Debbie Macomber's Cedar Cove Series

  Her day in court with Judge Lockhart-Griffin had been revealing, to say the least. People did stupid things and seemed shocked when they were held accountable in a court of law.

  Anson wasn’t like the people who stood before the judge. He’d been working hard to do the right thing, and then it seemed everything had blown up in his face. No one believed he was innocent. Yes, he was angry and disillusioned with the Gundersons—understandably because they’d laid him off—but that didn’t mean he’d started the fire.

  She sat on her bed and studied her notes from the day in court. The phone rang in the distance and she left it for Eddie to answer, since he considered it his duty to check all incoming calls. He was okay as brothers went, she supposed, but sometimes he could be a real pest.

  “Allison!” he shouted as if she were deaf. “It’s for you.”

  “Who is it?” she demanded.

  “Some guy. He didn’t give his name.”

  Only half interested, Allison reached for the receiver in her room. She paused. “Hang up, Eddie.” When she heard the click, she said, “Hi,” in an indifferent voice.

  “Allison.”

  Her heart stopped. It was Anson.

  “Where are you?” she asked, gripping the phone with both hands.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sort of.”

  She wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  “I needed to hear your voice,” he said. “I know what happened at The Lighthouse. Everyone thinks I did it, don’t they?”

  She couldn’t lie to him. “Yes.”

  He didn’t respond for a moment. “I swear to you, Allison, it wasn’t me.”

  “I believe you.” It was hard to speak past the lump in her throat. In her joy at hearing from him, she nearly floated off the bed. “How did you get past Eddie?” That was a crazy question when so many others were far more important.

  “I had a friend of mine call. I’m using a throwaway cell phone. No one’ll be able to trace it. I don’t want to get you into trouble.”

  “Do you need anything?”

  “No…just the sound of your voice. I knew if I heard it I’d be okay.”

  “I will be, too,” she said breathlessly. She longed to tell him how desperately she missed him and how difficult it was to go to school every day and defend him. Anson didn’t need to hear any of that. His troubles far outweighed hers.

  “Has it been bad for you?” he asked. “Did the sheriff question you?”

  “Yes. I…told them about you coming to my window that night.”

  “That’s okay—you had to tell the truth.”

  “You…you smelled of smoke. I was too upset to realize it right away…. I—I didn’t say anything to the sheriff.”

  He didn’t comment or explain. Instead, he asked. “Is there a warrant out for my arrest?”

  “No.” She lowered her voice on the off-chance Eddie was listening. “But the sheriff says you’re a…a person of interest.”

  He seemed relieved to hear that. “No matter what anyone tells you, Allison, I swear I didn’t do it.”

  “I know.” She closed her eyes and held her breath, as if to keep him close. Then she wondered if he had a specific reason for reaching out to her, if he needed her help. “Should I send you some money?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  Her heart pounded so hard that her pulse echoed in her ears. The money box had been taken from the office the night of the fire. Allison had heard the sheriff mention it to her father.

  Anson hadn’t been able to save any money because everything he’d earned as a dishwasher and later as a prep cook had gone toward restitution for the fire he’d set in the park. If he left Cedar Cove with money, it hadn’t come from his employment. She wanted to ask what he was living on, but she was afraid of the answer, afraid of the truth.

  “Come back, Anson,” she pleaded softly. “My dad will help you.”

  “He can’t,” he returned, “not this time. I appreciate everything he did, but this is bigger. I’m eighteen now, Allison. This isn’t going to be handled in juvie. I’d be tried as an adult and I can’t risk that.”

  “Please.” She didn’t want to beg. “I can’t stand not knowing where you are or what’s going on.”

  “It’s too late, Allison. I’m sorry—sorrier than I can ever tell you.”

  “It isn’t too late. It can’t be.” Anson didn’t seem to understand that they’d never be together if he didn’t clear his name.

  “Where I am,” he began, then stopped abruptly.

