Snowfall on Haven Point (5 page)

“Homemade shortbread is a good start,” he said, a blatant reminder to turn over the goods.

She fought a laugh and set the tin on the table beside him. “Here you go. It might still be warm.”

Without hesitation, he opened it and popped one small square into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed with a look of clear appreciation. “Oh, wow. That's delicious.”

“I wish I could take credit for making it, but it's a gift from your neighbor next door. Louise Jacobs.”

He had just been about to pop a second piece in, but at her words he froze for just a second and returned the cookie to the tin. “You've been to see Louise and Herm?” he said, his tone oddly neutral.

“Only Louise. Herm volunteers once a week, stocking shelves at the library. Apparently retirement didn't completely agree with him and he gets bored during cold weather when he can't fish as much. Louise is a friend of mine and she's doing a little work for me.”

“What kind of work?”

She held up the brown portfolio. “I'm a commercial graphic artist—computer graphics, mostly, but photography, sometimes oil on canvas. I needed a watercolor, which isn't exactly my specialty, and Louise was kind enough to work up a few possibilities for me. They're wonderful.”

“Oh. I guess I didn't realize she was artistic.”

“She considers it more of a hobby, but she's really talented. And not just in making shortbread.”

He smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. He looked distracted—whether from pain or something else, she couldn't tell.

“Is there anything I can get you right now?”

“I can't think of anything.”

“I'll refill your water bottle while you make a list of what you'd like me to pick up at the grocery store.”

“You don't need to do my shopping.”

Good grief, trying to help the man was about as easy as climbing Mount Solace in a blizzard.

“You might as well tell me. If you don't, I'll just look through your kitchen cabinets and see what staples seem to be missing. Who knows what I might come back with?”

He gave a sigh that sounded more resigned than annoyed. “Fine. I'll text you a list of a few things. Does that work?”

“Perfectly. See? You're getting the hang of this whole accepting-help thing.”

“I don't believe you're giving me much choice, are you?”

“Not really,” she admitted. “I have just enough time to reheat a little more stew or I can probably throw together a sandwich if you would prefer.”

He didn't sigh this time, but she could tell he wanted to. “Stew would be fine,” he finally said. “Thank you.”

“Give me a second.”

After dishing some into a bowl and popping it into the microwave, she spent a moment straightening up his mostly clean kitchen while it reheated. She added a couple of the rolls she had brought the evening before and cut up an apple she found in the vegetable drawer of the refrigerator.

“Here you are. Soups and stews are always better the second day, if you ask me.”

“Agreed.”

“I wasn't snooping—okay, I was snooping a little—and I noticed you didn't have milk or bread and the only other banana looked pretty ripe. I can pick those up for you and whatever else is on your list. And if you think something sounds good for dinner, let me know.”

“Stew is fine by me, if there's enough for one more go-round.”

She raised an eyebrow. “My stew is remarkable, I will admit, but you can't have it for every meal.”

“You're not running a short-order restaurant here. I'm fine with whatever. I've got frozen dinners in the freezer that will do.”

“Are you this stubborn with everyone or am I receiving special treatment?”

If she didn't know better, she might have thought the stoic sheriff almost smiled, for a minute there. “My deputies would probably say the former,” he answered.

“That makes me feel a little better. I need to run, but make sure you text me your list. I probably won't have a chance to go shopping until after Chloe gets home from school, but we'll bring groceries and dinner around five thirty, if that works. Meanwhile, you've also got leftover pie and Louise Jacobs's shortbread.”

“What else could a guy possibly need?”

CHAPTER FOUR

T
HE
SCENT
OF
flowers again lingered in the room after Andrea Montgomery blew out of his house as quickly as she'd come.

He couldn't seem to escape it. He shifted in the recliner, wishing he could find a spot that was comfortable for more than five seconds.

It wasn't only the general discomfort from his smashed-to-smithereens leg or his various other aches and pains that left him edgy and unsettled. Her mention of the Jacobs family next door was even more disconcerting.

He knew Herm and Louise from way back. Louise had been good friends with his mother—in a roundabout way, that friendship had been the catalyst for everything that came after.

When he first moved into Wyn's house here on Riverbend Road in late summer, he had made it a point of going over to say hello to them. It had been the neighborly thing to do, hadn't it?

Since then, he had spoken with them a few times in passing, but he worked long hours and their schedules didn't seem to coincide, plus he didn't really have an obvious excuse for stopping by.

They had bumped into each other a few times at the only grocery store in town—which was one of the main reasons he didn't do his shopping in Shelter Springs, five miles away, even though the two grocery stores and the box store there were larger and had a far more extensive selection.

He had decided those rare encounters at the little store in Haven Point were worth the disadvantage of having a choice between only two brands of dishwashing detergent.

He needed to figure out a way to do more than say hello in passing. That was the entire reason he was living here in his sister's house instead of his perfectly adequate—and certainly more conveniently located—apartment in Shelter Springs, after all.

