A Creed in Stone Creek (5 page)

Steven opened his mouth to say something along the lines of “It’s okay, I appreciate the offer, but the tent will be fine for now,” but Meg already had her cell phone out. She dialed, stuck a finger in her free ear, smiling fit to blow every transformer within a fifty-mile radius and asked whoever was on the other end to please bring the bus next door.

Brad, meanwhile, had wandered over to look at the barn. Or what was left of it, anyway. “Good for firewood and not much else,” he said, scanning the ruins.

Steven nodded in agreement, shoved a hand through his hair. “Listen, about the bus, I wouldn’t want you and Meg going to a lot trouble. We’ll be okay with a tent.…”

Brad listened, grinning. But he was shaking his head the whole time.

Steven’s protest fell away when he heard Matt give a peal of happy laughter. He glanced in the boy’s direction and saw that Meg was leaning down again, her hands braced on her thighs, so she could look into Matt’s eyes. Her own were dancing with delight.

Matt must have told her one of his infamous knock-knock jokes, Steven thought. The kid did tend to laugh at his own jokes.

“Never look a gift bus in the grillwork,” Brad said.

Steven looked back at him, blinked. “Huh?”

Brad laughed. “Never mind,” he said, and started off toward Meg again.

It was almost as though the two of them were magnetized to each other, Steven observed, feeling just a little envious.

Ten minutes later, the gleaming bus was rolling up the driveway, and it was a thing of beauty.

I
T WAS
5:30
P.M.,
by Melissa’s watch. The bus from Tucson and Phoenix would have disgorged any passengers it might be carrying—Byron Cahill, for instance—at 5:00 sharp, before heading on to Indian Rock and then making a swing back to stop in Flagstaff and heading south again. She was familiar with the bus route because she’d ridden it so often, as a college student, when she couldn’t afford a car.

Although she usually looked forward to going home after work, today was different. Home sounded like a lonely place, since there wouldn’t be anybody there waiting for her.

Maybe, she thought, she should give in to Olivia’s constant nagging—well, okay, Olivia didn’t exactly
nag;
she just
suggested
things in a big-sister kind of way—and adopt a cat or a dog. Or both.

Just the thought of all that fur and pet dander made her sneeze, loudly and with vigor. Since she’d been tested for allergies more than once, and the results were consistently negative, Melissa secretly thought Olivia and Ashley might be right—her sensitivities were psychosomatic. Deep down, her sisters agreed, Melissa was afraid to open her heart, lest it be broken. It was a wonder, they further maintained, that she didn’t sneeze
whenever she encountered a man, given her wariness in the arena of love and romance.

There might be some truth to that theory, too, she thought now. She adored the children in the family, and that felt risky enough, considering the shape the world was in.

How could she afford to love a man? Or compound her fretful concerns by letting herself care for an animal? Especially considering that critters had very short life spans, compared to humans.

Feeling a little demoralized, Melissa logged off her computer, pulled her purse from the large bottom drawer of her desk, and sighed with relief because the workday was over. Not that she’d really done much work.

It troubled her conscience, accepting a paycheck mostly for warming a desk chair all day; in the O’Ballivan family, going clear back to old Sam, the founding father of today’s ever-expanding clan, character was measured by the kind of
contribution
a person made. Slackers were not admired.

Telling herself she didn’t need to be admired anyway, dammit, Melissa left her office, locking up behind her. She paused, passing Andrea’s deserted desk, frowned at the ivy plant slowly drying up in one corner.

It wasn’t her plant, she reminded herself.

It is a living thing, and it is thirsty,
that self retorted silently.

With a sigh, Melissa put down her purse, searched until she found the empty coffee tin Andrea used as a watering can—when she remembered to water the indoor foliage, which was a crapshoot—filled the humble vessel at the sink in the women’s restroom, returned to the cubicle and carefully doused the ivy.

It seemed to rally, right before her eyes, that bedraggled snippet of greenery, standing up a little straighter, stretching its fragile limbs a bit wider instead of shriveling. Melissa made a mental note to speak to Andrea about the subtleties of responsibility—she wasn’t a bad kid. Just sort of—
distracted
all the time. And little wonder, given all she’d been through.

Andrea had arrived in Stone Creek as a runaway, when she was just fourteen, riding the same bus that had probably brought Byron Cahill back to town that very afternoon. Out of money and out of options, she’d spent her first night sleeping behind the potted rosebushes in the garden center at the local discount store.

Upon discovering her there, first thing the next morning, the clerk had called Tom Parker, a natural thing to do. Especially since Andrea sat cross-legged against the wall, stubbornly refusing to come out.

