New Leaf (5 page)

Barney sat back in his chair to study her. Now
that he’d heard the whole story, he supposed that she could be telling the truth. He just wasn’t sure why she was involving him.

“The judge was lenient with me,” she went on. “I guess they often are with first-time offenders. I got five years of probation plus mandatory attendance at anger management counseling bimonthly. Phillip immediately started brainwashing Sarah to be terrified of me. I was granted monthly court-supervised visitations with my daughter, but with each visit she was so increasingly traumatized by seeing me that I finally decided I was doing more harm than good. It was the hardest choice I’ve ever made, but I had to think of what was best for my little girl. People in Erickson thought I was guilty. They hated me. I couldn’t even go to a grocery store without something unpleasant happening. When a man spat at my feet and an older woman on a sidewalk called me a monster, I petitioned the court for permission to relocate. Permission was granted, and I was appointed a probation officer and counselor in Crystal Falls. That’s when I came to Mystic Creek. I used a small divorce settlement from Phillip, which he gave me only to make himself look good, to lease my shop and start my business.”

Barney forked up a bite of spaghetti. It tasted like cardboard with a drizzle of grease on top. Offhand, he couldn’t remember when he’d pegged somebody so wrong. “I’m sorry you’ve had such a rotten time of it,” Barney offered. “But I still don’t see how I can possibly help.”

She leaned closer. “I hired a private investigator
to keep me updated on Sarah’s well-being. He called me this morning. I knew Phillip had divorced Melanie, but I had no idea that his father had finally gotten fed up and stopped giving him money. I also didn’t know that Phillip’s mom, Grace, is gravely ill and unable to care for Sarah. They’ve been taking care of Sarah for Phillip since his divorce. His dad is, of course, distraught over his wife’s health. Phillip had no choice but to step in and provide care for his daughter. But he’s doing a horrible job of it, leaving Sarah with one strange woman after another. My investigator says rumor has it that Phillip is maintaining his fancy lifestyle by dealing in drugs now that his dad won’t cough up any more cash. I suspected Phillip dabbled in recreational drugs during our marriage, but this is even lower than I would have thought he would stoop.

“Sarah—she’s only five, Barney. The girlfriends who are taking care of her may be using drugs while she’s with them. Sarah is missing a lot of preschool because Phillip can’t be bothered with taking her to class every morning. Her teacher says she isn’t getting along well with other kids. She’s acting out and dressing inappropriately, whatever that means. In short, my little girl is in a very perilous situation, and no matter what it takes, I have to try to get her out of there.”

Barney turned his glass, staring into the remaining water. “How do you think I can help?” he asked. He’d known from the start of this conversation that she wanted something. Now maybe she’d spit it out. “Shoot.”

“You’re a deputy.”

He sighed and gave his glass another turn. “Being a law officer doesn’t empower me to cure all the problems of the world. I can’t bust Phillip for using and selling drugs unless I catch him in the act, and Erickson is way out of my jurisdiction.”

Her gaze clung to his. “You don’t understand, Barney. I don’t want you to bust Phillip. You’re a respected man in Mystic Creek. If you and I were together, it would make me look more squared away and respectable. I might have a chance of getting custody with you standing beside me. I’m not talking about a real marriage, at least not a permanent commitment. It would be only temporary, and of course I would grant you conjugal rights for the duration. Once I get Sarah, we can get a quiet divorce.”

Somewhere in the middle of this announcement, Barney knew his jaw had dropped open. Of all the things he might have expected her to say, this wasn’t it. Now he was glad they had come in separate cars, because all he wanted was to get the hell away from her and her wild stories and even wilder ideas.

A pretend marriage? Was she out of her mind? He believed in the sanctity of matrimony. For him, it was a forever deal. On top of that, his parents frowned upon divorce unless it was absolutely unavoidable. They would be extremely upset if he married a woman and then divorced her a year or so later. In fact, he reflected rapidly,
upset
didn’t describe it by half. If his mother thought he was at
fault, she would shorten him by a head, deputy or no deputy.

