Tainted Gold (23 page)

“No, thanks.” She shook her head. “I’ve got things to do here.”

“Okay love.” He kissed her soundly and pushed through the screen door. “See you later.”

The kitchen window was still open, and Quillen heard the Blazer whine down the driveway in reverse as she cleared the lunch dishes. Once she’d loaded the dishwasher, scoured the skillet, and wiped the table, she retired to her studio and her navy leather stool.

She tried to work, but her eyes kept drifting shut under the intense warmth cast by the Luxo lamp. An hour or so later, with just the bare outlines of a design sketched, she turned off the light and went to bed. I’ll wake up when Tucker comes back, she thought, yawning as she burrowed her cheek into her pillow.

The telephone roused her, not Tucker. She jerked awake with a start, groggy and disoriented. It took her a minute to identify the shrill ringing she heard, to swing her legs to the floor and snatch up the extension on the nightstand. Before she could say hello, the line went dead and she slammed the receiver back in its cradle.

She lay down again, but couldn’t sleep. The clock radio read four-forty-one, and she couldn’t imagine where Tucker was. She stayed in bed until five when worry forced her up. In the kitchen, she brewed a pot of tea, drank two cups, and sat at the table eyeing the telephone. At five-twenty she got out of her chair to call Sheriff Blackburn, then sighed, relieved, as she heard the glass in the kitchen window rattle as the Blazer growled up the drive.

“Where the hell have you been?” she demanded, throwing the screen door open as he mounted the back porch steps. “I was worried sick.”

With his hand on the banister, he looked up at her and frowned. He was still in his dusty, torn clothes, and his face, though gray with fatigue, showed splotches of angry color.

“I can do without the third degree,” he snapped, pushing past her and striding through the house toward the bedroom.

“Oh, really?” she shot back, whirling after him. “Well, I can do without wondering if you ran the truck off into a ditch because you aren’t even well enough to stand up, let alone drive.”

“Don’t worry,” he retorted, flinging himself down on the bed on his back. “I returned your precious truck in one piece.”

He threw his left arm over his eyes, rubbed his rib cage with his right hand, and her nasty, “Get your filthy boots off my crocheted bedspread!” died in Quillen’s throat. There were two fresh, knuckle-shaped bruises on the side of his jaw, and the bright red splotches on his right hand had to be ink or blood. Somehow she didn’t think they were ink.

“Who slugged you?” she demanded.

“Nobody,” he snapped, guiltily and quickly tucking his right hand under the pillow.

“Ran into another door, huh?”

He raised his left arm and stared at her. Some of the strained lines in his face had eased, but the corners of his mouth looked pinched.

“Got an ice bag?” he asked hoarsely.

Quillen knew she had one, somewhere. It took her almost five minutes to find it on the top shelf of the linen closet, and another minute or so to load it with ice cubes, carry it into the bedroom, and hand it to Tucker. A grateful sigh parted his lips as he pressed it to his jaw, and she sat quietly on the side of the bed, giving him a few minutes to rest, before she repeated her question.

“Who slugged you?”

“You aren’t helping my ego any.” He cracked one closed eye at her and frowned. “You could have asked who
I
slugged.”

“Okay, who did
you
slug?”

“The Jolly Green Giant.”

“Cal!” Quillen cried, wide-eyed. “Why?”

“Because when I drove out to the creek to clean my gear out of the Jeep, I found him doing it for me. I told him to take his hands off it or I’d have him arrested. He said I’d have to beat him to it, because Uncle Des had told him about the warrant he swore against me last night. He tried to haul me back to town then, I resisted, he belted me, and here I am.”

“Uh-huh.” Quillen nodded slowly. “And where’s Cal?”

“Probably still flat on his back next to my Jeep.”

“Oh, Tucker.” Quillen groaned. “What did you do?”

“I defended myself,” he retorted indignantly.

“With
what
?”

