Chapter 11 - First Pretend Date
Chapter 11
First Pretend Date
Saturday
They’d discussed the particulars yesterday, down to every detail. Andi’s idea was to see and be seen with the deputy in a way that would allow them to talk to as many people as possible. He had agreed and said Saturday in town would be the easiest day to see a good cross section of people who might remember Jamie Morrell.
Andi knew it was a long shot they’d find anyone willing to talk about her father, but it was a chance.
They were both dressed casually. The deputy had ditched his uniform and dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. The denim jacket and old straw hat made him look more like a farmer than any kind of law enforcement.
She had to take a second look when he walked up. The T-shirt showed off his muscles. He looked homegrown and model tan.
Andi had donned jeans and another sweatshirt from her small Clifton Bend collection. Her leather jacket was simple, but warm.
The deputy parked his farm pickup near her cabin. It was an older Ford that looked as if it had been well used over the years. It would give any passerby the idea the cabin was occupied.
As they headed down the trail to town, Andi could admit she was a little nervous. Being seen as a couple in a lunchtime café was one thing, but in plain view of the whole town, there was no going back.
From the moment they walked out of the trees the picture-perfect view of the little town welcomed her.
Andi wondered if the locals even noticed what beauty surrounded them.
As they walked across the square, she smiled thinking about the game they were playing and knew the best course of action was to lean into it and make it as real as possible. They had to be a sweet couple, laughing and flirting as would be expected. It was a very different role than she usually played undercover, but there was no reason not to enjoy it.
Maybe it would take her mind off her troubles. A few people dotted the sidewalks as they neared; she could almost hear the director yell, Action! Andi wrapped her hand around Danny’s upper arm, squeezing near his muscular form and smiling up at him. In silhouette the deputy was almost handsome. Tall, but in a just-the-right-size way for her, and built of rock with a low, almost sultry voice that was not hard to listen to.
He fit the strong, law enforcement stereotype, unfortunately, and she’d had quite enough of that with Texas Ranger Carl Ramm. It wasn’t that those types weren’t good men, they were. They tended to be polite and gentle to most everyone, until you disagreed with them or their ideas. Then, it was a nonnegotiable line in the sand. No give, no gray area, no discussion. While this deputy was no Carl Ramm, she had seen a small idea of what he might be like when crossed, and it certainly fit the mold.
The good thing about that was that it made it very easy for her to keep some healthy emotional distance. She didn’t follow anyone’s rules but her own when it came to her life, and she certainly wasn’t going to be ordered around in any relationship. No matter how good it might look at first, it just wasn’t worth it. The deputy glanced down and smiled back at her, putting his hand over hers on his arm.
Now was a good time to remind him this was an act, not reality. While that was never necessary when she worked with other cops undercover, this deputy was all about honesty, so any misunderstanding could go bad.
She leaned closer. “Just a reminder, Deputy, we need to look like a happy couple, not get carried away. Just as an FYI, I don’t like being picked up or handled.”
“Understood.”
They walked a short distance before he spoke again. “Just to be clear, I have no interest in bossing around women. Clearly your past experience with men was about as bad as mine was with women, so let’s just leave it at that. I am more than able to control myself and to be a gentleman.” He barked out a laugh. “I’m more afraid of you than you probably are of me.”
“Fine,” they both said at once, then both laughed.
“Maybe we should relax.” She winked. “I’ll not bite.”
He winked back. “I wouldn’t mind.”
They waved to Noah through the coffee shop window as they passed the bookstore. Danny’s response should have given her a bit of relief, but instead Andi found it unsettling. It’s not like she thought he was falling for her or anything, she just wanted to ensure clarity so there wasn’t a misunderstanding. His response seemed a little uncalled for, but it really didn’t matter.
They wandered into the café and ordered some brunch. She nibbled on a muffin while he scarfed a whole dozen-egg omelet. She figured he probably spent his entire paycheck on groceries. A few of the morning joggers stopped to chat and introductions were made all around. No one wanted to talk about Jamie Morrell.
