One Last Look

by Linda Lael Miller

  Presently, the lock on the back door jiggled.

  And then Kip was there, looming in the doorway.

  Loretta sent the sugar bowl wheeling toward his head. She’d been the darts champion at Nipples, and she hadn’t lost her touch.

  Kip ducked just in time.

  I stood, planning to make a run for it.

  Loretta put a hand on my shoulder and pushed me back into my chair. “Don’t you dare leave!” she shouted. “I’m about to commit murder, and I want a witness!”

  “Loretta,” Kip said. He looked rumpled, as if he’d hung from one of the helicopter runners all the way from Aruba, or wherever he’d been in the days since the fateful phone call. Indiana Jones after a very bad week. “What in the name of God has gotten into you?”

  Loretta screamed a drunken expletive, reminding me of dear old Mom, and sent the cream pitcher sailing along the same trajectory as the sugar bowl. Again, Kip was lucky. Or just quick.

  “For God’s sake, Loretta,” Kip reasoned. “This will get us nowhere.”

  The fool. Didn’t he know there is no getting through to an angry, inebriated woman in an ugly bathrobe?

  I covered my face with one hand, but couldn’t resist peering between my fingers. If the conflict escalated, I decided with an odd detachment, I would dive under the table. Kip was blocking one exit, and the others were too far away.

  “Is this about Miranda?” Kip asked.

  Duh, I thought.

  Frenzied, Loretta looked around for more things to throw. Fortunately, the bronze quail sculpture in the middle of the table proved too heavy, though she tried to hoist it. She finally settled for the Waterford salt and pepper shakers I’d saved for weeks to buy, back in the Nipples days. Okay, I got them at an outlet, but I wasn’t rich then. I hated to see my wedding present hurtling across the kitchen, shattering into expensive slivers, just short of Kip, on the tile floor.

  “You’re—having—an—affair!” my friend huffed.

  “Loretta,” Kip said, spreading his hands. “It’s over. I promise it will never happen again.”

  A direct admission of guilt.

  My mouth fell open.

  Loretta froze.

  Kip’s beleaguered gaze slid to my face, rested there for a moment. I think it’s safe to say he and I were both wishing I wasn’t around. I wondered what had taken him so long to make his dramatic entrance. The ways of tycoons, I concluded in the next moment, are past understanding.

  “I’ll make it up to you,” Kip told Loretta.

  Inwardly, I rolled my eyes. There weren’t enough little blue Tiffany boxes in the world to make up for this one.

  “Get out,” Loretta said. She seemed so fragile that I stopped thinking about taking cover under the table and prepared to catch her if she started to go down.

  “I fired her,” Kip said dismally. “Miranda is gone. For good.”

  Loretta flushed, then went alarmingly pale, all in the space of a few seconds. “Get out,” she repeated.

  Kip didn’t move. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. But I couldn’t help imagining what I would do in Loretta’s position.

  “I love you,” he said to her, and I believed him, crazy as it sounds. Of course, Loretta didn’t, and that was what counted.

  Loretta gaped at him. Tears trickled down her face. Then she turned and fled the kitchen.

  I rose from my chair to follow. God knew what she would do next.

  “You’ll stay with her?” Kip asked.

  I nodded and hurried after Loretta. The roar of the departing helicopter seemed to set the walls trembling.

  It took me a full twenty minutes to run my friend to ground. She was downstairs in the wine cellar, trying to pull the cork out of a vintage merlot with her teeth.

  I gently removed the bottle from her grip.

  “You’ve had too much to drink already,” I said, stating the painfully obvious.

  “Wrong,” Loretta countered petulantly. “If that were true, I wouldn’t be hurting so much.”

  I took her arm. “Come on,” I said quietly.

  Loretta’s chin quivered. “I hate him,” she said, and her blue eyes welled up again.

  “No, you don’t,” I replied. “That’s the problem.” I set the bottle aside, thankful she’d chosen the wine cellar over the gun collection in Kip’s study. “Here’s the plan. You’ll take a bubble bath and try to calm down a little. I’m going back to the kitchen and fix you something to eat. I’ll bet you haven’t had a balanced meal since you called Aruba and got Ms. Slater on the line.”

