For a moment she was too grief-stricken to answer. The connection had been so strong. If he felt the same helpless, overwhelming need, how he could turn away from her? “If I were a man who hadn’t had sex for ten years,” she said wearily, “I don’t believe I could turn down an offer. For any reason.”
“That doesn’t say much for your opinion of men in general and me in particular.”
“No, I’m saying I must rank somewhere below lepers and sheep.”
He was silent and deceptively still, as if paralyzed by too many conflicting emotions he couldn’t describe or release. Then, slowly, his expression softening enough to bring tears to her eyes, he said, “At night you sit in the rocking chair nearest the steps, and sometimes after you fall asleep your arms relax, and the quilt slides down around you. When the moon sets, its light comes under the porch roof. First on your hair, then your face, then on down, letting me see just a little of you at a time. The rest is always hidden in the shadows. It’s a kind of torture. I spend the night trying to put you together, but I never can.”
Sam felt drugged. The breath soughed out of her. She could only look up at him in silent, dazed wonder, the way he was looking at her. He shifted as if groggy, scrubbed his hand over his face, and the mask slipped back into place. “We’re wasting time,” he repeated. “Change your clothes. I’ll get Bo and wait at the car. How far do we have to go?”
“A long way.” She hadn’t recovered enough to offer practical details.
“Then move it.” He pivoted quickly and strode up the knoll.
A long way, she thought. But another step closer.
Charlotte had a bad case of the creeps. She didn’t like being alone in the Cove—at least, she thought she was alone. Sam had gone somewhere—the house had been locked when Charlotte arrived, and Sam’s car wasn’t in the yard. Jake, of course, was nowhere to be seen, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t prowling the woods like a bear with a thorn in his tail.
It wasn’t like Sammie to take off without letting her know. And it wasn’t like Sammie to forget Charlotte’s daily visit.
The house had been closed up for so many years that Sam still hadn’t quite rid it of a musty scent. The smell was too forlorn to Charlotte; it reminded her of the incense their mother had burned, and of the decrepit, antique-filled cellar beneath Mom’s first store. Gray light filtered through the window curtains over the kitchen sink. The afternoon was dark and rainy, playing on her gloom. Thunder rumbled occasionally in the distance.
She threw open a back door in the kitchen and latched the screen. Trying to distract herself, she set the kitchen radio to an oldies station and cranked the volume up. Maybe the Beach Boys and Little Richard could drown out her bittersweet memories of Hugh, Sarah, and Ellie. She hoped her nagging worries about Aunt Alex and Tim couldn’t compete with Diana Ross and the Supremes.
Humming stoically, she removed containers bulging with food from a cardboard box. Cooking created order in the midst of chaos. It was an anchor—proof that any problem, no matter how terrible, could be chopped, diced, or whipped into submission.
Our problems don’t amount to a hill of refried beans in this crazy world. Charlotte arranged her day’s concoctions in the refrigerator with grim resolve. Casablanca. If Rick had been a chef, he’d have said that to Ilsa.
One of her problems called her name and rapped imperiously on the screen door. She jumped. Ben peered through the screen at her. He was the only man she’d ever known who looked debonair wearing rumpled khakis, a faded chambray shirt, rubber boots, and a camouflage fishing vest with a rubber worm peeking out of the breast pocket.
He wandered over to the patio of her condo every evening, armed with a can of peanuts and a bottle of good wine. Charlotte wanted to ignore him but couldn’t resist. He would settle in a lounge chair and entertain her with anecdotes about his law practice and his interesting, close-knit family. She told herself she tolerated him because she had nothing better to fill her time. And because he brought her fresh trout to cook almost every day.
Now the sight of him filled her with relief. She couldn’t brood about much of anything while Ben was around. Charlotte turned the radio down and hurried to the door. “Did you get rained out, fisherman?”
“Hmmm. The trout were holding little umbrellas. I decided to call it a day.”
She held the screen door open and eyed him drolly. “So you decided to trail the evil sister and see what she was up to?”
