A Taste of Blood and Ashes

by Jaden Terrell

  She turned and went inside, back straight, shoulders square, a small one-armed woman with a fierce spirit.

  I wondered again if it had been a mistake to bring her along. I wondered if I could protect her from whoever had tried to kill Zane and who, after tonight, might have my sister and me in his sights.

  21.

  There was one bed in our living quarters. I gave it to Khanh. Then, steeling myself against the pain in my ribs, I put the horses back in the corral, pulled my sleeping bag and air mattress out from behind the seat of my truck, and slid them into the bed of the pickup. While the battery-powered compressor filled up the mattress, I mulled over what Eli had said about the murders.

  Thirteen suspicious deaths over a period of forty years. All people who, like Carlin Underwood, had taken on the Big Lick community. If Eli was right, someone, or several someones, had been both patient and clever.

  And lucky.

  A twig snapped, and as I turned to look, a figure came out of the darkness. Moonlight gleamed off mother-of-pearl buttons and a tumble of blonde curls. I recognized the curve of her hip, the swell of her breasts.

  Rhonda Lister.

  She laid her forearms on the side of the truck bed and said, “I came by to see how you were. That was a nasty hit with the shovel.”

  “I’m good. Thanks for getting the doc for me.”

  “No problem. Just call me a Good Samaritan.” She went around and put her palms on the open tailgate, boosted herself up. “Let me help you with that.”

  There wasn’t much left to do, but she crawled across the truck bed and knelt beside me, reaching for the sleeping bag. While I unhooked the compressor, she unzipped the sleeping bag and spread it across the mattress, then gave it a gentle bounce. Her hair smelled of some lemony shampoo.

  “This is nice,” she said. “But don’t you have a sleeper in the trailer?”

  “My sister’s using it.”

  “It’s a good night for sleeping under the stars anyway.” She smoothed the sleeping bag with her palm. “I don’t suppose you’d like a little company.”

  “I don’t draw too many lines,” I said. “But I do have a few, and one of them is, I don’t sleep with married women.”

  She made a small, disappointed sound. “I could tell this afternoon. You have that look.”

  “What look is that?”

  “I don’t know. Something chivalrous. I think that’s what I liked about you. Only . . . Jim’s out drinking with the boys. He won’t be back for hours. Could we just, you know, maybe just lie here and talk?”

  “Your husband might have a problem with that.”

  “He won’t. Discretion is important to him, but he gives me a certain amount of freedom.”

  I sighed. “I don’t know, Rhonda. News spreads like typhus around here.”

  “Plausible deniability,” she said. “We aren’t even going to take off our clothes.” She pulled off her boots and lay down on her side on top of the sleeping bag. “Please?”

  It had worked so well before, I guess she thought she’d try it again. I sat down on the edge of the mattress and took off my own boots. Watched her lying there with the moonlight on her face.

  “I heard what happened to Zane,” she said.

  “Already?”

  “Well, the sheriff called Samuel and Eleanor, and Eleanor called Trudy, and then Sam called Jim. So . . .”

  “The grapevine,” I said.

  “Exactly. Zane’s all right?”

  “What did the grapevine tell you?”

  “That they kept him in the hospital. For observation, they said.”

  “Then you know as much as I do.” I pushed a stray curl back from her forehead.

  She smiled. “Do you have someone at home? You do, don’t you? Guys like you, they always do.”

  “She’s on sabbatical in South America. Building a school for underprivileged kids.”

  “Very noble.” She rolled onto her back. “We have that in common. We both have someone, and we’re both alone.”

  “We made choices,” I said, watching the rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed. “And now we live with them.”

  I didn’t tell her that Elisha and I had made no long-term commitments or that increasing references to someone named Roderigo had crept into her infrequent texts and e-mails. It seemed wiser to keep as many barriers as possible between myself and Rhonda Lister.

  “You lied to me today,” Rhonda said. “You said you were looking to see what the Walking Horse thing was all about.”

  “That wasn’t a lie,” I said.

