Behind the Shield

by Sheryl Lynn

  She didn’t need to be told twice to go back to the beads. She finished a row and had started another when he gave her a fresh cup of coffee. He stood behind her, studying her sketch of sorrow.

  “That’s one sad sack of a critter if I ever saw one.”

  “He’s supposed to be.”

  “Good drawing. May I?”

  She hated showing her sketches. They were too rough, too raw and too personal, going straight from her soul through her fingers and onto the pages. Hoping he changed his mind, she nodded ever so slightly. He picked up the book. She appreciated how he held the edges, as if aware that the oil from his fingers could transfer to the pages. He leafed through the drawings, his expression impassive.

  Unable to stand it, she held out a hand. “They’re just doodles. Fooling around to help me think.”

  “If these are doodles, I’d like to see when you’re serious. They’re incredible.”

  She listened for mockery. Braced for the “but.”

  “Do you paint pictures along with beading?”

  “I have.”

  “Hope I can see them someday.” He gave back the sketchbook. “Be an honor.”

  The eager, needy child within wriggled at his praise. The sensual woman, weary of being shoved to the far reaches, flexed her muscles and made herself known along every nerve path. “I’d be honored to show you. Someday.” It was too hard looking at him straight on. She’d spontaneously combust. She lowered her eyelashes and turned her head. She peeked sideways. His mobile brow raised. She felt every molecule of air in her chest. Her heartbeat pulsed against her eardrums.

  He took a step back. His chest hitched. A slight action and quick, but she noticed. Just as she noticed how he smelled of sunshine, sweet hay and horses.

  He raked a hand through his hair. He rested the hand on the back of his neck. “There’s repairs on the porch I need to get to. If you’d like to bring your beads out there and keep me company, I wouldn’t mind.”

  Oh, Madeline, she thought, don’t do this. Do not melt beneath his gaze. Do not dream of his body pressed against yours. Do not imagine, for even one second, that one iota of good could come from a physical relationship with this man.

  “Okay,” she said.

  He struck a chair with his hip, caught it before it fell, and practically ran out of the kitchen.

  MADELINE RAN A DUSTING CLOTH over framed photographs atop the fireplace mantle.

  Carson had gone to town early to buy Sunday papers. Her father and the hijacking were still front-page news. One story quoted her mother extensively, saying Frank and Madeline were tight as ticks and the only reason he turned to a life of crime was to lavish his spoiled daughter with luxuries.

  The telephone rang. Carson answered, hung up and it rang again. His voice grew increasingly impatient with reporters and townsfolk.

  “Madeline,” he yelled. “The timer dinged. Want me to pull out the biscuits?”

  “I’ll get it.” She glanced at a photograph of Carson and Jill wearing formal clothing. Jill looked as if someone had told a ribald joke and she was doing her best not to laugh. With a hand on his pretty wife’s shoulder, Carson stood tall and proud.

  She hurried to the kitchen.

  “You don’t have to clean up around here.” He had the Arizona Republic spread out on the table. “You aren’t the housekeeper.”

  “I don’t mind.” She pulled biscuits from the oven. “It’s my fault you let Judy go.”

  The telephone rang again. Carson snatched it up. “Chief Cody.” He listened and rolled his eyes, and his mouth twitched as if he fought an outburst.

  “Any sightings are a hoax. Don’t even bother wasting paper to write them down. Got it? Out.” He put down the phone with such exaggerated care Madeline knew he wanted to pound it to pieces. “Can you believe it? Some idiot reported seeing you headed south on Highway Sixty driving a brand-new Ford Explorer.”

  He abruptly pushed away from the table, snatched up the phone and stomped out of the kitchen.

  When he returned, he said, “I don’t know how to keep people off your property. I don’t have enough manpower for a patrol. Best I can do is post No Trespassing signs then actually prosecute anybody we catch. Can you hear the traffic on Hoshonee? Sounds like an interstate down there.”

  “I hate causing trouble.”

  “You aren’t. They are. Is breakfast ready? I’m hungry enough to eat bear on the hoof.”

