Dove in the Window (13 page)

I was right, and once she started walking us through the store, she temporarily forgot her annoyance at me and her dislike of Emory. Her face lit up as she talked about book trends, the possibilities opening up in CD-ROM, and her eventual plans to buy the used clothing store next door and expand her square footage. Emory listened intently, asking intelligent questions and keeping his lovesick expression hidden. Elvia started to relax when we ended up in the basement coffee house where we sipped lattes at one of the round oak tables scattered about the large room. Vivaldi played softly in the background, Sunday being classical music day at Blind Harry’s. Elvia rotated the background music to accommodate all her customers. Wednesdays, featuring bluegrass and country oldies, were my favorite days at the store.

“Any news on Shelby’s death?” Elvia asked when Emory excused himself to wander around the coffee house and peruse the book-lined shelves. The only criteria for Elvia’s casual lending library of used books was that you replaced a book you borrowed with another, thus always providing an eclectic and changing array of free literature.

I leaned back in one of the heavy oak library chairs. “Not yet, but Gabe was going to the sheriff’s office this afternoon, so I’ll know more tonight. If there’s anything to know. Gabe thinks there might be some foul play involved, but he said she also could have just fallen and hit her head.”

Elvia looked as skeptical as I felt. “Backwards?”

“It does sound like a bit of a stretch, but the alternative is to believe that someone at the barbecue left her to die.” I couldn’t say the word murder. “I find that much less appealing.”

She nodded, not verbalizing what we were both thinking. Wade had that kind of temper, though I’d never seen, him manifest it toward a female in all the years we lived at the ranch. He’d been raised by his tough-handed Texan father to believe that a man never beat up on women or kids, or creatures that were weaker or smaller than him. It was an old-fashioned mixture of condescension and respect, and though I had always been a bit uncomfortable with John Harper, Sr.’s beliefs, which also included the assertion that women belonged in the kitchen and kids should be seen, not heard, I respected the fact that he taught his sons to never take advantage of their brute strength. But John Harper had been dead a long time, and people often change over the years, rejecting the things they’d been taught as children. Maybe Wade had stepped over the line his father had drawn for his sons so many years ago.

“May I borrow a book?” Emory asked, walking back up to our table. “Or I’d be happy to purchase it, if that is your preference. This is one of my favorites, and I haven’t reread it for a while.” Elvia’s face was neutral, almost genial, a distinct step up from the annoyed look of an hour ago. My hopes were raised about the date I’d so rashly promised Emory.

When he held up the book for her inspection, two lines bisected her perfect black eyebrows, and my hopes were trampled under galloping hooves.

“You don’t need to buy it,” she said, standing up, her voice crisp and businesslike. “Just return it when you’re through.” She turned to me. “What time is the reception at Roland’s gallery tonight?”

“Seven,” I said, confused at her sudden change of mood.

“I’ll see you there.” She walked away, her head held high. Now that she couldn’t see him, Emory watched her retreating back with an open expression of adoration.

I turned back to my cousin. “Emory, what book are you borrowing?”

He held the faded used book for me to read the title. Then it all became clear. I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Why would
Pride and Prejudice
make her mad?” he asked.

“I don’t know how you do it, Emory, but that’s her all-time favorite book in the world. I mean, she has parts of it memorized.”

Emory just smiled his slow, southern smile.

“Fate,” he said.

6

EMORY AND I spent the next few hours driving around San Celina visiting places he remembered from his summer here twenty-five years ago. After a tour of the folk art museum, we stopped off at Liddie’s Cafe for lunch.

“Emory Littleton, you’ve done grown into a movie star!” Nadine Johnson squealed when we walked into Lid-die’s brown-panelled truckstop foyer. “Come over here and give me a hug right now.” Nadine had ruled as head waitress at the cafe whose neon sign made the improbable claim “Open 25 Hours A Day” since before I could read the home-cooked items on the peeling plastic menus. She had a memory as long and sharp as an ice pick, especially if you tickled her or ticked her off. Not surprisingly, Emory fit into the former category.

“You don’t be gone so long, you hear,” she said, smacking his back with her order pad after leading us to one of the six-person red vinyl booths.

“Yes, ma‘am,” he said, pulling off his tweed jacket which she snatched from him and carefully hung on the coat rack attached to the booth. We ordered cheeseburgers, onion rings, and chili-cheese fries.

“And a vanilla Coke for Emory,” Nadine said triumphantly.

“Lord have mercy, Nadine, I can’t believe you remembered,” Emory said, laughing.

She smacked him again with her order pad. “I reckon I ain’t that old yet, Emory Littleton. And I expect a big tip. If that jacket of yours didn’t cost you five hundred dollars, I’ll eat my apron.”

“I’ll make sure Benni gives you at least thirty percent,” he said.

“Ha!” she said. “That’ll be the day.”

“So much has changed,” he said after she left. “Thank goodness Liddie’s and Nadine haven’t.”

“The changes aren’t as noticeable when you’re living here, but I know what you mean. Life seems to be like one of those bullet trains, doesn’t it?”

When our food came we reverted to our childhood roles, arguing over who got the biggest onion ring or the juiciest-looking cheeseburger.

“Quit hogging all the chili,” I said, jabbing my fork at his over our shared chili-cheese fries.

“You don’t need it, Miss Piggy,” he replied, clinking his fork against mine. “Cottage cheese thighs will surely turn off that husband of yours.” We were in the midst of a spirited fork fight when Greer and Parker walked up.

“Behold our illustrious leader,” Greer said, laughing deeply. “Not to mention she’s also the wife of a highly esteemed city employee.”

“She started it,” Emory said, getting in the last jab. Just like he always did as a kid.

I stuck my tongue out at him. “Whiny baby.”

