Burned in Broken Hearts Junction: A Cozy Matchmaker Mystery (Cozy Matchmaker Mystery Series) (12 page)

He scanned my face, like he was trying to gauge just how deep the pain ran.

I cleared my throat.

Fletcher sat back in his chair, looking at the fire for a few moments, probably deciding how to politely get out of this crazy woman’s home without making too much of a scene.

I leaned forward, resting my head on the palm of my hand, regretting that I had told him in the first place about my ability.

It was out of character for me. Even drunk, I had enough of a handle on that particular secret to keep it. But I don’t know. Something about the stranger had made me feel like I could talk to him, like I could tell him things.

He had an easy way of listening.

“I’m not expecting you to believe me,” I said. “Most people don’t. Not even my mom does, even though she’s benefitted from it.”

“Does it really matter whether I believe you?” he said. “I mean, seems to me you’ve got a lot of proof.”

He looked back up at the wall.

“Maybe only one misstep.”

He looked at the photo of Jacob and me again.  

“Well, maybe the verdict’s still out on that.”

“Oh?” Fletcher said, lifting his eyes.

“Just because you find your soulmate doesn’t mean that life with them is easy as pie,” I said. “People still have problems, you know.”

That insight hung in the air for a little while. The stranger got up and put another log on the fire, beating me to the punch.

The flames crackled with the new infusion of fuel. I glanced out the window to the front porch and saw that the snow was continuing to pile high on the railing.

You never knew what to expect with the weather here in Broken Hearts. The weather was a lot like love. Stormy one moment. Bright and sunny the next.

“You know, I’ve never liked that term much,” he said.

“What term?”

“Soulmate,” he said. “Makes it sound like people are meant to be together, like it’s pre-ordained or destined. I’ve never been too fond of that idea.”

My whole life had been built upon the idea, I realized.

“Well, what do you believe in, then?” I asked.

“Free will,” he said. “An open road and a wide blue sky. And not being tied down to anything or anyone.”

“Sounds nice.”

He cleared his throat.

“Least that’s what I used to believe,” he said.

“Not anymore?” I asked.

“I couldn’t stay true to the idea,” he said. “I got waylaid by a bad woman, once. She took the notion right outta me.”

He stared down into the fire for a moment, a strange look on his face. I was about to ask him more about it, but he interrupted me before I could begin.

“But that’s a story for a different time,” he said.

I nodded, and he sat back down in the chair near the fire.

“You think his wife’s going to be okay?”

It took me a moment to realize he was talking about Courtney: he had changed the subject so abruptly.

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “Those two had a lot of problems, but I think she loved him, in her own way. I think it’s hitting her pretty hard.”

I flashed again on Dale’s body spread out on the barroom floor.

“You know, Dale and I didn’t get on all that well,” I said. “But he wasn’t a bad man. He didn’t deserve to die in a freak accident like that.”

The stranger didn’t say anything for a few moments, but I could tell something was on his mind.

“What?” I finally said.

“You know that it wasn’t no accident, don’t you?” he said.

Chapter 31

Even though she’s gone, he still feels those sharp dark eyes of hers boring into him.

Those large, full, brown—almost black—eyes flecked with amber always kind of had a way with him, made him think about and do things that he knew he shouldn’t be thinking about or doing.

He watches as she crosses the deserted fairgrounds parking lot, dodging the shadows cast by the streetlights before finally disappearing into those shadows at the edge of the woods. He sits in the truck bed, all alone, his eyes fixing on the last place he saw her before she vanished into the forest.

Coward.

Her words echo in his head. They have a steel edge to them that he didn’t think she was capable of, and their steeliness drills into him like a rusted nail.

Maybe she’s right.

About him being a coward.

But things are complicated. A lot more complicated than she makes them out to be. There were people looking to him, things that he couldn’t afford to sacrifice.

Lines that couldn’t be crossed.

She had been a mistake.

That’s what he had told her. That she was just a big mistake. That he’d been drunk that night when…

That she didn’t have any right to him, and the best thing to do was to pretend it had never happened.

None of it.

He sits there in the empty parking lot, feeling the negative space of her presence. Small fingers of guilt tug at his barrel chest.

But it isn’t the kind of guilt he usually feels when he breaks somebody’s heart. He’d known what that felt like, and the feeling never lasted all that long.

No, this guilt is of a different kind.

That feeling you get when you tell a lie, and see someone else suffer for it.

That’s the feeling he has now.

His eyes grow damp when he thinks about the pain on her face.

He swallows back spit, gets out of the truck bed and opens the door to his truck, his body aching as he climbs in.

He thinks about the guys and what they’d say if they ever found out what he’d been doing with her.

He’d never live it down.

And that’s something he just can’t afford.

He starts up the engine, the sound of it rumbling off the asphalt.

He throws his foot down on the accelerator and peels out of the parking lot.

It still feels like she’s watching him. .

Maybe he would talk to her tomorrow.

Maybe he would be honest with her.  

Maybe she would be worth it.

Chapter 32

I looked out at the frozen landscape.

The juniper trees were encased in a thin layer of ice. A low fog had rolled in and hovered above the snow drifts that now covered the sage brush-dotted ground.

I sat on the sofa, drinking a cup of strong black coffee, thinking about the strange dream I’d had. How it had almost felt like one of my visions, except none of it made any sense to me.

It didn’t fall in line at all with the ones I’d been having of Beth Lynn’s mystery man.

The dream had an entirely different atmosphere to it.

But I never got a look at the boy whose thoughts I was hearing. I never got a real good look at the girl he was watching, either.

But though the vision had left me with a strange feeling, I hadn’t been thinking too much about it this morning. Mostly what I’d been thinking about was what the stranger had said the night before.

