Miranda's Revenge

by Ruth Wind

  “Sweet talker.”

  In a moment, they started moving again, and in another moment, the car bumped into the housing where a boy opened the door for them. Miranda and James jumped out.

  He gestured for her to follow and they headed uphill, past the restaurant and the ski patrol. Miranda had to stop and catch her breath after only a few feet. “Wait! I can’t breathe.”

  “Sorry!” He peered at her face. “Are you light-headed? Headachy?”

  “Light-headed. A little dizzy.”

  He smiled gently. “We’re at about twelve thousand feet or better. Not a lot of oxygen up here.”

  “It feels funny.”

  “We’re just going to that group of trees right there. Do you see them?”

  Miranda breathed in through her nose slowly, feeling better. The trees were about a few hundred feet away, up a gradual slope. “Yes. I can do that.”

  “We’ll just go very slowly. Don’t talk.” He took the bag she had slung over her shoulder. “Once we’re sitting down, it should be okay, and we’re going down on the way back.”

  She nodded. It took all of her concentration to put one foot in front of the other, and she had to stop twice on the hill to catch her breath. “Damn,” she exclaimed the second time. “I feel like an old lady!” Sweat popped up along her neck and she raised a heavy arm to her hair, pulling it over her shoulder.

  “You’re doing great, actually.” He gave her a bottle of water. “Have a big sip. It’s easy to get dehydrated up here, too.”

  Miranda breathed, drank, handed him back the bottle and started trudging toward their destination.

  At last, they made it to the trees. A wide, flat rock sat on the hill, a perfect granite table, and Miranda collapsed on it. “Finally!” With a not-entirely-fake gasp, she fell backward and closed her eyes, breathing in the fine, oxygen-depleted air. It felt lighter than any air she’d ever experienced, but she also felt a bit like she was underwater. Her senses felt a little watery.

  “Are you okay?” James asked.

  She opened one eye. “Is this a test? Because I think I’m flunking.”

  “Not at all.” He gave her a pear. “Sit up and look at your reward.”

  Miranda flung an arm over her eyes. “It’s the mountains. It’s Mariposa,” she said. “It’s always spectacular. One Sound of Music view after another.”

  He laughed. “Was I right about the altar?” He nudged her. “Sit up.”

  “You were, sir.” She hauled herself upright. And looked.

  And blinked.

  “Wow.” The rock sat on a small mesa, surrounded on all sides by the harsh, craggy peaks of the San Juans, all at an altitude of thirteen thousand to fourteen thousand feet. The Mariposa valley divided them neatly, and far, far below twinkled the first streetlights in the dusky shadows. It looked like a toy railroad town, with plastic broccoli trees and traffic lights changing from green to red and teeny, tiny neon signs. From this vantage point, she could also see Allen on the other side of the mountain, far more spreading, with bigger parking lots and open fields and parks.

  But the most spectacular thing was the sun, which hung like a molten gold ball to the west. Long, long bars of light arrowed into canyons and misted over certain streets and cast shadows of boulders three thousand feet below.

  She grinned at James. “Okay, so it’s better views than The Sound of Music.”

  A low, earthy chuckle escaped him and he started putting their supper out on the sparkly gray rock.

  “You actually run up here, don’t you?” she asked suddenly.

  “I do.” The words were not the least apologetic. He bit cleanly into a pear, chewed meditatively. “It’s like nothing else.”

  “I keep wondering how my father is going to do this race. I mean, he’s old—like seventy-five. Who does a long run like this when they’re seventy-five?”

  “Lotta people. Some tough old birds out there. Is your dad like that?”

  Miranda almost snorted, but a sudden vision of her father coming down a mountain in Zurich, sweaty and pleased, flashed in memory. “He’s always liked running, and I think he specifically likes mountain running. He did it a lot it Europe.”

  “The race is Saturday. When will he be here?”

  “Tomorrow,” she said with the inevitable sigh. “They’re coming from the house in the French Alps, so I’m sure he’s been training along with drinking his martinis.”

