Dream a Little Dream (27 page)

“Gabe, don’t listen to him,” Jane said. “Don’t listen to Ethan either. I like the Widow Snopes.”

Gabe felt duty-bound to point out the obvious. “That’s nice to hear, but I don’t believe you’ve ever met her, have you?”

“No,” his sister-in-law replied in her no-nonsense voice. “But I lived in her awful house. When Cal and I were having all our trouble—I know it sounds silly, but whenever I was in her bedroom or the nursery, I’d feel this funny kinship with her. There was this wickedness about the rest of the house, and a goodness about those two rooms. I always thought it came from her.”

He heard a bark of skeptical laughter from his brother in the background.

Gabe smiled. “Rachel’s the farthest thing I can imagine from a saint, Jane. But you’re right. She’s a good person, and she’s having a tough time. Try to keep big brother off my back for a while, will you?”

“I’ll do my best. Good luck, Gabe.”

He made some other calls, including one to Odell Hatcher, then packed up the perishables from the refrigerator and headed back to Heartache Mountain. It was mid-afternoon when he parked next to the garage. The cottage windows were open and the front door unlocked, but Rachel and the boy weren’t inside.

He carried the groceries into the kitchen and unloaded them in the refrigerator. When he turned around, he saw the boy standing just inside the back door. He’d entered so quietly that Gabe hadn’t heard him.

Gabe remembered the way Jamie had flown into their big old rambling North Georgia farmhouse, door slamming, sneakers banging, usually yelling at the top of his small lungs that he’d found a special earthworm or needed a broken toy repaired.

“Is your mother outside?”

The boy looked down at the floor.

“Please answer me, Edward,” Gabe said quietly.

“Yes,” the boy murmured.

“Yes, what?”

The boy’s shoulders stiffened. He didn’t lift his head.

The child definitely needed some toughening up, for his own sake. Gabe forced himself to speak quietly, patiently. “Look at me.”

Slowly, Edward lifted his head.

“When you talk to me, Edward, I want you to say, ‘Yes, sir’ or ‘No, sir.’ ‘Yes, ma’am’ and ‘No, ma’am’ when you talk to your mother or Kristy or any lady. You’re living in North Carolina now, and that’s the way polite children speak around here. Do you understand?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Edward . . .” Gabe’s tone carried a soft warning note.

“My name’s not Edward.”

“That’s what your mother calls you.”

“She’s allowed,” he said sullenly. “Not you.”

“What am I supposed to call you?”

The child hesitated and then muttered, “Chip.”

“Chip?”

“Don’t like Edward. Want everybody to call me Chip.”

Gabe considered trying to explain to him that Chip Stone might not be the best choice of names, then abandoned the idea. He’d always been good with children, but not this one. This one was too strange.

“Edward, did you find the ball of string?”

The back door opened and Rachel came in. Her dirty hands and smudged nose indicated that she’d been working in the garden. Her gaze immediately flew to her son, as if she were afraid Gabe might have used thumbscrews on him when she wasn’t looking. Her attitude made him feel guilty, and he didn’t like that.

“Edward?”

The boy went over to the old cupboard, tugged open the left drawer with both hands, and pulled out the twine ball that had been there, in one form or another, for as long as Gabe could remember.

“Put it with the bucket I was using, would you?”

He nodded, then gave Gabe a wary glance. “Yes, ma’am.”

Rachel regarded him quizzically. Edward let himself out the back door.

“Why’d you name him Edward?” Gabe asked, before she could start in on him about what had happened that morning with the garter snake.

“It was my grandfather’s name. My grandmother made me promise to name my first son after him.”

“Couldn’t you call him Ed or something? Eddie? Nobody calls little kids Edward anymore.”

“Excuse me. I seem to have forgotten . . . Exactly which part of this is your business?”

“All I’m saying is that he doesn’t like his name. He told me I have to call him Chip.”

