As the door closed behind him, Maya searched her sister’s weary, resigned expression.
“Matty’s upstairs watching TV,” Cleo said coldly at Maya’s look. “I have to work on Saturdays. It’s our busiest day.”
Several teenagers lingered near the inexpensive pewter fantasy figurines. No one appeared interested in the two magnificent paintings of a medieval sorcerer and his lady on the high walls. Maya had thought they’d sell quickly. Maybe she had no business sense after all. Maybe Cleo couldn’t make a living here.
“That man who just left was pure evil,” she hissed quietly so the kids couldn’t hear.
“Bigot,” Cleo countered.
“Don’t give me that. Evil comes in all colors.” Terrified, Maya looked closely at her sister but couldn’t see any sign of drug use. “Cleo, if you’ve got trouble, share it. You can endanger yourself if you like, but not Matty. He’s too young.”
Cleo’s expression shuttered. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. That man is a customer who likes to use mystical party favors. I supply them.”
“That man never showed his face the entire time I ran this store,” Maya retorted. “Cleo, I’m your sister. We can fight this.”
Cleo shook her head. “You always were a dreamer.” Forcing a smile, she emerged from behind the counter and spoke to one of the teenagers. “That’s a crystal from Nepal. It’s supposed to have the power to heal...”
Maya marched up the stairs and retrieved Matty. As she held the boy’s hand through the shop, he tugged and dragged his feet. “Don’ wanna go,” he protested.
Furious with Cleo, Maya marched on.
“Mama needs me!” Matty whined, fighting her hold.
Arrows of pain piercing her heart, Maya halted and kneeled beside him. “Of course your mama needs you, sugar. She loves you. But she needs to be by herself right now.”
Wiping his eyes, Matty shook his head. “The bad man was here. I’m gonna kill him!”
Shocked to the core, Maya glanced up to see Cleo hovering in the background, her expression stony but her eyes blurred with tears.
Maya hugged her nephew and lifted him in his arms. “Bad men can’t hurt people if they stay away from them,” she said loudly enough for her sister to hear. “We’ll chase him away like the Boogie Monster.”
Swiveling on her heel, she walked out of the shop carrying Matty to safety.
***
“It’s drugs, Selene, I know it is,” Maya sighed into the phone. “How can I repay all of Axell’s kindnesses by letting my sister smear his reputation? Axell owns that building. The cops will be all over him. He’ll lose the building and maybe his license. How can Cleo be so damned stupid?”
Selene never argued over Maya’s leaps of logic. She accepted them at face value and worked from there. Maya wished Axell could be so understanding.
Remembering just how much Axell had understood when he’d come to her room last night, Maya brushed her hand over her wet cheek. She’d always known how to spurn the attention of men, even when she wanted it. Axell knew how to climb right over all her defensive barriers, straight into her bed. Just remembering what he’d done to her last night made her blush. Maybe “domineering” wasn’t entirely a bad thing when coupled with understanding. She didn’t want to lose him because of Cleo.
“Look, girlfriend,” Selene’s voice jarred Maya back to the moment. “I’m not into that scene, but I know a few people who are. I’ll sound them out, see if I can get the dude’s name. If we turn her over to the cops — ”
“The whole story will hit the paper and Axell’s name will be tarred in print. I may have to give up the school, Selene.” Maya bit her quivering lip as she expressed the fear nagging at the back of her mind.
“Say what?” Selene screamed.
“If I give up the school, the mayor will get off Axell’s back, and even if Cleo gets busted again, no one will make the connection without the mayor’s instigation. He’ll scratch Axell’s back if Axell scratches his, is the way he put it.”
“That’s blackmail,” Selene snapped. “You swim out of this school, Miss Fish, and you swim out for good. I’ve got too much invested here, and I don’t mean just money. This is my dream, too, you’ll remember.”
Maya pinched the bridge of her nose as she’d seen Axell do. It didn’t help. Any way she looked at it, she risked losing her husband, her sister, her best friend, and the dream of a lifetime.
