Steps to the Altar (2 page)

GABE

LATE AT NIGHT when the dreams woke him, he would lie in the dark and try to forget the faces of the people he’d watched die. Memories of them exploded in his brain, popping and flaring like star shells launched from cannons. With a sick compulsion, he counted off their lives like a human rosary.

Vietnam was an old movie to him now, a videotape that allowed him to fast-forward through the unbearable parts. Except when he slept. In his dream world thumb-sized maggots burrowed into sweaty thighs, rancid jungles steamed like old garbage, the smell of foot rot gagged like a clump of gristle stuck fast in an esophagus narrowed by terror. His head filled with the sulfuric meaty stench of fresh blood and human entrails swarming with buzzing black flies. It was an uncontrollable roller coaster of terrifying peaks and valleys. Sometimes he cried out in his sleep, choking on his own salty bile, reactions that shamed him to his core and could have gotten him killed in country.

In ’Nam, his buddies, José Two, Willie M., and Clarence Earl, called him Stoneman because he never made a sound when he slept. It was a silly nickname, one given by adolescents. But of course, that’s what they were. A bunch of boys sent to a jungle halfway around the world to fight some old men’s pissing contest. That’s the nature of war itself. At forty-four, Gabe understood that now, though he would protest in the streets and send his son to the Canadian back country before he’d let him serve in such a war.

When the dreams captured his mind and wouldn’t let go, her voice brought him back.

“It’s okay,” her voice would call through the murky jungle of crimson sounds and smells that seemed so real they couldn’t be mere products of his brain’s electrical charges. Cool hands stroked his hair and face, coaxing him awake. “Friday, wake up now. It’s okay. You’re here with me. That’s good, come on back now. Come on back.”

It was the same voice she used with skittish horses and panicky new heifers delivering their first calves. It was a sweet, sure voice that he trusted like no other.

It was not lost on him that she was the only woman in his life with whom his subconscious had ever felt free enough to cry for help.

But still, it shamed him. He took pride in being able to compartmentalize his life. Take a long hot mental shower and scrub away the filthy parts. Vietnam and its brittle, grisly terrors in this corner. All the women he’d thoughtlessly used in that corner. His first wife, Lydia, and his inability to love her here. His son, Sam, and how he failed him there. He wrapped all the street stories together in one filthy bundle: dead babies in plastic bags, women beaten until their faces resembled rotten plums, needle-scarred heroin addicts lying in their own shit, little girls ripped apart by their fathers’ uncontrollable lust. Take all those sad human stories and shove them in a room and padlock the door. It worked perfectly. Until he went to sleep and the padlock was snapped as easily as a child’s forearm.

When he came to San Celina, he’d planned only to help out his old partner, Aaron, to hold his place as police chief until he could return. He was merely looking for a stopover, a place to regroup and think about where he wanted to go. To find a place where the images could fade. He knew the faces would never go away. He knew that the past couldn’t be changed. He only wanted moments of peace. That was all he hoped for. But he expected nothing.

He never expected Aaron to die. He never expected to fall in love. He never expected to find grace.

2

BENNI

I WAS AFRAID to move.

One unlucky stumble or shift in weight and it appeared to me that I could bring Miss Christine’s whole knickknack-filled teahouse down around my mud-caked boots.

As much as I loved Miss Christine, a former Vegas show girl who was rumored to have once been a mobster’s girlfriend, only one thing could entice me into this garden of girlish delight. Too many clichés flitted through my mind: fish out of water, square peg in a round hole, and the most appropriate, the infamous bull in a china shop.

But it was this or having my best friend, Elvia Aragon’s, wedding shower, a shower I’d waited to give since we were both second graders trading my pimento-cheese sandwiches for her homemade burritos, in my own cramped Spanish-style bungalow. I wasn’t the only one who’d waited a good many years for this momentous event. When the shower’s guest list hit forty, I started panicking. After moaning about the problem to my friend, Amanda Landry, expert quilter and pro bono attorney for the Josiah Sinclair Folk Art Museum, where I was curator and head bottle washer, she suggested I rent Miss Christine’s Tea and Sympathy Parlor for the whole afternoon and let someone else do most of the work.

