Yes, it was a cow’s head, quite literally. Dumped right there so it could be viewed from several bedrooms as well as a couple of the living areas, the cow’s head lolled, glassy-eyed, its tongue sticking out like a giant, shiny slug. Not only was it so in their faces, being so close to the master bedroom, it seemed to have been positioned just so it was reflected crisp and clear in the long, still pool. Its eyes were closed as though meditating. Oddly, knowing it was dead made it seem even more immediate, as though its facial features were human.
It was strewn with roses plucked from Drake’s garden, so that must’ve been the roses the two men were arguing over.
Drake was standing with hands on hips looking at the head, but when he saw Jesse, Rose peeking over his shoulder, he pointed a stiff arm at them. “Out! Back!”
His voice trembled with such authority, Jesse didn’t dare question him. Besides, who wanted to look at that damned cow’s head anymore?
Drake herded them back into the bedroom where he slammed the slider shut, leaving Joaquin to deal with the head.
Jesse was just beginning to become angry. “Another one of Burt Macklin’s sick jokes? What the fuck, Drake?”
Drake said coldly, “You know I scoured that Room of Memories for that jewelry box. No one’s seen the damned thing, even if it ever existed. That would be my best leverage to get the contract back.”
Jesse pointed out, “If we could figure out what’s so damned valuable about the box. How could the box be worth more than a twenty million dollar contract?”
Drake said, “Well, at least I found out how Macklin knew the contract was in the back of the painting. Joaquin got so pissed over that slain head of cattle he just confessed to me that he had told Macklin about the contract. Joaquin knew about it from ages ago when my dad told him about it, I guess. Macklin bribed Joaquin with a few thousand dollars. Guess we don’t pay him enough.”
Rose jammed her hands onto her hips now, too. “What’re you going to do about Joaquin? You need to fire him for betraying you so horribly. Falling for that cheesy bribery just cost you millions of dollars!”
Drake held out his hands in a calming position. “It’s been taken care of, pet.”
Jesse wouldn’t be placated. “I want better security for that damned cottage, too, Drake. Every mother and his brother have been waltzing in there stealing contracts and paintings and god knows what.”
“The security company is coming out later today to upgrade the system on your cottage and some of the others.”
Jesse didn’t feel that was enough. First his painting was stolen, which was macabre in and of itself. But now there was a smelly cow’s head right outside Drake’s bedroom, covered in roses, no less, as if they were too dense to get the message. Would Rose herself be the next target?
But Jesse could offer no alternative suggestions. Macklin seemed to have them over a barrel, holding all the cards. Jesse took Rose’s arm. “We’ll be at the cottage waiting for them. Starting a new painting of Rose.” Drake jutted out his lower jaw. This bastard. He can look like the most virile stud in the world wearing nothing but chaps and cowboy boots, with his flaccid dick nestled there. And I still know I’d move the world for him.
Drake said, “I’ll figure it out, Jesse. I’ve increased security along the perimeter of the property. Don’t worry. I won’t let anything happen to you and our sweet pet Rose.”
Risking overstepping his submissive position, Jesse opened his mouth to protest some more, but that damned Stony Curtis was at the bedroom door again, dressed like he was about to rock this town and turn it inside out.
Stony intoned mournfully, “Master Drake. The bovine head case has been sorted out.”
Drake raced to the glass door, Jesse hot on his heels. The cow’s head was already gone, and two burly fellows were escorting Joaquin off the property, one holding each of Joaquin’s arms. Joaquin’s legs flailed aimlessly as they lifted him off the ground as he yelled something about donkeys and codfish.
Drake meaningfully handed Jesse a half piece of typewritten paper with a few blood splatters on it. Jesse took it gingerly, between thumb and forefinger.
My dear Mr. Stinson,
It would behoove you to renew the lease on the lizard preserve property. I’ll be by Tuesday for payment, at which time you will get your painting of your hot chick back.
Of course it wasn’t signed, and Jesse snorted. “Hot chick,” he said derisively.
But a part of him was scared.
Chapter Thirteen
“So what should Drake do?”
