Hear No Evil (3 page)

Jessie lay propped up in bed, her leg elevated and encased in white. She was seventy-one years old, a big woman, and she had a badly bruised nose, a bandage on her cheek, and three stitches in her forehead from the accident.

Her dander was up, because she’d been told she’d need to stay in the hospital at least nine days—her fracture was that serious. Even though her body was battered, her spirit was defiant, and her voice was still strong and hauntingly sonorous. “Did you get hold of Eden?” she asked.

“She’s flying in as soon as she can,” Owen said.

He thought he saw an expression of relief in Jessie’s eyes, but she thrust her chin up and looked as if she weren’t surprised. She made her living as a psychic, a phone psychic primarily, and seldom admitted to being surprised by anything.

How she would rationalize Peyton’s unexpected appearance or her own accident he had yet to hear, but he knew she would have an explanation, mystical or practical or both, and she wouldn’t back down from it.

With a shaky hand, she took a sealed envelope from her bedside table and held it toward him. “Give this to Eden when she comes.”

Owen nodded and thrust the envelope into the pocket of his nylon jacket.

“She ain’t going to be happy when she reads it,” Jessie warned in her sibyl’s voice.

Owen raised a dark brow and gave her a questioning look.

“She’d never come if she knowed the whole truth up front,” Jessie said darkly.

She gave Owen a sharp look. She had strangely colored eyes; he could never put a name to what color they were.

“The whole truth?” he asked. “What’s the whole truth? That you’d been worried about Mimi? About those calls lately?”

She ignored the question. “Did you tell her what I said? That I wanted her? That I needed her?”

“Yes,” Owen answered, suddenly wondering what secrets lay beneath those simple words.

“Well, that’s truth enough,” Jessie said. “She’ll probably raise hell. She usually does. Pay her no mind.”

He had misgivings, but he said nothing. “When you go home,” she said, “I want you to unplug my business phone line.”

Owen nodded. “I’ll do it.”

“And don’t let Peyton in my office,” ordered Jessie. “She’s too curious by a damn sight.”

“I’ll lock the door.”

“Have you seen that new doctor?” Jessie demanded. “He come walking in here with a can of RC Cola in his hand, wearing jeans. He looks twelve years old. He asked me about my
ovaries
. I said, ‘You tend my leg, not my private parts.’ ”

Owen patted Jessie’s thick hand. “Be nice. Maybe they’ll give you time off for good behavior.”

Jessie’s expression changed. She gave him a wary
glance. “It’s good of you to watch out for Peyton. I know it’s hard for you. That you don’t take to children.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “It’s not for long. Your granddaughter’ll be here soon. She’ll take care of everything.”

Jessie crossed her arms. She gave him a curt nod. “She better,” she said, a hard glint in her eye.

E
DEN’S COMMUTER FLIGHT TO
E
NDOR WAS NOT ONLY
late, it hit turbulence, which soon mixed with a witch’s brew of lightning and violent rain.

The plane made a particularly nasty lurch, and the woman behind Eden started to weep, plea-bargaining with God. Eden hung on to the arms of her seat, gritting her teeth and vowing to be brave. She sang under her breath.

Then a blinding bolt of lightning turned the air of the cabin a crackling blue, thunder shook the fuselage, and she bit her lip so hard it bled.

Eden crushed a paper airline napkin against her mouth.
No more singin’ in the rain
, she thought miserably and wondered if they all were doomed. But at last, as
the flight approached Endor, the tempest gentled into mere autumn rain.

The plane landed on a wet black strip that shimmered with rainbow reflections of the airport’s lights. When Eden descended the narrow steps, her knees were still jellied, her stomach still queasy.

The sky was pitch-black, and the thin, steady rain chilled her as she crossed the tarmac, lugging her carry-on bag. It was three-thirty in the morning, and she felt like very hell.

She pushed open the glass doors into the terminal and wondered, dimly, if Owen Charteris had kept his promise to meet her. She hoped not; she was in no mood to be grateful.

But almost immediately she heard a male drawl that she recognized as his. “Miss Storey?”

She looked up and was taken aback to see a tall, lean man with jutting cheekbones. His hair was thick and silver-gray now instead of brown. He was unsmiling, and a frown line was etched between his dark brows. He was taller than she remembered.

She was jolted by the surprise that, after all these years, she recognized him: the startling blue eyes, the high-bridged nose, the angular line of his jaw. He’d been a handsome bastard all those years ago; he still was, perhaps even more so.

“Owen Charteris,” she said numbly, without pleasure.

“Welcome back to Endor.” His tone sounded sardonic.

She was too shaken to exchange pleasantries, even false ones, and could think of no reply.

He said, “Maybe ‘welcome’ is the wrong word.”

He reached to take her carry-on. She clutched it
more tightly and eyed him suspiciously. “You turned gray,” she accused, as if he’d committed some sort of betrayal.

What a stupid thing to say
, she thought, but she found herself focusing on his gray hair, as if it were a fascinating illusion. The golden boy had become a silver man, and her words had simply tumbled out.

A cold smirk flickered at the corner of his mouth. “Thanks for pointing it out. Do you want to give me that bag or do we keep fighting over it?”

“I can carry it,” she protested, drawing back. It was as if by keeping hold of the bag she could keep a grip on herself as well.

He shrugged as if he didn’t care. He was dressed casually, Arkansas style. His faded jeans were not designer jeans, his cowboy boots were scuffed from use, and he wore a belt with a silver buckle shaped like a coiled rattlesnake.

