Stalked In Conard County (Conard County: The Next Generation Book 41) Read online

  “That’s right. I remember. It’s been a while, though.”

  A while. Sorrow shadowed Haley’s heart. Grandma had been in the habit of flying out to visit every year, staying with Haley for a week or so. A comfortable pattern. Then Grandma had missed a summer, made some excuse Haley couldn’t even remember now, and she felt guilty for not having realized that something was wrong.

  Well, she could kick herself over that later, she decided as she forked some scrambled egg into her mouth then followed it with a bite of rye toast. The voyeur seemed like a more immediate issue and she wondered if she should even bring it up to Roger. He’d stopped in to offer a friendly greeting, not necessarily to get dragged into any part of her life.

  “Listen,” he said. “This is an old house and I used to do some work on it from time to time when Flora needed it. I was in the middle of a project to fix the ductwork in the basement when she...took ill.”

  She looked up from her plate. Man, she’d forgotten this guy was so attractive. Maybe he hadn’t been years ago, when still a stripling. “What’s wrong with the ducts?”

  He put his mug down. “A little of everything. Rust, age, shrinkage, loose joints. Anyway, it was rattling enough when the heat came on that Flora finally got irritated. I can’t say I blame her. She asked me to come over and listen to it. Clang, bang, rattle. And, of course, it came amplified right through the registers. Anyway, I was replacing it a bit at a time and, unless you have an objection, I’d like to finish the job. I hate to leave work undone.”

  “I have no objection,” she answered promptly. It would be nice to have a chance to get to know him again. “They really make a racket, huh?”

  He laughed briefly. “Let me put it this way. If it hadn’t happened slowly over time, I think Flora would have blown a gasket. I can’t believe how much she got used to before she decided she needed to do something.”

  “Isn’t it funny how we can do that?”

  “Oh, yeah. We adapt to an awful lot. Except saddle sores, heel blisters and...well, no need to make a whole list.”

  It was her turn to laugh. “It’s so good to see you again, Roger. It’s been an age.”

  “Yeah, and somewhere along the way we both grew up. I’m sorry you missed Flora’s memorial at the church.”

  “Dad didn’t leave me much opportunity to get here. It’s okay. Flora didn’t want all that for herself.”

  “That sounds like Flora, all right. Go on, finish your breakfast. I don’t know about you, but I hate cold eggs. Come to think of it, cold toast isn’t much better.”

  Part of her wanted to journey down memory lane with him. Thinking back, she realized the two of them really hadn’t spent that much time together those few summers she had visited. He’d been apprenticing with his father and only occasionally had time off. As for her grandmother...well, it seemed likely he’d spent more time with her than Haley ever had. They’d been neighbors, after all.

  But then he asked the question that directed her to more urgent matters.

  “Why do you have all the curtains closed?” he asked. “Flora only did that during the winter.”

  She laid her fork down on her empty plate. Had she imagined last night? It seemed so distant now, but she was still wrapped in her robe against a chill that didn’t exist except inside herself and she had turned the house into a cave.

  “Last night...” She hesitated, hoping she didn’t sound fanciful or hysterical. “The moon was awfully bright. It woke me up and I was staring at it, thinking how beautiful it was when...” She sighed and pushed the words out. “Someone was looking in my window, Roger. It unnerved me.” Understatement.

  He was already rising from his chair. “Flora’s room?”

  “Yes.”

  Before she could say any more, he’d gone out the front door.

  She rose to her feet, wondering why her legs felt wobbly. Because she’d addressed what had happened last night, hadn’t just shoved it into the background to be forgotten with a million other bad things? She’d learned to do that in early childhood—a lesson she had believed was well-learned, a lesson she used often in her work.

  She rinsed her dishes and put them in the dishwasher that her father had installed many years ago during one of her summer visits here. Darn thing was still working.

  Then she leaned against the counter, resting her weight on the palms of her hands, and closed her eyes.

