Autumn Blue Read online

  Sidney didn’t go in to see the quilts. Instead she said good-bye to Mary, ducking between the horse barn and the back of the bleachers overlooking a dirt arena where a youngsters’ rodeo was going on, so that she would avoid running into any more old friends. She wandered toward the old log cabin set back by the outer fence. It had been part of one of the original homesteads there in Ham Bone, sitting on the county fairgrounds now because the real estate it used to occupy had become a parking lot for the Cascade Savings and Loan. Members of the town’s historical society had restored it, redecorating the inside to look the way it might have back in 1879 when William Dangle, the town founder, lived there while mining for gold. Since that didn’t pan out so well for him, he began logging, making his fortune not so much from the timber as from the rich, mostly level farmland that was exposed.

  It was quiet there on the back side of everything. Most of the locals were no longer interested in the old cabin with a rusty crosscut saw mounted on the wall of the covered porch.

  Beside the cabin was a new acquisition: a miniature white chapel, the one that used to rest alongside the state highway leading to Mount Baker before the road was widened. The old sign had been moved, too: Weary Traveler, Stop and Pray. Sidney was curious. She had always wondered how many people could fit inside the tiny steepled structure. She stepped up on the creaky porch and pushed on the double doors.

  Her girls would like this. It was like a playhouse, only it was a play church. There were four short pews, benches really, facing a small oak podium. If Rebecca were there, she would be behind that podium in two seconds flat, preaching flamboyantly to an imaginary congregation. Sidney smiled. She used to take her kids to the community church in town. It was not long after the girls witnessed their first baptismal service that she saw them baptizing other children down at the public pool. There had been a plethora of repentant sinners that day, waiting in line while Rebecca, a white towel draped over her shoulders like a robe, immersed them “in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, ’til death do us part.”

  She stepped around the pews and looked up to the pine boards on the vaulted ceiling. In the distance she could still hear the voice of the rodeo MC and an occasional cheer from the small crowd.

  The tears came unexpectedly, and she sank down onto the first pew, pulled a tissue from her pocket, and dabbed at the corners of her eyes as she stared at the patterns in the worn hardwood floor. She had lost him. Despite all her attempts to protect, to guide, to prepare her son for this world. As a newborn she had wrapped him tightly in soft flannel because the maternity ward nurse told her it made the infant feel securely embraced in his mother’s womb. Over the years she had buckled him into car seats, bundled him in warm jackets, held his hand so that he wouldn’t wander into the street or get himself stolen at the mall. But it was all in vain. She had protected her son in body, but somehow failed to defend his vulnerable heart.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. “I don’t know what to do. Please bring someone to help me. Someone to help Ty. A father who will love him and the girls. I just can’t do this on my own.”

  She sat still for some time, grateful for the solitude, a sense of peace settling over her. She felt calm, as if God really had heard her cry for help and the angelic Coast Guard had already been dispatched, hovering over Tyson, preparing to rescue him, wherever he was, his head bobbing among the dark waves.

  4

  MONDAY NIGHT there was still no sign of Tyson. Sidney made a cup of licorice tea and plopped into the big green wing back her mother had given her, propping her feet on the coffee table with a sigh. Her first sip of tea scalded her lip. She jerked, lowered the mug to her lap, and dropped her head wearily to the back of the chair.

  She had made it through another day of work at the insurance office, another evening of feeding the girls vegetable stew from the slow cooker and nutty whole-grain bread that she had thrown together in her bread machine that morning. She signed more papers from the school, barely reading them, and repaired a split in the seam of Sissy’s backpack. It was getting harder with each passing hour to feign normalcy for the sake of her daughters. The girls were in their room now, reading and doing homework.

  Sidney could no longer pretend that her son was just somewhere beyond the perimeter of trees at the edge of their yard camping out under the stars. It occurred to her that a boy on the run could get pretty far hitchhiking. Ty could be in Canada or California for all she knew, or in the dark alleys of Seattle where drug dealers and deviants preyed on kids like him—confused, angry children running like animals from forest fires that they hadn’t kindled but that had burned them just the same.

