The Salt Maiden (17 page)

“Oh, Jay. I’m so sorry.” Dana put down the sandwich. “I don’t care how people feel about the war. There’s no excuse for that behavior. You made a commitment and stood by it, a commitment to your country.”

“Sure, they had an excuse for talking that way. I
was
crazy, Dana—acting like a first-class nutcase.”

“It was an
accident
.”

“What I did was dangerous, and it could’ve been a lot worse if my buddy hadn’t been there to restrain me. That’s why I checked into the VA to get myself evaluated.”

“But they helped you? Right? I mean, I haven’t seen any signs—”

“I did a few of the group sessions—counseling, I guess
you’d call it. But it was hard being around a lot of people stateside. Their priorities…I didn’t get them. And the noise. The cell phones and the TVs and the Starbucks and the strip malls and the music and—”

“So that’s why you came out here,” she guessed, “to escape America—or as much of it as you could.”

He nodded, shrugged a shoulder. “That and the fact that the Dallas PD wouldn’t have me back. Not without extensive treatment. Maybe not even after that.”

“It would’ve been a good idea, Jay, to work things through in counseling. Hiding from the problem—”

“You think I want to live off the government on some kind of psychiatric disability?” he burst out. “That even if I could work again with something like that on my record, I’d beg and plead and jump through hoops to get help from the system? Who’d ever let me carry a gun, knowing something could set me off again? I was broken up about my uncle’s death, but I was also damned lucky to have an offer from the one place where the name Eversole’s worth something, where they wouldn’t look too closely at my references or background. Because not everybody’s got a rich family to help them. Not everybody’s got a safety net when things don’t pan out like they should.”

Dana stiffened. “I’m well aware of that, Jay. But I’m not about to apologize for mine. For one thing, as you might have noticed, it hasn’t exactly bought me a special dispensation against all things unpleasant.”

The chill in her voice lingered, freezing the narrow space between them.

“You didn’t deserve that. See? It’s just one more way of lashing out at others. And one more reason you should stay away from me. Because I’m screwed up, Dana.”

She smiled without a trace of humor. “Maybe
that’s
the big attraction. Because anybody else would take one look at my life and start running. Even before the thing with Angie, my fiancé already decided I was a bad bet.”

Relieved at the change of subject, he said, “I thought we’d pretty well established the man’s an idiot with no taste.”

“But possibly good survival instincts.”

He faltered through a smile. “Well, you’d have to have suicidal instincts to take a chance on me. For one thing, now that that story’s out, my days as sheriff here are probably numbered. And even if I stay, this is no place for any woman. No place for anyone but scorpions and rattlers and a very few lost souls.”

“Everybody gets lost, Jay. We all wander through one desert or another in our lifetime. There’s still time for you to get whatever help you need to put yourself back on track and return to Dallas, or go anywhere you like.”

“Cops handle things. They don’t go cry on some shrink’s shoulder or snivel around some lame-ass sharing circle and pass the tissue box. And they sure as hell don’t respect any cop who does.”

She made a face. “Oh, so it’s a macho issue. I see. Then you’ll forgive me if I don’t make time to listen to it anymore.”

“You don’t have to listen. Just eat.”

When she only stared, he added, “Unless you want me to feed you. Or call the old-lady brigade in here to do it.”

Her look reflected his mood: sullen, bordering on mean. But she picked up the soup bowl nonetheless and started spooning.

“I’ve got some other things to see to,” he said. “I’ll check in with you in the morning. Meanwhile, I want you to get some rest and lie low. As far as I’m concerned, you’re still in danger as long as you’re here and there’s a killer out there, God knows where.”

Dear sis,

Those prayers you promised must have helped, because it seems we’ve dodged a bullet. Nikki’s fever’s finally down, and she’s eating a little this morning, even smiling.

For how long, no one can guess. With the birth mother dead, we’re almost out of other options. If she’d only listed the father on the original certificate, there might have been some chance. But now? Now we’re using the publicity (or the “public evisceration,” as John is calling it) to go out on the news and ask perfect strangers to be typed for the National Marrow Donor Registry. I know it would take a miracle to find a match in time, but aren’t we due a big break about now?

