Somewhere Along the Way (23 page)

“Clean him up first,” she said loudly.

“Did you hear that, Denver, we’ve been invited to supper, if you’ll take a bath and shave.”

Denver hooted. “Mind if I use your shower? I need to get started right away to get the layers off in time.”

Gabe waved him away with one hand and pulled Elizabeth closer with the other. “Everything all right, now?”

She looked over his shoulder to make sure Denver was gone, then nodded.

“Mind if I kiss you?” He wanted to make sure he’d be welcomed if he got closer.

She answered by standing on her tiptoes and brushing her lips over his.

WEDNESDAY
FEBRUARY 13, 2008
WRIGHT FUNERAL HOME

My fourth funeral for the new year.

TYLER WRIGHT WAS WRITING HIS DAILY E-MAIL. HE WROTE every night just like he used to write to his friend Kate. She hadn’t answered an e-mail in two years, but he still wrote.

He leaned back, thinking he was probably the greatest fool ever born. A lonely bachelor in his forties who sent an e-mail to a woman he’d seen only a few times. They’d shared a dinner once at an out-of-the-way lodge on a night too icy to drive. They’d agreed that if the e-mails ever stopped, they would both go the first Monday of the months following for three months and wait for the other.

He’d been going on the first Monday to Quartz Mountain Lodge for two years. She never came.

I’m still missing you,
he wrote. He’d told himself he wasn’t going to write those words again, but he just wanted her to know.
Not much has happened here. Remember Reagan Truman? I told you about her getting hurt. She’s out of the hospital and on the mend.

Stella McNabb poked her head into Tyler’s office. “The Hendersons are gone, Mr. Wright. Mrs. Biggs was a lot of help tonight. You want to drive her home while I finish up? I hate keeping her out too late when she might have someone besides Martha Q to cook for in the morning.”

“Sure. Glad to,” Tyler said, a moment before he clicked Send. He could have thought about it for a while, but no one was reading his e-mails anyway. “I’ll get my hat and be right there.”

He rushed around the desk and grabbed his hat and coat. “Come on, Little Lady, let’s go take Mrs. Biggs back to the inn.”

The border collie stood and shook, as if fluffing her coat for the trip.

Mrs. Biggs was waiting for them when they reached the reception area. Since the mystery lady had showed up at his cemetery, Tyler had somehow become responsible for her.

When he had her tucked into the car, he said, “Thanks for helping out tonight. The Hendersons are a big family and sometimes get a little rowdy when they have a night visitation. Stella can usually handle them, after corralling high school kids for forty years, but I’d hate to think what they’d do if the food ran out.”

Mrs. Biggs laughed. “You know, they’re sweet people. I went to school with a few of them before I moved away. We used to play a game when they weren’t around. Someone would say Hendersons and we’d all try to name them in order as fast as we could. With all the names starting with
H
, it wasn’t easy.”

Tyler smiled. “It probably didn’t help that Mrs. Henderson got mixed up and named two of them Henry.”

“Henry the first and Henry the second. I’d forgotten that.”

“They’re both dead. The oldest Henry of cancer about ten years ago and the younger one in a car wreck in Houston. I made the long drive to bring him home.”

They were silent for a minute before Mrs. Biggs said, “You’re a good man, Mr. Wright.”

“I try,” Tyler said, thinking of one person on the end of an e-mail connection who must not think so. “A few years ago we had someone setting grass fires around Harmony and the federal people Alex brought in thought it was me. I even got arrested.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t my finest hour.”

“I’m glad it was cleared up, Mr. Wright, or I’d have to bake you a cake with a file in it.”

They both laughed, but remembering the day his Kate saw him in handcuffs made him sad. It had been the last time he’d seen her wonderful hazel eyes.

Tyler waited until Mrs. Biggs made it inside, then turned on the radio as Little Lady jumped into the front seat. They both drove home listening to the mellow sounds of jazz.

THURSDAY, 7:00 P.M.
FEBRUARY 14, 2008
MATHESON RANCH

GABE WASN’T SURE WHAT HE EXPECTED A FAMILY NIGHT supper at the Mathesons’ to be like, but a table for ten wasn’t it. The fire chief, Elizabeth’s brother, was there with his wife-to-be, the sheriff. Two little old ladies who told him to call them Aunt Pat and Aunt Fat were there. They looked so much alike he knew he’d never keep their names straight. A frail little girl on crutches smiled up at him when she answered the door and kept staring at him as he was introduced to the others. Elizabeth’s mother, Joyce, was nice, but had that now-what-are-you-two-guys-doing-here look about her as she showed them into a large living room decorated in leather.

Elizabeth was nowhere in sight, and minutes after meeting everyone, Gabe had run out of anything to say. He’d gone into town and bought a new pair of jeans and a white sweater, so he assumed he looked presentable enough. He’d even made a trip to the barber shop and gotten a shave. Denver had followed along, buying tan slacks and a turtleneck, but skipping the shave and haircut in favor of fast food next door. He looked more like a young Hemingway than an air marshal.

Denver and Alex started talking shop, leaving everyone else, including Hank, out of the conversation. The aunts and the mother vanished back into the kitchen, leaving Gabe sitting next to the kid on a long couch.

“How’d you get that scar?” Saralynn, about six, asked.

Gabe looked at her. No one had ever asked him that. As soon as the wound on his face had healed, he’d grown the beard. He regretted shaving. “I was in the army.”

The kid looked at him as if she could see all the way to his soul. He’d never been around kids and couldn’t help wondering if they all seemed so creepy. “Where’d you get those crutches?” he asked, hoping she’d get mad or bored and move away.

“In the army,” she answered without blinking.

“Oh yeah, what branch?”

