“Why,” Tucker asked, “are you doing this?”
“Three reasons.” Sheriff Blackburn stopped beside Quillen, cupped a weather-worn palm around her elbow, and winked at her as he looked back at Tucker. “First, ’cause I’ve wanted to poke Desmond Cassil in the nose for many years, but second and third because Jeff McCain was a friend of mine and I’ve only got four deputies. The festival weekends keep us busier than one-armed paper hangers, and I can’t spare a man to keep an eye on this young lady. Much as I’d love to lock up your uncle—and sure as I am that he’s up to no good—I couldn’t hold him five minutes on the paltry evidence I have. Until such time as I can make a case against him that’ll stick in court, Quillen needs somebody looking out for her, and I’ve decided that somebody is you.” He paused and his hand tightened on her arm. “Don’t disappoint me.”
“I won’t,” Tucker assured him quietly.
“I didn’t think you would.” Sheriff Blackburn gently eased Quillen aside and let himself out.
A second or two later, she heard the front door click shut, looked at Tucker, and sniffed back the tears smarting in her eyes. He smiled at her and rubbed his bruised rib cage.
“It’s official, love. You’ve been entrusted to my care.”
“I already was,” she answered, walking across the room to take his hand. “Unofficially,” she added, smiling over her shoulder as she led him back to the bedroom.
Chapter Ten
The next morning, Tucker could barely move, and Quillen wasn’t in much better shape. Her bruised, abraded feet were swollen, and the effort involved in hobbling around the bedroom and the kitchen made her bite her lip and brought tears to her eyes. She made tea and toast, limped it back to the bedroom on a lap tray, and forced herself to eat. Beside her, Tucker made a face as he chewed, and then groaned.
“It even hurts to swallow,” he said, tossing a half eaten piece of toast on his plate.
“Maybe a hot bath would help,” she suggested.
A mischievous smile curled one corner of his mouth. “I’m game if you are.”
“Right.” She arched a wry eyebrow at him, dragged herself off the bed, and winced her way to the bathroom.
Oohing and ahhing with every step he took, Tucker followed her a few minutes later and eased himself, muttering curses, into the half-filled tub. While he soaked in steaming water, Quillen fetched a plastic dishpan from the kitchen, filled it in the bathroom sink, and added Epsom salts. She put it on the floor in front of the toilet, lowered the lid, and sat down. Submerging her feet in the water, she sighed and leaned back against the tank.
“Aren’t we a fine pair?” Tucker asked morosely. “Doesn’t this scare the hell out of you when you think that someday we’re going to be old and we’ll wake up every morning feeling like this?”
“Thank you,” Quillen quipped sarcastically, “O prophet of doom.”
They spent the morning soaking and taking turns massaging Ben-Gay into each other’s aching, creaking muscles. By noon they were genuinely hungry and as wrinkled as the octogenarians they felt like. Quillen turned grilled cheese sandwiches in a skillet and Tucker stirred a saucepan which held enough cocoa to float the Queen Mary. She nearly gagged when he spread grape jelly on his three sandwiches, but got even by adding marshmallows—which Tucker said he abhorred—to her cocoa.
“I think I may live,” he announced with a sigh as he leaned back in his chair at the table. “Remember this when we’re sixty-five, love.”
“I hope we live to be sixty-five,” she said pensively, poking at a half-melted marshmallow bobbing on the surface of her mug.
“What makes you think we won’t?”
“I don’t, really.” Quillen lifted one shoulder in what she hoped was a convincingly nonchalant shrug and looked up at him. “I’m still kind of jumpy from yesterday, I guess.”
“Jumpy or scared?” he asked with a gentle smile.
“Scared,” she admitted. “I was okay until Sheriff Blackburn showed up last night.”
“I think he meant to reassure you.”
“I know that, still—” Her voice trailed off; she tried to shrug again and only managed to shiver. “He was very careful not to say so, but I got the distinct impression that he thinks Cassil may be trying to kill me.”
“I didn’t get that impression at all.”
