Blue Smoke

by Nora Roberts

  “Nothing. Is the case being reopened?”

  “No. No,” Reena repeated with a shake of her head. “It’s personal. Just something that keeps coming back around on me.”

  “I know.” In an absent gesture, Mandy pulled her sunglasses back in place. “Still does on me, too. It’s harder when you’re young like we were, and it’s one of us. You’re not supposed to die at twenty. At least that’s what you think when you’re twenty. Life’s forever. Plenty of time out there.”

  “DeWanna Johnson was twenty-three. There’s always less time than you think.”

  But she put it away, put the file away as she’d done before and concentrated on now.

  When DeWanna Johnson’s mother walked into the squad room, Reena rose. “I’ll take her,” she told O’Donnell, and stepped over.

  “Mrs. Johnson? I’m Detective Hale. We spoke on the phone.”

  “They said I should come up here. They said I couldn’t take DeWanna yet.”

  “Why don’t we go back here?” Reena laid a hand on the woman’s arm to lead her into the break room. There was a short counter crammed with a coffeemaker, an ancient microwave, foam cups.

  Reena gestured Mrs. Johnson to a chair at the table. “Why don’t you sit down. Can I get you some coffee, some tea?”

  “No, nothing. Nothing.” She sat. Her eyes were dark and tired.

  She couldn’t have been much past forty, Reena judged, and would soon bury her daughter.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Johnson.”

  “Lost her the minute he got out of prison. Should’ve kept him in there. Should’ve kept him locked away. Now he’s killed my girl, and left her baby an orphan.”

  “I’m sorry for what happened to De Wanna.” Reena sat across from her. “Jamal’s going to pay for it.”

  Grief and rage warred with fatigue in those dark eyes. “How do I tell that baby her daddy killed her mama? How do I do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did she . . . the fire. Did she feel it?”

  “No.” Reena reached out, closed her hand over Mrs. Johnson’s. “She didn’t feel it. She didn’t suffer.”

  “I raised her on my own, and I did my best.” She drew a deep breath. “She was a good girl. Blind when it came to that murdering bastard, but she was a good girl. When can I take her home?”

  “I’ll find out for you.”

  “You have children, Detective Hale?”

  “No, ma’am, I don’t.”

  “Sometimes I think we have them just so they can break our hearts.”

  Because those words played over and over in her head, Reena stopped by Sirico’s on the way home. She found her mother at the big stove, her father at the work counter.

  She was surprised to see her uncle Larry and aunt Carmela sitting in a booth nibbling on stuffed mushrooms.

  “Sit, sit,” Larry insisted after she bent to kiss him. “Tell us all about your life.”

  “Right now that would take about two minutes, and I don’t even have that. I’m already going to be late.”

  “Hot date,” her aunt said with a wink.

  “As a matter of fact.”

  “What’s his name? What does he do? When are you going to get married and give your mama pretty grandbabies?”

  “His name is Bowen, he’s a carpenter. And between Fran, Bella and Xander, my mama has about all the pretty grandbabies she can handle.”

  “There’s never too many. Is this the one who lives next door? What’s his last name?”

  “It’s not Italian,” Reena said, and with a laugh kissed her aunt again. “Buon appetito.”

  She wound her way back, pulled herself a soft drink from the dispenser. Her father’s hands were in dough, so she rose on her toes and kissed his chin. “Hello, handsome.”

  “Who is this?” He glanced around to his wife. “Who is this strange girl giving out kisses? She looks a little familiar.”

  “It hasn’t been a week,” Reena complained. “And I called two days ago.”

  “Oh, now I recognize you.” He lifted his hands, pinched her cheeks with doughy fingers. “It’s our long-lost daughter. What’s your name again?”

  “Wisecracks, all I get are wisecracks.” She turned to buss her mother’s cheek. “Something smells good. New perfume, and Bolognese.”

  “Sit. I’ll fix you a plate.”

  “I can’t. I’ve got a good-looking man cooking me dinner.”

  “The carpenter cooks?”

  “I didn’t say it was the carpenter. But yes, it is and he does. Apparently. Mama, have your children broken your heart?”

  “Countless times. Here, have some mushrooms. What if he burns the dinner?”

  “Just one. If we broke your heart, why did you have four of us?”

  “Because your father wouldn’t leave me alone and let me sleep.”

  He turned his head at that, chuckled.

  “Seriously.”

