Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 1 - Combust the Sun Read online

  I stood back to avoid being squashed and to savor this moment, looking at my parents. They'd made it through the death of my brother, through my dad's drinking, through Mom's brief flirtation with another man, through a five-hundred-year flood, a bankruptcy, my dad's heart attacks, and damned near everything else that could happen to two people in forty-two years, and they were still here, their arms around one another.

  A hand touched my arm and I turned to find Callie standing beside me. Of course, she'd be invited to the party, I thought.

  "Very sweet, aren't they?" she said, and I loved the tenderness in her voice.

  She looked exquisite in her cream silk pants and high heels and the little jeweled Eisenhower jacket, her hair gorgeous, her makeup perfect, and that air of purity and kindness that emanated from her. Suddenly, I wanted to spend the next forty-two years with her.

  As my mind registered that thought, I felt an electrical charge go through me as if I were trying to shock myself into reality.

  What in hell am I thinking! Well, it's obvious. I'm vulnerable because I haven't been in a relationship for a while, and now I'm watching my parents grow old, and I'm thinking I should settle down, and that's exactly how people end up with the wrong mate. By acting like chimps in heat!

  "I'm sorry about this afternoon," I said.

  "What happened to your hand?" She reached for my bruised palm and I felt my knees buckling from the pure pleasure of her touch and my body turning into a chimp.

  "I hit the guy who was following me. You know, I could use some help with the desserts," I lied and signaled her to follow me through the banquet hall, into the bar, and deeper into the wine cellar, where I shut the door and pulled her gently into me and kissed her.

  "What are you doing?" she asked nervously.

  I wasn't the kind of woman who would ever risk being caught in a wine closet at her parents' anniversary bash, but I was so physically obsessed with Callie that I had lost all sense of propriety and certainly any fear of being caught.

  "Let me do it again and see if you can figure it out." I kissed her again. The electrical current between us could have served as the backup generator for New York City.

  "So you no longer think I'm trying to kill you?"

  "Being without you is killing me." I slid her loose knit top down over her small, white shoulders and slid my hands up under it, kissing her shoulders and holding her soft breasts—breasts so soft they were almost sedating. The world slowed. I floated in some ether state, adrift in a wet sea of my own imagining.

  The door rattled. I jumped back, and Callie snapped her shirt up over her shoulders as the bartender entered. "Hello," he said, amused.

  "My parents' anniversary, and we were looking for something really special..."

  "Looks to me like you found it," he said, eyeing Callie.

  "Maybe an Ice wine, 1997 Reserve, by any chance?" I tried to maintain a shred of decency.

  "No," he said as we exited.

  Giggling like two teenagers, we made our way back to the ballroom, where across the sea of revelers, Ely Mason, a silver-haired oilman who had to be at least eighty-five, was tapping the microphone and preparing a toast. "Is this thing on?"

  "I think I should drive back to L.A. with you." Callie leaned into me and spoke softly. "Looking at your progressed chart and your transits, it would be a good idea to have a traveling companion if you're going cross-country during this planetary phase. Your mother agrees with me."

  Drive back to L.A. with me. What does that mean? She would drive back with me and then fly home? Or drive back with me and be a houseguest? Or drive back with me and live with me? I got more nervous as I thought about the old joke: What do lesbians take on a second date? A U-haul!

  "What do you think?" Callie interrupted my thinking.

  "I think I'll be safer...if I don't have to worry about your safety and I can just take care of myself," I said. "And why are you consulting my mother about me?"

  "She's my friend, and we both care about you."

  Ely's voice blared across the room. Tap, tap, tap. He slapped the mike as if he'd just delivered it and he was trying to get it to breathe. "Can you hear me?" Suddenly the mike let out a long, high-pitched electronic squeal.

  Callie took my hand, without regard to who might see us, and for the first time in my life, I didn't mind if someone saw me holding hands with a woman.

  "I think you need me," she said.

  "I definitely need you," I replied.

  "As a traveling companion." Her voice held a smile.

