Salem Falls Read online

  But Delilah wasn't there. Instead, a tall blond man who looked entirely too polished to be working as a dishwasher was standing at the big sink, rinsing out cookware. He finished another cast-iron pot and set it down--with a righteous, ear-splitting clank--onto a makeshift drying rack. "Delilah went to the bathroom," the man said over his shoulder. "She should be back in a second."

  Delilah had left several burgers going on the grill. Fire hazard. He never would have done that in his days on the line. "Who the hell are you?" Roy barked.

  "Jack St. Bride. I was just hired as a dishwasher."

  "For crying out loud, you don't do it by hand. There's a machine just over there."

  Jack smiled wryly. "Thanks, I know. It's broken." He stood uneasily before the old man, wondering who he was and why he'd appeared from a back staircase. The alcohol fumes coming off the guy could have pickled the cucumbers Delilah had sliced for garnish. Jack grabbed another dirty pot and set it into the soapy water. As he scrubbed, black smoke began to rise from the grill. He looked at his hands, at the pot, then at the older man. "The burgers are burning," Jack said. "Do you mind flipping them?"

  Roy was two feet away from the grill; the spatula lay within reach. But he sidled away from the cooking area, giving it a wide berth. "You do it."

  With a muttered curse, Jack turned off the water again, wiped his hands dry, and physically pushed Roy out of the way to flip the hamburgers. "Was that so hard?"

  "I don't cook," the older man said succinctly.

  "It's a hamburger! I didn't ask you to make beef Wellington!"

  "I can make a hell of a beef Wellington, matter of fact, if I feel like it!"

  The swinging doors that led to the dining room swelled forward like an eruption, then parted to reveal Addie. "What's going on? I can hear you yelling all the way up front ... Dad? What are you doing down here? And where's Delilah?"

  "Bathroom." Jack turned to the sink, assuming his hired position. Let the old man explain what had happened.

  But she didn't even ask. She seemed delighted, in fact, to find her father in the kitchen. "How are you feeling?"

  "Like a guy who can't get any rest because someone's downstairs banging around."

  Addie patted his hand. "I should have warned Jack that you were upstairs napping."

  Napping? Comatose, more like.

  "Jack, if you've got a minute ... there are some booths in the front that need clearing."

  Jack nodded and picked up a plastic bucket used for busing tables. His heart started to pound as he entered the front of the restaurant, and he wondered how long it would take until he no longer felt like his every move was being watched. But the diner was empty. Relieved, he cleared one table, then headed toward the counter. Jack put a coffee cup into the bin, then reached for a full plate, the food cold and untouched. French fries and a cheeseburger with extra pickles--someone had paid for a meal and hadn't even taken a bite.

  He was starving. He'd missed breakfast at the jail because he was being processed for release. Jack glanced around ... Who would ever know? He grabbed a handful of fries and quickly stuffed them into his mouth.

  "Don't."

  He froze. Addie stood behind him, her face white. "Don't eat her meal."

  Jack blinked. "Whose meal?"

  But she turned away without a response and left him wondering.

  At fifteen, Thomas McAfee knew he was going to be a late bloomer. Well, at least he sure as hell hoped so, because going through life five feet five inches tall, with arms like a chicken, wasn't going to make for a pleasant adolescence.

  Not that ninth grade was supposed to be pleasant. After taking medieval history last semester, Thomas figured high school was the modern equivalent of running the gauntlet. The hearty survived and went off to Colby-Sawyer and Dartmouth to play lacrosse. Everyone else slunk to the sidelines, destined to spend their lives as part of the audience.

  But as Thomas stood on Main Street after school that day, freezing his ass off, he was thinking that Chelsea Abrams might like to root for the underdog.

  Chelsea was more than just a junior. She was smart and pretty, with hair that caught the sunlight during the keyboarding class Thomas had with her. She didn't hang with the cheerleaders, or the brains, or the heads. Instead, she was tight with three other girls--including Gillian Duncan, whose dad owned half the town. Okay, so they dressed a little weird, with a lot of black and scarves--a cross between the art freak Goths who hung out in the smoking pit and gypsy wannabes--but Thomas knew, better than most, that the package was far less important than what was on the inside.

  Suddenly Chelsea turned the corner with her friends, even Gillian Duncan, who had been too sick to go to school but had made an amazing enough recovery now, to be out and about. Chelsea's breath fogged in the cold air, each huff taking the shape of a heart. Thomas squared his shoulders and came up from behind, falling into step beside her.

  He could smell cinnamon in her hair, and it made him dizzy.

  "Did you know the alphabet's all wrong?" he said casually, as if they'd been in the middle of a conversation.

  "Sorry?" Chelsea said.

  "The letters are mixed up. U and I should be together."

  The other girls snickered, and Gillian Duncan's voice fell like a hammer. "What's it like at the moron end of the bell curve?" She looped her arm through Chelsea's. "Let's get out of here."

  Thomas felt heat rising above his collar and willed it to go away. Chelsea was tugged forward by her friends, leaving him standing alone. Did she turn back to look at him ... or was she only adjusting the strap of her knapsack? As they crossed, Thomas could hear Chelsea's friends laughing. But she wasn't.

  Surely that was something.

  Charlie Saxton ate a peanut butter sandwich every day for lunch, although he hated peanut butter. He did it because for some reason, his wife Barbara thought he liked it, and she went to the trouble of packing him a lunch each morning. Around Valentine's Day, she'd bought those little sugary hearts with messages on them, and for a month now she'd been sticking one into the soft white bread: HOT STUFF! CRAZY 4 U! With a fingernail, Charlie edged out the candy of the day and read its message aloud. "Kiss and tell."

  "Not me, boss. My lips are sealed." The station's receptionist hustled into his office and handed him a manila folder. "You know, I think it's sweet when a guy over forty can still blush. This just came in on the fax."

  She closed the door behind her as Charlie slid the pages from the folder, scanning the court records of Jack St. Bride. They showed his arrest for a charge of felonious sexual assault against a minor ... but a final disposition for simple sexual assault, a misdemeanor.

  Charlie dialed the Grafton County attorney's office, asking for the name of the prosecutor listed on the fax. "Sorry, she's out for two weeks on vacation. Can someone else help you?" the secretary said.

  Charlie hesitated, making a judgment call. The list of registered sexual offenders was public record. That meant anyone could walk into the station and find out who was on it and where that person lived. As of this morning, his list stretched to all of one person. In spite of what secrets he knew as a detective, Salem Falls had the reputation of being a sleepy New England town where nothing happened, which was the way the residents liked it. As soon as word got out to the male populace that a guy who'd been charged with rape had moved in near their wives and daughters, there would be hell to pay.

  He could start a snowball rolling or he could give St. Bride the benefit of the doubt and just keep an eye on the guy himself for a couple of weeks.

  "Maybe you could ask her to call me when she gets back," Charlie said.

  Gillian had been the first to try Wicca, after finding a Web site for teen witches on the Internet. It wasn't Satan worship, like adults thought. And it wasn't all love spells, like kids thought, either. It was simply the belief that the world had an energy all its own. Put that way, it wasn't so mysterious. Who hadn't walked through the woods and felt the air humming? Or step