The joggers all exited the café and as the waitress cleared their dishes, Andi sighed. “This didn’t seem to be as productive as I’d hoped it would, so far.”
Danny looked at her over his coffee. “Don’t worry, by tomorrow every single person we talk to will have told ten more and within forty-eight hours we will get some answers.”
She chuckled as if he’d said something funny, then leaned over and kissed his cheek for the benefit of those who watched them. Danny’s cheek muscle tremored. She allowed herself a little satisfaction. She may not be his type, but he certainly reacted to her touch.
“Why don’t we head over to my Jeep and take a drive around? See if we can run into some different people?”
He nodded. “Good idea. A bunch of the older locals spend Saturday fishing the river and they would be good to talk to.”
It was a short walk back to the cabin. Andi walked a few paces ahead of him.
She began to relax. Who knew playing girlfriend to an adoring boyfriend could be so nerve-racking? Her kissing his cheek hadn’t helped. She’d meant it to be relaxing but it wasn’t.
He should have told her to warn him if she was going to do that, not just glare at her in shock. Her surprise had gone against her rules.
As Dan seemed to delve deeper into his thoughts, they hiked toward the lodge and her cabin just beyond.
Minutes later he bumped into Andi, who had come to a dead stop. She was staring at the Jeep still partially hidden by trees. He looked it over, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. “What?” he said to her.
Andi didn’t move.
“What’s wrong?” His head was suddenly on a swivel looking for anything or anyone that didn’t belong.
She started forward but walked a wide circle around the Jeep, coming up on the side of the vehicle to peek in. He followed, keeping step with her and fully on alert. “The Jeep isn’t locked,” she said, “and I know it was when I parked it here.”
Her steps slowed as they walked near the Jeep and he slowed as well.
“I left it locked with mud on the handle,” she said. “I learned that in the wild hills of Mexico. Unless it is raining, I can see the mud on the handle from ten feet away. I’ll know someone has messed with my vehicle.”
Dan raised an eyebrow. That was smart, very smart. He turned over this fact and what it might mean and scrutinized every detail as they crept closer.
The rental looked undisturbed until they neared the front passenger window. The console papers were askew and scattered on the floorboard as if they had been searched.
“Why would someone search your Jeep?” They started to walk away as if the Jeep was of no interest.
“They weren’t looking for anything specific, just wanted me to know they know I’m here.”
The large white clouds that had grown in the sky all morning seemed to darken. Danny prided himself on being able to feel trouble coming, but this time he knew, trouble was already here and Andi was being watched.
He wasn’t a man who sought out danger if there was any other way, but this time, he was in. When he saw her eyes, he knew she felt the same. If they found her here, then nowhere was safe. The time for running was over; now it was a fight. He kissed her forehead like lovers do. “Stay alert,” Dan said against her hair and pulled her into the circle of his arms as he scanned the trees. Nothing out of the ordinary, but he felt eyes on them.
Tugging her hand, Dan steered them toward the lodge and her little cabin. They may know she’s here, but the cabin offered more privacy and was easier to defend than open space.
The old man who ran the lodge came out and started to talk about the weather as he waved them into the lobby that looked more like the three bears’ home without Goldilocks.
The minute the door closed, the old man, called Digger, said, “Noticed your Jeep right after dawn when I put out the mail. Passenger’s door was not completely closed. Saw footprints circling it, but they’ve been erased by now.”
“See anything else?” Dan asked.
Andi turned her back to the windows and said softly, “I left nothing in the car of interest. Just a few maps and a pack of gum, but they were working fast. At least two.”
The old man pinned her with a stare. “They might have been scared off. I had several fishermen come in late.” He studied her. “How did you know there were more than one?”
“Both doors were forced open.” Andi met the old man’s eyes. He was ancient but his stare told her he was aware. He missed little.
“Anything else strange?” Danny kept his sights on the windows.
