Winter's Secret (15 page)

Wendy nodded reassuringly and proceeded to take her blood pressure. Rodd had followed and hovered nearby. His presence made Wendy more jittery, more shaky. Taking off the cuff, she suppressed the urge to question him about the kegger. Mrs. Z's health pushed everything else to the back of the line.

Then the light before Wendy's eyes began to flicker. She forced herself to continue the pre-exam. "How did you hurt your ankle? Why ...how did the sheriff..." Wendy fell silent, her fatigue slamming her in waves.

"Wendy dear, sit ...down. You look ...faint." Mrs. Zabriski turned to Rodd. "Get her ... a chair, Sheriff."

Wendy swayed slightly. The glue that held her together seemed to be dissolving.

The sheriff steadied her and settled her on a chair against the wall.

"I'm all right." Wendy tried to stand up, but Rodd nudged her back. "I ...just...need a cup of coffee."

"And about eight hours of sleep," Dr. Doug said as he came in. "I called one morning nurse to come in early. She'll be here within the hour." The doctor turned to the sheriff. "Can you drive Wendy home?"

Rodd nodded.

Wendy swallowed a yawn. "I just need a quick nap—"

Doug bent down and looked at her closely. "Go home, Wendy. We're fine now."

Wendy stood up slowly. "If you don't need me."

Rodd helped her on with her parka, then took her arm and led her toward the exit. She fought the urge to follow her instincts and lean against him. Standing close to her, he spoke over his shoulder, "Mrs. Zabriski, I'll be back after I run Wendy home."

"Sheriff," Doug called after him, "if I heard Mrs. Z say her asthma was acting up, I'll be keeping her for what's left of the night."

"What about Rieker?"

"He finally passed out. I'll keep him too. Go home and get some sleep yourself, Sheriff!"

With a wave, Rodd hustled Wendy outside. The brittle cold took her breath again but revived her enough to help her stumble to his Jeep.

Inside, she gazed at the dashboard's green-lit speedometer in a stupor. Rodd's Jeep—even with all its police equipment—had become a familiar place. She felt herself relaxing. Finally, she sighed. "I can't remember being this tired for a long time." Thoughts, words floated in her mind, but she couldn't focus on one of them.

Rodd watched Wendy's eyes close and her head loll against the seat, asleep. Through deserted streets, he drove to the trailer park on the edge of town and found Wendy's trailer, which Harlan had pointed out to him recently.

When he pulled up beside the darkened trailer, he glanced at her. Though he didn't want to wake her, he'd have to eventually. But the Jeep was warm, so he paused for a moment, letting his gaze linger on her. The glow in the car highlighted both the gold in her hair and the ivory of her complexion. Everything about her spoke of delicacy and fine detail. But her frail appearance was deceptive. Wendy Carey was up to any challenge.

Observing Wendy in repose worked on him, gave him a feeling of peace that flowed soothed his jagged nerves. She was a lovely young woman, but the most beautiful thing about her was the boundless giving of herself. Wendy Carey had exhausted herself serving her community today.

Rodd gazed at her softly rounded cheek, so inviting. If he touched it, he might waken her. He shook his head. Where had that come from? He finally admitted his attraction to this woman. Why, how had this happened now? His job hung in the balance. What if he wasn't able to lure the Weasel into another trap? Would he be forced to resign?

And what if he acted on his attraction to Wendy? He'd not thought about marriage in years. But Wendy was different, special.... He tried to come up with a word to express how he felt about her and couldn't. He couldn't act on his feelings now, anyway. It was all too new, too uncertain. After he'd caught the Weasel...leaning his head back, he stared at the roof overhead.

With a jerk, he awoke. The dashboard clock said he'd been asleep about half an hour.

As though she sensed his waking, Wendy stirred in her sleep and opened her eyes. Blinking, she straightened up.

Thinking that she looked like a sleepy fawn waking from a nap, he grinned. "Hello."

