Treasure Me (21 page)

At the curb, Natasha Jones elbowed her way through the crowd. Her family appeared behind her—first her husband, next her father, then the three kids. The boys were close in age, and Birdie guessed the oldest was eight. They were great diversions, all three of them, if she
were
planning a light day of work. Grandpa was an easy mark as he bent over the middle boy, his wallet peeking out of the back pocket of his trousers. Natasha, too. Her husband pressed his cheek to hers. Her purse swung free.

No.
A gust of wind kicked by, nearly taking Birdie off her feet.
They’re a nice family out to see the parade.
Instinctively she fished around her pocket, winding her fingers around the ruby-studded key. It felt heavy and complete. Substantial. Unlike her dreams, which Hugh had cruelly pointed out were an illusion.

Had he foretold the future? Finding the rubies and believing she’d go legal wasn’t the same as doing it. Wandering from city to city and praying for her luck to hold were habits ground deep under her skin. It was all she’d ever learned. It was how her parents lived. Not much comfort to a man doing a long stretch in Arizona. And her mother? The Feds were determined to take down Wish. Their pursuit had probably driven her deep into Mexico by now. How normal people lived, people like Natasha, with her arm linked through her husband’s and the boys darting around like fireflies—it was incomprehensible and unfair.

Despair swamped her. Why pretend she was anything more than a two-bit thief? She carried Tanek’s blood in her veins. If she dared to look in a mirror she glimpsed a replica of her mother, a younger version of Wish with too-long hair and a hard certainty around her mouth.

Natasha swung around to peer at the courthouse, her red leather purse bobbing like a ripe cherry. On instinct, Birdie shot forward.

Bumping into the woman, she worked fast. It was a ballet really, her practiced apology and Natasha’s honeyed eyes sparkling, and the way the boys laughed at Birdie’s deceptively clumsy moves. They didn’t see the lightning in her fingertips. They missed the joggle of their mother’s purse and the flash of green. It was over in seconds.

Returning to her perch in front of the restaurant, Birdie stuffed the bills into her pocket. The usual, self-congratulatory high didn’t surface. Holiday music burst from the center green,
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
. She listened in numb confusion
.
The crowd heaved forward even though the street was still empty. Unable to get a fix on her emotions, she watched them with the detachment of an observer on the moon.

“Birdie, wipe that sour expression off your face. It’s the holiday season.”

The scrape of Theodora’s voice snapped her to attention. The fringe on the old woman’s cowhide jacket whipped through the air like rust-colored snakes. Beneath a cowboy hat trimmed with red and green lights she screwed up her face with palpable displeasure.

One of the hat’s green lights stuttered out. Birdie tapped it and the bright flashing resumed. “Where’s your tinsel?” Tipping her head, she took in Theodora’s brown and white leather boots. Obviously the pint-sized retiree was itching for a cowboy Christmas. “Nice. If we find you a mask, you can hand out presents dressed like the Lone Ranger.”

“Are you casting aspersions on my clothes?”

“Why not?” She flicked at Theodora’s satchel. “You can’t shoot me in public. It’d ruin the parade.”

“Or start it off with a bang.” Theodora stuck out her chin. “Why are you hiding over here by yourself?” She bounced a thumb at Finney, creating all sorts of mayhem further down the street. “Why aren’t you helping her?”

Evidently the volunteer fire department was trying to raise money. Their members flanked a bent Christmas tree with cheery smiles. They’d stuffed the trunk of the tree inside a garbage can and dotted a few branches with tinsel. Finney stood in the center of the men, clanging a bell in front of a red lacquer bucket. Whenever someone approached, she charged with her bell singing and her face tilted at a bullish angle.

“She doesn’t need my help.” What Finney
did
need was a sedative.

Furtively, Birdie’s gaze drifted back to Natasha. Taking the baker’s money wasn’t merely stupid. It was mean. Cruel. What had she been thinking? Natasha’s coat looked ten years old. True, her purse had been polished to a nice luster but there were spidery cracks in the fake leather.

Theodora poked her in the stomach. “Pay attention!” Then she barked at Delia, who was flirting with a biker. The girl trotted over and she added, “If you lazy asses don’t have anything better to do, come and help with the parade.”

Delia’s nose crinkled. “Oh, man. What’s wrong this time?”