Relieved, I jumped at her advice and called two weeks ago. Thanks to Miss Christine, most of the preparations were ready to go and we were in the final phase—selecting the menu. Amanda, a good ole Southern girl raised by a rich society mama in Alabama, was having the time of her life.

“I’d forgotten how fun showers are,” she said, giving me her wide, white-as-new-cotton grin. Anticipation brightened her smooth-cheeked, ivory complexion as she peered toward the kitchen where Miss Christine and her chef, José, were working on sample trays of sandwiches, scones, and other teatime treats.

Trying to avoid what could be a small but very costly disaster, I carefully crossed my legs, resting my ankle on the knee of my slightly grimy Wranglers. I’d forgotten how crowded this place was with English china, silver, and Victorian geegaws. I’d come straight from the ranch, where I’d helped Daddy and Sam, my stepson, stack a ton of hay bales. My shoulders, unused these last few years to the manual labor, were already starting to ache. At that moment a couple of aspirin washed down with a Coke sounded more appetizing to me than chicken salad sandwiches.

“I still think A. J. Spurs Restaurant would have been better,” I grumbled.

“Sure, if we were wanting steak sandwiches for you and a bunch of your ranch women friends at a Cattle-women’s luncheon,” Amanda said, flipping back her thick, auburn hair. “But this is
Elvia
we’re talking about. She’s waited a good long while for this wedding shower. I’ll bet she’s attended a lakeful of them in her thirty-five years on this earth and it’s payback time, babydoll.”

I sighed and said, “You’re right. If anyone deserves the best, it’s Elvia. I’m just always afraid I’m going to trip and break a million dollars’ worth of china in these places.”

Amanda laughed. “This isn’t Tiffany’s and I promise I’ll pay for whatever you break.”

I was picking at a piece of oat hay stuck in my jeans when Miss Christine, wearing a dress that appeared to be made of a hundred black-and-red silk scarves, came floating out of the kitchen followed by a short, thick-chested Hispanic man in a spotless white chef’s coat. He carried an ornate silver tray the size of a tractor seat.

“Ladies, thank you so much for being patient,” Miss Christine said. “I can assure you, it will be worth the wait. My José is a genius with petit fours and his honey-walnut scones.” She rolled kohl-lined green eyes and fanned herself with elegant fingers that seemed to be made to dangle an ivory cigarette holder between their crimson tips. “Paradise on your tongues.”

The sober-faced, middle-aged man set the tray on the linen-covered table in front of us. Amanda and Miss Christine sighed simultaneously as they surveyed the tiny, crustless sandwiches and other colorful treats.

Turning my head slightly, I peeked at José’s hand, trying to see if the rumors were true. Yep, there it was. SC 13 tattooed in dark green between his thumb and forefinger. Gabe had told me that the chef here was once quite high in one of our local gangs. He’d gone to prison for armed robbery, studied there in a special program under a San Francisco pastry chef, and recently emerged from incarceration with a skill much more in demand than driving a getaway car. Somehow, Miss Christine managed to snag him out from under the five other gourmet restaurants vying for his prestigious talents.

He saw where I was looking and gave me an amused wink. I felt my face grow warm and pretended intense interest in the food he’d prepared. My identity as the police chief’s wife here in San Celina, a medium-sized college and retirement town on the Central Coast of California, was not much of a secret, even though I didn’t look like the typical police chief’s wife. I did my best, wearing dresses whenever appropriate and making small talk at political shindigs and charity events, but my heart just wasn’t in it. I was a country girl, reluctantly moved to town by the death of my first husband and the loss of our ranch a few years back. I still managed to get out to my gramma Dove and Daddy’s ranch a few times a week, but my life these days included more afternoons punching computer keys down at the folk art museum than punching cattle. Not to mention, as my beloved second husband would point out, getting way too involved in the criminal affairs of San Celina County.

