Somewhere Along the Way (2 page)

“Oh, Bob, I’ve had another premonition.”

When he didn’t react, she shouted, guessing he’d already turned off his hearing aid. “I had a terrible dream and this time I know I was looking flat-out into the future.”

“What’s your dream, darling? Maybe I can help you interpret it.”

Stella calmed a bit and smiled, happy to oblige. “It started with a shadow moving through the streets down in the old part of Harmony. A darkness seemed to creep along that creek bed where the mud’s curled up like dead skin.”

Bob patted her hand. Stella’s dreams had become far more descriptive since she’d taken that creative writing class at the senior citizens’ center.

She took a deep breath and continued, “Then, silently, it began to spread like clouds full of poison gas and anyone in its path crumbled. The gas, barely visible, spread out and moved through the town.”

Bob nodded, even tugged on his chin, as she continued, but inside, he was thinking he should have taken her to the fish fry at the Methodist church tonight. It looked like he’d never get back to his movie.

JANUARY 9, 2008
BLUE MOON DINER

REAGAN TRUMAN GRIPPED THE GREASY DINER PHONE SO hard her knuckles whitened. “You’d better be sick, Edith. . . . really sick. When you asked me to cover your shift, you didn’t mention intrigue. I thought all I’d be doing was making a few Cokes and maybe pushing the pie.”

After listening to more of the waitress’s instructions, Reagan added, “I didn’t know this was part of your job. I thought I could do my homework unless someone came in.”

Reagan heard Edith coughing on the other end and gave in. “Oh, all right, I’ll do it.”

She hung up and stared out at the empty diner.
Nine o’clock, Wednesday night
, she thought. No one else was coming in, not this late, not with the fog. She might as well go home. Even the owner, grumpy old Cass, had left her to lock up. All Reagan had to do was wipe off the counters, put the frozen dough in the refrigerator, and turn off the lights.

“And,” she frowned at the phone, “pack takeout for the local serial killer.”

She crossed to the kitchen hoping someone would come in to delay her mission, but the bell over the door hadn’t sounded in a half hour. She made two ham sandwiches and spooned up a quart of chili while reminding herself that Harmony was a safe town. Nothing bad ever happened here. Walking across the gully out back was no different than walking around her uncle’s orchard. Trees are trees.

After placing the food in a brown bag, Reagan tossed in crackers and a plastic spoon. Hesitating, she considered whether murderers needed napkins. On impulse, she added a bag of Cass’s homemade oatmeal raisin cookies. Maybe she’d sweeten him up just enough so that Gabriel Leary wouldn’t slit her throat tonight.

“This is ridiculous,” she muttered as she headed toward the back. “Why can’t the weirdo come in the front door like everyone else?” The kids at school told stories about driving along Timber Line Road and seeing Gabriel walking over his rocky land, stabbing at the dirt like he was practicing killing.

At five feet three, Reagan figured he wouldn’t need much practice to murder her. She wasn’t really worried about herself. She’d danced near death several times while growing up, moving from foster home to foster home in neighborhoods where even rats fought to survive, but she didn’t want to die and leave the old man who’d taken her in as family. Uncle Jeremiah Truman needed her. Even tonight, he’d be waiting up for her until he knew she was home safe.

Reagan tried to keep her grab on the takeout bag from tightening. As soon as she delivered it, she could lock up and head home.

She shoved open the back door and stepped into the cold night. “I’m tougher than I look,” she whispered to herself.

Halfway to the Dumpster she decided this alley would be perfect for a crime scene. Dark, freezing night, dumb seventeen-year-old girl walking out alone. Nutcase hiding somewhere in the shadows waiting for his supper. All she needed was a vampire and she’d be starring in a hit.

As she reached the edge of the dull backdoor light, she thought she heard movement to her left. Fighting down a scream, she told herself it was only one of the alley cats looking for scraps. Problem was,
herself
didn’t seem to be listening. Focusing on the trees across the dry gully, she measured her steps, testing solid ground before rushing across the scar in the earth to the scattering of old cottonwoods beyond.