  James grinned. “It’s good to see a woman who is so devoted to her parents.”

  “I haven’t heard you talk about yours.”

  “My father passed about three years ago. My mother is—she just is a woman of her times and her place.”

  Miranda started to feel better, more acclimatized. She broke off a chunk of bread and spread soft cheese on it. “Is she part of the story you were going to tell me?”

  The brightness bled from his face. “No.”

  “I’m sorry,” Miranda said. “Don’t go there if you don’t want to. I apologize.”

  “It’s all right.” He broke a piece of cookie off the main body and ate it. “You asked why I did not become a priest. People generally assume it was a woman. It was, but not in the way most people think.”

  Miranda tightened her hand. “James, let’s not talk about anything dark or sad or in the past, all right? We have this beautiful view, and this good food, and—” She took a breath. “I guess I’m just tired of thinking about what once was, instead of what is.”

  For a long moment, he looked at her, his beautiful mouth sober. Then he leaned in and kissed her, very gently. “Thank you.”

  The tenderness in his lips made her heart catch. Bending her head, she focused on the food. “Now, tell me how you became a private detective. I think I remember reading on the Web site that you were a cop.”

  “I was,” he said. “It’s a simple story. I felt I could do more good working independently. Often, a difficult case requires more time than can be afforded by the police.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “It occurs to me, Miranda, that you are a very good listener. I have told you my stories and you have not told me yours.”

  “You haven’t told me why you gave up the seminary.”

  His eyes darkened dangerously. “We’re leaving it in the past, remember?”

  “Yes. You’re right.” Twisting the stem from a pear, she shrugged. “I don’t have very good stories.”

  “Oh, come on. How did you become an artist?”

  “I think I always was one. I clearly remember the first time I discovered felt—color you could hold in your hands. It was just so thrilling, being able to handle it and cut it and glue it. I made a bunch of little wall hangings for my sisters and I.” She grinned, remembering the bead-crusted works. “They were so good to me, those two.”

  “Did you go to art school?”

  “I did. And studied in Europe, and I got lucky, met some of the right people and got into a good gallery where the mass marketers found me. So I can have money and be an artist, which is sort of rare.” She swallowed pear and raised a finger. “Which makes me think of Claude, who is a highly valued commodity now that he’s dead, and the phone calls I made this afternoon.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  She sucked in a gulping measure of air. “I had to breathe.”

  “I understand.”

  “I wasn’t able to talk with Renate Franz. They said she’s out of town, so we’ll have to reach her later, but I did talk to some other people I know, some gallery owners and members of the art community in New York, and it was kind of interesting.” A soft breeze blew strands of hair over her face, and Miranda caught it back with one hand. “It seems Claude was somewhat known around Renate’s gallery, that they’ve been hanging out together for a long, long time.”

  “She’s represented him for a long time, right?”

  “No, he didn’t start painting until he and Desi moved here to Mariposa.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Really
.”

  “That it’s only been a few years, and suddenly he’s that brilliant? I mean, it happens sometimes, but not that often.”

  “So what’s the feeling among the people in your world? That he’s a fake?”

  Miranda’s mouth dropped. “No, actually, but that’s brilliant, James. What if he was just being a front man, an ethnic front man, for another painter?”

  “And maybe that painter got tired of it.”

  Miranda grinned. “Painted himself into a corner, though, huh?”

  He laughed. “That was terrible.”

  “Yeah, I know. And we didn’t really need another motive for someone to kill Claude. It’s like the Orient Express, where everyone had reason to kill him.”

  “Maybe it is something like that, a bunch of people who got together and decided to get rid of him once and for all—ex-lovers, cuckolded husbands, business partners he double-crossed. Everybody.”

  “Did you just say cuckolded?”

  “I did.”

  “Wow.” She fanned herself with exaggerated movements. “I can’t resist a man with a great vocabulary!”

  The sun made a sudden slip, and the entire world blazed, as if someone in the heavens switched a floodlight marked Pink. Miranda snapped to attention, captured by scarves of pink clouds drifting over the pointed breasts of the mountains, by the trailers of pale gold necklaces draped over the swells and curves.

