Sapphire Nights

by Patricia Rice

  “Xavier?” Walker pushed past to see the rental agent slumped in the wicker porch chair, unresponsive. He flashed his light at the visitor and his gut froze. “Go get Cass,” he ordered curtly. “I’ll call for an ambulance.”

  Although Xavier Black looked past the need for a hospital.

  Chapter 21

  After midnight, June 22

  * * *

  “I know CPR.” Sam tried to push past the obstacle of Walker’s arm while the cat dashed back down the stairs. “We should at least check his pulse.”

  “It’s a potential crime scene,” Walker warned. “Stay there,” he said curtly, pointing at the stairs. “I’ll check. That’s a kerosene can beside him.”

  Astounded, Sam stayed put. Kerosene? That dazed old man had burned the cross? Had he intended to burn her home?

  She took Daisy’s artwork from Walker and set it aside on a mosaic table. So much for protective spirits.

  Or had the spirits stopped him? Maybe she was the one who needed to broaden her thinking.

  Walker pulled out his radio and ordered an ambulance, then reached over to check the old man’s wrist. “It’s weak, but I think I feel something.”

  “How long will it take for an ambulance?” she asked anxiously, helping him lay Xavier flat on the balcony. His green blazer hung loose on an almost skeletal frame.

  “Too long. Run over to Cass’s.” Walker began compressions, counting out the pace. “There’s a nurse who lives up here somewhere. She’ll know. It might be diabetic shock for all we know.”

  “Why on earth would he be on my porch with kerosene?”

  “Keep him alive, and we’ll ask,” Walker said grimly, pumping. “After you fetch Cass, find the evidence bags in my car. We need to bag up that can.”

  Sam took his keys and ran down the stairs, but before she could cross the lawn, she saw Cass’s irregulars on the move. She opened Walker’s car and found what she hoped was an evidence bag as the women approached, then dashed back to the balcony to warn Walker. “Here comes the light brigade, right on schedule.”

  While she bagged the can and Walker kept up the compressions, Sam called to the approaching crowd. “We need medical help. Walker says there’s a nurse nearby?”

  “I’ll fetch her,” Mariah cried, peeling off from the pack and jogging down the path to the cottages below.

  “Who is it?” Cass demanded. She carried a large flashlight and led the way for the others.

  “Xavier Black. Does anyone know if he’s diabetic or has a heart condition? It will be a while before the ambulance arrives.” Sam eased to one side, allowing only Cass up the stairs before blocking the others. The balcony wasn’t large.

  Cass checked under Xavier’s eyelids, then called to the women milling about below, “Who has the naloxone?”

  “Crap,” Walker said, sitting back on his heels and turning Black on his side. “He’s an addict?”

  “Painkillers mostly,” Cass said crisply. “He self-medicates but usually not to this extent.”

  “I won’t ask how you come to have the antidote,” Walker said grimly.

  One of the older women ran up the stairs and handed over a box that Sam passed on to Walker, who seemed to know how to handle the nasal spray. Xavier coughed briefly but didn’t regain consciousness.

  Walker took his pulse. “Stronger. Give it five minutes to kick in. Anyone know why he was on Sam’s porch?”

  “He’s kind of been hanging around me a bit,” Sam said, fretting at her bottom lip. “I had the feeling he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words. I really didn’t sense any harm in him.” Of course, he hadn’t been carrying kerosene at the time.

  Cass muttered an unladylike expletive and gestured at her audience. “You’d best all go home before the police arrive.”

  Amazingly, they did as told. Wide-eyed, Sam watched everyone depart, chattering. “Police?” she asked. “Walker is the law up here. Why would they need anyone else?”

  “I’m off duty,” Walker reminded Cass. “I didn’t ask for back up, and no one is likely to be here until morning, when the sheriff heads for the lodge. A drug overdose won’t rate suspicion, yet.”

  He checked his watch and Xavier’s pulse again. The old man seemed to be stirring.