The lodge owner wiggled his eyebrows as if he knew a secret. “Besides a deputy sleeping outside the last cabin? I should charge you, Deputy Davis.”
Danny straightened. “That’s official business, Digger. What else did you see?”
“I’ve seen my share of police business over the years, but all I’ve heard was snoring lately.”
All three stood silent until Danny said, “Anything else going on that I should know about?”
Digger finally stared outside. “I don’t know if this is connected, but I smelled gas early, just before dawn. I looked around. If I was a betting man, I’d say your tank has been drained.”
“I was low on gas yesterday when I pulled in but not empty.”
Both men followed her outside and watched her try to start the rental Jeep. Empty.
Danny took Andi’s hand as she stepped out of the car. “Looks like we’re walking to supper.”
The owner of the lodge headed inside, talking to himself. “Too late for lunch and too early for dinner. Why don’t you kids just have coffee or ice cream for a snack? Something funny is going around and I’ll bet you it’s more police business than private business.”
As they walked away Dan said, “Forget ice cream. I don’t eat snacks; never have. If I stop to eat, might as well eat a meal.”
Andi was barely listening to the rambling deputy. He was lightly moving his hand over her back. She thought of ordering him to stop, but it felt nice.
Ten minutes later they were on the far quarter of the square. She leaned closer and said, “Fill me in on who you are, facts about you that most folks in town would know.”
He was silent for a few minutes, as if the question was too hard for him, then finally he spoke. “Graduated from Honey Creek High because it’s the only school big enough to have a football team in the valley. I went to college at Texas Tech on a free ride thanks to football. Been a deputy for two years. Before that I was a fireman for almost three years. I took a year off after college and just wandered around. I’ve lived over by Someday Valley all my life except when I lived in the dorm. My folks have land thirty miles away. It’s a drive but I like the work here and the job is never dull. We raise horses, chickens, and hogs, and I help with the farming when needed.”
“You live with your parents?”
“Nope. I live in our barn. I like it there. After growing up in a house with six brothers and sisters, I like the silence.
“Some of my sisters and brothers built their houses on our land and some moved to town, but all my kin live in the valley. If you’re still my girl, tomorrow, you’ll have to have your knees under the Sunday Davis dinner table.”
“Didn’t you want your own place, farm boy?” she asked as they neared town. “I had my own apartment in DC at eighteen. My stepfather came by every week. He’d take me out for a meal and ask if I was ready to come back home. When I said no, he’d tell me to study hard, eat right and be in by ten because nothing good happens in DC after dark.”
Danny leaned toward her. “Why did you like a tiny little two-room apartment where you can hear the folks upstairs and downstairs? Smell what everyone is cooking and hear every fight anyone for a block has? Sounds from the street wake you all night. I learned during my wandering year that it’s best to be alone.” Dan grinned. “In the barn all I hear is nature.”
For a minute she thought he would say something else, but he stopped. A sadness covered his face and he removed his hand from her back.
He tried to smile but his eyes wore sorrow so deep she didn’t want to ask a question.
Finally, he added, “In the barn I hear the horses moving around at night and a rooster is my alarm. I wake up with the sun smiling at me and listen to mockingbirds. I can air-dry just by opening the loft window.”
“Too much information,” she said trying not to use her imagination. She’d traveled the globe. Spoke three languages. Had fallen in love several times. Usually, her affairs lasted about as long as a cold, and she’d almost died more times than she could count. But she’d never known a man like Danny. He was open and seemed honest to the core. Polite. And funny in his small-town kind of way.
She’d always felt sorry for people who lived in small towns. No nightlife. No theater. No great restaurants. Nothing happening. The world could end and Honey Creek would miss it.
But the strange thing was, no one in town seemed to care.
For one night Andi didn’t want to remember that there were a few people who’d like to know what she knew about drug trafficking or have a hint who she’s flying from one secret meeting to another. Danny didn’t pry. He seemed to accept her as she was.
