Scent of Roses & Season of Strangers

by Kat Martin

  “I know she’ll do her best. She’s very protective of Raul. And she wants very badly for him to succeed.”

  “They seem to mean a lot to each other.” There was something in his face, something that looked strangely like envy.

  “I guess that isn’t the way it was with you and Carson.”

  A disgusted sound came from his throat. “Carson hated my guts from the moment he laid eyes on me.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Eight, the day I moved in. Carson was ten.”

  “Ten. That’s pretty young to start hating people. How do you feel about him? Do you hate him, too?”

  Zach shook his head. “Not really. Hating someone takes too much energy. Besides, I guess I always felt a little sorry for him.”

  “You felt sorry for Carson? Why?”

  “Because my father expected so much of him. Carson never seemed to come up to scratch, no matter how hard he tried. Me, my father mostly ignored.”

  “Until you got out of prison.”

  “Yeah. I don’t know exactly what happened. Maybe he figured he was partly to blame. When he found out I was serious about turning my life around, he did everything in his power to help me.”

  “Which probably didn’t please Carson.”

  Zach grinned. “Yeah, he was about as pleased as a bole weevil with a crop duster overhead.”

  “Carson seems to have done a good job running the farm.”

  “I think he has. The place means everything to him. In a way I think he’s glad the old man is out of the picture.”

  Elizabeth said nothing to that. Since Fletcher Harcourt’s accident, Carson had become the power behind Harcourt Farms. Running the multimillion dollar farming operation gave him a position of prestige and influence most men would envy, though Zach didn’t seem to want any part of the business.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  “Let me get my purse.” She grabbed her straw bag off the coffee table, and they headed out the door. Zach was driving his Cherokee today, she saw, and Elizabeth tossed him a smile.

  “I guess you aren’t trying to impress me anymore.”

  Zach gave her a wicked grin. “I was hoping you were already duly impressed.”

  Thinking of his skillful lovemaking, Elizabeth laughed. “I suppose I am.”

  She waited while Zach opened the door then slid onto the brown leather seat. They rode in silence out to Willow Glen, and she could tell that Zach was getting more and more nervous.

  “You don’t have to go in,” he said. “You can wait out in the lobby, if you want. I never know what to expect when I see him. Sometimes he seems almost normal, other times he can hardly speak. There are times he gets mad and throws things. Sometimes he’ll remember the past and think it’s the present. You just never know.”

  “You said the doctors believe there’s something pressing on parts of his brain.”

  He nodded. “When he fell down the stairs, small bits of bone chipped off the inside of his skull. If there was a way to remove them, his speech would improve, his motor skills as well, and more of his memory would probably return. He could live a fairly normal life.”

  Zach didn’t say more, just wheeled into the parking lot and turned off the engine. Once they were inside the building, he led her down the hall toward his father’s room. “Like I said, you don’t have to go in.”

  “I was out here teaching once a week for a couple of months. It gave me a fairly good idea what goes on in a place like this.”

  They kept on walking, stopping just outside Fletcher Harcourt’s room. One of the staff doctors passed along the corridor about the same time.

  “Hello, Zach.”

  “Hi, Dr. Kenner. How’s he doing?”

  “You’re here at a very good time. He’s having one of his more lucid periods.”

  “Great.” He turned to Elizabeth. “I’ll let him know I’m here and that I’ve brought a friend.”

  She nodded.

  “By the way,” the doctor said, “Dr. Marvin wants to talk to you. He’s planning to call your office on Monday morning.”

  “Dr. Marvin’s the neurologist who’s been handling Dad’s case,” he told Elizabeth, then returned his attention to Kenner. “Do you know why he’s calling?”

  “I’m not sure. Something about some new, experimental surgery. He was pretty excited about it. That’s all I know.”

  “Thanks, Doc.” Kenner waved and continued down the corridor.

  “I wonder what’s up,” Zach said.

  “Maybe they’ve found a way to help your dad.”

  “I don’t want to get my hopes up, but, man, that would sure be terrific.”

  Zach stepped quietly into the room, said something to his father, then motioned for her to join him.

  “Dad, this is a friend of mine, Elizabeth Conners.”

  Fletcher Harcourt nodded. “Pleased.”

  “Hello, Mr. Harcourt.” She smiled, and he managed a partial smile in return. Even sitting in a wheelchair, he was an impressive man, tall, heavy through the chest and shoulders, with iron-gray hair and the same gold-flecked brown eyes as Zach. The lines of his face were strong, weathered by years of outdoor work, but the four years since his accident had taken their toll.

  The muscles in his throat had begun to sag, as well as the skin along his jaw. And yet she could see that he had been handsome. At sixty-seven he was still an attractive man.

  “Liz came to talk to you about the farm,” Zach said gently. “She’s interested in the history of the place. She thought you might be able to help.”

  He stirred in the wheelchair, seemed to sit up a little straighter. Though his speech was slow and a little bit slurred, his mind seemed to clear as they began to discuss the farm, Zach easing his father into memories of the past.