  It was after eight o’clock but not dark yet; they were still on daylight saving time. The September sky had deepened to soft violet. Across the street, Mr. Bradbury was spraying his garden with the hose. He reminded her of her dad a little. Not in looks so much; Mr. Bradbury was taller, with broader shoulders and long, gangly arms. But there he was, predictably doing what he did every night around this time—on the nights it didn’t rain, anyway—wearing that same dove-gray cardigan sweater, faithfully spraying his black-eyed Susans and orange mums. Just like her dad used to do. Mr. Bradbury’s entire life was packaged up as neatly, she was sure, as his immaculate yard. Checkbook always balanced, bills paid a week or two before they were due, that classic Lincoln lubed and oiled precisely on schedule. She missed her stable, dependable father, gone now for five years. She remembered how her mother had grieved for him, the man she had slept beside for forty years, and at the same instant Sidney had a twinge of revelation. Hadn’t she heard that Mr. Bradbury’s wife died just last year? He must be grieving, too. She should go over there, maybe bring him a pie or a loaf of orange oatmeal bread. Yes, he would love her bread; everyone did. And with the delay timer on her bread machine, she could deliver it to him after work tomorrow, still warm.

  A car cruised up to her driveway and surprised her by turning in. Sidney’s heart lurched. The sheriff. Hot tea splashed on her bare thigh and soaked into her khaki shorts.

  She stood, gripping her tea mug, straining her eyes to see the shape of Tyson in the backseat of the patrol car. From the front door she waited for what seemed like a day and a half before the uniformed deputy opened his car door and stepped out. Mr. Bradbury had been headed inside for the night, but froze halfway up his front steps, staring curiously from across the road. The deputy walked toward Sidney without so much as a glance back toward his car. “Mrs. Walker?”

  “Did you find my son?”

  He shook his head. Sidney’s blood was charged, racing through her veins. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. If he had been in the car, Tyson would be on his way to jail. But if they hadn’t found him, then he was still lost, still running, out there in that terrible unknown that haunted her with alarming visions every waking hour. The deputy stopped at the base of her steps, a tall, thick-shouldered man with some kind of Latin blood. Probably Mexican. His dark eyes were cold and she knew instantly that he had not come as a friend. “I need to ask you some questions.”

  Should she invite him in? No, she didn’t want the girls to hear this. They knew their brother was on the run, but Sidney had tried to shelter them from the specific details. “Ask away,” she said.

  He stepped up to the porch. She read the name bar pinned to his starched khaki shirt just below the Winger County sheriff’s badge. Deputy A. Estrada. Sidney drew back, leaning against the doorjamb, putting a comfortable distance between her and the ominous visitor. She hugged herself, running her hands over the goose bumps on her bare arms.

  “When was the last time you saw your son, Tyson, Mrs. Walker?”

  “The morning he ran off from school.” He should know that. The school counselor had called the Sheriff’s Department immediately that Friday afternoon to report that he had broken his probation, and Sidney had been in touch with them regularly since then. “It was the ninth.”

  He cocked his head, his p
iercing eyes narrowing. “You’re telling me you haven’t seen him since then? He hasn’t come home at all?”

  She nodded. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  He raised a dark eyebrow and inspected her face without speaking. He might as well have called her a liar. Sidney had a fleeting impulse, a vision of her leg shooting out karate-style, kicking the sour-faced deputy sheriff off her porch. Instead, she reminded herself that he was just doing his job. Mr. Bradbury had obviously changed his mind about retiring for the night. He was stooped over, popping dead heads from the mums growing outside his picket fence and casting furtive glances across the road.

  “You wouldn’t mind me taking a look in his room, then?”

  She straightened, inflating herself to her largest stature, trying for the life of her to avoid being intimidated by the badge, the gun on his hip, his broad chest and shoulders, and those austere eyes. “Yes, I would mind. My girls are inside and I don’t want them upset. What are you looking for, anyway? You know he turned himself in right after the incident at Graber’s Market. The only thing he took was a bottle of wine and he didn’t even make it out the door with that.”

