Keeping the Peace

by Linda Cunningham

  “I don’t care,” he whispered, and he kissed her on her temple, where her pulse beat hotly.

  “Why are you doing this? What do you expect?”

  “Why are you doing this?” he shot back to her.

  “Do you think I’m some kind of bored housewife?”

  “You said that. I didn’t even think it. What if you weren’t married? What if?”

  “There is no point even thinking about that because I am.”

  “I want to know. Would you be with me?”

  Melanie felt as though her knees might buckle. This was getting too murky. She sat down on a bale of hay in the stall. He still held her hand. “Yes, I would be with you.”

  Gabriel sat down beside her. He put his arm around her and drew her in to him. They sat like that for a few minutes, neither of them uttering a word. Melanie listened to him breathing, felt the gentle rise and fall of his chest. Finally, she said softly, “Gabriel, I cannot do this. I can’t even give it credence in my own mind. It’s far too dangerous. There are way too many people who could be irreversibly hurt. I could not bear that.”

  He pressed his lips to her temple again and whispered into her hair. “I wish we could go away. No, I wish everybody else would just go away. You make me feel things I’ve never felt. You have captivated me. You make me forget somebody’s trying to kill me!”

  He unzipped her parka and slipped his hand up under her sweater, cool on her skin that flushed hot with desire, despite her brave speech. She felt his fingers spread out across her ribcage, just below her breast.

  Laying her hand on his chest, she slowly pushed back from him. “No,” she said as gently as she could. “No, I told you how it is. I love my husband, Gabriel. I love my children. Under different circumstances, it seems that I might love you, but the reality is all around us. Let’s behave like adults and get through this.”

  She allowed herself to kiss him, on the mouth, while his hand was still on her naked skin. These emotions had crept up on her. She had not been prepared for—was not looking for—an attraction of this kind. For a moment, she allowed herself to feel the true desire for him that burned in her now, to be transported by the thrill of his touch and the thought of what lying next to him would feel like. For a single moment, however brief, she allowed herself to give in to her desire and give that moment the depth and breadth needed to sustain it for a lifetime. She shook the glove off her hand and ran her fingers through the soft curls at the back of his neck. She kissed him deeply and honestly, savoring the taste of him and the lust that the weight of his body awakened in her as it pressed into her own. For one moment, they were the only two people in this sphere of existence. For that one moment, she was as he was: young and unfettered like a bird. She reveled in the rush of her desire rising to meet his.

  But it was only for a moment. Melanie drew back from him and gently brushed her fingers through his hair once again. He looked longingly, questioning, at her as she rose.

  “What now?” he asked.

  Melanie smiled. “Now everything is back to the way it should be, the way it has to be here and now. And we are fine.”

  “I’m not fine.”

  “You are. How wonderful that we had this…this interlude. How wonderful to join with another person on so deep a level, however brief, however incomplete. Gabriel, I am so flattered by your attentions, by your feelings for me. It has given me the confidence I needed. You’ve made me see that I still have a depth of being that I was ignoring. Under different circumstances, well, things would be different, but we have what we have, and it’s real. Now we must weave it into the rest of our lives, one more fiber to strengthen us.”

  “You are a very pretty talker,” he said as he stood, “in more ways than one, but I still wish for another reality.”

  Melanie smiled. “Let’s go back in. It’s getting colder.”

  They walked slowly back to house, side by side, occasionally brushing together. Melanie felt a sense of peace, as though her power had been returned. She was in control of the situation now. There was only one problem left to her, and that was how to draw her husband back to her. No more automatic sex. No more bickering. No more sacrificing themselves on the altar of mundane daily life. Suddenly, she wanted her husband desperately, wanted to be held in his strong, familiar arms, wanted to talk to him and hear his low, soothing voice.

  They went into the house. Gabriel said, “I want to call my mother. I want her know I’m okay.”

  Melanie nodded, and he drifted off to the guest room, his phone to his ear. She poured herself a cup of syrupy, leftover coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. She stared out the window at the bird feeder, alive with chickadees and juncos. Her mind wandered back, retracing her life with Police Chief John Giamo.

