Little Black Book of Murder (21 page)

When she didn't answer, I said, “I can smell the gasoline.”

“Then take care of Twinkles,” she snapped, “while I change. Mick will be here looking for you any minute.”

My fingers shook on the bridle, but I managed to get it off the horse and slide the bit from his mouth. He nuzzled my hair and gave me a shove with his nose, still full of energy. His legs were mud-­spattered, but he was also wet up to his knees and hocks as if he'd splashed through a stream. I used a rag to rub the worst of the mud from him.

While I cleaned up the horse, Emma went to the back of the barn where she'd parked her truck to conceal it. She pulled her sweater over her head and threw it into the straw. I could see her shucking off her boots next, and then her jeans. She climbed into the truck and rummaged for something else to wear.

I gave Mr. Twinkles a slap on his haunch, and he swung willingly into his stall. I went with him and ran a brush over his damp coat while he munched on a mouthful of hay.

Emma came back, yanking a T-shirt over her head. Her buff riding breeches were clean. She had found a pair of sneakers, too. At the water trough, she dunked her head and swished her short hair around to rid herself of the last fumes of gasoline. When she came up for air, she shook her head like a dog coming out of a lake and reached for the beer that she had balanced on the rim of the trough. She snapped the top and took a long, thirsty slug.

I said, “Tell me you didn't do something terrible.”

She drank a little more.

A rush of fury boiled up inside me, and I batted the can out of her hand. It landed in the straw off in the darkness.

“Screw you,” she said.

I grabbed her by the arm. “What have you done, Emma?”

Matching my anger, she said, “On Sunday I found Rawlins's jacket in Starr's barn.”

Still holding her arm, but frozen with dread, I listened.

She said, “I figured either he'd been there, or he was being set up. When I heard the police nabbed him, I figured somebody better do something in case he left any other evidence at the farm.”

“My God.” I had known Emma was on the brink of something bad, but this was far more than my imagination could conjure up.

She pulled out of my grasp and ran both hands through her short, wet hair. “Maybe it was a stupid thing to do. Or crazy. But if somebody's going to get caught helping Rawlins, it might as well be me. I got nothing left to lose, right?”

“Don't say that.”

She had been drinking long before she'd left the barn on Mr. Twinkles and ridden the back road to Starr's Landing. I couldn't judge how drunk she was, but she certainly wasn't sober.

I said, “We love you, Em. We don't want you to go to jail any more than Rawlins. You can't run around in the middle of the night setting fire to—”

“Shut up,” she said. “Forget I was here. Go back to bed. Go back to Mick and make a baby. Let me do what has to be done.”

“You're not thinking straight. Giving your child to Hart has made you—”

“It hasn't done anything to me, so forget it. Get out of here. I'll sleep in the truck for a couple of hours and go to work before anyone—”

Behind me, Michael said, “Before anyone what?”

Both of us nearly jumped out of our skins. We spun around and faced him. He had pulled on a pair of boots and a jacket over his otherwise bare chest. Emma and I must have stared at him stupidly.

He laughed. “The two of you look like you just robbed a bank. What's going on?”

“We're having a fight,” I said as calmly as I could manage. “I want Emma to come into the house and sleep in a bed. But she's determined to stay out here in the barn. Make her see reason, will you?”

He looked past me at my sister, no longer amused. “She knows what's best for herself.”

Behind him, a set of headlights suddenly swept across the yard, and we heard the crunch of tires in the gravel. Michael glanced over his shoulder.

“State police are here,” he reported. “So get your alibi in order, ladies.”

He turned to intercept the cop who got out of the cruiser.

It was Ricci, the trooper I'd spoken to at the impound lot. Michael shook his hand, and they exchanged a sentence or two before Ricci came to the open barn door and directed a blazing flashlight in my face. He said, “Everything all right here?”

“We have a sick horse,” I said. “My sister's taking care of him.”

The flashlight illuminated Emma's face next, but she didn't flinch. She said calmly, “Don't scare him. He's a valuable animal.”