“Of course.” He left his muddy rubber boots on the back porch along with his vest and stepped inside. He had a pink rosebud in one hand. He tucked it under the fastener on one shoulder strap of her white overalls. She wore only a pink tube top under the overalls, and his fingers brushed the bare skin of her shoulder. “I’ve become so accustomed to your ill temper that I actually invent excuses to see you. But today I have business to discuss with Sam and Jake.”
She was silent, thinking about the rose and his touch, feeling absurdly pleased and more than a little warm. “Sammie’s not here,” she said finally. “I don’t know where she’s gone, and that worries me. Jake—well, he could be anywhere. There’s only one sure bet. He’s not with Sammie.”
“Hmmm. I need to talk to them about Dr. Raincrow’s old offices.
Charlotte felt a pang of sorrow. Sam had asked Ben to manage the tiny building for them over the years. He’d arranged for its upkeep and handled lease agreements. Sam had insisted that the offices not be turned into yet another specialty shop. I don’t want Jake to come home and find someone selling mink-trimmed poodle collars and gourmet cat treats in there, she’d said.
But that hadn’t been a problem. Several of the town’s doctors had competed avidly for the lease, as if they could acquire Dr. Raincrow’s reputation just by occupying his space.
Ben sighed. “The tenant won’t sign a new lease unless we remodel. He wants skylights. Says the lack of ambiance makes his patients think he’s cheap.”
“Skylights?” she repeated contemptuously. “Dr. Hugh didn’t need any stinking skylights to keep his patients happy. What next? A wine bar?”
Ben gave her a pensive look. “I’ve been thinking,” he said slowly, “that I’d like to move here permanently. That maybe Sam and Jake would let me lease the building for my law office.” He cleared his throat. “No skylights or wine bar, I swear.”
Charlotte stared at him. He was tossing a tempting lure in her direction, but she was too skittish. She’d mastered the art of scooting under logs. But the gleam in his eye was a lure she couldn’t easily ignore. She’d circle it. “Why in the world would you want to give up the bright lights of Durham and stay here?”
“You know why.”
Charlotte backed away. “I’m not staying very long. I … I have a good job back in L.A. A very understanding boss who let me have time off to help Sammie get resettled. I have my sights set on wooing the rich and infamous with my culinary magic. I intend to hook up with some show-biz types who have money to invest in a restaurant. That’s my goal—to own my own restaurant. Chef to the Stars. I’ll get my picture in People.”
Ben’s expression had become darker with every word she spoke. “Cooking for Zsa Zsa,” he said sarcastically. “I can’t imagine a higher calling.” He moved toward her. “Stop running away. If you’ve got a problem with me, have the guts to tell me exactly what it is. Drop your act and be honest with me.”
“What an ego! You think you make me nervous?”
“I think most men make you nervous. Why?”
“I’ve had plenty of men.” She refused to take another step back. Instead, she turned blindly toward the kitchen counter, dragging more containers from her box. “I’m a magnet for men. Me and my big cantaloupes. You’re not any different.” What a terrible lie, and she knew it.
“Oh? Miss Irresistible Melons.” He took her by one arm and made her face him. “If all I cared about was your produce section, I’d have taken my shopping list to a friendlier grocery store a long time ago. I’ve co
me close to doing it. But then I get another glimpse under that steely rind of yours, and I’m hooked all over again.”
“Ben, I’m afraid. I have a knack for causing trouble. It was my fault the trouble started between Sammie and our aunt. It was mainly because of me that Sammie couldn’t stay here when Jake needed her. Somehow, without even meaning to, I’ll cause trouble for you too.”
“I’m a lawyer. I’m Jewish. Dealing with trouble is my specialty. What are you talking about?” She felt trapped. She shook her head wildly. “I don’t want you to deal with it! I’ve seen what happens to people who try to solve each other problems! Look what that’s done to Jake and Sammie!”
Her strained logic snapped his patience. “You can’t love people without wanting to fight their battles for them,” he yelled. “And I love you!”
