Warily eyeing the drop-off, I eased the tires through the loose stuff, fighting the wheel, trying to force my lightweight car in the proper direction. Halfway across, thinking I’d finally gotten the hang of it, I raised my eyes and saw a blue pickup truck hurtling straight at me.
I jerked to the right; the truck swung to the left. If I hadn’t committed the cardinal sin of stomping on the brake I would have been all right, but brake I did, and sent the Escort in a sickening backward slide across the narrow shoulder. One rear wheel caught in a shallow ditch. The car shuddered, and stopped.
I gasped for breath, heart pounding like a trapped bird. I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to. I dropped my head to the steering wheel and waited for all the adrenaline, or whatever it was, to switch off.
The Escort’s door flew open. “My God!” a voice thundered in my ear.
I’d only thought I couldn’t move. With a startled yelp, I flung myself across the crazily canted seat.
The man grunted. “You’re not hurt.” It sounded like an accusation. “The way you were draped over the wheel, I thought you were dead.”
Head, shoulders and black cowboy hat filled the doorway. His face was dark with tan and beard-shadow, dominated by a square jaw and heavy, sharply arched Tom Selleck eyebrows. Unfortunately, the resemblance ended there.
“I’m not hurt, no thanks to you.” My voice trembled with anger. Fear had turned my body into an unmanageable lump of sludge. I tried to slide back under the wheel and lost a sandal in the process; the limp skirt twisted around my hips and crawled up my back.
“Stop looming over me.” I yanked furiously at the flimsy material. The motion popped open the rest of the blouse buttons and sent my fingers flying. He had the grace to retreat, but not before I saw a grin pull at his mouth.
“You could have killed us both,” I snapped.
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” he said, smoothly polite.
“Somebody should show you people how to build a road. Even without insane drivers this one is stupidly dangerous.” I righted myself in the seat. The buttons that mattered were fastened and my legs covered decently enough.
He hunkered down by the open door so we were eye-to-eye, and pushed the incredibly dusty hat off his forehead, exposing a white band where the sun hadn’t reached. Heavy-lidded eyes gave him a lazy appearance, deceptive, probably, from the tough look of him.
“All right,” he said, “I apologize for the road and for my driving. I just want to make sure you’re not hurt.”
“I’m perfectly all right.” Exhaustion took over. Whatever fueled my anger had burnt out.
“Let’s see if you can walk.”
“No, I’m fine. Just leave me alone.” I leaned back and closed my eyes.
“Look, I haven’t got all day,” he said finally. “I’ve had enough of harebrained women today to last a lifetime.” He reached in and grabbed my arm.
My eyes flew open and I shook free of his hold. I didn’t need to be reminded that I was a million miles from nowhere, and he a total stranger. My flash of fear must have been evident; he dropped his hand as if he’d touched an explosive device and stood back.
“You’ve hurt your knee,” he said, pointing to my scraped shin, which must have banged against the steering column. “I’m not leaving until I’ve seen you walk.” Exasperation crisped each word.
The abrasion was more vivid than debilitating. However, being a Grand Master of Stubborn myself, I recognized champion stuff when I saw it. I struggled out on my own, wincing when my bare foot touched the gravel. With an eloquent grimace of disgust he reached into the front seat and retrieved my sandal, gingerly supporting my elbow as I slid it on.
He was so obviously incensed by my show of fear and general bad attitude that I felt a smile building and shreds of good humor returning. I walked the few feet he seemed so determined to see and windmilled my arms, and flexed my knees for a bonus. Actually, I was rather relieved to find that, other than the usual aches and miseries from riding too long in a small car, my body was all in one piece and worked as well as could be expected.
I turned, ready to make amends for my foul humor. “There. You see, everything works.”
But he was staring at my car. Heart-in-mouth I did the same; it clung perilously close to the edge.
“Oh, please,” I begged shamelessly. “Would you drive it back on the road for me?”
“Sure. Where are you going?”
“To Minnie Darrow’s.”