  “Yes?” she urged.

  “There’s no going back for me. I shouldn’t have phoned.”

  “No! I’m so glad you did.”

  “I have to go now.”

  The reluctance in his voice made her feel like crying. She wanted to argue with him, plead with him to talk to her for just a few minutes more. Instinctively she knew it wouldn’t make any difference.

  “Will you call again?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Please.” All her love was in that word.

  “I’ll try. Believe in me, Allison. You’re the only good thing that’s ever happened to me.”

  “I believe in you. With all my heart I believe in you—I believe in us.”

  The phone disconnected.

  For a long time, Allison just sat on her bed, holding the receiver. Tears pooled in her eyes but she held them back, unwilling to let them spill over.

  Some time later, she heard the garage door close as her mother came home from work. Rosie Cox was teaching fifth grade this year at one of Cedar Cove’s elementary schools.

  “Allison,” her mother said as she walked past her bedroom door. She knocked once. “Would you mind peeling five potatoes for dinner?”

  “Sure.” She tried to sound normal, as though everything in her world was exactly as it should be. Apparently she failed, because her mother opened her bedroom door and glanced in, her face showing signs of worry.

  “Everything all right?” she asked gently.

  Allison shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

  Her mother stepped into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “I remember when you were three years old and you decided you were perfectly capable of pouring your own bowl of cereal.” She smiled as she spoke. “It was early one Saturday morning and you sat in the middle of the kitchen floor, where you emptied the contents of an entire box into a single bowl. I walked in, and you looked up at me with almost the same how-did-this-happen-to-me expression you have now.”

  Allison had heard that cereal story a dozen times. “I didn’t do anything,” she insisted, and she hadn’t.

  Her mother patted her hand. “Does this concern Anson in some way?”

  Allison wanted to deny everything, to vent an anger that came from frustration—and fear. Being defensive was how she would’ve responded a few years ago. But she knew that ploy wouldn’t work. Lowering her head, she whispered, “He phoned.”

  Exactly as Allison had suspected, her mother snapped to attention. “When? Just now?”

  Head still bent, Allison nodded.

  “We have to tell the sheriff,” her mother said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “Mom,” she cried, “we can’t! Anson swore to me he’s innocent. He told me he didn’t set the fire and I believe him.”

  Her mother slid one arm around Allison’s shoulders. “If that’s the case, we don’t have to worry. We want Sheriff Davis to solve this so Anson can come home, right?”

  Allison wanted that more than anything.

  Her mother called the sheriff, who arrived about the same time her father did. Everyone gathered around the kitchen table, and Sheriff Davis questioned Allison again and again. He reviewed every detail of her brief conversation with Anson. Halfway through, the sheriff’s cell phone rang. He excused himself to answer it, going into the other room, then returning to the kitchen a few minutes later.

  “Th
e phone is untraceable,” he announced. “We don’t know where he is.”

  That was what Anson had told her, but she was relieved to hear it, anyway.

  “Do you think he’ll phone again?” Sheriff Davis asked, pinning her with a look.

  “I…I don’t know.” But Allison prayed that he would.

  “You have any idea how he’s living?”

  “No.”

  “What about money?”

  “He said he didn’t need any.”

  Her parents exchanged a quick glance, knowing that she’d offered to give him what she had. She tried to defuse the tension, saying, “I asked him to come back, but he said he couldn’t.”

  “There might be a very good reason for that, Allison,” Sheriff Davis said. “An innocent man doesn’t need to hide. If he calls you again, you tell him I said that, all right?”

  Allison met his eyes and nodded. “I’ll tell him,” she promised.

  Eleven

  The day before Easter was always a busy time at Get Nailed. A lot of their clients attended church and wanted to look their best. She knew it was an important religious feast day, but Teri wasn’t much interested in church. It wasn’t how she’d been raised. Her mama was a single mother with three kids, struggling to make ends meet. She could barely keep them fed and clothed, let alone teach them about church. Teri, the eldest, had dropped out of high school at sixteen to attend beauty school and had her license the day she turned eighteen.

