Winter Roses

by Diana Palmer

  Hayes pulled up at her front steps, where she and the children were wielding paint brushes, touching up the fading white of the door facing and wood trim. Minette, in jeans and a sweat shirt, got up, glaring at Hayes.

  He glared back. “I need to ask a favor.”

  She looked furious. “I don’t owe you any favors, Sheriff Carson,” she said icily.

  “I know that. But I have to put Ivy some place where she’ll be safe. Drug dealers may be after her.”

  Minette’s eyes narrowed. She seemed to be biting her tongue.

  Carson just looked un comfortable. “The county will pay for her upkeep,” he said curtly. “It’s only for a few days.”

  Minette looked worriedly at her siblings.

  “I’m going to have one of my deputies stay here, too,” he added. “If you don’t mind.”

  “I always wanted to open a hotel,” Minette told him irritably. But when she saw Ivy’s consternation, she went to her and smiled. “I’m sorry. You may have noticed that the sheriff and I don’t get along. But you’re welcome to stay. Aunt Sarah would love the company. I’m at work most days until late.” She looked at Hayes viciously. “When I’m not overdosing men, that is.”

  “Cut it out,” he bit off, avoiding her eyes.

  Ivy knew at once that Merrie York was out of luck where Hayes was concerned. Something powerful was at work between these two. And it wasn’t business.

  The little girl, Julie, walked over to Hayes and looked up at him. “Do you got any little kids?” she asked softly.

  “Careful, baby,” Minette said softly, eyeing Hayes. “Rattlesnakes bite.”

  He glared at her. She glared back.

  He looked down at Julie, who was blond like her half sister. “No, I don’t have any kids,” he said a little stiffly.

  The child cocked her head at him. “That’s very sad,” she replied, sounding very grown up. “My sister says little kids are sweet.” She frowned. “You don’t look like a rattle snake.”

  “Julie, would you get me a rag from the kitchen, please?” Minette asked her.

  “Okay, Minette!” She ran up the steps and into the house.

  “You’re very welcome to stay with us,” Minette told Ivy, her smile welcoming.

  “I’ll run you back to the boarding house to pack a bag,” Hayes said.

  Ivy hesitated. “Listen, are you sure this is necessary?”

  “Mrs. Brown isn’t going to be much protection if Rachel’s boy friend comes looking for you,” he said.

  She grimaced. “All right, then.” She smiled at Minette. “I can cook,” she said. “If you need help in the kitchen.”

  The other woman laughed. “Always. Aunt Sarah and I share kitchen duty, but neither of us is overly skilled. Still, we haven’t poisoned anyone.”

  “Yet,” Hayes enunciated coldly.

  She stood up, eyes blazing. “Someday,” she said slowly, “the truth is going to bite you in the neck! I didn’t kill your brother. He killed himself. That’s what you can’t accept, isn’t it, Hayes? You want a scapegoat…!”

  “You bought the drug for him that he over dosed on!” Hayes shot back.

  Minette stood erect, her face pale. “For the twentieth time, I never used drugs, or got drunk, or put a foot out of line in my life,” she said proudly. “So how exactly do you think I’d know where to find illegal drugs in this town?”

  He looked odd.

  “Never mind,” she continued. “I’m tired of beating a dead horse. Ivy, we’ll get a room ready for you. The one thing we do have plenty of in this white elephant,” she indicated the two-story Victorian house, “is room.”

  “Thanks,” Ivy replied. “Hayes?”

  He was staring at Minette, frowning. “What? Yes. We’ll go now. Minette, I’d like to speak with Marsh.”

  “He’s out in the barn, fixing a saddle.”

  Hayes took Ivy to the car, and he went to the barn. He was back in a couple of minutes. He got in the car and drove away.

  Ivy didn’t ask about his feud with the other woman, but she gathered that it had something to do with his brother’s death. Everyone knew that Bobby Carson had died of a drug overdose three years earlier, just before Rachel went to New York. Why he thought Minette was responsible was curious. She was known locally for her hard stand on drug use and her support of antidrug programs in the schools.