“Tucker.” She spoke his name sharply. “Don’t snow me, okay? I’m not stupid.”
“I’m not, Quillen. I honestly think he was very careful about what he said so he wouldn’t give you that impression.”
“Really?”
“Really,” he repeated emphatically, and smiled.
Again, because she loved him, she believed him.
Gritting his teeth and bracing his hands on the table, Tucker counted to three and pushed himself to his feet. The grimace on his face disappeared and a startled, pleased smile lit his face.
“Hey, that was almost painless,” he told Quillen. “While I can still move, can I borrow your truck for a while?”
“Sure. Where are you going?”
“To my uncle’s house to pick up my belongings from the front lawn, where he told me yesterday morning he was going to throw them as soon as he got home.” He started toward the bedroom and Quillen followed. “He said I had until this afternoon to collect them, and then he was going to call the Salvation Army.”
“He would, too,” Quillen replied disgustedly.
“You bet he would,” Tucker agreed, shaking his ruined, blue plaid shirt and filthy jeans out of the pile on the floor where he’d thrown them yesterday. “Especially after I decked him in the afternoon. But if I know my Aunt Grace, she snuck outside last night after he went to bed and packed it all in my suitcases.”
Because he was getting dressed, Quillen did, too, in jeans and an old Colorado State sweatshirt. She gave him her keys then, and walked him to the back door.
“Want to come?” he asked.
“No, thanks.” She shook her head. “I’ve got things to do here.”
“Okay love.” He kissed her soundly and pushed through the screen door. “See you later.”
The kitchen window was still open, and Quillen heard the Blazer whine down the driveway in reverse as she cleared the lunch dishes. Once she’d loaded the dishwasher, scoured the skillet, and wiped the table, she retired to her studio and her navy leather stool.
She tried to work, but her eyes kept drifting shut under the intense warmth cast by the Luxo lamp. An hour or so later, with just the bare outlines of a design sketched, she turned off the light and went to bed. I’ll wake up when Tucker comes back, she thought, yawning as she burrowed her cheek into her pillow.
The telephone roused her, not Tucker. She jerked awake with a start, groggy and disoriented. It took her a minute to identify the shrill ringing she heard, to swing her legs to the floor and snatch up the extension on the nightstand. Before she could say hello, the line went dead and she slammed the receiver back in its cradle.
She lay down again, but couldn’t sleep. The clock radio read four-forty-one, and she couldn’t imagine where Tucker was. She stayed in bed until five when worry forced her up. In the kitchen, she brewed a pot of tea, drank two cups, and sat at the table eyeing the telephone. At five-twenty she got out of her chair to call Sheriff Blackburn, then sighed, relieved, as she heard the glass in the kitchen window rattle as the Blazer growled up the drive.
“Where the hell have you been?” she demanded, throwing the screen door open as he mounted the back porch steps. “I was worried sick.”
With his hand on the banister, he looked up at her and frowned. He was still in his dusty, torn clothes, and his face, though gray with fatigue, showed splotches of angry color.
“I can do without the third degree,” he snapped, pushing past her and striding through the house toward the bedroom.
“Oh, really?” she shot back, whirling after him. “Well, I can do without wondering if you ran the truck off into a ditch because you aren’
t even well enough to stand up, let alone drive.”
“Don’t worry,” he retorted, flinging himself down on the bed on his back. “I returned your precious truck in one piece.”
He threw his left arm over his eyes, rubbed his rib cage with his right hand, and her nasty, “Get your filthy boots off my crocheted bedspread!” died in Quillen’s throat. There were two fresh, knuckle-shaped bruises on the side of his jaw, and the bright red splotches on his right hand had to be ink or blood. Somehow she didn’t think they were ink.
“Who slugged you?” she demanded.
“Nobody,” he snapped, guiltily and quickly tucking his right hand under the pillow.
“Ran into another door, huh?”
He raised his left arm and stared at her. Some of the strained lines in his face had eased, but the corners of his mouth looked pinched.
“Got an ice bag?” he asked hoarsely.