In some vague corner of his mind, he had thought maybe he would wait until after the holidays before he burst in and shook their world completely. He glared down at the stupid cast. He could still go talk to Herm and Louise after the holidays, but some idiot in a stolen SUV had added a complication he never would have anticipated.

How could he show up now, in this completely useless state, when he couldn't even go to the grocery store on his own?

Though he wasn't really hungry, he forced himself to take another few bites of Andrea Montgomery's delicious stew. His body needed fuel to heal, and the faster he healed, the faster he could return to work.

He was on his third bite of stew when his phone buzzed with an incoming text. He set down his spoon and checked the message from Jackie Scott, the assistant he had inherited from the previous sheriff, asking him a question about holiday overtime. He answered her question, which led to two more follow-up texts in quick succession.

Three texts in a row was his personal limit. More than that warranted an actual conversation instead of an endless string of thumbed communications via text or email.

He quickly found her number on his phone and Jackie answered on the first ring.

“You're not supposed to be working, Sheriff. You should be resting.”

He didn't bother reminding her she had been the one to text him about overtime.

“I've rested plenty. Just because my leg is broken doesn't mean my brain is. How are things there?”

“Ken Kramer is walking around like he won the lottery since the commission named him acting sheriff. He tried to move into your office, but I wouldn't let him. I told him you left the door locked and I didn't have the key, and if he wanted it, he would have to go there and take it from you.”

“I believe I won't hold my breath,” he said.

Both of them knew Ken would never do that. On the surface Ken Kramer pretended to be loyal and supportive after Marshall defeated him in the last election, while behind the scenes he whispered and spread rumors. He was the kind of man who was really good at sneaky, underhanded sabotage but didn't have the stones for outright confrontation.

He was also a brother-in-law to County Commissioner Newbold. The joys of small-town politics.

“I've also got about a hundred things I need you to sign. I'll try to swing by one day this week.”

“Sounds good.”

Jackie was hyperefficient, organized and the exact opposite of Ken Kramer. Taking over the job a year ago would have been a nightmare without her on his team to help the transition.

“You should know there are all kinds of rumors flying around about what happened to you. That young reporter from the newspaper called to ask if it was true that you had been airlifted to Boise and were in a coma.”

“You didn't tell him the truth, did you? I wouldn't mind sticking with that story, if it meant I didn't have to talk to him for a while.”

“You're not that lucky,” she answered.

He glanced down at his broken leg. He wouldn't call himself lucky, by any stretch of the imagination.

He and Jackie talked for several more moments about his calendar and meetings he would need to reschedule until the New Year, business details of running a department that employed twenty deputies and ran a jail with up to two dozen inmates.

By the time they ended the call and he hung up, the rest of the stew was cold and the exhaustion pressing on his shoulders reminded him how little sleep he'd been able to find the night before.

He was amazed at how wiped this broken leg had left him.

This wasn't his first major injury. He broke his arm twice during his wild younger days, once skateboarding and another time backcountry snowboarding with friends in the mountains east of Haven Point.

Considering all the crazy things he used to do with his brothers and Cade, it was a wonder he came out of childhood with only those few battle scars.

His mother would freak when she found out he'd been struck by a hit-and-run driver.

Charlene was a fretter, of the highest order. She had always been overprotective, wanting to keep all her children tucked safely under her wing like a hen with her chicks, but she had gone into overdrive after Wyatt's tragic death and then his father's life-altering injury.

The shooting at Andrea's house earlier in the year had only made her worse.

That he was injured on the job as well, while trying to meet a confidential informant, would probably send her over the edge. Good thing Elliot worked in Denver with the FBI or she would be camped out on his doorstep every day, making sure he came home safely from work.

He took one more bite of shortbread from the tin Andrea had brought, which automatically sent his thoughts zooming back to his neighbors next door and the problem he didn't know what to do about.

He was still mulling his options when he drifted to sleep and dreamed of headlights coming toward him in the silvery twilight of a Lake Haven December.

* * *

F
URTIVE
WHISPERS
AND
the sensation of being watched woke him out of tangled dreams.

“Is he dead?” Marsh heard a nervous little voice ask.

“I don't know,” another one answered. “Maybe we should poke him to see.”

“You do it,” the first voice said.

“No, you.”

“Nobody's poking anything,” a more mature voice interjected quietly. He opened his eyes a crack and saw Andrea Montgomery walk inside the room with a stack of mail that she set on the table beside him.

Her cheeks were rosy from the cold and she looked pretty and soft and more delicious than all the shortbread in Scotland.

He blinked, wondering where the hell he came up with that thought.

“Leave the poor man alone and let him finish his nap,” she said to her children in a low voice.

“I'm not napping,” he growled—though he had been doing exactly that. He must have slept all afternoon, like some old geezer in a nursing home with nothing better to do.

“If you weren't napping, why were your eyes closed?” Will Montgomery said, his tone accusatory.

