C's Comeuppance: A Bone Cold--Alive novel (4 page)

And why should she be stressed today? It wasn’t her time of month, her father was securely at home with the night nurse, and Mandy was beaming as she made her way through the half-time crowd of teens to James Thomas to beg more money. Jemma had no doubt she’d get it—and something extra from Jessie as well if her mother’s hand-dip into her waist-bag boded anything. The little darling was spoiled, but as she’d had as big a hand in that as anyone else, she couldn’t complain.

No, the source of her stress was brought home to her by a T-shirt seated in the next section. It was black with white lettering, a message that started on the back left shoulder and rippled and wound its way around the torso, ending over the heart:
Be Alive—Be Cold to the Bone!
Bone Cold—Alive’s last album before Eddie T Samuels took the cure. It had become a signature chant for a genre that played havoc with lives and ideas and attitudes. And now with one appearance across from her desk, with one touch of his fingers on her arm, now Eddie C was threatening to wreak havoc with her emotions and was putting a damper on her evening.

Enough of this! she told herself. She’d be damned if she’d let that little episode continue to upset her. She called Mandy over with a smile and promised a trip to the mall on Saturday morning.

***

The light was bright and intrusive. C squinted his eyes together and brought his hands up to cover his face. His position was awkward and he temporarily forgot where he was, sitting up and banging his knee on the steering wheel before memory came plunging back. The light brightened and now there was knocking on the driver’s window.

“C—that you?” The voice was male but only slightly familiar. C twisted the key in the steering column and rolled the window down.

The flashlight dipped to the ground. “C, you okay?”

Now he recognized the man. Tib Wilson, the game warden, and Lyla Samuels’ former beau. Cuckolded, C would have added, but he didn’t believe his sister-in-law, his dislike of her notwithstanding, would have ever gone to bed with this one. Not that he wasn’t attractive enough—C could judge human comeliness no matter the gender—but something was missing in their relationship Tib hadn’t been able to supply. Not for lack of trying or so he’d heard, but T was remarkably tight-lipped on the matter and Fletch had declined to gossip when C had really, really wanted the goods on them. Now it didn’t seem to matter.

What did matter was what he doing asleep in the Lake Country Realty parking lot at one in the morning. Even he knew it looked suspicious.

“I’m fine, Tib.” Now that his eyes were adjusting he could see that Tib was dressed casually in jeans and T-shirt, his uniform jacket open, his booted stance wide so he could look into the car. His left arm was crooked onto the top. “You on duty?”

“No, just going home.” He pointed over his shoulder with the flashlight. “Had to take some of the DamSite crew’s money, and when the game broke up I could see your little red rental over here. Wondered if you had car trouble.”

“Just got sleepy.” C stretched. “But I’m awake now. On my way to the airport to fly standby. Guess I’ll catch the early bird now and not the redeye.” He smiled up at Tib. He had absolutely nothing to lose by being pleasant and a whole lot to compromise by not.

“Heard Lyla kicked you out.” Tib didn’t hide the smile that tweaked at the corners of his mouth. “But I thought that was this afternoon.”

“I tried an end-run but it didn’t work.”

Tib laughed. “Sorry but, you gotta’ understand, this whole situation…” He let his voice trail off and looked out toward the street. Nodding his head quickly, he brought his attention back to C. “Why don’t I buy you a cup of coffee before you hit the highway?”

C raised his eyebrows.

“I know, bet you never thought you’d hear that. But then I never thought—” He shrugged.

“I’d be glad to have a cup of coffee.” C turned the key and the Porsche engine roared to life. “Shall I follow you?”

***

If C had wondered where they’d find a cup of coffee in a town that rolled the sidewalks up by nine, he was fully mystified when the roads Tib took kept getting narrower and rougher. Fifteen minutes into the caravan, they hit white rock and C backed off from the utility vehicle’s dusty wake. A few minutes later, Tib pulled into the drive of what was, quite literally, a little cabin in the woods. Motion sensors sent lights on around the perimeter.

“Not exactly the Quik-Lee, but the coffee’s just as good.” Tib searched for the right key on the massive ring and inserted it into the deadbolt. “Don’t tell Lyla that,” he commented as he entered, switching lights on in his wake. “She has some crazy notion she’s the only one that can make coffee.”

