He came looking for him, and he found him. I told you that hiring Harris was a mistake, and you see how right I was. He hasn’t been here more than a couple of hours, and look what’s happened.” Ben gestured to the group on the ground. “They tore the heck out of the store, fighting. Look at this mess!”

Rachel looked. Paint cans, brushes, rollers, and color charts littered the floor from an overturned display. One can had burst open, spilling bright scarlet enamel across the black and white tile. A plastic bin that had once contained a huge assortment of nuts and bolts lay on its side, its contents scattered everywhere. Wild birdseed that had been stored in a large metal trash can made a gritty carpet underfoot. The can itself, now badly dented, rested against the foot of the wooden counter. From the look of it, it had been thrown at someone.

“You should’ve checked with me before you did anything so all-fired foolish as giving Harris a job, Rachel,” said Chief Wheatley. “Anyone with a lick of sense would have foreseen that the Edwards boys would be after him the minute he hit town. Hell, I can’t blame ’em, though I’ll uphold the law as I’m bound. It ain’t right that Carl here’s sister’s dead and her killer is runnin’ around loose, back in our town.” As he spoke, the chief straightened away from the second downed man, whom Rachel now recognized as Marybeth Edwards’s older brother Carl.

“Could you get off him, please?” Rachel said very quietly to Greg Skaggs, indicating Johnny. Clearly these men were prejudiced against him and would not have the slightest qualm about doing him an injury. She had believed
in him all these years in the teeth of overwhelming public opinion, and she wasn’t going to abandon him now just because he was not the peach-fuzz-faced boy she had idiotically been expecting. “I hardly think any of us are in danger from him with so many armed policemen around. He doesn’t have a gun, does he?”

“Far’s I can tell, he’s unarmed.” Kerry Yates, having just completed a quick frisking of the prisoner, spoke grudgingly to Chief Wheatley.

“Get the hell off me, asshole!”

“Shut your mouth, boy, or you’ll end up back in jail quicker than a sneeze,” Chief Wheatley said, his voice a low growl.

“Fuck you.” Johnny’s reply made Rachel wince. Greg Skaggs rapped the black head with his pistol a little harder than was necessary for a mere warning. Kerry Yates yanked the arm he was holding a little higher and grinned. Johnny grunted with pain. Watching, Rachel saw red.

“Let him up!” Rachel raised her voice, something she rarely did. Chief Wheatley looked at her, looked at his men, hesitated, then nodded.

“Let him up,” he said. Then, to Johnny as he jerked his arm away from Kerry Yates’s loosened grip, he added, “You behave yourself, boy, or you’ll be back on the floor before you can wipe your nose.”

“Get up, then,” Greg Skaggs said, and eased back away from his erstwhile prisoner before standing. He did not return his gun to its holster but kept it ready in his hand.

Johnny’s reply as he got to his feet and turned to face them was offensive enough to make Rachel excuse the sudden tension in the officers’ stances. He stood balanced on the balls of his feet, his fists clenched at his sides as if he expected to be attacked at any minute, his face white and smeared with blood, his eyes glittering with rage.

“I’ll run into you one day when you’re not wearing a uniform, kid,” he said to Greg Skaggs. “Then we’ll see how tough you are.”

“That sounds like a threat to me.” Chief Wheatley’s voice had a warning edge to it.

“You hush,” Rachel said fiercely to Johnny, and walked right up and tapped him in the center of his chest with an admonitory forefinger. Without any real reason other than gut instinct, she was suddenly, fiercely, one hundred percent on his side. He glanced down at her, jaw tight, eyes hard, but, silenced by the look she gave him, he said nothing more. Rachel pivoted in front of him, standing between him and the others like a shield. The absurdity of her protecting him, when the top of her head didn’t quite reach his shoulder and she was perhaps half his weight, was lost on her at the moment. The injustice of the situation inflamed her. What had he done, after all, that Carl Edwards had not done, too, except be Johnny Harris?

On the floor, Carl Edwards moaned, stirred, and sat up, rubbing the back of his head. He glanced around, saw Johnny, and his face contorted.

“You son of a bitch,” he snarled. “I’ll get you, see if I don’t. You murderer—you think you can kill my sister and get away with it?”

“That’s enough, Carl,” Chief Wheatley said sharply, going over to catch him by one arm and haul him to his feet. “You want to press charges against Harris for assault?”

“Hell, yes, I—”

“To be fair, Edwards threw the first punch,” Ben interrupted, his tone reluctant.

“See there?” Rachel looked triumphantly at Chief Wheatley. “Why don’t you ask Johnny if he wants to press charges against Carl? That’s only fair.”

“Rachel—” Chief Wheatley sounded harassed.

“I don’t,” Johnny said abruptly from behind her.

“Don’t do me any favors, you bastard!” Carl Edwards rasped. “I’m gonna cut you up just like you did Marybeth. Remember how pretty she was, Harris? She wasn’t pretty after you got through with her, was she? You scum—how
could you do that to her? She was just seventeen years old!”

“Now that sounds like a threat to me,” Rachel said, but the measure of satisfaction afforded her by the reversal was erased by the sudden, pitiable collapse of Carl Edwards’s face.

“Come on, Carl, let me take you on home,” Chief Wheatley said quietly as Carl gasped with emotion and tears started coursing down his face. Rachel felt her heart contract with pity for him. It must have been unimaginably hard to lose a sister in such a horrible way—but nevertheless, she was on Johnny’s side.

“You tell him not to come back in here, Chief. I’ll press charges for trespassing against him if he does,” Rachel said clearly as Chief Wheatley, his men following, escorted a sobbing Carl Edwards toward the door.

“God, Rachel, don’t you have any compassion at all for him? Edwards loved his little sister. You gotta feel sympathy for him.” Ben sounded aghast at this cold-hearted threat.

“I do feel sympathy for him.” She turned to look at Johnny. Blood from a split lower lip was smeared all along the left side of his face. A liberal amount stained the once white T-shirt. Outside, the sound of cars pulling away told her that the police had left. The store was once again open for business.

“Olivia, get back to work, please. Ben, is the inventory done? I’ll want to go over it with you first thing tomorrow morning, so you’d best be finishing it up if it’s not.” Behind her, the tinkling bell that announced the opening of the door told Rachel that a customer, probably one of the curiosity-seekers who had gathered outside, had entered.

“Can I help you?” Ben asked smoothly, moving toward the newcomer. Rachel didn’t even look around.

“You come with me,” she said to Johnny, her voice crisp with authority. Crooking her finger at him imperiously, she started toward the stockroom door. From there, a small
staircase led up to his apartment, where they could be private. Without looking behind her to see if he followed, she knew that he did. Her sixth sense where Johnny Harris was concerned was proving to be disturbingly acute.

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