Run Wild With Me (17 page)

Halfway back to the main picnic area she heard a hush in the crowd that alerted her to trouble. Something was wrong. She knew it before she reached the circle of men surrounding … Sam?

“What did I tell you?” Ed was asking derisively. “Does the man have a busted head or not?”

“Damnation,” one man chortled, “if we don’t have the thief right here.”

Another spoke up. “Yeah, just like you said, Ed. No wonder he could fix up that old house and buy a truck so quick.”

“Call Andy!” voiced a third.

“Not Andy, you fool.” Ed’s voice came clear. “Why would she arrest her lover? She’s probably been protecting him all along. How else could that loader have been hidden around here without us knowing it?”

In the center of the jeering men stood a grim Sam Farley. Andrea started forward, then came to a stop when she saw the angry red marks on his forehead.

The crowd suddenly parted as they caught sight of Andrea striding intently across the shaded clearing.

Andrea wanted to scream at Ed. What was he
trying to do? Sam couldn’t have had anything to do with what had happened. “What are you doing, Ed?”

“Looks like I’m doing your job,” he said maliciously. “Finding the man who was driving the stolen truck over on the interstate. What happened to your face, Farley?”

A smattering of conversation rose, then died down again.

“Why bother asking?” a voice jeered from the crowd. “He’s the one. Arrest ’im, Andy.”

“What’s going on here?” Sam asked quietly.

Andrea raised her hand to protest the absurdity of the charge. Where was Buck? She wasn’t qualified to handle this kind of situation. The last thing she wanted was to see Sam accused of a crime in front of the entire population of Arcadia. She knew he couldn’t be guilty, and so did they, if they stopped to think about it. But with Ed inciting the crowd, she didn’t know what might happen. What on earth had happened to Sam’s face?

“That’s enough, Ed.” Andrea crossed the open space to stand at Sam’s side. “The rest of you break it up. Sam, there’s been an accident involving a stolen front-end loader over on the interstate.”

“I don’t understand. What does that mean to me?” His quiet question didn’t cover the narrowing of his brows into a frown.

“The thief busted his head on the windshield,” one of the men called out, “and run off. Andy’s supposed to be looking for him.”

“Yeah, and it looks like she’s found him, huh, Andy?”

Ed looked from one person to the other, nodding
his head in satisfaction. “What do you think he’s going to say, Andrea, that he’s the crook? The evidence is there, clear as the marks on his forehead. Are you going to do your duty and arrest him?”

Andrea gasped. “Arrest Sam?”

“That’s what a police chief does, Andrea—arrest criminals. You wanted to do your daddy’s job. Now do it.”

“I don’t suppose it would matter if I told you that I haven’t done anything, would it?” Sam was looking at Andrea, not at the crowd.

“Maybe he has an alibi,” a female voice came from behind the circle of men.

“Well, Farley,” Ed said with a knowing smile, “tell us where you were about ten-thirty this morning.”

“You tell them where I was, Ed,” Sam answered, even more softly. “You were there.” Sam continued to look at Andrea. Once before he’d seen the same kind of expression that he was seeing in her eyes and heard this same kind of anger from a crowd. It was happening again, except this time, though she didn’t know it, the doubt was in the eyes of the one person in the world he cared about.

There was a catch of desperation in Andrea’s voice that she couldn’t hide as she spoke. “An equipment hauler carrying a stolen John Deere loader crashed over on the freeway, Sam. The driver crashed his head against the windshield and escaped.”

“I see.”

“Talk to us, Sam,” Andrea said somberly. “Tell them what happened to your head.” Andrea knew
now what it meant to have your life flash before your eyes. No matter what happened, everything was ruined. Unless she could get Sam away from the crowd, they were going to convict him all over again. She had to do something quickly. No matter what her heart and mind told her, she was still a police officer sworn to do her duty.

This couldn’t be happening. Sam saw the conflicting emotions on Andrea’s face. He couldn’t do anything but stand and wait. Ed Pinyon had won, and Sam hadn’t known they were involved in a war. It didn’t matter to him what the others thought—only what Andrea thought. Nothing he could say was going to make any difference. Still, he had to try.

“I don’t suppose you plan to say anything helpful, Pinyon, like telling the truth about what happened to my head, do you?”

