Leave Tomorrow Behind (Stella Crown Series) (15 page)

“Austin, how could you be her boyfriend, and no one knew?”

He was quiet for a few moments. “Have you seen the papers? Those stupid ‘newspapers’ that tell the gossip from the entertainment world? It’s all about famous people’s personal lives. Their boyfriends, girlfriends, people they hate, people who hate them. There’s no such thing as private anymore. Rikki doesn’t…didn’t want that. She wanted us to just be us. Not us and the world.”

I couldn’t blame her. Not after everything I’d seen about her and that other singer, what was her name, Valerie Springfield, and the guy who supposedly drove a wedge between them. “What about that other guy? The actor from that zombie show?”

He snorted. “She couldn’t stand him. They were at a premiere once and somebody took their picture, totally made it into something it never was.”

“So she and that other singer? There wasn’t really a rivalry?”

“Oh, sure there was. Valerie Springfield hated Rikki, at least that’s what Rikki heard. Valerie thought Rikki was keeping her from moving up the food chain. That there could only be one star from rural Pennsylvania. Stupid, of course. Why would Rikki care? They weren’t even at the same label.”

“Did Valerie hate Rikki enough to kill her?”

He breathed through his mouth, his brain obviously on overload. “I never said that. I don’t know her. Just what Rikki told me, and she thought the whole thing was ridiculous. And lame. I just know I loved Rikki. And I would never, ever hurt her. Not even a little.”

I stepped closer to him, speaking so no one else could hear. “I don’t for a second think you did. But I do think you hurt someone else. You and Rikki put the lemon in the calf’s food, didn’t you?”

He sniffed, and wiped his nose with his sleeve. “It was just supposed to—”

“—be a joke? It’s never a joke when you hurt an animal.”

“It didn’t hurt him. He’s fine.”

“But it could have kept him out of the competition.”

“So? He didn’t deserve to be in the competition, anyway. I mean, she didn’t. Those stupid Greggs deserve everything that’s coming to them.”

“Everything? You mean there’s more?”

“No! I just…” He closed his eyes briefly, and when they opened again, he didn’t look scared anymore. He just looked pissed. “That family thinks they own the world. The fair. Rikki’s career. It’s about time someone told them different.”

“Austin.” I looked at the boy—for at that moment he was definitely a boy, and not a man—and pushed down the anger rising in my gut. “You’ve put me in a horrible position. You know what this kind of thing means. You know what I should do. What I’m supposed to do, if I follow the rules.”

His nostrils flared, and another round of tears gathered in his eyes. Not pissed anymore—now he was terrified. “The lemon wasn’t going to hurt him.”

“Austin, you sabotaged another person’s animal. You should be expelled from the fair.”

“Please.” He sniffed and wiped his nose with his sleeve. “Please, Stella, I didn’t mean…and now Rikki’s dead. And the calf won, anyway, right? So it didn’t change a thing. It didn’t hurt anything.”

“Didn’t it?”

“What? What did it do? She still won!”

Dammit, what was I supposed to do? Turn him in, and he’d lose everything. Scholarships, respect, perhaps even his clean criminal record. Did he deserve that? But if I let him go, I was an accessory to a crime. I was an adult, not living up to the rules and regulations expected of us. Especially someone who was sponsoring an animal. Someone who spent her life protecting and caring for animals.

“Stella.” Austin sank onto a straw bale. “It was dumb. I know it was dumb. And wrong. I won’t…I’m sorry.”

I clenched my jaw, already kicking myself for what I was about to do. But, holy crap. How could I destroy the future of this kid? Even if he was a moron. “Listen. If I let this go, which is the stupidest thing I’ll have done in a very long time, you have to promise me—swear on Halladay, or your mother, or whatever keeps you up at night—that you will never, ever do anything like this again. If you so much as consider sabotaging another animal, I’ll be all over you like flies on my manure pit. You understand me? You do something like this, and it’s not just you who will be in trouble. It will be my ass, too, because I turned my back on it this time.”

Austin nodded, not looking at me. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, and he clenched his hands so hard he probably left nail marks on the backs of his hands. “I know. I’m…I won’t ever. I promise. I swear. Please. You have to believe me. I’m telling the truth.”

Idiot kid. It was a little late for that.

“But that’s not it.”

“There’s more?”

“Of course there’s more! You could have been one of the last people to see Rikki alive. You were with her just before she was killed.”

He dropped his face into his hands and sobbed. “I never should have left her. She said she would be okay…”

I sat next to him and put my hand on his back. He stiffened.

“Austin, what happened?”

He wiped his nose again. “I got a text, asking me to come by the fair office.”

“At midnight?”

“I know, it was crazy. But I didn’t want to take any chances and miss something. So Rikki said she’d sneak over to our trailer. My folks never stay here, so there wouldn’t be anyone to see her. She couldn’t come to the fair office with me, because, well, there would be too many people around. I thought she’d be fine.” He sobbed again, and I squeezed his shoulder.

