Bitch Factor (15 page)

Emma Sparks’ kitchen smelled of baked apples and cinnamon, awakening a pang of nostalgia in Dixie. Cheeks rosy from the heat and wisps of white hair springing around her head, Emma was rubbing peanut oil on a plump turkey in a blue granite roaster. She looked as happy in her kitchen as Kathleen had always been in her own.

“Can’t recall the last time we had guests for breakfast. God sure does work in mysterious ways. Sends a blizzard to make us take time with each other.”

Dixie lifted a warming lid. “Smells great.”

“Honey, there’s not much trick to whipping up a batch of eggs and sausage. Now you grab a plate from the cabinet and fill it from those pans. There’s hot coffee and buttermilk biscuits on the sideboard. Remember, I don’t want a mess of leftovers to deal with.”

The early sunlight streaming through yellow-flowered curtains gave the kitchen a homey glow. In the adjoining dining room, dishes clinked around a table. Conversations hummed. Dixie saw her henna-haired neighbor and a young man wearning a Ski Canada sweatshirt. She was tempted to sit down with them.

But the antsy part of her mind was back in the room with
Dann. Handcuffed to the bed, he couldn’t raise much havoc. Yet why risk leaving him alone to try something stupid?

Emma clucked sympathetically about Dann’s “cold.”

“You just pile both these plates high, and I’ll wrap them up good for you to carry back.”

As Dixie scooped spoonfuls from each dish, she watched the redhead chat gaily with everyone at the table. Somehow, the woman had tamed her mass of tangles into a curly mane that bounced like copper pennies around her shoulders, and judging by the freckles sprinkled delicately across her nose, the copper hadn’t come from a bottle as Dixie first suspected. The woman’s skin had a translucent quality, like fine porcelain. She’d artfully tinted her eyelids lavender, which made her green eyes bright and vivid. A peachy blush colored her cheekbones. Not young—probably Amy’s age—but youthful and vibrant, she was the sort of woman who totally baffled Dixie.

Why did anyone spend that much time on looking good? For that matter, how did they know where to start? Somewhere there was a secret women’s club that passed these little tricks around. Dixie’d never been invited. Oh, sure, she’d played with makeup. Amy had insisted. “You only need a touch, Dixie, with your strong bones and naturally rich coloring, but you do need a touch.” And she’d had her “colors done” by a professional—also at Amy’s insistence. Dixie knew she wasn’t homely; she cleaned up pretty damn good at times. But there was something missing, a distinctly feminine quality this redhead possessed.

Amy had it, too, although the hard edge of her glamour had softened as she matured. Carla Jean had it in spades. Dixie’s mother was female extraordinaire, not a masculine bone in her perfumed, powdered, ruffle-clad body, and not a practical thought in her head. Carla Jean always presented herself as a princess, a tawdry princess perhaps, too often used and discarded, but always a princess. Maybe Dixie, in her fear of becoming like her mother, had bent too far the other way.

Scooping butter pats onto the plates, Dixie caught a glimpse of herself in a narrow beveled mirror above the buffet.
She hoped she didn’t smell as scruffy as she looked. Forty-eight hours without a bath or change of clothes was probably pushing bad grooming to its limit. She turned away from the troublesome reflection—out of sight, out of mind—and was glad, after all, that she hadn’t sat down to eat with these people. One thing she didn’t have to worry about with Parker Dann was her appearance.

Buck held the door as she started back to the cabin between shoulder-high mounds of shoveled snow, the aroma of baked apples still strong in her nostrils. Now that the wind had died down, she hardly felt the cold. The sun had popped out strong and bright in a sky as blue as Texas blue-bonnets. A brush-stroke of creamy clouds mirrored the snowscape.

She wished Ryan were here. He’d want to jump right in the middle of those tall drifts. Make snowballs. Build a space-age snowman. Hell, Dixie herself felt an urge to jump in the middle of a drift.
God sends a blizzard to make us take time with each other
, Emma had said. Those few minutes with the Sparkses had dredged up a slew of concerns. When Dixie didn’t show up for Christmas dinner tonight, Amy would be worried and upset. Ryan would be disappointed, opening his Cessna and having no batteries to fly it. And shucks! Dixie would miss meeting Old Delbert Snelling!

