Authors: Lynn Michaels
Absently, Quillen rubbed the hair that rose on her left arm. How right Tucker was. Someone very easily could have been killed.
“The seismometer was a threat, wasn’t it,” she asked slowly, “because you knew then when they blasted, right?”
“Sure, and approximately where, how large the charge was—”
The doorbell interrupted him and Quillen jumped.
“I told you not to gloat,” she snapped.
“Why don’t you answer the door,” he suggested patiently, “
before
you call the bailbondsman?”
“I think I should ignore it.”
“That’s avoidance.” He groaned a little as he sat up on the side of the bed. “Answer the door, love.”
Muttering under her breath, Quillen tugged her aquamarine shift over her head as she crossed the studio. The bell rang again as she entered the living room and switched on a lamp.
“Who’s there?” she called.
“Jason. I’m alone, are you?”
“No.”
“Good, let me in.”
He sounded happy. Too happy; and though Quillen was pretty sure she knew what that meant, she unlocked and opened the door anyway. A very rumpled, grinning, and very drunk Jason stumbled inside.
“Still wanna open our own studio?” he asked, throwing the brown suit coat flung over his shoulder at the love seat.
It missed and hit the floor, and Quillen picked it up. She folded it over her arm and frowned at him.
“Why the sudden change of heart?”
“I got fired,” he announced, his grin widening. “When D.C. came to, he missed the plans and accused me of giving them to you. I said, ‘What plans?’ and he said, ‘You’re fired.’”
“Oh, Jason.” Quillen sighed, closing her eyes and raising the fingertips of her hand to her temple.
“Well, if it isn’t Jack Dempsey. How’s the hand?”
Quillen opened her eyes and looked at Tucker leaning in the archway on his right elbow. He’d reknotted a yellow bath towel around his waist, and she bit her lip at the large, purplish splotch discoloring his torso above and below the tape.
“Just fine,” he answered evenly, waggling the splint at Jason. “How’s your head?”
“Which one?” Jason laughed.
Oh, brother, Quillen thought, shaking her head again, is he snockered.
“How about some coffee?” Tucker asked.
“Love some, but I can’t stay. I just stopped in to let you know D.C. plans to press charges. He was on the phone with Sheriff Blackburn when I left.”
“I told you,” Quillen said sharply, shooting a glare at Tucker, who shrugged indifferently and then winced.
“I wouldn’t back him up,” Jason went on, listing to the left as he reached for his jacket on Quillen’s arm, “but Mildred probably will. If D.C. said black was white—” The bell chimed again, and Jason lurched in a circle to face the door, his suit coat dangling precariously from two fingers. “Uh-oh, John Law,” he announced, suddenly sounding very sober. “If I were you, Ferris, I’d slip out the back door.”
“In a bath towel?” he retorted dryly. “I think not.”
“You could go in the bedroom and shut the door,” Quillen suggested hopefully.
“No,” Tucker answered firmly. “Open the door, Quillen.”
“And point me upstairs while you’re at it,” Jason added, weaving across the room behind her. With a broad, expansive grin, he said, “Hi, John,” to Sheriff Blackburn when she opened the door.
The sheriff, whose first name was Phillip, raised a curious eyebrow at Jason, and then one hand to his elbow as the younger
man tripped up the first step. “’Lo, Jason,” he replied as he gave him a gentle push toward the railing.
“Thanks, John.” Jason grinned over his shoulder and veered crookedly up the steps toward the landing.
Frowning and shaking his head, Sheriff Blackburn stood beside Quillen watching him bump from wall to banister and back again. Once he’d wobbled around the corner, the sheriff swept off his hat and turned toward her. “It’s a miracle that young fella’s got a liver left,” he said in a low voice, then asked, in a normal tone, “And how are you feeling, young lady?”
“Just fine.”
She smiled thinly.
“Good. Would you happen to know where Mr. Ferris is this evening? I’d like to talk to him.”
“I’m right here, sheriff,” Tucker answered before she could open her mouth.
