Dead End by Stella Cameron Read Free Book Online Page A

ever’ second in this crazy place.”
    “I’m going,” Wally said, raising his skinny butt from the bench. Jilly eyed him, and he sat again.
    “William,” Cyrus said. Chastising the man for his questionable analogies would only goad him into further earthy eloquence. “Welcome, podner. You’re moving too fast for a big man in weather like this. But don’t give me that
old
stuff. You’re as strong as an ox. Sit down.” He indicated the bench. “Take a load off.”
    “Rather stand,” William said. A huge, muscular fellow, he stood six and a half feet tall and had a grin that could tease at least a glimmer of a smile out of the meanest of critters. “I ax for you to call me.” He worked a red, white, and blue cell phone from the back pocket of low-riding tan jeans. His T-shirt, complete with the American flag plastered across his sweating chest, resembled a frayed and stretched Austrian blind and only paid lip service to covering his fine torso.
    “You’re looking good, William,” Jilly said. “Keeping those brothers of yours in line?”
    The man splayed a hand built like a plate-sized filet mignon over his heart. “I suffer, ma’am. I surely do suffer. How my dear departed mama came to birth those twin hellcats when she was near fifty, I cain’t say. Between those two and my motherless Martha, the burden’s enough to break a man’s back.”
    Cyrus decided it would take something major, like a runaway train, to break William’s back. “You do a good job with your family,” he told him and meant every word. “I would have called you later.”
    “No reason they two cain’t hear anythin’ I got to say. Ever’body gotta be warned about that man.”
    “Marc Girard?” Jilly said, still toe-picking the lawn while she shaded her eyes to look at William.
    “How’d you know, Miss Jilly?”
    “‘Cause everyone in town’s talking about him,” Wally said, and Cyrus was almost sure he saw the start of tears. “And he’s scaring my folks. Scarin’ them mad. They are so mad they can’t hardly talk normal at all.”
    “Wait a minute, Wally,” Cyrus said quietly. “That’s what it’s all about? Doll and Gater are worried—and they don’t have any need to be—but they’re upset, and that’s why you don’t want to be at home?”
    Wally shifted his eyes from place to place, avoiding looking at anyone directly. He nodded.
    Cyrus saw Jilly open her mouth to speak but signaled for her to hold off. “Marc’s been here only days.”
    “I gotta go.”
    “You’ve been staying out of the way all day for weeks,” Jilly said, sitting up straight and crossing her legs under the yellow dress. “Your folks aren’t even sure how long.”
    “I don’t want to talk about it,” Wally said, pulling his brown sack from beneath the bench.
    Cyrus knew better than to intervene while tempers were so high. “You’ll have to talk about it,” Jilly said. “They know
everything
now. You might as well face the music and get it over with.”
    Clutching the sack to his chest, Wally backed off. “Everything?” he said. “They found out about…everything? About what happened?”
    “Wally,” Cyrus said, but his young buddy wasn’t hanging around for more conversation. He made a run for it, and when Cyrus moved to go after him, William’s hand on his shoulder changed his mind.
    “Let he go, Father. You ain’t gonna git anythin’ out of the kid while he all riled up and scairt.”
    “We weren’t even talking about the same thing,” Jilly said. “He’s got something on his mind we don’t know about.”

Four
     
     
    “You know who you pushin’ around, Devol?” Chauncey Depew asked, managing to swagger with another man holding a fistful of his seersucker jacket right where it pulled his shoulder blades together. “I want a telephone and a leak, in that order.”
    Deputy Spike Devol didn’t like Chauncey, in fact he considered him the kind of lowlife who would look good floating among the water