Dove in the Window (2 page)

1

“YOU SOLD ME?” Elvia shrieked. She slapped her tea cup down into the saucer. “Like one of your cows?”

I swear one of my kitchen windows rattled.

My ever-supportive husband’s deep and melodious laugh reverberated from the living room of our tiny Spanish-style bungalow. No doubt a smug “I-told-you-so” from a certain chief of police resided in my immediate future.

I held my hands palms out in entreaty to my best friend since second grade. “Try and think of it as a short-term lease.” Then I darted out of her reach, placing my sturdy pine kitchen table between us.

“Benni Harper, I’m going to kill you,” she said. Her black eyes flashed, and it occurred to me that repressed in her genetic memory might lurk some incredibly painful means to accomplish that task. Was it the Spanish Conquistadors or Native Americans who smeared their enemies’ naked bodies with honey and tied them to ant hills? Well, what she didn’t recall genetically, she’d make up for with torture techniques she’d learned being the only female sibling among six males.

“It’s just one night,” I said, contemplating the distance to the knife drawer. I ran faster than she did in grade school. Could my thirty-five-year-old legs still beat her? “A few hours. You’ll like him.” I gave an encouraging smile. “Besides, as your own dear mama has often said, you’re getting kinda old. You really should consider Emory. He’s very handsome. You’d make beautiful babies.”

She glared at me. “He’s a geek.”

“Geek? No one uses that word anymore, and besides, the last time you saw him he was eleven years old. He’s thirty-four now—all grown up. Elvia, I had to offer him something. It was for a good cause. The information he found for me helped solve two murders.”

She sipped her Earl Grey tea and continued giving me the evil eye. I considered telling her how attractive she looks when she’s angry, then decided that was pushing my luck. My best friend, Elvia Aragon, really is a breathtakingly beautiful woman. A combination of Armani elegance and Latina sensuality wrapped up in a perfect size three. She’s smart, too. And law abiding. I was hoping that last trait would not be compromised by my small but audacious act.

Because I had indeed sold her lock, stock, and Charles Jourdan pumps to one Emory Delano Littleton of Sugartree, Arkansas. Well, at least her services for one night. A date. That’s all. Kiss not included, unless Emory could weasel one out of her, which I wouldn’t put past him. He’s got a real way about him, ole Emory does.

Emory is my cousin. Sort of. In that weird, meandering way only Southerners truly understand. His grandfather and my dad’s grandfather were first cousins by marriage. And, to make the connection even more complex, Emory’s father, Boone Emory Littleton (famous all over northeastern Arkansas for his smoked chicken company—Boone’s Good Eatin‘ Chicken), married my mother’s third cousin, Ervalean, after they met at my mother and father’s wedding. Cousin Ervalean died when Emory was eleven, and Emory stayed that summer at our ranch outside San Celina on the Central Coast of California while his father closed every bar in Little Rock. After three months of trying to drown his sorrow in innumerable bottles of expensive Kentucky bourbon, Boone was saved at a tent revival and called Emory back home.

I’d seen my cousin since on my occasional trips back to Arkansas with my gramma Dove to visit her sister, Garnet, but he’s never returned to California mostly because he’s afraid to fly. That’s why I felt safe offering Elvia’s services when I needed Emory to use his extensive and often suspiciously gained journalistic contacts throughout the South to help me with a couple of murder investigations I’d stumbled into. He’d had a crush on Elvia since he first set his green Southern eyes on her that summer twenty-three years ago. Even at twelve Elvia was turning men’s brains to mush.

“Emory’s changed a lot since he was eleven,” I said, setting a plate of her favorite almond scones from Stern’s Bakery in front of her. “And he really did help me. Think of it as a public service.” I’d been rehearsing this talk for two weeks, ever since getting the phone call from Emory informing me he was joining the Ramsey clan for Thanksgiving at the ranch this year. His train would arrive at six P.M. on Wednesday. Which was today.

“Nevertheless, I’m going to kill you,” she said, her voice determined. Only someone who knew her as well as me would hear the tinge of resignation in her tone. I released my held breath, knowing I’d won. But I’d owe her big for this favor, and she wouldn’t hesitate calling it in when it was to her greatest advantage. Knowing when to fight and when to temporarily concede was one of the traits that had turned her bookstore and coffeehouse, Blind Harry’s, into one of the most powerful independent bookstores in California.