Tom had soon arrived, accompanied by his portly mixed-breed retriever, Elvis, who pushed his way right through those spiky-spined rosebushes to lick Andrea’s face in friendly consolation. After a while, Tom—or had it been Elvis?—managed to persuade Andrea to take a chance on the kindness of strangers and leave her erstwhile hiding place.

Over breakfast at the Lucky Horseshoe Café, since closed, the girl had confided in Tom, told him about her less-than-wholesome home life, down in Phoenix. Her mother was on drugs, she claimed, and her stepfather, who had done time for a variety of crimes, was about to get out of jail. Rather than be at his mercy, Andrea said, she’d decided to take off, try to make it on her own.

Of course, Tom checked the story out, and it held up to scrutiny, so agencies were consulted and legal
steps were taken, and Andrea moved in with the elderly Crockett sisters, Mamie and Marge, who lived directly across the street from Tom’s aunt Ona, she of Parade-Committee fame, as a foster child. Andrea still lived in the small apartment above the Crocketts’ detached garage, proudly paying rent and looking after the old ladies
and
their many cats.

Melissa was thinking all these thoughts as she left the courthouse, head bent, rummaging through her purse for her car keys as she crossed the gravel lot.

“Did you get my email?”

The question jolted Melissa and she came to an abrupt halt, her heart scrabbling in her throat.

“Velda,” Melissa said, when she had regained enough breath to speak. “You scared me.”

Byron’s mother, probably in her early fifties and emaciated almost to the point of anorexia, stood near the roadster, dappled in the leaf shadows of the oak tree. Velda wore an old cotton blouse without sleeves, plastic flip-flops and jeans so well-worn that the fabric couldn’t have been described as blue, but only as a hint of that color.

“Sorry,” Velda said, her voice scratchy from several decades of smoking unfiltered cigarettes and half again that much regret, probably, her expression insincere. Lines spiked out around her mouth, giving her lips a pursed look. “I wouldn’t want to do that. Scare anybody, I mean.”

“Good,” Melissa said, steady enough by then to be annoyed instead of frightened.

Velda stood between Melissa and the driver’s-side door of the car, her skinny arms folded. Her hair was iron-gray, with faint streaks of yellow, and fell well past
her shoulders. Pink plastic barrettes, shaped like little hearts, held the locks back at the sides of her head, creating an unfortunate effect of attempted girlishness.

“Did you get my email?” Velda asked again.

“Yes,” Melissa replied, holding her keys in her right hand. “And I answered it. The situation is really pretty simple, Velda. As long as Byron stays out of trouble, he won’t have to worry about my office or the police.”

Velda smiled wanly, shrugged her bony shoulders. She sidled out of Melissa’s way, rather than stepping, as if it would be too much trouble to lift her feet. Clearly, there was more she wanted to say.

Melissa got behind the wheel of her car and turned the key in the ignition, but she didn’t drive away. She waited.

“It’s hard enough for him,” Velda went on, at last, as if Melissa hadn’t said anything at all, “knowing that poor young girl died because of what he did. Byron’s got to live with that for the rest of his life. But he’s not some hardened criminal, that’s all I’m saying. He’s not some monster everybody ought to be afraid of.”

As she’d spoken, Velda had curled her fingers along the edge of the car window, so the knuckles whitened.

Melissa sighed, something softening inside her, and patted Velda’s hand. “Byron is your son,” she said quietly, looking straight up into the faded-denim blue of the other woman’s eyes, “and you love him. I understand that. But, Velda, the best thing you can probably do to help Byron right now is to lighten up a little. Give him some time—and some space—to adjust to being back on the outside.”

Tears welled up in Velda’s eyes; she sniffled once and stared off into some invisible distance for a long
moment before looking back at Melissa. Her voice was very small when she spoke.

“Byron wasn’t on the bus,” she said slowly. “He was supposed to be on that bus, and he wasn’t.”

Melissa felt a mild charge of something that might have been alarm. “Maybe there was some kind of delay on the other end—didn’t he call you?”

Velda’s expression was rueful. The bitterness was back. “Call me? Not everybody can afford a cell phone, you know.”

Melissa looked around. Except for Tom’s cruiser, the roadster was the only vehicle in the lot. “Where’s your car?”

“It’s broken down,” Velda said, still with that tinge of resentful irony. “That’s why I was late getting over to the station to meet the bus. It was gone when I got there, and there was no sign of Byron. I asked inside the station, and Al told me he didn’t see my boy get off.”

“Get in,” Melissa said, nodding to indicate the passenger seat, leaning to move her purse to the floorboards so Velda would have room to sit down.