Once there, she froze, unwilling to step where shadows crossed. A rustling whispered in the trees as her eyes adjusted to the night.

A man stood up slowly from where he’d been huddling out of the wind. Tall, bone lean, and dressed in black.

Reagan gulped down panic. “I brought your takeout meal.”

He took one step toward her and reached for the bag. “Thanks.” His whisper seemed to circle in the wind, more shy than menacing.

She didn’t miss the holes in the fingers of his gloves or the patch on his sleeve.

Reaching into his pocket with his free hand, he pulled out two wrinkled dollar bills.

“No,” Reagan said. “That’s all right.” She turned away.

“I can pay,” he answered. “I always pay.”

She looked back, planning to say that payment wasn’t necessary, and then she saw his eyes. Pale blue eyes, almost the color of frozen water, glared down at her. Reagan had known times when money was tight and charity hard to take. She wouldn’t hurt his pride.

Leaning forward, as if her feet had taken root, she took the two dollars. “Thanks for your business, mister,” she muttered.

He straightened, and nodded slightly. “Name’s Gabe Leary.”

“I’m ...” She wasn’t sure she wanted to be on a first-name basis with this guy.

“Reagan,” he filled in the blank.

“Yeah, Reagan,” she answered, thinking that on the scale of strange, this one was off the charts. “Reagan Truman.”

“I know. Edith told me about you. You’re Jeremiah’s niece. Tell the old man thanks for me, would you?”

“For what?” For the third time in almost two years someone had thanked her uncle.

Gabe remained still, watching her with no warmth in his eyes. “He’ll know, just tell him.”

The light over the back door flickered in a sudden gust of wind. Reagan glanced back at the diner, wondering if she could outrun this guy. They seemed to have exhausted all conversation. He was probably thinking it was time for the killing to begin.

When she looked back, Gabe Leary had vanished into the trees along with his takeout meal.

A few flakes of snow brushed against her face, and she ran back inside. If she hurried, she could lock up and drive the few miles to her uncle’s place on Lone Oak Road before any precipitation made the roads slippery.

Fifteen minutes later, she drove up to the farmhouse that had been her only real home. When she’d first arrived the place looked like the spook house in a Disney movie, but now with paint and some work, it seemed grand to her.

“I’m back,” she said to the dog as she jumped out of her pickup before the engine stopped rattling. Swinging her backpack, she climbed the steps and opened the always-unlocked front door. The ghosts of her almost-ancestors greeted her from their faded photos along the walls. Reagan had learned all their names and sometimes called good night to each one as if she lived with a house filled with family.

Reagan moved down the hallway to the back of the house, where a wide, warm kitchen welcomed her. They’d knocked a wall out and almost doubled the space. Now, the kitchen was on one side, a table in the center, and couches and chairs on the solid north wall with a TV that no one watched. Reagan had seen a picture of a country kitchen in a magazine and talked her uncle into making the addition. There were many rooms in the old house, but this was where they cooked and ate and talked. The room where they lived.

Uncle Jeremiah sat at the table, his coffee cup beside a stack of week-old papers. She grinned at him; he frowned at her. She’d come to consider any reaction from him an endearment. He might be in his eighties, but she thought of him as somewhere between preschool and kindergarten in his communication skills.

“Home late for a Wednesday,” he grumbled, and went back to his week-old newspapers.

“I took the last three hours of Edith’s shift at the diner. She claimed to be feeling sick, but I thought I saw a bruise on her face.” Reagan sat her book bag down and grabbed two plates and the last of the pie she’d made Monday. “I’m getting too old for you to worry about. I’ll be eighteen soon, you know.”

“I can count,” he protested, “and I’ll stop worrying about you when you’re thirty and carry a gun.” He stopped frowning when she set the pie down and cut the last big slice into two small pieces. “Didn’t they feed you at that roach café they call a diner?”

