“You’re losing your dewy-eyed reverie,” Ben noted gruffly. He trailed his fingertips down her spine. “Don’t stop looking into my eyes as if I’m a great recipe you’ve discovered. I like it.”
“Sammie and Jake should have been the first ones to do the horizontal two-step in their own house.”
“They were.”
“No, I mean, after Jake came back.”
“We’ll be their inspiration, then.”
“I’m not telling my sister that we went nuts and used her spare bedroom for a motel.” Charlotte sat up. Ben’s hypnotic gaze dropped to her breasts. “I’m trying not to stare lecherously,” he told her. “But they are impossible to ignore.”
“I don’t mind. You’re the sweetest, most gentle man in the world.” She looked away, blushing. Hiding behind wisecracks was much easier than telling the truth.
“Tell the aliens they can keep her.”
“Who?”
“The impostor they were trying to foist off on me before this afternoon.” His expression became mischievous. “How did they do it? Mind-meld? Cloning? Did you notice a large larvaelike pod under your bed one night? Never fall asleep when a large pod is waiting to metamorphose into your exact replica.”
“I have a large larvaelike pod in bed with me right now.” She hesitated, then added softly, “But I wouldn’t change a thing about him.”
“I promise, I’m the real McCoy.”
“The McCoys had a Jewish branch?”
“The McCoybergs. They shortened it at Ellis Island.”
“I see.” She searched his eyes seriously. “You realize, of course, that I’m a religious handicap.”
“Funny, I don’t feel culturally disabled. In fact, I feel blessed.”
She made a soft sound of pleasure. “You sure you want to be one of the shiksa-challenged?”
“I’ll decorate Christmas trees if you’ll cook the seder dinner.” Charlotte frowned and looked away. After an awkward moment Ben added, “I can’t believe you’d turn down an opportunity to cook.”
“It’s not that. I’d be happy to cook the seder dinner every night and twice on Sundays.”
“I believe,” he said coyly, “that once a year is all that’s required. Think of it as Thanksgiving with kosher wine.”
“We’re avoiding the real issue. You think I’ve forgotten about going back to California.”
“No, I think you were never serious about that.” He cupped the back of her head, splaying his fingers into her hair and rubbing small, seductive circles. Charlotte trembled. “We’re on a high plateau, Ben. I’d like to stay put awhile and catch my breath. Adjust to the altitude. Not look back, and not look forward either.”
“Just wait for a strong wind to push you in the right direction,” he said sardonically. “All right, I’ll huff, and I’ll puff and I’ll—”
“Hyperventilate. Rest your case, Perry Mason. Your briefs have a hole in the them.”
“I haven’t forgotten our earlier conversation either—though it feels as if it happened in another lifetime, arguing with that alien.” He sat up. He searched her face somberly. “Your aunt bullied you. You’ve got some bad memories. But that was more than ten years ago, and you’re a grown woman now. There’s no good reason for you to feel threatened.”
Shame and bitterness rose in Charlotte’s throat. She didn’t want the man she loved to learn that she’d been mauled by her own cousin and called an emotionally disturbed liar by Aunt Alex. Her memory of the lust on Tim’s face when he’d grabbed her breasts still made her feel confused. An endless cycle of self-doubt stayed with her. Was she provocative in some way she didn’t recognize? She’d read dozens of books about incest, consumed the reassurances of every therapist who discussed the subject on TV talk shows, but deep down she still felt there was something wrong with her too.
Ben knew she was quirky. But he didn’t know she was capable of slicing off ears with a carving knife.
She lifted the corner of the quilt that covered his thighs. Nodding toward their jaunty centerpiece, she said brusquely, “That key is very useful, but there are some doors it won’t open.”
He scowled and started to reply, but she scrambled out of bed. Their clothes were scattered everywhere. She found her overalls and tube top in a corner. “R and R is over, soldier. Help me square this place away. It’s back to the front lines. I’m going on a reconnaissance mission.”
“You can’t evade my questions forever.”