Or how my cousin Emory, Elvia’s fiancée and a journalist with the
San Celina Tribune
, would most likely say in his sexy, Arkansas drawl, sticking my snout where it shouldn’t be sticking. It did me no good to insist that all the homicides I’d been involved with were only because I happened to be unlucky enough to be in the crime’s vicinity.

“That’s okay, sweetcakes,” Emory had said a few days ago, his even-featured, handsome face giving me a loopy grin. These days, drunk on the idea of finally achieving his life’s dream, marrying Elvia, every expression he wore looked a bit goofy and amazed. “Without you, the chief’s life would be incredibly pedestrian.”

I gave a decidedly unladylike snort. “I’ll remember to mention that the next time I get involved in a murder.
Not
that there’s going to be a next time.”

“Pay attention, cowgirl,” Amanda said, smacking my knee. A tiny puff of chaff dust exploded and she waved it away like unwanted cigarette smoke. “What do you think of watercress, chicken salad, cucumber, and this lovely nutty-tasting spread for the sandwiches?”

I popped one of the crustless, star-shaped sandwiches in my mouth. It tasted like walnuts, mayonnaise, grape, and some other flavors I couldn’t put my finger on. “It’s all okay with me, though I vote thumbs-down on the watercress.”

“Why?” Miss Christine and José blurted out simultaneously. The hurt look on José’s craggy face made me instantly explain.

“It’s not the sandwiches. I’m sure they’re wonderful. It’s just that watercress and I have a tumultuous history.” I didn’t want to go into detail about the first homicide I’d become involved with, the incident where Gabe and I met. Right before I discovered the body, I’d eaten watercress sandwiches at one of Elvia’s book-signing events at her store, Blind Harry’s. Later that night, I’d retasted the watercress in a not-so-pleasant manner. “Really, the watercress is fine.”

José’s face softened in relief. Miss Christine straightened her spine and asked, “What about everything else?”

I glanced over the pastel-colored cakes and cookies and tiny scones and croissants. “It’s all perfect. I think we should have a bit of everything you have here. Enough for forty, no, make that forty-five people. What do you think, Amanda?”

She popped another strawberry-and-cream-filled miniature croissant in her mouth. “I agree. And we’ll have Lady Grey tea and a lovely mint lemonade.”

“Very good,” Miss Christine said. “We’ll see you all here this Sunday afternoon then.”

“Wearing clean boots and underwear,” I said.

Amanda kicked me under the table, grinning as she did. “I wish I could have inflicted you on my dear sweet mama before she passed on to that great tea party in the sky. She so loved a challenge.”

José laughed out loud, a masculine rumble that was wonderfully at odds with the ultrafeminine decor. Miss Christine bestowed upon me a tentative, but brave smile, not quite certain if I was joking.

Outside the tea parlor, Amanda asked, “What about the cake?”

“Ordered it a week ago,” I said. “I’m dropping by Stern’s Bakery with the check this afternoon. I need to talk with Sally about Dove’s shower cake. This is not the only shower meeting I had on my schedule today, you know. I’m due at the historical museum in”—I checked my dependable Daffy Duck watch—“an hour to discuss Dove’s wedding shower.”

My gramma, who had raised me since I was six years old when my mother died of cancer, had, after some thirty-odd years of widowhood, decided to get married. Her fiancée, the world-renowned photographer Isaac Lyons, had entered our lives a year and a half ago when he’d come to San Celina to investigate his granddaughter’s mysterious death. He and I solved the case and in the process he fell head-over-boot-heels in love with my gramma. A man of impeccable taste if you wanted my unbiased opinion.

“That is so great,” Amanda said, leaning against one of San Celina’s black wrought iron lampposts. They were decorated on this cool, February morning with emerald green, royal purple, and bright gold streamers advertising this week’s Mardi Gras festivities. “Dove gettin’ married at seventy-seven after all those years being a widow. How’s your daddy takin’ it? Is he feelin’ threatened by Isaac becomin’ his stepdaddy?”