  The image floated up in her mind, as clear as it had been last night. Her heart pounded once, hard, then settled again. A Peeping Tom. Probably no threat at all, just a guy who got his kicks by sneaking looks at sleeping women.

  Nothing, she told herself. Nothing to fear.

  When Roger returned, he entered the kitchen talking on his cell phone. “Yeah, Flora McKinsey’s house on Poplar—901. Her granddaughter’s staying here at the moment and last night she had a Peeping Tom. There are footprints under her bedroom window.” He paused. “Geez, Gage, how would I know? Probably scared the bejesus out of her. We don’t have any known peepers making the rounds, do we?”

  He fell silent. Then, “Yeah, I think she’d be glad to see Kelly. Someone has to come, right?”

  When he disconnected, Haley let go of the counter and faced him. “I didn’t want to make a federal case out of it.”

  He gave her a half smile. “I did it for you. It matters, it upset you, and there’s not a whole lot I can do, not being a cop. Just get yourself another cup of coffee and relax. You’ll like Kelly.”

  “Kelly?” She looked down at herself. “I should get dressed.”

  “You’re decent. Relax. Kelly’s one of our K-9 officers. She’ll probably talk to you for a few minutes then try to follow the guy’s trail. Her dog, by the way, is called Bugle.”

  “Bugle?” That surprised a small laugh out of her. This was happening too fast. She’d spent most of the night trying to regain her equilibrium, to push childhood memories back into the tar pit, and, with just one phone call, everything was awake and alive again. It didn’t matter there was no kidnapper involved. It only mattered that someone at her bedroom window had shaken her life until past ugliness tumbled into the present.

  She took Roger’s advice and poured herself some fresh coffee before returning to her seat. “It was always odd to me how Grandma would start every day with coffee and switch to tea by midmorning.”

  “Yeah.” He pulled out the chair he’d been sitting in earlier and sat facing her once again. “She never could persuade me about the tea. And, Lord knows, she tried.” Then he eyed her straight-on. “Haley? Why didn’t you call the police last night?”

  The underlying truth burst out of her, shocking her as she faced it. “Because I didn’t want to make it real!”

  * * *

  Those vehement words told Roger he’d tripped into a minefield, one he wasn’t equipped to handle. Damn, he was just a guy who made saddles. He knew horses better than he knew people. Well, with the possible exception of their riders.

  But the very honest anguish Haley had just displayed left him feeling helpless and as if he needed hip waders so he wouldn’t get in dangerously deep. The last thing he wanted was to make some stupid comment that would exacerbate whatever Haley was experiencing.

  “Sorry,” she said quietly. Her gaze was now focused on the coffee mug she held in two hands before her.

  “No need.” Really there wasn’t. His brain was on a rapid search down the halls of memory, trying to pull out some sliver that could give him a clue to this moment. Peering down those hallways, however, told him how little he truly knew about Haley, how little time they’d really spent together. Flora provided more recollections.

  But then, somewhere in his mental search, he ran up hard against a nearly forgotten memory. Of course it was nearly forgotten. He’d been what? Twelve or so? At that point he wasn’t sure he’d ever met Haley at all, but he’d heard
her mentioned. And he suddenly remembered, although it hadn’t seemed important at the time, not to a kid, something about her having been kidnapped and returned unharmed. In fact, by the time any adult had mentioned it around him, she was safely at home.

  And his young mind had dismissed the event as unimportant.

  After Haley’s reaction just now, he realized the memory was not in her distant past and that at this moment it was very much present.

  Calling the police would make it more real? Uh, yeah. God, she’d probably spent much of the night wrestling with recollections that should have been buried beneath a tombstone nearly a quarter century ago.

  All of a sudden, the Peeping Tom no longer seemed like a minor nuisance that needed to be looked into. Suddenly he seemed like a major threat to Haley’s peace of mind. Problem was, Roger didn’t know what to do about it. Nor, likely, would the police.

