Callie's Cowboy (12 page)

So this was what Johnny had been working on mere minutes before his death. A feed order, for alfalfa hay. Nothing sinister about that, except … the date. The order was dated October 3, a good week before Johnny's death.

Well, maybe he was printing up an extra copy for his files, Callie reasoned. He was such a meticulous man, he probably did everything in triplicate. It would be interesting to see if the order had been filled, though. She ripped off the paper, folded it into quarters, and stuck it in the back pocket of her jeans.

The door banged open and she whirled around, her hand going automatically to her throat in a gesture of fear.

Sam stood in the doorway, the devil's own fire burning in his eyes. “What the hell are you doing in
here
?”

“I … oh … you scared me,” Callie said, her heart pounding.

“I guess so. What are you up to, Callie Calloway?”

She stared at Sam. “What do you
think
I'm up to?”

“Oh, just a little snooping around. Looking for clues at the scene of the crime, a crime that exists only in your imagination. Dreaming up headlines that would reinstate you at the
Record
, perhaps?”

She was so shocked by his anger, it took her a moment to find her voice. “You must really think I'm scum. For your information, I offered to call a cleaning service to take care of this room so no one in the family would have to. I was checking to see how bad it was, so I'd know what to tell the service when I call. I'm done, now.” She didn't think she could stand another ten seconds in this room with its bloody reminder of the violence that had taken place. But Sam stood in her path like a stone monument.

“And you weren't looking to satisfy some morbid curiosity of your own?”

The piece of paper she'd torn from the printer burned in her back pocket. But she hadn't come into the room with the idea of snooping. She'd run across the feed order accidentally. Perhaps she shouldn't have removed it, but once she'd noted the anomaly, she had to follow up on it. She'd promised Sloan
and
Beverly.

Still, she didn't answer Sam's question directly. “If you think this is satisfying to me in some way, you're wrong. In fact …” Oh, dear. Bile rose in her throat. It was the smell. If she didn't get out of here soon, she was going to disgrace herself.

She tried to push past Sam. “Excuse me.”

He grabbed her arm. “I'm not done talking to you.”

“Talk to me outside!” She shook herself loose and bolted for the front door. Better to throw up in the bushes than on Beverly's living-room rug.

The moment the cool autumn air hit her she felt better. Leaning against the porch railing, she took in huge, gasping breaths, trying fruitlessly to wash the stench out of her nose.

“Callie?” Sam was right behind her with a steadying hand to her waist. “Good God, you turned green right before my eyes. Are you going to—”

“No,” she said sharply. “I won't soil your shrubs.” She was all right, now, feeling steadier by the moment. If only Sam would take his hand away.

Instead he moved closer. “Sure you're okay?”

“Fine.”

He slipped his arm around her. “Come back inside. I heard Mom saying something about tea.”

She stood rigid, glued to the spot. “I don't think so. I came by to check on you all, see if there was anything I could do to help. And, yes, I came to see you, because we have unfinished business.” She was thinking about the explanation she owed him concerning her role in investigating his father's death.

But from the way he was looking at her, she guessed he was thinking about other unfinished business. “Do we?”

She sighed. The only way she was going to get this mess cleared up was to take the direct approach. She would be violating all sorts of confidences by what she was about to tell him, but she couldn't stand for this matter to hang between them any longer.

“The police suspect your father was murdered,” she said. “Your mother believes the same thing, and I agree with them both. I'm working with the police on an informal basis because I happen to be close to the case. I promised I would let them know if anything useful turned up. I told your mother the same thing. That's the extent of my involvement. For the last time, I'm not planning to write any more stories about your father's death, for the
Record
or anyone else. If you don't believe me, I have nothing more to say to you.”

During her speech, Sam had gradually pulled his arm away until they were no longer touching. Now he was silent. When Callie chanced a peek at him, she saw that his throat was working and his eyes glistened. “No one would kill him,” he finally said, more to thin air than to Callie. “That's patently ridiculous. The case is closed.”

“Officially it is. But not everyone agrees with that finding.”

He turned to her suddenly. “So you're looking for some type of evidence that would reopen the case? To what purpose? So my family can be dragged through the mud some more?”

“Sam, if someone did kill your father, would you want that person to go free?”

“No, of course not.”

“Neither do I.”

“But there
is
no such person.” He said this as if the forcefulness of his words could make it so.

“I want to be sure of that,” Callie said quietly. “The media will never know about this unless something concrete does turn up, and then only if someone at the
Record
is astute enough to figure it out. You'll have to trust me on that.”

“I guess I don't have a choice.” He sighed and relaxed a fractional degree. “I don't agree with what you're doing, though. The sooner Mom accepts the truth that Dad killed himself, the sooner she can get over it. You're not helping by encouraging her to live in this la-la land of plots and murders.”

“I'm doing what I believe is right.” That was all she could offer him.

“Fine.” He paused, then said gruffly, “Come back inside. Have some tea. Spend time with my mother. You always do her a world of good.”

“But I don't seem to be of much help to you. Every time I turn around I'm making you mad.”

“That's just me, I guess. I think I'm not quite ready to be comforted.”

The pain in his eyes moved her. Everyone expected Sam to be the strong one, the one in control. He'd been the backbone of the family for a long time. He'd probably been so busy taking care of everything after Johnny's death that he hadn't had time to grieve.

“If there's ever anything I can do—”

He looked at her sharply, cutting off her words. The pain in his eyes receded, replaced by something else—raw need. Suddenly she knew what she could do, how she could connect to this man who usually seemed to demand so little in the way of emotional support.

She felt it, too, an answering need inside her. Right there on his front porch, an understanding passed between them that went beyond anything they'd experienced together.

