Ashes To Ashes

by Gwen Hunter

  "Really?" The twinkle was back in Alan’s eyes, as if he, too, found Bret plodding and humorless. He ran a hand over his flat stomach. "Big business makes me hungry. Sure you won’t stay and join me—us," he added, including Bret, "for supper?"

  "Thank you, no," I said. "Gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure."

  "Mrs. D," Bret said, with his attempt at levity.

  "Ma’am," Alan said. "Your humble servant."

  I rolled my eyes, tucked Jack’s briefcase beneath one arm, took Jasmine’s hand in my left and Topaz’s in my right as they reached my side. I pulled them outside. The rain had slowed, leaving a fine mist in the air, scented with honeysuckle and exhaust fumes. Puddles glistened in the potholes of Miccah’s parking lot, reflecting the security lights. Darkness had fallen.

  "Macon filled us in about this afternoon. He said you really nailed old RailRoad to the wall," Jas said, with fierce pleasure.

  "We’ll discuss that later. Right now, I want to know what you’re doing off the farm."

  "I had to pick up some feed. Jimmy Ray showed up drunk after lunch, and we were running low. Since Daddy died, we haven’t received a shipment and I called two days ago but they haven’t gotten back to me with an explanation."

  It was an innocent excuse, and there were four, fifty-pound bags of feed in the back of Jack’s Jeep, next to and piled on the jump kit. But I’d thought Jas understood that she had to stay on the farm. "Right," I said, still looking into the back of the Jeep, suddenly feeling my weariness in every muscle and joint, every tendon, even every eyelash. I was tired down to my bones. Too tired to think straight. But, I had to deal with Jas. Now. If my plan was to work, my daughter had to be safe. "So. You needed feed. The fact that someone called you from Miccah’s, and told you I was here with a man had nothing to do with your trip to town."

  "I told you she would see through it, Jas," Topaz hooted. "She got you, girl."

  Jas’ hand rested on the Jeep door, keys dangling. Her expression was part guilt, part defiance, the reaction glaringly visible in the dark of the parking lot. "How did you know?"

  "I took a wild guess." It was something Jack might have said, or Nana, but never me. Not until now. Jas unlocked the doors and we all climbed in, My daughter fighting a slow, unwilling grin. I figured, why stop now, and went on, sounding more and more like Jack as the words left my mouth. Maybe I had delegated all the discipline to Jack out of laziness and not inability.

  "I thought you understood that I will not be dating unless we talk about it first. And I thought you agreed to stay on the farm until I straightened out this mess with DavInc."

  "But—"

  "No buts, Jas. You spent the last ten years of your life trying to convince me you were grown up enough to be trustworthy. You said your word was your bond, which means once you give it, you keep it even if keeping it’s hard."

  "But—"

  "You broke your word. Not because I was in danger and you were coming to my rescue. Not because some great moral imperative overrode the necessity of keeping your word. You left the farm and broke your word because you didn’t trust me." I let the last phrase hang in the air.

  The warm front had moved in and I was perspiring in the layers of shirts and Jack’s jacket. Jas said nothing, just sat in the driver’s seat, staring out at the drizzle, her bottom lip held in her teeth. It was a mannerism that meant she was thinking over what I had said. Finally Jas looked at me, her mouth turned down in a frown that could have been either anger, frustration, or shame. "You were having a business meeting. Right?"

  I nodded.

  "I’m sorry," she said.

  I turned in my seat. "I’m so hungry I could eat a horse."

  Jas smiled that unwilling smile again. It was an old joke on the horse farm, and she answered with the ritualistic answer. "Which one?"

  "The Italian one."

  "Pizza or subs?"

  "If my vote counts in this little mother-daughter dialogue, I want pizza," Topaz said.

  "Little Caesar’s or Pizza Hut? I’m buying," I added. "And it has to be enough to feed Nana and Aunt Mosetta and Macon and Wicked and anyone else who shows up. Nana’s having a party tonight." A party I could have done without, tired as I was, but no one said no to Nana.

