Page 4 of Under the Lights
His parents’ home was in a small neighborhood made up mostly of retirees, though his mother still worked. She claimed she enjoyed doing insurance claim work for a large auto body shop, but Chase suspected she couldn’t handle her husband 24/7. Nobody could. Today she was home, though, her shiny compact car squeezed into the driveway alongside the massive Cadillac that Bob Sanders had bought back during Clinton’s first term in the Oval Office.
His mom was on the sofa when he walked in, watching some kind of cooking show. “Hi, honey. Your father’s out back.”
It was the standard greeting, but he stopped and kissed her cheek on his way through the house. “Hi, Ma.”
His old man was on the tiny dock that matched all the other tiny docks up and down the canal that ran through the neighborhood. He had a bulk package of cheap chicken drumsticks and was shoving a couple of pieces of raw poultry into each of his wire traps. Ma would be making fresh crabmeat-salad sandwiches for lunch.
Chase hated seafood. Especially crab.
“You heading north today?” Bob asked when Chase reached the dock.
“In a few minutes. Ma made a pie for Mrs. McDonnell.”
“Lucky her.”
Chase grinned and shoved his hands in his pockets, but the smile faded as the silence stretched toward awkward. They’d never had a lot to say to each other, but their relationship was particularly strained at the moment.
Bob Sanders made no bones about being disappointed—and maybe a little embarrassed—by the failure of Chase’s business, no matter how much of it was due to the economy and Seth’s financial shenanigans rather than mismanagement on Chase’s part. Chase’s impending return to Stewart Mills had also dredged up his buried resentment that his father had written him off as stupid, and it had taken Coach McDonnell to show him he wasn’t.
Bob lowered the last trap into the water, shoved the empty chicken packaging back into the plastic shopping bag and turned to face Chase. “Get everything straightened out?”
“More or less. Got most people willing to wait for pay until the lawyers catch up with Seth. Scraped together enough to stay out of bankruptcy court, and managed to find contractors to handle the jobs I can’t afford to do now. Things are tight, but I’ll probably get to keep my shirt.”
“And you think it’s a good idea to go to New Hampshire right now?”
Yeah, he did, because Coach needed him. “Probably not, but I’m going anyway. This mess will still be here when I get back.”
Chase followed his dad back to the house and, since the conversation seemed to have run its course, he got the pie and got the hell out of there. He thought about ditching the hostess gift in a rest area trash can, but if his mother tried to call him at the McDonnells’ and the pie—or lack of one—came up in conversation, he’d never hear the end of it.
He turned the music up too loud, drove a little too fast and drank way too much coffee, but he pulled into Stewart Mills a little past six. A perfectly respectable time to show up on Coach’s doorstep.
As he drove through Stewart Mills, though, he noticed the town had changed a lot, and not necessarily for the better. A lot of For Sale signs. A few bank auction signs. They’d obviously done some restoration work on the historic covered bridge, but it didn’t distract from the dark, silent shell of the paper mill looming behind it that used to be the lifeblood of the town.
There was also a new stop sign, he realizedashe went through the intersection. Without stopping.
And the Stewart Mills Police Department had a fairly new four-wheel-drive SUV, too.
There hadn’t been a stop sign at that intersection fourteen years ago, Chase thought as he pulled off to the side of the road, making sure there was plenty of room for both his truck and the SUV with the flashing blue lights.
It was one hell of a welcome home.
02
Kelly untethered her weapon and approached the pickup truck with her hand on the butt of the gun. It wasn’t because of the out-of-state license plates—those were common enough due to tourists having to pass through Stewart Mills to get to the four-wheeling and snowmobiling playgrounds farther north—but because it was protocol. The simplest of traffic stops could turn ugly fast if the idiot behind the wheel had something to hide.
She stopped a little behind the driver’s window so she could see him, but he would only be able to catch glimpses of her uniform in his mirror. As she opened her mouth to ask for his license and registration, the pieces clicked in her overworked mind and she shut it again. New Jersey plates. The timing. The profile she used to moon over.
Chase Sanders was back in town, and blowing a stop sign was one hell of an entrance.
“License and registration, please.”
His head tilted just a little and Kelly rolled her eyes. Here it came—all the cheesy charm men shoveled out when the badge was pinned to a female breast. If he didn’t at least make a comment about the handcuffs, she’d do an extra mile on the treadmill.
“Here you go, Officer.” He handed the stuff out the window. “How did such a pretty lady end up in law enforcement?”
Gee, that was original. And since he could only see her from neck to waist, and her vest didn’t do much for the girls, the fake flattery was wasted. “A guy with no respect for traffic laws broke my heart in high school and this is how I get my revenge.”
“Did he have no respect for frisking, too, because I wouldn’t mind taking the payback for that one.”
