Page 12 of Deputy Brand Gets Her Man
He looked right back at her. The amount of pissed off she was at her uncle was uncomfortable and unfamiliar. Uncle Garrett looked crestfallen. He was not being a jerk on purpose, and he was not enjoying it.
And yet she was mad. “Fine, you want details? I got details. I had a flat on the way home from work. Jeremiah saw me changin’ the tire and stopped to help. I invited him home for leftover lasagna as a thank you.”
“I saw him when he left, too,” Taylor put in.
Willow narrowed her eyes. “I knew you were secretly watchin’.”
Taylor shrugged. “If you knew, then it wasn’t a secret.” Then she returned her attention to her brother-in-law, the sheriff. “Jeremiah left about fifteen minutes after I did. Walked past the fork in the driveway. I was still on the front porch.”
“Walked?” Garrett asked, shifting his gaze to Willow. “Why was he walkin’?”
Willow glanced at Jeremiah again, but he gave a subtle shake of his head and she knew for sure he’d been told to keep quiet. She didn’t like that notion one bit. Was her uncle trying to catch her in a lie? Trying to catch Jeremiah in one, more likely, but still…
“I didn’t want my very curious mamma makin’ somethin’ out of his visit, so I asked him to park at the pull-off and ride the rest of the way with me. He obliged, like any gentleman would. We went to the cottage and ate leftover lasagna from Aunt Chelsea. Mom came out not long after we got there, and Gringo left a few minutes after she did. End of story.”
“All good, all good,” Uncle Garrett said in the tone he’d use on a spooked horse. “I just need the timing of all that, as close as you can?—”
“From the time he came upon me with the flat, he was with me about an hour and twenty minutes,” Willow said. “It was around midnight when he pulled over behind me on the road, and about one-twenty when he left my place. Tack on ten minutes for the walk back to his car. Now, will you please tell me what this is all about?”
Garrett nodded. “Somebody threw a brick through the window at the pharmacy last night. It hit that old wall clock that’s been hangin’ there since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Right in the face. A cryin’ shame is what it is. But at least we know exactly what time it happened, ‘cause that clock stopped dead. Seventeen minutes after midnight.” He gave a slow shake of his head, then nodded at Jeremiah. “You’re off the hook, son, as I knew you would be.”
“Why was he on the hook to begin with, Uncle Garrett?” Willow asked. The edge in her tone surprised her. From the quick quirk of his eyebrows, she thought it surprised Jeremiah, too.
He spoke while Uncle Garrett was still wiping the wounded look off his face. “An anonymous caller said they saw me do it,” Jeremiah told her.
Willow tilted her head to one side, then turned to her uncle again. “What was taken from the drug store? Cash, or opioids?”
“Neither,” Garrett said. “Looks like pure vandalism.”
She met Jeremiah’s eyes and saw a reflection of her own doubts about that.
“Well,” Taylor said, “would you gentlemen care for a mid-mornin’ snack? We have fresh apple pie and more coffee at the house.”
“I have to get back to work,” Garrett said. “Willow, Jeremiah, I apologize for all this. Willow, I really had to ask?—”
“You were just doing your job, Sheriff,” Jeremiah said. But he’d been calling him Garrett up until then.
Uncle Garrett felt that formality as it was intended, then wheeled his horse and rode back alone.
“I’d best go with him,” Willow’s dad said. “Somethin’s…off.”
“Somethings been off ever since the fire,” Taylor said. “Go on, take care of your brother.”
Wes and his horse galloped off after Garrett.
“I’m fixin’ to walk the stream a bit further before I head back,” Taylor said to Willow. “You should ride back with Jeremiah.”
“Mom, I don’t?—”
“Don’t back talk your mamma.” Taylor handed the thermos and empty mugs to Willow. “Take those, will you? I’ll pick ‘em up later.” And then she was waving, turning, and walking away along the bank of the creek where it cut the meadow in two. She vanished into some trees, leaving Willow all alone with Jeremiah Thorne, the Gringo, her adopted cousin’s half-brother. Lord, the Brand family tree was more like a briar-patch tangle.
He took his foot out of the stirrup, and reached down for her. She grabbed his forearm and the reins, put her foot in the stirrup, and swung her leg forward and over the mare’s neck, so she mounted in front of him.
“Did they even introduce you?” she asked, patting the horse’s neck. “This is Starlight. She’s a three-year-old rescue. You could count her ribs when they brought her to us.”
“I didn’t know you took on rescues here,” he said.
“More and more,” she replied. “I don’t think it’s responsible or ethical to breed animals into existence when there are so many alive being abused. I’ve been arguin’ since I was ten that if you do one, you’re obligated to do something about the other. Well, my folks never could win an argument with me, so that year they took in a rescue just to shut me up. It went so well, they took in a few more the followin’ year, and a few more the year after that. Now a quarter of the herd are rescues. We heal ‘em, rehab ‘em, train ‘em, and then re-home ‘em someplace where they’ll be cared for proper.”
