Authors: Sandra Chastain
“Nice to see you again, Chief. Are you picking me up?”
The amused teasing in his lazy voice ran along her nerve endings, almost daring her to comply. Andrea was careful to appear relaxed as she answered. “Sure, but you’re heading the wrong way to get to the interstate.”
“I’m headed for the county seat.” He flicked his hat back on his head, opened the car door, and slid inside.
“Oh? Why?”
His gaze swept over her leisurely, and something warm coiled in her stomach.
“I’ve decided that I owe it to my mother to at least talk to the tax man about my … the property.”
“Your property? Why?”
“I’m thinking that maybe I could fix the house up a bit while I’m here. Who knows? I might find
some work around here and stay for a while. If not, at least the house won’t look so deserted. Do you have a problem with that, Chief?” He frowned.
“You’re thinking of looking for work? Here?”
“Well, not at this particular spot in the road.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Those people behind you might get impatient. Don’t you think you ought to move along?”
Andrea looked in the rearview mirror at the two vehicles behind her and swapped her foot from the brake to the gas. The car leapt forward.
“Damn! Now look what you made me do.” She picked up speed before turning off on a dirt road, throwing up a cloud of dust behind them.
“Is this a shortcut, Chief?”
“Shortcut?” Andrea slowed the car. All she’d had on her mind was getting away from anybody who might have been watching. She stopped the car beneath the limbs of a moss-hung oak tree edging a large tumbling stream.
“Say, this is nice.” Sam looked at the stream and the secluded surroundings, then back toward Andrea. “Do people come here to fish?”
“Mostly the local teenagers come here to—” Andrea caught herself and amended her sentence, “they like it out here. Not much privacy in Arcadia.”
Why didn’t I just say yes?
she asked herself desperately as he grinned openly. She could tell that he was enjoying her discomfort.
“I see. Come here often, do you?”
“Hardly.” Andrea put the car in reverse and turned it around.
“Wait, Andrea.” Sam reached over and placed his hand on hers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to
tease you. Couldn’t we just talk for a minute? I need some advice.”
What he needed was a cold shower, a swift kick in the pants. He didn’t belong in Arcadia, Georgia, and no foolish emotional binge about having a real home was going to make him fit, even if the thought of giving it a try had occurred to him in the wee hours of the morning. Going over to talk to the tax commissioner was downright dumb.
Andrea stopped the car again, watching the change of emotion on Sam’s face. What on earth could she have to say to a vagabond man who had already traveled half the world? That he was dangerous? That he made her breathing do funny things? That she wanted to examine the heart-shaped tattoo up close and in detail, wanted to go back ten years and be one of those teenagers who parked under this old oak tree? But she’d never gone skinny-dipping in the creek then, and now it was too late. She wasn’t naive anymore.
“Talk?” If she was going to talk with him, she wanted it to be in the middle of the Arcadia High School gym with a full house.
The bright summer sun hit the hood of the squad car and glared through the window. Good, she didn’t want the conversation to be too private. With supreme effort she pulled her thinking together and forced herself to be calm.
“All right, Mr. Farley, what can I do for you?”
You can take off that hat and let your hair down the way it was the first night we met
, he wanted to say.
You can open that car door and go for a walk with me by the stream. We can hold hands and pretend we’re a couple of those
teenagers who come to this spot for privacy, for touching and kissing
.
Sam let his hand slide to the seat beside him. In spite of something in her eyes that told him she wasn’t entirely unaware of the tension that sparked between them, touching and kissing this woman would not be a smart move. He already knew what the results of that kind of thinking would be, and he wasn’t interested in either jail or marriage.
“Is there someone else waiting to pay the taxes and claim the farm if I don’t?”
Andrea thought of Ed Pinyon’s plans for the property and decided not to spoil Sam’s mental picture of the land being farmed. Knowing the truth would only spoil Sam’s memory of his mother’s home after he’d gone. “Probably, but I doubt anybody’d live here. People want new houses like they’re building in town now. They don’t appreciate the old homes like Mamie’s.”
“Oh, she’s a jewel, all right. She’s a grand old lady who just needs a little loving care.”