Reluctantly Quillen backed out of the way and let him enter. As she shut the door she looked over her shoulder at Tucker, still leaning nonchalantly in the archway.
“If you’ll give me a minute,” he said, “I’ll put my pants on and we can go.”
“Go where?” Sheriff Blackburn asked as he stepped past Quillen and sat down on the closest raspberry wing chair.
“Oops.” Tucker cocked his head warily to one side. “I think I’d better claim the Fifth here.”
“No, I think you’d better tell me what you and your uncle argued about this afternoon. I’ve heard his version, now I’d like to hear yours.”
Once Tucker had related the conversation on the creek bank, he backed up and explained the blast he and Quillen—and half the town, probably, he added—had felt on Sunday night. Yes, Sheriff Blackburn confirmed, his office had received several calls that night. While the two men talked, Quillen leaned against the door listening, scarcely breathing, and watching the sheriff’s face. His wrinkle-edged brown eyes shifted twice in her direction, once when Tucker mentioned the new shaft in her mine, and again when he told the sheriff about the nuggets he’d found in the Cassil Construction truck. When he finished, Sheriff Blackburn leaned back in his chair, his elbows resting on the arms, and his fingers steepled at his chin.
“Well.” He looked steadily at Quillen. “Looks like somebody’s finally found your daddy’s gold, young lady.”
“Correction,” Tucker said, “somebody
thinks
they have. There’s no gold in that mine.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
“Did you tell your uncle that?”
“Several times,” Tucker admitted, glancing a quick, apologetic smile at Quillen. “I told him again this afternoon as a matter of fact.”
“And what’d he say?”
“Nothing. He just laughed.”
Quillen stifled a shiver and rubbed her arm.
“Sounds like he didn’t believe you. Why do you suppose that is? You’re a geologist.”
“I’m also his nephew,” Tucker pointed out, just a hint of irritation in his voice. “My degrees don’t impress him. In his mind, I’m still the skinny little twelve-year-old he used to fleece at gin rummy. But we both know there’s no gold in that mine.”
Leaning forward, Sheriff Blackburn parked his elbows on his knees. He smiled and laced his fingers together.
“Sometimes,” he said slowly, “it’s hard to accept instruction from the young.”
His comment was a roundabout apology for his earlier stubbornness. Quillen recognized it as such, but held her breath until she saw the slow, answering smile spread across Tucker’s face.
“I’ve got a signed complaint in my pocket sworn against you by your uncle,” the sheriff told him, “but I can’t arrest you if I can’t find you. My log book will show that I visited your apartment and your landlady, but that you weren’t home and that Quillen hadn’t seen you since this afternoon.” He picked up his hat, rose, and walked toward Quillen.
“Why,” Tucker asked, “are you doing this?”
“Three reasons.” Sheriff Blackburn stopped beside Quillen, cupped a weather-worn palm around her elbow, and winked at her as he looked back at Tucker. “First, ’cause I’ve wanted to poke Desmond Cassil in the nose for many years, but second and third because Jeff McCain was a friend of mine and I’ve only got four deputies. The festival weekends keep us busier than one-armed paper hangers, and I can’t spare a man to keep an eye on this young lady. Much as I’d love to lock up your uncle—and sure as I am that he’s up to no good—I couldn’t hold him five minutes on the paltry evidence I have. Until such time as I can make a case against him that’ll stick in court, Quillen needs somebody looking out for her, and I’ve decided that somebody is you.” He paused and his hand tightened on her arm. “Don’t disappoint me.”
“I won’t,” Tucker assured him quietly.
“I didn’t think you would.” Sheriff Blackburn gently eased Quillen aside and let himself out.
A second or two later, she heard the front door click shut, looked at Tucker, and sniffed back the tears smarting in her eyes. He smiled at her and rubbed his bruised rib cage.
“It’s official, love. You’ve been entrusted to my care.”
“I already was,” she answered, walking across the room to take his hand. “Unofficially,” she added, smiling over her shoulder as she led him back to the bedroom.
