by Lisa Jackson
And he had just the ticket.
Caleb Swaggert was dead and now there wasn’t anyone to give that reporter-gal the inside scoop on what happened the night Ol’ Ramón Estevan had been killed. What better story than straight from the horse’s mouth, from the man who’d been set up and sent away for the murder?
Yep, he’d have to contact the reporter and work himself a deal. And then there were some other old debts that needed to be repaid. He had yet to square off with Nevada, but that day was comin’ and fast. Like a fuckin’ freight train.
He hadn’t paid a call on Shelby Cole yet, but the time just hadn’t been right. He would, though, and soon.
Ross smiled to himself and walked outside to the two weathered steps that constituted the front porch. Some of the garbage had been strewn around the place last night, and Ross thought it was about time he got himself a gun to take care of the coyotes or whatever the hell it was that was marauding around here at night. Aside from that, it would feel good to have a rifle in his hands again. A man wasn’t really a man without a gun. He surveyed the dry landscape. A few scraggly trees, dry grass and hard pan. How the devil had his grandfather ranched here and supported himself, his wife and five kids?
He’d have to find himself a rifle, and soon. Maybe he’d get himself a dog as well—a pit bull or rottweiler would be just the ticket. He needed protection. A lot of strange things were going on in Bad Luck these days. He rubbed the back of his neck, felt the sting of a bee and slapped the hornet hard. Buzzing angrily, it dropped to the rickety step. Ross was quick, grinding the varmint beneath the toe of his boot and feeling a spurt of satisfaction race through his blood.
Yep, he thought, his neck smarting, a lot of strange things were happening in Bad Luck, Texas, and unless he missed his guess, there were gonna be a few more.
Shelby slid the last file into its slot in her father’s credenza and silently berated herself. She had read through each one, slipping a few folders at a time up to her room, then studying them and finding nothing that would help her. Whatever secrets the Judge was keeping, they were still safe, unable to be uncovered by any of the papers he’d locked in his den.
Lydia had come to the house sometime after noon, and other than offering to make Shelby some lunch and explaining that Aloise had taken too many sleeping pills, the housekeeper had kept to herself. Her eyes had been red, her usually sunny expression decidedly missing, and Shelby had thought she’d heard Lydia sobbing softly.
All in all, it had been a fruitless and disturbing morning.
It was nearly two-thirty by the time Shelby locked the credenza and pocketed the small ring of keys that her father kept in the dish near his humidor. Surely one of the keys would open the door to his office downtown, and maybe there she would find more information, anything, that would help her find Elizabeth. She’d take the keys to Coopersville this afternoon, find an out-of-the-way locksmith who wouldn’t recognize her, then return the original set to the den. After that, the Judge’s office would be at her fingertips. Hoping no hint of guilt showed on her face, she walked from the den to the kitchen. The keys jangled softly deep in her pocket.
Lydia was crying again, dabbing at her eyes with the corner of her apron and muttering softly in Spanish to herself as she carried a plastic container filled with cleaning supplies toward the dining room.
“Lydia, is something wrong?” Shelby asked as she poured herself a cup of coffee.
“What? Oh, niña. No.” Lydia cleared her throat and disappeared through the archway. Shelby followed.
“You’ve been crying. Look, I’m not trying to pry, but I’m not blind or deaf. Something’s bothering you, Lydia. Something big.”
The housekeeper offered a frail smile as she set her bucket on the floor. Last week’s birds of paradise arrangement was beginning to wilt on the table, though the crystal, rarely used, sparkled behind the glass doors of the buffet. “I am just upset to hear of Aloise. She is ... well, a friend, and a relative.”
This was news. “You’re related to the Estevans?”
“Sí—well, not to Ramón’s family.” Lydia’s mouth puckered as if she’d just tasted something sour. “That one, he was a ... tirano.” She made a quick sign of the cross over her ample bosom.
“A tyrant?”