Andi grinned to herself. “I’m a world of secrets and codes, and a few are all mine.”
“Not me. I’m an open book, Andi. I couldn’t even remember my locker code in school. Never locked it.”
“Didn’t you get robbed?” she asked as they headed toward the town square. Andi laced her hand in his.
Dan shook his head. “Only once.”
She stopped and faced the deputy. “Don’t tell me you beat some kid up over a pencil or a book taken?”
“No,” Danny said, “my little sister beat him up for me. By the fourth grade Inez was bigger than any of the sixth-graders. I wasn’t much of a fighter in school, but she was. When she was in the sixth grade, she walked over to the high school to beat up a boy in the ninth who yelled at her.”
“What happened?” Andi asked. “Did she get expelled? Was he hurt?”
Danny shrugged. “I don’t remember how that fight ended. When they were little, they fought on the playground at least once a week. Ten years later they married. You can ask her tomorrow at Sunday dinner.”
She tugged him toward the same café where they’d had lunch. She could have sworn the same people were still there.
After sliding into a booth, Danny told her he rarely left Texas. The year he’d wandered, after college, he didn’t find another place he wanted to stay more than a few days.
Andi bet he’d never pulled his service weapon. They had nothing in common. He was writing speeding tickets and she was saving others who found themselves in danger.
Before she could tell him that her life was nothing like his, Danny said, “I’ve had a great life as a lawman. I help people mostly. I like that.”
“Me too,” she said. “Now and then I help them go to prison.”
All Dan answered was, “Me too.”
As the sun dropped behind the courthouse, they talked. The shadows of night blended into the shadows of town.
When they walked out of the café, she slid her hand down his arm and laced her fingers in his. The feel of him was growing on her. “You got any idea how we met, Danny? If not at Texas Tech. I’m guessing that’s the question they will ask.”
“Sure,” he said. “I picked you up at the bar in Someday Valley. That’s how everyone meets if they hadn’t paired in high school or college. I looked at those long legs and realized I could see your pretty face if I danced with you. I decided you were perfect.”
He laughed. “Turns out it’s hard to talk to the top of some girl’s head and dance.”
She elbowed him. “That’s nothing. Try dancing with a guy with his nose bumping your breasts.”
Dan put his arm lightly over her shoulders. “I’ll think about which is worse.”
She poked him. He tickled her. And, as simple as that they both relaxed. They walked beneath the trees as the cold settled in for the night.
Finally, she said, “That story wouldn’t work, Deputy. The people in Someday Valley would wonder how come they’d never noticed me if I grew up around here.”
“Right,” he agreed. “You’re not a girl anyone would overlook. Any chance you were ugly your senior year?”
A quick laughed bubbled from her. “How about I tell people we met online?”
“Fine,” he said. “And just for a note, I love the way you laugh.”
She didn’t comment. He relaxed.
After a few minutes she asked, “You do know how to use a computer, Deputy?”
“Yes. I was into IT in college and I still play around with cyber security,” he shot back. “How about this for how we met? We both went to Tech like I said. You love football so you staked me out.”
“Of course. You were my date most weekends that spring of my senior year in college.”
Danny added more to the pretend-story as they walked. “I got to second base on our first date. Then after graduation, you moved west and I moved south. After years of chatting online you came down to have another look at me.”
She popped her fist into his hard stomach. No reaction. The man was a rock.
He barely moved, then took her fist in his hand, brought it to his lips and kissed her fingers just in case anyone might be watching. “Why’d you do that, honey?” he said calmly. “I have a feeling dating you comes with bruises.”
She pressed her lips against his throat and said, “You didn’t get to second base in a dating history.”
He straightened and kissed her nose. “You’re a hard woman to date.”
“No kidding. I’d like you to remember I’m armed.”
As they passed the bakery, he didn’t even glance to see if it was open. “How about I buy you dessert? If the lights are on, they still have sweets to sell. After five, it’s takeout only.”
