The River Burns (28 page)

“So you knew I was coming.”

“If I were a betting man, Ryan. Why don't you come around back?”

“Why don't you step outside right here? We might get into something, Denny. I don't want to do that in front of Valou and the boys.”

Denny O'Farrell nudged open the door and stepped outside. He went to the opposite railing and leaned on it with his palms, his back to his brother. Then he turned around to face him.

“We have to work in Maniwaki now. That's a drive up. A drive back.”

“I'm not asking you if you burned the bridge down, Denny.”

“Didn't you already?”

“Because if you didn't do it and you say you didn't, I might not believe you, and we don't want that, right? But if you did do it and you say you didn't, that'll make you a liar. So I don't want to put us in either situation.”

“What if I didn't do it and I say I did?”

“Do you really want to shit with me, Denny? Today?”

The younger brother minded his peace.

“I'm just here to inform you of something.”

Denny shrugged. “Inform me.”

“Brother to brother,” Ryan said.

Denny shot a harder glance at him. “I'm listening.”

“Burning the bridge is not some misdemeanour. If it's arson, then that's a major crime. Even so, I might be allowed to investigate, but not when the value of the loss to property is so extreme. The SQ assumes that the job is too big for any town cop and they take over the case. They'll take over this case, Denny.”

Denny considered the news. “Well, good,” he said. “Brother to brother, I didn't want to put you in an awkward position. Such as having to investigate me for no good reason. Just because there's been some rumours.”

“Brother to brother, I'm still going to be in an awkward position. If you didn't do this, you have nothing to worry about. If you did, I'm not going to let you take me down with you.”

They waited awhile, both quiet in the warm air. Denny chose to break their silence. “I don't see why you can't stay for dinner now. We're done talking, right? We haven't thrown any punches.”

“Not so far. Thank you, but I can't stay. I've got a date.”

Kicking up dust with his heels, ambling down the road, came a figure both men recognized at the same moment. Denny sighed.

“Have you talked to him yet?” Ryan asked.

Denny shook his head. “I just got home.”

“Good luck with that.”

Denny kept his eyes on his father as his brother stepped off the porch and started across the lawn. “Hey, Ry,” he called to him.

Ryan slowed his pace, then stopped walking as he turned. The movement was familiar to Denny, something he'd seen from him throughout their lives together, and these days he noticed the same physical motion repeated in his two small sons whenever they were reined in by a parent. A slouch undermined his correct posture, indicating a total lack of desire to talk. “Yeah?”

“You don't want to stay and help me out here, do you?”

“Hell, no. You got this one on your own.”

“Just so you know,” Denny admitted, and while he did not look at his brother directly he wanted him to feel a certain intimacy in his words, “I feared talking to you more.”

This time Ryan checked down the road at their father approaching.

“Denny, maybe that's something you don't quite have right. Maybe you don't get everything. Not every time anyway.”

As he turned away, Ryan flicked his wrist, a mere halfhearted wave, and walked back to the squad car. On the street, he initiated a broad, over-the-head wave to his dad, which was returned, but the old fellow was still too far off for him to wait. He had a date and needed to change and get ready. He was glad for that excuse on many levels. Ryan glanced at his brother, briefly, before he drove off, just as Denny was going back inside.

Walking down the road, Alex O'Farrell just wanted to rest. He wished his older son backed up to say hello, if for no other reason than to give him a ride the rest of the way. He didn't understand this weariness all through his bloodstream. He didn't appreciate this aggressive grinding pain. Against his better judgement he was going to be good to his younger son tonight, not only because he wanted to eat, but later on he might have no choice but to ask him for a lift back home.

17

O
n their first date, Tara fiddled with the two-way radio in the squad car on route to dinner, acting like an eleven-year-old brat and playing the role to the hilt. Upon vacating the restaurant, tipsy, saucier than ever, she installed herself in the backseat, unable to leave as no interior handles for doors or windows existed.

“It's a squad car,” Ryan protested, mildly at first, hands on hips as he stood upon the pavement. He could not willingly participate without being drawn utterly under her influence where, he feared, he might find himself awash. “In a public parking lot. I can't neck with you in the backseat if that's what you're hoping for. Is that what you're hoping for? People will notice.”

“So?”

“They'll gossip. We'll be in the papers.”

“Great! Not to mention, Ry, if you climb in here with me and close the door, neither of us can escape until we're rescued. Won't that be exciting?”

“Yes.” He considered it, totally tempted. “And no.”

“What do you mean, no?”

Essentially, she was waving around the prospect of public humiliation as her trump card. He was stuck on the pavement while she grinned at him from inside, delighted by his dilemma.

She poked her tongue out at him. Then showed him a little more thigh.

“Come on out,” he said, trying not to sound plaintive.

“Make me,” she parried. Tongue, literally, in cheek, she added, “One way or the other.”

He could easily get silly in her company. Ryan countered, “I'll turn on the siren and walk away until you do come out.”