“Sí. Worse. He was always the boss. Everything had to go his way. If not, then he would ... reventar, like a volcano, yelling and screaming with anger.” She threw her hands over her head, either showing how the man vented or appealing to God. “Ramon, he was not a nice man. But...” She cocked her head and sunlight streaming through the dining room windows caught in the silver strands of her hair. ”... He was Aloise’s husband and she is cousin to Pablo, my brother-in-law.”
“Pablo—the gardener?” Shelby asked, leaning against the archway and sipping her coffee. How had she missed this bit of information? Why hadn’t she paid attention?
“Sí.” Lydia removed the vase with the dying flowers, which suddenly seemed morbid. Her father’s canonization of a woman to whom he was not always faithful wasn’t so much about love, Shelby decided, as about guilt.
“Aloise and me, we grew up together in the same village in Mexico, not too far from Mazatlan—you have heard of this resort? It is by the ocean.”
“Yes.”
“Later, all the families moved. Closer to the border,” Lydia explained. “But that was very long ago, when we were both girls.”
“And from there you both moved to Bad Luck?”
Setting the vase on a counter of the china cabinet, Lydia nodded, but the comers of her mouth tightened perceptibly. “Sí. Our families moved here.” She turned back to the table and began spraying lemon oil on the dark surface, working as if she intended to rub the polish right through the dark wood.
“And Pablo is Maria’s father.” Why hadn’t she known this when she was growing up?
Again Lydia nodded, but this time her shoulders stiffened slightly and she avoided Shelby’s eyes. “She is his only daughter, but he has three boys as well. Enrique, Juan and Diego.”
“Lydia, what’s going on here? The other day you were upset because Maria was having trouble with her daughter. Today you’re crying because Aloise Estevan nearly killed herself, and I didn’t even know you were related.” Before she could answer, Shelby added, “Then there was that conversation I overheard between you and the Judge. The one about the secrets that I should know about.”
Lydia picked up a bottle of Pledge and avoided Shelby’s gaze. “I told you to speak to your father.”
“I’ve tried. Over and over.” Shelby set her cup on the counter near the vase. “He won’t tell me diddly-squat.”
“He will. In time.”
“I don’t have a whole lot of that.”
“None of us do,” the housekeeper admitted, blinking rapidly.
Shelby felt as if she was finally getting through to the woman who had practically raised her, and she wasn’t going to let up. Touching her gently on the shoulder, Shelby said, “Look, Lydia, whatever it is that Dad’s hiding, you’ve got to let me know about it. The secrets in this house are getting to all of us.”
“Oh, niña,” Lydia whispered, her dark, tormented eyes filling with tears, “please, please, for my sake, do not pursue this. I can tell you nothing.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“It is no different.” Lydia attacked the job of polishing the mahogany table as if her life depended upon it. Sweat beaded her brow, and the flesh beneath the cuff of her short sleeve wiggled as she worked.
“The Judge won’t tell me anything.” Shelby was so frustrated, she wanted to shake the housekeeper, but as she saw the pain in Lydia’s dark eyes—no, it was more than pain, more like fear—and the lines of sadness near her mouth, she said only, “If you know anything about Elizabeth, please, tell me. You’re a mother. You know how important it is for a mother to be with her child—”
“Sí,but I cannot.”
“For the love of God, Lydi
a, she’s my daughter! My only daughter. Please—”
The doorbell pealed. Soft, dulcet tones that were as intrusive as if they’d been the report of a shotgun blast.
“Excuse me,” Lydia said and dropped her dusting rag, wiping her hands on her apron and, in a rustle of nylon panty hose, hurried to the foyer.
“This discussion isn’t over,” Shelby insisted, trailing after her like a tracking dog on the scent of an escaping felon.
As the housekeeper opened the door, Shelby’s heart sank. There, standing in the middle of the front porch, just as she’d promised she would be, stood Katrina Nedelesky. Her grin was neatly pinned in place and she was just removing her sunglasses.
When she turned her blue eyes upon Lydia, the housekeeper gasped and her face drained of all color. “Espíritu Santo!” Lydia crossed herself yet again.
Shelby asked, “What’s wrong?” but wondered if she really wanted to know. She felt the tension in the air, saw the fear in Lydia’s eyes. “You two know each other?”
