What She Saw Page 6

  “Well, I need an excuse to hang around until the next irregularity occurs. Then I’ll follow the second truck to see where it’s going. If I can. At the very least, I have to confirm that shipments are being switched here. That’s my official task. What happens after that...” He shrugged. “Let’s just say I might want to know where the other truck is going.”

  At that Gage leaned forward. “If you find out, you’re going to let us know. Right? You’re not going to take the law into your own hands. Not here.”

  “I’m not allowed to anymore. I get it. But as everyone keeps pointing out to me, this is a small, tight-knit community. How many people around here don’t know every single one of your deputies by sight?”

  Gage and Micah exchanged looks.

  “He’s got a point,” Micah remarked.

  “He damn well does.” Gage leaned back, grimacing faintly. “I’ll agree on one point, Mr. Devlin—”

  “Buck.”

  “Buck. Okay. I’m Gage. I agree with you on one thing. This seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to unless something illicit is being shipped in some of those containers. Illicit and worth considerable money. There’s no point in it otherwise. And maybe you’re right about Ray talking a little too much about coming into some money. Around here that would get attention.”

  “So did his anonymously-paid-for funeral.”

  Gage disagreed. “That doesn’t fit with the rest of the story.”

  “Unless the Listons are in on this somehow.”

  “It’s possible,” Gage said after brief reflection. “That family has been dirt poor forever. They might be willing to do almost anything to make ends meet.” Then he shook his head. “Only one problem. In all their lives, they’ve never done one thing wrong.”

  “Except for that scrape Ray got in right after he graduated,” Micah said.

  “Alcohol and tough words don’t mix well,” Gage remarked. “I’ve seen worse sins in my day. He paid for it.”

  From Buck’s perspective, it was interesting to hear how well these lawmen knew the people of this area. He’d almost never had that advantage in the army. “So,” he asked slowly, “who might be up to something?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” Gage regarded him thoughtfully. “All right. When can I call your boss?”

  Buck looked at his watch. “Right now if you want. He’s on until midnight Pacific time. Ask for Bill Grayson.” He recited the phone number and Gage scribbled it down.

  Gage called, waited a few minutes, then started speaking to Bill. From Buck’s perspective, it was interesting.

  “Your employee didn’t have much choice, Mr. Grayson. Strangers around here get a lot of attention. We’re a small town. We wanted to know why a truck driver was hanging around. This isn’t exactly a vacation destination. He’s sitting in my office right now. Yes. No, we’re not getting directly involved in what he’s doing. It might create more problems. Yes. I’ll tell him.”

  Gage hung up. “That’s one upset man.”

  “He wants this quiet so the company doesn’t lose business. It hardly looks good for a trucking company to keep messing up its manifests.”

  “Doesn’t look good at all.” Gage sighed. “Okay, you’re legit. I see two problems here. First, you stick out like a sore thumb. Second, you’re right, if we start doing anything different, half the county will be wondering what’s going on within a day or two. So I’m going to give you free rein. Within the law, that is. As for Haley...”

  Buck waited while Gage frowned. “Why couldn’t you have picked someone else?”

  “Like I said, it’s Haley I’m worried about. Micah knows she reported that something was going on in that parking lot that night. So two deputies and at least two other people know what she thought she saw—the guy everyone calls Hasty, and the other waitress. I gather folks around here talk about nearly everything.”

  “The downside of a small town,” Gage remarked. “If you want to know what you’re doing, ask a neighbor.”

  That surprised a laugh from Buck. “That bad?”

  “Damn near. On the other hand, nosiness doesn’t keep people from hiding things they want to hide. It just makes them a damn sight more cautious.” He looked at Micah. “If Buck here is right, these folks are willing to kill.”

  “We won’t know that until the reports are back.”

  “No, but can we afford to take the chance? So I guess we’d better let Haley know Buck is okay. She can decide how much she wants to trust him or help him.” Then his gaze returned to Buck, as strong as laser beams. “You be careful of that girl, hear? She’s strong, but there’s a part of her that’s fragile. No hanky-panky with her. No leading her on. You’re here for a few days or weeks, and I don’t want to see any broken hearts.”

  “That’s not on my agenda. At all.”

  Gage continued to study him. “Why do I get the feeling you like to give people a hard time?”

  “I’ve heard that before.” And damned if he was going to apologize for it.

  “I bet you have.” A lopsided smile appeared on Gage’s scarred face. “You know you’re at a disadvantage. Being an outsider, nobody around here is going to tell you much.”

  “I’m used to that.”

  “I’ll bet,” said Micah. He looked at Gage. “If you think a stranger investigating around here is going to be tough, watch an MP looking into a unit of Rangers. You’d think they all became instantly deaf, dumb and blind.”

  At that Gage cracked a laugh. “Okay. I’ll call Haley and tell her you check out. But that’s all I’m going to tell her. I want her to sleep easy. Other than that, it’s all her decision. If I hear you pushed her even a little, you’re on your way out.”

  Buck could live with that. He just hoped he hadn’t tipped his hand to the wrong people. Given the way these cops seemed to know about every little thing around here, he had to wonder how they could be unaware of whatever was happening at the truck stop.