  The store proprietor had been watching Ty via strategically placed mirrors, saw him tuck the Mad Dog 20/20 inside his jacket, and tackled the boy before he made it out the automatic sliding door. The bottle shattered. Sidney was shocked when she learned that her son had then rolled onto his back, pulled his pellet gun out of his pants, and pointed it directly beneath Mitch Graber’s chin. Mitch backed off, thinking of course that it was a real gun, and Ty ran out the door. Sidney had heard the patrol car sirens from her bedroom that warm August night, never suspecting for one moment that her son was the cause of them, thinking that he was just in the woods out back cooling off after a heated argument in which she insisted that he would indeed be attending his freshman year of high school, whether all the teachers were idiots or not.

  The deputy smirked. “I’d turn myself in too if I needed somebody to tweeze all those glass splinters out of my chest.”

  “Well, I’ll bet you got a good laugh out of that down there at the Sheriff’s Department,” Sidney retorted. “He probably looked like he’d been shot, with all that Mad Dog bleeding into his jacket. You all must have been rolling on the floors.”

  The deputy’s smirk disappeared. “Look, Mrs. Walker, I’m just trying to do my job here. I’m not the bad guy. Your son’s crime got real serious the minute he pulled out a gun. He’s charged with attempted armed robbery and that’s a felony.”

  “But it wasn’t a real gun.”

  “Yes, ma’am, it was. In the eyes of the law, anyway.”

  “The thing shoots little plastic BBs. The boys around here shoot one another with them all the time.”

  “Even threatening someone with a squirt gun is a crime nowadays. Anyway, the judge released Tyson to your custody with strict stipulations, including that he was to go nowhere but school and home until his sentencing hearing. Now he’s on the run and I have reason to believe he’s committed another crime.”

  Sidney’s heart sank in her chest. “What kind of crime?”

  “A burglary in town.”

  She shook her head. “Ty wouldn’t do that. He’s not a bad boy, Deputy.” But she immediately wondered. Who was the angry young man who had taken over sweet, compassionate Tyson’s body?

  “That’s why I’d like to take a look inside. To see if he might have stowed any of the stolen items in there.”

  “He hasn’t been here,” she stated firmly, sliding her body directly in front of her door. “Believe me, if he had, I would know it. I’m not going to let you come into my home with that gun on your hip and scare my daughters.”

  His full lips pulled into a straight line and he gazed at her as if pondering his next move.

  The front door suddenly opened behind her, and before Sidney could stop her, Sissy was on the porch, eye-to-eye with the deputy’s Glock, or whatever he packed in his black leather holster. Her youngest daughter peered up at him with a sweet smile. “Hi.”

  “Sissy, you go on back inside,” Sidney said.

  She began to back up. “Are you the sheriff that came to my class?”

  His face softened slightly. “I might be. Who’s your teacher?”

  “Mrs. Gilbreath.”

  Sidney gently pushed Sissy behind her. Rebecca peered curiously around the doorjamb. “Will you girls please go back in and let the deputy and me talk in private?” She emphasized the last word, hoping old Mr. Bradbury’s hearing was good enough to take the hint. It was dark enough now that he was probably plucking off perfectly good blooms just for an excuse to stand out there within earshot.

  Sissy called out a friendly “’Bye” as the door closed.

  Deputy Estrada ran one hand across his jaw. He would have been a strikingly handsome man without the pinched forehead and squinty eyes. “Something tells me they’re not afraid of me.”

  “Just the same, I’d rather you not come in.”

  “You know, Mrs. Walker, if you’re knowingly possessing stolen goods . . .”

  “I am not doing any such thing!” Now she was indignant, outraged. How dare he insult her like that? She felt branded, as if someone had burned the letter L for loser on her bare arm. Like she was one of those pathetic, dysfunctional women on COPS, only she still happened to have good teeth. It was as if he knew all about the past, all those sordid situations that Dodge had dragged her through. But her ex-husband was gone now. Cut off. She was making a new life for herself and the kids.

