“You? Is he really mad?”
“Yes, but he’s probably just—” Hungover, she started to say, but caught herself. “Grumpy. He doesn’t really think I’d do something so mean. In a few hours, when he’s feeling better, he’ll be sorry he said all those things.”
“Maybe. Mom, what’s a ‘straining order’?”
“Nothing you have to worry about.” She walked over and kissed Shelley. “You don’t have to worry about any of this. Daddy’s car is insured. The insurance company will pay for the damage, he’ll get the car fixed, and then he’ll be happy again.”
“But will he ever come home? Will things ever be like they used to be?”
Nicole hesitated. There was no point in lying, in building false hopes. “I don’t think so, honey. But that doesn’t mean you and Jesse and I can’t be happy.”
“I guess not,” Shelley mumbled disconsolately.
Later, as Nicole drove Shelley to school, she tried to say something cheerful, but all she could think of was Roger’s battered car and the voice on the phone saying, “That man who calls himself your husband won’t dare talk to you so cruelly again. Tonight I’ll give him a warning. But if he continues, chérie, I will kill him.”
The only person who had ever called her chérie was Paul Dominic.
2
Bobby Vega placed a valuable clay pot carefully on a shelf and looked out the front window. “Plenty of people on the River Walk today.”
“All the better for us,” Carmen said. “I feel lucky today. I’ll bet we do over a thousand in sales.”
“You’re dreaming. What I see are a lot of lookers and few buyers.”
“Do you have mind-reading powers I’m not aware of?”
Bobby turned. “No. They just have a look about them. They’re the tourists who buy T-shirts, not our kind of merchandise.”
Bobby was only a couple of inches taller than Carmen, with a square build that made him seem stocky. His face was pleasant, although it bore little resemblance to the poster-boy cuteness he’d been known for in his teens and early twenties. He had not aged well, his dimples turning into furrows, too many lines cutting horizontal paths across his forehead, his eyes narrowed by eyelids whose once sexy droop at the corners had turned into definite sags. He was thirty-seven, but he looked ten years older.
Carmen’s youthful face grew serious. “Bobby, you’re worrying about the business, but we’re doing all right.”
“ ‘All right’ isn’t what I had in mind for us. We’re too cramped in the house since my father had to move in and we can’t afford anything bigger.”
“We’re at the store all day and Jill is at school. Things are only crowded at night. Besides, much as I hate to say it, your father will probably be in a nursing home by this time next year.”
“Crammed into a ward because I won’t be able to afford a private room for him. Then there’s Jill.”
Carmen frowned. “Jill! What’s wrong with her?”
“College. How are we going to afford it?”
“The same way a lot of kids do—college loans. Besides, with her grades, it’s likely she’ll get a scholarship.” She went to her husband and placed her hands on his shoulders. “What’s wrong today?”
“It always bothers me when I have to bring Dad to work because his ‘baby-sitter’ didn’t show up and he can’t be left in the house alone.”
Raoul Vega’s Alzheimer’s was a constant source of sadness mixed with irritation to Bobby. The man who had started this shop, who had once been a maker of exquisite jewelry, now often had trouble remembering his granddaughter’s name or how to make coffee.
“Well, cheer up. Things could be worse. At least we’re happy together and your papa is doing fine for the time being. He’s going over the inventory right now and doing a good job. How would you like to trade places with Nicole?”
Bobby turned and walked back to the shelves, rearranging the pieces he’d just arranged. “How’s she doing?”
“Not too well.”
“Lots of tears and dramatics and leaning on friends who have their own problems, no doubt.”
Carmen looked at him so sharply her dangling silver earrings swung. “Where did that come from?” Bobby shrugged. “For your information, Nicole is doing none of that. However, I did have an interesting conversation with her yesterday.” Bobby didn’t answer and Carmen continued. “She was looking at some newspaper clippings she kept about the time of her attack.”
“You were looking at them with her?”
“Yes. Do you know Nicole had completely forgotten that you were with The Zanti Misfits?”
“Really made my mark, didn’t I?”
