needed right now.
They ate in the kitchen, making small talk. Easy there, too-none of that awkward second-date stuff. She was curious about his work, what kind of sales job he had, but he didn’t have much to say about it. Didn’t ask much about her profession, either. Okay with her. Bill had taught her it was best to keep casual talk about the detective business to a minimum, except when you were dealing with professionals. So what they talked about, mostly, was Lucas’s mama. Didn’t bother Tamara, though it probably would if they’d been moving toward a long-term relationship. So the man loved his mother, so what? Kind of refreshing. Not too many thirty-four-year-old studs with slow, slow hands had a sentimental side.
“She’s out on a date tonight,” Lucas said, still going on about Mama. “I don’t like the guy, but that’s her business.”
“How come you don’t like him?”
“He’s not good enough for her. Dresses cheap, talks cheap.”
“Serious between them?”
“No, I don’t think so. Casual.”
“Like you and me.”
“God, I hope not. I mean, you know, sex. I don’t like thinking about her going to bed with that guy.”
“Her business, like you said.”
“Well, anyhow, it doesn’t matter. He’ll be gone before long and there’ll be somebody else.”
He said that last like it bothered him. Well, maybe it did, if Mama had herself a string of boyfriends. But she was entitled, wasn’t she? Woman had been a widow a long time. A heart attack had snuffed Lucas’s father twelve years ago, he’d said.
“I’d like to meet her sometime,” she said.
“My mother? Why?”
“You talk about her a lot. She must be pretty special.”
“Special. Yes, she’s that.”
Something in his voice again, but Tamara couldn’t quite get a handle on what it was. Jealousy? Disapproval?
“Be all right with you?” she asked.
“What? Meeting Alisha? I don’t know, I suppose so. We’ll see.”
Reluctant. She had the feeling he wouldn’t allow it to happen.
A thought popped into her head. What if Alisha wasn’t his mother, what if she was his wife? He’d told her he was single, never been married, and she’d accepted that without thinking too much about it. If Alisha was his wife, the reason he talked so much about her might be guilt working on him. Well? Come right out and ask him, he’d just deny it and spoil the mood. Did it really matter? On a casual hookup like theirs… no, it didn’t.
Yeah, right. But good detectives were always looking for answers, something else Bill had taught her, and it was the detective in her that made her push it a little in spite of herself. “Okay if I ask you a personal question, Lucas?”
“If it’s not too personal.”
“Can’t help wondering how come you still live at home. I mean, your mama doesn’t sound like she needs somebody to look after her…”
Whoops. Pissed him off. His face clouded up and he said, “Why I live where I live is nobody’s business but mine and my mother’s.”
“Hey, I was just curious-”
“Well, don’t be. We have a good little thing going here, Tamara. Don’t screw it up by being nosy.”
“Okay, sure. Sorry.”
Took a few seconds for the anger to fade out of his eyes. Then he shrugged and the smile came back. “I’m sorry, too. I didn’t mean to growl at you.”
“No problem.”
“Why don’t we take another glass of wine into the living room?”
“Bedroom’s closer,” she said.
“On a full stomach? How about we just sit for a while, let the digestive juices do their thing.” Slow wink. “Then we’ll let the other juices do theirs.”
“Cool.”
The word reflected how she felt right now. Not as eager for those clean sheets as before. Another glass of wine, and if he didn’t conjure up Mama again, she’d be ready-sure, she would. But there wouldn’t be too many more nights like this one. She didn’t care for that angry, private side of his. And Alisha kept cropping up and getting in the way.
Alisha.
Mother? Wife? Who was she and just what kind of relationship did Lucas have with her? Now she couldn’t get the questions out of her head.
Well, there was an easy way to answer a couple of them, at least. Tomorrow at the agency.
Bad, girl, wanting to check up on a casual lover. Better not do it. Be smart. It’s not important, it might put an even quicker end to the hookup. Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t really want to know.
Good arguments. She listened to them as Lucas poured wine, and nodded to herself, and made a promise to herself that she wouldn’t do it-and knew she’d break the promise two minutes after she walked into the agency tomorrow morning.
14
JAKE RUNYON
Harmony was nothing more than a break in the two-lane county road. He came out of dense timber and there it was, like the appearance of a mirage-a scatter of buildings and a few hundred yards of surrounding meadowland. More thick forest walled it in on the east. Four miles in that direction, according to the directions Tamara had sent, an old logging road branched off and wound up to where the Hendersons’ hunting camp was located.
You couldn’t call Harmony a village or even a hamlet. The only public buildings were a tavern and a general store made of redwood siding and fronted by a couple of gas pumps. There was a house across the road, set far back at the edge of the meadow where cows and a sorrel horse grazed. Parts of a couple of other houses or cabins were visible at higher elevations among the timber.
The store and tavern were both closed. He should’ve figured nothing would be open this early, a little past nine by his watch. But he’d been too restless to hang around the motel in Fort Bragg, the nearest large town, where he’d spent the night. It’d been after dark when he pulled in there, too late to go out looking for Harmony and the hunting camp, and the downtime had weighed heavily on him. He’d left the motel at 7:00 a.m., wasted most of an hour on breakfast and a few more minutes driving around the area before finally heading out here.
He pulled over in front of the store, got out to look at the posted hours. Open at eleven. Two more hours to kill, unless he wanted to start knocking on doors hunting for the owner of the Harmony General Store. Better to use the time checking the Hendersons’ property first thing instead of second.
He drove on through the close-grown stands of pine and Douglas fir, climbing gradually. The logging road was right where Tamara had indicated, 8.6 miles from Harmony. Rutted, and muddy in patches of deep shade, but not too bad; there hadn’t been much rain or snow this winter. The Ford had all-wheel drive, so he had no trouble negotiating the rough spots.
Half a mile of bouncing and rattling brought him to the private road that led uphill through more timber and finally emerged in what appeared to be a man-made clearing. Tree stumps, old and crumbling from the assaults of insects and woodpeckers, spotted it here and there. He threaded his way among them to within fifty feet of the main cabin, one of three buildings that made up the camp.
He stepped out into biting cold and dead-calm stillness. Clouds and mist clung to the tops of the surrounding forest, as if somebody had draped them with puffs and streamers of gray bunting. Faintly, from behind the cabin, the sound of running water came to him-a trout stream that ran down to a small river whose name he’d already
