Dark Paradise (23 page)

"I'll pick you up myself. Be ready by nine. We'll go riding. Have a

picnic. It'll be great."

Then he was gone, gliding down off her shabby porch and striding

gracefully toward the sleek Mercedes.

Samantha let herself into the darkened house, not bothering to turn on a

light. The light from the streetlamp on the corner shone in through the

windows well enough for her to see. As always, she had harbored the

secret hope that Will would be waiting for her. It was a hope she never

acknowledged until the disappointment struck her.

He wasn't there. He was probably down at the Hell and Gone, laughing and

drinking, his arm around some girl with tight jeans and big boobs. He

probably wasn't thinking about her, didn't wonder if she was lonely,

didn't know she had spent the evening with people who drove sports cars

and drank champagne. Would he care?

The question slipped into her heart like a knife. Now there was no one

to see them, no one to talk her out of them, the tears fell. She sank

down onto the scarred wooden floor of the living room, bending over,

curling into a ball. Her long braid fell over her shoulder and lay like

a length of rope on the floor.

Rascal scampered in from the kitchen, all feet and ears and wagging

tail. He was part golden retriever and part who-knew-what, big and

clumsy and brimming with love. He barked at her for a moment, growls and

whines mixing in his throat as he tried to decide what to do about her.

Finally, Samantha sat up and reached for him, and he clambered into her

lap, all too happy to give her something to hug and to lick the tears

from her cheeks.

And she wrapped her arms around the puppy and sobbed as hard as her

heart could stand, crushed by the thought that the dog he had given her

cared more about her than Will.

"What do you think?
 
Does the Jennings woman know what Lucy was into?"

Bryce turned and admired his cousin. She was quite stunning by

moonlight. "I don't know yet. She hasn't given any indication of it."

Sharon reached back with one hand and freed her blond mane from its neat

twist, tossing her head. "I can't imagine Lucy leaving everything to her

without including all her dirty little secrets in the bargain."

"It won't matter," he said, thinking of other complications. "Nothing

to worry over."

He really wasn't concerned at all. It was a game to him. A game he

couldn't lose. The stakes were huge for some, but he held nearly all the

cards. That was the beauty of power and a brilliant mind.

Lucy had understood. She might eventually have been a worthy rival for

him, or a worthy partner. He had certainly enjoyed her charms in bed and

out enough to consider the possibilities.

Pity she was dead.

Marilee's first order of business the next morning - after watching the

sunrise - was a trip to Our Own Hardware to purchase cleaning supplies.

She loaded up on sponges and cleansers, bought a bucket and a mop and a

broom, not willing to count on Lucy to have owned this sort of thing.

She shot the breeze with Marcia, who worked the counter, starting with a

friendly debate over Formula 409 versus Fantastic, and going from there

into a light discussion of local politics and the pros and cons of home

permanents.

From the hardware she jaywalked to the Rainbow and had a cup of coffee

and a slice of lemon meringue pie with Nora. Nora directed her to the

Carnegie Library, and she went in search of books about llamas, finding

one in the small children's section of the cramped old building. There

was nothing on the care and understanding of mules, but since mules were

so closely related to horses, she hunted up a couple of texts on

horsemanship for a refresher course.

She struck up a conversation with old Hal Linderman, who had taught math

in the New Eden high school for forty years before retiring to become

the town librarian.

An hour later she had a temporary library card and an invitation to join

the Presbyterian church.

Pleased, she headed back toward her Honda. She would pick up a supply of

junk food at the Gas-N-Go and head out to the ranch for a day of

cleaning, reading, and contemplating. Cutting across the square, she

paused to watch the sculptor at work out in front of the courthouse.

Marcia at the hardware store had been dubious about the project. She

couldn't see what good it would do, but Marilee stood outside the

roped-off area and studied the model, finding it interesting.

"It symbolizes the conflict of old ways and new ways coming together to

bond into something strong and beautiful," Colleen Bentsen said. She was

dressed for welding from the mask tilted back on her head to the torch

in her gloved hand. She had her coveralls unzipped partway, revealing a

T-shirt from Hamline University.

Hal Ketchum sang out of the speakers of a boom box on the other side of

her cluttered pen. There was a long table lined with tools and piles of

what looked like scrap metal.

"Sounds good to me," Marilee said. She tilted her head and scrutinized

the lines of the model. "I like the elements - the rough and the smooth

twining into a single arm that will be stronger than its individual

components."

The artist beamed. "Exactly."

That kind of partnership between the old and the new factions of New

Eden seemed unlikely, but Marilee was the last person to shoot down

idealism. Dreams were important. To her way of thinking, even

unattainable goals were worth striving for.

She thought of her own goals as she drove out of town.

There had been a time when she had dreamed of making it big as a singer

and songwriter, but her parents had pressed hard for college and a

career in law. She had fought them and fought within herself, the

independent young woman in her warring with the insecure child. The

factions compromised. Her dreams lost. No one lived happily ever after.

