Bright Eyes (29 page)

“Oh, of
course,”
Naomi inserted in a voice gone thin with suppressed laughter.

“Dad swears to this day that I must have double loaded the thing because the blast was deafening and sent tobacco and paper flying everywhere. It startled the bank manager pretty badly, and he had a weak bladder.”

Naomi started laughing so hard that she slid down on her chair. “Oh
no!”

Between chuckles, Pete asked, “Did your old man get his loan?”

Zeke grinned and looked at Natalie. “He did, actually. The bank manager had teenage boys himself, and one of his sons had pulled the same thing on him only a few months before.”

A few minutes later, Zeke was about to launch into an account of his sister’s senior prom when the doorbell rang. Everyone at the table straightened on their chairs. Gramps frowned. “Who’n hell might that be, do ya think?”

“It’s only twenty ’til eight,” Naomi pronounced.

Chad came in from the living room where he and Rosie had been watching the animal channel. “It’s two guys in suits,” he said in a hushed voice. “I think maybe they’re cops.”

A moment later, with all his dinner companions gathered in the kitchen archway behind him, Pete opened the door to find two of Crystal Falls’s finest standing on the porch. The plainclothesmen flashed their badges and then a search warrant. Pete had no choice but to let them enter, a fact that Gramps begrudgingly stated countless times over the next two hours as the detectives systematically destroyed the household with gloved hands, upending cereal boxes and drawers, rifling closets, stripping beds, flipping over the mattresses, and just generally wreaking havoc. It appeared to Zeke that the two men were searching mainly for prescription drugs, which they ferreted away in a clear plastic bag, regardless of the bottle labels.

When practically every room had been gone over with a fine-toothed comb, Zeke made a fast trip to the barn to lock Chester in the tack room. When he returned to the house, he assured Natalie that he would release the gander when he went home later.

“I think they’re almost done,” she told Zeke. “They even searched the attic.”

The two detectives came tripping down the stairs just then. At the sound of their footsteps on the wooden risers, Natalie and Zeke moved into the living room. Wide-eyed and pale, the kids huddled together on the sofa.

“You gonna clean up yer mess?” Gramps demanded as the two detectives moved toward the front door to let themselves out.

“No, sir,” the older fellow replied. “That isn’t part of our job.”

“It part of the job for you to be a smart-ass?” Gramps popped back.

The detective smiled with strained politeness. “I apologize for the inconvenience. I know it’s unsettling to have your home searched.”

Gramps puffed out his chest. “Unsettlin’? Ye’ve turned the whole place topsy-turvy.”

“Our superiors will be in touch tomorrow,” the younger detective replied. “And, again, we apologize for the inconvenience.”

Gramps followed them onto the porch. “Wait a minute! That’s my blood pressure pills you got there!”

The older detective glanced down at the clear evidence bag he carried in one hand. “After these medications are examined at the lab, they’ll most likely be returned to you, sir.”

“How long will that take?”

“A day or two.”

“And what am I supposed to take tonight? If I die of a stroke, my son will sue yer fancy britches off!”

The detective lifted the sack higher. “Which bottle contains your blood pressure medication, Mr. Westfield?”

“That one,” Gramps replied, indicating the bottle under discussion with a jab of his index finger.

The detective drew a pair of plastic gloves from his pocket, slipped them on, carefully removed the bottle from the sack, read the dosage directions, and shook three of the tablets onto his palm. After giving them to Gramps, he returned the bottle to the bag. The younger man made note of the exchange in a black notebook.

“Three doses will get you by until the prescriptions are returned to you,” the detective holding the sack said.

Gramps shook his head. “What’s this country comin’ to?” he blustered. “I never in all my days seen the like. You got any idea how much those damned pills cost? Way over a hundred bucks for a month’s supply, that’s what. I can’t afford to go buyin’ more of ’em!”

“I understand, sir, and I assure you that the prescription will most likely be returned to you. I’ll make a special note regarding the blood pressure pills, telling our lab techs to put a rush on them.”

As Gramps stepped back in the house and closed the door, Zeke felt Natalie’s body go heavy against him where he held her tucked under his arm. He glanced down and saw that her face was as white as alabaster, her eyes huge and luminous in her pale countenance.

“They were searching for sedatives,” she said, her voice reedy with tension and exhaustion. “They think I’m the one who drugged Robert.”

Zeke had already determined that. He glanced at Rosie, who sat so close to Chad she was almost on the boy’s lap. First things first, he thought, and left Natalie to go upstairs and right the child’s bedroom. As he shoved clothing back into drawers and put the little girl’s bed to rights, he clenched his teeth, furious beyond bearing that the law of the land allowed such invasions. There wasn’t a single room in the Westfield home that hadn’t been rifled. Zeke understood that the detectives had only been doing their jobs, but it seemed to him that they could have at least tried not to make such a mess.

