by Lori Wilde
“May I stand up?” I asked. “My leg is going to sleep.”
He nodded.
I stood.
Or rather I tried to stand. My legs wobbled like rubber bands and I stumbled sideways into that hunk of granite passing for a human being.
Conahegg’s hand went out to catch me.
The contact was electric.
No kidding. You read that clichéd comparison in romance novels and you assume it’s an exaggeration. I mean, I’m a nurse for crying out loud. I touch people all the time. Save for static electricity you don’t ever feel a jolt, a shock, a current.
Except I did.
And I had no clue why. It scared me. Big-time.
I jerked away. Fast.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Oh, sure, other than the fact that you’ve fried all my internal organs, I’m peachy.
“Need to get the circulation back in my legs,” I said, jogging in place, more to shake the sensation of Sheriff Conahegg’s touch than to bring blood to my lower extremities.
“Ally?”
The sound of my name drew my attention to the garage door occupied by my mother, Aunt Tessa fluttering at her side.
“I tried to keep her in the pottery shed,” Aunt Tessa explained, “but she heard the sirens.”
Mama floated over, hardly noticing the sheriff’s deputies with guns strapped to their sides. “Honey?” As always, she looked to me for explanation and reassurance. “What are these people doing here?” Her voice still held the sugary sweetness of her Carolina girlhood.
“Ma’am.” Super Sheriff turned on his heel and held his hand out to Mama. “I’m Sheriff Conahegg and we received several complaints of disturbing the peace.”
“Oh, dear.” Mama pushed a wisp of graying brown hair back into the loose bun atop her head. “Why, I know you.” She smiled. “You’re Lew Conahegg’s boy.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I remember when you wore short pants. Your father and my husband used to have offices side by side on the courthouse square. Green’s Green House and James Lew Conahegg, Attorney at Law.”
Really? I didn’t remember that.
“That’s been a while,” Conahegg said.
“I’m so sorry to hear about your father’s passing.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Well,” Mama continued. “You’ll have to excuse the noise. My daughter’s boyfriend and his band like to practice here in our garage.”
She waved a hand at the abandoned instruments. I was beginning to wonder if she’d even noticed Rocky lying on the floor, suffering from a gunshot wound inflicted by her youngest daughter. Mama had the amazing ability to focus upon only what she wanted to see and ignore the rest.
“So I’ve gathered.” Conahegg nodded. He still held Rocky’s bag of weed in his hand. As if he’d just become aware of that, he shoved the pot into his pocket.
“Goodness, Rocky,” Mama said, finally catching on. She lifted up her long skirt and stepped over his injured foot. “What happened to you?”
“Accident, Mrs. Green.”
“You’ve got to be more careful, dear. You weren’t imitating those musicians on television who smash their guitars, were you? That’s not a nice way to treat your instruments.”
Everyone looked at me.
I shook my head. No point in explaining reality to my mother. I’d learned that a long time ago.
“Mama,” I said. “Why don’t you let Aunt Tessa take you inside and make you a cup of tea.”
Mama brightened. “That sounds nice. Tessa?”
But as Mama spoke to her sister, a strange expression crossed Aunt Tessa’s features.
“Ung!” Aunt Tessa cried out and all gazes swung in her direction. Her right hand went to her throat and her eyes stared vacantly ahead.
My heart sank into my shoes. No. Not now. Not a visit from Ung. Uh-uh. Please God.
Not in front of Conahegg.
But I was not to be the beneficiary of divine intervention. The gathered deputies watched in fascination. I’d seen it before. Many times. I admit, the first time you see it can be quite a show.
The expression on Aunt Tessa’s face changed from empty indifference to lively animation. Her lips curled back, a combination smile and grimace. Her eyes widened until they seemed to encompass her entire face. Her nostrils flared. Her cheeks flushed with color.
“I am Ung!” Aunt Tessa growled in a deep voice.
Conahegg shot me a “what-in-the-hell” expression. I couldn’t blame him. Aunt Tessa’s transformation into her twenty-five-thousand-year-old spirit guide, a cavewoman named Ung, is quite a spectacle.