  “You didn’t say you were investigating that fire at the Underwoods’.”

  “Sin of omission.”

  “What’s it like, investigating crimes?” She gave me an appraising look. “Did you ever kill anyone?”

  “When I had to. It’s not something I’m proud of.”

  “You live a dangerous life.” She patted the mattress beside her. “Join me? I promise not to bite.”

  “It’s not biting I’m afraid of.”

  She smiled. “Are you afraid of me?”

  I eased onto my back beside her. “Terrified.”

  “Liar.” She rolled onto her side again, slid a finger between two buttons of my shirt. I sucked in a breath, and a pain shot through my side. My groin throbbed. She toyed a button open and slipped her hand inside.

  I said, “In fact, you might just be the most dangerous person at this show.”

  She propped herself on one elbow, left her other palm on my chest. My skin, beneath her hand, grew warm, then hot. “Why, Mr. McKean, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

  I lifted my arm, and she slid closer, her breasts against the side of my chest, her knee over my thigh. The pain in my ribs was a dull throb, the stirring at my groin a pleasant ache.

  She said, “You think one of us started that fire?”

  “I’m not ruling anything out yet.”

  “Have you decided which one?”

  “Not yet. Could be a Trehorne. Could be Mace Ewing. Or even Trudy. She doesn’t like Carlin much.”

  “Can you blame her? She and Zane planned to get married from the time they were kids. Then, three months before the wedding, Zane met Carlin.”

  “Just like that? He meets Carlin, and bang, he dumps Trudy?”

  “I hear there was a lot of it’s-not-you-it’s-me stuff but basically, yes.” Her fingers made a lazy circle on my chest. “Trudy’s started hanging out with Mace, but people say she’s still pining for Zane.” She laughed softly. “Of course, they say it behind her back.”

  “You think she’s capable of setting that barn fire?”

  “I think anybody’s capable of anything,” she said. “If you dig deep enough.”

  “What about you? I’m told you like fire.”

  She didn’t bother to ask who’d told me. Instead she was quiet for a long moment, then said, “I promised you a story.”

  “About your father.”

  She blew out a long, slow breath and said, “I told you he was a stock car driver. He was good, really good. I never once saw him not qualify. He was even starting to beat out the Winston Cup guys. And fearless. It was like he knew he was charmed on the racetrack. Until one day he wasn’t.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  It had happened on a curve, where he’d been clipped by another driver and spun into the path of a third. The car flipped three times, she said, then crashed into the wall and burst into flames. He was dead, thank God, before the fire reached him.

  “He thought he was going to live forever,” she said. “And he didn’t even live to see thirty. My mother went through his insurance money like it was water and then married a dotcom millionaire.”

  “So your dad never met Jim.”

  She smiled. “Oh, he would have hated Jim. ‘Baby girl,’ he’d say, ‘why are you settling for a man twice your age?’”

  “Why are you settling for a man twice your age?”

 
“I’m settling for a million-dollar mansion, two Caribbean cruises a year, designer jewelry, and all the spending money I want. Does that sound cold? My mother used to say it’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as a poor one.” She gave a self-conscious laugh and touched the diamond at her throat. “Funny, I was always a daddy’s girl, but I guess I’m my mother’s daughter.”

  “And the thing for fire?”

  “I didn’t set that fire at the Underwoods’.” Her hand slipped down, her finger circling my navel. She nuzzled my chest, gave my nipple a playful nip.

  “Rhonda—” I said.

  “Ssshhh.” She nestled into the curve of my arm. “Don’t ruin it.”

  She yawned.

  It was still hot and humid, but the air had cooled with sunset, and an occasional breeze wafted across the back of the truck. I lay on my back with Rhonda Lister in my arms and watched the stars, smelling diesel fuel and horses and the lemon scent of her shampoo. Her body relaxed against me, and her breathing grew even. For a long time, I thought about nothing except how good it felt to have her there. Then the case crept back into my mind, and I wondered how Carlin and Zane would take the news that Samuel Trehorne had hired me to spy on them. I wondered how or if the string of murders Eli thought he’d uncovered was connected to the fire at the Underwood barn. And then I was back where I’d started, wondering if Jim Lister’s interpretation of “a certain amount of freedom” was compatible with his wife’s.

