Tangled Vines (38 page)

The green-and-white Buick was in the background, along with the tall weeds and the scattered junk. Linda James walked up the steps and opened the door. A slick edit showed her walking into the living room. The clutter of it, the filth, the pile of ash and cigarette butts next to her mother's picture.

Oh, God. Kelly cupped a hand over her mouth, choking back a cry. There was her doll, in close-up, sitting forlornly on the dirty couch. The grimy kitchen and the dishes, caked with dried food, piled in the sink and on the counter, the moldy contents of the refrigerator. Why hadn't she cleaned it up when she was there?

Linda James sat on a bed. Kelly's bed. Dragging a finger over the dust-laden top of her dresser, touching the iron headboard, standing at the window gazing up at the bleak sky.

The two-and-a-half-minute piece ended outside, with Linda expressing sympathy and closing with, “We haven't been able to reach Kelly Douglas for comment, although we understand she is staying in the area. No doubt monitoring the latest developments in the hunt for her father. With mixed feelings, I suspect. Linda James, Napa Valley.”

Professionally, Kelly recognized it was a good story. Personally, she felt devastated, exposed. Her privacy invaded. Angry and ashamed, she bolted from the library That was never going to happen again. Not a second time.

She faltered only an instant when the front door opened and Sam walked in. His shirt was soaked, the wet cotton sticking to his skin and outlining the muscled contours of his chest. His tan chinos were rain-spotted and wet around the cuffs. He didn't immediately see her as he swept off his hat, scattering droplets of water over the marble floor. She took a deep, steadying breath and unclenched her fingers, meeting his gaze when he finally noticed her.

“The rain has started coming down in earnest out there,” he told her with the smallest of grimaces.

“It looks that way.” She moved toward the stairs.

“Going up?”

“Yes.”

“I'll walk with you. I need a hot shower and some dry clothes.” With long strides, he crossed to the staircase, leaving drops of water in his wake. He fell in beside her as they mounted the stairs. “Anything on the news tonight?”

“Nothing new. He's still hiding out somewhere.”

A sigh came from him. “I'm sorry. I honestly thought they would have caught him before now.”

“So did I,” she admitted.

He halted when they reached the door to her room. “Are you okay?”

She wasn't sure she had ever felt okay. “I'll make it,” she told him.

“I know you will.” He smiled. “See you in a bit.”

Kelly nodded, but didn't answer as she pushed the door open and Sam continued down the hall. Wasting no time, she grabbed her purse and yanked her Burberry's raincoat from the closet. Then she was out the door and running down the steps.

Fifteen minutes later, the rental car splashed through the water puddling in the rutted lane and rolled to a halt in front of Kelly's old home. Rain had stained the exposed wood siding a near black and turned the windowpanes into dark shiny mirrors. Kelly stared at it for a long minute, then switched off the headlights and killed the engine.

She stepped from the car into a steady rain and made it to the front door without stepping into any deep puddies The living room was pitch black when she walked in. She groped along the wall for the light switch, hit it, and the overhead light lit the room with a dull glow. Shrugging out of her coat, Kelly looked around and decided trash first.

Miraculously, she found plastic garbage bags in the cabinet under the sink. She filled the first one with spoiled food from the refrigerator, containers and all. She emptied the kitchen wastebasket into the second one and topped it with empty cartons lying about. The third bag she carried from room to room, emptying ashtrays, picking up empty bottles, stuffing in old magazines and newspapers and anything else that resembled trash. By the time she finished, four garbage bags were piled next to the front door.

Kelly tackled the sink of dirty dishes next, scraping off as much of the dried food as she could, then soaking and scrubbing, soaking and scrubbing. Thirty minutes after she started, Kelly dried the last pan and stored it in the stove drawer. With the sink filled with fresh soapy water, she scoured the kitchen table, the range top, and the counter, then wiped down the front of the cupboards and the refrigerator, inside and out.

