Deserves to Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

“Maybe you need a long vacation away from everything for awhile. See how it goes.”

She almost choked. That’s exactly what was going to happen, whether she wanted it to or not. Pregnancy leave.

Something in her expression must have showed because he became deadly serious. “You’d tell me if we weren’t okay, right?”

She reached over and clasped his hand. “We’re okay,” she assured him.

He heard the sincerity in her voice and nodded.

By the end of her second shift, Jessica hadn’t learned a lot more about the dead woman found on the O’Halleran ranch. She’d heard plenty of gossip, just snippets from customers that had peppered into the conversations about work, family, kids, school, friends, or grandkids. One item was about a preacher approaching retirement age who was leaving his wife for a young parishioner. There was also a missing dog, an apparent suicide, and a homicide investigation of a man who was either pushed, or fell, from a mountain trail around these parts. The biggest news stories by far rippling through the dining area over the clink of flatware and the endless loop of songs from the fifties and sixties was the county losing Dan Grayson as its sheriff and the discovery of the body of an unknown woman found in a creek winding through the O’Halleran ranch.

Unfortunately, Jessica heard nothing substantive about the dead woman and though she told herself it was just coincidence—a woman’s body found in a deep pool of a local creek—she couldn’t help the tide of panic that rose within her.

He’s here, she’d thought frantically. He’s here somewhere in Grizzly Falls.

By sheer will, she’d forced herself to remain calm as the hours wore on. Even if he really had found away to chase her to Grizzly Falls, she hadn’t sensed anyone following her. So far. Several times during the day, she’d scanned the dining area, but he hadn’t been inside the diner, she was sure of it.

Yet, she reminded herself.

She considered her options. Slim and none.

Except for Cade.

God help her that her fate was dependent on the cowboy who had put her in danger in the first place. It was pure hell to think she needed to depend on him.

At the end of her shift, Jessica glanced outside to the parking lot in front of the diner. Empty of vehicles, the security lamps casting blue pools of light over the snow-covered asphalt, the area looked a little surreal. Again snow was falling, softening the edges of ruts made by earlier vehicles. From inside the diner, with its bright lights and wide bank of windows, she felt as if she were in a fish bowl, that anyone hiding in the shadows could watch her every move undetected. Feeling a sudden chill, she told herself she was imagining things. She was safe. For now.

Nonetheless she squinted, trying to peer through the veil of snow.

“Hey, hit the switch for the sign that says we’re open. Just turn it off, so we can go home. It’s that one there, the one with the piece of black tape on it. Yeah, over there.” Misty was shouting her orders from behind the counter and waggling a finger toward a toggle switch near the door. “Then flip the sign on the door for the morons who can’t figure it out even when the neon goes dark.”

“Got it.” Jessica pushed on the switch, then twirled the two-sided hanging placard on the door so that it read COME IN, WE’RE OPEN to anyone looking at it from the interior and SORRY, WE’RE CLOSED to potential customers peering through the glass.

Misty slapped at another switch near the doors to the kitchen and half the interior lights turned off. “That should do it,” she said, one hand on the swinging doors. “You’d think people would understand that when we’re closed, we’re goddamn closed.” She was in a bit of a snit as the last customer had come in fifteen minutes before closing, idled over her meal, texting and playing some game on her phone before asking for a doggy bag and leaving half an hour after the restaurant was supposed to close.

Nell was a stickler for attending to each person who walked through the door and so, though the doors had been locked, the customer was not hurried out the door.

A bare fifteen minutes since the customer had left, almost forgetting the leftovers she’d asked to be bagged, the floors had been quickly mopped, chairs squared around each table, booths brushed off, each station cleaned. All the tables were sparkling, coffee mugs turned face down on the Formica surfaces, condiments refilled and standing at the ready for the morning crowd that was due to arrive within eight hours.

With one last glance through the windows, Jessica started untying her apron as she walked through the swinging door to the kitchen.

Armando and Marlon were long gone and Nell was in the office with the door shut, where, as each night, she was counting the day’s receipts and balancing the cash register.

Connie, one of the teenaged bus girls, was swabbing the kitchen floor with a mop that had seen better days, while sterile glasses were still steaming in the open dishwasher. The warm room smelled of pine-cleaner that didn’t quite mask the lingering odors of deep-fryer grease and coffee.

“I can’t believe this,” Misty said, digging through the purse she’d retrieved from her locker area. Shaking her head, she crumpled the empty cigarette pack she’d located and tossed it into the trash. “Anyone got a ciggy?”

As Jessica shook her head, Connie gave a quick nod, reached into her pocket, and withdrew a pack of Marlboro Lights. To Jessica, she said, “I’m eighteen, okay?”

“I owe ya,” Misty said, shaking out a filter tip, then flipping the pack back to the girl, who slipped the pack quickly into her pocket.

Jessica tossed her dirty apron into a bin with other laundry and unlocked her locker to grab her purse.

Misty, still clutching the cigarette, was shrugging into her jacket.

Jessica asked, “So did you hear anything about the woman who was found in the creek?”

“Just bits and pieces, same as you.” Misty zipped up the jacket. “I did catch it on the news as I passed by the office. Nell had it on. It was that woman from the station in Montana. Oh, God, what’s her name? Nia Something-Or-Other, not that it matters. All I heard was that they haven’t IDed her yet. Kinda sounds like they suspect foul play and I don’t blame them. You wouldn’t believe the nutcases that have blown through here lately.” Her lips, faded now as most of her makeup had worn off, twisted downward. “Not too long ago, Grizzly Falls was a sleepy little town, no trouble other than a drunk getting into a fight or shootin’ up the WELCOME TO GRIZZLY FALLS sign. Now, though, it seems we get more than our share of psychos. And I’m not talking about our local weirdos like Grace Perchant. She’s the gal who owns wolf-dogs and thinks she talks to ghosts.” Misty shook her head. “Or that idiot Ivor Hicks who still claims he was taken in some kind of spaceship or something and experimented on by lizard people. No, those are our usual Grizzly Falls oddballs. That’s not what I’m talkin’ about. Nuh-uh.”