  Conard City—in fact, the whole county—was by and large a peaceful place. Oh, yeah, they had their share of loonies and wackos, but overall it was still a place where people felt safe, let their children play outside and all the Norman Rockwell rest of it.

  Of course, some of that was illusion. Everyone knew it but clung to it anyway. So far, he didn’t think many had paid a high price for believing everything was okay around here. People might be irritated by the idea of a Peeping Tom, but they’d be equally certain they’d figure out who it was and, between a misdemeanor charge and public disapproval, he’d get back in line or leave town.

  But if the guy peeked in on kids...well, local ire might be explosive. It was something he’d seen early in life. The village would put up with the idiot because he was one of them. If the village idiot went beyond the pale, however, tolerance would evaporate.

  He was just putting together careful words to ask Haley if her reaction had to do with her kidnapping when a heavy knock sounded on the front door. Police, he thought with mild amusement, were never timid about pounding for attention.

  “That must be Kelly,” he said, rising. “Should I ask her in or just show her where the footprints are?”

  She tilted her head a little and smiled. “I’m not a hermit. I’d like to meet her. I just hope she doesn’t think I’m overreacting.”

  “There isn’t a soul around here who’d think anyone was overreacting to having someone peer into their bedroom window in the middle of the night. You can relax about that.”

  The front door wasn’t far away. A small foyer divided the ground floor of the house, a foyer he’d helped to refinish a few years back when Flora had remarked the wood wainscoting was looking rough. Dryness had begun to crack it, so he applied sandpaper and oil and made it look as good as new. His reward had been Flora’s delight. All he’d ever wanted, although she’d often drowned his bachelor self with all kinds of tasty casseroles because, according to her, cooking for one was a pain.

  It was a nice excuse.

  He opened the door and found Kelly Noveno there with Bugle, a Belgian Malinois. Bugle sat politely beside her, looking attentive. Kelly herself was a pleasant eyeful with dark hair and snapping dark eyes, but she was already claimed by Al Carstairs, the animal control officer. A guy could still look.

  Haley herself was a lovely woman. As a rule, he didn’t find blondes appealing, but Haley was different. And those blue eyes of hers looked like deep, still waters, even now. Under less stressful circumstances, she might have lit his fire.

  “Come on in, Kelly. Haley’s at the kitchen table and I don’t think she got much sleep.”

  “I heard that,” Haley called from the kitchen. “Caffeine helps. Want some, Deputy?”

  “Kelly, please. And I’d love some.” Once in the kitchen, she put Bugle at ease and invited Haley to pet him. “He’s a friendly guy, but don’t touch him without permission.”

  “I get that,” Haley answered with a smile. “I feel almost silly about this,” she remarked as she brought Kelly a mug of coffee and joined her and Roger at the table. Revealing more than she probably realized, she clutched her robe closer. Roger didn’t overlook it, though.

  “Silly?” Kelly repeated. “Some guy peers in your bedroom window in the middle of the night and you feel silly for telling the police about it? Gimme a break.”

  At that, Haley laughed, and Roger felt some relief. Whatever had been going on earlier, that remark about making this all real could wait for another time. A time when he felt he’d gleaned enough to know where it might be headed.

  Flora, he knew, would want him to look out for her granddaughter, but he at least had to have some idea what she needed. That meant getting to know her better.

  “Okay,” Kelly said, pulling out a notebook. “About what time did you see this guy?”

  Haley furrowed her brow. “I hate to say this, but I’m not exactly sure. The moon woke me up, coming through my window. It was so bright!”

  “Supermoon, at its closest point to earth.” Kelly nodded. “Okay, so the moon was still high enough to be visible over the rooftops of surrounding houses.” She tapped her pencil a few times. “Say sometime between two and three. At three, it would have been disappearing behind everything, including the mountains to the west. What exactly did you see?”

  “Nothing,” Haley said, flushing faintly. “The moonlight was coming from behind him and I couldn’t make out his features, just his shape.”

  “But he could probably see you,” Kelly said.

  Haley nodded slowly. “I’m pretty sure of that.”

