Addicted to Love (16 page)
E
arly the next morning, Rachael was atop the Valentine billboard again, this time with turpentine and a scrub broom in her hands instead of a paintbrush. Cleaning up the sign wasn’t as much fun as vandalizing it had been, but in a Zen-like way, it was almost as therapeutic.
As she mindlessly scoured the sign, her thoughts were on her new endeavor. The more she thought about Romanceaholics Anonymous, the more excited she got. This was her new mission in life. She’d seen the error of her ways and she was a convert. Now, to get other people on board.
She’d been working about an hour and she was already starting to sweat, even though it wasn’t yet nine o’clock. The day promised to be another scorcher. Just when she was beginning to realize she should have brought water and sunscreen, Brody’s Crown Vic motored by.
When he pulled to a stop on the shoulder of the road beneath the billboard, Rachael’s heart started pounding erratically.
Looking resplendent in his uniform and sunglasses, he got out of the car.
Rachael set down the scrub broom and pushed back a strand of hair that had fallen from her ponytail and was trailing across her face. She glanced down at him.
Brody held a white paper sack in his hand. “Had breakfast yet?”
“Cereal bar this morning,” she called back down. “But I’ve worked up an appetite.”
He waggled the bag. “Come on down. You deserve a break.”
He didn’t have to ask twice. As fast as her legs could carry her, she was off the billboard and in the passenger seat of his car.
“Besides breakfast,” he said, “I thought you might need a few other supplies.” He handed her a second, bigger sack containing sunscreen, bottled water, a battery-powered fan, a straw hat, and a collapsible umbrella.
Something strange tugged inside her at his considerate gesture. “How did you know I needed all this?”
“I drove by earlier,” he admitted. “I figured you’d forgotten how hot it can get in Valentine in late July.”
He was right, she had forgotten.
“Egg McMuffin,” he said, taking a breakfast sandwich wrapped in yellow paper from the other sack and passing it to her. “Hash browns and orange juice.”
“Thanks so much.” She hadn’t known she was so ravenous until tempted with the aroma of food. She dug into the sandwich. They sat in the car, air conditioner running, eating in companionable silence.
They were halfway through breakfast when Brody’s radio crackled.
“Sheriff?” came the young female voice over the bandwidth. “We’ve got trouble.”
Brody stuck his Egg McMuffin back in the sack, dusted his hands on a napkin, and then reached for the radio. “What’s up, Jamie?”
“You better get over to the courthouse. Mayor Wentworth is raisin’ a ruckus.”
Brody rolled his eyes and Rachael suppressed a giggle. “What’s he got his shorts in a bunch over this time?”
“He’s pitchin’ such a bitch I’m not really sure, but he keeps saying something about parking meters.”
“I’ll check it out, Jamie. Thanks.” Brody settled the radio back in place.
“I better get out”—Rachael reached for the door handle—“and let you do your job.”
“Stay put,” he said. “Finish your breakfast. This shouldn’t take too long.”
He put the patrol car in gear and headed over to the courthouse. They arrived to find Kelvin pacing the courthouse lawn, face florid, mopping his brow with a handkerchief, letting loose with a string of colorful curse words.
That’s when Rachael saw the parking meters. She sucked in her breath as a mix of emotions surged through her. Shock, disbelief, and an odd, heady sense of glee.
She wasn’t the only one in town disgruntled by Valentine’s gaudy attachment to romantic symbolism. Someone else had taken a stand.
Because every last one of the sixteen heart-shaped parking meters in front of the courthouse had been neatly beheaded.
“C
ALM DOWN
, K
ELVIN
,” Brody soothed.
“I will not calm down. Not only has this town been disrespected twice in one week, but you’re consorting with the perpetrator.” Kelvin glared at Rachael, who’d gotten out of the patrol car behind him. “She’s the cause of it all. I want her arrested again.”
Brody cast a glance at the parking meter heads that had been arranged in the middle of the courthouse lawn to form the letters “F.U.” The poles stood impotently bare, no longer capable of extracting parking fees from courthouse patrons. The message was pretty succinct. Brody couldn’t help wondering if Kelvin was the target of this latest vandalism and they were using Rachael’s billboard scandal as a dodge. Or maybe it was just someone tired of paying to park.