  “I am serious. Every time I turn around, the man’s hands get busy.” Bianca tapped her spoon on the edge of the pot, set it down. “I had four because as often as you broke my heart, you filled it. You’re the treasures of my life, and the biggest pains in my ass.” She tugged Reena toward the prep room, lowered her voice. “You’re not pregnant.”

  “No. Mama.”

  “Just checking.”

  “A lot of strange things on my mind the last couple of days, that’s all. Good mushrooms,” she added. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Come to dinner Sunday,” Bianca called out. “Bring your carpenter. I’ll show him how to cook.”

  “I’ll see how it goes tonight, then maybe I’ll ask him.”

  He stuck with chicken because he felt he had a pretty good hand with poultry. He had stopped off for fresh produce, and had intended to swing by the bakery. But he’d built an arbor for Mrs. Mallory that afternoon, and when she learned of his plans for the evening, she’d given him a freshly made lemon meringue pie.

  He was still debating the ethics of passing it off as his own when Reena knocked.

  He had music on—some jazzy Norah Jones—and had taken a swipe at the dust. His intentions to do a more thorough sprucing job had been waylaid by his time at Mrs. M.’s. And his weakness for her cookies.

  But the place looked good, he decided. And he had changed the sheets on his bed. In case.

  When he opened the door and looked at her, he was really hoping they’d get to use the fresh sheets.

  “Hello, neighbor.” He moved straight in—why waste time?—cupped his hands on her torso and caught her mouth with his.

  She softened against him, just a little. Just a tantalizing bit. Then eased back. “Not bad as appetizers go. What’s the main course?” She handed him a bottle cheerfully bagged in a silver sack. “And I hope it goes with Pinot Grigio.”

  “We’re still on for chicken, so this is great.” He took her hand to walk her back to the kitchen.

  “Flowers.” She turned at the table to admire the Shasta daisies he’d stuck in a blue bottle. “And candles. Aren’t you clever?”

  “I have moments. It’s my grandmother’s stuff. I spent some time going through the boxes last night.”

  She followed the direction of his gaze, studied the display cabinet. There were more old bottles, interesting shapes, and some dark blue dishes, some wineglasses with etched cups.

  “That’s nice. She’d like you putting her things out.”

  “I never got much of that sort of thing on my own. Just more to pack up when you move.”

  “Which you do, regularly.”

  He opened the wine, got two of the etched glasses from the cabinet. “Can’t turn a place if you’re still living in it.”

  “Don’t you get attached?”

  “A couple of times. But then I’d see this other place and think, Wow, think what we could do with that. Potential and profit versus comfort and familiarity.”

  “You’re a house slut.”

  “I am.” Laughter warmed
his eyes as he tapped his glass to hers. “Have a seat. I’ll get things moving here.”

  She slid onto a counter stool. “How about starting from scratch? Have you ever bought a lot and done the whole works?”

  “Thought about it. Maybe one day. Dream house deal. But mostly I like seeing what there is, how to make it better or bring it back from the dead.”

  When he checked something in the oven, she caught the scent of rosemary. And made a note to pick him up a couple of pots of herbs for his windowsill—if things progressed.

  “You said you could do anything with my house I wanted. Was that lust talking, or is that straight scoop?”

  “Lust is a factor, but within reason, sure. You can have pretty much what you want.” He dribbled oil in a sauté pan.

  “Can I have a fireplace in my bedroom?”

  “Wood-burning?”

  “Not necessarily. Gas or electric would do. Probably better, actually. I don’t think I want to haul wood up the stairs.”

  “We could do that.”

  “Really? I always wanted that—like in the movies. A fireplace in the bedroom. One in the library. And what I’d really like is to turn the bedroom into more of a master suite. Incorporating the bath, maybe enlarging it some. And I want a skylight over the tub.”

  He glanced back again, considered her. “You want a skylight over the tub.”

  “I think that falls into the within-reason category. Of course, all this has to be done in small stages. I’ve got a budget.”

  He added minced garlic to the oil. “I’ll take a look, play with some designs, work you up a bid. How’s that?”

  She smiled, resting her elbow on the table, sipping wine. “Handy. You may turn out to be too good to be true.”

  “That’s what I thought about you.”

  “I don’t know what I want, Bo. For this, for myself. Hell, I don’t know what I want tomorrow, much less a year from tomorrow.”

  “Me, either.”

