Velvet, Leather & Lace
Page 28
Come on. Tell him the truth. Rocky’s the biggest pot hound in three counties.
Sissy took a deep breath.
We waited.
“I found it,” she said.
“You found it?” Conahegg shook his head, disappointed in her answer.
“Yes.”
“Where did you find it?”
In Rockerfeller Hughes’s back pocket!
“I don’t remember.” Sissy was studying a guitar lying to one side of the garage as if her life depended on memorizing every fret.
“Are you aware of the penalty for marijuana possession?”
“No.” Her voice was barely audible. Sissy might talk tough and act tougher, but when she’s in trouble she reverts to kid mode.
Silence ensued. You could even hear the frogs croaking down by the water. Conahegg rose to his feet and swept his gaze around the room.
The garage was unbearably hot. From where I sat crouched over Rocky’s foot, the smell of fresh blood kept assaulting my nostrils and my knees ached from the cement floor.
“May I stand up?” I asked. “My leg is going to sleep.”
He nodded.
I stood.
Or rather, I tried to stand. My legs wobbled like rubber bands and I stumbled sideways into that hunk of granite passing for a human being.
Conahegg’s hand went out to catch me.
The contact was electric.
No kidding. You read that clichéd comparison in romance novels and you assume it’s an exaggeration. I mean, I’m a nurse, for crying out loud. I touch people all the time. Save for static electricity, you don’t ever feel a jolt, a shock, a current.
Except I did.
And I had no clue why. It scared me. Big-time.
I jerked away. Fast.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Oh, sure, other than the fact you fried all my internal organs, I’m peachy.
“Need to get the circulation back in my legs,” I said, jogging in place, more to shake the sensation of Sheriff Conahegg’s touch than to bring blood to my lower extremities.
“Ally?”
The sound of my name drew my attention to the garage door occupied by my mother, Aunt Tessa fluttering at her side.
“I tried to keep her in the pottery shed,” Aunt Tessa explained, “but she heard the sirens.”
Mama floated over, hardly noticing the sheriff’s deputies with guns strapped to their sides. “Honey?” As always, she looked to me for explanation and reassurance. “What are these people doing here?” Her voice still held the sugary sweetness of her Carolina girlhood.
“Ma’am.” Super Sheriff turned on his heel and held his hand out to Mama. “I’m Sheriff Conahegg and we received several complaints of disturbing the peace.”
“Oh, dear.” Mama pushed a wisp of graying brown hair back into the loose bun atop her head. “Why, I know you.” She smiled. “You’re Lew Conahegg’s boy.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I remember when you wore short pants. Your father and my husband used to have offices side by side on the courthouse square. Green’s Green House and Lew Conahegg, Attorney at Law.”
Really? I didn’t remember that.
“That’s been awhile,” Conahegg said.
“I’m so sorry to hear about your father’s passing.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Well,” Mama continued, “you’ll have to excuse the noise. My daughter’s boyfriend and his band like to practice here in our garage.”
She waved a hand at the abandoned instruments. I was beginning to wonder if she’d even noticed Rocky lying on the floor, suffering from a gunshot wound inflicted by her youngest daughter. Mama had the amazing ability to focus upon only what she wanted to see and ignore the rest.
“So I’ve gathered.” Conahegg nodded. He still held Rocky’s bag of weed in his hand. As if he’d just become aware of that, he shoved the pot into his pocket.
“Goodness, Rocky,” Mama said, finally catching on. She lifted up her long skirt and stepped over his injured foot. “What happened to you?”
“Accident, Mrs. Green.”
“You’ve got to be more careful, dear. You weren’t imitating those musicians on television who smash their guitars, were you? That’s not a nice way to treat your instruments.”
Everyone looked at me.
I shook my head. No point in explaining reality to my mother. I’d learned that a long time ago.
“Mama,” I said. “Why don’t you let Aunt Tessa take you inside and make you a cup of tea.”
Mama brightened. “That sounds nice. Tessa?”
But as Mama spoke to her sister, a strange expression crossed Aunt Tessa’s features.
“Ung!” Aunt Tessa cried out, and all gazes swung in her direction. Her right hand went to her throat and her eyes stared vacantly ahead.
My heart sank into my shoes. No not now. Not a visit from Ung. Uh-uh. Please God.
Not in front of Conahegg.
But I was not to be the beneficiary of divine intervention. The gathered deputies watched in fascination. I’d seen it before. Many times. I admit, the first time you see it can be quite a show.
The expression on Aunt Tessa’s face changed from empty indifference to lively animation. Her lips curled back, a combination smile and grimace. Her eyes widened until they seemed to encompass her entire face. Her nostrils flared. Her cheeks flushed with color.
“I am Ung!” Aunt Tessa growled in a deep voice.
Conahegg shot me a “what-in-the-hell?” expression. I couldn’t blame him. Aunt Tessa’s transformation into her twenty-five-thousand-year-old spirit guide, a cavewoman named Ung, is quite a spectacle.