  Maybe it was the shards of truth that sliced into her from his comment that enraged her so. Like the shattered bottle hidden inside Ty’s jacket. She was guilty. Guilty of being an idiot. Believing that Dodge had really won that big-screen TV in a poker game. That all the nice things he brought home had been gifts from friends or incredible deals that he just couldn’t pass up. The first time a pair of officers from the Bellingham Police Department had shown up at their door, she had been shocked. Ty was a baby on her hip then. And now, it was like déjà vu, standing out there on her porch and staring into a badge, only this time Ty was the suspect. The phrase “Like father, like son” popped into her mind uninvited.

  “Look, Deputy . . .” She sighed, rubbing one temple that was beginning to throb. “If you had a search warrant, you would have pulled it out by now. Whether you believe me or not, I’m not hiding anything. I’m just tired. Please, go away now. I have to get my kids to bed.”

  He nodded curtly, glaring. “Have it your way, Mrs. Walker.”

  She watched him turn and walk to his car, head high and shoulders back like a marine. He glanced up at her again before ducking his head, sliding in, and slamming the door. The official green sedan accelerated quickly once on the road, and Sidney stood there massaging her hammering chest until the car’s red taillights disappeared around the bend.

  “Good night, Mr. Bradbury!” she called, adding “You nosy old coot” under her breath.

  He looked up as if startled to see her there. “Oh, good night now,” he stammered almost inaudibly, then turned and headed down the path to his front door.

  5

  IT WAS A TERRIBLE SHOCK, catching Millard Bradbury so off guard that he stumbled backward several steps and caught the front doorjamb for support. The Winger County Herald lay forgotten at his feet.

  A mole. Dad-blasted blind-as-a-doorknob mole! It had pushed up a string of mounds from the picket fence that bordered the grassy field on the west halfway to the center of his immaculate lawn, where the tunnel was punctuated by a pile of rich brown earth.

  His breath became short as he strode down the concrete steps. Stopping abruptly at the bottom, he detoured to his left toward the garage, which was set back at the end of the driveway, and emerged from it with shovel in hand. As he approached the scene of the crime, he tiptoed, holding the rough, wooden handle like the shaft of a spear, ready to send the mud-sucking rodent to its maker the moment it showed its snout.


  He waited. The mound of dirt was still. Birds trilled and swooped through the sky, oblivious to the weighty drama playing out beneath them. A squash-colored school bus screeched to a stop across the unlined county road, rumbling and smoking as the little girls from the house across the street boarded. A row of curious faces peered out its windows at the seemingly frozen man, knees slightly bent and arm raised like a statue of an old warrior, but Millard did not see them as the bus roared past.

  Still no sign of movement. He slowly lowered himself to one knee, using the shovel for support. Then, down on all fours, he listened. Perhaps if he put his ear right down to the earth like the Indians used to do to tell if the buffalo were coming . . . He lay flat out, his face on the cool, damp lawn. At first there was no sound other than the current of his own breath. Of course, his hearing wasn’t all it used to be. He waited patiently, closing his eyes to enhance concentration. This invasion was an act of war and he could be as stealthy as, if not more than, the enemy. After all, he was the one with superior intelligence. His mouth spread into a sinister grin as his fingers fondled the handle of the shovel. He was the master of the guillotine.

  Finally he heard something. Yes. The ground was definitely vibrating. He forced himself to remain still, as still as a cat hunting in the tall grass.

  “Mr. Bradbury!”

  His heart leapt to his throat. He sprung to his elbows, his head jerking toward the alarmed female voice.

  “Please, don’t move. It’s me, Sidney Walker, from across the street. Let me get help.”

  “No!” he stammered, awkwardly pushing himself to his hands and knees. She dropped to her knees, her hand on his back. “I’m fine.” He tried to stand but the blood rushed from his head and he abruptly sat back onto the shovel blade, causing the handle to spring upward, wobbling in the air.