by Lisa Jackson
“Does it have to be about something? Well, yes, Shelby, it does.”
“I—I can’t explain it.”
“Try.” The desperation was gone. Replaced with anger.
She took in a deep breath, found no words. A crow flapped its black wings and settled on a telephone wire that drooped through the branches of a gnarled oak tree.
“Look at me.”
With all her strength, she raised her eyes, forced herself to meet the questions in his gaze.
“Did I hurt you that bad?”
She wanted to die inside. The truth pounded in her ears. Shame drove it back. “No.”
“Then—?”
What could she say? Nothing. So she didn’t..
His nostrils flared and his lips twisted into a hard scowl. Storm clouds gathered in his gray eyes. “It’s not true, you know,” he said, his voice somehow permeating her haze of despair.
She blinked. “What?”
“That I’ve been seeing Vianca again.”
Her heart, already bruised beyond repair, took another sharp blow.
“I—don’t understand.”
“It’s just talk, Shelby,” he said, the brackets around his mouth deep and hard. From inside his cruiser the radio crackled.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Like hell!” He yanked her close, pulled her roughly against him and kissed her so hard she couldn’t breathe, could barely think. When he raised his head, she looked at him through a sheen of tears. “It’s you I care for. Damn my soul to hell, Shelby, but that’s just the way it is.”
She sniffed, the C.B. crackled again—spitting static and orders, his number and then, through the static, ”... officer needs backup ...”
“Damn.” His grip lessened, he took off his hat and rammed impatient fingers through his hair. “You don’t believe me.”
“I don’t know what to believe,” she said, trying to get over the hump of her ill-won guilt and degradation.
“No matter what happens, you’re the one.” Flinty eyes held hers in a gaze that was hot and pure. “You’re the one.” He strode back to his car, climbed inside, spoke into the microphone and flipped on his lights and siren. In a spray of gravel and squeal of tires, he was gone.
“Get over this,” she told herself, finding some shred of faith in his words, knowing that she had to trust him, to find a way back to that safe haven she’d felt in his arms, to rediscover her own self, her sense of vitality. As she drove to her house, she glanced in the rearview mirror. “Don’t let Ross McCallum do this to you,” she said, tears streaming down her face, mascara leaving black tracks. “You can’t let him win.”
She parked near the garage, dashed around the hedge, through the gate and up the back stairs. With each riser she felt a new degree of determination, her battered pride resurfacing, bruised but not broken. Nevada loved her. He’d as much as said so. What had happened that night six weeks ago was long over. It wouldn’t happen again. Ever. No man, including a scum bucket like Ross McCallum, would ever terrorize her again.
At the top of the stairs she felt a little light-headed. She walked to her room as the first wave of nausea hit her. Her stomach threatened to empty. She raced to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet when she heaved.
Everything she’d eaten, which wasn’t much, came up.
She fell back on the cool tile, then steadied herself and stood, rinsing her mouth by holding her head under the faucet. What was that all about? But she knew. Deep inside, she’d been worried sick for a couple of weeks.
“Oh, no.” She hung her head.
In a second her world splintered and that which she’d tried to deny became impossible to ignore. “Oh, God, no.” She ran to her bedroom, picked up her calendar and stared in disbelief. “Please, no,” she whispered. “Not this ...”
She was late.
Not just by one month, oh, no, it had now been nearly sixty days since she’d had her last period.
“God help me,” she whispered and wished for the millionth time that her mother was still alive.
Maybe there was some mistake, maybe her cycle was just off kilter because it was the end of the year and she’d be graduating in a couple of months. She was tired and worried and stressed out and depressed over the rape and ... and ... and ... She gulped, stared at herself in the mirror. The excuses that she’d clung to for the past few weeks fell away as she gazed with worried eyes at her pasty-faced, nearly gaunt reflection.
There wasn’t much doubt about it: Shelby Cole was pregnant.