Chapter Ten
The next morning, Tucker could barely move, and Quillen wasn’t in much better shape. Her bruised, abraded feet were swollen, and the effort involved in hobbling around the bedroom and the kitchen made her bite her lip and brought tears to her eyes. She made tea and toast, limped it back to the bedroom on a lap tray, and forced herself to eat. Beside her, Tucker made a face as he chewed, and then groaned.
“It even hurts to swallow,” he said, tossing a half eaten piece of toast on his plate.
“Maybe a hot bath would help,” she suggested.
A mischievous smile curled one corner of his mouth. “I’m game if you are.”
“Right.” She arched a wry eyebrow at him, dragged herself off the bed, and winced her way to the bathroom.
Oohing and ahhing with every step he took, Tucker followed her a few minutes later and eased himself, muttering curses, into the half-filled tub. While he soaked in steaming water, Quillen fetched a plastic dishpan from the kitchen, filled it in the bathroom sink, and added Epsom salts. She put it on the floor in front of the toilet, lowered the lid, and sat down. Submerging her feet in the water, she sighed and leaned back against the tank.
“Aren’t we a fine pair?” Tucker asked morosely. “Doesn’t this scare the hell out of you when you think that someday we’re going to be old and we’ll wake up every morning feeling like this?”
“Thank you,” Quillen quipped sarcastically, “O prophet of doom.”
They spent the morning soaking and taking turns massaging Ben-Gay into each other’s aching, creaking muscles. By noon they were genuinely hungry and as wrinkled as the octogenarians they felt like. Quillen turned grilled cheese sandwiches in a skillet and Tucker stirred a saucepan which held enough cocoa to float the Queen Mary. She nearly gagged when he spread grape jelly on his three sandwiches, but got even by adding marshmallows—which Tucker said he abhorred—to her cocoa.
“I think I may live,” he announced with a sigh as he leaned back in his chair at the table. “Remember this when we’re sixty-five, love.”
“I hope we live to be sixty-five,”
she said pensively, poking at a half-melted marshmallow bobbing on the surface of her mug.
“What makes you think we won’t?”
“I don’t, really.” Quillen lifted one shoulder in what she hoped was a convincingly nonchalant shrug and looked up at him. “I’m still kind of jumpy from yesterday, I guess.”
“Jumpy or scared?” he asked with a gentle smile.
“Scared,” she admitted. “I was okay until Sheriff Blackburn showed up last night.”
“I think he meant to reassure you.”
“I know that, still—” Her voice trailed off; she tried to shrug again and only managed to shiver. “He was very careful not to say so, but I got the distinct impression that he thinks Cassil may be trying to kill me.”
“I didn’t get that impression at all.”
“Tucker.” She spoke his name sharply. “Don’t snow me, okay? I’m not stupid.”
“I’m not, Quillen. I honestly think he was very careful about what he said so he
wouldn’t
give you that impression.”
“Really?”
“
Real
ly,” he repeated emphatically, and smiled.
Again, because she loved him, she believed him.
Gritting his teeth and bracing his hands on the table, Tucker counted to three and pushed himself to his feet.
The grimace on his face disappeared and a startled, pleased smile lit his face.
“Hey, that was almost painless,” he told Quillen. “While I can still move, can I borrow your truck for a while?”
“Sure. Where are you going?”
“To my uncle’s house to pick up my belongings from the front lawn, where he told me yesterday morning he was going to throw them as soon as he got home.” He started toward the bedroom and Quillen followed. “He said I had until this afternoon to collect them, and then he was going to call the Salvation Army.”
“He would, too,” Quillen replied disgustedly.
“You bet he would,” Tucker agreed, shaking his ruined, blue plaid shirt and filthy jeans out of the pile on the floor where he’d thrown them yesterday. “Especially after I decked him in the afternoon. But if I know my Aunt Grace, she snuck outside last night after he went to bed and packed it all in my suitcases.”
Because he was getting dressed, Quillen did, too, in jeans and an old Colorado State sweatshirt. She gave him her keys then, and walked him to the back door.
“Want to come?” he asked.