—E-mail message from Laurie Harrison

Thursday, July 5, 10:49
P.M.

82 Degrees Fahrenheit

The house lay in dark silence when Dana awakened, saturated with too much sleep, too many aches, and far too many memories that cut like shards of broken glass.

Though she’d met with the FBI special agents earlier, cried with her mother in a wrenching phone call later, and finally arranged a flight home for tomorrow evening, Dana had retreated to Mrs. Lockett’s guest room several times and fallen down the mine shaft of exhausted, dreamless sleep. Her recovering body craved rest, but her mind needed the escape more, for every time she woke it was to tears.

Tonight she held them at bay, her mind drifting through the misty layers of Special Agent Tomlin’s endless questions.

A tall man whose gray eyes matched his short hair, he had rolled through the obligatory sympathetic statement
quickly before peppering her with a fresh round of questions about last night, the weeks leading up to last night, and so many details about her sister’s history that Dana felt as if her brain had been turned inside out. Each time she started to tire or lose patience, his partner, Petit, an athletic-looking blond man with a slightly chipped front tooth and a homegrown West Texas accent, interrupted the barrage by offering her water or holding up a palm to slow Tomlin down and suggesting, “How ’bout we give Dr. Vanover a minute to catch her breath?”

Which only went to prove that federal agents, too, resorted to the classic good-cop/bad-cop method, not only with prime suspects but with cranky witnesses as well. During one of these breaks she had told the two men, “I’ve been answering your questions long enough. Now I need some answers to mine.”

She tried not to take it personally when the agents denied her every query about gathering both her belongings and her sister’s and having them sent home. The clothing and supplies Dana had left in the adobe were now considered evidence, along with her flooded convertible. Angie’s loom and the tapestry on it were evidence as well, and her clothing, art supplies, few mementos, and abandoned clunker all must be thoroughly examined. Neither man would venture to predict when they might be released. Most frustrating—and something Dana couldn’t help taking personally—was the matter of her sister’s body.

“What about the funeral?” she’d asked. “Surely you can’t expect us to go on waiting, wondering. How can we move on with our lives without knowing when this might be over?”

“I realize it’s not ideal.” Petit leaned forward in his seat to touch her hand. “But most people in your situation opt to hold a memorial service to provide some sense of closure. Then, when the time comes, they hold a private burial for the immediate family.”

The younger agent was an attractive man who seemed genuinely committed to the apprehension of her sister’s
killer, yet Dana had jerked her hand away from him without understanding why.

But later, in the wakeful darkness, she knew that his show of concern—though more professional than personal—had touched off thoughts of the man who wasn’t there. The man she wanted desperately to talk to.

“This investigation is now in federal hands,” Special Agent Tomlin said when she had asked about Jay. “You won’t have to bother dealing with these locals anymore.”

She hadn’t liked the way he’d said, “these locals,” hadn’t liked it, either, when Jay had simply dropped her purse and the clothing from her car at the house while she slept. His note said,
Even the feds ought to know better than to come between a lady and her handbag, and I figured you could use those clothes you picked up, too.
There had been no mention of how he’d charmed these items out of the inflexible Tomlin, or if Jay had found a way to hijack them somehow.

When he didn’t stop by later, she worried each time he crossed her mind. Was his career in jeopardy because of the publicity about the theater incident near Dallas? Or did he fear that rumors of their personal involvement would add fuel to the debate about his fitness?

“Well, Dana, why don’t you just ask him?”
Angie challenged.

Dana turned to see her sister sitting in the delicate chair beside her. Her waist-length, sun-bleached hair gave off light enough to illuminate her thin face. Hollow-cheeked but strangely radiant, she looked as clean as thin, blue moonlight and far younger than she had the night before.

“You’re alive.” Relief cascaded through Dana, beginning in her center, radiating through her pores. With joy bubbling inside her, Dana used her arms to push herself upright, launching herself toward an embrace—

The movement, and the pain of sore limbs, woke her to a room as still and black and silent as that salty tomb beneath the desert floor.

