Authors: Sandra Chastain
When she opened her eyes again, sunlight streamed across her bed, and Sam was gone. On his pillow was one red rose tied with a soft pink ribbon.
The fragrance of flowers touched the air for weeks after Sam had filled her house with balloons and her heart with love. Andrea smiled and stretched, awakening slowly to each morning saturated with memories of Sam.
For almost three weeks they’d been together for some time every day. This day was special, though, for today a fellow and his steady girl would attend the Fourth of July Founder’s Day Picnic. Sam was as excited as a child.
The phone rang. Sam.
“Hello.”
“Andrea, this is Lewis Kelly at the state-patrol headquarters over in Cottonboro. Hate to bother you today, since it’s the Fourth of July, but we need your help.”
Andrea left the dream she’d been floating through and came wide awake, sitting straight up in bed. “Good morning, Lewis. What can I do to help?”
“We’ve had a tip from the FBI that a stolen front-end loader is being moved down the interstate sometime today. It’s supposed to have been hidden somewhere in Meredith County. Now it’s headed for Miami and on to South America.”
“And you want me to go out and look for it?”
“No. We’ve been working with Ed Pinyon and Judge Thomas for the last month covering the county, but so far we haven’t found it. Can you and Buck cover the interstate between Cottonboro and Arcadia?”
Andrea took down the description of the equipment and alerted Buck. By the time she was dressed, Buck was on the phone telling Agnes that he and Andrea had business in Cottonboro and would keep in touch.
“Why did you tell her that?” Andrea asked as she pulled the car onto the highway.
“Well, if that equipment has been hidden around here and we haven’t seen it, it might be a good idea not to alert the culprit that we’re watching for it.”
“You mean you think somebody in Meredith County is involved?”
“I think there’s a good possibility.”
“But, Buck,” Andrea protested, “we know all these good people. We trust them. There can’t be a thief in Arcadia.”
“No matter how much you think you know somebody, Andy, you never really get inside their mind, and people do strange things sometimes under pressure.”
Good people
. Sometimes good people do bad things. That’s what she’d told Sam when he’d told her about his arrest. Sam—she jerked her mind
away from any thought of him. She couldn’t be distracted this morning.
For the next two hours they patrolled their section. “Not much traffic,” Buck observed as they reached the end of their assigned territory and made the turn back. “Guess folks are getting on over to Minor’s Lake to the picnic.”
It was after ten o’clock when Andrea heard the sirens. She and Buck had circled around to the south of Arcadia and had started back up the interstate, when flashing blue lights showed up in the distance. Andrea hit her own lights, and the gas pedal. The truck carrying the machinery wasn’t stopping. She quickly cut across the median and headed toward the hauler.
When the driver saw the police car coming straight for him, he hit the brakes and did a snake dance across the highway.
“Look out, Andrea, he’s lost it.”
Andrea hit the grassy median and whipped around the machine as it crashed into an abutment under the overpass with a metal-grinding thud. By the time she got her car turned around, the state patrol car in pursuit had stopped, and the officer was chasing the driver into the woods.
“Buck, you stay here and call the report in. I’ll help run down the driver.” Andrea unsnapped her gun and tore across the field in the direction of the officer.
“Be careful, Andy!”
Andrea, her gun in her hand, began to circle around, hoping to head the driver off. The woods were hot and airless, and perspiration rolled down her forehead and stung her eyes. Andrea stopped,
listening for some indication of the direction her quarry was taking.
Silence.
Finally she heard a soft crackling of footsteps to her right. Someone was hiding in the thicket just ahead. Andrea worked her way toward the thick brush, her heart hammering in her throat. What in God’s name had ever made her think she could be a police officer? Finally she reached the over-grown area.
“Come out with your hands up, and I won’t shoot!”
“Andy!” Lewis stood up. “I thought you were our man!”
“Damn! Where’d he go, Lewis?”
“I don’t know. Holed up somewhere, maybe, if he hasn’t passed out from that lick on the head. Let’s pack it in until we can get some help.”
When they came out of the woods, a bevy of cars were gathered around the crashed equipment hauler.
“And nobody at the weigh station saw it come by?” Buck was talking with a heavyset older state trooper whom Andrea recognized as the major in charge.
