Black Heat (11 page)

She heard the bell at the door and then the one voice that could set her on edge faster than any other sound in the world.

"Is my stepdaughter here?" Mimi's smoky voice called, and then came Walt's quieter one, murmuring that he wasn't sure. Good old Walt—he was giving her a chance to slip out the back, if she wanted to. Roan hadn't told her boss everything about her relationship with Mimi, but she'd said enough for there to be little ambiguity about her feelings.

She eyed the back door, propped open a couple of inches to let fresh air in, the icy blast a good counterbalance to the building's old and overworked heating system. It was so tempting: slip out the back, grab her bike from the side of the building, be long gone before Mimi gave up and left.

But.
Angel
.

Roan took a deep breath and wiped her hands on her cargo pants. She ran a hand through her hair, and glanced in the mirror Hank had nailed next to the door so he could check himself out before going on the floor to wait on attractive women. What would Mimi say if she knew that even Hank spent more time on his appearance than Roan did? She was reaching for her shoulder bag to see if there was a lip gloss somewhere in the bottom of it when she heard Mimi's impatient voice again, changed her mind, and hurried into the store.

"Hi, Mimi, I thought I heard your voice!" she exclaimed as brightly as she could. It wasn't even that hard to fake a cheerful expression today, since she was still on a high from spending the morning with Cal. "Hey Walt, I didn't leave yet after all. I forgot a...thing."

Walt gave her a semi-exasperated eye roll and busied himself at the cash register.

"Well." Mimi looked at her suspiciously, then shrugged. "I don't mean to interrupt if you're still working on something..."

"No, it's no problem."

"Good, because there's something I think we need to talk about."

"Oh...me too." What could Mimi want to talk about? Hadn't yesterday's encounter in the diner been enough to satisfy her for a while? "Do you want to get a cup of coffee?"

Mimi wrinkled her nose and made a show of looking at her watch, the silver and mother-of-pearl one that Roan's father had given her on their first anniversary. The sight of it plucked Roan's tender nerves, and she steeled herself.

"It's past five o'clock, and that's more than late enough for civilized people to have a little cocktail," Mimi said. "Let's go to Badlands."

"Well—sure, okay," Roan said. "Just let me grab my coat."

Slipping her arms into the old shearling-lined garment, Roan wished she'd worn something a little nicer. Dress codes weren't common in an oil town, but Roan would have felt more sure of herself if there wasn't such a disparity between her own outfit and Mimi's. Today Mimi had on red skin-tight pants tucked into black high-heeled boots, and a long patterned sweater under her suede coat. A glittery scarf was wound several times around her neck and she must have used industrial strength hairspray to keep her coif in place through the mist and sleet outside. Her lipstick was bright red and looked freshly applied.

Roan followed Mimi toward the door, giving Walt a little wave and trying to hide a grimace. "Mr. Shanks couldn't make it?"

Mimi waited for her to catch up and then started down the street toward Badlands, which was the classiest bar in town, one that had an actual wine list rather than a row of boxes on the bottom shelf.

"Actually, I thought this was a conversation you would prefer to have between just the two of us."

That was certainly true, Roan thought, but how would Mimi have known? Roan had never asked her for money before—not one cent.

They arrived at the bar and Mimi chose a table as far away from the other customers as possible. She waited until the waitress had come for their order—a chardonnay for Mimi, a club soda for Roan—to lean in conspiratorially.

"I had a visit from Chief Byrd today."

Roan sat back, feeling like she had been slapped. She should have seen this coming. Except, how? Jimmy had given her his word that he hadn't turned her in, and she didn't get the sense that he'd made that promise lightly. He seemed like the kind of person who said exactly what he meant, and though he hadn’t looked happy when he came to pick up Roan and Cal, he'd been perfectly polite.

There was always the backpack, with her name written inside. So, they had a good reason to suspect her. But if they had decided to come after her, what would the police chief be doing talking to Mimi about her?

Cal
.

Cal, who had a lot riding on his interview with the police. Cal, who was weeks away from his dream job...as long as he didn't screw it up. Had he gotten cold feet? Had something happened to make him think he might be discovered—so he decided to talk to the chief first?

The sense of betrayal was an overreaction, she tried to tell herself. They'd spent one morning together, in a tangle of covers in her bed. And this was his career, his entire future was riding on this. She was just lucky that whatever he'd told the chief, Cal had convinced him not to arrest her. At least, not yet.

Or maybe he had talked Mimi into interceding for her, a possibility that was almost too mortifying to entertain.

"The police chief?" she asked, dully.

"Yes, Roan." As if they both didn't know there was no other chief they might have been talking about. "The chief says that you were trying to break into the house the other night. One of the boys apparently...interrupted you."

"The boys?"

"My tenants. The ones who live in the bunkhouse. Come on, Roan, please don't make me do this the hard way. I know what happened. I know that one of the boys tried to hold you there until the police came, and somehow you got away. The chief isn't going to come after you, since nothing was taken and you weren't actually seen at the house, not by anyone but the boys and they don't wish to press charges. But. I have your backpack in my car. He asked me to return it to you." Her mouth tightened and she stared down at her drink. “It seems I may have misjudged him somewhat. He didn’t have to be so…forgiving about all of this.”

Roan's stomach twisted further. There wasn't anything in the backpack that she needed back. She never wanted to see it again, in fact. "Okay, listen, Mimi," she said quickly, determined to steer the conversation back in the direction she needed it to go. She would have to worry about Cal, and what all of this meant for their relationship, later. "I'm really sorry about all that. I screwed up. But I was looking for...I need...look, do you have my mom's jewelry? I need to sell it."

Mimi's face underwent a subtle transformation. She'd already downed half the wine in her glass, but it wasn't the alcohol that brought pink spots to her cheeks or made her lips tremble. "I don't have any idea what you mean," she said thinly. "I don't have anything that belonged to your mother."