“I’ve shown you all the good stuff.” She dressed quickly and gazed at him with all the nonchalance she could fake. “Save your energy for what matters. I’ll get some clean sheets for this bed. Then let’s find Jake, so you can discuss the office lease with him. Then we can traipse back to Condo World and toss a coin to see whose sheets we’re going to wrinkle next—yours or mine.”
“Don’t try to distract me with dessert when I’m still waiting for the entree.”
She went to the door, looked back over her shoulder, and forced a smile. “I never promised you a full-course meal.”
“Good Lord,” Doop muttered under his breath. He seemed shocked, too, standing there with her locked to his sideview mirror. The grizzled, stocky detective looked at Sam as if he were embarrassed and didn’t know what to say. She pounded her free hand on the car’s fender. “You have a key, don’t you? Unlock my wrist.”
“Ma’am, I … I’ve seen a lot of strange things, but nothing quite like this. I depend on Jake. Trust him. Feel bad for what happened to him, ’cause I think he got a raw deal. I figure him for a man who does things for good reason.”
“Not this time. Please unlock this cuff. You don’t understand. You’ve never met me before because even when Jake and I were first married he never let me go on tracking jobs with him. It was the only part of his life he shut me out of. I don’t know why. But I know that if I hadn’t let him do it, I’d have been with him when he really needed me. He wouldn’t have gotten into trouble. I can’t let him shut me out again.”
Doop shifted uneasily. “I’m no good at playin’ marriage counselor, ma’am.” He scowled. “You settle down now. If it starts to rain, I’ll give you a tarp to hold over your head.”
Sam strained her eyes toward the woods, then twisted toward Doop. “I can tell that you respect my husband, and he respects you. But you’re not helping him this way. He’s got something bottled up inside him. He’s always been that way. I’ve got to find out what it is so it can’t hurt him again.”
Doop waved his hands soothingly. “Well, of course, havin’ the touch can set a person apart. At least, when it’s as strong as it is with Jake. It’s like one of them genius kids who starts bangin’ out songs on the piano without a lesson. They get it by the grace of God, but people treat ’em like they’re some kind of freaks. They got to take care with the gift, ma’am. I figure Jake learned that early on. You wouldn’t want him to go paradin’ the grace of God around like it was a prize at a turkey shoot, would you?”
Sam drew back against the car’s fender and eyed him nervously. Jake wouldn’t have left her alone with a lunatic. She’d humor Detective Doop if that was what it took to win his sympathy. “So you believe Jake’s … gift … is the reason he’s secretive?”
Warming to the discussion, Doop leaned his thick-set body against the car and nodded fervently. “You see, ma’am, I have the touch too. Oh, not like Jake has it. Just my good, solid hunches.” He sighed. “If I could do what he does—if I could figure people out—find ’em, know what they’re thinkin’, feel whether they was dead or alive—if I could do that just by handling a bit of something they’d worn—why, I’d probably have made captain by now.” He wagged a finger at her. “But I’d probably keep my ways to myself, just like Jake. Because regular people get edgy about things they don’t understand.”
Play along. “I see your point.”
“Now, you being Jake’s wife, you believe in him and respect his gift, and you probably think everybody else should too. But
it just don’t work that way, ma’am.”
Don’t chew your tongue off yet. “Would you say he’s a bonafide psychic?”
Doop grunted happily. “Bonafide, certified, gold-medal-winning hall-of-famer.”
Enough was enough. Every astrologer, palm reader, crystal gazer, and self-styled mystic who had played on her mothers need for reassurance floated through Sam’s disgusted thoughts. Mom’s good-hearted faith in bullshit artists had primed her for Malcolm Drury. Sam would never look for easy answers that way.
She drew a deep breath and stared Doop straight in the eyes. “Sir, Jake’s parents and sister burned to death in a house fire. If Jake were psychic, he’d never have let that happen.”
Doop’s pleased expression faded into troubled confusion. “It don’t always work that way, ma’am. Nobody bats a thousand. And maybe we’re not supposed to know everything. Only God sees the big picture.”