Andrea was startled by the genuine excitement in his voice. There was something to the man other than his ability to set off hormonal combustion inside her. “You really like old houses?”
“I’m a carpenter, remember? With the right tools and a little work, you’d be surprised how my grandmother’s house could look.”
Andrea heard confidence in his voice and pride, coupled with a kind of suppressed wistfulness that he couldn’t disguise. She hadn’t expected a house to get to him. But he did sound serious about staying in Arcadia. If he really wanted to
get to the courthouse, they’d better be on their way. She released the brake and drove the car back to the highway.
“Say, do people ever swim in the stream back there?” Sam asked, rubbing perspiration from his forehead with his arm.
“Sure. Farther downstream is Minor’s Lake and a city park where Arcadia holds a Founder’s Day celebration and picnic every Fourth of July.”
“Founder’s Day celebration? Really? Tell me more about your community, Chief Fleming.”
“Arcadia was settled in the 1800s by big cotton-plantation owners. It was a gay, thriving city in its time. Then came the Civil War, and the planters lost everything. Now we have nine hundred and thirty-six residents in the city limits, with about the same number in the outlying areas.”
“Do you live on a farm, Chief?”
“No, not anymore. Our house is on a big tract of land, but Pop leases most of it out to other farmers.” Buck would be farming, Andrea could have added, if he hadn’t come home from Vietnam with a steel plate in his head that kept him from doing manual labor.
“There was a time when everybody farmed,” she continued, “until high interest rates and the drought wiped everybody out. Oh, we have a couple of manufacturing plants. But so many of our people are leaving. It’s very sad.”
“Same thing’s happening everywhere,” Sam commented. “In Texas it was the oil industry. In Pittsburgh the steel mills have problems, and out in California the computer industry isn’t what it used to be. I’m glad I work with my hands. I can always
move to the next town if the one I’m in closes down.”
Andrea stole a glance at the man drumming his work-roughened fingers on the car door. She didn’t like what was happening to her county. Ed Pinyon’s construction company was the only thing expanding. She didn’t know how he did it.
Sam crinkled up his nose and squinted his eyes. “Cotton dust. I’d recognize that smell anywhere.”
“That’s the universal smell of the South, Mr. Vagabond. Ever worked on a farm?”
The odor of cotton dust wafted through the open car window and settled across Andrea like a familiar shawl. This was her world, an everlasting world she could trust, a world that would never be something other than what it appeared to be. Today her world was fresh and green.
“Not by choice. Let’s just say I’ve tried to avoid farming communities in the last few years.”
“Why is that, Sam? Don’t farmers build things too?”
“Yes, fences—barbed-wire fences that either keep you in or out. I like concrete and steel, being high above the ground, or in the wilderness all alone. And I’m a traveling man, remember?”
Remember? How could she forget?
They reached the outskirts of Cottonboro, where the two-lane highway narrowed a little and became Court Street. Court Street led straight to the red-brick courthouse with the broken clock in the steeple. She parked the patrol car in a reserved space.
“Here you are, Mr. Farley, the Meredith County Courthouse. The tax office is on the second floor. I’ll meet you back here at the car.”
She got out and strode purposefully inside, glad that Sam hadn’t insisted on walking in with her. She didn’t need Sam around when she wanted to ask questions about him. She pushed open the judge’s door. Maybe she could find out something from Madge, his secretary. She and Madge had been friends since grammar school.
“Morning, Madge.”
“Andrea! My, don’t you look official in that uniform. Women’s liberation in Meredith County. You
don’t have to tell me why the Arcadia City Council gave you the job. You already do everything else.”
“Is the judge in, Madge?”
“No, he and the sheriff had to go out—some kind of tip about a stolen tractor trailer. Crime rears its ugly head in Meredith County. But he had me make you a copy of Mamie’s will. Just leaves everything to her daughter. Not a word about anybody else. You know, we never did actually find out what happened to Millie.”
“Did anybody look?”
“Sure, when Miss Mamie died and again at tax time. They found some sort of nursing-home address for her in Mamie’s things. But she never answered our letter. In two months it will be sold for taxes if nobody claims it.”
Maybe, Andrea thought as she recalled Sam Farley’s new interest. “You never know, Madge. Somebody might want it.”