He swung around. Raw hostility filled his face. I caught my breath.
“I should have known,” he muttered, then folded his long body into the Escort. He slammed the gear in place and gunned the motor. With a spray of gravel and debris the car lurched back on the road. He was still scowling when he stepped out.
“Look,” I said before he could walk away. “What is all this about Minnie Darrow?”
He took a cigarette and a kitchen match from his shirt pocket. The cool, gray-brown eyes never left my face as he fired the match with a quick snick on his fly zipper. He lit the cigarette and exhaled a cloud of smoke.
“If you’re smart, you’ll go back where you came from.” He tossed the dead match to the gravel and ground it in with his heel. “I don’t know who you are, or what you’re here for, but we’ve got enough trouble without anyone else adding to it.” His calm manner was belied by rigid tendons that stood out on his neck and wrists. Abruptly, he turned, stalked back to his truck, and climbed in.
“Wait!” I called, shocked out of my stupor. But he drove off, leaving me to choke in his dust.
Two
My mind reeled with questions. What was I getting into? Who was this guy anyway, and what did he mean by trouble? And how could my presence add to it? I tried to remember what Minnie had said on the telephone, with little success. She had been upset and I thought she sounded scared, but that had been my interpretation. I should have asked more questions and done less mother-henning. And what about the people in the restaurant? Had their reaction to Minnie Darrow’s name been more than the rude curiosity I’d taken it for?
As if on signal, the thunderheads returned to darken the sky; tendrils of shadow reached through the trees and across the road. Silence bore oppressively down around me, broken only by the clack and whir of insects.
With an uneasy glance over my shoulder, I hurried to the car. Ten more miles, maybe, then I’d get some answers from Minnie. And if I didn’t like the look of things, I reassured myself, I could always leave.
The car careened down the road; heavy pink dust boiled up in clouds beneath the tires. A misty haze prickled my nose and clung to skin and clothes with gritty tenacity. It was stifling.
Roger was right, I thought morosely, this side trip was a stupid idea. I could be getting into some kind of unsavory mess, and what did I expect to gain?
The manuscript for one thing. If it was finished, I could take it back to Chicago with me and stop worrying about deadlines. If not, ugh, I didn’t even want to think about that possibility. All the old doubts came flooding back. What did I know about publishing anyway?
Leaving my chosen profession of teaching had been traumatic enough without throwing myself into a new field where I had no expertise. No wonder my confidence was in shreds.
It had only taken four years of force-feeding junior high kids to realize that my dreams of imparting knowledge to hungry little minds were just that—dreams. Facing the fact that I was totally uninterested in the vast sea of reluctant learners left me shattered, as if the loving, giving side of me had been hopelessly damaged in the process. At least I had enough sense to know my usefulness as a teacher was limited, and the time had come to change course.
The job market landed another blow. The only people impressed by my literature degrees and teaching credentials were my parents, who were eager to welcome me back to the bosom of suburbia. When Dad finally accepted the fact that I wasn’t going to move back in and help him run his constant string of local campaig
ns—Water Board this time—he urged me to approach the Sweeney Publishing Group and Roger. After a particularly harrowing string of rejections, desperation won out, and here I was. For better or worse.
My blouse stuck to my back in an uncomfortable wet blotch. I tried to run my fingers through my tangled hair. Always unruly, it was practically standing on end, windblown, matted with sweat and dust. Balls of grit rolled under my fingers when I brushed them across my cheek. I wanted a shower. I wanted to sit on something that didn’t careen around like a drunken horse. I wanted to put my feet up…a cold beer would be nice.
Damn it, what I really needed was a success, I thought, trying to pull myself from the dumps. And with Minnie’s manuscript for the lead title the book series would be a success. I was sure of it. Minnie was a good, dependable writer who’d been turning out nicely-researched articles for Western True Adventures for several years, well before I came to work at Sweeney. She wouldn’t fail me.
