Garden of Dreams (24 page)

Hattie didn't even look in her direction. Nodding sagely, she stayed with the one path her mind could find. “We all must come home someday. You'll be glad I held on to that farm for you, Marietta. We can raise Helen the way we were raised. These modern ways lead to the devil.”

Helen bit her lip and threw Nina an uncertain look. Nina shrugged and surrendered. “You've done the best job any woman could, Aunt Hattie,” Nina answered warmly. “If I ever have children, I'll raise them just the way you taught me.”

“She's right, Hattie. You've done a wonderful job with Nina. I can't tell you how much I thank you. But I'll make it up to you now. I'll take you home, where you belong.” Helen reached over and held Hattie's spotted hand.

“The roses are so pretty this time of year,” Hattie said dreamily. “I want my granddaughter to have them. Hank would have loved her. I'll have that tea now, Marietta. Fetch it for me, will you?”

Nina handed her a glass of ice water from the pitcher by the table, but Hattie didn't see it. Her mind's eye had slipped beyond the landscape outside the window.

“Hattie, I'll go talk to the doctor now,” Helen said nervously, standing and inching toward the door.

Hattie didn't notice her departure.

A single tear streaking down her cheek, Nina held her aunt's hand and patted it. “Who's Hank, Hattie? Does he love roses?” She didn't expect an answer. Figments of Hattie's past flitted in and out of her conversation these days. The reference to a granddaughter was something new, but she supposed Hattie might think of her as the granddaughter she never had. It didn't seem significant.

“Hank loved roses. He had one painted on his airplane, he said. He promised me a rose garden.” Hattie lifted her clouded eyes. “Helen had too much of Hank in her, but you're my spitting image. Take care of her for me.”

Nina's heart caught in her throat. She wanted to protest Hattie's orders but wasn't certain how far her aunt's mind had wandered. She just clung to the affection Hattie had never expressed before.

“Men can't be trusted, child. Don't ever give your heart to a man.”

Nina sighed. She had heard that countless times before. “I know, Hattie. Only trust the land. I'm doing that. You'll love the new garden.”

Hattie nodded. “Just don't let any man poke you and you'll do fine.”

A moment later, her chin fell against her chest, and she slept. Contemplating her great-aunt's frail form, Nina pondered the strange pathways of the mind. Stroking her aunt's thin hair, she didn't immediately set out to find her mother. Hattie was the only mother she really knew.

Helen returned without a doctor or nurse in tow. Nina had known she wouldn't find anyone. The doctors never made themselves available during visiting hours, and the nurses had their hands full. “Are you ready to leave now?” she inquired politely.

“Of course not. I have to get Hattie out of here. I thought you said she wasn't in her right mind. There's not anything wrong with her.”

“Fine. If you want to sleep in the room with her so she won't wander down to the lake in the middle of the night, I'll leave word at the desk to have an ambulance transfer her back home. She has spells when she won't get out of bed, so you'll have to change the bed linen and persuade her to use the bedpan. And she's as likely to throw her food as to eat it. But I'll help where I can.”

Nina disliked the bitterness she heard in her own voice as she hurried down the antiseptic corridor of the nursing home. She hated this place. She hated the soft squish of the nurses' thick-soled shoes, the smell of disinfectant, the querulous tones and harsh cries from all the closed doors around her. She knew Hattie would hate it, too, if she knew where she was.

“I suppose I should talk to the doctor first. What's his name? Can I call him from here?” Helen caught up with her.

“His name's Karpatik. He's in the Hopkinsville phone book. He won't get back to you until this evening. I've tried a dozen times before. Do you want to wait here until then?” Impatiently, Nina kept hurrying toward the door.

“Then I'll call when we get home. We can't leave her in here. Hattie hates it.”

“I know. But there isn't a damned thing I can do about it.” Nina slammed open the glass front doors and stalked out to the parking lot. They'd arrived in her Toyota because her mother had claimed her Cadillac had a brake lining that needed work. From the looks of the ancient vehicle, Nina suspected a great deal more than the brakes needed work.

