Unexpected Dismounts

by Nancy Rue

  “Little place that just started serving coffee and breakfast,” she said. “The food’s not much, which means we’ll probably have the whole thing to ourselves.”

  I let her haul me along, although my mind wasn’t making much progress.

  “Faith,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I hope you don’t mean faith that God is going to snap the Divine fingers and this is all going to be peachy. I’m not buying that.”

  Hank grunted. “If that were the way it worked, why would he have made all this happen in the first place?”

  “You think God did?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Then why are we even talking?”

  She twitched her lips at me. “You brought it up, Al.”

  “I love you, Hank,” I said.

  She stopped again, and put herself in front of me, and took both of my wrists in her hands. The face she turned up to me was tender.

  “That’s the faith I’m talkin’ about, Al,” she said. “That’s what’s going to get us all through this and on top of it. God’s got the love and God’s pouring it out. Now, can we eat?”

  I looked up at the sign above us.

  “The Monk’s Vineyard?” I said. “Lewis and Clark are serving breakfast now?”

  “You’ve been here before?”

  “This is where I found Ophelia.”

  And where I’d last seen Kade Cacciatore, or whatever that scoundrel’s name was. I hadn’t thought much about him since, which was actually fine.

  “Miss Chamberlain!” a voice sang out from the porch.

  Hank gave me a look.

  “Long story,” I said. “Hi, George.”

  “Not a long-enough story, far as I’m concerned,” he said, shaking his head and with it his impossible mop of curls. “What do you say we fix that? Tell me what’s been going on with you.”

  “Some menus first, please, George?” Hank said. “And a table would be good too.”

  The air was a little March chilly, but the street was quiet before the expected onslaught of kids on field trips, so we picked a spot on the porch and let George regale us with the specials. None of it sounded particularly appetizing to me, but I ordered a sausage biscuit and let him persuade me to try the latte Lewis was perfecting.

  When he was gone, I felt Hank looking through me. I might as well tell her before she guessed.

  “I’m putting the Palm Row house up for sale,” I said.

  She stared.

  “I have to,” I said.

  That was as far as I got before my phone rang. I scrambled it out of my bag, sure it was Desmond already knocking off for the day. But it was Bonner.

  “Hey, we were just talking about you,” I said. “Or getting ready to, anyway.”

  “I don’t know if this is good news or not,” he said. “But the owner of that house on San Luis has accepted our offer, contingent on the sale of the Palm Row house, like you said. You and I need to sit down and really talk seriously about what you want to ask for it.”

  “What if we offered him a straight trade?” I said.

  Silence didn’t fall. It crashed.

  “I know I’m not Chief,” he said finally. “But I am not going to let you do that, Allison. I’m just not. I won’t represent a deal like that.”

  “Okay,” I said. “It was just a suggestion.”

  “And I’m going to pretend you never made it. When can we meet? How about I take you to dinner tonight?”

  “I don’t—”

  “You need to get out and Hank needs a break from feeding you.”

  “I heard that,” Hank said. “I don’t need a break, but I’ll take it.”

  “What about Desmond?” I said.

  “I’ll take him, too,” Hank said.

  I frowned at her but she waved me off. “Go—it’ll do you good. Maybe Bonner can talk you out of whatever it is you’re trying to do.”

  I told Bonner I’d go and hung up with Hank still staring at me.

  “I just want to know one thing,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Are you getting this from God, this selling your house idea?”

  I rubbed a smudge from the screen on my phone.

  “You’re not,” she said.

  “Not directly. But Hank, I have to do something. Now I have Ophelia and Zelda to find places for.”

  “And you and Desmond?”

  The phone rang again.

  “Speaking of Desmond,” I said.

  For once his timing was perfect.

  Desmond did look as if he were in pain when I picked him up, though he was vague on the details. When we got home he went straight to his room, and when I peeked in later, he was bent over his sketchbook.

  “I’m liking this,” I said. “I haven’t seen you draw since the accident.”

  He flipped the cover closed and tossed the book aside.

  “I wasn’t going to try to look at it,” I said. “I always wait for you to offer.”

  “It ain’t no good,” he said.

  I tried to appear casual as I leaned against the doorframe, arms folded, but my heart lurched. I had never seen Desmond be anything but downright cocky about his work.

  “If drawing’s not doing it for you, you could come out here and have a snack. Or you could just ram around the kitchen until whatever it is comes out and then you can tell me what a good listener I am.”

  “Or I could just take a nap,” he said. He turned his back to the doorway and lowered himself to the mattress.

  Okay, so I blew that.

  “Allison?”

  I jumped. Nicholas Kent was at the screen door. I must have left the main door open when Desmond and I came in through the porch.

  “Hey, come on in,” I said.

  His freckles were folded into a frown as he let himself in. “I don’t advise you to leave that unlocked when you’re here.”

  “Sorry, I’m just a little—okay, I’m a complete mess. You want some tea?”

  That seemed to befuddle him momentarily, but he nodded. The boy was learning.

  I nodded him toward the bistro table and put the kettle on. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, so I knew whatever he’d come for wasn’t of an official nature. There was that anyway.

