Lalla Bains 02 - A Dead Red Heart (23 page)

He slapped his hands on the wheel and laughed out loud. "You're a piece of work, you know that? Sheriff Stone thinks the sun shines out of your butt, and what do you do? Typical woman, you twist his nuts in a vise and blow him off. Okay by me. Whadya say we get us a room and I'll show you what you've been missing?"

I swallowed the bile threatening to come up. Rodney was slimy, obnoxious and married, not to mention prone to rough sex with the single women he dated. But so far nothing in his conversation indicated that Jan had squealed on me.

"I think we both know it's a no-go, Detective."

At the ranch I unbuckled my seatbelt, and before sprinting for the house, remembered to say, "Thanks for the ride."

He called after me, "The pleasure may still be all mine, Miz Bains."

Maybe he did know, or at least suspected, that I was the one who beaned him with that skillet. Or maybe this was simply his way to throw me off balance.

Inside the house, I shook off the last few hours of drama and looked around.

Everything was back to normal; Juanita's radio was tuned to a Mexican station, my dad whistling tunelessly as he tucked his shirt into a pair of recently ironed pants, old scuffed Justins' sagging around his ankles, his ornery buddy, Spike, close at his heels.

Of course, this was after I'd come home unexpectedly and accidentally walked in on him and my third grade teacher.

Unable to stop myself, I had to go and rub his nose in it.

"Where's your date?"

"Never mind that. What happened to your house arrest at Caleb's?"

If circumstances had turned out differently, if I'd stayed where I was supposed to, I wouldn't have been in Del's apartment to see Detective Gayle Rodney slobbering over Jan Bidwell, or to be the one to clobber him with that skillet. And if I'd stayed at Caleb's like a good girl, I'd also still be in the dark about my father's afternoon dalliance with Shirley Hosmer.

Boy, howdy, the things I'd miss out on if only I did as I was told.

"Lalla? I asked you a question. Aren't you supposed to be at Caleb's?"

"Huh? Oh, I'm happy to say that Detective Rodney says that I've been exonerated from all charges. Oh, I have to make a call!" Then I ran for the stairs.

I settled onto the bed, pulled out my cell phone, and called Jan.

"Jan? It's Lalla. What did you do with Rodney after I left?"

"Oh, Lalla, I have great news, but not over the phone. Can you meet me, uh tomorrow, same place as today, ten a.m?"

"Sure," I said to dead air. She'd hung up. Good news? What were the chances that she got Rodney to confess and she got it on tape?

Punching memory dial, I waited as Caleb picked up in the middle of the first ring. "Caleb? I'm so sorry. Please don't think I wanted to leave you like that. I—"

He interrupted. "Are you okay?"

"Me? Sure. I'm fine, fine. I'm sorry. I should've left you a note where I was going."

There was a moment when neither one of us said anything. Then we both started again.

"Sweetheart, I just wish—"

"—Caleb, please, there's so much we need to talk about, but not now. Can you come out tonight?"

"You don't want to come back here?"

I heard the ache in his voice and wished I hadn't been responsible for putting it there.

I also thought of the reason why I didn't want to be at Caleb's tonight and hoped my excuse would hold him until we could talk. "I'll be coming in from work. We can eat here and talk, okay?"

Knowing how tired I would be by the end of the day, he agreed to come out.
 
Besides, Caleb had a weakness for Juanita's seven-layer casserole, and it was on the menu for tonight.

My dad was sitting in the office chair I'd come to call mine. "Look at the facts, Lalla. It was your job, your mistake."

Mad-Dog did a fly-over on a field I'd meant to do two days ago, something I should have done, would've done, if I hadn't been stuck at Caleb's for the last two days. Now there were white streaks in the alfalfa field from the larva that eat the tender corn in its husk and leave the stalk. It should never have happened, and I had no one to blame but myself. I'd been neglectful, worrying about things I couldn't change instead of paying attention to business. And now my dad knew because the farmer had called him and complained, saying we'd get his next job but he wouldn't be paying for chemicals or the time it took to do it. It was pilot error, and it would come out of my paycheck.

"I'm sorry, Dad, but…,"

"I would've chalked it up to your recent worries, but that's not all of it, Lalla. I checked the regs on that cylinder you said was kicking. That engine is already hours beyond its TBO. So now someone gets to do the overhaul, and maybe replace the damn thing."

"I'm sorry, Dad. I'll help, I promise."

"You can bet your buttons you're going to help. You're also grounded as of today."

"Noah Bains! That's just not fair. This is my living too, you know." What I didn't say, and we both knew, was that flying, even in a pokey Ag-Cat was the nearest thing to heaven. Up there I was free of the constraints of the earthbound. My troubles became small and insignificant. Flying was usually the cure for what ailed me and I hated to lose it.

"You're too distracted, and it ain't safe. Not for you or anybody else."

"So what am I supposed to do in the mean time?"

"Paperwork's done for today, and the boys are all out on jobs. We can't start on that engine until tomorrow, but I have something that will keep your mind occupied till then."

I took the paper he held out. "This? You can't be serious!" I squinted at him. "Tell me this doesn't have anything to do with catching you in
flagrante delicto
with Mrs. Hosmer."

"Don't start with me, missy!" he said, but his big ears flamed with the denial.

For the second time in one day, I'd embarrassed the two men most important to me. "I'm sorry, Dad. That was out of line. Please don't be mad at me."

