by Ken Casper
“What are we going to do?” Gwyn cried.
“I’ll have a private investigator do some checking on Belmonte, see if we can’t find him ourselves.”
Gwyn bit her lip to stem the emotions going through her. Jed’s hand holding hers under the table helped. “It’s this never knowing . . . having people always wondering if Jed is a murderer.”
“You want my advice?” Thorny asked as he pushed back his plate. “Get on with your lives.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
THEY’D BOTH brought vehicles to the county seat. Marshall wasn’t exactly a high-crime area, but Jed didn’t want to leave his truck on the street overnight. A brand-new, shiny pickup might be too much of a temptation for joyriders. The Rover was Gwyn’s only means of transportation, and she had the mineral blocks she’d bought in the back of it. Under the circumstances, they had no choice but to drive home to Uncertain separately.
Jed was disturbed. Despite his lawyer’s upbeat advice, the events of the past few hours had imparted a sense of gloom and foreboding that seemed endless.
He ached to have Gwyn by his side. He’d never needed another human being, never wanted a woman as much as he needed and wanted her. He’d been fooling himself when he thought he could do the noble thing and send her away. He couldn’t fool himself anymore.
He wondered about the unhappiness he’d seen in her eyes when they’d left the D.A.’s office. Was it the same disappointment he felt that nothing had been resolved in the legal arena, or was it disenchantment in him as a man?
Get on with your lives had been Thorndyke’s counsel. It sounded positive and encouraging—until he remembered Gwyn’s observation, that life could never be normal or content as long as people kept wondering if he were a murderer.
Gwyn led the way back to Caddo Lake. Her old Rover plumed blue smoke as she chugged along the nearly deserted country road. She needed an overhaul badly, or better still a new van or truck. Obviously, she couldn’t afford either. He’d offer to fix it for her, but he knew she’d turn him down. The independence of the woman amazed him.
What was equally astounding was that her strength didn’t weaken his but bolstered it. They’d started off by clashing wills. Now their energies complemented each other—and not just in bed. In spite of their opposing backgrounds, they understood each other.
He’d grown up in modest circumstances and come into a fortune. She’d been raised in the lap of luxury and walked away from it, choosing instead a frugal life. He’d seen the lack of money as a burden. She’d seen the possession of it as a much heavier millstone. He smiled at the ironic term.
Jed remembered a saying attributed to Sophie Tucker, a comedienne from the age of vaudeville: I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Rich is better. Apparently, Gwyn would disagree.
Of course, it wasn’t the wealth she had rejected but what she’d seen it do to people who possessed it. Gwyn worked hard as an animal agent, and she no doubt had ambitions of making money at it. Whatever capital she might accumulate, however, would be an indication of her personal success, not greed for someone else’s.
She drove past Beaumarais and continued on to her place. Jed followed up the narrow cracked driveway and made a mental note to have it repaved. Romeo scampered out from around the side of the building and barked ferociously until he recognized the people who got out to greet him. Then his tail wagged with equal enthusiasm.
Jed moved up to Gwyn’s side and bent down to give the dog a friendly rub behind the ears.
“I have animals to feed.” She straightened up. “And so do you. I guess I’ll see you later.”
The warmth they’d shared at the D.A.’s office had been supplanted by a coolness that sent an icy chill down his spine. His worst fear was being confirmed. The squirming he’d felt when he took her in his arms at his office in Jefferson had been to get away from him, not to ask that they reconsider their differences. Her distress at the D.A.’s office had been real enough, but the short trip from Marshall had given her a chance to reevaluate the situation. Clearly, he’d come up wanting.
“Hey, you’re not trying to give me the brush-off, are you?” He tried to sound playful, but her somber expression made it difficult. Taking another tack, he drew her against him and looked down at her, at the deep blue of her eyes under long lashes. “We have things to talk about, decisions to make.”
“Decisions?” she asked warily. She didn’t pull away or resist but passively allowed him to hold her. The giveaway that her indifference wasn’t total was the delicate tremor he could feel beneath the surface of her skin. It rallied his sagging confidence.
“We’ll start off with the easy ones. Where shall we eat?” He smiled invitingly. “My place or yours?”
She chuckled then. “Trust me, you don’t want to experience my lack of culinary skills. Your very survival could be at stake.”
Should he tell her she already held the key to his survival, to any chance he might have for happiness?
“I guess that means my place for dinner.” He grinned smugly. “How about we compromise and have cocktails here beforehand?”
“Here? Cocktails? My offerings are rather meager, I’m afraid.”
He stroked her cheek and touched his lips lightly to hers. “Let me be the judge of that.”
The guardedness was back in her eyes. Did she think he was talking about sex? Of course he was, but more, much more. Somehow he had to convince her of that.
Gwyn studied him, trying to fathom the full depth of his thoughts. Was he saying he wouldn’t marry her but saw no reason why they couldn’t share a bed from time to time? Would she accept him on those terms until he was cleared of murder? And what if he never was?
“I might have a bottle of white wine in the back of the fridge,” she murmured. “No fancy vintage, though.”
