A Time to Gather

by Sally John

  No big deal, she thought. Nope, no big deal. As a matter of fact, it was good news. That moony teenager might be put out of her misery once and for all.

  Two

  Officer, is there a problem?” The man in the silver convertible flashed a toothy grin and squinted at the policewoman.

  Rosa Delgado lowered the flashlight beam from his bloodshot eyes. These guys always asked the dumbest questions. Problem? With red eyes, slurred speech, car weaving like a kite down the road? “Yes, sir, there could be a problem.”

  “Okay, shoot.” His grin stretched to clown proportions.

  “Wow! For real? You don’t mind?”

  The smile went lopsided.

  “Aw, shucks, you were kidding,” she said. “I don’t get many invitations like that to shoot. Hey, this is a great-looking car. But aren’t you freezing?”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s thirty-eight degrees, the top’s down, and you’re in shirtsleeves.”

  “Oh. Yeah! I see what you mean. Record-setting polar temps, eh? Who would have thought, in Southern California! Global warming, you know.” His left eye closed and stayed that way. “But I’m fine. Just fine. The leather seats are heated.” He waggled a hand, dismissing her concern, and then let the hand drop back onto the steering wheel beside the other.

  Rosie studied his hands. Though masculine in size, there was a softness to them. The long fingers moved in a graceful manner.

  Whether it was his wink gone south or the sight of those hands that for sure never came in contact with dirt, she didn’t know, but her hackles rose. Her muscles tensed.

  On the other side of the convertible, her partner hummed a distinct “uh-oh” sound. “Delgado.” He murmured her name, pushing the last syllable up a notch to convey caution.

  Bobby Grey’s uncanny ability to read her emotions amazed and annoyed her to no end.

  Okay, so she should just request the driver’s license and proof of insurance and get things over with. But she wanted to keep playing. Tanked rich guys set her off with their promise of slimy lawyers. She wanted to give this one enough rope to string himself up so tightly that the slimiest of the slime could not untie him and make DUI charges go poof.

  “Hey.” Bobby again, a soft growl.

  Still watching the smiley tanked rich guy, she nodded to her partner. Okay, okay. I’m in control. Just give me half a minute with him.

  In the car, Mr. Slaphappy cleared his throat, an ugly, rumbling noise. His left eye reopened. “So kind of you to inquire after my comfort. Will that be all, Off—” He hiccuped. “—icer?”

  “Did you honestly think that was all?”

  “Huh?”

  Rosie took a deep breath. The scent reached her again. She guessed martini. Made with gin. She willed her expression to stay neutral and her voice to go low. “Sir, you coasted right on past a stop sign.”

  “Really?” He glanced over his shoulder. “Oh, right. That one.” He leaned toward her and whispered, “To tell you the truth, I roll through that one all the time. I live right down the street, and I know from experience there is ab-so-lute-ly no traffic this time of night. I’m usually on my way home from work about now.”

  “What job keeps you out so late?”

  He gave his sluggish wink again. “You don’t recognize me?”

  “No.”

  “I’m on television. News anchor. Channel 3. Six and eleven.”

  “No kidding? That’s gotta be an interesting gig. Bet the news gets you down, though, after a while.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “You probably like a martini or two after that business.”

  “It takes the edge off.”

  “How many did you have tonight?”

  Both eyes closed now, and he chuckled. “I don’t have to answer that.”

  Rosie sighed to herself. The fun was over. He’d been here before. “No, sir, you don’t have to answer that. But you do have to show me your driver’s license and proof of insurance.”

  “Look, my condo’s two blocks away. How about I park right here, walk home, and we’ll call it a night? Unless this is a no-parking zone.” He peered over the hood at a sign on the sidewalk. “Guess I better move—”

  “License. Now.”

  He tilted sideways and eventually managed to pull a wallet from his hip pocket. With exaggerated movements, he opened it, slipping a hundred dollar bill into plain view.

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t see that.”

  He handed her his license.

