Jessica nodded, brown water splashing up her legs with each step. “He’s my uncle now.”
“That’s right,” Cal said. “I got hitched to Jessie’s aunt last month.” He pushed back his hat to reveal tobacco-stained teeth under amused blue eyes. The band of bare forehead suggested a bald head, and he was handsome in a high-energy salesman kind of way. “Then again, if I’d known you were coming back to town, I might have held out a bit longer.”
“Excuse me?”
His smile was begrudging, but a little flirtatious. “I been watching you over the years. Times you came home after college. I just never thought you were back to stay.”
Stalking her? She searched her mind for a memory of this man, Cal Haney, but she couldn’t place him. Had he lived here fifteen years ago? She had plenty of questions, but she didn’t want to spend one more minute than necessary with this man.
“Come on, girls.” She put an arm around Penny’s shoulders and extended a hand toward Jessica. “Where’s your shirt, Jess?”
The girl lifted her chin toward the back railing. “It’s wet.”
“Put it on for now. We’ll get you dry clothes.”
“Yeah, I got to get going anyways,” Cal said. “Meeting some guys at The Dog. Business contacts.”
Ruth couldn’t imagine a legitimate deal transpiring over a pool table at the saloon, but she didn’t pick up on his bait. Besides, she made it a habit not to converse with men who stared intently at her breasts, as Haney was now doing.
The bastard.
He’d ruined a beautiful summer afternoon, and she had to wonder if he was the man who had ruined most of her high school years here in Prairie Creek.
“I’ll see you around,” he called after them.
She sure hoped not.
As she guided the girls back through the common field, the truth emerged. The girls had wanted water for the plants—a liberty Bev McFerron had apparently denied them.
“Grandma said we would get all muddy,” Penny admitted, her orange hair brilliant as a penny in the bright sun.
“So we went over to my aunt and uncle’s to get water for the plants. But Aunt Val wasn’t home. And Uncle Cal tricked us with the hose.” Jessica pulled her sopping shirt away from her belly. “Still soaking wet. I’m going to catch my death of cold.”
“Not in this weather,” Ruth said, “but we’re going to have to get a change of clothes for both of you before we head out for dinner.”
“Can we still go to the diner?” Penny begged, on the verge of tears.
“After you get changed. And before we eat, we’re going to have a talk about where you can and can’t go on your own.”
“Am I in trouble?” Penny asked. She prided herself on following the rules and doing the right thing.
“No, but we need to keep you out of trouble in the future,” Ruth said, patting her daughter’s shoulder. And out of danger.
“I won’t get in trouble because Cal is my uncle,” Jessica said. “I can go there any time I want.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you.” Ruth knew she would have to talk with Jessica’s parents about the new uncle. Just because someone was family did not mean they could be trusted.
“He was very mean,” Penny said. “I’m never going back there.”
“But it felt good to get sprayed, right?” Jessica prodded.
“At first. But then he wouldn’t stop.”
They loaded the flower bowls into the car, then Ruth marched the girls two blocks to Jessica’s house, knowing there’d be hell to pay if she brought two wet, muddy ones into her mother’s house. Jessica’s mother, Fiona, offered to supervise the cleanup and find something for Penny to wear while Ruth went back to her parents’ place. She could have said good-bye in a text, but the matter of Calvin Haney was too big to cover by cell phone.
She frowned at her father’s Oldsmobile, parked in the driveway. She had hoped to scoot out before he got home.
Her mother was in the kitchen, chopping onions. Dad, she suspected, was off in the den they used as an office.
“Where are the girls?” asked Bev.
“They were a little too messy to traipse through here. I found them playing with the hose.”
“Those little stinkers! I hope you sent Jessica straight home.”
“I took them to Jessica’s to get cleaned up.”
“You are too lenient with Penny.”
“It wasn’t entirely her fault.” She told her mother about the alarming exchange with Cal Haney. “It’s a little scary to think of him living down the street. There’s something off about him.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Years ago, he was in a bit of trouble. The sheriff kept questioning him about those missing girls. What were their names?”
“Rachel Byrd. Erin Higgins. Courtney Pearson.” The names were an indelible part of Ruth’s memory. “Was he involved in their disappearance?” she asked, trying to hide the fear she could feel rising in her throat.
“He was under suspicion for a while, but then it eventually blew over. When the girls stopped disappearing, they said the kidnapper moved on.”
“Who said that?”
“You know. People at church. That was such a sad thing. It just destroyed the Byrds, losing their daughter that way.”
Ruth shivered despite the heat of the kitchen.
“But Calvin Haney has turned over a new leaf. He’s a married man now, and that wildcat business is tough, but he did get one well that earned him enough to buy a house.”
A wildcatter. That explained the cowboy costume. Cal Haney seemed far too soft to be a ranch hand, but Ruthie knew that a Stetson hat, jeans, and boots did not a cowboy make.
“A house and a wife might make him seem respectable, but that man is morally off center. I’m going to tell Penny to stay away from him, even if he is Jessica’s uncle.”
Her father came into the kitchen and, after a short nod of acknowledgment, asked his wife about his calendar in early September. The Reverend Robert McFerron had never deigned to accept his youngest daughter as a peer, and at the age of thirty-one, Ruth was beginning to accept that he never would. Still, she stood her ground in conversation with him, which he frequently perceived as a challenge.
“Your father has been approached to preside over the Dillinger wedding,” Bev said in a futile attempt to bring them together in conversation.
“You mean Sabrina and Colton’s?” Ruth had heard talk of the gala wedding.
“Oh, did you know them, dear?” her mother asked.