“You’re right,” Holly said quickly. “I should have thought of that, but you know how I am. I just rush off in all directions. I’ll wait a few months.”
“Hold it right there,” Emma said. “You’re backing off much too fast, and that’s because you’re scared to follow through. I don’t blame you. I’m scared, too.”
“You don’t think I’ve got a point, cher?” Angela said, sounding the faintest bit peeved, Emma thought.
“Maybe.” Emma scooted to the bottom of her chaise and pulled one of Holly’s feet onto her lap. She started a firm massage, hitting the reflexology points hard enough to make Holly jump. It wasn’t news that Harold Chandall didn’t have an imagination.
“Holly,” Emma said, “what you do isn’t tied to what I do. It’ll be nice to hold each other up, though. I don’t want you waiting for me before you deal with your life. If you’re ready, do it. I’m hoping the party I’ve told Orville I’ll host in about two weeks will be a help. If he gets a lot of positive attention and support he won’t care… I’m not even foolin’ myself here, am I? He’ll go mad, but I’m doin’ it anyway. The day after the party, I’m goin’ job huntin’.”
“Good for you,” Angela said. “You don’t think—no, he wouldn’t do anything to really hurt you.”
“He might try,” Emma said. “He’ll wipe mud all over my reputation, that’s for sure.” She wanted to say she didn’t care, but she did.
Holly let out a loud breath. “I’d like to see him try. Everybody in this town knows your character, Emma, and it’s beyond reproach.”
“Thank you,” Emma said.
“Hey,” Holly said, animated again. “I’m workin’ toward full service event plannin’. You could play at parties and weddings and so on. I could put together a trio or a quartet. There’s some talented people in this town, and like Frances says, we don’t hear enough music.”
Emma stopped herself from scoffing. “You think it might work?”
“I surely do.”
“Okay, then. If you ever need someone, call on me.”
“This is great,” Sandy said. “Only I’m not giving up on Poke Around, so it looks like you’re goin’ to have a busy life, Emma.”
“Holly,” Angela said, “do you think Harold would ever get violent?”
“No!” Holly shook her head. “He’s not a bad man, he just doesn’t know how to love someone, is all. He loves rice because it’s made him rich. That’s as close as he gets to emotion.”
Emma chuckled before she could stop herself, and she and Holly laughed together.
“Bun buster!” Holly yelled. “C’mon. Anyone still in the shower, get out here.”
“I’m too tired for exercisin’,” Sandy said. “I feel like I got ironed with one of them old flat irons like my grandma used.”
“Didn’t get you very flat,” Frances said.
At a run, Holly pulled back the chaises and sat herself on the pink stone.
“Ow,” Frances said. “Isn’t that cold?”
“Get behind me,” was all she got out of Holly. “Close. A leg each side of me, so I can hold on to your ankles.”
“I’m not doin’ that,” Frances complained. “I’ll get my panties wet.”
“Won’t be the first time,” Sandy said, and Frances pretended to take her by the neck.
“C’mon,” Holly called. “I’m freezin’ my south pole off here.”
“You don’t have a south pole,” Suky-Jo pointed out, but she knew better than to push Holly too far. She sat behind her, stretched a leg on either side of Holly’s and held her around the waist. The rest followed suit, including Emma, who switched her tunic for a robe.
Angela watched, laughing aloud at the picture they must have made.
“Now,” Holly said, “everyone lean to the left. Up on that bun.”
Sniggering exploded while they tried to keep their balance.
Holly said, “Oh, yeah, one, two, three, roll on that right bun. Feel that fat squeeze?”
Back and forth they rocked, until Sandy, who didn’t have much meat on that part of her anatomy, moaned for mercy.
“Step two,” Holly announced. “A circuit of the pool. Everyone move your right leg forward, now your left. Right and left and bang those buns every time. Keep it up. Not so far to go.”
“We’ve hardly started,” Frances squeaked, but they continued on like a crazy caterpillar. The towels from their hair hit the floor, and faces grew red.
“Now,” Holly said, sounding breathless, “modified pushups, just to give the upper body a workout.”
