And yet she was back.
With a vengeance.
Unerringly she drove down sun-baked side streets and turned the corner at a cement-block motel boasting low rates, air-conditioning and cable TV, then nosed the Caddy past a mom-and-pop grocery where scattered cars glinted in the pockmarked lot. Further on, past small bungalows, some with “For Rent” signs in the windows, the street curved around a statue of Sam Houston in the park and wound through a residential area where shade trees offered some relief from the sun and a few of the older homes had a veneer of nineteenth-century charm.
Far from the center of town, closer to the hills, were the more prestigious and widely scattered homes.
Her father’s Victorian was the grandest of the lot, a mansion by Bad Luck standards. Nestled on five acres in the sloping hills a mile from town, with a creek meandering through ancient pecan trees, the house was three stories of cut stone and brick, flanked on all sides by wide, covered porches. Ornate grillwork and tall windows were graced by hanging baskets of fuchsias exploding with color. The grass was cut, green and edged, the flowering shrubs trimmed, and she imagined that the kidney-shaped pool in the back was still a shimmering man-made lake of aquamarine, a testament to Judge Red Cole’s wealth, power and influence.
Shelby frowned and remembered the taunts she’d heard as a child and teenager, the whispered words of awe and scorn that she’d pretended had never been uttered.
“Rich bitch.”
“Luckiest girl west of San Antonio.” .
“Can you imagine? She has anything she ever wanted. All she has to do is ask, or blink her baby-blues at her daddy.”
“Rough life, eh, darlin’?”
Cringing even now as she had then, Shelby felt her cheeks burn with the same hot shade of embarrassment that had colored them when she’d been told not to play with Maria, the care-taker’s daughter, or warned that Ruby Dee was a “bad girl” with a soiled reputation, or learned that her Appaloosa mare was worth more than Nevada Smith had made in a full year of working overtime at her father’s cattle ranch located eight miles north of town.
No wonder she’d run. She braked at the garage, slipped on her heels, cut the engine and tossed the keys into her briefcase. Muttering, “Give me strength,” under her breath to no one in particular, she climbed out of the car, ignored the fact that her blouse was sticking to her back and marched up the brick walk to the front of the house. She didn’t bother raising the brass knocker that was engraved proudly with the Cole name as she remembered the sickening spoof of a nursery rhyme she’d heard in grade school.
Old Judge Cole
Was a nasty old soul
And a nasty old soul was he.
He called for his noose
And he called for his gun
And he called for his henchmen three.
The front door opened easily and the smells of furniture polish, potpourri and cinnamon greeted her. Italian marble, visible beneath the edges of expensive throw rugs, gleamed as sunlight streamed through tall, spotless windows.
“Hola! Is someone there?” an old familiar voice asked in a thick Spanish accent. From the kitchen, soft footsteps sounded, and as Shelby rounded the corner to the kitchen she nearly ran smack-dab into Lydia, her father’s housekeeper.
Dark eyes widened in recognition. A smile of pure delight cracked across her jaw. “Senonta Shelby!” Lydia, whose once-black hair, neatly braided and wound into a bun at the base of her neck, was now shot with streaks of silver, smiled widely. Wiry strands that had escaped their bonds framed the face that Shelby remembered from her youth. Lydia’s waist had thickened over the years but her face was unlined, her coppery akin with its Mexican tones and Native American cheekbones as smooth as ever.
“Dios!” Lydia threw her arms around the woman she’d helped raise. “Why did you not tell anyone you were coming home?”
“It was kind of a quick decision.” Unwanted tears burned the back of Shelby’s eyes as she hugged Lydia. Black dress, white collar, white apron and sensible sandals-Lydia’s attire hadn’t changed in all the years Shelby had been away. And she still smelled of vanilla, talc and cigarette smoke. “It’s ... good to see you.”
“And you, niña. ” She clucked her tongue. “If I would know you are coming, I would have cooked all your favorites—ham and sweet potatoes and for dessert pecan pie. I’ll make it this day! It is still your favorite?”