“A marriage with benefits?” Barney heard the outrage that rang in his voice, but for the life of him, staying calm was impossible. “I’m sorry, lady, but what the hell makes you think I’m that hard up?” He pushed off the stool. “My answer is no. Not now, not ever.”

“Please, Barney, don’t go. At least think about it before you turn me down. My little girl is in danger!”

Barney grabbed his jacket and shoved his arms into the sleeves with a lot more force than was necessary. “And I’m really sad to know that. But bottom line is, she’s not my problem. When you said you had a proposition for me, I never for an instant suspected that it would be something this crazy.” He turned for the door, stopping only long enough to drop a couple of twenties on the table. Over his shoulder, he said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

•   •   •

Taffeta was shaking so violently after Barney stormed out that she knew she shouldn’t drive. She sat alone at the table, staring at the grease bleeding off her untouched meatballs and spaghetti. The smell alone made her want to gag. She felt so stupid, not to mention frightened, rejected, and totally humiliated. Barney Sterling now had it within his power to destroy her future in Mystic Creek, and she had handed over the information to him on a silver platter. What had she been thinking?

Taffeta’s only excuse was that she felt completely
and utterly desperate. Stepping back from her daughter’s life was one thing when she thought it was the only option for her daughter’s well-being. But she’d missed her terribly every day they’d been apart and now Sarah needed her. Asking Barney to pretend they were in a serious relationship had seemed like her only hope. Taffeta could think of no other way she might stand a chance of contesting Phillip’s custody. As Barney’s wife, she might have had a shot. She certainly wouldn’t have a prayer if she filed for custody as a single mother who had already been convicted on one count of child abuse.

Taffeta recalled all the lonely nights that she had endured during her marriage to Phillip. Now he was abandoning Sarah in the same way. Even worse, he was leaving her with strangers who were possibly abusing drugs. Had she failed to drive that point home to Barney? She hadn’t offered him sex because she thought he was hard up for it. She had offered it as a way of paying him back if he helped her.

Her heart sank when she thought of what her little girl might be witnessing right now.
Oh, Sarah.
She was a confused little girl who couldn’t possibly begin to comprehend why her daddy didn’t love her and resented being around her. And what line of bull was Phillip feeding the women he was using to watch his kid? Taffeta could almost hear him.
“The
firm is litigating an important lawsuit. My mom is gravely ill. My dad’s falling apart. While I burn the midnight oil to do all the casework, I need someone to look after my child.”
How would those girlfriends react toward Sarah when they discovered Phillip wasn’t working, but was instead having a fine time with some other woman? Taffeta was particularly worried about Sarah’s caregivers being under the influence. They could be violent. It was a bad situation for Sarah all the way around.

Taffeta finally composed herself enough to feel safe behind the wheel. As she drove back to Mystic Creek, her mind kept circling one question over and over.

What would Barney do with all the information that she’d given him? He had never promised that he would keep what she told him a secret.

If he chose, Barney Sterling could destroy the solid reputation she was trying so hard to rebuild.

Barney fumed half the way home, until he realized he was doing fifteen miles an hour over the speed limit. He jammed his foot on the brake, pulled over briefly, and smacked his free hand against the dashboard. A speeding ticket would look just great in the personnel file of a county deputy, and he’d be damned if he’d give Miss Taffeta Brown the satisfaction of being responsible for a mark against his character.

He rolled down his window and took several head-cleansing gulps of cold air before he calmed down enough to think straight. He had heard some tall tales in his time. Either the Brown woman had an unrivaled imagination or she was—just possibly—leveling with him. Not that it would make much difference, either way, but at least then he wouldn’t feel so repulsed by her that he couldn’t be her friend.

