Dark River Road (59 page)

One of the police officers who came to take the report remembered Chantry quite well. It had been a long time ago, but not so long he’d have forgotten the boy who’d head-butted him.

“Heard you’s back,” he drawled, eyes narrowed at Chantry as if trying to figure out why. “Reckon there’ll be trouble on your tail as usual.”

“Not if I can help it.” Chantry leaned up against his car, crossed his arms over his chest and stared back. After a minute, the officer looked down at the ruined tires and shook his head.

“So who did this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hear anything unusual last night?” Officer Walker scribbled something on his pad for a couple of minutes. “This morning?”

“Nothing. But the car’s in the alley away from the bedroom.”

“Yeah. Well, ain’t much the police can do about this but make a report. Vandals, most likely. Or maybe somebody don’t like you.”

Chantry took the report copy he handed him. “That narrows it down.”

“I bet.” Still slit-eyed, Walker tapped his clipboard against his leg as if wanting to say something else, then just shrugged. “Don’t make trouble for yourself. Or anyone else. If you do, folks ’round here ain’t likely to want you stayin’.”

“How would that would be any different?” Chantry straightened, pushed away from the car. “I didn’t come back to make trouble.” It wasn’t quite a lie. He’d come back for answers, and that’d probably be what made trouble. For someone, anyway.

“Yeah, we’ll be watchin’ you,” Walker said after a minute. “Captain Gordon said to be sure you knew that.”

“I thought Gordon would be police chief by now.”

“He’s in the runnin’. But I’ll tell him you’re interested in how he’s doin’.”

He could imagine how that conversation would run. Chantry didn’t say anything else, and in a minute, Walker got in his car and left. Unless things had changed a lot since he’d gone, old man Quinton usually had a big hand in appointing the police chief. He couldn’t expect any help from that quarter, even if Gordon had forgotten him.

By the time the insurance company sent an auto service to get him back on the road, it was mid-afternoon and Doc had clients lined up in the waiting room. Dogs, cats, birds, and two ferrets were clutched by anxious pet owners, each eying the other apprehensively. A zoo.

It took the rest of the day to get through them all, and by the time the doors closed on the last patient, Chantry had a much greater admiration for Doc’s patience.

“I don’t know how you keep your mouth shut,” he said, wiping down the stainless steel table with disinfectant and paper towels, eying Doc. “You know that guy’s fighting his dogs.”

“Yeah, he probably is. But I can’t prove it. And even if I could, not sure it’d do any good to say anything. No one around here will stop it, and at least the dog’s getting some help.”

“Maybe. Had my way, I’d close him down.”

“So would I. All I can do is treat the dog for now. If we ever get anyone in office that’ll do anything about it, we can at least make it hard for them to profit in Quinton County. Can’t change the nature of some people though. Men like that one’ll always be around.”

It was depressing. Chantry thought about it while he got the clinic animals settled for the night, checked IV drips and gave meds. Mindy Rowan set a helper to cleaning cages and feeding, and he gave her a lift home when they left for the day.

“Don’t guess you know too much about that last guy who came in with his dog, do you,” he said when he parked in front of the Rowan trailer. It looked much the same as it always had, except a wooden deck had been built onto the front and an addition on the other side, but it still squatted atop cinder blocks on a bare patch of dirt, with a catalpa tree to shade it from the harsh summer sun. A line of cottonwood trees bordered a small, sluggish ditch behind, and the air held bits of white fluff like lint drifting on a breeze. Mindy paused with her hand on the door handle.

“Billy Mac Stark, you mean? Yeah, I know him a little. Why?”

“He’s fighting his dogs.”

“You don’t want to get into that, Doctor. Folks get serious about it. Some of them ain’t real nice, either.”

“What a surprise.”

She gave him a considering look, then shrugged as she opened the door. “Thanks for the ride. I’ll tell Mama you said hey.”

He nodded. Eleanor Rowan probably still worked nights at the twenty-four hour diner that had catered to truck drivers as long as he could remember. A hard life. He should go in and talk to her, but it just dredged up the kind of memories he’d rather not face right now.

From Sugarditch, he headed for Highway 1. Six Oaks wasn’t that far, not nearly as far as he remembered it being. Maybe Cane Creek had gotten smaller or his memory flawed, but he was there before he realized it, pulling into the long curving driveway still flanked by a three-rail white fence along the front and sides, still looking like a state park instead of a private residence. All Quinton money and influence.

He braked at the end of the drive and just looked at the house set back in the trees. There were only five old oaks now. One was obviously young, probably replacing an original lost to storm or disease. He thought of the times he’d been here, working on the grounds, or with Mama up in Quinton’s office. And then the time with Chris after Tansy left Cane Creek. It was still etched sharply in his memory—his shock, the depth of the secrets kept by the Quintons, the lengths they’d go to in order to protect themselves. Chris had known he wouldn’t tell because it’d only hurt Dempsey and Tansy. Bound to silence by loyalty. What a bitch.

After a moment, he pulled up to the house and parked in the circle drive. The woman who came to the door didn’t remember or recognize him, and he didn’t know her. She simply said that Mr. Quinton was unavailable.