“No.” Lydia drew in a deep, shaky breath and touched her fingers to her hair. “No.”
Katrina’s eyes narrowed a fraction and her smile seemed all the more fake. “I’m Katrina Nedelesky,” she said, extending her hand. “And, no, we’ve not met before.”
“This is Lydia Vasquez. I thought you were going to call before you showed up.”
“Oh, yeah.” Katrina grimaced. “Sorry about that. Guess I forgot. ”
Shelby wasn’t buying it for a minute. She’d bet Katrina didn’t forget much.
Lydia mumbled a quick “pleased to meet you,” took the woman’s hand, then dropped it as if it actually had burned her skin.
Katrina turned that incredible smile toward Shelby. “You know, since I landed here in this part of Texas, just about everyone I meet tells me I remind them of someone.”
“Is that so?” Shelby asked. “Who?”
“No,” Lydia said. “This is foolishness.”
But Katrina just turned those incredibly blue eyes on Shelby. “Can’t you guess?”
A cold sensation started at the base of Shelby’s skull and dripped down her spine. She knew in an instant that she wasn’t going to like what Katrina had to say.
“Don’t you know what it is?” Katrina rolled her eyes and then sighed theatrically. “Well, I hate all this high melodrama, so let’s just get this over with. I’m your sister, Shelby. Well, half-sister really. The Judge is my father, too.”
Chapter Fourteen
“I think you’d better come in and explain all this,” Shelby said, unable to keep the suspicion from her voice. Shell-shocked, she stared at the woman standing on the front porch, searching for any sign of resemblance between Katrina Nedelesky and the Judge. Okay, so they both had startling blue eyes, but so did millions of other people. Katrina was a redhead, as was the Judge, but who knew if her short tresses were a natural shade or dyed. One thing was for certain, Shelby didn’t trust her. Not one iota.
“I take after my mother,” Katrina said, as if reading Shelby’s thoughts.
“Convenient.”
“True.” She flashed that irritating, smug smile that was already getting on Shelby’s nerves.
“Why haven’t I heard of you?”
“Because I was Judge Cole’s deep, dark secret.”
Shelby was only vaguely aware of Lydia, but the housekeeper was still at the door, staring at Nedelesky as if she were a ghost, confirming the truth far better than the slight, confident woman standing in the shade of the porch’s overhang.
“Then what took you so long to show up?”
“Timing, Shelby. Timing.”
“And now’s the right time.”
“Bingo.”
Well, it wouldn’t hurt anything to hear Katrina’s story, though Shelby had her own agenda. Through her pocket, she felt her father’s key ring press against her thigh. She needed to drive to Coopersville, get duplicates of the keys made and replace the originals before she was found out. “Come on in,” she invited, pushing the door open wide.
Shelby was skeptical. Though she’d always known her father attracted women, and he certainly hadn’t been celibate in the past twenty-odd years, she’d believed that he’d been careful, discreet and would have taken precautions not to father any children out of wedlock, if only to protect his reputation. Katrina’s claims could well be just a scam, a publicity ruse, and she was older than twenty-one or twenty-two. Ace reporter though she might allege to be, Katrina Nedelesky was an opportunist clear and simple. And in that respect, Shelby grudgingly thought, she was very much like Judge Jerome Cole. “We can talk in the living room.”
“Lead the way.”
As Katrina entered, Lydia, ashen-faced, her forced smile tremulous, muttered something about getting refreshments, then gratefully retreated toward the back of the house.
“Nice place,” Katrina remarked, hiking the strap of her briefcase onto her shoulder. With the confidence of someone who knew that she belonged, she took in the gleaming marble floors, the sweeping staircase and the pieces of art mounted on the walls. Finally, her gaze inched across a rosewood table covered with pictures of Shelby and her father.
“Yes, very nice,” she commented, touching a silver frame as her eyes met Shelby’s in the mirror. A fleeting kaleidoscope of emotions—envy, anger and despair—showed in those blue depths before being quickly masked.
