Fool's Puzzle (27 page)

Dove thought for a moment. “Not really,” she said. “She talked a lot about you, but it was always the things she was going to do for you. She even talked about what colors your bridesmaids’ dresses were going to be. That was when you were insisting on everything you got being pink.” Dove looked at me, her face still and sad. “I don’t think she thought she was really going to die. Just couldn’t imagine not seeing you grow up.”

As we walked back to the house, she stuck her cool, dry hand on the back of my neck, then stroked my hair.

“Feels nice,” she said. “Maybe I should go for it too. Garnet’s going to snap a garter next time she sees you.”

“It just seemed like it was time,” I said, grabbing her hand and squeezing. “Where is Aunt Garnet, by the way?”

“That’s right.” She gave a rusty cackle. “In all
your
excitement you didn’t hear the latest. Rita called.”

“She did?”

“From Las Vegas.”

“What’s she doing there? Wait, maybe I don’t want to know.” I opened the back door and we went into the kitchen.

“She got married, the little fool.”

“I don’t believe it.” I went to grab my braid and caught empty air. This new hairstyle was going to take some getting use to.

“Believe it. Garnet was so upset she went straight home to consult with the clan. Your cousin Remar’s youngest son, Lyle, is doing pre-law down at the university in Little Rock. They’re talking annulment.”

“That’s going to be a bit difficult. She’s over twenty-one and I’m willing to bet the ranch
that
marriage has been more than adequately consummated.”

“That’s what I told Garnet, but you know her, nobody can tell her nothing. They’re still hoping to get their hands on that money Rita was going to marry into.”

The thought of Rita and Skeeter and the hullabaloo their marriage was causing made me smile more than once over the next few days. I helped Dove get all her pots and pans back in proper order, watched Daddy work with his latest love, a sorrel mare named Reba, and rode miles and miles over trails Jack and I had ridden together.

One day I stuck a jar of strawberry preserves in my saddlebag. As I stood on the edge of a deep ravine with the intentions of throwing it, in some great symbolic gesture, Jack’s voice seemed to speak to me.

“Now, honey,” he said. “There you go making something fancy out of nothing but plain old strawberries. Wouldn’t they do a whole lot more good on a nice piece of toast?”

And I laughed. Maybe it was his voice in my head, or Dove’s, or my own. It didn’t matter. Because the whole point is, we’re all a part of the people we love and they’re a part of us and that never changes; it’s a whole long chain, not held together by genetics but by something we can’t see or measure.

I cradled the jar in my lap, sat on the edge of the ravine and watched a hawk cruise for its supper. It wasn’t the last time I cried for Jack, but it would be a long time before I cried again.

“You’re lucky the police didn’t shoot you,” Dove said on the fourth morning as she poured me a cup of coffee. She’d had me replay the scenario at least a dozen times, frustrated she missed out on the excitement.

“Believe me, I had their attention.” I picked at the coffee cake she set in front of me. This was the first morning I’d slept in; the first night of good, dreamless sleep I’d had in a long time.

“Bet you scared the tar outta them,” she said, the deep lines in her peachy-brown face moving upward in a grin. “All those big ole tough cops.”

I grinned back. “I do believe I did.”

“Good.” Her braid swung around like a monkey’s tail as she turned back to the turkey she was basting.

“Heard from your policeman?” She pronounced it pole-leece and she knew the answer; she was just digging at me.

“No,” I said in a casual voice. He was the one thing I had purposely avoided thinking about the last four days. “Doesn’t matter.”

She turned, gave me a knowing look and gestured at the coffee cake.

“Eat up. You’re too skinny. Most men like a little something to hold onto.”

“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.” I pushed up the sleeves of my red sweatshirt and took a small bite, letting the brown sugar dissolve on my tongue. “Where’s Daddy?”

“Outside someplace, and don’t change the subject. You’re too young to be alone.”

“You weren’t much older than me when Grampa died,” I said. “You’ve been alone all this time.”

“Honeybun.” She pointed the dripping baster at me. “What with raising six kids and then you, I haven’t been alone in over fifty years.”