“Is it safe to reenter the arena?” Gabe stuck his head around the corner of the kitchen door, his deep-set gray-blue eyes inquiring behind round, gold-rimmed glasses. You’d think someone who’d been a cocky Marine grunt in Vietnam, a fearless undercover narcotics cop in East L.A., and was currently San Celina’s chief of police would behave a little less like the Wizard of Oz’s cowardly lion. That conveys a bit of the power of Elvia’s personality.

He said something to Elvia in Spanish that made her red lips part into a tiny reluctant smile.

“No fair,” I said. “Speak English.”

“Don’t worry,” Elvia told him. “I’ll wait until you leave before murdering her. Then you can send one of your underlings to investigate.”

He entered the kitchen, tying his conservative gray-and-blue silk tie. “Good. I’ve got enough to worry about with all the San Celina Heritage Days security. Try and make it neat. I don’t have time to mop the floor this week.” He leaned over and kissed me, then rubbed his five-day growth of black-and-silver beard across my cheek. Combined with his gray Brooks Brothers suit and white dress shirt, the beard looked incongruous and a bit sexy. Just a slight deviation from what I call his Sergeant Friday look.

“Ouch,” I said, pushing him away. “You’re packing a lethal weapon there.”

“You’re the one who talked me into entering this ridiculous beard-growing contest, so you’ll have to suffer, too.” He scratched his face vigorously with his knuckles. “So, when does the big date ensue?”

Elvia and I spoke at the same time.

“Never,” she said.

“This week,” I said.

Gabe laughed out loud.

“Please,” I begged her. “I’ll hand wash and wax your precious Austin-Healy. I’ll work at the bookstore during the next five Christmas seasons. I’ll pick every flea out of Sweet William’s coat with tweezers.” Sweet William was her newly inherited championship Persian cat.

She stood up and picked up her leather briefcase. “Sweet William has never had a flea in his life. You owe me mucho
grande, gringa loca
. Grand Canyon big. Pavarotti big. A bigness of global proportions.”

I scooted around the table and hugged her. “Thank you, thank you, thank you. You are the queen of best friends. He’ll behave himself, I promise.”
I hope
was what I was actually thinking. “Are you coming to the barbecue on Friday afternoon?”

Every year since I can remember, my dad, the oldest of the six Ramsey kids, and his mother, my gramma Dove, have hosted a barbecue at the Ramsey Ranch the day after Thanksgiving for all our friends and family. It coincided with our four-day, no-holds-barred-kick-em-in-the-nuts-when-they‘ re-down poker tournament and semiannual calf roundup. California’s Central Coast, having the mildest weather around, didn’t have to adhere to the traditional spring roundup common in colder states, and besides, Daddy always liked to get a head start on castrating our calves before they grew too big. To keep his young ranch hands happy, though, he always saved some for the spring so we could have an old-fashioned roundup complete with roping and riding and Rocky Mountain Oysters. But every November, my uncles and aunts left their ranches and came from all over the West to participate in this Thanksgiving ritual of food, cards, and cattle. For four days the ranch looked like a cross between a scout camp, small-town rodeo, and a two-star RV park. I didn’t attend last year because I couldn’t endure the family crowd after losing my husband, Jack, the February before in an auto accident. But it had been almost two years since Jack was killed, and this year I was attending with Gabriel Ortiz, my new husband, a complex and wonderful gift that God, with more than a little amusement, I imagine, dropped into my life when I least expected it.

Elvia pushed me away, straightening her cinnamon-colored Armani knit suit. “Don’t try to make up to me. And, yes, the whole Aragon clan will be there. We haven’t missed one in twenty-eight years, have we?” She patted her black hair, arranged this morning in an elegant French twist. “Just keep Emory away from me. I’ll agree to a short dinner on the day of
my
choosing. That’s it. I don’t want him pawing all over me at the barbecue.” She pointed at the scones. “I’ve got things to do. Wrap mine up to go.”

“Yes, ma‘am,” I said, pulling a plastic bag from the drawer. “I promise to keep him occupied. You might be surprised, though. He’s quite a personable man now.” I held out the wrapped scones, giving her a wide smile.

