Chapter Fourteen
“Where exactly are we
going?”
Walker took his eyes off the road for
a brief moment. He loved looking at Laney. She’d pulled her curly
black hair back into a ponytail, and dangly earrings sparkled in
her ears. With those long, long legs encased in hip-hugging jeans,
he figured she was just about perfect.
Since their
talk two days ago, he’d
moved ahead with his commitment to finding who’d framed him for
Melanie’s rape. If he was going to make a future for himself and
build the business he wanted, he couldn’t have that unresolved
issue hanging over him.
Beyond that, whoever raped Melanie had
never paid the price for the lives they’d destroyed. Leaving the
situation unresolved meant risking someone coming back to threaten
the future he was embarking on.
And he wanted to fan the flicker of
hope he refused to let die: maybe he and Laney could be
together.
She drummed fingers on her leg and
lowered her brows, which told him she was halfway to being pissed.
He figured he’d better explain why he’d asked her to come with him.
She hadn’t changed much. She’d always wanted to know what was going
on and hated being kept in the dark.
“I told you, I need your
help with something.”
“And that something
is…?”
He steered to the center of the road
to make room for a bicyclist. “Here’s the deal, you know Martha
Watkins?”
“Yeah, she worked for the
sheriff’s department as Neil Grafton’s secretary. I think she
retired after he left. She was in Gran’s book club for several
years. She lives on Pinon Road.” She glanced out the window as they
turned onto Pinon. “We’re going to her house?”
“I want to talk to her. I
bet she knows a lot about what went on when Grafton was
sheriff.”
“Okay. That doesn’t
explain why I’m in the truck with you.”
He flashed her a look. “Maybe I like
being with you.”
“Right. You like being
with me so much you didn’t call or write for six years. You
could’ve been married with a couple kids for all I
knew.”
“I’m not married and I
don’t have any kids. And for the record, there’s nobody I’d rather
be with than you.”
“Jesus, Walker. You can’t
say things like that to me.”
“It’s the truth. I know
you don’t trust me, but I’m trying to fix that.” And obviously, he
had a long way to go.
He pulled the truck to a stop in front
of a small, single-story bungalow with pots of deep red flowers on
either side of the front door. Resting his hands on the steering
wheel, he turned his head to look at her. “Right now, the issue is
Mrs. Watkins, another woman who doesn’t trust me. I ended up in a
holding cell at the sheriff’s office a few too many times when I
was a teenager, and she tagged me as a troublemaker.
“Despite her obviously
poor judgment in that regard, she always struck me as fundamentally
honest. I spent time at the library over the last week looking
through years of past newspapers and noticed Mrs. Watkins didn’t
come out publicly against Grafton, but she also didn’t defend him
when she had the opportunity. I want to find out what she knows,
see if she can shed light on my arrest and conviction, or anything
else that was going on at the time. I called her yesterday
afternoon and asked if we could talk. She didn’t sound too happy
about the idea, but agreed to see me.”
“Wouldn’t she have been
interviewed when your case was reopened?”
“Maybe. I still want to
talk to her.”
“What’s my
role?”
“I think she’ll feel more
comfortable talking to the reformed troublemaker if you’re
there.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as
to say you’re reformed, but okay. But you know you didn’t need all
the secrecy. You could have simply asked me to come.”
“I wasn’t sure you would.”
He shrugged. “I don’t want to screw things up with you, but I can’t
seem to stop myself.”
“You didn’t screw things
up, you just made them more complicated than they needed to be.”
She grabbed her purse and slung it over her shoulder. “Let’s
go.”
They climbed the steps between the
potted flowers. Ringing the doorbell set off a round of hysterical
barking from what sounded like a pack of yapper dogs. It took a few
minutes before a thin voice came through the doorbell camera.
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Watkins, it’s Walker
McGrath. We spoke yesterday. I’m here with Delaney
Bryant.”
“One moment,
please.”
The dogs were still raising the alarm.
The dead bolt slid over, and when the door opened a fraction, the
yapping got louder. He had a one-inch view of a puff of silver hair
and hazel-green eyes behind round lenses. “Go around through the
side gate to the backyard. I’ll talk with you on my back patio.”
The door snapped shut, then opened again. “Latch the gate after you
so my girls don’t get loose.”
Doing as directed, they circled the
house with its neatly trimmed lawn.
“Mrs. Watkins has gorgeous
flowers. I love the geraniums.” Laney bent to brush a finger over a
fuzzy leaf.