When she was through, the fifth garbage bag was partially full. She hauled it into the living room with the others. Outside the rain had slowed to a drizzle. Taking advantage of it, Kelly dashed to her car, turned on the headlights, then one by one carted the bags outside, and hoisted them into the back of a rusted-out trailer near the shed.

Finished, she turned and surveyed the junk visible in the headlight beams. The stuff she could lift, she threw in the back of the trailer; the rest she let lie. Tomorrow she'd come back and figure out what to do about it. And the weeds as well, if it stopped raining.

But there was still furniture to dust, floors to sweep and mop, and a bathroom to clean. She turned the car lights off and went back inside. She started to close the door, then changed her mind and left it open to air out the house.

Her fingers were on the last button of her raincoat when Kelly heard a noise. A clink, like silverware. Frowning, she pulled off her coat and draped it over a chair as she walked to the kitchen.

She froze in the doorway, staring at her father. He sat in one of the kitchen chairs, calmly shoveling dry cereal out of a box into his mouth. His thinning hair was wet and flattened to his head in a dark gray cap, but he had on dry clothes.

The anger, which never seemed far away lately, came back. “What are you doing here?”

“Eating.” He poured another handful of Frosted Flakes into his mouth and chewed noisily. “Cold wienies, cheese and crackers, a couple candy bars, and some chocolate chip cookies, that's all I've had for the last two days. You've cleaned the place up some. It looks good.” He dug his hand in the box again. “Why don't you fix some coffee? I got chilled to the bone out there in that rain. It took me a while to figure out you were alone. Remember, I like lots of sugar in my coffee.”

Kelly wanted to slap the cereal box out of his hand. Instead she walked over to the sink, washed her hands, and filled the old electric percolator with water. “I meant why did you come back here?”

“To get some food, dry clothes, blankets, and anything else I might need.”

She added two scoops of ground coffee to the basket, pushed on the top and plugged the pot into the wall socket, then gripped the edge of the counter and leaned against it, keeping her back to him. “Why did you have to break out of jail?”

“What did you expect me to do? Stay in there and get convicted for something I didn't do? Not a chance.” There was the rustle of dry flakes. “I had to get out, figure a way to get my hands on some money and keep those Rutledges from stealing my land. They were clever blaming me the way they did. Those grapes out there should have been picked yesterday. With this rain, I'll probably lose the whole damned crop to mold. I won't get a penny out of them. Which means I'll need that much more.” He chomped on more flakes. “You have to help me, Lizzie-girl. I need to raise enough money to pay that bitch off before she takes my land away from me.”

“Give yourself up and I will help.” Kelly stared at a chipped spot on the cupboard door. “You said once you needed thirty-five thousand dollars. I have it. I have that and more. Surrender to the police and I'll pay off the note. The land will be yours, free and clear.”

“The Rutledges put you up to this, didn't they?”

Kelly swung around to face him, her hands seeking their previous grip on the counter's edge. “No. This is my idea. Strictly mine.” The cereal box was on the table. His hands were empty of all but crumbs as he stared at her with suspicious eyes. “I'll go with you when you give yourself up. I'll drive you myself.”

“No. I won't give myself up. I'm not going back to that jail.”

“They'll catch you sooner or later,” she argued.

“No, they won't. Not if you help me.”

“Help you? How?” The percolator began to gurgle behind her.

“By slipping out, meeting me every so often, bringing me food and stuff.”

She couldn't believe she was hearing this. “You're asking me to become an accessory after the fact. Aiding and abetting an escaped prisoner.”

“Dammit, I'm innocent.” He glared at her. “You can bet if your mother was still alive, she'd do it. She'd help me. And she would want you to help.”

“Don't talk about her!” Raw with anger and old pain, Kelly swept forward and grabbed the back of the nearest chair, her fingers digging through the ripped cheap vinyl and into the crumbling foam padding. “I'm so sick of hearing you go on about her. About how much you loved her. How much you miss her. You killed her. You killed her just as surely as if you'd put your hands around her throat and strangled her.” There were the tears again, burning her eyes, blurring her vision. “I told you she was sick. I told you we needed to take her to a doctor. But you said you didn't have the money to spend on doctor bills. ‘It's just a summer cold,' you said. But you had enough money to throw away on whiskey, didn't you? You took off. You took off and left me there to take care of her, And I didn't know how! I didn't know what to do!”

