“My dogs always loved a good sock tug,” he said. “Seems a small doggie sin to possess.”
“I agree. But, like I said, ’taint my dog.” I walked over to Dove and laid my head on her shoulder, stooping slightly to do so. It felt like an arrow in my heart; she seemed to be shrinking before my eyes. “Thank you, Gramma, from the bottom of my wicked, but contrite heart. Today was definitely a chicken and dumplings day.” It was my ultimate comfort food, and no one made this dish like Dove. “Hey, aren’t we supposed to go to the airport to pick up Isaac?”
Dove shook her head. “He came in early. He’s already at the ranch. Ben picked him up.”
“Do you know when Gabe is coming home?” Kathryn asked.
I turned to face her. “I haven’t seen him all day. I thought he was with you.”
She looked back down at the lettuce head she was tearing, her face neutral. “Gabe and I had some words this afternoon.”
I glanced over at Ray, who didn’t look up from his tug-of-war with Boo. I turned to Dove, who just shrugged and went back to dropping dumplings.
“Has anyone called him?” I asked.
“He said he was going for a drive,” Kathryn said. She turned to Dove. “Didn’t you mention you brought some tomatoes from the ranch?”
Dove wiped her hands on the towel she had stuck in front of her jeans for a makeshift apron. “They’re out in the truck.”
“I’ll get them,” I said. It would give me a chance to call Gabe and see what was going on.
Outside, I called his cell phone. He answered the second ring.
“Ortiz, here.”
“Ortiz here too. Where are you?”
“I’m about two miles out of town. My ETA is about five minutes.”
“Good. Dove’s making chicken and dumplings. By the way, what did you and your mom fight about?”
There was a long silence on the line. In the background I could hear Etta James playing on his Corvette’s tape player. He only played Etta when he was very agitated. “What did she say?”
“She said you two had words. Care to elaborate?”
“No.”
I didn’t answer for a minute. “Okay, we’ll talk about this later. Are you and she going to be able to get along through dinner?”
“We’ve been faking it all my life. What’s one more night?”
“I’ll see you soon,” I said, not wanting to delve into this any deeper at the moment. Right now, just getting through dinner looked like it was going to take a gargantuan effort.
I was washing the tomatoes when Gabe opened the front door. Ray had taken Boo outside, since he’d just been fed, to try to coax him to do his business in the yard and not on my new carpet. Kathryn was setting the table, and Dove was checking the progress of her baking powder biscuits.
“Supper will be ready in five minutes,” Dove said. “Better tell Gabe to wash up.”
He was halfway up the stairs when I came out of the kitchen. I followed him into the bedroom, where he was pulling off his navy blue sweatshirt. I sat on the bed and watched him go through his dresser drawers picking out and discarding one T-shirt after another. He finally settled on a plain black one.
“Supper’s almost ready,” I said.
“Okay,” he replied without turning around.
“Gabe—” I started.
He held up a hand for me to stop, causing my hackles to rise. There was no gesture that I found more condescending. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to smack him in the back of the head.
“Fine,” I said, standing up. “See you downstairs.”
Throughout the meal, Gabe and his mother pointedly talked to everyone but each other. We discussed the Christmas parade, the decorations downtown and the place where Gabe and Kathryn had eaten lunch, Carlos by the Creek. It was a new Mexican restaurant whose building straddled San Celina Creek, which wove through the center of town like a drunken snake.
“Speaking of decorations,” Dove said. “When are you going to get your Christmas tree? It’s only eleven days to Christmas.”
I glanced over at Gabe, who shrugged and went back to eating. “We were waiting for Kathryn and Ray to get here so we could decorate it together,” I said.
Actually, we had been waiting for Kathryn. We hadn’t even known about Ray, but I’d had this great idea about having a tree trimming party while Kathryn was here and inviting some of our friends so Kathryn could meet them. Now, it didn’t seem like such a good idea. It didn’t appear as if Gabe and Kathryn were in the mood for a party.