  Ignoring them, Cass lowered herself to the top step. Emma arrived to bat her furry head against Cass’s leg until she was petted. Worried, Sam glanced from Walker and the unconscious man on her doorstep, to her great-aunt, who looked worn thin.

  “You know something,” Sam concluded. She sat cross-legged on the only space remaining between Walker and Cass. She’d hoped to have Walker naked and in her bed about now. He sent her a glance that probably meant he was thinking the same thing. That revived her a little.

  “I really haven’t given any of this enough thought,” Cass said. “Mariah dumped the announcement on us that the Kennedys are going through with the construction we thought we’d stopped all those years ago. I never wanted to look for the names of people who were here when your father died. It would have stirred up all those old ghosts. Most of the people involved are gone, foreclosed on, dead, retired—there just aren’t that many of us left. It didn’t seem relevant.”

  “But Xavier Black was one of them,” Sam said. “I learned that much. He said he moved here about the time Geoffrey Kennedy died, but he didn’t seem particularly coherent. I thought perhaps he had some form of Asperger’s and didn’t know how to socialize.”

  “He was a friend of Geoffrey’s back then,” Cass said. “He socialized just fine. He had a law degree but chose to become a mortgage broker. He talked people into taking out loans for improvements that they couldn’t afford. He sold them on easy loans that go up with the interest rates or had balloon payments.”

  “Free market,” Walker said cynically, administering another dose of the spray. Xavier began to cough again, spitting up the meager contents of his stomach. Walker moved out of the way but kept a moaning Xavier tilted on his side so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit.

  Sam sent a little prayer of thanksgiving that he wasn’t a corpse.

  “Yes, dear, the fine line between legal and moral. Geoff’s bank knew those people wouldn’t be able to afford higher rates, but they gave the loans anyway. That was one of my allegations when I hired lawyers to sue. That brought in the federal regulators, but much too late for most of them, the store owners in particular. Carmel always hated that I’d deprived Geoffrey of half the Kennedy fortune. She’s been determined to make up for it ever since. That’s how the Kennedys’ leasing company came to own most of the town.”

  “What happened to Xavier?” Sam demanded, recognizing her aunt’s procrastination.

  “He spent the night in the cemetery.” She sounded almost proud. “The law couldn’t provide justice, so we did.”

  Sam exchanged a puzzled glance with Walker, who shrugged and steadied his waking patient. “You knocked him out and left him in the cemetery?” she asked when Cass didn’t continue.

  “Really, I shouldn’t say anything with the law as a witness. It implicates others. Let us speak in theories. If one believes in ghosts and spends the night in a haunted house, what happens?”

  “One imagines ghost and goblins and runs screaming from the building,” Walker said dryly.

  “Yes, well, if the door is locked, then there’s no leaving, is there?” Cass leaned her back against the concrete stair wall. “The spirits cleansed him. Xavier was a changed man. Geoffrey fired him. We didn’t have a mayor or an official town back then, but we had already signed a petition to start one. So we appointed a temporary mayor who set Xavier up in one of the empty storefronts and gave him a list of properties to rent out. He’s been there ever since. Of course, since the Kennedys have bought the bulk of the rental properties, he’s essentially working for them again.”

  Mariah arrived at the bottom of the stairs with a stranger. Cass and Sam moved out of the way.

  “Brenda is a nurse practitioner,” Ma
riah said, remaining at the bottom.

  “I’m retired,” Brenda protested. Small and wiry, Brenda didn’t appear old enough to be retired.

  Walker explained what they’d done so far, then held up his flashlight so the nurse could check under the patient’s eyelids and take his pulse. She had Walker hold the light over Xavier’s shaking hands and on his face again.

  “I’m not sure this is Vicodin. That’s his usual escape, but there’s blue around his mouth. There’s some alcohol on his breath, but he knows better than to have more than one drink. His temperature is elevated and so is his pulse. Bring me some cold water and towels.”

  Sam jumped up to unlock the door, fetch her meager stash of towels, and rummage for a bowl for the water. She could hear the others talking as she filled the bowl.

  “Coke?” Walker asked. “There’s a dealer up here?”

