A Year of You (18 page)

The man shrugged. “I did what I could. It’s almost like she’s never existed before now.”
West sighed and pulled a plastic baggie containing a wide cuff bracelet out of the pocket of his baggy cargo pants. “Can you run fingerprints?”


“I got a friend in the Sheriff’s Department that’ll run ‘em, if she can lift them.”


“That’d be great.”
“You know it’s going to up my fees. You’re asking for some considerable expenses here. Travel expenses, et cetera.”


“Yeah, I figured. McKendrick won’t care. He’ll be happy to find out who this imposter is.”
The title of ‘imposter’ left a nasty taste in West’s mouth. He was betraying Mattie. Over the week he’d softened a little bit toward her. They were mostly on the right track back to being friends again. Maybe he should just let her be. She fit in, into his life at least. She didn’t hesitate getting her hands dirty out in the nursery or dealing with upset customers on the phone.


Emeline’s bright blue eyes flashed in his mind, accompanied by a silver-blonde flick of her hair. I’m doing this for her. For Emeline.

Yeah, for Emeline
.
But why? Em doesn’t care about me anymore. Mattie...Mattie does
.


“That Mattie seems like a sweet girl,” Frank said, leaning back in his chair. “Cute.”


“Yeah, I guess.”


“Nothing like her sister, though, huh? I heard you had to marry Mattie to keep from losing your land.”
West glanced at the clock on the wall above the windows.

“Yeah.”
Frank picked up a pen, examined the end, chewed on it thoughtfully. “If there’s anything to find on the woman, I will.”
West nodded somberly and got to his feet. He placed one of his business cards on the desk.

“Um, when you get anything, let me know. McKendrick’s sort of put me in charge of all this. Since I married her, and all.”

Frank raised an eyebrow. After a long second, he shrugged. “Whatever.”


“Another thing. Mattie’s said it a couple of times and it might be worth looking into.”


“What?”


“More than once she’s told me about a woman named Carmen who raised her. Once she even said that the woman had worked for Ruth Ellen.”
Frank perked up and scribbled down the name.

“I’ll look into it.
West left the dark, dingy office with a heavy heart. Rather than free of his burdens, guilt made his shoulders heavier than ever.
Mattie really was trying. He flushed, remembering his stealthy middle-of-the-night rummage through her purse. Wasn’t real proud of it, and it hadn’t even turned up anything other than a cache of tampons that rivaled Wal-Mart. The only unusual thing in the bag had been the pink-crystal pacifier necklace tucked in one of the side pockets, wrapped in a small twist of tissue paper. He hadn’t noticed when she stopped wearing it.

At his hip, his battered old cell phone rang. “Hello?”

“Hey, man, got a call about McKendrick’s irrigation system not working right. He wants you out there a-sap.”

“Damn it. Fine, whatever. What’s wrong with it?”

“I don’t know. Emeline didn’t really know. Just said it wasn’t working right.”

Emeline had called about the irrigation system? That was weird. Maybe McKendrick had been too busy and asked her to call for him—

Or, it was just a ruse to get him out to the house. “You sure it was Em?”

“Fransisca just said the McKendrick lady called.”


“Why is Fransisca on the phones? She can barely speak English.”


“I don’t know, man. Mattie had her there when I came in.”

“Well, whatever. I’ll deal with it when I get home. I’m headed out toward the McK’s, I guess.” He hung up and shoved the phone back into his pocket.

Even though it could have been Justine who called, he was sure it was Em. His heart leapt and his blood rushed. It had been two whole weeks since he’d really got to talk to Emeline. He’d tried to pull her aside at the wedding and tell her that the whole thing was just temporary, that it didn’t change the way he felt about her. Unfortunately, the boy-toy that had been attached to her hip had kept her way too occupied.

He’d taken his frustration out on Mattie, giving her the silent treatment. It was her fault, after all. If she hadn’t offered him that ridiculous deal, none of this would have happened.

“Yeah,” he muttered to himself as he struggled with the door of his truck. An accident long ago had made the driver’s door one bitch to open. Almost as bad as the passenger side door. “I wouldn’t have caught her screwing around in the club.”