How Freudian
, Eden thought sarcastically. Yet she was surprised and displeased to feel a tremor of sexual awareness run through her. Guiltily, she willed it to go away, and it almost did.

He had the Charteris family height and leanness, and the Charteris air of ironic detachment. She stared at him rather defensively, as if he were a prize exhibit in the museum of a past she’d tried to forget.

The high school hero’s grown up and gone gray
, she thought.
And Mimi’s left her child on Jessie’s doorstep, and Jessie’s in the hospital—

The thoughts of Mimi and Jessie struck her anew, driving all her other crazy thoughts away. She grasped her carry-on more tightly. “Has anybody heard anything about Mimi?”

“Nothing,” he said.

Her throat tightened. “What about my grandmother? Should I go see her right now?”

Without emotion he looked her up and down. “I’ll take you if you want. But it wouldn’t do any good. And frankly, you look green around the gills. Maybe you should rest.”

She brushed a strand of damp hair from her eyes and forced herself to stand straighter. “Jessie—how is she?”

“Asleep. They gave her a sedative. She was raising hell.”

Imagine that
, Eden thought wearily, but said nothing.

“Who gave you the split lip?” he asked.

“God,” she said.

“Rough flight?” he asked in his laconic way.

“My life only passed before my eyes two or three hundred times.”

He seemed to try to smile again, but his mouth only twisted slightly. “I’ll take you home, give you a drink.”

“I don’t drink,” she said more sharply than she meant.

She thought she tasted blood in her mouth again, but ignored it. Lord, she was tired, but she had to keep her priorities straight. “How’s the child? Mimi’s daughter?”

For some reason mention of the child wiped the forced smile from his face. He looked downright grim. “We finally got her to sleep. You’ll see her in the morning.”

His words sounded more like threat than promise. She struggled to muster up a modicum of politeness and said, “You and your wife, it’s very good of you to take care of the child. Very kind.”

His eyes weren’t kind. They were the cold blue of ice. “My sister,” he said. “Not my wife.”

He bit the words off so acrimoniously that Eden sensed she’d made some sort of inexcusable blunder. “I’m sorry,” she said, not knowing what she was supposed to be sorry for.

His expression didn’t change, but something in his mien had gone harsh, even more aloof than before. He said, “On the phone, you sounded surprised when I mentioned the kid. You didn’t know about her?”

Eden made a gesture of frustration. “No. It’s a long story. No. I didn’t know about the child. That sounds terrible, I know, but it’s—a family matter.”

“Yes,” he said. “It is. That’s one reason Jessie wants you here. To take care of the kid. She’s not going to be up and around for a while.”

Eden’s jaw dropped in surprise. “She wants me here for
that?
My God, I don’t know anything about children. I’ve never been around them. I hardly remember
being
one.”

“Me, either,” he said. “But she’s all yours now.”

She stared at him aghast, not wanting to understand the full import of his words. “W-why,” she stammered, “did this happen? Why did Mimi send this—child?”

“It’s a family matter,” he said, echoing her words. “I don’t know. But Jessie’s been nervous lately about Mimi.”

She swallowed hard. “Nervous? Why?”

His eyes held hers. “She thinks she’s in trouble. It involves some calls Jessie’s been getting. I don’t have all the details.”

“Trouble? With the law?”

“I don’t know.”

Hellfire on a stick
, Eden thought.
What now?

Owen Charteris raised his brows in an expression that might have been sympathy or merely resignation. “Did you have luggage checked aboard?” he asked.

She nodded. “If it didn’t get thrown out for ballast.”

“Why don’t you go clean up,” he said. “You’ve got blood on your lip and your blouse. I’ll wait for your luggage. It won’t be here, but I’ll check for it.”

“Won’t be here? Why?”

“It’ll be lost,” he said matter-of-factly. “Luggage coming to Endor always gets lost. We’re sort of the Devil’s Triangle that way.”

“Devil’s Triangle,” muttered Eden. “That’s how I remember it, all right.”

If he felt she had insulted his hometown, he didn’t show it. He gazed toward the luggage carousel, as if it were far more interesting than she was.

Absently he reached into the pocket of his wind-breaker. “Jessie wrote a note. I’ll let you read it in private. The ladies’ room is that way.”

Not bothering to look at her, he offered her a somewhat crumpled envelope. She took it reluctantly, careful not to let her fingers touch his. A queer sense of foreboding twisted in the pit of her stomach.

Inside the rest room, she couldn’t bring herself to open the envelope immediately. She set it on the shelf over the row of sinks and stared at herself in the mirror.

Sleeplessness had carved dark circles under her eyes. Her skin was pallid, and her lower lip was as swollen as if a wasp had stung her. The front of her silk blouse was flecked with the scarlet of her own finely spattered blood.

So what?
she thought, splashing cold water on her
face. She was back again in this despised town, supposed to baby-sit a niece she hadn’t known existed until this morning, and so far her only ally in this mess was Smiley out there, the patron saint of lost luggage, who seemed bitter over something, possibly everything.

She washed her face, brushed her limp hair, and halfheartedly applied a swipe of lipstick to her upper lip. She didn’t bother trying to clean the blouse, it was ruined, she knew.

Full of a sense of impending disaster, she forced herself to pick up Jessie’s note and open it. From childhood she remembered that Jessie didn’t write greetings or endearments; she wrote orders, made pronouncements, issued proclamations.

The paper glared yellowy beneath the flicker of the fluorescent lights. Eden read Jessie’s familiar scrawled misspellings with growing disbelief and distress.