  From the start, her parents had been vehemently opposed to the relationship. And as the years went by and Melanie graduated college, her mother and father had tried everything to dissuade their daughter from her continuing relationship with “that Italian boy,” as they called him. They cajoled…

  “You should break it off with him before you hurt him,” said her mother.

  “I have no intention of hurting him,” Melanie said, amused.

  “I think he thinks this is more serious than it is,” her father said with a cough. He was not comfortable talking with his daughter about boyfriends or, in fact, any other scenario between males and females.

  “It is serious,” said Melanie belligerently.

  “No, Melanie, it’s not. You won’t feel the same five years from now,” insisted her mother.

  “Of course I will. I’ve felt this way about him since I was a teenager.”

  “When you were a teenager, it was different. Now you are a young adult. You’ll be starting a job in the fall. In the city. A museum curator. You were very fortunate to land that job. Aren’t you excited?”

  “Of course I’m excited about the job, but why can’t I have John, too?”

  “Melanie, the boy went to Boston College. He graduated near the top of his class, if I’m to believe town gossip.” Her mother sighed. “And he chose to come back here and live with his grandmother and be a policeman.” She said the last word as though she was being forced to commit blasphemy. It was the same voice she used when she said “sex” or “actor” or other words that suggested topics she preferred to avoid.

  “What’s wrong with being a policeman?” Melanie said petulantly. “They’re necessary, aren’t they? His job’s more important than mine, really. Who needs museum curators?”

  This time, her father spoke up. “Your mother is saying that there were probably better choices for him to make. He made a choice and took the path of least resistance. He’s just not up to your standards.”

  “Oh, you two are ridiculous.” Now her ire was up. “John wants to be a policeman. He likes living here. He loves me.”

  “Melanie, even if you could iron out all the particulars, like you living in Boston and him living up here on a small town cop’s salary, you come from opposite ends of the spectrum.”

  “How do you figure that?” she asked between tight lips.

  “He’s Italian.” Her mother’s face looked like she’d just tasted something bitter. “What can you possibly have in common? Ravioli?”

  “It’s a different culture,” her father said hastily. “Do they know anything about what you studied, about your interests and goals?”

  “I can’t believe you! Have you people heard of the Renaissance? Galileo? The language sung in most operas?”

  “He’s Catholic,” said her mother, grasping to put John in a bad light.

  “You’re going to want a husband who can provide you with the things you need to raise a family your way. How are you going to afford your horses?” her father asked.

  “There are more reasons to marry than just…just youthful attraction to someone,” her mother said emphatically, trying to be wise.

  Melanie squealed angrily. “You can’t even say the word, c
an you? You can’t say the word ‘love.’ Mom, tell Dad you love him.”

  “We’re not discussing your father and me at the moment.”

  “Are you two serious?” Melanie looked from one parent to the other. “Can you hear yourselves? Am I in some kind of time warp, like eighteen ninety-nine or something?”

  When cajoling didn’t work, they tried bribery…

  “This farm will be yours when we go,” said her father.

  “Where are you going?” Melanie asked deliberately.

  “Melanie! Don’t talk to your father that way. This is a very valuable piece of land. You will be a wealthy woman in your own right.”

  “As long as Mia Giamo doesn’t rescind the water rights.” Melanie let out a cruel laugh.

  “You are impossible and ungrateful!”

  “Well,” she said haughtily, “I don’t know anything about the water rights agreement. What is it? At least you didn’t have to worry about it as long as Grandpa was alive. I hear they were pretty good friends.” Melanie meant it to needle them, and it did. Her father stood and left the room because he could remember things she couldn’t.

  Then they simply forbade…

  “You are an adult now,” her mother said. “We can’t interfere with your actions any longer, but we don’t have to have them going on under our noses. If you continue this relationship with that boy—”

  “He’s not a boy.”