Ricci paced into the barn and used the light to skim past Michael's parked car to Mr. Twinkles, now nervously eyeing the growing crowd and shifting his feet in the straw. He still looked hot and sweaty to me, but maybe Ricci had no experience with animals.

The trooper put his flashlight back on me, letting it slide down my figure. He said, “That's some getup you're wearing tonight.”

There was no covering up the low décolletage of the vintage dressing gown I'd picked up in a Paris thrift shop years ago. The straps of my black silk nightie showed, too, making me look like an escapee from a French boudoir. For an instant, I thought Michael was going to step in front of the light to shield me, but he thought better of it and let the trooper take a long look.

I said, “I didn't plan on running around in public like this. What's going on? There's a fire?”

Ricci shut off the flashlight. “Yeah, the barn at Starr's Landing is burning. I thought I should stop here and make sure everybody's okay.”

“Why?” I asked, a plausible note of fear in my voice. I didn't have to fake my shivering. I was suddenly very cold. “Is there a pyromaniac in the neighborhood?”

Michael said, “Nobody's going to light a match to this place, Nora. Not when we've got half a dozen guys watching the drive.”

Ricci turned his attention to Michael then. “What's that all about? You expecting trouble?”

Michael shrugged. “I like knowing my family is safe.”

“Which family?” Ricci asked.

Michael stiffened, but Emma spoke up before he could pop off an angry retort. She said, “Do you mind taking this conversation outside? I've got a sick animal here, and you're getting him all worked up again.”

Ricci glanced in the direction of Mr. Twinkles, who gave a timely snort of annoyance.

I led the way out of the barn, and the two men followed, leaving Emma behind. I glanced back in time to see her gather up a blanket and throw it over the horse's back.

I hugged myself, suddenly shivering, and said to Ricci, “It was very nice of you to check on us. But if you don't mind, I'm freezing now. May we go back to bed?”

Ricci gave Michael and me another long, suspicious stare. Finally, he said, “Sure. Go to bed before you catch cold.”

He tossed the flashlight into the cruiser and climbed in behind the wheel. I heard Michael ask him a question, and the two of them spoke while I let myself back into the house.

Upstairs, I warmed up and rinsed off the smell of horse in a very hot shower before I put on a clean nightie. My dressing gown was going to need a trip to the dry cleaner. Michael came in as I slipped under the bedclothes.

He checked on Lucy and Max before climbing in beside me. “I almost knocked that cop on his ass for looking at you with that damn flashlight.”

“Thank heavens you didn't,” I said, keeping my voice to a whisper so we wouldn't wake the children. “We already look like America's Most Wanted around here.”

“I didn't punch him because you were putting on a hell of a distraction. You gonna tell me what you and Emma are keeping secret?”

Taking a line from Michael's own script, I said, “It's better if you don't know.”

He said, “I can guess. I had some other stuff delivered when that car was put in the barn. Including a gas can. It wasn't there tonight.”

I sank back against the pillows. “What about you?” I asked when Michael began rubbing my feet to warm them. “When do I get an explanation of what's going on between you and my sister?”

There wasn't any use ignoring it any longer. I'd sensed it for weeks—­Emma making cryptic remarks and Michael changing the subject when Emma's name came up. They'd had a fight. And neither of them wanted me to know the details.

He shook his head. “It's over. Nothing to worry about.”

“Michael,” I said. “She's hormonal. Giving up her baby has been much harder than she thought it would be. She can't be held responsible for her behavior.”

“The hell she can't,” Michael shot back in a tone that surprised me.

I sat up in the bed and pulled my foot from his suddenly painful grasp. I whispered, “Something serious happened between you two, didn't it? Michael, she's my baby sister. As tough as she pretends to be, we have to give her some slack now and then.”

“Maybe she's gotten too much slack over the years.”

“You're mad at her,” I said, amazed.

“Not mad,” he replied. “But fed up.”

“What happened between the two of you?”

He almost got out of bed, but I reached for his hand and pulled him back.

“Tell me,” I said.