  “Ta da!” James said, spreading his palms. “The artist’s palette, spread out just for you.”

  Dazzled nearly to tears, Miranda opened her eyes wider, as if to take in more of the show. Pale gold and pink melded and the colors of the mountains turned dark blue, and then, as if the heavens were igniting, red flickered from cloud to peak to cloud. Miranda put her hands to her face. Tears leaked from the corner of her eyes, and she blinked them away, embarrassed. “It’s amazing!”

  He, too, gazed at the sky, his profile almost Mayan. For a moment, Miranda was snared as much by the beauty in his face as by the sky bowled over their heads. His hands rested loosely on his knees, and there was a depth of utter peace and calm about him that drew her like a hearth. It seemed a weary person could rest there, in the pool of quiet, let go of the tangles of tension and spiky drama in her chest.

  A small voice in her head murmured, uh, oh—better be careful with this one.

  She ignored it, leaned into him, her arm touching his arm, her cheek against the red cotton of his shirt. “Thank you, again.”

  “My pleasure.” He touched her nose, brushed her chin with one finger, as if surprised by the shape, as if he’d never seen nose or chin before. For a single moment, he looked down at her, and their eyes met, a single moment that felt to Miranda as if the rest of everything hung in the balance.

  Here, now.

  “There is a Navajo chant that says, You see I standin good relation to you…I am alive, I am alive,” he said quietly, his finger now brushing the angle of her cheekbone. “In this moment, I am alive.”

  The vivid pink light edged his hair, cast his tawny skin in a new light. She could see what he’d looked like as a boy, and conversely, what he would look like as an old man, and her heart squeezed so hard she put a hand to her chest.

  Then he bent to kiss her, and they tumbled backward, gently rolling together on the wide flat rock, laughing as they squashed the remainder of the bread.

  He settled nearly on top of her. Miranda welcomed it, feeling dizzily suspended, as if they were part of the sunset. He stroked her hair, her cheek, kissed her lightly and then more deeply. She raised her hands to his hair, thick and cool and slippery, and touched his ears, his neck.

  And there they were, drifting, melding, alive in the light, in the airy softness of dusk, lips and hands and bodies doing the communicating.

  “Sorry to break things up, folks,” said a voice above them, “but it’s going to be dark as sin in a few minutes and you need to get on up here.”

  They broke apart to grin at the man standing on the road. A man of fifty or so, with a ski patrol jacket and bushy eyebrows, clapped his hands. “C’mon. Move it.”

  “No problem,” James said, leaping to his feet. He held out a hand for Miranda, who brushed her hair down, smoothed her blouse, color burning in her cheeks.

  Chapter 9

  They walked back down to the tram station, holding hands in the lavender gloaming and stood in the building waiting for a car. The unfinished kiss was a siren that stretched between them wantonly, and James tried to shake it off. But he felt heat in the oval hollow between their clasped palms, and stroked the delicate skin of her wrist with his thumb. She looked up at him, her eyes both trusting and afraid. He raised her hand to his lips, kissed her knuckles.

  A faint smile turned the corners of her red mouth, and she looked away. Shook her head and he was sure it was at herself. “Hey,” he said. “It’s not imaginary.”

  For a moment she held his gaze, then looked toward the arriving car. “Here’s our ride.”

  They settled inside, side by side. James moved close, slid an arm around her shoulders. Her hair brushed his arm, light and soft as fur. Amused by the thought, he picked up a lock and rubbed it between his fingers, wondering what kind of animal she would be. Something rare and skittish. A red fox, shy and soft, given beauty by her pelt. He smiled to himself, and at that moment, she looked up again.

  Their eyes caught. The only sound was their breath and the machinery moving the car down the mountain in a smooth, easy ride. James admired her mouth, her long eyelashes, her body next to his. Everything about her was soft, so inviting. He bent to kiss her lightly.

