The Ties That Bind

by Andi Marquette

  The Ties That Bind

  Copyright © 2009 by Andi Marquette

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  About the Author

  More Andi Marquette Titles

  Other Quest Titles

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  The Ties That Bind

  by

  Andi Marquette

  Copyright © 2009 by Andi Marquette

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Parts of this work are fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, or events is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-1-935053-79-8 (eBook)

  eBook Conversion April 2011

  First Printing 2009

  987654321

  Cover design by Mari SanGiovanni

  Cover concept by Donna Pawlowski

  Published by:

  Regal Crest Enterprises, LLC

  4700 Hwy 365, Suite A, PMB 210

  Port Arthur, Texas 7764

  Find us on the World Wide Web at http://www.regalcrest.biz

  Published in the United States of America

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to everyone (you know who you are) who read incarnations of this, including R. G. Emanuelle, who went through the entire thing and found some holes I patched right quick. Thank you, too, to Patty Schramm for editing and to the RCE proofreading and typesetting crew who followed her lead. Many thanks, as well, to Mari SanGiovanni, who continues to make me swoon with her cover designs. Thanks to the muses and to all the quarters where I find inspiration and as always, thanks to you, the reader, for taking some time with me and the New Mexico posse.

  The Ties That Bind

  by

  Andi Marquette

  Chapter One

  Body found on Navajo Reservation near Shiprock

  THE HEADLINE CAUGHT my eye as I skimmed through the local news round-up in the Albuquerque Journal waiting for the coffee to brew. I read the brief paragraph, shifting into research mode. An unidentified white male, possibly mid-late fifties, found dead about ten miles outside the reservation town of Shiprock. Authorities speculated that he'd been dead for a few days and that he'd been hit by a car. He was wearing blue jeans and a red flannel shirt and he carried no identification. Anyone with any information was encouraged to contact Navajo Tribal Police or the Farmington Police Department.

  White guy. I puzzled over that for a bit as I leaned on the counter, coffeemaker gurgling next to me. Not to suggest that white guys weren't allowed on the Navajo Reservation. It just struck me as odd that this guy was out there. Even that close to Farmington, the Navajo Reservation had few roads, fewer people, and a lot of lonely space. What was a white guy doing walking around on the Rez in such a state that he was hit by a car and left to die?

  I wondered who he was and the logical part of my brain clicked through a myriad of possibilities. Most likely he got himself into a bit of trouble with local rednecks who roughed him up a bit, drove him to the Rez, took his wallet, and rolled him out of a battered pickup along with several cans of beer. Maybe he was drunk and might have tried to get help but instead got the front end of either that truck or a different one. Regardless, whoever hit him kept going.

  Nice. What pleasant pre-breakfast thoughts. I placed the newspaper on the kitchen counter, making a mental note to check for more information on this case. It was just the kind of thing I was looking for to include in my lesson plan for one of the courses I was teaching, the Sociology of Crime. I ran a hand through my hair, reminding myself again that it was just three weeks before fall classes started at the University of New Mexico. Where the hell does the time go?

  I glanced at the coffeemaker. Almost done. I stirred the eggs and turned the sausages over in the frying pan and adjusted the burner heat while I thought some more about the unidentified man.

  Whoever he was, I didn't envy the investigators charged with the task of trying to uncover his identity. Because he was white, he'd be autopsied. Because he was found on Indian land, his journey to the medical examiner's table in Albuquerque might take a while. A dead white guy on Indian land made for bad press for the Navajo, especially if more than just stupidity and callousness was involved here. Like, say, if a Navajo had taken him there and dumped him. Or hit him and kept going. Plus, the traditional tensions between tribal and non-tribal law enforcement sometimes hamstrung investigations of crimes committed on Indian land. Unless the guy was killed elsewhere and just dumped on the Rez.

  I turned my full attention to the coffeemaker as it finished and poured coffee into the two cups I'd set on the counter, half-and-half already in them. I skimmed the rest of the headlines but nothing grabbed me or demanded my anal retentive research streak so I tossed it onto the counter just as Sage entered the kitchen. Before I turned around, she slid her arms around my waist and rested her head against my back.

  "Hi," she murmured. "Aren't you up bright and early on a Saturday morning, solving the world's problems," she teased. She knew how stuff in the newspaper sent me down paths of conjecture.

  I turned around to hug her. "Nope. It gave me time to make you breakfast." I kissed her on the forehead and buried my face in her hair, breathing in her scent, lavender and cloves, and losing myself in the moment with her.

  "Not that I'm complaining," she said as she nuzzled my neck, "after last night," she added with a little nip at my throat. Sparks zipped up and down my spine and I ran my hands down her back. She was wearing one of my T-shirts and it struggled--without success--to cover her bare ass.

  "Jesus," I whispered. "Two years and I still can't get enough of you." I'll never get enough. I looked down into her eyes, soft brown edged with fire.

