Nicky was looking around, marveling that the snow was gone except for a few solitary, shaded clumps. She opened the back door for Beth and fended Scrappy off with attention. “Can’t you get your work done during the day?”
Beth’s heels clicked across the kitchen floor, and Nicky admired the swing of her hips. “There are going to be a lot of after-hours. It goes with the job.”
In the bedroom she watched Beth remove her clothing as she changed her own, putting on jeans and a flannel shirt. They might have been making the bed, she thought, they were so used to each other. Was that good? Meg’s long, athletic body walked into her thoughts.
“Sweetie, we have to talk.”
“Hmm? What about?” She sat on the bed as Beth hung up her clothes.
“There’s a conference week after next in New York. I’m booked to go.”
Nicky frowned a little. “All of a sudden there are a lot of meetings.”
“I know. Nancy Brown wants me to participate fully in the firm.”
“Don’t the other partners?”
“Yes, of course they do. It’s just that I’ll be going to the conference with Nancy.”
“She’s a lesbian, isn’t she?” She spoke in a flat voice, her heart hammering at her own guilty behavior, expecting the same from Beth.
Beth nodded and turned away to hang up her suit. “But that’s beside the point. I hope you’ll understand.”
Her jaw clenched. “It’s just going to be the two of you at these dinner meetings and the conference?”
“I love you, Nicky. This is business,” Beth replied, her back still turned.
Well, what could she say? What had she done over the weekend but muddy the waters with Meg? Somehow, though, she didn’t want Beth doing the same. Envisioning Beth opening herself to another woman nauseated her. She followed her to the kitchen. In Natalie’s absence, Beth did the cooking.
“Tell me about your weekend?”
Startled, Nicky looked for telltale signs of Beth’s knowledge of her infidelity. “I went to a horse show on Sunday.”
Removing a package from the refrigerator, Beth began deboning chicken, performing the task with a proficiency Nicky admired. “Did Meg show Brittle?”
Stir-fry, Nicky remembered, and started chopping vegetables. “No, but I took my camera and sold some photos.” Slicing her finger instead of the green pepper, she wrapped a paper towel around the injured digit and continued, “Meg has missed a bunch of shows. I think she’s maybe afraid Brittle will get snatched again if he wins too much.”
“If you buy that theory—that he was kidnapped because Meg was too successful with him.”
“True.” Peeling away the bloody toweling, she sucked her finger.
“Only you, Nicky, would mistake your finger for a vegetable.” Beth had finished deboning and turned her attention to Nicky. “Let’s get a bandage on that.”
“I can do it.”
“Let me. You’ll bleed all over everything. You shouldn’t be allowed in the kitchen except to eat and clean up.” Beth grasped the injured member. “This is a lovemaking finger. Don’t be so careless with it.”
Nicky laughed. “I guess I’ll have to use other parts of my anatomy.”
In bed that night after making left-handed love, her tongue tired and her lips slightly swollen, Nicky lay awake staring at the shadowy ceiling. Doubts were sinking in slowly, twisting her guts, flooding her with panic and nausea. Beth, who lay in lovely slumber next to her, her long lashes gracing pale cheeks, looked the part of wronged lover. But Nicky couldn’t shake the niggling worries that she, herself, was being cheated on.
Tossing and turning for hours before falling into a restless sleep, she woke up tired and vaguely angry with the woman lying next to her, as if she were the one responsible for her fatigue.
Chapter Fifteen
Nicky stood with one foot in the fence, watching Meg ride. There was an exciting warmth in the wind that played across her face, bringing an earthy smell on its current of air. But she couldn’t appreciate the signs of spring around her or settle anywhere for very long or concentrate for more than a few minutes. Beth was in New York, and Nicky was certain she was sleeping with Nancy Brown.
She had seen it in her eyes after every dinner meeting, a glazed expression that she thought had been reserved for herself, a sort of afterglow. Her mouth twisted as she recalled their conversation over the phone last night, when she had said accusingly, “I called your room around midnight last night. You weren’t there.”
“I was out.”