Of course, I knew nothing about Minnie’s personal life except that she had grown up in Iowa and was raised by an older sister who had died several months ago. I had no idea if Minnie was married, or how she earned a living. She certainly couldn’t support herself with what Sweeney paid for a few articles. For all I knew she could be the Mayflower Madam of Iowa. And did it really matter? I felt the old enthusiasm stirring. After all, there is something wonderfully fascinating about Ladies of the Night and their various dens of iniquity.
And as for the Cro-Magnon who’d run me off the road…well, so much for the code of the West. Who needs John Wayne, anyway?
I spotted Minnie’s mailbox with the relief a racer must feel when he sees the checkered flag. The last lap. Turning onto a dirt road that seemed as smooth as city cement after all those rocks, I followed the narrow track up an incredibly steep incline threaded through thickets of pine trees and scrub. The Escort groaned as I shifted into second gear.
“Come on, baby, we’re almost there.”
A sharp turn brought me to the top of the hill where the road disappeared abruptly at the edge of a clearing. An immense hewn-rock house rose from the naked ground, a desolate relic. Two tall posts and a few scattered pickets were all that remained of a wooden fence. There was no yard, or grass, or obvious place to park, so I stopped by one of the sentinel posts, put on the brake and stepped out.
A wooden verandah ran across the front of the house and wrapped around the corner. Several supporting posts were missing, causing the roof to sway in a frowzy line across the stark facade. Crude letters carved or burned into the lintel above the steps were barely discernible: Hal way H lt.
There was a daunting aura about the crumbling sandstone, an eerie look of flatness, as if there were nothing behind the limpid curtains hanging in the windows. A trick of the light, perhaps. Nevertheless, I was strangely reluctant to approach the house, reminded of something Minnie had told me, some old-timer’s description of the house: “Halfway to heaven or halfway to hell, depending on which way you was going.” It sounded like an epitaph.
Stalling for time, I took a small hairbrush from my shoulder bag and cleared the tangles from my hair. Every sound—the bag’s zipper, bristles pulling through hair—seemed magnified in the intense silence. I looked around warily. Like the road, the trees stopped at the edge of the clearing. Beyond the house stood a ramshackle barn and out-buildings in various stages of collapse, then the hill rolled endlessly away into a distant purple horizon.
The scene had the look and feel of an Andrew Wyeth painting, that same sense of decay and sorrow hiding under rustic tranquility. Nothing moved. I wanted to yell or throw something.
Instead, I retrieved my sash from the car and slammed the door with a satisfying bang, then yelped with surprise when something wiggled against my legs and licked my hand.
A black and white shepherd-type dog had come out of nowhere to squirm against my feet, begging for a kind hand, but not expecting one, poor thing. I dropped to my knees, relieved to find some other living thing in this godforsaken place, and lavished him with coos and hugs. The dog moaned with ecstasy, lolloping me with a long, wet tongue. Obviously, I had a friend for life. I had also added the pungent smell of dog to other sins of disarray.
Brushing at my skirt again, I tied the sash and headed for the house. The porch listed at one end, but seemed sturdy enough. I knocked on the door and squinted down the length of the porch, trying to picture what it must have looked like in its heyday. Wicker furniture maybe, a swing, virile cowboys lounging on the railing ogling wrapper-clad hoydens.
The door opened without warning and caught me daydreaming.
“Oh,” I said stupidly, and stumbled over the dog, which groveled at my feet. “Ms. Darrow?”
“Yes?” She held the door partially open, a plain statement of “name your business, or be on your way.”
“Thea Barlow.” I held out my hand.
She barely came up to my chin, a little dumpling of a woman, one of those who age in a lump, with bosom, waist and hips becoming one. In spite of her shape, or perhaps in defiance of it, she wore denim pants and a white shirt with a red farmer bandanna at the collar. Her hair was a lively mass of graying curls that bobbed with every movement.
She ignored my hand, so I added, “I’m from Sweeney Publishing Group.”
“Oh! Thea, of course.” She sprang into animation, her smile revealing a deep dimple in her finely-lined, doughy cheek.