“Me?” Ed’s laugh was mocking, an expression of his disbelief at the absurdity of Sam’s statement. “Why would I try to help you? The evidence is right here, for all the world to see.”

“No?” Sam agreed, drawing his eyes away from Andrea. “I can’t say that I’d do anything differently myself if I were you. I don’t know anything about any heavy equipment, Andrea, but I can see that nothing I can say is going to matter now.” He turned and walked slowly to the police car parked at the entrance to the park.

“Wait, Sam!” Andrea started after him.

Madge came charging into the circle and shook Ed’s arm angrily. “Ed, you idiot. Why are you doing this?” She ran after Andrea. “You can’t arrest Sam.”

“I know,” Andrea agreed, “but I’ve got to get him away from here before this crowd gets out of control.”

Andrea looked around and heard the growing murmur of unrest in the crowd. She didn’t have any choice. Ed’s followers were beginning to sound like a lynch mob in an old Western movie. If she was going to protect Sam, she’d have to put him under arrest until she could get to the bottom of this.

Andrea unclipped the billy club from her belt. “Out of the way, men, out of the way.”

After a few carefully placed jabs, the crowd began to scatter. They realized that she was serious. “Get in the car, Sam—quick. I’m going to have to arrest you—for your own protection.”

He stared at her sadly for a moment. “I know.” He got into the backseat of the patrol car, staring straight ahead as she closed the door and walked quickly around to the driver’s side.

“We’ll get you out before dark,” Louise Roberts promised Sam through the open window beside him.

“I’m ashamed of you, Andrea Fleming,” another neighbor said in disgust.

“Fool women,” Ed’s voice rose above the rest. “What else can you expect? He’s got them all hypnotized.”

Andrea reached Buck on the CB and told him what had happened. All the way back to town she wished that the highway would open up and swallow them, car and all. She waited for Sam to say something in his defense. He didn’t. She didn’t
realize she was crying until the tears dropped from her face onto her shirt.

“I’m so sorry, Sam. I know you didn’t do it. It was that wild crowd of Ed’s. They’d had too much to drink, and then you came in with your head injured. Just tell me what happened so that I have something to work with.”

Sam sat staring straight ahead, tight-lipped and silent. He didn’t answer. The look on Andrea’s face and the fact that she’d arrested him were statement enough of her belief. He should have known better.
Trust
was just a fancy word that applied to other people.

“Aren’t you even going to defend yourself, Sam? If your head didn’t break the windshield on that truck, how did you injure it?”

“It was all a lie, wasn’t it, Andrea? All this talk about trust and acceptance. Arcadia is no different from any other place. Your locks just aren’t out in the open where they can be seen. Well, I’ve been this route before, darlin’, so it’s up to you. You do whatever you have to.”

Andrea parked the car at the side of the police station, walked around to open his door, and stood waiting for Sam to precede her inside.

“Don’t make me lock you up, Sam. Tell me the truth.”

“The truth? Wouldn’t help, darlin’. In this case the truth sounds like a lie. Besides, if your fine citizens have to choose between an outsider and a future governor, I don’t have the chance of a snow-ball in hell.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No? Well I do.” Sam went into the cell and sat
down on Brad’s favorite bunk. “I think I’ll wait for Buck.”

Andrea closed the cell door and leaned her face against the bars. How could she defend Sam if he wouldn’t defend himself?

She was scared. The circumstances were just too damning. The equipment thefts had begun just before Sam came. Even Buck had thought that some local person was involved. But she knew everybody in Arcadia. They were her people. They couldn’t be guilty of international theft, no matter what Buck had thought. It had to be an outsider, and though she knew it couldn’t be true, the inescapable truth was that the only outsider was Sam.

Round and round the argument went in her mind. And then she remembered Sam in her living room, carrying all those balloons and flowers. Trust? Duty? She didn’t know anymore where to draw the line. All she knew was that Sam couldn’t be a thief. She paced up and down. Acutely aware that Sam was in the cell behind her, she felt as if she were on fire.

She’d accepted him from the beginning as a temporary part of her life. Then he’d begun to make plans for the future, and she’d begun to believe. “I love you, Stormy girl,” he’d said—just once. But she’d never told him that she loved him too.

“Sam?”