“Rachael didn’t cut the heads off the parking meters.”
“How do you know?” Kelvin demanded.
“For one thing, I asked her and Rachael doesn’t lie. For another thing, Rachael was in custody the night someone stole pipe cutters from Audie’s Hardware.”
“Yeah, but where was she last night?”
Brody looked at Rachael.
“I was at home with my mother,” she said.
“There you go.” Brody spread his palms.
“That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have an accomplice, and you’re assuming someone used pipe cutters and that they were the same ones stolen from Audie’s store. Hell, they could have used a Sawzall.”
“Examined the tool marks.” Brody waved at the markings on the posts. “It’s a pipe cutter. Besides, a reciprocating saw would have made too much noise. Someone did this under cover of darkness and it took them most of the night.”
“That’s what I mean. It’s someone with an anti-romance agenda like your girl there. It’s a plot.” Kelvin glowered.
“A plot?” Brody couldn’t keep the amusement from his voice.
“And she’s behind it.” Kelvin jerked a thumb in Rachael’s direction.
“So we’re talking conspiracy theories here?” Brody pressed his lips together to keep from laughing. “Do you know how paranoid that sounds, Kelvin?”
“Someone’s trying to sabotage my business deal. I have investors coming in tomorrow and someone is trying to make Valentine look bad.”
Brody paused to consider what Kelvin was saying. The mayor was overly dramatic, it was true. But if Kelvin did have investors coming to town, there might be something to his paranoia. “What kind of investors?”
“I’m not prepared to discuss it with you.”
“Then how am I supposed to explore your theory?”
“Just do your job and catch whoever did this.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Brody explained patiently.
Kelvin chuffed out his breath and ran a hand over the top of his bald pate. “How am I going to explain this to my investors? It’s going to look bad.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
Kelvin eyed him. “What do you mean?”
“You can say removing the parking meters was your idea. Wasn’t it your daddy that got them installed in the first place? Free parking in front of the courthouse is a gesture of goodwill toward the town. It couldn’t hurt you in the election.”
Kelvin perked up. “That’s not a bad idea, Carlton. Now get that woman back to the billboard so she can clean up her mess.”
Brody snorted, knowing it was the best he could expect from the mayor. “So you don’t want me to file a report. I mean, if you’re having the parking meters removed, that’s what you’d want appearing in the paper. Not that someone beheaded the parking meters in the middle of the night in the police blotter.”
“Right, right.”
Crisis averted.
Brody headed back to the car satisfied that he’d solved Kelvin’s PR problem, but he couldn’t help thinking this act of vandalism was just the start of something that could easily get out of hand.
And when he slid a glance over at Rachael, who was standing beside the patrol car looking so sweet and innocent, he couldn’t help thinking that she was going to get caught in the cross fire.
“T
HIS IS A
call to order for the first ever meeting of Romanceaholics Anonymous. My name is Rachael Henderson, founder of the group, and I’m a romanceaholic.”
The small group assembled in the meeting room of the Valentine Public Library consisted of her mother, Deana Carlton, Rex Brownleigh, Audie Gaston, and two old-maiden sisters, Enid and Astrid Pope, who were notorious for attending any and every social event in town. They all just blinked at her.
“You’re supposed to say, ‘Hello, Rachael,’ ” she schooled them from the podium. After spending two weeks boning up on twelve-step programs — in between serving some of her community service hours — she’d learned the basics. But tonight, their first time, they would be flying blind.
“Hello, Rachael,” they greeted her in unison.
She beamed at them. “Very good.”
They beamed back.
“Everything we say in here is confidential. It’s like Vegas. What happens in Romanceaholics Anonymous stays in Romanceaholics Anonymous. Does everyone agree?”
Heads bobbed.
“The first step,” she said, “is for us to admit we are powerless over romance and that our lives have become unmanageable because of our romantic ideations. I’ll go first and tell you what led me to start this group.”
Even though Rachael was fairly certain everyone in the room had already heard her story through the Valentine grapevine, she told it anyway. “After my ex-fiancé Trace Hoolihan appeared on
Entertainment Tonight
,” she said, leaving out the part that minutes later she’d been on the verge of kissing Brody Carlton, “I realized I had a problem and I couldn’t conquer my addiction alone. And being back in Valentine, with all its emphasis on romance, I realized other people might have the same problem. So who would like to go first? You don’t have to share if you don’t want to, but the sooner you admit you have a problem, the quicker you’ll get on the road to clearheaded thinking.”