  “With that young man, then. Listen to me, Melanie Dearborne. If you continue your relationship with John Giamo, you will have to do so under your own steam. You’ll have to move out. Your father and I don’t appreciate watching you settle for something just because it’s familiar when we’ve raised you to go after so much more.”

  “I am moving out, Mother,” Melanie said triumphantly. “I’m moving out. I’m moving to Boston, and I’m continuing my relationship with John.”

  “Then we can’t help you any longer. We’re your parents, and we’ll stick by you up to a point, but we can’t support you in such a futile direction. It would be irresponsible. He’s not the man for you. Can’t you just give it a break for a while? Give someone else a chance? Give yourself a chance, another option? There are so many interesting people out there.”

  “I’m perfectly able to take charge of my own life. I’ve given several other guys a chance, and they bored me to tears or irritated me to distraction. I think I’ll stick with this one.” She flounced out of the room.

  Chapter Fourteen

  BY THE TIME JOHN GOT BACK to his office, it was ten thirty. Becky was at her desk, but no one else was around. “Where is everybody?” he asked.

  “Joe Bernard went back to the barracks. Cully is on Fleming Hill trying to divert traffic around old man Clemens’s car, which is augured into the bank. He’s waiting for Larry Sample. Jason came and went right to the inn. He called in a little bit ago. The Waterbury team was just finishing up there, and they were trying to sneak the body down the back fire escape. Bill Noyes didn’t want it going through the lobby and out the front door. Steve Bruno finally went home. I hope he’s sleeping.”

  The door opened, and Jason Patterson came in. Jason was Woody Patterson’s nephew, but unlike his verbose, pudgy little uncle, he was tall and quiet and sure of himself. Jason’s mother was a Griswold, and as Becky frequently pointed out, it was fortunate for everyone that her three children took after her.

  “Jason,” John acknowledged.

  “Hey, Chief,” answered the young man, taking off his jacket and hanging it on the peg behind the door.

  “Come in my office and grab a cup of coffee,” John said, leading the way behind Becky’s desk and into his own office.

  Jason followed him. “I’m coffeed out, Chief,” he said cheerfully.

  John gestured to the chair in front of his desk, the one, he ruefully remembered, Gabriel had been sitting in, holding hands with Melanie. “Take a seat and tell me what you know.”

  “I probably don’t know much more than you do,” Jason said as he sat down. “The Waterbury team took the body. They were able to get it out the fire escape and into the van without attracting too many curiosity seekers.”

  “Good. That’ll make Bill Noyes happy.” He lifted his security blanket—the perpetual cup of coffee—to his lips. “Anything else?”

  Jason shook his head. “No, not much. They’re going to do a complete autopsy in Waterbury, but Sarah said it appeared that the cause of death was the obvious: a bullet in the brain. Twenty-two caliber hand gun. Close range. Poor S.O.B. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Do you think the guy who did it is still around? I wonder if he knows he got the wrong guy yet?”

  Sometimes, Chief John Giamo felt as though he were surrounded by kids, at home and at work, but if his men were young, if they were relatively inexperienced, if they made his hair gray from time to time, John still loved each one, even Cully. To a man, they were young and healthy with bright eyes, white teeth, and wide smiles. They might be naive, but they were honest. And they did not say “perpetrator” or “perp.” They said “the guy who did it.” They were honest and took their job seriously. To a man, they tried to do their best.

  “I don’t know.” John shuffled some papers on his desk. Then, looking up, he said, “We do have a lead on a suspect, though.”

  “Yeah? So soon?”

  “It appears Gabriel Strand took out a restraining order on an ex-boyfriend of his mother’s, and the guy didn’t take it too well.”

  “It didn’t say anything like that in the initial report I read.”

  “He failed to mention it to me.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “Mia.”

  “Mia, your daughter?”

  “Mia, my daughter.”

  “Hmm.”

  “She read it in a tabloid magazine. You believe that?”

  Jason shook his head again. “Well, what do we do?”