“You've turned into a heartless monster,” Helen accused as she bent her willowy height into the small front seat of the Toyota.

Nina's fingers clenched the steering wheel as she set the car in motion. “I'm a heartless monster?” she asked in incredulity. “You desert me for twenty years, and I'm the heartless monster? Do you have any idea, any idea at all what my life is like? Where were you when Hattie fell and broke her hip and couldn't walk for six months? Where were you the night she nearly drowned in the lake? Where were you when I had to call the ambulance and have her placed in that horrible home because I couldn't keep working to pay the debts and maintain the house and watch Hattie at the same time?”

Nina fought the tears blurring her eyes. She didn't even ask about all those years when she'd needed a mother to explain the facts of life, to sew her Halloween costume, to attend her first band concert. Those years were long gone. She needed support now, and instead, she got this mealy-mouthed tirade on the way things should be done.

“Well, I'm here now,” Helen answered huffily, crossing her arms over her ample chest. “You can go play footsie with that criminal of yours. I'll take care of things.”

“Do me a favor and don't bother,” Nina said wearily. “Just go back wherever you came from and leave me alone. I don't need the hassle.”

“You can't throw me out. I checked with a lawyer. Even if my mother didn't have a will, by law, her share goes to her children. Half that house is mine. And Hattie always said it would all be mine someday. So if you don't want the hassle, go live with your lover elsewhere. I don't need you any more than you need me.”

“He's not my lover, he's my boarder. And I've poured most of my salary into that place for these last ten years, so don't go telling me who it belongs to. If it weren't for me, the taxes wouldn't have been paid, and you wouldn't have any land at all. I don't know how the hell you think you'll pay for taxes and maintenance if I move out, unless you've stashed away a small fortune these last few years. About the only job available around here is waiting on tables, and I can tell you right now, that won't pay the electric bill.”

“There's over a hundred acres out there,” Helen said stiffly. “It should bring a pretty good price.”

Oh, Lord in heaven above, forgive her please, but she would have to throttle her mother. Gritting her teeth and glaring at the ribbon of two-lane highway in front of her, Nina said nothing until the thick cloud of her temper cleared sufficiently to speak without shouting. “Eight hundred an acre is the going price for undeveloped land. Good luck. You'll need it when I sue for every penny I put into it.”

Neither of them spoke for the rest of the hour-long drive home.

* * *

As the clock in the church tower chimed nine, Jimmy MacTavish steered the cherry red Geo into a parking space in front of the cubicle labeled “Sheriff's Office.” Beside him, Nancy nervously fiddled with her hair. They'd taken rooms at a hotel near the interstate last night after they'd arrived too late to find anyone in the sheriff's office. Nancy had insisted they drive up and down the streets of Madrid looking for Jackie until it grew dark.

Jimmy had thought it a waste of time, but he had nothing better to do. This town didn't have a computer store, but he rather admired the tree-lined. residential streets, the huge green lawns, and the neat beds of colorful flowers. Accustomed to the car-clogged highways and modernistic architecture of LA, he'd enjoyed the trip back in time.

Nancy was out of the car before he could open the door for her. Her high heels clicked on the pavement, and he breathed a silent sigh of appreciation at the long legs they accented. She'd taken care with her appearance this morning. Until now, she'd worn shorts and pulled her hair back in a knot. Today, she looked as if she'd just stepped off a movie screen.

The only person in the office was a bespectacled, overweight woman of indeterminable age. She looked up at them with curiosity, obviously more than eager to abandon her project on the ancient electric typewriter.

“I'm looking for Sheriff Stone. Is he in?” Jimmy felt foolish asking since the only other desk in the place was empty. He'd never had an aptitude for communication.

“He's over at the morgue with the state police. They found a body in the lake last night, and they're sending it in for autopsy. Could you state your business, please?”