Good chess move. This guy was proving more interesting than expected. “Arrest me,” Tara challenged him. “Take me to the jailhouse.”

So he closed the door on her and climbed into the driver's seat.

“Are you serious?” Her eyes, already large, seemed to expand as she gazed through the protective screen. He started up the car.

“Consider yourself under arrest, ma'am.”

“Oh, now it's ma'am? And I thought our date was going so well. For a first date, anyhow.”

“The lights are too bright at the jailhouse. Instead, I'll show you what we do with our incorrigible prisoners.”

“Goodie.”

She talked a lot, brushed her hair, and checked her look in a compact as he drove across the old covered bridge, then up a long hill to a roadside lookout above the beauty of the Gatineau. A lover's dark leap. Teenagers preceded them there, two couples in one vehicle, who spontaneously departed as the cop car pulled in. Then Ryan got out and opened the trunk. Tara had no clue what was on his mind, especially when he pulled out rope.

He opened the rear door opposite her.

“Sex toys? On a first date? Seriously, Ryan?”

When he used the rope to tie back a door to a tree, preventing her from locking them in, she laughed, and performed a mock scream when he crawled in beside her. She had no escape, wedged to the opposite door, and even though she intended to be playful she was suddenly intensely aroused by the desire in his eyes.

She liked that.

He kissed her, and she loved the seductive control that governed his passion as well as the fullness and softness of his lips. He was a good kisser. Ryan surprised her when he touched her intimately, and they both got giddy.

His hands seemed everywhere and not everywhere enough at the same moment. Briefly, she allowed him to slip back her bra with his thumb to take her left nipple between his lips.

What life can be
.
If only.

Tara prompted them both to surface.

A pretty fine first date, she assayed. She told him so while they searched each other's faces, but she did not tell him that this romantic gazing felt compulsory rather than spontaneous and was the only time during the evening when she did not feel at ease. Then, as though he knew that, he kissed her eyelids shut, and this silence and gentleness and darkness was lovely, too.

For their second outing, Ryan borrowed a friend's car. No more police vehicles with shotguns and radios to keep her preoccupied, and in any case he desired a modicum of elegance. His pal forgot that his three girls were due at ballet class, so while he promised Ryan the car, it was missing when he came over. The friend tracked his wife down and in a massive violation of procedure Ryan traded the squad car—on condition that his wife and daughter take it straight home from class—in exchange for the Camry.

He wasn't late, yet cut it close when he drove up to Potpourri, frazzled and edgy, to pick up Tara. No door to knock upon or bell to ring, access to her apartment was only through the locked store, so she was waiting on the railway tracks by the side of the road in a pale blue print dress with a scattering of polka dots above the hem of varying hues and sizes. In her hands she held a small black clutch. The light of the setting sun tinged her skin. In a trice he feared that he might slip into the danger of hyperventilating or succumb to some fumbling ailment equally embarrassing, or with any luck just be utterly tongue-tied. Parking, he fully intended to get out and in a gentlemanly flourish open her door, but lickety-split she hopped in, leaned across, and gave him a peck on the side of his mouth.

“Hi!”

Glumly, he stared.

“Ah, earth to Ryan. Hello!”

A laugh broke across him and he recovered. “You look gorgeous,” he said, and put the car into drive.

“Thanks. You, too.” She had that knack, to get the upper hand. Ryan noted that this was going to be a perpetual challenge. “Where to?”

“We have a table above the falls.” At a stop sign he shot a glance at her. “At the Old Mill Inn.”

“Good. I stayed at the Old Mill when I first arrived.”

“Then you've eaten there already. Okay, I'm officially disappointed. We could go somewhere else.”

“Hey, no, it's a great spot. Anyway, I only ate at the bar. On a barstool. Like a hooker. I didn't want to sit at a table by my lonesome. Too conspicuous. Men would admire me, wives hate me. I'd feel a trifle ill, frankly, to dine alone in a place like that. Akin to putting myself on display in public. So great, I'm delighted to dine properly with company. Do we have a view?”

“We have a view.”

“Perfect. So how's tricks, Ry? Have you put your own brother in jail yet?”

She was needling him, he could see that, but still, there'd be no escaping this new and troubling circumstance in his life, although he fantasized otherwise.

■   ■   ■

A lovely evening, the air
on the lengthy outdoor balcony warm, the meal fine, and their chitchat hummed along quite naturally. Ryan was satisfied that the date was going well and kept a running scorecard—so far, a positive tally. His qualms about dining out locally faded. Too many inquisitive eyes and straining ears being a concern. Yet the restaurant catered first to clientele staying at the inn overnight, then to tourists accommodated elsewhere but desiring a gourmet meal, and finally only randomly to cottagers and full-time locals. As far as he could tell, not a soul present was looking to tamper with his privacy. No one knew him.

“The SQ will spare you the trouble,” Tara noted. Her vantage point took in the waterfall, a cascade mesmerizing in its continuous muffled thunder and sense of an endless moment.