Quillen knew she had one, somewhere. It took her almost five minutes to find it on the top shelf of the linen closet, and another minute or so to load it with ice cubes, carry it into the bedroom, and hand it to Tucker. A grateful sigh parted his lips as he pressed it to his jaw, and she sat quietly on the side of the bed, giving him a few minutes to rest, before she repeated her question.
“Who slugged you?”
“You aren’t helping my ego any.” He cracked one closed eye at her and frowned. “You could have asked who I slugged.”
“Okay, who did you slug?”
“The Jolly Green Giant.”
“Cal!” Quillen cried, wide-eyed. “Why?”
“Because when I drove out to the creek to clean my gear out of the Jeep, I found him doing it for me. I told him to take his hands off it or I’d have him arrested. He said I’d have to beat him to it, because Uncle Des had told him about the warrant he swore against me last night. He tried to haul me back to town then, I resisted, he belted me, and here I am.”
“Uh-huh.” Quillen nodded slowly. “And where’s Cal?”
“Probably still flat on his back next to my Jeep.”
“Oh, Tucker.” Quillen groaned. “What did you do?”
“I defended myself,” he retorted indignantly.
“With what?”
“A cottonwood branch,” he told her, and she groaned again. “Well, what the hell did you expect me to do? Let him drag me off to jail? Sheriff Blackburn wouldn’t have had a choice—he would have had to lock me up. Believe me, I didn’t want to whack him with the tree limb, but the punches I managed to land had as much effect on him as a pea shooter would have on King Kong.”
“Well.” Quillen sighed thoughtfully. “I don’t think you have to worry about Cal going to the sheriff. He’d sooner die than confess that someone had whipped him. Where did the blood on your splint come from?”
“My nose,” he muttered, sliding his arm over his eyes again. “It bled on the way home.”
“What was he doing in your Jeep? I don’t suppose he said?”
“Of course not. He just stood there daring me to accuse him of breaking into it—which he did.” Tucker raised his arm again and frowned at the ceiling. “He was looking for something—he’d strewn my gear all over the ground—but for the life of me, I can’t think what I’ve got that he’d want.”
“I can’t, either,” Quillen admitted, “unless he was looking for the plans Jason gave you.”
“I doubt it, but that’s a good point. He might come here looking for them, so we’d better keep an eye peeled tonight.”
The thought made her heart sink, especially because it seemed Cal had betrayed their long friendship, but she gamely refused to let Tucker see how much it distressed her. She put on her Quillen-the-Invincible face, and when he got up to unload his luggage from the Blazer, she tagged along to help. On her third trip into the house with a soft-sided navy suitcase in one hand and a small box of paperback books in the other, Quillen heard the doorbell, dropped the pullman, slid the carton on the kitchen table, and went to answer it.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
“Jason. Is Ferris in there?”
“Not at the moment—”
“Quick, open up.”
His voice sounded urgent. Quillen released the lock, turned the knob—then Jason pushed through the door, grabbed her arm, and yanked her out into the hall.
“Hey, what—”
“Shut up,” he hissed as he pulled the door shut, backed her against it, and spread his palms on either side of her head.
He leaned his face close to hers, and Quillen purposely drew a deep breath. She didn’t smell liquor, and her heart clutched between her ribs.
“Listen,” he said lowly, “I went by the office today to clean out my desk—”
Quillen felt the door give behind her and shrieked when it opened, falling back into Tucker’s arms. She glanced up at his face over her shoulder and then at Jason. His olive cheeks were nearly scarlet.
“No, don’t stop, keep going,” Tucker invited him cheerfully as he eased Quillen to her feet. “I love secrets.”
“Look, I’m sorry,” Jason apologized. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I just thought this was best said to Quillen in private.” He backed away and wheeled up the stairs. “I’ll catch you later, Quill.”
He bounded up the steps two at a time, and once he’d turned the landing, Quillen faced Tucker with a bewildered frown. His expression was equally confused—and something else she couldn’t quite read.