Her comment had him noticing the
blooms in the beds under the eaves. The same flowers as those
beside the door, but in more colors. Even an idiot about flowers
like him could see the different shades of purple and pink looked
good together.
They went through the gate, he
securely latched it, then followed the stone pavers to a backyard
shaded by a grouping of trees he thought were birch. More flowering
plants were arranged in pots around the patio.
“Oh, look at the
hummingbirds. They’re so pretty.”
Walker looked where she pointed. There
had to be three or four of the tiny birds darting from bloom to
bloom.
The screen door at the back of the
house opened and a pack of bug-eyed little dogs swarmed out. What
sounded like a dozen turned out to be only three. They’d stopped
barking and made a beeline for him and Laney and began sniffing
around their ankles. Mrs. Watkins stepped out carrying a pitcher
loaded with ice and what looked like tea, and three stacked
glasses.
Walker waded through the dogs to
intercept her. Through his research, he’d learned Martha Watkins
had recently turned eighty-three and had worked for the sheriff’s
department well past typical retirement age. Her husband of over
sixty years had died a few years before. Being a Korean War vet,
he’d been buried at the national cemetery in Sacramento. She did
her own work on her garden and was a member of a quilting group
that met at the community center.
“Let me take those.” Ice
clinked as he took the pitcher and glasses from her.
“It’s warm today so I made
iced tea. Put the glasses on that table. That’s where we’ll sit.”
Walker felt like she was waiting for him to screw up, maybe drop
the glasses or spill the tea. He did as directed.
“Mrs. Watkins, you know
Delaney Bryant?”
She nodded at Laney. “Of course, I do.
You’re Clara’s granddaughter. I’m sorry about James.”
“Thank you.” Laney smiled
at the older woman.
Walker didn’t know a person alive who
wouldn’t be softened by that smile. She took the glasses and
separated them, then took the pitcher from him and poured the tea.
“You have a beautiful home, Mrs. Watkins, and your flowers are
lovely. I love the color palette you’ve chosen. The overall effect
is stunning.”
“It’s my pride and joy.”
Mrs. Watkins studied her with shrewd eyes, then turned to skewer
Walker with a hard stare. “I’m glad you came back. What was done to
you was wrong.”
He shifted in his seat. Not much made
him uncomfortable, but for some reason he’d always wanted Mrs.
Watkins’s approval. He could acknowledge that now. His teenage self
had been hurt that she hadn’t given it then. “I appreciate you
saying that.”
Her gaze narrowed. “But you’re
surprised.”
“You didn’t think much of
me back then, so yeah, I am.”
“You were a smart boy who
needed a firm hand. James tried to rein you in but was only
marginally successful. I wanted to see you make something of
yourself, and you needed to stay out of Jerod Fetterly’s way to do
that.”
Surprise had him sitting straighter in
his seat. “You knew what Fetterly was doing?”
“He was a bully and
targeted you and Sawyer. Sawyer seemed better able to deal with
him.” She pointed her forefinger at him. “But you couldn’t seem to
stop yourself from provoking him.”
“Me breathing provoked
him.”
She waved that away like a pesky gnat.
“You provoked him and it was like poking at a hornet’s nest. He was
darned easy to set off. I remember a time he brought you in for
being uncooperative after he’d pulled you over. You accused him,
very loudly I might add, of seeing him parked on a dirt road with a
young woman in his cruiser.”
“I did see them. At the
time, I assumed she was there voluntarily, but now I’d bet money it
wasn’t consensual.”
She nodded slowly. “I agree with your
assumption. There was something wrong with that man. But that’s in
the past. You might consider letting go of the injustice against
you and focus on the good in your life.” Without missing a beat,
she motioned to Delaney. “You two an item?”
“Ah—” Walker’s response
was cut off by Delaney’s quick, “No.”
“Take it from someone
who’s seen a lot. Don’t waste time. If someone’s your soulmate, you
can’t fight it. My Charlie and I were married sixty-three years,
and it wasn’t near long enough. If I hadn’t been stubborn and put
him off like I did, we’d have been married two years sooner and had
sixty-five years together.”
As he looked at this woman who wore
the signs of age etched onto her face, her words resonated. He knew
Laney was the only woman he’d ever want to build a life with, but
if she was with him, she was in danger.
Once he removed that danger, then all
bets were off. He still wore the stigma of prison, but somehow in
the time since he’d been home, that didn’t seem as important. The
charges against him had been dismissed and while he didn’t want her
to get blowback for being with an ex-con, the people who mattered
to them didn’t seem to care.
“But that’s not what you
came to talk to me about.” Mrs. Watkins pointed at him again and