"I'm not mad, Lalla. This is only temporary. When you or Caleb or the police department get this all sorted out, you can get back into the seat. We can't afford to lose a half-million dollar aircraft, not to mention the lawsuit it might bring, just because you're not paying attention to business. Surely you, of all people, can understand. It's your business you'll want to protect for the future, not what I'm doing with Shirley Hosmer."

I pulled out the pity card. "But, Dad, they took my driver's license, remember?"

He snorted. "When has the lack of a license ever kept you from driving? Take the farm truck, leave the Caddy, and no one will be the wiser."

I took my chastisement and my marching orders and went out the door.

"Now, children," I said, raising my voice over the joyful shouting of thirty or so first graders. "Can anyone tell me what a pest is?"

All hands shot up, and unable to choose, I finally called on one boy sitting cross-legged on the floor up in the front. "Yes, you, young man in the blue T-shirt. Can you tell me the answer?"

"Yeth ma'am, I thur can! My little brother is a peth. Have you got anything to get rid of him?"

That broke them up for another few minutes until the teacher's sharp clapping brought them to heel. "All right, children, that's enough! Now, let Miss Bains do the talking."

I didn't want to talk, I wanted recess. I looked at the big round clock at the back of the room. I'd been given forty minutes to an hour to talk about the benefits of pesticides. What I really wanted to do was go outside and play on the jungle gym, or maybe eat lunch and take a nap.

I raised my voice another octave and started again. "Pesticides are not scary. We use them every day in our homes. Pesticides save wildlife, wetlands, water, and lives. Everyone uses pesticides:Your mother uses them to get rid of the fungus in the shower, and do you have a flea collar for your dog?"

That brought an outburst of opinion, comments and comparisons of dogs, sizes, colors, and who had the best dog in the world.

"Awright!" I shouted. How do teachers do it? "How many of you go swimming?" The teacher smiled and nodded. She was saving her voice. "Everyone does? Good. What's in the water? Your little brother's pee? No, you can't flush the pool out every time your kid brother pees in it. So they put a chemical called chlorine in the water to fix that, don't they? What would happen if they didn't put chlorine in the water? That's right, it would get all icky and turn green, wouldn't it? Did you know that a good thing in one place can be a pest in another? Can you give me an example? Someone? Not you, cowboy, someone else? Anyone?"

This time I picked a pink-cheeked little blonde. She stood up by her desk and said, "I think a truck would be a good example because my mommy says my daddy shouldn't have bought his truck. It cost eleventy-seven dollars, and she says if he doesn't sell it, she's going to get a D-I-V-O-R-C-E, but my daddy says she's being a pest, because…"

The teacher, I noticed, was carefully examining her nail polish.

I ignored her attempts to keep from laughing and tried again. "Let me see if I can explain. A rose is a nice thing, but if it grew in a field of corn, the farmer wouldn't be too happy. So he calls us, and we... yes? Uh, yes you, did you have a question?"

"Do you have guns on your airplanes, like they do in the old movies?"

"Uh, no. Now if you can hold your questions until after my talk, where was I? Oh, yes, roses in the corn. That would be an example of something that looks right in your mother's garden, but not in the farmer's field, isn't that right?"

Enthusiastic nods all around the room. Then it dawned on me... A rose in the corn. That's what was bothering me about Billy Wayne. He was as out of place amongst the homeless men who wandered the underworld of Modesto's night streets as a rose in the corn. Perhaps I'd mistaken Billy Wayne's messages to me. Maybe they weren't meant to be love poems as much as a way to reach out to someone who might listen. But then, why me? And why not a fellow Marine like Caleb, who'd tried to befriend him? The dead are entitled to justice, Pippa said. And for whatever reason, Billy Wayne had chosen me to bring his killer to justice.

I came back to the present when a spitball hit me in the forehead.

Released fifteen minutes early, I shook hands with the teacher and told her I'd be glad to do it again anytime, just not any time this year.

I managed to get through dinner with nothing to rattle the quiet except for an occasional request to pass the salt.

Caleb and I washed and rinsed and piled the dishes into the dishwasher as we'd done since we were kids. I'd had him for a lifetime of friendship and now he'd come to mean more to me than I ever could've imagined. So why was I still clenching my teeth against the bond as if it were a hair rope dragging me to my grave instead of the sweet bond of promise.

Outside, we settled into our wicker chairs with a bottle of beer.

My dad came out the front door and, passing us for the steps, said, "'Night," and ambled across the yard to his truck.

When the taillights were half-way down the road I turned to Caleb and said, "He's dating our third-grade teacher."

It took him a minute, but then he coughed out, "Mrs.Hosmer?
That
third grade teacher?"

"The very one. When I came home to pick up some extras for my stay at your house, I kinda, sorta accidentally walked in on them."

"That'll teach you to go home unexpectedly. Sweetheart, I only hope when we're that age we're still getting it on."

It was dark and I could barely see the outline of his profile. But I could tell he was smiling. "Oh, Caleb, what am I going to do?"

He reached out to me in the dark. "You don't like her?"

"Who?" I'd been thinking of Janice and Rodney.

"Our third grade teacher. You don't like her, or you don't like the idea that your dad is dating again?"

"Well, what if he got married?"

"You'll move in with me."

"We've been over this. No moving in together."

"And no getting married either, right? Then what do you want?"

"I didn't say I didn't want to get married." Well, not lately, anyway.

"You turned me down last week."