She had turned sarcastic. “Were you still out at three o’clock this morning? Because I called then too.”
There had been a long silence before Beth said, “I turned the sound down on the phone. I guess I didn’t hear it ring. Why would you call me in the middle of the night anyway?”
Why would Beth admit to any wrongdoing? And why would she, Nicky, want to hear about it if she did? Considering her own behavior, what right did she have to question Beth? But it was like poking at a sore tooth with her tongue, unable to leave it alone no matter how painful.
Meg rode toward the barn, cooling Brittle off at a walk. Her body moved with the rhythm of the horse. As they reached the gate, she smiled and winked at Nicky. “When you going to learn to ride, woman?”
An unexpected flush rose up Nicky’s neck. Meg never failed to turn her on with her athletic grace, her flirtatious behavior. “Never. I like a ground’s-eye view.”
“Let me practice opening the gate,” Meg said as Nicky started to do it for her. Opening a gate on horseback was part of the trail class.
The warmth of the April day faded with the setting sun. Meg and Nicky fixed dinner together. Neither being adept in the kitchen, they decided to thaw and bake a pizza and prepare a tossed salad.
Scrappy, parked at his favorite spot under the table, was the first to hear someone at the door. With a bark he rushed to investigate and confronted Denise, who knocked and let herself in at the same time and then turned rigid at the sight of the dog.
Sighing, Nicky said, “He won’t hurt you, although he might lick you to death. Scrappy, go lie down.” And to Denise again, “Come on in. We’re just fixing something to eat. Care to join us?” Nervy, she thought, walking in like this. She deserved to be bitten. Why on earth had she invited her to stay?
Denise eyed the little dog until he settled under the table. “Thanks, but I’m not hungry,” she demurred, her tone uncharacteristically soft, her eyes fixed on Meg.
Nicky looked from one to the other, sensing Meg’s dismay.
“Can I talk to you alone?” Denise addressed Meg.
Meg clutched the pizza she had been about to pop in the oven, her rapidly beating pulse visible in her throat. “Where?”
“How about your room? You do have your own room, don’t you?” A little sharpness crept into her tone.
“Sure,” Meg agreed. “Just let me put this in to bake.”
Nicky listened to the sound of their voices, rising and falling, as she absently ripped apart a whole head of lettuce. “How are we going to eat all of this?” she said aloud and felt Scrappy’s nose against her leg. She looked down at him. “You don’t like it when people fight, do you?”
It was pitch black outside the kitchen window and suddenly silent inside. She strained for sounds from the bedroom and heard nothing at first. Leaning on the counter, she listened harder and thought she detected sobbing. What the hell, she thought with exasperation. Who was crying and why?
She heard the door being flung open and Meg’s voice, choked and angry. “Get the hell out of here.”
Unable to move, she turned to watch Denise shuffle through the kitchen, the back door closing quietly behind her. She had never thought she would feel a pang of pity for her, but now she did. She shot a questioning glance at Meg.
Meg looked furious. “So go ahead and say you told me so.”
“Why don’t you just tell me what’s going on?”
“S
he did it. She gave them the sweet feed. She swears she just fed it to them to get them out of the way. She said it was in an open bag in the feed room in a corner, and she wanted to divert them while she walked to the stream. So she dumped it in the tub and shut them in the lot.”
Nicky frowned. “There was an old bag of Dan’s feed in there,” she said in a quiet voice, seeing it in her mind’s eye. It had been just where Denise said it was. “She could be telling the truth.” But why would she walk to the creek on such a bitterly cold day?
“She should have told me this a long time ago.”
“If you’d been her, would you have admitted it? After Tater died?” Nicky unwillingly played the devil’s advocate.
Scrappy startled them by again rushing to the door in full bark. “If that’s Denise, tell her to get lost,” Meg said as Nicky went to check the door.
“There’s a trailer up the road by Dan’s,” Denise announced breathlessly. She looked wild in the meager light flowing out through the open door.
“Would he be taking a bunch of his cows somewhere this time of night?”
