JULIA HAD NEVER been so glad to see her mother-in-law in her life.
Nor—once she glimpsed Calvin standing behind Beverly and Gregory—so terrified.
“Julia, we’re so sorry to bother you. Calvin has everything he needs at my—” She stopped. The smile she turned on Gregory dripped rainbows and songbirds. “At our house except for Bear-Bear. We were out running errands, so we stopped by to get him.”
“Jake!” Calvin crowed. The dog leapt from Julia’s arms to the floor, where he fell into an immediate wrestling match with Calvin.
“Listen, Beverly.” Julia pulled her close. The hair on her neck stood at attention again.
“Who do we have here?” Wayne stepped past her and extended his hand, first to Gregory and then to Beverly. “Deputy Sheriff Wayne Peterson. I just stopped by to check on Julia. She might not have told you, but she’s been having problems with some harassment lately.”
“How very kind of you. I’m Julia’s mother-in-law, Beverly Sullivan, and this is Gregory Abbott, my, my …”
“Her betrothed,” Gregory finished with his characteristic twinkle.
“Congratulations!” Wayne pumped Gregory’s hand again. “You’re a lucky man.”
Beverly flushed and tried to recover her equilibrium. “You might know him. He owns the bookstore downtown.”
“Of course.” Gregory nodded recognition. “Standing order for the weekend Wall Street Journal, right?”
Julia turned to Wayne in surprise. “I’d have taken you for the Guns & Ammo type.” Then wanted to kick herself. The last thing she needed, under whatever circumstances these were, was to antagonize Wayne.
But he took it in stride. “Helps me talk with the movers and shakers,” he said easily.
Julia reminded herself that Wayne had his eye on the top job in the sheriff’s office. The election was still some months away, but she was already tired of these campaign machinations. When would people go back to being themselves?
Although—this time the prickling sensation ran all the way down her spine—she’d thought of Wayne as one of the good guys. Now she just wanted him out of her house.
“Wayne was just leaving,” she said. She motioned Beverly and Gregory inside. Anything to get them out of the doorway, impeding Wayne’s departure.
But he stepped back, farther into the house. “Come on into the kitchen. You won’t believe what Julia has made.”
“Yes, come in.”
As much as Julia wanted Wayne out of the house, if he was going to stay—which appeared to be his intent—she wanted as many people with her as possible. Whatever Wayne was up to, Beverly’s and Gregory’s genteel presence would certainly put a stop to it.
But Beverly shook her head. “No, we still have several stops to make. Nice to meet you, Deputy Peterson.”
“Gamma, can I stay and play with Jake? You can pick up me and Bear-Bear on your way home.”
“No!” Julia’s refusal emerged in a near-shriek.
Beverly glanced at her, but Gregory was already staring indulgently down at boy and dog. “That sounds like a fine idea. Julia, it won’t be any trouble, will it? We won’t be long, an hour or two at most.”
“No trouble at all.” Wayne stepped into the fray. “In fact, I can stay here with Julia until you get back.”
That earned another curious glance from Beverly, sharper than the first. She knew about Julia’s months-long relationship with Dom. Now here was another man, acting perfectly at home in Julia’s new house.
Julia threw her a pleading look, but Wayne was already shepherding Beverly and Gregory toward the door, showering them with inanities on the way. “You two crazy kids have a good time. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
The door closed. Wayne turned to Julia, an unseemly gleam in his eye.
“Now,” he said. “Where were we?”
Jake ran back toward the kitchen, Calvin in pursuit. He stopped in the doorway, staring a question at the open back door.
Wayne shoved past him. “Goddammit.”
Halfway across the yard, Angie stumbled in her too-long sweatpants and fell.
“Wayne, no!” Julia ran after him, grabbing at his heavy-duty belt, trying to pull him away. “Angie, run!”
Wayne reached back, gripped her arm, and flung her aside. He kicked Angie’s feet from beneath her as she tried to scramble away on all fours. He wound a hand in her shiny clean hair and hauled her to her feet. “Bitch. What were you thinking?”
Julia recovered her balance and looked back toward the house, where Calvin stood in the doorway, his mouth an O of surprise, face scrunched with fast-growing fear.
“Hey, Calvin,” she called. “It’s okay. The lady fell and Deputy Peterson was just helping her up. Isn’t that right, Angie?”
She locked eyes with Angie, willing her to understand that from this moment forward, everything was secondary to Calvin’s safety.
Angie ran a hand across her face as though trying to wipe away her own terrified expression, an effort betrayed by her shaking hand, her trembling lips. But her voice, when it emerged, quavered only a little and her words added further cover.
“I scared myself when I fell down.”
“Is that what happened to your teeth?” Calvin asked with the frankness of the young. “Did you fall down?”
Angie stretched her lips in a vague resemblance to a smile. “Something like that.”
Wayne twisted her arm behind her back, where Calvin couldn’t see, and marched her toward the house. “Probably because she ran her big fucking mouth,” he muttered.
Julia’s blood iced her veins.
Whatever was happening was worse than she’d thought, and now her son was in the middle of it.
