Dead End (39 page)

“Silly stuff about our liking the sauna, that type of thing.”

She blushed as only a redhead could. “How would anyone know about that? Darn their nosy hides; I hate it when folks waste energy interfering in other people’s business.”

He was grateful she was more angry than humiliated. This was the Reb he’d always known, the one who took him on at tennis when she was about seven and he was already on the junior high tennis team. And even after losing game after game, she wouldn’t quit until Marc arranged himself on his face, on the court, and wailed that she’d worn him out.

“I asked you a question, Marc. How does anyone know what we have or haven’t done?”

“We’ve done everything,” he said with an angelic grin. “That’s an exaggeration; there’s a lot for us to get to yet.”

Reb didn’t look amused.

“There are workers all over the place,” he said. Stacks of materials in the foyer supported his statement. “Someone makes a suggestion, and by the time it’s repeated a few times, it gets blown out of proportion and embellished.”

“You haven’t mentioned anything that was embellished. We did—have enjoyed the sauna.”

He wasn’t about to snitch on poor, bored Cletus, who couldn’t have felt important very often in his life. The old man had enjoyed the attention his revelations brought him and must have lapped up the way the workers hung on his words. “Gossip just is. Sometimes it’s accurate by accident. It is now, about us. I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I hadn’t wanted you to be prepared in case someone says something.”

She shook her head. “Come on, Gaston. Bedtime.”

She couldn’t be more ready for bed than he was, but he didn’t expect to get much rest unless they went there together. And there was another issue to deal with first.

Rather than obey his mistress, Gaston sat in front of Marc and stared up at him. The dog had been bathed and clipped short all over in what Reb told him was a lamb clip—because it kept him cooler and helped stop him from picking up burrs from outside. The grinning horror had a rainbow ribbon at the top of each softly puffy ear. Sickening. No self-respecting man would be caught with such a wimpy-looking dog.

“Gaston,” Reb said again.

The dog placed his front paws on his enemy’s shoes while he grinned up at him.

“You can’t blame him for recognizing a man of character,” Marc said and lifted Gaston into his arms. Who could blame him for using whatever advantage presented itself? “He’s hungry, Reb. There’s some white chicken meat in the refrigerator. I’ll cut some up for him.” Feeling smug could be a precursor to disappointment, but he’d take the chance.

Just as he intended, Reb followed him into the kitchen, where he gritted his teeth and stood Gaston on the table before cutting up some of the breast of chicken and adding a little leftover rice to the dish. Early that afternoon, while he’d been working, he’d gone on the Net and researched good stuff to feed dogs. The way Gaston all but danced while Marc finished mixing in the rice suggested the dog approved.

“That’s really nice of you,” Reb said.

Marc waved her thanks aside. “I doubt if I’ll ever win him over, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like him and want him to be fit”—he smiled at her—“for your sake as well as his.”

He pushed the dish toward Gaston, who immediately buried his nose in the food. Seconds passed to the accompaniment of loud chomping, then Gaston raised his head, stood on his hind legs with his front paws on Marc’s chest and landed a sloppy chicken-and-rice-flavored lick on his benefactor’s mouth.

“Oh,” Reb said. “Look at that. How sweet. He does like you, Marc. And he’s grateful. He hardly likes anyone but me, you know.”

“That’s nice.” Marc broke the clinch and placed his new buddy back at his dish. “I’ve got something to show you.” His stomach practiced pretzel twisting, but he made sure he showed no emotion.

“Can’t it wait for tomorrow?” Reb said. “I’ve already got too much on my mind—like whether or not I should mention something I’ve been thinking about.”

“Okay, you’ve got my attention and I’m asking: what have you been thinking about?”

“Meat pies.”

Meat pies?
“Uh huh.”

“The ones from Jilly and Joe’s. I guess they’re really good.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I expect lots of people get them, don’t you?”

“Get to the point, Reb.”

“The night someone hid in my closet and Gaston didn’t raise any alarm, he was lured off with one of those meat pies.”

“Did I know that?”

“I don’t know. Anyway, seems to me we could ask Jilly to look up all the people who had orders for them that day.”

Her motive didn’t need explaining, but it had one or two holes in it. “We could do that. But that wouldn’t account for people who walked in and bought one out of the display case.”