  Not that it mattered. A line was a line, and this was one I didn’t intend to cross. All the same, I lay awake a long time, breathing as deeply as I could stand and savoring the lingering scent of Rhonda Lister’s perfume.

  22.

  Friday morning

  At first, I slept fitfully in the truck bed. My cracked ribs made it hard to get comfortable, and I snapped awake every time a leaf skittered across the metal skin of the Silverado. It was a few hours before dawn when I gave in and took one of the pain pills Dr. Genaro had prescribed, taking it from my shirt pocket and swallowing it dry so as not to wake Rhonda. When sleep finally came, I dreamed of bloody hooves and figures in black. I dreamed my arms and legs were bound and that a great weight pressed against my face and chest. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. I woke up drenched in sweat.

  My temples throbbed. My arms were empty.

  Rhonda Lister was gone.

  My watch said six A.M. when I pushed into a sitting position, teeth clamped tight against the fire that shot through my side. I closed my eyes, willed myself into that meditative state where you can detach yourself from pain, then forced myself to take a long, deep breath.

  It felt like being gutted with a serrated knife. So much for meditation.

  I did it a few more times just to prove I could, then gave myself a break and returned to normal breathing.

  I left the air mattress and sleeping bag where they lay and slid out of the truck bed, then unlocked the door to the living quarters, and slipped inside to look up Eli’s story in the Sextant and get the frozen gel packs Doc had given me. Khanh stirred, and I held my breath until she rolled over and went back to sleep. After a quick and fruitless search of the Sextant’s site, I grabbed the gel pads and crept back outside. Took a text from Billy—All Quiet on the Western Front—and sent one back—Good work. Carry On, My Wayward Son.

  A few embers still glowed in the fire pit. I stirred them gently with the poker and revived the fire with some tinder and a chunk of walnut wood. When the alarm on my cell phone dinged, I put the gel packs back in the freezer and fed and watered the horses, taking it slow and easy, dropping the hay into the corral one flake at a time and mixing Tex’s mash with slow, measured strokes. Bending hurt, and I took care to do it as little as I could manage.

  The horses seemed to realize something was amiss. Tex gave my hand a gentle nuzzle, and Crockett lipped my ear. I drank in the sweet, hay-and-leather smell of them and rubbed the broad flat spot between their eyes. I rubbed them down with my hands, first Tex and then Crockett, feeling the heat of their skin, following the contours of their muscles as they pressed against my palms. I was standing in the corral scratching Crockett’s withers when Khanh came out, bleary-eyed, and said, “How you sleep?”

  “Like the dead, once I took Doc Genaro’s miracle pill.”

  Khanh frowned, made a gesture to ward off evil spirits. “Never say that, sleep like dead. Bring bad luck.”

  “I slept fine,” I said.

  “Rice inside,” she said. “Coffee too. Vietnamese kind and also American. Black like you like.”

  I shot her a grateful look and went inside for sustenance and revival. The hot shower loosened me up and soothed my aching muscles. The coffee—black, American—sent a jolt of energy through me. I forewent the rice.

  We drank more coffee by the fire. Then I laid a cooking rack across the pit and scrambled eggs and bacon in an iron skillet. Khanh brought out two plates and more coffee. I plopped a spoonful of eggs onto her plate and said, “You know, you said you’d never seen a horse show. Well, now you’ve seen one. Been here long enough to bore yourself to tears. Might be a good time to go back home and work from the office.”

  She gave me a narrow look, waved off a proffered strip of bacon. “Good time for us, or good time for you?”

  “I have to stay. You know that. I haven’t found whoever set fire to the Underwoods’ barn.”

  She sat down and set her plate on her knees. “You stay, I stay too.”

  “I’m not sure I can protect you, Khanh.”