Rose pondered idly aloud while holding the pose for Jesse. It was difficult enough sitting stock-still, and posing for the stolen painting had given her cramps, so she’d devised a new pose. Now, her fingers were threaded on the top of her head and the viewer could see one of her nipples, but she didn’t have to sit precariously on the coffee table. Now she was on the floor with a lilac sheet artfully arranged so she could shift her legs around and it wouldn’t make a difference. She had to sacrifice a nipple to the god of comfort, and it was worth it. Where would the painting wind up hanging, anyway?
Rose had a secret wish Drake might want to keep the painting somewhere around. She knew she was falling heavily for him. Sure, he was an overbearing, incorrigible fuckwad who was in his element when ordering people around. But he had come a long way from his hedonistic daredevil days in Europe. She knew he’d adhered to his promise to stay monogamous with her and Jesse—she knew, because Jesse could keep an eye on Shining Land’s front door from his cottage. It wasn’t that they didn’t trust Drake’s word, but hey, his past was his past. And some of it wasn’t that long ago.
But people could change, Rose knew. She only recently found out that her father had cheated on her mother decades ago, when Rose was maybe ten. He had repented, Rose’s mother had taken him back, and they were still together. It had probably weighed heavily on the couple for some time, but they had made it through to their fortieth wedding anniversary.
So her father had changed—or it had been a one-time accident. Either way, allowances had to be made for other people’s weaknesses, and that change was possible.
Jesse said now, “Drake’s between a rock and a hard place. That scumbag’s got his contract, so Drake has no proof anyone ever made a payment to Macklin.”
Rose sighed. “I guess he has no choice but to refuse to renew, and some other low-down rancher gets his land and his lucrative lease.”
“If it had been a legitimate competitive bid, Drake would have no problem renewing it. But the whole thing was so damned corrupt. I mean, Sam Stinson basically bought Burt Macklin that gorgeous home. No one on a government salary could afford five acres at Seven Hills Estates. I looked at the satellite image. He’s got an infinity pool and a cactus garden like Drake’s.”
“Well, it just creeps me out that he’s got my painting. Of all the things he could’ve taken, he has to take that?”
“Creeps me out, too, Rose. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it was only the burglar who took a liking to it. Maybe Burt didn’t order him to take it.” Jesse put down his palette and leaned back as though to observe Rose in a different light. She cocked her head in curiosity. He looked as though about to frame her with his hands. “You know what would look good? Some plants.”
Abandoning her pose, Rose twisted her torso fully around to face Jesse. “The Persian garden! All those birds of paradise around that rectangular pool are in pots. And all of those little palms surrounding that mosaic tiled patio are in pots, too. You can’t tell from a distance, but I think it’s easier to keep them looking good that way.”
Jesse pointed at her with his paintbrush. “The Persian garden, perfect! Drake won’t mind at all if we borrow a few of those plants. Let me call the gardener, see if he’s got one of those carts so we can pull a bunch of them at once.”
Rose took a much-needed bathroom break and threw on her clothes. When she emerged, Jesse looked so jazzed at their idea they practically held hands
as they skipped out the door. He said, “I don’t want to make it too tropical. That won’t fit in with our aesthetic of the mid-century modern architecture.”
Rose’s Searchlight Motel was designed the same way—the large expanses of glass and steel, the spare and simple furnishings, clean and modern lines. “Maybe things like split-leaf philodendrons, bamboo. My mother had a bunch of African violets when I was little, but those are probably too small to show up in your painting.”
“Yeah,” Jesse said excitedly, “I think there are some spider plants hanging from the ceiling below that tiled arch, and of course we have to have some rubber plants.”
They merely opened the slider that led to the central breezeway where the Persian garden was. Drake hadn’t gotten into the habit of locking every door, even since the break-in—he had just stepped up security at the main gates. Rose was touched when Jesse did take her hand as they wandered down the formal pathway next to symmetrical canals that ran over glittering blue tiles. They sat down on a mosaic bench near a pavilion to let everything sink in and observe.