“He’s from Arkansas,” she said with a disdainful sniff. She grabbed the bag and stuck it in her briefcase. “Tell Dove happy Thanksgiving for me. See you Friday. Mama’s bringing tamales.”

“Bless her,” Gabe said with a sigh.

She scowled at him. “You know, I actually thought you might be able to control her.”

“Better people than me have tried and failed,” he said, unperturbed.

“Boy,” I said, pouring myself another cup of coffee after she left. “That was close. I thought she was going to leave me flapping in the breeze.”

“She should have,” he said, reaching into the Stern’s Bakery bag and pulling out a cranberry scone. “It really was presumptuous of you.”

“So you’ve told me a few hundred times. But it worked. A female general I saw interviewed on television one time said it’s easier sometimes to ask forgiveness than permission ... or something like that.”

“That could be your motto,” he said, his voice not a little ironic.

“Ah, take your scones and go to work, Chief Ortiz,” I said, kissing him good-bye. “Before crime overtakes the fair streets of San Celina.”

After he left, I pulled on my boots and grabbed my worn sheepskin jacket. San Celina had been going through an early cold snap, unusual for the Central Coast, and the days had not gotten much above sixty degrees. When I called and informed my Aunt Kate of that fact, she just laughed. She and my Uncle Rex live in Rock Springs, Wyoming, where sixty degrees in winter is short-sleeve, get-out-your-barbecue kind of weather. They, as well as the rest of my gramma Dove’s kids, were due at the ranch tonight. But I had a million things to do before then and only about eight hours to get them done.

I climbed into my old red Harper’s Herefords Chevy pickup that I’d finally reclaimed from Gabe’s son, Sam, since he had, with the help of his father, bought a 1965 Chevy Malibu. Now that Sam was living at my dad’s ranch rather than with us and had a new job at Elvia’s bookstore, he and Gabe managed to go for as long as two or three days without sniping at each other. With Sam’s plans to attend Cal Poly in the spring, it appeared my stepson was going to be a permanent fixture in my life, for a while anyway. As is not uncommon with nineteen-year-olds, he got along fine with everyone except his parents, and he and I had become friends in the way that two people who share a common passion do. We were both intensely committed to figuring out that person who was his father and my husband, and we loved Gabe deeply, though it was often easier for me to admit it.

This was going to be a busy week and a half for Gabe and me. As curator of our local folk art museum, the Josiah Sinclair Folk Art Museum and Artists Co-op, I was smack-dab in the middle of the San Celina Heritage Days celebration. The co-op had aligned with the women in the Fine Arts Guild to run concurrently a women’s western art show. We’d been given a grant from the city as well as from our local NOW chapter and were committed to educating the public about the contributions that women had made and were continuing to make in the western art field. The official start of Heritage Days and the art show was the Monday after the Thanksgiving weekend and culminated with a parade, fiesta, and western dance a week from Saturday.

The museum was presenting a special exhibit on loan from a sister folk art museum in Eugene, Oregon, of nineteenth-century pioneer quilts, most women’s only means of artistic expression during the long trek across the West. Our smaller, upstairs gallery spotlighted some of our co-op’s own western artists and an antique cloth doll exhibit. Though the exhibits were finished, there were always last minute details that needed to be ironed out before an opening, and as usual our artists would be selling their wares at the Thursday night farmer’s market as well as at the fiesta on Saturday. That meant I had to make sure that everyone knew their booth assignments and that the booths and canopies were in good shape and that all the artists were at peace. Well, as much at peace as forty very different, and often temperamental, artists could be. My job was, I had discovered after long, lazy Sunday-morning-in-bed talks with Gabe, very similar to his. We both spent a good deal of our time trying to keep divergent groups of people happy. There were days when I wholeheartedly missed full-time ranch life. Cattle were at least fairly predictable, possessing only a limited number of tricks up their bovine sleeves. Humans were an entirely different creature to figure out and never ceased to amaze me with their creative ways of driving each other crazy. And now that I was the police chief’s wife, there was a whole other aspect to my life I’d never anticipated. One that included cocktail parties, charity balls, endless social chitchat, and the wearing of fancy clothes. None of those things had ever been on my list of favorite activities, but I was trying my best to at least not be a liability to Gabe’s career, having long abandoned the idea that I’d be an asset.