by Lee, Rachel
But then he kicked himself for being a chicken. There was no way on earth Trina could give him half the trouble of some of the punks he’d dealt with in his job. No way.
Sighing, he climbed out of his car and listened to the breeze ruffle the trees and palms. He loved this time of night. What he’d really like to do was go grab a beer and sit on his screened lanai for a while, listening to night sounds.
Fat chance.
He took a moment to collect himself and order himself into a better mood. Inside, the house smelled of delicious things again, and he decided that one of these days he was going to tell her that good, home-cooked food might make him happy but it didn’t turn him into a fool. On the other hand, why disabuse her of that notion? She was cooking some great stuff …
The thought actually made him grin as he dumped his jacket over the back of a chair and entered the kitchen, greeting his daughter. Instead of getting the too-bright smile and chipper voice he expected, he got a glare.
“You’re late,” Trina said accusingly.
Refrigerator door open, beer bottle in hand, Gil looked at her. “I said hi, how are you doing. It would be nice if you responded in kind.”
“Hihowareyoudoing, and why didn’t you call?”
She was sunburned, he noted. How many times did he have to tell her what the sun could do to her skin? But the thought barely skimmed his mind as he realized he wasn’t in for a snow job.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
“Everything!”
Which wasn’t too helpful. Everything could be just that her favorite shorts had a stain she couldn’t get out. He stood a minute, letting a sense of parental helplessness roll over him, then he waded in.
Crossing the room, he put an arm around her shoulders. “What’s everything?”
“Everything!”
He smothered a sigh and considered retreating to the table and sipping his beer while he waited for details to bubble out. Something else suggested that would be foolhardy.
“So talk to me,” he said. “I’ve got willing ears.”
But instead she tugged away from him. “You won’t understand. You’ll tell me none of it is that important. And besides, you don’t like Jamie anyway.”
He found himself hoping she and Jamie had broken up, then kicked himself mentally for wishing his daughter unhappy. Cripes, there was never a right response with a kid. “You and Jamie fight?”
“Yeah. Go sit down. Your dinner’s probably ruined. I was trying to keep it warm.”
He obeyed, deciding he was only going to get the story when she was ready to tell him.
Out of the oven she pulled a foil-covered plate. After ripping the foil from it, she placed it in front of him. Two pork chops, breaded and baked, a mound of somewhat overcooked broccoli, and a baked potato that had shrunk during the wait.
“It looks really good,” he said.
“It’s ruined.” She sat across from him. “You should tell me when you’re going to be late.”
“I did. Check the machine. I probably called fifteen times today.”
At last a response. She flushed, turning even redder than her sunburn.
“So…” He chose his words with care. “Did you make it to the beach?”
“Did I forget to mention where I was going?” At least she had the courtesy to avert her eyes.
“I guess so. I assume it was the beach. You’re pretty sunburned.”
She sighed, then wailed, “Everything sucks, Dad!”
“It usually does at your age. But it’s kinda hard to commiserate when I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Jamie was so nasty! I got upset because we were supposed to go to the mall for a couple of hours to meet the gang, but he took me to the beach anyway, and I know you didn’t want me going down there alone with him…”
He nodded. “Not without asking first.”
“That’s what I told him, but he wouldn’t listen. So we got down to the beach, and I was mad, and he started picking on me for being such a baby, and I got even madder and told him to take me home….”
She stopped and wiped her eyes. “He wouldn’t. So I got a ride with a friend.”
“But where were you? Honey, you were gone all day. Did something else happen?”
She hesitated, her gaze slipping away again. Gil had to step down on his impatience. “Honey?”
She sniffled.
“Trina?”
“Well…” Her voice trembled. “There was this other guy there I know from school. And Jamie was being so nasty…”
“Just exactly how was Jamie being nasty?”
“He was kicking sand at me and throwing it in my eyes and threatening to hit me if I didn’t grow up.”