When he reached the outskirts of Mystic Creek, he took a right off North Huckleberry onto Creek Crossing Road to stop by the department headquarters. Before he ran home to feed his horses and fell
exhausted into bed, he intended to do a little research on Taffeta Brown.

When Barney entered the building, Doreen glanced up over a bank of monitors, momentarily ignoring the voice of Serena Paul, another deputy, that came over the radio. She smiled at him, and snapped her bubble gum. Her curly red hair gleamed in the fluorescent lights that hummed softly above her. “Hey there, Deputy Barney. Have you taken time to polish that bullet in your pocket today?”

Barney walked straight past the woman without speaking. Myriad smells drifted through the rear desk area when he stepped inside. Someone had ordered in pizza from Wood Fyre Delights, a parlor a little west of there. He saw the crumpled box stuffed in a trash can. The unmistakable aroma of a hamburger and fries also assaulted his nostrils. His empty stomach snarled in response.

Sheriff Adams, an older man who had developed a paunch, emerged from his office preceded by his belt buckle. His thinning brown hair, now threaded with silver, sported a circular indentation from the Stetson he normally wore. “What are you doing here, Sterling?”

“I’d like to use one of the department computers for a while if that’s all right.”

Adams arched a grizzled eyebrow, and his intense brown eyes filled with question. “Personal or department related?”

“Personal. I have two systems at home, but the Internet speed here is faster.”

Adams stepped over to the coffee machine, presenting his back to Barney. “Help yourself. Just don’t lose sleep and be an asshole tomorrow.”

Barney grinned. “Speaking of which, you’re here mighty late. Did something come up?”

“Nah. The wife is out of town visiting her sister, so I went to the Cauldron for supper.” Marietta, Blake Adams’s spouse, was a plump blonde with a smile that could melt ice and a personality to match. Barney imagined that the sheriff felt lost without her. “On the way home, I decided to stop in here and check on things. Nothing to do at the house but eat chips and watch TV.”

Barney moved deeper into the room, which accommodated six metal desks. The deputies in Mystic Creek shared the office furniture and equipment. Because they rotated in and out, doing desk duty only when they weren’t working in the field, six computers facilitated everyone. Barney waved at a couple of buddies and then got on a computer toward the back of the room where no one would see what came up on the screen.

Barney knew the newspaper in Erickson, Oregon, was named the
Sentinel Guard
because the publication was sold at newsstands in Mystic Creek. When he ran a search on Taffeta Brown in the online archives, he came up with nothing. He decided she might be using her maiden name now, so he ran a search on attorneys in Erickson with the first name Phillip. He found several, but he was able to rule out over half of them because they looked too old in their photographs to have been her husband. He
began pairing Taffeta with the remaining surnames as he searched the newspaper archives.

Bingo
. Her last name had been Gentry.

The story she had told Barney at the restaurant pretty much matched what he read in the news articles. It still troubled Barney that she’d been found guilty if she actually wasn’t, though. He believed in the court system. He understood that sometimes people were wrongly convicted of crimes, but he liked to think it didn’t happen often. It looked as though she’d been convicted more on testimony than actual evidence, but he couldn’t be certain.

Barney wished he could review the court documents, but though he had spearheaded many investigations during his career, he had never had reason to peruse old trial records. Luckily he had a friend who might be able to tell him how to do it.

Finished with his mission, Barney stopped by Sheriff Adams’s office to say good night and thank him for the use of the computer. He told Doreen to stop popping her gum as he passed her station. Ignoring her irked look, he left the building. The air outside smelled like smoke. He remembered that a low-pressure system had moved in, suppressing the drift from people’s chimneys. When that happened, the whole town smelled like a damp campfire.

Once in his Ram, he called an old classmate of his from the University of Oregon who now practiced law in nearby Erickson. His name was Bryan Vorch, which had always made Barney think of some character in
Star Wars
. He supposed that a lot of people had reason to dislike their names.
Jokesters like Doreen made him detest his more with each passing day.

