Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 3 - Venus Besieged Read online

  "Not that elevated, I assure you," Ramona said, sipping her martini but keeping her eyes lifted and locked on Barrett. Even I could feel the heat and I made eye contact with Callie, indicating with a nod that she should check out what was going on and perhaps join me in the kitchen and give them some space.

  There was a pause as Barrett and Ramona appeared to be analyzing why their earlier meeting hadn't produced the chemistry currently in the air. I mused on that mystery—how a place, a time, an instant coalesces to create a magical, inescapable energy that can be felt across the room, can sear through clothing, can create sleepless nights and lustful longings.

  "Do you spend much time in L.A.?" Barrett asked almost softly.

  "When it's needed." Ramona's penetrating stare invited Barrett to express a need.

  "Good to know," Barrett said and I felt my own heartbeat. Is Barrett really going to put a move on Ramona? She’s not even a writer.

  Ramona must have caught us watching them out of the corner of her eye, because she suddenly turned to include us in the conversation.

  "Teague and I are old friends. We met in Tulsa, during the Anthony murder that ultimately had studio ties, as you know. In fact, I recall now that you were heavily involved in that case and were injured and hospitalized."

  Barrett said she was, and for the next fifteen minutes they reminisced about Frank Anthony's being shot in the gym by people who wanted to cover up the graft and corruption taking place at the studio. The conversation wasn't about poor dead Frank Anthony at all; it was sexual foreplay as two women who had cruised half the planet let one another know they shared language skills, quick wits, and healthy libidos.

  Barrett had pulled her battered leather chair up close to the couch where Ramona lounged like a stately silver cat, her arm, as long as Barrett's, reaching out toward the coffee table in front of her, the quarter-sized diamond on her finger signaling she was a woman accustomed to comfort. She leaned in to grasp the drink glass, never taking her Dresden blue eyes off Barrett, who seemed caught in their experienced net.

  "So do you live alone?" Ramona repeated, seeming to survey her present opportunity.

  It was the phrase that put a lesbian on the path to a quick close or possible complications. The moment in which, like an archaeologist, she unearthed husbands, live-in girlfriends, underage children, or the fact that the admired lived in her car under a viaduct. Barrett paused, no doubt a tingling sensation rippling from her pelvis to her throat, for the answer was also a moment—one in which she could surrender to her passion or rid herself of an unwanted suitor by pleading anything from herpes to heterosexuality.

  A smile played around Barrett's lips. "I live alone."

  "We have to make up for that," Ramona said lightly, as if that meant they might meet for lunch sometime as opposed to devour one another across the coffee table. They didn't seem to notice our absence as Callie and I watched from the kitchen, our lesbian children playing in the living room.

  Ramona Mathers, whose relaxed and sensual presence clearly indicated she was still interested in anything life had to offer, and her body amazingly offered more than could realistically be expected, was sophisticated sexy, feline sexy, available sexy. When I overheard Ramona say she once wanted to be a writer and had published several short stories, I smiled at Callie, trying to conceal a snicker.

  "This is so going to clinch the deal," I whispered.

  Barrett perked up, saying she'd love to read what Ramona had written.

  "Is it warm in here or am I getting drunk?" Ramona asked, giving Barrett her entree, and Barrett quickly suggested they step out on the porch with their drinks.

  As the door clicked shut behind them, Callie said, "So, it appears we have a match."

  Elmo let out a large bored moan.

  "I'm with you, Elmo. Good grief, Ramona is twenty years older than Barrett."

  "So what?" Callie smiled. "If she were a man, people would say, 'Good for her.'"

  "Well, then—good for her," I said and almost meant it.

  Barrett and Ramona stayed outside longer than you would think comfortable in light of the cold night air, and I wondered if they'd gone off into the woods and curled up in a knothole.

  Turning the lights off in the cabin, I pulled back the curtain so I could peek onto the porch.

  "What are you doing?" Callie giggled.

  "I want to know if they're out there porking each other in the pines or what," I whispered. My eyes adjusted and I could see them facing each other, their drinks deserted on the porch railing. Barrett slowly stroked Ramona's long arm and then slid hers around Ramona's waist, pulling her in and gently putting her lips to Ramona's, shifting slightly and then kissing her deeply. Barrett can't kiss, this is going to ruin the deal, I thought.