  “We’ve got to find out where this guy is. If he’s been in California with an airtight alibi for the past three days, then we have to revise our plan, but I’m thinking he hasn’t been in California with an airtight alibi for the past three days. I think he’s been here.”

  “What makes you think that, Chief?”

  John leaned over his desk, his wry smile on his face. “I’ve always wanted to say this. Here goes.” He paused for effect. “Just a hunch.”

  Jason laughed. “It makes sense.”

  “You can hit the trail on the computer and the telephone, then,” John said. “Try to find this guy. Find out where he has been. If you get him on the phone, let me talk to him.”

  “Cully’s out there by himself,” Jason said slowly.

  “Cully’ll be fine. He’s not stupid.”

  Jason arched his eyebrows.

  “He’s just overzealous.” John smiled. “There won’t be much going on today anyway. He’s busy right now getting Burt Clemens out of a snow bank. If you’re needed, he’ll let us know. Right now, I need you here so we can untangle this before it gets out of control. This town isn’t set up for murders. I’ve got Strand at my house now for safekeeping, and fish and guests, even rock star guests, stink after three days.”

  Jason smiled, looked at the floor, and left the room.

  The rest of the morning passed quietly. Richard Seeley had no criminal record. The only mark against him was the restraining order, but John found the detective at LAPD to be more than cordial.

  “There are a lot of people,” he said to John, “who don’t have a rap sheet, but they’re still out there doing the crimes, day after day. Sounds like you might have the right instincts, Chief. I’ll follow up for you. Shall I call you or your officer?”

  “Call me,” John said. “I’ve got my officer trying to find out whether he might have gotten a flight east in the last three days or so.”

  “Smart move. Have you talked with the mother?”

  “That’s next. Strand will be getting restless pretty soon. He’s got a con
cert to do at the winter carnival here. I’d just like to pin something down because I can’t stop him from getting on stage and making a target out of himself.”

  “Yeah.” The detective snorted. “I hear you. Look, I’ll dig around and get what I can for you. Good luck.”

  John found he was right about Strand getting restless. No sooner had he hung up the phone than Becky called in through his partially open door, “Gabriel Strand on your line, John.”

  “Hello,” he said. He hadn’t meant to bark into the phone quite so loudly.

  “Hi,” the musician said. “Look, I can’t stay under house arrest like this. I’ve been on the phone with my manager. The band’s due in Boston tomorrow morning on the red eye. Then, it’ll take them two, two and a half hours to make the trip to Dartmouth. I’ve got to be there.”

  “Strand, you’re not under house arrest. You’re under police protection. I can’t force it on you, but I strongly suggest that you stay where you are while we at least try to determine where this Seeley is. I’m calling the newspapers next, and we’ll get it out on the television news that there’s been a murder. We’ll let it slip that you’re still alive. That should flush out an action or a reaction of some sort.”

  “I’ve at least got to have a conference call with my band. Melanie said she could get me down to her office and I could do it there. Then, if nothing’s done by tomorrow, I’ve gotta leave anyway.”

  “You’ll be a sitting duck, Strand.”

  “I’ve got security.”

  There was nothing more John could do. He sighed, said goodbye, hung up the telephone, and sighed again. He wiped his hand across his face and looked up to see Becky standing in the doorway, looking concerned and sympathetic.

  “You all right, John?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  He knew, and knew that Becky knew, that Melanie was often a topic of discussion around town. Even though everyone liked her, and men blatantly loved her, her behavior sometimes pushed the parameters of respectable-wife-andmother to the limit, stopping just short of woman-to-watch-out-for. Not that John could ever cite an instance where he thought his marriage was compromised. Rather, it was when something akin to the current situation came up, putting his wife in close proximity to another man, be it professional or social, that he sometimes thought, in the deep interior of his soul, what if this is the time? What if this is the man? What if this time, the gossip turns out to be true? Usually, he was successful in keeping these thoughts and fears relegated to his subconscious, but he and Melanie had been so distant from each other lately. Even their lovemaking the other night, though enjoyable, had something of the ordinary about it. Had he drifted away, or had she?