by Amber Foxx
“So you painted a whole damned copy?”
Reno looked at the canvas again. “To complete her vision.” His voice faded to a whisper. “I could do it when she couldn’t. I actually could.”
Will blew out a breath and shook his head. He seemed about to speak, but gathered his clothes and left. The vision flickered. Reno was lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling when Mae saw him again. A soft tapping on the door made him stir. “What?”
Jamie glided in. “Mate. I need to take it.” Reno turned his back to him and curled up. Jamie sighed. “Jeezus.” He sat behind the younger man, studying him. He tugged his ponytail. No response. “Talk to me. Will says you don’t eat, don’t go out. You need help.”
Reno shook his head.
“Go home and talk to Lonnie.”
“I can’t.”
“Yeah, you can. He already knows.” Jamie dug his wallet from his pocket and searched through it, bringing out a business card. He reached over and tucked it into Reno’s hand. “Call this bloke, too. Carl Gorman. He’s good. And he’s Navajo. He’ll understand you.”
Reno rubbed his eyes and rolled over, squinting at the card. “Who is he?”
“My therapist.”
Mae left the vision. Reno was in bad shape. No wonder Jamie had been willing to help Zak protect him.
She found everyone had moved out to the front porch. The air had grown cooler and the stars had come out in all their desert brilliance. Jamie lay on his back, softly singing the song he’d sung under the double rainbow.
“We’ll live forever, love lasts forever ...”
Niall and Marty sat side by side on the steps, with Daphne a step below them and Alan a few feet to their right, listening.
Jamie broke off the song and sat up. “You found out it’s hers, right?”
“Yes. And that Reno painted the other. The reason he did it, though—it’s not what I’d guessed.” Mae hesitated to share Reno’s mental state. “It’s messed up, but he thought he was doing something for her.”
“They know. I told ’em.”
“Thanks for checking.” Niall got to his feet, and the others followed suit. “Let’s lock this place up. Alan, can we take you out to dinner? Give you a bed for the night?”
Alan declined, saying he had to collect Ezra and bring him to Bernadette’s.
Mae and Jamie said their goodbyes and walked to the back of the house hand in hand. Once they were in his car, she asked, “Do I get the whole story now? About the other painting?”
“Mm.” Jamie backed the Fiesta out into the street. “If you don’t tell anyone. Has to be just you, me, and Zak.”
“Does Reno know?”
“Nah.” He drove toward Mae’s house. “Better that he doesn’t. Zak told Ezra to go on without him, said he’d seen some trash he needed to get, and he ran and got the painting from me and shoved it in the bag, and he—Jeezus, hate it that he had to do it—he got rid of it. With the litter. Passed it off as a fucking pizza box.”
“He threw it away?”
“Had to—to end the forgery story.”
“But it’s not over.”
“Yeah, it is.” He paused at a stop sign. “All that’s left is the love story.”
“Jamie.” Mae turned to look him in the face. “He was forging, and they weren’t lovers.”
His eyes were soft and vulnerable, meeting hers briefly. “You sure?” He drove on.
Reno had denied the intimacy when Will asked about it, but Florencia had been at her worst that night. Her relationship with Reno might have been stormy—up and down, off and on—and secret, but it was possible. “No. But I do know he was forging her work. Zak told me.”
“But Niall doesn’t know. David and I went to the gallery last Saturday after I talked with you. Took the whole night because he wanted to keep the frames and just destroy the canvases. His mum was so upset she wouldn’t help us, but she couldn’t fight it. I mean, if we’re saving Reno, we’re saving her—can’t do one without the other. Next day she sold Niall’s buyer one of the genuine early works. Feel bad about him spending the money, but at least the estate can pay for it, and he got something valuable. When it gets authenticated, he won’t have anything to go on for forgery.”
They crossed a silent, summer-night Broadway with a three-quarter moon rising over it and continued down Foch past Austin to Marr. With Jamie’s help, Zak the hero and rescuer had made sure Reno didn’t get caught. It had been a close race, but this time Zak had won. And Mae was relieved that he had.
She asked, “Are you ever going to explain the first painting disappearing?”
“Nah. It wasn’t Niall’s, it was Reno’s. So taking it wasn’t illegal. And neither was painting it. He didn’t sign it with her name or plan to sell it. So—no intent to defraud, right? And it’s not actually a copy. It’s more like the painting she didn’t finish, as finished by Reno. An act of mourning. I told Niall that if you hadn’t accused Reno of forgery, he could have left his version in the studio and returned the original, too.”
“If I hadn’t accused him of forgery, he wouldn’t have returned the original.”
“I didn’t mean you’d done something bad, love. He needed to almost get caught. They all did. Zak couldn’t talk them into quitting when they knew he’d never turn them in. Not like his moral imperative was that persuasive, y’know?”
