The Second Lie (11 page)

"I know you're not. Sheila Grant would have had you by now if you were."

"Sheila is happily taken."

"Which brings us back to you." Sam sobered. "I worry about you, Kel. You're hardly ever alone, but you're always alone."

"I don't feel alone," I told her. "A woman doesn't need a man to be complete, Sam. I thought you, of all people, understood that."

"I do. It's just...at least I've got Kyle. I don't know what I'd do without him."

I was horrified when Sam's eyes filled with tears. Samantha Jones didn't cry. Ever. It was like a rule or something.

"What's going on? Has Kyle found someone else?" It was inevitable. They all knew that he wanted a wife. A family. Always had. Even in high school, when most of them were raring to leave town and see the real world, Kyle had been the odd one out, wanting nothing more than to get married and stay on his farm forever.

Samantha shook her head. "It's stupid. I'm just tired and overreacting."

"To what?"

She looked straight at me. "Did you know that Kyle slept with someone else the weekend we broke up after I signed up to go to the academy?"

I was stunned. "No way," I said, falling back against the couch. "Kyle? Who was it?"

"At least I'm not the only one who didn't know about it." Sam's voice was bitter. I didn't like the tone coming from her. Wasn't used to it.

"Who was it?" I asked again. "Kyle never wanted anyone but you. Everyone knows that."

"Yeah, well, he had someone. A prostitute. Though I don't think she was one then. Supposedly she got pregnant."

"Supposedly?"

"That part's just rumor."

"Then that's all it is," I said. "Come on, Sam. If he'd gotten a woman pregnant, he'd have a child in his life. You know Kyle."

"Do I?"

Sam looked like a lost vulnerable kid--nothing like the Sam Jones I'd known since grade school.

9

S
am stopped by Sunday night. Zodiac greeted her outside, but Kyle waited in the house for her.

"Where's Grandpa?" she asked, standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

"In bed."

"Is he asleep?"

"I'm not sure. I pulled up the bars about ten minutes ago." He'd had to resort to a hospital bed six months earlier because his grandfather kept trying to get out of bed in the night. The old man's knees gave out on him more times than not these days and he'd taken a couple of potentially serious falls.

"Mind if I check?"

Kyle motioned toward the bedroom directly off the kitchen--his grandfather's room for as long as he could remember--then followed Sam.

"Hey, Grandpa!"

"Suzy, my girl. Come, come." His grandfather patted the side of the bed and Sam settled beside him, taking his wrinkled hand in both of hers.

Zodiac lay on the floor at her feet.

Suzy.
Kyle's mother. A woman who'd died so long ago he couldn't even remember her.

"You're a good girl," Grandpa said, his toothless grin, so rare these days, big and broad. "My boy, he needs you." The old man looked at Kyle.

"I know, Grandpa, that's why I'm here," Sam said, playing along. "Now tell me about your day. How was dinner?"

"Good. I burned the buns, but the roast made up for it."

Grandpa hadn't burned buns in thirty years. Or cooked in two, other than making peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for Kyle at random times. And they'd had ham for dinner.

"Tell me about Gretel, Grandpa. About the time the two of you ran away to the fair..."

Kyle stood there, listening as his grandfather talked about the love of his life, who'd died before Kyle was born. When it came to his late wife, the old man didn't forget a single detail.

His voice filled with strength--and his eyes with peace. Sam asked questions, actively engaging in stories she'd heard almost as many times as Kyle had, until the old man fell asleep.

And then she headed back to the kitchen, standing there awkwardly.

"I just came to...apologize...again for the way I came at you on Friday." Her gaze scanned the kitchen. "I'm just tired, you know, and worried, and--"

"Forget it, Sam."

She looked at him, then quickly glanced away. "I... You... I don't want to lose you, Kyle."

"I'm guessing since you haven't lost me by now, it's probably not going to happen," he said, wishing she'd just be Sam and mouth off to him about doing something stupid like buying dangerous chemicals, or berate herself for being paranoid, and then take him to bed.

That's what they both needed.

"I..."

