The Salt Maiden (Leisure Romantic Suspense)

by Colleen Thompson

So far, forty-seven grand and change had been recovered. Some of the original total might have been spent already, while more had doubtless blown across the desert. Jay figured many of his neighbors would take an interest in dry-country hiking once the news got out.

  “Either that,” said Petit, “or somebody meant to punish her for something. She surely didn’t die a quiet death. Nor the kind of death a female perpetrator would be statistically likely to inflict.”

  Jay reread another line, trying to extract every shade of meaning from the clinical details. Seeing nothing more of interest, he said, “Full report’ll come in after they’ve had a chance to run the tox screen.”

  Petit frowned before picking up the pages. “Too bad they can’t get more specific with the time of death. Would’ve helped a lot to know when she’d been killed. I guess because of the body’s desiccation, they weren’t able to use the usual insect evidence.”

  Jay nodded, his mind perversely drifting to a distant history lesson on Western frontier life. “I guess the old-timers had one thing right,” he said. “Looks like salt’s not a half-bad preservative after all.”

  Saturday, July 7, 1:02 P.M.

  95 Degrees Fahrenheit

  When Dennis Riggins’s wife opened the door to their ranch house, Jay couldn’t believe this was the same woman he remembered. In the time he’d been away, Suzanne’s once-dark hair had gone completely white, and her full, pink face had paled, falling on dark, crepey circles beneath once-vibrant gray eyes. Jay had expected change over the course of the sixteen years since he had seen her, and he had heard she’d had a mild heart attack last winter. But she looked terrible, as if she’d received the shock of her life, such as her husband telling her they’d lost everything to the con artists who called themselves Haz-Vestment.

  “Why, Jay Eversole.” She smiled in recognition and stepped back to wave him inside the Mexican-tiled foyer. Her voice might be thinner than he remembered—as was her tall frame—but her West Texan accent remained the same. And so did the personality that sparkled just beneath the surface. “Come on in. It’s so good to see you all grown up, and I have to say you’ve filled out real fine.”

  His face grew warm at the compliment.

  “Thanks, Suzanne.” She’d never taken kindly to being called “Mrs. Riggins.” “You’re a sight for sore eyes, too.”

  She waved off his reflexive statement, the look in her eyes telling him that she knew bullshit when she heard it. But instead of chastising him, she said, “Sorry I’m not dressed for company…Would’ve slapped on my boots ’n ball gown if Dennis had given me any kind of warning.”

  Though it was early afternoon, she wore a green-and-white-striped cotton bathrobe.

  “That was my fault, not your husband’s. I’m sorry I didn’t call first.” Jay would have, but he wasn’t sure his uncle’s old friend would have stuck around the house if he had had fair warning. “But next time I’ll be sure to do that. Wouldn’t want to miss a chance of seein’ a pretty lady all dressed up.”

  She laughed at their foolishness and led him toward the sound of a TV playing at high volume in a den that hadn’t changed at all. As worn and comfortable as the rest of the house, the room was decorated with cross-stitched patterns in antique frames, a Victorian washstand with a flowered basin and a matching pitcher, and Dennis’s moth-eaten old trophies, the mounted heads of a pair of mule deer bucks whose racks were lightly laced with cobwebs.

  Dennis’s huge form was ensconced in an oversize recliner as he watched baseball on ESPN.

  “Who’s playing?” Jay called to him, all but shouting to be heard over the TV.

  Dennis looked at him morosely, his frown nearly hidden by the bushy red-gray beard. Shrugging, he answered, “Who the hell cares?” before using the remote to mute the sound.

  Suzanne shot her husband a worried look before glancing back at Jay. “I was heading for the tub when I heard you knocking. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave the two of you to talk. There’s Cokes and lemonade out in the fridge, so make yourself at home, Jay.”

  “Thanks,” he said, and waited for her to leave before sitting in the smaller of the two chairs, which was covered in the same faded plaid fabric as the “his” version. The rocker-recliner creaked beneath his weight. “How’s she taking the news about Haz-Vestment?”

