Relatively Risky

by Pauline Baird Jones

  “One should never be too tired or too sore to get crazy.” Her smile was slow and evil.

  Alex might not know Sarah, but he knew the body language of a woman on the mischief war path. Nell stared at her friend, her look one a guy with six sisters was all too familiar with, so he was not surprised when her mouth curved up into mischievous as well. He didn’t expect the jolt to his gut from the smile. Cute. A cute woman could be the most dangerous kind of woman, except maybe one with a yen to get maternal. And cute often led to maternal—damn. He gave a mental shake. He should quit thinking now. It was starting to hurt.

  Sarah considered them all, a finger tapping a pointed chin. “What do you think, Nell? Vocals or air instrument?”

  Alex exchanged a glance with his brother. Way in the back, behind the buzz he heard: Danger, Will Robinson. But the sight of Nell’s pursed lips as she gave amused consideration to the inexplicable question muted the warning.

  “Vocals might hurt less, but,” she waved her fists like they held something, “drumming is both cathartic and crazy fun.”

  Sarah grinned. “Excellent choice.” Her gaze shifted to them. “Air guitars or vocals—keeping in mind that singing along is required, while staying on key isn’t. In fact, we adore dreadful. It’s crazy making fun.”

  Ben exchanged a puzzled look with Alex. “Um, air guitar?”

  “Yeah, that for me, too.” Alex wasn’t sure what he’d agreed to. His tired brain was slow to assemble the clues. Crazy. Vocals or air instrument. Drumming…surely they weren’t planning—Sarah made her way to a drawer and pulled out a spoon.

  “I’ll do vocals then.” She struck a pose, the spoon angled like a…microphone. Then dropped it to tap the spoon against her grinning mouth.

  “We don’t usually have a four person band. Need to pick the right song…” She headed for a small speaker set up and inserted her smart phone. She appeared to consider and discard several choices. “D’oh!” She flashed Nell an impish look. “So obvious.”

  His brain said no way in hell, but the words didn’t make it out his mouth before the music started booming. He wasn’t tired enough to not care, Alex noted, but he had been side-swiped by something worse. He wanted to kiss the girl and was willing to play air guitar to do it. It was crazy, but Nell’s grin was an invitation to crazy he couldn’t turn down.

  Ben rose, giving himself a shake, as if it loosen up. Alex shot a warning look at his brother. “Cell stays in your pocket.” He wanted no YouTube videos or pictures on Facebook.

  The look Nell exchanged with Sarah reminded him of his sisters. They’d made a sort of family, he realized. He knew Nell had no one, but if Sarah had family, she’d still made room for Nell. Family wasn’t all bad. His would like this—he blinked. Yeah, tired was a lot like drunk. Only tired hurt more. He was a bit surprised to find himself standing, too, taking his place in the “band.” His thoughts started to spin off as the music for Bad Moon Rising began to thump out the speakers, loud enough to rattle the cups on the table.

  It should have hurt. It didn’t hurt enough. He could have left. He was a grownup. No one could make him do things—okay his sisters made him do things all the time. Was that why he started to “play” his guitar? Might be. And it might be a bad case of crazy. Or it might be Nell. He’d sort of figured a librarian would be shy, maybe a bit inhibited. Didn’t look either as she kicked in with her air drums. Good sense of comic timing. Seemed like they all vied for truly awful. It was infectious as a cold. Something you caught whether you wanted to or not. Ben, who never minded what anyone thought of him, riffed like he was a member of CCR. And suddenly it didn’t matter that they were awful or goofy or tired. It was fun. And it probably hurt less than if he’d tried to slide down that bannister….

  He and Ben did rival air riffs, his eyes closed as he felt the music. And when he opened them there was his dad. And Curly Gastonieau.

  The band froze, but the music kept going, a perfect compliment to the look on Bubba’s face. Why did he look so grim? It’s not as if air guitar was a crime. If anything Curly looked more shocked than Zach. Damn near white as ghost.

  The music cut off, the silence both deep and weird.

  Curly swallowed, tried twice before he managed a hoarse, “You look just like your mama.”

  Nell shook her head, frowned. “What?”