  "Callie, I'm being tracked by very dangerous people. You are a huge distraction, and lack of focus could get us both killed. I won't risk your life. When this is over, I would love to—"

  "Have a safe trip." She pivoted and walked away. Her leaving left the room dark, as if someone had turned off all the klieg lights. For me, the party was over. I remembered my dad saying something once about little women being dynamite in small packages. Note to self: Callie Rivers has a very short fuse. No wonder she lives alone. This is one difficult woman.

  Before going to bed, I rang Cedars to inquire about Barrett. The nurse on duty said she was improving, so I went to sleep feeling better on at least one front.

  Several hours later, I was dreaming that I was about to be shot when the phone rang beside my bed, frightening me and leaving me gasping for air. I picked up the receiver, still panting. The phone went dead. I looked at the clock. It was three in the morning. Callie was the only person I knew who kept late hours, so I dialed her number, asking if she'd just phoned me.

  "I thought we'd said our goodbyes." Her voice was seductive. "No, I didn't phone you," she said, and hung up in that abrupt way she had of ending conversations.

  I rang Callie back, exasperated over my own lack of resolve when it came to this woman. "We leave for L.A. Friday at eight a.m. There's room for one suitcase. I am not real cheery in the mornings, and I hope you like a steady diet of swirling dog hair."

  "I'm already packed. Good night." She hung up on me. I was going to have to talk to her about that. People should mutually agree the conversation is over. I flopped back on the bed, jostling Elmo, who was resting on the foot of it.

  "I know I should have checked with you first, Elmo. I don't know what got into me," I admitted apologetically. "Something about her gets me. She's sort of unpredictable and wild, and she looks fabulous and she smells great. Same reasons you pick a girl." Elmo let out a loud sigh of annoyance, and we both settled down to try to get some sleep.

  If I were to mark an event that changed my life, I would have to highlight this one in Day-Glo yellow. I had just agreed to drive fourteen hundred miles with a cranky basset, a crazy psychic, and several guys who were trying to kill me.

  Chapter Seven

  I busied myself with the Jeep, masking my sadness over leaving by feigning concern over tire pressure and battery fluid levels, only giving my parents a quick kiss at the last moment as I hurriedly backed out of the driveway. Mom smiled broadly and waved energetically as if to assure me she'd always be standing on that porch for me. Dad seemed less certain.

  In the rearview mirror, I could see Mom walking back inside the house, but my dad's lone figure stood in the front yard, waiting until I was completely out of sight. Tears flowed freely down my cheeks.

  I reached Riverside Drive and Callie's condo, where she was patiently waiting out in front of the gleaming twenty-story building wearing white Reeboks, a white T-shirt, a tiny pair of blue jeans, and a big smile. The radio was playing and a country singer was admitting that she knows what crazy means—seeing her guy in a pair of jeans. I could relate. I was blown away and insane over the way Callie Rivers looked in her jeans. I was just short of howling like Elmo. I was going to be in a car for two days with this woman, and it made my heart race like a NASCAR engine. I may be in danger of some sort of sexual blowout, I thought.

  She glanced down at my tennis shoes, so beaten up that the brand name was indiscernible, and said,
"I want to buy you some cute tennis shoes, Teague," and I knew that all my casual clothes were in danger of debuting at Goodwill.

  I caught sight of her three metallic silver suitcases lined up on the curb. I reminded her that we'd agreed on one suitcase.

  "We didn't agree. You informed me that one was all I was allowed. I'm very high maintenance, Teague."

  "You're right." I shrugged. "How could anyone possibly look like you look, out of one suitcase?" I began shifting everything around inside the Jeep, scrunching Elmo up to steal a few more feet. The third suitcase had to be bungee-corded to the roof rack. I was panting when it was all over. Callie took this time to introduce herself to Elmo.

  "He's huge and he's so beautiful!" she said, stroking his long white frame with its big black and tan spots. Elmo happily banged his tail against the back door. Callie disappeared around the car to locate her makeup mirror, giving me time to talk to Elmo, who was making tight circles and fretting over his loss of personal space.

  "Be nice to her, she's from another planet," I told him.