“So you got to the office, and then what?”

“Nobody there had texted me. It was just the one old guy there, and he didn’t know anything. So I went back to my trailer, and Rikki wasn’t there. I tried texting her, but she didn’t answer, so I thought maybe she got spooked, and took off. I just texted her that I’d call her tomorrow. I mean, today. Of course I never heard back.”

I drummed my fingers on his back. “Do you still have the text you got from the fair office?”

“No.” He got out his phone and scrolled down. “It was just a number, because I don’t have the office in my contacts, and there was no reason to keep it.”

I wished he had, because it very easily could have been someone luring him away from Rikki. Someone who had access to his phone number. But I’m not sure he’d put that together yet.

“Austin, I know this is hard. Really hard. But you need to tell the cops, not about the lemon, that’s small stuff compared to Rikki. But you need to go. Today. Now. Tell them about the bogus text, and about being with Rikki that night.”

He sniffed, but didn’t respond.

“I’ll give you a little time, but if you don’t go, I am going to tell them this. It’s too important to let go. You want me to go with you?”

He held so still I thought he was ignoring me altogether, or just was too far into his head to hear me. But then he shook his head, so subtly I almost didn’t catch it. “I’ll go,” he whispered. “By myself.”

I waited a few more seconds, then quietly walked away.

Chapter Twenty-four

“Everything okay?” Nick met me outside the barn.

“No, not really. I need to check in with Carla now.” She’d never replied to my text warning her about Watts, and I was worried she hadn’t seen it, and had been blind-sided.

“All right. Do you know where she is?”

I loved that he didn’t question me about why I needed to see her, or why I had steam coming out of my ears. “I’ll find her.” I pulled out my phone, which was getting more use that day than it had in the past several months. Speed dial three, behind only Nick and Lucy. Lucy…I should probably check in with her at some point.

“Hey,” Carla said. I could hear voices in the background, and what was probably an electric fan.

“Where are you? We need to talk.”

“So talk.”

Hmm. Had Watts already cornered her and accused her of killing Rikki Raines? “If this is a bad time—”

“I’m in the rabbit barn. Come on over.” She hung up. All was not merry in Carla Land.

“Are we going, too?” Miranda said, when I informed them where I was headed. “More animals?”

“They’re rabbits,” I said. “Cute. Fluffy. Babies.”

Nick nudged her. “Come on, Sis. It’ll be fun.”

She sighed. “Fine.”

We made a quick stop to get Miranda a corn on the cob on a stick, and found Carla talking with a young girl who was holding an adorable, charcoal-colored lop-eared bunny. Too bad Tess wasn’t there. She would have gone ballistic. Bryan waited a few feet away, sitting on Carla’s vet box, the one Watts thought had been burgled for the Acepromazine. Or where Carla had stashed her murder weapons. Bryan made a face at me which could have meant, “Thank God you’re here,” or “Watch out, she’s in the mood to kill somebody.” Which wouldn’t be good for her future, if Watts got wind of it.

The girl soon put the rabbit back into its cage, and Carla turned toward Bryan. He gestured at me, and she dropped onto a straw bale right next to him, blowing hair off her forehead. “Hey. Sorry I was short with you on the phone. It’s just…this day.” Her chin trembled, and she looked down at her knees.

Bryan put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed, but gazed at me with a helpless please-do-something sort of expression.

I jerked my head for him to move, and took his place beside her. “Can you folks give us a minute?”

Nick immediately guided Miranda to a cage where a pair of rabbits looked like they were made entirely of exploded fuzz. Bryan shifted from one foot to another, then shuffled after Nick.

I knocked Carla’s knee with my own. “Want to talk about it?”

She took a shuddering breath. “You won’t believe it.”

“I think I will. Have you checked your phone lately?”

She jumped, like I’d prodded her. “Crap, I turned the sound off a while ago, because I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I’d be in the middle of checking an animal, or talking to someone, and the dumb thing would go off. Then I was just telling a kid I thought his pig was going to have to be taken home when the stupid phone rang, and it was a terrible time for an interruption. I forgot to turn it back on, and then—oh.” She held out the phone with my text on the screen. “So you know about the detective.”

“I know what she thinks. What did she tell you?”

“Other than that I need to watch my step, and give her a detailed timeline of my whereabouts, and not leave town?”

“She didn’t really say that.”

A grin flickered across her mouth. “No, but she might as well have. But get this, you know how I’ve been saying these 4-H’ers and their parents are running me ragged? They just might be my alibi.”

“I thought I was your alibi.”

“Well, yeah, but then you left, remember? I was checking on a goat late last night, right while you were finding Rikki Raines’ body on the manure trailer. That kid and her parents will vouch for me.”

“I think Watts knows you’re out of the picture as the actual murderer.”

“Yeah.” She glanced at the box under me. “But I might be a partner in crime.”

“No. Just because someone stole your stuff—if that even happened—it does not mean you’re responsible. It means someone took something that wasn’t theirs and used it in a way you never would.”