She yawned and stretched. "The kegger?" Her arms lifted gracefully over her head, then drifted down again.

He took a deep breath. "I thought you'd ask about that." Disgust churned inside him. "It was a decoy."

"A decoy?" Her eyes widened. "You mean ..."

"I was set up." Remembering one unpleasant surprise after another in the past twenty-four hours gave his voice an edge. "Someone spread the rumor about a kegger to keep me and some of my deputies busy." He clenched his teeth. Why hadn't he become the least bit suspicious about the kegger before he got the breaking-and-entering page? He glanced at her sideways. "This is confidential—"

"I wouldn't—"

"I know you wouldn't." He drew back his lips, irritated with himself for even intimating he didn't trust her. "That's why I'm talking to you. I've gone over and over today's events in my mind, trying to figure out what should have tipped me off."

"I shouldn't have told you what my uncle told me—"

"No." Her apology grated on him. "Anytime a citizen has information about a crime, possible or already committed, I want to hear about it." The dried oak leaves on a nearby tree rustled in the wind, sounding like faint laughter, laughter at him. "You weren't the only one who heard the rumor about the kegger."

"Who else knew?"

He let out a gust of air. "Carl at the Grill told me about the rumor when I stopped at his place, and Mrs. Beltziger called my office."

She drew up her legs under her. "Tell me what happened."

Her soft, sympathetic voice acted on him like someone running a finger around the back of his neck, sensitizing him to her. "I set up the stakeout to stop the kegger before it got very far." He forced himself to go on, spelling out what had gone wrong. "About eleven o'clock, kids showed up on snowmobiles—one even started a fire in a stove in the bam. We moved in—-just as the kids realized they'd been tricked. There was no keg in the Dietz barn. As my deputies and I were arresting the kids for trespassing, I was paged about a possible break-in on the other side of the county."

"Whose house?" She angled herself toward him.

"Clyde Sparrow—"

"Clyde? He's gone to Chicago to spend the week with his granddaughter—"

Her words only added fuel to his sizzling frustration. "I should have asked who would be away for the holiday—"

"Sheriff," she interrupted, "I could have given you a long list. How could you cover every one of them all over the county? And people around here generally know who's going to be gone. People talk." She shrugged. "Is this a new MO?"

Somewhere in the darkness, something metal crashed over and bumped along in the wind. Wendy glanced around. "Raccoons," she explained. "Someone left a garbage can open."

Shaking his head, Rodd answered her question. "No, this isn't a new MO. The first four burglaries fit an opportunist. Now it looks like that MO was planned as a smoke screen too. This kegger took obvious planning. It also shows that the thief must have known Clyde would be away— without watching your movements. As you just pointed out, people knew Clyde made a habit of visiting his granddaughter for holidays."

"The thief might have just taken a chance," she suggested. "If he'd seen Clyde was at home, he might not have gone through with the burglary. The kegger might just have been a coincidence. Or someone might have dreamed up the kegger to get Elroy into trouble."

"Very good." He grinned at her. "You have been learning."

Wendy gave him a muted grin. "I can't stop thinking about it. The victims have all been friends of mine." The sad, weighed-down sensation hit her midsection again.
Lord, help Rodd solve these burglaries. Don't let the thief go on hurting people!

Then she wondered if Rodd was praying about this himself. Probably not. She sensed his resistance to accepting help—even from God.

"I've gone over and over it in my mind. It's all too well executed to be coincidence." He touched her shoulder.

She accepted his comfort, fighting the urge to rest her cheek on his warm hand. Should she ask him to pray with her about this? "Where did Mrs. Z come into this? Was she hurt by the burglar?"

"No, the burglar hit Sparrow's place before she went over to check on the house. She'd planned to go earlier, she said, before dark. If she had gone in daylight, I think she'd have missed everything, and I might not have known about the burglary until later today when she went back."

