“A spin around the pasture bareback?”
“Sure. Just let me get some reins. Bobby’d just as soon smash your leg against the fence without ‘em.”
“Okay then,” I said, backing up against the gate to wait.
When the bit was settled in the horse’s mouth, Lyle threw the reins over his head. Then he laced his hands together to hoist me up.
The horse’s coarse mane bunched in my left fist, the smooth reins wound between my right fingers, I kept Bobbyboy to a walk for the length of the field before heeling him up to a butt-bouncing trot—the best our limited space would allow.
When my smile muscles began to ache, I just plain bubbled over with laughter. This was pure joy, a happiness the likes of which I hadn’t experienced in months, probably not since my brief affair with Scarp Poletta.
Ah, Scarp. He’d gone back where he belonged, back to the pleasantly neurotic Rainy McQuinn. His apologetic honesty had severed my last tie with Pennsylvania and made foisting myself on my brother and Karen ever so slightly easier. I missed how he wrinkled his crooked, busted nose, his granite thighs, his wit. But I knew he wanted his own kids, and with me he wouldn’t have that option.
Someone else would come along for me. Maybe even the stoic cowboy over there grinning at my expense.
I eased Bobbyboy to a halt at the gate, slid off, rounded the horse’s muzzle. “Whooph, thank you,” I told Lyle, handing him the reins. Then I rubbed my butt and shook my head. “Now I remember why they invented saddles.”
The ex-cop chuckled. “Give me a minute to get Bobbyboy settled. Meet you in the barn. There’s beer.”
I gave him a look that you might describe as direct. “That’s okay. I’ll wait for you.”
Lyle appeared to think about that. “Okay,” he agreed.
And so I watched from my perch on a hay bale as he put the three horses in for the night, fed and watered them, and throughout it all watched me watching him.
We didn’t talk, but we smiled. Then somehow we segued into a more serious connection, an invited exploration of the other person’s thoughts, both of us imagining that what we perceived was true. As I added this elusive new knowledge to whatever had allowed me to share my personal history with him, I realized my subconscious had made a decision and was daring my conscious self to catch up.
I won’t say we “made love,” but we did have a lovely roll in the hay with the thoughtful benefit of a plaid horse blanket in between.
“Hello Lauren Beck,” said the cowboy as he lay inches from my face.
“Hello Lyle Dickens,” I said as I rubbed the stubble on his chin with a thumb.
“You missed dinner,” he observed.
“Any chili left?”
“Nope.”
“Peanut butter and jelly?”
“Nope.
“And Bobbyboy ate my only apple. I guess we’ll starve.”
“Hell no. I told you there’s beer.”
“Damn!” I exclaimed. “Who’s been watching the house while you’ve been…you’ve been…?”
“Tom. The first night man’s name is Tom. Get decent. I’ll introduce you.”
“Oh no. Not without a shower. We both smell like horse.”
“Good point. Tiny water tank though. We’ll have to double up.”
I rolled my eyes.
I never did meet Tom. After we cleaned up, separately mind you—both the water tank and the shower were tiny—Lyle and I arranged ourselves about a foot apart on the sofa and settled down to a dinner of Swiss cheese on crackers topped with sweet relish. Three prominent food groups plus all the calories of beer. Apparently cowboys do not do “lite.”
After my two Corona Extras, I mentioned that Frank and Marsha had had a big fight this afternoon and asked Lyle whether he happened to know anything about it.
“Yep,” he said after a generous swig. The dog Chloe sat at his knee, and he scratched her ears as he answered.
“Know what it was about?”
“Jewelry.”
“That’s what Abby told Chantal and me. The kid was really upset. How did you find out?” so fast? I wondered.
Lyle hesitated, but we’d chosen the route of honesty at the outset, so I suppose it seemed foolish to balk about the Roitmans’ argument. “Tom had just come on duty,” he admitted. “We both heard it.”
I did a double-take. “You heard it? How?”