“Just checking for holes in my eyelids,” he answered, which had been
his
father's standard answer when one of his kids caught him dozing off in church.

The little girl, whom he had seen only briefly the day before when she slipped in and out of the room like an afternoon shadow, gave a little giggle. The sound seemed to take her by surprise because she quickly clamped her lips together and looked down at the ground.

“Sorry we woke you,” Andrea said, her tone brisk. “I have your groceries. I also brought you some chicken casserole and a couple pieces of spice cake.”

“I thought you weren't coming until later.”

“We have something tonight and I'm not sure how long it will go, so this time worked best.”

“It's a party and my friend Ty is going to be there,” her son announced. “It's at my mom's friend McKenzie's house. She has a dog who's my friend, too, and her name is Paprika. Only, we call her Rika.”

With his mom's auburn hair and a scattering of freckles, the kid was really cute, Marsh had to admit. Too bad he wasn't very good with kids. His uniform had always seemed to make them nervous around him—like the boy's sister was acting.

“I know that dog,” he admitted.

Will took a step closer to the recliner. “Rika is
funny
. She licks my hand and it tickles. Guess what? We have a dog, too. We've had her for two whole weeks and her name is Sadie and she's the best dog in the whole world.”

“Is that right?”

“She hardly ever pees in the house. Do you have a dog?”

“No. Not right now. I did when I was a kid, though.”

One or two dogs were always running through the Bailey house when he was growing up, but he hadn't had one since he left home. It was hard to justify it when he lived alone and worked long hours.

He was much better with dogs than he was with kids, actually.

“We can bring Sadie over if you want, to keep you company while your leg is broked,” the boy offered.

The tightness in his throat at the offer was caused by the pain, he told himself. “That's very nice of you, but I should be okay.”

“Are you sure? She's a really nice dog. Just as nice as Young Pete, only not as big. She likes to sit on your lap and watch TV.”

“Good thing she's not as big as Pete, then. I don't think I'd have room on this recliner.”

The boy giggled, which Marsh had to admit was kind of a sweet sound.

“We had another reason for stopping by,” Andrea said with a meaningful look down at the girl, who had moved back to the doorway to be closer to her mother, as if afraid he was going to reach out and whack her with his crutches.

“Chloe?” Andrea said when her daughter only looked at the carpet. “Chloe? Show Sheriff Bailey what you made.”

The little girl shook her head vigorously. “You do it,” she whispered.

“I'm not the one who made it, honey. You are. You did such a beautiful job on it, too.”

Chloe continued to look anywhere in the room but at him, and after a moment her mother sighed.

“Sorry. She's become a little more nervous about people she doesn't know the last few months.”

Though he had come onto the scene after the fact, Marshall had read the reports of what happened at Andie's house over the summer. He knew Chloe was an eyewitness to the double shooting at her house, when Wyn and Rob Warren had both been injured.

When he showed up just moments after dispatch called him, Andie had been cradling her daughter close, trying to comfort her.

The tenderness of the image had stuck in his head for a long time—the bruised and bleeding Andrea, who must have been terrified herself, doing her best to calm her child.

He frowned, furious all over again at the man who had caused the whole situation.

Warren had put Andrea and her kids through hell, simply because he refused to accept a simple one-syllable word.
No.

“Go ahead,” Andie encouraged.

“You show him,” Chloe said again, her voice whisper soft.

“I'll do it.” Will, his tone exasperated, grabbed a paper out of his sister's hand and thrust it at Marsh. “This is for you. It's from Chloe.”

An odd mix of emotions tumbled through him as he looked at what was clearly an art project, a wreath cutout made from two pieces of green construction paper that had been sandwiched on either side of a glued-together mosaic of colorful tissue paper pieces.

“Did you make this?” he asked.

After a pause, Chloe nodded. She looked at him now, but her gaze didn't rise above his chest.

“I asked my teacher if I could make two and she said I could,” she said, still nearly whispering. “I had to stay inside at recess so I could finish it before Miss Taylor had put away all the art supplies. I didn't mind. Not really. It was snowy and cold out anyway.

Marshall wasn't sure what to say. He almost felt like another SUV had just plowed into him.

Why would she do that for him, a virtual stranger who obviously frightened her?

He cleared his throat, telling himself the thickness there was only thirst. “Thank you. It's beautiful,” he answered truthfully.

He considered it a small victory when she met his gaze for about half a second. “It's really pretty when the sun comes through it,” she offered, her voice a little louder. “If you want, you can hang it in your window. That's what we did with ours.”

“That's a good idea. I think I'll do that.”

She nibbled on her bottom lip, something he had seen her mother do the evening before. “Do you want me to hang it for you?” she asked after a minute. “That's why I put a string on it and my mom gave me a hook thing.”

Not sure what to say, he glanced at Andie, who was watching the girl with a warm approval that touched him almost as much as the childish artwork. She met his gaze and gave a barely perceptible nod.

“Sure. That would be very kind of you. Thank you.”