Silk and Stone (29 page)

Jake raised hands that looked too large and rough to have made something as delicate as the dreamcatcher. He shoved them through his wet hair, then let them drop by his sides. “I’ve tried every way I can think of to help them through you. I’m tired of hiding.”

“I figured a long time ago that keeping your distance is the hardest thing you’ve ever done. If you’d stepped in the way you wanted to, Alexandra would have cut them off without a penny—cut off her own sister. And I don’t doubt she’d have made poor Frannie miserable in other ways to boot. You’ve done the right thing, because Alexandra is as cold-blooded as a snake.”

“She can’t keep a hold over them forever.”

“I’ll tell you what she did when Sammie opened your present. Alexandra didn’t know it was from you, of course, but it must have made her nervous. Because she told Sammie it was too nice a gift to take from somebody who isn’t family. She didn’t want her to keep it. From what I heard, she grabbed your note and scrutinized it like it might be secret code. I’m warning you, she’s suspicious.”

“What did Samantha say?” Jake never called the girl anything but
Samantha
. He’d decorated her in his own private way, Joe supposed, and Sammie deserved decoration. “She said she wasn’t giving it back,” Joe replied proudly. “And you know what Alexandra did? She gave Sammie a choice—keep the dreamcatcher or keep
her gift.
”

“What did she give her?”

“A
car
. A damned Mercedes.” Joe hesitated, studying Jake’s expression intently. Jake looked pleased but not surprised. That kind of faith—between two people who’d seen each other only a handful of times—would have seemed foolish if the people hadn’t been Jake and Sammie. “You got yourself quite a lady there,” Joe added.

“She knows it’s me,” Jake said under his breath as if talking to himself. “And that means the line’s already been crossed.”

“Who knows?” Joe asked. “Alexandra? Nah, she’s too sure of herself to think you and Sammie would go against her.”

Jake frowned, still lost in thought. “It’s time. I always said I’d know.” His attention was suddenly riveted to Joe again, the meaning of the vague, unsettling words locked inside him. Joe didn’t like the uncompromising gleam in his eye. “Don’t lose your patience now,” Joe told him anxiously. “You don’t look like you’re in the right mood to make up your mind about anything. You look like you been rode hard and put up wet.”

“Bad work.” Jake’s voice was hollow and slightly hoarse, and once again he seemed to be distracted by other thoughts.

Joe pressed carefully. “You been doin’ some tracking?”

“Just got back from Tennessee. Went up to Nashville. Police called me to help find a kid who disappeared from a nursery school playground two days ago.”

“Tennessee, huh? You and Bo are gettin’ a wide reputation.”

“We go where we’re needed.”

“Find him?”

“Yeah.”

From the look on Jake’s face, Joe didn’t think he wanted to know the details, but he couldn’t help himself. He had a grandson in nursery school. “Alive?” Joe asked.

“No. Stuffed under a creek bank. Somebody’d strangled him with a piece of wire.” Jake’s troubled gaze finally settled solidly on Joe. “His clothes were all gone. He’d been … messed with. You know?”

Joe grimaced. “Do they have their sights on the bastard who did it?”

“They do now. I tracked him down.” Jake stared into space, as if seeing something no man wanted to see. “Do you believe in ravenmockers?” he asked slowly.

Joe grimaced. “Hell, yes. Some of them have been president.”

“I caught one today. He couldn’t get away from me, and he couldn’t kill me.” Jake smiled thinly. “I learned a good lesson today.”

Chapter
            Thirteen
 

“H
appy New Year,” Mr. Gunther said the second he walked into the shop. “Sammie, have I got a birthday present for
you.
”

Sam, who had been going over the day’s mediocre receipts before she left for her night job at the fabric store, peered at him anxiously. “My birthday’s not until next week.”

Charlotte, halfheartedly working on algebra problems at a table in one corner, perked up at the sight of him. But Mom turned from stacking bottles of vitamin E on a shelf, a pensive expression on her thin face. “Joe, I asked you not to—”

“Aw, this isn’t anything that’ll raise your sister’s hackles. I got Sammie a nice little job, if she wants it. A hundred bucks for about an hour’s worth of easy work.”

Sam dropped the receipts on the counter so fast they scattered like confetti. “A hundred dollars an hour? How much of my clothes do I have to take off? I’ll sew sequins on my underwear.”

Mom gasped. “Sam.”

“I’m only kidding.” Sam looked at Mr. Gunther shrewdly. “I won’t go farther than a tight T-shirt.”

“You’ll have to do better than
that,
” Charlotte chimed in. She fluttered her hands in front of the largest bosom in her tenth-grade class. “You were standing behind the door when God passed out big—”

“
Charlotte,
” Mom warned.

Mr. Gunther laughed. “The only thing Sammie has to uncover are her
hands.
”

Sam frowned at him. “You really are just teasing.”

“I’m not, I swear.” He plopped down in a folding chair beside the counter, hooked the heels of maroon cowboy boots over the chair’s crossbar, and pulled a business card from the breast pocket of his pink western shirt. “I’ve got a second cousin over in Yonah Lake. Name’s Marie Path Walker—well, she was born Marie Walker, but she’s a full-blood, and back in the seventies she took up the Indian cause in a big way, so she went back to the old family name—anyhow, then she went out west for a while and studied jewelry-making with the Navajos, and for the past fifteen years or so she’s made some of the finest turquoise and silver jewelry you’re ever gonna see.”

“Take a breath, Mr. Gunther,” Charlotte interjected. “Your face is turning red.”