Aunt Tessa spread her arms wide. “I speak from spirit world. Heed warning.” Her eyebrows dipped. She crooked a finger and lurched toward Rocky.
Reflexively he raised his hands, shielding his face. “Get her away from me. She’s creepy.”
“The warning is for you!” Tessa-turned-Ung cried. “Much evil. Beware!”
Chills chased up my arm.
Granted, I don’t often believe in Aunt Tessa’s New-Age, Shirley MacLaine crapola but occasionally Ung will make a prediction that comes true. Of course, it’s not much of a stretch to figure out that a dope-smoking, unemployed musician who cheats on his girlfriend with his wife and vice versa is going to end up in trouble.
The sheriff, who by the way had magnificent forearms, tugged me to one side. “What’s this all about?” he whispered.
“You got me.”
“Who is that woman?”
“My aunt.”
The sheriff rolled his eyes. “Why does that not surprise me?”
“Are you disparaging my family?”
“Looks like they’re doing the job all by themselves,” he commented dryly.
I planted my hands on my hips. Who did he think he was? I mean besides sheriff. He had the power to put us behind bars on one trumped-up charge or the other, but he certainly didn’t have the right to bad-mouth my kinfolk. We took enough guff off the locals. You expected more understanding from your elected officials.
“Hey, come on. Do something, man. Get her off me,” Rocky cried.
Aunt Tessa was hovering over Rocky’s prostrate body, trembling from head to toe. “The evil forces are strong,” she croaked. “Run. Run. Run for your life.”
“That’s enough!” Conahegg said, and motioned for a deputy to intercept Aunt Tessa. “Where is that ambulance?”
As if on his command, the ambulance pulled down the graveled river road and into our yard, siren wailing and lights flashing.
Aunt Tessa crumpled in the deputy’s arms, her face slack. On the floor, Rocky was sweating buckets and my idiotic sister sat rocking him in her arms and cooing into his ear. Some people never learn.
“What do I do with her, Sheriff?” the deputy asked. Aunt Tessa was dishrag limp, and she often stayed that way for an hour or more after channeling Ung.
“I’ll take
her to bed,” Mama said, surprising me with her helpfulness. “Come on, Tessa.” She guided the deputy, Tessa in his arms, out the side door.
“We’ll need statements from everyone involved,” Conahegg said at the same time two paramedics trotted into the garage.
“Everybody else took off,” Rocky said. “’Cept for my darling, Sistine.”
Oh, brother.
“I’d never leave you, tiger,” Sissy whispered.
No, but you’d shoot him in the foot, I thought rather unkindly.
There have been many times in my life I could have sworn I was a changeling. When I was a kid, growing up with a head-in-the-clouds, fairy-tale-believing, troll-doll-making mother; a florist father who collected butterflies and a cavewoman-channeling aunt, I harbored sweet fantasies that Gypsies had stolen me from my rightful parents—usually a practical-minded accountant and a devoted stay-at-home mom—and left me on the Greens’ doorstep.
Although I never came up with a proper motivation for such rash actions on the part of these anonymous Gypsies, I quickly determined my place in the scheme of things. I was in the Green family to take care of everything. To attend to the routine chores no one else seemed inclined to do, like paying bills, holding down a steady job, cooking dinner, cleaning the house, washing the car, changing the light bulbs. That sort of thing. If it hadn’t been for me, the family would have unraveled long ago. Especially after Daddy died.
“I’d like you to come to the station with us,” Sheriff Conahegg said to me.
“But I didn’t witness the shooting.”
He took me by the shoulder—that red-hot grip again!—turned me around, ducked his head and whispered in my ear, “Maybe not,” he said, “but you seem to be the only one in the place with a lick of sense.”
I smiled. Swear to God I did. And flushed with pride. I was the only one with a lick of sense, but nobody in my family saw me that way.
In my bizarre-and-proud-of-it clan, I was known as the dull one. Ally would rather clean the dishes than strip naked and dance in the rain. Or Ally is such a snore—she has always got her nose stuck in a book instead of actually living. Or Ally doesn’t have an artistic mind—she only cares about making money. My family never seemed to appreciate that because I did the boring, mundane things, they got to be eccentric.
The paramedics loaded Rocky onto the stretcher and trundled him into the back of the ambulance. Sissy begged to ride along but they wouldn’t let her. She stood beside me, sobbing into her hands.
The deputies scattered, searching for witnesses to interrogate, leaving me and Sissy and Conahegg in the garage.
“Well, ladies,” Conahegg said. “May I have the honor of escorting you to my squad car?”
…NOT THE END…
ISBN: 978-1-4268-7141-2
VELVET, LEATHER & LACE
Copyright © 2005 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:
A MAN’S GOTTA DO
Copyright © 2005 by Suzanne Forster
CALLING THE SHOTS
Copyright © 2005 by Donna Kauffman
BARING IT ALL
Copyright © 2005 by Jill Shalvis
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