Authors: Nancy Bush
Jordanna also kept Dutton’s regression into the persona of Boo from Agnes, though she touched on it in her series as well. That division had apparently started when his mother had begun to fail and taken out her aggressions physically on her oldest son. To get him out of her sight, Kate Sazlow had sent Dutton to work at the Calverson farm at a very young age. There, he’d encountered Gerald Calverson, a rigid taskmaster with a sadistic streak, who had branded the boy, all under the guise of an accident that Jordanna just didn’t believe. It seemed like Nate might share in some of his father’s traits, she thought, recalling how he’d ordered around the poor kid cleaning out the stalls. Though the Calversons were no relations to the Benchleys, they certainly had their own dark family history.
She was just closing her computer when she heard Dance open the back door. Dayton had blessed them with a working refrigerator, and though they’d both protested that they were only at the homestead temporarily, neither had made any serious effort to leave yet.
“How’d it go?” she asked, when he appeared in the doorway, holding a bag from Braxton’s Pharmacy. His injury was well on the way to being completely healed and he’d given up the cane shortly after the debacle at the Sazlow farm. Dutton was also healing, she’d heard, and was awaiting his fate in a jail cell. Everyone suspected he would never be pronounced fit for trial.
“Okay,” he said. “Max apologized to me.”
Jordanna’s brows lifted. “What happened?”
“Guess he finally realized none of it was my fault.”
He came and sat down beside her on the couch.
Dance had been driving back and forth from Rock Springs to Portland and back again, dealing with the aftermath of the bombing and the involvement of the Saldanos. Carmen had been arrested and had immediately hired a high-powered attorney, loudly insisting that she was innocent, and it was all a setup. Victor’s health had taken a steep nosedive, and until today, apparently, Maxwell had given Dance the cold shoulder, especially when it appeared that the two men on the audiotape had been under Victor’s personal employ. Apparently, Victor had sporadically smuggled in stolen artifacts from other countries, intending them for his personal collection. He’d learned of Carmen’s plan and had faked his heart “attack” to make certain his son was safe. Dance was working with the police to bring all the evidence to light.
“How’s the writing going?” he asked, throwing an arm over her shoulder.
“I’m kind of tired of it.” She glanced at the bag. “What’s in the bag? Lunch?”
“Well . . . it’s almost edible.” He pulled out a bottle of lime-pomegranate body wash.
Jordanna grinned. Since their first night together, she’d been thinking about his body pressed to hers, slick and wet. “Think your injury can handle it?”
His snort of derision said it all. She kissed him hard on the mouth, laughing, as he pulled her to her feet.
Epilogue
The late-June day was warm and bright with none of the “June gloom” so often associated with the month along the West Coast. September walked along the beach with her cell phone pressed to her ear, her sister, July, strolling beside her, baby Junie strapped into a Baby Bjorn across her front.
“You seriously get enough signal here?” July asked skeptically.
September nodded, listening to her brother recount what had gone down with the Saldano case.
“. . . lawyers are trying to get her off,” Auggie was saying, “but I don’t think all her father’s money is going to help. The videotape’s damning, and with the audiotape Danziger provided, Victor Saldano’s goose is cooked, too.”
“What about Maxwell?” she asked.
“So far he’s in the clear. Maybe he knew something about the smuggling, but if he had a clue about the bombing, he should get an Academy Award, because that was some acting. I think he always thought it was sabotage, and that’s what it looked like.”
“Danziger’s lucky, then, that Jordanna Winters got him out of the hospital, because Carmen doesn’t seem like the kind of woman to give up.” She heard beeping in her ear and pulled the phone away to see who was calling. “Auggie, I gotta go, it’s Gretchen,” she said when the cell was to her mouth again.
“Even when you’re on vacation,” he tut-tutted. “You’re as bad as I am.”
“You got that right.” She said good-bye and clicked over. “This better be good, Sanders, because I’m walking on the beach with my sister and my new niece, and Jake’s back at the cottage we rented, getting his three favorite women appetizers and wine from both the Westerly and Rafferty vineyards, though of course July’s drinking grape juice and, well, Junie’s on breast milk.”
July blew a raspberry, but she was smiling, looking down at her sleeping baby with tenderness.
“You’re gonna want to cut that vacation short,” her partner predicted. “Remember Fairy and Craig and the skeletons in the closet?”
“I’m not likely to forget.”
“Finally got all the forensic work back. Remember there was Gramps and Gran and Uncle Harry, too. Lots of stealing money from the government. But wait, there’s more. A new guy, too. This one’s about our age, so no one’s hiding him in order to cash his Social Security check.”
“Really?” September said.
“Bones are pretty clean, so he’s been there awhile. Looks like we got ourselves a bona fide case, Detective Rafferty. When can you get back?”
September looked at her sister, then out across the restless gray ocean, the frothy white waves rushing up the beach and nearly touching her sneakers, then down at her bare finger, the one she’d decided probably needed that ring after all. Nothing like a newborn baby to put things in perspective. And no, she wasn’t ready for motherhood yet, but geez Louise, time had a way of running faster and faster, and putting off marriage to the man she loved because she felt conspicuous about wearing a ring? What the hell was the matter with her?
“Oh, no, what’s she saying?” July asked, reading September’s expression correctly. “You promised a whole week, remember?”
September nodded to July, and said, “I’ll be back on Monday,” to Gretchen.
“Come on, Nine. I could have this thing solved by then,” Gretchen protested. “Come back tomorrow.”
“Monday,” she reiterated, clicking off as Gretchen swore pungently. Then she leaned over and kissed Junie’s clean little brow, her mind traveling along pathways she tried to ignore.
“You’re not going to make it till Monday,” July predicted.
“Sure I will.”
“Wanna put a hundred dollars on that?”
September started to protest, to tell her sister she was all wet. She wasn’t nearly as gung-ho as her partner about these kinds of weird cases. But, she could admit a little tickle of interest growing, a desire to know the truth. Extra bones? Someone around her age dumped into the mix at the house on Aurora Lane? A possible homicide?
July had thrust out her hand, waiting for September to shake on the bet. September curled her fingers into her palms, ignoring the request, and July laughed out loud, an “I told you so” evident in her amused eyes.
ZEBRA BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2015 by Nancy Bush
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ISBN: 978-1-4201-3464-3
First Electronic Edition: July 2015
eISBN-13: 978-1-4201-3465-0
eISBN-10: 1-4201-3465-5
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