Tainted Gold (12 page)

Gently sighed into her ear, the little, soft-spoken word knocked the last chink out of Quillen’s defenses. Looping her right arm around his neck, she clung to him and sobbed. He held her and let her cry, his left hand stroking her hair, his right pressing her against him and cradling her face in the curve between his neck and shoulder.

The brown flannel beneath Quillen’s cheek smelled of dirt and sweat and smoky, autumn-dried leaves. She cried until Tucker’s shirt was damp with tears, then she mopped at the wet spot with clumsy, embarrassed fingers.

“Oh, Tucker, I’m sorry.” Quillen bit her tongue, ducked her head, and leaned her forehead against his collarbone. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—that’s all I seem to be able to say to you. I’m really not a blubbering idiot. I don’t know what’s wrong with me and I’m so sor— Oh, God, there I go again.”

“It’s all right, love.” He raised her chin on the tip of his index finger and smiled. “But you could save yourself a few apologies if you wouldn’t try so hard to prove that you can lick the world singlehandedly. You can’t, you know; no one can.” His thumb softly rubbed her chin. “So why don’t you tell me what Sheriff Blackburn said that scared you so badly you almost fainted?”

“Everything he said scared me.” It was true enough; still, Quillen crossed the first two fingers of her left hand in her lap and quickly changed the subject. “How did you find me? I thought you were investigating the tremor we felt Sunday night.”

“I
was
,” he answered, his smile vanishing, “until somebody clobbered my seismometer. I had to come back and pick up my spare and I thought I’d stop by and see you while I was in town. Thank God I did.” His arms enfolded her again and he hugged her closer. “And thank God you cried out when you fell down the stairs. I’d just come up on the porch, taken a good whiff of the gas, and was about to run like hell for the house next door to call the fire department.”

“Amen.” Quillen sighed and leaned against him, the warmth of his body easing some of the chill out of hers. “Better camouflage your spare or put it out of sight someplace. The town kids run the hills around here like packs of wild dogs.”

“My love, a child couldn’t have lifted, let alone swung the fifteen-pound ball-peen hammer used to pulverize my seismometer.” Tucker eased away from her and frowned. “It was left at the scene of the crime with the name Cassil Construction wood-burned on the handle.”

“You’re kidding!” Quillen gasped.

“Am I?” He cocked one eyebrow sourly, lifted his arm from her shoulders, and restarted the engine as he moved behind the wheel. “I returned it to C.C.’s fearless leader this morning, who very conveniently had a police report that listed that particular hammer as one of several items stolen from one of their job sites last week.”

“You don’t look like you believe him,” Quillen observed as she said a silent prayer of thanks for the
very
good reason Tucker had for being in Cassil’s office.

“I don’t, not after the altercation he and I had last Friday over the environmental impact study. He informed me—and not very politely, either—that he wouldn’t tolerate interference from anyone.” Tucker nudged the gearshift into drive and held his right arm out to Quillen. She slid next to him and his hand curved around her shoulder. “I’ve been thinking about that, Quillen. Do you suppose your friend Cal could smuggle you a copy of the plans for that damn park? I think my boss in the Denver office would just
love
to see them.”

“Oh, Tucker!” Quillen cried joyfully, throwing her arms around his neck and planting happy, haphazard kisses on his face.

“Whoa, easy!” He laughed as he tried to duck away from her. “I’m trying to drive.”

“Pull over,” she said lowly, tilting her head to one side and catching his earlobe lightly in her teeth.

The tires screeched and the Jeep bumped against the curb. Twisting away from the wheel, Tucker grinned and scooped her against his chest. “We’re over.”

Holding his face between her hands, Quillen kissed him, not as hard as he’d kissed her, but hard enough to elicit a deep groan. A silly, half-dizzy giggle tickled in her throat and bubbled past her lips as she broke the kiss and hugged him.

“That’s the first time I’ve heard you
really
laugh,” he said gently, peeling her off his chest, then frowning as he looked into her eyes. “And judging by your slightly dilated pupils, I’d say I have Dr. Ross to thank for it. Damn, and I thought you were getting high on me.”

“Oh, I am, Tucker,” she said softly, touching her fingertips to his chin as she kissed his cheek.