  She read it. Erik Beaumont, age thirty, really did live two blocks away, a tiny neighborhood snuggled between downtown and Little Italy and chock-full of San Diego Bay views. “Mr. Beaumont, are you familiar with field sobriety tests?”

  “I don’t have to answer that.”

  “Nope, you don’t. However, I would like to conduct one.”

  “I refuse to take one.”

  “You have that right, too, sir.”

  He smiled, a flippant “gotcha” expression.

  A dangerous stillness settled over Rosie. The guy had crossed the line. She was about to cross one herself. No matter Bobby’s warning or the fact that a video camera recorded her every move and word, she could not stop the ensuing, regrettable behavior.

  She blamed it on ancestry.

  Rosie resembled her father in every which way: Mexican in appearance, chatty as a magpie, a mellow demeanor. At times, though, her mother’s Irish temperament erupted, self-control vanished, and words spewed forth like volcanic ash, raining down on anyone within shouting distance.

  “You know what I’d like just once?” Her voice jumped to a yell. “I’d like just once for some joker like you to say, ‘Yeah! I did it! I admit it. I got drunk as a skunk, and then I got behind the wheel of a car. As a matter of fact, I am still drunk as a skunk. You better lock me up before I hurt somebody!’”

  Rosie blew out a loud breath. The verbal explosion ended as quickly as it had come.

  Bobby groaned softly in the shadows. “All better?” he murmured.

  She ignored her partner and watched the driver’s smirk disintegrate.

  “Okay.” She tuned her voice back down to its usual low pitch. “Where were we? Oh, yeah. Mr. Beaumont, get out of the car.”

  “I don’t have to—”

  “Yes, you do have to. You’re under arrest.”

  Rosie, Rosie.” Bobby shook his head and tsked. “You were doing so well. Why did you let him get to you?”

  Walking beside her partner through the police station, she shrugged. They were off duty, wearing street clothes, and heading home to sleep away daylight hours.

  He touched her arm and pulled her to the side of the noisy room. When Bobby Grey spoke, she listened. Pushing forty, he was the most focused person she’d ever met and the smartest cop. Fifteen years on the force and he was still passionate about being a patrolman. After two years of working with him, she adored him more than she did that first day when he unabashedly welcomed her, a scared blustery rookie, as his new partner. He soon became the big brother she never had.

  “You know,” he started, his gravelly voice hushed lower than usual. “You would make some partners nervous.”

  “I know. I know.”

  Not much taller than her own five-six and wiry in build, he did not intimidate through size, but through intense cornflower-blue eyes that seldom blinked. Though he never lost his cool, there was always a pulsating undercurrent of physical and mental strength about him.

  “You’re profiling, Rosie. It doesn’t matter how right you call a situation, if you don’t get this under control, you’re headed for trouble. I can’t have you shooting some guy’s head off just because he’s eye candy, drives a fancy car, and smirks at you.”

  “I wouldn’t—”

  “You never, never know for sure. Look, you’re a good officer. You can rise above whatever it is that trips your trigger about this type.”

  She shrugged again. “My temper only lasts a few secon
ds.”

  “Like you couldn’t pull your gun and waste him within a few seconds.”

  “Bobby, it’s not that big a deal. I’ve told you. I have a bad history with the Erik Beaumonts of the world, but that doesn’t mean I want to maim and kill them. I just need to spout off now and then.”

  He glanced over her shoulder. “My wife would have been royally ticked if you’d hurt this Erik Beaumont.”

  “What does she have to do with him?”

  “She watches him on the news. I think she has a crush on him, along with half the female population of San Diego.”

  “I should have shot him.”

  “You should have shot him.” He flashed a grin. “Actually, you’ve got another chance. Here he comes now.”

  She looked over her shoulder. The hot anchorman didn’t look so good. Hangover was written all over his puffy face, messy black hair, rumpled clothes. She wondered what his adoring fans would think.

  An older man walked beside him, obviously his dad. Though not as tall as the younger Beaumont and fifty-something, his handsome face would turn heads as well.

  She should shoot the father, too, for bailing the son out so soon, for not letting him suffer consequences that might remind him not to drink and drive.

