Seven Sisters

by Earlene Fowler

  I answered without hesitation, “Why, your family, of course.” Then I instantly regretted my quick response. “Unless ...” I started, thinking Unless your job is to uphold the law. She looked like she might dissolve into tears at any moment. There was no doubt she knew or suspected something about Giles’s murder, and it was clearly upsetting her.

  “Unless what?”

  I turned off the hose and reached for the scraper hanging on one of the metal posts. “Bliss, I’m not sure I’m the person you should be asking about this. Maybe you should talk to Gabe.”

  “No! No way!”

  Her emotional response surprised me. “Bliss, I know it’s your family, but if you know something about Giles’s murder . . . ”

  “Forget it,” she said, pushing herself away from the tree trunk. “It’s not your problem. Put Dash on the hot walker when you’re finished cleaning him up and let Luis know. I have to go take a shower and get ready for tonight. Thanks for your help.” Her tone was clipped and businesslike, but her expression belied her voice. Her gray eyes were full of fear.

  “No problem.” I turned back to Dash, trying to hold back my anger and embarrassment, and started scraping water off his back and flanks. I was irritated at her giving me just enough information to get me involved and curious, but not enough to do anything about. When I was through, I led the horse over to the hot walker, clipped his halter to it, and turned it on. Luis was in the second barn shoveling clean shavings into a stall. After informing him of Dash’s whereabouts, I whistled for Scout and headed for my truck.

  Glancing in my rearview mirror at the house on the hill, I had to agree with Gabe. Sam had picked himself one heck of a family to marry into. There were times I really liked Bliss and times I felt like smacking her upside the head. I smiled to myself. In general, I tended to feel that way about most cops, including my own husband.

  After dropping by the museum to pick up my laptop computer with the vague thought of working tonight, I took Scout home and fed him. After puttering around the house for a few hours, trying not to worry about what Bliss had told me, I finally decided to walk the five long blocks downtown, grab that sandwich, then visit Elvia at the bookstore. Scout gave me a baleful look when I hooked the leash to his leather collar.

  “Sorry, Scooby-doo,” I said, giving him a quick belly rub, which made him happy. “But this town has leash laws, and we’re a law enforcement family. We have to set a good example.”

  At six o’clock, downtown was busy with tourists just arriving for the wine activity weekend, Cal Poly students already hitting the bars, and families out for a stroll and an ice-cream cone. The city had declared the crush an official city celebration with flags hung from the wrought-iron lampposts depicting grape clusters and wineglasses. Even Blind Harry’s had gotten into the spirit with their display window filled with wine books, crystal and pewter wineglasses, decanters, antique wine bags, and carafes, and huge piles of artificial grapes.

  The San Celina Inn, a restored old hotel with a mission-style theme and one of the most popular restaurants in the county, was a little over a mile north, up near the train station, so I walked with Scout down Lopez with no fear of running into Gabe and his ex-wife. I was proud of the mature way I was handling her presence in our life. I bought a roast beef and Swiss cheese sandwich, planning to take it to one of the many benches lining San Celina Creek, which meandered through the center of town, past the mission, and eventually ending at the ocean. Luckily I was across the street when I spotted them at Geppetto’s, a new Italian restaurant next to the ice-cream parlor. Gabe, Lydia, Sam, and Bliss were sitting next to the window, laughing at something Sam was describing with exaggerated hand gestures. I froze, staring at them, people weaving their way around me. They looked so . . . right. Unaware of the tight grip I had on Scout’s leash, his low whine brought me back to reality.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, boy,” I said, loosening my hold. I stooped down and rubbed behind his floppy Labrador ear in apology. He licked my hand in forgiveness. “Let’s go before they see us.”