  “Is your mama,” he had to swallow to finish the question, “where is she?”

  “My parents passed two years ago.”

  He half flinched back. “I need—”

  The look in her eyes should have dropped him where he stood. It did rock him back on heels, clearing the way so she could stalk out.

  “That went well,” his dad said into the uncomfortable silence, giving Curly his destroying angel look that Alex had been on receiving end of a few thousand times. And a few seconds ago.

  Alex felt a need to get away. To help Nell. He made a move to follow, but Sarah held up a hand.

  “I’d better take this one.” Her gaze shifted toward his dad, studied him for several seconds, then came back Alex’s direction, her brows lifting.

  “My dad,” he muttered, not sure why he felt awkward or why that put a slight flush in her cheeks.

  “Indeed.” She followed Nell out, leaving behind a deep, and uncomfortable silence.

  Nell stiffened at the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs toward where she sat, tracing the patterns in the spindles. She’d run out of steam just past the second landing. She relaxed when she saw Sarah, who sighed, then lowered herself onto the stair next to Nell.

  “I told you not to choose the attic.”

  Nell nodded sheepishly. She shifted her tush a bit. “Thinking of sleeping here tonight.” Her butt was already asleep. One of her legs, too.

  Sarah angled, so that the wall supported her, her expression a bit complicated to parse. What was worse than tired? Cuz she was so there. Nell studied the spindle she fingered. Unlike the two men, it wasn’t hard to parse. She wrapped her hand around cool wood and stroked up, then down. Saw cartoon eyes and a toothy scowl form in the spindle shape.

  “You all right?”

  All right was so subjective. She’d met people who thought it was a tragedy if they broke a nail. On the other hand, her mom always told her, “If you’re not dead or hungry, then you’re all right.” By that criteria she was freaking awesome.

  So why had she felt so desperate to get away from that man? It wasn’t what he said, at least not totally. She did look like her mom. The fact that they were in New Orleans and he knew that didn’t mean anything. Lots of people passed through Waipiti on their way to, or from, Yellowstone Park. And a bunch of them had shopped at the Wal-Mart where her mom had worked. A little weird for one to notice her mom and then notice she looked like her…to remember…

  No, the panic hadn’t come from what he said, but from how he looked at her. As if the sight of her horrified him. Scared him in some way.

  She half shrugged, half nodded. “I’m fine. Tired.”

  Done getting knocked down. Done getting up. She might have to crawl to her room or maybe just to the next landing.

  “Speaking of people looking like people, did you see their dad?”

  Nell looked over at that. “Does he look…” …like the father of thirteen…

  “You’d never know his still waters ran that deep.”

  “Thirteen kids, his waters don’t get to be that still,” Nell had to point out. “Did you blush?”

  She nodded.

  “Awkward.”

  “Truly.” Sarah chuckled.

  Nell giggled. It helped ease the knot in her tummy. “That might be our most embarrassing moment ever…”

  Surely a record? They’d been a band a long time, so there were lots of contenders for most embarrassing. They’d started after surviving the worst run of finals ever. After days with no sleep, they were maybe a step from zombie-ness. They’d had to do something or burst. They did both. Half the dorm had pelted them with popco
rn for being so bad, the other half had joined in. One thing she knew to her toes, you did bad karaoke in your underwear with someone, you were friends forever. Over the years, they’d worked the kinks in, milking it for maximum embarrassment factor. Tonight might have been the pinnacle.

  Sarah laughed. “It was a score. The guys helped boost our suckage factor by a really big number.”

  That made Nell laugh and then wince. It hurt, but not so much she stopped, at least not until Sarah sobered. “What?”

  “Alex started to follow you, but I told him to let me.”

  Good choice. “Not going back in there. I’m done. Three times is more than enough for one day.”

  Sarah frowned. “Three…what?”

  Oh yeah, she’d missed the Cliff notes on her three impacts, so Nell caught her up.

  Sarah stared at her. “Someone shot at Alex?”

  “He is a cop. People do shoot at them.”

  “Indeed. In that case, I can see why Alex is worried, but why is the guy who isn’t the dad so freaked out?”