  She didn’t understand. He didn’t strike her as the stubbornly stupid type. Maybe protecting her was some sort of twisted penance. Punishment for losing his wife. If so, it was unhealthier than the stupidest stubbornness. After eating, she asked to borrow the telephone.

  He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Have to plug in the base unit first. Unplug it when you’re done. It rings again and my head will explode.”

  In the front room she paced and dusted and straightened bric-a-brac and wall pictures until the clock ticked past nine o’clock. Myriad reasons to not call crowded her head and weakened her nerve.

  She wasn’t brave, but knew how to pretend, knew how to steady her quaking voice and act calm.

  She called Uncle Willy’s house, praying he answered. Aunt Alma said, “Hello,” and Madeline’s heart sank. “Hello? Hello!”

  “Hi, Aunt Alma, it’s Madeline. May I speak to Uncle Willy?”

  “Madeline Shay!” Alma made it sound like a curse. “You got some nerve calling here. You take all that money from my poor husband, food right out of my children’s mouths, then you don’t pay back nothing.”

  Madeline bit back rising fury. She had worked her tail off at the trading post and done it for minimum wage. On her own time, at her own expense, she ran errands and cleaned the store after hours. Aunt Alma resented having to pay family any wages at all.

  “Please, may I speak to Uncle Willy?”

  “It’s in all the papers and on the television. I thought that worthless mother of yours was just talking crazy like she always does, but even a crazy woman has to be right sometimes. And you! You don’t even think about your poor uncle and all his hungry children. No. You are a bad, selfish, spiteful girl, Madeline Shay. A bad, bad girl.”

  “Aunt Alma, that’s a lie! I—”

  Alma hung up, leaving Madeline with a silent telephone and a red cloud burning her eyes.

  She resumed pacing and straightening and fuming. Uncle Willy probably knew Nona Redhawk’s itinerary and how to contact her. He was the only person who might give her the benefit of the doubt.

  She punched in Uncle Willy’s number. “Please answer, please answer,” she begged him. Alma answered again, her querulous voice sharp. Madeline hung up.

  Hoping against hope, she called the trading post. Sometimes Willy did paperwork and stocked the shelves on Sundays. The phone rang and rang and rang. Conceding defeat, she hung up.

  The telephone rang. Caller ID said Morales, Pedro. She carried the ringing phone to Carson.

  “I think it is Sergeant Morales,” she said.

  Looking wary, he answered.

  Madeline washed dishes. All Carson said was an occasional “uh-huh” and “no kidding,” but he often looked her way. Her curiosity clamored.

  Carson said, “I’ll talk to her and get back to you.” He hung up.

  “Talk to me?” she asked. “About what?”

  “The FBI wants to exhume your father’s body. They can get an order from the court, but out of respect for the family, they prefer asking permission. You’re the only person who can give it.”

  She was horrified. “Dig him up? From his grave? Why?”

  “DNA evidence. The FBI can account for all the blood taken from the hijacked plane. Except for one sample. They eliminated the airplane crew, the dead hijackers and Deke Fry. They even eliminated mechanics who worked on the plane.”

  She groped for and found the clumsy locket. She clutched it through her shirt. She had zero respect for her father alive, but dead? Disrespect for the dead went against everyt
hing she believed. “I don’t know.”

  “It’s important evidence.” He grimaced in apology. “They’ll do it whether or not you grant permission.”

  “If they eliminate him, does that mean he wasn’t one of the hijackers?”

  “Not necessarily. You have a right to be there when the coffin is opened.”

  “Absolutely not!” She hugged herself.

  “This is very important. Your permission will save time. This mess will end sooner.”

  “Do I have to talk to the FBI?”

  “Pete will handle the paperwork. All you need to do is sign your name. Okay?”

  God forgive me…Daddy forgive me. “Okay.”

  Carson patted the table. “Have a seat. The FBI is questioning anyone Shay might have talked to in Lewis. Far as I know, they’ve come up with zip. Did he ever mention names in his letters?”

