Dead Man's Rules (17 page)

She slapped at his arm and muttered a swear word. “You can be such a jerk.”

“Maybe that’s why he’s haunting your dreams. He wants payback. Or perhaps he locked you in because he doesn’t want you doing the story after all.”

“Stop being funny. And don’t tell me I’m an excitable female, Tafoya. I’ve been in tricky situations before. I don’t panic.”

“Well, maybe you should.”

She shot him a glare so sharp it would have wounded him if it had been a material object. They walked back to her car. Cere started to toss in her clothes but stopped. “Oh, no, look at that.”

“What?” He followed the direction of her pointing finger.

Her front tire was flat.

“Do you still doubt me?” she asked. “Someone locked me in that room and flattened my tire.”

“I doubt that. This car wasn’t meant for off road driving. You probably hit a rock or an old nail or something.” The situation was beginning to perturb Rafe, but maybe this would teach her a lesson. The open prairie was no place for her rental sedan. “I’ll change it for you.”

He almost expected her to tell him she could do it herself. Instead she opened the trunk and stepped back.

“Damn rental company,” she said with a grimace. “There isn’t a spare in there.”

He looked into the empty well. “I doubt someone did that to you.”

She let fly a curse that surprised him.

Rafe smiled. She was moving up in his estimation. Not that he enjoyed women who cussed. It just made her less prissy.

“Hell!” She pushed hair from her face, twisting it at the nape of her neck. “Is there a towing service I can call?”

“They’ll be closed. Why don’t I drive you home and we’ll get a tow truck to come out in the morning?”

She hesitated, her hand on the door. “I’d rather not leave the car here, even if it is a rental.”

“The car will be safe. I doubt anyone will be out this way tonight.”

“Except whoever flattened the tire,” she argued. “I have insurance, but I don’t want the car damaged or stolen.”

Rafe was growing weary of arguing. “You’re not in the city. It will be fine. And don’t worry about insurance. The rental company is responsible since they didn’t provide a spare.”

“I don’t know…”

Her face was set, and he could read her reluctance, but he was losing patience. He needed to get home to Ginny. “If you won’t leave it, you can spend the night inside. I’ll send a tow truck in the morning.”

Despite her earlier show of bravado, he didn’t think Cere would opt to stay alone near the abandoned dance hall.

She tugged at her lower lip and then sighed heavily. “Oh, all right, let’s go back to town.”

Rafe stepped over to check the tire before leaving. Maybe it wasn’t as critical as she thought. He stared at it and leaned closer. His stomach rolled over. A long clean slash was cut along one side of the tire. She could not have driven far if a rock had caused the damage and the cut would be jagged. This had been done by a knife blade or box cutter.

No doubt about it. Someone had cut Cere’s tire.

Chapter Eighteen

“You know that was stupid, don’t you?” Rafe asked as he drove back toward town. “You didn’t find what you were looking for.”

“How do you know?”

Rafe met her eyes and grunted. Intense curiosity burned in her beautiful eyes, and he dropped his gaze. It fell to the crossed bare legs visible in the dim glow of the dashboard lights. A hot river of desire flooded his veins, like lava unleashed. This was something he didn’t need—physical attraction to a snobbish spitfire.

“I looked around. The hand print is in the room on the other side of where you were. Tell me what you thought you heard.”

“Someone was in there,” she insisted. “Maybe they followed me.”

“Were there any cars on the road behind you? Did you look?”

“There weren’t any cars. I checked my mirror before I made the turn off.”

“The wind probably blew the door shut.”

His gaze flickered to her legs, and she smoothed the shirt over them as though she noticed the direction of his glance.

“I’m sorry you had to come out here. Where is your daughter?”

“Your mother stayed with her.”

She sighed and shook her head. “I don’t understand why Mom was looking for me. I thought she was on a date.”

“With Bradley Foster?” he asked.

“How did you know?”

“Everyone knows everything in this town. You’ll find that out quickly enough.”

“I won’t be here that long. I just want to get my story and get out.”

A spark of irritation grated at him. “That damn story is going to get you in more trouble than just getting locked in a dark room.”