Dark-green storm clouds gathered in her eyes. “Are you sure you’re not the one who told him something was wrong with his name? Maybe
you
told him he should call himself Chip.”

“No.”

She stalked forward, finger pointed toward his chest like a pistol. “Leave my son alone.”
Bang!
“And don’t you dare interfere between us again the way you did this morning.”
Bang! Bang!

She’d never been one to mince words, and she kept after him. “What you did with that snake was cruel, and I won’t allow it. If you try anything like that again, you can move right back out of here.”

The fact that she was right made Gabe feel cornered. “In case you’ve forgotten, this is my house.” It was his mother’s. Close enough.

“I haven’t forgotten anything.”

A small flutter of movement in the periphery of his vision caught Gabe’s attention. He looked past Rachel’s shoulder toward the screen door and saw Edward standing there, taking in the argument.

Even through the screen, Gabe could sense his watchfulness, as if he were guarding his mother.

“I mean it, Gabe. Leave Edward alone.”

He said nothing, merely looked past her toward the door. Edward realized he’d been spotted and disappeared from view.

The lines of strain at the corners of Rachel’s mouth put Gabe out of the mood to argue with her. Instead, he wanted to pull her back to the bedroom and start all over again. He couldn’t get enough of her. But they weren’t alone . . .

He extracted the square of paper he’d stuck in his back pocket and unfolded it. It was his guilt offering for what had happened that morning, but she didn’t have to know it. “Odell gave me the the names of everybody who was at the airstrip the night G. Dwayne escaped.”

Her bad mood vanished. “Oh, Gabe, thank you!” She snatched the list from him and sat down at the kitchen table. “Is this right? There are only ten names on the list. It seemed as if there were a hundred men there that night.”

“Four from the sheriff’s office, and Salvation’s entire police force. That’s it.”

Just as she started to study the list more closely, they heard a car approaching. He went into the living room ahead of her, then relaxed as he saw Kristy get out of her Honda. She was dressed to kill in khaki shorts and a slinky green top.

Rachel hurried to greet her. Edward raced around from the side and threw himself at Kristy. “You came back!”

“I told you I would.” She bent down and kissed the top of his head. “I’m tired of working, so I came by to see if you want to go to the pig roast with me this afternoon.”

“Wow! Can I, Mom? Can I?”

“Sure. But go clean up first.”

Gabe wandered back to the kitchen and was pouring himself a cup of Rachel’s pansy-assed coffee when the two women came in.

“But why would you want Dwayne’s Bible? What do you—” Kristy broke off as she caught sight of him. He knew she’d been worried about Rachel being here alone, and he detected relief in her expression. “Hi, Gabe.”

“Kristy.”

“I want the Bible for Edward,” Rachel said, without looking at him. “It’s a family heirloom.”

So, Gabe thought. She wasn’t even going to tell Kristy the truth. He was the only one who knew.

Kristy sat down at the table and studied the list.

“One of these men had to have stolen it the night they confiscated my car.” Rachel picked up the cup of coffee Gabe had just poured for himself and took a sip. He didn’t know why, but it felt nice to be taken for granted. Rachel seemed to be the only person who expected anything from him these days.

Kristy regarded the list thoughtfully. “Not Pete Moore. He hasn’t been inside a church in years.”

Rachel leaned back against the sink and cradled the mug in both hands. “The person who took it might not have done it for religious reasons. He could very well have wanted it as a curiosity piece.”

In the end, Kristy entirely eliminated six names and said the other four were highly unlikely, but Rachel refused to be discouraged. “I’ll start with those, but if I don’t discover anything, I’m talking to the rest.”

The boy rushed into the kitchen. “I’m clean! Can we go, Kristy? Are they going to have a real pig there?”

As Rachel went over to check Edward’s hands, Gabe picked up the coffee mug she’d abandoned and walked out onto the back porch. A few minutes later, he heard Kristy’s car drive away.

Quiet once again settled over Heartache Mountain. He and Rachel would have the cottage to themselves for the rest of the afternoon. Heat rushed through his veins. God bless Kristy Brown.