“I thought he only sold off the bull calves.” Meg turned to Nicky.
“Dan’s not even home. He and Natalie went to a movie tonight,” Nicky said. “Are you sure, Denise?”
She stood just inside the door, her hair disheveled and her pupils enormous. “It’s a great big trailer behind a semi, and some people are loading cattle in it. I could see them. I could hear them.”
Nicky met Meg’s eyes. It was all she needed to believe Denise. “Rustlers?” It happened. She’d read about it in the paper. “Let’s go.”
“Denise, you call the sheriff. Okay?” Meg grabbed a jacket from the back hall. She patted Denise on the shoulder. “Good work, woman.”
“Don’t let Scrappy out,” Nicky said, holding the dog inside with one hand.
“Hey, they might have guns,” Denise protested. “Wait while I call, will you? I want to go with you.”
“What now?” Meg asked, following Nicky to her truck. “Maybe we shouldn’t do anything.”
“I can’t not do anything. Dan’s done too much for me. Let’s just drive out there. Maybe they’ll go away.” They stood under the dusk-to-dawn light. Excitement made her heart hammer, her legs feel weak.
“If they go away, they’ll take what they’ve got in the trailer.”
“Not if we park my truck in front of theirs.”
“Nicky,” Denise called from the house, her thin figure silhouetted in the light behind her. “Can you tell them how to get out here?”
“Jesus,” Nicky muttered, doubly disgusted as the dog brushed past Denise and made a dash toward them. She grabbed the phone and gave directions. “The tractor-trailer rig is parked in front of Paulson’s Dairy Farm. How soon can someone be here?” she asked the dispatcher at the sheriff's office.
“Fifteen minutes outside. Don’t go playing heroine and queer it for us. We think we know who these guys are.”
Strange choice of words, she thought, hanging up the phone and turning slowly toward the other two women who had joined her in the darkened dining room. “He told us to stay out of it, but we can’t just let them escape.”
They compromised by driving the truck, lights off, to the end of the drive where they could keep the tail end of the trailer in view. The cool night closed around them. The plaintive mooing of the cattle reached their ears. A screech owl called eerily from somewhere close by. Scrappy barked from the house behind them.
Peering down the road, the women watched the rustlers’ progress with strained eyes. Five minutes passed without any of them exchanging a word, which was a goddamn miracle, Nicky thought. After five more minutes the last of the animals were loaded and one of the shadowy figures started to close the tailgate on the livestock.
“Anyone wants out better vamoose now,” Nicky said quietly, her pulse beating in her throat as the semi’s diesel engine blended with the sounds of the night. She gave Denise an extra second to leave, was mildly surprised when she didn’t, then stepped on the accelerator and sped down the road.
Pulling directly into the pathway of the semi-tractor, she blocked its escape. There were three men in the high cab. Their menace flooded her system with adrenaline, making her realize how foolhardy she had acted. But someone from the sheriff's department should be here any minute, she told herself.
“Oh, God,” Denise exclaimed in a high voice.
“It’s okay,” Meg said, patting her on the leg. “Just hang in there.”
They had locked the truck doors in the hopes of buying time. What had she been thinking, Nicky wondered, as the semi backed a few feet down the road in order to gain space to get around her. She put the truck in reverse to again block the tractor and trailer, but the semi was moving toward her, unable to pass freely, pushing the bed of her truck sideways as if it were a minor obstacle. “Fuck,” she exclaimed.
That was when they heard the sirens. Nicky glanced at Meg, whose wide grin matched her own. Denise, pale with fear, smiled sickly.
“Hey, we did it,” Meg said in the camaraderie of success. “I can see the headlines now: ‘Women Rescue Cows.’”
Two deputies trained guns on the men in the truck, who grudgingly surrendered. They divided them between the squad cars, putting the two passengers in one and the driver in the other.
Nicky got out of her truck and examined it. Meg and Denise stood with her as she studied the tangle of metal that had been the bed. “Looks totaled to me. Now what do I drive to work tomorrow?”
“It might still be driveable,” Denise said.