“A cottonwood branch,” he told her, and she groaned again. “Well, what the hell did you expect me to do? Let him drag me off to jail? Sheriff Blackburn wouldn’t have had a choice—he would have
had
to lock me up. Believe me, I didn’t want to whack him with the tree limb, but the punches I managed to land had as much effect on him as a pea shooter would have on King Kong.”

“Well.” Quillen sighed thoughtfully. “I don’t think you have to worry about Cal going to the sheriff. He’d sooner die than confess that someone had whipped him. Where did the blood on your splint come from?”

“My nose,” he muttered, sliding his arm over his eyes again. “It bled on the way home.”

“What was he doing in your Jeep? I don’t suppose he said?”

“Of course not. He just stood there daring me to accuse him of
breaking into it—which he did.” Tucker raised his arm again and frowned at the ceiling. “He was looking for something—he’d strewn my gear all over the ground—but for the life of me, I can’t think what I’ve got that he’d want.”

“I can’t, either,” Quillen admitted, “unless he was looking for the plans Jason gave you.”

“I doubt it, but that’s a good point. He might come here looking for them, so we’d better keep an eye peeled tonight.”

The thought made her heart sink, especially because it seemed Cal had betrayed their long friendship, but she gamely refused to let Tucker see how much it distressed her. She put on her Quillen-the-Invincible face, and when he got up to unload his luggage from the Blazer, she tagged along to help. On her third trip into the house with a soft-sided navy suitcase in one hand and a small box of paperback books in the other, Quillen heard the doorbell, dropped the pullman, slid the carton on the kitchen table, and went to answer it.

“Who’s there?” she asked.

“Jason. Is Ferris in there?”

“Not at the moment—”

“Quick, open up.”

His voice sounded urgent. Quillen released the lock, turned the knob—then Jason pushed through the door, grabbed her arm, and yanked her out into the hall.

“Hey, what—”

“Shut up,” he hissed as he pulled the door shut, backed her against it, and spread his palms on either side of her head.

He leaned his face close to hers, and Quillen purposely drew a deep breath. She didn’t smell liquor, and her heart clutched between her ribs.

“Listen,” he said lowly, “I went by the office today to clean out my desk—”

Quillen felt the door give behind her and shrieked when it opened, falling back into Tucker’s arms. She glanced up at his face over her shoulder and then at Jason. His olive cheeks were nearly scarlet.

“No, don’t stop, keep going,” Tucker invited him cheerfully as he eased Quillen to her feet. “I love secrets.”

“Look, I’m sorry,” Jason apologized. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I just thought this was best said to Quillen in private.” He backed away and wheeled up the stairs. “I’ll catch you later, Quill.”

He bounded up the steps two at a time, and once he’d turned the landing, Quillen faced Tucker with a bewildered frown.
His expression was equally confused—and something else she couldn’t quite read.

“Am I crazy?” she asked. “Or does there seem to be some kind of paranoia creeping over all of us?”

“You’re not crazy,” he answered, his gaze still fixed on the landing where Jason had been moments before. “I wonder what that was about.”

“All he said was he’d been in the office today to clean out his desk, then you opened the door and he clammed up. I’m guessing, but I don’t think he wanted you to hear what he had to say.” She smiled as Tucker glanced down at her. “I don’t think Jason trusts you.”

“I couldn’t care less.” He smiled back. “As long as you do.”

“If I didn’t,” she said, slipping her arms carefully around his waist and stretching up on her toes to kiss his battered jaw, “you wouldn’t be here.”

“I’d like to say prove it.” He grinned as he slipped his arms around her. “But I think the proving would probably put us both in a body cast.”

Though neither of them was particularly hungry, they forced themselves to eat a light dinner of tomato soup with the last of the oyster crackers and the cocoa left over from lunch. Quillen compassionately left the marshmallows out of hers, and afterward Tucker helped her straighten up the kitchen. They went to bed then, again took turns with the Ben-Gay, and snuggled together under the covers.

“Do you really think,” Quillen asked as she stifled a yawn, “that Cal was looking for the plans and that somebody will come looking for them tonight?”