"Let it go, Sam." He needed her tonight. He'd had a call from the doctor Saturday morning. The blood pressure tests they'd done on his grandfather that past week hadn't been good. Any exertion at all--even eating--raised his blood pressure to dangerous levels. And he was already on the highest dosage of medication.

Nodding, she turned toward the door. "Okay, well, I just... I'm sorry."

She left. And didn't glance back.

Kyle was still pondering the ex-woman of his dreams Tuesday morning as he tackled the storage barn. Sam was acting as if she didn't know him. Like he'd sprouted horns. All because he'd purchased some extra chemicals?

Chemicals that could be used to make meth.

Could Pierce be right? Was she really becoming irrational like her father? So afraid that if she didn't rid the world of scum, her loved ones would be at risk.

He'd known Sam's father. Had liked him. He hadn't seen any sign that the man was obsessive. But then he'd only been ten when Peter Jones had been killed. Still, from what Kyle had heard, most folks were shocked when Sam's dad had gone off the deep end and gotten himself killed.

Surely the same thing wasn't happening with Sam.

Kyle didn't want to think so. But when he'd finally put his foot down, told her she had to chose between being a cop or his wife, she'd chosen to be a cop.

And if she'd given him the same ultimatum--staying on the farm or being her husband?

No, Kyle wasn't going to spend another morning going around in circles with that one.

Cleaning the barn was much easier.

The house only got dusted or vacuumed when Sam grew sick of looking at the mess and cleaned it herself or if he called a woman from town to do it. But Kyle did his best to keep up with the barn.

The fact that he'd had to climb over the small tractor, snow blade and the tiller, then step over some shovels, a half-used bag of mulch and the dump trailer just to get to the small insecticide sprayer he was looking for, told him it was time to reorganize.

A good hour later he'd cleaned and refilled the horse feed and seeding bins. Spare bags of both feed and seed were neatly stacked, extra horse tack and medicines were all in their proper cabinets and he had a small path cleared through the rest of his mess.

Which was more than he could say about the situation with Sam. He didn't want to marry the woman. They'd been down that road. But he couldn't imagine life without her.

He decided to tackle the chemicals next. When he went to hoist the fifty-five-gallon carbon steel tank of methanol so that he could sweep the cement slab it rested on, Kyle almost fell backward with the force of his own strength.

He'd used enough force to lift fifty-five pounds, but the tank felt like ten.

With a frown, and an unusual sense of foreboding, Kyle lifted the tank again, rocking it slightly back and forth.

He'd noticed the tank was a little lighter the last time he'd checked, and he'd put it down to evaporation. But forty gallons of gas did not evaporate from a sealed tank that quickly.

What the hell was going on?

Was he mistaken? Had he used more gas than he'd thought? Purchased less?

Shaking his head, Kyle set down the tank and headed for his office--what used to be the formal dining room in the house his grandfather had built for his Gretel seventy years before. He knew he wasn't mistaken. Sam had just thrown the sales figures at him on Friday. Not something he was likely to forget.

Checking both his purchasing accounts and the record of use he meticulously kept for all of the hazardous, seed, feed and medicinal products on his property, he verified what he already knew. He'd stored that last fifty-five-gallon tank of methanol on the cement slab poured specifically for that purpose. And he hadn't touched the tank since.

Call Sam.

Kyle reached for the phone and set it back down as the full implications of that Friday morning visit slammed into him.

Sam believed meth was being made in large quantities in the area.

Kyle had purchased a larger quantity than usual of two of the key ingredients.

And now he was missing a substantial amount of one of them.

How would that look to a woman obsessed with finding this lab, even though her colleagues weren't so sure it existed? Chuck Sewell was the best cop around next to Sam and equally concerned about the county's drug problem. But according to Sam, Chuck believed there was a huge increase in the amount of the drug being imported.

One thing was for sure. Right now, especially after Sunday's visit, Kyle didn't trust Sam to believe him when he told her that he had no idea what had happened to the gas. Or to help him. He didn't trust his best friend to have his back.