She jutted her chin. “We could still think about the standing orders. It was the rectory order that made me think about it. I guess Cyrus really loves those things. He had six of them.”

Marc studied her downcast eyes. “You counted them? Yeah, you counted them. Are you trying to decide if Cyrus has taken up hiding in closets and bashing his friends with coconut shells carved like monkeys?”

“Of course not.” Her response was overly sharp. “I was telling you what gave me the idea to check the orders, that’s all. I thought we could get Spike to ask Jilly.”

“Be my guest.” Some things should be done by those who dreamed them up. “I want to take you outside.”

Reb gave him a speculative look.

“To introduce you to something new,” he said and quickly added, “Something you haven’t seen before.” Tonight he was too smooth for his own good.

“Okay. Marc, we didn’t have a chance to talk about that photo of Cyrus and the baby. I’ve got all the same questions he said he had.”

“
Said
he had? Don’t you believe him?” The notion of Reb being suspicious of Cyrus seemed fantastic.

“Of course I believe him. Oh, forget it. Show me whatever it is you want me to see so I can get some sleep. You’re a kind man to have me here and watch over me, but I feel as if I’m pushing my welcome. I promise I’ll do something about that.”

He didn’t say what he wanted to say, which was that she made him simmer by talking like that. She knew as well as he did that he wasn’t just being “kind.”

The outside door from the kitchen led to a neglected vegetable garden on the uppermost level of the grounds. Marc let Reb walk out ahead of him into the still evening and closed the door to keep Gaston from following.

The original coach house and stables still stood to the side of the house and set well back. No horses nickered behind closed stall doors anymore, but Marc planned to change that one day, even if only in a small way.

“Watch your step,” he told Reb. “It’s easy to twist an ankle on the cobbles.” He took hold of her hand, and they walked to the coach house.

“You’re making me curious,” she said.

He swung open one of the wide doors. Every inch of the way the hinges squealed, and the door had dropped just enough to scrape the cobbles. A musty but not unpleasant odor came from inside, together with a blast of pent-up heat. Empty apple barrels lent a pungent scent, and warm dust mixed with the smell of old leather. Some of the family buggies and carts, and even a carriage, remained crowded together on one side.

“I remember this,” Reb said, sounding delighted. “I remember when you used to take me to the plantation in the trap. If we passed any guys who knew you, they’d laugh, but you didn’t care.”

He’d cared, but not enough to bloody noses in front of a young girl.

The interior of the building was gloomy and the lighting a poor effort, but he switched on what lights there were and edged past the crowded equipment. He heard Reb moving behind him. He’d deliberately planned to come in this way.

He stepped into a cleared expanse and said, “What do you think?”

Reb looked at the light bronze BMW that stood there and said, “Nice car.” She went to open a door and look inside, showing the polite enthusiasm expected when a proud owner showed off a new vehicle.

“Don’t you love that smell, cher?” he said. “Sit behind the wheel. This baby’s loaded.”

Dutifully, Reb walked around and slid into the driver’s seat. “It’s really wonderful,” she told him, and he got in beside her. “I like the camel leather. It’s got a cool look, not that it matters with air conditioning.”

His heart began to make occasional uncomfortable bumps. He hopped out and opened the second door to the coach house before getting in again. “Drive it. See how it feels.”

She shook her head.

“The keys are in the ignition. Please, I want your reaction.”

Hesitantly, she turned the key and the engine sprang smoothly and quietly to life. Reb glanced at him again before driving cautiously out of the coach house. “It moves like silk,” she commented, settling more comfortably. “I’ll go the end of the driveway, then back. Driving this makes me nervous. I don’t blame you for falling in love with it. What a thrill to own something like this.”

Reb-the-honest.
You usually knew pretty much what she was thinking and feeling. “Well, now you
know
how that feels.”

She laughed. “Only vicariously, but I like thinking of you getting jazzed about it.”

“I get jazzed about you, Reb. Jazzed enough not to need new cars. The Range Rover is practical for me. This is perfect for you. It’s yours.”

At least she didn’t do what he’d expected and slam on the brakes. But she slowed to a crawl, or maybe she took her foot off the gas and the car coasted. She didn’t say anything while they gradually came to a stop almost at the end of the drive.