  The girls conferred as the Jeep motor purred and Miccah’s parking lot filled up around us, spilling over into the bank’s lot to one side. I watched each new arrival, as I hadn’t been able to do inside the restaurant or while Jas and I were having our mother-daughter dialogue, as Topaz had called it. Few of the men who went into the restaurant glanced at the Jeep. I knew most of them, which gave me a measure of confidence; I could concentrate on the strangers. My stalker was just hired help, his vocabulary setting him apart from the letter writer. I wondered how many newcomers had severe periodontal disease. Did cops allow a "sniff test" of possible suspects?

  The thought made me laugh. It was all so ludicrous. "Pizza Hut," I said to cover the laugh and settle the dispute. "Drive. I’ll call it in."

  We picked up six large pizzas, called Nana to tell her we were on the way, called two of Jas and Paz’s friends to join us, and headed home. I relaxed in back, nibbling a slice of Supreme pan pizza with extra jalapenos.

  I had done alright today. Averted one crisis, concluded another, fired RailRoad, and acted in a professional manner. If I made any mistakes, no one had been rude enough to tell me. The result of the success was dry eyes and exhaustion that thrummed through my veins like pain. I was a nurse, not a female version of Jack. I took care of drunks, gunshot wounds, kidney infections, earaches, heart attacks, and other assorted medical problems. I knew next to nothing about finance, land, water rights, rights of way, advertising or running a business. Mentally, I cataloged what I had learned today, and it all boiled down to one fact. DavInc investors were all so busy protecting their little patches of turf, they couldn’t compromise without a lawyer to hold their hands. They were legalistic and dogmatic. Unless you got one of them off alone, they rapidly developed a pack mentality. The scene at the golf course hadn’t been pretty, a group of rabid wolves snapping their jaws at Peter. And worse, I didn’t know how much of my success handling today’s crises had been beginner’s luck. I’d had the element of surprise when I showed up at the development; tomorrow things might be considerably different. By tomorrow, all the investors would know that I was taking over. Even worse, I still didn’t know what my stalker looked like. I could have been within feet of him today, and if he had been downwind, I wouldn’t have noticed him at all. Which made me grin. Sillier and sillier. . . . I smiled and closed my eyes.

  Somewhere between the Pizza Hut and home, I fell asleep, a slice of pizza in my hand. By the time the girls turned on to the gravel road, the cheese had dripped into the weave of the denim on my right leg, and then cooled enough to pry free with little residue. I woke feeling positive, hopeful, and inordinately refreshed from my catnap. For the first time, I was not weighted down with the fear and loneliness that were my legacy from Jack. I could do this. I could run DavInc, solve Jack’s problems, and protect my daughter. I could.

  At seven A.M., I was up and dressed in jeans, boots, and T-shirt, eating a muffin at the kitchen sink. There had already been a call from Bret, asking to speak with me about a private matter. And a message left over from last night, from Monica, wanting to know why I hadn’t returned her call. Jas had been up for two hours and was at the barn with Duke and Disa, feeding the horses. Macon and Esther weren’t due for another hour. It was peaceful and calm in the house. A refuge from the world.

  I had the kitchen window open to let in the last, cool, night breeze, and a bite of cream cheese and muffin in my mouth when the irregular rhythm of a diesel engine reached me. A strange car pulled down the drive. I swallowed the bite whole, choking as I attempted to see the car through the trees. It was red. Did killers drive red cars? I swallowed again, trying to force the bite of muffin past the lump of fear in my throat.

  Without conscious intent, I ran fo
r the office, to Jack’s gun cabinet, and pulled out the 9mm I had slept with for several nights. I checked the safety. The clip. And I swallowed and swallowed, trying to down the bite of muffin. I tried to take a breath, fighting for air past the lump of dough lodged in my throat; I couldn’t get enough air to cough. Tears burned, caustic and sere for not being shed. People choke to death this way. Food stuck partway down, the esophagus swelling shut around the mass, obstructing the airway. My heart was a beating pain in my chest. I closed my hand on the 9mm. Holding the weapon down beside me, I ran for the kitchen. Struggling against the panic spreading out from my throat. I grabbed my hot tea. Tepid now. It went down fast, lubricating my throat, wetting down the muffin. Tears which I no longer cried for Jack, trickled down my face, blurring my vision of the uninvited guest. Finally the bite of muffin moved. I swallowed harder.