Instead of frightening her, the comment seemed to spur interest. “What do you mean by that, Tafoya? Is there something you’re not telling me? Did you or your family know Marco?”

“He died long before I was born and by now you should know no one wants to talk about him.”

“What about his relatives? Are they all gone?”

He drew a deep breath. No sense lying; she’d find out the truth on her own. “He has a few cousins still in town.”

She sat forward, a tense nervousness driving her to tap her fingers on the window rest. Her voice took on extra vigor. “So if I call every Gonzales in the phone book, I should run across his relatives?”

“Probably.”

“Why don’t you save me time and give me names?”

“Uh, uh, I know how media people work. You’ll call and say, ‘Sheriff Tafoya told me you’re related to Marco and might talk to me.’ Isn’t that how it goes? You can make all the calls you want, but they won’t talk. They were unhappy about the newspaper story.”

She sat back, but he could feel the intense energy emanating from her. Something was on her mind. “Do you really think I’m callous?”

Rafe had regretted being so perturbed, though her comment had been a harsh wake up call for who she really was. “Perhaps I overreacted, but Naldo was more than a murder statistic to me. I’d known him since I was a boy. He didn’t deserve to be murdered. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Someone killed him, and someone might have killed Marco.”

“Don’t try to tie the two together!”

What if she found out there was a connection between Marco and old Naldo? He didn’t like thinking about that himself.

She turned wide eyes to him, and he realized he had made another mistake. She’d caught the undertone in his angry proclamation. “Look, Cere, why don’t you drop this and enjoy visiting your mother?”

“Talk about culture shock. Seeing her in this town, with that man...” She shook her head, and Rafe perceived an opportunity to turn the conversation in a new direction.

“You don’t like our mayor? He’s such a sweet old guy.”

“It’s not that I dislike him. I want her to have a new life, be happy. Somehow it seems disloyal to my dad.”

Disloyal? A quick vision of Carmen appeared in his brain.
Was he being disloyal by looking at Cere?

The lights of the city grew closer and they fell into silence. Cere tried to relax, but her moments in the Palladium kept coming back to her. She had heard a noise. Not the ghost of Marco. She started to thank Rafe again and stopped. His large presence filled the interior of the Jeep. She smoothed down his shirt. The light scent of shaving lotion rose from it, sending butterflies through her stomach. It had been a while since she’d worn a man’s shirt.

She glanced at his implacable face. His finding her had been a godsend, and she could imagine what he thought about her sojourn. Still she wasn’t going to give up her enterprise. She would have her mother drive her to get the car in the morning and have a look at the hand print.

Rafe pulled into a garage on the edge of town. The lights were out, but when he honked, a side door flew open. A rotund man in a greasy T-shirt approached them. Cere recognized him as one of the men at the counter the previous day, but she hadn’t heard his name. He had turned his back to her, concentrating on his tamales.

“What’s up, Tafoya?” he asked, looking from Rafe to Cere.

“Hey, Len. The lady here is gonna need a tow from the Palladium.”

“Garage is closed. I can get it for you in the morning.”

“That’s what we figured. She’s gonna need a new tire too.”

Rafe opened his door and stepped outside, guiding the man away from his open window. Their voices carried back to her, but she couldn’t make out the words. When Rafe opened the door to slide inside, she blinked at the bright light from the overhead bulb.

Her gaze fell on the finely honed muscles of Rafe’s arms and shoulders. She had been too distracted to notice before, but now she noted the white undershirt against tanned muscular skin. Its tightness emphasized powerful shoulders and a wide chest with a fine matte of black hair. He must work out. Too quickly he shut the door and the car plunged into darkness.

“Len says he knows you,” Rafe said as he settled into his seat.

“I met him at the restaurant,” she admitted.

“Did you tell him about doing the Marco Gonzales story?”

“I mentioned it to the guys at the counter, but I told you, no one would talk to me.”

He drew a sharp breath. “They may not have talked to you, but that doesn’t mean everyone isn’t talking about your project.”

“What did he say?” Cere thought of the message on her phone and the paper stuck to her car. Her hour at the café seemed to have drawn a lot of attention.

