“No telling,” Clark said. “Well, I’ll get home,” he added, smiling. “Thanks for everything, Keely.”
She smiled. “Thank you.”
“I’ll call you.”
She waved as he drove away. It was already dark. She went back inside, still puzzled about Ella’s condition.
* * *
BUT THERE WERE more puzzles to come. She’d tugged off her mother’s shoes and thrown a coverlet over her. Undressing an unconscious person was heavy work and Keely’s shoulder was already aching.
She was watching the news on their small color TV while doing a load of clothes when there was a knock at the door.
Most Saturday nights, there was an emergency at work and she was called in to assist. But the phone hadn’t rung. There weren’t even any messages, except for an odd call with nothing but static and then a click. She wondered if Bentley had driven over to collect her for an emergency.
When she opened the door, it was another surprise. Sheriff Hayes Carson was standing on her front porch. He wasn’t smiling.
“Hi, Keely,” he said. “Mind if I come in?”
“Of course not.” She held the door wide so that he could enter. He was a head taller than Keely, with brown-streaked blond hair that had a stubborn wave right over his left eyebrow. He had dark eyes that seemed to see right through people. In his mid-thirties, he was still a confirmed bachelor, and considered quite a catch. But Keely knew he hadn’t come calling in the middle of the night because he found her irresistible.
She went to turn the television down, and motioned him into a chair. She perched on the edge of the sofa.
“If it’s about the bar tonight,” she began worriedly.
“No,” he said gently. “Not quite. Keely, have you heard from your father lately?”
She was stunned. It wasn’t the question she’d anticipated. “No,” she stammered. “I haven’t heard a word from him since he dropped me off here when I was about thirteen,” she added. “Why?”
He seemed to be considering his options. He leaned forward. “You knew he’d fallen into some bad company before you left?”
“Yes,” she said, and shuddered. “One of his new friends slapped me around and left bruises,” she recalled. She’d never told that to anyone else. “I think it was the main reason he brought me back to my mother.”
Hayes’s sensuous mouth made a thin line. “Pity he wasn’t living in Jacobs County at the time,” he muttered.
Keely knew what he meant. She’d heard that Hayes was hell on woman-beaters. “It is, isn’t it?” she agreed. “Is my father in some sort of trouble?”
“We think he needs money. He may get in touch with you or your mother. This is important, Keely. If he does, you need to call me right away.” He was solemn as he spoke. “You could both be in terrible danger.”
“From my own father?” she asked, agape.
He was hesitant. “He’s not the father you remember. Not anymore.”
He never had been the father she’d wanted, she recalled, even if she’d tried to give him the love a father was due from his daughter. She could remember times when she was sick and her father left her alone, going out at odd hours and staying gone, sometimes for two days at a time, while Keely and the hired help kept the game park going. At the last, his drinking and his violent friends worried Keely more than she’d ever admitted.
“Is he mixed up in something illegal, Sheriff Carson?” she asked worriedly.
His face was a closed book, revealing nothing. “He’s got friends who are,” he said, sharing with a little of the truth. “They’re pushing him for money that he doesn’t have, and they want it very badly. We think he may have tried to contact your mother.”
“Why would you think that?” she asked slowly.
He sighed. “The bartender at Shea’s said she was yelling that her husband was going to kill her if she didn’t buy him off, and she was broke.”
Her heart skipped. “Broke? She said she was broke?” she exclaimed. “But she owns property, she gets rent—”
He hated being the one who had to tell her this. He ground his teeth. “She’s sold all the property, Keely, probably to pay her bar bills,” he said heavily. “One of the Realtors who was at the bar at the time mentioned it to me. There’s nothing left. She’s probably drained her savings, as well.”
Keely felt sick. She sank down into the sofa and felt wounded all over again. No wonder Ella didn’t want her to leave. Her mother couldn’t afford to hire someone to replace her for domestic work.
“I’m sorry,” Hayes said genuinely.
“No, it’s all right,” she replied, forcing a smile. “I did wonder. She let things slip from time to time.” Her green eyes were troubled. Her own small salary barely allowed her to own an ancient used car and buy gas to get to work, much less pay for utilities and upkeep. What Hayes had told her was terrifying. “What do you want me to do?” she asked, surmising why he’d come.
“I want you to tell me if you hear anything from or about your father,” he said gently. “There’s a lot at stake here. I wish I could tell you what I know, but I can’t.”
Keely recalled that her father’s friend had a police record. He’d bragged when he slapped her that he’d killed a woman for less than Keely had done, talking back to him.
She frowned. “Just before I came to Jacobsville,” she recalled, “Dad’s friend, Jock, said he’d killed a woman.”
“Jock?” He drew out a PDA and pulled up a screen. “Jock Hardin?”
Her heart flipped. “Yes. He was the one who hit me.”
He frowned. “Why did he hit you?”
She drew in a long breath. “I burned the rolls.”
Hayes cursed roundly and then apologized. He leaned forward and stared right into her eyes. “Did he do anything more than
