Death Come Quickly (5 page)

Upstairs, Caitlin stopped in the middle of her third rendition of “Clair de lune,” her summer violin recital piece. A moment later, light footsteps clattered on the stairs.

Twelve-year-old Caitlin joined our family two years ago. Biologically speaking, she's my niece, my brother Miles' daughter—my half brother, actually, but that's a whole other story. Tragically, she lost both of her parents before she was eleven. She's my daughter, now, and McQuaid's.

Caitie is small for her age and fragile looking, with pixie-cut dark hair and large dark eyes, not as sad as they used to be, I'm glad to say. That's partly because McQuaid, Brian, and I have taken her into our hearts, helping her to feel loved and secure. But it's also due to her violin, her chickens (known familiarly as “the girls”), and her scruffy orange alley cat, Pumpkin.

My mother, Leatha, gave Caitlin the violin I scorned when I was her age, and she immediately fell in love with it. She's studying with Sandra Trevor, who teaches strings at CTSU and says that Caitie has a fine talent. “I'm not sure I'd call her a prodigy,” Sandra told McQuaid and me when she suggested that Caitlin enter the Young Classical Artists Competition sponsored by the university. “But she is certainly exceptional. I'm sure she'll do well.”

She did, placing at the top of her age group. McQuaid and I do what we can to encourage our daughter's remarkable musical talent—and to make sure that she leads a normal life, in spite of it. Which is where the cat and the chickens come in.

“Hey, Mom.” Caitie bounced into the kitchen, followed by Pumpkin, who had already squandered eight of his nine lives in riotous living before he showed up on our doorstep and announced that he had arrived and would someone please warm up a saucer of milk because he had come a long way and he hadn't happened on anything much to eat in the last hundred miles or so. Oh, and a bed would be rather nice, too, thank you very much.

“How about a sweet, fluffy kitty instead?” I'd asked, when Caitie begged to adopt him. But the scruffy, down-at-the-heels tomcat had already clawed his way into her heart.

“He's just like me when I first came to live here,” she'd said, clutching him in her arms. “He doesn't have any family. He needs somebody to adopt him. He needs
me
.” The cat, knowing a very good deal when it bumped into him, had powered up his pussycat purr, unpacked his bags, and moved right in.

Pumpkin and Caitlin's girls are the only resident creatures at our house these days, except for a few of Brian's fugitive lizards, the ones who were absent on safari under the refrigerator or in the laundry hamper and hence could not be located when he decided to release their friends and relations back into the wild. I don't miss the lizards and I cheered (under my breath, of course) when Brian sold his tarantula, Ivanova, to another arachnid collector.

“I'm sorry, but I can't take you to college with me,” he'd explained to Ivanova as he packed her up, with her terrarium habitat and hides and toys. “And if I asked Dad and Mom to take care of you, they might let you get loose.” I shuddered at the thought.

But all of us do miss dear old Howard Cosell, McQuaid's ancient basset. Howard went to the happy hunting grounds a few months ago, after a brief illness. He was well loved and deeply mourned. But he'd had a long life and a happy one, especially since we moved to the country. True to his inner basset, he loved chasing rabbits and squirrels. He never caught one, of course: they were much too speedy for him. But he once managed to corner an armadillo against the stone fence and took a bite. McQuaid and I still laugh when we remember Howard's surprise and disgust when he actually got a taste of the creature. There's probably another dog in our future, but we miss dear Howard too much to think about that just yet.

Caitlin went to the table, leaned over to peer into the casserole dish, then looked up at me in pretended alarm. “Mom, that's not—”

“No, of course it isn't,” I said, going to the fridge. “You don't think I would do such a thing, do you?”

“Just checking,” Caitlin said cheerfully and threw me a dimpled grin. Her girls—three white hens and three red hens—live in the palatial plywood edifice that McQuaid and Brian erected in the backyard. The girls proved to be astonishingly productive, once they got the hang of it. They deliver an average of five eggs a day, seven days a week, forty-plus weeks of the year. Caitie (who bought her chickens out of her babysitting money) sells some of her eggs to us and the rest to our neighbors, bringing in enough to cover the cost of chicken feed and retire the debt they accrued in the months before they started laying. She says she is thinking of doubling her flock in the fall, with the idea of using the money for a new full-size violin. Leatha has offered to buy the violin for her, but Caitie, who is an entrepreneur at heart, wants to earn the money herself.