  “Not anymore,” Cass insisted. “We’re all into yoga and health foods. We learned our lesson long ago.”

  “I’m no expert,” Brenda said. “I’m only operating on what little I know. But drug use isn’t all illegal. Hillvale has a large older population. We all have medicine cabinets full of prescriptions. It could be a prescription or a cocktail of drugs I don’t know about.”

  Sam supplied the water and helped apply the compresses. “Can you check on the ambulance?” she asked Walker as Xavier began to shake.

  Walker took his radio inside the house, out of the way. She was pretty certain she heard him mention suspicious circumstances. Her heart sank to her feet.

  She glanced at Daisy’s little statuette and her anxiety rose even more.

  Crazy Daisy may have been here when Xavier arrived. What did that signify?

  The ambulance took Xavier away. Brenda walked Cass back to her house. Walker stayed with Sam, hugging her close while she wept from the aftershock of the night’s events.

  “Given what we know about Juan’s death,” he told her, “the sheriff will try to expedite the blood tests on Xavier and turn this into a crime scene. Better get some sleep before they start tramping up the stairs.”

  Holding Daisy’s artwork, she nodded against his shoulder. If this was a crime scene, it had already been seriously disturbed. Still, he’d have to tell the sheriff about the kerosene and the butterfly in the morning.

  Taking Sam’s nod as permission to lock the door, Walker guided her behind the colorful blanket to her bed. “Anything look out of place in here?” he asked, switching on the lights.

  She jerked back, surprised. “You think someone was in here?”

  “The door was locked, so no, I don’t think so, but I thought it best to check before we mess up anything else.” He really wanted her in that bed. He needed sex, not tears. No more tears, no more crazy, no more responsibility for anyone but himself.

  Setting her stone butterfly on a wall shelf in the front room, Sam pushed back the curtain. She checked the suitcases she seemed to be living out of, went into the bathroom and looked through her personal belongings, and came out to examine the open studio. “That first time, I could tell someone had been in here. This time, nothing.”

  Her space was limited, neat, and easy to tell if anything was out of place. Walker nodded agreement. “Since Xavier probably has keys to every rental in town, he may have been the one who searched your place earlier. If he meant to do it again, he could have. So he must have come for another reason, then passed out waiting for you.”

  “A purpose besides burning me out? What would have happened if I’d been here?” she whispered in a mix of panic and horror.

  “If you’d been here, you might have seen whoever gave him the drugs. Or you might have been accused of giving them to him. It’s a damned good thing you went with me to the lodge.” He shouldn’t have said that.

  Her eyes grew wide and looked almost purple in this light. “You think they may have been framing me?”

  “You seem to hold the key to the Lucys, but let’s not speculate. Come on, let’s go to bed. We can just sleep, if that’s what you want. It will be a short night.”

  Fortunately for him, Sam wasn’t ready for sleep. They worked off their adrenaline overloads together, without any need to discuss where their non-relationship was going. Walker thought he might be able to handle this friends-with-benefits business they had going, especially with an intelligent woman like Sam. Even when she was being Lucy crazy, she had her head on straight.

  In the morning, they explored the tiny shower together. For the first time, Sam studied his damaged thigh, running her fingers over the puckered skin and injured muscle. Walker stood still for it. He supposed he had to explain sometime.

  “I only read the small piece in the newspaper,” she said hesitantly.

  “My late wife heard voices.” She needed to understand the true extent of his damage, that he wasn’t whole on the inside or outside. “She was a writer, said medication messed with her work.”

  “You don’t have to tell me if it still hurts,” she whispered, caressing his chest.

  Keeping sex upfront somehow distanced the pain. He knew talking would help, but he had to grit his teeth to continue. “The voices told her our son was a distraction she didn’t need. She took my gun out of its case and opened fire.”

  Here was the hard part, and he hugged Sam close while he talked over her head. “I should have jumped on her and taken the weapon. But I followed protocol and took the safe route. I grabbed Davey and rolled beneath the car. Tess kept firing until she only had one shot left, then turned the gun on herself.”