“Ah-ah-ah.” His hands on her shoulders, he eased her away from him. “You’ll end up with terminal whisker burn. Give me a chance to shave, love, and we’ll pick this up where we left off.”

That’s five “loves,” her little voice sighed as Tucker straightened behind the wheel and drew her into the curve of his arm. Nestled there with her head on his shoulder, Quillen slipped her right arm around his rib cage and smiled. So there, Jason, she thought smugly as she burrowed her cheek into the still-damp spot on his shirt.

Nothing in Cassil Springs was that far from anything else, and fewer than ten minutes later, Tucker turned the Jeep onto Mulberry Street. In the middle of the block stood her house, tall, stately and beautiful, with its elegant gingerbread trim and slate blue roof. It didn’t look violated, and Quillen was surprised. She’d expected it to look different somehow, but it looked the same as ever with a stream of mauve-colored cloud winnowing away over the attic gables toward the distant mountains.

“I see you followed Realgar’s suggestion.” Tucker chuckled as he parked the Jeep at the curb and nodded at the vacancy sign she’d staked in front of the birdbath.

“For luck,” she told him with a smile.

He touched his lips between her eyebrows, pushed his door open, and stepped out into the street. As Quillen wiggled under the steering wheel to follow, he lifted his arms and held them out to her.

“Tucker.” She bent her right elbow on the wheel and wrinkled her nose at him. “I can walk.”

“I know, but I need the practice.”

“What for?”

“For carrying you over the threshold.”

“Isn’t this bad luck?”

“Only for the man who doesn’t practice and realizes on his wedding day that he can’t budge his wife’s feet off the ground.”

In long strides, Tucker rounded the nose of the Jeep, climbed the porch steps, and carried her into the front hall.

“Miss McCain!” Mrs. Sipp sprang off the third step where she’d been sitting. “I’m so glad to see you’re all right!”

“Oh, Mrs. Sipp.” She tugged urgently on Tucker’s shirt sleeves and he put her down in the middle of the Oriental rug. She drew a deep breath as her feet touched the floor, and tasted just a faint trace of gas on her tongue. “I’m glad you’re all right, too.”

“I think you’re so brave,” Mrs. Sipp fluttered. She came down the steps to stand in front of her as Tucker stepped aside. “No one’s ever risked their life for me before. I—I just don’t know what to say.”

Her faded blue eyes misted and she tugged a lace hanky from the cuffed sleeve of her pink and white seersucker dress. Sniffing, she dabbed it daintily at her nose and Quillen put her arms around the fragile-looking woman, as Tucker leaned against the newel post, folded his arms, and smiled.

A loud, echoing metallic
bong
vibrated the floorboards and rattled Quillen’s teeth. It startled her and nearly buckled her weak knees.

“That’s Tom Fergus,” Mrs. Sipp said, slipping out of her embrace. “I called him right away and he started work on the furnace just as soon as the house aired out. When he’s finished he’ll turn the meter on and we’ll have hot water again.”

“Bless you, Mrs. Sipp.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” she demurred, her face turning as pink as her dress.

“Bless Tom Fergus.” Tucker scraped the knuckles of his right hand across his whiskered chin and winked at Quillen.

Wanly, she smiled back at him, and walked gingerly toward her open apartment door. Dreading the havoc she expected to see within, Quillen winced as she peered around the doorjamb.

“Well, isn’t this odd.” A bewildered frown twisted her mouth as she surveyed her perfectly ordered living room.

“It was mostly just overturned furniture,” Mrs. Sipp explained at her elbow in her tiny, soft voice. “I set it all up again.”

“You’ve got no business lifting furniture,” Tucker told her sternly.

“Oh, it wasn’t very heavy, Mr. Ferris.” She smiled at him over her shoulder as she stepped through the door ahead of Quillen. “Here, Miss McCain, the deputy—that nice Bill Taggert—found this behind the garage.” She lifted a grass-stained daffodil yellow pillowcase that Quillen recognized as one of hers and opened it on the love seat. “He said it looked like the thief got scared and just dropped it there.”

