Hard Row dk-13

by Margaret Maron

spun against the loose gravel, before they gained trac-

  tion and began to inch upward.

  103

  MARGARET MARON

  Tree branches brushed either side of the car. Normally

  she enjoyed the roller-coaster effect of this drive, but

  that was in daylight. Tonight, the sky was overcast. No

  moon. No stars. Only her headlights to illuminate the

  opening between the trees. Driving up here to Buck

  Harris’s mountain retreat had been an impulse fueled

  by bourbon and anger.

  That he could be so cavalier as to go off to sulk about

  the money he was going to have to give up in this di-

  vorce settlement! Did he really think that staying away

  from court would somehow make that fat greedy wife

  of his settle for less? And even if she did wind up with

  a full half of their assets, how much money did a per-

  son need? As someone who had been forced to scrabble

  for every dime, Flame was ready to settle down and be

  taken care of by a man with an ample bank account. It

  did not have to be billions. A modest five or six million

  invested at six percent would do just fine. She could live

  very happily on that.

  But land and money were how men like Buck kept

  score. The sale of Harris Farms, if it came to that, would

  leave him cash rich. He could keep his yacht, buy two

  more houses to replace the two he would have to give

  up, and still have enough spare change to fly first class to

  Europe or Hawaii whenever he wanted. Nevertheless, it

  galled him to know that Suzu Harris could, if she chose,

  force the sale of the land they had so painstakingly ac-

  quired in their early years. Could even hold his feet to

  the fire over their first tomato field, the thirty acres that

  had been in his family since before the Civil War.

  By the time she reached Wilkesboro, Flame was stone

  cold sober and beginning to think that running Buck

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  into the shallows was probably a mistake. She had played

  him like a fish these last two years, giving him enough

  line to let him think it was his idea to come to her. Start

  reeling in too hard and she was liable to have him break

  the line or spit out the hook. As long as she had come

  this far, though, it was easier to go on than turn back.

  “Thank God it’s not icy,” she muttered as she steered

  to avoid a hole where the gravel had washed out and

  almost scraped the car on an outcropping of solid rock.

  Another quarter-mile and the drive ended in a circle in

  front of a large rustic lodge built of undressed logs. She

  did not see his car, but the garage was on the far side

  of the house. Nor were there any lights. Not that she

  expected any. Not at—she pressed a button on the side

  of her watch and the little dial lit up. Not at one-thirty

  in the morning.

  The front door was locked and she rang the bell long

  and hard until she could hear it echo from within.

  To her surprise, the interior remained dark.

  She rang again, leaning on the bell so long that no

  one inside could possibly sleep through it.

  Nothing.

  A long low porch ran the full length of the house

  and she retrieved a door key that was kept beneath the

  second ceramic pot. Within minutes, she was inside the

  lodge, fumbling for the light switches.

  “Buck, honey? You here?” she called.

  No answer.

  With growing apprehension, she mounted the mas-

  sive staircase that led to the bedrooms above.

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  MARGARET MARON

  In the small hours of Saturday morning, Detective

  Mayleen Richards drove through the deserted streets

  of Dobbs. The only other person out at that time was a

  town police officer, who gave her a friendly wave from

  his cruiser that indicated he’d be glad to share a cup

  of coffee from his Thermos and kill some boring time.

  Another night and she might have. Tonight though, she

  merely waved back and continued on to her apartment,

  a one-bedroom over a garage on the outskirts of Dobbs

  where town and suburbs merged.

  The elderly couple who lived in the main house spent

  their winters in Florida and were glad to have a sheriff ’s

  deputy there to keep an eye on things. Richards was

  glad for the privacy their absence gave her. Even when

  the owners were in residence, they went to bed early

  and seemed singularly uninterested in their tenant’s ir-

  regular comings and goings.

  Not that there had been anything very irregular about

  her personal life before this. She pulled her shifts. She

  attended a Spanish language course two nights a week

  out at Colleton Community College. She visited her

  family down in Black Creek almost every weekend. She

  harbored no regrets for ditching either that dull com-

  puter programming job out at the Research Triangle

  nor the equally dull marriage to her highschool sweet-

  heart who had achieved his life’s goal when he traded

  farm life for a desk job. Except for fancying herself in

  love with Major Bryant, law enforcement had absorbed

  and satisfied her.

  Richards could smile to herself now and see that re-

  cent adolescent crush for what it was—attraction to an

  alpha male, generated by proximity and nothing more

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  than the needs of a healthy body that had slept alone for

  way too long.

  She coasted to a stop beside a shiny gray pickup with

  an extended crew cab and cut the ignition, then hurried

  up the wooden steps that led to a deck and to the man

  who waited inside.