She grinned. Things could be worse. She could be shacked up with an ugly, foul-tempered, illiterate jerk. At least Dann was reasonably good company. Maybe she should loosen his rein some. Even in the harshest of prisons, criminals celebrated Christmas; and as Dann had pointed out, there was no way anybody could leave until the snowplows came roaring through.

With that settled, Dixie felt better about herself. Even a badass bitch should take Christmas off. After breakfast, maybe she’d telephone Amy.

“South Dakota?”
Her sister’s mellow voice had picked up a worried barb. “Dixie, whatever possessed you to drive to South Dakota during a blizzard?”

“The blizzard happened
after
I drove up here. And the weather is beautiful again. I’m only waiting for a highway crew to clear the roads, then I’ll start home.”

“On Christmas Day? You think people are going to run those snowshovel things instead of being home with their families?”

“Lots of people have to work on Christmas.”
Including me
. But Dixie didn’t want to remind Amy of the reason for her unplanned trip, because then she’d have to admit she was sharing a motel room with a prisoner. Amy would have nightmares.

“I hope you realize how upset Ryan’s going to be. I swear, Dix—”

“If you’ll put him on, maybe I can explain.”

“Well, I’m sorry. He’s not here.” She didn’t sound a bit sorry, she sounded pleased, but Dixie knew Amy was only venting her frustration. Her notion of jobs that constituted “women’s work” was not quite Victorian, but certainly pre-Margaret Thatcher. “Carl and Ryan are driving around, looking at the snow.”

“It snowed in
Houston?”

“Enough to turn the ground white. Of course, it’ll burn off by noon. They should be back here in a couple of hours. Dixie, you’re not doing anything dangerous, are you?”

“A routine job. Nothing to worry about.” Someday lightning would strike her for telling these white lies, but the truth would set Amy to walking the floors.

“South Dakota doesn’t sound at all routine to me.”

“You should see it, Amy, it’s so beautiful up here. The couple who own the motel are cooking Christmas dinner for everyone who got snowed in. They’re really sweet….Of course, I’d rather be home with you guys.”

“I know. We’ll miss you, too.” Her sister’s voice softened. “Dixie, drive carefully. We’d rather have you arrive in one piece, even if it means you’ll get here a little later.”

“I will, Amy. Cheers.”

“Yeah… cheers yourself.” She paused. “I think there’s a nine-volt battery around here someplace that wil fit the
remote control for Ryan’s model airplane. I’ll tell him to save that package and open it when you call.”

“Thanks, Sis. I love you, too.”

Cradling the phone with a pang of regret, Dixie regarded Dann. He sat at the yellow table finishing his breakfast, one hand cuffed to the table leg, where he could rest it on his knee. She was not missing a traditional Flannigan Christmas for the ten-thousand-dollar fee, she reminded herself. She was not missing Christmas because of her loyalty to Belle Richards or because Belle didn’t want the jury to know Dann had skipped. She had taken the case because an eleven-year-old child would never see another Christmas. Accident or not, Betsy Keyes’ death was wrong. Dann could not be allowed to carry on with his own life as if drunkenly killing a child meant nothing.

Reminding herself why she was here helped ease the ache Dixie felt, missing the biggest day of the year with her family. But it didn’t ease that ache a whole hell of a lot.

“Guess it messed up your holiday, coming after me,” Dann said, as if reading her mind.

Innocent until
proven
guilty, Flannigan
.

“Actually, the storm messed up my holiday,” she relented.

He stacked his plate on hers and set them both on the shelf above the table. Dixie had found a small radio in the closet. It sat beside Mr. Coffee now, tuned to Christmas music.

“Your family have big holiday plans?” Dann took a box of worn wooden dominoes from the nightstand drawer and turned them out on the tabletop.

“Not big, exactly, but mandatory. To miss a Flannigan family dinner requires a death certificate or, at the very least, a hospital admission slip.”

“Big family gatherings,” Dann said. “That’s what I miss most about Montana. Our whole clan used to pile in the hay truck, drive up the mountain to pick out a Christmas tree. Arguing all the while—which tree had the bushiest limbs, straightest trunk. Back home, Mother would break out the apple cider, a bottle of schnapps, a box of tree trimmings. No
matter how much we fooled around, rearranging the lights, by midnight Pop always positioned the angel and hit the light switch.” Dann sat down and drew a domino hand. “Good times.”