Quillen looked inside and saw several of Grandma Elliot’s porcelain bells—and her treasured china clock lying facedown. Her heart shot up her throat as she lifted it slowly and turned it over. The crystal was shattered and one delicately curved foot fell off in her hand.

“Oh,
my
.” Mrs. Sipp pressed her shell pink fingertips to her lips.

“Maybe it can be repaired,” Tucker said quietly, his palms lightly cupping her shoulders.

Swallowing a lump of angry tears, Quillen placed the clock lovingly on the seat cushion, slid out from under Tucker’s hands, and whirled away from him. Her knees quaked as she marched across the studio, but she ignored them as she cut through the kitchen, flung open the basement door, and quickly downed the steps.

On the landing where the steep flight made a right-hand turn, she paused and surveyed the basement. The doors on the five storage lockers built across the back wall were closed, the locks unbroken. All four windows were open, the white eyelet curtains billowing in a gusty breeze, but the reek of gas fumes was stronger here and her head began to pound again.

“Well, hi there, Quillen.” Tom Fergus, his broad, ruddy face beaded with perspiration, looked over one of the branchlike arms of the furnace, which squatted like a fat, ancient tree in the middle of the cement floor. “You had a close one, I hear.”

“Not
that
close,” she replied shortly. “How are you doing?”

“Just finished.” He grunted a little as he bent over and stepped under the furnace duct. “Glad, too; it still stinks to high heaven down here, don’t it?”

“Yes, it does,” she agreed, sitting down hard on the landing as a faint, dull ring, the first warning sign of vertigo, started in her ears.

“Quillen.” Tucker spoke her name harshly. “You’ve got no damn business down there.”

She glanced up at him, standing at the top of the stairs and frowning as he pressed his hands on the side moldings. She ignored him and turned back to Tom.

“How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing, now. I can wait till your insurance check comes.” He tugged a grease-stained red rag out of his back pocket and wiped his hands as he shook his head. “The fella that busted this made damn sure it was busted, lemme tell you. I found the old valve over there”—he nodded at the far corner near the storage lockers—“and the pipe over yonder.” He pointed in the opposite direction. “The valve was twisted up like a pretzel and one end of the pipe was smashed flatter’n a pancake. Whacked it a helluva shot, he did, prob’ly with a sledgehammer.”

A fifteen-pound ball-peen hammer, Tucker had said, with the name Cassil Construction wood-burned into the handle. Stolen last week but returned to Desmond Cassil this morning, probably in plenty of time—

But no one would believe her.

Chapter Six

“If you aren’t up here by the time I count three,” Tucker said tersely from the top of the stairs, “I’m going to come down there and bodily drag you to bed. One—”

Chuckling, Tom Fergus tucked the red rag back in his pocket and grinned at Quillen. “I believe he means it.”

“Means what?” she asked vaguely, her mind stuck on burglars who used sledgehammers to sabotage furnaces. It took her a second and a sly wink from Tom in Tucker’s direction to alert Quillen to the monumental misconstruction his mind had leaped to. “Oh,
no
!” she cried, wide-eyed with dismay. “He doesn’t mean that—”

“How do you know?” Tucker interrupted. “Two—”

“—the way it sounds,” she finished, shooting him a glare over her shoulder.

“Three!”
he called firmly, and started down the stairs.

“I’m coming!” Quillen answered angrily, and pulled herself to her feet.

A very pleased-with-himself smile lifted the corners of Tucker’s mouth as he backed up into the kitchen. Folding his arms across his chest, he leaned against the jamb and watched her climb the stairs. Behind her, Tom Fergus chuckled again, and a hot scald flushed Quillen’s cheeks as she mounted the top step and collapsed, winded, against the wall on the opposite side of the door.

“I’ve known that man all my life,” she told Tucker, her voice a low, breathless whisper. “I’m so embarrassed—”

“Could you excuse us a second, Mr. Fergus?” Tucker smiled and waved at Tom, moved off the jamb, and partially shut the stairwell door. “I’m sorry, but it was all I could think of. You were getting paler and shakier by the second.” He leaned his right hand on the knob, cupped his left around her cheek, and brushed his thumb across her upper lip. “You’re supposed to rest, Quillen. Go to bed, love. I’ll set him straight.”