High Tide (12 page)

“Right,” Fiona said, and for minutes she didn't breathe, but, as far as they could tell, they were safe and no one was following them.

But when Fiona saw the house where Ace had grown up, she almost said that she'd rather turn herself in to the police. Jail couldn't be as bad as that cabin.

It had a rusted metal roof that was peeled up in places, and in others the metal was missing altogether. But she doubted if too much rain got inside as thick piles of Spanish moss covered the big holes. There was a sort of porch on the place, but one of the columns had collapsed, so the roof was hanging down on one side. There was a front door and two windows with missing panes. The upper part of the building was gray wood, and the lower was rotting.

No wonder he liked Kendrick Park, she thought. This building made those at the park seem like the Taj Mahal.

Ace got their bags out of the car, then stood holding them while Fiona stared at the cabin. “It's a bit rustic,” he said under his breath.

What was he up to? she wondered, because she had the feeling that this wasn't real, that he was trying to make her believe he was a poor little boy from the wrong side of the tracks. There were bells ringing in her head that told her that he was doing this for a reason. But what reason?

She didn't know the answer, but she did know that she could play this game too. If he wanted to believe that she thought he was some redneck briar, so be it. She could pretend
as well as he could. “So. Do these Taggert relatives of yours wear shoes? Pick their toenails with a Tennessee pig sticker? What about the Montgomerys? Ever seen a bathtub?”

Tension visibly left Ace's body as he opened the front door. Not that it mattered much whether it was open or closed, since it was hanging on one hinge. “Come on, we've electricity,” he said, motioning with his head for her to enter.

“Let me guess. Your family knew Edison.”

“Sure. He built the house. Wait until you see the woodstove.”

Fiona had to close her eyes for a moment to give herself strength, and she vowed that when this mess was over, she was going to give more to charity to help poor people. It was disgusting that anyone in America should live like this.

Some part of her was hoping that the inside of the cabin would be nice, but instead animals had been using it for their own. There was an old couch that should have been discarded twenty or so years ago, and it looked as though something had built a nest in it. She hoped it wasn't a bird or he'd never allow it to be cleaned.

On the other side of the cabin was what passed for a kitchen, with a few battered cabinets, a big woodstove against the wall, and in the middle was a table with a broken leg.

Toward the back was a door.

“Let me guess,” Fiona said. “One room and a path, right?”

“Two rooms,” Ace said cheerfully as he put a load of groceries down on the table, then had to catch them as they nearly slid off. “We'uns gotta bedroom.”

“Tell me again how bad jail is,” she said as she tested a
chair for sturdiness, then sat down cautiously. Surprisingly, the thing held.

“The point is that you might get out of here, but you won't get out of jail.”

She looked about the cabin again. “Let me think about that and get back to you.”

Again Ace laughed. “Here,” he said, “put these on and let's get busy.”

When he handed her a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves, she looked up at him in question.

“This place hasn't been used in a while.” He grinned. “Well, okay, maybe in years, and Florida's wet, so it reclaims places quickly, so …”

He seemed to think that she knew what he was getting at, but she had no idea what was going on inside his mind—not about
anything
.

Putting his hands on the table, he bent over until his nose was close to hers. “We clean while we talk.”

“Clean?” she said as though she'd never heard the word before. Behind him something furry ran across the floor. “This place needs a veterinarian and a really hot fire.”

“Up!” he said, then grabbed her wrist and pulled her out of the chair.

When Fiona moved, the chair, never sturdy to begin with, broke a leg and nearly sent her sprawling. To keep from falling, she clutched at the nearest thing, which happened to be Ace. He grabbed her to him and held her upright.

“Sorry, I …” She stopped speaking as she looked into his eyes, her body pressed against his, and she saw interest there. But she wasn't about to admit her own interest. She
wasn't going to find out any of his secrets if she let his terrific good looks sway her. Why, oh, why couldn't he have been five feet tall and fat?

“Don't get any ideas,” she said as she pushed away from him, but carefully keeping her head turned so he couldn't see her face.

But Ace had seen and felt the attraction between them. “I think you're the one who—”

He broke off at the look Fiona gave him. “Okay, peace,” he said, then held out his hand to shake hers.

But Fiona turned away and didn't touch him. “Look, abnormal circumstances make for abnormal relationships,” she said, “so let's think about the future and other people who are involved in this, and let's not let circumstances …” She turned back to look at him and saw that he had one of those male smirks on his face.

“What?!” she hissed at him.

“You really
must
tell me what you read that makes you live in such a fantasy world.”

“Give me that!” she said then snatched the broom out of his hand.

“Don't tell me
you
know how to use a broom,” Ace taunted. “Not Miss Cotillion. So where
did
you go to school? No, no, let me guess. Miss Somebody's School for Young Ladies.”

“Oops,”
Fiona said as she swept a cloud of dirt and couch stuffing and, she hoped, animal droppings in his direction. “Are you going to continue to waste time, or are you going to fill that bucket? I do hope this place has water.”

“With or without alligators?”

“If you're fetching it, with.”

At that Ace laughed, then went out the front door. In minutes he was back, the bucket full of water, and he was still smiling. “Okay, you first. You now, me later.”

She gave him her most wide-eyed, innocent, ingenue look. “How economical—two baths from the same tub of water. A Montgomery family tradition?”

But he didn't take the bait and reveal anything about himself. “No bath for you if you don't start,” he said, smiling.

She was truly puzzled and paused in sweeping to look at him. “Start what? Other than doing your dirty work, that is?”

“I want you to tell me everything about yourself. There's a connection between us, and we need to find out what it is. So now you tell me about your life, and later I talk about me.”

Fiona hesitated. This was going to be tricky. How did she reveal but not reveal? How did she let him know that she wasn't going to tell him anything unless he told her everything, without sounding like a petulant child? As to that matter, how did she know what to keep hidden?