Dan and Natalie arrived late on the scene. The police cars with their circling lights and chattering radios were still parked at angles in front of the semi-tractor trailer with its load of bawling cattle. Dan and Natalie got out of Dan’s truck to stand among the gathering of neighbors and passersby. They looked bewildered.
“What the hell’s going on?” Dan asked.
“These cattle yours?” one of the uniformed deputies inquired.
Sorting everything out in the dark took a couple hours. First they unloaded the stock, checked to make sure all the cattle were Dan’s before turning them out onto pasture. Then they supplied the immediate information needed by the police.
When the sheriffs deputies drove off with the rustlers, leaving the emptied tractor-trailer rig marked for pickup by the side of the road, Dan and Natalie went to Nicky’s farmhouse with the three women.
They sat around the kitchen table, congratulating one another. And Denise said with atypical timidity, “Do you suppose that’s what happened to Brittle? Do you think he was kidnapped by rustlers?”
Looking with surprise at her ex-lover, Meg squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll bet you’re right.” Her eyes softened as she smiled and explained to Dan and Natalie, “Denise jumped into the truck with us. She wouldn’t let us go without her, would you?”
Feeling slightly nauseated, Nicky thought, she’s going to forgive her. Ten to one, she’d even go back to her. “We better tell the police to check with Bill, the guy from the youth camp. Maybe he can identify the rustlers as the men who sold him Brittle for five-hundred bucks.”
“Let’s do that,” Meg said.
“I almost forgot, we have news, too, though not as exciting as this.” Natalie smiled at Dan. “I’m moving in with Dan.”
“I thought you already had,” Nicky said with a grin.
Nicky’s parents showed up on Saturday, an unexpected visit. Her mother, deeply tanned and stylish in cotton slacks and sweater, stepped out of the Wagoneer as Nicky returned from a walk in the field with muck on her tennis shoes and dirt on her jeans. How was it that her mother always seemed to arrive when she looked her grubbiest, she wondered as she leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek.
“How are you, Nick?” her father boomed, grabbing his daughter in a robust hug.
“Good, Dad. You both look terrific? When did you get home?”
“Yesterday, dear.�
� Her mother wrapped her arms around herself. “It’s so cold here.”
“I thought it was a nice day,” she said, still disconcerted by their appearance and holding Scrappy at bay. She didn’t want his dirty paw prints on her mother’s beige pants. “But I suppose it must seem that way to you after Florida. Want to go in the house?”
“Yes. Where’s Natalie?”
“I think she’s cooking up a storm at the country club.” Nicky glanced around the yard before going inside. It had that unkempt look that followed winter, after the snow melted and before the growing season began. “We had some excitement here last week.”
“I heard something about that,” her father remarked, patting her on the back as she opened the door. “You were a heroine. Nattie told us on the phone the other night.”
Her mother noticed her surprise. “She didn’t tell you we called, did she?”
“We only talk to each other in passing.” Apparently Nattie hadn’t told their parents that she was now waking up with Dan. She certainly wasn’t going to be the one to break the news to them. Instead, she said before either of them could ask, “And yes, she’s still seeing Dan.”
“I know that, dear.” Her mother sat at the kitchen table while Scrappy nosed her hand, looking for a pat. “How about some coffee?”
“Go lie down, Scrappy.” Nicky poured the last of the morning’s coffee into two cups and put them in the microwave. Then she made fresh.
“We’re proud of you, Nick.” Her father winked at her.
“But you shouldn’t be so careless with your life, dear. You could have been shot.”
“Or worse,” Nicky added with a grin.
“Nicole, there’s something I want to talk to you about before anything else.” Her mother gave her an appraising look that kicked Nicky’s heartbeat into high gear.
“Honey, can’t it wait? We just got here.”
She gave her husband an indecipherable look. “No, I want to get it out of the way while it’s still fresh in my mind. Then we can get on with the more pleasant chitchat.”
“I told her this is foolishness,” her father said to Nicky, further alarming her. “I’m going outside.”
Triple Exposure Page 16