  I ducked into Gum Alley, a local artistic landmark created and maintained by generations of gum-chewing college kids, to Blind Harry’s back door and punched in the security code. Leaving Scout in the stockroom on a rug that Elvia had provided especially for his visits, I walked through the children’s department to the wooden stairway leading down to the basement coffeehouse. All the way downstairs, while waiting for my coffee order, and winding my way through the Friday night crowd to a table in the back corner, I talked to myself about the picture I’d just seen—there was nothing to worry about, Gabe loved me, I was invited and chose not to go, and, yes, they looked great together, but looks weren’t everything, were they? Okay, so they had history, too, but that was a long time ago. A long, long time ago. Okay, they had a son together. One child. One. He was grown now. And he liked me, too. I was so involved in my silent pep talk between bites of my sandwich I didn’t notice anyone around me until a chair next to me scraped across the wooden floor. I glanced up into Detective Hudson’s smiling face.

  “Is this chair taken?” he asked, sitting down before I could answer. In the background, the folk singer started crooning “Blue Moon.” Detective Hudson cocked his head and listened for a moment. “My mother’s favorite song. She’s a music teacher in Abilene.”

  “I thought you said she was an interior decorator in Dallas.”

  He rubbed his chin and grinned. “You’ve got a good memory. Where’s your husband?”

  My jaw tightened, and I looked away, pretending interest in the folk singer’s performance. “Out to dinner with his son.”

  “And his ex-wife?” he inquired, his voice softly mocking.

  I turned and stared at him, unblinking. “Are you following me?”

  He shifted in the tall wooden library chair. “You’re right, it’s none of my business. Just hate seein’ such a pretty woman look so sad.”

  “Would you cut the bull and tell me what you want?”

  “Just wanted to know if you’d heard anything new on our case.”

  “ ‘Our’ case? I told you, I’m not involved.” I picked up my sandwich and took a small bite.

  He unzipped his black leather jacket, leaned back in his chair, and crossed his legs. Tonight he was wearing bright red bullhide boots. Black shafts stitched with rainbow-colored swirls peeked out from under his Wranglers. No Arrow shirt, only a pure white T-shirt.

  “Those are the ugliest boots I’ve ever seen,” I said. “They look like something a pimp would wear.”

  He grinned at me. “Thank you.” Then he leaned forward, placing both boots flat on the floor. The folk singer finished her song and started another, an Emmylou Harris song, “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues.”

  “You went out to Seven Sisters ranch today.”

  “You are following me!”

  “Did you find out anything?”

  “I wasn’t trying to find out anything.”

  “Sure.”

  “Detective Hudson, listen up, because I don’t plan on repeating myself. I am not going to snoop for you. Not now, not ever. Got it?”

  His face turned serious, and I caught a glimpse of an intensity that startled me. “Benni, I have something important to share with you and I’m telling you because your husband probably already knows or will shortly, and you need to know it, too, whether he thinks so or not. We aren’t dealing with a heat-of-the-moment homicide like it first appeared.”

  “We aren’t?” I said, before realizing he’d won and pulled me into thinking of this as something we were doing together.

  “I suspected as much Tuesday when I was taking the gun and bullet down to the lab in Goleta.”

  “Why?”

  He said slowly, “The bullet didn’t match the gun. The gun found at the scene was a .38 revolver. The bullet came from a 9mm semi-automatic pistol. They cause similar wounds, which is why no one questioned it at first. I’m kind of a gun nut so I knew when the bullet was recovered
that it was a FMJ pistol bullet and not a lead round nose or partially jacketed revolver bullet.”

  “What?”

  “A full metal jacket. Also, we didn’t find a casing at the crime scene, so they must have taken it with them. Add that together with the switching of the guns and you have a premeditated murder, darlin’. Unless you or one of your family members had a grudge against Mr. Norton, it appears one of his family members most definitely had this planned all neat and pretty or was a pretty quick thinker.” He couldn’t resist adding, “Just like I told you that night.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Why would someone take that chance when all of us are there? They could have killed him when he was out in the fields or in his office alone or any number of better times than when a party is going on. I think you’re stretching the facts to fit your theory.”

