Riverbend Road (5 page)

As she hoped, Andrea seemed to relax. “It's an easy place to grow flowers, as long as they like a lot of moisture. I love the wildflowers here.”

They talked about flowers and gardening a little—not Wyn's area of expertise, as evidenced by the scraggly flower gardens outside her house. She waited until they reached the driveway of the Craftsman before she slid the next question into the conversation.

“And what brings you to our beautiful neck of the woods? Do you have family close by?”

The woman gripped the walking stick with white knuckles—from pain or tension, Wyn couldn't tell. “We needed a change,” she said tersely.

She obviously wasn't going to add anything more and Wyn knew she had pushed her hard enough.

“Haven Point is a nice place for a new start,” she said, offering up a calm smile, “especially with the new Caine Tech facility opening up. We've had many new people move in already and expect even more. We're happy to have you all.”

“Thanks,” Andrea said as they walked up the driveway. Wyn helped her struggle up the few steps. “And thank you...for your help.”

“You're very welcome. That's what neighbors do. Are you sure you're okay from here?”

“Yes. Fine.”

Wynona gestured to the other woman's swollen ankle. “You probably know this already but you should elevate that and ice it. RICE, right? Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation.”

“Got it.”

“And if it's still swollen and giving you trouble in the morning, you may want to see a doc. My friend Devin Shaw is an excellent family doctor and is wonderful with children and grown-ups alike. Hold on, and I can write down her name and number for you.”

She reached into the front pocket of her backpack for the little notebook and pen she always kept there, just in case. Her best moments of inspiration for solving cases often came while she was hiking and she hated to lose her train of thought. She jotted down a few things then ripped out the paper and handed it to Andrea.

“Here you go,” she said. “That's the number and address for Devin's clinic. I also put down my cell number. If you need someone to drive you to the doctor or the grocery store while you're laid up, I'm more than happy to help.”

The other woman looked both shocked and wary at the offer. “Thank you.”

“You're more than welcome. The third number is the other essential thing you need to know—the secret delivery number for Serrano's. That's the best restaurant in town and they have pizza, sandwiches, whatever kind of comfort food you need and if you tell them I referred you, they'll deliver it right to your door. They don't do that for everyone but will help out in an emergency.”

“That's very kind of you.”

Andrea looked overwhelmed but grateful too.

“Seriously, I'm just up the street if you need anything.” She grabbed Pete's leash from Will, who apparently was now completely over his fear of big dogs—at least
her
particular big dog. “I'll see you guys later. Take care of your mom, okay?”

“'Bye, Officer Bailey,” Chloe said.

“'Bye,” Will said with an adorably enthusiastic wave that would have scared away any mosquito within a square mile. “'Bye, Pete.”

Wyn walked back down the driveway then waited until the woman and her children were safely inside the house. The blinds moved as if someone had made sure they were closed tightly.

Something wasn't right with this family. The impression settled on her shoulders and refused to lift. The woman wasn't simply unfriendly. She was a bundle of nerves and had the hollow-eyed, furtive look of someone with something to hide.

What? Was she afraid, guilty or both?

A dozen possibilities flitted through her mind, none of them good. Wyn turned, barely registering the lovely lavender dusk that smelled of cut grass and someone working the charcoal grill.

It wasn't any of her business, she told herself. Didn't she have enough to worry about without taking on someone else's problems?

Her gaze landed on Cade's SUV with the HPPD logo on the side, parked in the driveway of his log home across the street. Like him, she was a police officer. Taking on other people's problems was sort of in her job description.

She really
should
mention her concerns about the new neighbor and ask him to keep an eye on things here, just in case trouble showed up in the middle of the night.

As a side benefit, perhaps she could persuade him to reduce her suspension by a few days. It was worth a try, anyway.

CHAPTER FIVE

T
HIS
WAS
THE
craziest damn day he'd had in a long time and right now all he wanted was a steak, a cold Sam Adams and a nice, relaxing baseball game on the big screen to help him unwind.

Though he had a perfectly serviceable gas grill and it was fine in a pinch, he preferred the rich flavor from the traditional method so Cade spent a moment lighting the charcoal on his old-fashioned Weber. Yeah, he was a two-grill guy. Sue him.

Once the coals were smoldering, he headed inside to turn on the game and pulled the two rib eyes marinating in the refrigerator. Since it was as easy to grill two as it was one, he always cooked an extra and used the leftovers for fajitas or a steak omelet.

He had a very limited skill set in the kitchen, he would freely admit. Most of it involved flames and protein of some sort, though he tried to add fruit and veggies where he could.

He set the steaks on the counter and reached back into the refrigerator for a beer. He was just grabbing the bottle opener when his cell phone rang.

Sometimes he wanted to grab the thing and toss it into the middle of the Hell's Fury.

As much as he would have liked to ignore the blasted ringing, he knew he couldn't. It might be an emergency. He was the chief of police and had a responsibility to the people of Haven Point, like it or not.

A quick check of the caller ID showed it wasn't a problem in his community but still something he couldn't ignore. His sister-in-law wasn't in the habit of calling him for no reason.