“That’s got to be the stolen equipment,” Ed Pinyon was saying. “No question about it.”
“Don’t guess he came back this way, did he?” Lewis asked hopefully.
“No.” Buck shook his head. “Did anybody get a good look at him?”
Lewis shook his head. “All I can tell you is that he was tall and had a bloody forehead.”
There was a spidery, bloodstained network of
cracks in the windshield on the driver’s side. The glass wasn’t broken, but the blow had been hard enough to cause the driver grave injury.
“Well,” Lewis added with a puzzled look, “I can’t figure where he came from. That thing’s too big to get through these backroads and bridges without either being seen or getting stuck somewhere.”
“Maybe he had help,” Ed suggested. “But we don’t have any criminals around here, unless—” he gave a long pause—“the inside man is a newcomer, an outsider with special connections.”
For a minute Andrea couldn’t believe what she’d heard.
“We just missed the hiding place, Ed,” Buck interjected sharply. A second patrol car had appeared, and the officer was directing traffic around the crashed hauler. “Andy, give us a hand over here.”
A horrible sense of déjà vu washed over Andrea. She shook off Buck’s motion and stared at Ed in shock. “I hope that you don’t mean what I think you do, Ed. Because the only newcomer around here is Sam Farley.”
“Exactly my point, Andrea. What do we know about the man?” Ed turned to Buck. “Don’t you think you ought to check him out, Chief?”
“But,” Lewis began, “Andrea already—”
“Knows enough about Sam Farley,” Andrea interrupted, “to agree to marry him.”
There was a shocked “Andy?” by Buck and Ed at the same time. Then silence.
“Ah, has anybody called the wrecker?” Lewis broke the silence, directing their attention back to the accident. Though Andrea knew he didn’t
understand what she was doing, he was willing to go along for the moment.
“I did,” Buck answered, “but they don’t want the truck moved until the FBI gets here.” He took Andrea’s arm and turned her toward the patrol car. “You get on back to town and check out the picnic. With the thief loose, I don’t want anybody in town to decide to get up a search party.”
“But, Buck,” Andrea protested, whipping her head around to look back at Ed.
“Now, Andrea. We’ll talk later.” Buck stumbled on his cast, but his tone didn’t allow any argument. He wasn’t going to let her have this out with Ed. “You’re still the chief of police, Andrea Fleming, and you’re on duty.”
Buck turned back to the others with a look that told them he was ready to do battle with anybody who disagreed. “As for you, Ed,” he growled, “I think you’d better get to the picnic. You have a speech to make, don’t you? Though I’m certain you’ve already said enough.”
After making a point of telling Lewis that she’d talk to him later, Andrea left the scene of the accident. She spent an hour in the police station, answering the phone and reassuring the residents that there was no manhunt for a desperate criminal.
Ed’s insinuation that Sam might be involved in the theft of the machinery kept going round and round in her mind. She couldn’t forget that Sam had once been accused of a crime. Not telling Buck about Sam’s past weighed heavily on her conscience. Loving Sam had made her dishonest, and she didn’t like the feeling.
She debated about calling Sam, but she didn’t
want him involved until she’d straightened out the situation. She couldn’t tell him what had happened. She didn’t want to tell the truth, and she couldn’t lie. This morning she had to be Chief Andrea Fleming of the Arcadia Police Department.
Sam put the finishing touches on the swing, added a couple of matching bright pillows on the seat of the rocking chairs, stood, and looked around. Except for two broken steps leading up to the porch, he was satisfied. What he was seeing matched the picture he’d carried around all those years in his mind. All he needed now was lemonade and cookies—and Andrea.
He’d tried to reach Andrea all morning. Agnes had told him that she and Buck had gone over to Cottonboro on police business. She hadn’t called him, and he couldn’t help but be uneasy. What kind of police business would they be involved in on the Fourth of July? The picnic would be getting started shortly, and Sam admitted that he was looking forward to it. But he’d wait until he heard from Andrea.
In the meantime he’d fix the broken steps and put a coat of paint on them. He measured the board and started toward the back where the tools and equipment that he’d borrowed from Louise Roberts were stored. In the last three weeks business had really taken off, and he was saving all his money for the taxes.
