“Language, Raymond,” Heath’s mother said, but she added a wink to let him know she was only half serious.
“Hey, Aunt Serena,” he said contritely, stepping up to give his aunt a hug. “Heard you been in Phoenix.”
“I have,” she said to him, stepping back to look him up and down. “But I’m back now. And while Heath is away, working on his television show, he’s going to put me in charge of making this place livable. Won’t that be fun?”
I had the distinct impression that while it would most likely be great fun for Mrs. Lujan, it was not going to be fun for Ray.
“Oh,” Ray said, barely catching himself before saying something that would get him in trouble. “Sure, Auntie. That sounds great. Hey, Heath, why don’t I show you what I’ve done so far?”
Heath turned to Gilley and me. We’d been left out of all the exchanges. “Want to come inside?”
“I’d love to,” I said.
Ray turned to look at me and caught himself again. “Oh, man! Where are my manners?” he said, thrusting his hand at me. “Hi, I’m Ray Whitefeather. You must be the chiquita my cousin keeps talking about in his e-mails, eh?”
“Uh . . . ,” I said, caught off guard while watching Heath’s face turn red.
“Why, hello!” said Gilley, practically pushing me out of the way to take Ray’s hand. “I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that I’m Gilley. But you can call me Gil.”
Ray’s eyes widened a little as he moved from attempting to shake my hand to Gilley’s. “Hey, Gil,” he said. “Nice to meet you. How do you know these guys?”
Gilley’s face registered a bit of shock. “I’m on the cable show with your cousin,” he said, as if he was trying to remind Ray of something he should already know.
“Ah,” said Ray, clearly trying to let go of Gilley’s palm, which was busy pumping his up and down.
“Let’s go inside!” I said, if only to end the awkward moment.
Heath turned and led the way, stopping by the security panel to punch in his code. When the panel continued to beep its warning, Heath turned to Ray and said, “What’d you do to it?”
“Sorry, bro,” Ray said, stepping forward quickly to punch in a series of numbers. “I had to change it ’cause I could never remember your code and I’ve got some tools in here I don’t want to get stolen.”
While Heath’s and Ray’s backs were turned, I grabbed Gil by the shoulder and whispered, “Behave!”
“He’s cute!” Gil responded just as quietly. “Do you think he’s single?”
“Hands off, Gil,” I warned. I was pretty sure that Ray was as straight as they came and would only be offended, even possibly angered, by Gilley’s advances.
Heath held the door open for us and we all went in. The interior was dark except for the light from the windows, but I could still tell the space held terrific promise.
Large and airy, the interior had wonderful flow, and even though it’d been gutted down to the studs, it still looked to be in great shape structurally. Heath and his cousin talked progress—or lack thereof—and Gilley and I took the opportunity to snoop around.
The home had a good-sized living room, which also flowed right into the dining room and the kitchen, with an island separating it from the eating area. Some of the appliances had been delivered but were clearly not in place yet, and Gil and I saw patches of work that had been started, but not completed. Around the corner of the kitchen was a separate bedroom that seemed large enough to be the master suite or a big spare bedroom. “I like this,” I said, feeling out the energy of the place. “I think when it’s done, Heath is really gonna dig it here.”
“Could you see yourself living here with him?” Gil asked me quietly.
I blinked. “Huh?”
“Oh, come on, M. J.! Haven’t you fantasized about you and Heath and a baby or two?”
“No!” I yelled loud enough for Heath to call out to me to see if I was all right. “Fine!” I assured him, then rounded on Gilley. “We’re not there yet.”
Gilley just cocked a skeptical eyebrow.
“We’re not even close to there yet.”
Gil folded his arms and continued with the raised eyebrow.
“I mean, we just started dating!”
Gil threw in a toe tap or two just for good measure.
“Oh!” I growled. “Whatever, Gil! Sometimes you’re impossible.”
I then moved out of the room to head upstairs. When Gil tried to follow me, I glared at him and he backed off. “Maybe I’ll check out the backyard,” he said.