“Hey, Barney!” Bryan said when he answered the call. “Good to hear from you!”

“We need to do a better job of keeping in touch,” Barney replied. “I think of you a lot, but I’m so busy that I never get around to contacting you. We burned a lot of midnight oil together studying for finals.”

“And guzzled so much coffee that I’m surprised my eyes didn’t turn brown.”

They shot the bull for a minute before Barney told him why he had called. “I want to review a court case,” he said, “and I don’t have a clue where to start.”

“Court proceedings are public records and available to almost everyone,” Bryan told him. “Normally a person has to fill out a form and sometimes pay a small fee to review public records, but I do it so much in my line of work that I pay an annual fee for almost instant access. I could pull the docs up and e-mail them to you. Or, if you’d like to cut me a check for the cost, I can send you a download for the recorded version.”

“I’ll take the files, thanks.” Barney had to watch his budget. “And it’s great of you to offer to do this, Bryan. There’s only one wrinkle. The lady who stood trial is a friend of mine, and I don’t want word to get out here in Mystic Creek that she was convicted of a crime.”

“I’m your man, then. You’re the only person in Mystic Creek that I know.”

Barney laughed and gave him Taffeta’s married name. “She was convicted of abusing her little girl.”

“Oh, shit, I remember the trial,” Bryan said. “It dominated the front page of the
Sentinel Guard
for over a week. She was married to that dickhead Phillip Gentry.” Bryan whistled. “He’s bad news, dude. I’ll be happy to e-mail you the files. I still have your e-mail address unless you changed it.”

“I haven’t. I have enough trouble trying to remember my current one,” Barney said with a chuckle. “I really appreciate this, Bryan. I owe you one.”

Barney had just pulled up in front of his house when his phone pinged to notify him of an incoming e-mail.
Hopefully from Bryan,
he thought.

Normally Barney went to bed fairly early unless he went to Crystal Falls for an evening on the town. But despite his former weariness, now he suddenly felt wired. He got that way whenever something intrigued him, and Taffeta Brown sure as heck did, even though he’d been thrown by her crazy proposition.

He fed his two geldings and Mary Lou, the cow, before he went inside, cursing when bits of hay got under the collar of his shirt. He usually wore a wool jacket with the collar turned up when he tended to his animals. He’d filled the chicken feeder that morning, so the hens needed no attention.

He flipped on a light as he stepped through the back door into the kitchen. His brother Jeb had helped with the remodeling, designing banks of new cabinets that looked nearly as old as the ones they had replaced. True to the character of the structure,
he’d said, and Barney liked the results, which were countrified, warm, and perfect for an old farmhouse. He opened the stainless steel fridge to get the fixings for a sandwich and grabbed a can of soda to wash it down. Minutes later, he had a fire snapping and popping in the hearth, and he sat in his burgundy recliner to open his laptop. The flames cast an amber glow over the room, highlighting the rustic barn-plank flooring, which had taken a year of his savings to install. Sitting there reminded him of when he’d told Taffeta where he most enjoyed reading. The memory made him sad. She had seemed so right for him when they were discussing favorite books. Oh well, he guessed that every guy got bamboozled by a female at least once.

He spent the remainder of the evening reading about Taffeta’s trial. Barney was no attorney, but it appeared to him that there had been little, if any, solid evidence presented by the prosecutor to prove that Taffeta had purposefully harmed her daughter. Just as she’d said at the restaurant, she had wrapped the child in a blanket and driven her to the hospital. Nowhere did Barney read that police officers had visited the house to examine the accident scene.
Accident?
Was he starting to believe her claims, after all? He guessed maybe so. It looked to Barney as if she had been convicted mostly on the strength of her husband’s testimony.

It had grown too late to call Bryan Vorch back to ask his opinion, so Barney sent his old friend an e-mail, asking him if he’d be willing to review the
case and share his thoughts on the apparent lack of physical evidence. Would Bryan feel that Taffeta had gotten a fair shake?