  She was good at her job, but it wasn’t the career she really wanted. Teri would’ve liked to spend her time around books. Be a librarian or even work in a bookstore or something like that. She was constantly reading. Her house had stacks of paperbacks in every room—romances and mysteries and biographies. Any title that caught her eye. Most of her extra cash went to books. With her lack of a social life outside the salon, they were great company.

  Being a stylist suited her well enough, and it paid the bills. Fortunately, she was talented and kept up with current styles; she also had a decent clientele. Her first customer of the day was Justine Gunderson, who came in for a trim.

  “I heard about what you did,” Justine teased her as she sat in Teri’s chair. Word had spread throughout the community. People talked, of course, and she’d been questioned again and again about meeting Bobby Polgar.

  Teri studied Justine’s thick, straight hair, which hung down her back—the kind of hair they had in shampoo advertisements, healthy and shiny. Teri’s own had been dyed, cut and permed so often she’d forgotten the original color. Dishwater blond, she guessed. At the moment it was dyed brown with red highlights, and she wore it ultra-short and spiked with gel. She was thinking of dyeing it black next week when there was a lull in the schedule. She’d see if she could get Jane to do it for her.

  “I’m impressed,” Justine said. “You cut Bobby Polgar’s hair.”

  People still talked about how she’d appeared at the televised chess match and bullied her way in to see the world-famous chess player. For pride’s sake, she’d made it seem easy; in truth it’d taken a lot of effort.

  Her arrival had caused a scene with those unpleasant security people. When they found her scissors, the guards acted as though she was some dangerous lunatic. She’d made such a fuss that Bobby himself had come out to see what she wanted, which was the only reason she’d even had a chance. He’d listened to her assessment that he needed a haircut and agreed to let her do it.

  With several bodyguard types following, she’d been escorted in to Bobby Polgar’s suite. When she entered, all kinds of people were milling about, giving him advice and making suggestions about the next chess match with the Russian. The moment Teri stepped into the fray, Bobby had lifted his hand and the room went silent. He’d stared at her, so she stared back. She’d told him to sit down, draped a towel over his shoulders and retrieved her scissors from one of the security people.

  “Like I said, your hair is what’s distracting you,” Teri had told him. “You don’t need other people’s advice. You know what you’re doing better than anyone.” In retrospect, it was a bold statement and Teri couldn’t quite understand why she even cared about this man and his silly chess match. All she knew was that she had this compelling urge to go to him and cut his hair. Go figure. She was the impulsive type and…well, it’d worked. Didn’t matter if she couldn’t explain it.

  Most everyone wanted to know what Bobby had said to her. This was the confusing part. A few minutes after she showed up, Bobby had asked everyone else to leave, and then it was just the two of them. She wished she had some fantastic story to tell, but she didn’t. She’d simply cut his hair and left. The entire time she was in that room, he probably didn’t say a dozen words to her. Not until she was back in Cedar Cove did she learn that he’d won the next match and the one after that.

  “Have you heard from him since?” Justine asked.

  Teri arranged the cape over Justine’s shoulders and fastened it. “Me? Nah. I didn’t even tell him my name.”

  “He didn’t talk to you?”

  “Not really. Nothing I’d consider a conversation, anyway.” In fact, Bobby Polgar hadn’t even bothered to pay her, which was a damn shame since she’d had to borrow twenty bucks to get to Seattle. But then, to be fair, Teri hadn’t asked for payment.

  “What’s Bobby like?”

  Teri held up a comb as she thought about Justine’s question. All week people had been asking her that and she was never sure what to tell them. “It’s hard to say, seeing he wasn’t all that communicative. He’s intense and…” She wanted to say “peculiar” but that didn’t seem quite right. “Strange,” she finished. “He’s just strange.”