  “She’s very nice,” Ivy began.

  Hayes didn’t answer. “You’ll be safe. Marsh will keep you safe. Nobody would think of looking for you out there, but even if they did, you’d see them coming a mile away. Not that I think the boy friend will come all the way down here, since he isn’t sure you’ve got that journal. But it’s best to be cautious.” He glanced at her. “I still think Merrie and Stuart would have let you stay with them.”

  She didn’t answer him, either.

  The next day, she authorized Hayes to open the safe-deposit box in the Jacobsville bank, with Police Chief Cash Grier and DEA Agent Alexander Cobb as witnesses. He picked her up and brought her to the bank.

  It was a haul. Rachel had names, locations, dates, quantities of drugs shipped and the point of origin for a huge cocaine shipment. Implicated in the drug trafficking were her boy friend, a local Jacobsville resident and two men who sat on Jacobsville’s city council two years earlier.

  “This is great.” Cash Grier spoke for the other men as he read through the documentation. “This is enough evidence to shut down one of the biggest pipe lines of illicit drugs in south Texas.”

  “We can certainly use it,” Cobb agreed.

  “Amen.” Hayes smiled at Ivy. “Rachel made up for a lot with this,” he said. “Regardless of her motive.”

  Ivy wondered about that motive. She didn’t say it aloud, but she had a feeling that Rachel had been blackmailing somebody. She probably never expected to die, or to have played a big part in shutting down the drug trade in Jacobs County. It was the one noble act of Rachel’s life.

  It was decided that Ivy would stay at Minette’s house. When she packed up her few things and told Mrs. Brown and Lita what was going on, they both tried to get her to stay.

  “I have my father’s old shotgun,” Mrs. Brown said.

  “I’m not afraid of drug dealers,” Lita added.

  “I know that, but it’s going to take professionals to keep this from escalating,” Ivy told them. “I don’t want either of you in danger. Okay?”

  They agreed, reluctantly.

  Ivy left Rachel’s ashes in her room for the time being. Once the fear of retribution from Rachel’s boy friend was past, she could take care of the funeral.

  She was given a room next to Minette’s, and she became part of the family over night. Aunt Sarah, a tiny little woman with white hair, was a live wire. The children had sweet, loving natures. Minette had a wicked sense of humor.

  “I’m surprised that Hayes would bring you here,” she commented over steak and biscuits. “He really hates me.”

  “Maybe that’s why,” Ivy chuckled. “He seems to think I might be a target.” She shook her head. “If anything happened to the kids,” she added worriedly.

  “Don’t you worry,” Minette assured her. “We have Marsh Bailey out in the bunk house. He was an IPSIC shooter. That’s pistol competition,” she clarified. “He worked for the U.S. Marshal’s Service, and he never misses. God help the outlaw who shows up here uninvited.”

  “I hope he won’t,” Ivy said. “But Rachel’s boy friend has more to lose than most people. He might figure out that I have the journal she left, and come after me.”

  “I don’t think he’s that stupid,” Minette ventured, sipping coffee. Her soft eyes pinned Ivy’s across the supper table. “Think about it. There’s a journal floating around that has names and ad dresses and the potential to explode the local drug trade. You don’t know who’s got it or where it is, but you know you’ll get blamed if the authorities find it. Would you walk into the arena, or would you run for your life?”

&
nbsp; Ivy felt better. “You know,” she said, “I think I’d run.”

  Minette smiled. “I think I would, too.”

  For the next two days, Ivy stayed with the Raynors. She got her ledgers from the boarding house and drove her little VW back to Minette’s house. Hayes came by to check on her and mentioned that they’d heard nothing from their informants about the New York connection to the drug trade. However, he did say that the baker had been arrested and charged with drug trafficking. Julie Merrill was still on the loose, however, and nobody, including her father, had any idea where she’d gone.

  “We did phone the Brooklyn precinct that worked your sister’s death,” he added. “It seems that her boyfriend was involved in an accident yesterday. He’s in the hospital and not expected to live.”