There was no answer. She could hear him breathing, so she knew that he was aware of her.

“Sam, please listen to me. I may not have a
chance to say this again before they take you over to Cottonboro, but I want you to know …” She caught her breath. Her legs were weak, and she had a hard time standing.

“What, Andrea?” His voice was wooden, expressionless.

“I want you to know that I love you. Arresting you was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. You have to understand that I did it to protect you. It was my duty.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“Yes, Sam, my duty. After all, the evidence was there, so obvious that everyone could see.”

“Do you really believe I’m guilty, Andrea?”

“Of course not. But that isn’t the point now. Oh, Sam, tell me the truth. I trust you.” She was holding on to the bars now, staring inside at the man watching her silently from the shadows.

“You say you do, Stormy girl, but I see the questions in your eyes. That tells me what your words don’t, that
trust
isn’t synonymous with
love
.”

“Oh, Sam, I do love you.”

“Then I suggest you ask Ed what happened to my face. It must be obvious why Ed’s trying to pin this on me. He’s determined not to lose you, darlin’.”

“Ed? He’s just been drinking. He’s acting like a fool, but I’ve known Ed all my life. I trust …”

“Ed belongs in Arcadia. He’s lived here all his life, so that automatically makes him trustworthy. And that’s what I mean, Andrea.”

Andrea watched as Sam swung his feet around and lay back on the bunk. He’d closed himself off
from her, and she felt her heart split with pain she’d never felt before. Sam wasn’t guilty, and she’d have to prove it. She wasn’t going to let her town become part of the dark places in his past.

Why had Sam asked Ed to explain what happened to his forehead? There was something wrong. There’d been something wrong back at the accident site. If heavy equipment had been stored in the county, Ed ought to have known where. He covered the county from one end to the other every day. He knew how much space was required. He had large storage areas and some of that same kind of equipment himself. Ed ought … Ed!

Andrea turned around and left the station in a rush, taking time only to let Agnes know where she was heading.

A half hour later Andrea was vaulting the security fence around Ed’s storage area. The man inside the warehouse must have thought she had backup, because he didn’t even try to escape when she opened the door and looked inside. She cuffed him to the building, listening to his protest that he wasn’t the thief. He’d been hired to drive the rig, that’s all. She could just check with the man who’d hired him—Ed Pinyon.

Andrea put in a call for Buck on her radio, asking him to pick up Ed and meet her at Pinyon Construction’s equipment barn. In less than ten minutes a state-patrol car was pulling in with the major, Lewis, Buck, and a subdued Ed Pinyon inside.

Lewis accompanied Andrea and her prisoner back to Arcadia, where they would sort out the details.

“What made you think of looking for the driver there, Andy?” Buck asked as they herded the two men inside the police station.

“It was Sam’s idea,” she admitted, “something he said. Sam! Will you unlock his cell and let him out, Buck?” Andrea asked.

“Not necessary,” Sam said quietly, stepping into the corridor. “The cell was never locked to begin with.”

Andrea let out a deep sigh of relief. She’d known that the cell was open. He hadn’t left. Now he was standing there, looking at her with a sad expression carved in deep lines across his face. His silence made the great wrong they’d done him even harder to bear. She’d said he was innocent, but there’d been a tiny doubt that she hadn’t been able to hide.

Sam had known the truth all along. Sam had had to be hurt for her to understand the truth. Somehow she’d made Arcadia and the people who lived there her own security blanket, and one of them had let her down.

She had to explain. “It was Ed. He was using his yard to store the stolen equipment.”

“Oh?”

Even now she was avoiding the truth. She was giving Sam the facts when what she ought to be doing was saying how sorry she was for even suspecting him.

“Ed’s business was never quite as successful as he led everyone to believe,” the major added. “In
order to expand enough to land the big jobs, he had to have equipment. Equipment cost money. He didn’t have it, and he couldn’t admit he was overextended—not when he was being groomed for political office. The thieves got wind of his problem and worked out an exchange.”

“I don’t think he realized what he was getting into,” Buck said in his defense. “Then he got caught up in his own success. He never expected to be arrested, but if anything ever happened, he figured that being engaged to you granted him protection. Having his business here provided the perfect hiding place for machinery being resold in South America, and Ed got the equipment he needed.”