Kelly barely managed to swallow back a sob. The air seemed to have been squeezed from her lungs. She tried to draw more in as her father leaned his arms on the table, bowing his head slightly and turning it away. The coffeepot gurgled and sighed in a quickening rhythm that seemed to match the aching pound of her heart. As much as she wanted to turn and walk out the door, she couldn't. She'd started this; now she had to finish it.

“You were so drunk when you came home that night you passed out before you ever got to the door. She had tried to wait up for you just like she always did. She was too sick and too weak to do anything but lie on the sofa. I slept on the floor beside her and when I woke up – she was dead.”

“I know.” He brought his hands together on the tabletop, a faint tremor in them. “I let her down. I was always letting Becca down. God knows I loved her, but I wasn't much of a husband.” His whiskey voice was thick with regret and his eyes were shiny with wetness when he lifted his head, not quite able to meet her eyes. “I guess I wasn't much of a father either.”

“Not much of a father? My God, that has to be the understatement of the century,” Kelly declared, disbelief and outrage warring for supremacy. The latter won. “Have you forgotten how you broke my arm and all the times you beat me, all the times I went to school with bruises and black eyes, all the nights I spent here alone, scared that you wouldn't come home and more scared that you would? The real truth is I never had a father. I lived in this house with a drunk. A child beater.”

“It was the whiskey,” he protested.

“Then why didn't you quit? Why did you have to drink? Why?”

“You never understood, did you? Becca, your momma she always knew.”

Self-pity. How many times had she heard it in his voice? So many that the same old disgust came back. “Then make me understand.”

“It's because I'm weak. Because I could never be strong like your momma. Like you.” He kept his eyes centered on his clasped hands. “She always knew I was nothing. That I'd always be nothing. But the whiskey made me feel big and powerful. I could brag about how someday I was going to take the grapes from my vineyard and make my own wine. Wine that would be as good as anybody's in the valley. And when I had whiskey in my belly, I could believe it. Then I'd come crashing back to earth and know it would never happen. Because I couldn't do it. I didn't have what it took. Inside, I mean.”

Kelly stood looking down at him, at the coarse thinning hair on his head, at sagging skin yellowed from too much alcohol for too long and aged beyond its years. Once his shoulders had been broad and muscled; now they were bony and slumped in defeat. This tired and broken old man was the fugitive the police were hunting with helicopters, dogs, and drawn guns.

“This land was the only thing that made me somebody,” he went on, his voice low and throaty. “That's why I have to hang on to it. That's why I can't let those Rutledges take it.” He finally lifted his gaze, his eyes pleading with her. “Don't you see? Without it, everyone will see I'm nothing.”

“I see,” Kelly murmured and turned away, going to the cupboards, taking down two clean cups, filling them with coffee while her mind raced.

All those years. All those years of pain and anger and...fear. All those years of hating and wanting and needing. Now, she just wanted it to end, to be rid of it and him forever.

She reached for the sugar canister and spooned three teaspoonfuls into his coffee cup, then carried the cups to the table and set one down in front of him. “Drink some coffee. It will warm you up.” She pulled out a chair and sat down at the table, opposite him. “You can't keep running,” she said finally, watching as he lifted the cup with both hands and slurped the coffee hot from the cup. “I talked to MacSwayne yesterday. He's a good lawyer. He can help, but only if you give yourself up to the police.”

“Help me go to prison, you mean,” her father grumbled. “The Rutledges have got me framed good for this. It's my word against hers, and who's gonna believe me?”

“But if you're innocent-“

“If.” He paused and expelled a fragment of a humorless laugh. “See? Even you don't believe me. My own daughter, and you think I killed that guy.”

Kelly wanted to believe him, but that meant trusting him, something that had never brought her anything but pain and heartache.

She released a long tired breath and said, “Then answer some questions for me.”