“Bobby, that’s not my point. Nicole said she’s always felt you don’t like her. I told her I’d noticed you usually seem uncomfortable around her, reserved.” She waited for Bobby to answer, but he’d begun straightening paintings. “Anyway, we wondered if maybe you thought she did remember that you were with The Zanti Misfits and believed she held it against you that you’d been friends with Zand and Magaro.”
Bobby finally looked at her, his dark eyes defiant. “I was never friends with Magaro. Ritchie was another matter.” One corner of his mouth lifted in a sardonic smile. “So Nicole thinks I’m cool around her because I’m afraid she holds the rape against me?”
“Actually, I thought it. Is it true?”
Bobby sighed. “Carmen, what’s the big deal about Nicole this morning?”
“It’s not a big deal. It’s just that she is my best friend. I’d like for my best friend and my husband to get along.”
“Have Nicole and I ever had an argument? Have I ever been rude to her?”
“Come on, Bobby, you know what I mean.”
Bobby finally abandoned the paintings and walked toward her. His hair was mostly gray, but he dyed it black. He brushed a lock off his forehead. “Frankly, I don’t think about Nicole that much, just like she doesn’t think about me. Hell, she didn’t even remember that I was the drummer in what would have been one of the top bands in the world.”
“Might have been,” Carmen corrected. “You know how unpredictable show business is. The band might not have caught on.”
“I don’t believe that,” Bobby said fiercely. “We would have been great, still going strong.”
Carmen lifted her hands in defeat. “Bobby, you can’t possibly know what would have happened. But you do know one thing. The failure of the band was the fault of Ritchie Zand.”
“Because he was murdered?” Bobby demanded, growing angry.
“Because by raping Nicole he set in motion a chain of events that got him murdered.”
“He had an alibi for that rape.”
Carmen looked at him in disbelief. “Oh, Bobby, not even you can believe he and Magaro didn’t rape her.”
“Okay,” Bobby said reluctantly. “He was getting loaded a lot in those days. Maybe he did have sex with her.”
“Have sex with her? He raped her. He and Magaro would have killed her if they’d gotten a chance, and I’m glad Paul Dominic killed them.”
Bobby stared at her. “You always hated Ritchie because you thought he and the band were taking me away from you.”
Carmen blinked at the venom of his words. Then she answered quietly, “I didn’t hate the band. I hated Zand and Magaro. They were changing you, getting you into alcohol and drugs and—”
“And groupies. Let’s bring it up one more time, Carmen. I screwed around a little. I was young and those were wild days. But I loved you. I married you.”
“You married me because I was pregnant.”
“I don’t want to talk about our dead son,” Bobby said crisply.
“Neither do I. But would you have married me if The Zanti Misfits hadn’t fallen apart?”
“Sure.”
“I wonder,” Carmen murmured doubtfully as Bobby turned to greet the first customer coming in the door. “I really wonder.”
3
Nicole sat up in bed,
pillows piled behind her. Day after tomorrow she had to return to the university and she was reviewing notes for her Major American Writers class. Wednesday they would begin on Herman Melville. Now she had to compose an introductory lecture that wouldn’t put everyone to sleep. She began, as always, writing in a spiral notebook on her lap. Tomorrow she’d switch to her computer.
She was only on the third paragraph when a huge yawn threatened to unhinge her jaw. She looked at the clock. Midnight. Maybe she should just give up for tonight and hope sleep would infuse her with inspiration.
She gathered up her notes and notebook and carried them to the dresser. Then she turned off her bedside lamp, flipped on the dim night-light she’d never slept without for fifteen years, and crawled into bed.
Almost immediately she felt as if she were drifting, hovering in a huge candlelit room where “Rhapsody in Blue” throbbed from huge stereo speakers. “So you liked it, chérie?” a deep, gentle voice asked as intense hazel eyes gazed into hers.