“We can always pretend.”
What else are we pretending? she wanted to ask. That every time we touch each other it isn’t with the secret fear that it might be for the last time?
“Will two hours be enough for you?” he asked, looking at her as if he could see the turmoil coiled deep inside her.
“I guess so—”
“Good.” He released her, turned toward his pickup and called out over his shoulder, “I’ll see you then.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
GWYN WAS STEPPING out of the shower when Jed tapped on the back door. She called for him to come in. “I’ll just be a couple of minutes.”
She would have been ready in time, except one of her horses had managed to cut a foreleg. Not badly enough to require phoning a vet, but treating it had thrown her off schedule.
After using the blow-dryer on her hair, she gathered it, still slightly damp, at her nape with a powder-blue ribbon. She donned loose-fitting tan slacks and a baggy cotton blouse, applied a mere touch of mascara and lip gloss and went out to the kitchen.
He was bent over the open door of her refrigerator, his narrow, jean-clad backside projecting.
“Can I help you?” she asked lightly.
“Thought I’d get out the wine,” he muttered, reached inside and removed a bottle of low-priced California Chardonnay.
“I told you it wasn’t vintage,” she observed when he checked the label.
He shrugged indifferently. “At least it has a cork instead of a screw cap.”
She chuckled softly and got a couple of plain wineglasses from an overhead cabinet. “You’re obviously a connoisseur.” She dug a corkscrew out of a drawer just below it.
His eyes swept her body. “You look very pretty,” he said appreciatively. “Gold suits you.”
She glanced down at her shirt. “It’s ordinary yellow, Jed,” she objected.
“Is it?” He cocked an eyebrow. “I guess I was thinking about the glow of your skin.”
It was a c
lumsy compliment, but it made her blush nevertheless.
Smiling at her discomfort, he opened the wine, poured, raised his glass and held it between them. “Here’s to making beautiful music together.”
A cliché wasn’t the toast she’d expected from him. It made her wonder if he was as nervous as she was. Why? Because he was saying he only wanted to share pleasure with her, but not pain. His body, but not his soul. Could they be separated when you were in love? Wasn’t it all or nothing? She certainly didn’t know how to compart-mentalize her emotions so easily.
“I’ll drink to that.” She lifted her glass and smiled at him over the rim.
“So are you ready?” he asked after their virgin sip.
“Ready?”
“To make music?”
Bewildered, she gazed at him, at the erotic sparkle in his blue eyes. Is this what their relationship had sunken to? Appointments for sex? The worst part was she suspected if that was the condition of their staying together, she just might agree. Making love with Jed Louis wasn’t exactly a hardship, she consoled herself.
Then she saw the violin case sitting on the kitchen table. It took another minute for her to register its significance. He’d literally meant making music. Her face grew hot this time at the realization that she’d completely misconstrued his meaning, his intentions.
“I thought we’d start with something a little less ambitious than the ‘Double Concerto,’” he said in a soft, intimate voice. “Maybe ‘Liebestraum.’”
Gwyn loved nineteenth-century romantic music and Franz Liszt’s sentimental composition was one of her favorites.
“Jed, I haven’t held a bow in several years.” The admission didn’t please her. She hated disappointing him, disappointing herself.
“Neither have I,” he confessed. “So we can warm up together.”
Warm up? She could feel herself heating up from the inside out. “I don’t want to embarrass you.”
He smiled intimately. “By your expertise?”
“By my ineptitude,” she replied humbly, then saw the gleam in his eyes. She didn’t believe they were still talking about stringed instruments.
He took her wineglass and put it with his own on the counter. Hands free, he cradled her hips and held her in front of him, not quite touching, except for the tension that practically crackled between them like an electrical force field.
“I’m willing to take the chance,” he murmured, his eyes focused on her lips. “Are you?”
She smiled up at him, the corners of her mouth curled impishly. “I don’t think you know what you’re letting yourself in for.”
“I’m looking forward to finding out.”
She laughed, then brought her hands up to his shoulders. They were warm and broad and solid. She caught a whiff of his aftershave, woodsy, fresh, arousing. Raising herself on tiptoe, she planted a playful kiss on his lips. Unsatisfied, he wound his arms around her and pulled her closer.
He kissed her, hard, hungrily, impatiently.
She took a deep breath when they finally broke, her eyes wide. It certainly was convenient, she thought, that her cello happened to be in a bedroom.
They tuned for several minutes, then Jed warmed them up with a rousing version of “Turkey in the Straw.” They segued into tunes ranging from early-eighteenth-century baroque to late-twentieth-century jazz. Short pieces mostly, many of them upbeat, a few nostalgic. Time slipped by.
At last, he began the sweet-sad strains of Liebestraum. Gwyn filled in the harmony and could have wept at the melancholy beauty of the piece. She glanced up at Jed, who stood tall and straight, his chin tucked against his instrument, eyes closed as he absorbed the sweeping lyricism of the music.