  Callie returned with a box of chocolate doughnuts and a thermos of coffee, climbed into the passenger seat, and said she thought this might cheer me up.

  "They're homemade," she said. "I made them last night."

  I was happily amazed. I didn't know anyone who knew how to make doughnuts, much less chocolate doughnuts, which happened to be my favorites. I bit into one. It was without a doubt the best doughnut I'd ever eaten. The coffee she poured me was black and strong, just like I liked it. I was beginning to relax and told her that taking her on as a traveling companion was proving to be an excellent decision on my part. I was glad I'd thought of it.

  "You're a woman of great insight," she said sweetly. I checked her eyes for sarcasm. Callie Rivers had apparently had a sarcasm bypass. How could that be? No one could live on this planet and not use sarcasm to defuse life's basic asininities. How will we ever communicate? As if in response, she handed me a second doughnut, and I ate it immediately, giving Elmo the last bite.

  "Chocolate's bad for dogs," Callie said.

  "It's okay. Elmo's not a dog." I grinned, and Elmo nodded on cue, making Callie laugh.

  "Sorry, Elmo." Callie patted him. "Case of mistaken identity."

  "So do you have clients who'll miss you while you're gone?" I asked.

  "A few," she replied enigmatically.

  "And you live entirely alone.. .no pets, no lover?"

  "I'm able to live with my choices. I just remind myself that we experience greater growth through wrong choices than through right ones, and if the wrong choices help us grow, then how can they really be wrong?"

  "Speaking of choices," I switched gears, grateful for a segue out of her tie-dye philosophy, "reach behind you on the floor. There's a shopping bag with something in it."

  Callie rooted around in the backseat and came up with the bag. "What do you want me to do with it?"

  "Open it. I bought you something."

  Callie carefully extracted the lizard handbag and gasped so loudly that Elmo rose to a standing position and pricked his ears.

  "Oh, Tee, it's gorgeous! I love it! How did you know what to buy me?"

  "I just went for something expensive that, personally, I would never own..."

  "Well!" She feigned being offended.

  ".. .but would look smashing on someone as lovely as you."

  She unbuckled her seat belt and leaned way over and gave me a long, warm kiss on my neck just below my ear. I went red with pleasure.

  "Thank you so much," she whispered sincerely.

  "You're welcome."

  Callie rocked her seat back, clutching her purse like a teddy bear, closed her eyes, and wrapped her small, perfectly manicured fingers over the top of the waistband on my faded jeans, the bouncing Jeep allowing the tips of her fingers to brush my naked skin. I gave out a large bassetlike sigh as Callie fell asleep. I wanted to buy her a gift every day just to see her sweet, childlike joy. How could anyone live to be our age and still have so much joy for the small things?

  I glanced over at her gorgeous face. She had a sharply chiseled profile, her nose straight and elegant. She was really stunning looking. Why did she spend all of her time talking like an alien philosopher trying to put the planet in perspective? What in the world do we have in common other than my intense desire for her? Maybe that's why God gives us desire, to keep us sexually hooked on one another until we have time to figure out we have other things in common. Whatever drew me to her, I knew that I couldn't remember ever feeling this much at peace in all my forty-one years. Callie Rivers touching me as she slept seemed to calm every nerve in my body.

  We moved through the Texas panhandle while it was still daylight. The land on the north side of I-40 was so flat that if a prairie dog raised its head in Canada, I was certain we would spot him. Callie talked about her family and how her brother died of a drug overdose when he was just twenty-two. How her mother was psychic and her father's mother had predicted the moment of her own death, based on a dream she had, and how Callie herself felt she was directed by her dreams.

  "In my dream there were three flashing neon signs with showgirls all kicking their legs in the air. I threw a ball to them, and it dropped down between the girls into this slot and one of the showgirls kicked it and the ball exploded into the number fifty with three more zeros on the end of it. So I knew I was supposed to go to Las Vegas, play the slots, and win $50,000. So I did and I did!"