Strident barking pulled her from the dream world. “No,” she mumbled as the music, the deep voice, the intense hazel eyes drifted away. “No, please…”
Suddenly Jesse was on her bed, yipping shrilly, turning in circles. Nicole shot into a sitting position as the dog leaped off the bed, ran to her window, and stood on his hind legs, barking, spraying the glass with saliva. Nicole looked at the window and drew in her breath. The wolf’s head stared directly at her.
With a calmness that later surprised her, she reached under her mattress and retrieved the key. The soft glow of the night-light allowed her to unlock the drawer of her bedside table without fumbling. She took out her loaded gun and aimed straight at the window.
In a flash the figure disappeared. She jumped out of bed and joined Jesse at the window, kneeling beside the dog. The weak bulb in the outside light illuminated enough of the yard for her to see someone tall heading for the back fence.
“Mommy, what is it?”
Simultaneously, Nicole turned to look at Shelley and slid the gun beneath the bedside table. “Apparently our werewolf is back.”
“What?” Shelley quaked.
Nicole held out her arms and Shelley rushed to her. “It’s just a person wearing a mask, remember? Your window blind was down, but mine wasn’t, so he came here.”
Jesse still barked frantically, jumping at the window, fully prepared to tear apart the intruder. “Settle down, Jess,” Nicole said as she and Shelley watched. When the person reached the back fence, he grabbed a rope and began climbing up the fence. He topped it and reached for a branch of the live oak. “So that’s how he did it the first time,” Nicole said. He climbed into the tree and began his descent, disappearing from their view behind the fence. “Well, there he goes.”
But in a moment a shout pierced the night. It was so loud, they could hear it from behind the closed window. Then came the sound of a dog barking. A big dog who’d obviously cornered the intruder. In a moment Nicole saw a form climb back up the tree and huddle in the branches.
“What’s going on?” Shelley asked.
“Good luck for us, honey!” Nicole reached for the phone. “Now we can call the police because there’s a great big dog out there that’s got the creep cornered.”
Ten minutes later Nicole heard a siren. By this time she had on jeans and a sweatshirt, but as she slipped her feet into loafers, her heart sank as the barking of the big dog abruptly stopped. The police pounded on her front door. Why in heaven’s name were they making so much noise? she wondered angrily. First the siren, now the pounding. You’d think this was a bank robbery.
While Shelley held Jesse on a leash, Nicole explained to two young patrolmen where the man was. She and one policeman went through the backyard to the fence. The other patrolman went around the block to the yard of the vacant house that abutted Nicole’s property. “No dog, no man,” he called.
“Damn,” Nicole muttered. “If only the dog hadn’t run off.”
“Maybe it was the sound of the siren,” the young patrolman suggested.
No kidding, Nicole thought. She watched the beam of a flashlight dancing on the other side of the fence. Then the other policeman yelled, “The dog got hold of him. There’s some blood on the tree trunk and some on the grass. Not a lot. Couldn’t have been a bad injury. Wait a minute. I think I see something else. A piece of gold jewelry.” Nicole could only see slivers of light between the boards of the fence as the policeman bent to inspect his find. “It’s fancy,” he shouted. “Some kind of religious symbol.” He paused. “It’s a brass Saint Francis medal.”
“Saint Francis, the patron saint of animals,” Nicole murmured.
Finally, the policeman laughed. “Well, can you believe this? It’s a pet ID tag. It says, ‘Jordan,’ and there’s an address. At least a partial. The number’s scratched, can’t make it out, but the rest is Hermosa Street. That’s in Olmos Park. The dog’s a long way from home.”
Nicole stood frozen as the world of her familiar backyard and her little brick house disappeared and she saw a long Spanish-style mansion with a fountain on Hermosa Street in Olmos Park. The home of Paul Dominic.
Seven
1
Nicole awakened with a dull headache. She took two aspirin with a glass of orange juice before fixing Shelley’s breakfast.
Unlike her, the child was in high gear, excited by last night’s commotion. “Can I tell everyone at school about the werewolf and the policemen?” she asked, spooning Cheerios and strawberries in her mouth.
“No.”
“Why?”
“It might scare the other kids. They might get ideas about playing the same kind of trick.”