  Dennis turned to make sure his wife was out of earshot before meeting Jay’s gaze and dropping his voice to a loud whisper. “Haven’t told her yet how bad it is. For us personally, I mean. I know I oughta, but…Suzie’s got more’n enough to worry over right now.”

  “What’s going on?” Jay dreaded the answer, but the change in Suzanne’s appearance was too drastic to ignore.

  The pain flashing through Dennis’s blue eyes was unmistakable, though his features hardened almost instantly. “You didn’t come here to talk about her.”

  “But I care about her, Dennis.” Jay nearly told the older man he was worried about him, too, but Rimrock County was the kind of place where a man helped another man sink postholes, castrate calves, or shore up a sagging feed shed. Expressions of sentiment between males were considered useless, if not positively suspect.

  “A prayer wouldn’t go amiss,” Dennis admitted as he looked away. “And that’s all I’ve got to say on the subject. So tell me, what the hell brings you here? And it had goddamned well better not be to question me like some damned suspect.”

  Well, hell, thought Jay. He stood and took a step in the direction of the kitchen.

  “Think I’ll go for that Coke,” he said. “Can I get you anything?”

  Might as well be civil while he still could. Because Jay sensed this conversation was about to go downhill fast.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Dear sis,

  The birth mother’s sister, Dana, arranged to meet me yesterday while John stayed with Nikki at the hospital. (More problems with the new IV site, so they’re putting in a central line this morning.)

  Dana looked so sad, I told her how sorry I was for her family’s loss—as if it weren’t our family’s loss, too. I told her how much I would have liked to thank her sister for the gift she shared with us. But it must have been too hard for Dana to hear, because she changed the subject to the purpose of her visit, the documents she wanted John and me to gather from Nikki’s adoption file.

  I can’t imagine what good she thinks they’ll do her. I explained that the father was listed as “unknown,” that the hospital in Odessa wouldn’t give out any further information. Our attorney says there’s nothing more for them to give, but maybe the Vanovers have their own resources.

  Better light another candle. Better say another prayer. Because the next infection Nikki gets could be her last one. And I swear to you, if my baby dies, I’m going to die with her. Because a heart can’t keep beating through that kind of pain, can it? At some point it has to scream, “ENOUGH!”

  —E-mail message from Laurie Harrison

  Thursday, July 12, 9:33 A.M.

  82 Degrees Fahrenheit

  As they sat at her mother’s backyard patio set, Dana wondered how to break the news that she was leaving Houston first thing tomorrow morning. She swallowed fresh-squeezed orange juice to moisten her dry throat, but before she could come up with the right words, Isabel put down her fork and started talking.

  “Your sister called me that night to get your number.” Dana’s mother’s eyes reddened, a startling contrast to irises that matched the lush green of the landscaping around her pool. “That’s why I tried to reach you, to let you know about it.”

  After the time she had spent surrounded by the desert’s subtler palette, Dana found the sight of so much verdure overwhelming, almost painful. The blaze of hibiscus blossoms seemed extravagant, the bougainvillea blooms too gaudy—even the pool’s turquoise made her wince and turn away, her cheese omelet forgotten.

  “That’s what I figured,” Dana said, still wrung out from the previous night. Her mother and Jerome’s circle had attended a restrained but e
legant memorial service. Of Dana’s friends, Lynette and their two vet techs had come from the clinic, along with a few others who had seen the announcement in the paper. But not a soul showed who had known Angie personally, though Dana had heard from her sister’s art agent and a couple of friends she had met in rehab, each of whom promised to remember her in their own way.

  Including one Dana had called back three times in the past three days, between her visits with John and Laurie Harrison.

  “Once I told Angie you were out there, the only thing she wanted was to call you.” Isabel sipped the ginger-peach iced tea she drank in place of coffee on warm mornings. Like her daughter’s, her own breakfast lay abandoned after a few bites. “She didn’t even tell me good-bye.”

  “She was in bad shape, Mom, and desperate to get out of there. If she had known it would be the last time, I’m sure she would have—”

  “You don’t have to do that. To make excuses for your sister. You know as well as I do why she was the way she was…I was never the sort of mother Angie needed.” Moisture glittered in her eyes. “And probably not much better when it came to you.”

