Seven Sisters (22 page)

“Forget it,” I said curtly.

Emory walked up at that moment and asked, “What’s going on?”

“Are you finished with your interviews?” I asked.

“Yes, but—”

“Then let’s go.”

Emory looked at me, then Detective Hudson, then back at me. “Are you all right? What did he do to you?”

“I said, let’s go, Emory.” I climbed into the car, buckled my seat belt, and stared straight ahead. We were out of the parking lot and well on the highway back to San Celina before Emory spoke.

“Need to talk about it?” he asked.

I put a hand up to my eyes. “Not right now, Emory. But thanks for asking.”

He gave me a worried look, then turned the conversation to Isaac with whom he’d chatted briefly at the tasting. “He and Dove are cooking something up. He says he’ll tell me about it when they need publicity. Couldn’t get him to spill a word.”

“Me neither. I’m going out there for dinner tonight, though, so I’ll give it another try. Why don’t you come, too?”

“Can’t. I have to get these stories written and dispatched to my editor for final approval. Then I’m going to see if I can pry my ladylove away from her office long enough for a romantic dinner down at the beach.” His voice wasn’t as chipper and optimistic as usual.

You’d better watch it
, I silently told Elvia,
or this one’s going to slip right through your fingers, and I know you’ll live to regret it.

We pulled up in front of my house, and it was immediately apparent that Gabe’s Corvette wasn’t parked in its customary spot in the driveway.

My cousin gave me a sympathetic look. “He’ll be home soon, sweetcakes.”

I patted his hand, still curled around the steering wheel. “We both got us some kind of troubles, don’t we, Cousin?”

“Amen, sister Albenia,” he said, leaning over and kissing my cheek. “I’ll call you tomorrow and find out the scoop on Dove and Isaac.”

Inside the house the answering machine blinked a single message. I hit play, anticipating Gabe’s baritone voice. Instead, it was Detective Hudson’s.

“Hud, here. Mrs. Harper, in the confused melee of being injured, I failed to inform you that I observed you conversing with the senior Mrs. Brown and I expect you in my office with a full report tomorrow morning.”

“Fat chance, Detective,” I muttered, pulling on my barn jacket. I left a note for Gabe telling him I’d be at the ranch and to come out if he got home early enough.

I stayed at the ranch until nine o’clock, catching up with Isaac and trying to pry something out of Dove about her fund-raising project.

“In good time, honeybun,” she said, “in good time. Now you and Isaac go out on the porch and catch up while I make some phone calls.” She stood on tiptoe and planted a kiss on Isaac’s lips. “Come get me before you go to bed, sweetie, and I’ll heat you up some warm almond milk.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, gazing down at her with pure adoration. She smiled back at him, her own soft peach face matching his glow. Not for the first time I wondered why in the world I ever worried about this sweet, sweet man hurting my gramma.

Out on the porch, we sat on the swing, rocking in companionable silence, watching the evening shadows turn the oaks to black matchsticks against a cobalt blue sky. I tried not to peek at my watch every five minutes and wonder where Gabe was and what he was doing.

“Get things straightened out with that detective?” Isaac asked.

I brought my knees up and rested my chin on them. “I know I sounded like a brat this afternoon, but that business about his mother being a photographer is a flat-out lie.”

“And how do you know that?”

“In the few days I’ve known him, he’s claimed his mother lived in four different towns and had as many different occupations. It’s either some kind of stupid game he’s playing, or he’s a pathological liar. I’m leaning toward the latter.”

Isaac stretched his arm across the back of the swing. “He seemed nice enough.”

“Well, you talked to him for exactly two minutes, so I wouldn’t be trusting him with your life savings if I were you.”

With his thumb and forefinger, he thumped the back of my head gently. “Your mouth is getting a tad too sharp for my taste, kiddo.”

I sighed and leaned my head against his thick, warm shoulder. In the dark September evening, the crickets echoed the
squeak, squeak
of the porch swing being pushed by Isaac’s foot. “I’m sorry. I’m just in a funk tonight.”

“I noticed. You’ve been checking your watch about every ten minutes. Doesn’t Gabe have a cell phone? Why don’t you just call him and see when he’s going to be home?”

