She let herself into her room and locked the door behind her, without even waving her thanks to Reede. Dinner was a tasteless meal ordered off the room service menu. She thumbed through the yearbooks again, but was so familiar with them by now that the pictures hardly registered. She was tired, but too keyed up to go to sleep.
Junior’s kiss haunted her thoughts, not because it had sparked her sensual imagination, but because it hadn’t. Reede’s kisses haunted her because he had so effortlessly accomplished what Junior had wanted to.
Angus hadn’t needed a script to know the kind of scene he’d walked into when he had entered the hangar and found her with Reede. His expression had been a mix of surprise, disapproval, and something she couldn’t quite put a name to. Resignation?
She tossed and turned out of fatigue, frustration, and yes, fear. No matter how many times she denied it, Plummet disturbed her. He was a wacko, but his words held a ring of truth.
She had come to care what each of her suspects thought of her. Winning their approval had become almost as important as winning her grandmother’s. It was a bizarre fact, one she had difficulty admitting to herself.
She didn’t trust Reede, but she desired him and wanted him to reciprocate that desire. For all his laziness, she liked Junior and felt a twinge of pity for him. Angus fulfilled her childhood fantasies of a stern but loving parent. The closer she came to uncovering the truth about their conne
ction to her mother’s death, the less she wanted to know it.
Then, there was the cloud of the Pasty Hickam murder lurking on the horizon. Reede’s suspect, Lyle Turner, was still at large. Until she was convinced that he had killed the Mintons’ former ranch hand, she would go on believing that Pasty had been eliminated as an eyewitness to Celina’s murder. His killer considered her a threat, too.
So, in the middle of the night, when she heard a car slowly drive past her door, when she saw its headlights arc across her bed, her heart leaped in fright.
Throwing off the covers, she crept to the window and peeped through the crack between it and the heavy drape. Her whole body went limp with relief and she uttered a small, glad sound.
The sheriff’s Blazer executed a wide turn in the parking lot and passed her room once more before driving away.
Reede thought about turning around and going to where he knew he could find potent liquor, a welcoming smile, and a warm woman, but he kept the hood of his truck pointed toward home.
He was sick with an unknown disease. He couldn’t shake it, no matter how hard he tried. He itched from the inside out, and his gut was in a state of constant turmoil.
His house, which he had always liked for the solitude it provided, seemed merely lonely when he opened the squeaky screen door. When was he ever going to remember to oil those hinges? The light he switched on did little to enhance the living room. It only illuminated the fact that there was nobody to welcome him home.
Not even a dog came forward to lick his hand, wagging its tail because it was glad to see him. He didn’t have a goldfish, a parakeet, a cat—nothing that could die on him and leave another vacuum in his life.
Horses were different. They were business investments. But every once in a while, one would become special, like Double Time. That had hurt. He tried not to think about it.
Refugee camps in famine-ravaged countries were better stocked with provisions than his kitchen. He seldom ate at home. When he did, like now, he made do with a beer and a few saltines spread with peanut butter.
On his way down the hall, he adjusted the furnace thermostat so he wouldn’t be frozen stiff by morning. His bed was unmade; he didn’t remember what had gotten him out of it so suddenly the last time he’d been in it.
He shed his clothes, dropping them in the hamper in the bathroom, which Lupe’s niece would empty the next time she came. He probably owned more underwear and socks than any man he knew. It wasn’t an extravagance; it just kept him from having to do laundry frequently. His wardrobe consisted of jeans and shirts, mostly. Having several of each done up at the dry cleaner’s every week kept him decently clothed.
While he brushed his teeth at the bathroom sink, he surveyed his image in the mirror. He needed a haircut. He usually did. There were a few more gray hairs in his sideburns than the last time he’d looked. When had those cropped up?
He suddenly realized how lined his face had become. Anchoring the toothbrush in the corner of his mouth, he leaned across the sink and peered at his reflection at close range. His face was full of cracks and crevices.
In plain English, he looked old.
Too old? For what? More to the point, too old for whom?
The name that sprang to mind greatly disturbed him.
He spat and rinsed out his mouth, but avoided looking at himself again before he turned out the cruelly revealing overhead light. There was no need to set an alarm. He was always up by sunrise. He never overslept.
The sheets were frigid. He pulled the covers to his chin and waited for heat to find his naked body. It was at moments like this, when the night was the darkest and coldest and most solitary, that he wished Celina hadn’t ruined him for other relationships. At any other time, he was glad he wasn’t a sucker for emotions.
At times like this, he secretly wished that he’d married. Even sleeping next to the warm body of a woman you didn’t particularly love, or who’d gone to fat months after the wedding, or who had let you down, or who harped about the shortage of money and the long hours you worked, would be better than sleeping alone.
Then again, maybe not. Who the hell knew? He would never know because of Celina. He hadn’t loved her when she died, not in the way he’d loved her most of his life up until then.
He had begun to wonder if their love could outlast their youth, if it was real and substantial, or merely the best substitute they had for other deficiencies in their lives. He would always have loved her as a friend, but he had doubted that their mutual dependence was a healthy foundation for a life together.
Perhaps Celina had sensed his reservations, and that had been one of the reasons she’d felt the need to leave for a while. They had never discussed it. He would never know, but he suspected it.