Aunt Tessa spread her arms wide. “I speak from spirit world. Heed warning.” Her eyebrows dipped. She crooked a finger and lurched toward Rocky.
Reflexively, he raised his hands, shielding his face. “Get her away from me. She’s creepy.”
“The warning is for you!” Tessa-turned-Ung cried. “Much evil. Beware!”
Chills chased up my arm.
Granted, I don’t often believe in Aunt Tessa’s new age crapola but occasionally Ung will make a prediction that comes true. Of course, it’s not much of a stretch to figure out that a dope-smoking, unemployed musician who cheats on his girlfriend with his wife and vice versa is going to end up in trouble.
The sheriff, who, by the way, had magnificent forearms, tugged me to one side. “What’s this all about?” he whispered.
“You got me.”
“Who is that woman?”
“My aunt.”
The sheriff rolled his eyes. “Why does that not surprise me?”
“Are you disparaging my family?”
“Looks like they’re doing the job all by themselves,” he commented.
I planted my hands on my hips. Who did he think he was? I mean besides sheriff. He had the power to put us behind bars on one trumped-up charge or the other but he certainly didn’t have the right to bad-mouth my kinfolk. We took enough guff off the locals. You expected more understanding from your elected officials.
“Hey, come on. Do something, man, get her off me,” Rocky cried.
Aunt Tessa was hovering over Rocky’s prostrate body, trembling from head to toe. “The evil forces are strong,” she croaked. “Run. Run. Run for your life.”
“That’s enough!” Conahegg ordered and motioned for a deputy to intercept Aunt Tessa. “Where is that ambulance?”
As if on his command, the ambulance pulled down the graveled river road and into our yard, siren wailing and lights flashing.
Aunt Tessa crumpled in the deputy’s arms, her face slack. On the floor, Rocky was sweating buckets and my idiotic sister sat rocking him in her arms and cooing into his ear. Some people never learn.
“What do I do with her, Sheriff?” the deputy asked. Aunt Tessa was dishrag limp, and she often stays that way for an hour or more after channeling Ung.
“I’ll take her to bed,” Mama said, surprising me with her helpfulness. “Come on, Tessa.” She took her sister’s hand and guided her out the side door.
“We’ll need statements from everyone involved,” Conahegg explained at the same time as two paramedics trotted into the garage.
“Everybody else took off,” Rocky said. “’Cept for my darling, Sistine.”
Oh, brother.
“I’d never leave you, tiger,” Sissy whispered.
No, but you’d shoot him in the foot, I thought rather unkindly.
There have been many times in my life when I could have sworn I was a changeling. When I was a kid, growing up with a head-in-the-clouds, fairy tale believing, troll-doll-making mother, a florist father who collected butterflies and a cavewoman-channeling aunt, I harbored sweet fantasies that gypsies had stolen me from my rightful parents—usually a practical-minded accountant and a devoted stay-at-home mom—and left me on the Greens’ doorstep.
Although I never came up with a proper motivation for such rash actions on the part of these anonymous gypsies,
I quickly determined my place in the scheme of things. I was in the Green family to take care of everything. To attend to the routine chores no one else seemed inclined to do like paying bills, holding down a steady job, cooking dinner, cleaning the house, washing the car, changing the lightbulbs. That sort of thing. If it hadn’t been for me, the family would have unraveled long ago. Especially after Daddy died.
“I’d like you to come to the station with us,” Sheriff Conahegg said to me.
“But I didn’t witness the shooting.”
He took me by the shoulder—that red-hot grip again!—turned me around, ducked his head and whispered in my ear. “Maybe not,” he said, “but you seem to be the only one in the place with a lick of sense.”
I smiled. Swear to God I did. And flushed with pride. I was the only one with a lick of sense, but nobody in my family saw me that way.
In my bizarre-and-proud-of-it clan, I was known as the dull one. Ally would rather clean the dishes than strip naked and dance in the rain. Or Ally is such a snore, she has always got her nose stuck in a book instead of actually living. Or Ally doesn’t have an artistic mind, she only cares about making money. My family never seemed to appreciate that because I did the boring, mundane things, they got to be eccentric.