  His face stayed genial. “You don’t want to face the fact that someone in one of your most prominent families, a family your stepson is marrying into, is nothing but a cold-blooded killer.”

  I stood up. “I think this conversation is over.”

  He caught me again upstairs in the art section where I was glancing through a new book on Outsider artists from the South.

  “Anything worth reading?” he commented from behind me.

  I didn’t turn around. “Don’t you think you’d be serving our county better harassing someone who had some genuine involvement in this case?”

  “Just one more thing before I take your subtle hint and leave. Aren’t you wondering even just a little who called the paper hours before Mr. Norton was shot to say that there was something going down at Seven Sisters?”

  I didn’t answer and in a few minutes I could tell he was gone. I took the Outsider artist book to the front counter where Elvia stood leafing through a book catalog.

  “Put this on my account,” I told the clerk working the cash register.

  “What’s up with the rhinestone cowboy?” Elvia asked. “You two were really going at it over there.”

  “Let’s go outside,” I said.

  We sat on the bench in front of her store, and I told her what he said and how I didn’t want to get pulled into this whole mess.

  “Looks like you already are, amiga. And what else is wrong?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Her look could have withered a hundred-year-old rosebush. “This is your hermana, you dope. I’ve known you since second grade. I know when things aren’t right with you.”

  I described the happy little scene in the Italian restaurant.

  She clucked under her breath, causing me to laugh because she sounded so much like her mother, though I wasn’t stupid enough to say that out loud.

  “She wants him back,” she said.

  “Dove thinks so, too.”

  “Listen to your grandmama, then.”

  “And do what?”

  “Don’t let her have him.”

  “Are you, of all people, telling me to fight for my man? Elvia, that’s the most unliberated thing I’ve ever heard you say. I’m going to report you to the feminist police. They’ll revoke your NOW card.”

  She laughed, poking me with one of her red nails. “Benni Harper, feminist or not, if and when I ever decide a man is mine, you can bet mucho dinero that I’ll never let any other woman have him until I’m through with him. If you need it, I have a great book on poisons at the store.”

  “Maybe I’d better warn Emory.”

  Her smile turned into a tiny frown. “He’s not even close to being important enough for me to poison, so don’t worry about it.”

  We made plans to have lunch at her mother’s next week, then I went back inside and reclaimed Scout from his bed in the storeroom. The walk home went quicker than usual since my mind was reluctantly worrying over the case. Who had called the paper hours before the murder, claiming something was going to happen at the Brown estate that night? Did someone know Giles was in danger? Why not warn him directly, then? Had the killer called? No, it didn’t make sense that anyone planning to kill Giles would want a newspaper reporter there. Unless there was some other announcement that was going to take place. Certainly it wasn’t Sam and Bliss’s engagement that would bring a reporter out to Seven Sisters. Maybe the announcement that the company was going to merge with Norton Winery? As earth-shattering to the Brown family as that might be, to the rest of the world it was merely another family business being eaten up by a corporation. In this case, a corporation owned by one of their in-laws. That information might make the financial page, but it certainly didn’t warrant a reporter being sent out after regular business hours. Then there was that conversation I had overheard—“I’ll do it tonight if I have to,” Giles had said. Do what?

  I was settled into bed reading my new book when Gabe came in at a little before eleven o’clock.

  “How was dinner?” I asked, watching him pull off his leather jacket.

  “It went really well. I’m feeling a little better about things, though Sam still doesn’t have a clue as to how difficult his life is going to be.”

  “Neither did we at that age.”

  He smiled. “No, I suppose not.”

  After he was in bed, he asked, “What did you do this evening? I missed you, by the way.” He nuzzled my neck.

  “Walked downtown with Scout. Went to the bookstore and listened to some music. That folk singer I like who sounds like Emmylou plays on Fridays, and I need to tell you about . . . ” He kissed me long and deep, cutting off my words before I could tell him about talking to Detective Hudson. That was my excuse anyway.