Jamie parked the Fiesta at Mae’s house and they climbed the porch steps.
“I hope Reno will go home,” he said, running a finger down her back while she unlocked the front door. “Stay with his family a while.”
“I’m sure it’d help.” She went to the kitchen, Jamie following, and filled two glasses of water. Mae sat at the table, sipping. Jamie guzzled, refilled his glass and stood at the counter, drinking more slowly. She said, “But it won’t solve everything. The forgeries Kathy sold are still out there. That’ll hang over him for the rest of his life.”
“Yeah. But there’s nothing we can do about it. Can’t see Kathy calling the buyers and telling ’em.” Jamie gazed into his glass, then took a sip. “We took care of everything we could.”
Florencia’s final work had come back. Reno’s reputation was intact. The Chavez-Mirabal gallery was cleared of forgeries. That wasn’t quite everything. “What about the parrots. Can they take them back to the store?”
Jamie made a few humming noises, and his shoulders did the telltale one-two shrug. He was avoiding something. Mae prodded him, asking again. He sighed. “They’d planned to keep Bouquet and give me Placido when David’s aunt passed—if she’d kept him—and say Shelli found him at the rescue center, but that was before they knew you were psychic. So they kept ’em both. The store had the birds insured and that made Shelli feel like they were paid for. Rationalizing, I know. But I told her that sooner or later Alan’s bound to mention that Violet died, so Bouquet had to leave the gallery.”
“And go where? Back to the store or not?”
“Um ... The Exotic Aviary, the store where Shelli worked ... they closed. Couldn’t compete with Feathered Friends. City can’t support two parrot stores. So, I have two parrots.”
“Oh, sugar. Did you think this through?”
“Nah. Couldn’t break ’em up, though. They love each other.”
“That was sweet of you, but they’re a major commitment. For a lifetime. You can’t just jump into it.”
“Sure I can, if I know what I want.” Jamie set his glass down. “There’ll be some problems, but I can solve them. I just have to change the story I tell myself.”
That sounded like therapy talk. Applied to spontaneous pet adoption. “Dr. Gorman teach you that?”
“Nah. My relationship book. They say you can have the life you want if you rewrite your story.” He pulled a chair in front of her and sat knee to knee. “I can have parrots. Because in my new story, I don’t stay depressed and kill myself and die young. I live. As long as they do.” He took her hands. “You could change your story, too.”
/> “I already have. A lot of times.”
“I meant your love story.” His eyes searched hers. “Believe in forever. Marriage. All of it.”
“I don’t know yet, sugar.” Before he could give her the baby seal look, she drew him to his feet, kissed him, and held him tight. “But I do want my story to have you in it.”
Author’s Notes and Acknowledgements
Dada Café, The Exotic Aviary, and Eight Northern Pueblos Tribal College are fictitious. I made changes to a few streets and buildings in T or C and Mescalero for the purposes of the story.
The painted trailer with the poem on it on Austin Street was one of my favorite bits of T or C scenery for years. In 2015, it got a makeover with turquoise siding. I like to think the words and images are still there, hidden like rock art in a canyon to be discovered again someday.
The Mescalero fire-danger T-shirt is made by White Horse Art and Design, Mescalero, NM.
The Dam It Man Triathlon took place every summer from 2010 through 2014. I made some alterations to the route and left out some fun but distracting details, such as the high school football team being on hand to haul competitors out of the deep water and onto the dock.
All information I have included about the ceremonies in Mescalero is material the tribe shares with the general public. I hope I have portrayed the event with the respect I feel for it and which it deserves.
I would like to thank the following people and businesses:
Darlene Parker of Feathered Friends of Santa Fe for answering my questions about parrots. Any inaccuracies in my portrayal of the birds are mine.
Delmas Howe, for permission to use the Cowboy Angel in this story. A small print of that extraordinary work of art kept me company and inspired me for two years as I worked on this book.
Passion Pie Café for permission to set scenes there and for allowing me to employ Misty Chino as their barista. I am especially grateful to Jia Apple for information about the design and structure of the art-topped tables and for the idea to have the artist try to drag one out the door.
Rio Bravo Fine Art for permission to set scenes there and to have Florencia Mirabal exhibit her work there.
About the Author
Amber Foxx has worked professionally in theater, dance, fitness, yoga, and academia. She has lived in both the Southeast and the Southwest, and calls New Mexico home.
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Also by Amber Foxx
Mae Martin Mysteries
The Calling
Shaman's Blues
Snake Face
Soul Loss
Ghost Sickness
Death Omen
The Mae Martin Mysteries Books 1-3
Standalone
The Outlaw Women
Bearing
Small Awakenings
Watch for more at Amber Foxx’s site.