  "Good." She kissed me, then pulled away, grinning impishly. "My evil plan is working."

  "And how." I released her so she could reach around me and pick up a cup of coffee.

  She took a sip. "Perfect." She winked. "Be right back."

  I watched as she padded out of the kitchen, hem of my tee brushing her ass, brown hair falling around her shoulders, and the athletic lines of her calves and thighs set my heart pounding again. I turned back to the scrambled eggs and sausage, glad I'd turned the heat down on that, at least. I moved the eggs around with a spatula and added more green chile.

  "Oh, K.C.," Sage called from the bedroom in a cute little singsong voice.

  "Yeah?" I flipped the sausage over.

  "What did I do with my zoom lenses?"

  I grinned. "By the front door," I called back. A little flush of heat suffused my stomach. By the door, where she'd managed to set the bag last night with one hand while unbuttoning my shirt with the other even as I was trying to shut the door and undo her jeans.

  She reappeared in the doorway, smiling. "You know, if this teaching and research
gig doesn't work out for you, I could always use a professional assistant of your caliber."

  I looked over at her. "My caliber, huh?" I furrowed my brow, pretending to consider her offer. "You don't think I'd be out of your price range?"

  She quirked an eyebrow, a gesture that always made me weak.

  I made a "somebody help me" face. "Hell, if you'd look at me like that once a day, I'd lug your equipment over the Rocky Mountains barefoot for you," I teased. Except I wasn't really teasing. I'd do it. Naked, even.

  She blew me a kiss and left the doorway, no doubt on her way back to the bedroom, leaving me with another spectacular view of her backside. I sighed happily and left the food for a bit so I could take a drink of coffee. I read a few of the headlines in the front section of the Journal. Same ol' political crap and local pronouncements about how poorly New Mexico ranked in terms of education and poverty, nuts doing nutty things, and politicians behaving badly. And that's news...how?

  I focused on breakfast again and filled two plates with food then took them out into the large front room that served as both our dining and living rooms, and set the plates next to the orange juice glasses on the table. I crossed the room to the Mexican-style sideboard that held the stereo and selected CD six, closing the cabinet door on the trastero as Ella Fitzgerald started her groove through the speakers. Sage emerged from the small hallway that delineated our bathroom and two bedrooms, wearing one of my baseball caps along with a pair of shorts and my tee. She looked cute as hell. I stared at her, blown away yet again. She sat down and caught my gaze, the look in her eyes reminiscent of the first time we'd met, right here in this house, at a barbecue.

  I had been staying in the small cottage out back, once inhabited by my ex, Melissa's, younger half-sister, who had gotten herself in a bit of trouble with a neo-Nazi boyfriend. I'd returned to Albuquerque from Texas to try to help track Megan down, since white supremacist movements were my area of research expertise. Sage and her then-roommate Jeff Abeyta lived here in the big house, and Jeff invited me over. But Sage already knew who I was. She knew a lot of things about me through Megan, and through her secret Sage-way of knowing things. I tried not to fall in love with her. Really tried. And I failed miserably. Thank God. I exhaled and sat down next to her. In a nice twist, Jeff was still in the family, in a way. He now lived in the cottage out back.

  Sage looked at me and took a bite, nodding and smiling. "This is so good."

  I grinned. "High praise, coming from you." I took a bite as well. Huh. Not bad at all. Though Sage remained by far the more gifted chef of the two of us.

  "Have you heard from Kara?" she asked between bites, shifting topics in typical Sage fashion.

  I rolled my eyes. "Not since Wednesday. She's threatening to show up sometime next week. But you know how she is."

  Sage smiled.

  "Oh, hell. Forgot the bagels." I pushed away from the table and returned to the kitchen. Sage didn't like hers toasted, but I did, so I put half of one in the toaster and held the other while I rummaged in the fridge for the cream cheese. I brought both to the table, setting the bagel half on Sage's plate and the cream cheese next to her. The toaster popped and I went to retrieve my bounty. I returned and took my seat again.

  "Thanks, hon." She glanced at me. "So we should expect her to get here any time between Monday and Friday," she continued as she slathered cream cheese on her bagel.

  I watched, wondering how the hell it was possible to find something like cream cheese on a bagel so damn sexy. Maybe it was her fingers. "Who?"

  "Kara." Sage looked up at me, and her expression told me I was busted in my reverie about her. "Your younger sister? In California?"

  I grinned sheepishly. "Oh, yeah. Her."

  Sage raised her eyebrows in amusement.

  "I'll try to get her narrowed down to a thirty-six-hour window. But you know how she is." I sighed and took the last bite of my eggs.

  She smiled again. "I do. But you know you love her."

  I shrugged.

  "Let's see...what did your mom call her...Ah. A 'free spirit.' I seem to recall she said the same thing about someone else in your life. Now who could that possibly be?" A little smile danced at the corners of her mouth. She took a bite of her bagel.

  "You're different," I said, reaching for the cream cheese.