“He leaves it in the Corvette, and they probably took Lydia’s car to her mother’s since Sam and Bliss were going, too.” Inside the house, I could hear Dove’s cajoling voice on the phone. Whoever she was speaking to wouldn’t stand a chance. “Besides, I don’t want to seem . . . ” I thought for a moment, searching for the right word. “I don’t know, possessive. Or paranoid. It’s not like this has been going on for months. It’s only been a week and a stressful one at that. If our marriage can’t withstand a week of weird behavior, then we haven’t got much of a marriage.”

He patted my shoulder. “He’s acting like a self-indulgent adolescent. I think you’re showing remarkable patience.”

“You don’t think I’m being too passive? With what everyone else has been saying, I can’t help wondering if I’m being a wimp.”

“Wimp is a word I’d never use to describe you, my dear,” he said, laughing. “And there’s a world of difference between patience and passivity.”

“The thing is, even though it irritates me, I think I understand what he’s feeling. He’s more insecure than people realize. One of the few things he told me about his and Lydia’s breakup was her contempt for what he did for a living. He was working undercover, and I guess that’s pretty hard on a family—his hours were erratic, he was moody and angry all the time, had trouble reconnecting with the real world when he wasn’t working. I don’t blame her for pushing him to get out of it. I’m not sure I could have lived with him either. But she said some pretty ugly things about his capabilities of making a living, of supporting his family, about his masculinity. She really hurt his ego, and he’s never forgotten it.”

“He told you all this?”

“Some of it. Some I pieced together myself.”

“So you think he’s out to prove she was wrong and in the process rub her nose in it a little.”

“Something like that. At least, that’s what it seems like to me.”

“But you and he haven’t actually talked about it.”

I stretched out my legs, tingling from being in one position too long, and studied the tips of my boots. “No, with all that’s gone on with Sam and Bliss and the murder, we haven’t had much time to talk about anything else.”

“You’ll have to deal with it eventually.”

“I know. And we will. I’m just trying to let it happen in its own time. That’s one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in the last few years. You can’t make things happen before they’re supposed to or make people do things they don’t want to do. Besides, I can’t help remembering how understanding and open-minded he was about me staying in my inherited house in Morro Bay last May. He was really there for me when I was acting a little nutso; it only seems fair that I should grant him the same grace.” I gave him a half smile. “Providing it doesn’t last longer than a week, that is. Then I may just have to get out my trusty bullwhip.”

He chuckled. “For her or him?”

“Depends on how I’m feeling that day.”

“Well, you’re thirty years up on me on that grace thing,” he said. “I didn’t comprehend that little fact until I was well past qualifying for Medicare.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Believe it. Wisdom has nothing to do with time served on this earth. In my observance, it’s learning to let go and let a higher power have the control you foolishly thought was under your puny command. Mr. Gabriel Ortiz is a luckier man than he realizes. Hopefully he’ll understand that someday.”

“Well, if he doesn’t, there is always the bullwhip.”

He laughed. “Lordy, I’d never want you mad at me.”

I tucked my arm through his. “You are one special gentleman, Mr. Isaac Lyons, and I
was
very wise about one thing. Letting you into my life.”

“And next to your gramma, Benni Harper, you are the light of my life.”

I hugged his arm to me. “Ha, gratuitous flattery will get you everywhere with a Ramsey woman.”

“So I’ve discovered.”

“I’m not touching that comment with a ten-foot cattle prod.”

WHEN I ARRIVED home, my lightened mood turned black again when Gabe’s car was still gone. That bullwhip was looking better and better. I was in bed cruising the television stations when he came in at ten forty-five. I heard him call out to me, then listen to the message on the answering machine before turning out the living room lights and coming into the bedroom.

“What’s that sheriff’s detective talking about?” he asked, walking into the bathroom while unbuttoning his shirt. “You are cooperating with him, aren’t you?” When I didn’t answer, his head popped out of the bathroom door. “Benni, I asked you a question.”

“Hello, Gabe. Yes, my day was great. How was yours? Of course I missed you as much as you missed me. I agree, it was such a long day without you. Of course I’ll tell you everything, but, please, you go first.”

