Close To Danger (Westen #4)(3)
Slowly she climbed out of the tub, toweled off as the water drained from her tub. She pulled on her flannel pajamas poured a second glass of wine and crawled into her bed, drawing the two thick quilts up around her. Just as she opened her romance novel to indulge in some reading, her phone buzzed.
A text.
Probably Bobby checking in since she hadn’t bothered to reply to the earlier one. She picked the phone up from the charger where she’d set it before her bath.
Yep a text.
She tapped the envelope icon.
If you’re going to run away from me, you might want to ditch the heels next time.
She’d felt it. He’d been there, watching her. Ready to pounce.
And with that, her heart jumped from a normal rhythm to staccato panic.
CHAPTER TWO
“You sleep okay in there last night, Earl?” Deputy Sheriff Wes Strong asked through metal bars of the old-fashioned jail cell door.
The man curled up on the bed slowly rose to a sitting position. “Got a bit cold last night. Deputy Jason had to give me an extra blanket. Mighty nice of him.” Earl’s gravelly voice, achieved from years of smoking, was rougher than usual. Probably due to an uninterrupted sleep for once. Two hard, hacking coughs came next.
Wes shook his head as he opened the cell door. Earl Graves was the small town of Westen, Ohio’s resident homeless man. A Vet from the Vietnam War who never quite found his way back into the normal stream of society. Mostly he was harmless, but on cold winter nights, the former sheriff and his son Sheriff Gage Justice would pull Earl in for vagrancy—mostly to be sure the man had a warm safe space to spend the night.
Wes led the way out of the back room. “Got some hot coffee and breakfast in the office. Pete had sausage and gravy with fresh biscuits this morning over at the Peaches ’N Cream. If you want to join me.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” Earl smacked his lips as he pulled one of the blankets around his shoulders and shuffled out to the front of the sheriff’s office. “That Pete sure knows how to make biscuits. And his sausage gravy reminds me of my mama’s.”
“Wasn’t much of a fan of sausage gravy until Gage ordered me to try Pete’s.” Wes set a Styrofoam box on the opposite side of his desk where he’d already pulled up a chair for Earl. Opening his own box, the aroma of spicy sausage and biscuits wafted into the air. “Just the smell makes me hungry.”
Earl nodded, already digging into the food in front of him. As he ate his own meal, Wes watched the other man eat. Since he’d come to Westen, he’d shared many a morning meal with Earl and each time it was an interesting experience. The man never gobbled his food in like a man who’d gone days without a meal—and Wes had seen many a man eat like that in his time in the Army. No, Earl always took his time, savoring every bite, sometimes with his eyes closed.
“Saw Pastor Miller yesterday,” Wes said casually between bites.
“Was he gettin’ into trouble?” Earl said with a twinkle in his eyes and a grin.
“Don’t think his wife or the ladies of the Baptist Women’s Circle would let him, even if he wanted to.” Wes laughed. “No, he mentioned that he needed someone to help him keep the sidewalks clear of ice and snow again this winter. Wanted me to mention it to you if I saw you. He said it would pay the same as in the past.”
Pastor Miller had provided Earl with a room in the church basement during the last two winters and a salary, enough to have him get warm meals at the cafe all for helping with sidewalk clearing. The county and the congregation could do the work themselves, but Earl hated charity, so having him work at the church made sure he wasn’t found frozen dead in an alley somewhere and helped keep his dignity intact.
“Well,” Earl said, wiping his mouth with the napkin, having finished his food, “I guess I’d better mosey over there this morning and check it out before someone else gets hired.”
Not that anyone else was going to be offered the job.
“Figured you might.” Wes nodded to the wall where his deputy’s jacket and a winter coat hung. “Ms. Lorna said she expected you for lunch and you’d better be wearing that winter coat when you come in or she’ll be seriously mad.”
Another grin split Earl’s lips. “Wouldn’t want to make Ms. Lorna mad. She might ban me from eatin’ at the Peaches ‘N Cream. Best food in town. Course I’ll have to shower and shave, too,” he said, rubbing his scraggly graying reddish-brown beard. “That woman expects her customers to be presentable.”
“That she does.” Wes suspected Lorna Doone had lectured Earl on this subject more than once and had a special rule about his appearance in her café more to get him to pay attention to his own hygiene than any snobbishness. Everyone in town knew that Lorna had a heart of gold and mush beneath her gruff, blunt exterior.
Earl stood, gathered up his breakfast box, as well as Wes’s, and took them to the trash. Wes could’ve insisted he’d do it himself, but understood it was Earl’s way of helping out with the food and thanking him for the warm spot to sleep last night. As he often did, Wes wondered what had brought Earl to town and what had happened to him in the war to make him so disassociated with society’s norms.
If it weren’t for Lloyd Justice taking a chance and hiring him when Wes wandered into town six years ago, he figured he might be as lost as Earl. Lord knows he had ghosts enough to haunt him.