Sketcher in the Rye: (13 page)

Rory set her tea down so hard it sloshed over the sides of the mug. She was mortified, not only for keeping their little arrangement a secret from her best friend but also for putting BB and Reggie at risk of losing their jobs. Of course she didn't believe Leah would report them, but failure to report the unsanctioned use of government property made her friend an accomplice to their
sub rosa
activities. A fine mess she'd created. “How did you find out?”

Leah emptied a packet of sweetener into her tea. “Give me some credit. I'm a detective after all. And you can wipe that worry off your face; the secret is safe with me. What I meant by someone coaching you was someone like Mac if he were still alive. He had a pretty impressive track record himself.”

Rory sipped her tea and shrugged. “I guess I inherited the ability.” Which was true to a degree. She
had
inherited the marshal from her uncle. Sooner or later though, she was going to have to tell Leah about her not-so-silent partner. But for the moment, “later” still seemed like the better option.

Chapter 14

“I've got an easy solution for you,” Zeke said, sitting across the kitchen table from Rory while she drank her morning coffee. He was wearing his marshal duds and looking as if he hadn't put a comb to his hair since their interview with Lacey. It was only a small detail of his manifestation, an oversight likely caused by a low energy level, but that morning it irked her.

“Let's hear it,” she said, yanking her focus away from his appearance.

“If you need hair samples from every member of the Harper family, I can get them for you.” His face split with a self-satisfied grin. “I should be doin' more to pull my weight around here anyhow.”

Rory opened her mouth to list every reason his plan wouldn't work, but she couldn't come up with a single one. She'd considered asking Helene to help her as she had in the dognapping case, but then she'd only needed one suspect's hair. This time she needed five samples, including Gil's. According to the marshal, even the person reporting the crime could turn out to be the culprit. She would have had to drag her aunt along to each of their homes to distract them while she made a beeline for their bathrooms to steal hair from their brushes. Using the same scenario over and over again, something was bound to go wrong. If she were still with the police, she'd have the clout to demand they each snip off a strand of hair right in front of her. But these days, she was only a private investigator, and she couldn't trust the suspects to supply her with a sample at their leisure. It would be too easy to substitute someone else's hair for their own. Zeke's idea was definitely the best one, because he had the gift of invisibility. Unfortunately he also had other “gifts,” like miscalculating the energy needed for a given task and taking liberties with the scope of his assignment, to mention just a couple.

“So what do you say, darlin'?” he prodded. “You won't be gettin' a better offer anywhere else.”

“It sounds like it might work,” she murmured, trying to put the lid on a roiling pot of reservations. As good as the plan seemed to be, anything that involved the marshal had the potential to blow up in their faces.

“That doesn't sound like a ringin' endorsement.”

Rory did her best to produce a confident smile and immediately laid out the ground rules. He was to slip through the walls of each house, find the master bathroom and take a few strands of blonde hair from a brush or comb. If there was more than one occupant of the house, as in the case of the elder Harpers and James's young family, Zeke was to find hair from each of their brushes, except, of course, the small children, and keep the samples separate from one another until he handed them over to her. Having him put the samples into individual, plastic evidence bags required fine muscle control, which was difficult for him and would waste too much time. Once he had the samples, he was to promptly leave the premises. She would be waiting in her car with prelabeled evidence bags at the ready. Remembering the broken figurine in James's house, she made it clear to the marshal that he was not to touch anything else in the house or linger for any reason. It shouldn't take him more than two minutes tops at each address. If Zeke was thinking of arguing with the strict parameters, one look at her steely expression changed his mind.

In fine-tuning the plan, Rory realized she'd have to park as close to each house as possible in order to give Zeke a long enough tether to conduct his search. To avoid the possibility that someone from the Harper family might recognize her car, she borrowed her mother's Chevy, which had the benefit of tinted windows.

Their first stop was Lacey's house. Rory figured it would be best to put the captivating Ms. Harper at the top of the list. If the marshal was going to try freelancing, it was more likely to happen near the end of the job when boredom might set in. She added one other safeguard for the first mission. She made sure it was a day that Lacey worked at Harper Farms, where she ostensibly earned her keep. The marshal didn't need any visual distractions.

Zeke returned to the car in under a minute with several hairs from Lacey's brush dancing the twist in the energy field above his palm. Rory placed them in the evidence bag with Lacey's name, and they were off to James's house. A silver Lexus was in his driveway and it was possible there were other vehicles in the two-car garage. It was a fair guess that at least one member of the household was inside.

“It shouldn't make any difference as long as you're careful not to bump into anyone or anything,” she told him.