“Tomorrow,” I said, making an executive decision. “We’ll buy it on the way home from the ranch. We can decorate it Monday night.”
Dove nodded, then smiled at Ray. “Hope you like beef, Ray. There’ll be a lot of it tomorrow. Not to mention a little bull.”
Ray smiled at Dove. “I’ve always been a little partial to both. I’m looking forward to a day at your ranch.”
After another uncomfortable half hour of making conversation, Gabe excused himself and went upstairs. I glanced over at his mother, whose face looked stricken and old. I stared after him, trying to decide if I should follow, then concluded it would be more sensible to let him be alone for a while. I’d help Dove clean up and then go talk to him.
“Let me help,” Kathryn said, as I picked up her plate.
“Not a chance,” I said. “You already helped make dinner. You’re probably tired. I’m sure the time change is working a number on your body clock.”
She sighed deeply; her blue-gray eyes seemed to sink into her face. Her sharp cheekbones, the bone structure she’d passed down to my husband, stretched tight across her pale skin. “You’re right, Benni. I am rather weary. Maybe I’ll make it an early night.”
“I think I’ll take a walk,” Ray said. “Give you some time for your nightly ablution.”
“I love a man with a good vocabulary,” Dove said, eliciting a smile from both Ray and Kathryn.
After they left the kitchen, I turned on the hot water, started rinsing the dinner dishes and arranging them in the dishwasher. At the same time, I began a game of ball to keep Boo occupied. His favorite toy was a large fabric ball covered with colorful tags. I’d kick it across the kitchen floor, and he’d scamper after it, his tiny toenails clicking across the tile floor. Scout, obviously tired from his day with the puppy, lay on his side next to the back door, content to let me entertain Boo.
“I’ll do the stockpot by hand,” Dove said. “Takes up too much room in the dishwasher.”
I murmured agreement and kept rinsing dishes. When I finished, I turned on the dishwasher and sat down on a chair. “Gabe and his mom had a fight.”
“I figured it was something like that,” Dove said, wiping the kitchen table.
I picked up Boo and settled him in my lap, scratching the back of his downy neck, trying to calm him down enough to go to sleep. “What am I going to do?”
Dove scrubbed at a stubborn spot on the table. The hum of the dishwasher vibrated the floor of my kitchen. An occasional clink of a dish not fit in properly echoed through the kitchen. It was the kind of thing that I could ignore and would drive Gabe crazy. He’d turn off the dishwasher and reorganize the dishes. I’d leave the room. Funny, I thought, just exactly the opposite of how we handle emotional problems. In that case, he’s always the one to leave the room.
“What can you do?” Dove said. “Whatever is going on between them started a long time before you and Gabe met. Just stand out of the way, and let them work it out. You can’t be a referee in this game. You’ll only get hurt.”
Of course she was right. I repeated it to myself as I drove her home, kissed her good night and drove back to my house. I mentally reiterated her words as I took Boo out for his last constitutional, settled him into his crate, gave Scout his nightly dog biscuit and while I took a long, warm shower.
Gabe was in bed reading the latest James Lee Burke book whose character, Dave Robicheaux, a Vietnam vet like Gabe, both delighted and irritated him.
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“Anyone who took that many punches would be in a wheelchair permanently,” he’d always say to me while he devoured Mr. Burke’s latest book. “And he’s always pissing off the bad guys and getting his women killed.”
“I truly appreciate that you don’t do that,” I’d tell him every time he said it. But he still always bought Mr. Burke’s latest book in hardback.
“How’s this one?” I asked, turning over on my side and propping my head up with my hand.
He peered at me over his gold-rimmed reading glasses. “Robicheaux’s pissed off some psycho, and he’s after Robicheaux’s daughter.”
“So,” I said, throwing all my good intentions to the wind. “What’s the deal between you and your mama?”
He looked back down at his book. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
I stuck my head over the page he was reading. “Good try, Friday, but we’re going to discuss this, so you may as well give in. You know I’m as persistent as a mole.”