Wendy absorbed this information. How she wished she could help him more. "Mrs. Z is Clyde's closest neighbor. She must have been there to feed Clyde's cats." Wendy glanced up at him. "Then how did Mrs. Z get hurt?"

Rodd stretched his long legs out in front of himself as best he could. "She called in the burglary and waited for me in her house. When I arrived, I drove her back to Sparrow's. I wanted her to get the cats out of the crime scene. After I took down her information, I looked things over while she coaxed the cats out of hiding and fed them. Then I was called away to Flanagan's—"

"The brawl?" She took her gaze away from him. Why did this man have the power to tempt her to forget that she didn't want to fall in love?
I'm not free to love
. What if Mom came home without Jim? Would it start all over again? The drinking ...everything?

"Yes, by then the brawl was a four-alarm fire." He raked his fingers through his hair. "We finally had to use pepper spray."

Wendy shook her head over it. "I know. The two who got it are going to be in bad shape for a couple of days."

He let his hands drop to the steering wheel. "We used it because it took the fight out of everybody. The ambulances and my deputies wouldn't have been able to get the injured off to the clinic and the guilty off to the county jail without it."

Remembering the chaos the brawl had unleashed at the clinic, she folded her arms around herself. "That must be when Dr. Doug called me in."

He nodded. "It was just after midnight. When I finished closing Flanagan's down for the night, I went back to Sparrow's and tried to secure the crime scene. Then I got a call to go back to Mrs. Zabriski. She'd fallen in her home. Dispatch called me since she knew I was right down the road. The ambulance crews needed a break, so I picked Mrs. Zabriski up."

The fatigue had started working on Wendy again as though she were a balloon being deflated. "That's right. Her place isn't far from Flanagan's."

Rodd nodded, then glanced over at her. "I think the thief may have chosen Sparrow's house because of its nearness to Flanagan's."

"Why?" Wendy didn't like the direction of this conversation. Her uncle had been at Flanagan's.

The sheriff went on as though talking to himself, "The idea of the brawl itself shows intelligence."

"A brawl—intelligent? How?"

"Because the brawl at Flanagan's was timed to start almost as the kegger would be discovered to be a setup. After sparking the brawl— which wouldn't have been difficult, considering almost everyone there had been drinking for most of the day—the thief then could have slipped out of Flanagan's, committed the burglary, and come back and thrown himself into the brawl."

"I see what you mean." She looked down, not wanting to admit how much sense his words made.

"Or it might have just been intended to keep things confused, stirred up. But another fact that shows the brawl was a smart move was that it involved practically every possible suspect in the county."

"How was that smart?" She looked at him in spite of herself. So near her, his restrained strength worked on her powerfully. Who had been foolish enough to choose this man as an adversary?

"The burglar guessed that I'd connect the closeness of Sparrow's place to Flanagan's. By involving all the suspects, the thief could spread suspicion around with a broad brush."

Tonight, Rodd had planned to do what he'd been elected to do— protect and defend his county. He'd laid his plans so well....

She touched his shoulder. "You did your best. No one can ask for more."

Wendy's touch didn't soothe him. He let out a sound of disgust.

She leaned closer. "You are doing everything you can do. You expected to tie this up weeks ago, that night at Olie's place. But you aren't calling the shots; the burglar is. All you can do is try to anticipate him. I've been praying. The church is praying." She paused. "You should go on doing everything you can do." She paused again. "Then you have to be patient. The day will come when you'll get the thief."

Awareness of Wendy filled his senses—her light scent, the sound of her even breathing, her sympathetic touch. She understood his frustration. He reached for her hand and held it in both of his. "Thanks, I...thanks." The desire to draw her hand to his lips nearly overwhelmed him. He fought it. He didn't want to mislead her. She was too fine a woman for that. And he had no time for romance now. He made himself release her hand. "I better let you go. It's late...."

"Will you pray about this, Rodd?"

His conscience tugged at him as he considered her request. "I'll try."