“I heard you the first time we went over this,” he said, “as well as the second and third times. I may be dead, but I'm not deaf or forgetful.” Rory apologized, thinking that had to qualify as one of the strangest statements she'd ever heard, and thanks to the marshal, she'd heard quite a few.

Three minutes went by with no sign of Zeke. What was going on in that house? If he'd messed up big time, wouldn't she have heard a scream? Or had he given someone a heart attack and was now trying to revive them? A string of awful scenarios flashed through her mind.

“What the hell happened?” she demanded when he finally reappeared beside her.

“When was the last time
you
tried to juggle three hair samples without letting them touch or get mixed up?” he grumbled, still focused on doing just that. “It's like jugglin' little, bitty tumbleweeds.”

“Sorry,” she said, startled into action. Grabbing the evidence bags, she snagged the samples out of the air as they rotated above the marshal's hands. He identified the first one as belonging to James and the second one to his wife.

“Wait a minute,” Rory said, reaching for the last one, “Why are there three of them? We're not including the kids.”

“They apparently have a live-in housekeeper, who also happens to be blonde. I didn't know if you wanted a sample from her too, but I figured as long as I was there . . .”

Rory tucked the housekeeper's hair into an unlabeled bag. “I seriously doubt she's the killer. Gil never even mentioned her.”

“And yet, if the butler is so often guilty, why not the housekeeper?”

“That's mostly in stories, you realize.”

“Well, of course,” Zeke said, clearly trying to save face, “which is why I never encountered such a butler in all my days as a federal marshal.”

“I imagine there was a shortage of them in the western territories back then anyway,” Rory said, unable to resist teasing him.

“Do you want to hear about the rest of my ordeal in that house, or are we going to sit here chitchatting all day?”

“I didn't realize there was more,” she said as she pulled away from the curb.

“You don't know the half of it.” Zeke took a moment to stretch his arms as if they'd actually cramped from his juggling routine. “James's wife was home, along with half a dozen little kids runnin' all around the place. It was like navigatin' an obstacle course at a rodeo. I came mighty close to collidin' with a couple of them. Then, when I was collectin' the last sample, the missus waltzed into the room and saw me drop the brush back into the drawer.”

“She saw
you
?” Rory asked, not sure which part of that sentence was the most worrisome.

“No, not
me
, she saw the darned brush fly through the air and tuck itself back into the drawer, which then shut itself.”

“What did she do?”

“She put her hand to her mouth like she was tryin' to hold in a scream. Then she shut her eyes tight and sort of fell back against the wall. That's when I left. I assume she's since opened her eyes and decided she couldn't possibly have seen what she thought she saw.”

“Let's hope so,” Rory said, “I don't want to be responsible for anyone winding up on a psychiatrist's couch.”

The marshal's mustache pumped up with a smile. “Maybe she'll just blame the episode on the chaos in the house and think twice before hostin' another herd of kids. Now, please tell me there are no more of the little darlins on the list.”

“There shouldn't be. Luke's the youngest of Gil's offspring, not married, no children as far as I know.”

Luke Harper's house was mercifully empty. But Zeke was still overdue returning to the car, and when he appeared, he was sporting a sour expression.

“Now what?” Rory asked, as she retrieved Luke's hair and dropped it into its bag.

“He's got dogs.”

Oh no, she should have checked for dogs. Since Hobo had finally bonded with the marshal, she'd forgotten that canines generally took exception to his bodiless state. “I am so sorry; what kind of dogs?”

“Big ones. A German shepherd and a Rottweiler, if I remember my breeds correctly.”

“Did they injure you?” she inquired, for lack of a better way to put it.

“Not so's you would understand, but I drained a good parcel of my energy tryin' to outmaneuver them and still get the job done.”

“How did it end?”

“Well,” he said, the grim line of his mouth lifting into a smile, “I choreographed it so both of them came runnin' at me from opposite directions and at the perfect moment I moved out of the way.”

Rory winced. “They crashed into each other?”

“Yes they did. But don't you worry; I peeked in on them again before leavin' and they were fine. Just a little dazed is all.”

Rory was grateful they only had one more house left to visit. She imagined the marshal was too. But things didn't go any smoother at the home of the elder Harpers. At first it seemed as if it would be an easy ending to their day, but while she was waiting at the curb for Zeke, Gil Harper came home. He slowed as he passed the Chevy, straining to see through the tinted glass. For a few frantic moments, Rory thought he was going to jump out of his Mercedes and knock on her car door to find out who was parked there. She said a quick prayer of thanks when he pulled past her and swung into the driveway. She didn't wait around to see if he would walk back down to confront her. She put her car in drive and sped off, not stopping until she'd turned the corner. That had been close, way too close. She had no idea how she would have explained her presence to Gil, who certainly hadn't hired her to investigate
him
. She drove back around, but stopped a house away, hoping she was close enough to retrieve Zeke. It didn't take long to find out. He arrived with the impact of a cannonball, slamming into the passenger seat with enough force to blow his image apart. It had probably been a matter of inches that had kept him from being shot back to their house instead of into the car.