“Go on, out with it. It couldn't be that bad. Start with where and when you were born, and go on with it from there.” He had his hands in a plastic bucket, and he was about to attack the filthy kitchen cabinets.

When she still didn't speak, he looked at her. “Come on, think about Kimberly. Think how much you want to get back to her and have lunch or whatever it is you two do.”

For a moment, Fiona had to turn away. New York and Kimberly and her job, Jeremy and The Five, were so clear to her that she could almost touch them. How had she gone from so much happiness to … to this in just a few days?

“Indulging in self-pity?” Ace asked softly, one eyebrow raised. “Remember that the sooner we find out who's behind this the sooner we can both go home.”

Fiona hit the floor with the broom and moved a fat clump of debris. “My mother died soon after my birth, leaving me to be raised by my father, except that he was a cartographer and moved around a lot.”

Once she started, she got into telling her life's story. And Ace could certainly listen. At first he seemed so absorbed in what he was doing that she wasn't sure he was hearing her, so twice she contradicted herself. Both times he instantly caught the errors, then told her to go on. Each time she had to hide her smile. It was flattering to have someone listen so intently to something that was so personal.

All in all, she'd had an uneventful life, certainly not one that had prepared her for finding a dead man on top of her, or for living in a two room shack while hiding from the police.

She told him that after her mother's death, she'd been sent to live with an ancient aunt and uncle. They were very boring, seldom allowing her to run and play, instead wanting her to sit quietly and color or play with paper dolls. With her head cocked to one side, she looked at him. He had a rusty hammer and a couple of nails and was now refastening the side of the clean cabinet. “I played with dolls a lot,” she said.

Without looking at her, he nodded but said nothing.

For a moment, Fiona just looked at him. He had a knee on the bottom cabinet, the other leg stretched back with a foot on a chair. He was reaching up to the top of the upper cabinets, so that his long body was stretched out, his muscles
straining against his shirt. For a moment, her mouth went dry and her hands tightened on the broom handle until the thing threatened to break.

“Dolls, right,” he said without looking down but encouraging her to continue.

“Yes, dolls,” she said and made herself return to sweeping. She told him that at six her father sent her to boarding school, and she had
loved
it. On the first day she met four other little girls who were the same age as she. “We called ourselves The Five, and we've been best friends ever since,” Fiona said but refused to allow herself to think about that. What kind of hell of worry must they be going through now, with Fiona falsely accused and in hiding?

“What about your father?” Ace asked as he stepped back to the floor. “Ever see him?”

“Oh, yes,” Fiona said, and her adoration of her father came through in her voice. “I know that a therapist would probably tell me I was neglected by him, but I never felt so. He was perfect.”

Her pace increased and happiness flowed through her as she talked about her father. For several minutes she forgot about where she was and why as she told about her father, John Findlay Burkenhalter. He visited her three times a year, and each visit was more exciting than the last. He always showed up bearing fabulous gifts for her
and
her four friends. “He took us to circuses and fairs and ice cream parlors. Once he took us to a department store and had a woman make up our faces when we were just twelve; then he bought all the makeup for us.”

When Ace made no comment to this, she sighed. “You have to be a girl to understand that. The fathers of all the
other girls in the school were always telling their daughters no. It was as though the fathers didn't want the girls to grow up. No lipstick, no short skirts, no anything.”

Ace was looking at her in impatience. Right, she thought, she was to recount facts, not make this into an essay contest.

“That's it,” she said. “I went to college, majored in business, graduated, had a few jobs in New York; then eight years ago I started work at Davidson Toys.”

“With Kimberly,” he said thoughtfully.

“I didn't meet Kimberly until I'd been at Davidson Toys for a year and a half.”

“Do you think Kimberly could be the connection between you and Roy?”

“Not hardly,” Fiona said, then stepped back to look at the room. She had removed enough debris to fill half a New York elevator.

But, obviously, no compliment was going to come from him. Instead, he was deep in thought.

“Did you ever go to Texas? Even as a kid?”

“Never,” Fiona said. “Could you point me toward the, uh, you know.”

“Out back,” he said without much concern. “But watch where you walk.”

She didn't want to think about what danger there could be as she tiptoed out the door. There was an overgrown path cut through the plants, and she followed it, expecting at any moment to be jumped on by some creature that no civilized person had ever seen before.

But her trip was uneventful, and when she returned to the cabin, Ace had taken a toaster oven from the back of the car.

“Your friend is going to hate you when he returns to his house and finds all his things gone. You didn't by chance pack sheets and towels, did you?”

“Two sets of each,” he said, and for just a second his eyes met hers, but she looked away. She had no idea what the sleeping accommodations were.

“So what's for dinner? I'm starving.”

“Shrimp, which you get to peel while I talk.”

At that Fiona let out a groan, a genuine groan about the shrimp but a pretend groan about hearing his life story. So now maybe she'd find out some truth, and not his Beverly Hillbilly act.

But Ace didn't tell much about himself. He was one of four children, he told her, and a bit of a misfit in a gregarious family. When he was seven, his mother's odd, quiet younger brother broke his leg and came to stay with Ace's family.

“We formed a bond,” Ace said as he peeled oranges for the sauce. “When I was eight, I spent my first summer with my uncle here in this place. By the time I was ten, I was living here full-time.” As he said the words, he looked about the horrible old house with love.

She had to turn away to hide her grim expression. He may have lived here, but there was more to his life than this ramshackle old cabin. But he wasn't volunteering that info, was he?

“What about school?” Fiona asked as she slipped her fingernail under the thin membrane of a shrimp.

“Here, let me show you,” Ace said impatiently as he bent over her, then put his arms around her as he showed her how to peel the shrimp.