  Barrett finally took her lips from Ramona's. A pause. And then Ramona took Barrett's face in her hands lovingly, gently, and slowly kissed her as if she'd discovered something she hadn't known the world contained. Her pelvis lodged against Barrett's generated so much heat I could feel it through the plate glass.

  "Omigod, Ramona Mathers must think Barrett can kiss spectacularly and she can't get enough of it," I stage-whispered.

  "What are you doing?" Callie asked, shocked, I was certain, over my voyeurism. "Does that bother you?"

  "No," I said, somewhat confused over my reaction. "Actually, yes. A couple of days ago I was fending off Barrett, who was practically packing a porpoise in her panties, throwing me on the floor, and talking to me like I was a hooker, and now she's treating old Ramona like she's Cinder-fuckin'-rella. What's up with that?"

  "Love, darling." She laughed and singed me with a sensual kiss, her mouth so hot and soft it sucked me into the depths of her, conveying that everything past the surface of her skin was equally wet and warm.

  The door opened and our visitors caught the two of us buried in one another, causing Ramona to announce, "The evening is picking up in every corner."

  Barrett, like a schoolgirl, held the door for Ramona and guided her toward the couch.

  "Sedona is a romantic place," Barrett said as if she really meant it, behaving like a charm-school graduate trying out her newly acquired social graces and causing my mouth to go slack in wonderment.

  "Romance is merely energy, transferable—and contagious." Callie smiled at them but her voice held no specific nuance.

  The air in the room had shifted the way air does when sex and romance are wafting through it. The pauses were heavy, the unspoken words laced with meaning. The electricity leapt out of the walls and into the room and swirled around us, but this time in the most exhilarating way and, as if to accentuate the obvious, a moan emanated from the corner of the living room where Elmo was engaged. At first glance I refused to believe what I was seeing—the stuffed basset hound wedged under him, Elmo clutching it with his front paws—a bizarre act of pooch porno.

  "Elmo!" I shouted in shock, and everyone turned to watch Elmo humping the stuffed toy. "Quit it!"

  The four of us couldn't suppress ongoing giggles and I felt a twinge of sadness for Elmo, normally distinguished and well behaved, frozen mid-hump, eyes rolled up at us, caught mashing the girl basset and wondering no doubt why we'd all turned into voyeurs.

  "He knows how a nice evening should end." Ramona smiled at Barrett and suddenly Elmo gave it up in one big thrust, falling over exhausted. I was no longer empathetic but simply mortified, having never seen him do anything remotely that obscene and certainly not in public.

  "It's the energy, don't blame him." Callie laughed harder.

  I glanced over and caught Barrett's eyes lingering on Ramona's cleavage, and then she leaned ever so slightly against her—close enough to make Ramona breathe in noticeably.

  "What are you wearing?" Barrett asked, and Ramona must have fielded that question often because she answered without missing a beat.

  "Bulgari."

  "I don't think I've ever known anyone who wore that." Barrett's voice was nearly sedated.


  "You may be wearing some yourself." Her gaze, both intimate and teasing, riveted Barrett, who appeared about to fall to her knees in sexual supplication.

  Ramona's tone shifted to business. "Well, I'll look into our little venture regarding the vortex site," she said, speaking in code to Callie and obviously referring to our enlisting her help in the exhumation of Nizhoni's body. "Meanwhile, I think I'll head back to my cabin."

  Barrett asked if Ramona had a view of the creek from her cabin and Ramona said she did, and then Barrett launched into an impromptu commercial about how buying her own cabin on Oak Creek was the right investment and offering to let Ramona have a look at the view from hers. I wanted to shout that they were too old for all this toying around and they should go get it on, but love seemed to reduce them to teenage hormone levels. Moments later, both cars pulled out of the driveway, heading in the same direction.

  "I can't envision it," I said. "Ramona Mathers humping Barrett."

  "They both deserve happiness, don't you think?"

  "But they're not.. .a pair."