That there was no way Dale’s death was accidental.

And the more I thought about it, the more he seemed to be right.

Old Velma had been sitting above that bar for years without so much as shifting. The chances of her falling just as Dale was walking by seemed like a one and a million shot.

Plus, perhaps the most damning of all of it was the song skipping on the jukebox.

I knew it was Tex Ritter singing, but I didn’t know much about the song itself.

Fletcher did.

It’s about a cowboy whose head gets bashed in by a bronco
, he had said.

And it seemed like a rather large coincidence that that song, of all songs in that old jukebox, was the one skipping over and over when I discovered Dale’s body.

No. That did not sound like an accident to me either. 

Fletcher had left shortly after dropping that bombshell on me. I had been worried about how he was getting back to his hotel in the snow, considering he was without a car.

I had told him he could stay until the snow let up. On the couch, of course.

Maybe that had been foolish of me, willing to let a stranger stay over like that. But I had Hank, and besides, there was something about Fletcher that felt trustworthy.

But then again, I’m sure plenty of girls had thought that very thing about Ted Bundy.

Either way, it didn’t matter. He didn’t take me up on my offer.

He said he’d walk, and left, leaving behind that expensive bottle of whiskey on my kitchen counter.

He sure seemed to like to walk a lot.

That was the other thing I’d been thinking about all morning.

The stranger.

What was his game? What was he doing hanging around The Stupid Cupid Saloon? What kind of business was he in, and why hadn’t he been upfront about it if it wasn’t something illegal?

And why, I wondered, did we keep running into each other? Why had he come over to my house? A man shows up on a woman’s doorstep at night with a bottle of whiskey, he’s usually got an ulterior motive for being there.

But I hadn’t gotten that impression from him at all.

My phone suddenly rang, knocking Fletcher Hart loose from my thoughts.

I sat for a few moments, looking at the name, trying to ready myself for who was on the other line.

I wasn’t ever good when it came to offering condolences.

Chapter 33

“I wouldn’t be asking if you weren’t absolutely my very last resort.”

I held my tongue, keeping it from clicking against the roof of my mouth in offense.

That felt real nice. I was her last resort.

Courtney had a way of putting things sometimes that just grated on me more than a zester against citrus.

But I decided to let it go. She had, after all, just been through an awful lot.

And frankly, me working again on a temporary basis at The Cupid would just about solve my rent problem until I could find myself another job.

“Okay,” I said, holding back a sigh. “When do you need me?”

“The police haven’t let us open the place back up yet,” she said. “But I need your help going through the… through his…”

Her voice got thick and she started sniveling.

“Through the office,” she finally squeaked out.

“Courtney, are you sure you shouldn’t just take some time off?” I said. “I could run the place for however long. Maybe you oughta just take some time and grieve prop—”

“No,” she said, rather harshly. “I need to keep busy. That’s the best thing. Keeping busy.”

Her voice was tight and high strung, and I could tell she was barely holding it together.

“Okay,” I said. “When do you need me?”

“This afternoon,” she said. 

She sniveled some more into the phone.

“I’ll be over in a bit, then.”

She hung up.

I shook my head and looked back outside.

My driveway was buried under a solid foot.

And it wasn’t going to dig itself out.

Chapter 34

His old fingers grabbed the worn top of the black castle piece. He slid it across the board, taking my knight out of commission and placing it triumphantly on his side of the table.  

“You’re something else, you know that Lawrence?”

He grinned devilishly. I’m sure he’d been building up to that capture for a while now.

“I’m only as God made me,” he said slowly, lacing his fingers together and leaning back in his wheelchair.

“Yeah, well, God must have been having one hell of a time that day,” I said, making a feeble move forward with one my pawns. My pieces were disappearing faster than a line of pickle shots on St. Patrick’s Day.  

Chess had never been my strong suit. But even if it had been, I’d probably have let old Lawrence beat me. He seemed to take such enjoyment out of it.

Though it wasn’t a Sunday, I’d been in the mood to see the old bear. Maybe it was seeing Dale dead like that, but I felt like spending the morning around family.

And old Lawrence was just about the best family I had.

I know. That sounds cold, considering that I had my mom too. But sometimes there’s the family you’re born into, and then there’s the spiritual family you feel most at home with.

And when it came to me, I felt most at home with a wise-cracking, poker-loving, donut-chomping old man.

Lawrence studied the pieces on the board a while in silence, no doubt scheming about how to draw my queen out.

“I’m glad to see you handling Dale’s death so well,” he said, pushing a pawn across the board. “I was worried when Nurse Ratched told me that you were the one that found him like that.”

“I wish it hadn’t happened that way,” I said. “But I’m okay.”

“Can you tell me about it?” he said. “I mean, only if you feel up to it. But I’m interested in the details. It’s about all anyone can talk about here, you know.”

I sighed.

It wasn’t much of a story to tell right before the old man’s nap hour. But I knew Lawrence, and I knew that despite having sold The Cupid, he was still very much invested in what went on at the place.

So I indulged him. I told him every unpleasant detail.

He smiled when I brought up the song.

“Tex Ritter,” he said, stroking his beard. “Now that’s interesting. I always did like old Tex. You’ve seen High Noon, haven’t you? I just love that theme song.”

He chuckled.

“Growing up, there was nobody I wanted to be more than Gary Cooper,” he said. “I guess that’s why when folks started calling me ‘Law Dog,’ I just let them.”

He started fidgeting with the chess pieces he’d collected from me.

“You ought to rent that movie sometime. Bring some donuts, and I’ll give you an education in the history of Western cinema.”

“Deal,” I said.