“No…” she moaned. “No, Angie. Please don’t do this.”

But Angie wasn’t there to either argue or explain.

Friday, July 6, 8:17
A.M.

76 Degrees Fahrenheit

Forecast High: 103 Degrees

“I wonder where the sheriff’s been.” Dana kept her voice as carefully casual as she could and her eyes cast down toward the cinnamon-raisin toast she was eating.

“Poor young Jay’s been running himself ragged, that’s all. You needn’t worry about him,” Mrs. Lockett told her. Between them sat a carb lover’s fantasy: fresh-baked breads, sweet yellow butter, and strawberry preserves.

As far as Dana had been able to establish, the old woman spent nearly all her waking hours filling the counters of her kitchen with cooling racks of muffins, cakes, and breads, biscuits, pies, and honey-nut rolls. She repeatedly mentioned her need to feed her hungry children—children pictured in the faded photos she kept all around the house. Apparently she had lapses, forgetting that her sons and daughter were decades grown and gone. But she happily fed her friends and neighbors who stopped by to bring her gifts of sugar, flour—all her groceries—and whatever cash she would accept.

Dana thought it wasn’t a half-bad arrangement, but she was happy she had finally arranged a flight home. If she didn’t get out of this house soon she’d be sure to gain ten pounds on the warm and yeasty smells alone. The thought came out of habit, though she’d probably lost that much weight over the past two months from stress.

The old woman swiped a crumb from her lip with a bony finger. “Don’t you fret. Our Jay will overcome this nonsense.”

“Do you mean the—”

“I mean all of it. Those lies about his uncle taking bribes—as if a good man like R.C. would ever do any such
thing—and that foolishness on the TV about something that happened right after Jay came home from the war.” The creases of her forehead folded into hard pleats. “Bunch of soft outsiders telling us who we should and shouldn’t have for a sheriff. As if country folk aren’t smart enough to know a crazy man when we see one. We’ve got a lot of experience dealin’ with that sort of thinking. And a lot of practice diggin’ in our heels when some slick city people waltz in and tell us what we should do.”

Dana took a deep breath, let it expand inside her. She, too, had taken the locals for a backward bunch when she had first arrived, with their petty feuds, their prickly natures, and the deprivations imposed by this harsh land. Only unlike most outsiders—and utterly against her will—she’d stuck around long enough to learn that there was more to them than that. Including a streak of stubborn independence that ran so deep it resonated to the core of a cinnamon-sweet woman in her mid-eighties.

“So the sheriff won’t lose his job?” Dana ventured, then repeated herself when Mrs. Lockett looked confused.

“I’m not saying he won’t have a tough fight on his hands. Since he was appointed to fill a vacated term of office, the county commissioners can fire him, if that’s what they decide. I figure Judge Hooks will try to use this news as an excuse to give his badge to Wallace. Estelle’ll lobby hard, too, even though she has a soft spot for Jay on account of what happened to his mother.”

“His mother?” Dana had wondered how his uncle had come to raise him.

The old woman’s gaze warmed, and the past drifted across her eyes like thin clouds. “Such a shame, all that was. That Gayla was the prettiest little thing—I taught her in my Sunday-school class when she was just a tiny bit of fluff. As she started getting older the boys buzzed all about her like bees on a blossom. Why, even my Nestor took a shine to her, but he was always the bookish type, my boy. He could
never—now, don’t you go repeatin’ this, or I’ll deny it—hold a candle to those handsome Eversole brothers or big Dennis Riggins.”

“So what happened to her?” Dana prompted.

“Why, she ran off with Lewis Eversole, she surely did. Didn’t come back till they were married and she was in the family way. But Devil’s Claw never suited Gayla—or Lewis either, for that matter. Restless types, those two, always chasing after some opportunity in another town, then bouncing back home when it didn’t pan out. But still, she always was a sweet thing. And always kept herself lookin’ pretty as a picture. Why, she was heading back from the beauty parlor over to Pecos when it happened—wanted to look nice for Christmas, cold as it was that year. But she spun out on an icy patch and flipped that cute little convertible she always loved to tool around in.”