"I'm not trying to say that you—"

"You can come to my apartment and search it yourself," Mimi went on, increasingly defensive. "Everything in it, I bought with the money your father left me, or he gave me as gifts. I would never try to cheat you. Never! I always wanted—I never thought—"

A small part of Roan—the part that wasn't dying of mortification and anger—was noticing that Mimi's eyes had gone shiny and wet. As if she was going to cry. As if her stepmother was capable of an emotional reaction that was based on someone else's feelings.

"Mimi, I'm not accusing you of anything. I just thought, I don't know, maybe it slipped through the cracks when all the paperwork was being done. Or, you might have found it in the bottom of a box or a drawer or something, years later. I wouldn't think anything about it. I don't even want it, I just need—well, I need the money."

"You would sell your mother's things?" Mimi asked, her voice going high and incredulous. "That your father gave her? All those anniversaries...those birthdays?"

Roan stared at her, surprised. Mimi was genuinely, truly upset, and not because of Roan breaking into the house. What was really going on with her?

Was she angry because Earl hadn't given her anything as nice as he had given his first wife? None of her boyfriends since she became a widow, as far as Roan knew, had given her jewelry. Was that the problem? Mimi was so fond of large, artsy pieces—plastic beads, faux-metal chains, outlandishly large paste gems—that Roan didn't think the woman would even wear a real piece if she owned it.

"It's not that I
want
to sell it," she explained carefully, even as she wondered what she would ever do with her mother's diamond eternity band, her delicate pearls, her carved jade bangle. The coral pin in the shape of a flower; the ruby drop earrings. Things she associated with her feminine, fine-featured mother, that went along with her rosewater cologne and conservative skirts. Nothing, in short, that Roan would ever wear. "It's just that I need the money."

Mimi picked up her glass and drained it. Her eyebrows knit together, forming a deep crease in her forehead. "What for?"

Roan closed her eyes briefly. She really, really didn't want to answer the question.

One of the more evil-stepmother-ly qualities that Mimi possessed was that she didn't like animals. Big ones, anyway. A cat, a tiny groomed poodle, these she might tolerate. But Angel?

Roan had only seen Mimi around Angel once, since her father had died two months after giving her the dog. In their new and tentative re-acquaintance, Roan and her father had begun meeting at the park, sitting on a bench and sipping lattes that Roan brought from the diner while Angel romped with the other dogs in the secured off-leash area. It had been...wonderful. Even though Roan still had lots to work through, even though she was still plenty mad at her father for choosing Mimi, it was so good just to sit with him again, to hear his chuckle, to lean on his tobacco-smelling shoulder and have him call her his "babygirl."

And then one day Mimi had shown up. "I happened to be in town and I saw your car!" she chirped in a brittle, shrill voice as she hurried toward them, and for a split second Roan had seen her father's expression freeze before he stood and kissed his wife perfunctorily on her powdered cheek.

That was when Angel, no longer a puppy but not yet full grown, came bounding over and threw herself joyfully on Mimi. The shriek the woman let out left no doubt as to how she felt, and she ran from the park, despite her high heels, Earl running after her, the coffee date ruined.

"It's Angel," Roan said miserably. "It's her hips. She needs surgery. It's five thousand dollars and I don't have it."

"Five thousand
dollars
!" Mimi exclaimed, her eyes round with horror. "For a
dog
? You could buy a dozen dogs for that. Brand new ones! With pedigrees!"

"Forget it," Roan said, standing. She rummaged in her bag and pulled out her old hand-tooled leather wallet and pulled out all the money she had with her: a five dollar bill and three ones. She threw them on the table as she was backing away. "I'm sorry if that's not enough for my drink."

"No, wait, Roan, I didn't mean—please, Roan, come back here and sit down—"

"Don't worry," Roan said. "I won't ever break in again. I won't go near your house. I won't...I won't."

Then she turned and ran for the door, her stepmother's protests swallowed up by the tinny recorded music and the conversations of people who weren't even related but somehow managed to get along fine.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

By the time Roan got back to her house, the sleet had turned to a mixture of icy rain and hail. The roads were not yet frozen, but if the temperature got below freezing tonight, they would soon be treacherous.

"Angel!" she called out as she came through the door, then winced when she saw the dog struggling to stand, her tail thumping the walls. Bad weather seemed to make her pain worse. Like the old men who spent long mornings comparing aches and pains over coffee and eggs in the diner, Angel seemed to sense the changing of the seasons in her hips.

But the expression on her face was the canine equivalent of a big, welcoming smile. As Roan knelt and wrapped her arms around Angel's neck, she made a rumbling, purring sound.

"Hungry, Angel?" Roan swallowed down the lump in her throat as she ran hot tap water over a half cup of frozen peas, a little treat to go along with Angel's dry dog food. It helped her feel full despite having been put on the special diet dog food which was meant to counteract the effects of a forced sedentary life. It broke Roan's heart because she knew there was nothing Angel would rather be doing than running around, burning off more calories than she could eat. But extra weight would only make her pain worse, so Roan was careful.

"Mmm, delicious!" she said as convincingly as she could, putting the bowl of dry kibble and vegetables on the floor for Angel. Angel ate obediently, if not with any particular relish. Afterwards, Roan got the leash and took Angel out in the cold for a walk. It was nearly dark, the streets reflecting streetlights on their wet surfaces. Lights were coming up in all her neighbors' houses.

When they were nearly back to the house, a truck pulled up beside her, rolling slowly, matching her pace. Roan glanced over and recognized the shiny white vehicle: Jimmy’s.

"Oh, no," she whispered, and walked faster. She'd just pretend not to see him. He'd take the hint. He'd drive away.