Stranger in My House (A Murder In Texas) (9 page)

“Why don’t you go on up and wash, Miss Frances? The rice is almost ready. Brittany will bring your tray up in a bit.”

“I’m not hungry.”

Miss Bea spun around. Her little eyes were wide with…what? Shock? Horror? Insanity? “You
must
eat dinner.”

Kirby would give a lot for Frankie, but a vodka-and-rice diet wasn’t on her list of sacrifices. “My stomach’s a bit unsettled.”

A wisp of wiry gray hair had pulled loose from Miss Bea’s tight bun, and she pushed it back wearily. “Brittany baked bread this afternoon. How about a jelly sandwich? You should eat something.”

Kirby’s gaze dropped to the floor where the dough had landed earlier. Still, a sandwich beat choking down the vegan fare that dominated the ranch menu, and the heat from baking would have killed any lingering germs.

“Sure. That would be great.”

Miss Bea looked relieved. Maybe the woman had a heart after all. “Are you okay, Miss Bea?”

Miss Bea turned back to the lettuce.
Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat-tat.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I heard Mr. Maguire hollering at you. I thought maybe he upset you.”

She turned, knife tight in her fist. The setting sun caught it, drawing a sliver of cold light between them. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

A humorless laugh erupted from the woman’s narrow mouth. The knife sliced through the air. “I know you did it.”

Miss Bea had to be nuts.
Had to be.
“If Seth is mad at you, I don’t know why you’re putting it on me.” Kirby tried to sound injured and just a little snotty, which was how Frankie sounded in an argument.

“You’re responsible for the shooting this morning.” Miss Bea’s grip on the knife handle turned white.

There was nuts and then there was dangerously nuts. Miss Bea appeared to be heading toward a breakdown. “I think it’s time to call in the local police, don’t you? My mama has been missing for two weeks, and now this.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? So you could declare your innocence.” She stabbed the knife in the direction of the barn. “After Maguire got his prints all over it, there’s no proof. Stupid man.”

“But my momma—”

Miss Bea’s face didn’t change. “Your momma’s a whore and so are you.”

Outrage flooded through Kirby. How dare she judge Frankie and Charleen. Maybe they were a little too loose to suit Miss Bea’s moral sensibilities, but they weren’t creeping into bedrooms or waving knives in people’s faces.

“You are out of line,” Kirby said.

Miss Bea reared back as if punched. “How could you even say such a thing to me?”

From far off, the macaw screeched. “She’s here, she’s here. Hell’s bells.” Miss Bea’s eyes darted toward the parlor, and Kirby, tired of trying to fight with an unbalanced woman, fled.

Chapter Eight

Seth peeled open one eye. How long had he been sleeping?

He patted the bedside table, searched blindly for his phone. Numbers blinked at him like warning lights—12:08 a.m.

After a day like yesterday, he could sleep for a year. First the shooting and finding Miss Bea’s rifle. Then Frankie’s personality transplant and the confrontation in the barn. She was not Frankie, because that would mean he wanted Frankie, and that was impossible.

From the unhappy look on doppel-Frankie’s face when she dragged herself into the house this evening, tomorrow promised to be another long one filled with lots of interruptions and little ranching.

A door banged.

Pulling on sweatpants, he shuffled to the window. The quarter moon cast a pale, ghostly glow over the yard, illuminating a choppy sea of gravel and a horseless paddock and beyond, where shadows converged, the opaque night. Nothing stirred.

A faint sound drifted up from the barnyard. Seth craned his neck, but the barn was set back too far. Sometimes coyotes came down from the ridge to sniff after the horses. He slid his feet into a pair of sneakers, wrestled his Colt from its hiding place under the floorboards, and hit the steps.

He emerged from the coach house to cries and banging. In front of the barn, a pale shape fluttered. Inside, Old Tom neighed. Seth cocked his gun. Then he uncocked it.