  As we made love, though I fought it, my mind flitted over images of him and Lydia, how beautiful they looked together, how they had made love just as we were doing now.

  “Querida,” he whispered, his shadowed eyes watching my face as his wide, calloused hands cupped my waist. I wondered what he had called Lydia in bed.

  Looking down into the strong, familiar planes of his face, an image of Jack came to me, the only other man I’d made love with. Our fifteen years together went so fast. I barely remembered what his lips felt like on my skin.

  Gabe closed his eyes, and I wondered if he was thinking of Lydia, of the other women he’d been with, of me. Life with this man was so much more complex than I’d ever imagined it could be, not just because of the complicated adult life he brought with him, but also because of our very different histories.

  Then I gave myself over to him, something I never found hard to do with this frustrating, often unfathomable man who made me feel safer than anyone ever had, and for that moment, lost to the hands and lips that had come to know my body so intimately, I told myself the lie all lovers tell themselves, that I was special, that no one had ever made him feel the way I did and no one ever would.

  9

  “I’M GOING TO the office to catch up on some paperwork,” Gabe said at breakfast the next morning. “What time is that wine thing? What’s it called?”

  “Zin and Zydeco. It starts at six-thirty. I’ll give you your ticket now, and we can meet there.” I slid the white ticket across the table. “I’ll save a dance for you.”

  He put it in his wallet, took one last swallow of coffee, and kissed me on the lips. “No way.”

  “For your next birthday, I’m buying you dancing lessons,” I said.

  “Oh, by the way, I ran into Detective Hudson last night. He told me something interesting.”

  “What?”

  I told him what the detective had found out about the bullets. Gabe’s face sobered as he slipped on his jacket. “That’s not good.”

  “So I assumed.”

  He looked at me intently. “Why did he tell you this information? Were you questioning him about his case?”

  “No, he offered the information without me putting bamboo shoots under his nails.”

  Gabe didn’t look convinced. “Please stay out of this.”

  “I am!” Tell him about Detective Hudson, a little voice inside me
encouraged. But the expression on his face told me that it was doubtful he’d believe me. Not with my past record. “I swear I’m avoiding this like poison ivy.”

  Still looking skeptical, he left for work.

  Frustrated, I picked up his breakfast plate, throwing a bagel piece to Scout, then stacking the dishes in the dishwasher. That was enough chores for me today. I hadn’t been out to the ranch for a couple of weeks so I pulled on jeans and a pink cotton tank top, since the news said it would be in the upper eighties, and called for Scout.

  We dropped by the folk art museum first to check on things. Saturday was usually a big day for both tourists and the artists. Many of our co-op artists worked full-time at other jobs during the week and tried to catch up on their inventory over the weekend. True to form, the gravel parking lot was almost full, and I was forced to park in a space near the empty back field. Out front, D-Daddy, my loyal and very inexpensive assistant, was hosing out two oak half barrels once used to age wine, preparing them for plants. He was a seventy-five-year-old Cajun man who’d spent forty years captaining a fishing boat off the coast of Louisiana and was the most dependable assistant I’d ever hired. His daughter, Evangeline, was a member of our co-op.

  “I been thinkin’ maybe some nice red geraniums,” he said, turning one barrel over to drain. “Maybe some impatiens. What do you say, boss lady?” He gifted me with one of his dazzling smiles. With a thick head of white hair he babied with every sort of potion you could imagine, a lean, fit body from years of hauling up fishnets, and the stamina to dance all night, he was, according to Dove, quite in demand down at the Senior Citizen Friday Night Dance Socials.

  “Whatever you want, D-Daddy. I know who the real boss is around here.”

  “The real boss is the boss who bosses the boss.”

  “Ha, he doesn’t boss me. Only thinks he does.”

  “I was talking about Dove,” he said with a cackle.

  “Okay, you got me there. Are you going to the Zin and Zydeco event at the mission?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it, chèr. Save me a dance.”