This time?
Birdie looked at them with confusion. “Are you talking about the floats for the parade?” Surely they were ready to go.

Delia chortled. “This is a small town, Birdie. We rig up vans and trucks for the Festival of Lights. There aren’t any floats. We have enough problems convincing the farmers not to dress up their chickens and add them to the convoy.”

“And how’s that my problem?”

Theodora thwacked her arm. “You’re in a beastly mood. Now, get moving. The trucks are behind the courthouse. There aren’t enough folks getting them fancied up. Where’s Hugh?”

Delia popped a stick of gum into her mouth. “He’s laid claim to one of the tables at the library. He’s got a homemade ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign.”

Theodora did the angry-shimmy thing with her shoulders. “What does he think he is? North Korea? Delia, trot over there and haul him out. There’s work to be done.”

After Delia trudged off, Theodora latched onto Birdie’s wrist and dragged her forward. The old woman was an angry bee zipping through the crowd. Even as her hat blinked holiday cheer, the scowl on her face sent the swarm of parade-goers scattering.

Breaking free, Birdie set herself a mulish gait. She nodded in greeting to Finney, busy emptying the pockets of anyone unlucky enough to pass within earshot of her clanging bell. The pail was already full of bills. Tens, twenties, a Ben Franklin—no, two. The citizens of Liberty weren’t rich, but they were certainly generous.

Still, there must be limits. If there
was
a parade committee, they operated on a budget of fifty dollars… or less. The trucks idling bumper to bumper behind the courthouse sported plastic poinsettias stuffed into rust spots and cheap tinsel taped on greasy windshields. A silver Ford was pathetically adorned with cardboard bells a five-year-old must have cut out. Behind it, a pockmarked Chevy revved beneath a twisted clump of twinkle lights. Half of the lights were dead.

“Give them your hat, Theodora.” Birdie nodded toward the men heaping greenery on the Chevy. “They need all the help they can get.”

“Like hell I will.” The old woman went up on the toes of her cowboy boots. “Hugh! Over here!”

Birdie tried to steel herself as he strode forward. Hugh was in fine form. His eyes were slitted and he was working the muscles in his jaw. His irritation went unnoticed by Theodora, who put them both to work on the third truck in line—another Ford. They strung lights in an uneasy silence while their cowboy general barked orders at Blossom, who’d eagerly appeared with her friends. Delia ran off to fetch aluminum garlands. Anthony was already pouring sweat from the flatbed of a truck near the end of the procession. Several men Birdie recognized as regulars at the restaurant were helping him.

Nervous energy galvanized her into action. The faster she got away from Hugh, the better. She peered back at the crowd for Natasha, who’d disappeared.

“Working out your next heist?” he asked when they’d tugged a gaudy length of aluminum garland around the front bumper and faced each other. He snatched the duct tape from her quivering fingers and tore off a strip. “If you’re watching Finney, you’ve picked the wrong target. She’ll never let you near enough to the fireman’s fund to grab a fistful of bills.”

“Go to hell.”

The retort jerked him upright. “It’s nice to see you too, Eggplant. Been minding the apartment while I’ve been away?”

Did he think she cared if he avoided her? “Let’s get this done, all right? I left my boxing gloves at the homestead. Find someone else to go a few rounds with.”

“I’m not fighting.”

“Then what
are
you doing?”

“Trying to get you to admit you need morality training. Not to mention a new line of work.”

“Leave me alone.”

Horrified at the tremor in her voice, she bit her mouth shut. Pressure built behind her eyes. Her heart flung against her sternum like a fledgling thrown from the nest.
Tears?
No way. Tears were reserved for cataclysmic events. If she were evicted from an apartment for skipping rent, or another drifter stole her stuff—maybe she’d bring on the waterworks. But not for Hugh.

She drew a deep breath in a desperate attempt to stabilize her emotions. “Will you lay off?” Because he was right, mostly. She hadn’t been able to resist looking at the fireman’s fund, and she
had
lifted cash from Natasha. She’d earned his loathing… and her own.

She’d stayed too long in this little town, long enough to grow used to the scent of cinnamon sweetening the air every morning as Natasha got to work at the bakery, long enough to wait with anticipation to hear about Delia’s weekend social life every Monday. Miss Betty greeted Birdie with a wink and a nod whenever delivering the mail, and Blossom Perini took over The Second Chance most afternoons with her teenage friends. They asked for advice about boys while they slurped root beer floats and fiddled with their iPods. Birdie liked the way they took in her words as if they were valuable gems. But she’d donned the townspeople’s affection like an ill-fitting pair of jeans. Trying to fit into their company was impossible.