  The diesel motor stopped, silence and morning air pouring through the open window. A car door opened. I swallowed the last of the tea. The liquid blocked more air. A hot sweat broke out on my body. My heart was thundering, which meant part of me was in a full-blown panic. People panic when they suffocate. They panic when someone is trying to kill them too. Another part of me looked on clinically, evaluating. So. Either way, this is what it feels like to die . . .

  Panic numbed my hands and I dropped my mug. It shattered beneath my feet, scattering porcelain in razor sharp shards. I couldn’t see the guest. He had parked behind the Volvo, and I wasn’t watching as he exited his car. I swallowed again and again. And the muffin went down. Sucking in a breath of precious air, I thumbed off the safety and jerked open the door. Blinked through my tears into the morning light. And focused. On Robyn.

  "Oh. . . . Ash." Her eyes were on the gun.

  I looked down into her face, down because she was on the step below me. She was still as lovely as the day she left town for Atlanta. As beautiful as the photos of her in Jack’s arms. I swallowed convulsively. My tears still ran. I lowered the gun toward the floor and turned away.

  "I just got in from the trip." Her voice quavered. "I drove straight in from Atlanta."

  Suddenly she was in my house, closing the door, enfolding me in her arms, Offering me the solace one woman offers another after a spouse has passed. I stiffened in her arms. Pulled back. Still breathing in loud, desperate draughts of air. Shaking. My heart still thundering as panic bled into some other emotion. Part shock. Part relief. Part fury.

  Backing away, I collided with the kitchen table and nearly fell. Carefully, I thumbed on the 9mm’s safety. Placed it on the table beside me. Looked into her lovely, lovely face. Some women are beautiful in an overt, sensual fashion, women like Sophia Loren and Vivien Leigh. They have a kind of beauty that is enhanced in strong light and picked up by the camera. A kind of beauty that glows every time a man is near. Others are simply pretty, like Jodie Foster or . . . or me—a kind of beauty that needs skillfully applied makeup and might not be seen at all without it.

  Only a few women in the world are truly lovely, gentle of spirit, tender and warm, like the character of Melanie in Gone With The Wind. Delicately featured and so well put together that no individual feature stands out. Like my daughter. Jas has that quality of loveliness. And so did Robyn. It was one thing that drew me to her when we first met, that gentleness of spirit.

  It was a gentleness totally lacking in the photos of her with my husband.

  My shaking worsened. Cracked porcelain crushed beneath my boots. My throat ached as if it wanted to close up again each time I pulled in a breath.

  "Ashlee?" Concern in her voice. And just a little fear.

  I turned away, wiping my face, my hands trembling as if with palsy. Shock faded. My anger grew. How much had Robyn known about the murder? I should have considered that before, and hadn’t, not even after the discovery of the photographs. It had never occurred to me that Robyn might have been in on the problems with DavInc. Had she typed the murder letter?

  "A gun? Ashlee, what—"

  "Get out of here." My words ground out, rough, coarse, full of pain. "Get out, Robyn."

  "Ashlee?"

  "I found the pictures. You remember the pictures, Robyn?" I asked, my voice low, a harsh, grating sound. "Well, I found them. Just a few days ago, I found them in his desk drawer. Photographs of you and my husband." I didn’t look at her, didn’t think I could. I inhaled and air burned my throat where the bread had scraped it raw. I wanted to ask about the murder, but I couldn’t force my throat to make the necessary sounds. Silence stretched between us.

  "Ashlee?" She was crying now. With my back turned, I could hear it in her voice. I couldn’t look at her, my once best friend. "Please, Ash. . . ."

  "Go away, Robyn. Just go away." Whispered words.

  Long seconds passed as I fought with the need to weep, holding it in so tightly it burned in my heart with white-hot heat. Behind me, her breath caught and shuddered. Her feet shuffled sounding uncertain and oddly forlorn. The door opened. Closed. I could hear her crying all the way to her car, great broken sobs. The diesel roared to life, backed slowly away. She was gone. I stood in the silence of my kitchen, hearing the house creak and settle, picking out the mewling sound of Cherry’s puppies on the screened porch. Listening to each sound and to nothing. The last tear fell, splattering on the back of my hand. My eyes dried.

  In Jack’s office, the phone rang. Jack answered, as he had every day since his death. "You have reached Davenport, Inc. Our regular office hours are eight-thirty to five-thirty, Monday through Friday. Please leave a message and someone will contact you as soon as possible. Thank you for calling Davenport, Inc." The tone sounded, A-flat and plaintive.

