by Sylvia Nobel
It quieted down after a few minutes, but my ears perked up at the sound of Tally’s familiar baritone, so I struggled out from under the mound of blankets and stumbled to the window in time to see him and Bethany walking towards two horses tethered to the pipe fence near the barn. I fought off a wave of dizziness, and as if to underscore my condition, Bethany’s words floated up to me. “Honestly, I don’t know what you see in her. She’s seems like kind of a wimp.”
Wimp? Wimp! My fingers tightened around the windowsill when Tally shot her a look. But, to my extreme disappointment, he said nothing in my defense, just untied the reins and swung into the saddle while Bethany smoothly mounted her Appaloosa. Watching him ride away with the self-ordained ranch queen at his side was ego-crushing to say the least. She rode like she’d been born on a horse, seemed so completely at ease with ranch life, so…perfect for him. No doubt she and his mother got along famously. An overpowering wave of desire rolled over me. I don’t think I’d ever wanted him more than at that particular moment.
Feeling isolated, wretched, and supremely sorry for myself, I turned and crawled under the nest of covers, my mind playing and replaying the memory of them together until I thought I was going to throw up. Rather than continue the mental torture, I cleared my head and refocused on my story instead. Okay, O’Dell, back to basics. Rule number one: follow the clues until a link is found. Problem: both Lupe’s relatives and Javier’s mother vanished during the crossing process. Why and how? Possible solution, alien abduction. End of story. Time to go home. I sighed and settled into the pillow. That was easy. Too easy. I gave myself a mental kick. Come on.
Following a more logical track, who was likely to hang out at the border besides the smugglers? The uncomfortable answer had to be the Border Patrol, and that link led to the late Bob Shirley. If he had committed suicide as the authorities believed, what had his final words meant? ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ What? What couldn’t he do anymore? Did Loydeen Shirley know? Most likely. And her look of abject terror when she’d spotted Cutter, the nasty-faced skinhead, led directly to none other than Jason Beaumont. And then, and then…what? I ended up staring at the usual blank slate until I fell into a fretful sleep.
After several restless hours, sunset finally arrived, filling the tiny room with a soft, rosy glow. I was cheered by the unexpected arrival of Rascal, who nosed the door open, trotted in and sympathetically licked my face. He stayed on the floor beside the bed until Lin Su chased him out. This time she’d brought a different-tasting tea, still sweet, but this time with a bitter aftertaste. She insisted I drink every drop before she left again, shutting the door behind her. Whatever was in it affected me almost immediately. A delicious drowsiness settled over me and the fire in my throat subsided. All my cares and concerns slipped away as I succumbed to the lethargy stealing over my body, holding me immobile. I felt mellow, definitely mellow. Yeah. And then I was soaring over lush meadows dotted with trees and carpeted with vibrantly colored flowers I hadn’t seen since leaving Pennsylvania seven months earlier. Luxuriating in the sensation of tranquility, I weaved my way through a series of fantastic dreams presented in wide screen and full Technicolor, yet it seemed that I could make out the interior of my little room at the same instant. Was I dreaming that I was awake? My conscious mind reminded me that I was most likely experiencing hallucinations brought on by the high fever. One dream in particular seemed very real. In the dim light of the waning moon, I could have sworn I saw Bethany leaning over my bed, her calculating eyes carefully searching my face. I slept again, dreaming of strange hovering crafts inhabited by small beings with wide, black eyes. Imprisoned by Lin Su’s powerful herbs, I kept trying to wake up, but I could not seem to lift my lids. Vaguely, I wondered if the dour-faced little woman had poisoned me.
Sometime during the night, my fever broke and I fell into a comatose-like sleep until a slight movement in the bed roused me briefly. Someone crawled in behind me and as gentle fingers smoothed my hair and then wound around my waist, a warm glow of happiness surged through me. “Oh, baby doll, my love, my sweet darling, thank God you’re back. I’ve missed you so much. You’ll never know how much,” whispered the husky voice close to my ear. Smiling to myself, delighting in the feel of soft kisses on the back of my neck, I snuggled close, rejoicing in sweet contentment. Was I lucky or what? Even with my string of major screw-ups, Tally had seen fit to forgive me. And I’d never known him to be so effusive. With extreme effort I was able to lift my hand and lay it over his. Murmuring, “I missed you too,” I glided back into peaceful sleep.
Dawn light was seeping through the small window when I opened my eyes, amazed at how much better I felt. Lin Su’s magic potions really worked. I didn’t feel sick any longer, but my thought process still seemed fuzzy. The even snoring from behind, resurrected the memory of Tally joining me sometime in the middle of the night. Sighing, I recalled his gentle words of love. How romantic. He called me his baby doll. I blinked a few times as my groggy brain slowly engaged. Baby doll? He’d never, ever called me that before. I rubbed a pattern along the back of his hand and my stomach plunged in dismay. Uh-oh. Something didn’t feel right about the fingers clasped tightly around my middle. They were long and bony.
A sharp gasp from behind, followed by Bethany’s outraged, “Grampy Boo! What on earth is going on in here?” had me struggling to a sitting position. In stunned silence, I turned and gaped at the doorway, unable to believe my own eyes. Standing hat in hand with Bethany’s fingers curled like octopus tentacles around his elbow was Tally, staring back at me in white-faced bewilderment.