  “I not sure you can protect you.”

  “What am I going to tell Tuyet and Phen if I get you shot?”

  “What I going tell them if I leave you and you get you self shot?”

  “They’ve known me, what? Three months? I think they’ll get over it.”

  “Maybe get over. But no more apartment. No more medicine for mother. No more counselor for Tuyet. Anyway we used to you now. Be sad, you die.”

  There was no arguing with that. I told her she was stubborn and hardheaded, and she said she thought it must run in the family. I couldn’t argue with that either, so I fell back on the oldest, least effective argument in the book. “I write the paychecks, and I say you go.”

  “Free country,” she shot back. “I stay.”

  We might have gone on like that forever, except that the door to the Lost in Space camper creaked open, and Eli Barrington spilled out of it. He was barefoot and bleary-eyed, moving stiffly in a baggy T-shirt and a pair of jeans with a worn spot over one knee. He’d abandoned the contacts for a pair of Clark Kent glasses, which made his eyes less bloodshot than they’d been the day before.

  He put his fists to the small of his back and stretched. Gave us a small smile. “If I ever do this again, I’m getting a new mattress. This one has lumps on its lumps.”

  I offered him coffee, and Khanh went to fetch it. Black, American.

  “God,” he said. “Why does morning have to come so early?”

  “It’s almost seven. Time to rise and shine.”

  “Sadist.”

  “Well, you’ve got the rising part,” I said. “Need a little work on the shine.”

  He dragged over a chair of his own and set it by the fire, but he didn’t sit in it, just stood behind it with his hands resting on its back. It was already almost too hot for the fire, but for now we simply pushed our chairs farther away from the circle of stones that enclosed it. Close enough to watch the flames, far enough away not to be enveloped by the heat. Khanh brought out the coffee, and Eli took a cup in grateful hands. Closed his eyes and took a sip. I let him take another drink, then said, “Someone tried to kill Zane Underwood last night.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Seriously? Why? How?”

  “ Why is anybody’s guess. How was a pillow over the face.”

  “Awful. But you said someone tried. What stopped them? Not Zane.”

  “No, not Zane. The guy got interrupted.”

  “Lucky.”r />
  Khanh smiled. “Lucky boss man come along.”

  Eli gave me a speculative look. Something glinted behind his glasses. “Boss man, huh? So what we have here is a genuine, bona fide hero.”

  I said, “Let’s not go overboard here.”

  “No, seriously. You saved someone’s life. That’s, like, enormous.”

  Khanh said, “Oh, he save people all the time. Catch so many bad guy, jails almost too full.”

  “Well, I didn’t catch this one,” I said.

  “You catch soon, I know.” She stood up and jabbed a finger toward my chest. “You talk. I go get you ice.”

  Eli watched her go. “Your number one fan, huh?”

  “You know how it is. Family.”

  He took a sip of coffee, held it in his mouth like a sommelier with an expensive wine.

  I said, “I went to the Sextant’s site, looked for your article about the show. The only articles with your byline are sports and lifestyle stories from about six months ago.”

  His fingers tightened on the cup. “You were checking up on me?”

  “I wasn’t checking up on you. You said you were writing an article. I thought I might read it.”

  “They didn’t think a fistfight at a horse show was newsworthy. And this isn’t even a major show. Not like the Celebration in Shelbyville.”

  “But you’re here.”

  He shrugged again. “I guess I disagree with them. But they’ll have to change their tune now, won’t they?”

  “You might try sounding a little less eager, considering a man almost died last night.”

  “Forgive me if I don’t shed any tears over Zane Underwood. Considering—” He cut himself off.

  I said, “Considering his father may have killed your grandfather? Zane probably has more in common with your granddad than he did with Dalt.”

  “Even so. Sins of the fathers and all that stuff.” He shot a quick glance in my direction, then lowered his eyes like a pup caught with a forbidden shoe. “I’m sorry. That was tasteless. Of course, what happened to my grandfather wasn’t Zane’s fault. How long have you known?”