That put fury in her eyes. “No.”
There was something odd here, but Arlen had no wish to pursue it.
“We’ll take our bags,” he said shortly, “and be on our way. I’d appreciate it if you’d give us a ride to a train station.”
“I’m not driving you anywhere in this weather.”
“Seems the right thing to do. We were visiting on your property when our last ride was killed and we ended up in jail.”
“That may be,” she said, “but it was not my fault and is not my responsibility. You were Walter’s guests, not mine. I didn’t invite you here.”
“Hell of a way to run a tavern,” Arlen said. “Real sense of hospitality.”
Paul shifted uneasily, touched Arlen’s arm, and said, “It isn’t any of her doing. Let’s just find our own way.”
Arlen turned and waved his arm at the wide window facing the beach, where rain drummed off the sea and wisps of pale fog hung over the water.
“Find our own way through that? It’s many miles of walking, Paul. She’s got a truck. She could—”
“She could do a lot of things,” Rebecca Cady said, pulling her shoulders back and tightening one slender hand back around the hammer, “but she won’t. Your bags are behind the bar. Take them and go.”
She and Arlen stood and stared at each other with naked dislike, but she kept her head high and those blue eyes firm on his. Hell with it, he thought, no use arguing with the likes of her. We’ll have ourselves a wet walk, but it’ll take us away from here, and that’s the only thing I want right now. That, and a drink.
“Fine,” he said. “Let it never be said that you’re lacking in generosity, Miss Cady.”
She didn’t answer, and he walked around the bar to find their bags. They were stacked back by the swinging door that led into the tiny kitchen. Arlen sorted out his and saw immediately that the contents had been disrupted.
“Sheriff and his deputy did that,” she said.
“They never touched our belongings. Didn’t set a foot inside the door.”
“They came back. After you were in the jail, they came back. To talk to me.” She gave him a long look, enough pause to let him imagine what Tolliver might have been like with her, and then said, “They tore through all your things and left them on my floor. I put them back as well as I could.”
“Thank you,” Paul said, joining Arlen behind the bar. Arlen just grunted, fingers searching through his shirts and under his jacket for the canteen. It was there. He withdrew it, unscrewed the cap, and tilted it.
There was no familiar rustle of paper. He shook it, feeling a cold rope tighten around his throat, and then turned it all the way upside down and reached inside with his index finger, slid it in all directions.
Nothing.
He stood there with the canteen in his hand as Paul shuffled around beside him. At length the boy went still, too, and then spoke in a soft voice.
“Arlen… my money’s gone. All I had.”
“Yes.”
Paul looked up. “You, too? They took—”
“Yes,” he said, and turned to look back at Rebecca Cady. “Someone did. Someone stole every dime we had.”
She held her palms up. “I didn’t touch your money.”
“Did you see them steal it?”
“No.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“The sheriff talked to me while the deputy went through your things.”
“Easy story for you to tell,” Arlen said.
She smiled. It was the first time he’d ever seen her smile, and even though this one was anything but an expression of pleasure, it stung him. She was something beyond beautiful.
“You want to see how much money I have,” she said, “you’re more than welcome to search the place.”
Arlen didn’t answer. He dropped the canteen down on top of his bag and leaned on the bar and stared out the windows into the building storm. He’d been worried enough about getting to a train station. Now they had no means of obtaining tickets once they got there. Outside the rain fell relentlessly and the wind had already begun to rise. It was miles just to get back to High Town, and what waited there for them? A sheriff who’d shown little interest in legality the first time he’d locked them up.
Almost four hundred dollars, he thought. Nearly two years of saving, with no goal in mind but to keep this dark damned world at bay. Gone, gone, gone.
“Arlen,” Paul said. “What are we going to do?”
The row of liquor bottles stood before him, glittering. He found a bottle of whiskey and took it off the shelf and located a glass and poured.