It was Frankie, or rather, doppel-Frankie. Her fisted hands pounded on the barn door. “Let me out, let me out, let me out.” Desperation lined her voice. Her long hair was tangled, her feet bare. A very unsexy Rangers tee hung to her knees.

“Frankie? What are you doing?”

“I have to go home. Let me out.” She banged again. Old Tom whinnied.

“Frankie. It’s me. Seth. You are home. This is your home.”

She turned. Her eyes were sightless pools.

Shit.
She was sleepwalking.

He’d been disgusted when Miss Bea began to mix sleeping pills in Frankie’s dinner. Disgusted until Frankie started sleeping for ten, twelve, sometimes fourteen hours a night. It was noon or one o’clock before she would emerge from the house and head in his direction. So he’d gone along with it.

He rested a finger on Frankie’s shoulder. “Frankie. Wake up.”

She raised her head. Dark brown eyes, vulnerable and honest and sad, gazed up at him. “If you leave me alone, I’ll be gone soon.”

This was not Frankie Swallow. No way in hell.

“Okay.” He reached across the narrow space between them and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” she said.

“I don’t?”

“I can take care of myself.”

Disappointment bloomed in his chest. “I don’t mind. Let’s get you back to bed.”

“Bed.” She sank to the ground, curled up, and closed her eyes.

He crouched beside her. “Come on, baby. Wake up.” No point calling her Frankie. It was not her name.

The dirt near her feet was mottled. Blood? He slipped his hand around a slim ankle and examined her sole. Bits of gravel poked from the pink flesh.

He scooped her up. Her body was cold, and he tightened his arms, holding doppel-Frankie against him, warming her with his body. She shifted, pressing her nose into his chest. Desire roared through him.

“They must have given you too much.”

Miss Bea had not been happy to see doppel-Frankie awake yesterday morning. She’d probably upped the dosage.
Witch.

The house was a labyrinth. He’d never find her room. He could wake up Brittany or Miss Bea, but he didn’t want to let her go. He wanted to keep her close. He wanted to hold her. He wanted to hear the honest truth.

…

The aroma of fresh coffee drifted past Kirby’s nose. A man’s raspy breath sawed the air. A wool blanket tickled her neck. Her eyelids drifted open. Planks of varnished redwood stretched across the ceiling.

Where am I?

“Thought you might sleep all morning.”

Kirby bolted up. She was in a strange bed in a strange room in a strange house. Maguire slouched against the doorjamb, slurping coffee and studying her. Rumpled curls, muscular chest, vee of dark hair running down his belly, sweatpants hanging on narrow hips.

Alarm jolted through her. He looked satisfied and sexy. What happened last night? Had he… Had she? Lord Almighty! Had she slept with Maguire?

A searing pain drove through her head, and she fell back against the pillows. “What…am…I…doing…here?” Her mouth was dry, her tongue thick. As if she’d been on a bender.

Maguire pulled up a chair. The scrape of chair legs against wood vibrated inside her head like thunder.

“Found you wandering around last night,” he said.

“Last night?” She remembered the sudden crush of exhaustion, of feeling too tired to hold up her head. Then nothing. Not putting on her T-shirt or brushing her teeth or turning down the bed. Speaking of T-shirts, what was she wearing, if anything? She brushed her fingers over her hips. The Rangers jersey twisted securely around her.

“Just after midnight. You were banging on the barn.”

“I don’t remember.” Her emotions swung between sheer embarrassment and sheer terror at being discovered. Either way, she couldn’t bear to look at him. “Was I, uh—I mean, did I, uh, do anything?”

“After the striptease?”

Shocked, she whipped her head around.

He grinned at her. “You didn’t do anything.”

Wow.
The overbearing, angry bull of a ranch manager was gone. In his place was a hot guy with a smile and a sense of humor. She was beginning to see what Frankie had seen. Maybe Brittany and Angie, too.