Ten years before, when he’d started his odyssey, he’d promised himself that he’d earn his own way wherever he went. He’d accomplished that
and more, sending money back to the little bank in South Carolina where he’d started his original account when he’d gone into the marines. Once he’d paid his mother’s final doctors and hospital bills, he’d been nearly broke. But, with the help of Otis and Brad, he’d managed the repairs on his house and traded out a job for the down payment on the used truck parked at the back door. At the rate he was picking up local work, it looked as if he might be able to pay off the taxes before the deadline. Andrea would be surprised.
Sam took the sawhorses and arranged them so that the old door he’d found in the barn made a worktable. He laid a piece of lumber on the platform and measured off the proper length for the step, reached for his electric saw, and turned it on. The noise of the motor concealed the sound of the approaching car.
Ed Pinyon caught him by surprise, or Ed would never have knocked him down. Though stunned by the blow, Sam managed to switch off the electric saw and drop it to the ground as he staggered to his feet.
“What the hell, Pinyon?”
“Andrea Fleming is mine, Farley. I’ve waited for her for six years. You aren’t going to marry her, no matter what she says. I won’t be made the laughingstock of the county by some no-account drifter.”
Sam blinked, unable to believe the man standing before him. “Marry Andrea?” Ed Pinyon must be drunk. What was wrong with the man? There was a desperation in his eyes that made Sam take
him seriously. He’d seen that look before—when he’d been in jail.
When Ed came at him this time, he stepped out of the way, catching the force of the blow on his shoulder. He wasn’t hurt, but already unsteady from the knock on his head, he was unable to prevent himself from falling. This time he hit the ground. Ed turned around and came charging back. Sam whirled away, catching his forehead against the blade of the saw as he tried to roll out of reach of Ed’s foot. The last thing Sam remembered was the sight of the sun dappling through the leaves of the large chinaberry tree above him.
When Sam came to, Ed was gone, leaving him with a bloody forehead from his collision with the sawblade and a giant-size headache that echoed behind his eyeballs as he washed the crusted blood away. He didn’t know where Ed got the idea that he and Andrea were getting married, but he could understand the man’s reaction. He’d felt like taking a swing at Ed a time or two himself. Still, marriage? He hadn’t dared verbalize the idea more than one time. Andrea hadn’t liked it.
He rubbed his chin and grinned. That he’d been decked by somebody like Ed Pinyon was hard for him to believe. There’d been a time when he would have reduced Ed to nothing for even thinking of threatening him. But Andrea had changed that, and him too.
Suddenly he wanted to hear Andrea’s voice.
Sam went to the phone. “Vera, what’s happening?”
“I wondered where you were.” Vera told him about the chase and the wreck over on the interstate.
“Andrea,” he interrupted, his heart in his throat. “Is Andrea all right?”
“Sure. She’s on her way over to the lake to check out the picnic. Official duty, you know.”
“Damn. Why didn’t she call me?”
“She tried, but when you didn’t answer, she thought you might have gone on ahead. If you hurry, you ought to be able to get there by the time she does.”
“Thanks, Vera. If she checks in again, I’m on my way.”
“After he cracked his head, the crook took off running into the woods. Disappeared completely,” Ed was saying to a group of wide-eyed men by the corner of the platform where the political speeches would be delivered.
Andrea avoided Ed as she made her rounds, keeping herself visible. After what Ed had said earlier, she was uneasy. She hadn’t thought he would be so upset about Sam and her. Apparently she’d been wrong.
She wiped her face with one of Buck’s large white handkerchiefs. She looked longingly at the youngsters splashing noisily in the lake, wishing she could jump in and wash away some of the tightness in her body.
By now the crowd seemed unusually tense, too, gathering in little groups under the hundred-year-old oaks hung with Spanish moss. The behind-the-pavilion refreshments, for men only, had been doing a big business, and Andrea wished Buck
would hurry and get there. Something was going to happen—she could feel it.
She was almost glad she hadn’t been able to get Sam on the phone. Andrea hoped that he’d stay away. Her crack about marriage had popped out from sheer anger at Ed’s suggestion that Sam might be involved in the machinery thefts. There was no way she’d believe that, and she wouldn’t let anybody else think it either.