Velda hesitated, then rounded the hood of the car and opened the door. Once she’d settled in and snapped on her seat belt, she met Melissa’s gaze.

“What are we going to do now?” she asked.

Melissa leaned to dig her cell out of her purse and handed it to Velda. “Call Byron’s parole officer,” she said, by way of an answer, certain that Velda would know the number, even if she couldn’t afford a mobile phone of her own. “He—or she—will know if there was some sort of hitch with his release.”

Velda hesitated, then took the phone from Melissa. She studied the keypad for a few moments, while
Melissa shifted into First and gave the roadster some gas, but soon, Byron’s mom was punching in a sequence of numbers, biting her lower lip as she waited to ring through.

B
RAD
O’B
ALLIVAN’S TOUR BUS
, it turned out, was equipped with solar panels, satellite TV, and high-speed internet service. It boasted two large bedrooms, a full bath and a kitchen with full-size appliances.

“Must have been tough,” Steven joked as Brad showed him and Matt through the place, “having to rough it like this while you were on the road.”

Outside, a couple of workers from Brad and Meg’s ranch were already hooking up the water supply and installing the secondary generator. That would serve as backup to the solar gear.

Brad grinned modestly, shrugged, slid his hands into the front pockets of his jeans in a way that was characteristic of him. “The band used it, mostly,” he admitted. “I traveled by plane.”

“Right,” Steven said, amused. “More like a private jet, I think.”

Brad shrugged again and looked away for a moment, the grin still tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Steven had never met a famous person before—not one from the entertainment world, anyway—and he was pleasantly surprised by this one. O’Ballivan was not only a down-to-earth guy, he was generous. He clearly loved his wife and kids more than he’d ever loved bright lights and ticket sales.

“I appreciate this,” Steven said.

“Just being neighborly,” Brad answered, his tone easy.
No big deal,
was the unspoken part of the message. He
turned, paused beside the door to scrawl a couple of numbers onto the small blackboard above the desk. “Let us know if you need anything,” he said.

Steven nodded. “Thanks,” he replied.

He stood in the doorway and watched as Meg and Brad drove away in their truck. Matt was so excited, he was practically bouncing off the walls.

“This is
amazing,
” he marveled. “Can I have the room with the bunk beds?”

With a chuckle, Steven turned to look down at Matt. The kid’s face was joy-polished; his eyes glowed with excitement.

“Sure,” Steven replied.

“Can we go back to town and get a dog now that we don’t have to live in a tent while our house gets fixed up?” The question itself was luminous, like the boy.

Steven felt like a heartless bastard, but he had to refuse. “Probably not a good idea, Tex,” he said gently. “This bus is borrowed, remember? And it’s pretty darn fancy, too. A dog might do some damage, and that would not be cool.”

Matt’s face worked as he processed Steven’s response. “Even if we were really,
really
careful to pick a really,
really
good dog?”

“
Good
has nothing to do with it, Bud,” Steven said, sitting down on the leather-upholstered bench that doubled as a couch so he’d be at eye level with the child. “Dogs are dogs. They do what they do, at least until they’ve been trained.”

Matt blinked. Behind that little forehead, with its faint sprinkling of freckles, the cogs were turning, big-time. He finally turned slightly and inclined his head toward the blackboard over the desk. “Maybe you could
call Brad and Meg,” he ventured reasonably. “You could ask them if they’d mind. If we had a dog, I mean.”

“Tex—”

“I’d clean up any messes,” Matt hastened to promise. He seemed to be holding his breath.

Steven sighed. Got out his cell phone. “You’re the one who wants to get the dog now instead of later,” he said. “So you can do the asking.”

Matt beamed, nodded. “Okay,” he said, practically crowing the word.

Steven keyed in one of the numbers Brad had written on the board, the one with a
C
beside it in parenthesis. When it started to ring, he handed the device to Matt.

“Hello?” he said, after a couple of moments. “It’s Matt Creed calling. Is this Mr. O’Ballivan?”

The timbre of the responding voice was male, though Steven couldn’t make out the words.

“My new dad says we can go to the animal shelter in town and adopt a dog if it’s all right with you,” Matt chimed in next. Inwardly, Steven groaned.
My new dad says…

The boy listened for a few more seconds, nodding rapidly. “If my dog makes any messes,” he finished manfully, throwing his small shoulders back and raising his chin as he spoke, “I promise to clean them up.”

Brad said something in response, after which Matt said thank you and then goodbye and finally snapped the phone shut, held it out to Steven with an air of
there-you-go.

Steven accepted the phone, dropped it into his shirt pocket, and ran a hand through his hair. “Well?” he asked, though it was pretty obvious what Brad’s answer must have been.