He shut his eyes for a moment, ashamed of how much he wanted Rachel, because he didn’t love her. He couldn’t. That part of him no longer worked. But he loved being with her. She calmed something inside him.

The screen door banged behind him. He turned toward her, only to feel his anticipation fade as he saw the determined look in her eyes.

“Let’s go, Gabe. We’re going to find that Bible right now.”

He got ready to argue, but then gave up. What was the use? Rachel’s mind was made up.

“A
nother waste
of time,” Gabe said as he closed the door of his truck.

The interior was hot, and the seat belt burned Rachel’s fingers as she snapped it together over the skirt of the dress she’d been reserving for a special occasion, a square-neck yellow cotton printed with black-and-orange monarch butterflies. “We only have one more name to go.”

“Let’s eat instead. I could use a hamburger.”

“I swear you have a tapeworm. We just ate an hour ago.”

“I’m hungry again. Besides, checking up on Rick Nagel’s going to be an even bigger waste of time than this was. The fact that he cheated off Kristy’s geography test when she was in fifth grade doesn’t mean he should be a suspect.”

“I trust Kristy’s instincts.”

Gravel crunched beneath the tires as Gabe backed out of Warren Roy’s short driveway. Rachel watched him flip on the air conditioner. At the same time, he gave her a look that combined both tolerance and irritation. He thought she was on a wild-goose chase, and he was probably right. The blank expressions on the faces of the first two men they’d visited had convinced her neither one had any idea what she was talking about. Still, the Bible had to be somewhere.

Something had been nagging at her ever since she’d first seen the list, and once again, she took out the paper to study the names. Bill Keck . . . Frank Keegan . . . Phil Dennis . . . Kirk DeMerchant . . . She hadn’t known any of them.

Dennis
. Her gaze shot back up the list. “Phil Dennis? Is he related to Carol?”

“Her brother-in-law. Why?”

She jabbed her finger at the paper. “He was there that night.”

“Then you’re out of luck. I heard he moved out west a couple of years ago, so if he took your Bible, it’s long gone.”

“Not if he gave it to Carol.”

“Why would he do that?”

“She was loyal to Dwayne. She still believes in him, and that Bible would mean a lot to her. Maybe her brother-in-law knew that and took it.”

“Or maybe not.”

“You could be a little more encouraging, you know.”

“This is as encouraging as I get.”

His attitude was irritating, but at least he was sticking by her. She studied his profile with its hard planes and blunt angles and thought about telling him a knock-knock joke so she could watch his face soften when he smiled. A lassitude stole through her, a need for him that wasn’t going away. She wanted to tell him to turn his truck around and head right back up Heartache Mountain, but she couldn’t do that, so she concentrated on folding the paper instead. “I want to see Carol next.”

She waited for him to protest. Instead, he sighed. “You sure you don’t want to get a hamburger?”

“If I eat another hamburger, I’ll start to moo. Please, Gabe. Take me to Carol’s house.”

“I’ll just bet she’s another charter member of your fan club,” he grumbled.

“Um.” No need to tell him exactly how much Carol Dennis disliked her.

Carol lived in a white colonial tract house set on a rectangular lot fronted by two symmetrically planted young maples. Matching redwood planters filled with purple and pink petunias sat on each side of the front door, which was painted Williamsburg-blue and held a grapevine wreath decorated with yellow silk flowers. Rachel stepped ahead of Gabe and braced herself for what could only be an unpleasant interview, but before she could push the bell, the door opened and two teenage boys came out, followed by Bobby Dennis.

It had been nearly a month since she’d seen him with his mother at the grocery store, but as he caught sight of her, his face hardened with the same hostility. “What do you want?”

Gabe stiffened at her side.

“I’d like to speak with your mother,” she said quickly.

He grabbed the cigarette the red-haired boy on his right had just lit, took a drag, and handed it back. “She’s not here.”