“Jesus.” Gil suddenly had a vision of his gun in his holster. He banished it immediately, but that couldn’t stop his anger from rising. “Go on.”
“So… well, I knew this other guy, and he said he’d take me home, and I said okay, which made Jamie madder.”
Gil nodded, feeling his jaw clench.
“So Randy—that’s the other guy, he’s a football player at school—he and Jamie slugged it out. Jamie started it.”
Which didn’t surprise Gil.
“Anyway, Randy knocked Jamie down, and then we ran to his car and drove away. Randy said we ought to drive around a while because Jamie was going to be pissed and might go to the house, so I said okay, and I didn’t have any sunscreen, and he has a convertible, so I got burned… and anyway…”
“Take a breath, honey, it’ll be easier.”
She nodded and took a couple of shaky gulps. “Around three he brought me home, and Jamie was waiting, and I was scared, so we drove away before he saw us. But finally Randy had to get home and I had him drop me off in Clearwater to catch a bus. I figured you’d be here by the time I got home…”
“But I wasn’t. Why didn’t you call me?”
“What’s the point? You’re always in the middle of something! You had a murder case. Louise told me you were in Tampa. What were you going to do?”
Her voice had been rising again, and she burst into tears anew. “Jamie… Jamie wasn’t here when I got home. He probably figured you’d be home any minute. But I’ve been so scared….”
Ignoring his untouched plate, he reached across the table and took her hand. “I’m sorry, honey. That’s awful. And if you’d called me directly I’d have found a way to come for you, or I’d have had someone else come for you, understand?”
“Mom hates it when I call her at work. She says her boss gets mad.”
“I won’t hate it if you call. That’s why I gave you my cell-phone number. So you can always reach me. Anytime.”
She nodded and sniffled again. “Eat your dinner.”
“In a minute. Trina, we need to talk about Jamie.”
“No! You hate him. He just got mad, Dad. Everybody gets mad.”
“Then why the hell were you so afraid?”
She shrugged. “I don’t like it when people get mad at me.”
“Well, you sure as hell don’t hide from me when I get mad. Nor do you hesitate to make me mad.”
“That’s different.”
“That’s my point,” Gil said forcefully. “It shouldn’t be any different with your friends. You shouldn’t have to be afraid.”
“We’ll make up,” she said.
He saw the shutters closing behind her eyes. She wouldn’t hear another word on the subject, no matter how he flapped his jaws. She was “in love.”
And those were two of the stupidest, most dangerous words in the English language.
“For gosh sakes, cut out that caterwauling!”
Anna’s mouth snapped shut and she stared into the face of her identical twin sister Nancy. “What the hell are you doing here? Why didn’t you call?”
“Because I wanted the hell out of Austin.”
“What did you do? Rob a bank?”
“Actually, my girlfriend dumped me a couple of weeks ago. So I
finally decided it was time to get away for a while.”
Regaining control of her limbs, Anna shut the door behind her and locked it. Then she looked at her beloved sister, who looked exactly like her, except for her choice of Western clothes.
Then both of them spoke at the same instant, and said the same thing. “When did you get your hair cut?”
Then, laughing, they fell into each other’s arms and hugged until their ribs hurt.
“Two months ago,” Anna said when she could catch her breath.
“Me, too,” Nancy answered. Now they both sported smooth, shoulder-length bobs.
But Nancy noticed something else. “You look about as bad as I feel. What happened? Some boyfriend dump you? I didn’t even know you had a boyfriend.”
“I didn’t and don’t. No, there was a theft at the museum last night. A priceless Mayan artifact was stolen.”
“Oh, God.” Nancy sat on a barstool at the kitchen breakfast bar and watched as her sister started a pot of tea. Tea was an indispensable part of their heart-to-heart conversations. “You must be really upset. I know how much this exhibit means to you.”
Anna pretended to shrug it off. “I’m not responsible for security, thank goodness.” She didn’t mention the other, darker thoughts that were plaguing her. She didn’t want Nancy worrying. “And what about you?”