Nancy took over before Jimmy could formulate a reply. “I'm looking for my son, Jackie Marshall. He was in a car accident here with his father a few weeks ago. Do you know anything about it?”

Jimmy almost covered his face with his hand before he thought better of it. JD would slice him into little pieces and feed him to the fish in the damned lake. Putting his hand to better use, he caught Nancy's arm and pulled her gently behind him. Smiling just a little nervously, he adjusted his glasses, remembered the broken nosepiece, and pushed at it gingerly. “Ummm, I think Mrs. Walker is a little confused. A friend of mine, JD Smith, had a little problem with my truck out here a few weeks back. He was giving Jackie a lift to his father's place when someone ran them off the road. We were wondering if you know where they went from here.”

The woman behind the desk beamed with enlightenment. “Mr. Smith! Of course. He's staying out at Nina's place. I heard all about the garden he's planning out there. It's the most exciting thing that's ever hit this town, let me tell you. My sister is already thinking of opening a flower shop where visitors can buy baskets and pretty pots and things. We're waiting to see if Nina means to sell her flowers out of the greenhouse, or if we should do it.”

Jimmy sought desperately for some response. Garden? JD didn't know a houseplant from an azalea. And he'd damned well better be working on the program loop or the business would crash down on their heads. Maybe it wasn't JD out there. Maybe somebody had stolen the truck and crashed it.

“Does Mr. Smith have a young boy with him? Is Jackie living with this Nina?” Nancy asked before Jimmy could find his words again. At least this time she used her head and followed his lead. Calling JD by his real name could cause real havoc.

“Well, yes, I believe there's a boy out there with him, but I thought he was Mr. Smith's brother. I didn't know his name was Marshall.” The clerk gave them a look of suspicion. “You say you're his mother?”

Nancy reddened, and relieved to come to the rescue, Jimmy jumped in. “Jackie's mother. Different fathers. Jackie's name is Marshall. Could you tell us where this Nina lives?”

“Who's asking?” a deep male voice rumbled behind him.

Jimmy spun around to discover a stocky, muscular man wearing a badge and a khaki uniform glaring at them from beneath a scowl that would suit a good John Wayne movie. Dealing with the law was up JD's alley, not Jimmy's. He'd never had much contact with the police except what he read in the newspapers or saw on television.

“I'm James MacTavish, sir.” He almost stuttered as he had back in school, but he managed to remember he was one of the chief officers of Marshall Enterprises and an important person in his own right. “You filed a report on my truck,” he said, straightening his shoulders. “We spoke on the phone some weeks ago. I came for my truck, but I understand JD and the boy are still in the area, and we'd like to see them. Your clerk tells us they're with”—he hesitated—”a Miss Nina? We were just asking for directions.”

Nancy clung to his arm as the sheriff glowered at them. Jimmy wanted to reassure her, but he was feeling a mite edgy himself. What in hell had JD gotten himself into this time?

“I was just heading out that way. You can follow, if you like.” Turning on his booted heel, the sheriff stalked out of the office.

Jimmy bit off the curse word he'd like to utter. Something was very, very wrong. Maybe he'd been just a little bit hasty in bringing Jackie's mother into whatever preposterous scheme JD had concocted this time.

Keys clacking beneath his fingers, JD grinned diabolically as the “execute” file fell into place. Anyone opening this cartridge would get the latest, greatest version of his newest Monster House game. Let Harry's thieves find the banking program now.

Finally, something was going right. Car accidents, dead bodies, mothers returned from the dead, and sons appearing from nowhere aside, he finally had one piece of his life in order. The banking loop worked. Champagne, caviar, and a month-long celebration were called for. He'd settle for a night in his landlady's bed.

Whistling merrily, he plotted his way to that goal as his fingers added the finishing touches to the program's disguise. Now, he only had to get the cartridge to Jimmy. He kept a backup of his own, and a spare he would send to a post office box. Basic. For challenge, his mind worked over the problem of seducing one commitment-minded lady.