  As they approached, the scowling duo paid no attention to Rosie and Bobby, but she heard the exchange between them.

  “I called Dan,” the son hissed. “Not you.”

  “It’s not your brother’s job to get you out of jail.”

  “And since when is it yours?”

  “I’m your father.”

  “Ha! You check out of my life for thirty years and now you’re my father. That’s rich.”

  They moved out of range, and Rosie caught no more of their argument. Not that she needed to hear more. Her macho police demeanor melted the instant she deciphered the tone of their voices.

  “Aw, nuts,” she muttered.

  Bobby chuckled. “Hit the soft spot, did he?”

  “I really hate it when they have issues.”

  “Rosie’s Adopt the Hopeless Club, now in session.”

  “Oh, get lost, Grey.” She spun on her heel and walked away, Bobby’s laughter echoing in her ears.

  Three

  Lexi wasn’t sure why she agreed to pizza at a restaurant with her siblings. The three of them reminded her of paintbrushes long overdue for a good cleaning: stiff with the old and a few hog-hair bristles shy of being useful for creating anything new.

  Jenna was . . . Well, Jenna was Jenna, an unequivocal pain in the neck.

  Erik, the oldest of the four of them, was a male version of Jen: gorgeous, talented, bossy.

  Only Danny, Lexi’s fraternal twin, prevented the evening from dipping into really ugly territory.

  “How about we change the subject?” Erik scowled into his goblet. “‘Chew on Erik’ has become quite boring.” He downed half the wine in one gulp.

  Jenna had been haranguing him nonstop for twenty minutes. “Maybe being chewed out is exactly what you need! I mean, a DUI? Give me a break! How old are you anyway? You’re on television! People look up to you! Danny, tell him how stupid he’s behaving.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to be redundant, Jen. How about we move on to the menu? What kind of pizza do you all want?”

  “But he hasn’t gotten the message! Erik, don’t you dare order another glass of wine.”

  He kept his arm raised and signaled the waiter. “I’m not. I’m ordering a bottle.”

  “Then I’m leaving. Move.” She shoved at Erik, who had her blocked in the booth seat.

  He didn’t budge. “Nasty habit you have, running away all the time. You haven’t left Kevin again, have you?”

  “You snot! That was totally uncalled for.”

  “So is ranting and raving about my habits, nasty as they are. It’s not like I get blotto every night and then drive and get caught.”

  “But you had to do it now? In the middle of Mom and Dad’s plans? Their do-over wedding or marriage blessing or whatever it’s called. The point is you were so hungover you missed your tux fitting appointment. You can’t blow their special time!”

  Erik did not reply. Even Jenna closed her mouth.

  An eerie hush settled about them. Noise of the bustling pizza joint sank to a background hum. Scurrying waiters slowed to robot pace.

  The siblings rarely got together as an isolated foursome. Aside from the special connection between the twins, the four of them were not exactly close friends. They saw each other at family events with brother-in-law Kevin, their parents, and grandparents in tow. There were occasional social doings when their paths crossed with mutual friends. But a dinner like tonight? Not in recent memory. Lexi had no clue why Jenna had insisted on it or why on earth they’d all agreed.

  Until now.

  The wedding reference brought them all up short. Lexi felt like they’d come upon a neon sign flashing a message: “Now hear this: You are all in the same sinking ship.”

  Erik sighed in his dramatic way. “Well, gang, I confess. That is precisely why I drank myself into a stupor at this exact point in time. I don’t want any part of Mom and Dad’s re-wedding stuff, and my guess is neither do any of you. Jenna, you’ve turned into a first-class shrew. Lexi, you’re so closed in on yourself, you’re going to disappear altogether.”

  She squirmed. Who wouldn’t be tentative with the king and queen of drama? As far back as she could remember those two had always dismissed everything she said with a laugh or some demeaning remark.

  Erik continued. “Dan, if you don’t have some deep, dark, nasty secret, I’ll plead guilty to the DUI charge that the mayor already fixed.”

