“He lives in that big ugly stone house on Crest Loop, the one that looks like a gargoyle looming over the town. It’s Grace’s house but she hangs out at the ranch when she isn’t traveling. She’s gone a lot and hardly ever gets over here except to lay down the law about this or that. The hotel is hers, too. There’s a general manager or something who runs it. Mort Cline.”
“It seems to me that in such a small community, where everyone knows all about everyone else, there shouldn’t be any crime to speak of or any need to lay down the law,” Barney said.
Seth kept his gaze on a bun he was slathering with mustard as he said, “Just last week I had to break up a brawl. Three eight-year-olds in the park going at it. And yesterday I had to go tell an old man to stop burning trash outside. A real crime wave.” He put a burger on the bun and bit into it.
“Aha, so there’s more to Brindle than meets the eye,” Barney commented.
Jan looked at him, suddenly all traces of cuteness gone, her eyes narrowed, her face pinched. “Brindle is rotten to the core,” she said. “There’s something really foul about this place. I hate it!”
Seth put his hand on her arm and she drew back. “Sorry. Anyone, more beer?”
Walking home later, Todd asked, “What did you make of them?”
“Cute couple.”
“Come on, don’t be coy.”
He had his arm around her waist and hers was around him, but when they turned off First Street, lit with street lamps and shop windows, onto darker Juniper, his hand slid down to rest on her buttock. He said he liked to feel her muscles as she moved.
“Okay. She’s miserable, and he’s chomping at the bit, bored out of his skull. Enough?”
“More,” she said. “Something to do with Lisa. I guess we’re too new to let us in on whatever it is. Are you bored here?”
“No time to be bored.”
She believed that. He was working hard, and to her eye he was more contented than she had ever seen him.
“What about you?” he asked.
“No time,” she said. “Since the newspaper is in pretty good shape now, I’ll also be working with Ruth Ann on the centennial edition. Scanning stuff, enhancing old photographs. My kind of thing. And tomorrow we’ll meet the alluring Lisa and Grace. I’ll be watching you, kiddo. No funny stuff.”
He laughed and squeezed her bottom.
Seth scraped dishes as Jan loaded the dishwasher. “You can’t leave it alone, can you?” he asked, opening a can of beer.
“I thought he should be warned, or maybe she should be. Whatever.”
“You know nothing happened.”
“Not her fault.”
“Jesus, let’s drop it.”
They had been in Brindle three months when he’d seen a Corvette, speeding on the highway, make a squealing turn onto First and drive into the hotel parking lot. He had followed, and the memory of the encounter was still vivid.
“Miss, may I see your driver’s license?” he had asked the young woman walking toward the lobby. He already had his ticket book in his hand.
She stopped and turned, a thin young woman, blond, blue-eyed, who looked him over, then smiled slightly. “I’m afraid I don’t have it with me,” she said. “Are you the new policeman? Are you going to arrest me?” She held out her hands, as if waiting for handcuffs, smiling. “Or maybe we could go somewhere and talk it over. Privately.”
He backed up a step, her invitation as blatant as a prostitute’s in any red-light district. He felt his face flushing, heating. Then Ollie Briscoe, the chief, came from the lobby.
“What’s the problem?” he asked, drawing near them.
“He’s going to arrest me,” Lisa said. “Take me to a back room somewhere and…interrogate me.” She kept her gaze on Seth, her smile deepening.
“She was doing sixty coming into town, fifty pulling in the lot,” Seth said.
Ollie Briscoe waved him away. “You run along, Sonny. I’ll handle this.”
“Sonny,” Lisa said. “How adorable. I’ll be seeing you, Sonny.” She gave him another long appraising look, nodded, and repeated, “I’ll be seeing you.”
He had avoided her for the several days that she was in town, and now here she was back again. He took a long drink from his can, wishing that he had not told Jan about the incident. Her comment had been that if Lisa got anywhere near him, Jan would pull every hair out of Lisa’s head one by one, either before or after she scratched out her eyes.
Five
The alluring Lisa was a disappointment, Todd decided when they met at Ruth Ann’s house on Sunday. Lisa was too thin, brittle in a curious way with jerky movements, and if her jeans had been any tighter, she would have been immobilized. She had on high-heeled boots and a red silk shirt that could have been buttoned higher. Her hair was bottle platinum-blond, styled in a way that was meant to suggest no styling, pulled back over her ears, unevenly cut. When she met Barney, she held his hand too long and swayed toward him, moved in too close.
“Do you ride?” she asked. Her voice was low, throaty.
He extracted his hand, shaking his head. “Nope. Never was on a horse in my life.”
“What a shame. You’d be so handsome on a horse.”
Todd suppressed a smile as Barney moved out of Lisa’s range. She realized that Jan had been warning them about Lisa. But Grace Rawleigh, Lisa’s mother, was the real shock, she thought. She looked much older than Sam, and she was fighting it. Her hair was strawberry blond and carefully styled. Todd suspected more than one face-lift in her past, and the makeup she wore did little to hide the lines at her eyes or the vertical grooves on her forehead, and nothing at all for the look of disapproval that turned her mouth down. She smiled briefly at Todd, but the smile did not get beyond her thin lips.
Todd was relieved to see Johnny’s wife enter the living room. She liked Carol Colonna, a comfortable, handsome woman who had a very successful real-estate business in Bend. Carol smiled at her, then said, “Maria says brunch is up and waiting in the dining room.”
Ruth Ann was watching her guests with an amused expression. She had seen Lisa’s pass at Barney, and Todd’s dismissal of it as well as Barney’s polite withdrawal. And she liked the way Todd had behaved, like a well-bred, confident young woman. She knew Sam had watched his stepdaughter go into her act with annoyance. But Sam was always annoyed with Lisa, and usually did not even try to conceal it. He and Grace had exchanged brief nods when she had arrived, as if of recognition, and that was that. At least Grace had not found a reason to yell at him. That would have been awkward. Families, she thought, and led the way into the dining room.
She had told Maria to keep it simple,
