Half Past Mourning (12 page)

Nina twisted slightly in the seat, tucking one long leg up under her. “No, but for the first time I feel like the sheriff is really looking. If we could just come up with the reason Danny left his car behind, I think we’d be a lot further along.”

Peter’s russet eyebrows pulled together, puckering his brow. “I think that’s a good place to start. And I heard from Betty Andrews on Monday. The wedding is over, the bride and groom gone, and she’s getting her life back in order. She said if I wanted to come over next Saturday, she’d be glad to poke through her husband’s papers and see if there’s anything to say who sold him the car. She was sorta curious about why I was asking, so I told her about you and about Danny and why it’s important to know how her husband came to buy the Thunderbird.”

Nina stared down at her blue seersucker pants. She supposed the woman’s curiosity was natural, but Nina hated to be the subject of the inevitable speculation. “She said she’d talk to you?”

Peter squeezed her hand again. “She said she’d talk to
us.
Danny’s disappearance and all you’ve been through the past two years worried her. Especially the speculation that Danny was involved with other women. Mrs. Andrews said she’d like for you to come with me. You’d see things
I wouldn’t, and maybe you’d ask different questions. Anyway, do you want to come? She lives clear over in Barlow, but I thought we could leave early, have lunch along the way, and get to her place mid-afternoon. Will you come, Nina?”

Reluctant to relive the pain such a visit would bring, Nina closed her eyes in thought. Painful or not, she had to have answers. “Yes, I think I will, Peter. I think it may be important for me to talk to this woman.” She turned so she was staring out into the receding countryside beyond the windshield. “I probably won’t be able to think of anything you haven’t, but I do want to hear what she says.”

“It’s going to be hard for you, isn’t it? Still, you may be the only one who can ask the right question or know if the answers have any significance.”

“I just hope we find some answers and that somewhere down the road we’ll know what happened to Danny.”

“Have you really considered what we might find, Nina? Really thought about it, I mean? Those answers might be more painful than not knowing.” Peter’s words were burdened with uneasiness.

Nina drew a sharp breath. “What do you mean? What could be worse than not knowing? You’re seeing something in all this, aren’t you?”

Peter pulled up in front of her house and shut off the motor. “Nina, you’re such an open and honest person you don’t think of other people doing something deceitful. But you’ve heard from that boy Tinker and from your uncle that Danny did play around with other girls. And men are apt to chase after women they shouldn’t. One way Danny could have left town and not taken his own car is to have gone with someone else, some woman.” He took both her hands in his and she felt the gentle pressure of his concern in his touch. “I don’t want to make this worse for you, sweetheart, but it’s the only thing I can think of that fits all the things we’ve discovered. Forgive me for adding to your pain, but you should think about the possibility. That’s why you must decide if your need to know the truth is powerful enough to stand up to what you might find. Can you stand it if we learn Danny left on your wedding day with another woman?”

Peter walked her to the porch of the pretty orchid house at the end of Jasmine Street and left. Again an almost tangible curtain of isolation fell around Nina as the T-Bird pulled away. Without conscious thought, she unlocked the door and entered the silent cottage. Late afternoon clouds made the room dim, and the familiar chairs and tables huddled in half shadows. Nina slipped off her driving shoes and padded in sock feet to the armchair by the window. Sinbad, looking up from the chair opposite, stretched, rippled in a tabby flow to the coffee table, and curled into her lap. With one finger she rubbed his tattered ear, her mind drifting in a fog of melancholy contemplation.

Danny planned it, he worked it all out, and he left. How could he say the things he did that last night, the night before our wedding, and still go away without me? Is Peter right? Was there another woman? Was she there all the time, in the shadows, and I was too blind to see it? She could have been waiting for him, met him when he left the wedding, and then they went away together. They wouldn’t need two cars, and the T-Bird was so noticeable. Did he sell his and drive away in her car? Is that it? I never thought of that possibility, but Peter’s got a point. It fits all the pieces of the puzzle together. But why go through with the wedding to me if he loved somebody else? Why not just leave?