She wishes she was me. The thought struck Shelby hard, like a fist to her stomach. Was it possible? Could she really be spouting the truth? Was Katrina her half-sister?
“This way,” Shelby said, peeling off toward the living room and leaving the image of two women with varying shades of red hair and blue eyes behind her. She opened the French doors and walked into the living room, where bowed windows overlooked a rose garden and furniture in muted shades of peach, gray and forest green was strategically placed around a marble-faced fireplace, another rarely used shrine to Jasmine Cole.
Once Katrina was inside the room,Shelby closed the doors behind her and leaned against the glass panes to look the younger woman square in the eye. “Let’s get one thing straight, right up front,” she said. “Everything we discuss is off the record. If you dare print a word of it without a signed, written release from me, I’ll sue you and that rag you write for from here until tomorrow.”
Katrina wasn’t bullied. “Look, Shelby, all the magazine is interested in is Ramón Estevan’s death, Caleb Swaggert’s testimony, why he recanted it and who could possibly have killed him—Ramón, I mean. If it turns out that Caleb was murdered, then they’ll want information on that as well.”
“I can’t help you there. I don’t know anything about the Estevan murder.”
Katrina eyed a white piano tucked into an alcove. “That’s not why I’m here.”
“Well, then, that brings up an interesting point.” Shelby crossed to the floral love seat and sat on an overstuffed arm. “What do you want?”
Katrina stared through the glass to the rosebushes with their heavy-headed blooms. “Okay, the deal is this—I’m not just a freelance reporter,” Katrina admitted, turning away from the view and dropping onto an antique settee. “I’m working on a book.”
Shelby’s heart dropped. She should’ve seen this coming. “About?”
“The Estevan mystery, of course. That’s at the center, but it’s also a story about Bad Luck and all the town’s secrets.” Katrina’s eyes brightened.
“Including this ... claim you have that you’re my father’s daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you’d better explain that.” Shelby wanted to believe this woman was a con artist, nothing more, someone who was trying to set her father up, but the fact that her own stomach was knotting, her mind spinning ahead with a million questions, convinced her that there was more to Katrina than met the eye. “So why is it you think the Judge is your father?”
From the corner of her eye, Shelby spied a gleam of silver through the windows. Her fath
er’s Mercedes was rolling up the drive, its shiny finish catching shafts of sunlight that had pierced the lacy branches of the trees. “Wait. I think you’ll get a chance to tell the Judge himself.” Apprehension swept through her. “Looks like he’s had a change of plans and has come home.” The keys in her pockets seemed to burn through the fabric and scorch her leg. Should she try to replace them in the den before her father found them missing?
Katrina’s smile didn’t even falter. “Good. This will only make things easier.”
Shelby doubted it. Since landing in Bad Luck, things hadn’t gotten easier for Shelby. Instead they’d become more complicated, much more complicated. “I’ll tell Lydia to send him in here,” she said, standing and heading out of the room, just as she heard the housekeeper’s footsteps in the foyer.
Carrying a silver tray that held crystal glasses and matching pitchers of lemonade and iced tea, Lydia had nearly reached the French doors when she, too, caught a glimpse of the Judge’s Mercedes slowing to a stop in front of the garage.
“Dios,” she whispered, shaken. The tray wobbled.
Shelby was through the doors in an instant.
Glasses and silver platter shifted.
Shelby was quick, grabbing an edge of the tray, but it was too late. Tea and lemonade slopped over the sides of the pitcher. The glasses toppled, crashing to the floor. Ice cubes slid across the marble. Lemon wedges flew. Iced tea splashed over Shelby’s face and blouse as she held onto the tray.
The front door opened. Judge Red Cole, leaning heavily on his cane, stepped into the foyer. “What the devil’s the matter with you two?” he asked, his face flushed, sweat trickling down from his hairline.
“Oh, Judge, I am sorry.” Lydia gulped as she tried to pick up the rapidly melting ice cubes. “So sorry. I—we did not expect you home so early.”
“My meeting in San Antonio got postponed.”
“I will get a mop.”
“What’s going on here?” Red Cole demanded.