  “I can’t eat,” Loretta protested. “I intend to starve myself to death.”

  “No man is worth that,” I said.

  Loretta surprised me by giving in. “All right,” she said. “I’ll take a bubble bath. But I won’t eat anything healthy. I want cookie dough ice cream, with whipped cream and walnuts.”

  “Done,” I promised.

  We parted ways at the top of the cellar stairs.

  When Loretta came into the kitchen, half an hour later, her face was scrubbed and moisturized, and she’d exchanged the Indian blanket for a black sweat suit. Her hair was pinned up in a loose French twist. Without her makeup, she looked incredibly young. If we hadn’t been in the middle of a crisis, I probably would have hated her for it.

  “What am I going to do?” she asked very softly, slumping back into her chair.

  “Eat ice cream until you pop,” I answered. I got out two mixing bowls, retrieved the Ben & Jerry’s from the freezer, and started scooping. The spray-on whipped cream and ground walnuts were at the ready, on the counter, and I’d broken into the chocolate syrup, as well, just to make the feast really evil. “It’s the only sensible thing to do in a situation like this.”

  Loretta laughed, though it was a congested, snuffly sound. “You’re bad,” she said. “That’s one of the reasons I like you so much.”

  The whipped cream made me miss Sonterra more than ever. Never mind why.

  I carried my culinary creations to the table, and Loretta and I each took a spoon and dug in.

  “We’ll probably gain five pounds from this,” she said.

  “More like ten,” I lamented.

  She laughed again. Reached out to squeeze my hand. “Thanks, Clare. Thanks for being my friend.”

  “I wouldn’t put on ten pounds for just anybody,” I told her.

  An hour later, when Loretta had gone to bed, and I was ensconced in one of the guest suites, fighting off a sugar coma, I scrabbled through my purse for my cell phone and speed-dialed Sonterra.

  He answered on the second ring. “It’s about time,” he said. “I thought you were dead beside the road someplace. I was about to send out the State Patrol.”

  “I’m at Loretta’s,” I replied, plopping down on the edge of the bed. “The situation is critical.”

  “How about a rundown?”

  If only he were there with me. I could have used the company, and there was still a lot of whipped cream left. “Kip’s been cheating on her, all right,” I said. “He actually admitted it.”

  “Oh, that,” Sonterra replied.

  I stiffened. “ ‘Oh, that’? Did Emma tell you?”

  Sonterra let out a sigh. “No,” he said, somewhat sheepishly.

  “You knew?”

  Silence.

  “Sonterra.”

  “All right. Yes. I knew.”

  Forget the whipped cream. I was thinking more along the lines of blunt objects. “You knew, and you didn’t bother to mention it to me?”

  “I found out by accident,” he said. I didn’t have to see him to know he’d run a hand through his hair. He always did that when he wanted to buy time. “The commissioner belongs to Kip’s country club. We had a meeting there, a few weeks ago, about this task-force thing, and I ran into Kip and the Squeeze. She was wearing a slippy red dress and he had his hand on her thigh. I jumped to the obvious conclusion.”

  I had to consciously relax my jaw. “Why didn’t you
tell me?”

  Pause. One of those charged ones, the kind that crackle. “I figured you’d decide all men were scum and give back my engagement ring. I’m sorry, Clare. I should have said something.”

  “You’re damn right you should have said something!”

  “Is Loretta okay?” I could tell by his tone that he truly cared what the answer was, and I softened a little, but grudgingly.

  “No,” I said, the word catching in the back of my throat. “No. She’s not okay.”

  “She will be, Clare,” Sonterra promised. “Whatever happens. Loretta’s tough, like you.”

  “Right now, I don’t think she feels very tough. I know I don’t.”

  “I could come down there.”

  I thought about Eddie, battered and broken. “No, you couldn’t. Your best friend is in the hospital.”

  “My best friend is in Tucson,” Sonterra said.

  I started to cry, all of a sudden, and a few moments passed before I could say anything. “Is there any news?” I finally choked out. “About Eddie, I mean?”

  “I’m at the hospital now. He’s stirred a couple of times. Still unconscious, though.”