Chapter Nine
The present
And now, ten years later, Ross McCallum was back in town. A free man. Shelby shuddered. Lying on her bed, looking up at the lazily circling ceiling fan, she reminded herself that she was no longer afraid. Since the time she’d last seen McCallum, she’d moved away from a controlling father, spent countless hours with therapists and counselors, found her self-esteem and managed to finish college in California. Eventually she’d landed in Seattle where she’d taken the exam to become a real estate broker while earning her master’s degree. She’d never finished her thesis, but she was satisfied, successful, and long over the curse of her youth.
She rolled off the bed and flipped on her computer. As it warmed up, she decided to do some checking on her own. First she would try to find Nevada’s friend, the private investigator. Bill Levinson. It wasn’t much to go on. But it was a start, and Shelby was tired of waiting for someone else to do what she had to. She hadn’t stopped her quest for Doc Pritchart and anyone associated with him—relatives, other physicians, nurses or receptionists. Then there was her father’s attorney—what was his name?
Orrin something-or-other. Orrin ... Filkins or Fillmore or ... She remembered the Judge rustling around in his desk drawer earlier, searching for his Last Will and Testament. Like a shot, she was down the stairs and into his office, where the smell of cigars smoked long ago still lingered in the air. The Judge was nowhere to be seen. Not that she cared. If he found her searching through his private things, tough. As far as she was concerned, he was stonewalling her about her life. Her daughter’s life. Let him come unglued if he found Shelby rifling through his things. It served him right.
Without any qualms she opened the drawers of his desk, one after another. Finding no legal documents, she scoured the room for a Rolodex or address book or anything with the law firm’s name on it. She pulled on the drawers of his credenza, but the sleek cherry cabinet was locked. Surely there was something ... a piece of paper, letterhead, business cards ... She scanned the room and spied a ring of keys in a crystal dish near his humidor. She tried three keys before finally finding the right one. Unlocking the first drawer, she ignored a jab of conscience and started rifling quickly through files, some as old as she was. Over the sound of rattling pans, Shelby heard Lydia humming softly, the same Spanish lullaby she’d sung to Shelby as a child. From the comer of her eye she saw movement outside the window—Pabto Ramirez, the gardener who was raking the flower beds. Still there was no sign of the Judge.
Shelby’s heart was beating like a drum. Sweat broke out on her forehead. “It’s got to be here somewhere.” she told herself, then stopped short. Her breath caught as she found a file with her mother’s name on it. “What in thunder?” she whispered, her mouth drying of all spit as she realized there were slots for everyone who had ever worked for the Judge, all his relatives and even others ...
Cole, Elizabeth
Her baby!
Cole, Jasmine
Dee, Ruby
Estevan, Ramón
Hart, Nell
McCallum, Ross
Ramirez, Maria
Ramirez, Pablo
Pritchart, Ned
Smith, Nevada
Vasquez, Pedro
The pull tabs read like a census tally for the town of Bad Luck. A cold feeling swept through Shelby, and she suddenly felt as if she was intruding, wading into a dark pool where at any moment she could step off a hidden le
dge and sink to unknown and treacherous depths. Then she saw her own name.
Her father kept a file on her?
“Oh, Daddy,” she whispered in despair and disbelief.
She heard the squeak of the back door as it opened, then her father’s voice speaking in soft tones to Lydia. She froze as she recognized his measured tread and the tap of his cane. Biting her lip, Shelby quickly extracted a few files from the drawer—just enough that they wouldn’t readily be missed. Stealthily, she shut and locked the credenza, left the key in its crystal dish and padded out of the room without a sound. Though she was ready to face her father if he caught her in his office, there was no need to tip him off that she was being so persistent, no reason to let him know that she intended to turn the house upside down and inside out as well as comb through every one of his papers in her quest to find out what had happened to her child.
His uneven gait sounded closer.
Damn!