“That’s my point!” she blurted out. “I love you.” The last three words echoed in her ears. She couldn’t believe she’d said them. Worse, she admitted for the first time that it was true. But she’d never tell him why men frightened her. She’d never tell him about Tim. Charlotte gave a garbled moan of defeat.
A second later they were in each other’s arms.
After fifty-four years of hard, joyful living, Detective Hoke Doop of the Durham police department knew where to put his faith.
He believed in the power of an old-fashioned preacher to scare the hell out of sinners, and the messy, majestic power of the law to punish sinners who wouldn’t get scared. As a young man, he’d stuck a foot inside the barely open door to the city’s all-white police force and become, against all odds, what he’d wanted to be since he was a kid watching cops-and-robbers movies from the colored section in the balcony of a Durham theater: He became an officer of the law.
He believed in the awesome love of his fat, sassy little wife, Louetta; the fine qualities of their four grown children, and the innocence of their six grandkids. He believed that hot fried catfish and cold beer could soothe any man’s troubles, and that Elvis had been the only white man who could sing gospel music with true soul.
And he believed Elvis was really dead—no small feat in these parts.
Hoke was nobody’s fool.
Which was why he didn’t feel like a fool for trusting Jake Raincrow’s God-given gift. Being equipped with a touch of the same thing, he had figured Jake out years earlier. He suspected that Jake knew he knew.
They leaned, side by side, against the fender of an unmarked police car. Hoke had trouble concentrating on business. His attention kept returning to an amazing discovery.
Jake really did have a wife. She wasn’t just a rumor. She was a sturdy, picture-pretty blonde with big smart blue eyes that had a few hard miles at the corners. She favored old jeans and fancy hiking boots and a long-sleeved work shirt with the tail tied in a dandy little knot that impressed him. Her hands were hidden inside two pairs of gloves. After smiling at him and shaking his hand with her overpadded mitt, she’d taken old lop-eared Bo off aways and was now bent over him, rubbing his saggy shoulders as if he were a prizefighter she had to loosen up for his comeback match.
Behind her, the junkyard made an eerie sight at the end of a weedy, rutted dirt road through the woods. The rusty hulks of old cars were lined up in neat rows draped in vines and briars. Pine saplings dotted the spaces between them. They resembled nothing so much as a forgotten cemetery. Thunderheads had rolled into the June sky; the wind was rising, and the air smelled like rain.
Hoke relit his old brown pipe, sucked on it for a minute, and glanced at Jake, who was as quiet as a sphinx and nearly as still, a rumpled, wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes. He couldn’t seem to stop looking at his wife either.
Hoke was eager to get going, but he knew better than to rush things. Jake needed time to meditate, or some such thing. Might be an Indian attitude, might be the silence of a man who’d spent a lot of years locked up, with nobody worth talking to, until talk became unnatural.
The damnedest thing was, this dude could find things, and people too. He’d proved it over and over to the guards. They’d take him out on convict road crews to clean up the state parks, and he’d show the forest rangers where to dig wells for drinking fountains. It had been a game to them, but not to him. After word got around that he was a dowser, the warden had brought him over to his farm to see whether he could locate a gas tank that had been buried so many decades before that nobody in the warden’s family could remember where it was.
So the story went, Jake found the old gas tank, a slave graveyard, and the warden’s missing car keys. After that they’d hauled him all over the state—to find lost hikers in the national forest, to track down runaway kids, to puzzle out where bodies had been dumped after a killing.
Hoke snorted in disgust. They’d probably have kept him in prison for ten more years, just for the free lost-and-found service.
“You got a nice wife,” Hoke said finally. “Should of brought her along before. Before you went to prison, I mean. This is something, her waiting all these years for you to get out. She must be a helluva fine woman.”
Jake stirred. He looked at Hoke without batting an eyelash. “She is. Let me borrow your handcuffs.”
All right, she was here. One small step. Maybe Jake hadn’t spoken ten words to her during the hours in the car, but at least they were together. She would get to watch him and Bo work. Jake would have to let her into this part of his life in a way he never had before. No more blind spots.
She would keep her distance, and act nonchalant, and dote on Bo, while secretly absorbing every fascinating detail. She walked over to Detective Doop’s car, Bo shuffling along beside her, yawning.