Shelby laughed. “Yeah, but please, Lydia, don’t go to any trouble—I don’t know how long I’ll be staying.”
“Hush. We will not talk of your leaving when you just walked through the door. Ahh, niña!” Tears brightened the older woman’s eyes. Blinking rapidly, she said, “You are like a fantasma, the ghost of your mother.” Sighing, Lydia held Shelby at arm’s length and looked her up and down. “But you are too skinny—Dios! Do they not know how to cook up north?”
“Nope. No one does,” Shelby teased. “Everyone’s skin and bones in Seattle. They just drink coffee and huddle against the rain and climb mountains. That sort of thing.”
Lydia chuckled. “This, we will fix.”
“Later. Right now I want to see the Judge,” Shelby said, refusing to be deterred by the housekeeper’s kindness or any ridiculous sense of nostalgia. She had a mission. “Is he at home?” She extracted herself from Lydia’s embrace.
“Sí. On the verandah, but he is with clients. I will tell him you are—”
But it was too late. Shelby had already started for the French doors leading to the backyard. “I’ll do it myself. Thanks, Lydia.”
She walked past the shining mahogany table that, with its twelve carved chairs, occupied the dining room. A floral arrangement of birds of paradise, her mother’s favorite flowers, graced the lustrous table, just as a new arrangement had every week since Jasmine Cole’s death over twenty years earlier. Crystal and china, sparkling and ready for a sit-down party, were visible through the glass panes of a massive china closet.
Nothing seemed to change in Bad Luck, Shelby decided as she opened the French doors and stepped onto the tile verandah that overlooked the pool. Fans mounted in the ceiling of the porch swirled the air lazily, and shade from the live oaks and pecan trees eased some of the summer heat that rose from the terra cotta that skirted the pool and reflected in sharp rays off the shimmering blue water.
Her father was seated at a small table. Dressed in a black suit and white shirt, a black Stetson on the table, his cane with its carved ivory handle lying across his lap, he was deep in conversation with two men. Not three henchmen, but, she supposed, two yes-men dressed in jeans and shirts with their sleeves rolled up. One had a brown moustache and thinning hair, the other wore a silvering goatee and dark sunglasses.
At the sound of the door closing behind her, they all looked up. Two faces scowled slightly, then gave her the once-over as if in tandem. Their sour expressions ebbed slowly to interest.
She ignored them both.
Her father looked over his shoulder. “Shelby!”
She ached inside when she saw the pure joy that lit his face. God, he’d aged. His face had become jowly with the years, his belly larger than it had been. His eyelids had sagged a bit and lines weaved through his neck and across his forehead. His red hair had faded and grayed, but he was still an imposing man. and as he pulled himself to his full height of six feet, three inches, she remembered how intimidating he’d been on the bench..
“My God, girl, it’s good to see you.” He opened his arms wide, but Shelby held her ground and stood away from him.
“We need to talk.”
“What the hell are you doin’ here, darlin’?” Disappointment clouded his blue eyes, and a part of her wanted to run to him and throw her arms around his neck and say oh, Daddy, I’ve missed you. But she didn’t. Instead she swallowed back the urge to break down altogether and stiffened her spine. She was no longer a frightened little girl.
“Alone, Judge. We need to talk alone.” She stared pointedly at his latest gofe
rs.
The men, dismissed by a nod from their boss, kicked out their chairs, and with muffled words and hasty assurances from Judge Cole that they’d get together later, walked stiffly around the back of the house and through a gate. In the ensuing stillness, when the sound of bees humming and a woodpecker drumming were all that could be heard, Shelby didn’t waste any time. She reached into her briefcase, pulled out the manila envelope, ripped it open and spilled its contents onto the glass-topped table where the ice in three half-consumed drinks was still melting.
The black-and-white photo of a girl of nine or ten stared up at them, and the Judge sucked in his breath as he slowly sat down again. Shelby noticed that his wedding band had cut a groove in the ring finger of his left hand, a ring that hadn’t been removed in over thirty years, and on his right, he sported a flashy diamond that most Hollywood brides would envy.