Shelley frowned over this for a moment and Nicole thought she was going to raise objections. Instead, she nodded. “I think you’re right. I bet Tommy Myers would buy a wolf mask and go scare somebody tonight. Mom, he’s so mean. And you know what else? He likes me! He wants to go steady. Yuck!”
Nicole took a sip of orange juice, thinking. One level of her mind was working on how ridiculous it was for nine-year-olds to be talking about going steady. Another part gnawed at a different question. “Is Tommy Myers very big?”
Shelley nodded. “He’s taller than most of the guys in class. Why?”
“No reason.”
Shelley stared at her for a moment, then assumed an owlish look. “You’re wondering if that was him last night. No way, Mom. That was a grown-up guy.”
“I just wondered.” Or rather, I hoped, Nicole thought. “You have a milk mustache.”
Shelley quickly wiped it away. “Our teacher said women used to take baths in milk.”
“They thought it was good for the skin.”
“Who’d want to sit in a tub full of cold milk? Besides, you’ve got real pretty skin anyway. Prettier than Lisa’s. She’s got freckles.”
“There’s nothing wrong with freckles.”
“Well, I don’t like them,” Shelley announced emphatically. “Or orange hair or green eyes. And she’s too tall. She’s also got real big boobs and she rubs them against Daddy all the time!”
“Shelley!” Nicole exclaimed, torn between shock and laughter. “Those aren’t nice things to say.”
“I don’t care. I like blond hair and blue eyes and little boobs like yours.”
“Thank you, dear,” Nicole said dryly. “And would you please stop saying ‘boobs’?”
“What should I say instead?”
“I don’t know. I’ll think of something. And for the record, her hair is dark auburn, not orange, and she’s about the same height as Aunt Carmen.”
“She looks taller. Huge.”
“Well, she’s not. Are you finished with breakfast?”
“Yeah. I wasn’t too hungry.”
This morning Nicole let Shelley take the bus to school. A couple of hours later, she climbed into her car, intending to head straight for her mother’s house. The impulse she’d had all morning was too strong, though, and in twenty minutes she fo
und herself in Olmos Park.
Although the Dominic home was less than three miles from her parents’ house, she had not been here since her last night with Paul. How romantic that tryst had begun. How horrifyingly it had ended.
As she drew near the Dominic home, she slowed down and parked on the opposite side of the street. The once perfect lawn now looked shabby, the hedges untrimmed, the white fountain, topped by its beautiful figure of Diana the Huntress, dry and stained from rusty water. She remembered once taking a picture of the sun shining through the sparkling spray.
Like the lawn, the house itself also showed signs of neglect. Its pristine whiteness had dimmed to a dirty eggshell color, and several of the dark red Spanish roof tiles were cracked or missing.
Paul’s father had been much older than his mother, Alicia, and died when Paul was in his early twenties. Nicole wondered if Alicia Dominic still lived here. She’d looked for the name in the telephone directory and found nothing, but that could mean the woman had an unlisted number. There were no signs of life around the house, though. Of course if Mrs. Dominic still lived here, her only companion might be the housekeeper, Rosa. How strange, Nicole mused. She hadn’t thought of Rosa for ages. Neither she nor her son. What was his name? Juan. She’d only seen him a few times and never said more than ten words to him. Besides, he would be a man by now.
But she wasn’t looking for people. She was looking for a Doberman. If not the dog, some sign that a dog lived here. She pulled farther up the street and stopped again, looking backward so she could get a view of the rear lawn. No fence. No doghouse. No dog.
Well, what did you expect? she wondered as she started the car and pulled away from the curb. Paul Dominic sitting on the lawn playing with his dog?
No. If Paul were alive and in San Antonio, he didn’t intend to make himself easy to find.
2
Her mother opened the door immediately. “Nicole! I didn’t expect to see you again today.”
“I wanted to talk to you yesterday, but I didn’t get a chance.”
Her mother gave her a small smile. “Mildred’s sympathy call exhausted me and added five pounds to her.”
Tonight You're Mine Page 10