“The willow branch.” She giggled. “I was a hero. I got a purple heart to prove it, but you can’t see it ’cause it’s still inside of me.”

He smiled, realizing the kid was playing with him. “That’s a good branch. They go into the windy fights, don’t they?”

She nodded. “We carry laser guns.” She raised her crutch like it was a rifle. “We can shoot the bad guys and freeze them solid in a second. When they thaw, they never do bad things again . . . and hair never grows on their face for as long as they live.”

“You know a lot about laser guns,” Gabe said, fascinated by her imagination.

“I go with my great-aunts to a place where they zap the chin hair off people. But the doctors have no idea what a great weapon they have.”

Gabe, who spent most of his days in fantasy, had no trouble stepping into her world. “What are we going to do if hairless invaders try to steal our lasers?”

“We’ll have to fight them off with huge rubber bands because everyone knows bullets don’t kill hairless invaders. They slip right over their heads.”

“Of course,” he answered. “Unless they’re sunburned, of course.”

Saralynn nodded once. “Of course, but very few people know about that.” She studied him a few seconds and then asked, “Can I touch your scar?”

He leaned closer and she placed her thin hand on the side of his face, where a scar almost as wide as her little finger ran from the corner of his ear along his jawline to almost his chin.

“Does it still hurt?”

“No,” he said. “A scar just becomes part of you, like a memory, but it doesn’t hurt.”

“Good,” she said. “The doctor says if I have surgery on my legs, I’ll have scars. I’m glad they won’t hurt.”

He saw it in her eyes. Saralynn had lived her whole life with pain. He felt weak for complaining about the few months he’d suffered. “When it’s over,” he said, “the scars will let everyone know you’re a hero.”

“Like you,” she said, pulling her hand away. “You saved Reagan Truman’s life. I heard Alex and Uncle Hank talking about it.”

Before he could say more to this angel on crutches, he heard laughter and turned to see the Matheson sisters step into the room. Elizabeth’s sister was a complete opposite of her. Where Liz was petite with curly hair and had an excitement for everything in life, Claire was tall, slender, and remote. She glanced around the room with big brown eyes and seemed to be silently chanting that nothing and no one interested her.

Elizabeth rushed over to Gabe. “You shaved.” She smiled. “Now I can see your face.” She put her hand on the side of his face, touching his scar as Saralynn had. “It’s a great face.”

He watched closely, but she didn’t blink at the scar. He wasn’t sure she even saw it. Funny, he’d worried about how people would react to it for years, and the first two he’d met hadn’t turned away at all.

“Everyone,” Elizabeth yelled over the talking, “have you all met Gabe and his friend Denver?”

“No,” Claire said, standing right in front of Gabe so that he would have had to push her aside to stand. Her jeans and spotted white shirt told everyone that she hadn’t bothered to dress for dinner and that coming down to meet them was interrupting her work. “I don’t believe I’ve met your client. Gabriel, is it? The inmate.”

Gabe was at a disadvantage with her towering above him, and he had a feeling Claire knew it. He nodded once as Elizabeth made the introductions. She ended with, “He’s not an inmate, Claire, he wasn’t even booked.”

Claire’s smile blinked so fast across her lips, Gabe wasn’t sure he’d seen it. “I’m glad to see they let you out of jail in time for dinner,” she said, glanced at Alex, and added, “Sheriff, are you sure he didn’t try to murder that poor girl and only played the savior after you arrived?”

Alex looked embarrassed by the question, and Hank opened his mouth to stop his sister from continuing, but it was Gabe who spoke first.

“If I were a murderer, we’d have a great deal in common. I understand you murder men on canvas for money. Kind of like a hired killer.” Gabe swore he saw her claws come out. Beneath the beauty was an angry woman he wished he could get at least a room’s length away from.

“Dinner’s ready.” Joyce Matheson called her guests and children to the dining room.

Claire glared at Gabe but turned quickly, as though she’d messed up the introductions completely.

Before she could think of something else to say to Gabe, Denver stepped between them. His height towered above everyone, even Claire. “Nobody introduced me.” Denver offered his hands to her, unaware of the claws. “I’m Gabriel’s friend, but don’t hold that against me. I’ll help you kill him if you’re set on the idea. He must be nuts to think a sweet woman like you would even think of murdering anyone. You’re Claire Matheson; I’ve heard of your work.”

Claire blinked and looked at Denver as if he had the brains of a sopapilla. “You know my work?”

“No, but I’d sure like to. I read an article about you on the airplane the other day. I would have guessed you would have been older to be so well known.” He stared for a moment, then lowered his voice. “There’s something about tall brown-eyed women that always stops my heart. I apologize for staring.”

Gabe thought Claire looked like she was getting another idea for one of her paintings. Denver didn’t seem to notice; he just picked up her hand, put it in the crook of his arm, and asked her to show him in to dinner.

Elizabeth laughed at Gabe’s side. “Hope she doesn’t kill him before dessert. They make an interesting couple, don’t you think? In fact, if he were wearing armor I’d say they were the perfect couple.”

Gabe started to offer his arm to Liz, then had a better idea. He leaned down toward Saralynn. “I got a limp, sweetheart,” he whispered to the little girl. “But if you’ll trust me, I think I can manage to carry you into dinner.”

She raised her arms and he lifted her feather-light body. Liz showed him the way into the wide dining room that probably had a hundred years’ worth of Mathesons sitting around the table. Tonight everything was done up in red and black, with smells of onion and peppers drifting in the air. Bowls of beans, flour tortillas, and Spanish rice were already on the table. As they took their seats, the two sweet old aunts brought in platters of chili-covered burritos and creamy chicken enchiladas. Huge baskets of hollow sopapillas and corn bread packed the table as everyone began filling their plates while they passed food.