Shelby leaned over the table so that the tip of her nose was nearly touching her father’s. With one finger she pointed to the black-and-white picture. “This is my daughter,” she said, her insides quaking, her voice unsteady. “Your granddaughter.”
She looked for any sign of recognition in the old man’s face. There was none. “She looks just like me. Just like Mom.”
The judge glanced at the photo. “There’s a resemblance.”
“No resemblance, Judge. This girl is a dead ringer. And here”—she edged a piece of paper from beneath the photograph—“ this is a copy of her birth certificate. And this ... the death notice of her as a baby. Read it—Elizabeth Jasmine Cole. She was supposed to have died, Judge—of complications, heart problems—right after birth. You ... you told me she hadn’t made it. That those ashes I spread in the hills ... oh, . God, whose were they?” she asked, then shook her head, not wanting to hear any more lies. “Don’t ... oh, God.” Shelby’s throat was clogged and she thought she might throw up. “You lied to me, Dad. Why?”
“I didn’t—”
“Don‘t! Just don’t, okay!” She held both her palms outward, in his face, and stepped back. Bile roiled in her stomach. Beneath her skin, her muscles were quivering in rage. “Someone, and I don’t know who, sent me all this. I got it yesterday, and so I came back here to clear it up. Where’s my daughter, Dad?” she demanded through teeth that were clenched so hard her jaw ached. “What the hell did you do with her?”
“Now, darlin’—”
“Stop it! Right now! Don’t call me darlin’, or sweetie, or kiddo, or missy or any of those cute little names, okay? I’m all grown up now, in case you hadn’t noticed, and you can’t smooth-talk your way out of this, Judge. I’m not a little girl. I know better than to believe a word that passes through your lying lips, and I only came back here to find my child, Judge—my daughter.” She thumped her chest with her thumb.
“Yours and who else’s?” he asked, his smile having disappeared and the old, hard edge she remembered coming back to his voice.
“That—that doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t it?” The Judge scattered the papers across the table and frowned, his eyes narrowing behind wire-rimmed reading glasses. “Odd, don’t you think? You get proof that you’ve got a kid during the same week that Ross McCallum is going to be released from prison.”
“What?” Her knees nearly buckled. McCallum couldn’t be given his freedom. Not yet. Not ever. Fear congealed her blood. She was suddenly hot and cold all at once.
“Oh, so you didn’t know?” The Judge settled back in his chair and played with the ivory handle of his cane. He looked up at her over the tops of his glasses. “Yep. Ross is gonna be a free man. Oh ... and Nevada Smith, he’s still around.”
Her stupid heart skipped a beat, but she managed to keep her face bland, her expression cool. Nevada was out of her life. Had been for a long, long time. Nothing would change that Ever.
“Yep,” the Judge went on, fingertips caressing the smooth knob, “inherited a rocky scrap of land that he’s tryin’ to ranch. No one knows how he’ll handle Ross’s freedom, but the word is that there is certainly gonna be hell to pay.” He bit his lower lip and scowled thoughtfully, as he’d often done while hearing long-winded summations when he was on the bench. “And now someone sends you bait—a little chum in the water to lure you back to a town you’ve sworn you’d never return to. Someone’s playin’ you for a fool, Shelby,” he said, slowly nodding his head, as if in agreement with himself, “and it ain’t me.”
For once she believed him.
She’d flown back here on a cloud of self-righteous nobility and determination to find her child. That hadn’t changed. But now she felt manipulated, and yes, as her father had said, played for a fool. Unwittingly, she’d stepped into a carefully laid trap set by an unknown individual with purposes of his own.
Well, tough!
Beneath the blouse that stuck to her skin, her shoulders squared.
She’d find a way to get herself out of this damned snare. Come hell or high water, she’d leave Bad Luck, Texas, behind her once and for all.
And this time, by God, she’d take her daughter with her.
Chapter Two
“But you can’t leave. Niña, please, you just got here!” Lydia was nothing if not persistent. It was her one quality that hadn’t changed over the years. Oh, her hair may have grayed and a few pounds had thickened her waist and ankles, but she was just as determined as she had been for as long as Shelby could remember. “The Judge, he needs you,” she said, puffing to keep up with Shelby’s quick steps as she marched through the house to the front door.