“You don’t have to buy me anything, Deputy,” she snapped as they stepped inside a bakery that was closing up.
Danny raised his voice a bit. “Of course, I’ll feed you, honey. You’re my girl.” He turned to the teenager sweeping. “Got any cookies left, Shirley?”
Andi fell into character as they walked inside. Smiling and patting his arm. They even held hands until the cookies were chosen. They moved close, almost touching. They both were playing a game neither ever played.
Danny seemed relaxed, but this was his valley. He told her about one of his mom’s prized chickens while the girl bagged three dozen cookies. “One chicken always watched the house dogs go in and out the dog door. Then the chicken would go to the dog’s door and peck on it as if she was knocking to get in.”
Andi knew nothing about live chickens. “Won’t the dogs eat the chickens?” she asked Dan.
“No. After the dogs get too close to Mom’s chickens and she bats the dogs with her broom, the dogs don’t even look at the hens.”
Andi chuckled and noticed the girl behind the counter did also.
She almost brushed his ear when she asked, “Does it hurt the pups?”
He kissed her cheek. “I don’t know about the dogs, but it really hurt me when she bopped me for running after the chickens when I was about five. Mom claimed she didn’t want her eggs scrambled before they popped out.”
While Andi was laughing, the girl delivered their bags. Then she looked at Andi and winked.
The deputy had eaten all his meal of chicken-fried steak and half of hers at the café. There was no way he could eat three dozen cookies the size of saucers.
On the way back to the cabin, they talked about how he could help with finding her relatives. If her father had passed through the three little towns in the valley, even lived there for short times, there had to be some record besides just the address and electric bill. If he hung out at the local bars, someone might remember him. Andi figured if she found one of Jamie Morrell’s sons, he might know where the others would be.
She’d never told anyone but she’d always wished she had siblings. With her father in the Army, he was more like a vacation dad. They’d go see him or sometimes he’d come home for a month, then gone.
Dan broke into her thoughts. “I could ask the old sheriff what he knows. I remember when I came back from the training academy, one of the other deputies mentioned trouble about a will. We’ll start there tomorrow,” he said as he squeezed her hand. “You know, Andi, I want to say I had a great date tonight. I just wanted you to know before you start threatening to kill me again.”
He waited.
All she said was, “Me too. It was fun pretending.”
They walked along the bank of the creek. “Danny, the creek really does sound like it’s babbling.”
“Not much on nature, are you, honey?”
She looked up at him. That was the second time he’d called her a pet name. Alarms went off in her brain. She was getting too close. Follow the rule, Never get near or you’ll cry when they die.
“Nope. Mud. Bugs. Storms. Nature is either too hot or freezing.”
“You cold?” Without waiting for an answer, he opened his jacket and tucked her in against his warmth.
“We put on a great show tonight, didn’t we?” She smiled at him. “We make a good team.”
“I wasn’t acting. It was like we were friends.” He placed his hand over her fingers that rested on his arm.
She shook her head. “We’re not, Deputy. In a few days I’ll be gone and you will never see me again. I don’t keep friends, lovers, even family except a card now and then. I just need to know the men who claim to be my brothers are safe, then I’ll vanish.”
“What about the Texas Ranger I saw you talking to? He matters to you, doesn’t he?”
“Once there was more between us, but he insisted I leave my job. I wouldn’t and he wouldn’t accept less. I’m just someone that he checks on now and then. No more.”
“Where is home, Andi?”
“I started as a pilot. It seems above the clouds is more home than anywhere. I guess I’m one of those animals who doesn’t need a flock, a pack, or a herd.”
He slowed halfway between the town and the cabin. “You’ve got a few things to look into. Find your half-brothers, make sure they’re safe or at least warned. Then we have to look into who messed with your Jeep. That might be nothing, or you do have someone moving in on you.”
Dan stood facing her. “Whatever this is in Honey Creek, I’ll be beside you.”