Nina rubbed the cat’s ears, smoothing the fur without feeling its ragged texture. That night, the night before the wedding, Danny had said so many things, promised her such a wonderful life. The trip to Dallas would only be the first of many roads they’d travel. They’d see the big races, the Indy, maybe even the Grand Prix in a year or two. He’d take her to Paris, to Vienna, around the world. They would look for gems of the automobile world for the Lassiter Museum. Together they’d make it a showcase for the history of cars and their artistry. They’d build a home, a jewel of a house, just for the two of them. They’d play and love and have their own world within its walls.

Nina felt a slow tear slide down her cheek. Danny, a dreamer, a playmate, could make her see castles in the clouds. She’d believed him, damn it; she’d believed every word. And all the time there’d been other women, other plans, and other dreams with no place for her in them.

Sinbad looked up with a baleful glare and kneaded her knee with piercing claws when she stopped stroking his fur. She shifted him in her lap so his head rested on her arm. “It has to be another woman, doesn’t it, tough guy? I might as well face it. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. He sold the car, left with her, and probably stuck the license and pocket knife in the trunk just to break off all ties here. If they went to Florida, or anywhere else, a copy of his birth certificate and a few dollars, possibly a driving test, would get him a new license and a new life. His lawyers would make things work for him, I guess. They get a lot of money for doing what he wants done and not telling anything about it.”

In the end, he didn’t love me. It was someone else, someone who touched him in ways I didn’t. Some woman with more sex appeal, prettier maybe. Not the small-town schoolteacher who played softball with the kids and liked to see how high she could climb or how hard she could kick the ball or how fast she could make the car get around the track. Maybe that other woman knew things about men that I don’t. Or was exciting in bed. Or was just more of what he wanted than I knew how to be. He loved her, loved her a lot more than he loved me. She must have been someone Marigold would have disapproved of, even more than she did me, or he would have told his mother. Who, who would he have wanted that much? Some sexy siren who knew how to play the game? An older woman who had been around? Some dungaree doll who flattered his ego? Who and why and when did it all start?

Nina wrapped her arms around the cat and buried her face in his fur. “I loved him, Sinbad. I didn’t know anything else, but I knew I loved him. I wanted to make his life good, to see him break out of that velvet-box world Marigold kept him in.” A tide of pain swept through her, and hot tears poured into the cat’s fur. “If he found that with somebody else, I shouldn’t be so hurt and angry, should I? When you love somebody, you want what makes them happy. If it wasn’t me, then I should be glad Danny did find someone else. I should be glad about that, shouldn’t I, Sinbad? Maybe I will be one day. Maybe, in time, I won’t feel as if something had been ripped out of my soul. I’ll try, Sinbad, I’ll try. It would be so much easier if we hadn’t had that last night, the night before the wedding. Oh, Sinbad, if he just hadn’t lied to me that night, that night of all nights.” The hard sobs came then, wrenching and tearing at the center of her being, till she thought she’d break into pieces from the pain. “That night, our special night. Why did it have to be a lie? Oh, Danny, didn’t it mean anything to you, after all? Didn’t I?”

Chapter 8

Peter could tell Nina was playing with her whole heart in the softball game. She was a good pitcher, controlled, graceful, and she threw the ball so the little kids at bat had a good chance to hit it. Out there in the sun, in her plaid shirt, a streak of dirt on her cheek, she looked almost like one of the kids on the field. Taller, of course, but she played with the same enthusiasm as her ten-year-old teammates. He watched as the last hitter made the final out for the side and the game ended with a seven-inning tie. Everyone cheered, flooded the field to congratulate both sides, and swarmed the hot dog stands along the sidelines. He caught up with Nina as she tossed balls and gloves into equipment bags.

“You looked about the same age as those kids out there.” He helped close the bag and lifted it for her. “Did you have as much fun as it looked like you did?”

Nina swiped her glistening forehead, leaving another streak of dirt behind, and pushed her Dodgers cap back from her face. Damp tendrils of hair made tight curls around her ears. “I had a great time. Every kid got to play, both teams scored, and nobody was a hero or a bum. Everybody won, nobody lost. Best kind of game, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Show me where to put this stuff, and I’ll buy you a snow cone,” he offered.