He had washed up and changed his shirt before she set out their breakfast. His chin stubble was starting to fill in, Dixie noted. He had the sort of face that looked good in a beard.

She’d taken her own turn with one of the tiny bars of Ivory soap, washing even her teeth with it, in the absence of toothpaste. Her overnight kit, which she kept in the Mustang’s trunk for emergencies, had been conspicuously absent when she brought their things in. After her last trip across the Mexican border, she’d removed the kit to replace the sample-size deodorant and mouthwash. She could see the brown, zippered leather kit sitting exactly where she’d left it, on a shelf in the utility room, handy for the next time she went to the car. But the next time she went to the car, her hands had been full and her mind busy with Christmas tasks.

Dixie ran her tongue over her teeth. She could sure use a slug of that mouthwash right now. And some fresh clothes. She resisted sniffing her armpits.

“At our house, it was Southern Comfort and eggnog,” she said, squirming her chair around so she’d be sitting downwind. “And pecan shells burning in the fireplace.” Dixie counted only the years after she became a Flannigan, never the earlier years. Holidays with Carla Jean were celebrated with turkey sandwiches from the Stop & Go.

“Had you figured as a teetotaler.”

“I’ve got nothing against alcohol. I just believe in moderation.”

Dann looked at her from under his heavy eyebrows, and something in his gaze reminded Dixie of a private investigator on a TV series. She couldn’t remember which one.

“Moderation in everything?” he said.

Now what the hell was he up to, flashing those blue eyes and dropping his voice into the sexy zone? She stared back at him.

“Even the best things can be overdone, Dann.”

He shrugged and shuffled his dominoes. They made surprisingly loud swishing sounds on the wooden table. Annoying sounds. Dixie glanced at her own hand, but didn’t see how it would improve with rearranging.

“Like soap,” Dann mumbled. “Soap can be overdone.”

“What?”

“You have a soap smudge.” He touched his jawline near the ear, and Dixie automatically mirrored him. “Other side.”

She slid her chair back, stalked into the bathroom, and closed the door. Soap smudge. Yep, there it was. Good thing she didn’t wear makeup, she’d probably paint her eyebrows red and her lips blue. She scrubbed the smudge off and splashed her face with cold water. Watching the droplets drip off her nose in the mirror, she wondered what sort of biological clock made a woman her age finally start worrying about appearances. No gray in her hair yet. No unsightly wrinkles. She wouldn’t turn any heads at a beauty pageant, but she looked okay.

Drying her face, she noticed Dann’s comb lying on the countertop beside his toothbrush and toothpaste. Borrowing the toothpaste had seemed too intimate a request to make of a man you held prisoner. Of course, it was only her imagination, thinking she could still taste the Ivory soap after chasing it with breakfast. She looked at the comb, about four inches long, black, the kind barbershops gave away free. What could be intimate about that?

When she picked it up, a single dark hair fell into the sink. The same brown as her own. Shorter, of course. Her own collar-length hair was heavy enough that it fell more or less in place, but there was no denying it would improve with combing. She pulled the comb through it. No magical rays zapped her. After a few more strokes, she did look better. Felt better, too.

From the bedroom came the
swish, swish, swish
of Dann shuffling his domino hand. Probably shuffling hers, as well.

She eyed the toothpaste.
In For a Penny, In For a Pound—
as Kathleen’s maxim would state. She squirted a dab of toothpaste on a clean washcloth, rubbed her teeth and gums, and swished with water. Better. Monumentally better. Absolutely, fantastically, peppermint-flavored better. Only now, of course, she’d have to confess to toothpaste theft.

Fessing up never came easy, though she’d had plenty of practice. Barney had told her there were two kinds of people, those who asked permission and those who forged ahead, begging forgiveness later. Dixie’d never learned the knack of asking for anything. But she understood quid pro quo.

Before resuming their domino game, she’d scraped the Mustang’s trunk free of snow and had found another pair of handcuffs. The two pairs linked together with some extra chain gave Dann nearly five feet of mobility, enough to take a bathroom break without asking and to sit comfortably in one of the wooden chairs. Watching him move around, she noticed he favored his right leg. An old injury?

She’d also made a fresh pot of coffee. Dann produced an airline-size pony bottle of Baileys Irish Cream to sweeten it.