  "You won $50,000 on the slots based on a dream? If I'd had that dream, I would have gone to Radio City Music Hall, dropped my token in the subway slot, and ridden the damned train along with 50,000 other people wondering what in the hell the dream meant!"

  "It's not interpreting the dream correctly that makes you win. It's believing in the dream." She smiled at me, and I smiled back.

  By ten p.m. we were just east of Albuquerque, under a dark blue sky dotted with stars, singing along to a country song about some woman's anatomical boogie woogie and where she was putting it, which included places like the ceiling. It dawned on me that if we ever stopped to analyze half of what we sing, we'd be highly perplexed. There wasn't a lot of traffic on the road except for truckers. In the rearview mirror I spotted a beat-up pickup weaving across the double line. I asked Callie if she was belted in. New Mexico at night was notorious for drunk drivers. Suddenly the pickup moved up quickly behind us, then swung around to pass us. Callie's voice was shrill and insistent.

  "Swerve off the road. Get off the road!" I pulled to the right a little, but at seventy miles an hour, no right-minded person "swerves" off the road. That's when I heard the first blast. Callie was screaming now, covering her face with her right hand and pulling herself toward me with her left. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the blasts coming from the truck window, and I took the Jeep over the side of the embankment at about sixty-five miles per hour.

  My seat belt snapped tight and luggage flew around our heads as the car rolled over and Elmo wailed. My mind seemed to leave my body. I was steering, but I wasn't in the car. I was editing our crash. Little four-frame, butt cuts flashing before my eyes: the latch on my luggage by my right eye, Elmo pinned against the door, then not pinned, my mom and dad waving goodbye from the porch, us bleeding at the bottom of the embankment, although we weren't there yet, telling someone I wanted a vet for my dog, seeing my hand twist and go numb, Callie's face contorted in pain, sand flying up around the windows. Ten seconds and sixty edits later, it was over. We were silent except for Elmo's low sobs. We were not on fire. We were down below the road.

  My insides were frantic as I felt for Elmo and asked Callie if she was badly injured. But Callie didn't answer. She was staring back up at the highway. She gripped my hand and told me to lay my head back and look dead. A moment later, a large light shone down on us from the road. We lay still, slumped in our seats. My heart was slamming against my chest so hard that my inner ears pulsed to the rhythm. We couldn't just lie here like sitting d
ucks and let them come finish us off. Moving nothing but my lips, I told Callie I had to get to the gun.

  "Don't move or they'll kill us."

  "With the gun we have a chance," I said.

  "Lie still and picture a white light all around us. A white protective light. They are being pushed back, they are being pushed back," she chanted a wishful mantra.

  Remaining stone-still was the biggest gamble I would ever take in my life. Callie's calm, sure voice made me override my own instincts, and I obeyed the hypnotic instructions that were whispered beneath the muttering of angry male voices up above. They were deciding whether to crawl down the hill and check on us. If they came down, we were dead. I spoke quietly to Elmo, who was sobbing and struggling to free himself from the topsy-turvy luggage, telling him to be quiet, everything was okay. The thickly accented voices above us seemed to argue forever, although in real time it probably lasted thirty seconds. After a moment, one of the men swore at the other two and they moved out of our line of sight. Apparently no one wanted the honor of descending the hill to examine bloody bodies. There was too much road traffic.

  I dug hurriedly through the Jeep debris and located my cell phone. No cell tower signal. That was the last straw!

  "What is the fucking purpose of having a phone to save me, when there's no signal? Do I need to be saved in a populated area? No! I need to be saved when I'm in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere, shot at by a bunch of cowardly little assholes..."

  "You're bleeding. I think it's coming from your mouth, along with a few other terrible things, like your language."

  "My language? You don't think this is a situation that might call for a little language?" I shouted at her, glancing over my shoulder up the hill to make certain we weren't on the second wave of a death charge.

  Even though Elmo was crying out in pain, I steeled myself and crawled over him to the luggage to retrieve my .357 and shells, shaking so badly I could barely load the gun.

  Suddenly the men were back, descending the hill, sliding down the sand toward us, two of them. They must have been waiting for the traffic to clear before coming after us.