I rolled my eyes and played with the crumbly topping on the coffee cake.

“Elvia called earlier this morning,” she said, closing the door to the oven.

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“She said she’d call back. She talked to Miguel. They got the tests back from the gun they found in J.D.’s collection. It was the one that killed the boy who worked with you. Stupid old fool. Doesn’t he even watch TV? I would of got rid of it.”

“Did she say anything about Carl?”

She looked at me with troubled eyes. “They can’t do nothing to him, baby. There’s just no proof he was driving. If they can get that Suzanne character to talk, the most he’d be charged with would be leaving the scene of an accident.” She wiped her hands on her jeans, never taking her eyes off my face.

“I still can’t believe J.D. would kill two people just to ...” I couldn’t think about what he really did. “To protect Carl’s reputation, his own? I don’t understand it.”

“Habit,” Dove said. “He’s been bailing Carl out since that boy could walk. Some parents just don’t know when to draw the line.”

“But murder?”

“He probably thought it was the only way to protect his child. When we love someone, we don’t always know when to quit.”

“I can’t believe you’re defending his actions.”

“I’m not, honeybun. I’m just telling you what he probably felt.” She picked up a knife and whacked the head off a stalk of celery. “It’s just a shame he never thought about those two kids he killed. That they were someone’s children, too.”

Outside, a car door slammed. Dove walked over to the large picture window in the living room and peered out.

“Who is it?” I asked after she stood there for a minute or so.

“Can’t really tell from this angle, but it appears to be for you.”

“What?” I walked over to the window. The hood of my Chevy was up and a long pair of legs in washed-out Levi’s pulled tight across the thighs was bent over the engine while Daddy stood talking and gesturing with his coffee cup.

“I can see what attracted you to him,” Dove said with a snicker.

“Dove!” I gently slapped her shoulder. “You’re seventy-five years old. You’re a great-grandmother, for Pete’s sake.”

“Which makes me more qualified than you to judge the quality of a man’s butt.” She looked back outside. “Looks pretty good. He must be one of them fellas who likes to exercise. Probably has lots of staying power.”

“You are unbelievable. You sound like a teenager.”

She patted my arm. “Best not let him get too close to me today. I might just give it a little pinch.”

I groaned and shook my head.

She placed a hand between my shoulder blades and shoved me toward the door. “You’d better get out there before your daddy puts him to work shoveling crap in the barn.”

As I walked down the porch steps, Daddy passed me, empty coffee cup in hand.

“Nice boy,” was all he said.

Ortiz leaned against the white rail fence that lined our long gravel driveway. A smudge of grease from the Chevy’s engine streaked the front of his white tee shirt.

“What are you doing to my truck?” I asked.

“Just checking it out.” His eyes widened a bit when he saw me, but he didn’t mention my hair. He gestured to a small pasteboard box sitting on the ground next to the truck. “Brought you something.” I opened it with the toe of my boot and peered in at some mechanical contraption.

“What is it?”

“A new starter. I’m tired of worrying about you breaking down somewhere. It’ll only take an hour or two to put it in.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say. In my family, when a man started feeling proprietary about a woman’s vehicle, that meant he had intentions. I wasn’t sure what it meant to Ortiz. I stared at the ground and waited.

“You’re welcome,” he said in a wry voice.

We were silent for a moment.

“You have a heck of a lot of nerve showing up here after how you treated me,” I blurted out.

“I am not going to talk about any of that with you. Every time I think about it, I have this uncontrollable urge to wring your neck.”

“You!” I said. “What about me? You treated me like a common criminal. And I want to know why you didn’t tell me you suspected J.D. all along? I can’t believe you kept that from me.”

“Why, so you could go running to Carl or J.D. and screw things up worse than you already did? It was a lucky break for us J.D. was stupid enough to keep the gun he killed the Griffin kid with, or we’d have squat to charge him with.”

“Screw things up? I solved this case, Friday. You’d still be out asking questions and writing things in your little notebook if it wasn’t for me. Besides, that was my life you were putting on the line by not telling me what you suspected.”