  “Is Jenna there? If she is, be nice to her.”

  “She isn’t. Which is a good thing.”

  “This isn’t her fault, Sonterra.” I plucked some tissues from the box on the bedside table and wiped my face hard enough to take off a layer of skin.

  Sonterra spoke moderately. “Let’s save this discussion for another time. Like tomorrow. I’m due in Dry Creek at ten o’clock, for the official swearing-in. I’d like you to be there. Bring Loretta.”

  I swallowed. “You’re still taking the job?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about Eddie?”

  “I can’t stand here and hold his hand till he wakes up, Clare. He wouldn’t even want that.”

  I wasn’t so sure, but I didn’t have the will to argue. I’d had all the drama I needed for one night.

  I bit my lower lip. “I’ll be there,” I said. “For your swearing-in, I mean.”

  “Good. How about the rest of my life? Will you be there for that, Counselor?”

  “Depends on how long you plan to stay in Dry Creek,” I answered. I was only half kidding. The place could have been the set for one of those B-movies where everyone gets abducted by aliens. I imagined shutters creaking on rusty hinges, sagebrush blowing down the middle of the main street. Nobody at the gas station. Dust settling on the petrified pies in the diner.

  “We’re talking about six months, max,” Sonterra said, treading carefully.

  Yes. Six months—five of which I would be profoundly pregnant. I looked down at my engagement ring, turned it round and round on my finger. If I agreed to the hitch in Dry Creek, I’d not only be with Sonterra, I’d be near Loretta, too. I was almost sure she’d stay on at the ranch until she figured things out, or felt ready to face Scottsdale society, whichever came first. And the ranch was only twenty miles from Sonterra’s new beat.

  That left Emma, who would be only too happy to board at school and spend the weekends in Dry Creek. In the meantime, she could stay on with Tiffany and her family, if they were agreeable to the idea, of course.

  “Are you still there?” Sonterra asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Look, try to get some rest, will you? And stop worrying. Everything will work out.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “I’ll be the guy with the shiny badge.”

  I smiled, but it felt shaky on my mouth. Suddenly, I was so tired I didn’t know if I had the strength to put on my pajamas or brush my teeth. Maybe I’d just stretch out on top of the bedspread and let myself sink into oblivion. “Will that be a gun in your pocket,” I teased, “or will you just be happy to see me?”

  He laughed. “Oh, I’ll be happy to see you, all right.”

  We said our good-nights, and I did manage to stagger into the bathroom, shower for the second time that evening, and dress for bed. I even remembered to plug my cell into the charger.

  The moment I crawled under the covers, I was out.

  I dreamed Loretta and I were wandering in the desert, with our feet bare and our hands duct-taped behind our backs.

  Suddenly, a loud, high wind came up.

  We heard the familiar whup-whup-whup of helicopter blades. Kip! We were about to be rescued. Overjoyed, weeping with relief, we jumped up and down, the dream Loretta and me, trying to shout through the thick tape covering our mouths.

  But then the helicopter tipped ominously in our direction, and the blades came at us like a giant buzz saw. We stumbled, tried to run, but it was too late.

  I woke with a start and a cry that hurt my throat.

  Wasn’t it me who said it?

  Things are never so crappy that they can’t get crappier.

  I was awake, but the nightmare lingered. My heart stumbled and slammed to a stop, and my eyeballs dried as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

  Myself, standing at the foot of the bed.

  I clenched my fists, just to make sure they were still attached to my arms.

  I blinked, but the vision didn’t go away. The other Clare wore jeans and a gray sweatshirt, and she was bleeding from a nasty gash in her head.

  She didn’t speak.

  She didn’t move.

  She just stood there, bleeding.

  My heart started up again, pounding so hard I thought it would rupture. My breath was too quick and too shallow. I knew I was hyperventilating, but I couldn’t get control.

  I hugged myself, too stricken to scream, and squeezed my eyes shut. This time, it worked. When I looked again, she was gone.

  I waited for my knees to solidify, then stumbled into the bathroom and hurled up the ice cream.