  Dana said gently, “You did the best you could. And like I told you, Angie planned to come home. She wouldn’t have said that if she didn’t love you.”

  Dana had repeated the same thing perhaps a dozen times over the past few days. This time, like all the others, Isabel didn’t look as though she believed a word of it. Avoiding Dana’s gaze, she fussed with the wrinkled linen of her sundress and turned her attention to a hummingbird’s worship of a garish blossom.

  Finished with their squirrel patrol, Ben and Jerry trotted over and sat near Dana’s feet. The corgis’ thick red-blond tails fanned in unison as they stared a reminder that the two unfinished breakfasts need not go to waste.

  Ignoring the dogs’ telepathic messages, Dana thought of asking her mother about the rumors she had heard years earlier, the talk that hinted of sexual abuse while Isabel was still a child. Maybe if she sought help, things could be different in the future. Or would the suggestion merely make Isabel wonder if she could have saved Angie with such an effort?

  Too dangerous to try now, Dana decided, especially since she wouldn’t be around to watch her mother. Though Jerome had taken the week off, it wouldn’t be fair to leave him with the fallout of yet another emotional upheaval—especially since he’d undoubtedly disagree with the idea of dredging up the painful past. Like most men, he believed in living in the present and burying whatever memories might prove too messy.

  Like Jay Eversole, who would prefer to avoid any reminder of the traumas that had left him with his own psychic wounds. Apparently Dana was one more aspect of the past to put behind him, since he hadn’t called or e-mailed since she had returned home. He had sent both flowers to the service and a handwritten letter of condolence, though the latter had been stiffly formal and addressed to the whole family, without a single hint of the intimacies the two of them had shared.

  But as much as that note rankled, it was another that had convinced Dana of the need to head back to the desert. A tersely worded, unsigned message with the postmark devil’s claw. Thanks to the anonymous typed letter, she was one aspect of Jay’s past that he was going to have to deal with—whether he wanted to or not.

  Jay tipped his hat to the postmistress as he unlocked the mailbox that had once belonged to Uncle R.C. “Good mornin’. How’re you?”

  Behind her mannish horn-rimmed glasses, Dorothy hobarth merely glared by way of greeting. In spite of regulations banning smoking in the tiny federal building, a lit cigarette dangled from her downturned lips, an inch of glowing ash drooping from its business end.

  So who pissed in your cornflakes? Jay wanted to ask her. But he didn’t, since in the unlikely event that he was still here for November’s election, he’d need every vote he could muster if he hoped to keep his job. Including the vote of one of Devil’s Claw’s most famously eccentric characters.

  Predictably, Judge Hooks had been gunning for his removal, and Dennis Riggins was arguing that the new sheriff was doing “a damned fine job keepin’ the peace,” despite the upheaval that had broken out after he took office. But Jay half expected Dennis to withdraw his support any minute, so angry had he been over their visit a few days earlier.

  For all his bluster, maybe Dennis considered Jay’s decision to question him the hallmark of a professional who wouldn’t allow his personal feelings to interfere with duty. Or more likely Dennis simply didn’t want Abe Hooks to “win” by running off his choice.

  Jay frowned at the empty metal box. “What happened to my uncle’s mail?”

  He hadn’t checked it in days, so he’d expected the usual barrage of farm and ranch catalogs, flyers from various businesses in Pecos, perhaps a statement from one of the utilities. Not even the dead got a pass on either junk mail or their bills.

  “That FBI man, Tomlin, showed up with a court order.” Beneath the slicked-back gray hair, the grooves in Dorothy’s forehead deepened, making her look like a thinner version of her twin. “Snooped in several boxes. Yours included, though they only emptied the old sheriff’s.”

  “They looked in mine, too?”

  Dorothy nodded. “I don’t like this one damned bit. Ever since that Vanover girl—Angelina, I mean—set foot in this town, it’s been nothin’ but one outsider after another messin’ in our business. Them reporters’re bad enough, traipsin’ through here with their questions, hoggin’ the whole counter over to the Broken Spur. But now we got the goddamned FBI, too. Wish they’d all just stayed where they belong.”