What's wrong with being a court reporter?
 
You wanted me to go into

law. That's a job in law.

We wanted you to be a lawyer, Marilee. You're so bright. You have so

much potential. You could be anything you want.

Fine. I want to be a court reporter.

It wasn't that she wanted to be a court reporter. She didn't want to be

a lawyer. Court reporting seemed like a fair compromise. She could still

see her parents wagging their heads sadly, wondering where they went

wrong, wondering why the rogue gene of the Jennings clan had surfaced in

their progeny. She could still feel their disappointment weighing

down her heart like a stone. She still mourned sometimes for the dreams

she had given up in her futile attempt to please them.

"The slate's clean now, Marilee," she said over the twang of Bruce

Hornsby's piano. She sped toward the ranch with the windows down, the

wind whipping her hair into a frenzy. "Dream new. Dream large."

But there were too many loose ends in the present to focus on the

future, and the only large thing that came to mind was J.D. Rafferty.

She spent the rest of the day cleaning. Her housekeeping habits had

always leaned toward a hinge and purge cycle.

She would let clutter accumulate, oblivious of it for weeks, then

suddenly she would see it, as if she had just come out of a trance, and

she would throw herself into the task of cleaning with dedication and

enthusiasm until the place sparkled. The mess in Lucy's house couldn't

be ignored. Nor could Marilee's need to get rid of it. The destruction

by the vandals was too much of an insult to the memory of her friend and

too reminiscent of random violence. The pall of that hung in the air,

and she opened all the windows in the place in the attempt to dispel it.

She started in the kitchen, scraping the mess off the floor, scrubbing

the Mexican tile, washing out the refrigerator. By the end of the day

she had worked her way through the great room. The dead ficus had been

dragged out, the prints on the walls straightened, the Berber rug

vacuumed. There was nothing she could do about the split in the seat of

the red leather sofa except hide it with a multicolored serape she had

found in a heap next to the woodbox. She salvaged what throw pillows she

could and discarded the others. The kindling that had been a rocking

chair and an end table were hauled outside.

Mr. Peanut watched the proceedings from his perch on the thick wood

mantel of the fieldstone fireplace. Marilee imagined Lucy's spirit

lurking behind the painted eyes, snickering as she worked herself toward

exhaustion.

Lucy's knack for avoiding physical work - for roping other people into

doing it for her - had been phenomenal.

I should have been born into your family instead of you, Marilee.

God knew she would have fit the Jennings clan like a glove in many

respects. Their family motto was "Live well, dress well, and hire help."

Marilee had always consoled Lucy with the fact that her mother wouldn't

have tolerated Lucy's promiscuity. In view of Lucy's taste for life in

the fast lane, it was better that she didn't have a mother looking over

her shoulder.

Marilee found herself regretting the words now when she thought of Lucy

dying alone. Shed a tear or two for me. No one else will.

With the great room finished, Marilee looked through what was left of a

glass-paneled door into a cozy study and groaned in agony at the sight

of it. There were books and papers everywhere. Smashed statuary and more

mutilated plants. A bronze sculpture of an eagle with outstretched wings

had been used like a bludgeon on the sleek walnut desk, splintering the

top. Marilee couldn't even begin to think about tackling it. Instead,

she pulled the last two cans of a six-pack of Miller Lite out of the

fridge by their plastic collar and went outside.

The sun had begun its downward slide behind the mountains to the west,

casting the valley in a warm bath of amber and shadow. She stood on the

deck for a long while, staring down at the stream, realizing that the

animals she had seen grazing along its banks weren't horses at all, but

the llamas.

The thought of their gentle eyes and regal bearing made her smile. She

wanted to just go and be with them and listen to their pleasant humming.

She would sit on the fence and let them rub their noses over her. She

would talk to them and try to absorb their air of wisdom.

They would want their supper and she would tell them to wait until

Rafferty came.

She wasn't sure he would come today. The book she had read over her

lunch break had been short on details about llama diets. They had an

inexhaustible supply of grass and water. Perhaps they got the feed

pellets only as a supplement once or twice a week. At any rate, Rafferty

probably had better things to do with his time than troop down for a

chore any ten-year-old ranch kid could have mastered. God knew, he

didn't even like her. He had kissed her in anger, had pinned her down

beneath him because she had attacked him.

And he held you while you cried because why, Marilee?

Because I didn't give him a choice.

She scowled at the reminder. Still, he had agreed to help her with the

animals. Because she was his neighbor.

That was part of the code of the West, she suspected.

Part of Rafferty's personal code. That touched her heart in a spot she

hadn't even known was vulnerable. She had spent too many years working

in a world where it was every man for himself.

Feeling restless, she walked around to the front of the house and

wandered across the yard toward the outbuildings, going in search of

llamas. The lawn needed mowing in a big way. Add that to the list for

tomorrow: find a lawn mower or bring a llama into the yard. She tried to