Two or three pushups and they all lay on their backs, panting, too out of breath to laugh.
“Miz Angela!”
The booming voice of tiny Mrs. Merryfield sounded from the door to the room, and Angela said, “What is it?” in the irritable tone she saved for the woman who ran her house.
“Yep,” Mrs. Merryfield said. “They all as decent as they likely to be. You come on in, boy, and set that down over there. On the safe.”
No one but Mrs. Merryfield mentioned the brass safe Angela kept against one wall of the chamber and in which they assumed she kept her worldly wealth, since she didn’t hold with banks. Mrs. Merryfield, who might be five feet tall in the high-heeled shoes she wore with stockings rolled down to her ankles, mentioned whatever she pleased. Her heavily made-up face and her carrot-red hair styled in finger waves reminiscent of the 1920s never varied. She wore shirt-waist dresses with skirts that didn’t reach her tiny knobby knees.
Angela had stood up to stare toward the door with narrowed eyes. The members wrapped their robes around themselves and remained supine, mostly with their eyes closed, as if not being able to see anyone would mean no one could see them.
“Don’t be shy,” Angela said. “We could use a bit of masculine blood around these parts.”
Emma sat up and made sure she was decent. A boy of about fifteen entered, carrying the biggest floral arrangement of all. To lilies had been added long stalks of pink gladiolus, and a large, white satin bow trailed streamers almost to the floor. Fortunately this tribute came in a huge crystal vase.
“Oh, my,” Angela whispered reverently. “Our Denise surely was loved.”
The boy held Emma’s attention. No kid should be that gorgeous. He kept his eyes averted, but that didn’t stop her from seeing they were large and dark, his brows perfectly arched and his mouth a crying waste on one so young. He’d started to fill out and must already be close to six feet. He tied his very black hair at the nape.
“Whoo-hoo,” Sandy muttered. “Now some experienced woman should take that boy in hand. He needs to be carefully taught.”
“Don’t let him hear you,” Emma said, quietly but firmly. “He’s just a kid doin’ an after-school job.”
“Deliverin’ for Fabulous Flowers,” Sandy said, her chin raised to get the whole picture. “Now that’s a cryin’ shame. I think I’ll see abut givin’ him a job at Casa Viator. I need someone to put on my suntan cream.”
“Is there a Mrs. Lachance here?” the kid said, his voice already a mellow tenor.
“That’s me,” Emma said, bouncing to her feet with an unpleasant sensation that she wouldn’t like what she was getting. When she got closer to the boy she stopped and said, “Aaron? Aaron Moggeridge?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said clearly. The corners of his mouth turned up sharply, and he had dimples in his cheeks. In fact, he looked a whole lot like his uncle Finn.
“You are just like your uncle Finn,” she said.
Aaron’s smile widened.
Emma went first to her purse and took out some money. She popped it into Aaron’s pocket, producing a pink tinge over his cheekbones, and pointed him toward the safe.
He set the vase there and backed away. “We had to go buy the vase,” he said. “It’s pretty.”
“It is,” she said. “You’ve had a lot of deliveries today.” She looked around the room.
“Yes,” he said. “Fred said he’
s never done this much business in a day, even for a wedding. Just about everybody with an account sent flowers.”
Emma blinked, noticing the comment about accounts. “Lots of telephone orders?” she said.
“Every one of them,” he said. “And all the same except yours. That came in later than the others. Shall I tell Uncle Finn you said hello?”
She didn’t dare glance at her friends. “You do that. I expect you’re off up there now.”
“No, ma’am. School in the mornin’. But I’ll tell him when I see him.”
The boy left, and Emma made herself go close to the flowers. Rather than a sympathy card, the butterfly cutout read, “To the most beautiful woman in the world, from the man who can’t live without her.”
She backed away, sickened at Orville’s display of false affection. Going from one display easel of lilies to another, she found every other card bore the same “With sympathy on the death of Denise.” There was even one there from Orville with the same inscription.
Emma bowed her head. An awful blackness crowded into her mind, an anger beyond understanding. “Damn him,” she whispered. “I owe him nothing.”