  The image summoned to Roger’s mind made his stomach knot tightly. Some sleaze staring in the window with Haley sound asleep and fully illuminated by the moonlight.

  The picture might have been magical except for the circumstances. Instead it was creepy.

  “How long was he there?” Kelly asked.

  “I’m not certain. I mean, to me, it was as if he popped up, looked in, and then when I started to sit up, he just vanished. If he was there earlier, I don’t know.”

  Roger’s jaw tightened, his teeth clenched. “In other words, he might have been observing you for some time. No way to know.”

  Haley frowned faintly. “But then why would he just suddenly pop up?”

  Kelly spoke. “Good question. Let me go outside and survey the scene.” She looked at Roger. “Want to show me?”

  She thanked Haley for the coffee and Roger followed Kelly and the dog out the front door. “Why,” Kelly asked quietly, “would she think it was silly to call us about a Peeping Tom?”

  “I’m not sure,” Roger answered, although the truth felt as if it were sitting in his gut like a lead weight. He was convinced this had something to do with her kidnapping, but it wasn’t his place to speculate. He trusted Kelly, so that wasn’t the issue. The issue was that he didn’t know for sure. To figure it out, he’d need more than a few old memories. And it still wouldn’t be his place to say. “You’ll have to ask her.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  They reached the spot beneath the window and Kelly studied the scuffed dirt. It was easy to tell that someone had stood there, but no print was really clear, Roger thought now.

  “Well, that’s not helpful,” Kelly remarked. “Okay, you go back inside with Haley. Bugle and I are about to take a walk and see what we can learn. Bugle, seek.”

  That dog, Roger had thought more than once, understood a great deal. Without further direction, Bugle sniffed around the scuffed area then headed toward the alley behind the house. Kelly followed.

  “I’ll let you both know if I find anything.”

  “Thanks.”

  Back inside, he found Haley still sitting at the table with cooling coffee in front of her. Except now she looked frozen, her gaze almost hollow, haunted.

  He was a man who liked to fix things, but this was something that didn’t appear to be easily fixable. Whatever was going on inside that woman was clearly above his
pay grade. He sat again so that he’d be at her eye level, even though his whole body wanted action right now.

  “Kelly and Bugle are following a scent. She’ll let us know if she finds anything.”

  Haley gave a brief, jerky nod.

  “Haley? Are you feeling ill? Do you want to go see a doctor?”

  In an instant her eyes lost the hollow look and began to spark blue fire. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m not sick. But some jerk woke me up last night and opened a box of memories I’d safely put away under lock and key for almost twenty-five years.”

  He hesitated, waiting, giving her a chance to continue. Then, wondering if he was prying, he asked the question boldly. “Your kidnapping?”

  “Yes.” She snapped the word.

  He nodded and leaned back, half deciding to just shut his mouth. She doubtless didn’t want to be poked and pried at. Remembering was probably bad enough. But people didn’t really forget things, no matter how deeply they buried them. What if she needed an ear right now?

  “I never heard much about it,” he said “I was too young, nobody said anything to me, and I just picked up that it had happened. But it was over quickly, right?”

  Something in her posture eased. Her face and tone quieted a bit. “That didn’t make it much better.”

  “I don’t imagine it would. I can’t conceive of anything more terrifying, no matter how long it lasted.”

  “It wasn’t just the terror,” she said slowly. Then she seemed to shake herself. “It’s in the past,” she said as if reminding herself.

  “Maybe not far enough in the past,” he remarked, keeping his tone pleasant. “You want more coffee? Are you ready to switch to Flora’s tea? Or how about a bottle of water?”

  She smiled faintly. “Determined to take care of me, huh?”

  “Not much I can do except play waiter and listen.” He shrugged. “You can also tell me to butt out. I’ve even been known to pay attention.”

  Now her smile widened and he was relieved to see that she seemed to be shaking off whatever nightmare had haunted her. “No need to butt out. You’ve been kind, but you must want to get to work.”