Life had been much easier when she could just swim along on her own.
“The lawyers promised to call back Monday,” Selene continued. “If our lease is bona fide, the mayor has to go the condemnation route. You got your Garden Club lined up?”
“Teamed with the Historic Society,” Maya agreed numbly. What difference did saving the school make if she lost Axell and Constance because of it?
She’d never fully realized the high price of a dream.
***
“How much do you know about drugs in this town, Headley?” Axell asked as he kicked aside the fallen police tape surrounding Cleo’s condemned building and unlocked the alley door.
“I’m semiretired, remember?” Headley glanced around the alley with interest. “I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout nuthin’.”
Axell switched on his flashlight and scanned the nearly empty storeroom. “Don’t give me that. You’re a sponge. You absorb information without trying. I’ve got two crackheads haunting my kitchen and this alley, and someone’s using this storeroom. What are the chances drugs are involved?”
“Drugs are involved in every crime in the country,” Headley snorted. “It’s worse than Prohibition. Government ought to tax the damned stuff and use the proceeds to build crackhouses where the morons can fry their brains without hurting the innocent. You’re better off messing with the mayor than these guys, kid.”
“They chose my restaurant for their crimes.” Axell shoved aside old boxes and searched the walls for the cellar door. “The police don’t have time to find out why, so I guess I will.”
“That’s ridiculous. You make it sound like a personal vendetta. Kids do drugs. They do it wherever they are. They happened to be in your kitchen when they did.” Headley gingerly followed him into the vacant interior.
“I fired their asses. They had no business back there. Someone was setting me up. And I think that someone was in here that night. How much more have you found out about our Yankee developers and their cash flow problems?”
“You don’t really think there’s a connection, do you?” Headley inspected a box of trash as Axell tried the knob of a door in the far wall. “Real estate is booming. They’ll cover their cash flow with a few loans.”
“Headley, you’re not helping here.” Axell tried the back door key in the cellar lock. “The mayor’s risking his career by approving a road through the school grounds. If a loan would solve the problem, he wouldn’t be after Maya.” The key didn’t fit. Axell jiggled it in irritation.
“Drugs are to this century what alcohol was to the last.” Headley gingerly removed an old hypodermic from the trash and wielded it for Axell to see. “Only kids are more involved today, so they don’t have fancy nightclubs. They have places like this. The city is spilling into suburbia, Holm. We’re smack in its path.”
Axell grimaced at the evidence that someone was using the place for drugs. He’d have the council expedite condemnation proceedings and get the place torn down. He ought to find out who owned it. Maybe Maya would know.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about that kid named Alyssum,” Headley replied irrelevantly, returning the needle to the trash. “He was working construction with some crew out of Texas about thirty years ago. Nice kid, ambitious.”
Axell tried every key on his ring, but none worked on the cellar door. He pulled out a credit card and tried jimmying the lock. “Maya said she was born here. Probably her father. You should be telling her this. I doubt she knows much about her parents.”
“The kid quit sharing my bottle
after he got married. Seems his bride had an alcoholic mother and wouldn’t tolerate drinking.”
The credit card trick didn’t work on old doors. Giving up in disgust, Axell jammed the card back in his wallet and picked his way around trash bags toward Headley. He had the sneaking suspicion the reporter was leading up to the connection between Pfeiffer and Maya and her sister.
“Don’t take that route, old friend,” Axell warned. “Maya isn’t interested.”
“I just thought you ought to know,” Headley replied, leaning on his cane as he opened the alley door. “The bride’s maiden name was Arnold, if I remember rightly. Her mother was the black sheep of the family, a little too freewheeling for the postwar years. She ran a seamy nightclub during the fifties when the county was dry and had a daughter out of wedlock. Scandal, even if it was before my time.”
Before his time, Axell snorted to himself. Headley had probably helped build the nightclub. As they hit the sunshine outside, the name “Arnold” hit him smack between the eyes.
Maya could be related to the mayor, from the wrong side of the blanket.