He’d claimed to be a mediocre fiddler, and maybe Frannie had been objectively correct in her assessment of his talent and technique, but there was a passion in his interpretation that was moving and sincere. Yes, Gwyn liked making music with him very much.
The last strains of Liszt faded into silence. He lowered his fiddle. “Love’s dream,” he said, translating the title of the rhapsody.
“What’s yours, Jed?” she asked.
“Being with you.”
Strangely, the admission seemed to throw her into a funk. He took up his bow once more and fiddled an upbeat version of the Beatles’s “Yellow Submarine.” It made her laugh, and she sawed at a fathoms-deep accompaniment.
“You ready to eat?” he asked brightly when they’d finished.
“I forgot all about food. Now that you mention it, I’m starved. What’s on the menu?”
“Pizza.”
She did a double take. “Pizza?” Neither of them was averse to fast food on occasion, but every time she’d eaten at his house, the cuisine had approached gourmet status.
He looked practically insulted. “Something wrong? Don’t you like pizza?”
“Of course I like pizza. Do you want to call from here?”
“Call? Who?”
“The pizza parlor.”
“Why would I call them?”
“To deliver.”
“You misunderstand. We’re not fixing to have someone else’s pizza. We’re fixing to have mine.”
“Excuse me,” she drawled. “I didn’t know I was fiddling around with an Italian chef.”
“Boy, are you confused. I’m not Italian. I’m Texan, and you can be sure the likes of my pizza have never been seen anywhere on the Italian peninsula.”
“Ah, crayfish and pineapple, I suppose.”
He drew back. “Anybody ever tell you you’re weird?”
“Not lately.”
“Well, take it from me.” He kissed her quickly on the lips. “You’re weird.”
He encased his musical instrument and they left the room. She felt wonderful, though there was just a niggling sense of letdown that they hadn’t taken advantage of the twin bed.
They departed the house through the back door, Jed carrying his violin case, and walked in the dusky light through the stand of oak and sycamore trees. In his kitchen, Jed removed a piece of cloth from a ceramic bowl, punched down a yeasty ball of dough and flattened it on a floured pastry board. From the refrigerator, he retrieved several covered containers and an enamel pan containing tomato sauce.
Gwyn helped him arrange them on the stainless-steel worktable. “June sure is well organized.”
“June?” He shook his head, clearly affronted. “I did it all myself with my trusty little paring knife. Except for the dough. I used my hands to knead that. But it’s all right. I washed them just the other day.”
She snickered. “That’s a relief. Jed, you didn’t really make the dough from scratch, did you? It’s frozen, right?”
He gave her a haughty, withering glance. “It’s not nearly as complicated as you think.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
This time he went still. “That I made it?”
“No, silly. That it’s not complicated. I still haven’t completely mastered the can opener.”
“Poor baby,” he chided. “You truly did have a deprived childhood, didn’t you?”
At first she thought he was mocking her, but a glance at his teasing smile and she knew he was laughing with her, not at her.
“It was terrible,” she agreed, playing along. “While other people were allowed to enjoy tuna salad on toast for lunch, I had to eat fish eggs on crackers. And instead of chicken noodle soup, I was given clear turtle broth.”
He took her in his arms. “I’ll make it up to you, Gwyn. I’ll give you all the things you were deprived of. I’ll teach you to make macaroni and cheese and sloppy joes.”
“You’re so good to me,” she crooned against his chest.
He held her away with his big hands. “But I draw the line at tuna fish
casserole and creamed eggs over toast.” He looked quite ferocious. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but there are some things even I can’t abide.”
She laughed now, imagining him being served those traditional, economical meals by Frannie on a routine basis. Gwyn had tried making a tuna casserole once. If hers in any way resembled the real thing, she wouldn’t miss having one again in the least.
She watched him pat out the dough, stretch it, then pick it up and spin it in the air. “Where’d you learn to do that?” She didn’t mind showing how impressed she was.
“I worked part-time in a pizza joint one year during college.”
“In that case, I’d expect it to be on your most hated list.”
“It wasn’t one of my favorite food groups for a while,” he acknowledged, “but abstinence made the palate grow fonder.”
He spread tomato sauce. She dotted it with sliced mushrooms. He caught her attention when he spread shredded barbecued beef brisket on it. She suggested adding jalapeño peppers.
He raised an eyebrow. “A woman after my own heart.”
Finally, they added generous amounts of mozzarella cheese, before he popped it into the preheated oven.
They slaked their thirst with tall glasses of chilled spring water. He opened a bottle of Chianti while she tossed a salad. She set up a tray with napkins, silverware and plates. The room filled with the mouthwatering aroma of baking bread and tangy spices. The timer dinged. He removed the bubbling pie, cut it into wedges with a wheel, and they carried their dinner to the library.
Although the day had been long and draining, their pleasure in the music they’d made still lingered in their heads. They ate in contented silence, devouring most of the pizza and all of the salad.
“Today made me think—about us,” he commented as he rose from his end of the couch to replenish their glasses with red wine.
“And what did you conclude?” she asked, eager for the answer and afraid to hear it.