A U-turn started them back the way they’d come. Marc held his breath, but the lady wasn’t talking. Outside the coach house she stopped once more. “Would you like me to reverse it in the way it was?”

“Up to you,” he said. “Your name’s on the papers. From here on you won’t have to worry about being as safe as you can be in a vehicle.”

Reb drove into the coach house, nose first, switched off the engine, and applied the emergency brake. Then she sat there with her hands in her lap.

“You’re mad at me,” he said, remembering to breathe. “I knew you would be. Go on, get it all off your chest. Tell me what you think of me and my gift—and my presumptuous behavior. I can take it.”

“What I want to do is give you a big kiss and tell you I’ve never been so surprised or thrilled in my entire life, only we both know I can’t do that.”

“Why?”

“Because a gift like this is totally inappropriate. If there are people around Toussaint talking about us now, imagine what they’d read into you giving me a BMW.”

She was so darn logical. “Why
are
you so logical, dammit? And why do you care what people say or think?”

“Mostly, I don’t.” She moved his fist from the dashboard to her lap and held it with both of her hands. “But this is over the top. Oh, I love it, Marc. I want it, just like I wanted stuff at Christmas when I was a kid, but I’ve got to be strong. Thank you, but I can’t accept it.”

“You can and you will. Think about someone else first. Think about
me.
Stress could cause me to have a heart attack, and I stress over your safety all the time.”

“It won’t work. No thank you.”

He fell back against the seat. “I am so pissed at you I could spit.”

“That’s nice.”

“Don’t mess with me, little girl.”

She turned toward him and shoved his hand away at the same time. “I’m not a little girl. I’m a green-eyed monster who wants this car so badly she can taste it. You might want to be grateful I’m strong—for both our sakes. I’m sure you can take it back. There’s some sort of grace period on these things.”

“Green-eyed monster?” He showed her his teeth. “Green-eyed, you are, but you’re no monster. This car stays. It’ll sit in here until you use it, or it rots, whichever comes first. You can kiss me, though.”

“Next weekend I’m going into Lafayette to buy a new motorbike.”

“No you’re not.”

“I hate it when you try that masterful stuff on me. It doesn’t work.”

“The idea of you risking your neck on one of those things—again—is absurd.”
Wrong approach.
“But you’re right, I have no power over what you do or don’t do. You can still kiss me.”

“Oh, thank you.” She turned a watery smile on him, leaned over, and pecked his cheek. He made a grab for her, but she was out of the car and running toward the house before he could extricate himself to go after her.

He jogged into the kitchen in time to see Reb make off with Gaston, and he bowed his head, praying for enough sense to leave her alone, at least for now. She hadn’t behaved as expected, not at all. She wanted that car badly. He smiled, and as quickly frowned. Reb O’Brien was a stubborn woman, always had been. What would it take to make her accept the gift?

Marc thought about that while he slowly climbed the stairs.

Sleep wasn’t only a good idea, it was a necessity. In the morning he’d be driving Reb into town again. He was glad to do it, and more glad she wouldn’t be in Depew’s handout. There were strings attached to anything the bastard did, they just didn’t show yet.

How great it would be to see Reb driving the BMW. If he was honest with himself, he hadn’t expected that to happen immediately.

He showered, and in the interests of trying to stay cool, went to bed damp.

An hour must have passed before he dozed. Dreams hovered in the limbo between sleep and being awake. Reb was in all of them, and they didn’t help him slip into real sleep.

Pies, pies as big as babies and heaped beside his drafting table, started sliding when Reb laughed and gave them a push. Not pies. They were babies after all, and they crawled around the legs of his stool. He told Reb they needed their mothers, but she only laughed at him. Cyrus was there too, holding a baby, until Marc saw it was really a big pie.

He tossed and threw off the sheets.

Lightning cracked, but it wasn’t close. Quiet fell again, and Marc floated, his limbs heavy on the hot bottom sheet. He couldn’t keep his feet still.

The next lightning strike brightened the sky beyond the windows he hadn’t bothered to cover. A dull boom of thunder came soon enough. He prayed for rain. The tension in this night might suffocate him. Sweat ran from his temples back into his hair, and his eyes stung.