Dove in the Window (20 page)

“Is he a scumbag? I don’t defend scumbags. That’s one advantage to being semi-independently wealthy with ill-gotten money.”

“No. He’s a rednecked cowboy who deserves to be slapped upside the head about ten times a day, but he’s not a scumbag, and I don’t think he did it. I really don’t.”

She nodded and sipped at her hot tea. “Tell you what. You call me if they charge him. I know the sheriff’s department, and they surely love to close their files as quick as possible, but I won’t let them railroad an innocent man.”

“Thanks, Amanda.”

Her reassuring words made the drive to the ranch a little less stressful. I didn’t realize until I’d talked to her how scared I was for Wade and how alone I felt in defending him.

With all my relatives gone now, the ranch looked strangely and sadly empty when I parked under the white oak that shaded the front yard. Inside Dove’s clean, cinnamon-scented kitchen, I threw my sheepskin jacket on a stool and helped myself to some leftover roast beef and mashed potatoes. The microwave
pinged
at the same moment I heard Dove and Isaac’s voices on the front porch. I had just taken my first bite when they walked in, pink-cheeked and laughing.

“Well, look what the north wind blew in,” Dove said, holding a basket of tiny pale green apples from her three pampered trees. Isaac carried two dusty orange pumpkins. A square black camera hung from a worn leather strap around his neck. “Hope you didn’t take all the leftovers. That was going to be our lunch.”

I looked straight into her clear blue eyes and said, “Only his part.”

A small chuckle erupted from his direction.

Dove pinched her lips together and set the apples down on the white-tiled counter. “Isaac,” she said, not taking her gaze from me, “would you excuse me and Miss Smart-mouth for a minute?”

“Sure thing, Dove.” Isaac placed the pumpkins carefully on the counter next to the apples and gave me a wink before he left. I glared at him, feeling the strongest urge to bounce one of Dove’s hard little apples off his white head.

“All righty, little miss,” Dove said, whisking my plate out from under my fork. “We’re going to have ourselves a talk.”

“Hey!” I said, reaching for my food. “Give that back.”

“I’m not going to be a-talkin‘ to you while you’re eating. You’re just like your Daddy and won’t hear a word if you got your mouth full.”

“Speaking of Daddy, what’s he think about you inviting a stranger to stay at the ranch?”

“Your daddy is a heap smarter than his daughter. I own one third of this ranch and I’ve got the right to invite anyone I want to stay here.”

“Gramma,” I said, “be reasonable. You don’t even know this man. He’s ... he’s ...” I threw up my hands in exasperation.

She narrowed one blue eye at me. “He’s my guest, young lady, and I’ll expect you to treat him with respect. What is your problem? Where in the world did you ever get the idea that what I do and who I see is any concern of yours? I’m a grown woman, and you need to keep out of my business.” She threw my plate full of food into the sink, spraying brown gravy across her clean counter.

“Me keep out of
your
business? Me!” I sputtered. “You, the queen of interfering—”

She picked up an empty iron frying pan and slammed it down on the stove’s burner, causing a clang that rattled the whole stove. “Don’t you take that tone with me or I‘ll—”

The door opened and the source of our argument walked back in. We turned to look at him as he strolled calmly across the carpeted living room and cupped his monstrous hand underneath my elbow.

“I think we need to take a walk before you both say things you’ll most likely regret.”

I jerked my elbow away. “Leave us alone, Mr. Lyons. This is none of your business.”

He clamped his hand on my shoulder. “Ms. Harper, I wasn’t asking.”

I jerked away again and looked to Dove, waiting for her to jump down his throat, to tell him that no one manhandled one of her grandkids like that.

She just glared at me. “Do what he says.”

Openmouthed, I turned around and ran out the door, so mad I could spit nails. I kept going through the backyard, the orchard, around the barn, and through the back pasture until I reached the path to the creek that meandered like a snake through the ranch. The cold autumn air cut deep into my lungs, but I couldn’t stop running. Underneath my feet, the dried leaves and grass crunched like toast. When I reached the creek bank I slowed down, picking my way carefully down the steep path to the water. I sat down on a large stone and watched the water bugs skim across the surface as my pounding heart slowed back to normal.