“What is it?” Sandy asked, sounding anxious. “Emma?”
“I said I don’t owe him anything. Mrs. Merryfield, is there a Dumpster outside?”
“There’s one behind my place,” Lynnette said. “That darn Lobelia Forestier says all businesses have to have a Dumpster. Says it’s a health regulation, and a hefty price we pay for ’em, too, even if they are empty most of the time.”
Emma picked up the vase Aaron had just delivered. “Would you mind if I throw these in there?”
“Of course not,” Lynnette said, sounding uncertain.
“I’ll take ’em,” Mrs. Merryfield said. “I’ll keep the vase, if you don’t mind. Very nice that’ll look in my room.”
Without a word, Emma gave the flowers to the woman and was, as usual, amazed by her apparent strength. With her back straight and her heels clipping on the pink stone tiles, Mrs. Merryfield marched from the chamber.
“Why did you do that?” Suky-Jo said. “Orville’s a snake, but he was trying to make peace. You…well, I don’t know.”
“She could have been a more generous person?” Angela suggested. “Is that what you were trying to say? I think Emma’s given enough and she’s had it.”
Emma hurried toward the dressing rooms. “You bet I’ve had enough. I’ve got every reason to be mad, and I don’t know why I’m trying to act sensibly, but it’s over. Don’t ask me what I’m going to do, because I don’t know, and I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”
“Emma,” Frances said, her big eyes baleful. “Don’t—”
“I’ve had it,” Emma said, disappearing behind a curtain to put on her clothes. “I’m so mad my brain feels swollen. I’ve been betrayed and walked on, and he’s still trying to pull my strings. If I had that Orville here right now, I’d tell him why he’s going to suffer for what he’s done to me. Just as well he’s not. I’m going to plan this. It’s going to put him through hell.”
“Don’t do anything without thinking it through,” Angela said.
“Oh, I’ve thought it through,” Emma said, hurrying from the dressing room, her shoes in one hand, her honey-colored hair standing out in shiny curls and color in her cheeks from her own emotion. “It’s all very simple, really. One good turn deserves another.”
13
Would he be in better shape if he’d killed the guy himself?
The sheet wound around his naked body and legs. Sweat coated him, burned his eyes, plastered his hair to his head. At least he was luckier than some poor bastards. He’d been in one too many battles, and it had messed him up, but he’d learned to cope, and the monster didn’t show up as often as it used to.
What the hell. It hadn’t been battle that messed him up, but his friend. What kind of madness made a man try to kill the one person who would have given his life for him anyway?
Finn tossed. The sounds, the old visuals, began to play in his mind.
“Get down and stay down!”
Damn, he couldn’t get any lower.
A flashlight beam blasted across discarded burlap draped between knots of vines. The rebels had been here before them, and not so long ago, judging from the garbage left behind.
“Go on, Finn,” Bo whispered into the earpiece Finn wore. “Push under that stuff. They’re gonna see us like a fuckin’ shadow show in here. I’m right behind you.”
“Gotcha,” Finn whispered back. Funny, but he couldn’t feel Bo behind him like usual. But he was there. They were a team, a crack sniper team, and Bo was always there.
Stretched as flat as his body would allow, his fifty-caliber rifle on his back, pushing his pack with his left hand and praying it wouldn’t be the one thing that caught the rebels’ eyes, Finn inched forward.
God, keep the fuckin’ snakes away—just this once.
He clamped his teeth together. Just as if he’d summoned it up, a cold, soft, spineless body slithered under his outstretched arm, vibrating ever so gently. Finn couldn’t see the thing. All he could do was stay still.
Oh, Christ, help me. It was big and taking its time. Waiting for the strike, Finn closed his eyes and pressed his face into the mess of slime and fallen vegetation beneath him. The snake slithered across the back of his head, a heavy sonofagun. He dared not make contact with Bo, not while he didn’t know if the reptile had reared up, ready to whip its poisonous fork into any flesh it could find.
Across his neck, the creature flowed.