“Flip of a switch. If we don’t like whatever’s going on up there, we listen—briefly—to make sure everybody’s safe. Marsha stomping upstairs with Frank chasing after her seemed like something we should check out.”
“How long did you listen in?”
A look. “Long enough to decide it was none of our business.”
“But you heard that Frank’s been giving her jewelry with real settings and fake stones.”
Lyle showed me a wry smile. “Guy’s entitled to save a few bucks. If my wife…”
I waved my head to interrupt. “You missed the best part. He admitted that he needed some secret cash, but he refused to tell Marsha what it was for. Do you have any ideas?”
Lyle gave off scratching Chloe to rub his chin. “Absolutely none my business.”
“For an ex-cop you really have a limited curiosity, don’t you?” Words I regretted immediately. We all are entitled to our secrets. The permanent limp, the scars on his legs. Lyle hadn’t shared the details, just told me in general terms that our stories were parallel.
“We’re not cats, you and me,” he remarked. “We’re not gonna get eight more lives.”
Chapter 30
Sunrise had whipped the air into a mean wind that sent elephant-size clouds running and tackled me the second I stepped out the pool-house door. Head down, hair swirling, I questioned my sister-in-law’s every last word as I plodded up to the house for breakfast.
When I phoned her last night, Karen had said all the right things; but as soon as I hung up, I shredded my brain dissecting our conversation. Had she sounded happiest when we said hello, or when I explained that I needed to pick up clothes for an extended stay? When I asked how she was, had she used the same everything’s-fine, nothing-to-report “Okay” she gave when I’d inquired about the kids? Or had it been the leave-me-alone hint of a person in mourning or the none-of-your-business dismissal of a wife about to leave her husband—the guy who happened to be my brother? I would find out today, and the worrisome possibilities had me nervous as all get out.
Lyle brushed by me with a wink as he exited the kitchen, the fragrance of bacon on his breath. I heard him whistling as he shambled down the walk toward the barn.
“No, no, the other way,” Marsha corrected Lana across the room. Holding a large fork in her fist, she looked like an irritable Poisedon ruling the choppy household waters. To lower my profile, I sat.
The bacon fork got traded for a plastic spoon, which Marsha applied to scrambling eggs as if she alone were qualified to perform the chore.
“Oh!” Marsha exclaimed when she turned my way. “You missed dinner last night.”
“Yes, I did. Sorry, Lana. I should have let you know.” I’d leaned to the side to address the cook, who was nearly obscured by the larger woman.
Lana responded with her usual indifference.
“You planning on joining us tonight, Lori?” the mistress of the house inquired. “I beg your pardon—Lauren.” She cast me a look hot enough to rival the spitting bacon grease. “Nice little laugh you and Mike had at our expense, Lauren.”
Ah, the remaining white lie, the one that continued to hide my investigation into Toby’s death.
“I’m awfully sorry about that. We only meant to have a little harmless fun.”
“And how did that work out for you, dear?”
I took the reprimand in silence; Chantal was wandering in wearing a pink bathrobe and feathered slippers. She’d washed her face and combed back her hair, revealing the sallowness that sometimes accompanies pregnancy.
“Morning, Mom, Lana,” she gre
eted the other two women.
“It’s okay, Chantal,” I said to help her out. “They know my name now.”
“Oh, of course. Good. Good morning, Lauren,” she said with a bow.
As Marsha replenished the bowl on the hotplate with her guaranteed-perfect eggs, she asked her daughter, “Will you and Lauren be back for dinner?” as if I were out of the room.
“We’re not sure,” I answered before Chantal had the chance. She blinked and stared but didn’t contradict me.
My interruption forced Marsha to acknowledge me again. “Be sure to tell Lana,” she ordered. “It’s only polite, you know.”
Polite, the way that insinuating your cook can’t scramble eggs is polite?
“We will,” I reassured both Lana and her nemesis.
Chantal and I met in front of the estate’s five-car garage at ten. A rain shower had emptied the last of the clouds, allowing the strengthening sunshine to tease open some purple crocuses around the courtyard fountain. A high breeze still quickened the branches of the nearby pines, so crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge promised to be even less fun than before.
