Authors: Casey Daniels
“Except now I need you.”
I dared to glance at him out of the corner of my eye, but I didn’t dare ask what he wanted. I didn’t have to. I already knew. He was going to press me for information I wouldn’t give him the day before and for information I wouldn’t give him the day before and I couldn’t give him now. Not after this new threat on Dan’s life.
“Sheriff over in Taos County is a friend of mine,”
he said, and I actual y thought he was changing the subject until he added, “From what you told me about where you got stranded yesterday, I figured that’s where you were. Gave him a cal this morning and told him to be on the lookout for your Mustang. He cal ed a little while ago, said they found your car, al right. They towed it over to the local station and they need you to cal .” He handed me a slip of paper with a phone number written on it. “You know, to authorize the work. You’ve got two flat tires you’re going to need to replace.”
“Which is exactly what I said. Two flats. I was out driving, taking a look around, checking out the scenery, and I had a freaky accident. Two flat tires at the same time.”
“Only it wasn’t an accident.”
My mouth fel open.
So not a good look for me, so I snapped it shut, but only for as long as it took me to col ect my thoughts. “Are you saying—”
“Somebody tossed nails on the road.”
“It wasn’t exactly what I’d cal a road.” He hadn’t been bouncing in and out of the ruts like I had, so I figured I’d better point that out. “I guess I should have been more careful. Maybe there was some kind of construction going on or—”
“Construction? Out where you were? What do you think?”
“Then maybe…” I scrambled for anything that would help explain where I was and what I was doing there. Anything that didn’t involve aliens. “Maybe a truck dumped its load.”
“Only there’s no reason a truck would need to be up where you were. That road doesn’t lead much of anywhere.”
“Then maybe—”
“Maybe you were fol owing somebody who didn’t want to be fol owed?”
Damn cops for al their insight.
I drummed my fingers against the washing machine, the rhythm keeping pace with the frantic thoughts spinning through my head like the laundry in the rinse water. “I don’t know anyone around here I’d want to fol ow.” I managed to say this at the same time I gave him a look that said
anyone
included him, and oh, how I hated having to do that! Bad enough Brian and his band of felons had risked Dan’s safety. Now they were messing with my love life, and I didn’t appreciate it. “I’m just a tourist, remember. Just soaking in some of the local color.”
“And if I’m any judge, getting yourself in a heap of trouble.” He’d taken off his cowboy hat when he stepped into the Laundromat, and he set it on the closest washer. “I just thought you should know.
About the nails, that is. You strike me as being a smart woman, but you may have underestimated whoever it is you’re fol owing. You see what I’m getting at, don’t you? They know you’re on to them.
That’s why they tossed those nails on the road. To flatten your tires. To strand you out there in the high desert. You’re lucky that ol’ truck came along and picked you up. The desert isn’t a kind place, not if you aren’t prepared. There are plenty of coyotes up that way, and mountain lions. Bears, too, though you don’t have to worry about them al that much. Not unless you just so happen to step between a mother and her cub. No, the desert at night… it might be a pretty place, but it sure isn’t a safe one.”
I didn’t point out that it wasn’t al that great during the day, either. Heck, he lived around here. He should have already known that.
“I’m just saying”—he shuffled a step closer
—“we’d be better off working together than we are working against each other. And in the long run, you’d be safer.”
I sucked in a long breath, pul ed back my shoulders, and faced him. “I appreciate it. I real y do.
And I wish I could help you. But you’ve got it al wrong. Thanks to that shaman of yours, you’re concocting some mysterious story for me, but you see, there isn’t one. You can’t help me find anything, because I’m not looking for anything. And you can’t keep me safe from anyone, because there’s nobody I need to be kept safe from. So even though you think you know a lot about me—”
“You’ve heard the legend of the raven, right?”
Jesse folded his arms across his broad chest and leaned back against one of the washing machines.
“You know the story we Indians tel ?”
I was so not in the mood for a cultural lesson. Not when, for al I knew, Brian was sitting in some nearby building watching us through binoculars and thinking building watching us through binoculars and thinking we were talking about Dan. There was a bench along the far wal and I turned to head that way. “I real y don’t—”
Jesse’s hand on my arm stopped me cold. Or I should say hot. Fire burned up my arm and puddled somewhere between my heart and my stomach.
Maybe he felt it, too, because as quickly as he grabbed me, he let go and stepped back, and I swear, when he started to talk, he was a little winded.
“My people… they say that a raven is a magical bird. It sees the past. It sees the future. The shaman tel s me you’re a raven.”
“What, so now you think I’m some kind of fortune-tel er? Don’t I wish! I could make a kil ing—
figuratively speaking, of course—if I knew next spring’s fashion trends before anyone else. But then, that’s probably not what you’re talking about. Is this just your way of tel ing me that I should know I’m getting into trouble and I should head back home where I belong?”
“Raven understands that sometimes there’s more to the world than just what we see with our physical eyes. He’s a messenger who brings word from the Other Side. Just like Raven sees the past and the future, he sees the living. And the dead.”
I wrinkled my nose. “You can be real y creepy.
You know that, don’t you?”
Jesse shrugged. “It’s what the shaman tel s me.”
“That you can be real y creepy?”
“That you are the raven.”
“Sorry. My coloring is al wrong.” I managed my sweetest smile. “And what does this have to do with you bugging me about looking for whatever it is you think I’m looking for, anyway?”
“I have no idea,” Jesse said. “When I asked the shaman the very same thing, he told me I’d have to figure it out for myself.” He plopped his hat on his head, sauntered to the door, and walked out. A minute later, I watched the patrol car cruise out of the parking lot and head south.
I let go a breath I didn’t even realize I was holding. “Damn it!” I pounded the washing machine with my fist. “Doesn’t it figure, just when I meet a guy who—”
“You like him, huh?” Goodshot popped up right on top of my washing machine. “You got good taste.