Still, methanol was a dangerous chemical. Improper exposure to the gas could cause dizziness. Nausea. Nervous system disorders. Eventual death.

And he had forty gallons of the stuff unaccounted for.

Back out in the barn with his inventory list, surrounded by his "toys," as Sam had once called his equipment and tools, Kyle calmed down a bit. Methanol was dangerous, but only if mishandled. If the extra gas were anywhere around him he'd have begun to react to its presence within hours.

If nothing else, his nostrils would have bothered him.

And if someone had taken it? In the first place, it wouldn't have been all that easy to get it off his property. And in the second place, the whole idea was ludicrous.

He wouldn't even have considered theft if Sam hadn't planted the seed of suspicion in his head. Methanol wasn't exorbitantly expensive. But had someone needed it for a valid and good reason and couldn't afford it?

Or was the thief involved in an illegal superlab?

What if Sam was right? What if the missing methanol was tied in some way to a dangerous drug operation?

He had to alert the authorities.

He couldn't be convicted for something he hadn't done. Hell, he had no idea how to make meth. Had never even seen the stuff. Even if Sam was nuts enough to arrest him, he'd be able to prove his innocence.

And his corn was going to be ready to harvest by the weekend. Which was the other reason he was in the barn that morning--making his way to the combine to make certain that the belts were tight and to adjust and oil the roller chains.

This harvest was critical if he had any hope of becoming financially solvent. He had no family to fall back on. No brothers or parents or in-laws.

He had a grandfather who was dying.

And if he didn't make a profit, they might not even have their home.

The corn had tested at twenty-two and a half percent moisture content the day before. At an average loss of three-quarters of a percent per day, and a minimum kernel damage at nineteen percent moisture, he'd have to be out in the field by Saturday.

He already had a couple of guys set up to help him.

Waiting any longer than Saturday and he'd be looking at an ear droppage of ten to twenty bushels per acre, a potential loss he couldn't afford.

And that was it. There was no way he could afford to be in jail--even for a day--while they proved that Sam had overreacted.

Besides, how could someone have accessed his land and his barn without him knowing it? Zodiac wouldn't allow it. And the storage barn was kept locked.

Kneeling down at the edge of the large cement slab, Kyle glanced over the rest of the chemicals stored there. Insecticide. Pesticide. All on pallets. All in solid containers, no rust or potential leak sites. Though it took time he didn't have, he checked each one against the sheet he'd brought out with him. Nothing else was missing.

He studied the fifty-five-gallon tank as if it could give him an accounting of the missing gas.

And then he noticed it. The cap was firmly closed, but the rubberized seal around the hose insertion area didn't look even. On closer inspection, Kyle started to breathe a little easier. It appeared as though something had been gnawing on the cap. The back side was whittled away. Which meant that the methanol had been exposed to air. For months.

Air facilitated evaporation.

He should have noticed the damaged seal straight off. Should have checked for it. Would have checked if Sam hadn't made him so damned paranoid.

He'd been fretting over jail time just because he'd never before heard of a varmint breaking a seal on a methanol tank.

But he had a bigger problem. A much bigger problem. The past hour had made it abundantly clear to him that Sam had destroyed the trust between them, something that not even their broken engagement or his marriage had done. And trust, once broken, couldn't be fixed.

Watching Maggie Winston any chance she got outside of her regular duties over the next week took time away from Sam's hunt for evidence of a meth lab. But it didn't take her mind off the problem. Or Kyle. Sitting alone in her cruiser, or the Mustang, gave her too much time to think.

She was going to have to talk to him. Sherry Mahon had been part of their lives for fifteen years, and Sam hadn't even known it. Now she did.

What if Kyle had had a child with the woman? And abandoned it?

They needed to talk.

Chandler had built a new high school facility since Kyle, Kelly and she had graduated. The property, along with an initial building fund, had been donated, and the town had resoundingly passed a tax levy. The new facility--just outside city limits--boasted a state-of-the-art sports facility, football field and computer lab.

Sam volunteered herself for the high school dismissal speed-control detail that the county ran every single day. That way, she could watch for Maggie. And avoid talking to Kyle.