To Love And Protect

Expecting the chief to lay a hand on Ben at any second, Corie was surprised when he inhaled a breath and seemed to think better of it. Wisely so, she thought. Ben was a good fifteen years younger and considerably more fit.

“We’ll see about this, Palmer,” the chief said. Then he turned, strode toward his up-accessorized police car, got in and sped away.

Teresa threw her arms around Ben’s neck. “How do you know all that?” she asked.

“We had a situation at an apartment building at home. My partner and I were called in to keep the peace until everything was done properly. I learned a lot.”

Corie was astonished by what had just happened. Ben had defended them against one of Querida’s bullies. He’d stood up to the police chief’s intimidation tactics on her behalf. Well, not her behalf. He’d stood up for Teresa and the children, but their problem was as important to her as any of her own, so he might as well have defended her.

“We don’t have to go?” Rosie asked. “Ben made it so we don’t have to go, right?”

Soren laughed and patted Ben’s arm. “Ben scared the police chief,” he said. “We can stay for two more months.”

Corie ushered the children back while Teresa pulled herself together. The past year had been a nightmare with Tyree’s repeated threats to evict her. She held on to Ben the way Corie wanted to—as though he were a strong handhold in a hurricane. And it had been so long since either of them had anyone to hold on to in tough times except each other.

Corie sat the children at the table again, gave them each another pastry half, knowing she was taking the coward’s way out to soothe their nerves but accepting that it was expedient. She made more cocoa, turned up the Christmas carols and got a discussion going about what they should make for Teresa’s present.

* * *

BEN LOOKED DOWN into Teresa’s tear-filled eyes and felt an eerie change take place inside him.

She hugged him fiercely again. “Thank you, thank you!” she whispered thickly. “I’m so glad you were here.”

He patted her shoulder, feeling his whole world go south on him. To be honest, he had to admit that it had begun when he and Jack and Sarah had followed Corie on her path to theft and vengeance.

“We’ve held him off for now,” he said, watching her pull tissues out of her pocket and dab at her nose. “But this is just going to continue unless we settle this once and for all.”

She looked up at him doubtfully. “Tyree doesn’t care about our situation. His father was a good man, but all Cyrus cares about is getting me out. I hate it when the children are worried. I wish they could just go to school and come home and play and be happy.”

“Are their parents really coming back? Any of them?”

“Absolutely,” she said, her eyes suddenly dry, her customary confidence returning. “They’re not bad people. They’ve just had bad things happen to them. I started this place so that when parents are ready to take their children back, they don’t have to wait forever for the court to do its thing. They can just reclaim their children and make a home again. They’ll be back. I know Joel Santiago and Amelia Flores thought they’d be finished with school by Christmas.”

“All right,” he heard himself say, “then we’ll do everything we can to see that you stay.”

“How will we do that?”

“Leave it to me.”

“You’d have to stay around for a while.”

Yeah. He was getting that.

He’d never been a selfish person—he’d been raised better than that. But his life so far, apart from his job, had been about doing what he wanted to do. He was enthused and excited about his plans to start an investigative agency. He was willing to work hard and had a fairly good business head. He could make a success of Palmer Private Investigations.

But he wasn’t going to be able to launch his business until he had Teresa and Corie and the children on a safer footing and he’d resigned from the Beggar’s Bay police force. And then there was the jewelry... He had no illusions that he could single-handedly solve either issue. He needed an ally in the cause, but he was going to do his best to brighten up the children’s world and give them the stability they deserved.

Teresa hooked her arm in his and tugged him back into the house. “Thanks, Ben, for caring about us.”

“I’m glad I was here.”

“And for agreeing to stay.”

He was about to deny that he had done that, but it would have been pointless. He hadn’t said the words but in his heart he’d made the promise.

And it was all Corie’s fault.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_ebf18667-1de4-5716-8e82-b03d7fed83fe)

BEN WENT TO town in the afternoon while the children made more ornaments for the tree. On an errand to buy more lights, he decided to make a detour to the local newspaper office.

Querida was too small to support a daily newspaper, but the Weekly Standard had its office in an unpretentious storefront in a strip mall on the other side of town.

The editor, a tall, slender man Ben guessed to be in his forties, seemed to be a one-person operation, except for a receptionist. He introduced himself as Will Fennerty.

Ben asked him if he could take a look at all the articles that had run that year on the Querida government, particularly Robert Pimental, the chief of police and Cyrus Tyree.

“I can,” he replied. “Fortunately for you, there’s no such thing as a weekend off in the life of a small town editor/publisher.”

Will provided copies in twenty minutes. He leaned across a battered counter toward Ben and asked if he was from the attorney general’s office.

Ben laughed and asked if the Querida town government required such attention.

The man nodded. “It absolutely does, but with just myself doing the reporting, I don’t have the staff to follow up on all my investigations. And if I don’t spend half my time selling advertising, I won’t survive anyway. I’d suggest if you’re going to look into things, find out how a deputy mayor in this tiny town can support a palatial home on Ocean Drive in Corpus Christi.”

“Doesn’t Pimental have to live in Querida to work in its government?” Ben asked.

“He has a modest little place here, too.”

“Maybe his wife has money?”

“She was a car salesman’s daughter from Dallas.”

“So, his job here is funding the Corpus Christi lifestyle?”

“I think so.”

Ben remembered that elegant Ocean Drive neighborhood because that was where Tyree lived. He, Jack and Sarah had trailed Corie there the night of the robbery.

“And nobody’s noticed? I mean, what’s a town this size doing with a deputy mayor, anyway?”

Will shrugged. “The mayor had ALS. When he was voted in he brought along Pimental, who had a car agency in Manzanita. The two of them were childhood friends. Since the mayor’s illness has become completely debilitating, Pimental’s been pretty much on his own.”

Ben was beginning to see the picture.

“Pimental’s behavior is largely ignored because the rest of the state doesn’t care about Querida. We don’t really produce anything and the landscape isn’t exactly inspiring. The police chief also seems to live far beyond the salary of a small-town cop. There’s so much going on in city hall, I wouldn’t know who’d be safe to report it to if I did have an airtight case.”

“Wow. I have a friend fighting eviction—”