Rose said, “You know, I think we’re the best things that ever happened to Drake. Think about it. Has he ever slept with anyone more than once? Maybe he had his favorite playthings in every city—”
“In Rio, Bora Bora, and St. Tropez,” Jesse supplied.
“—but as far as I can tell he’s never really had a serious, in-depth relationship like he has with us. Do you know of anyone?”
“No, no one. Of course, he’s not confiding to me his deepest, secret diaries, like you and I do with each other.”
Rose squeezed Jesse’s hand. Jesse knew all about her escapades with the ex-con at Denny’s and the tightwad with the chicken wing appetizer. “Yes. I’m surprised you didn’t run screaming from me. I’m not Typhoid Rose, I’m Bad Date Rose.”
Jesse nuzzled his face against the side of her neck like a cat and murmured, “I like Bad Date Rose. It means you’re not all jaded and been there, done that. Our antics are still amusing to you. You haven’t seen everything before.”
“Hey,” Rose protested. “Sometimes I get the feeling you haven’t seen everything before either.”
“I’ve been around. I was a model in New York City.”
“Oh, that’s right. You tied a girl up once. Compared to Drake Stinson, we’re both newborn babes. Oh, look at that plant! It must be a bromeliad of some kind.”
Rose stood to go investigate the glossy broad-leafed plant with the gold cup in the center. The Searchlight Motel boasted a few of these bromeliads, where the center cup actually seemed to be leaves that had turned a bright yellow. However, as she approached the plant that was alone in a little forest of rubber trees near a shamrock-shaped pool, she saw that the gold wasn’t a leaf cup but an object.
She slowed as she got closer, as though the gold-plated thing would jump out at her. What is that? It doesn’t really fit in with any of the decor. Is it a bomb? The ugly thing was shaped like a little grand piano with ornate scrolled legs and angel heads decorating the lid. She felt Jesse come up behind her, casting a muted shadow over the plant.
“Jesse,” she said fearfully, “I don’t like this thing. It’s sitting right in the cup of that plant, like someone placed it there.”
“Because someone did,” Jesse said, with more firmness in his voice. “I’ll bet you a dozen floppy disks that’s the infamous rococo jewelry box that used to belong to Kitty Chandler.”
Rose clutched her own shirtfront. “Just sitting there? How long do you think it’s been there?”
Jesse shrugged. “Could’ve been a long time. This place was empty before Drake moved in.”
He reached out to grab the box, but Rose stopped him. “How do you know Burt Macklin didn’t rig that thing?”
Jesse scoffed. “Macklin wants money, Rose, not to kill us. Besides, he wants the box, not to blow it up.”
“He could’ve planted the idea of the box in our minds so that when we see it we grab it and boom.”
Jesse rolled his eyes. “On the off chance someone wanders into the Persian garden and sees it? Highly doubtful, Rose. Hey, Abel!” Jesse yelled at the gardener who was wheeling the cart behind him. Abel met Jesse halfway down the path with the cart, and they conversed in broken Spanish, Jesse pointing at the jewelry box. Abel seemed to be saying that he’d seen the box before, for a very long time it had been there, and he was always afraid to move it because it belonged to Mr. Sam Stinson.
Now Jesse pointed, and Abel walked to the plant and reached out as though to finally grab it.
Rose made a lip fart. “Oh, that’s right, make the gardener get it. Real nice, Jesse.”
“No,” said Jesse, encouraging Abel. “He’s saying he thought it was some kind of good omen, so he wants to get it.”
Sure enough, Abel wore a beatific expression as he lifted and presented the box to Jesse with a little bow. Rose giggled. “Open it, Jesse.”
Jesse did with all the pomp and ceremony of a pope, but the only things in there were a few brooches and earring—cheap costume jewelry from what Rose could tell. It was all fairly anticlimactic, and Rose showed Abel which plants they wanted dragged back to the cottage while Jesse got Drake on the cell phone. Drake was out in the back forty splitting one of his herds up, probably an hour away, so they decided to take the box back to Jesse’s cottage where he would wait for the security company to install upgrades. That sounded fairly safe.
Jesse shrugged. “I’ll google around, ask my designer friends if they think there’s something special about this box, send them photos of it.”