  Madeline lifted her gaze to the ceiling. “I didn’t read his letters.” Her cheeks warmed. “But I kept them.”

  Carson arched a brow.

  Heat suffused her face and neck. The last time she talked to her father she had been seventeen years old. Her mother had been involved with a man who pounded on Cora, and considered Madeline fair game, too. The men fought, putting Cora’s boyfriend in the hospital. Frank had promised to take Madeline away—off the reservation, out of Arizona, far away from the craziness of home. She had packed her meager belongings and spent an entire night seated on a concrete bench outside the Dairy Queen. He never showed.

  “I’ll get them,” she said, unable to meet his eyes.

  In the small room where she slept and stored her belongings, she crouched before the Dumb Stuff box. As a child the only thing she had ever wanted was for her mother to choose her daughter over alcohol and for her father to come home every night.

  At thirty-one years old she still wanted it.

  She carried the box downstairs and set it on the table. Wordlessly she watched him open the flaps. He picked up a mouse carved from wood.

  “I didn’t cry when he died. I didn’t feel anything at all.”

  Carson brought out a pen-and-ink drawing of a little girl whirling in a joyous dance, her long black braids swinging.

  “He let me down, deserted me, let my mother and her boyfriends abuse me.” She sighed, her heart heavy. “And yet, even knowing he’s a bad man, I had to believe…something.”

  Carson took her hand. She squeezed his fingers.

  “He called me his little Indian princess. He never laid an angry hand on me.” She lowered a sad gaze on the box. “That box holds the only good things he ever did.”

  She went outside to sweep the porch. She swept the floor, the windowsills and wooden chairs. She swept cobwebs from beneath the eaves until her shoulders ached, but the pain inside continued to gnaw. She tore dead vegetation out of flowerpots. There was nothing to plant. She gathered rocks, juniper twigs with interesting twists and whorls, bits of rusty wire, and dried grasses and weeds. She found wild turkey feathers and the wing of a scrub jay.

  A shed snakeskin startled her. She looked around nervously for its owner. She used a stick to pick up the topaz-colored skin, which was dried and brittle, mostly intact. It crackled when she touched it with a finger. Not far away she found the molt of a grasshopper, tiny and perfect right down to the antennae and hairs on the legs. She created tiny landscapes in the pots.

  The screen door squeaked. “What in the world are you doing?”

  Her handiwork lined the porch railing. The whimsical deserts in miniature and arrangements of feathers and weeds tickled her. “I hope you don’t mind. The plants were dead.”

  He looked as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “How do you do that? How do you even think it up? Art out of junk. Amazing.”

  Pleased, she grinned. “I have no idea.”

  “I’m impressed no matter how you do it.” He glanced over his shoulder at the house. “He was surprisingly literate.”

  “Guess he did a lot of reading in prison.”

  “Why didn’t you read the letters?”

  She touched the locket, his final gift to her. “After the box of money, I couldn’t take any more. I had to stop torturing myself. Did you learn anything?”

  “A lot of talk about winning the lottery and the two of you starting over. Complaints about prison food.” He displayed a small key. “This.”

  “What’s it for?”

  “According to his letter, it fits a locker at the bus station in Phoenix.”

  She covered her mouth with a hand. “The money! Oh my God, I had it all along?”

  He laughed. “Not inside a luggage locker. Besides, it’s been four years. It must be cleared out by now.”

  “Oh.”

  “We’ll let the FBI handle it. Are you absolutely certain you never met Deke Fry?”

  “Positive.”

  “Deke Fry was going to ask you for a favor. Your father wanted you to give Fry what he asked for, no questions asked. In exchange he promised to build you a house and a studio and buy all the art supplies you could ever want.”

  “What kind of favor?”

  Carson shrugged. “Didn’t say.”

  “I was traveling to shows when he was released from prison.”

  “He sure was anxious to hook up with you. He sent quite a few drawings. Your face was his favorite subject.”