Tucking the files under her arm, she left the door slightly ajar and, to avoid running into him, cut through the butler’s pantry, dining room and the living room to the foyer, where she beelined for the main stairs. She was on the landing when she heard his voice. She froze. Held her breath. Glanced to the etched-glass windows mounted high over the twin front doors. Outside the world seemed the same, the front lawn, green and lush in this dry, dusty heat, was being watered by automatic sprinklers, while inside the home where she’d grown up, her life was in a tailspin.
“—I worry about her, you know,” the Judge was saying. “Shelby’s obsessed right now and has the notion that everyone’s against her.”
“Are they not?” Lydia asked.
“Of course not.” Red Cole snorted his disbelief. “Just keep an eye on her while I’m away.”
“She is a grown woman.”
“I know, I know, but Ross McCallum’s back in town.”
“Dios, ” Lydia said. “That man, he is ... el diablo. ”
“You bet he is. Satan incarnate.” He paused a second and Shelby strained to hear. “My daughter picked one helluva time to show up again.”
“I think it is for the best,” Lydia said softly. “And you, Judge, you need to tell her the truth.”
“Do I?”
Shelby’s fingers tightened over the files—what did Lydia and the Judge know that she didn’t? Her heart was drumming so loudly that she could barely make out the conversation. She leaned over the rail and could see the toes of her father’s boots.
“Sί It is only fair. There have been too many secrets in this family.”
Amen, Shelby thought. She’d have to talk to Lydia.
“Really. Shelby has the right to know,” Lydia said emphatically.
So the housekeeper—a woman as much like a mother as any Shelby had known—obviously knew more than she did about her own family. A deep pang of betrayal burned through Shelby’s heart. She’d always suspected her father of manipulating her life, but not Lydia, not the woman who had cradled her when she’d been scared, bandaged her scraped knees, and dispensed unwanted advice about friends and school and life as if Shelby had been a daughter to her. Now, it seemed, Lydia wasn’t trustworthy. So who could Shelby trust? Not her father. Nor Lydia.
Nevada’s rugged image raced through her mind.
Oh, Shelby, are you foolish enough to think you can trust him?
“Look, Lydia, I’m doin’ my best, tryin’ to keep my daughter safe, and that’s the bottom line here.” Red Cole’s voice was thoughtful and then, as if Lydia had raised a disbelieving eyebrow or somehow indicated she didn’t believe him, added, “Really. Damn it, I know it’s time to come clean about some things, but it’s not easy to have to open up your own closet doors and let the skeletons come dancin’ out. Oh, hell’s bells, I will. In time. My own time.”
Lydia’s snort of disbelief said it all.
What skeletons?
“I’ll be at the ranch this afternoon, so don’t worry about me for lunch.”
“You will eat there?” she said and there was gentle reproach in her voice, undercurrents of a conversation Shelby didn’t understand.
“I’ll pick up something.”
“But the doctor said—”
Doctor? What doctor? Certainly not Pritchart. Was the Judge sick? She’d never considered her father anything but healthy, hale and bullheaded.
“I’ll handle it, Lydia,” he snapped, irritated. “It don’t matter a whole helluva lot anyway.”
Oh, Lord, what did that mean? How sick was he?
His uneven tread became louder and Shelby, lest she be caught with the incriminating folders, dashed noiselessly up the remaining stairs to her room. Once there, she closed her bedroom door, slipped the files between her mattress and box springs and lay down on the bed as if she’d fallen asleep, just in case her father opened her door. He didn’t.
Heart thudding, a thousand questions whirling through her mind, Shelby listened as his footsteps retreated down the hallway to the wing where the master suite was housed. She let out her breath, then, impatiently staring at the ceiling where, above the slow-moving paddle fan, a fly was buzzing, she waited until she heard the door to his room open again and then his heavy, uneven tread as he climbed down the back staircase.
As soon as she was certain he wasn’t returning, she pulled out the manila folders and nestled into her favorite chair—the overstuffed seat where once her mother had held her and read nursery rhymes to her.