Her stomach did a somersault. “I feel like I chugged a bottle of whiskey last night.”

He sobered. “I’ll bet. Sorry.”

Sorry?
She was back to being wary of him. “Did you do something to me?”

He rubbed his beard stubble in his familiar way. “Let’s get you fixed up, then we can talk. I’ve got ibuprofen in the bathroom.” His chair scratched savagely against the floor; she squeezed her eyes shut against the pain in her head. When she opened them, he was gone.

Maguire’s bedroom was as untamed as the man himself. A dozen empty hangers dangled in the closet. Shirts, shoes, socks, underwear, jeans littered the floor. A worn belt lay over a chair. His Stetson hung from the bedpost. Under character flaws, slob joined bad temper.

On the bedside table, a thin wallet and a set of keys sprawled on a paperback. Kirby jiggled the book out from under his things. It was a well-thumbed copy of
The Rancher’s Handbook
. A man with a dream?

The edge of a creased snapshot poked from the pages, and she opened the book. A young girl, nine or ten by Kirby’s guess and already a beauty, mugged for the camera. She sat on the steps of a rainbow-colored trailer, dark hair lifted by the wind, toes dusted with dirt, an oversize shirt baring one thin shoulder to bright sunlight.

Her eyes, serious and direct, matched Maguire’s. Sister or daughter? Mother? Cousin? Aunt? Whatever branch of the Maguire family tree she sat on, her relationship to Seth Maguire was blood.

“What’re you doing?” Alarm sharpened Maguire’s voice.

Kirby shut the book and set it on the table. “Who’s the little girl?”

“No one.”

In other words, none of your business.

His mouth relaxed into an easy smile, too easy to be genuine. “Here, take this. You’ll feel better.” He held out two tablets and a glass of water.

The water was cold and quenched the fire in her throat. She emptied the glass in a few gulps and fell against the pillows.
Jeez.
What was wrong with her feet? They throbbed like a son of a bitch.

“My feet—”

“You scraped them up pretty bad. You’ll be limping for a few days.”

Frustration knotted the back of her neck. Pain pounded her head. She swung out of the bed. “What was I doing? How did I get here?” She swayed. Maguire’s hands closed over her shoulders, steadying her.

“Not so fast. You’ll hurt yourself.”

“I want to know what happened to me. Now.”

He sat down on the bed beside her. The mattress sank. “You have some questions for me, and I have some questions for you. Let’s trade.”

That sounded dangerous.

“Me first.” His mouth hardened. “Who are you?”

That sounded even more dangerous. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“I-I’m Frankie.”

“You’re lying,” he said.

“You’re hallucinating.”

He leaned in close and looked straight at her. “Your eyes turned brown.”

Kirby blinked.
Shoot.
No green contacts. “It’s just the light.”

He growled at her. “Bullshit. I want the truth.”

“Why should I tell you anything?”

An eyebrow rose. “Because I’m the only friend you got around here.”

He was as crazy as Miss Bea. “Friend? Let’s look at the evidence. You come on to me in the barn, chase me all over El Royo, drug me, and then you tell me you’re my friend.”

“I didn’t drug you, but I knew about it.”

“It was Miss Bea, wasn’t it?” His eyes refused to meet hers. As close to a yes as she was going to get. “Why would she drug me?”

“Tell me who you are and why you’re pretending to be Frankie.”

She studied his face. He allowed it, watching impassively, probably savoring the advantage he held. She’d been outed. That much was clear. She’d have to trust him or leave without finding Charleen or helping Frankie.

“I’d like your promise of confidentiality.”

Amusement fired the depths of his eyes. “Well, now. That depends on what you tell me.”

He could keep her for as long as it took her to spit out the truth. Unless she wanted to limp across the yard bare-ass naked except for her T-shirt and panties. No doubt to the amusement of the women in the house and probably Manny as well. From the look on Maguire’s face, it was clear she had no hope of persuading him she was Frankie. He’d figured it out, and unless he was willing to look the other way, she was finished here.