Just as Zeke smoothed the coverlet on Rosie’s bed, Natalie appeared in the doorway, her daughter draped over her shoulder. “Out like a light, thank goodness.”

Zeke jerked the covers back. “I’m sorry this happened, honey.”

Natalie laid her daughter on the bed and spent an inordinate amount of time arranging the sheet and blanket over Rosie’s small form. Never had Zeke seen such pain in anyone’s eyes.

“It’s my fault,” she said. “Of all the stupid things to do, going into Robert’s house takes the prize. None of this would be happening if I hadn’t been such an idiot.”

“You had no idea he’d been murdered. If not for that, what would have come of it? At the worst, Robert would have missed the goblets and confronted you about taking them. No real harm done, and you would have your grandmother’s crystal back.”

“He has been murdered, though,” she whispered. “And now, because I went in there, they’re convinced I killed him.”

Zeke couldn’t argue the point, and the fact made him heartsick. This woman had suffered enough at Robert Patterson’s hands, yet it seemed she was fated to endure more.

For the first time since Robert’s death, Zeke believed there was actually a chance that Natalie might go to jail for the man’s murder.

Chapter Fifteen

A
fter Zeke left that night, Natalie joined her mother for a cup of herbal tea before heading upstairs for bed. When she entered her room a bit later, she leaned heavily against the closed door and stared at the mess the detectives had made of everything. Clothing still hung from her drawers and lay in heaps on the floor. Earlier she’d remade the bed and put things back on their hangers. The rest would have to wait until tomorrow.

Exhausted, yet brittle with tension, Natalie moved farther into the room. Now she could understand how people felt after their homes had been burglarized. Those detectives had gone through everything, even her lingerie drawer. Shoe boxes of keepsakes lay strewn across the floor, the contents jumbled by careless hands. Natalie crouched down to straighten her mementos. She smiled when she came across a lock of Chad’s baby hair. Tears stung her eyes when she reached to close Rosie’s baby book and saw her tiny footprint.

By the time Natalie had the boxes righted and returned to their place on the closet shelf, she was so tired she could barely move. Even so, she didn’t expect to fall asleep very quickly after she donned a nightshirt, slipped between the sheets, and flicked off the lamp. She lay on her back, the feather pillow arranged just so beneath her head. As always, the night sounds that came through the open window soothed her. She listened to the whir of a nighthawk as it dove for mosquitoes, the cheerful trill of crickets in the field grass, and the throaty voices of frogs out in the irrigation pond. The old farmhouse groaned and creaked in the light breeze, the noises as familiar and comforting to Natalie as a lullaby.

Staring through the moon-silvery shadows at the ceiling, she let her thoughts drift to Zeke. He’d said nothing about sneaking over to see her tonight, but she still hoped he would come. Feeling his arms around her had been all that had held her together over the last few days.

Zeke.
Over dinner, he’d told her that the wall between the bar and dining room at the club had come down today. Tomorrow he and his brothers would begin fixing the floor and putting up wood trim to hide where the framing had been attached to the intersecting walls and ceiling. According to him, the cosmetic facia boards would look as though they belonged there, a delineation between bar and dining room that would be stained to match the laminate wood floor. Natalie was anxious to see it for herself, and she’d been hoping to drive into town tomorrow. Now the entire day would be spent putting the house back in order.

Her eyelids began to droop. She relaxed in the cozy warmth of her comforter, grateful in a distant part of her mind for the cool summer nights in Central Oregon. No matter how hot the day, the night winds brought relief.

Natalie had just drifted off when a loud, raucous honking noise brought her awake. Startled, she was out of bed before she could think clearly. The honking sound came again.
Chester? Oh, no!
Still bleary-eyed, she rushed to the open window. As she leaned out over the windowsill, she heard a man curse. Then it sounded as if he collided with the sheet metal that Pop had leaned against the pump house.
Zeke.
That dad-blamed gander was after him again.

“Zeke,” she called softly. “Is that you?”

She wanted to yell at Chester to behave himself, but she was afraid she’d wake everyone in the whole house. Out by the cars, which were parked at random between the picket fence and barn, Natalie saw a ghostly flurry of white, which she suspected was the gander, flapping its wings. Then she saw the indistinct figure of a man running toward the back of the barn. She leaned farther out the window, trying to see better.

The gander honked again, clearly in hot pursuit of someone. Natalie imagined Zeke, circling the barn and vaulting over fences, trying to escape Chester’s vicious pinches. She wanted to grab her robe, race outside, and lock the bird in the barn again.