I pulled the salad fixings out of the fridge: purslane from the sunny corner of the backyard; and from the garden, some Malabar spinach, a few green onions, a handful of cherry tomatoes, and two cucumbers. I feel virtuous when I feed the family at least one dish that we grow ourselves. And even more virtuous when one of the greens is a weed. (That is, a plant with a bad reputation.)

“Jake's coming for supper,” I told Caitlin. “Her parents aren't back from their field trip yet. So set the table for five, please.”

Jake is Jacqueline Keene, Brian's girlfriend and—coincidentally—the sister of one of the documentary filmmakers that Ruby had mentioned to Sheila. Dr. Keene, the girls' father, is on the anthropology faculty at CTSU. He and their mother, Annie, a high school teacher, were supervising a group of students doing a dig in the remote jungles of Belize and wouldn't be back for another week or so. Jake is a great kid, and she and Brian have been going together so long, and so comfortably, that McQuaid and I view her almost as a member of the family. There's a certain danger in this, I suppose, but all we can do is trust to the good judgment and common sense of both kids. McQuaid has made sure that Brian knows and respects the facts of life, and Annie tells me that she's had the Conversation with Jake. Teen sex is not a subject that any of us take lightly.

Things will change in a big way at the end of the summer, though. Brian has been accepted at the University of Texas at Austin. Jake, who decided that she would rather attend a smaller, more familiar school, will be at CTSU. Both their worlds will widen out to include new ideas, new places, new people. By this time next year, they may find themselves going in very different directions.

Caitie got the silverware out of the drawer. “Guess what,” she said.

I hate “guess what,” which always strikes me as a not-so-subtle one-up. When an adult pulls it on me, I never bite. But this was Caitie, and she's special. I played along, frowning, pretending to think.

“Well, how about this? Pumpkin chased a desperately hungry coyote away from your chicken coop, while the girls cowered in the corner, quaking with fear.” Pumpkin is perfectly capable of this. He is one fierce cat. And we do have coyotes—not to mention bobcats, and mountain lions.

“A good guess but wrong.” Caitie giggled. “Guess again.”

I pressed a forefinger against my forehead, frowning, pretending to think very hard. “You won four gold Reading Circle stars at the library, which is twice as much as anybody else.” Actually, I knew this for a fact, because Jenni Long, the children's librarian, had stopped at the shop to tell me. The kids get a gold star for every five books they read this summer. At twenty and counting, Caitlin was far ahead of the pack.

“How did you know that?” Caitie exclaimed.

“A fairy whispered it in my ear,” I said. “She also said, ‘Tell Caitie that's quite an achievement.'”

Caitie giggled, that sweet little-girl giggle that always goes straight to my heart. “Thank you. But it wasn't what I was thinking. You have to
guess.
”

I gave her a quick hug. “That's for the gold stars. But that's it for me, I'm afraid. I've totally run out of ideas. What is it I'm supposed to guess?”

“Mrs. Banner is going to have a baby.” She began laying out the silverware on the table. “She said so when I took her my eggs.”

“That is totally wonderful,” I said enthusiastically, reaching for the salad bowl, which lives on the second shelf in the cupboard. The Banners are our neighbors up the lane. Sylvia raises sheep and sells their fleece, online, to spinners and weavers. Tom does oil and gas consulting and builds birdhouses for a hobby. They're a nice couple, in their late thirties and married only a couple of years. This will be a first child for both. “A boy or girl or do they know yet?”

“A boy. They're going to name him Thomas, after his daddy. Mrs. Banner says I can come and help her take care of him, but he will be too little for me to babysit—at least for quite a while.” There was a brief silence. “Mrs. Banner is kind of old for babies, isn't she?” Caitie asked. “I mean, she's got gray hair. Not as much as you have,” she added thoughtfully, eyeing the gray streak in my brown hair. “But some.”

“Gray doesn't mean ancient,” I said defensively. “And older women do have babies.” Was this a teachable moment? “In fact,” I added, “you can conceive a baby right up to the time your periods stop.” We had discussed periods several times recently, and while Caitlin is still maybe a year away from the big day, her supplies are already stashed in her bottom dresser drawer. I believe in being prepared.

“I read about that in a book I got at the library,” Caitlin informed me. She put her head on one side, her dark eyes serious and intent. “Have
your
periods stopped, Mom? Could
we
have a baby?”