  “They got the DNA back on the rape case,” he said.

  I stopped, tea bag in midair. “Are you serious? That was fast.”

  “Some friend of Mr. Ellington’s. Said it was the least he could do.”

  I hiked myself up onto the other bistro chair. “Why doesn’t this sound like the good news it’s supposed to be? I know we don’t have anybody to compare it to yet.”

  “That’s the bad news,” he said. “The department is doing a halfhearted job of coming up with any suspects. If we can’t get some more from Othella—”

  “Ophelia, Nick,” I said. “Her name’s Ophelia.”

  “Look, I’m trying, okay? And I’m the only one who is, so just cut me some slack.”

  I chewed at my thumbnail.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t know why, but this case has got under my skin or something.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I told you, I’m just a mess. What were you saying?”

  “If we can’t get her to give us more about what happened, they’re going to shelve this as a cold case.”

  “Do you want to try talking to her again?” I said. “She’s upstairs.”

  “No. I’m here.”

  Ophelia moved across the kitchen, her hand out to Nicholas. He made no attempt to hide his outright astonishment as he shook it and watched her flow over to the stove and pour our tea. I really hoped this kid didn’t play poker.


  I couldn’t blame him. With her hair brushed and swinging down her back and her sweet figure clad in jeans and a top that didn’t offer her breasts up as a condiment, she looked like a different person than she had the night of the rape. She was still teeming with history beneath her caramel skin, however, and I didn’t want Nicholas to get his hopes up about how forthcoming she was likely to be.

  “Officer Kent needs to ask you some more questions,” I said. “Are you up for it?”

  It was my turn to be astonished. “I remembered something just today, just when I was waking up.”

  She still had her back to us, and I put my hand up to Nicholas. He nodded.

  “What did you remember?” I said.

  “I remember a profile.” Ophelia turned as if to demonstrate. “It was no features, you know, just black.”

  “Like a silhouette,” I said.

  “Yes. That’s the word.”

  “Can you describe it?” I said.

  “It was handsome,” she said. “But ugly.”

  I could feel Nicholas all but groaning.

  “Handsome because of the nose and the chin, but ugly because—of what he did.”

  Ophelia’s eyes filled, and I knew we were about to lose her into her pain again. I could feel myself falling, for that matter. But I had an idea.

  “Desmond!” I said.

  “I’m sleepin’,” he answered from the bedroom.

  “Wake up. I have a job for you.”

  Nicholas looked at me quizzically as I vacated the seat and nodded at Desmond, who appeared in his bedroom doorway.

  “You’ll need your sketchbook,” I said. “It’s police business.”

  I held my breath as he disappeared back into his room, but he came out with the book under his arm and a pencil behind his ear. He nodded at Nicholas and took his place on the chair, all with a glimmer of his cocky self in there somewhere.

  “Ophelia’s going to describe a person to you,” I said, “and we need for you to draw it as best you can from her description.”

  He squinched his cheeks up to his eyes. “I don’t get to see this person Imma be drawin’?”

  “No,” I said. “Is that a problem?”

  “Yeah, it’s a problem, Big Al. I always got to see who I’m drawin’.”

  Something about that didn’t ring true, but I didn’t have time to go there. “Just give it a try, okay? Ophelia, why don’t you sit where Officer Kent is …”

  For the next several minutes, Nicholas and I watched as Ophelia closed her eyes and, judging from the tightness of her forehead, strained to see that handsome-ugly profile yet again. Tears slipped from under her eyelids, but she finally began her description.

  Hair smooth, only coming up like fingers right in the front.

  Forehead that ended at his regular nose.

  “Ain’t no such thing as a regular nose,” Desmond told her. “You gon’ hafta looka here at what I’m drawin’ and tell me is it right.”

  From that point on she stood at his elbow, making the picture with her fingers and watching as Desmond transferred it to the paper. After several false starts, she watched him sketch and shade for a long time until she gasped and grabbed for the table. I caught her before she made it to the floor.

  “That’s him!” she said. “That’s him, Miss Angel!”

  “Okay, you did good,” I said. “You did great. Desmond, can you help Ophelia into the living room and stay with her till I get there?”

  “You need the big chair, Miss Ofeelins,” Desmond said as he took her from me—with far more therapeutic expertise than a twelve-year-old should have.

  “There you go,” I said to Nicholas.

  He shook his head at the drawing. “It’s pretty amazing that he can do that, but I don’t know how much it’s actually going to help us. Like you said, it’s just a silhouette. Unless we see this guy standing sideways in a dark alley.”

  “Don’t you think that’s exactly where we are going to see him?” I said.

  He scratched at his head. “I don’t know. I keep thinking about how she said he dropped her off in front of your house. I don’t see some West King Street wino driving her here. Besides, not to sound racist, but does this guy look African American to you?”

  “Not typically, no. Whatever that is. Okay, so it’s a long shot. Do what you can with it. I’m going to make a copy and give it to a guy I know. Maybe he can get them to print it in the paper.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “Y’know what, Nicholas,” I said. “Luck has nothing whatsoever to do with it.”