  “I thought you’d be gone,” she said, absurdly happy

  that her prickly reaction to his first overtures had not

  sent him away.

  “No.” He carefully unzipped her jacket and eased the

  soft pink sweater over her head, then buried his face in

  the waves of her dark red hair as his hands unhooked

  her bra.

  “Muy hermosa,” he murmured.

  Later, lying beside him in her bed, brown legs next

  to white, she was almost on the brink of sleep when she

  remembered. “McLamb said he saw you at the court-

  house today?”

  Miguel Diaz nodded, one hand lazily moving across

  her body. “One of the men from the village next to my

  village back home. He took a tractor and I was there to

  speak for him.”

  “Tractor? Was he the guy who plowed up a stretch of

  yards out toward Cotton Grove?”

  “Ummm,” he murmured, kissing her shoulder.

  “He works for you?”

  “For now. The other place, they fired him when he

  took the tractor.”

  Mayleen Richards laughed, remembering the jokes

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  MARGARET MARON

  the uniformed deputies had made. “What was he think-

  ing? Where was he trying to go?”

  She felt him shrug. “Who knows? It was the te-

  quila driving. Maybe he
thought he could get to his

  woman.”

  “She’s in Dobbs?”

  “No. Their baby died and she went back to

  Mexico.”

  “Oh, Mike, that’s so sad.”

  “Yes. But our babies will be strong and healthy.”

  “Our babies?” This was only their third time together

  and he was already talking babies?

  “Our red-haired, brown-skinned babies,” he said as

  he gently stroked her stomach.

  The image delighted her, but then she thought of her

  parents, of her family’s attitude toward Latinos, and she

  sighed.

  Intuitively, he seemed to understand. “Don’t worry,

  querida. Once the babies come, your family will grow

  to like me.”

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  C H A P T E R

  13

  A man can’t throw off his habits as he does his coat; if con-

  tracted in youth they will stick in manhood and old age,

  whether they be good or bad.

  —Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

  Deborah Knott

  Saturday Morning, March 4

  % Dwight got home so late Friday night that I

  slipped out of bed next morning without waking

  him, and Cal and I tiptoed around until it was nine

  o’clock and time for me to go pick up Mary Pat and

  Jake.

  “Are the children ready to go?” I asked when Kate

  answered the phone.

  “No, I’m keeping them home today,” she said and

  her voice was cool.

  I was immediately apprehensive. “Is something

  wrong?”

  “Did you speak to Cal like I asked you?”

  “Absolutely. Don’t tell me—?”

  “I’m sorry, Deborah, but I am not going to have Jake

  treated the way Dwight used to treat Rob.”

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  MARGARET MARON

  “What?”

  “You must know that when they were kids and Dwight

  went over to play with your brothers, half the time he

  wouldn’t let Rob come.”

  I heard Rob’s voice protesting in the background and

  heard Kate say, “Well, that’s what you told me he did.

  Isn’t that why he’s not taking this seriously?”

  Rob’s reply came faintly, “Kate, honey, that’s what

  kids do.”

  “Not in this house,” Kate said firmly, and I knew she

  was laying down the law to both of us, and probably to

  Mary Pat, too, if the child was within hearing distance.

  “Kate, I’m so sorry,” I said, “but unless you spoke to

  Dwight yesterday when he came by for Cal, he doesn’t

  know anything about this.”

  Cal had only been half listening, but when he heard

  me say that, he froze and guilt spread across his face.

  At her end of the phone, I heard the baby begin to

  cry.

  “Look, I promise that Mary Pat and Cal will include

  him today,” I said, fixing Cal with a stern look. “Let me

  come and get them. You need the break, okay?”

  There was a long silence, then a weary, “Okay, but if

  I hear—”

  “You’re not going to hear,” I promised.

  As soon as I hung up, I called Dwight’s mother and

  when Miss Emily finished exclaiming over those body

  parts she kept hearing about on the local newscast—

  “And now a whole body?”—I asked if she could pos-

  sibly drop by Kate and Rob’s and offer to sit with little

  R.W. during his morning nap so that Rob could take

  Kate out for an early lunch. “I’ll keep the children over-

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  HARD ROW

  night, but she sounds as if she could stand to get out of

  the house.”

  “What a good idea,” said Miss Emily. “I’ll walk over

  there right now. Isn’t it nice that we’re finally getting a

  taste of spring after all that cold?”

  “Are we? I haven’t been outside yet.” I glanced out

  the window. Sunshine. And the wind was blowing so

  gently that the leaves on the azalea bushes Dwight and

  I had set out in the fall barely stirred. “Maybe we’ll see

  you in a few minutes.”