C followed him silently, catching a quick glimpse of the bachelor living room, its walls covered with Ducks Unlimited prints, a trophy fish over the mantle, and a gun case that looked capable of outfitting a small militia. The kitchen was toward the back of the house, and C found Tib already involved with drawing water from the five gallon tank in the corner. “This is the secret,” he said as he filled the carafe. “I’m assuming you want the hard, straight stuff, fully leaded and dark as night?”

“I got to get to the airport. Sounds like it will do.”

“Have a seat.” Tib flicked the coffee maker into life and jerked open the refrigerator. “You hungry?”

C shrugged. “Lyla fed me supper.” He sat at the bar. “But I didn’t get any dessert. We’re watching our weight while preggers.” He hadn’t meant for his tone to sound so sarcastic and no sooner had he said it than he looked for Tib’s reaction.

He seemed to ignore it. “Ain’t that the truth.” He squatted. “How about some pie?” He looked around the edge of the fridge door. “You, too, can become part of the Great Experiment.” So saying he reached into the appliance and came out with a pie plate crowded with sliced pieces. Little numbered flags flew from toothpicks in the center of each.

“The Great Experiment?”
“Yeah, that’s what I call it.” He studied the plate, tapped the spatula on the side of it. “You look like a number seven man.” He reached over to the dish drainer and retrieved two small ironstone plates and a couple of forks. He lifted number seven out and set it in front of C. “Hope you like pecan, because that’s all there is.”

C lifted the toothpick out and set it to the side. “What’s going on?”

“Mar-Mar, my mother, and Sally, Lyla’s cook at the Quik-Lee, have individually catered desserts during the holidays for years.” He reached for two mugs and poured the coffee. “This year, they decided to join forces and get creative, so they dug up every pecan pie recipe they could find and made it. Then,” he lifted a forkful to his mouth and started to chew, “then, they numbered the entries and doled them out to the faithful for research purposes.” He sipped at the coffee. “This is my second batch. I love pecan pie, but I’m on overload.”

C dug into his. Pecans, chocolate and— “Bourbon.” He pointed to the piece with his fork. “I could be fond of your mother.”

“You wouldn’t be the first.”

C smiled to himself as he chased the last bite around the plate. Even he’d heard about Mar-Mar’s marital adventures. There was no way the lady could confine her name to the boxes on any given governmental form. “So didn’t Lyla get any of this?” He’d not seen any evidence of the Great Experiment in Lyla’s refrigerator.

“She was last week. Apple pie. Fruit. Pregnancy. Watching over the little mother.” Tib contemplated the pie plate. “You’d think no one had ever been pregnant before the way that lot’s carrying on. Now the judging criteria is: would you eat another piece of that number seven?”

“Only if I couldn’t have the whole pie.”

“They’ll be pleased.” He turned the plate around, considered the choices left. “Want another piece?”

C scooted his plate over. “I’ll try number ten there.”

Tib lifted it out, studied it. “I think that’s a number five with a different crust. They’re being real sneaky. Murphy, who works for Lyla part-time, helped them set this up as a blind study for his psychology course over at the junior college.”

“So we are serving many purposes.” C finished the mug of coffee and saluted Tib with it. It was quickly refilled. “So when you run out, do you call for more?”

“Normally, I could have a refill in the morning, but Mar-Mar took traveling feet and went to New England on the bank’s senior citizen tour. She won’t be home for a week.”

C nodded. The second piece wasn’t quite as good as the first, but then he’d been partial to chocolate from his early years. It reminded him of his grandmother’s Kentucky kitchen and way of life he and T had been so anxious to leave they had broken her heart time after time. He chased the last pecan around and pushed his plate away. “Number seven, but I wouldn’t turn down ten.”

Tib nodded and walked over to the refrigerator door, marked the results on a chart held on with a trout-shaped magnet. He loosely covered the pie plate and inserted it back in the refrigerator then reached for the coffeepot and warmed up both cups. “Heard you were over at DamSite looking for a place.” He twirled a teaspoon of sugar into his. “Thought you were going to be seeing property this morning.”

“Decided maybe I should get back to LA.” He sipped the coffee. “I don’t think there’s anything in the area anyway. At least that’s what the woman over at Lake Country told me when I stopped there first.”