  It didn’t leave him feeling easy at all as he walked back to the motel.

  * * *

  Haley didn’t exactly feel nervous when she got home. Buck hadn’t tried to follow her, and she was still torn between believing him and thinking he was some kind of nut. What he said made a certain sense, and in her heart of hearts she found it hard to believe that Ray had rolled his truck on that stretch of road unless something major had happened. Then there was that shadowy exchange in the parking lot, which might or might not be weird. What did she know about the trucking business, after all? Maybe it had been a delivery for some place near here. That struck her as far more likely than that someone was doing something wrong.

  But then there was Buck’s story of mixed-up shipments. That sounded even stranger, but she had to admit it had an element of plausibility to it. The things he’d said about money...

  She sighed after she finished brushing her teeth, then climbed into sweats for sleeping. Summer nights sometimes turned cool around here, and this one was cooling a lot. She didn’t want to turn on the heat because she needed to save money.

  Padding around in slipper socks, she went to get her nightly glass of milk. She didn’t care for it warm, so despite the night’s chill she drank it cold.

  Well, if she had anything to be grateful for, it was that Buck hadn’t dumped his story on her earlier in the day. At least she had finished studying for the exam tomorrow morning. She looked at her nutrition books, piled on her cheap little desk beside a lamp, and decided enough was enough. She needed to get some sleep, needed to calm her mind down.

  She paused to look at a framed photo of her mother, one taken before illness had robbed her beauty, and found herself thinking about the costs of funerals. How had the Listons afforded all of that? Even if the entire county had chipped in a dollar per family, it wouldn’t have covered that coffin.

  There she went again, pondering matters that had no answers. It occurred to her to be sorry she had ever talked to Buck Devlin at all. Before he had entered her lif
e, things had seemed so generally uncomplicated. At least since her mother’s passing. She needed some calm and stability after those long years of riding the cancer roller coaster with her mother. She wanted her life to be calm and even dull. For a while.

  She knew life had been bound to knock her out of her quiet little pond at some point. She might be young in some respects, but she figured she was pretty old in others. Old enough to know that smooth sailing was the exception rather than the rule.

  Sitting in her mother’s old armchair, she sipped her milk and tried to absorb all her conflicting feelings about Buck Devlin. At some point, she realized she wanted to believe him, but was afraid to.

  Interesting. She wanted to believe there was some illegal activity going on in the parking lot at Hasty’s and that Buck was seriously investigating it? That she might be in danger because she had glimpsed something she could barely make out through a window that had acted more like a mirror?

  That Ray had been murdered?

  That wasn’t a world she wanted to live in. But much of her life had been a world she hadn’t wanted, and that was probably true for most people.

  She sighed, finished her milk and headed to the kitchen to rinse the glass, wondering if her attraction to Buck Devlin wasn’t screwing up her thinking. Claire’s warning drifted back to her. Yeah, he was a rolling stone, here today and gone tomorrow. That alone should make her wary.

  Then the phone rang. It startled her because she wasn’t used to having late-night calls. There’d been a time when such calls meant that her mother had taken a bad turn in the hospital.

  It was over now, but the dread of late-night phone calls remained. Her heart started hammering as she reached for the receiver as if it were a poisonous snake.

  “Hello?”

  “Haley, this is Gage Dalton.”

  That made her stomach lurch. Immediately her mind started scrambling for ideas of what might have gone wrong to make the sheriff call her at such an hour.

  “I just wanted you to know,” he said, “we had a complaint tonight that a truck driver, Buck Devlin, was harassing you at the funeral home.”

  Haley felt her stomach sink. She hadn’t wanted this, no matter what. He might be what he said he was, or he might be a nut, but he hadn’t hurt her. He hadn’t even scared her enough to get the police involved. “Not really,” she managed to say.

  “I’m not saying he did. I’m just letting you know we had a report so we checked into him.”

  She caught her breath. “And?”

  “He’s exactly what he says he is and is doing exactly what he told you he’s doing. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether to get involved with him. But I don’t think you need to fear him.”

  That slight emphasis on him left her wondering if Gage thought she had something else to fear, but if he had, wouldn’t he have said so?

  All of a sudden she didn’t want to be alone. All of a sudden, despite the milk, she felt wide awake. Great. That was going to help on her test in the morning.

  Regardless, she pulled on a bra under her sweat suit, tugged on her jogging shoes, grabbed her purse and headed for the truck stop.

  She needed bright light, the swirl of people around her and some carbs to calm her down. At that moment nothing sounded better than a piece of Hasty’s cobbler and a bit of sensible talk with Claire.

  * * *

  As it happened, the place was pretty busy when she arrived. Claire and another waitress, Meg, were busy enough they could have used some help. Haley considered clocking in and digging a spare uniform out of her locker, but Hasty stopped her.

  “You’re supposed to be resting, what with that test tomorrow and the play the next two nights. What in the world are you doing here?”

  “I was called by your cobbler.”

  He unleashed one of his rolling laughs and promptly dished her up a serving big enough for two. “Coffee?”

  “Milk, please.”

