A Forever Christmas(51)
“None,” she replied. “And I haven’t found any matches to missing persons files since our system came back up yesterday,” she added.
“Would be nice to tell ‘Angel’ who she really is by Christmas,” Rick speculated.
Alma exchanged glances with her brother. “Maybe Angel doesn’t want to know who she is,” Alma suggested.
Had Angel said something to Alma? Gabe wondered. “What makes you say that?” he asked suspiciously.
Alma shrugged. “Just a gut feeling,” she admitted. “I figure if it really mattered so much to her, she would have been pushing us to try harder.”
“Meaning what?” Gabe asked. Was she suggesting that Angel wanted to cover something up?
“Down, Gabe. I meant no disrespect here. It’s just that maybe, on some level, she’s afraid that she won’t want to find out who she is. Maybe, when you found her, she was already running from something.”
Gabe had his own theories on that. He snorted. “Most likely whoever it was who left those fatal notches on her brake lines.”
Rick nodded, agreeing. “Sounds like a good theory to me. Too bad the sedan was so badly damaged. There might have been a decent set of prints or two we could have lifted.”
Gabe nodded, but his mind had raced ahead and was now elsewhere. What if someone did recognize her from that photocopy Alma had sent out? How was he going to be able to determine that whoever came looking for Angel wasn’t the guy who’d obviously set out to kill her?
He frowned. “Really wish you hadn’t sent out that poster, Alma.”
“We had to do something,” she pointed out defensively. “Can’t just hang back and let her go on wondering who she is for the rest of her life.”
What Alma said was true enough on the surface, but what if what Angel found out was something she would have rather left buried in the recess of her mind? He’d be doing her no favors by digging all that up.
Just then, a loud noise erupted from the rear of the building where their jail cells were located. Stunned, all three law enforcement officers quickly made their way to the back where they discovered Ben Walker, the man known affectionately as one of Forever’s two resident drunks, was standing on his cot, looking properly terrified by the slip of a woman standing on the other side of the cell’s bars, shouting at him to stop acting like the state’s biggest ass and the greatest disappointment of her life. The sentiment was reinforced and peppered with a great many blue words.
“Now, Eleanor, you know I’m going to have to fine you for all those cuss words coming out of that genteel mouth of yours,” Rick told the woman mildly. Glancing toward his brother-in-law, he asked, “How much is Eleanor up to now, Joe?”
Joe paused for a second to calculate, then answered, “Twenty-five dollars by last count.”
“Well, it’s all worth it,” Eleanor declared with a toss of her dyed flaming-red hair. “You’d cuss, too, if you had to be married to that poor excuse for a man,” she informed the sheriff, gesturing dismissively at her husband.
Rick took hold of the woman’s shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Eleanor, it’s almost Christmas and in the spirit of the season, I’m going to forget about your fine—but I want you to practice a little of that Christian charity you’re so famous for and give your husband another chance.”
“Another chance?” she echoed incredulously. “I’ve already given him another chance. I’ve given him a dozen extra chances—”
“Then it shouldn’t be all that hard to give him one more,” Rick said amiably. There was resistance in the woman’s rounded face. “Do it as a favor to the rest of us,” he coaxed.
Eleanor Walker, who had at one point in time been considered to be quite stunning, sighed dramatically. Twice. And then she shrugged in surrender, mumbling, “All right, but only for you, Sheriff.”
“Thank you, Eleanor. Can’t ask for anything better than that.” Rick looked pointedly at the man still standing on his cot, eyeing his wife fearfully. It made for a ludicrous scene, seeing as how Ben was twice his wife’s size. “And you, Ben, I want you to promise not to touch a drop of anything with alcohol in it for the next thirty days—”
“Thirty days!” Eleanor cried, outraged that the time limit was so short.
“Thirty days?” Ben lamented at the same time. The expression on his face clearly indicating that he viewed thirty days to be close to an eternity.