Where There's Smoke (5 page)

Janellen couldn't began to guess how many women her brothers had worked their magic on, especially Key.
 
She'd always entertained a fantasy of spoiling a mixed blend of nieces and nephews, but it remained an unfulfilled dream.
 
Key liked women, a wide assortment of them.
 
She saw no indication that he'd soon settle down into marriage.

"You're pretty good at helping a man into his pants," he remarked teasingly.
 
"Been helping one out of his lately?
 
I hope," he added.

"Hush!"

"Well?"

"No!"
 
She could feel herself blushing.
 
Key had always been able to make her blush.

"Why not?"

"I'm not interested, that's why," she replied loftily.
 
"Besides, no one's been swept off his feet by my dazzling face and form."

"There's nothing wrong with either," he said staunchly.

"But they're hardly dazzling."

"No, because you've got it into your stubborn head that you're plain Jane, so you dress the part.
 
You're so " disdainfully, he gestured at her prim blouse, "buttoned up."

"Buttoned up?"

"Yeah.
 
What you need to do is unbutton.
 
Unhook.
 
Unstrap.
 
Get loose, sis."

She pretended to be aghast.
 
"As an old maid, I take exception to such trashy talk."

"Oil maid!
 
Who the hell ?
 
You listen to me, Janellen."
 
He pointed his index finger at the tip of her nose.
 
"You're not old."

"I'm not exactly an ingenue either."

"You're two years younger than me.
 
That makes you thirty-four."

"Not "Okay, thirty-three.
 
Far from over the hill.
 
Hell, broads these days wait until they're forty to start having kids."

"Those who do wouldn't appreciate your referring to them as bnads."

"You get my drift," he insisted.
 
"You haven't even reached your sexual peak yet."

Key, please."

"And the only reason you're still a maid,' if you are "I am."

"More's the pity is because you clam up and shy away from any guy who even thinks about getting into your pants."

Janellen, stricken by his crudeness, stared at him speechlessly.

She worked around men eight hours a day, five days a week, and occasionally on weekends.
 
As a rule, their language was colorful and to the point, but they monitored it when Miss janellen was within hearing.
 
When her employees addressed her, they cleaned up their act.

Of counse Jody would shoot on sight any man using vulgarities in either her or her daughter's presence.
 
Paradoxically, Jody herself had an extensive vocabulary of obscenities and blasphemies, an irony that seemed to escape her.

The fact that Janellen emanated an invisible repellent against casual and unguarded behavior didn't please her.
 
In fact, she considered this characteristic a liability.
 
It set her apart and proved that she didn't attract men in any way, on any level including friendship.

She couldn't even be one of the boys, although she'd grown up having to contend with two older brothers.

She wasn't so much affronted by Key's salty language as she was stunned.
 
In a way she took it as a compliment.
 
Key, however, couldn't guess that.

"Oh, hell," he muttered remorsefully and stroked her cheek.
 
"I'm sorry.
 
I didn't mean to say that.
 
It's just that you're too hard on yourself.
 
Lighten up, for chrissake.
 
Have some fun.
 
Take off a year and go to
Europe.
 
Raise hell.
 
Create a ruckus.
 
Scare up a scandal.

Broaden your scope.
 
Life's too short to be taken so seriously.
 
It's passing you by."

She smiled, clasped his hand, and kissed the back of it.
 
"Apology accepted.
 
I know you didn't mean to hurt my feelings or insult me.

But you're wrong, Key.
 
Life isn't passing me by.
 
My life is here, and I'm content with it.
 
I'm so busy, I don't know how I'd fit in another interest, romantic or otherwise.

"Granted, my life isn't as exciting as yours, but I don't want it to be.
 
You're the globe-trotter.
 
I'm a homebody, not at all suited to hell-raising and ruckuses and scandals."

She laid her hand on his forearm.
 
"I don't want to argue with you on your first day home since
Clark's .
 
. ."
 
She couldn't bring herself to complete the sentence.
 
She dropped her hand from his arm.
 
"Let's go downstairs.
 
The coffee should be ready by now.

"Good.
 
I could use a cup or two before facing the old lady.
 
What time does she usually get up?"

"The old lady is up."

In the doorway stood their mother, Jody Tackett.

Bowie Cato came awake when he was nudged hard in the ribs with the toe of a boot.
 
"Hey, you, get up.

Bowie opened his eyes and rolled onto his back.
 
It took him several seconds to remember he was sleeping in the storeroom of The Palm, the loudest, raunchiest, and seediest tavern in a row of loud, raunchy, and seedy taverns lining both sides of the two-lane highway on the outskirts of Eden Pass.

As the recently hired janitor,
Bowie did most of his work after 2:00

A.M when the tavern closed, and that was on a slow night.