  "Not by your standards, but we don't want the entire world thinking and behaving like you." She smiled and kissed me, letting me know that despite my obvious faults, she loved me.

  "What do I smell?" I sniffed the air like Elmo.

  "Turkey. I started cooking it tonight. Tomorrow's Thanksgiving and I thought I'd get it ready ahead of time and then all we'd have to do is..." She reached between my legs. ".. .warm it up."

  I would forever view turkey as an aphrodisiac.

  Chapter Nine

  Sunlight broke through the slits between the rows of cafe curtains that hung from tarnished gold metal rods above the battered old wood-frame windows in the cabin's bedroom. I lay across the bed watching the golden slivers crisscross our bodies, finally realizing my dream of Thanksgiving alone with the woman I most loved in all the world. Callie Rivers lying next to me in bed, her body warm and naked and gorgeous, was a lotto win.

  Knowing I should be kind enough to let her sleep, I still couldn't resist stroking her shoulders that tapered down to absolutely exquisite hips and, once there, sliding my hand between her legs. She moaned, but it was more in light protest at my waking her.

  "Happy Thanksgiving, and I have so much to be thankful for," I said.

  She rolled over, causing the bed sheets to rustle, wafting her scent over me as she wrapped her arms around me and graced me with those fabulous blue eyes. "Hello, my darling love," she whispered, and my entire being melted; what more could I ask? Burrowed down in clean sheets and her fragrant breasts, in a Sedona cabin on the creek, the wind wafting the smell of pine through the bedroom windows and across the room, nowhere to go but into one another, nothing to see beyond each other's eyes, nothing to do but make love endlessly, I kissed her passionately...before she rose on an elbow and twisted out of my grasp.

  "Oh, I had a dream. It was about the chart. This long thread connected all these women like Maypole ribbons. And this duck had the end of the ribbon in his mouth and was flying from one to the other."

  Callie suddenly leapt to her feet, leaving me alone in our bunk feeling stunned that apparently I was the only one having a sexy morning, as she deserted me for her computer.

  "I think my dream is trying to tell me that whatever happened to Nizhoni is tied to other women as well."

  "By a duck?" But Callie wasn't listening and I would apparently have to wait until she could focus on us again so, meanwhile, I focused on my faithful hound.

  "Elmo, as a lover, I must be doing something wrong. Could be I'm moving too slow. I notice when you have success, you kind of sneak up on 'em from behind and jump 'em. I'm thinking that's a good tactic."

  Elmo let out a large belch and stretched.

  "I agree, far more satisfying." Slipping on a pair of cords, some thick socks under my hiking boots, a black turtleneck, and a short jacket, I took Elmo out for a quick walk. He stretched and yawned and farted in the brisk morning air. I thought about what Callie said last night in regard to Ramona and Barrett being a good match and hoped they too were having a delicious Thanksgiving morning. Feeling good about life in general, I decided maybe I should try to be less judgmental and more helpful—certainly more helpful to Callie, who was always supportive of me.

  "Elmo, I'm going to drive Callie over to Oak Creek Canyon and take a look at the spot where Nizhoni went over the cliff. I have a feeling I'll learn something. And Callie needs me on this case. Frankly, I haven't been focused on it. It's the energy thing.. .too hard to get my hands on."

  Elmo's teeth chattered and he looked nervous. A little shiver ran across my own spine, some kind of electricity in the air, like electric eyes sparking around me at a fun house, a sensation that someone was watching me. What, a squirrel? I mocked myself and was happy when we entered the cabin, going from crisp cold to the warmth of the snug log-sided room.

  I mentioned my idea to Callie, and she seemed genuinely pleased I was finally taking a real interest in Nizhoni's death.

  Assuring Elmo we would chow down on turkey when we returned, I gave him a Milk-Bone to tide him over. "Stay in the cabin and don't molest the squirrels."

  Elmo rolled his eyes at me.

  "Hey, fair comment. Last night you gave stuffed toy a whole new meaning."