Bo was long past retirement age. Jake didn’t want to admit that, she thought, because it was one more reminder of the lost years. They needed to have this day. Soon Sam would find some way, very gently, to discuss getting a young dog.
She halted in front of Jake and Detective Doop. “Bo’s awake and eager to work,” she said.
The detective squinted at him. “How can you tell, ma’am?”
“He’s just a little rusty.” She avoided looking at Jake, afraid he’d recognize her strained optimism. “What are we looking for?”
Detective Doop’s puckish expression faded. “A child, ma’am. A little girl.”
She felt the blood drain out of her face. “I thought … I assumed … you didn’t explain—”
“Didn’t want to upset you, ma’am.”
“Hoke didn’t expect you to come with me,” Jake interjected.
Sam inhaled sharply. “Be that as it may. Why are we the only ones here? Doesn’t a lost child rate more people power than this?”
Hoke Doop nodded grimly. “They’re all congregated on the other side of town, hunting through a stretch of woods along the highway. But I got a hunch that baby’s body is around here.”
“Body?”
Doop sighed. “All right, folks, here’s all seven yards of it. There’s a bunch of apartments ’bout a mile from here. Woman kicked her no-account boyfriend out. He come back to her place last night, beat her up, then run off with her baby. We picked him up just short of the state line this morning. No baby. He’s not talkin’. Everybody figures he most likely killed her and tossed her along the interstate. I don’t think he waited that long. I think he come over to this godforsaken stretch of nothin’ and dumped the baby in the woods. Just a hunch.”
Just a hunch? Sam felt sick, then furious. This man had dragged Jake here without good reason. Oh, yes, call Jake Raincrow on a whim. Toss him into a grisly scenario as if he had no feelings. But Jake seemed unfazed. She swallowed the scorching words she wanted to say.
Doop pulled a heartbreakingly small pink T-shirt from his coat pocket and handed it to Jake. “What do you think?”
Motionless and apparently lost in concentration, Jake held the shirt in both hands. “Your guess is as good as mine.” Sam searched his face. Jake didn’t make flippant statements. Something didn’t jibe here. If he were a
weaver she’d say he and Detective Doop were deliberately skipping a few threads in the warp. “Shouldn’t you be using something that the man wore? I mean, if this monster carried the baby into the woods, what good does it do to give Bo the baby’s scent?”
Jake straightened, tucked the tiny shirt into the waist of his jeans, then reached into his back pocket. “Good question. I haven’t got time to answer it. I’m going. You wait here.”
She stared at him. “I didn’t come with you to be left behind now. I won’t slow you down. I am going with you and Bo.”
“Hmmm. I figured you’d say that.” He held out a hand to her.
Was he going to pull her along behind him like a straggling hiker? All right. She wouldn’t debate small insults. Sam thrust her gloved hand into his.
He brought his other hand from behind his back and snapped a cuff around her wrist. Before the gasp of protest cleared her lips, he pulled her wrist to the side mirror of Doop’s sedan and snapped the cuff’s partner around the mirror’s shank. “Sorry,” he told her gruffly. “Hoke’ll keep you company.”
Then he walked away, gesturing to Bo to follow him.
Sam jerked frantically against the manacle. “This isn’t fair!”
He kept walking and didn’t look back.
Ben looked as if he’d been stirred with a whisk—dark hair disheveled, bare legs tangled in the quilt, one arm dangled around her shoulders, his head barely anchoring a pillow that hung half off the bottom corner of the bed. Charlotte suspected she looked the same way. She was splayed across his chest with the entire sheet wadded atop her naked rump like a giant dollop of whipped cream, her chin propped on her forearm, her forearm crooked on his chest. It was peaceful chaos. Each of them kept one hand free to explore all the newly discovered territory.
She wasn’t certain how long they’d been in Sammie’s spare bedroom, but the murky afternoon light was beginning to fade. Charlotte found herself listening for Sammie’s car. Reality crept back, and she started asking herself what in the world she’d done.