  Sage regarded me, waiting for me to remove my foot from my mouth.

  "Kara's my sister. I'm supposed to express long-suffering frustration about her freaky tree-hugging self. Sibling rivalry and all that." I spread cream cheese on my own bagel.

  "'Freaky? Tree-hugging'?" Sage giggled. "This from Miss Where's-the-free-trade-coffee?"

  I shrugged, trying not to laugh as I took a bite of my bagel.

  "Miss 'honey, don't throw that away, you can recycle it'?"

  I swallowed and flashed a grin at her. "But at least I'm not living in a redwood."

  "I thought Kara finished that campaign."

  "She did. But still." I picked up my coffee cup. "Don't worry," I said, catching Sage's eye. "I'll call her and find out when she'll be breezing into town."

  Sage air-kissed me.

  "Hey," I said, changing the subject, "does that artist friend of yours still live up near Farmington? The Navajo woman?"

  "That narrows it down in that part of the state," Sage responded, eyes twinkling. "And yes, she does."

  "You think she'd be willing to talk to me about something completely unrelated to art?" I set my cup down on the table and Sage looked at me, waiting for me to drop whatever nutty idea I had into her lap. "No, nothing crazy," I assured her. "I just don't know that much about Navajo beliefs surrounding death and I was thinking about incorporating some stuff about the Navajo Rez and jurisdiction over violent crime into one of my classes this fall."

  "What the hell did you read in the paper this morning?" she teased, bumping my leg under the table with her foot.

  "The usual. Destruction. Mayhem. And that's just politics." I grinned at her.

  "I had to fall for an academic," Sage said in an exaggerated stage whisper. "How did that happen?"

  "I'm sort of charming." I batted my eyelashes at her.

  "True. And fucking sexy," she said in a tone of voice that always made my insides melt.

  I blushed and she laughed. "Ellen Tsosie," she pronounced. "I'm sure she'll enjoy enlightening you. Bilagaana provide her with endless amusement." She took a sip of her coffee. "I'll get her e-mail address for you."

  "So us white folk make her laugh but she doesn't mind helping us out? Cool." I reached for my bagel. "And she's not on the Rez?" Most of the Navajo Reservation had little access to electricity, let alone computers.

  "A lot of her family still is. She lives in town, though." Sage finished her coffee and stood. "Thanks for breakfast, honey. It was great." She leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. I blushed again and Sage laughed as she took our empty plates into the kitchen.

  "Don't worry about it," I called after her. "I'll clean up. Go get your stuff ready." I stood and picked up our cups.

  Sage appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. "Thanks, sweets. You're the best." She moved to the table and pulled me down into a long, lingering kiss that left me weak in the knees. I let my breath out when she released me.

  "Damn," I muttered.

  "Indeed." She pecked me on the cheek and headed for the guest room, which we used as office space and a place to store all her photography gear. I finished cleaning off the table then washed dishes and wiped down the stove. The Journal rested on the counter, like it was waiting for me to do something with it. I wiped my hands off with a towel and opened it to the article about the dead man on the reservation. I carefully tore it out and took it to my desk in the guest room, where I taped it to the edge of my computer monitor as a reminder. I heard Sage in the shower and debated going online and seeing what I could find about Navajo jurisdiction in cases like this when my cell phone rang. I checked the ID and grinned.

  "Hey, Detective Ro
ck Star," I answered. "What's up? Your taskmaster boss got you working another icky murder case? And on Sage's art opening day?"

  "Hola, esa," Chris said with her customary Nuevomexicana greeting. "Damn, you're psychic. How did I not know that my best friend is psychic after all these years? Jerry did call and I do have to go in to work for a few--love that on a Saturday--but we should still make Sage's opening. We might be a little late, though. Sorry." She sounded frustrated.

  "No problem. Not like police work ever goes on vacation. Or Jerry, for that matter. Your boss is way scarier than mine, mujer."

  "Not as scary as some of the pendejos I have to deal with outside the police department. Don't get me started on this, chica."

  I cleared my throat. "If it's any consolation, you get a lot of them off the street. And you of all people know how slowly the wheels of justice turn."

  "I'll be retired before some of these cases go to trial," she grumbled.

  "And you and Dayna can hang out on the porch with me and Sage. We'll all have our own personal rockers."

  She chuckled. "That'd be a sight. So when are you going up?"

  "Soon. We'll leave in about an hour. Sage has a meeting in Santa Fe so she'll drop me off at the gallery and I'll finish getting things set up." I sat down in my desk chair and spun around.

  "Sounds good. I'll call you if it looks like we're running late."

  "Call the gallery if you can't get through to me or Sage. Cell phone service is iffy up there." I pushed with my feet and rolled on the hardwood floor along the edge of the Turkish rug and ended up near the doorway to the hall, feet propped on the arm of the futon-couch we kept in there for guests.

  "Jackson's, right?" Chris double-checked. I heard her moving papers around. "Okay. Dame el número, por favor."