“Tell him Chantry Callahan is here.”

“Really, sir, he’s not expected back for another hour.”

“I’ll wait.”

When she opened her mouth to refuse, something in his face must have changed her mind because she only nodded. “Very well. There’s a small bench—”

“I know where it is.”

Déjà vu all over again
, he thought, and went down the hallway to the bench outside the office door. It even had the same beige and cream stripes as when Mikey had sat here playing with a toy bear so long ago. The same wallpaper covered the walls above the chair rail. He didn’t want to sit so he stood up, arms crossed over his chest, shoulders leaned back against the wall. He still wore his jeans and tee shirt, but had left his scrub jacket in the car.

In a few minutes, footsteps sounded on the staircase that curved down from the second floor, and a woman he recognized as Chris Quinton’s mother drifted down the steps, seeming to almost float above them like a ghost. As always she wore a white nightgown. She paused when she reached the bottom and saw him, and he hoped she’d move on and not speak. She didn’t.

“I know you,” she said in the same whispery voice he remembered, low and almost monotone. “You’re that boy who used to beat up my son.”

He didn’t reply to that, just nodded. She smiled and moved closer on a wave of flowery perfume mixed with the distinct scent of gin. When she was only a foot away, she stopped at last and he glanced toward the stairs and the entrance hall, hoping for rescue. She touched him lightly on the arm.

“You’re here for the secrets, aren’t you.”

It was uncanny how she cut to the heart of the matter, and the hair lifted on the back of his neck even while he was mesmerized by her opaque blue eyes, wide open in her china doll face. A blonde curl dangled between her arched brows. She didn’t seem to have aged at all. Maybe insanity was a fountain of youth for some people. It seemed to be for Laura Quinton. She smiled.

“I told Chris you’d be back. He said you’re too smart, but I told him it’s not always the secrets that destroy people. It’s the keeping them. I should know.” Her fingers danced across his bare forearm and up to his biceps, stroked gently. “You’ve gotten stronger. Harder. Ruthless in a way. Just like Bert Quinton. He’ll destroy you if he can.”

“He’s already tried.”

She smiled. “Yes. He has. But you’ve beat him so far. You didn’t give up. You didn’t die in the desert. Now you’re back. And he’s worried but he won’t say it, doesn’t want anyone to know. But I know. I can see it in his eyes, in the way he talks about you.”

Chantry stared at her. Something eluded him here, hovered just beyond his grasp, and he thought maybe he shouldn’t even pay any attention to her at all. She rambled, medicated and no doubt drunk as well, saying whatever came into her head.

“He has influence, you know. He’s only gotten stronger over the years. He’s helped elect governors and senators. People owe him favors.” Her nails scratched lightly on his arm, like a cat idly sharpening her claws. “But he owes, too. Synchronicity. Law of retribution. Payback. It’s all going to catch up to him one day. I think you’ll catch up to him.”

He didn’t know what she was talking about, wasn’t sure he wanted to. Mama’s early lessons of courtesy wouldn’t let him be rude to her, yet he felt like pushing her away. But he only shrugged.

“I intend to talk to him when he gets here.”

“Yes. Ask him
 . . .
ask him where Ted is. That might be a good starting point.”

“Who’s Ted?”

She laughed softly. “You know. Oh, you know. I know you know. Chris told me.”

Rescue arrived at last in the guise of the maid who’d answered the door, and she took Mrs. Quinton gently by the arm and steered her back toward the staircase. “Mr. Colin will be upset if you don’t get your rest, Miss Laura. Come along now. Your supper is ready and waiting for you in your room.” Glancing back over her shoulder, long white nightgown drifting around her ankles in a sheer swish of silk, she smiled at Chantry as she let herself be led back to the stairs. “I’m glad you came back from the desert.”

“Thanks,” he said because he didn’t know what else to say, and it seemed to satisfy her so that she nodded.

He waited over an hour before Quinton returned. Someone had obviously already told him he had a visitor, because he didn’t look at all surprised to see Chantry waiting.

“Young Mr. Callahan. You’ve arrived at my supper hour.”

“This may not take long.”

Quinton smiled. “Perhaps not, but I don’t care to be inconvenienced.”

“So nothing’s changed.”

He had to be over seventy now, but he was still a big man, broad shouldered if a bit slack-muscled, his features looser as well. Folds of flesh sagged from his jawline, eyebrows lower over his eyes, his nose not as sharp as it was once. His hair had gone snow white but still waved back from his high forehead thickly enough.

“Of course nothing’s changed,” Quinton said. “Did you think common courtesy would alter just because you wish to be rude?”

“Courtesy only matters to you when it’s convenient. We have some unfinished business.”

“No, I think our business was finished when you left Cane Creek.” He opened his office door and went inside, and Chantry followed without an invitation.

The office looked much the same, too. Fading light visible outside the windows gleamed on the line of white rocks Chantry and Dempsey had put in years ago, the dry creek bed dotting over green grass. Chantry focused on Quinton.