  “They say he’s one of the greatest chess minds of our time.”

  “He is the greatest chess mind of our time,” Teri corrected. That much she’d garnered from Bobby himself, not to mention his handlers.

  “So you’re a fan?”

  “Not of Bobby, and not of chess, either. They don’t teach you much about the theory of chess in beauty school, you know?”

  “So what interested you in Bobby?” Justine asked as they walked to the shampoo bowl.

  “I don’t know,” Teri said slowly. “I saw him on television one morning and thought he was interesting looking. Then he lost that chess match. I knew what was wrong and that I could help him. I do stuff like that. People need something, and I do what I can. My mother’s the same way, God bless her.” Her mother also had a tendency to fall for the wrong guys, another trait Teri was afraid she’d inherited. At least Teri didn’t see any reason to marry them. She’d been through three or four rocky relationships, none of which had lasted more than six months. They’d all ended with her wanting to kick herself for being so stupid. Teri liked to think of herself as savvy and smart; life, however, had a way of proving her wrong.

  Teri lowered Justine’s head into the shampoo bowl. Their eyes met, and Teri offered her a quick smile as she turned on the water.

  “Thanks, Teri,” Justine said, suddenly intent.

  “For what?”

  “For not asking about the fire. That’s all anyone ever talks about. I haven’t gone out of the house in weeks, except when it’s absolutely necessary, because every time I do, people bombard me with questions.”

  The truth was, Teri had forgotten about the fire. With her own small world spinning around her brief moment of notoriety, the destruction of The Lighthouse had slipped her mind.

  “You okay?” Teri asked. One look at Justine said she wasn’t.

  Justine didn’t seem to hear and closed her eyes. Teri had discovered that there was something about working on women’s hair that had a relaxing effect on them and led to confidences and disclosures they might make at no other time. Barriers were lowered, and they discussed their lives and problems with surprising openness. Teri was convinced it had to do with her being admitted to their personal space, as well as her undivided focus and the soothing atmosphere at the salon. She sometimes said she shou
ld put out a shingle advertising that she did hair with free counseling on the side. She certainly had enough experience to know what not to do when it came to unhealthy relationships.

  “Seth and I are having a few problems,” Justine confessed, sounding sad and lost. Her voice was so low Teri had to strain to hear. “We’ll be all right…. It’s just that things are difficult now.”

  “Which they’re bound to be after something this upsetting,” Teri reassured her. Again, their eyes met.

  “We haven’t made love in weeks,” Justine whispered. “Not since the fire. Seth is so angry. He doesn’t know how to deal with this.” She closed her eyes again, and Teri gently squeezed her shoulder.

  “Don’t you worry,” Teri said. “Everything will work out, you wait and see.” She didn’t mean to serve up platitudes; every word was sincere. Teri had seen it happen over and over. Some trauma would upset a family and it was the marriage that took the brunt of that strain—but if the relationship was strong, husband and wife could survive it together.

  “How long have I been cutting your hair?” Teri asked. It wasn’t a rhetorical question.

  “I don’t know,” Justine replied. “Six or seven years for sure.”

  “That’s what I thought. I remember when you were dating Warren Saget. I never did understand what you saw in that geezer, but who you decided to date was your business. Then Seth came along and—oh, my goodness—you were dumbstruck. I ran into you down by the waterfront one Saturday, and I saw the way you looked at each other. You two were crazy in love, no mistake about that.”

  Justine’s eyes stayed closed as Teri washed her hair, but she smiled. “I remember those days, too. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other.”

  Teri grinned. “You pretended Seth meant nothing to you. I made the mistake of mentioning his name one time, and you nearly bit my head off.”

  “I most certainly did not,” Justine protested.

  “Did, too,” Teri retorted, working the shampoo into the long, thick hair. “I’ll bet Seth still looks at you the same way he did back then. There’s no denying that man loves you and you love him. Just hang in there, okay?”