Chantal must have been thinking that, too, because she handed me the keys to a Mercedes sedan. “Do you mind driving? I hate that bridge.”
“I was going to offer anyway. Bodyguard, remember?” I’d had some training in evasive techniques, but I couldn’t use them if I wasn’t behind the wheel.
For instance, if anyone intended to follow us, they would most likely pick us up soon after we departed, so I frittered away fifteen minutes turning left out of the property rather than right toward DC.
“This is how it’s going to go?” my assignee inquired.
“Yup.”
“Well, okay then.”
An inevitable silence fell, so I took the opportunity to thank Chantal for not giving me away at breakfast.
“Giving what away?”
“Mike and me,” I answered. “That we’re not really a couple.”
She tossed a hand. “My mother wouldn’t have believed me, so why disappoint her?”
I smiled with relief. The Mike fiction was still the cover that protected me and my investigation, and it would end the second the elder Roitmans realized they weren’t exempt from my scrutiny.
“One more thing. Your dad thinks I was forced off the Landis police.”
Chantal suddenly jerked forward. “Really?”
“I left for personal reasons,” I hastened to reassure her, “but I’d rather not tell your dad he was wrong. Nothing to be gained. Okay?”
Chantal locked her arms tight across her waist and stared out the front window, so I returned my attention to the road and the rear-view mirror. The driver of the white Honda SUV that had kept pace with us for a couple of miles hadn’t taken either of the opportunities I gave him to pass.
“So Dad assumed you were a dirty cop, but he hired you to protect his darling daughter anyway. What a sweetheart.”
Terrific. I’d just made her feel even less loved by her father than before.
“I left because…”
“No, don’t,” Chantal halted me. “It’s your business, and I apologize on behalf of my goddamn shit of a father for making you think you have to explain.”
“I don’t want you thinking you can’t trust me.”
A glance showed me her pale brown eyebrows had lowered like thunderclouds. “Do you know why we all came home early?” she asked.
“Something happened at work.”
“You bet your ass something happened at work. Another lawsuit—retirees claiming mismanagement of their pension fund.”
I took that to mean the person or persons managing the fund had used questionable judgment that caused a frightening dip in the fund’s assets. Probably nothing criminal, or legal steps would already have been taken. Still, a class action suit by the people dependent on those shrunken assets could be a major disaster for Roitman Industries.
Déjà vu all over again Frank had remarked to himself after the call that sent us packing. I’d felt sorry for the man. At least I thought I did, but that was before the “money off the books” information had emerged.
Chantal and I spent several minutes with our own thoughts after that, and a good thing, too. I was negotiating the streets of our nation’s capitol, using an indirect route only partly from design. Roads under repair sent us out of our way. A wrong turn did the same.
Now and then a white SUV slipped in and out of my sight, but was it the same one? Midday reflections on the windows revealed only a hint of a driver behind the wheel, sometimes ahead of us, sometimes behind, once passing by us on a one-way street. Ultimately we would join the funnel that brought us to the mouth of “the scariest bridge in the world.”
After that, I would definitely use some evasive moves.
And that gave me an idea.
Chapter 31
“Isn’t the hunting lodge sort of on our way?” I hinted as a blue Ford slipped in front of us.
Chantal inhaled sharply before answering. “It’s southeast. Your brother’s farm is northeast.”
“But is it doable?” Seeing the scene of the potential crime was Number One on my sleuthing To-Do list, but I’d been expecting to go on my own. That was before the responsibility of protecting Frank Roitman’s pregnant daughter practically joined us at the hip.
I assured her the detour was entirely up to her. “It’s just that we’re close and…”
“Sure. If you think you need to see it.”
Oh, I needed to see it alright, for so many reasons. Greatly relieved, I thanked her then inquired about a key.
“We hid one in case any guests get there first.”
And how many people know about that? I wondered.