“Am I crazy?” she asked. “Or does there seem to be some kind of paranoia creeping over all of us?”
“You’re not crazy,” he answered, his gaze still fixed on the landing where Jason had been moments before. “I wonder what that was about.”
“All he said was he’d been in the office today to clean out his desk, then you opened the door and he clammed up. I’m guessing, but I don’t think he wanted you to hear what he had to say.” She smiled as Tucker glanced down at her. “I don’t think Jason trusts you.”
“I couldn’t care less.” He smiled back. “As long as you do.”
“If I didn’t,” she said, slipping her arms carefully around his waist and stretching up on her toes to kiss his battered jaw, “you wouldn’t be here.”
“I’d like to say prove it.” He grinned as he slipped his arms around her. “But I think the proving would probably put us both in a body cast.”
Though neither of them was particularly hungry, they forced themselves to eat a light dinner of tomato soup with the last of the oyster crackers and the cocoa left over from lunch. Quillen compassionately left the marshmallows out of hers, and afterward Tucker helped her straighten up the kitchen. They went to bed then, again took turns with the Ben-Gay, and snuggled together under the covers.
“Do you really think,” Quillen asked as she stifled a yawn, “that Cal was looking for the plans and that somebody will come looking for them tonight?”
“I can’t imagine what else he’d be looking for,” Tucker replied sleepily, “and I sure as hell hope nobody comes skulking around here tonight. As tired as I am, he could probably carry off this bed with us in it and I’d never wake up.”
To the contrary, Tucker almost leaped off the bed when the telephone rang. Quillen shot up on one arm behind him and listened to the several sharp, impatient hellos he barked into the mouthpiece. A shiver started up her spine and she jumped when he slammed the receiver down and turned toward her.
“That happened this afternoon while you were gone,” she told him. “It rang, I answered it, and the line went dead.”
“If it rings again, you answer it,” Tucker said, grunting a little as he shoved his pillow against the headboard and swung himself around to lean against it. “Maybe it’s your friend Jason.”
“Or maybe it’s just some kid playing games with the phone.”
“Maybe,” he said simply, but he didn’t sound convinced.
Quillen wasn’t, either, not really. She thought briefly about Jason. What had he wanted to talk to her
about? But it wasn’t his style to call and hang up. She’d speak to him tomorrow. Pushing her pillow next to Tucker’s, she curled herself gingerly around him in a half-supine position. The telephone didn’t ring again, and eventually her weary eyelids drifted shut of their own accord.
The next day was a festival day, and the clock radio wakened Quillen at six, although she couldn’t remember having set it. She opened one sleep-weighted eye in time to see Tucker shoot out of bed, grab his side, and curse as he leaped out of the bedroom and into the studio. Pulling on her shift, Quillen followed him and bumped into the doorway, yawning, as she watched him drop to his hands and knees and open the storage space built in below the windowseat, where he had put the plans.
“Thank God, the plans are still there.” He shut the doors, rocked back on his heels, and raised one eyebrow at Quillen. “Great pair of watchdogs, aren’t we?”
They ate a hasty breakfast of tea and toast, then Tucker carried a makeup case twice the size of Quillen’s into the bathroom and began Realgar’s face. While she put on her costume and French-braided the ribbons into her hair, Quillen watched him, fascinated by the transformation. It took him an hour and innumerable layers of latex and pancake makeup to construct the ancient, wizened visage of the wizard, but once he’d glued on his beard and tugged on his wig, it was Realgar who turned away from the mirror and kissed her.
“Here’s the face you love, my love. Did watching me put it on make you crazy with passion, I hope?”
He waggled his white, bushy eyebrows at her and she laughed.
“Some other time, you dirty old sorcerer.” She grinned. “We’ll be late.”
“One last thing.” He frowned, raised his right hand, and tore at the tape securing the splint with his teeth.
“Tucker!” she cried, making a grab at him that missed.
He jerked his arm over his head and Realgar glowered at her. “There were no metal splints in the fifteenth century, my love.”
“But your fingers—”
Tainted Gold Page 17
