Sugar Plums for Dry Creek & At Home in Dry Creek (29 page)

F
loyd Spencer looked at the church building and swore. He hadn't planned to drive back to Dry Creek this morning. He'd seen that the cake was delivered yesterday, and he thought that would be enough for the time being.

But last night someone had come into his house while he was sleeping and left a note taped to his bathroom mirror. The note said he had three more days. There was no signature to the note, but he knew who it was from. Harlow Smith was letting him know that the cake wasn't enough.

Floyd didn't know what to do. The door to his house had been double-locked. The windows had been locked, too. Whoever had come inside hadn't even had to break into his house, and he'd even changed the locks a few weeks ago. Someone had picked the lock. That was the only explanation. And
if Harlow had someone working for him who could pick locks, Floyd wasn't safe anywhere.

Floyd knew it was probably foolish of him to come to Dry Creek. He'd spent the past hour hiding behind those pine trees in back of the deserted house. He didn't want anyone to see him. But he was a desperate man. If he could find a way to take that boy of Neal's as a hostage, that's what he was going to do. He'd already nosed around that place where Neal's wife and the kids stayed, but they weren't there this morning. It looked like the only place they could be was in that church there.

He'd hoped to catch the boy alone, but it didn't look like that was going to happen today.

Floyd patted his pocket. He needed one of those antacid pills. He'd bought another packet this morning at the same grocery store next to the motel where he stayed in Miles City. At this rate, he'd spend all of the money he'd gotten from the robbery on gas driving out to Dry Creek and on antacid pills to keep his stomach settled down.

T
he next morning, for the first time in fifteen years, the sheriff stood in front of his bedroom mirror and debated about whether or not to put on his uniform. Of course, he knew he had to put it on. Monday was a working day for him, and people needed to know that he was on duty.

It was just this business of Barbara calling him Carl that made him feel un settled inside. He'd always liked people calling him Sheriff instead of Carl. It said who he was, and that was enough. People needed a sheriff.

It should be enough for a man, shouldn't it? The sheriff shook his head. He wished he knew. It had certainly been enough for him for all these years.

He'd never had a family and he'd never expected to have any friends. He didn't need to be more than the sheriff to anyone. Or did he?

He wasn't sure what had changed things for him. Maybe it was Barbara using his first name all morning yesterday or maybe it was sitting with her and her two children during church. Whatever it was, he found himself having dreams of something he'd never known—a family. At least, he thought it was dreams of having a family. He didn't even know what a family felt like. He'd never come close to anything like it in all those places where he'd lived growing up. He hadn't even missed it. Everyone had limitations. He'd been content with his life. Until now.

The sheriff reached for his shirt and started putting it on.

Church had been a surprising thing for him, too. He'd never thought someone like him belonged in a place like that. Church was mostly for families and children.

He had always been more comfort able with the ranch hands, his boots hitched up on a corral when the rodeo hit Miles City. He hadn't thought he would like sitting in church, but he had. People came up and shook his hand after the whole thing was over and he knew he was welcome. The church at Dry Creek didn't have any of the fancy frills he'd feared, either. The building was a place where people could just be them selves.

The sheriff reached for his pants.

He'd been able to follow the talk Matthew Curtis
had given, the sheriff thought with satisfaction. It was mostly about a person trusting God when they were in trouble. The sheriff had no problem with people doing that. He knew he couldn't be everywhere. It was good for people to ask God for help some times, too.

Of course, the sheriff hoped no one was foolish enough to ask God for help when they really needed a sheriff instead. After all, a lawman carried a gun.

The sheriff reached for his belt that looped onto his gun holster.

Yes, the sheriff told himself, he needed to be ready to do his job. Today was a day just like any other work day.

When he had finished dressing, the sheriff walked over to his dresser and opened the top drawer. Somewhere in there he had a brass name badge that he'd been issued with his uniform years ago. He shoved aside some socks and found it. It wouldn't hurt to wear the badge, he told himself as he pinned it on to his shirt—just in case other people wanted to call him by name, too.

 

Barbara started baking early so she'd get the donuts and the pies ready this morning before nine. It was a fairly light day for bakery orders; Monday always was, probably because people ordered so much for Saturday that by Monday they were thinking they
needed to eat a little more fruit instead of baked goods.