Meanwhile, the dreaded bridge was upon us. Chantal clutched the passenger door as if she thought it might fly off in the wind, while I settled the Mercedes in behind a smoke-choked pickup whose driver didn’t have a snowball’s chance of earning a checkered flag.
To distract us I asked what I expected to be a harmless question. “What’s up with your mother and Svetlana?”
Chantal’s head snapped my way. “What do you mean?”
Looming beside us were the wire fans of the eastbound span. Seagulls soared in the wind gusts swirling to our right. The pickup slowed even more, so I did, too.
“The dynamic,” I answered. “I can’t figure out if they like each other or not.”
“Good question.”
Really? As a conversational dead end, I thought it was right up there with nail polish, but Chantal stared at the passing scenery as if getting it right actually mattered.
“A little of both,” she decided. “Lana came over from Belarus with one suitcase and a university degree, which, unfortunately, she can’t use here. My mother…” Chantal paused to consider her words. “…She grew up on a rented farm that ‘couldn’t support a flock of crows.’ Her words. Once she got so hungry she ate some of the neighbor’s carrots right out of the ground.”
I could see where Chantal’s love/hate assessment was probably right. Her mother’s jewelry obsession, her attitude toward me, the symbiotic relationship with Lana all added up. If Marsha was terrified of becoming poor again, Lana’s presence would keep that fear sharply in focus.
As for Lana, being grateful for food on her plate and a roof over her head seemed perfectly compatible with hating the snide, controlling dictator her boss seemed to be ninety percent of the time.
A fist of wind punched the side of the Mercedes and jostled us toward the left lane. As a result, the pickup truck over-steered toward the rail. Only slightly, but the sudden movement made my stomach lurch.
The smoky pickup slowed even more, so much more that the vehicle behind me actually honked. Jeez. Nothing I could do. The lane to my left was clogged with Richard Pettys.
Way below us the seagulls had become white dots that resembled ripples on the blue-gray bay. I gave Chantal’s silence a glance. She was biting her thumb, thi
nking her thoughts.
“Dad got another death threat at the office,” she informed me, and I thought I detected a smug pleasure in the statement, as if others inflicting pain on her father relieved her of the need to do it herself.
Just what I needed—something else to think about.
The left lane finally presented an opening, so I used it to pass the stinky pickup.
A white SUV eased in behind me.
Great! Just great.
To deal with the overload bombarding my brain, I resorted to an old Silva mind-control trick. I pinched my middle finger and thumb together and counted down 333-222-111 in my head. The calm clarity I needed was far from guaranteed, but I liked the idea of doing something positive for a couple of seconds.
Chantal simply gazed out the window toward the sky.
We completed the bridge ordeal in silence.
At the second turnoff after the bridge I pulled a quick right, but so did the white SUV.
“This isn’t…” Chantal protested. “Oh, another…did you see something?”
I didn’t reply, just steered into an office parking lot, continued around to the back of a huge brick building, and stopped in the middle of the driveway.
Three-three-three, two-two-two…
The white SUV continued out of sight.
I put the Mercedes in Park before revisiting a serious question. “Tell me again where you are with this bodyguard idea. Are you really on board?”
“No, not really,” Chantal finally admitted. Our eyes met and locked. “I guess I should be, right?”
“Eyup,” I told her.
“Because…because my dad…”
“Is pissing off lots of people. And because…”
“…because my husband is dead.”
Having promised myself not to state the obvious, I held my tongue. So proud.
“What were the last things Toby said about his work?” I prompted. “Anything about a disagreement? About the lawsuit? About…I don’t know…”
Chantal burst into tears.
Waiting out her emotions, I scanned our surroundings. Raised stainless steel lettering labeled the place as a medical building. Bushes in a decorative clump on either side of a wide rear entrance rustled in the chilly air. While Chantal sniffled and sobbed, an elderly woman holding the arm of an even more elderly man exited, an ordinary occurrence but nothing Chantal would ever get to do with her husband. The crying lasted a while.
Guilt Trip Page 14