Rose said, “If Macklin really wants it that bad, it’s our only leverage. Don’t let it out of your sight.”
She returned to the Searchlight Motel and the Cavern on the Green restaurant then. Trying to recreate a retro mid-century garden gave her the idea to concoct a new recipe for scrapple. It was sort of a pig-innard mush loaf, if she recalled correctly. Her Pennsylvania cousin had told her that her mother had made it in the sixties and it sounded just edgy enough to deserve to make a comeback.
It wasn’t until one o’clock in the morning that Rose was able to send the rest of the kitchen staff home and locked the doors to the supper club. She had to skirt the pool, lit up like an atomic spaceship and fringed by cantaloupe-orange lounge chairs. She passed Willow’s darkened office to climb the stairs to the second story. The Searchlight only had thirty rooms, but since Willow’s grand opening earlier this year it had gained in popularity and fame. Rose had heard about it while still working in LA. Designed in 1947, it had been closed down in the sixties after its glory bordello days had taken a toll on it.
Restored now to a fashionable desert oasis, Rose had adored living there, but lately had been getting a yen for change. She knew it was pushing things much too fast to expect Drake to invite her to move in. That the idea occurred to her at all stunned her. Drake Stinson was not the sort of man she’d ever imagined falling in love with, back in the years she and her friends had imagined they’d all be stewardesses, models, or actresses and have two point five children apiece. Drake was a sadistic disciplinarian who had probably whipped hundreds of women in his time, not an upstanding man she could bring home to her folks.
Then again, Drake seemed to be making a sincere effort to work hard at ranch business. When the three of them slept together in his giant bed, it was Drake who was up before sunrise and gone to milk cows, or whatever it was he did. Drake came home around seven covered in dust, and his dusty chaps were getting worn in the shape of his body. His cowboy hat had a dusty brim, and one day when it rained he came home coated in mud to the upper thighs. Of course, Rose was usually absent from Shining Lands at that time of day. The Cavern was a supper club, and while not necessary for the head chef, she liked to be there. She was hands-on.
And yes, certainly Drake the billionaire was presentable to her parents. It was just that Drake was a far cry from the sort of man Rose had imagined marrying. She would have to give him time, time t
o learn if monogamy—or was it polyamory?—was for him. Jesse, Rose had no compunctions about. She trusted Jesse completely. Even after his years in the gritty modeling world and now the cutthroat design arena, Jesse had retained a sort of innocence and sweetness. He was stunning, the sort of man who had women constantly running up, shoving their phone numbers at him. Yet Rose knew with a certainty he would always think she was the most voluptuous bombshell on the face of the planet. Why? She had no idea. She was just glad that he did.
Rose almost smelled the boozy breath before she heard Burt Macklin. Her fingers that held her room cardkey went still before she had a chance to swipe it. “You look almost as good as you do completely naked in that painting.”
She was glad he hadn’t given her a chance to open her room door before accosting her. She faced Macklin head on, pointing her cardkey as though it were a gun. “What are you doing here? Can’t find your room?”
Macklin smiled, lop-sided and hammered. As usual, he wore the suit and tie of the federal executive, but she knew his business dealings were anything but on the up-and-up. And apparently his personal dealings were just as sleazy, because what was he doing on the second floor of the Searchlight Motel when he owned a lavish home in Seven Hills? “I was hoping to be let into your room.”
What? Why on earth would I do that? “Well, that’s not going to happen, Mr. Macklin.”
“You remembered my name. I’m flattered.”
Rose narrowed her eyes at him. “You never let me forget your name. First you blackmail Drake to renew that stupid contract that was illegal to begin with, then you send some goon to break into his house and rifle through his papers. Oh, and that’s not even mentioning that you had your goon steal a frigging painting of me!”
Macklin laughed lazily, as though all of these antics were part of what made him charming. As though she were overreacting to some mild pranks. “As I recall, it wasn’t that long ago that Drake Stinson was about to have you drawn and quartered for making a soup he didn’t like. As it turns out, you enjoy that sort of kink.”
The Subject Was Rose [The Sunset Palomino Ranch 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 13