  “What happened to him?” she exclaimed.

  “It seems he walked into an elevator shaft in his own apartment building,” Hayes told her. “There were two eyewitnesses. They have mob ties, of course. The word on the street is that Smith was trying to trespass on another drug dealer’s territory.”

  “Tough,” Ivy said, without any real regret. The man who’d helped Rachel feed her habit had gone the same way she had. It was a fitting sort of end. She said so.

  “I have to agree.”

  “Then, do you think I could go home?” she ventured.

  He hesitated. “I can’t stop you. Smith won’t be a problem, but there are some shadowy members of the drug cartel still on the loose. You won’t know who they are.”

  “I have an answer to that,” she replied.

  “What?”

  “Let Minette do a story about the Jacobsville drug link and say that all Rachel’s records are now in the hands of law enforcement,” she suggested. “That should put a kink in their operation—and keep them out of Jacobsville.”

  He began to smile. “I like the way you think. Okay. I’ll talk to her about it.”

  “And I can go home? I still have Rachel’s funeral to arrange.”

  He nodded. “Go ahead. If you need me, you know where I am.”

  “Yes, I do. Thanks, Hayes.”

  “No problem.”

  She did go back to the boarding house, but she was nervous, even under the circumstances. She didn’t want to endanger Mrs. Brown and Lita. On the other hand, she hadn’t felt right about endangering Minette’s young siblings. If only Stuart was still speaking to her. She agonized over his defection to the pretty debutante. He’d just dropped Ivy like a rock, and when she needed him most. If she only knew why!

  The next day, she drove out to the cemetery, where the funeral home director and his assistant were waiting. The trees were all bare. It was a gray day. It was misting rain as well. It looked such a forlorn place with the cold wind whipping Ivy’s hair around.

  A small grave had been dug next to her father’s, to receive Rachel’s urn. There wasn’t anyone there except herself. She had thought of putting the obituary notice in the paper, but Rachel had left plenty of enemies in Jacobsville, and few friends.

  She was wearing a long gray dress with an equally long tweed coat. The wind was crisp and cruel. She’d been awake half the night thinking about Stuart and wondering what she’d done to make him stay away. They’d been so close in New York. Now, he didn’t seem to remember her at all. At least when he’d disliked her, she’d seen him from time to time. She ached to be with him. Even just the sight of him at a distance would feed her hungry heart. But apparently that wasn’t going to happen.

  The wind blew coldly around her as she stared at the bronze urn that contained the only human remains of her sister. She’d never felt so alone.

  The funeral director’s assistant, who was also a lay minister, said the words over Rachel’s ashes. As Ivy listened, she was sorry that her sister’s life had been so wasted, so full of selfish greed. If only Rachel had been different. If only she’d cared about Ivy. She closed her eyes as the prayer ended, hoping that it had helped the older woman in her path to the other side of life.

  When she looked up, she was astonished, delighted, shocked to see Stuart York striding toward her. He wasn’t smiling. His wide-brimmed dress hat was pulled down low over his eyes. He was dressed in city clothes, a gray suit that made him look distinguished. He paused at the graveside and looked down at Ivy, who couldn’t hide her delight, or her wounds.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said curtly. “I couldn’t find out what time you were having the service. If I’d known, Merrie would have come down, too.”

  “I didn’t think anyone would come,” she said simply.

  His eyes narrowed. “You didn’t think, period,” he said shortly. His big hand caught her small one and held it tight. She looked up at him, feeling suddenly safe and confident, and tears misted her eyes.

  The funeral home director gave Ivy his condolences, along with the lay minister, and then beckoned to the workman to put the urn in its resting place.

  “Do you want to stay for this?” Stuart asked.

  She nodded. “It’s such a sad way to die,” she said.

  His hand tightened. He didn’t say anything.

  He walked with her to her vehicle, and his eyes said what he thought of it. “You’d be safer riding a one-wheeled bicycle,” he said flatly.

  “It doesn’t look like much,” she agreed, “but it does run. Mostly.”