“I can’t imagine what else he’d be looking for,” Tucker replied sleepily, “and I sure as hell
hope
nobody comes skulking around here tonight. As tired as I am, he could probably carry off this bed with us in it and I’d never wake up.”

To the contrary, Tucker almost leaped off the bed when the telephone rang. Quillen shot up on one arm behind him and listened to the several sharp, impatient hellos he barked into the mouthpiece. A shiver started up her spine and she jumped when he slammed the receiver down and turned toward her.

“That happened this afternoon while you were gone,” she told him. “It rang, I answered it, and the line went dead.”

“If it rings again, you answer it,” Tucker said, grunting a little as he shoved his pillow against the headboard and swung himself around to lean against it. “Maybe it’s your friend Jason.”

“Or maybe it’s just some kid playing games with the phone.”

“Maybe,” he said simply, but he didn’t sound convinced.

Quillen wasn’t, either, not really. She thought briefly about Jason. What had he wanted to talk to her about? But it wasn’t his style to call and hang up. She’d speak to him tomorrow. Pushing her pillow next to Tucker’s, she curled herself gingerly around him in a half-supine position. The telephone didn’t ring again, and eventually her weary eyelids drifted shut of their own accord.

The next day was a festival day, and the clock radio wakened Quillen at six, although she couldn’t remember having set it. She opened one sleep-weighted eye in time to see Tucker shoot out of bed, grab his side, and curse as he leaped out of the bedroom and into the studio. Pulling on her shift, Quillen followed him and bumped into the doorway, yawning, as she watched him drop to his hands and knees and open the storage space built in below the windowseat, where he had put the plans.

“Thank God, the plans are still there.” He shut the doors, rocked back on his heels, and raised one eyebrow at Quillen. “Great pair of watchdogs, aren’t we?”

They ate a hasty breakfast of tea and toast, then Tucker carried a makeup case twice the size of Quillen’s into the bathroom and began Realgar’s face. While she put on her costume and French-braided the ribbons into her hair, Quillen watched him, fascinated by the transformation. It took him an hour and innumerable layers of latex and pancake makeup to construct the ancient, wizened visage of the wizard, but once he’d glued on his beard and tugged on his wig, it was Realgar who turned away from the mirror and kissed her.

“Here’s the face you love, my love. Did watching me put it on make you crazy with passion, I hope?”

He waggled his white, bushy eyebrows at her and she laughed.

“Some other time, you dirty old sorcerer.” She grinned. “We’ll be late.”

“One last thing.” He frowned, raised his right hand, and tore at the tape securing the splint with his teeth.

“Tucker!” she cried, making a grab at him that missed.

He jerked his arm over his head and Realgar glowered at her. “There were no metal splints in the fifteenth century, my love.”

“But your fingers—”

“—are just fine, see?” He ripped off the last layer of tape, popped off the splint, and showed her his puckered, bruised fingers. He bent them and winced. “Oh, well, they’ll loosen up. Come on, let’s go.”

He drove and Quillen turned sideways in her seat to watch him. A lump of gray rough weave in the rear deck caught her eye between the seats and she asked him what it was.

“My spare cloak,” he told her, “and my bow’s underneath, just in case.”

“You can’t take it onto the grounds, Tucker. Real weapons are forbidden.”

“I know that, love, but it’ll be in the truck.”

“And the truck will be in the parking lot.”

“If I need it,” he said, glancing at her, “I can get to it faster than you can whistle the William Tell Overture.”

“Why do you think you’ll need it?”

“I don’t.” He smiled. “But better safe than sorry.”

“I will be safe,” she pointed out patiently. “I’ll be in the midst of hundreds of people all day long.”

“I know,” he agreed, his smile widening, “and I’m not the least bit worried.”

“Liar,” Quillen muttered inaudibly.

He talked and joked with her as he drove, but she wasn’t fooled. Beneath his smile his mouth looked taut and his eyes troubled. Maybe it’s the wrinkles, she thought, but she really didn’t believe it.