Oh, hell, first Pfeiffer, now the mayor. He must have been out of his mind that day he’d walked into The Curiosity Shoppe to speak with Constance’s teacher. Maybe that “Fate” Maya kept talking about had switched sides from her to him. Maybe he just ought to stand here and hope a bolt of lightning struck him.
“I suppose you’re going to tell me next that the mayor’s family ran Maya’s family out of town?” Axell asked in resignation as they wended their way through the alley and back across the street to the restaurant. This was a small Southern town. The mayor’s family wouldn’t like evidence of any scandal around once they took up politics. Ralph’s father had been mayor back in the seventies.
“Actually, I hadn’t thought about that, but the chances are pretty good.” Headley beamed at him with approval. “Want me to find out?”
“I think I’d rather not know,” Axell said gloomily.
He needed to get his life back in order again, he decided as he drove toward home later. Maya had been right. He liked all his soldiers in a row, and he didn’t see why he couldn’t have them that way just because marriage had added a few extra complications.
Constance was safe and happy; that was the important thing. She was blooming like a wildflower under Maya’s attentions. So the marriage was definitely not a mistake. It had accomplished just what he’d hoped.
And then some. Axell ruthlessly shoved aside all thoughts of Maya sprawled across her bed in the morning sunshine, her hair an auburn tangle across the pillow, her breasts taunting creamy cones awaiting his taste. He wasn’t a sensual man, he told himself. The sex was convenient, but he didn’t need to dwell on it.
So, if Constance and sex were in order, what else needed reorganizing? What were his priorities here?
His license. He had to protect his liquor license. It was his livelihood, his means of taking care of his family. He’d prefer to err on the side of paranoia and believe someone was up to sneaky tricks by sending those druggies into his place. This was a small town — not so rural any longer, but small. The cops should be able to spot a dealer from a mile away. They’d know where he lived. Something was not right with this picture.
He didn’t want to believe that flaw was Maya’s sister. For Matty and Maya’s sake, he prayed she was clean and could stay that way. For the sake of his license and reputation, she’d damned well better be. Maybe he could hire someone to work in the store and keep an eye on her. Cleo would pitch a fit. Maybe he could say he was renting out that unused corner...
He pulled into the driveway behind an unfamiliar car blocking his access to the garage. Now what? He didn’t know anyone who drove white Fords. The damn thing looked like a rental.
Climbing out of the Rover, Axell heard the musical chimes of childish laughter. Rolling his shoulders and relaxing some of the tension his morning’s detective work had generated, he sauntered in the direction of the backyard, past the cascade of petunias Maya had planted in pots on the driveway wall.
An obscene blue plastic pool jarred the sedate view of landscaped lawn. He’d intended to eventually build a real pool, but he’d wanted to wait until the kids were older.
The kids...
Axell swallowed past the lump in his throat at the thought of the children he’d once intended to have. He still had Constance, and now, Alexa, and it looked as if he had Matty again. He frowned at that as he strolled over to watch the horseplay in the pool. He’d thought Cleo had taken her son for the weekend.
Maya looked up from where she was happily planting colorful banks of impatiens around the spindly boxwood. He hated to tell her, but those plants would croak in the noon sun. He’d already figured out she knew diddle-all about flowers but chose them for their colors. He had to admit, they cheered up the boring yard.
“Axell, there you are!”
That wasn’t the musical greeting he’d anticipated. Maya’s sunny smile froze as she raised her eyebrows and jerked her head in the direction of the deck.
Oh, shit. Sandra. The chalkboard-scratching tones finally registered. Axell checked the deck, recognized the plastic bubble of hair, and grimacing, bent over and kissed Maya. “I’m getting that beeper,” he whispered against her welcoming lips. “I want to know when to run next time.”
“Forget that, mister. She’s your problem. Just be lucky I haven’t roped her to the deck and planted petunias between her teeth.”
With that enchanting image to contemplate, Axell headed for the deck. The kids were apparently too engrossed in a watery battle to greet him. Alexa slept in her shaded basket. All was well with his world except for the blond fly in his suntan oil.