The paramedics loaded Rocky onto the stretcher and trundled him into the back of the ambulance. Sissy begged to ride along but they wouldn’t let her. She stood beside me, sobbing into her hands.
The deputies scattered, searching for witnesses to interrogate, leaving me and Sissy and Conahegg in the garage.
“Well, ladies,” Conahegg said. “May I have the honor of escorting you to my squad car?”
CHAPTER TWO
“ARE WE UNDER ARREST?” I asked.
Conahegg’s flint-gray eyes revealed no emotion. It would take a lot to get close to him. Had he ever been in love? I wondered for no good reason.
“No,” he said and for one moment I thought he was answering the question I’d posed in my mind. “At least not yet. For now I’m simply detaining you for questioning.”
What was I going to say? When an assertive man with a badge tells you he’s taking you for a ride what choice do you have? To tell the truth, I sort of got off on his forcefulness. I’m used to being the one in charge, the leader, the boss. To find myself in the subordinate position was both thrilling and disconcerting.
“Just let me change.” I flapped a hand at my bathrobe.
He nodded and I darted into the house, shimmied out of my gown and into blue jeans and a crisp white blouse. Okay, I admit it. I also stopped long enough to run a brush through my hair and roll on some lipstick. That’s not a crime, is it?
Conahegg and Sissy were bent together in a huddle when I returned to the garage. I didn’t like the feeling that zipped through me. Jealousy is not one of my usual faults.
“Ah,” Conahegg said, straightening to his full height when he saw me. “You’re here.” The glance he flicked over my body was quick but I caught it.
And smiled to myself.
“Ready,” I said.
We walked outside into the starry cloudless night. Warm, moist air wrapped around us like a soggy thermal blanket. The wind shifted and I caught the scent of honeysuckle mingled with river smell.
A copse of blue spruce and a six-foot stone wall separated our waterfront property from the house on the hill next door. Reverend Swiggly had recently completed the three-story Colonial affair reminiscent of Tara from Gone With the Wind. It was quite out of place on the Brazos where most homes were breezy farm styles like ours, functional A-frames or log cabin replicas.
The house was heavily guarded with a high-tech security system and motion detector floodlights. Clearly the good preacher did not wish to be ambushed on vacation by overly devout members of his flock seeking to kiss the hem of his thousand-dollar, tailor-made trousers.
Conahegg took Sissy’s elbow and gently eased her into the backseat of the patrol car, a white and brown 2004 Crown Victoria. After she was inside he stepped away and motioned for me to join her.
Great. No reassuring hand on my arm. Wasn’t that the story of my life? Men tripped over themselves for Sissy. Me, I had to fend for myself.
I climbed in and slammed the door a little too firmly. Okay, maybe I was a little miffed. It wasn’t fair. I felt like a criminal and I hadn’t done a damned thing.
“Buckle up,” Conahegg said, before getting in and starting the engine.
I snapped my seat belt on. Sissy didn’t. The ambulance was still wedged in the driveway between cop cars, the back doors hanging open. I spied one paramedic sitting next to Rocky taking his vital signs. The second paramedic was leaning against the ambulance filling out paperwork.
“What have I done?” Sissy whispered, flattening her face and palms against the window and peering dolefully at the ambulance as we drove past.
“It was an accident.”
She shook her head. “I wanted him dead, Ally, you don’t know half of what he’s done.”
“Shhh!” I laid a finger over my mouth and inclined my head toward Conahegg.
He shifted the car into second gear and started up the steep grade leading from our house to the main road above. A thick growth of underbrush and trees lined the gravel drive. In a flash something appeared on the road, taking us by surprise.
Conahegg trod the brakes.
Thump!
My head jerked forward. Sissy squealed, pitched off the seat and onto the floorboard.
“What happened?” I unbuckled my seat belt.
“I struck someone,” Conahegg said.
“What?” I had to hand it to him. He sounded calm and in control. Not the least bit flustered. My kinda guy.