“But if I’d locked the box up better—”

“It was locked?”

“Well, sure. I would never leave it open. Too much dangerous equipment in there. Obviously.”

“Did it look like someone had gotten in? Is the lock messed up?”

“Not that I noticed.” She leaned down to look between my knees at the keyhole. “There are scratches on there, but they could have happened anytime. It’s not like I’m always watching for someone to steal my stuff. The only other time I got robbed was when my truck got mashed, and that was obviously different. I don’t like thinking somebody’s always out to get me.”

“Of course not. You have all that goodwill toward men I’ll never have.”

She chuckled. “Toward women, too.”

I knocked her with my shoulder. “So now what? What did Watts really say?”

“She wanted to know if I’d noticed anything weird, or if I was missing something. But I hadn’t had a chance to go over inventory since Sunday. These kids and their animals. What is up with them needing a vet all the time?” She grinned, and some of her usual spark made its way back into her eyes. “So we went through the box. It’s impossible to tell if I’m missing a syringe—I’ve got a container of a hundred, and I’d have to go back through records to find out how many I’ve used since I stocked up. Plus, there’s no way to tie the syringe to me, necessarily. It’s not like they each have a serial number, or anything. It was the same brand, we think, but they’re like, everywhere.”

“What about the Ace?”

Her face darkened again. “I’m not missing any of that, according to my records, but I could be wrong, I guess. I’m not a perfect organizer every second of the day. God, how did this happen?”

“Hey, remember what I said? Not your fault. You’re here to do a job. Tranqs are part of it. Other people need to keep their hands off.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

We sat for a few moments, and then I said, “Bryan thinks somebody’s out to get you.”

A flash of irritation raced across her face, but I wasn’t sure if it was directed toward Bryan, or toward the “somebody.” “He’s sweet. But I’m fine.”

“Carla, could it be the other vets? The ones who wanted this job?”

“Why would they want it? It sure hasn’t been fun so far. And no, I can’t see someone trying to get me unlicensed over a week-long stint at the county fair. It’s not that great an honor. I’m finding that out fast.”

“So who else? Anyone unhappy with results lately? Someone have a prize animal you’ve had to put down, or anything?”

“It’s been a very tame month. I’ve thought about it. I can’t come up with anybody who would be mad at me for any reason.”

“So maybe Bryan’s just imagining things.”

“I sure hope so, but I don’t know. It was the whole lemon peel thing that really got him worried. He figures somebody did it just to see if I could figure it out.”

Damn that Austin. He had no idea how his stupid actions would affect people other than the Greggs. I knew I’d regret keeping my mouth shut.

“He’s wrong,” I said.

“Who is?”

“Bryan. About the lemon peel. It had nothing to do with making you look bad.”

“How do you know?”

“Just…trust me on this.”

She frowned. “Is there something I should know?”

“No.” I stood. “Anyway, I thought it was the texts that got Bryan all riled up.”

Her face darkened. “He told you about those?”

“Sure. He’s worried.”

“And smothering me.”

“Carla, he loves you. He wants to protect you.” Wow. Was I really defending him? I must have been suffering from a lack of sleep. Or something. “So who sent the texts? And what did they say?”

“Don’t know who they were from. It was just a number. And they just said stupid things about me becoming a laughingstock, or being proven incompetent, or something.”

“Do you still have the texts?”

“Why?”

“I want to see the number.”

She gave me a suspicious look, but got out her phone. Of course I didn’t recognize the number. I don’t even know why I looked. I wished I had the number of the person who’d texted Austin, pretending to be the fair office, so we could compare them.

“What?” Carla said.

“Nothing.”

She was still looking at me funny. “What are you not telling me?”

“Nothing. Please, don’t ask anymore.”

She stared at me for a few more long moments, then shook her head. “Fine. You can tell me when it’s convenient for you.”

“Carla…”

“No, no, I’m sorry. It’s just been such a crappy day so far. And now I need to help a hysterical mother who is sure her son’s pig is on its deathbed, but he’s headed off to be in the parade. The kid, not the pig. You going?”

“I don’t think you need me to come. Isn’t Bryan going with you?”

“I meant the parade.”

“Oh, I guess. I told Zach I’d be there to wave. I also told him not to take my eye out with a Tootsie Roll.”

“Wear safety goggles. Okay, I’m off. Thanks for the pep talk.”

“Anytime.”

Bryan must have been watching, because as soon as Carla stood, he hustled over to grab her box.

Nick came over, too, and we watched them leave. He brushed some straw off my back. “Everything okay now?”

“It’s better. But still not perfect.”

“Nothing ever is.”

“Speaking of not being perfect, where’s Miranda?”

He grinned. “She’s fallen in love.”

“She found Mr. Right in the rabbit barn?”

“Sure did. Come meet him.”

I trudged after Nick, knowing whoever this guy was, I was going to hate him.

But I was wrong.

How can you hate a little guy named Pouncer, who weighs thirteen pounds and is covered with fuzzy, black and white spots?