“He doesn’t need anyone.”
“I thought you were here to visit.”
“Nope. Business.” Shelby shook her head; she couldn’t stay here, not in this house, this huge tomb where her own mother had taken her life, where she’d grown up an only child with the stern Judge as her father, where faceless people with special requests of the Judge had slunk in and out of the house at all hours, unaware that Shelby had watched in the shadows of the upper landing, hidden in a niche near the linen closet behind the ficus tree and peeking through the lacy branches to the foyer below.
“But Shelby...” Her voice broke, and Shelby stopped as she reached the door. Turning, she saw genuine sadness in Lydia’s dark eyes. “... I’ve missed you, niña. The house has been cold since you’ve been gone.”
The ice around Shelby’s heart cracked, for this was the woman who had raised her from the time that Jasmine Cole had made the decision that she preferred death to the dishonor of divorce. It was Lydia’s arms that had surrounded her when she’d been scared, Lydia’s ample breasts on which she’d cushioned her head and heard the steady beat of a true heart, Lydia who had encouraged her to be anything she wanted to be and comforted her when she’d failed. Lydia Vasquez had applied iodine to her scraped knees and scolded her in rapid-fire Spanish when she’d made a mistake and winked, then turned a blind eye, when she’d “borrowed” the keys to her father’s 1940 Pontiac for a joyride.
“I can’t stay here,” she said now, holding Lydia’s fleshy upper arms in her hands.
“Not forever, no. But for a few days? It would bring such comfort ... such joy to him.” She cocked her head toward the back of the house and the patio where the Judge still sat by the pool. “And, to me, as well. Por favor. A few days. A semana.”
“A week?” Shelby said. “No way. I can’t.”
“What would it hurt? Your father, he would like it and I ... I would see to it that you gained a little weight. Things have changed since you’ve been gone.” Her lips pursed, little lines visible around the edges. “He is not the ... the ... what did you call him? The monstruo.”
Shelby couldn’t help but smile. “Ogre, Lydia. Not monster. Get it right.”
“Sí Ogre.”
“I’ll ... I’ ll think about it.”
“Do and I will pray. To the Holy Mother and—”
“She’ll do fine. You don’t have to call up all the saints,” Shelby said, and at the look of sheer h
orror on Lydia’s round face at the sound of her blasphemy, Shelby laughed and gave the older woman a quick kiss on her cheek. “Just let me handle this my way, okay? I don’t need you or the Sacred Virgin, or God Himself, to try and tell me what to do.”
As Shelby reached for the handle of the front door, Lydia crossed herself with the dexterity and fervor of the truly religious and was muttering in Spanish about headstrong, irrational young women who didn’t know their rightful place on this earth. Shelby only understood half of it. But she got the gist and closed the door with finality.
She didn’t want to stay in the same house as her father, couldn’t imagine reliving all the hopes, dreams and disappointments that she’d endured during the first eighteen years of her life, and yet it would only make sense to stay here, in close proximity to the man who had so callously destroyed her life—to find out exactly what had gone on ten years ago, to find out how involved he was in this mammoth deception.
Her legs were a tad wobbly as she made her way to the Cadillac, but she didn’t falter and slid behind the wheel, the bucket seat hot against the backs of her legs. Twisting on the ignition, she glanced at the house and swore a curtain moved in the den. Her father? Lydia? Someone else?
Not that it mattered. Slipping her shades onto the bridge of her nose, she nearly backed into the comer of the garage, then threw the car into drive and gunned the engine. In some ways it would be easier to stay with her father, and yet she wasn’t ready to eat that kind of crow. Not yet.
Where better to uncover his secrets? To talk to him, hope that he’ll open up and tell you the truth?
“Damn it all,” she muttered under her breath and guided the huge car toward the heart of town and the old stone building where Doc Pritchart had once housed his practice. As she drove, her head pounded. Ross McCallum was going to be out of jail.