“Hey, Christy,” he greeted her. “What's going on?”

She uttered a particularly succinct epithet that basically summed up Cade's own prior delightful twenty-four hours. “Guess who just called me from jail again? That's right, you guessed it. Your idiot asshole of a brother!”

And this day just kept getting better and better.

He closed his eyes and pressed the cold bottle to the tension headache brewing at his temple. A familiar sense of helplessness settled in his gut, the same feeling he always had when dealing with certain members of his troubled family.

“I've had it. Do you hear me? I told him the next time would be the last time. I told him if he can't keep his sorry ass off a bar stool, there's no freaking
way
I was going to bail it out of jail again.”

“DUI?” he guessed, though it didn't take any particular detective skills.

“What else? Third one in four months.” She swore again. “It's like he's been on one long bender since he lost his job.”

Marcus was the brother just younger than he was, with barely two years between them. He was also the Emmett brother who seemed determined to follow in their father's wobbly, drunk-off-his-ass footsteps.

Until a few months earlier, things had been going well for Marcus. Though his brother had only graduated high school by the skin of his teeth, he immediately moved to Boise and went to work in construction and eventually made a good living driving a cement truck.

He and Christy had a rocky start, marrying young after she got pregnant, but seemed to be making things work and had even added a few more kids to the mix.

Earlier in the year, Marcus's company had run into financial trouble and he was laid off and everything seemed to implode.

“I can't do this anymore, Cade. I just can't,” Christy said. Her voice wavered and he could hear the tears just below the surface. “When he's here, he just mopes around doing nothing but snapping at me and the kids.”

“Being unemployed is tough on a guy like Marc, who's used to taking care of his family.”

“I get that. Believe me, I get it. But instead of going out to find another job, he goes out and buys more booze. What is
wrong
with him?”

Cade didn't know how to answer. Christy wanted him to fix his brother. He felt as if he'd spent his entire life trying to duct-tape together the jagged pieces of his broken family in one way or another. Hell of a lot of good that had done over the years. He hadn't been able to prevent his mom from getting sick when he was eleven and he couldn't keep anybody else out of the hot mess of trouble they always seemed to land in.

“What do you need from me?” he asked.

“How about a phone number for a good divorce attorney?” she countered.

That would be a disaster for their three kids, who adored their father. On the other hand, living with an unreliable, unstable, angry drunk wasn't a great alternative.

“I can't help you there, Christy. He might be an ass but he's still my brother. He would be devastated to lose his family. You know he loves you.”

“Does he? Really? He's losing his family right now. He's just too plastered to notice!”

Was she only calling to complain or did she really think he had some power to change his brother's behavior? He couldn't decades ago when they were kids. He certainly couldn't now.

“I'm not bailing him out this time,” Christy went on. “I'm dead serious. I'm working my fingers to the bone, trying to keep food in my kids' mouths and shoes on their feet. I'm not going to use my hard-earned money to bail him out of jail one more time. As far as I'm concerned, he can rot in there.”

Maybe that would be the wake-up call his brother needed, the stimulus to get off his butt and make a change. Or maybe Marcus would perceive Christy's inaction as proof she didn't love him, which might send him slipping further into the depression that seemed to have caught hold.

“I understand where you're coming from.”

“Do you?”

Yes. Hell, yes. After his mother died, Cade had tried his best to help his father but had finally had to accept his father loved Johnnie Walker far more than he could ever love his sons.

Marcus wasn't Walter. He was a good man going through a rough stretch.

“I can try to talk to him, see if I can convince him to go into rehab.”

Christy paused and he heard more sniffling on the line. “Don't you think I've tried that? Only about a thousand times. He won't listen.”

“It's worth a shot.”

“Maybe you'll have better luck. He respects you more than any other man he knows.”

“I can't make any promises,” he warned. “Any change has to come from him.”

“I appreciate the effort anyway. You've been a good brother to him.”

He would beg to disagree. A good brother would have been better at keeping his siblings out of trouble.

“It might be a few days before I can get over there. I've got to work double shifts for a while since I'm short an officer this week.” He grimaced at the reminder of Wynona Bailey and her foolhardy stubbornness.

“That's fine with me. Let him stay in there and stew about the mess he's created.”

“I should be able to squeeze out a few hours toward the middle of the week to drive to Boise.”

“I hope you can talk sense into his hard head.”

“So do I.”

She was silent for a moment and he heard more sniffling on the line and a muffled sob. “Why does he have to make it so hard to love him?” she finally burst out.

If his brother had been there, Cade would have had no problem pounding him, badge or no badge. Idiot. He had a good thing going. A wife who loved him, kids who needed him. Why would he throw all that away?

Cade's own beer—the bottle from the single six-pack he allowed himself per week—suddenly tasted flat and bitter.

None of them had been given much of a chance, with an abusive drunk for a father and a weak mother who didn't take care of herself and ended up with liver disease because of it.