His perfect little vision of sweet Emeline wouldn’t have been tainted. He couldn’t even think of her now without seeing her in the club, being ravaged by two guys. How many other guys had she messed with?

West got in the truck and slammed the door. “What the hell am I doing messing with her anyway? I’m six years older than her.”
She’s a kid with no sense of commitment
. No idea of what a relationship even entails.
I’m too old for her, and I want completely different things than she wants.

He flicked on the radio, accidentally changing the station to one that featured pop music. Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” blared through the speakers, startling him and immediately making him think of Mattie.

He knew when the singer was playing on her MP3 player because she would do this ridiculous hip-happy dance. He grinned; he couldn’t help it. Mattie had no compunctions about being herself. Doing whatever felt right, whenever it felt right.

Damn vibrator. His groin tightened. Maybe it was time to think in terms of him and Mattie. Even if it was just as friends. A random thought shouted,
Friends have sex! It’s called benefits!

If he had to guess how Mattie was in bed, she would be wild. Passionate. Just like she went through her days, losing herself in the moment, whether it was shaking her booty to Shakira while doing dishes or cutting fern. The few moments they’d been intimate had been close to mind-blowing. The nights were getting longer, colder, hornier. She wasn’t bashful about using that little toy of hers, and feeling her body tense up, hearing her soft gasps, nearly undid him and his stupid resolve.

Twice she’d grabbed his hand and guided it between her legs. Her soft, breathy, “Please,” sent bolts of pure lightning through his groin. He hadn’t denied her, sliding his fingers inside her while she worked her clit with the vibrator.

The deep blast of a semi-truck’s horn jolted him out of his daydream. He snapped the steering wheel to the right, correcting his drift into the other lane. With his heart pounding, he realized he was close to the turn-off to the McKendrick house.

When he reached the gate, he keyed in the code and waited for the ponderous iron gates to slide along their tracks. The garages were all empty. Neither McKendrick nor Justine were home, and Emeline’s Navigator wasn’t anywhere in sight.

Maybe there really was something wrong with the irrigation system. He got out and headed for the garage. The controls were in the kitchen, in an alcove just inside the interior garage door.

The box checked out fine, and all the diagnostics he ran on the uber-expensive computer- controlled system didn’t show any irregularities.

“It’s the sprinklers in the back,” Justine said, startling him so bad he jumped and whacked his knuckles on the wall painfully. “They aren’t extending out of the ground like they should.”


West put a hand to his chest, willing his heart to slow down. “Justine, those aren’t supposed to extend. Those stay flush to the ground. The ones by the patio hedges come up, and the ones in the front yard.” He frowned. “Is Emeline here? Jose said she called.”


“I called. I said I was Emeline, though, to make sure it was you who came out.”


Something’s up,
West thought. This was way too creepy. Justine wasn’t acting right. The weird vibes she was throwing off gave him the chills.
“I’m sure it’s okay, Justine. The computer here would tell me if anything was broken, or even damaged.”


“No, something’s wrong. I know. I’ve watched these sprinklers every day since you put them in.”

She practically hissed the last part, glaring at him.
He held his hands up in defeat. “Okay, I’ll check them out.” He followed her through the house.


She sighed, trailing her fingers along the walls. “Elaine was such a hyper child,” she said softly. Her voice echoed through the big living room. “Barely manageable. You didn’t help that any, as wild as you were.”

“Um, sorry,” he replied.

“Emeline barely got any attention from Karen, and definitely not her father. Sweet little Emeline. I wished she were mine, you know.”

“Oh.” He didn’t know what to say, and he was beginning to feel really, really uncomfortable. Silently, he willed his phone to ring, a tornado to hit, something to happen to get him away from this woman.

“Elaine’s death was for the best.”
A jolt of ice-cold, red-hot adrenaline shot through him. He froze mid-step.

“Her death?”


Justine shuddered. “She wasn’t even James’ child. We knew it the day she was born. I couldn’t stand the thought of what his whore of a wife did to him. The idea that we would raise Elaine...” Justine shook her head, a ferocious expression on her face. She spoke slowly, enunciating, “We assumed she was dead. Her father and I. We assumed. A child just doesn’t disappear in the middle of the night.”

“I saw somebody carrying her away.” West clenched his hands, not liking the thoughts going through his mind.