He raised his head to look at me. There was just the slightest shadow under his chameleon blue eyes, eyes that never failed to make my heart beat a little faster. “I don’t want to talk about my mother right now. Let’s just get through her visit with as little conflict as possible. We can talk about it after she’s gone.”
I held his gaze, not convinced by his words. “I would agree to that, except I’ve been married to you long enough to know that she’ll leave, and then you won’t want to talk about her because then it doesn’t matter; she’s gone. I think we’ve been married long enough now that you can open up a little bit to me about your mom. Obviously, you two had an argument, and it would help me get through her visit if I had a little hint about what it was about.”
He lay his book down, not bothering to save his spot. “Why would you knowing what my mother and I argued about make her visit easier for you?”
I hated it when he turned homicide investigator on me, not answering my questions but posing questions of his own. I leaned over and poked a finger in the middle of his chest. “Look, mister, you’re not going to sleep tonight until you talk to me.”
He grabbed my hand and brought it up to his mouth, resting his lips on it. “Querida, please, I just can’t do it right now. My mother and I have lots of history, some of it good, some bad. Like all parents and children. She surprised me with this sudden marriage, and I told her so. She got a little huffy. I got a little huffy. By tomorrow, it’ll all blow over. Trust me on that. She and I have danced this dance many, many times.”
I pulled my hand out of his and laid it on his scratchy cheek. I suspected there was more to it than just the normal conflict between mother and son. There was some painful history between the two of them. When Gabe’s father died, Gabe had only been sixteen, a particularly hard age for a boy to lose his father. The only part of the story I knew was that he’d gotten into some trouble back in Kansas. His mother, probably reeling from the shock of her husband dying from a heart condition they didn’t know existed, trying to keep working as a teacher, caring for Gabe’s ten-year-old twin sisters and dealing with her own grief, did what I was sure she thought was the best thing for Gabe. She sent him to live with his dad’s older brother, Antonio, in Santa Ana, California. Uncle Tony had been a police officer in the Santa Ana police department, had four sons of his own and didn’t hesitate for a moment when Kathryn asked him to let Gabe finish out his high school years with his family.
Gabe loved and admired his father’s older brother and often gave his uncle credit for Gabe’s success both in the marines and in police work. The one thing Gabe never spoke about was what he felt about being sent away from home only months after his father died. Like his time in Vietnam, his feelings about those years were in an emotional room that he kept closed and padlocked. I had a feeling that between those long-buried feelings about his father’s death, the tragedy involving his cousin Luis, and his mother’s unexpected marriage, something was going to explode. I thought talking about it would ease some of the pressure. He obviously thought the opposite.
I thought all this as I caressed his cheek, the roughness of his evening beard tickling my hand. “You know I love you.”
“I know.” He pulled me to him, and I laid my head on his chest, listening to the thumping of his heart. I couldn’t remember exactly the age his father had been when he died of a heart attack, but I fretted about Gabe’s heart. He’d had all the tests, was given a clear bill of heart health so far, but I couldn’t help worrying that something lurked under his coppery skin, a clot or genetic flaw that would take him from me in an instant.
“I’ll be here for you,” I said. “When you need to talk.”
“I know,” he said again, stroking my hair.
I admit, as much as his vulnerability touched me, I was still a little annoyed that he’d managed to turn the conversation around so that none of my questions were answered. I felt his lips on the top of my head.
“Change of subject,” he said, deftly closing the door on any more discussion about his mother. “What’s happening with Constance?”
I pulled away from him and sat up. “That rat! She never called me back!”
“She was supposed to call you?”
“After I interviewed the three potential 49 Club members, I called her because I wanted to verify some information I discovered. She was taking a nap and not accepting phone calls. I told her housekeeper to have her call me as soon as she got up.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I swear, I’m going to shoot that woman.”
“Please, not in the next two weeks,” he said, a half smile softening his tired expression. “I’ve got enough on my plate at work.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure not to leave any clues. I think I could murder someone without getting caught.”