  Emotion pinched her lungs. She was a sucker for her father’s art. He used her weakness to manipulate her. “That’s Daddy. Dangle a bit of hope in front of me and when I jumped, snatch it away.”

  “Any ideas about the favor?”

  She puffed her cheeks and blew a long breath. “The ten thousand dollars? Or maybe he stashed something at Mama’s house. He wouldn’t dare ask Mama for anything, not after the way he divorced her.” She added in a mutter, “Arrogant ass, thinking I’d help him and his thug friends.”

  “You have to give the letters to the FBI.”

  She didn’t want to let go of the letters any more than she wanted to keep them. Both options hurt. She rearranged some stones in a pot to a more pleasing shape.

  “You know, Madeline,” he said, his voice so tender it soothed her anxiety, “I hang on to things that hurt me. I don’t know why I do it, either.”

  CARSON STOOD in the doorway to the bedroom he had once shared with his wife. The walls were covered with family photos and weavings Jill had crafted from wool she sheared, spun and dyed. The carved maple furniture had been a wedding gift from his in-laws.

  He waited for the tension in his chest to ease. Only stuff, he reminded himself—inanimate wood and metal and cloth.

  Madeline appeared at the top of the stairs. “Did you call me?”

  “Would you do me a favor?”

  “Sure.”

  “I should have done it long ago, but, you know, procrastination and all. Would you clear out my wife’s closet and drawers? It’s a shame, her clothes going to waste when others can use them.”

  She peered between his shoulder and the doorjamb. Her hair was inky black and smelled of sunshine. He stepped into the room.

  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said.

  “It’s the least I can do. Are you all right with this?”

  He waited for the ache to ease in his throat. “It needs doing.”

  A strange expression, a little wary and a whole lot puzzled, captured her face.

  “Something wrong?”

  She shook her head. “I am honored to help you.”

  She was a proud woman. He didn’t want her thinking he considered her pitiful. “I’m donating everything to the church ladies’ thrift shop. Feel free to take what you need. That way there’s less for me to tote into town.”

  In his peripheral vision he glimpsed her tug the top button of the shirt she had worn since the fire. He felt stupid for not offering fresh clothing.

  “There are some cartons out in the barn. I’ll fetch them.”

  When he turned for the door, she blocked the way.
Her calm eyes arrested him. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Everybody says I should.” He frowned at the dusty quilt on the bed. “The preacher, the guys at work, even Tony says it’s important to clear—”

  “I understand that,” she interrupted. “I mean me. Why are you helping me?”

  He hadn’t a clue how to answer.

  “When I saw you at Crossruff Creek, I was positive you meant to run me off. When you brought that man to look for the money, I was sure that was it. But no, you took my side. You saved my life. You took me into your home. Why not lock me up in protective custody? Save yourself the grief.”

  He swallowed hard and studied his boots.

  “People either want to hurt me or use me. I avoid the first and handle the second.”

  “I’m not either of those.”

  “Are you sure?” She looked around the room. “Are you using me to hurt yourself?”

  There might be an element of truth in what she said, even if he didn’t want to admit it. “I’m not going to hurt you and I don’t want anything from you. Except your cooking, which is real good.” He hooked his thumbs in his pocket and shifted from foot to foot.

  Her rigid shoulders and defiant eyes suggested she was as uncomfortable with this conversation as he was. “Doesn’t it make you sick to look at me?”

  “I thought I hated you. I thought I should hate you. You aren’t your father. You’re not responsible for what he did.” He shrugged. “Fact is, I like you.” He almost said how much he liked looking at her, how much he wanted to hold her and kiss her, but managed restraint.

  She ducked her head and lowered her eyelids. Her shy, sideways look blew rational thought from his head. She tugged the hem of her shirt. Her hands were elegant, with long fingers and short nails. Fabric molded over her breasts. There was nothing boyish about her slender figure then. A small voice of reason—very small—told him he tread dangerous waters, but he brushed his fingertips lightly along the seam of the shirt. He longed to feel the texture of her skin.

  Her almond eyes narrowed; her stare pierced him. When she lifted her face, he kissed her.