  “Do you remember the old house, Dad? The overseers’ cottage you tore down so you could build a new one in its place?”

  “I tore it…down?” He slowly shook his head. “I never…tore any of the workers’ houses…down.”

  Zach flicked a glance her way. “I guess you were just thinking about it. Place must have been there since you were a kid.”

  “You’re talking…about the old gray, wooden house…the one my dad built. Been there as long as I can…recall.”

  “That’s the one. Do you remember any of the families who lived in the house? Way back, I mean.”

  Amazingly, Fletcher Harcourt launched into a lengthy discussion of one family after another, most of them non-Hispanic back in the early days of the farm, which might be important, Elizabeth thought, since the vision of the child Maria believed she had seen had blond hair and blue eyes.

  Talking slowly, the old man continued his discussion of the past. Back forty or fifty years ago, men worked for the same employer for long periods of time so there were fewer names than she would have thought.

  Using the small notepad she carried in her purse, Elizabeth wrote down each of the names he mentioned, then asked a little about each family. He had been too young in the forties to remember anything useful, but as they moved through the fifties and sixties, a few more memories surfaced.

  “Let me see…there was a man…Martinez… Hector Martinez…that was his name. Had a wife. I think her name…was Consuela. Had to fire him. Got real…belligerent toward the end. Wife was…pregnant. Hated to…do it.”

  Elizabeth’s ears perked up. “His wife was pregnant?”

  He nodded. “Moved to Fresno…last I heard.”

  She flicked a glance at Zach, who was thinking the same thing she was. No one but Maria had been troubled by the ghost—at least that anyone knew of. If the Martinezes were still in Fresno, maybe they could find them. Maybe Consuela had also seen the ghost. Maybe there was some connection to the
fact that the women were pregnant.

  “Do you remember, Mr. Harcourt, if any of the other women who lived in the house were going to have a baby?”

  Fletcher’s heavy gray eyebrows drew together. “Long time back. Can’t…recall. Seems like Espinoza’s wife. Think she lost it…though.”

  A chill went down her spine. They’re going to kill your baby. They’ll take your baby if you don’t leave.

  Elizabeth swallowed. Juan Espinoza was Mariano Nunez’s friend. Elizabeth made a note to find out if the man remembered anything about Espinoza’s wife having a miscarriage or if losing an unborn child had happened to any of the other women who had lived in the house.

  Fletcher looked up at Zach and frowned. She could see they had tired him.

  “You behavin’ yerself, boy? Stayin’ out of trouble? You aren’t getting drunk? Aren’t smokin’ that damned weed again, are you?”

  Zach just shook his head. “No, Dad.”

  Fletcher flicked a glance toward Elizabeth. “Looks like you got a nice girl there, for a change. You see you treat her proper.” He pinned Zach with a glare. “And tell your mama I’ll be over to see her in a day or so. Soon as I get outta this damned place.”

  Zach’s voice faltered. “I’ll tell her.” He tipped his head toward the door and Elizabeth started in that direction. “We gotta go, Dad. You take care of yourself.” Zach reached down and squeezed the old man’s shoulder before he headed for the door.

  Behind them Fletcher grumbled something Elizabeth couldn’t hear.

  “Connie!” he shouted. “Get your ass in here, woman. And bring that good-for-nothing son of yours with you. I gotta bone to pick with him.”

  Zach said nothing as they headed down the hall, but his face looked grim. It was obvious seeing his father that way bothered him greatly.

  Elizabeth reached over and took his hand. “Maybe Dr. Marvin will have good news.”

  “Maybe.”

  But she could see he didn’t really believe it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Zach’s expression remained closed as Elizabeth waited for him to slide the key into the ignition and start the Jeep. It was roasting hot inside the car, the pavement surrounded by ripples of heat. She could feel perspiration collecting between her breasts and was glad he rolled down the windows as they drove out of the parking lot.

  As she studied his profile, she noticed that the muscles were taut across the bones in his cheeks.

  “Your father didn’t mean to upset you,” Elizabeth said gently. “He was remembering something that happened a long time ago.”

  “I know. It’s just…it brings back memories, things I try not to think about too much.”

  “Prison, you mean?”

  He nodded. “I talk to the boys about it. I try to make them understand that there are other choices they can make.”

  “Was it really bad, Zach?”

  He cast her a look, then pulled the Jeep into the other lane to pass a produce truck plodding along the road. “Not as bad for me as it was for some of the other guys. I’d been hanging around with a pretty bad element for the past couple of years. By the time I went inside, I knew how to take care of myself. And living on the farm, I spoke Spanish like a native. I got in a fight with one of the Mexican gang members in my cell block. The guy was a real pit bull but I came out the winner. Another guy in the gang considered I did him a favor and from then on I never had a problem.”

  He kept his eyes fixed ahead, but his jaw was set as if he were seeing the past instead of the highway.

  “What happened that night, Zach? The night of the accident?”

  He sighed into the quiet inside the car. “To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure. I was so damned drunk and high I can’t remember much of anything that happened that night.”

  “I know it was the summer I graduated from high school,” she said. “The accident was all over the local news.”