21
My gaze ricocheted from Tally to that of my befuddled bed partner, Cecil Beaumont. “You’re not Penelope,” he quavered, his rheumy eyes dulling in confusion. Equally mystified, I disengaged his hand from my waist. “No,” I mumbled, “I’m Kendall. You’ve made a mistake.” My voice was back! It sounded low and throaty, but, hey, it was there.
The old man’s face turned beet red. “I…I…I’m sorry. Someone told me that…my wife was in here.”
I fired a suspicious glance at Bethany. “Really? I wonder who would tell you that?”
He massaged his temples. “I can’t exactly remember now.”
“What is the matter with you?” Bethany snarled at me, sprinting to the bed. “Do you have to sleep with every man in the county? Come on, Grampy, let me help you out of here.” She pulled him to his feet and led him out the door, hollering, “Felix! Felix, I need you right away! Tally, I’ll be waiting for you downstairs.”
As their footsteps faded away down the hall, I pulled the covers up around my chin, gazing sheepishly into Tally’s quizzical eyes. “You have to believe me when I say this isn’t what it looks like. I…I thought it was you,” I murmured, running a hand through my tangled hair, terribly cognizant of how awful I must look in contrast to Bethany’s blonde perfection. Damn, he looked good standing there all trim and tanned in those snug blue jeans. “Whew, I don’t know what was in that last cup of tea Lin Su gave me, but I had some really spacey dreams last night. I still feel all muddle-brained.”
He said nothing, just glared at me in stony silence.
Hoping to thaw his arctic expression, I added brightly, “But I do feel quite a bit better this morning.”
“Well, we can all be thankful for that.” The obstinate set of his jaw and undertone of sarcasm wasn’t lost on me.
I groaned, scooping clumps of frizzy hair away from my face. “Jesus, Tally, nobody feels worse than I do about this whole fiasco and I don’t blame you one bit for being ticked off at me. My plan was to follow one last lead for Lupe before coming home and….”
He cut me off with, “But your obsessive curiosity took precedence over me.”
I slapped the mattress. “Quit saying that! You know it’s not true.”
“And how would I know that?”
My temper flamed, overriding the twinge of guilt. “Hey, I didn’t set
out to deliberately get myself trapped all night in that wretched little jail. You think it was fun sleeping on a cold, hard floor wrapped in damp newspaper?”
His shrug was unsympathetic.
“I know you’re going to think I’m paranoid, but I have a bad feeling someone shut me in there on purpose.”
He shifted his weight and shot me a dubious look. “And why would anyone do that?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but I can tell you this. Someone in this house was eavesdropping on my phone conversation and knew damn well I was going there.” I repeated the threats aimed at me by Jason and Cutter outside La Gitana on Monday, but his already hypercritical expression dissuaded me from voicing my suspicion that it may have been more to Bethany Beaumont’s advantage to have me out of the picture.
“Oh, give me a break. This isn’t a Nancy Drew novel. That sounds like a couple of guys just shooting off their mouths.”
“Tally, I’m serious! Whoever was yelling for help knew my name. The next thing I know, I’m face down in the dirt. Pretty odd coincidence, don’t you think?”
He leaned into the doorframe and folded his arms, staring at me as if I were an errant child. “I’m sorry you’ve had such an awful experience, but regardless of the reason it happened, it was you and you alone who made the choice to take this cockeyed assignment. The outcome for me is the same. You were a no-show and as far as I’m concerned, your promises aren’t worth diddly squat.”
“Look, I’m sorry—a thousand times sorry, a million times sorry. What do you want me to do? Can’t we just continue with our plans and head on to California this morning?”
His face registered incredulity. “You know what? I think I liked it better when you couldn’t talk.”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “Come on, Tally, we’ll only be one day late for the show.”
“So that’s your solution. Just leave? Right now? What about your car and the fact that you’re sick?”
“Weren’t you listening? I told you I’m feeling better. I’ll just have to deal with the car situation when we get back.”
He shook his head. “It’s too late. The fact is your misadventures have…” he hesitated, turning towards the hall, then back to me, lowering his voice, “…have ended up involving me. Now I have to spend the whole day and probably tomorrow entertaining a of bunch of overweight greenhorns on an imaginary cattle drive…” He paused and drew in a calming breath. “But I gave Twyla my word that I’d stay and help them out, so I intend to do just that.” For emphasis, he stabbed his thumb against his chest. “Unlike some people, I keep my promises.”
Ignoring his disdain, I blurted out, “Does your promise to entertain extend to the talented and oh-so- charming Bethany Beaumont?”
His jaw tightened. “And what exactly is that supposed to mean?”
I fussed with the bedcovers and avoided his probing stare, feeling inept, vulnerable. “Well, you do seem to be spending an awful lot of time with her.” Hopefully, I didn’t sound as petulant to him as I did to myself. When he didn’t respond, I glanced up and caught him observing me in thoughtful silence before he drawled, “Now that you mention it, she does seem to appreciate my company.”