Reagan laughed. “No. I’m not sure I could get down one of their pies. They come frozen from the freezer. Once I get out of school in May, I’m thinking I could make pies to sell as a full-time job.”

“It’ll take us all summer to work the orchard, and in the fall you’ll go off to college. I don’t figure that leaves much time for starting a small business.”

She opened her mouth to argue, then decided to eat the pie. She’d made up every excuse she could think of to claim she couldn’t go away to school next year. How could she leave him? Arthritis was slowly twisting his bones, and he couldn’t see well enough to find his glasses in the morning. Dear God, she loved this old man, who’d claimed her as his kin when no one else would. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave him.

He carefully divided his slice of pie into quarters and ate the crust part first.

“I met that man who lives up on Timber Line Road tonight. Leary was his last name.”

As always, Uncle Jeremiah didn’t seem interested in talking while he ate, and he was never much concerned with other people.

“You know him?” she pried.

“Not well,” he answered as he chewed. “Not even sure I’d recognize Gabriel Leary if I saw him in town. Talked to him when he came home from a hospital in San Antonio, but couldn’t see much of him for the bandages. The man looked like a mummy.”

“You know about him? How come he’s up there all alone?”

“I fixed an engine for his pa back about five years ago. He said he needed it to go get his boy fast, so I worked all night. Everyone knew his only child left ten years before when he wasn’t even out of high school. Sheriff came by looking for him. Said he ran off, but I always figured Gabe Leary just left. I’m guessing he must have been in bad shape if he asked for help from his old man. Old Leary was a hard man and about as worthless as his land.”

“How was Gabriel hurt?”

“Didn’t ask.”

“What kind of hospital was it?”

“Didn’t ask.” Jeremiah swallowed the last bite. “Just fixed the car.”

“That’s it?”

Jeremiah thought a minute as if he didn’t understand the question. “Old man died in town at the doctor’s office the winter Gabriel came home. They say he was sitting in a crowded waiting room and by the time they called his name, he no longer needed the doctor. Don’t know that anyone, including his son, mourned him.”

Reagan tried again. “Want to tell me why Gabriel said to thank you tonight?”

Jeremiah lowered his gaze, as he always did when he was considering a lie. “Nope,” he said as he collected the dishes and moved to the sink.

Reagan knew she’d get no more information out of him. Maybe one day he’d tell her, but not tonight. She stood, lifted her backpack, and met him at the bottom of the stairs. Without a word, she kissed his cheek and headed up to her room.

She heard his “Come on, boy” to the dog as he shuffled down the hallway to his bedroom at the back of the house. Her uncle held as fiercely to his secrets as he did his land. She knew without a doubt that he’d never told anyone in town that she wasn’t really his niece. To him, she was his kin. She’d gone from being a runaway to being the next generation of Trumans a week after she’d hitchhiked into town. She’d stepped from having no roots to being the future of one of the three families who’d founded the town.

It was too heavy to think about, she decided, but then thinking about school and Noah didn’t give her much peace either. Noah McAllen was her best friend, and he’d been acting strange lately. Why couldn’t everything stay just like it was? Why did the world keep changing on her?

Plopping onto her bed, Reagan pulled out her cell and punched speed dial for her best friend. “Noah, you awake?”

“I am now, Rea,” he mumbled.

She laughed. “It’s not that late.”

“I know, but my dad had me up at five moving cattle before school. He seems to think a storm’s coming in.”

Reagan tugged off her shoes and settled in for her nightly talk with Noah. They’d dated occasionally until they both decided they were meant to be friends. She wasn’t ready for a boyfriend, and he was too focused on rodeo to have time to date.

Only lately, he wasn’t as open as he’d always been, and she didn’t know how to ask what was wrong. Half the time he acted like he was mad at her, and she couldn’t think of anything she’d done.They talked of school and homework, but he didn’t mention the date he’d had with Jennifer and she didn’t tell him about Gabriel Leary. When she said good night, Reagan wished she hadn’t called.