“Jake was away from home that night. Tracking a stranger, just like today. Helping other people. Doing what he was asked to do by men like yourself. He lost three people he loved dearly, and where they went he couldn’t follow. He couldn’t track them, and find them, and bring them home safely. He was never the same after that. He was so bitter and hurt, he couldn’t think straight. He saw threats everywhere. He went looking for them, and he’s still looking.”
Sam grasped the detective’s coat lapel with her free hand. “Don’t make him look alone.” Her voice was hoarse, pleading. “Don’t add a dead child to the heartbreaking memories he has to carry around by himself.”
She lowered her hand and sagged against the car, trembling. She couldn’t tell whether she’d made a dent in the detective’s bizarre ideas about Jake. She’d failed at so much.
“I can’t read you the way he can,” Doop said grimly. “But I can damned sure see why you’re special.” He clamped his pipe between his teeth, pulled a key from his coat pocket, and unlocked the handcuffs. “Go on.”
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
Jake and Bo had vanished. Twenty minutes of hopeless wandering made her understand the panic a person lost in the woods must feel. Rain began to fall—at first in slow, fat droplets that barely found their way through the canopy of forest, but now with steady force, soaking her. Sam wiped her eyes as she picked her way among muscadine vines that hung like soggy garlands from the smaller trees.
She climbed a hill, pushing through dripping huckleberry shrubs and briars. The sound of rustling leaves made her halt, searching anxiously. A fallen poplar sprawled across the hill’s crest, its ripped base propped precariously on the rotting stump.
Bo peered at her from a narrow shelter beneath its trunk. He was curled up. With rainwater running along the creases of his skin, he looked like a red clay sculpture in danger of dissolving. All he could manage to move was his long red tail, which wagged among the matted leaves.
Frowning, Sam dropped to her heels and stroked his droopy ears. Where was Jake? How could he work without a tracking dog? Unless Bo’s only a prop. So people won’t suspect the truth. Sam ignored that ridiculous thought.
Bo had run out of steam, she decided, and Jake had been forced to leave him there. He’d probably circled back toward the junkyard. He was probably there now, telling Hoke Doop they’d need one of the police department’s dogs, a stretcher for Bo, and a less soft-hearted guard for her next time.
“I know you’re tired,” she told Bo. “But can’t you follow Jake’s trail at least? Come on, Bo. Get up.” She tugged at his collar. “Try, okay?”
Blah blah blah, Jake, blah blah was undoubtedly how Bo interpreted it. But Jake was enough to get him on his feet. He sneezed, then shuffled stiffly down the hill, nose to the ground.
Sam followed right behind him. Her breath caught in her throat. He was leading her farther away from the junkyard.
He was close. He could feel it. But he didn’t know what awful scene he’d find, and he tried not to think about that. At least he’d prevented Samantha from seeing the worst. And from seeing how he worked. He’d realized before they started that Bo was too old to keep up with him.
Maybe he could have convinced Samantha that he was the one with the extraordinary sense of smell.
Jake followed a muddy ravine. The familiar sensations stole over him, a trance of déjà vu that lingered. He recognized the ravine as if he’d seen it before.
Around the next bend a gnarled crabapple would be clinging to an undercut lip of clay. The crumbling hulk of a radiator would protrude from a bed of ferns. A pock-marked metal sign with GILMAN’S AUTO SALVAGE fading into rust would be lying in the ravine’s narrow bottom.
The search would end there.
“Jake!”
Samantha’s voice. His concentration evaporated. He halted and turned unerringly toward the sound, then watched, amazed, as she and Bo came up the ravine behind him. Her face was flushed. She squinted at him with unrepentant determination, rubbing rain from her eyes as she dodged roots and slipped in the mud.
A shattering combination of admiration, anger, and dread filled Jake’s chest. “What did you do?” he demanded. “Pick the cuffs’ lock with a fingernail file?”
She staggered to a halt in front of him. “Detective Doop listened to reason. He let me come after you.” Bo collapsed at her feet, his sides heaving. “Good thing he did,” she added, her puzzled gaze boring into Jake. “You lost your dog.”
“Go back. Turn around and go back.”