A flash of heat rushed over me. “Meaning what? That I don’t?”
“It doesn’t appear that you do as of late.”
“Hey, I’m sorry I have to work for a living. I’m not some swooning little cowgirl cutie batting her baby blues and clinging to your arm like a leech…”
He cut me off with, “Don’t try to turn this around. This isn’t about me and it isn’t about her. It’s about you.”
Exasperation almost choked me. “Look, you of all people know how busy I’ve been at the office with all the construction chaos and us being understaffed all summer!”
“Yes, and I’m also well aware of where I rank in relation to your all-important career path.”
“Will you quit saying that?” I shouted so loud, my newly-returned voice cracked.
“Only if you stop demonstrating that it’s true. Is it too much to ask for you to stop chasing off helter-skelter all over the blasted state and maybe spend a little more time with me at the ranch?”
It wasn’t too much to ask but I wasn’t ready to admit it. This was not the time or place to voice my concerns about my tenuous relationship with his ever-so- annoying mother. “Can we call a temporary truce and talk about this another time?” I asked, allowing a placating note to enter my voice. “I really need your input on some things I’ve found out these past few days.”
He couldn’t have looked less interested. “I don’t have much time.”
“Just give me five minutes. I think you’ll be intrigued.” I patted the corner of the bed in invitation. “Come on, please?”
He sighed and studied his watch. “Five minutes,” he announced, crossing to perch stiffly on the edge of the mattress. I ached to touch him, have him hold me, but his demeanor wasn’t encouraging. Instead, I began my explanation with Lupe’s tearful request for help, only to have him interrupt me. “Wait, wait, wait. I thought you said you were sworn to secrecy and weren’t allowed to divulge any details about her mysterious problems.”
I grimaced. “Well, the parameters regarding my promise to her have changed somewhat since last Friday night.” He listened while I filled him in on all aspects of the story, appearing surprised by my decision to adopt the kitten, and then mildly intrigued, until I got to the part about Mazzie La Casse’s hypothesis linking the disappearances of the undocumented migrants to alien abduction. The unmistakable skepticism seeping into his deep brown eyes made me hesitant to repeat my own experience with the strange pulsating lights, especially since, in retrospect, I’d convinced myself that they could very well have been Border Patrol helicopters or possibly surveillance balloons launched from the army base at Ft. Huachuca.
I wished I’d had my camera handy to record the look of utter astonishment on his face. “A UFOlogist? Invaders from outer space? For chrissake! Kendall, do you have any idea how nuts that sounds?”
“Of course I do, but logically….”
“Yeah, let’s do inject some logic, please.”
“Will you let me finish?”
He ignored me. “You want to know what I think?”
I cupped my chin in one hand. “What?”
“For Lupe to be out of touch with her relatives for only two weeks is way too soon to fly into a panic. For my money, you’ve squandered our hard-earned vacation on a classic wild goose chase. Do you know how many hundreds of illegal immigrants cross the border every day?”
“As a matter of fact I’ve learned quite a bit….”
“Good. Then you realize that these people could be any number of places. They might be caught in the paperwork maze of deportation, especially if one or both of them has been hospitalized or jailed. Hell, they could be stashed in a safe house in Phoenix for all you know and can’t get to a phone. She could hear from them tomorrow.”
“I’ve already thought of those scenarios but….”
As if I’d not spoken, he went on with his tirade. “Or, they might already be in another state, and simply haven’t contacted her yet. You’re forgetting that I’ve had a little experience dealing with these people. Some work out fine, others just move on when the impulse grabs them. As far as that first guy found hiding in Morita, have you considered the fact that he was probably one of the smugglers and manufactured this wild story as a clever way to divert attention from himself? It sounds to me as if he wanted to be deported. Period. End of story.”
Hearing him voice the same reservations I’d had, added to my feelings of self-doubt. “But what about Javier? How can you just set aside the similarities in their stories—the weird lights, both of them being chased by these supposed bug-eyed creatures, the other people traveling with them just poof, gone? Tally, people don’t just vanish into thin air. Something had to happen to them
.”
Tally waved away my objection. “Kids make things up. It’s as simple as that.”
That was the fast and easy way to dismiss the entire episode, but I wasn’t convinced. “What about his mother? Why would a woman walk off and abandon her child?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time some Mexican handed off her kid to a coyote. Some people are just plain stupid. Can you imagine giving a total stranger your entire life savings and then trusting one of these scumballs to safely transport your kid to relatives in the States? Not all of the coyotes are men, you know,” he added grimly, “The good Sister what’s-her-face over at the mission is probably up to her eyeballs in trafficking illegals, if you ask me.”
The hollow feeling in my stomach returned with a vengeance. He dismissed each situation, one by one, in a very male, very left-brained fashion that was difficult to refute. “Okay, but what about Bob Shirley?”
“What about him? You said he was going to be indicted on drug running charges. Looks to me like he took the easy way out.”
I fidgeted with the blankets. “Boy, if I always followed your analytical line of thinking, I’d be out of a job tomorrow.”
He eyed me critically. “Face it. There’s only a story here because you want there to be one.”
“Not true. You’ve left out a major part of the puzzle.”