  Fifteen minutes later, we parked a hundred yards from the edge of the most breathtaking gorge in Sedona, allowing us full view of a vista so deep and broad that eagles soared overhead and dove down hundreds of feet into its basin without coming near any edge, their shrieks echoing across the vastness as they swooped in and out of one of heaven's more massive bowls of air. I imagined how enchanted visitors parked and stared in wonder at this masterpiece of nature twelve miles long and roughly half a mile deep, the bravest of them walking to the edge of the cliffs to envision what it might be like to take flight from this ledge; but this morning, it was beautifully silent and free of other tourists.

  We got out of the car marveling at the beauty all around us and headed for what appeared to be the primo view, when suddenly Callie stopped.

  "Teague, this is the area where news reports say Nizhoni was attacked by the wolf."

  "Where exactly do you think she went over?"

  Callie paused for a moment, swinging her body slowly as one would swing a shotgun, moving smoothly from left to center to right and then back again. "Over there."

  She pointed decisively and I walked in the direction she indicated. At the edge of the canyon, I crouched like a catcher and ran my hands over the red rock, then swiveled on the balls of my feet, my back to the canyon's edge, and examined a piece of rock directly to my right bearing chalk markings, no doubt the police markings of the accident scene.

  "Teague, move away from there!"

  I heard Callie's sharp voice as the small red rocks under the ball of my left foot began to give way, sliding like gravel, and my foot slipped out from under me. I managed to get my balance and rise halfway to a standing position when I saw the wolf, fangs bared, charging directly at me, snarling, snapping, the eyes no longer kind, but ferocious, heading for my face. Reflexively I recoiled and went over onto my back, reaching out behind me to catch myself, but found nothing but air. I catapulted in a certain-death backflip off the edge of the cliff, the only sound Callie's prolonged scream.

  Airborne, uncoiling, grasping, terrified, weightless, rocks zoom, plants tear, birds scatter, Callie’s face, prepare impact!

  "Callliiieee!"

  Snagged, ripped, slammed, stopped! Alive? Alive I Breathing... panting...breathing... panting.

  My trembling body dangled somehow in midair as my mind continued to tumble around in my head, unable to find its bearings.

  Near the ground? Will it hold me up, can I hold on? How do I get out of here?

  More panicked than I could ever remember being in my life, I felt the pain of something slicing into my armpit. Slowly, I turned my head to see what was holding me.

  A rope, so close I could see the fibers in
each strand, dirty white, rolled in graceful spirals around one another forming something akin to a seining net. My arm had miraculously hooked through it, and the rest of my weight pulling against it was cutting off my circulation. I turned slightly in the breeze, refusing to look down, and grabbed more of the netting with my unsteady left hand, allowing me to take some pressure off my right arm, but not much, because my left hand was shaking uncontrollably.

  Struggling, I tried to hook my feet into the vertical netting that somehow dangled off the side of the cliff, but couldn't snag the bottom portion with my toe. The lightweight net flapped away from me in the wind, and the spaces in the net weren't much larger than the width of my shoe. After resting a minute, I slowly pulled my knees up to my waist, wincing at the rope tearing into my arm. I was grateful I'd kept up my body crunches, because I had the strength to get my feet up closer to a part of the net I could hold steady and slip one shoe in without the net drifting away.

  Contorted into a ball, I had both hands and both feet locked in the net where I steadied myself and tried to regulate my breathing. Over time, I could now slowly work my feet and hands up one square of netting at a time and walk myself up...but to where? I couldn't think about that now. Steeling myself, I peered through the netting. The canyon, five or six hundred feet of it, stretched beneath me, as vast as my desperation.

  Can you hear me? Callie, I'm alive. Find me! I cried out for her again and again—at first in words and then silently, and finally, I just cried.

  Chapter Ten

  It took me awhile to pull myself together. I'd experienced plenty of bad things on the force—been chased by every sonofabitch known to man with a gun or a knife and the intent to kill me, been damned near beaten to death and set on fire that night in Oklahoma when I was investigating a murder case, not to mention the number of crazies we'd encountered in Vegas; but I always pitted my wits and my strength against theirs. This was different.

  Settle down, I told my terrified self, and look at the rock wall next to you. But that advice didn't work because the netting that held me captive swung toward and away from the rock, reminding me I was no better off than a snared bird dangling over the potential place of my death.