Rory bit down on her lip hard enough to taste blood as she watched the pixels of his image fly outward. Whenever he'd lost cohesion in the past, he'd disappeared for days. But this time, instead of vanishing, he slowly started coming together again, coalescing like a star after the big bang. She'd never seen him manage that before. And most extraordinary of all—as he became whole again, the strands of Gil's and Faye's hair were still hovering limply above his hands. The moment she took them, he disappeared. She had no idea how long it would be before she saw him again.

Chapter 15

The Arizona Territory

1876

“There you go, Marshal. You can't buy a better shave or haircut at the swankiest place back east.” Antonio De Luca pulled the towel off the marshal's shoulders with a flourish. “You're a fine-looking man, but you gotta come in more than twice a year or you'll never find yourself a wife. Word of advice?” He leaned closer even though they were alone in the shop. “Ladies, they have delicate sensibilities. They don't like it when a fella looks scruffy. Listen to me; these things I know.”

Drummond peered at his reflection in the mirror before he clamped his hat back down on his head. “I'll keep that in mind,” he said, paying the barber and adding on a nice tip. He strode outside to find that the desert sun had chased the early morning clouds clear to the horizon and warmed the chill out of the air. Tucson's citizens were going about their business without need of coat or cloak. It was the perfect day for a walk. He shook his head and chuckled at himself. When was the last time a thought like that had crossed his mind? Most likely ten, twelve years ago when he'd been courtin' Grace Adams. He crossed the street to the tailor's shop to pick up the new trousers Clarence Higgs had made for him. He wondered, and not for the first time, if Celeste had helped her father with the sewing of the garment, although he had no idea why that should matter. Women did strange things to a man's mind.

When he walked into the shop, Clarence was taking measurements on a customer. After they'd exchanged greetings, he called out to his daughter to join him. A few seconds later, Celeste pulled aside the curtain that separated the back of the store from the front. “Yes, Papa,” she said, “what can I . . . ? Oh, Marshal Drummond, how are you?”

Drummond tipped his hat. “I'm just fine Miss Higgs. And yourself?”

“Never better,” she said, stepping up to the counter. “It seems that the weather here suits me well. I imagine you're here to pick up your new trousers?” Before he could answer, Celeste disappeared behind the curtain, returning in moments to present him with the finished garment.

Drummond made a show of inspecting it, although he had no idea what he ought to be looking for. All the stitches seemed uniform, the fabric smooth, free of pulls or puckering. “You did a fine job,” he said, looking up at her. “Or should I be thanking your father?”

“I had no hand in the fabrication of the trousers,” Clarence put in as he jotted down measurements. “Celeste made them entirely on her own. As you can see, they're flawless. She's a regular chip off this old block,” he chuckled with the pride of a happy father.

“Papa,” she said, a blush blooming on her cheeks. She turned back to Drummond. “You should try them on, Marshal, in case anything needs altering.”

“I doubt there'll be anything that requires fixing,” he said, “but I defer to you.” He took the pants and disappeared into the makeshift changing room Clarence had created by installing a rod and curtain across one corner of the shop. When he emerged, he was wearing the new trousers. “As you can see, they're perfect. No need to change a single stitch.”

Celeste's smile was somehow less brilliant than it had been just minutes earlier, although the marshal couldn't fathom why. “Seein' as how I'm all decked out in my new duds,” he said, “do you think your father can manage without you for a short while? It's a grand day for a stroll around town.” When had his mouth started bypassing his brain?

She seemed caught off balance by the invitation. “I don't know; there' so much—”

“Yes, Marshal,” Clarence interrupted her. “I can most certainly manage on my own for a time. It's too nice a day to spend the whole of it cooped up in here, Celeste. Go on now,” he said, shooing them out with his hands. “Go on.”

Celeste came around from behind the counter, her smile radiant again. Once they'd stepped outside, Drummond offered her his arm and she threaded hers right through it, as if they'd done this a million times before.

What in the world was he doing? His life didn't lend itself to the requirements of a normal relationship. He was away far more than he was home, and each time he rode out of town, there was a fair chance he wouldn't make it back. But the joy he was feeling in her company was making quick work of both his common sense and his powers of reason.