  “I think you do, or you have a rough design. I think when you do what you do, when you build and project, you’re able to visualize next year.”

  “I know I want you tonight. I know I’ve wanted you—or the image of you—for a long time. But I don’t know what we’ll do with, or about, each other tomorrow. Or next year.”

  He slid chicken into the pan, turned. “I think there’s a reason you moved in next door. I think there’s a reason I saw you all those years ago, but didn’t meet you until now. I don’t think I was ready for you until now.”

  He watched her, sitting at his counter with her she-lion eyes, running her finger along the etched cup of his grandmother’s glass. “Maybe that means things are falling into place. Or it means something else. I don’t have to know right this minute.”

  “You talked about potential, when you look at a new place and it pulls at you. You have the potential to make me fall in love with you. That scares me.”

  He felt something rush into his heart, burn there. “Because you think I’ll hurt you?”

  “Maybe. Or I’ll hurt you. Or it’ll just turn out to be some big, complicated mess.”

  “Or it could be something special.”

  She shook her head. “When I look at relationships—my relationships—the glass is half empty. And what’s left in it may or may not be potable.”

  He picked up the wine, filled her glass to the rim. “You just haven’t had the right guy doing the pouring.”

  “Maybe not.” She glanced toward the stove. “Don’t burn the chicken.”

  He didn’t, and she had to admit she was impressed that he managed to get a full meal on the table without incident. She nursed the second glass of wine, and sampled the chicken.

  “All right,” she said, “this is good. This is really good. That’s a serious compliment coming from someone who grew up in an atmosphere where food isn’t just sustenance, isn’t even merely art, but a way of life.”

  “The rosemary chicken gets them every time.”

  She laughed, continued to eat. “Tell me about your first love.”

  “That would be you. Okay,” he added when she narrowed her eyes at him. “Tina Woolrich. Eighth grade. She had big blue eyes and little apple breasts—which she generously let me touch one sweet summer afternoon in a darkened movie theater. How about you?”

  “Michael Grimaldi. I was fourteen, and desperately in love with Michael Grimaldi, who was stuck on my sister Bella. I imagined that the scales would fall from his eyes and he would understand it was me who was his destiny. But that love went unrequited.”

  “Foolish Michael.”

  “Okay. Who broke your heart the first time?”

  “Back to you again. Otherwise . . . nobody.”

  “Me, either. I don’t know if that makes us lucky or sad. Bella now, she thrived on getting her heart broken, and breaking hearts. With Fran, I remember her crying in her room because some jerk had asked another girl to the prom. Me, I never cared enough. So I guess that is sad.”

  “Ever get close to the M word?”

  “Marriage.” Something flickered in her eyes. “Depends on your point of view. I’ll tell you about it sometime. I talked with Mandy today.”

  And with that, he assumed, the talk of relationships past was closed. “Yeah?”

  “She called to apologize—again—and I asked if she’d meet me. Every now and again I pull Josh’s file out of the closet. I wanted to talk to her about it. Nothing new, of course. But meeting her here struck me as one of those cosmic signs, so I wanted to follow through. In any case, I liked her. Buckets of energy, which may come from the fact that she drank a gallon of coffee in a twenty-minute period.”

  “Lives on it,” Bo agreed. “She’s never understood how I live without it.”

  “You don’t drink coffee?”

  “Never got the taste for it.”

  “Me, either. Strange.”

  “Just another check on the you’re-meant-for-me balance sheet. Want more chicken?”

  “No, but thanks. Bowen?”

  “Catarina.”

  She laughed a little, took another sip of wine. “Did you sleep with Mandy when she was married?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. That’s just one of my lines. I don’t have many, but that’s one of them. I’ll do the dishes,” she said as she rose.

  “We’ll just pile them up for later,” he began, then, catching her expression, sighed. “You’re one of those. Okay, we’ll do the dishes. Want dessert first?”

  “I haven’t decided if I’m sleeping with you yet.”

  “Ha ha. There goes my heart. I meant the sort you put on a plate and eat. We’ve got pie.”

  She set her plate on the counter, turned. “What kind?”

  He opened the refrigerator, took out the dish.

  “That’s lemon meringue.” She stepped closer, gave him a serious look. “That’s not from the bakery either.”

  “Nope.”

  “You baked a pie?”

  He tried an innocent, slightly insulted look. “Why is that so surprising?”