He moved forward and put his hand over my mouth. “I’m sick of arguing about this. I’ve followed you around like a friggin‘ puppy dog the last week and a half trying to keep you out of trouble. You know, you are the most pig-headed ...”

I pushed his hand away. “Besides your obvious enjoyment at lecturing me and your peculiar interest in my motor vehicle, just
why
are you here, Ortiz?”

“Actually, your grandmother called me.”

“What?”

“She said that if it was of any interest to me, you were probably ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“She didn’t say, but it was too intriguing to pass up.”

I groaned. I was going to take that braid of hers, wrap it around her neck and pull. Better yet, I’d buy Aunt Garnet a one-way ticket back to San Celina.

“Don’t be too hard on her. I’m sure she meant well.” He reached over and pulled at a strand of my hair. “So, what happened here?”

I shrugged. “It seemed like something to do at the time.”

“Psychologists say that men assert their freedom from authority by growing their hair long and that women show their independence by cutting theirs.”

“You’re always just crammed full of interesting facts, aren’t you?”

He smiled. “It’s cute. I like it.”

“Believe it or not, that really wasn’t one of my considerations when I had it done.”

“New hair,” he said, running his hand gently through it. “Hair grown in the last nine months.”

A part of me wanted to push his hand away, but a bigger part of me didn’t. “Not much gets by you, does it, Sergeant Friday?” I said softly.

“Not the important stuff,
querida
.”

“Okay,” I said, deciding to get to the point. “This thing between you and me. What is it anyway?”

“What do you want it to be?”

“A question for a question. Is that what life with a cop is like?”

“I’m warning you, it isn’t easy. Interrupted meals, interrupted holidays, interrupted ... well, you get the drift. It’s what broke up my marriage.”

“Just how long are you going to be around these parts?” I asked. I climbed up and sat on the top rail of the fence so we were equal eye level.

He was silent for a moment. “Does it matter?”

I considered his question, then decided to tell the truth. “Yes, it does. I don’t like to start things I can’t see to some sort of finish.”

“So I noticed.” He grabbed the fence on both sides of me and leaned close.

“I have three months left, and they’ve asked me to stay six more. Aaron isn’t getting better as quickly as anticipated.” His face grew pensive for a moment, then he smiled. “After that, who knows? Is that long enough?”

I placed my hands on his shoulders and looked into his crazy gray-blue eyes. “I guess if we can’t figure out something in nine months, then we’re pretty stupid.”

“Sounds about right to me.”

“We’re really different, you know.”

“Yes. I, for example, have some sense.”

I punched him in the chest. “You have a terrible temper. You really need to work on that. And I bet you can’t even ride.”

“I never had a problem with it before I came here. And I rode a horse once. Wasn’t that hard.”

“You are so incredibly arrogant.”

“And that smartass mouth of yours is going to get you in real trouble someday.”

“Oh, this is going to be great fun,” I said.

“Sure is,” he replied and grinned.

“We’ll be in a fishbowl. No privacy whatsoever.”

“Guess I’ll have to get used to it.” He kissed me quickly on the lips, then started to back away. “I’d better get cracking on that starter.”

“Just a minute, Chief Ortiz,” I said. Hooking my boots around his waist, I pulled him back and gave him a kiss he wouldn’t forget anytime soon.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked some time later. I was off the fence and pressed against his clean, sweet-smelling shirt, his chin resting on the top of my head.

“About what I’d get if I rebuilt your carburetor.”

I laughed and kissed the bottom of his chin.

“Could you do one thing for me?” he asked.

“Depends.”

“My name’s Gabe.”

I laughed again. “I’ve grown kind of fond of Friday, but I’ll try.”

At that moment, Dove came out and rang the dinner bell.

“Bring the boy in for coffee,” she called.

“She’s enjoying this immensely,” I said as we walked toward the house. “Be prepared to tell your goriest stories. Feel free to be as graphic as you like. Knowing the chief of police on a personal basis will be quite a feather in her hat with the historical society. All those old ladies are a bunch of bloodthirsty ghouls.”