“Oh.” Nancy shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “I told you. Peggy dumped me.”
“After two years?”
“Well, look at heterosexual marriages.”
“True. You must be devastated.”
Nancy shrugged again. “I don’t know yet. Right now I’m hopping mad, and I figured I’d better get away before I did something stupid. You know, like getting even? Then I decided to just let her new girlfriend discover it all on her own. Peggy’s a pig. She never cleans up after herself. She cheated on me three times that I know of. She drinks too much, and I figure she’s going to have a problem before long.”
“And you miss this?”
Nancy’s eyes reddened. “Yeah. I was kind of in love with her.” She gave a shaky laugh. “I knew you were going to say ‘I told you so.’ “
“Aw, Nancy…” Anna didn’t quite know what to say. She wasn’t a hundred percent comfortable with her sister’s sexual orientation, but she still ached for her loss, even if she had been trying to warn Nancy for a year that Peggy was trouble.
“Doesn’t matter. I’m better off now.” Which sounded like bravado. “So, as a result, you get to enjoy my company for two weeks. Aren’t you thrilled?”
“Actually, I am.” It couldn’t have come at a better time. Though she didn’t want to expose her sister to any danger, right then the last thing on earth that Anna wanted was to be living alone. “I’m so glad to see you.” And she could see that her sister desperately wanted to get away from the subject of Peggy.
“Yeah.” Nancy gave her a bright smile. “Same here. Hey, I bet you got to meet a lot of cops today. Any gorgeous ones?”
“For you or me?” Anna asked.
“You, of course. I don’t wanna get tangled up with someone who lives half a continent away.”
“Well, there was this gorgeous detective, but he’s from St. Petersburg.”
“Heck, that’s only a hop away.”
Anna laughed again, but shook her head as she put the teapot on the counter between them, then went to get cups. “He’s on a case, I’m part of the case.”
“Yeah. Bummer. So, this was the Pocal exhibit that was hit, right? The one Dad found?”
“Dad didn’t exactly find it, Nance.”
Nancy screwed up her face. “Okay, okay. Be nitpicky. But it’s the same one, right?”
“Yeah, the same.”
“Cool. You finally get to see all the stuff.” She swiveled around on the stool, and looked straight at Anna. “But… don’t you feel uneasy?”
She did, but Anna wasn’t about to admit it. She’d made it her lifelong goal not to be fanciful like her mother, her aunt, and her sister. Nancy might think she was a realist with her job of programming, but she worked on machines that had names like Icarus and Gandalf, and on weekends she played Dungeons & Dragons. She read science fiction and fantasy faster than publishers could supply her addiction, and she knew most of the technical specifications of the Enterprise. Not the shuttle, but the fictional one.
All of that added to Nancy’s cuteness and appeal, making her seem far livelier than her twin, but… sometimes Anna seriously doubted her sister’s practicality.
And even now, when they were both adult women with successful careers, Anna wasn’t about to admit she shared some of that fancifulness.
“No,” she said finally.
“Braaaaaaa,” said Nancy, making the buzzer sound for a wrong answer. “Took too long to answer, Annie.”
“Oh, cut it out.”
“No, I won’t. Part of the reason I decided now would be a good time to shake the Austin dust off my boots was because of the Pocal exhibit. You think I don’t want to see what our dad died for?”
“Nance, they didn’t die for that stuff. It was an earthquake.”
“Yeah. Okay. It was an earthquake.” Nancy cocked her head to one side, her green eyes intent. “The problem with you is that you won’t let magic into your life.”
“Magic? Whatever for?”
“I dunno. Maybe because it makes life more interesting.” Reaching out, Nancy picked up the teapot and poured for them both. Aromatic green tea filled the cups, and she sniffed appreciatively. “You buy the good stuff. Yummy. I’m stuck with the supermarket stuff.”
“Why?”
Nancy shrugged. “Peggy kind of left me… poorer than I was.”