“Oh, you do, do you?” He pulled me back to him and kissed me hard on the lips. As he was so good at doing, his kiss made me forget his mother, forget Constance Sinclair and probably, if asked, forget my own name, for a few minutes. When he slipped his warm hands underneath my T-shirt, I pulled away from him, scooting to the other side of the bed.
“No way, Friday. Not until your mama leaves.”
“You’re kidding,” he said, giving a low, dramatic moan. “It’s the holidays!”
“That’s the dumbest reasoning I’ve ever heard,” I said, laughing. “Besides, don’t you want to hear about my investigation?”
“Not particularly,” he said, reaching over and stroking my bare thigh.
I swatted at his hand. “They are leaving the day after Christmas. You can just wait.”
He tossed his book on the floor next to the bed, causing Scout to lift his head from a dead sleep. “Okay, if I can’t have sex, then go ahead and tell me about Constance. That should cool my jets.”
“It’s okay, Scooby-Doo,” I called softly to my dog. “Go back to sleep.” Then to Gabe I said, “Well, she failed to tell me one little thing about Francie McDonald, that she’d been blackballed the last time she was up for a place in the 49 Club. By none other than Pinky Edmondson.”
Gabe slipped down under the down comforter and turned out his bedside light. “So?”
“So, that might be a motive.”
“Except for one thing.”
I cocked my head. “What?”
“This isn’t a real investigation, remember? Pinky Edmondson was not murdered. She died of a heart attack.”
I set my alarm clock for two a.m. and turned out my own light. “I know that, but I don’t have to tell you that people have killed for a lot dumber things than getting into an exclusive club.”
“It’s not real, Benni,” he repeated. “Am I going to have to take you off the case?”
“How can you take me off a case that’s not a case to begin with?” I reached over and started rubbing his stomach. It was a big house, and his mother was all the way on the other side of it.
“Don’t start something you don’t intend to finish.”
“
I never do, Friday.”
CHAPTER 8
THOUGH I DON’T KNOW HOW THEY DID IT, THE NEXT morning Gabe and his mother were laughing and acting like nothing had happened. Well, I knew why Gabe was in a relaxed mood, and I took a little credit for that.
But I was more than a little bleary-eyed when I walked into the kitchen at seven a.m. carrying Boo and wearing the kelly green cashmere bathrobe my cousin Emory bought me for my birthday this year.
“Cashmere and puppy,” Gabe commented as he scrambled eggs. “Probably not the wisest combination.”
His mother was sitting at the kitchen table dressed in knife-pressed khaki slacks and a red sweater. She was drinking a cup of tea and hulling some fresh strawberries.
“Good morning, Kathryn,” I said, attempting a smile. “Eat dirt, Chief.” I softened my comment by patting him on the butt as I walked past him toward the back door. After Boo watered the grass and we were both back in the warm kitchen, Kathryn motioned at me to take a seat.
“Let me pour you some coffee,” she said. “Or would you rather have tea?”
“Coffee, thank you. What’s cookin’, Friday?”
“My special scrambled eggs and whole wheat-pecan pancakes.”
I wrinkled my nose. I liked his scrambled eggs, full of cheese and onions and green peppers and topped with sour cream. But his whole wheat pancakes were too bumpy-lumpy, organically good for you for my taste.
“I saw that,” Gabe said, without turning around. “Don’t wrinkle your nose. My pancakes are delicious.”
I stuck my tongue out at his back, then grinned at Kathryn. “The pecans are good.”
He just laughed and said, “Go ahead, have one of your ubiquitous Pop-Tarts. At least I have some people at the table who’ll appreciate my culinary expertise.”
“Oh, quit showing off in front of your mom. Ubiquitous isn’t even the exact right word. I often run out of Pop-Tarts and happily switch to Lucky Charms or Cap’n Crunch.”
Gabe shook his head and laughed, stirring his eggs.
“Sounds like you two have been married for twenty years,” Kathryn said, smiling.
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