She was fine with having a quick morning today though because Mrs. Hargrove had happily agreed to take her into Miles City at ten o'clock when she went for her dental appointment. The children had both caught the school bus at seven-thirty and it was a good day for Barbara to go to Miles City. Mrs. Hargrove had even offered Barbara the use of her car while she was in the dental office so that Barbara could do her errands.

Barbara was determined to find a pawnshop in Miles City so she could ask about selling the ring set she had. Ever since Amanda had voiced her prayer for a house, Barbara had been determined she'd do what she could to let the children know that a house was coming soon. She didn't want them to worry. Barbara didn't want just to give them a promise, either. They'd both heard too many promises in their lives from their father, and none of them had come true. No, she wanted to show the children that she was serious.

Barbara walked over to the oven and pulled a coffee cake out of the oven. That was the last of the baked goods. Everything needed to cool for a minute and then she'd be ready to go. In the meantime, she'd go see how the weather looked outside.

Barbara didn't even bother to lie to herself as she stood in the open doorway to the outside. She was
looking down the road to see if Carl was driving by anytime soon. There were several pickups parked in front of the hardware store, but there was nothing else coming down the road into town. The sheriff must have driven by earlier.

Oh, well, Barbara told herself, she had better things to do today than keep an eye out for the sheriff.

She needed to change clothes before Mrs. Hargrove picked her up in fifteen minutes, and Barbara didn't know whether to dress poor or rich. If she dressed poor, she might get more from a pawnbroker for the rings she was willing to sell. But if she dressed too poor, the pawnbroker might think the rings were stolen.

In the end, Barbara settled for wearing jeans and a sweater. She looked just like what she was, a young divorced woman who was trying to do something better for her children.

 

The sheriff had to go out to the Elkton ranch the first thing this morning to take a report on a fight in the bunk house. The two ranch hands had both been tight-lipped about the fight and the sheriff didn't see much reason to do a report when he could see the two men would be at each other when he left anyway. But the foreman insisted.

“See that you keep it to fists,” the sheriff told the two men after he'd written down the notes for his
report. “Remember, any knives or broken bottles—anything like that and it becomes assault with a deadly weapon.”

Both men gave him a curt nod and the sheriff told himself he'd done all he could.

“I hope this isn't over a woman,” the sheriff gave a guess before he walked to the bunk house door.

“How'd you—?” one of the ranch hands said in surprise.

The sheriff shrugged. “It's usually either money or women. I figure you both get paid about the same, so it had to be a woman.”

The sheriff turned and walked back to the men. “The pity of it is that she's going to pick the loser in the fight instead of the winner anyway.”

The men looked up at him in astonishment.

“Well, think about it,” the sheriff said. “How do you figure it's going to go?”

The men stopped being so closemouthed soon enough as they thought about just who would end up with the woman if they kept fighting. The sheriff felt he'd done his job and he left.

All of the way back into Dry Creek, the sheriff wished he knew an easy answer to the questions about the woman who was troubling him. He wasn't worried any more that she might be breaking the law by hiding some of her ex-husband's stolen money. But he was worried that he'd be setting himself up for a
deep disappointment if he kept on dreaming the way he was.

It was almost eleven o'clock before the sheriff drove into Dry Creek for the second time that morning. He'd swung by earlier around seven o'clock and checked that Mrs. Hargrove's kitchen light was on. Then he'd gotten the call to go to the Elkton ranch and had ended up there. The sheriff knew that Barbara was going into Miles City with Mrs. Hargrove, so he didn't really expect her to answer the door when he knocked on the outside of the building that housed the dance studio and bakery.

The sheriff didn't get an answer to his knock, but he decided to walk around the building anyway. The fact that someone had left that money for the cake on the porch here without anyone hearing or seeing anything made him realize how vulnerable Barbara and the children were. It wouldn't hurt to be sure all of the windows closed securely and the door at the back was sturdy.

Once he finished looking around this building, he might even step over to the old Gossett place and have a good look at that house. Mr. Gossett had asked him to keep an eye on the place for him, and it had been a couple of months since the sheriff had made an inspection of the house to be sure everything was still locked up tight. Unless he was wrong, he thought the Gossett
house would be a much sturdier building. It needed some paint, but that didn't weaken the house any.

The sheriff had finished his inspection of the building Barbara was living in and found it was in the same condition it had been in the last time he looked. It would do for the time being, but not for long.

The sheriff looked down the street a little at the Gossett house.