“I’m Kirby. Kirby Swallow. Frankie’s half sister.”

His eyes widened. “Where’s Frankie?”

“She’s in Tulsa, staying at my house.”

“Go on.”

“She showed up last week. Scared to death. She said Charleen disappeared, and she begged me to trade places and find out what happened to her momma.”

“Well, here’s what happened. Charleen disappears at least once a month. A horny man comes and picks her up, and they drive away. A few days or weeks later, she comes back.” He grimaced. “Usually worse for wear. None of this is news to Frankie.”

“How long has Charleen been gone?”

“Week, week and a half. I don’t keep count. You don’t really believe she was kidnapped, do you?” He sounded incredulous…and mad. “You and Frankie lie so much you’re beginning to believe your bullshit. Go back to Tulsa. And feel free to keep Frankie just as long as you like.”

“Look, I know this is upsetting—”

“Upsetting?” He stood, prowled the bedroom, kicked viciously at the piles of clothes. “You sneak in here pretending to be someone else, lie to all of us, and you think it’s upsetting?” He was roaring now. “Is your whole family so self-centered and clueless, or is it just you and Frankie?”

That did it. Kirby catapulted herself off the bed. Her head began to buzz. Her feet throbbed. She didn’t care. “Maybe my family is self-centered, and maybe we are clueless, but we don’t drug people and we don’t chase them into town and we certainly don’t shoot at them.” She let her gaze burn into his so he’d know how furious she was. “And we don’t treat people as if they were dirt like everyone on this godforsaken ranch!”

He went toe to toe with her. If he thought he was going to intimidate her with his size, he could think again. She met his gaze and held it.

He blinked first. “Why you? Why didn’t Frankie call the police if she thought her momma met with foul play?”

“She did. They didn’t believe her.”

His eyes raked her body. “What could
you
possibly do…besides put yourself in harm’s way?”

“I’m a police officer. In Tulsa.”

His frown turned to amazement. “Frankie’s sister is a cop?” His jaw gaped and his eyes blinked, and she could see him trying to digest this new turn in events.

She jumped in while he was too shocked to fight. “Why is Miss Bea drugging Frankie?”

He turned away from her, pacing the small room. “I can’t believe this. How do I know you’re not lying?”

“I have a badge and an ID in my room that says I’m telling the truth. Answer my question.”

He stopped, eyeing her as he decided if he believed her. Then he nodded. “Since you’re not Frankie, and you’ve been asking a lot of questions, I’m going to go on like you’re telling the truth about the cop business. At least for now.”

“Well, thanks,” she said drily. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t out her the minute he ran into Miss Bea.

“But I want to see that ID.”

“The drugs in Frankie’s food. Why?” If she about to get kicked off the ranch, at least she wanted to go with as much information as she could dig up.

He shrugged. “I know you might find this hard to believe, but your sister is a handful.”

“So Miss Bea slips roofies in her salad. That’s a fantastic story.”

“Believe it or not. It’s all the same to me.”

“Why would you go along with it? You could go to jail, you know. Both of you, and Mr. Shaw, too, if he knew and did nothing to stop it.”

“Look, I didn’t like the idea at first. But your sister—” He stopped and eyed Kirby. “She gets into a lot of trouble. This way, her days were shorter, and there was less time for, uh, monkey business.”

“So the bread and jelly I ate last night was laced with sleeping pills?”

“Miss Bea freaked when she saw you yesterday morning. She must have figured you were building up a tolerance.”

“I could have died. You know that.”

He dropped his eyes. “I said I’m sorry.”

“That’s not going to go very far with a judge.”

His head shot up. Dark blue eyes studied her face. “Tell me something.”

“What?”

“Are you and Frankie close?”

“She grew up in Houston with my daddy and Charleen. I grew up in Tulsa.”