He leaned forward, waving his extravagantly ringed fingers like an excited auctioneer. “Now, she’s no lightweight, you understand. She sells her work through some of the best stores in New York City and Los Angeles. I mean,
movie stars
have bought her jewelry.”

“How about Madonna?” Charlotte asked. Her only noncooking idol.

“Shhh,” Mom said.

“Marie needs to put together a real slick portfolio of her best pieces for a distributor over in Europe. She
needs somebody to model the rings and bracelets for the photographer. So
I
told her I knew a gal with hands like an angel’s.”

“That’s all there is to it?” Sam asked. “I put on some jewelry and let a photographer take pictures of my hands? And I get a hundred dollars?”

“A hundred dollars
an hour,
” Mr. Gunther corrected her. “I did some checking. That’s what professional hand models get, and Lord knows their hands couldn’t be any prettier than yours. Marie’s rolling in money. Didn’t bat an eyelash when I told her what you’d cost.”

Sam was flabbergasted. “You’re serious. There are people who get big money just for modeling with their hands.”

“Well, it makes sense when you think about all the ads where all you see is a pair of hands holding something.” He gazed at her eagerly. “Marie’s got the photographer lined up for next week. She works out of her house, so he’ll set up there to do the pictures. Do you want the job, Sammie?”

“I was planning to close the shop on Sammie’s birthday,” Mom said wistfully. “She needs a day off.”

“Mom, I don’t need a day off. I need this job. Besides, it won’t take very long.”

“It’s a deal, then!” Mr. Gunther beamed at her.

Sam lifted her hands and studied them curiously. She
was
a spider, and she’d discovered a way to spin gold.

The weather was mild, particularly for January, when cold winds curled between the mountains more days than not. The photographer liked the clear afternoon light outdoors, and had set up his equipment on a stone patio in Marie Path Walker’s sprawling, unkempt backyard.

Mrs. Path Walker’s house was a huge restored Victorian full of paintings by Indian artists, ceremonial masks, fine English antiques, and Cabbage Patch dolls belonging to her numerous grandchildren. Marie was a tall, thin woman with a flat face, vibrant black eyes, and long black
hair shot through with gray. She strode around in loafers, jeans, and a long black sweatshirt.

When Mr. Gunther introduced Sam to her, she examined Sam’s hands as if they were disembodied set props and pronounced them perfect but too pale, so Mr. Gunther was dispatched crosstown to the home of a black lady who sold beauty supplies for women with dark skin. He returned with a tube of chocolate-brown foundation, matching powder, and a cosmetic brush. Then he disappeared upstairs to watch television with Marie’s husband.

Sam sat on a folding chair on the patio, the tube of makeup clasped nervously in her lap, as she squinted in the bright gleam of the photographer’s set lights. Mrs. Path Walker and the photographer scurried around her as if she were invisible, adjusting a blue backdrop strung on a clothesline and endlessly discussing a vast array of beautiful turquoise and silver jewelry laid out on a card table nearby.

It was her birthday.
Eighteen
. The world’s definition of an adult finally agreed with Sam’s self-image. She was responsible for her own decisions, free as a bird, but not free at all. This work might pay well, but it made her feel restless. She’d never thought of her hands as being valuable merely because of their looks; it was hard to keep them still.

From where she sat she could see the edge of a paved driveway between holly shrubs, and she heard the sound of a car pulling in.
Probably someone bringing neon-pink nail polish for me to wear
, she thought grimly. She scrubbed her damp palms on the legs of her loose black trousers, distractedly running her fingertips over the expertly stitched seams of the pockets.

Neither Mrs. Path Walker nor the photographer had asked her anything about herself—whether she had skills, or deep thoughts, or wanted a glass of water. Apparently, she was expected to sit there like a mannequin, and keep quiet.

A car door slammed. A few seconds later Jake walked between the hollies.

There was a moment of sinking alarm, the recognition of sensitive parts of her body she’d ignored for a long time, and the primal jolt of gratitude and confusion.
Mr. Gunther set this up
, she thought.
My birthday present. The one I’ve waited for so long. The one I can’t accept
.

Jake was brutal-looking, handsome in the manner of big, brawny men who considered a decent haircut a luxury and a bar of cheap soap a cologne. Sunlight glinted on reddish-black hair as glossy as a new penny and long enough to brush his rumpled collar in back. Oddly enough, the hair suited him, making a sweeping counterpart to a serious, straight-edged face. If she drew her fingertips along that face, she’d find angles hard enough to trace a line by. The rest of him would have made an outline of startlingly masculine proportions, a bulge here, a long perimeter there.

He walked toward her with long, determined strides. And then she understood. He’d promised to come for her when she was old enough.
But you can’t
, she told him silently.
Not yet
.

She started to turn away, but her eyes were riveted to him. Of all things, a large, ugly bloodhound followed him. The dog had an incredibly long tongue, spilling drool on the neat grass, as pink as a nipple.

Samantha stood, fumbling with the top to the tube of makeup, dropping the top heedlessly, and shooting furtive glances at Mrs. Path Walker. Mrs. Path Walker waved at Jake. “How’s your mother, Jake? Sold any more of her watercolors lately?”

“She’s fine, thank you. Sold a few.”

Now I get it
, Sam thought, stunned. Mr.
Gunther knew we’d be safe, meeting here. But nothing has changed
.

Smoothing dark foundation on the unblemished perfection of her hands and lower arms, she frowned and refused to look up, but every nerve was tuned to the approaching sound of Jake’s soft, undeterred footsteps on the patio stones.