“All right, are you going to tell me? What does he look like, Andy? Do you think he really is Mamie’s grandson?”
“Who?”
“The hitchhiker that Otis picked up. Who else would I be talking about?”
“Good grief, how’d you find out?”
“You know party lines. Somebody just happened to overhear Louise Roberts and Otis’s wife talking. Does he have long hair and an earring? What does he look like?”
“He’s tall, lean, and charming, some kind of drifter. I don’t know much about him, Madge.” Andrea shook her head. “I only saw him in the
dark last night and then for a … few minutes today.”
“Last night in the dark? This gets better and better. Tell me more. What’s he doing here? Is he married?”
“Outside of checking out his grandmother’s property, I have no idea. He said he was just passing through.”
“Maybe he’s planning on staying. What do you think?”
“She thinks I should stay,” Sam said with a grin as he stepped inside the office and laid his arm casually across Andrea’s shoulder. “Ready, Chief?”
Andrea glared at him. “Will you stop that, Farley? I’m not your personal chauffeur. I just gave you a ride.” Andrea knew from Madge’s puzzled expression that she was overreacting, but she couldn’t stop herself. “And take your hands off me!”
“Sorry, Chief Fleming. You just finish up your business, and I’ll wait in the car.” Gallantly he tipped his hat to the secretaries who’d gathered in the hallway, gave Madge a big smile, then left the office, whistling merrily.
“Wow! Was
that
him?” Madge asked. “Why didn’t you tell me that he was a cross between Clint Eastwood and Ken Wahl? Now I really want to know what you meant when you said you met him
in the dark
.”
“Madge, honestly. Last night I checked out a report of a break-in at Mamie’s house. It was Sam Farley. Today I gave him a ride. That’s all there is to it. Please don’t go starting rumors.”
“Me? Start rumors, when half the single women in the country are probably outside drooling over him and you’ve already staked a claim? Never! Where are you going now?”
“Back to work,” Andrea snapped. “Forget about Sam Farley, Madge. He’s
available
, but he’s not permanent.”
“All right, if you insist on keeping him all to yourself.” Madge turned piously back to her typewriter. “Pity, how authority just seems to go to some folks’ heads.”
“Honestly, Madge, you sound like some fifteen-year-old in the throes of passion.”
“I wish,” Madge admitted with a toss of her head. “Speaking of passion, or the lack of it, will I see you and Ed at the church supper Wednesday night?”
Andrea winced and stopped. “Madge,” she said slowly, “it is not a foregone conclusion that I will be at the church with Ed. We are not engaged, in spite of the general opinion of half the county. He’s just a … friend.”
“Well I can’t blame you. I’d go for the stranger too. Okay, okay, Andy.” Madge threw up her arms in mock self-defense as Andrea took a step toward the desk. “I’m sorry. I just thought … I mean, you’ve been friends for nearly two years, and Ed talks like … well, you’d better let Ed know. I’m thinking he has a different idea about that.”
Andrea knew that Madge was right. She’d allowed herself to establish a routine with Ed out of boredom. She’d been content to let things drift along, and that had been a mistake, a mistake
she’d have to rectify. And now she had an even bigger mistake waiting in the police car.
In the corridor she ran into Joe Willis, the tax commissioner. “You just talked to Mamie’s grandson?”
Joe nodded. “Told him the tax deadline had passed on the place. I don’t think that I can give him an extension. But he does have the option to pay the full amount plus penalties by August first and prevent the auction.”
So much for that, Andrea thought. She doubted that Sam could come up with the full amount between now and the auction, even if he wanted to. Lost in thought, Andrea slapped the envelope containing Mamie’s will against her leg as she went outside. She slipped back into the police car and buckled her seat belt.
Sam was sitting with his head back against the seat, his hat covering his face as though he were sleeping. She wanted to ask him how he felt about the tax commissioner’s news but didn’t want to let him know that she’d inquired. Sam already thought that small-town people were too nosy.
The morning heat glared down on the patrol car. Andrea fanned herself with the envelope containing the will. About the only things stirring in Meredith County today were telephone receivers as people gossiped about her and Sam Farley.