Talk about teachable moments. I was considering how best to reply to this when the screen door banged and I was saved from saying anything at all. Brian barged into the kitchen, followed by Jake. Brian—dark haired, blue eyed, remarkably like his dad—towers over me now. When he comes into the room, it feels crowded. Jake is tall, too, thin and cute and lively, with steady gray eyes and a bouncy blond ponytail. She isn't quite as tall as Brian, but almost. And they're both athletic: Brian lettered in baseball, and Jake played basketball and trombone in the Panthers marching band. All-American kids. There are moments when I would like to stop the clock and tear up the calendar and keep them both—and Caitie, too—just as they are, forever young, sweet, and innocent, before sex and all that jazz. Thank goodness that's not in my power.

“Ah, chicken for supper,” Brian said, with an approving glance into the casserole on the table. His voice is past the squeaky stage now, and reliably deep. “Hey, Cait. Have you counted your girls lately? I was out there a few minutes ago, and I only saw five. Three white ones and two—”

“You lie!” Caitlin shrilled furiously. But she banged down the silverware on the table and sprinted through the door, nearly smacking into McQuaid, coming up the back steps.

“Whoa, there,” McQuaid cautioned. “Watch it, kid, or you'll end up on your nose.”

“I gotta go count my girls!” Caitie cried and rushed down the steps.

Jake smacked Brian on the arm. “Brian McQuaid, that was
so
mean. You go out there right now and apologize to your sister.”

“Ditto that, Brian,” I said sternly, tearing the Malabar spinach into the large bowl that already held the washed purslane leaves. Teachable moment or not, I was glad to be off the hook, at least for now. “You know how Caitie feels about those chickens.”

Jake picked up the silverware and began to arrange it beside the plates. “Go, Brian,” she commanded.

“You're ganging up on me,” Brian protested, scowling.

“You got it!” Jake and I said together, and Brian went.

“We need to keep this girl around,” McQuaid said to me, slipping an arm around my waist as I stood at the counter, mixing the greens. “She manages that boy better than we do.” He kissed the back of my neck, then headed for the fridge.

I shivered. McQuaid is a big man, six feet, one-ninety-plus, with the broad, muscled shoulders of an ex–college quarterback who is still in very good shape. Even after years of sleeping with him, some of them blessed by matrimony, my body is still very much aware of his body. It's an awareness that often feels almost electrical, as though the voltage just got tweaked up a notch or two.

McQuaid opened the refrigerator door. “Jake, how much would you charge to keep Brian in line?”

“Sometimes the magic works; sometimes it doesn't.” Jake gave a little shrug. “I know he
hears
me, but he doesn't always listen.”

“I've had the same experience,” I said dryly. “The napkins are in the drawer by the dishwasher, Jake—let's use the red ones. You kids can have milk or tea, whichever you want.” To McQuaid, I added, “Pour a glass of that for me, would you?” He was getting the white wine out of the refrigerator.

“Done,” he said and put my wineglass beside my plate. He bent over the casserole dish. “Hey, chicken.” He frowned at it. “That isn't—”

“No.” The timer buzzed and I went to the stove. “A thousand times no.” I took the rolls out of the oven. “Why is everybody so concerned about the source of that chicken? You don't really think I would—”

“I'll go see what Brian and Caitlin are up to,” Jake offered diplomatically and headed for the door.

McQuaid lounged against the counter. He was wearing jeans and my favorite blue plaid shirt, the same color as his eyes, and his dark hair was rumpled, as usual, where he'd been running his fingers through it. He has a jagged scar across his forehead—a knife-fight trophy from his days as a Houston detective—and his nose has been broken more than once. His features are too rugged to be called handsome, but he's certainly tall, dark, and sexy, every inch an alpha male. After he left the police force, he served for several months as Pecan Springs' acting police chief; on another occasion, he took an undercover assignment with the Texas Rangers. He got badly shot up on that case, though, and I don't mind telling you that I was nervous when he hung out his shingle as a private detective. But most of his cases have been of the seek-and-find variety, more of an intellectual challenge than a physical one—at least so far. I'm not as uneasy about his work as I used to be, especially since Blackie came on board. Blackie Blackwell is the quintessential lawman's lawman, smart, cool, and utterly dependable. I worry less, knowing he has McQuaid's back.