  Unease spiked again as Nell remembered the look in the guy’s eyes as he asked about her mom. She shrugged.

  “Did you ever wonder…”

  Nell shifted so she could look the question she didn’t have the energy to ask. The world had gotten fuzzy around the edges. Seriously fuzzy.

  “…why you never managed to visit here until…”

  Nell considered the question with as much energy as she could muster. Had she wondered? Yeah, but not nearly enough. She didn’t remember thinking their opposition was about New Orleans. She had wondered if they had issues with Sarah. Or cities.

  “They didn’t like cities.” She frowned, traced some more patterns in the spindle. “You’d think they’d gone to Oz on a tornado as kids. No place like home was their mantra.” Weird that two home bodies had managed to have a daughter with a secret longing to fly to the moon—or at least the coop. A coop that turned out to be rented. Had they left her a house, it would have been harder to leave. The lack of money, well, that wasn’t a surprise. There’d never been a lot of that. She shifted uneasily. Did it matter? The look in that man’s eyes seemed to say that yes, it did.

  “I thought it was me they didn’t like,” Sarah admitted, her look a bit wry.

  “There were times when it seemed like they didn’t like much,” Nell admitted, “but they never minded when you came to visit me.” That she knew of anyway.

  “Aren’t you curious to know why he’s here? Why—” Sarah stopped.

  “I’m too tired to be curious.” Okay, not the whole truth. Sarah’s gaze called her on it. “Okay, maybe a little,” she hesitated. “I guess I thought all the people who knew them were in Wyoming.” She made a frustrated sound, rubbing her face. “It has to be a mistake.” She looked at Sarah. “Did you see how…freaked he looked?”

  “Yeah.” She tipped her head to the side. “I’ll make him go away until morning. If that’s what you need. If you’ll get any sleep.”

  Nell didn’t have to say it. Sarah knew her capitulation look. She rose, held out her hand. “Come on. Let’s shrink this problem down to a manageable size.”

  6

  Left alone in the kitchen, Alex looked at Zach, not sure what to ask.

  “I did knock,” Zach said. “Guess you didn’t hear it.”

  Color scored Alex’s cheeks as Curly grabbed a chair, sank into it like he needed it. Without consultation, he and Ben chose the opposite side of the table, where they could keep an eye on the door, even though it was too little and way too late.

  Zach picked the head of the table, his chair squeaking when he pulled it out.

  Alex had questions, but Curly Gastonieau looked like he’d aged twenty years in two minutes. Lines cut deep into his gray face and sweat glistened on his bald head. His mouth was set in grim lines. He didn’t look at anyone. Stared ahead like the zombies were coming for him. He rubbed his upper lip, his hand showing a tremor when he lowered it back to the table. Without speaking, Alex rose, found a glass and filled it with water. Carried it back and set it down in front of Curly. He looked old and tired and scared and his hand shook when he lifted the glass to his mouth, but it seemed to help.

  Just when Alex had decided that Nell did not intend to come back, he heard footsteps out in the hall. Sounded like two sets, but his insides didn’t ease until he saw her with Sarah. They all scrambled to their feet, his dad and Curly moving a little slower.

  Nell’s gaze met his as she paused in the doorway, a slight flickering of something across her face before this who-yelled-in-the-library look replaced it. He ignored the shiver of remembered trouble snaking down his spine, reminded himself it wasn’t for him, and pulled out a chair for her. Ben pulled out one for Sarah, putting them all on the opposite side of the table from Curly. It felt a bit unfair, but Alex got a murmured “thanks” from Nell when she’d made her way past Curly to the chair. Silence settled over the room once more. Nell appeared to gather herself in, and only then did she look at Curly, who had watched her with a weird mix of horror and fascination.

  “Maybe you could do some introductions, Alex,” Zach prompted.

  “Nell Whitby. Sarah Burland.” Alex knew he sounded terse. “Nell, Sarah. My dad, Zach Baker. And Curly—William Gastonieau. They were partners when my dad was NOPD. They’re retired now,” he finished, not sure why.

  Zach looked annoyed, and maybe worried. Curly just looked shell-shocked.