“Carolyn?”

C paused, wanted it to look like he was thinking on the matter. “No, Jemma, I think it was.”

“Yea, Jemma Lovelace. Ol’ Mr. JT’s daughter. She was pretty well running the place before his stroke a few years back, but I’d say she was the boss for sure now.”

Woman had ‘boss’ written all over her. Of course that title was in small letters under the other one: bitch. “She, ah, she hard to deal with?” Tib’s eyebrows knitted and C sought to clarify. “I mean, given the same piece of property, should I try to negotiate through her or DamSite?”

Tib thought on it. “For me, I’d use Jemma.” He ran his tongue around his teeth loosening a bit of pecan. “She’s honest as the day is long and those boys at DamSite, well, it’s not that they’re dishonest—” he emphasized the word, “but I think I’d have two lawyers look at any contract they drew up.”

“So, she’s honest, but hard to deal with?”

“I don’t believe I said that.” Tib rested his mug on the counter top. “Was she difficult for you to deal with?”

Trapped, but he was always good at recovery. “Now don’t go confusing me with my brother.”

“Don’t worry on that account. I’ve never confused him with anyone else.” A hard edge slipped into Tib’s voice and his eyes lowered. “I always had him figured out.” He lifted his mug as in salute. “You, too, buddy.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning it’s probably time you scooted on back to the weird West Coast. Why you’d want a place around here except to bother Lyla and T, I haven’t the slightest idea.” He set the mug down and stepped back from the counter. “You need your own life, C. Best to go about getting it.”

Still protecting Lyla. C considered the fact briefly as he rose from the barstool. “You still love her.”

“I’ll always love her.” Tib didn’t hesitate in his confession. “I loved her when we children, I loved her as a sister when she was Wes’s, I tried to love her as a wife, but it just wasn’t meant to be. Now I’ve accepted what happened with your brother and Lyla. Trust me, I’ll do whatever it takes to see that she remains happy and safe.”

“Including serving me coffee and your mother’s pie and seeing me to the edge of town.”

“I’ll escort you to the airport if necessary. We take care of our own around here.”

They stood eye to eye and C knew Tib would never blink. “And I’m not one of your own.”

“No, sir.” He relaxed his stance only slightly. “There’s a half bath by the front door if you need to use the facilities before you go.”

“Just so the door doesn’t hit me in the rear on the way out?”

“I don’t think there’s any danger of that.”

Chapter Four

J
emma set the insulated coffee mug on the SUV’s hood and juggled keys, purse and briefcase, trying to click the remote-lock for the vehicle. It had never worked right and she swore under her breath as she realized another trip to the dealership was in the making. Damn! Just what she needed after the night she’d had!

Her mother had awakened her at two. Her dad’s breathing was labored and Jessie was panicking. The worst response possible, the respiratory therapist had told them: their panic would incite his and the whole thing would spiral downhill. Jemma had pitched her mom out of her dad’s room, and she and the night nurse had managed to do the treatment and get him back in order. But she’d never really gotten back to sleep.

So she was at the office by seven Friday morning. Making coffee at the house, she’d punched through the Caller ID numbers from the night before and found Lyla had phoned. The night nurse must have been busy with her charge because she’d made no mention of it. Jemma would return the call after she opened the office.

She left the SUV unlocked, wanted to write “steal me” in the dust on the back window and leave it temptingly close to the highway. But with her luck, Wiley Rose would stroll over from DamSite and tell her what someone had done to Jem-Jewel’s fine little vehicle.

Unlocking the door to Lake Country, she heard the familiar chirp of the door locks setting.

***

“I just saw the school bus roll by, so I know I didn’t wake you.” Jemma kept her tone light, although curiosity had driven her to call Lyla two hours before she normally would have. She settled deeper into her desk chair and brushed at a speck on her rust-colored broomstick skirt. She took a sip of coffee she’d brewed at the office.

“Not hardly.” The voice on the other end was light, too, almost carefree. Jemma didn’t trust it.

“I couldn’t return your call last night because, quite frankly, I didn’t look at the machine. Then Daddy had a breathing spell at two—”

“Oh, I am sorry. Is he all right?”