“You’re on, Peter. A cherry snow cone would hit the spot.”

Nina’s plaid shirt had come untucked and her capri pants had a grass stain across the seat, but Peter saw life and laughter in her caramel-brown eyes. She looked far better than she had earlier in the week.

“I think the end of school agrees with you,” he told her. “Are things better?” He immediately wished he’d stayed quiet. A shadow darkened her eyes.

“I’ve managed to put everything we talked about—Danny, the other women, all that—out of my mind for a couple of days. Getting the last classes finished, report cards out, and planning for today took every minute.” He followed her through the deserted school halls and helped put the playground equipment away. “Now about that snow cone,” she reminded him.

“One cherry-flavored snow cone coming up.” Peter waded through the milling children and their parents to the small booths at the end of the playground. By the time he got to the front of the line, made his purchase, and struggled back around knots of people, Nina had moved to the far side of the playground and was talking to a shapely blonde woman carrying an armload of books. Nina waved as Peter edged past the crowds to join them.

The cherry snow cone dribbled sticky syrup over the edge of the paper cone as the ice dissolved inside. “Your frappé, mam’selle,” he said, offering the slushy cup.

“Perfect, thank you.” Nina drank from the damp cone, leaving a pink outline above her upper lip. “I needed that.”

Her blonde companion snickered. “Just like one of the kids. I swear, Nina, in some ways you’ll be ten years old for the rest of your life.”

Nina took a bite of the tinted ice. “I certainly hope so.” She turned to Peter. “This is my friend and fellow teacher Paula King. She teaches the fifth grade. Her class and mine made up the softball teams. Paula, this is Peter Shayne. I told you about him and the T-Bird.”

“So you have Danny’s car? How do you think his driver’s license got into the trunk?”

Peter was taken aback by the woman’s bold questions and the calculating gleam in her wide blue eyes. She had to be one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen, but he felt no attraction. She was too chilly for his taste. The silky hair swirled in golden waves around her shoulders, her eyes had the twinkle of experience, and that figure... Peter decided she should be wearing a sign that said “dangerous curves ahead.” In spite of her physical attributes, Peter preferred the lithe girl in the plaid shirt and baseball cap, her lips stained with cherry syrup and her hair in tangled curls. Nina had more natural appeal than the voluptuous blonde could ever manufacture.

“Do you think stirring things up again really will help Nina?” she was asking.

Nina answered before Peter could. “He’s been a lot of help, Paula. I really think we’ll find Danny, now that some clues are coming to light.”

Paula shifted her books, gave Nina a pitying smile, and shook her head. Blonde waves shimmered in the sunlight. “I don’t think you’ll find him, sweetie, and I hate to see you break your heart trying.”

“I have to keep at it,” Nina answered. She turned her attention to Peter. “Paula thinks my life is a TV drama. She keeps waiting for the next episode.”

Paula laughed. “Yours isn’t the only one. I’m about to get a full share of drama on my own, so I probably won’t have time to worry about yours.” She glanced at Peter and added, “The man I’m going to marry next month is a widower with two children, both teenagers. Talk about drama! I always wanted a family, but I hadn’t planned to get a ready-made one with almost-grown kids.” She shifted her books again and looked at her watch. “Oops, if I don’t get these books turned in, I’ll be coming back from my honeymoon to explain why. See you later, Nina.” She nodded to Peter. “Nice to meet you.”

“Pretty girl, but a little negative about your chances of finding Danny,” Peter commented as Paula hurried away.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Nina answered. “She has reason to be hesitant about the search for Danny. I think she hates to see me disappointed again. She was going to be my bridesmaid, but she took pneumonia just before the wedding. She feels if she’d been at the wedding, nothing would have gone wrong. Her pneumonia was actually worse because she was so distraught. She fretted over it all summer.”

“Sounds as if she’s marrying an older man,” Peter added.

“Quite a bit older. She was seeing somebody seriously a couple of years ago, but he took a job out of state, and I guess they drifted apart. I’m not sure how deeply she loves this new man, but she wants a family and he seems devoted to her.” Nina crumpled the sticky remains of her snow cone into a wad and looked for a place to deposit it. “And she really loves those kids.”