I made my way to the top floor and over to the bedroom facing the front yard. Heath’s mother and his uncle were out there talking, and because the window pane was fairly thin, I had no trouble hearing their conversation.
“. . . the girl’s a medium like Heath,” Mrs. Lujan was saying. “When we went to Milton’s cabin, she saw what happened to him.”
“Pena says it was a mountain lion,” Rex said. “He’s got a hunting party out looking for it.”
“It wasn’t a mountain lion, Rex!” Mrs. Lujan snapped. “It was a demon.”
“A demon?” Rex repeated, and then he began to laugh. “What mind games have Heath and his girlfriend been playing on you, Serena?”
“No games!” she insisted. “I saw the girl with my own eyes, Rex! She went into a trance and she didn’t even flinch when I pinched her! I know she saw what happened to Milton that night, and it wasn’t natural.”
Rex’s body language suggested he didn’t believe any of it. “Why would a demon attack Milton?”
“It’s the enemy of the sky spirit,” his sister replied. “The black hawk. It’s come to take its revenge on the Whitefeathers.”
“You’ve been filling your head with too many old Indian fairy tales,” said her brother. “I talked to Cruz before we came here. He says the coroner is ruling it a cougar attack, which fits with what he says he saw at the cabin. Milt had a deer carcass hung from a tree, which he was going to clean the next morning. Cruz says it must have attracted the cougar and that’s what got Milt.”
“Why won’t you listen to me, Rex?” Mrs. Lujan asked. “Our brother was murdered by the spirit of the black hawk and you need to warn the others! Bev could’ve been attacked by it too!” According to what Heath and I discovered at the accident site, Mrs. Lujan was more on target than she realized.
Rex, however, wasn’t swayed, and he became visibly angry. “Oh, now Bev was killed by this spirit demon too?” he mocked. “I thought she drove off the road and hit a tree?”
“It could’ve been in the road, Rex. It could’ve caused her to lose control and hit that tree.”
Rex waved an impatient hand at his sister. “Oh, stop it, Serena!” he snapped. “This is crazy talk! Bev wasn’t even a Whitefeather by blood! She married into it and divorced herself away from it! You’re going to tell me this demon doesn’t know the difference?”
“I want access to the library, Rex,” Mrs. Lujan said, folding her own arms across her chest and trying to stare her brother down. “I want to see if there’s anything in the histories that can explain it.”
Rex’s cell phone rang and he rudely turned away from his sister to answer it. He finished the call after only three “Yeah’s,” then swiveled around to his sister again and stepped forward to hover menacingly over her. “That was Vernon,” he said. “Beverly’s body is ready for burial. The ceremonies are being held tomorrow. You and your son can come, but only until the ceremony ends. Then you need to leave the Pueblo.”
“How generous of you,” Mrs. Lujan snapped, her face angry and determined.
“It’s your own fault, Serena. You turned your back on your husband and the rest of us twenty-five years ago. Don’t act surprised that we don’t want to welcome you back with open arms just because you remembered some old Indian tale.”
“So, just because I got caught and you didn’t, you think you can pass judgment on me?”
My eyebrows shot up. Was Mrs. Lujan refe
rring to an affair her brother had?
“How dare you!” Rex growled, looking around as if afraid that someone would overhear. “I owned up to my responsibilities, Serena! You just wiped your hands of us, stole the family urn, and walked away.”
I bit my lip. These two really knew how to sling the arrows.
I could tell that Heath’s mom was about to fire off another accusation, but then she appeared to collect herself and in an instant her expression softened. “Rex—,” she said, reaching out to touch his arm, but he shrugged her off.
“I’m done talking about this, Serena. Hear me? Done.”
“M. J.?” Heath suddenly said behind me.
I jumped. “Hey! Didn’t hear you come upstairs.”
Heath smiled and peered over my shoulder at his mother and his uncle. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “Uncle Rex isn’t buying our theory that a demon killed Uncle Milt and Aunt Bev.”
“He’s going with mountain lion and car accident,” I told him. “And he’s not open to letting you or your mom into the library.”