•   •   •

Saturday morning dawned bright and sunny, and while Barney drank his wake-up coffee, he stared out his kitchen window, wishing he could spend the day behind the wheel of a county truck, driving the streets and roads of Mystic Creek. Count on it to be a lovely day when he’d be stuck inside. Desk duty had never appealed to him. He hated all the paperwork, and when calls were directed to him by the dispatcher, he yearned to be out in the field talking in person to the individual. It was connecting with people that made him love law enforcement. If and when he became the sheriff, he would pawn the paperwork off on subordinates as much as possible and work the streets. Until then, he had to climb the ladder.

Anne Warf, a well-seasoned dispatcher, greeted Barney with a halfhearted smile when he arrived for work at ten. A slender woman with dark eyes, black hair, and eyebrows that looked as if they’d been drawn on with a felt pen, she had celebrated her forty-fourth birthday last month, and in June she would mark her twenty-fifth anniversary with the department. Most of the time, her seniority afforded her the privilege of working weekdays, but every once in a while, she got stuck working Saturday and Sunday to give someone else time off.

“Don’t tell me what a beautiful day it is,” she warned. “I’ll say I’m sick and go home.”

Barney couldn’t help laughing. He poured her a cup of coffee and brought it back out to her. “Maybe this will cheer you up,” he said as he set it on her desk.

“Nothing will cheer me up. It’s the first real day of spring, and I’m stuck at this stupid station fielding calls that make me grind my teeth! Christopher Doyle called in to say that Edna Slash is parading around on her porch half-naked, and he wants her arrested for indecent exposure.”

Barney nearly choked on a laugh. “Those two are always bickering about something, Anne. I think it’s the geriatric version of flirting with each other.”

“They’re a pain in my arse,” she shot back. “It’s the first real day of spring, I’m telling you.”

That made him laugh again. “Anne, you’ve lived here too long to believe that this break in the weather means anything. Mother Nature loves to play games with us in April and sometimes even in May. The second we start to believe spring has finally arrived, she dumps a foot of snow on us.”

“My crocuses are blooming. My daffodils are poking their heads up. That’s a sure sign.”

“You say that every year.” As Barney walked back toward the desk area, he said over his shoulder, “I detest desk duty, you know. We can grouse about having to be here all day, or we can make the best of it.”

Garrett Jones, one of Barney’s fellow deputies, gave him a mock salute from a corner desk. His dark
brown hair looked as if he’d been thrusting his fingers through it, and he had circles under his blue eyes.

“Late night partying?” Barney asked.

Garrett ignored the dig. “You ever wonder what the fricking hell everyone else does when they have desk duty? It sure as hell isn’t paperwork.”

Studying the piles of stuff in front of him, Barney saw Garrett’s point. “Maybe they play games on their phones.”

“There’s an idea, only I hate playing games. And Sheriff Adams has the computers locked down so tight that you can’t do much of anything on the Net except research. Facebook is blocked. Blogs are blocked. It’s a boring pain in the ass.”

Barney had never tried to go online except for department business. He’d been taught good work ethics by his parents, and fooling around when he was being paid to do a job didn’t occur to him. He blocked out Garrett’s whining and started sorting through the backlog of reports.

By noon, Anne had patched in only two calls on his phone line to break the monotony. Marjorie Jane Roberts, who lived on Bearberry Loop overlooking the golf course, wanted to know if it was too close to fire season for her husband, Pete, to use their burning barrel. Devon Penny called to ask if Barney had any work on his property that Devon could do for ten dollars an hour. Barney felt badly for saying no, especially when the boy dickered with him on the wage, dropping it to eight an hour. Devon was a nice kid with a single mom who struggled to make ends
meet. But on a deputy’s salary, Barney couldn’t afford hired help. He suggested that Devon call his brother Jeb, who often brought in kids to help him out.