But she wouldn’t think of Jasmine Cole just yet, or how she died. There was time enough for remembering faded images of the woman who had borne her, a woman she’d barely had the chance to know.
She concentrated on the job at hand and opened the first file, labeled with her daughter’s name. It was disappointingly thin, holding only the birth certificate and death certificate.
Disappointment seeped through her bones. Tears burned the back of her eyes. She’d seen copies of these documents more times than she wanted to count.
What did you expect? her frustrated mind nagged. Pictures? The names of Elizabeth’s adoptive parents? Report cards from a school she’d attended? Her first awkward attempts at finger painting? What?
Shelby bit hard on her lip and told herself to forge on. This was just a small obstacle and if her first attempts at finding the truth through burglary hadn’t worked, she’d try something else.
She opened the second file, the one labeled Smith, Nevada. It held a sheaf of papers, and Shelby thumbed each item feeling as if she were trespassing on private property. Nevada Evans Smith’s birth certificate, medical documents, school and Army records were included, along with his juvenile history and a private investigator’s report about him and his parents—his drunk of a father and runaway mother.
Shelby felt a shiver of apprehension as she sifted through the pages. She glanced over her shoulder, as if she expected Nevada to appear and catch her snooping into his private life, but that was silly. Of course she was alone in the room, and as the big blades of the paddle fan rotated over her head and the fly bounced against the window, she settled back in her chair and started to read about a man she’d once loved but had barely known, the man whom she believed to be the father of her only child.
Absently she rapped on the top of a nearby table for good luck, though surely Nevada was Elizabeth’s father; he just had to be. She wouldn’t even consider the other possibility. The third me—the one with her name scratched boldly across the tab—she saved for last.
Caleb Swaggert looked like death warmed over, Katrina thought as she paused at the doorway to his hospital room and the clipped staccato beat from her high heels no longer echoed through the hallways of Our Lady Of Sorrows Hospital. Without checking with any of the staff, she marched into the geezer’s hospital room and acted as if she belonged there.
Skeleton-thin, his skin pasty and hanging without much flesh to support it, his hair reduced to a few gray tufts, Caleb lay on a hospital bed with sterile metal rails ensuring that he stayed put.
His eyes, so brown they appeared nearly black, were sunken into deep sockets. They stared without blinking at a television from which some televangelist was preaching ardently about the wages of sin.
Tubes and wires were attached to various parts of his body, and he appeared less than half a step from the grave. But his poor health and sorry condition weren’t surprising. She’d expected as much. It was the proliferation of religious icons strewn around the room that gave her pause. Three new Bibles on a table near his bed, dozens of pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary tacked to the wall, statuettes of Christ gathered on the windowsill and on a table holding not only his comb, a box of Kleenex, a water glass, electric razor and box of surgical gloves, but also a miniature nativity scene, though Christmas was half a year away.
The devil sure wasn’t gonna get a toehold in here.
In a way, it was spooky.
As for Swaggert, he was as close to death’s door as anyone could get without actually crossing the threshold. If she wanted an interview, and she did, then she’d better get cracking before the grim reaper came to collect her interviewee, and the indicator on the old coot’s heart monitor became a flat line.
“Mr. Swaggert?” she said, startling him. He jumped, the monitor over his head went crazy for a second, and he turned his gaunt face in her direction. “I’m Katrina Nedelesky.” As if she were approaching a skittish colt, she moved slowly toward his bed. Like this ancient guy is gonna bolt. Somehow she forced a smile she hoped looked a lot more genuine than it felt. “Remember? From Lone Star Magazine.”
His balding, spotted pate creased with wrinkles for a second before a hint of understanding crossed his features.
“Did you get the contract I sent you?” she asked, edging closer to the bed and trying not to show that she felt nothing but revulsion at the sight of his bony body. She really didn’t expect him to remember much. This guy was way too far gone. But she did hope beyond hope that his memory was sharp enough to recall what happened the night Ramón Estevan was shot and killed.