Rainier Drive (Cedar Cove #6)(27)

“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.

“The 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.