“What the Sam Hill is going on?”

Valerie’s whispered question startled Natalie so badly that she jerked erect and cracked the back of her head on the bottom rail of the window frame.
“Ouch!”
she cried in a hushed voice and grabbed the smarting spot.

“Sorry.” Valerie moved farther into the room. “What on earth is Chester all upset about?”

Natalie dropped her hand. “I think he’s after Zeke.”

“Uh-oh.” Valerie snickered. “As if scaling the roof to see you isn’t bad enough? That dumb bird. I thought he was getting used to Zeke.”

“Maybe he didn’t recognize him in the dark.”

“Zeke’s going to get mad one of these times and wring that gander’s neck.” Valerie yawned and rubbed her eyes. “If that’s all it is, I’m going back to bed.”

“ ’Night,” Natalie said softly.

Valerie tiptoed quietly from the room and eased the door closed again. Natalie turned back to the window and peered through the darkness. She saw no sign of Zeke—or of Chester, either. With a sigh, she retraced her steps to the bed and flopped down on the mattress.
Dumb gander.
If he ruined her chance to see Zeke tonight, she might lose patience and wring his neck herself.

Zeke crawled through Natalie’s window at three o’clock in the morning. When he slipped into bed with her, she stirred awake, smiled sleepily, and said, “You came back.”

“Of course. Sorry I’m so late.”

She slipped her slender arms around his neck. “I’m the one who’s sorry. Is Chester still in one piece?”

Zeke gave her a bewildered look. “Why wouldn’t he be?” he whispered.

“I’m surprised you didn’t murder him,” she said with a sleepy laugh. “I can’t believe he chased you like that again.”

Zeke didn’t know what she was talking about. “Chester didn’t chase me again. When I let him out of the barn after I left, he was a perfect gentleman.”

Natalie tucked in her chin to study his face. Her eyes were so damned beautiful in the moonlight. Zeke started to kiss her. She stopped him dead with, “It wasn’t you he chased off the property earlier?”

“Tonight?” Zeke glanced at the window. “Chester chased someone off the property tonight?”

“A man, judging by his size, or maybe a teenage boy. He was out by the cars. Chester took after him. It wasn’t you?”

Zeke shook his head. “After I left here, I drove to town to do my books and make out some orders. I ran into a few wrinkles and ended up having to stay longer than I expected.” Zeke swung off the bed. “You got a flashlight? I’d better go check on things.”

Natalie rose onto her knees. “I’m sure everything is perfectly fine. It was probably some kid trying to siphon some gas. No big deal.” She opened her arms. “Come back here.”

Zeke glanced at the window. “What if someone stripped the cars?”

“Then someone stripped the cars. Whoever it was, he’s long gone now. If anything’s missing, we’ll worry about it in the morning.”

She looked so sweet and inviting that Zeke was back on the bed before he consciously made the decision to move. He knelt in front of her and gently claimed her lips in a lingering kiss. She sighed and went soft against him.

He promptly forgot all about the damned cars and made love to her.

The following morning Natalie woke up bright and early. When she got downstairs, she found Valerie already up, dressed, and drinking a cup of coffee.

“Wow. What lit a fire under you?” Natalie asked.

Valerie sank onto a chair. “There’s a lot of work to be done around here today if we’re going to get the house put back together. I thought I’d hit it early before it gets too hot.”

“Good plan.” Natalie stepped to the door. “It wasn’t Zeke that Chester was chasing last night.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No. I’m going to check the cars, just in case something was stolen.”

Moments later, Natalie was circling the automobiles. It didn’t appear to her that anything was missing. Valerie’s boom box was still sitting on the front passenger seat of her Mazda, Naomi’s factory-installed stereo system was still in the dash of her small sedan, and Pop’s tools were still in the bed of his pickup.

“If he was a thief, he ran before he could snatch any good stuff,” Natalie told her sister when she returned to the house. “Kids, trying to siphon gas, I’ll bet.”

“With Chester standing guard, they probably didn’t get any fuel, either,” Valerie observed with a laugh.

“Thank goodness. I can barely afford to keep my tank full as it is.”

Natalie stepped to the cupboard to get a coffee mug. The counter was littered with spilled cereal. She pictured the detectives upending the boxes onto the drain and then scooping the contents back in with their hands.
Disgusting.
Every box of cereal was going in the trash. She wasn’t about to let her kids eat it now.

“Man, this gripes me,” she said as she grabbed a dishcloth to wipe the countertop. “How can the police get away with muscling their way into people’s homes and doing stuff like this? I even saw one of them sifting through the flour bin. Who wants to eat food that strangers touched?”