He walked back into the bedroom slowly, his head tilted in wariness. “
Querida
, are you all right? Did something happen today to upset you?” The sight of the dark circles under his tired eyes softened my irritation.

I sighed, climbed out of bed, and went to him, pulling his shirt out of his jeans and running my hands up his warm back. Sarcasm wasn’t going to solve this. “No, Friday, I’m just . . . It’s nothing. I’m fine. You were later than I expected and I got worried.”

“We ended up spending the whole day with Lydia’s mother, and then she wanted to take us out to dinner. After we dropped Sam and Bliss off at JJ’s house, Lydia and I started talking about Sam, and then one thing led to another. I’m sorry. I should have called.”

I pinched his lower back. “Yes, you should have.”

He jerked. “Ow! Okay, okay. It won’t happen again, I promise.”

I laid my cheek on his bare chest, his musky scent so familiar and yet still so mysterious to me.

His hand stroked my hair, and I rubbed my face against his coarse chest hair. “About that message from the detective . . . ” he said.

“I’m cooperating with Detective Hudson as much as I can.”

He grasped my shoulders and held me away from him, staring down into my face. “What’s that mean?”

“Well, I...” I didn’t know how to explain that the detective was asking me to do exactly what Gabe was asking me not to do.

“Benni, it’s one thing when you defy me and get involved in investigations, but please don’t embarrass me in front of another agency. I want you to do whatever Detective Hudson requests of you.”

“But...”

“No buts. I’m too busy right now with Bliss and Sam to be worrying about you. Please, for once, curb your urge to snoop. If you have some information the detective needs, give it to him and then stay out of his way.”

“It’s not what you think, Gabe. Detective Hudson—”

“Has a job to do and doesn’t need you getting in the way. No more discussion. You’ll do as he asks,
comprende
?”

“Understood,” I said, my voice cool. I pushed away from him and climbed back in bed.

He joined me a few minutes later. “Sweetheart, let’s not argue. I know I sound like a drill sergeant sometimes . . . ”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“I’m really sorry. I’m just so preoccupied with this situation with Sam and this nutty family he’s marrying into. I don’t want to worry about you being hurt because you’ve gotten in over your head.”

An ominous prickling rippled through me. The last part of his sentence almost word for word mirrored Cappy’s statement.

“I know,” I said, reaching under the covers, taking his hand and lacing my fingers through his. “I’ll stay out of this as much as possible. I promise.”

“Good,” he said, bringing my hand to his lips and kissing it. “Lydia sends her regards. Said she was sorry you didn’t come.”

I’ll bet
, I thought, and the possibility ran through my mind that I was indeed being naive, that my husband was being stolen right from under my passive little nose.

Then I went to sleep and dreamed fitfully all night of gravestone rubbings and clouds and wine bottles that sprouted legs and became racehorses, and beautiful Mexican women wearing cowboy boots in all the colors of the rainbow.

“IT’s A FULL moon tonight,” Gabe said, glancing at the kitchen calendar the next morning. “All the loonies will be out.”

“Isn’t that an old wives’ tale?” I asked. “I saw on one of those magazine shows some statistics that said that there wasn’t any more crime on full moon nights than any other.”

He stood next to the toaster in his jogging shorts, waiting for a bagel to pop up, his strong thighs still tight and twitching from their morning run. I watched him over my coffee through bleary eyes, feeling like, with all my crazy dreams, I’d only slept two hours instead of eight.

“Let that television reporter take the next seven p.m. to three a.m. shift during a full moon and see if he changes his tune.” He grabbed his toasted bagel, juggling it from one hand to the other before dropping it on the plate across from me. As he spread grape jelly over it, he glanced at the morning headlines, then peered at me over wire-rimmed glasses. “Are you going to talk to Detective Hudson today?”

“I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Okay, yes, I’ll talk to him. I don’t really have anything to tell him, though. The conversation with Rose Brown that he’s putting so much stock in was nothing that would help him find out who killed Giles Norton.”

“What was it about?”

“She rambled about her dead husband, how much he loved beautiful women and good horses.”

“That’s it?”

My big gulp of coffee burnt my throat. He waited while I waved my hand in front of my mouth. “She also told me I should fix myself up or you’d leave me for someone prettier.”