“We’d better get in here and referee before they get thrown out of this joint,” Greer said to Parker. Parker smiled and slid into the booth next to me.

“Just stay away from my chili,” Emory said, scooting over to make room for Greer.

“Are you all ready for tonight?” I asked Greer.

She shook her head no. “I thought being interviewed for that art magazine was nervewracking, but this has it beat by far.”

“Have you been down to Roland’s gallery this week?” Parker asked.

“No,” I said. “I’ve been so busy getting ready for our exhibit at the museum as well as the things I’m involved with for the Heritage Days that I haven’t had time.”

“Greer’s paintings look spectacular,” Parker said, her wide cheeks stained crimson from the cold outside. “I think this will be a real turning point in her career. Major galleries all over the country will be begging to show her after her opening and that article comes out.”

“I can’t wait to see them,” I said, smiling at Greer. Her face held the mixture of pride and dread I’d come to learn was common to artists about to show their work publicly.

“I’m grateful to Roland for the opportunity,” she said. She nodded at Parker. “Her time will come soon, I’ll venture to say,” she said graciously. “And she’s a lot younger than me.”

Parker blushed and ducked her head. “If I’m lucky.”

After their orders of chef’s salads arrived, we discussed Greer’s reception. Emory and I were sharing a piece of lemon icebox pie when Parker brought up Shelby’s photographs in the show.

“It’s going to be kind of weird, don’t you think?” she said, stirring her melting ice with a red-striped plastic straw. “I mean, seeing her pictures and knowing she’s ... not here anymore.”

“Tragic,” Emory said, and we all murmured agreeing noises.

“What’s Gabe say about it?” Greer asked. “Did they rule it an accident?”

“I guess it’s still up in the air. He doesn’t know much,” I said. “It’s not really his investigation since it happened on county land.” I sighed and rested my chin on my hand. “I just don’t want to believe she was killed on the ranch I grew up on.”

Greer reached over and patted my other hand. Her palm was dry and cool. “I know what you mean. If that had happened on our ranch, I’d be going bonkers. It’s been in my family five generations, and we’ve been lucky enough to escape any criminal activity.” She rapped her knuckles on the countertop. “At least any we know about. Let’s just hope they discover it was an accident. For everyone’s sake.”

Parker nodded in agreement and pushed aside a piece of boiled egg, a troubled look on her face.

“Let’s try and enjoy tonight anyway. I’ll see both of you there.” I nudged Parker so I could slide out of the booth.

At home, Emory claimed the shower first, so I was lying on the sofa, channel cruising, when Gabe walked in. I clicked off the television and turned eager eyes to him.

He held up his hand before I could speak. “There’s nothing to tell, so don’t even start.”

I sat up and threw the channel changer at him. He caught it one-handed and grinned.

“Oink, oink,” I said, smiling back. “You know, I really do have a vested interest this time, because it happened on my family’s ranch. Don’t hold back on me, Friday, and don’t give me any crap about it being official business ‘cause I’ll come over there and smack you hard, I swear I will.”

He sat down in his black leather recliner, kicking off his topsiders. “Sweetheart, I love it when you talk rough to me.” He pushed back in the chair.

I started to throw a pillow at him, then changed my mind and put it behind my back. “Seriously, Gabe, what’s going on?”

His face sobered, and he stroked his porcupine beard. “Not much. I imagine it’ll be one of those homicides where the only way they’ll make any headway is to question and requestion the people at the party.”

“Is anyone from her family coming out?”

He shook his head, his eyes unblinking and hard. “No. They just wanted to know when her body could be shipped back, and her father demanded to talk to the sheriff personally. He threw around the fact that he golfed with a couple of U.S. senators and had some kind of tenuous connection to the White House. I guess that was supposed to insure John’s complete cooperation.”

“I bet that really endeared him to John.” John Quincy Nesbit, San Celina’s county sheriff, was a local man who knew San Celina County and its citizens as well as he did the bloodlines of the championship Weimaraner dogs he raised on his ranch north of San Celina. He was the original good ole boy who knew how to play that image to the hilt when it suited his purpose. He rarely let it be known that along with getting a degree in criminology at USC, he also got one in nineteenth-century French literature. He and Gabe loved flaunting the fact that they were the only two top city officials who didn’t play golf.

“John can handle a snooty Chicago surgeon,” Gabe said. “It’s the local people who have him worried.”

“Why?”

“He’s just taking the same heat I do whenever there’s a murder. All you Central Coasters seem to think that even though the rest of the country has major crime, it is somehow more of an insult when it happens here in your little piece of Eden.”

I didn’t answer, knowing that was a little return jab for the remark I made in bed last night. He was right, in a way. We did have a rather unrealistic sense of entitlement. The last few days I’d heard the same lament from my aunts and uncles about the rural areas where they lived. Crime had certainly become more mobile in our country, and those of us raised in rural and semirural communities were a bit naive in thinking that it wouldn’t affect us. We’d often had to do without the services found in big cities so, in compensation, we’d prided ourselves on sacrificing convenience for a safe and clean environment for our families. Now, it seemed, even that was gone.

“No one in her family cared enough to come out,” I said, feeling an incredible sadness. Her family was more heartless than she even had managed to convey to me. “If someone in my family had died like that, the whole clan would be out there haranguing the police.”

“How well I know,” he said with an ironic smile. “Getting involved has never been a problem with your family. But not everyone’s like that. I’ve seen both kinds of reactions in homicide investigations—those who are involved in every little detail and those who just want to bury their dead and get on with it.”

“Which do you think is better?”

He shrugged. “For the homicide investigator, it’s always easier when you don’t have someone dogging your steps. On the other hand, often family and friends can give insight into a victim’s background that even the best investigator can’t dig up. Six of one, I guess.”