  Four

  I didn’t sleep the rest of the night, and when Loretta wandered into the kitchen at six-thirty in the morning, I was pouring cold water into the well on the coffeemaker. I’d already swept up the broken crockery from last night’s Kip bombardment.

  “You don’t look so good,” she said. Loretta and I rarely minced words. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “Morning sickness,” I answered. It was only a partial lie. I was hungover from the ice-cream binge; then there was the helicopter dream. Semibullshit reasons. The main one was the hallucination. She’d been so real, the other Clare. Not shimmering and see-through, like your average apparition.

  I should have told Loretta what happened, right then, but she had problems enough without having to worry that I was losing my sanity.

  And I should have told Sonterra—but he, too, had a lot on his mind, because of Jimmy Ruiz and Eddie and because it was the first day of his new job. Besides, he hadn’t told me about seeing Kip with Miranda Slater at the country club. If he wanted to play keep-a-secret, he’d find himself seriously outmatched.

  I decided to wait for a decent hour and put in a surreptitious call to Mrs. Kravinsky on my cell phone. My good friend and former neighbor was psychic, among other things. She would know what to do.

  I bit my lower lip, fumbled for coffee mugs.

  Loretta took a loaf of bread from the freezer and set her course for the toaster. “Have you spoken to Tony?”

  I couldn’t meet her eyes. Sonterra had known about Kip’s affair. Granted, he hadn’t told me, but I still felt guilty, as though I’d been the one to withhold information. “Yes,” I said. “He’s being sworn in as chief of police today, over in Dry Creek. Ten o’clock. Care to come along and help celebrate?”

  Loretta was clearly taken aback, but she recovered quickly. She didn’t look half as bad as I felt. In fact, she didn’t look bad at all. Bitch.

  “Chief of police—Dry Creek—Clare, what the heck are you talking about?” She took the coffee carafe out of my hand and poured a mugful for each of us.

  I explained about Sonterra’s career change, leaving out the task-force part. Since the feds had arranged the gig, I wasn�
�t sure if it was supposed to be top secret or not.

  Hope sparked in Loretta’s eyes. I wondered what cost-the-earth cream she’d used to prevent puffiness. I was a Maybelline girl myself. “You’ll be just down the road from here,” she said. “You are planning to live with Tony in Dry Creek, right?”

  “Right,” I said with a sigh.

  “Show a little enthusiasm. The man is seriously attractive.”

  I smiled, took a sip of hot, fresh coffee, and felt a little better, that quickly. As a detective, Sonterra worked in plain clothes. Now he’d probably wear a standard cop suit. “I do have a thing about uniforms,” I said.

  Loretta giggled. It was a thick sound, painful to hear. “Sit down and drink your coffee,” she said. “You still seem a little peaky. I’ll make breakfast.”

  Loretta didn’t usually cook. In Scottsdale, she had Rosa to keep house and make the meals. It finally occurred to me that I hadn’t seen any sign of the middle-aged couple who managed the ranch.

  I asked about them.

  The toast popped up, and Loretta buttered it before answering. “They’re spending a month in Seattle,” she said without looking at me. “Their daughter had a baby last week.” Her voice caught on the word “baby.” She put the toast on a plate and brought it to me. “Eat this.”

  “What about Dry Creek? Are you coming with me?”

  Loretta shook her head. “I think I’ll stay here. Maybe have one of the cowboys saddle Cherokee. Take a ride.”

  “Loretta, you’re talking like a telegram.”

  She cracked six eggs into a skillet, and, munching toast, I watched with interest as she picked out little pieces of shell with her nail. We took a cooking class together once. We were the first people ever physically expelled from the Williams-Sonoma at Fashion Square Mall.

  “I’m not up to celebrating anything today, Clare,” she said.

  That was the end of the subject.

  After breakfast, Loretta donned jeans, boots, and a chambray shirt and retreated to the stables.

  Though it was still early in the day, I snagged my cell and put that call through to Mrs. K just the same. I first met her when I started my indentured servitude with Harvey Kredd—Harvey had picked up the tab for my three years of law school, with the proviso that I’d work five years for him, at an abysmally low salary, with all the worst cases funneled straight to my desk—and I knew by long experience that she’d be up and around.