The sound of the trickling water gradually soothed my raw nerves, and rational thought began to return. Why was I acting like such a spoiled brat? What was it about this man that set me so much on edge? Was I really afraid of Dove being hurt or was it that I didn’t want to share my grandmother with anyone? As I trailed a stick through the water, the chilled air caused me to shiver underneath my cotton shirt. How was I going to go back and somehow make amends for my childish behavior? I still didn’t like or trust Isaac Lyons, but Dove and everyone else was right. It wasn’t my place to dictate who she should see no matter how sincere my concern was.

Behind me, the sound of breaking twigs and crackling leaves told me I wasn’t alone anymore. By the heaviness of the footfalls and the sound of his breathing, I didn’t have to turn around to see who it was.

“Got a spare rock?” Isaac said, coming up beside me.

I shrugged and didn’t answer, my noble and mature intentions of a moment ago shattered. It irritated me that he was again pushing his way in before I was ready to concede.

He sat down beside me with a small groan, his overwhelming body filling the spot by the creek that had been my hiding place since I was a little girl. I resented his presence and wondered how he’d found me.

“Dove told me where you’d probably be.”

I ignored him and continued studying the trickling water. Above us, a Phoebe flycatcher flitted from branch to branch, scolding us like a cranky old aunt. I shivered again and in the next moment felt the heavy warmth of his fleece-lined leather jacket around my shoulders. I considered pushing it off, then decided that I might be stubborn and unyielding, but I wasn’t stupid.

Finally he said, “Benni, I’m not going to hurt your grandmother. That’s a promise.”

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. The camera still hung around his thick neck. Did he ever go anywhere without it?

“How do I know that?” I asked. “I don’t know anything about you.”

He pointed to his camera and asked, “May I?”

I shrugged. He slipped the lens cap into his shirt pocket and brought the camera up to his eye. The shutter’s clicking was so soft, a deer could walk by unstartled. He didn’t ask me to smile, and I didn’t. He stood up and circled me, talking continuously as he snapped pictures.

“You know, a good picture takes a strong subject as well as a strong composition. All the equipment and filters and talent in the world can’t make a subject interesting if there isn’t something substantial there to begin with.” His voice came from behind me, cajoling and demanding at once. “Look at me, Benni.” I twisted around and looked over my shoulder. He clicked a picture. “What a photographer leaves out is just as important as what he includes. Only then does the real picture, the real truth, emerge.”

I frowned. He snapped a couple of pictures. “The truth as the photographer sees it,” I said.

He lowered his camera and smiled at me. “Very good, Ms. Harper. I suspect you would have been an excellent student of photography.”

I didn’t react to his flattery, still not trusting him, still waiting to see where this was leading.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” he said, stepping with his long legs across the narrow creek. “No one really knows where good pictures come from.” I followed him with my eyes. He clicked another three or four shots and murmured, “Beautiful.” He looked at me over the camera. “How to find them is to always reach for the unsafe thing, the unexpected image. You have to disarm your subject as coldly as a soldier in battle. And after all that, sometimes they are just, pure and simple, a gift from God.” He lifted the camera back up to his eye. “Think of me in ballerina tights and toe shoes.”

“What?” I said and laughed when the picture compulsively drew itself in my mind.

He snapped off a quick rat-tat-tat, then grinned. “Gotcha.” He stepped back over the creek and sat down beside me. “Now, you’re angry at me even though you don’t know me. What can I do to change that?” The soft whir of the camera rewinding film sounded like a small frantic animal.

“I think you’re using Dove,” I blurted out.

He contemplated me silently. The camera stopped rewinding. Without taking his eyes from my face, he opened the back of the camera, removed the film, and put it in his pocket. “You think so? Is it so hard to believe I would be attracted to your grandmother?”

Before I could answer, he continued.

“Your grandmother is a remarkable woman and an excellent photographic subject. Very natural. My project on California western women is not entirely a sham. It’ll sell well, no doubt about it.”

“But you’re not here just to take pictures of women roping cattle and canning peaches.”

He smiled and fitted the lens cap back on his camera. “Dove said you were a sharp one, that it would be, to quote her, pretty near impossible to pull one over on you.”