“You left Bo behind,” she insisted with rising intensity. She stared up at him as if she were afraid of his explanation, as if she desperately needed to hear a logical answer. Her eyes flickered to the baby’s pink shirt, clutched in one of his fists, then back to his face. “How can you—” she swallowed hard—“how can you track the baby if you don’t use Bo?”
She was hammering at the only door he didn’t want her to open. They’d known each other almost all their lives. He couldn’t suddenly reveal a side of himself that would change her whole idea of him. There’re a few things you’ve never known about me, sweetheart. I like to watch soap operas, and brussels sprouts make me choke. And, oh, by the way, I’ve got a psychic phone line to the astral plane.
When he said nothing, she made a hoarse sound of alarm. Her hands darted forward. She snatched the baby’s shirt from him and knelt by Bo. “Here, Bo,” she said urgently. “Please. You can do it. I know you can.”
Bo snuffled the shirt, wheezed, then dropped his head to his paws. “Please, Bo,” she said. Her voice was ragged. “Jake can’t track people by-guess-and-by-God. That’s not possible.”
A low groan curled from Jake’s throat. He bent over and pried the shirt from her viselike grip. She refused to let go. They froze, locked in a tug-of-war that threatened her most basic understanding of him, their past together, their future, and all of her self-protective commitment to common sense.
Suddenly, as if the vivid emotions between them had called up something equally strong, he knew exactly what he’d find around the bend of the ravine. Life.
He left the shirt in her hands, whirled around, and ran to find it. Dimly he heard her startled cry and the sound of her hurrying after him.
Jake squeezed himself between an overhanging ledge and the gnarled roots of a massive tree. Sam stumbled up behind him. She gasped.
Jake knelt on one knee. A tiny girl dressed in a diaper and a dirty T-shirt lay curled up, her eyes closed, atop a rusting sign that said GILMAN’S AUTO SALVAGE.
Jake reached out, his large, brutal-looking hand posed over the child’s drenched hair. He touched his fingertips to her cheek.
She stirred, mewled softly, and opened her eyes.
Samantha scrambled through the opening and fell to her knees beside Jake. She made small fervent sounds, cooing to the little girl. Jake leaned back, removed his shirt, and handed it to her. She wrapped the baby in it and quickly cradled her in her arms. Jake watched in bittersweet anguish.
Maybe Samantha would forget about the rest
.
Tears slid down her cheeks. She looked at Jake over the baby’s head. “You found her. It’s true. Oh, my God, it’s true, isn’t it? Hoke Doop says you have a gift.” Terrible sorrow hollowed her voice. “I’ve loved you since a time when I wasn’t much older than this baby. Why couldn’t you tell me?”
He didn’t feel the cold rain on his bare shoulders and chest. He didn’t feel anything except the strangling sense of doom crawling through him.
He got to his feet. His knees were weak. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said between gritted teeth. “I’ll carry Bo back. You follow with the kid.” He left her sitting there.
She knew. And all he could do was lie to her, because every question she’d ask would bring her closer to learning what he knew about her aunt.
“He’s not here. No surprise.” Ben said it morosely. They stood at Jake’s campsite. Charlotte concentrated on not thinking about the pitiful clearing where the old house had been. The oaks hovered around it like courtiers to a missing king.
Gray clouds blanketed the sky so deeply that the granite head of the distant bald was hidden in them. Evening mist rolled across the pine forest that had overtaken the old pastures. “There used to be a barn over there,” Charlotte said, pointing wearily. “A few years ago Joe Gunther called Sammie to report that the roof sagged and the walls were covered in graffiti. He said the local kids had decided the Cove was irresistible. Haunted. A wonderland where they could find arrowheads and gemstones. He was worried about the barn collapsing on one of them. Sammie told him to bulldoze it. She told him to send her a piece of board from the walls.”
Ben frowned. “A piece of board?”
“The day it came in the mail, I found her sitting in the living room of her apartment. She’d had most of a bottle of wine. She was hugging the damned chunk of wood. Told me she had to save it for Jake.” Charlotte stared grimly at Jake’s empty tent. “I don’t think he cares.”
Silk and Stone Page 44