Heath wrapped his arms around my shoulders. “Figures. My uncles can all be pretty stubborn. Milton was cool, though. He would’ve believed us.”
Abruptly we heard Rex bark something like, “I’m not listening to this anymore!” before stalking off to his truck.
I was surprised that he’d gotten so angry, but Heath didn’t seem to react. “He’ll go back and tell Vernon that Mom’s gone crazy again,” he said with a sigh.
“Again?”
“Uncle Vern and Uncle Rex both think Mom was nuts for leaving my dad. Even though he broke her jaw, they think she should have stayed with him.”
“Do you remember your dad?”
Heath shook his head and his chin rubbed against my neck. “No. He died when I was only two. I did really love my stepdad, though. Frank was awesome, and I know my mom really misses him.”
I could feel Frank’s presence again, and there was a tightening around my heart. “He had a heart attack?”
“Yep,” Heath said. “He started getting chest pains in the morning and called my mom around noon. She met him at the hospital right before he was wheeled into surgery. They got to see each other and say all the important stuff before he went under. He died on the table three hours later. The doctors said the damage was too bad to repair.”
“I’m so sorry.”
I felt Heath’s shoulders rise and fall. “What’re you gonna do?”
The smell of burning wood filled my nose. “Do you smell something burning?” I asked, pulling out of his grasp and sniffing the air.
Heath sniffed too. “No.”
I lifted my chin higher and walked around the room, sniffing every corner, but the smell had all but vanished. “Weird,” I said, coming to a stop in front of the alarm control panel. I remembered again why we were here in the first place. “Did you talk to your cousin about the electrical and plumbing issues?”
Heath scratched his head. “He swears the electrician was out last week and checked over all the wiring. His guy says the wiring’s good. As for the plumbing, Ray says that he’s waiting on a part before he can install the dishwasher, but otherwise, all the pipes are sound.”
I frowned. What I’d seen in my head didn’t match what Heath was telling me. I sniffed the air again. No smoke. “Huh,” I said.
“Let’s check the house,” Heath said, seeing that I was still nervous about the smell.
We took the next ten minutes to check every room, but neither of us could find any hint of something burning. All the light switches looked sound, and there weren’t any frayed or exposed wires anywhere, so it was hard to figure out why I’d smelled what I’d smelled.
Gilley joined us just as we were checking out the garage. “Your uncle and cousin are gone,” he told Heath. “And your mom’s waiting in the car. She looks really hungry.”
“We’re coming,” I told him, knowing full well that it wasn’t Mrs. Lujan who was hungry—it was Gil.
Heath, however, turned irritated. “Did you say my cousin’s gone?”
Gilley’s eyes darted to me. “Uh . . . yeah.”
Heath swore under his breath and removed his cell from his back pocket. Tapping at the screen before putting the phone to his ear, he waited a beat, then tore into his cousin. “What the hell, Ray?” he snapped. “My back’s turned for ten seconds and you bounce?”
Gilley’s eyes got large and he mouthed, “Yikes!” to me.
I waved him out of the room. Heath turned in a circle and faced the wall. “Ray,” he said sternly. “You promised me you were gonna work on this today! I’ve given you a lot of cash to get this place cleaned up and if I have to bring in your dad or Uncle Vernon, I will, bro.”
Heath’s shoulders were raised and tense. I hoped for Ray’s sake he didn’t try and shirk out of work again. “Okay,” Heath said after a minute. “Fine, drop your dad off at his house, then get back here and get to work, okay? I’m gonna check on you later, bro. Don’t let me down.” With that, Heath clicked off and stuffed his phone hard into his back pocket.
“He’s coming back?” I asked.
Heath whirled. “Sorry,” he said when he saw me still standing there. “I had to get tough with him.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me. It sounds like he’s been taking advantage of you.”
Heath shrugged. “Ray’s a good guy—he’s just easily distracted. He likes to start projects, but he doesn’t always like to finish them. I’ll come back here after dinner to make sure he’s here and working.”