  She would have settled at the counter except that a table near the window emptied. She headed straight for it and closed her eyes for a few moments as she savored the first mouthful of peach perfection.

  She opened her eyes again and studied the lot. The window really did act almost like a mirror. She could choose either to see what was going on around her in the restaurant, or to pick out the shadowy movements in the lot. And they were shadowy, until headlights came on.

  So how could she be sure of what she had seen the other night? Staring out there now, she decided she really couldn’t have seen anything, that her mind had probably manufactured the whole impression to explain sounds and shadowy movement. More, nobody except people she trusted knew she might have seen anything.

  She really didn’t have anything to worry about.

  “Hi, hon.” Claire slid into a seat across from her and Haley was startled to realize that she had apparently wandered so far away in her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed the place emptying out. The revving of engines and the bloom of headlights from the lot announced that the wave was moving on.

  “Hi, Claire,” Haley answered.

  “You’re supposed to be tucked in at home, resting for your big day tomorrow. Not taking a busman’s holiday here.”

  “Maybe I’m nervous. All of a sudden I was wide awake,” Haley said.

  “This is your first play, huh?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t even do it in high school. It’s only a few minutes onstage, but those minutes seem to keep getting bigger.”

  Claire laughed. “I felt that way about my first wedding. Two lousy words, and I kept wondering if I’d be able to get them out. Maybe I should have listened to the cold feet.”

  The last two drivers left and Meg cleared the tables. Then she announced she was going out for a smoke. Hasty went with her, which left Claire and Haley alone in the empty restaurant.

  “That Devlin guy is back in town,” Claire said. She reached for a paper straw, pulled the wrap off it and began to fold it like an accordion. “Says he’s on vacation. Does that make sense to you?”

  “I saw him,” Haley said cautiously.

  Claire looked up. “Aha! I thought you might be the reason he was hanging around.” There was a glint in her eye.

  Haley didn’t know how to answer that. It was certainly what Buck had claimed he wanted people to think. “I don’t know about that. I saw him at the funeral home.”

  “Well, I saw the cops come pick him up a little while ago. You better take care, honey. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that if the cops are interested in a guy, a woman shouldn’t be.”

  Haley caught herself before she said the cops had just been checking him out. She didn’t want any of that getting around, and while Claire wasn’t the worst of gossips around here, neither was she a sphinx about anything.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Haley answered, quickly slipping some more cobbler into her mouth.

  “You might also keep in mind that he doesn’t come in here with other groups of drivers. A lone wolf. Oh,” Claire added, “I asked about what you told the cops you saw in the lot the other night. Seems there was a crate that was headed for Gillette and they just put it on a smaller truck here.”

  Haley’s heart quickened with anxiety. This was something she didn’t want to get around. “Who did you ask?”

  Claire shrugged. “The guy who came in with Ray. He came in earlier, so I asked. Like I thought, it turned out to be no big deal.”

  Oh, God, this was exactly what Buck had warned her about. The peach in her mouth now tasted like ash. “Did you mention I was the one who saw it?”

  Claire shook her head. “I just said one of the girls. Why would I mention you?”

  Maybe because she’d been the only other waitress on that night. Maybe because the driver would know that since she’d waited on him. Butterflies flapped unhappily in her stomach. What had possessed Claire?

  The bell over the door jingled and Claire looked up. Her eyes widened a shade. “Speak of the devil,” she sai
d quietly.

  Haley looked around and saw Buck walking in. He nodded to her and Claire and kept on walking, taking a seat much farther down.

  Despite all that had happened, she still thought he looked good enough to eat. Having him pass her as if he hardly knew her didn’t make her feel any better, either. Had Gage warned him off? If so, she didn’t like it. Sometimes folks around here could be overprotective.

  “Well, I guess he’s clean,” Claire remarked. “Nothing outstanding, at least. I’ve gotta go take care of him. I wonder if Hasty and Meg are smoking a whole pack out there.”

  Haley watched as Claire strode to Buck’s table and pulled her order pad and pencil out. Buck gave his order quietly, then returned his attention to the window that would give him a fractured view of the parking lot.

  After what had happened earlier, she could only conclude that he was avoiding her. She couldn’t decide whether that was good or bad. Bad if he was right about her possibly being in danger, that was for sure. But under Claire’s gaze she could hardly approach the guy.

  Then Claire disappeared down the hall to holler out back for Hasty to come in and cook.

  At that, Buck looked across the intervening tables at Haley. “She didn’t have to disturb his break.”

  Haley gave him a half smile. “She doesn’t get to annoy him often.”

  “He doesn’t seem like the type to annoy easily.”

  “He’s not.”

  Then another truck rolled into the lot, signaling the advent of another wave of customers. Haley watched the trucks come, only a minute or two apart, until they neatly lined up and sat growling like mythical beasts. Beyond the window the noise level from all those idling engines would be high enough to require a man to shout to be heard.

  That drew her up. How had she even heard that clanging from the ramp? It would have had to have been awfully loud, unless Ray had turned off his engine. Some drivers did and some didn’t, and she didn’t know why. But try as she would, she couldn’t remember if Ray’s engine had been idling that night. Of course, it would have been only a single engine, not as loud as a bunch of them.