“Oh, man.” Anna didn’t know whether to shake her sister or hug her. “How’d she do that?”
“She didn’t do it. I did. I gave her a credit card and bought her a new car. Nobody to blame but me.” Her eyes were growing red-rimmed again.
Anna reached out and squeezed her sister’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Nance.”
“Live and learn. You’re right about one thing. I tend to jump in with both feet without checking the water depth first. I’ll survive. I just need to be careful for a while.”
“I’m still sorry.”
Nancy shrugged, but couldn’t quite conceal her pain. Anna ached for her.
“But,” said Nancy after a moment, “let’s not get too far from the subject you’re trying to avoid. It’s much more interesting than my least-favorite topic. Dad’s dead. Earthquake or curse, what difference does it make? I’d kind of like to believe it wasn’t just a nasty accident for no reason at all.”
“I’d rather not believe that.”
Nancy picked up her mug and looked over the rim at her. “How’d you get to be so different?”
“I think it was some kind of compensation. Somebody had to be practical and down-to-earth in that house.”
Nancy’s eyes grew dreamy. “I think that’s why Dad loved Mom, you know. Because she wasn’t practical. I think she was an escape from all that engineering he did.”
“Maybe so.” Anna looked down at her own mug, watching as a small tendril of steam rose from it. “But … magic is a useless thing to think about. It doesn’t serve any purpose.”
“Maybe not. All I know is you take after Dad. He was always solid, reliable, and down to earth. Maybe you just wanted to be like him.”
“Maybe.”
“And I still think the curse might have had something to do with it. I don’t know if I could stand working with that stuff. I mean, I want to see it, but I don’t want to touch it.”
Anna shrugged. “I wouldn’t be afraid to. But … nobody did touch it. As far as I know, anyway. We made a big deal out of it as part of the hype for the exhibit.”
“Did Dad ever touch any of it?”
“I’m not sure. He might have. Then maybe not. Why would he? He didn’t have anything to do with the archaeologists.”
“So maybe the curse doesn’t only affect people who actually touch the stuff.”
The thought gave Anna a distinct chill. “Nancy…”
“Okay, okay.” Nancy laughed. “I’ll stop. I’m just teasing.”
But it wasn’t a kind of teasing Anna found comfortable, especially not now. Not when she might be the target of a crazy stalker.
Slowly, she turned her head and looked toward the curtained windows. They suddenly seemed poor protection against the night outside.
Later that evening, Gil sat in the recliner in the living room while Trina showered and got ready for bed. He dozed a little, but mostly he turned over the day’s events, from Trina to the murder to the museum, and most of all to Clarence Tebbins.
They were after a wily thief and murderer all right, but Tebbins worried him almost as much. The man was not quite… right, for lack of a better word. And his presence last night when the dagger was found… it was more of a coincidence than Gil could easily accept. In his job, coincidence was something to be treated first with suspicion.
And his suspicions were abounding. Sighing, he finally got out of his recliner and went to get a legal pad to scribble notes on. Trina was still banging around in the bathroom, opening and closing doors. As he returned to his chair he heard her blow-dryer come on.
Okay. The guard. Eddy Malacek. According to Tebbins, the overnight video cameras showed nothing unusual. They even showed Malacek leaving at a few minutes after eight, at shift changeover, when the new guard arrived.
Ergo, Malacek had to have been involved in the burglary somehow. And he had to have been killed after he got home, a drive of nearly an hour even at optimal times. So, say around nine.
Neighbors claimed to have noticed nothing unusual, but he wasn’t sure he trusted that. Neighbors often didn’t notice much, or even pay attention to minor things, like when someone’s car was home. But assuming they were right, and Eddy had come home at the usual time, then someone must have been waiting for him.
Gil made notes to question the neighbors a little more closely.
Tomorrow he needed to check out some of Eddy’s friends, find out if they’d noticed anything unusual. Or if he’d said anything strange in the days before the burglary.