“You dreamed it,” Justine said. “Do you hear me? You dreamed it.” Her eyes narrowed and she leaned close. Her breath smelled of halitosis and toast. “Has Ruth Ellen been telling you anything different? We all know she coddled your ideas that someone kidnapped Elaine. But she’s dead, Brant. I promise you, she’s dead. That whore you’re married to, she isn’t Elaine, and if she pursues what should rightfully be Emeline’s, I’ll take care of her, too!”

“You’re crazy, Justine,” West said, backing up. “Are you threatening Mattie?”

“No, I’m making a promise. She’s going to destroy this family, Brant. I will not let that happen. I will not let Ruth Ellen’s theories and lies make that woman destroy all I’ve done for this family!”

Shaking his head, West turned and nearly ran through the house.
“I won’t let her, Brant West!” Justine’s cry chased him through the house.
He rounded the curve of the stairs and hit a slippery patch of marble floor. He went down, crashing into a bust of some Roman dude. It hit the floor and shattered. A shiny aluminum can rolled away from the debris.

West paused long enough to pick it up. W-D-40. Oil.

Oil? Why would spray-on oil be hidden inside a statue by the stairs?

There was something slippery on the stairs
, Mattie told him. Later, she’d told him she smelled something funny, something sweet. It was a familiar scent that she couldn’t quite place.

Holding tight to the can, he headed for his truck. It didn’t make sense. Why would somebody want to hurt Mattie?

Justine had babbled something about Ruth Ellen and her theories. What theories? She was the only one who believed him when he said he’d seen someone outside his window all those nights ago. If anybody knew anything, it was Ruth Ellen.

He drove like a madman to the nursing home, then hauled ass upstairs to Ruth Ellen’s room. She was having a good day, sitting in the rocking chair by the window. She looked surprised when West burst into the room.

***

Mattie plundered through the toolshed next to the trailer for ten minutes before she unearthed a shovel.

“Good night!” she growled, exasperated. The dogs grouped at the door of the shed watched her, fascinated, with their big goofy grins. She plowed through the crowd of mutts and headed for the orange grove.

The dogs trotted after her. Scruffy, the leader of the pack and the only dog that West had actually intended to keep as a pet, stayed right by her side, warning off any of the mongrels that got too close.

“You’re just like your owner, Scruff,” Mattie said. “Quite the possessive asshole.”
Scruffy cocked his head at her, his tail wagging slowly.
“But you balance it out all right. You’re enough of a sweetheart to pull it off.”
Mattie was sweating by the time she got to the orange grove. It was quite a walk from the trailer.

Near the grove, off to the right and nearly hidden by the overgrown grass were the charred remains of a foundation.

Mattie dropped the shovel and wandered in that direction, stepping carefully in the high grass. Grasshoppers and other little insects flung themselves at her legs. Sandspurs left over from summer clung to her jeans. As she neared the house, she nearly stepped on a bunch of bunnies, a mother and four babies that shot away in five different directions.

“Aw, how cute!” The words were barely out of her mouth before the dogs were after the rabbits. “Dang it, stop it! Leave the rabbits alone.”

Disgusted by the mutts, Mattie stomped toward the burnt foundation. It had to be the remains of West’s childhood home. It had burned nearly twelve years earlier. Not long after that, his mother, Carla, and his father, Aidan, had died in a car accident. West had been seventeen when he lost his parents. He used their life insurance money to buy the third-hand mobile home and get the nursery his dad had dreamed about started. One by one he’d added second-hand trailers to the north end of the property and bartered rent for work with the migrant farmers passing through.

Mattie walked back to the grove. West had worked so hard to make his dad’s dreams come true. It was a shame the orange grove was worthless. Why didn’t he just tear the trees down and turn the land into something else?

Oh.
Elaine
. Surely the little lost girl had something to do with it. He was attached to the grove because he knew Elaine was part of it, somehow.

Mattie began the climb up the hill to the grove. Once she crested the low rise, she picked up her shovel.

“Well, where do I start?” The last thing she wanted was for West to see the disturbed ground and question her. She was supposed to be Elaine. How weird would it be to get caught looking for her own body?

There had to be two or more acres of grove. A wave of hopelessness rose up and crashed over her.