  She raised her head infinitesimally and pressed her mouth to his, and raised a hand to his jaw, a light, exploratory touch that traced his cheekbone, jawline, the edge of his eye.

  He closed his eyes and drank of her mouth, taking his time, easily and without urgency kissing and kissing her, sliding his lips one way, then the other, taking a moment to gauge the lower lip, then lightly touching her upper with his tongue. They kissed all the way down, making out like teenagers, and it felt like each kiss shifted the universe, that each binding moment meant something finer was coming into the world. He felt lost in her, delighted and lost and bemused and breathless.

  About halfway down, the car stopped dead, and they broke apart to look at the soft lavender world around them, the scattering of the town below, pristine and perfect. “Wow,” Miranda said. “I’ve had some pretty great dinner dates in my time, but this takes the cake.”

  “Yeah?” He cupped her cheek, his heart pounding as if he were already in love. “I don’t want to seem like a weirdo, but this feels like something rare.”

  “If you’re weird, I am, too.” She swallowed.

  He kissed her again, drinking deep. They were both dizzy and flushed as they jumped off the tram, and holding hands, dashed like children into the street. “I’ll buy you a drink,” he said, reluctant to leave her.

  “You won’t have even one?”

  “Not with a race coming up.”

  “I can respect that,” she said. “Sure, I’d love a drink. Let’s not go to The Black Crown, though—I’d rather not run into my family or Tam. I doubt any of them are there, but just in case.”

  “Ashamed of me?” he said lightly.

  Her head jerked up. “No! Why would I be?”

  Which was more vehement a reaction than he’d expected. “I was only teasing you a little,” he said. Slightly troubling, but he brushed it away. Don’t be too sensitive. Sometimes, pride got in his way. Too much pride.

  “Sorry,” she said, and pursed her lips. “I know where we’ll go. It’s only a block or two. I haven’t been there before, but I’ve heard about it. Now I have the perfect reason to try it out.”

  “Lead on, my lady,” he said, and she laughed. They held hands in the mild summer night, joined for a few minutes by a pair of dogs, a blue heeler mix and some sort of spaniel. He was about to worry about them crossing the busy main street, but
as if they, too, knew to avoid it, they turned off before they got there. “I worry about dogs too much,” he said. “I want them to stay home in their yards, safe and happy.”

  “Me, too. It makes me crazy that so many of them wander around here. They must get hurt.”

  “Do you have one?”

  “No, I live in a tiny apartment. There’s no room for a dog. I thought about getting a cat recently, but honestly, I’m on the road so much that it’s just too hard.” She stopped in front of a tiny bar with a window painted in blue and red paisleys. Written in sixties rock poster script was The Poppy Seed. “Here we are. Put on your sunglasses, man, and let’s go inside.”

  Inside he chuckled. India cotton tapestries hung on the old walls, probably hiding cracked plaster, and there were soft purple lights glowing at intervals through the room, making square velvet and fluorescent posters glow. “Are those black lights?”

  Miranda grinned. “Isn’t this the coolest little spot? The jukebox has nothing but a bunch of baby boomer oldies, too—Rolling Stones and The Who and stuff like that.”

  Customers were a mix of twenty-something backpacker types, tanned and a little grimy, or real exhippies and bikers, men and women. The bartender, a man of about sixty with a round tummy like Santa Claus and a beard to match, nodded at them. “I’ll have a margarita, please,” Miranda said.

  The old guy shook his head. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he said in a voice like five miles of mountain road, “we don’t do anything that fancy here. Beer and wine, or a whiskey and Coke. I can set up a shot of tequila for you if you want.”

  Miranda laughed. “No, thanks. How about beer, then?”

  “Coke for me,” James said.

  “Jack and Coke?” He narrowed his eyes. “No, I reckon not. You’re a runner, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  “I used to be,” the bartender said, his voice gravelly. “You know Peter Bok lives here.”

  “I met him! My first day here,” James said. “What a guy.”

  “He comes in here, now and then. His wife likes my French fries, and as long as I’ve been here, he has a beer a day, at suppertime.”