Approaching, Hugh seemed to sense an opening. “How ‘bout this. I’ll back off if you’ll admit I’m right.”

“Then here goes. I’m everything you think I am. A loser, a drifter—I’ll never get it together. Satisfied?”

His expression froze. “If you agree, why not change?”

The question ate through her eroding composure. “Gee, I don’t know. Because I don’t have any real job skills? Or maybe it’s because I can’t deal with people, their expectations. You should’ve seen how pissed I made Finney yesterday. A customer grabbed me by the arm, to take his order. I nearly sent his ass to the floor. I reacted like he’d come at me in an alley.”

“Get off the street and you won’t have to be streetwise. There are other ways to live.”

And what would that involve? Monthly bills, a car payment—
responsibilities.
“You make it sound simple. It’s not,” she replied. “No one taught me the basics. How to keep a schedule. Hold down a job. Pay bills.”

“You have a job. You do pay bills—rent at least.”

“I can handle a short stint. Then it falls apart. I don’t get it.”

“Sure you do.” He drilled her with a hard stare. “It takes perseverance to change, but you want it easy. You’ll grab the rubies and go. When the money runs out, you’ll go back to drifting.”

Christ, she
did
want to cry. “And you’re an expert on change? I should follow your lead?”

“I can help you rehabilitate.”

“I manage fine on my own.”

“Oh, yeah? Seems like you need something before you manage your life straight into jail.”

He’d tapped her deepest fear and the harsh tenor of his voice made the horror vivid. The steel cage. Miles of cement, like a tomb. If she was ever forced to spend time in prison, locked up like an animal, she wouldn’t survive.

He grunted. “So you are scared.” He blocked her path when she tried to flee. “You should be. The U.S. has grown a conservative hide. Most people think criminals like you should be warehoused for the long haul. They aren’t big on rehabilitation, Birdie. They’d just as soon incarcerate your ass and throw away the key.”

“Why won’t you lay off?”

“I can’t. Not while you’re screwing up your life.”

She wasn’t taking it. “Aren’t you the guy who derailed his life when he wrote about some do-gooder’s cheating husband? Didn’t the woman drown?” She got into his face, enough so he flinched. It was an awful victory. “Isn’t it your fault she died? Oh, and you’ve been doing so well ever since.”

The accusations sucked the air from Hugh’s lungs. She was taking gutter swipes and she knew it. No glory in winning, not with the pain in his eyes mainlining straight to her heart. She wanted to double over and wallow in the body blow she’d doled out to them both.

Theodora trotted up. “Cain and Jezebel! What are you fools arguing about?” She planted herself between them. “Hugh, you’re not fixing to faint, are you?”

The question drew his shoulders up. “Stand off, buckaroo. I’m all right.” He scraped his hand through his hair, unwilling or unable to draw his eyes away from Birdie’s. The pain in his face ebbed to low tide, with gale winds rising.

Theodora screwed down her hat. “Make another comment about my Western wear and you won’t be fainting. You’ll be dead.” She grabbed the duct tape dangling from his hand. “We’ll finish together. Birdie, get the lights. Move!”

Stiffly Birdie swung onto the ice-crusted lawn, where decorations were heaped in boxes. When she returned with her arms full, Hugh lobbed fiery glances. Enough so that Theodora noticed. Her mouth worked silently while the air between them congealed. When she’d had enough, she stamped her foot.

“All this high emotion is poisoning my disposition. What were you rascals discussing?” She thumped Hugh on the hip, as if he were the one more prone to honesty. Glowering, he was as mute as marble.

Theodora’s mistrust stung but it was manageable. “We weren’t discussing anything important,” Birdie snapped. She flung one end of the string at his chest. She ached from her ankles to her neck, as if his displeasure were a virus running rampant in her system.

“Horse manure. Hugh, tell me what’s going on.”

He glanced at Birdie, the hurt extinguished from his face. His predatory smile pooled fear in her belly. “We were arguing about Justice Postell,” he said, and her blood ran cold. “Birdie swears the freedwoman brought rubies to Liberty. I wasn’t buying it.”