I pressed my lips together, determined not to let his compliment affect my goal. “So why are you here?”

“I don’t have any children,” he said, locking his thick fingers around one knee. “And I’ve been married five times. Sounds impossible, I know, but somehow with each one it was either too early or too late or some other crazy reason why we didn’t have a family.” He looked past me to the water spilling into a miniature waterfall formed by a dam Emory and I had tried to build the summer he stayed here. Moss had grown furry and green over the rocks we’d hauled from the lower creek with overly enthusiastic plans for a swimming hole. “A part of me regrets it now that I’m old. Especially when I see the family surrounding your grandmother. I envy the love that would cause a granddaughter to forge in and butt heads with someone just because she thinks he’s going to hurt her grandmother.”

I bit the inside of my cheek, fighting the empathy I was starting to feel toward this man.

“We childless people are a special group, whether it’s by choice or not. We love intensely because when we do we can focus on one person. But we at times can also feel an incredible loneliness that no one with children will ever truly understand.”

I swallowed hard, knowing exactly how it felt. I stared down into the clear, running water, wanting to scoop some up and cool my burning face. “Why are you telling me this?” I asked in a low voice.

“My fourth wife, Catherine, was the love of my life. She was ...” He paused for a moment, remembering. “She was the photograph I’d been searching for my whole life. It was her second marriage. Her first husband was an aviator, a career Navy man. Their daughter, Gina, was twelve when he died. An experimental plane he was flying went down at Edwards Air Force Base. When Catherine and I married, Gina was thirty-five and already had three sons. They were close to their teens and didn’t pay much attention to the old man with a camera around his neck who married their grandmother. Then Gina got pregnant one last time, and my whole life changed.” He looked down at me and smiled. “She looked just like pictures of her grandmother at that age. To me, she looked just like what I’d always pictured my own daughter, or granddaughter, looking like. And she was fascinated by cameras from the time she was a baby.”

My eyes widened. “Shelby,” I said. “She’s your granddaughter.”

He nodded. “Catherine died four years ago from a heart attack. Happened just like that.” He snapped his fingers softly. “I married again, but it didn’t work out. I should have known better, but I was looking for what I had with Catherine and I know I’ll never find that again. Shelby and I were close from the very start. She truly accepted me as her grandfather even though I technically wasn’t. She called me Papa Lyons.” His voice caught. “It was me who encouraged her to go away to college here in the West. I told her if she wanted to be a true artist she needed to first discover who she was and I knew that would be impossible while she lived in Chicago.”

“You’re here to find out who killed her.”

His brown eyes grew glassy and hard as creek stones. “Gina and Marcus—Shelby’s father—just wanted her body shipped back, and that’s that. Gina said it didn’t matter what happened, that it wouldn’t bring Shelby back.”

“But it does matter to you.” I looked at him steadily.

“Whoever did this will be punished. It won’t bring her back, but I need to have justice. For her ... and for myself. Otherwise, I won’t be able to let her go.”

A cool breeze blew through the thick trees. I hugged my knees and burrowed deeper into his jacket. It smelled of Polo cologne, the aftershave Gabe wore, and a sharp, metallic scent I couldn’t name. “I know,” is all I answered.

He held my gaze for an uncomfortable minute. “I know you do. Dove told me about Jack.”

“His brother, Wade, is a suspect.”

Isaac nodded.

“I don’t think he did it.”

“Dove doesn’t think so either. She said he was raised good. That his mother was an honest, hardworking woman.”

“She was,” I said, remembering my former mother-in-law, who had been warm and loving to me and her sons the whole time I lived on the ranch. “She is.” What Dove didn’t know was Wade’s little foray into delivering drugs last year when he was trying to save the Harper ranch.

Isaac’s camera-trained eyes narrowed; the deep crevices in his face seemed to fold inward. “But you’re not entirely sure of him.”

I didn’t answer.

“It appears, Ms. Benni Harper, that we’re both after the same thing, but the question is, are you willing to take a chance on finding out the truth?”

“Do I have much of a choice?”

“I suppose not.” He pushed himself up from his rock and held out his hand. “So, partners?”