“That possibility occurred to me,” Ryan admitted.

“Okay,” she said, embarking on a change of subject.

“Okay what? You're thinking something.”

“Last time. First date. When I declined to catalogue every last titbit of my life history—”

“You refused to tell me anything of consequence.”

“—you threatened to check me out.”

Ryan raised one shoulder and lowered the opposite, a shift he performed several times, as if to emulate a teeter-totter seeking a balance.

“You did,” she insisted.

“What I said was, specifically,” he modified, “that pending your own detailed revelation of what you've been up to in your life, and in anticipation of that, ah . . . for lack of a better word . . . report, I was prepared to do my own study. If there's any black marks I don't know, if you're an embezzler on the run, I can find that out, being a cop.”

“God, you're so tangled up on nuance, you'd think you were the lawyer.” The way she smiled seemed wonderfully flirtatious. “So did you? Check me out? I bet you did. Or did the bridge business interfere? What did you find out? A whole whack of lies, I bet.”

“So you admit it then.” He was surprised by the revelation previously kept to herself. “You're a lawyer.”

She briefly poked her tongue out at him. “Am I?”

“You're being sly, Tara. That's not how this is supposed to go down. You're supposed to tell me about your deep dark past.”

“What do I get out of that again?”

“You get to ask whatever you might want to know about me. And I'll be obliged to answer. That's the deal.”

“See. That's where we have an issue.” Dessert was finished and the dishes cleared. They were on to coffee and Grand Marnier.

“Of course you do.” That Ryan was enjoying himself showed. Determined to make things happen, he also felt comfortable in her company, and they both graduated to freely kidding each other. “From you I expect nothing but roadblocks, at least when it comes to personal stuff.”

“Whereas you're an open book, right?” Unexpected, the retort caught him slightly off guard and Tara swooped in to take advantage. “So spill. You and your previous ladies. What went down with that?”

Ryan suppressed a worry. Over appetizers, she surprised him when she mentioned meeting his father and selling him a grandfather clock. Odd, as his father bought almost nothing in life that he couldn't eat or wear. The two shared a pie on the stoop of Potpourri, on the husband's bench. No plates, just two plastic forks and the raspberry pie. They dug in. “We had a blast,” she teased him. At least, he hoped she was teasing. “A bit like being on a first date. Except Willis came over and tried to ingratiate himself, the bugger. He wanted a slice, but he wouldn't eat from our communal plate.” She rattled him then by recounting that on the stoop of the gift shop, in full public view, she gave his father a yoga lesson while Willis Howard watched.

“Yoga,” Ryan noted. He was imagining her gyrations.

“He needs to loosen his hips and glutes.”

“You got my dad to exercise.” She might as well have told him he'd agreed to go bungee jumping.

“Twisted him up like a pretzel. I warned him. He'll be sore tonight. Watch. Tomorrow he'll feel better. He'll be back for more.”

She knew how to keep him dangling on a string, the impending fall over a gorge not unlike the one alongside them.

“Of course he'll go back for more. You're a beautiful woman! Even if you crippled him, he'd be back for more.”

The compliment mixed in with what he said wasn't lost on her, but she did defend herself as well. “I didn't cripple your dad.”

They both smiled.

“You said me first,” Ryan challenged her. “Why me first?”

“It's not you first. You investigated me. Whereas I haven't given you a second thought. So I've already been scrutinized. So it's
your turn
, see?”

He was about to acquiesce but thought better of it. “It is so
not
my turn. You sneaky devil! You pumped my dad for information! You already know more about me than I'd ever want you to find out.”

She nearly slipped one past him, only to find out that he was sharper than anyone she previously dated. As if, perhaps, he could handle her.

“Actually,” Tara demurred, “I only have your dad's version of events.”

“And he's cagey. Like me. Or, rather, I'm like him that way. So you didn't get any real dope.”

She turned serious. “I guessed that. I wondered why that was, what's the big secret.”

“Meanwhile, my knowledge of you comes from outside sources.”

“An impasse,” she acknowledged.

“So you first,” he decreed.

“Think so? Why me first?”

“Because I have nothing to say of interest. Brokenhearted boohoo stuff. But you. A rising young lawyer in a major law firm, who quit, not as anyone might think, after losing a case, but after winning a big one that most people considered unwinnable. Instead of riding that tide, raking in the dough and accolades, you quit. Why? Disillusioned? That old song?”

She played with her snifter, and while she cast a smile his way a few times it was not with any sense of happiness. He could tell that she was preparing herself to bend, to reveal more than she might initially have intended.

“As for my illusions, Mr. Smart-ass Policeman, I was disabused of them early in life. So, no. Not disillusioned. It's much more . . . standard shrift.”

He waited, his expression slowly losing its swagger.

“Disenchanted,” she said.

He waited still. He saw that she was not up to being coy, but was quite serious for the moment. “How so?”