  “So you would rather the FBI had left us in the dark about Haz-Vestment?”

  Tension crackled between them like power arcing from a downed line. But finally she answered, “We got our own way of dealing with thieves and liars here in Rimrock. I figured, growing up with old R.C., you’d have known that.”

  Devil’s Claw’s postmistress was as famous for her morosely ominous statements as her artistry with swear words, but even so, her statement prickled at the back of Jay’s neck.

  “Miz Hobarth, I believe we need to have a serious conversation.” He didn’t want anyone else interrupting. “But not here.”

  “If you think I’m settin’ foot in that office of yours, you’re as crazy as they’re sayin’. Probably can’t turn around in there without bumping your ass against an FBI bug.”

  Jay wondered for a moment if she could be right about the feds bugging his office, but decided it was more than likely her paranoia talking. “How about I swing by your place this afternoon, then, once you’re off work?”

  Dorothy lived in an old trailer home just beyond Dead Horse Run. After last week’s storms, flash flooding washed out the track and stranded the postmistress there for two days. When enough neighbors tired of waiting for their mail, a detail was organized to regrade the dirt road for her.

  Predictably, she hadn’t thanked them with a batch of homemade cookies. Instead she’d asked what the hell had taken the goddamned bunch of them so long.

  She considered before nodding. “All right, all right. But leave that mutt of yours at home. My girls would likely rip off his balls and feed ’em to him.”

  Jay wasn’t sure who—or what—Dorothy’s “girls” were, but he agreed and gave her an exact time, then warned her to be on the lookout for his SUV. Like nearly everyone in Rimrock County, she was known to keep loaded weapons, one of which had been accidentally discharged when her twin sister had dropped by unannounced. Though the incident had taken place more than two decades earlier, Estelle was still waiting for an apology for the blast that had nearly cost her her right foot.

  Besides that, Jay decided it would be damned embarrassing to come back from a war zone only to get his head blown off by someone Wallace laughingly referred to (though never in his mother’s presence) as “Uncle Dorothy.”

  After sorting through and discarding most of the junk mail from his own box, Jay returned to his office, where he found Walla
ce himself going through the largest side drawer of the desk. This was getting to be a habit for members of the Hooks family.

  “Can I help you find something, Deputy?” Jay asked without preamble.

  Wallace jerked to attention, his face reddening. “I, uh, I was looking for a file. Uh, my mom said it was missing—this transcript from the community meetings for Haz-Vestment. The feebs were askin’ her about it, and I…I thought I’d make sure you hadn’t accidentally—”

  “Lifted it out of her locked cabinet?” Jay watched how his deputy’s color deepened at the question.

  Jay went to his own file cabinet and pulled his key ring from his pocket. As he unlocked it he said, “I did borrow it a while back—forgot to tell her. Meant to remind her, too, to be more careful with her own keys. She left ’em sitting on her desk when she went home…”

  As Jay’s fingers walked the top tabs of file after file, his words trailed off. Frowning, he rechecked before looking up at Wallace, who had closed the open desk drawer.

  “It’s gone,” Jay told him. “The folder’s not here.”

  “You sure that’s where you left it?”

  Jay nodded. He distinctly remembered the morning he had brought the transcripts back from his place. Estelle hadn’t yet been in her office, so he’d unlocked his file cabinet and slipped the manila folder into the front with the intention of returning it to her once she arrived, along with an apology for borrowing it without a word. But at about that time Abe Hooks had burst in ranting that Dennis riggins had overturned the Broken Spur’s trash barrel—when any idiot could see the javelina hoofprints all around it. By the time he had talked the judge out of tossing his archrival in the hoosegow, Jay had forgotten all about the transcript.

  “So are you sure you locked your file drawer?”

  Though Wallace looked smug, Jay could hardly fault him, since he’d made the mistake of criticizing Estelle to her son’s face. As Dennis was so fond of saying, Never get between one Hooks and another.