She waited until they were all back in the kitchen and said to Calvin, “Why don’t you and Jake go wrestle in your playroom in the basement while the grown-ups talk?”
She held her breath. Wayne nodded assent. “Good idea.”
Julia’s shoulders sagged. Whatever was going to happen next, at least her son wouldn’t see it.
Wayne forced Angie into a kitchen chair and sat next to her, clamping her arm so tightly she cried out in pain.
“Shut up,” he said. “Unless you want that kid to come back up here and see what’s happening?”
“What is happening, Wayne?”
Ignorance was anything but bliss. Julia figured she might as well find out what was going on.
“I didn’t tell her nothing, Wayne,” Angie said. “She doesn’t know.”
“But you know. And that asshole boyfriend of yours knows. And he was going to tell her, wasn’t he?”
“He wasn’t. He wasn’t.” Tears streaked Angie’s cheeks.
Wayne put his face close to hers. “He was. I heard him trying to meet up with her.”
Angie gasped for air. “He was upset about Billy. About what you all did to him.”
Julia knew that the less she understood, the safer she was. But she couldn’t help herself. “Meet up with who? What did you do to Billy?”
“Doesn’t matter. He was just a big dumb drunk. He was going to buy it one way or the other.”
Angie’s head snapped up. Her eyes blazed. “He was our friend. What you did to him, it was wrong.”
Julia’s head whipped back and forth as she tried to follow the conversation.
“Are you saying that …” No. It was impossible. But she couldn’t think of any other explanation. “That Wayne killed Billy?”
Wayne laughed, jarring. “Big dumb fuck practically drank himself to death. Just like you’re going to.”
“Wayne, what the hell are you talking about?”
The conversation had veered from improbable to surreal, something Julia found oddly steadying.
“Yeah.” Angie chimed in. “I tried to drink myself to death all those years ago and it didn’t work. Besides, what’s my drinking got to do with Billy’s fighting?”
“Billy’s fighting? You mean with Ray the night he was killed?”
Now it was Angie’s turn to laugh, though hers held no more mirth than Wayne’s.
“Tell her, Wayne. You’re so worried about me telling her.” She straightened and spoke in mincing, formal tones. “Why don’t you be the one who, ah, enlightens our hostess?”
Wayne cast her a warning look. “Shut the fuck up, Angie.”
“Why? You just said we’re goners anyway.”
He had?
Julia’s mind shied away from the prospect. Her son was playing in the basement. Beverly would be back soon. Surely Angie was overreacting.
But Wayne nodded agreement.
“Another homeless person gets clobbered while blind drunk. Claudette Greene can jump up and down and hold all the press conferences she wants, but nobody in this town gives a shit when one of you dies. One less cockroach is how most people see it.”
“Wayne!” Julia’s head reeled. Had he always been this person?
Angie’s words came out in a rush. “They make them fight. In jail. They bet on it. A fight club sort of thing. Big money. Real money. Billy was so big, he usually won. But he got sick of being everybody’s punching bag. He was going to tell. Well, Ray was. He was afraid Billy was going to end up dead one of these days. So one of you guys”—she turned a poisonous look upon Wayne—“saw to it that Billy ended up dead anyway and put it on Ray. You figured that would shut him up and it did. But you didn’t count on Miss Mae. That woman wasn’t afraid of anything.”
Julia waited for Wayne to deny it. He merely shrugged.
“Guess she should’ve been, huh?”
“Wayne, what are you two talking about?” Angie couldn’t possibly be saying what Julia thought she was saying. And Wayne wasn’t denying it. Which meant that he was …
And he was in her house …
And her little boy was downstairs …
She didn’t want to know.
She couldn’t afford not to.
“Wayne. Are you saying you know who killed them?” Too vague, too vague. She gulped oxygen and tried again. “That you did?”
He turned to her with an easy smile. “Aw, hell, Julia. You know me better than that.”
A wild hope soared within Julia. Crazy talk, all of it. Drunken ravings from Angie. As to Wayne’s treatment of Angie, she knew that the daily grind of policing, seeing humanity at its most inhumane, ground even the good ones down. She’d never think of Wayne the same way again, would certainly never trust him, would slot him into the “just another asshole cop” category. She’d always thought Duck Creek’s two law enforcement agencies remarkably free of assholes. One more thing she’d been wrong about. Her cartwheeling thoughts tripped over something Angie had said.
“A fight club?”
He rolled his eyes.
“Angie here really needs to lay off the sauce. People fight in jail all the time. It’s one of the biggest problems our guys deal with. It’s why I’m campaigning on extra pay for them.”
Angie snorted. “So they can bet even more money that’ll just end up in your pockets—owwwww.”
Wayne gave her arm a vicious twist.
Angie’s face contorted. “It’s true! That guy Mack Coates helps him. Scouts big guys like Billy for him to arrest. And now he’s got Ray fighting. Ray knows if he doesn’t, he’ll end up like Billy and Miss Mae and Craig.”
“That little prick’ll end up like them anyway. So will you.”
He smiled amiably at Julia.
“And you too.”