“I told her you wouldn’t appreciate that trailer park trash in your yard,” Sandra complained as he reached the stairs. “But she wouldn’t listen. Constance will be wearing tattoos and those dreadful pink plastic shoes before long. Whatever could you have been thinking?”
Biting his tongue, Axell vowed to buy Constance the first pair of pink plastic shoes he found.
Wearing a pressed linen shorts set and oversized sunglasses, Sandra sat beneath the patio umbrella sipping an iced drink. With her manicured fingers, she gestured at Maya. “Just look. She’s planting impatiens in the sun. They’ll be dead by morning.”
Axell thought he recognized the grim determination in the set of Maya’s chin as she shoved her trowel into the loose mulch beneath the shrubs. The yard wasn’t so large that she couldn’t hear every word of Sandra’s shrill complaint.
“And what brings you back to our part of the country?” he asked calmly, checking the cooler Maya had brilliantly provided to prevent the kids from running in and out in their wet suits. He smiled as he discovered a bottle of spring water.
“I came to check on Constance,” Sandra replied.
Translation: She’d had a fight with her family in Texas and had hastily repaired to her North Carolina friends for sympathy. When her husband had been alive, it had worked in reverse.
“Well, I’m certain Constance is delighted to see you.” Unscrewing the bottle top, Axell settled into a lounge chair. He was aware of Maya out of the corner of his eye, but strangely enough, he didn’t feel compelled to shield her from Sandra’s venom. He thought Maya had his former mother-in-law’s number and could take care of herself better than he could. His gypsy had backbone. It was a rather relaxing revelation.
“What are you going to do about that pool?” Sandra demanded. “The neighbors will be incensed.”
Axell agreed the pool was an abomination, but it was a practical solution for the moment, even if it did kill the manicured lawn. “What neighbors?” he asked. “They’d have to walk through the woods to see it. Surely you didn’t come all the way from Texas to complain about a little pool.”
“No, I’ve decided I’m moving back here. If you won’t take care of Constance properly, I will. My suitcases are still in the car. If you’ll get them out, I’ll beg
in house hunting on Monday.”
Je-humping-hosaphat. Axell pinched his eyes shut and tried to mute more virulent swear words as he pictured the immediate consequences of this decision.
The kids and Maya currently occupied the guest wing. He had the choice of installing Sandra in Maya’s room, or in the sanctity of his wing of the house — the only island of serenity in this chaotic world he could call his own.
Opening his eyes and glancing at the pale curve of Maya’s shoulders above her halter top, Axell knew damned well Sandra wasn’t the one he’d be introducing to his inner sanctum.
Thirty-two
Reality is a crutch for people who can’t handle drugs.
“They’re all asleep. Are you sure this will work?” Maya asked worriedly as she slipped into the family room carrying the last of Alexa’s blankets. She didn’t know how she’d accumulated so much stuff in a few short months. She used to be able to pack everything she owned into a suitcase. Those days were over.
“I’m not sure of anything,” Axell replied a trifle grimly, taking the blankets from her. “I just couldn’t find a polite way of throwing the woman out on her ear.”
The urge to reach out and kiss him bubbled deep in her belly. Her Norse god looked so bewildered and beleaguered that she wanted to cuddle him and tell him everything would be all right, even if it meant sacrificing his holy privacy. But he wasn’t a child to be cuddled. She could tell that by the fire igniting in Axell’s eyes the instant she tucked her hand between the buttons of his shirt.
“Well, just pretend I’m a wanton woman come to share your bed for the evening. You can throw me out in the morning.”
“And keep Alexa?” he inquired in a deep, low drawl that chased shivers through her midsection.
“Well, there is that,” she admitted as she followed him down the hall to his rooms. Rooms.
They passed a comfortable den/office complete with bar and television, where he could retreat to watch football while the kids watched cartoons. The next room had been turned into a home gym with all the latest paraphernalia. No wonder the damned man looked like a pinup model beneath those suits. He’d probably worked off a lot of frustration.
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