“They wore gloves.”

“How do we know they were clean gloves? The only reason they wore them was to keep from putting their fingerprints on any possible evidence. For all we know, they wear the same ones, over and over. Heaven only knows what filth they’ve touched. Toilet tank covers, for instance. They always look under tank covers in the movies.”

“Oh, nasty, yucka.” Valerie curled her lip. “I guess you’re right.”

“The flour and cereal have to go. I’m not eating it, and my kids aren’t, for sure.”

Valerie nodded. “I see what you’re saying, but there’s no point in getting pissed off about it. They were only doing their job.” She crossed her slender legs. She wore jeans with strategic slits in the legs, one so high on her thigh that her pink underpants showed. “If you were guilty of Robert’s murder, you wouldn’t hide the sedatives in the medicine cabinet, would you?”

Natalie sighed. “No, of course not. I’d have thrown them away or hidden them in the most unlikely place possible.”

“Like, maybe, the flour bin?”

“Not now, I wouldn’t. Seeing that detective going through the flour is emblazoned on my brain forever.” Natalie poured herself some coffee. “Sorry I’m so cranky. I wanted to drive in and check on things at the club today. Zeke says it looks great with the wall gone. Thanks to last night’s raid, my whole day is screwed up.”

Valerie yawned and took a sip of coffee. “Doesn’t have to be. Mom and I can take care of this.”

“I can’t waltz off and let you guys do all the work. It’s my fault it even happened.”

“It’d be better for the kids if you got them out of here. Poor little Rosie doesn’t understand any of this. Did you see her eyes last night? She was scared to death of those guys.”

Cradling the steaming mug in her hands, Natalie turned to rest her hips against the stove. “This whole mess has been hard on both of them.”

“Then get them out of here,” Valerie urged. “I don’t mind. Honestly. And I know Mom won’t either. Take the kids to town and make a day of it. You haven’t been to church in weeks. They’d both enjoy that. Afterward, take them by the club with you. When you’re finished there, treat them to something really fun to get their minds off everything.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. Just remember you owe me one.”

Natalie glanced at her watch. Then she hurriedly finished her coffee, hugged her sister, and went upstairs to roust her kids out of bed. As the children raced around to get ready for church, Natalie yelled, “New clothes today.”

Rosie slid to a stop in the hall and planted her tiny hands on her hips. “I thought we couldn’t wear them ’til school starts!”

“Church is more special than school,” Natalie insisted. “Pick out your favorite new outfit.”

Rosie shrieked in delight and raced off to her bedroom. Chad grinned and said, “I’m wearing my new Nikes.”

“Go for it, my man.”

A few minutes later, Natalie joined her children at the kitchen table for a fast breakfast of toast and milk, neither of which had been handled by the detectives last night. The moment they all finished eating, they said their good-byes and made for the door. En route to the car, Natalie announced, “After church, we’re going to stop by the supper club to see what it looks like with the wall removed.”

“Cool,” Chad said as he climbed into the back.

“Cool!” Rosie, the parrot, said as she joined her brother on the rear seat and searched for the ends of her safety belt.

After fastening her own safety restraint, Natalie started the car. “When I’m done at the club, we’re going grocery shopping.”

“Big-time boring,” Chad said.

“Yeah, Mommy. That’s no fun.”

Natalie smiled at them over the seat. “But then . . .” She let her voice trail off to get their attention. “
Then
we’re going to do something really special.”

“What?” Chad asked.

“Well, we can go to Papa’s Pizza or, if you’d rather, we can see if there’s a good movie showing. Or we can go to that huge indoor place with the miniature golf and stuff.”

“Fun Village?” Chad asked incredulously.

“Yeah, Fun Village.” At the end of the drive, Natalie turned left onto Old Mill Road, which got very little traffic this far out. After making the turn onto the asphalt, she waved her arm above her head and yelled, “Hurray! We’re on our way!”

“Hurray!” Rosie shrieked. “I get to go to Sunday school in my pretty new top and pants!”

“And then maybe to Fun Village!” Chad cried.

Natalie settled back to devote her attention to driving. After adjusting her mirrors, she accelerated to fifty-five, the rural speed limit in Oregon, and began the long trip to town, slowing down only for the occasional curve. She was going to make this a special day, she thought with a smile. Chad needed a distraction and so did Rosie. After Fun Village, she might even take them to the park to feed the ducks, a fairly inexpensive activity that both kids enjoyed.

That was Natalie’s last rational thought. The next instant, she came upon a sharp curve, and when she pushed on the brake, the pedal offered only momentary resistance before it went clear to the floor. She tried to pump it back up and got a little pedal back, but then it vanished.