“A naked man jumped in front of the car. I didn’t see him in time to stop.”
Simultaneously, we both leaped from the car. It was strange how we mirrored each other’s movements. We left Sissy quivering on the floorboard, and ran around to the front of the patrol car.
Sure enough, a naked guy was rolling around in the gravel, clutching his knee and moaning, “Ow, ow, ow.”
Tim Kehaul.
Conahegg and I crouched beside him. Our shoulders brushed lightly. Awareness jolted through me. I could smell his scent. All leather and Lava soap and he-man. I tried not to notice but it was like trying to ignore an elephant at a tea party.
“I was only doing five miles an hour,” Conahegg said, “how badly could I have injured him?”
“Bad enough, motherf…” Tim started, but I clamped my hand over his mouth.
“Be cool,” I told him. “That’s the sheriff you’re cussing at.”
“Oh.”
“Where are your clothes?” I asked.
Tim didn’t answer.
“I’ll get the paramedics,” Conahegg said. “Don’t let him move.” He took off downhill.
A rustling in the bushes from where Tim had emerged drew my attention. “Who’s there?” I called, the hair rising on the back of my neck.
More rustling, then the sound of feet slapping against asphalt. Whomever had been in the bushes with Tim, made it to the road. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what had been going on in the thicket right outside my house. A little midnight delight.
“Who was with you, Tim?”
“Nobody,” he muttered, clutching his knee to his chest. Tim was in good physical shape, I’ll grant him that. Fine, firm body, well-endowed. Plenty of men who swung his way would find him attractive.
“Tim? Is that you?”
I turned my head to see that Sissy had crept around the car toward us. She had her arms crossed over her chest and she was shivering despite the heat.
“Go back to the car,” I told her.
But as usual, my sister ignored me. She crouched beside Tim, reached out a hand to stroke the hair from his forehead. “My sweet Timmy.”
“Sissy,” Tim said, eating up the attention. “I never should have left you.”
Thankfully, Conahe
gg chose that moment to return with a sheet, a paramedic and the deputy named Jefferson. Conahegg leaned over to cover Tim’s naked body with the sheet, then straightened.
“Go with him to the hospital,” he told Jefferson. “When he’s released, arrest him for public lewdness.”
“Hey, man,” Tim protested. “That’s such a gyp. You run over me and now you’re arresting me.”
“Think about that before you strip naked in public next time,” Conahegg instructed.
We waited while the paramedics shifted him onto a second stretcher, then bundled him into the ambulance beside Rocky.
“Shall we try again?” Conahegg asked.
The remaining drive to the sheriff’s department was uneventful. Conahegg ushered us through a back door and into his office, the sparse, unadorned space of a government employee.
Paperwork neatly stacked. Wanted posters tacked to the bulletin board. Everything gray and bland and impersonal. No plants or pictures. No curtains. Nothing fancy. Empty trash can. A desk. Three functional metal chairs. One behind the desk, the other two in front.
Apparently, to Conahegg’s way of thinking, real men don’t decorate. In that moment my dear little nurturing heart had the most irresistible urge to put a pot of geraniums on the sill, hang a bucolic pastoral scene on the wall and fill his desk with executive toys.
But clutter didn’t suit Conahegg.
“Have a seat,” he commanded, jerking his head at the chairs while he remained standing. I knew the ploy. He wanted to tower above us, keep the upper hand.
Sissy plopped down and I sat beside her, perching on the edge of the chair, poised to bounce up and face him eye to eye if needed.
Conahegg pulled the baggy of marijuana from his shirt pocket and dropped it on his desk. “Why don’t we talk about the cannabis?”
“It’s not my dope,” Sissy said, petulantly protruding her lower lip.
Her case would have been better served if she had changed out of her Pantera T-shirt, put a scarf around her ebony-dyed locks and removed the matching black nail polish and nose ring, but my little sister had never come to me for fashion advice.
Conahegg said nothing for the longest moment, simply narrowed those steel-gray eyes and drilled them into her. “You’re telling me you never toked a doobie with your boyfriend?”