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She didn’t know what she might have expected him to say, but it definitely hadn’t been that. “Busy,” she said evenly. “Did you need to discuss something about Eli?”
“I’m sorry he was late this morning. It won’t happen again.”
“Okay.” When it seemed as if he had nothing further to say, she started to turn again.
“I didn’t expect to see you here.”
Which meant she’d never been a hot topic of conversation between him and his mother, since she’d been working with Genna for some time now. “I can say the same thing about you.”
She felt certain that she imagined the flicker in his eyes at that. Wishful thinking on her part that he might feel something, anything, about what had happened all those years ago. He’d made his feelings then perfectly clear, even though he’d never been perfectly clear about anything else.
And darnitall, that fact still stung even though she’d made herself believe that it was all water beneath the bridge.
She shifted the weight of her book bag to her other shoulder. “Coming down a little in the world, aren’t you? From detective to deputy?”
“The job meets my needs for now.”
She didn’t want to know what his needs might be. “Then you have my congratulations.” Her tone said the contrary, however. “Excuse me. I have things I need to do.” She turned again and strode down the corridor, the click of her shoes sounding brisk and hollow.
Max’s hands curled as he watched the bounce of that long, thick braid as Sarah strode away from him.
He didn’t make the mistake of speaking her name again.
She hated him.
Well, could he blame her?
When it came to Sarah Clay, he pretty much hated himself, too.
God, but he still couldn’t believe she was here. In Weaver.
Aware that Eli was still waiting for him, he headed out to the SUV. His son was fiddling with the scanner when he climbed in the truck.
“She tell ya?” Eli sat back in his seat as Max reset the equipment.
Great. Tell me what? He started driving away from the school. “What do you think?”
His son heaved a sigh, obviously assuming the worst. “Figures. I was only kidding with the guy. How was I supposed to know his glasses would fly off like they did? At least they didn’t break or nothing, though.”
He gave his son a hard look, thinking he was glad Eli was more open than his teacher evidently was. “Did you apologize?”
“Yes. I used Miz Clay’s phone in the classroom.”
“Good. Don’t do it again.”
“How come you came to get me?”
“I told you. You were late. I was worried.”
Eli rolled his eyes. “What for? This place is dinky. I mean, geez, Dad. There’s not even a real mall!”
“Missing those afternoons you liked to spend shopping, is that it?”
His son snorted. They both knew that Eli loathed shopping. That was one trait he had gotten from Max.
He drove past the station where he’d go back on duty after Eli was settled with Genna. He drummed the steering wheel. “So, what’s your teacher like?”
“Besides a rat fink?”
Max let out an impatient breath. “She didn’t tell me anything, pal. You did that all on your own.”
“Geez.” Eli’s head hit the back of the seat. He looked out the window. “She’s all right, I guess.” He was silent for a moment. “She kinda reminds me of Mom.”
Max let that revelation finish rocking. Since Jen had died of cancer almost fourteen months earlier, Eli rarely mentioned her of his own volition. “In what way?”
“I dunno. What’s for supper?”
“Grandma’s cooking.”
“I thought we were here to take care of her.”
“We are. But she’s pretty bored sitting around all day letting her broken leg heal. She’s not used to that much inactivity.”
“Can we go skiing sometime?”
Max wanted to tell his son they could. He didn’t want Eli to be miserable the entire time they were in Weaver. “We’ll see.” Most everything would depend on how well the case went.
“Do ya even know how to ski?”
“Smart aleck. Yeah, I know.”
“Well, you just lived in California all my life.”
“All your life, bud. Not all of mine.”
“What about horses? Can we go riding horses sometime?”
Max suppressed a grimace. He and horses had never particularly gotten along. “We’ll see.”
“Did you know Miz Clay?”
The question, innocence and curiosity combined, burned. “Yeah. I knew her.”
“Did you, like, go to school with her?”
“No. She’s a lot younger than me.”
“Well, yeah.’ Cuz you’re old and she’s still pretty.”
A bark of laughter came out of him. Miz Clay was still pretty. Beautiful, in fact; all that youthful dewiness she’d possessed at twenty-one had given way to the kind of timeless looks that would last all of her life. “That’s why I keep you around, Elijah. To keep me humble.”
His son smiled faintly. “She says you can’t swing a cat without hitting someone from her family. Was she your girlfriend?”
He pulled to a sudden stop in his mother’s driveway and the tires skidded a few inches. He needed to get out the snowblower, and soon. “Just because she’s female doesn’t mean she was my girlfriend. I just told you. She’s a lot younger than me.”
“How much younger?”
God, give him patience. “I don’t know. A lot.” Liar.
“Five years?”
As if a paltry five years mattered. “Twelve.”
“Geez. You are old. Not like Grandma old, but still—”
“Enough. I’m not so old that I can’t beat your butt inside the house.”
Eli grinned and set off at a run, his backpack swaying wildly from his narrow shoulders.
Max jogged along behind him. At least one thing had gone right that day. Eli was smiling.
Just before his son bolted up the front porch, Max put on the speed and flew past him to open the storm door first.