  Emergency services had arrived too late to save Davey from that first direct shot or his wife from the last one. Intellectually, he knew he couldn’t have done better, but the if-only leech sucked at his soul.

  He felt her hot tears against his skin even through the stream from the shower. She didn’t question his actions as he’d been doing for months. Instead, she kissed his chest and said, “You must have been in rehab for months.”

  Tension seeped away. He despised sympathy, but she was simply acknowledging a truth. He lifted her chin and kissed her thoroughly, before turning off the water and reaching for a towel.

  “Months in which I decided life was short, and I wanted more than a desk job,” he said, watching as she rubbed her hair dry, leaving the rest of her gorgeous body visible for his perusal.

  “And being a small-town deputy fit the bill?” she asked, rightfully dubious.

  “Looking for the reason for my father’s disappearance fit the bill.” And it still did. He wasn’t ready to give up on finding the killers, now that he knew for certain that his father had been murdered here—and that the murderer might still be on the loose.

  She wrapped the towel around her and ran product through the tangle of her hair. “That’s how I feel. I want to know what happened to make my parents abandon me. Cass knows a lot more than she’s telling.”

  “I think it’s all starting to unravel, but it’s hard to imagine even a Lucy with a grievance killing anyone. My bet would be on one of the store owners whose livelihood got stolen.” Walker missed the fresh uniform he had waiting at the lodge, but he hadn’t been thinking of clothes when he’d led Sam out last night. He strode into her bedroom to gather his discarded uniform.

  “You don’t limp as much in the mornings,” she called after him.

  “Muscle tires out. I’m supposed to be doing exercises to build it up again. I figured hill climbing works.” He yanked on briefs and trousers and reached for his shirt.

  She appeared in the doorway, combing out her shoulder-length hair. “Do you believe in evil yet?”

  “Haven’t defined it yet,” he countered. “Dinah’s for breakfast?”

  “What if evil is all the venal things inside us—the jealousies and greed and hatred? And yes, Dinah’s. I work and she feeds me for free.”

  She bent over to rummage in her suitcase, giving Walker a heart-stopping view of her rounded buttocks. He was a goal-oriented man who didn’t waste a lot of time
thinking about sex, but Sam could easily change that.

  As long as he kept it to just sex. No more commitment and family and the painful strings that tied him in knots. He’d not been able to protect the child he’d been given. If he meant to get back into action, he wouldn’t be leading the kind of safe life a family needed—as his father had proved.

  “So where does strung-out on drugs and stupidity fall on the scale of evil?” he countered, to keep from thinking of what couldn’t be changed.

  “Admittedly, nebulous.” She wiggled into a tight camisole. “So we’re back to negativity instead of Biblical evil. If we’re infused with negativity, we get depressed, take drugs, blame others for our woes. . .”

  “And end up like Xavier, passed out on a stranger’s front porch. Give it up, Sam. Hillvale is not inhabited by evil or negativity. It’s a bunch of old hippies who hug trees and believe in earth spirits instead of a Great Creator or whatever. People need to believe in a larger power than their own.” He tucked in his wrinkled shirt and wondered if he’d have time to change before the sheriff and his crew arrived.

  “That’s what I would have thought until I was out on that mountain during the fire. I know I have a smart mouth, but I’m usually cautious and never mean. I said things to Carmen—a complete stranger—that I would never have said under any other conditions. And you were behaving like a Neanderthal and even Harvey had a greedy gleam in his eye.”

  “Tension, stress, human nature. Don’t make too much of it.” Walker waited for her to finish dressing.

  “So you think my planter boxes are normal, and Xavier imagined ghosts in the cemetery, and Val found your father’s skeleton by accident?” She shimmied into a pair of jeans.

  “Or she knew he was there all along and just decided it was time for the world to know. Don’t let the Lucys get to you. They know things others don’t because they’re a close-mouthed bunch and don’t tell all they know until they decide it’s time to be said. Xavier’s story is a good example.” He checked out the window to be certain no more bodies were on the doorstep and no crazies were burning crosses.