  “I’d been hanging out at The Roadhouse a lot that summer. They had a really rough crowd and I fit right in. That night I was drinking with a couple of my so-called buddies. I smoked some dope, got good and high, and started drinking straight shots of tequila. The last thing I remember was arguing with my brother.”

  “Carson was there that night?”

  He nodded. “He and Jake Benson came out there to get me. My father sent them. Jake was his foreman back then. I remember Carson telling me to get my ass in the car, that he’d drive me home in my car and Jake could follow us in Carson’s car. I wouldn’t do it. I said I wasn’t ready to go.”

  “Your brother left you there?”

  “I wouldn’t go with him. What other choice did he have?”

  “So how did you wind up driving home when you were that drunk?”

  “That’s the worst part. I don’t know. It wasn’t something I usually did. Carson and Jake drove off and I passed out in the parking lot. That’s pretty much the last thing I remember. I’ve got a hazy memory of getting into my car, but I’m not really sure it’s real. When I woke up, I was slumped over the wheel, blood running down my forehead and three of my ribs broken. I’d hit another car head-on. The driver was dead and it looked like I was the guy who killed him.”

  Elizabeth frowned. “What do you mean, ‘it looked like you were the guy’?”

  Zach’s glance slid away. “Like I said, I’m not really sure. I refused to plead guilty at the hearing. I have a vague memory of getting into the car, but every time I think of it, I see myself climbing into the passenger seat, not the driver’s side.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “You don’t think you were the one driving the car that night?”

  “I might be wrong. It’s possible.”

  “But if you’re right, you went to prison for something you didn’t do.”

  His hands tightened on the wheel. “Whether it was my fault or not, that wreck changed my life. If I hadn’t gone to prison—if I hadn’t realized the bad stretch of road I was heading down—God only knows what would have happened to me. Of course, I didn’t feel that way the first year I spent in jail.”

  Elizabeth studied his lean, handsome profile. “If you weren’t driving that night, who do you think might have been behind the wheel?”

  Zach just shook his head.

  She stared at him hard. “You don’t think it was Carson, do you?”

  For several seconds he didn’t reply. “If it was, I don’t remember. And I’m sure as hell not going to accuse another man of something like that when I was so drunk and stoned I was half out of my head.”

  “What did Jake Benson say?”

  “He said they never went back to The Roadhouse.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “I didn’t have much choice.”

  Elizabeth said nothing. It took a lot of courage to accept responsibly for a crime you might not have committed. More and more, she was coming to admire Zachary Harcourt. She didn’t want to. The more she liked him, the more it was going to hurt when their affair was over.

  Elizabeth watched the flat landscape passing by outside the car window, the fields of Harcourt Farms cotton stretching row after row toward the horizon. Farther along the highway, swatches of bloodred roses formed a scarlet slash in the distance.

  As Zach drove back to her apartment, she couldn’t help wondering if Carson Harcourt was really the kind of guy who would let an innocent man go to prison.

  * * *

  Elizabeth and Zach were just finishing a breakfast of French toast and bacon the next morning when someone started hammering on Elizabeth’s front door.

  Pulling the sash on her pale blue terry-cloth robe a little tighter, she padded into the living room to open the door. She was surprised to find Carson Harcourt standing on the other side of the threshold.

 
“Good morning. May I come in?” It was a polite request that didn’t match the hard look in his eyes and he didn’t wait for permission. His glance swung from her to Zach, who strode in from the kitchen barefoot, wearing only a pair of jeans and a shirt he didn’t bother to button.

  Zach stopped in front of him. “Well, here’s a surprise. What’s the occasion, Carson?”

  “The occasion is that since you are no longer to be found at the local Holiday Inn—or in residence with your last paramour—I came to speak to you here.”

  Zach’s features hardened. “You should learn to think of women as ladies, Carson, you’d have a lot better luck.”

  “What I think is my business, not yours—which is the reason I’m here.”

  “Go on.”

  “I want you and Elizabeth to stop snooping into Harcourt Farms business. Whatever it is you’re trying to find out, it’s none of your concern.”

  “There’s no law against researching public records,” Zach said calmly, hiding the same surprise Elizabeth was feeling that Carson had somehow found out.

  “That’s right, there isn’t.” Carson’s mouth curved but it wasn’t really a smile. “And there’s no law against firing an incompetent employee. Stay out of farm business—both of you—or Santiago and his wife will find themselves out on the street.”

  Zach stiffened. He was every bit as tall as Carson, but leaner, his muscles harder, more defined. Still, Carson was a formidable opponent. While Zach had a past in San Pico, Carson had power and influence. Carson might be able to cause trouble for his brother, as well as the Santiagos. Elizabeth’s stomach tightened at the thought.

  “Mrs. Santiago is frightened,” Zach tried to explain. “She’s afraid for her unborn child and to tell you the truth, I think she has every reason to be afraid.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Elizabeth stepped forward. “Things have been happening in the house…things that can’t be explained. Zach and I stayed there most of one night and it was terrifying. I know it’s hard to believe, but…”