He looked away first. She took a deep breath, wondering if she'd imagined the whole thing. Maybe she had. But she couldn't escape the nagging feeling that a bargain had been struck.

Callie spent the next two days in a state of perpetual near hysteria. Without a single word, she'd practically issued an engraved invitation to Sam. She'd been positive that, for once, they'd been on the same wavelength. If they hadn't been on his mother's front porch—if they'd been somewhere more private—her fate would have been sealed then and there.

Maybe Sam had thought better of the whole idea. At any rate, she'd been given a reprieve. She was tempted to pack her bags and run away until Sam was gone and things were safe in Destiny.

She managed to forget about Sam for a few minutes Tuesday morning as she worked in the garden belonging to her landlord—the man who lived in the “big house” to which her carriage house was attached. He was out of town and had told her to make use of anything she could scavenge there among the autumn-shriveled plants.

She wasn't much for gardens, but she was on a strict budget now and couldn't afford to turn down free food. So here she was, wearing her oldest jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt that dated from college, gathering tomatoes and peppers and one rather sickly looking butternut squash.

When she was finished, she turned the hose on, hoping to keep the plants alive a few more days or weeks, until that first freeze.

She brought her treasures inside and dumped them into the sink to be washed.

The phone rang and her heart jumped. Never had the phone attained such significance in her life. She should have been hoping, praying, the call was from one of the newspapers she'd applied to. Instead she thought of Sam.

“Hello?” She tried to make her voice sound normal. The caller was neither Sam nor a newspaper. It was Sandler's Feed Store. “This is Wayne Pedder, Ms. Calloway. You said you had a question about Johnny Sanger's account?”

Callie took a deep breath. “Yessir.” She rummaged around on her cluttered counter until she located the wrinkled feed order she'd snagged from Johnny's
printer. “Johnny ordered some alfalfa hay on October third, is that correct?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And was the hay delivered?”

“Oh, yes, ma'am, the very next day. Is there a problem?”

“No, not at all. I was just curious about something. How did he place the order? Did he call?”

“No, ma'am, he always faxes in his orders. We've gone tech-no-logical around here,” Wayne said proudly. “He pays with a credit-card number, and we deliver a receipt with the hay. Johnny Sanger thought up the system. Saves a lot of time and paperwork.”

“I see.” So maybe Johnny had simply printed up a hard copy for his files. That would make sense, even a week after the fact.

“Anything else, Ms. Calloway? Do you need me to spell my name?”

“Oh, um, I'm not doing a story for the paper,” she admitted. “Just tying up a few loose ends.”

“Oh.” He sounded supremely disappointed.

She concluded the conversation, then ran back downstairs to turn off the water. She was disappointed herself. She'd thought maybe the feed order would be an important clue.

“Silly,” she murmured to herself. If it had been important, the police would have done something about it. Come to think of it, they'd probably already checked it out.

She turned purposefully toward the carriage house—and almost had a collision with Sam. Oh, terrific! She hadn't even had a shower yet this morning.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, rather ungraciously, she realized, after the words were out. Of course, he looked freshly showered, his caramel-and-gold hair still slightly damp, his jaw smooth.

“Is that any way to treat a man who's brought you kolaches?”

“Kolaches?” she repeated, inhaling to catch the scent of her favorite pastry.

He held up a white bakery bag. “Don't tell me you've already eaten.”

“No …”

“Something wrong?”

“You couldn't have called first?”

“I did. No answer. You can check your answering machine,” he added when she started to object. “You were probably out here playing Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.”

No, more like Cinderella before the fairy godmother got to her, she thought, eyeing the grime on her hands. Where was a fairy godmother when you needed one?

Callie considered telling him to go away and come back later, when she was presentable. But then she looked at the bakery bag, thought about her recently enacted policy of not turning down free food, and decided she'd be smarter not to leave Sam and the bag alone together for too much longer.

“Well, it was nice of you to think of me.” She pasted on a smile she hoped would hide her sudden case of nerves. For heaven's sake, this was Sam! He'd seen her in worse states than this. What was there to be nervous about?

Oh, nothing, only the fact that she'd implied a certain promise, and that's why he was here bearing gifts.

“I'll finish watering here,” he said, “if you'd like a chance to, um, freshen up?”

She couldn't very well deny that she needed some heavy-duty freshening. “I'm done watering. You can come upstairs and warm these in the oven while I jump in the shower.” She turned and walked sedately, trying her best to hide her inner turmoil. Was he really here, without Deana, for the reason she thought?

She showered quickly with her strawberry-scented soap, dusted herself with the bath powder she hadn't used in years, and put on the only pair of matching panties and bra she had—purple silk. She thought about Sam's bold gaze taking in the sexy lingerie, his hands unfastening the front clasp of the bra and sliding the silk panties over her hips and down.

She shivered. There wasn't a single doubt in her mind that her vision could become reality.

When at last she felt ready, dressed in purple jeans and a thin lilac sweater, her damp hair braided, she entered the kitchen. The coffee she'd put on to brew earlier was ready, and Sam had popped the kolaches into the oven to warm.

“They'll be ready in about five minutes,” he said. His gaze lingered on her for several long seconds. “You look nice.”

Nice? Was that the best he could come up with? She laughed at herself. This was Sam, who had never been a man of many words. “Thanks.” She brushed dangerously close to him on the way to the coffeepot. She fancied she could hear a sharp intake of breath as she
passed, but maybe that was only her overactive imagination.

She filled two pale blue ceramic mugs she'd bought last spring from Millicent at a crafts fair. She'd been waiting for the perfect opportunity to use them, and this was definitely it.

“So, what's the occasion?” she asked with feigned naïveté as she set mugs, plates, and napkins on the small round table in her breakfast nook. “You don't often bribe me with Polish pastries without a reason.”