  "Well, well. Ashlee Davenport. Sticking your toes into the water, are you? Testing the temperature? Dangerous business that, getting involved in your husband’s problems." Who was this? The man from the Soiled Utility Room? I remembered his words, whispered in the close confines there and again in the gazebo. "Remember what you were told? To take good care of the file? Losing it isn’t a very good start, Ashlee. When you find it again, I hope you will remember that it belongs to my friends and me. And I hope you don’t ask the wrong questions, or get too curious. Because then you’ll be in trouble, Ashlee, baby. Very big trouble."

  The phone clicked off, the final tone sounded. I could hear my breathing, coarse as a bellows in the silent room. How had he known I didn’t have the file? What did I do today that gave it away? A cold chill settled in the pit of my stomach.

  "I’ll find your damn file. And I’ll find you." I heaved a breath that burned against the abraded tissue of my throat and left me coughing. "And when I do, you’ll wish to God you had never been born. I promise you that," I finished. In the silence of my house, I laughed, a stubborn sound, as hoarse and guttural as my words. Pure Chadwick. Picking up Jack’s gun, I walked back to his office and raided the gun cabinet for a holster. Made for another of Jack’s weapons, it wasn’t a perfect fit for the 9mm, and it certainly didn’t fit me. But it worked well enough.

  Locking the gun cabinet with its expensive collection, I went back to my bedroom to change. I needed a thicker knit shirt to protect my skin from the leather holster’s chafing. I needed to wash the tears from my face. While I was splashing cold water against my reddened skin, the man’s words came back to me. The threats, the diction; the grammar. The man who’d attacked me twice had used poor diction and grammar. Not this caller. Proof perfect that the man who was after my daughter and me wasn’t working alone. This time it was one of the bosses.

  I pulled one of Jack’s jackets over my gun. I had a busy day ahead.

  I left a list of instructions for Macon. Number one was to apply to the sheriff for a temporary gun permit that gave me legal permission to wear the 9mm in the ill-fitting shoulder holster. I needed the permit fast and didn’t have time to take the eight-hour course. Second was an order to hire a bodyguard for my daughter, someone innocuous who could double as a stable hand. The third order was to dig faster into DavInc records. M
y appearance at the development yesterday had rattled someone’s chain. Between taking over as the company’s legal consultant and handling all my personal needs, poor Macon would have a busy week . . . okay, month. My legal fees would go through the roof. And I didn’t care. When I had done all I could to protect my daughter, I went to the barn. With Jimmy Ray on a binge, the chore load seemed especially heavy, even with school finally out for the summer and Duke available to work. He had proven an invaluable addition to the farm, though I would have to keep an eye on the littlest Chadwicks to ensure their safety.

  I spent the long hours of the morning working in the barn, shoveling manure one-handed, stretching tight muscles, working out my anger from seeing Robyn. I was also giving Jas the time she needed to contact prospective buyers for the Friesians she wanted to sell, and time to locate Elwyn VanHuselin, the trainer she wanted to hire. Selling the Friesians would mean the presence of strangers on the farm, which I didn’t like at all. However, within another hour, I’d been assured that the bodyguard would start first thing in the morning, and Jas would then be as safe as I could make her, short of locking her in the old root cellar at Nana’s.

  Just before two, during a late lunch, Wicked stopped in to talk. I was alone in the kitchen, drinking a bowl of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and a mug of hot tea laced with a shot of Jack’s whiskey. My throat still ached from choking on my morning muffin, and liquids eased the pain. Especially the whiskey. The whiskey-tea was Nana’s recipe, of course, but I had to hand it to her, it worked. It even helped to alleviate the discomfort of my bruised shoulder, dislocated thumb and the sprained ankle I was still walking on.

  Wicked came into the kitchen from the office, made himself a sandwich from my supplies in the fridge, poured himself a cup of hot water and dropped in a tea bag, all without a word of greeting. I wouldn’t have taken him for a tea man. Coffee or beer, yes, but not tea. He added a shot of Jack’s whiskey to his own mug, making himself at home in my kitchen. Well, he was family, after all. He took a seat at the table, propped his feet in the chair across from himself, and took a bite of bread and chicken salad.