Mrs. Hargrove had told the sheriff that Barbara was interested in renting that house, but he hadn't given it much thought until lately. He was sure old man Gossett would want to rent the house. Why would he pass up some good income?

The sheriff left his car parked where it was and walked down the street to the Gossett house. When he came to the wooden fence surrounding the house, he reached for the lock on the inside of the gate. That was odd, he thought, as he saw that the lock was undone. The sheriff frowned; he didn't like the thought of someone nosing around the old Gossett place. It was probably just kids, but still—

The sheriff walked around the house carefully and checked that none of the windows were unlocked. No one had tampered with the two doors either. The sheriff decided he had been right and that it had been curious kids who had unlocked the gate when he noticed the papers behind one of the pine trees.

These weren't left by kids, the sheriff told himself, as he picked up the wrappers for several rolls of antacid tablets.

The sheriff thought a moment and decided that whoever had been standing here hadn't been interested in vandalism because nothing had been disturbed. There was something about an un painted place that just attracted trouble, he finally decided. It wouldn't hurt for him to put a coat of white paint on that fence. Maybe that would stop anyone from making them selves at home in the backyard.

 

Barbara stood at the counter of the pawnshop and opened up the envelope that held the three rings she was selling. She was surprised that she didn't have some feelings of sadness as she rolled the rings out onto the counter of the pawn shop so that the man could look at them more closely.

Maybe she wasn't more upset about giving up the rings because she had had such a hard time finding a pawnshop. When she'd told Mrs. Hargrove that she wanted to go to a pawnshop when they got to Miles City, the older woman had said she didn't think Miles City had any pawn shops. Then Mrs. Hargrove had offered Barbara the use of her car so she could drive to Billings.

Barbara was reluctant to drive Mrs. Hargrove's
car, but the older woman had finally convinced her to borrow it.

“There's some kind of a pawnshop just this side of Billings,” the older woman had said. “You can be there and back before I'm through with my appointment. It's a long one today.”

Barbara hadn't told Mrs. Hargrove that she was selling the rings. She wasn't al together sure that the older woman would approve. There seemed to be something cold about selling wedding rings. Maybe it just reminded Barbara of all that she had lost, she thought. It wasn't just the years that she had used up being married to Neal; it was also the reluctance she felt now to trust any man with her well-being or, even more important, the well-being of her children.

She might date again, Barbara admitted. But it would have to be a casual friendly thing with no expectations by her or anyone else that it would deepen into a real romantic relation ship.

And, she thought, smiling to herself a little as the man in front of her kept looking at the rings, the only reason she was even willing to date a little was because she was hoping Carl would want to have dinner with her every so often. That would be nice.

“I'll give you five hundred dollars for all of them,” the man behind the counter finally announced. “And
I've got to be a fool to go that high. If you were a man, I'd give you four.”

“I don't think that the fact that I'm—” Barbara started and then shut her mouth. Instead, she smiled. “Thank you. That sounds fair.”

Barbara was grateful to get that much for the rings. She would have to pick up a newspaper and look at the classified ads. Someone surely had a sturdy dining table for sale. Maybe she would even have enough to buy some dishes and silverware as well. And a small rug for the bathroom.

Oh, Barbara thought as she took the stack of twenty-dollar bills that the man handed to her, there were so many things that she and the children could use. If she had time today, she'd try to buy a few of them.

 

Floyd Spencer didn't feel too good. He was sitting at his desk at the bank, but he wished with all his heart that he was home in his bed.

“How are you doing there, Floyd?”

Floyd looked up to see his manager standing beside his desk. “I'll get those reports soon.”

Fortunately, he'd kept no records of the times he had tried to transfer that money to the offshore accounts for Harlow and Neal, so he had nothing on his desk he needed to hide.

His manager was frowning at Floyd anyway. “How are you feeling these days?”

“Ah, fine,” Floyd mumbled. He hadn't slept for six days straight, but he didn't want to look like he was falling down on his job. He needed this job.

The manager nodded. “The Human Re sources division at corporate is worried that the staff here has been suffering from stress related to that bank robbery. Even though it didn't happen here, it was close.”

Floyd was worried that he might stop breathing. Was this a clue that someone suspected something? “I'm not stressed.”

“It's nothing to be ashamed of.” His manager sat on a corner of Floyd's desk. “I've noticed you seem a little more tired than usual. Have you been sleeping okay?”