“Dad!”
He shrugged and went inside. “Wipe your boots,” he reminded. He pulled his radio off his belt and set it on the hall table and tossed his jacket on the coatrack. “Hey, Ma.”
Genna Scalise was sixty years old and looked a good ten years less. Her hair was still dark, her face virtually unlined. And she was currently trying to poke one end of an unfolded wire hanger beneath the thigh-high edge of her cast. “Turn the heat off under the pasta.”
“Don’t poke yourself to death.” He went into the kitchen and turned off the stove burner. The churning water in the pot immediately stopped bubbling. The second pot on the stove held his mother’s homemade sauce. “Smells great, but I thought you said you were just going to throw together a casserole or something.” He went back in the family room and took the hanger from her frustrated hands. “Here. Try this.” He handed over the long-handled bamboo back scratcher that he’d picked up at the new supermarket on the far side of town.
Her eyes lit as if he’d just told her she was going to have a second grandchild. She threaded the long piece beneath the edge of her cast and tilted back her head, blissfully. “Oh, you’re a good boy, Max.”
Eli snickered.
“How was school?”
“I got homework,” the boy said by way of answering her. “Vocabulary.”
“Well, horrors.” She smiled. “Get a start on it before we have dinner.” She withdrew the scratcher and set it on the couch, then held up her arms to Max. “Help me up, honey, so I can finish that.”
He lifted her slender form off the couch. From above, he could hear Eli moving around upstairs. Doing his homework, hopefully. “When you said you wanted to cook today, I didn’t think you meant making homemade pasta.”
“What other kind of pasta is there?” She patted his cheek and reached for her crutches.
He followed her slow progress back into the kitchen. He wasn’t used to seeing his mother have to struggle; he didn’t like it. But he knew she didn’t want him constantly helping her, either, considering they’d already had a few skirmishes on that score since his and Eli’s arrival a few days earlier. “Why didn’t you tell me Sarah Clay would be Eli’s teacher?”
Balancing herself, she sat down on the high stool that Max had put in the kitchen for her. She gave him a sidelong look. “I didn’t think about it. I assumed that you knew. Is there something wrong with her? She’s a fine teacher.”
He shook his head. He was hardly going to tell his mother about it.
She sighed and set down her long wooden spoon. “What happened with your father and the Clays was a very long time ago. The only one it still bothers seems to be you.”
What happened with Max and Sarah was a long time ago, too, yet it still felt like yesterday. “Last I heard, she was studying finance. Didn’t expect to find her here teaching third grade.”
“I like her.” Genna pointed the spoon. “Hand me the strainer.”
He shook his head and drained the pasta himself. “You’re supposed to be resting, Ma, not cooking up a storm like this.”
“Consider it good planning. We’ll have leftovers for a week.”
He heard the crackle of his radio and went out to get it. He listened to the dispatch, answered, and stuck his head back in the kitchen. “Gotta go. You okay with Eli?”
She waved her wooden spoon. “Of course. Be careful, now.”
He yelled up the stairs for Eli to mind his grandmother, and hustled out to the SUV.
The drive to the Double-C Ranch wasn’t an unfamiliar one, though it had been a helluva long time since Max had made it. The ranch was the largest and most successful spread in the vicinity. It was owned by the Clays, though as far as Max knew, Sawyer—the sheriff—had never taken an active part in running it. That was the job of Matthew Clay.
Sarah’s father.
He turned in through the gate and a short while later stopped in the curved drive behind Sawyer’s cruiser. He could count on his hands the number of times he’d been to the Double-C. The last time, he’d been barely fifteen and his father had been caught red-handed stealing Double-C cattle.
It was still burned in his memory.
He climbed out of his truck, nodding at Sawyer, who was leaning against one of the stone columns on the front porch. “Matthew,” he greeted the second man.
Sarah’s father ambled down the steps, sticking his hand out. “Max. Good to see you again.”
Max returned the greeting, looking past the man to his new boss. “What’s up?”
“Thought it best to discuss things away from the station.”
Max looked from Sawyer to his brother.
“He’s aware of the situation,” the older man said. “Let’s walk.”
“You’re surprised,” Matthew observed as they headed away from the house, cutting across the drive toward a sweeping, open area unoccupied by anything but a stand of mighty trees.
Max didn’t like feeling out of control. Sawyer might be the sheriff, but the investigation was Max’s. “It was my understanding that nobody but my superior and the sheriff knew what I was really doing here.”
“Matt’s noticed another discrepancy among his trucking records,” Sawyer told him. “This time on a shipment of stock heading to Minnesota.”
“How recent?”
“Couple weeks.” Matt settled his cowboy hat deeper over his forehead. “When I talked to Sawyer about it, he admitted the other thing that’s been going on.” His face was grim. “Bad business. Kind of thing I don’t want to see going on in Weaver.”
“Drug trafficking shouldn’t be going on anywhere,” Max said flatly. For five years, he’d been serving on a special task force investigating distribution cells that were cropping up in small towns. The less traditional locations were highly difficult to pinpoint.