Deana’s hand shot up.
“Come on up, Deana,” Rachael said and took a seat while Brody’s sister claimed the podium.
“My name is Deana Carlton, and I’m a romanceaholic,” she said.
“Hello, Deana,” the group greeted her.
“As many of you may know, romantic notions about happily ever after led me into an ill-fated marriage to a guy who turned out to be a con man. Because we had a daughter together, I stayed with him for seven years, pretending that everything was all right. My craving for the romantic gestures he dealt out when things were flush — lavish gifts, love notes pinned to my pillow, impromptu vacations — kept me hanging on. I never once questioned where he got the money for the extravagant gestures. I didn’t want to know. Until government agents showed up on our doorstep to haul everything away.”
Deana’s voice cracked. She sniffled and a tear rolled down her cheek. Rachael hopped up to offer her a Kleenex. She was proud that she’d remembered to buy a brand-new box specifically for the meeting.
A murmur of sympathy ran through the collective.
“That’s not even the worst of it,” Deana said. “The bad part is that two days ago he called me and begged me to meet him in Costa Rica where he’d fled, but he said I’d have to leave Maisy behind.” Deana cringed. “I’m ashamed to admit I actually bought the ticket. But then I heard about Rachael’s meeting from the flyer she posted in the window at Higgy’s and I knew I couldn’t do this alone. I need help. To think I’d be willing to leave my child behind and go back to this guy because he made romantic promises I couldn’t resist.” She shuddered.
“Do you have the airplane ticket with you?” Rachael asked.
Deana nodded.
Rachael looked her in the eye. “I know this is hard for you, but I want you to tear that ticket up, right now.”
Nervously, Deana licked her lips.
“You can do it,” Rex Brownleigh called out.
Deana directed a shaky smile at the audience, reached in her purse, and took out the ticket. She tore it into little shreds.
“It’s an e-ticket,” Selina pointed out. “What’s to keep her from going online and printing out another one?”
“The desire to get better,” Rachael said. “Plus, Rex has his laptop with him. He can cancel Deana’s ticket right now.”
Rex opened his laptop.
“Do you want him to cancel the ticket, Deana?”
Deana, looking pale and shaky, nodded.
“Go sit beside Rex,” Rachael instructed. “And give him the information so he can cancel the ticket for you.”
Deana did as she was asked.
“What’s to keep her from ordering another one when she gets home?” Enid Pope asked.
“We will.”
“How’s that?” asked her sister, Astrid. “Steal her computer? Lock her in leg irons?”
“We do it by offering her emotional support. Deana, whenever you feel tempted to fall back under the spell of your ex-husband, I want you to give any one of us a call. We’ll talk you through it.” She looked at Deana. “Okay?”
Deana nodded.
Rachael looked at her watch. “We’ve got time for one more declaration tonight. Anyone else want to admit that their life has become unmanageable because of romantic ideations?”
Rex raised his hand and Rachael waved him to the podium. He declared he was a romanceaholic and he was powerless to keep off Internet dating sites.
“I keep meeting women, falling in love with them, pouring my heart and soul into the relationship, and they walk all over me,” he said. “I’ve had my car stolen, my identity ripped off, and I contracted a nasty computer virus all because I can’t say no to women.” His deep voice boomed in the confines of the tiny room. “Growing up in Valentine a guy is taught to be chivalrous and help damsels in distress. It all sounds so romantic, but what happens is that when you’re sweet to a woman, she thinks you’re a wimp and walks all over you.”
“That’s not necessarily true,” Rachael said. She loved it when men were sweet to her. Problem was, she fell for sweet talkers who never really meant their declarations of love. “I think this is the hardest thing about being a romanceaholic, knowing the difference between mere romance and true love. That’s why we need each other. To help us sort it all out. Do we need a guest speaker on the topic?”
“Yes!” the group said in unison.
“Okay, then. For our next meeting I’ll see if I can find a psychologist willing to tell us how to recognize if it’s true love or if it’s just romance.”