“That’s terrible,” said Dana.

Mrs. Lockett’s eyes filmed, and she reached under her bra strap and pulled out a lace-edged handkerchief, thin with age. Dabbing her eyes, she said, “Killed her instantly, it did—and that precious boy of hers was only twelve. His daddy was so broken up, he could hardly stand to look at poor Jay after. That’s when Lewis finally got himself a job that took him out of Devil’s Claw for good.”

“Poor Jay…” Dana, too, had lost a parent young, but she couldn’t imagine how she would have survived had her mother turned her back on her in her grief. Except…wasn’t that exactly what Isabel had done by withdrawing as she had from both her daughters?

“Don’t you worry about our Jay,” Mrs. Lockett told her. “That boy’s a genuine Eversole, like R.C. And everyone in these parts knows that Eversoles make the best sheriffs.”

“Everyone except the Hookses,” Dana said.

“That’s only because blood is thicker—and Wallace is always carryin’ on about how he needs a fatter salary so he can move out of the family house.”

“The deputy still lives at home?”

Mrs. Lockett bobbed her head in answer. “Has since he’s moved back here, and the way I hear it, it’s not a situation that’s to anybody’s liking.”

“So Hooks will try to fire Jay to get his own house in order.”

“That’s part of it, but I’d say far as Abe’s concerned, it’s more about getting one up on Dennis Riggins—he’s another of the county commissioners. Abe’d just as soon dip him in barbecue sauce and leave him in the foothills for a lion. But since he can’t, he’ll try to thwart him ’cause Dennis was the one that swung the vote for Jay’s hiring over Wallace.”

“Hmm…” Dana wished she had a scorecard.

“R.C. was Dennis’s good friend, you see, ever since the two of ’em were knee-high,” said Mrs. Lockett. “He took it awful hard after the fire. And Rigginses and Hookses have been oil and water ever since I can recall—something about a land deal that went sour between their folks. Or maybe it was their granddaddies.”

No wonder these people hated outside interference. Anyone raised elsewhere would need years of study to avoid stepping in the middle of alliances and enmities that were apparently passed down through the generations.

“But then,” Mrs. Lockett continued, “my youngest boy, Nestor, always said that there was more spite between those two families than in a sack of scalded bobcats. And worse ’n ever these past fifteen years or so—ever since that one term Dennis got himself elected county judge and Abe accused him of buying votes.”

“It was nice of your son to offer to drive me to the airport this afternoon,” Dana said to change the subject.

Mrs. Lockett’s thin hand fluttered in dismissal. “I’m afraid Nestor got tied up in that business of his over in Kermit. So my nephew Bill Navarro’s going to take you. You remember Billy, don’t you, from the Broken Spur?”

Dana nodded, trying not to wince at the memory of the huge bouquet back in El Paso and how disappointed he had
sounded when she’d asked directions to Jay Eversole’s place after thanking him for the flowers. This could turn awkward if she wasn’t careful.

“That’s a lot of trouble to put him to,” she said uneasily. “A lot of hours on the road to run me into New Mexico. Why don’t I just hire a driver out of—”

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Lockett said. “By West Texas standards, the drive to Carlsbad’s nothing. Three hours round-trip at the most. Quicker than that, the way Bill drives.”

Dana’s stomach quivered. After her wild ride two nights before, the idea of speeding along these desert roads unnerved her. Along with the thought of speeding along
any
road with some lovesick cattleman. If the insurance company ended up totaling her Beamer, she decided she’d buy something slow, low-flash, with lots and lots of air bags. Maybe a higher-clearance vehicle, one that wouldn’t be swept off course by a piddling, knee-deep flood. If she had driven something like that, something safe and practical, maybe she wouldn’t be aching in a dozen places. And maybe her sister would be living, the two of them laughing during the long drive back to Houston, Angie asking anxiously,
“So, does Nikki look like me?”

“Dana? Dana, dear, I asked if you’d like more tea.”