He’s Indian. Indian men make good husbands.”
“I’m not looking for a husband.”
He floated down to the floor. “Your boots say otherwise.”
“My boots!” Honestly, I was so tired of men talking nonsense, I nearly screamed. I took out my frustrations on that pile of towels I’d just folded, slapping them back into the clothes basket I’d plucked them out of just a few minutes before. “I don’t see how my boots—”
“A woman never wears boots that fancy unless she’s out to get a man. You know how it works. He notices the boots, so he checks to see if her legs are strong, and that tel s him if she’s a hard worker.” He skimmed a look over me. “After he looks over her legs, he studies her body. So he can judge if she’l be good at bearin’ his children. From there, he has to figure out if that’s the face he wants lookin’ at him from the pil ow next to him each mornin’. But believe me, Pepper, it al starts with the boots.”
“Whatever!” I tossed the last towel in the basket.
“Or it could be that a woman buys a pair of boots because she likes the boots. Period.”
He scrunched up his nose and shook his head.
“They ain’t practical for ridin’ or ropin’.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m not going to be doing any riding or roping.”
“But you are goin’ be doin’ some investigatin’, right?” It wasn’t what he said so much that got me interested as it was the gleam in his eyes when he said it. He had my attention and he knew it, and once he did, he went right on. “Figured you’d been so busy making moony eyes at that policeman, you hadn’t heard the news yet. About that woman over at the saloon down the street, that Norma. She’s dead.
Local cops found her last night from what I heard.
Strangled,
right
there
in
her
own
house.
Can’t imagine it has anything to do with my bones, but I figured as how you should know. I was over near her house—”
“You know where Norma lives?”
“Lived,” he corrected me, and since he understood the difference between present tense and past in a far different way than I did, I let him.
“Wouldn’t have noticed at al except as how she lived right next to the cemetery. We were over there, me and Anarosa and Kitty and Suzanna. You know, shootin’ the breeze and talkin’ about old times. And shootin’ the breeze and talkin’ about old times. And we saw al the commotion last night. Pity, that Norma bein’ such a young woman and al .”
It was more coincidence than pity, and I’m not a big believer in coincidence. I spun the dial on the washer so that the water would drain and I could get my clothes out and toss them in a dryer. That way, when I got back, I could pick them up.
“The cops are there now?” I asked Goodshot.
He shook his head. “Been dead al day, pardon the pun. They took what was left of Norma away last night and locked up the house behind them. And I never would have even mentioned it to you, except that a little while ago, don’t you know it, but a man showed up at the house. Not a policeman, somebody who didn’t have no business there. I know this for a fact, because he didn’t go in through the door. He broke a window round back and got in the house that way. Can’t say what any of it means, or if it’s important. But I thought you might like to know.”
I think he realized he was right because I’d already raced out of the Laundromat and was waiting for him out on the sidewalk. Goodshot led the way to the ratty adobe right next to the cemetery.
Anarosa, Kitty, and Suzanna (a pretty little blonde with a bowed mouth and a gosh-shucks looks on her face) were already there.
“He’s stil inside,” Kitty whispered, though since she was dead and nobody could hear her except me, it didn’t real y seem to matter.
“We are watching him for you, yes.” Anarosa’s cheeks were pink with excitement. No easy thing for a ghost.
“Not very Christian of him.” Suzanna’s hands were folded at her waist, her jaw was tight, and that cute little chin of hers trembled with outrage. “Brazen as brass, that’s what he is. He went into the house even though that sign there says it’s a crime scene and no one’s al owed in.” I couldn’t help but notice that when she pointed this out, she looked right at Kitty and Anarosa and batted the long lashes on her big blue eyes. No doubt, she was the only one of them who could read and she wasn’t about to let them forget it.
“You guys cover the front of the house.” I waved them that way. “Nobody’s going to see you, anyway, and you can yel to me if he tries to get out that way.
I’m going to…” I was already in stealth mode, stooped over, making my way along the side of the house. I reminded myself that they could be as loud as they wanted to be, but I had to whisper. “I want to see what this guy is up to.”
Careful y, I raised myself up on tiptoe and looked into the window. Kitchen. Smal , messy, and nothing going on in there. I flattened my back to the wal and moved on to the next window. This one was a combination living room and dining room and I had no better luck there. Cursing under my breath, I moved around to the other side of the house.
Norma’s bedroom was painted a brassy shade of yel ow and decorated with pictures of tropical islands torn from magazines. Water, water everywhere, and I guess I couldn’t blame a woman who lived in this parched wonderland for craving blue ocean waves. Of course, it wasn’t Norma’s decorating talents (or lack thereof) that interested me nearly as much as seeing Brian inside her bedroom, rooting around in Norma’s closet.
I kept low, peeking in through one corner of the window and watching as he tossed shoes and purses and a couple shabby sweatshirts over his shoulder and onto the floor. When he froze, his hand on something deep in the closet, I tensed and held my breath.
It came out in a whoosh of astonishment when Brian pul ed my Jimmy Choo glazed canvas tote bag out of the closet. Grinning, he unzipped the bag, turned it over, and shook it.
Nothing fel out but a few flakes of dust.
Goodshot’s bones weren’t in there.
Not what I expected, and I wil admit, I was puzzled. Brian? Not so much. Like he wasn’t the least bit surprised, he slipped the bag over one shoulder, the better to hang on to it, and turned toward the door.
It is never wise to let emotion get tangled up in an investigation. I knew this in my head. Too bad it was so tough convincing the rest of me. Heck, I’d paid a lot of money for that bag. And I loved it. Nearly as much as I loved my new boots. Now Brian had the tote and… wel , heck, there was no way I was going to let him walk away with it.