  No one said hi or how do you do. Nell did take her gaze off Curly long enough to nod at Alex’s dad.

  Maybe two, old cops couldn’t help putting on their interrogation faces, though Alex wasn’t sure who was supposed to talk or what they planned to ask.

  Curly lifted the glass again, with one hand this time. His color went from dark to light gray. “Damn, you look like—”

  “So you said.” Nell’s voice cut him off. Her tone encouraged him to move on. “They say everyone has a twin.”

  Something like respect filtered into Curly’s eyes. “Some of your daddy in you, too.”

  Alex watched her pulse give a kick just under her chin. He realized that he’d stereotyped her again, equating librarian with gentle and a bit frail. Not sure why he’d done it—at their first meeting she’d tried to ram a carjacker with her bike. She kept surprising him. In a good way, but he didn’t like surprises, even good ones, that much. Liked to see ‘em coming.

  Curly looked down, his hand turning the glass with his thumb. He licked his lips before asking, “What did she tell you—” He stopped, rubbed a forehead gleaming with sweat.

  Alex shot Zach a look, wondering if they should call an ambulance. Zach stared at Curly, his gaze on his “bore to the core” setting. Curly didn’t seem to notice. Or didn’t seem able to take his gaze off Nell.

  Nell took a long, slow breath. She must be bursting with questions, but she didn’t speak. Just looked. Then arched her brows a little, like she didn’t know how it was his business. She would have made a good cop. Have perps spilling their guts in record time. Curly cracked first. He rubbed his face. Could almost hear the gears turning inside his head. He hesitated, then pulled out his wallet. He thumbed through the contents and extracted what appeared to be a small photograph, which he flipped it at Nell. She didn’t reach for it. Didn’t look at it at first. Not until Alex slid it close enough for study.

  Sarah leaned in to look, too. It was small, aged, and creased. Color had faded a lot. The girl in it looked like Nell, though younger and like it had been one of those pretend vintage photographs. Except it wasn’t pretend and the shot was candid, the girl’s head half turned as if in answer to a hail, but not from the photographer. Wrong direction.

  “She looks like you,” Sarah offered to the silence gods, her tone mild.

  Nell’s lips tightened, but she didn’t pick it up.

  Alex did that. Background didn’t look like Wyoming. Wrought iron gate, lots of flowers, big house almost hidden by trees and crap.

&nbs
p; Ben reached out. “May I?”

  At Nell’s slight nod, he handed it to Ben, who studied it. “Could be wrong, but that looks like Calvino’s place in the background.”

  Nell inhaled, to speak or protest, he wasn’t sure, but her lips clamped shut. Zach took the photograph from Ben. He didn’t look happy. He also didn’t look surprised. What did he know that he wasn’t sharing?

  “Antonia Calvino.” Curly twitched as Zach added, “I remember—that case.”

  Curly’s chin lifted, though his color had gone bad again, apology and defiance in his eyes. Then he seemed to deflate, his gaze settling on the glass he had both hands wrapped around.

  “What case?” Alex managed to bite back the swear words that tried to crowd out after the question. Ladies were present and he wasn’t sure his dad wouldn’t put his head down in the sink with some soap. He’d have to let him. It looked like the old man had a head of steam with no where to go.

  Zach’s voice was grim as he set the photo down and pushed it toward Alex. “According to the newspapers, public records and the police file, Antonia—Toni—Calvino died in a car bomb. Along with her lover, Phillip St. Cyr. Both of them are tucked away in a couple of crypts last I knew.”

  There was a long silence as their side of the table processed this.

  “Romeo and Juliet?” Sarah looked from Zach to Curly.

  When Zach didn’t speak, Curly shook his head. “It wasn’t the love affair that bothered St. Cyr or Calvino.”

  “It bothered Afoniki. It threatened to upset the balance of power among the three families,” Zach said. “One third of the empire was all right as long as no one else had more.”

  “Is that what set off the turf war?” Ben put in. “I remember hearing something—”

  “It was short, but ugly,” Zach said. “There were rumors at the time that the families came to some sort of peace deal after Pavel Afoniki got taken out.”

  Weird how the three names seemed to be linked, as if something more than crime kept drawing them together.