Finn held his breath. From the weight, he could be toting an anaconda. The head tucked around his neck, under his chin, nuzzling…deciding if it would wrap him up like the filling in a great, big bun and squeeze him until blood popped from every orifice on his body. At least he would be dead before he was dinner—probably.
A scream burst inside Finn’s chest and grew. He didn’t hear it yet, but it would erupt, and the prehistoric beast would snap him up.
Slowly, caressing the skin it touched, the snake whispered over Finn’s ear, retreated, pressed under the collar of his fatigues, began a sensuous probing down, down between his shoulder blades.
The intimate touch withdrew, oh, so slowly.
The head left his shirt, started over his back again, on top of his clothes this time. Slowly, slowly, the great snake traveled over his torso as far as his hips, then headed away, still without a sound, until the weight and the disgust, but not the horror, completely left Finn.
The beam of light had shifted away, and for that he gave thanks.
“Watch out for a snake,” he said into his mic. “Big sucker.”
“Fuckin’ well move,” Bo said. “What’s keepin’ you?”
Finn smiled a little and crawled forward, under the burlap, using the curled fingertips of his right hand to get purchase, and still pushing the pack. He glanced back, searching for the sheen of Bo’s mud-and-cork-smeared face.
“What’s with you?” Bo said. “A little snake make you shit your diaper or what? We don’t have time, buddy. We get them or they get us. Now get going.”
Finn frowned but propelled himself forward, crablike, until he paused to adjust his night goggles and reached for another handful of roots.
Burning pain, a rage of agony, flared up his arm. His fingers extended and stiffened. Squeezing his eyes to clear them, he got his left hand on a pistol. His breath clicked in his throat, tears and sweat mingled, and he fought to stay conscious. The slightest turn of his head and he saw the glitter of a metal spike, driven through his right wrist and into the ground. There should be blood, oceans of it spurting. The stake must be sealing the wound so the bleeding was internal.
He felt warm wetness fill the ground under his palm and saw the blood at last, forced up between his fingers. What he didn’t see was the enemy. Pistol in his good hand, he rose onto his right hip as far as he could without tearing at the metal in his wrist.
Nothing, not a sou
l. “Bo, I’m down.”
Bo didn’t answer.
“I’m down,” Finn repeated. “Can’t get up. Shit, I’m bleedin’.”
“Put your face down,” Bo said at last. “Keep still while I make sure the bastard’s gone.”
Finn rested the side of his helmet on his outstretched arm and kept his grip on the pistol.
Life moved into his sight. Big, green and menacing, a figure rushed at him, a figure dressed like he was and holding a machete in both hands.
He got one shot off. Wide.
The machete flashed through the night, and Finn knew where it was intended to strike and what it would sever. Another shot went wild.
“Stop! Bo, for God’s sake, stop, you freakin’ idiot.” A battalion commander’s familiar voice blasted in Finn’s ear.
A noise, half scream, half sob, broke over him. Another shot sounded. And Finn felt himself torn apart. A heavy thud moved the ground in front of him.
His buddy, his lifeline when everything else failed, fell like a tree, his face inches from Finn’s. A hole between Bo’s open, flat eyes showed where someone’s bullet had felled him. Blood ran from his nose and mouth.
The lights went out.
Shaking, breathing through his open mouth, Finn dragged himself to sit up in the bed. He was all the way out of sleep, not that he’d rested well. He would have laughed if the old dead ache weren’t back in his hand, and if the scars on his back and arms, the ones Bo made when he missed Finn’s neck with the machete, didn’t itch and throb and bunch together as if fingers were twisting the welts.
He blinked at the ceiling, where shadows of oak leaves outside the window swept to and fro hard in the wind that moaned and slashed at the house. Finn hadn’t bothered to close the curtains, and he saw how rain came sideways at the glass. The clattering sounded like handfuls of ground grit.
Months had passed since the last time that night had come to him so clearly. Why now? Because he’d been around death again and expected—no, feared—there would be more?
Dammit, he was a big boy. He’d returned to Pointe Judah for a number of reasons, one of which he hadn’t discussed with anyone. Sooner or later he would have to or he would never find out the truth about his father.
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