With such a screwed-up childhood, it was a wonder Marcus had been able to maintain a good relationship with Christy all these years.

“You take good care of yourself and those kids.”

“That's what I'm trying to do. But you know Marcus won't see it that way.”

He feared she was right. “Do you need help with bills?” he finally asked quietly.

Christy was silent for a long, awkward moment. “You've done more than enough, Cade.”

He didn't mention to her that Marcus had come to him asking for help paying the mortgage the last few months. He had a feeling she knew and was too proud and stubborn to ask for more.

He would send a check anyway and hope she accepted it, for the kids' sake. Losing their home wouldn't help the situation right now.

“I'll talk to you later in the week to see how things are going,” he said.

“Thanks, Cade. I didn't know what else to do but to call you. I needed to vent to someone else who loves that idiot as much as I do.”

“I'll do what I can,” he promised.

After they said goodbye, he leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, exhausted suddenly from the crazy day. Marcus and his latest DUI seemed like just one more thing he couldn't fix.

The world was filled with problems he couldn't solve, which sometimes seriously sucked.

The doorbell rang while he was still trying to figure out how he could slip Christy the extra money for her mortgage—which happened to be the one problem he
could
remedy.

He might get to that steak at some point that evening, but he was beginning to wonder.

“Coming,” he called out.

He headed to the front door and pulled it open. All thoughts of Marcus and Christy, DUIs and mortgages, flew completely out of his head.

Wynona Bailey stood on his doorstep with her wheat-colored hair pulled back into a thick braid and tan shorts revealing a surprisingly long stretch of tawny legs.

Yeah. The world was really good at throwing unsolvable problems at him.

His mind snapped back to that nightmarish moment when he had pulled up to the fire at Darwin Twitchell's barn and found her patrol vehicle empty and no sign of Wyn, and then an instant later she burst through the doors of the barn with a kid in each arm and flames exploding behind them.

He had run through that moment in his head dozens of times in the last few hours and still couldn't figure out the emotion he'd experienced, when he knew she was safe and unharmed.

Something had changed. That's all he knew. Or maybe it had been there forever but was only now growling to life.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, then realized how rude the words sounded when her hesitant smile slid away.

But what was he supposed to say? Though she lived at the other end of the street, they didn't socialize at each other's homes outside of work. He could count on one hand the times he'd been to her place, usually to drop off paperwork. She stopped here just as seldom.

Why was that?

He didn't know the answer and it seemed odd now. They were friends and had been for years, even before she came to work for him after her father's injury. Her brother was his
best
friend.

He had been to all his other officers' homes several times. Barbecues. Birthday parties. It had never been a big deal to socialize outside of work, especially in a small police department like Haven Point. But something about Wyn Bailey was...different.

Maybe he could blame the same something that had sent him rushing to the scene of a fire after she stopped responding to the radio, with his heart hammering and his foot pushing hard on the gas pedal.

“I'll tell you why I'm here but I'd rather not do it standing on the porch,” she said. “May I come in?”

He had no choice but to step back and open the door wider for her.

A familiar canine followed her in and he couldn't help a smile, despite the tension that popped and sparked between them like a bad wire.

“Hey there, Young Pete.”

The dog's ears perked up at his name and he sat at Cade's feet with his tail brushing the wood plank floor of his entryway. Cade reached down and scratched Pete in the spot he remembered the dog liked, just under its left ear.

“How are you, buddy?”

He and Young Pete went way back, to the days when the dog used to be John Bailey's constant companion. The former chief had adored the puppy, the latest in a string of dogs he always named Pete.

He wasn't a puppy anymore. Gray peppered his muzzle and he walked with the same ginger care of an old man on the cusp of needing artificial knees.

“How are the lungs?” he finally asked when Wyn showed no inclination to let him know what she was doing at his house.

At her blank look he arched an eyebrow. “Smoke inhalation, remember? A few hours ago you were being examined by two of Haven Point's finest EMTs. Ring a bell?”

“Oh. Right. The lungs.” She shrugged. “If I breathe too deeply, they ache a little but nothing I didn't expect.”

The reality of her close call seemed to reach out and grab him by the throat all over again. He couldn't even contemplate what might have happened to her.

Yeah, he knew the risks of the job. Every day when he sent his officers out, he knew they were risking injury and even death. People thought Haven Point was a nice, quiet town where nothing much happened but those in his department knew better. The town had its share of drug abuse, domestic disturbances, assaults.

He had been standing just a few feet away when her father took a bullet to the head that should have killed him—and in a roundabout way, eventually did just that two years later.

If Wynona had joined the ranks of the fallen that included her father
and
her twin brother, Cade wouldn't have been able to live with himself.

Her mom was probably out of her head with worry.

“That was a really stupid thing you did,” he said sternly.

“Yes, I believe you mentioned that when you were yelling at me in front of the entire fire department.”

For a guy with a reputation for a cool head under pressure, he had done a miserable job of handling the whole situation. He could admit that now, after the fact. He should have taken her aside and reprimanded her in private. The whole public-safety community didn't need to watch him lose his temper.