With that, we left the house and headed to town to find some grub.
Heath took us to a lovely restaurant called Cafe Pasqual’s, where Gilley ordered his way through the menu. I looked pointedly at his midsection while the waiter hurried to scribble his way through Gil’s order. Gil must have taken the hint, because he canceled the appetizer.
Heath’s phone rang as we were finishing up our meals and he fished it out of his back pocket again. His mother gave him a stern look. “Don’t you dare answer that at the table, young man,” she said.
Heath looked properly chagrined. “Okay, Mom,” he said, clicking the button to ignore the call.
He’d only just managed to put it back into his pocket when Mrs. Lujan’s phone went off. No one said as much, but I could see everyone at the table wondered if it was the same caller. Mrs. Lujan steadfastly ignored her ringing telephone and after four rings it stopped.
I cut into my food again when Heath’s phone went off a second time. “Oh!” said his mother when he pulled it out to look at the display. “Go ahead, Heath, but keep it short, all right?”
Heath got up and turned away from the table to take the call. I followed him with my eyes. Something felt off.
“Wait, Ray, what? Dude, calm down! I can’t . . .” Heath’s voice trailed off, but I could hear the alarm in his voice. “WHAT?” he shouted after a lengthy pause, and the entire restaurant fell silent as all the patrons looked round at Heath.
Mrs. Lujan got up and went to her son. “What’s happened?”
“We’re coming!” Heath said, clicking off the line and turning around to face us. Gone was his relaxed and easy smile, replaced by a look of shock and disbelief. I stood and our waiter came hurrying toward us.
“Is everything all right?” he asked me.
“The check,” I said, barely looking at him. “Now, please,” I urged when he just stood there and stared at me. I didn’t know what’d happened, but I knew we were about to go running out of the restaurant.
“Heath!” said his mother, taking him by the arms. “Tell me! Tell me what’s happened!”
He turned his wide eyes to her. “The house,” he said haltingly. “Ma, it’s on fire!”
Chapter 6
We got no farther than the bottom of the hill below Heath’s driveway. Fire trucks and equipment blocked the road along with several firemen who were standing guard making sure no pedestrians got too close.
Heath
didn’t consider himself a pedestrian. “That’s my house!” he shouted when he tried to push past the group and run up the hill. It took three of them to hold him back. “You need to stand over there!” one of the firemen shouted. “Sir, you can’t go up there! It’s too hot!”
I ran to Heath’s side and took him firmly by the arm. “Come with me!” I commanded, and I think it was because he knew me that he complied. I walked him down away from the firemen to give them breathing room, but one look up the hill at the orange glow told me it was bad. Really bad.
I turned Heath to face me, away from the scene, and hugged him tightly. I knew how much it’d meant to him to buy his first house, and I couldn’t imagine losing it before even having the chance to move in.
He hugged me back fiercely and I could feel him shaking with rage and emotion.
“Heath!” I heard someone shout. I picked my head up from his chest and turned around. Ray was a bit farther down the street, sitting in the open back of an ambulance with an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. I let go of Heath and we both ran to him.
He was barely recognizable from the youthful bouncy young man I’d met just two hours before. His face was covered in soot and he was cut and bleeding in several places along his arms and side. “What happened?” I gasped when I saw him.
But Ray directed all his comments to Heath. “It wasn’t me, bro!” he said. “I swear! It wasn’t me!”
Heath’s lips compressed to form a very thin line and he turned to the paramedic trying to patch poor Ray up. “Is he okay?”
The paramedic shook her head. “I keep telling him he needs to let us take him to the hospital, but he wanted to wait for you guys. So now you’re here, tell him to let us take him in, okay? He needs stitches for at least three of those cuts on his arms, and his lungs may have some smoke damage.”
Mrs. Lujan appeared at my side. “Raymond?” she asked, her expression astonished. “My God, son, what happened to you?”
To my surprise the tough-guy persona Ray wore completely disappeared and his eyes welled with tears. “It wasn’t me, Aunt Serena! You gotta believe me! I didn’t do this!”