  Cal headed for the garage door.

  “Sit,” I said quietly.

  He sat down at the kitchen table and I took the chair

  across from him. “You want to tell me what happened

  yesterday?”

  He shrugged, twined his feet around the legs of the

  chair, and tried to look innocent. “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do.”

  His brown eyes darted away from mine. “Nothing

  really.”

  I waited silently.

  “We were just playing.”

  “And?”

  “He kept bugging us. Aunt Kate wouldn’t let us

  use the PlayStation because she said we weren’t letting

  Jake have enough of a turn and when we let him play

  Monopoly with us, he couldn’t count his money, so—”

  He hesitated.

  “So?”

  “So we said we’d play hide-and-seek and then . . .”

  His voice dropped even lower than his head. “I guess

  we sorta hid where he couldn’t find us and we didn’t

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  come out even when he said he gave up and then he

  started crying and Aunt Kate got mad and made Mary

  Pat go to her room.” He looked up with a calculated

  glint in his eyes that more than one defendant had tried

  on me. “But then I did read Jake a story.”

  I wasn’t any more impressed with that than I gen-

  erally was in the courtroom when the defendant says,

  “But I only hit him twice with that tire iron and then I

  did take him to the hospital.”

  “You think that makes up for getting Aunt Kate upset

  again?”

  He shrugged, but his jaw set in a mulish fix that was

  so reminiscent of Dwight that I might have laughed

  under different circumstances.

  “You promised me on Thursday that you were going

  to be nicer to Jake and cut him some slack.”

  “Sorry.” It was a one-size-fits-all, pro forma apology.

  “But Mary Pat—”

  “No, Cal, this isn’t about Mary Pat. This is about

  you. You gave me your word and you broke it.”

  “I don’t care!” His head came up angrily. “You’re not

  my mother and you’re not the boss of me!”

  It was the first time he’d snapped at me and we were

  both taken aback. Defiance was all over his face, but I

  think he had shocked himself as well.

  I took a deep breath. “You’re absolutely right, Cal. I’m

  not your mother, but now that you’re living here—”

  “I didn’t ask to come here and I don’t have to stay.”

  His eyes filled with involuntary tears and he wiped them

  away with an impatient fist. “I can go back to Virginia

  and live with Nana.”

  “No, you can’t,” I said with more firmness than I felt.

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  “That’s not an option and you know it. I may not be

  your mother, but I am married to your father and that

  gives me the right to haul you up short when you step

  over the line.”

>   He glared at me.

  “Unless you want me to let him handle it?”

  That got his attention.

  “No! Don’t tell him. Please?”

  Uncomfortable as this was for both of us, I knew

  that something had to be done, but this was going to

  take more than a simple time out or an early bedtime.

  Besides, there was no way I could send him to bed early

  without Dwight’s knowing and for now I was willing to

  respect Cal’s plea that he not be involved.

  “You know that what you did was wrong?”

  He gave a sulky half nod.

  “When your mother punished you for something se-

  rious, what did she do?”

  His eyes widened and he turned so white that the

  freckles popped out across his nose. “You’re going to

  spank me?”

  Even though my parents had occasionally smacked our

  bottoms or switched our legs when it was well deserved,

  I was almost as horrified as he. “No, I’m not going to

  spank you. But you know we can’t let this go.”

  He thought a moment. “I could not watch television

  for a whole month.”

  “And what’ll you tell your dad when the Hurricanes

  play an away game and you don’t watch it with him?”

  As soon as I’d said that, I knew what would be

  appropriate.

  “Here’s the deal,” I told him. “You hurt Aunt Kate’s

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  feelings when you left Jake out and made him cry, so

  now it’s your turn to miss the fun. You’ll stay home

  from the next Canes game and I’ll go with your dad.

  You can say it was your idea and you have to make him

  believe it or else he’ll ask you for the whole story. If that

  happens, you’ll have to tell him yourself and you’ll still

  stay home. Is it a deal?”

  He nodded and by his chastened look, I knew I’d

  gotten through to him.

  “If I hear from Aunt Kate that you’re not trying to

  turn this situation around with Jake, you’re going to

  miss the next game after that as well. Three strikes and

  you’re out of all the others the rest of the season. Is that

  clear?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah?” I said sternly, unwilling to let him get away

  with that deliberate show of disrespect.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he muttered.

  “Just because Mary Pat is six months older than you

  doesn’t mean you have to let her lead you around by

  the nose.”

  “But then she may not want to play with me,” he

  protested.

  “I seriously doubt that, Cal. You’re smart and funny