A sharp rap on the window stopped Rafe from answering. He lowered the window, and Len shoved a piece of paper at him.

“Here’s a receipt. We’ll pick it up in the morning if you give me the keys.”

Cere pulled her keys from her purse and handed them to him. “Thank you.”

His eyes stayed on her, dark angry circles that bored into her. “If I was you, lady, I’d stay away from that Palladium. Next time you might not be so lucky to have the sheriff rescue you.”

He pulled back before Cere could respond. She was aware of his hulking figure watching as Rafe eased out of the driveway.

“That guy was spooky,” she said, trying to make her voice light, fighting shakiness in her stomach. “It was like he was warning me. Why should he care if I’m at the Palladium?”

Rafe pointed at a sign as they pulled back onto the road. It read “Gonzales Auto Parts.”

“Len is Marco’s second cousin. And before you start another open discussion at the Matador, you ought to know that Frank, who owns it, is also a Gonzales.”

Damn. She should have known all these people would be related. “Hmm, well, speaking of spooky, how does that man, Diaz, fit in?”

He grimaced and glanced over at her. “You want the truth?”

She thought about the note again—and the phone call. Why had he been at the dance hall that day she and Freeda stopped by? “Did he know Marco?”

He inhaled sharply and turned toward her. “To be honest, I don’t know.”

“Is he from here? That truck he was driving last night had Texas plates.”

“That’s where he’s from, I guess.”

“Is he new in town? You haven’t checked up on him?”

Rafe stared straight ahead, but when he spoke, it was through gritted teeth. “I haven’t had a reason, other than he is hanging around and being a general pain in the ass.”

“Someone new in town and someone gets murdered and you don’t check him out?”

Rafe’s laugh was harsh. “Well, see this town has strange people go through it all the time. We’re not that far from Taos and prime camping areas. Tourists come by, get gas, have lunch and some hang around for a few days. We have a campground at the edge of town and decent motels with pools. We don’t make a habit of checking out everyone who wanders into town.”

She drew a deep breath. “You said you were curious about him.”

“Well, number one, the Sanchez investigation is not my case and number two, he hasn’t done anything illegal in the county.”

“He broke into that building. Did you notice that when you walked around it? How do you think I got in? The latch was broken.”

“If I was going to arrest him for trespassing, I’d be taking you in too. Want to share cell space with him? Our jail only has two cells and they face each other, though both have toilets.”

She could tell he was teasing. “I’m just saying! And I just got in once. There were two sets of prints inside that building. I saw them. Which means he’d been in there more than once.”

“Actually the other set was mine. I was curious about why he might have wanted to go inside.”

Cere jerked upright, though it was painful on her still sore bottom. “Aha! So you know he’s not simply an ordinary visitor to town.”

He gave her a sharp look. “Give me a little credit, Medina.”

Cere smiled back at him. She had a feeling that in the morning—if he hadn’t already—Rafe would make a call to the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles to find out exactly who the man was.

Chapter Nineteen

“Help me. Please!”

The glowing eyes burned brighter.
Cere jerked herself from sleep, forcing the apparition from her as she struggled to sit up.

“Don’t give up.”

She hadn’t had a dream since arriving in Rio Rojo, but it seemed more real now. She had visited the dance hall where Marco died. Had she felt him there? No, but she hadn’t found the hand print either.

Sunlight stroked her face and she shifted, becoming aware of how much her body ached, from using her sore arms to move the piano, to her rump where stickers still tingled, to her thighs from kicking the boards, to her sore ankle. She wanted to roll over and go back to sleep but instead glanced at her wrist to check the time. Her wrist was bare.

Where was her watch?
A quick patting of the sheets uncovered nothing. Thinking back, Cere didn’t remember wearing it when she showered and got ready for bed. Thinking further back she remembered checking it on the way to the Palladium but she couldn’t remember it after that. She either lost it in that fiasco inside the dance hall or in Rafe’s Jeep.

The heavenly scent of coffee hung lightly in the air and her stomach rumbled. She hadn’t eaten the night before. Cere stretched and got to her feet. A black and blue bruise was forming on one thigh and her ankle hurt when she tried to walk.