In addition to the piddling salary he earned, the owner had granted him permission to sleep on the storeroom floor in a sleeping bag.

"What's going' on?"
 
he asked groggily.
 
It seemed he hadn't slept for more than a few hours.

"Get up."
 
He got the boot in the ribs again, more like a bona fide kick this time.
 
His first impulse was to grab the offending foot and sling it aside, throwing its owner off balance and landing him flat on his ass.

But
Bowie had spent the last three years in the state pen for giving vent to a violent impulse and he wasn't keen on the idea of serving another three.

Without comment or argument, he sat up and shook his muzzy head.

Squinting through the sunlight coming from the window, he saw the silhouettes of two men standing over him.

"I'm sorry,
Bowie."
 
Speaking now was Hap Hollister, owner of The Palm.

"I told Gus that you'd been here all night, didn't leave the premises once since seven o'clock last evenin', but he said he had to check you out anyway on account of you being an ex-con.

He and the sheriff asked around last night and, best as they can tell, at the present, you're the only suspicious character in town."

"I seriously doubt that,"
Bowie mumbled as he slowly came to his feet.

"It's all right, Hap."
 
He gave his new employer a grim smile, then faced a bald, bloated, burly sheriff's deputy.
 
"What's up?"

"What's up," the deputy repeated nastily, "is that Ms. Darcy Winston nearly got herself raped and murdered in her own bed last night.

That's what's up."
 
He gave them the details of the attempted break-in.

"I'm awful sorry to hear that."
 
Bowie divided his gaze between the uniformed deputy and Hap, but they continued to stare back at him wordlessly.
 
He raised and lowered his shoulders in a quick, quizzical motion.
 
"Who's Ms.
 
Darcy Winston?"

"Like you don't know," the deputy sneered.

"I don't know."

"You, uh, were talking to her last night,
Bowie," Hap said regretfully.

"She was here while you were on duty.
 
Redheaded, big tits, had on those purple, skinny-legged britches.
 
Lots of jewelry."

"Oh."
 
He didn't recall the jewelry, but those tits were memorable all right, and he figured that Ms. Darcy Winston knew it better than anybody.
 
She'd been guzzling margaritas like they were lime-flavored soda pop and giving encouragement to every man in the place, including him, the lowly sweep-up boy.

"I talked to her," he told the deputy, "but we didn't get around to swapping names.

"She was talking to everybody, Gus," Hap interjected.

"But only this un has a prison record.
 
Only this un is out on parole."

Bowie shifted his weight and ordered his tensing muscles to relax.

Dammit, he knew instinctively that trouble was just around the corner, barreling full steam ahead, ready to knock him down.
 
He hoped to hell he could get out of its path, but the odds didn't look good.

This two-hundred-fifty pound sheriff's deputy was a bully.
 
Bowie had tangled with too many in his lifetime not to recognize one on sight.

He'd seen them large and muscular; he'd seen them small and wiry.
 
A man's size and strength had nothing to do with it.
 
The common denominator was a meanness-for-meanness' sake that shone in their eyes.

Bowie had first encountered it in his stepfather soon after his desperate, widowed mother had married the drunken son of a bitch who got off by slapping him around.
 
Later, he'd recognized it in the junior high school boys' gym teacher who daily, deliberately, humiliated the kids who weren't natural athletes.

Standing up to his abusive stepfather and defending those pitiful kids against the gym teacher had been the start of the troubles that had eventually landed
Bowie in county jail as a juvenile offender.

Slow to learn, years later he'd graduated to state prison.

But this wasn't his fight.
 
He didn't know Darcy Winston and couldn't care less about the attack on her.
 
He told himself that if he just stayed cool it would be all right.
 
"I was here at The Palm all night, just like Hap told you.

The deputy surveyed him up one side and down the other.
 
"Take off your clothes."

"Excuse me?"

"What, are you deaf?
 
Take off your clothes.
 
Strip."

"Gus," Hap said apprehensively.
 
"You sure that's necessary?
 
The boy here "Back off, Hap," the deputy snapped.
 
"Let me do my job, will ya?

Ms. Winston shot at the intruder.
 
We know she hit him 'cause there was blood on her balcony railing and on the pool deck.
 
He left a trail of it as he ran off through the bushes."
 
He hitched up his gun holster, which fit in the deep crevice beneath his overlapping beer belly.
 
"Let's see if you've got a bullet wound anywhere.
 
Take off your clothes, jailbird."

Bowie's temper snapped.
 
"Go fuck yourself."

The deputy's face turned as red as a billiard ball.
 
His piggish eyes were almost buried in narrowing folds of florid fat.

Now there'd be hell to pay.