Country Proud (Painted Pony Creek #2) - Linda Lael Miller Page 0,54
combed and left to dry on its own, teeth brushed and mouthwash swished, he proceeded to the kitchen in search of the red wine Sara had requested.
The cabinet was empty.
No surprise there; Eli was a beer man, and he rarely drank wine. Kept it on hand only for pizza nights and spaghetti dinners, when Sara and the kids were over.
He sighed, tossed his keys, caught them.
After he secured the house, resetting the alarm system and checking the app to make sure the cameras were still operating, he walked to the SUV. He would normally have driven his truck, since he was technically off the clock, but today, he wanted the official rig and all the equipment it contained close at hand.
He drove back into town, passing the turnoff to Sara’s place, and made his way to the town’s one real supermarket. He parked and got out of the rig, scrolling through his phone in search of Sara’s text, the one where she’d asked him to bring red wine.
He found it, went inside the store and grabbed a cart, one of the smaller ones, meant for shoppers who weren’t there to stock up for the next faux-Armageddon, but just to pick up milk, bread and eggs.
The wine had a whole aisle to itself, both sides stacked high.
The selection was overwhelming.
Eli tracked down the ones he knew Sara favored, laid them in the cart, where they rattled annoyingly, until he braced them with half a case of good beer.
Rolling toward the checkout lines, which were surprisingly clear, he spotted none other than Gretchen Lansing at one of the tills, and headed her way.
Small and mercilessly freckled, with mouse-brown hair that rested limply across her low forehead and left her ears exposed, Gretchen greeted him with a poisonous look.
After running the first bottle across the scanner, she set it down with an eloquent thump.
Eli suppressed a grin. “How’s your day going, Mrs. Lansing?” he asked.
“‘Bout like you’d expect,” she said, still glaring.
Eli wondered if Gretchen Lansing treated every customer to the stink eye, decided that she was probably civil to most folks, if only to keep herself gainfully employed. Being the sheriff, and thus antagonistic toward her son and husband, he was beneath contempt.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Eli finally replied. She hadn’t exactly said she was having a bad day, but then, she didn’t need to say it.
Gretchen lowered her voice, looked briefly around for eavesdropping managers, and spat, “I’ll just bet you are, Sheriff. You leave my boy alone, you hear me?”
“Or what, Mrs. Lansing?”
“Just leave him be!” Gretchen hissed. “He’s trying to make a fresh start!”
Eli ignored that. “Does Freddie have a girlfriend?” he asked.
Color flooded Gretchen’s pale face, throwing her freckles into sharp relief. “No,” she snarled, “he doesn’t. And if you think you’re going to pin anything on him, you’re dead wrong!”
“Now, why would I try to ‘pin anything’ on poor Freddie. He’s such a good, upstanding citizen, after all. Just like you and Fred.”
For a moment, Gretchen looked as though she might spring across the counter, like some small, wiry, weasel-like creature, all teeth and claws and most definitely rabid.
Eli was reminded of a time when he was a kid, and he and J.P. and Cord had come across a young raccoon up in the foothills, where cottonwoods rustled among close stands of fir and pine.
Thinking the animal was hurt, he’d reached out, meaning to pick it up off the ground, where it lay sprawled and stunned.
In the space of a heartbeat, that raccoon balled himself up and came hurtling at Eli with the force of something fired from a giant slingshot, bowling him over, leaving him flat on his back, with cuts stinging all over his arms and chest and the wind knocked right out of him.
He’d had to have stitches, and a series of rabies shots.
Now, years later, standing in a supermarket, he couldn’t help drawing the obvious parallels between that critter and Gretchen Lansing.
Not much difference, for his money, except that she probably wasn’t rabid.
“I’ll be out to your place sometime tomorrow with official notification of the restraining order I mentioned to your husband and son last night. Make sure Freddie’s around because I’ve got some questions for him. Got that?”
Gretchen finished ringing up his order and then bagging the four wine bottles, each one carefully wrapped, all without saying a single word.
Her thin lips were pressed together hard, and her gaze skirted Eli’s.
“In the meantime,” Eli went on, putting away his debit card