  My phone rang and I held up a finger to him. “We’re not done,” I said. “Hello, this is Allison.”

  “Miss Chamberlain, it’s Doug Doyle.”

  Nicholas Kent and everything else around me disappeared down a tunnel.

  “What is it?” I said. “What’s wrong?”

  “No, it’s good news,” he said. “Your Chief is awake.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Doug Doyle stopped me at the nurse’s station, and it was all I could do not to knock him down and trample over him so I could get to Chief. But then my stomach turned over and I grabbed his sleeve.

  “What’s wrong? Is there brain damage?”

  “No—”

  “What is it—why won’t you let me see him?”

  His face fought a smile. “I’m going to let you see him. I don’t think I have much choice.”

  “Okay. Then what?”

  “You just need to keep it low key,” he said. “He still doesn’t remember much.”

  “Will he know me?”

  He looked at the nurse behind the counter.

  She glanced up from her computer. “The first thing he said when he opened his eyes was, ‘Where’s Allison?’”

  Dr. Doyle let the smile win. “I think that’s conclusive.”

  “So …”

  “Don’t ask him a lot of questions, and if he drifts off to sleep, that’s okay. We want him to rest. I know it seems like all he’s been doing is resting, but it’s a different kind.”

  I left him giving the neuro-lecture to the nurse and bolted for Chief’s door. I stopped just inside, and I closed my eyes, and I felt the pain in my gut release, just enough so that I could breathe. Just enough to hear—

  It is good, yes?

  Yes, God, it is very, very good.

  Chief’s face was as mushy and soft as a three-year-old’s in those first fuzzy moments after a nap. His eyes stayed closed long enough for me to wish I could crawl in with him, and pull him onto my lap, and kiss the backs of his hands. When he opened them, all I could do was grin.

  “Where have you been, Classic?” he said.

  “Don’t give me grief, dude. I’ve been here every day. I can’t help it if you waited for me to leave before you finally decided to wake up.”

  “I know.”

  “You know what?” I heard my voice threatening to crack.

  “I know you were here. But you never stood across the room.”

  I laughed like the teenager I never was and went to the bed. His hand groped for mine.

  “How’s our boy?” he said.

  “Ornery as ever,” I lied. “He’s just about milked all the sick leave he’s going to get out of that broken collarbone.”

  “They weren’t lying then. He wasn’t hurt that bad.”

  Not physically, I wanted to say. But, Chief, he’s not the same.

  I was glad his eyes fluttered closed because I knew he would have read it in mine. I blew out some air.

  “Your bike,” he said, eyes still shut. “Was it totaled?”

  “Yes. That’s the last time I’m letting you ride it. And just so you know, I still have yours.”r />
  He opened his eyes to slits and gave me a half smile.

  “I’m not riding it, though,” I said.

  “You can. You should. You can do it.”

  “Are you sure you’re not still in a coma?”

  He squeezed my hand. It was surprisingly strong, that squeeze. The need to hold him, all of him, pounded in me, and I had to do something, even if it was wrong.

  “You said you knew I was here,” I said. “Do you remember what I told you?”

  “No. I just knew when you were here and when you weren’t.”

  My Adam’s apple rivaled Desmond’s as I swallowed. “Y’know, I hate to repeat myself—”

  “Had a personality transplant while I was asleep, did you?”

  “Jack?” a male voice said behind me.

  I wasn’t that crazy about Detective Kylie under any circumstances. Right now, I could have ripped out his nose hairs.

  “Just need to ask you a few questions,” he said.

  He nodded at me as if he expected me to step out, which would have taken an act of Congress at that point. I didn’t move from my spot next to Chief, which necessitated Kylie going to the other side of the bed. In the meantime, Chief’s eyes closed.

  “What’s the matter?” Kylie said. “Is he out again?”

  “Must be,” I said. “Darn the luck, huh?”

  “Classic,” Chief said.

  Kylie shot me a look and leaned over Chief.

  “Just need to ask you about the accident and then I’ll leave you alone.”

  “I don’t remember anything.”

  Kylie’s eyebrows met over his nose. “Nothing?”

  “I feel like Humpty Dumpty.” Chief’s voice grew drowsy. “Everything about that day is lying on the ground around me and I can’t put the pieces back together again. Don’t bother with the king’s horses and the king’s men.”

  “I don’t follow,” Kylie said.

  Chief didn’t answer. His breathing was restful and easy and rhythmic.

  “He’s just asleep,” I said.

  “Which is right where we want him to be.” The nurse from the station stepped briskly to the foot of the bed. “The doc says no more talking until tomorrow. Let him get a good night’s sleep and you can pick it up from there.”

  As Detective Kylie left, I wondered if he’d be able to pick up anything at all. I wasn’t quite believing Chief remembered absolutely nothing. I might not have known that he had an ex-wife or that the HOGs were his only family, but I did know Chief’s honest, no-nonsense voice, and that whole thing about Humpty Dumpty? That wasn’t Chief at all.