  He turned her to him, taking her gently by the shoulders. “I saw you ride off with Hayes Carson the morning after we got in,” he said coldly. “You were with him again the next day.”

  “Yes,” she said, surprised, “because he and Chief Grier…”

  “…had to oversee the opening of the safe-deposit box,” he finished for her, dark eyes flickering. “You could have called and told me that, Ivy.”

  “Yes?” Her own eyes began to glitter. “And you could have called me, instead of riding around town with your pretty debutante visitor!”

  The hard look on his face melted. He began to smile. “Were you jealous?” he taunted softly.

  “Were you?” she shot right back.

  He laughed. It was a wicked sort of laugh.

  It made her cheeks color. She lowered her eyes to his chest. “I thought you’d had second…I mean, I thought…”

  He put his forefinger gently across her lips. “So did I,” he whispered.

  She met his eyes and couldn’t look away. He bent and drew his lips tenderly across her soft mouth. She started to reach up, but he caught her arms and held them down.

  “No,” he whispered. “Not in a cemetery.”

  She cleared her throat. “You started it.”

  “And you have no will power,” he teased. “I love it.”

  She laughed shyly.

  “Why did you go out to Minette Raynor’s house with Hayes?”

  “How did you…?”

  “Two thousand pairs of curious eyes live in this town,” he said with affection. “The druggist and the clerk at the bank mentioned it, even before Cash Grier told me the whole story. Which you could have done,” he added shortly.

  She started to argue, but she realized that he was right. She moved restlessly and didn’t look at him. “My pride was hurt, when I heard about you riding around with that woman.”

  “She was visiting her uncle. I’m doing a business deal with him. She needed a ride to town, and I obliged.” He tilted her chin up. “Which I could have let Chayce do. But I’d seen you with Hayes and I figured somebody would see me with her. In fact,” he added wickedly, “I drove right by Hayes Carson’s office with her. He saw us.”

  “Rachel gave us enough information to hang the local drug lords out to dry,” she said. “Maybe, in one way, she redeemed herself. How about the jewelry?” she added.

  “I flew up there yesterday and had the millionaire’s attorney meet me at the bank,” he told her. “He was astonished that you’d want to give him back what amounted to a king’s ransom. He wants to give you a reward.”

  “I wouldn’t take one,�
� she said.

  He smiled. “I told him that. Know what he said?”

  “What?”

  “That you were one in a million, and I was a very lucky man.”

  “You weren’t thinking that, I bet.”

  “Not at the time, no.” He frowned. “You haven’t said why you went to Minette’s with Hayes. He hates her. Everybody knows he thinks she gave his brother the drugs that killed him.”

  “He said that Marsh would watch out for me, and that the place was situated so that you could see someone coming two miles away. There’s no way to sneak up on it.”

  “He’s right, there—Marsh was a federal agent. But so was Chayce, who works for me. You’ll be safer at my house.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  He grimaced and took a long breath. “I asked Merrie if she could take a few days off and come home to chaperone me with a woman. She laughed her head off when I had to admit that it was you.”

  “She would.”

  He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed the palm. “I’ll follow you to your boarding house. You can leave your car there and come with me in mine.”

  She hesitated. “I’ve only just come home from Minette’s place, and I’ve been worried about my boarding house friends. Rachel’s boy friend is on his way out of the world,” she added, pausing to explain what had happened. “But it’s still possible that one of the cartel people could come looking for me. If they see my car there, it might put Mrs. Brown and Lita in danger,” she cautioned.

  “Suppose we leave it at Hayes’s office?”

  “Would he mind?”

  “Hell, no. Hayes only lives for the adrenaline rushes his job gives him. That’s why he’s never married. No woman in her right mind would marry him.”

  “He and Minette are like flint and steel together,” she commented.

  “Yes, I know,” he replied. “One day, there’s going to be a fearful explosion between them, and anything could happen. That’s why I’ve discouraged Merrie.”

  “Merrie isn’t stupid, you know,” she said gently.