  Beside her, Danny piled up sugar packets, his eyes lowered, his lips bunched. People often didn’t believe he was Lexi’s twin. His brown hair was darker than hers and curly. Unlike her, he had their dad’s black-brown eyes. Sometimes, though, people noticed the twin-ness in their ability to read each other.

  She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he did not have a deep, dark, nasty secret.

  Danny folded his hands on the packets and eyed Erik across the table. “I lost a client. My biggest.”

  An excruciating pain shot through Lexi, as if a rhinoceros had just fallen atop her and crushed every bone and organ in her body.

  Danny shrugged. “My fault. I’m surfing instead of working, and the whole time I’m thinking to myself, who gives a rip? Let them design their own stinking software.”

  Erik guffawed. “You are such a Boy Scout! I was talking booze, sex, drugs.”

  “Get off your high horse. We’re both talking about our living. You’ll lose yours if you keep this up.”

  “No worries. They love me at the station. My fans adore me.”

  “It’d be Dad’s worst nightmare come true, you know, if either of us flopped at our careers.”

  “Whatever.”

  Jenna cleared her throat. “Kevin,” she whispered. “Kevin’s going. Next week. They’re shipping out.”

  They turned as one and stared at her.

  She nodded, her face crumpling.

  “Next week?” Lexi said.

  “No way!” Danny exclaimed. “He’s not supposed to go until sometime after the wedding! In June, not March!”

  “Stupid, idiotic, incompetent, lousy, rotten marines.” Jenna lifted her hands in a helpless gesture.

  Erik flung an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. “Oh, Jen-Jen.”

  “That’s why I’m such a shrew!” she blubbered.

  Lexi wanted to slide under the table and slink on out the door. It was all too much. Danny not confiding in her? Erik drinking like a fish? And Kevin? Her brother-in-law? Overseas?

  She grabbed a breadstick. Only over her own dead body would she ever agree to get together with her siblings again.

  Arhinoceros?” Danny grinned.

  Lexi stood beside her twin, studying her unfinished oil painting. No wonder she’d imagined a rhino earlier that evening
. She’d been engrossed with the animal, working on its likeness for weeks now.

  They were in her apartment, in the spare bedroom she used as a studio. Danny had driven her there after they’d finally eaten dinner—a mushroom-and-pepperoni pizza that still wasn’t feeling quite right from the inside. Kevin’s news had dominated their conversation. By the time they left the restaurant, Jenna was under control. Erik wasn’t, but she and Danny escorted him into his condo and hid his car keys.

  “Lex, how on earth do you come up with these subjects to paint?”

  “The Wild Animal Park.”

  “I know that much. But why choose this guy? I mean he is one ugly dude. Horrific. Your work is disturbingly realistic sometimes.”

  The white African rhino filled much of the sixteen-by-twenty-inch canvas. His head turned slightly, the two horns on his snout were front and center, one menacing eye above them.

  Danny stepped nearer the canvas and studied the color photo clipped onto the side of the easel. “Whoa. How close were you to the real guy when you snapped this?”

  “A few feet. I took one of those photo caravan tours at the park. He came right up to the truck.”

  “He’s not a true white color, really. Just gray. Is he endangered?”

  “Yes.” She studied her depiction again.

  Except for the shiny dark eye, all the colors in the painting were drab and fading. Light gray armor covered the rhino. There were stark, leafless tree branches behind him, an ashen sky, sunbaked earth beneath him, a few dried-up weeds.

  He said, “Everything about this is endangered, isn’t it? The ground, the plants. The sunless sky, even. It’s like every detail is in the throes of death.”

  She shut her eyes briefly. Danny always figured them out.

  “Lex, I was going to tell you.”

  She assumed he was referring to his business situation. “You didn’t have to. It’s okay.”

  “But it’s not okay. I tell you everything.”

  She shrugged.

  “Don’t do that. Don’t shrug it off. I’ve been avoiding you, Lexi. You’re my other half and I’ve been avoiding you like the plague. Which makes absolutely no sense at all.” Plainly exasperated, he clasped his hands atop his head. “No sense at all except it shows you how tied up in knots I am over this whole mess.”