“I’d forgotten this was the day you were coming.” The sweetness of her tone did not quite reach the alert brown eyes that were giving me a thorough once-over. “You’re younger and prettier than I expected.”
With a start, she noticed the dog writhing belly down on the porch. “Oh! Don’t let him in!” she said in a frightened little voice, and moved as if to shut the door in his face.
“Your dog?”
“Well, I guess so, if nobody comes to claim him.” She glanced at him uncertainly. “He just showed up the other day. I have a bad ear and thought it might be a good idea to have a dog around to raise a ruckus if need be. Protection, you know.” She drew me in and closed the door.
What she thought that obsequious beast would ever save her from, I’ll never know.
“But I don’t want him in the house,” she said, nervously. “I’ve never had a pet before.”
I could tell.
We stepped further into the oak-paneled hallway. Never having been in a whorehouse before, either new or old, the temptation to gawk was overpowering.
“So this is Halfway Halt,” I said. “I was really surprised when you told me you’d moved out here.”
A narrow stairway with a carved and burnished banister rose to the second floor. To my right was a large room with an enormous fireplace filling the far wall. But it was the room on the opposite side of the hall that drew me in, a magical Victorian parlor exquisitely furnished down to the finest detail. No whorehouse red here, but soft shades of rose and celery green that enhanced the elaborate whorls of a cabbage flower carpet. Tall narrow windows led the eye up to a high pressed-tin ceiling untouched by decorator’s art. A grayness seemed to hover there, decades of mustiness that refused to be conquered.
“Do you like it?” Minnie rushed by me, fussing with the placement of a needlepoint cushion, moving a cut glass vase of peacock feathers an inch to the right, checking my face for a reaction.
“It’s marvelous,” I said. And indeed it was.
“Well, the woodwork needs more attention, but I’ve done the best I can with precious little help.” She twitched the heavy lace curtain to better cover the window frame. “And I can’t find a soul brave enough to tackle that ceiling.”
She continued to fuss and I turned to the great room across the hall. Masculinity prevailed here. A few dark rugs were scattered over the wood floor, and heavy leather-covered chairs clustered around a fieldstone hearth streaked with soot. Shafts of waning sunlight filtered around the edges of brocade draperies providing a dim, hazy illumination. A magnificent mah
ogany bar filled the far end of the room, and at it, to my surprise, stood the cowboy of my dreams. He could have been a remnant from an old Western movie, one high heeled boot braced against the gleaming brass rail.
He wore a scarred leather vest that hung open over fawn-colored pants and a light shirt. But it was the hat that made my heart sing—a pale cream Stetson with a wide curving brim and a foot-high, uncreased crown. An open cigar box sat on the bar in front of him, and he studied something—a piece of paper or photograph—balanced on the box’s rim.
He stood so still, and the picture was so perfect, that I thought he was a mannequin. I must have gasped when he moved, because he looked up, stared for a moment, then gathered up the cigar box and walked toward me with brisk, cocky steps.
The room was long and the lighting dim. The sound of leather heels against bare boards caromed off the walls. The appearance of youth dropped away as he approached. When he stood in front of me I could see he was just the husk of that mythic man I’d envisioned.
He was old and small, but finely made, dressed to the hilt and well aware of it. A black silk scarf circled his throat with the elan of an ascot, but looked nothing like one.
Sweeping off that incredible hat, he revealed a sparse thatch of bone-white hair and pale blue eyes that sparkled at my obvious appreciation.
“Oh, there you are, Helby,” Minnie said, coming up behind us. “I’d like you to meet Thea Barlow. Thea is my editor, come from Chicago. This is Helby Enright, Thea. Lives up the road.”
He gave a terse nod and offered a hand liberally sprinkled with age blotches, the skin rising in delicate parchment wrinkles. Well into his seventies, I thought. A slight tremor shook his fingers, but the grasp was firm.
All the Old Lions (A Thea Barlow Mystery, Book One) Page 2