A bad moment ticked by before Michael admitted, “A couple of weeks ago, I threw her out of the house. Told her she couldn't live here anymore.”

“Why?” I demanded, my voice rising. “You had no right to do that!”

He looked at me, his usually lazy-­eyed gaze suddenly sharp. “Didn't I?”

“You did,” I hastily corrected myself. “This is your house as much as mine now.”

But that didn't settle the matter. I had said the wrong thing in the heat of the moment. Michael hauled me out of the bed and pulled me into the bathroom. He closed the door. In the dark, he said, “You were right just now. This isn't my house, Nora. It's yours.”

“We're together,” I insisted. “What's yours is mine. For better or for worse—”

“Bullshit.” Michael loomed over me. “We may be together, but not the way I want it.”

“Are we back to that?” I asked.

“We said some words in front of your family, but we're not married. I want a license and a priest and everything else that comes with making it official.”

I couldn't help myself. “Such as the right to toss my sister into the street?”

“If she comes climbing into my lap every time you leave the house, yes.”

My legs loosened under me, and I sat down hard on the edge of the tub. I knew Emma was attracted to Michael, but I hadn't guessed she'd acted on those feelings. Not in my own home. “She—?”

Michael stayed on his feet and ran an exasperated hand through his hair, sorry he'd said it but determined to keep going. “She's good at hiding her drinking, Nora. She started again right after she gave away her baby, and she got plastered every day. Every damn day, she'd get numb and dumb. And as soon as you were out of sight—” Michael caught himself.

“She came on to you?”

He shrugged. “You know how she gets.”

I did. When Emma really got loaded, she had no control. Numb and dumb, indeed. And Michael was her type—­a bad boy with a powerful sexual presence.

He had something else she needed, too—­an inner strength a woman could rely on, be comforted and protected by. I had been drawn to that quality in him perhaps more than anything else at first, when I needed it. To Emma, he probably appeared battle-­tested and undaunted.

He said, “She knew it was wrong. But she couldn't stop, and after a few weeks I couldn't take it anymore. She was a pain in my ass. I don't want to be with two Blackbird sisters. I want to be with you.”

“You did the right thing,” I said softly. “But . . .”

“But what?”

“She said something tonight. That she has nothing left to lose. That worries me.”

Michael sighed and leaned his back against the door, eyes closed.

I looked up at him. “I can't help wanting to do something for her.”

“I know,” he said harshly. “That's your specialty—­helping lost causes.”

A hard lump suddenly clogged my throat. “You think she's a lost cause?”

“No,” he said swiftly, rubbing his face to wake himself up. “Sorry. I didn't mean it that way. It's your—­I know you want to help all of us—­Rawlins and Emma and me, too, but sometimes, Nora, you have to let people make their own choices. Make their own mistakes. People have to learn for themselves.”

I thought about that for a moment. It made sense. But I couldn't make it work in the context of my own family. It was harsh—­more harsh than I could stand. Maybe I was too exhausted to think straight. My head felt like a woolly mess.

“I'm sorry, too,” I said at last. “I'm sorry you had to put up with Emma's behavior.”

“It was pretty comical, her chasing me around the house.”

I tried to smile.

Our gazes met, and we shared a complicated moment. I knew why he'd kept the secret—­both to protect Emma and to spare me the hurt of her betrayal. Now that it was out in the open, however, neither one of us felt good about it.

He said, “I didn't want you to lose your sister.”

“I know. But that might happen anyway.”

“Did she set the fire tonight?”

“I think so. To protect Rawlins. I can't believe she'd be so reckless. So stupid.”

“She's never been the sensible type,” Michael agreed. “And lately? I've been expecting her to do something really wild.”

“It's so wrong. Destroying property, defrauding the insurance people. Will she get caught?”

“Depends on what she left behind. Whether or not the cops can track a horse. I could send some of the guys to—”

“No, don't,” I said at once. “I don't want you connected to the fire in any way whatsoever. Promise me you won't. If she goes down for this, let her do it alone. Please.”