Fool's Puzzle (2 page)

The Oreo crumbs all over the house I tolerated; even the long, sniffly phone calls to her girlfriends in Pine Bluff only raised my blood pressure a few manageable notches, but the morning I wandered into my own kitchen wearing nothing but a pink tee shirt and a pair of Jack’s old hunting socks and encountered a sloe-eyed, bare-chested cowboy in a dirty white Stetson, sipping a mug of my chocolate amaretto coffee, I’d had enough.

“Rita’ll be back in a minute,” he’d said, appraising me from droopy socks to tangled hair, his left hand disappearing behind a silver belt buckle the size of a pie pan. “Went for doughnuts.”

I played with the phone cord as Dove continued to complain.

“I could tell Rita was going to be trouble from the day she was born,” she said. “She had shifty eyes even then. Where is she?”

“As far as I know she’s still working at Trigger’s out by the interstate. She’s renting a room from a bartender there. A girl named Marla who belongs to the co-op. I guess it’s working out okay.”

“Two of a kind,” Dove pronounced. “Probably bringing home a different fella every night of the week.”

I made a noncommittal sound.

“You just get ahold of her and tell her to call Garnet. And you’d better be here on Thursday.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“As long as you’re thinking, think of some way to get rid of Garnet. Something that won’t throw any suspicion on me.”

I couldn’t help giggling. Dove and her love-hate relationship with her only sister always raised my spirits. “Chin up, old woman. When does she fly back to Arkansas?”

“Three weeks, hallelujah. You’re sure that ... ?”

“Busy, busy, busy.”

“Stubborn brat.”

“I understand short hair is much easier to take care of.”

She snorted and hung up, as usual, before I could beat her to it. The woman had the reflexes of an eighteen-year-old.

I burrowed back under the covers and tried not to think about what the rain would do to the flimsy canvas tents we’d rented for the Folk Art Festival the co-op was sponsoring this weekend. As curator of the Josiah Sinclair Folk Art Museum and chairman of the Artists’ Co-op affiliated with it, it was up to me to figure out what to do, and at that moment all I felt capable of was turning over and going back to sleep.

Formerly a morning person, I’d come to dread them since Jack died. There were times, in that moment between sleep and wakefulness, when I’d hear his voice call my name as clear as if he were bending over me, and I would jerk up, my heart beating like a puppy’s, to confront an empty room. But in the last month or two, I’d become wise to my mind’s tricks, and though I still heard his voice, I’d bury my head in my pillow, refusing to be fooled, except for my heart.

I crawled out of bed and padded into the kitchen. A gust of wind and rain sprayed the windows again, giving me the feeling of being trapped inside a giant car wash. After putting on the coffee and feeding some bread to the toaster, I lifted the shade over the sink and studied my reflection in the dark window. I undid my braid and pulled my fingers through the tangled curls. If Dove succeeded in pawning Aunt Garnet off on me, it’d be my hair as well as my social life she’d be after. Though she’d long ago given up on Dove and Daddy, Rita and I gave her fresh fodder for her self-acclaimed matchmaking abilities. I felt a brief flash of sympathy for my young cousin. Rita was no match for Aunt Garnet’s Noah’s-Ark mentality.

Flipping on the radio to KCOW, I commiserated with Patsy Cline as she fell to pieces. Brahma Bob gave his usual highly professional and scientific meteorological report—“Rain, rain, rain, as far as this cowboy can see.”

After burning my throat with the first cup of coffee, I carried the second into the bedroom to root around for something to wear. Yesterday’s jeans hung on the post of my brass bed and looked clean enough for one more day. I grabbed one of Jack’s faded flannel shirts, tucked it into my jeans and rolled up the sleeves. Except for his old Colt .45 pistol, they were the only things of his I hadn’t packed away. I’d followed the advice of friends and family and started a new life, but as I rubbed the soft, frayed collar of Jack’s shirt against my cheek, I couldn’t help but wonder what I would do when they all wore out.

Pulling on one brown boot, I limped around searching for the other. It still amazed me how disorganized I’d become since living alone. Though I’d maintained the Harper Ranch books for ten years, in the three months since I’d moved to town I’d had two warnings from the electric company, spent more time than seemed possible searching for my truck keys, and had once squeezed Ben-Gay on my toothbrush.

After a few minutes of half-hearted searching, I gave up and settled for a pair of white hightop Reeboks and quickly rebraided my hair.

The rain peppered my face with icy needles as I dashed out to the red Chevy pickup truck Jack and I bought the first year we were married. Driving south down University Avenue toward the museum, I became ensnarled in a traffic jam of ranchers’ trucks, students late for class and senior citizens trying to make that last breakfast-special. It was the first storm of the season, and San Celina, like all California towns south of San Francisco, was unprepared for its intensity. A pink-haired old lady in a tan Gremlin shot me the bird when I accidentally cut in front of her. I laughed when she ignored my palm-up apology and sped past me. I guess senior citizens in a college town had to get tough or move on.

The old Sinclair Hacienda, once so isolated it took a day on horseback to reach the nearest neighbor, now shared its little piece of commercially zoned real estate with the huge Coastal Valley Farm Supply, San Celina Feed and Grain Co-op and a dozen or so small businesses housed in metal prefab buildings. The rain had washed the off-white adobe walls of the two-story hacienda clean of its usual dust, and the building’s normally dull, red-tiled roof glistened.

I parked my truck beneath the initial-scarred oak tree at the back of the lot and squeezed through the small pickups and Japanese imports of the artists, managing to avoid all but one puddle.

Trudging through the lobby, my now piebald shoes squeaking like rubber cat toys, I inspected what Eric, the museum’s alleged maintenance man, had accomplished.

In the main hall, the floor was a mine field of tools; wooden quilt hangers languished against the adobe walls, and stacks of quilts lay wrapped in tissue and old sheets I’d scrounged from friends, family and members of the co-op. Plastic would have been easier to get and kept the quilts cleaner, but the book on old quilts I’d almost memorized while getting the exhibit put together said it would rot the delicate cotton fibers.

A portable stereo with tiny speakers blasted Van Halen while a leak from the ceiling into a tin saucepan added a percussive zing every few seconds. Silence answered me when I called Eric’s name.

Eric Griffin, part-time handyman and full-time goof-off, had been hired by Constance Sinclair, zealous patron of Central California arts and richest lady in the county. The Josiah Sinclair Folk Art Museum, named for her great-grandfather, was currently one of her favorite projects. Eric, the footloose son of some acquaintance of hers, was another.

She felt all he needed to discover what he should do with his life was the encouragement of an older, wiser person and the structure of a regular job. It was my opinion that at twenty-four he was already doing his life, but maybe that was jealousy talking.

Until three months ago, my last official employment had been fifteen years before, serving the graveyard shift at Hogie’s Truckstop Cafe out on old Highway One. I’d had to compete with five people for the job as curator, and though low-paying and possessing no benefits except the freedom of flexible hours and dressing as I pleased, I was proud of it. Although my fossilized degree in American History was a rather dubious qualification, it was something.

Eric, on the other hand, was one of those people who tripped through life letting others clear the path for him, and with his dark, Lord Byron looks and bad-boy smile, he always had someone, usually female, willing to Teflon the way.

Flipping off the radio, I walked across the red-brick patio in back to the hacienda’s old stables, now the co-op studios and museum offices. In the main studio, the activity of the artists reflected the weather, dark and frenzied.

“Benni, when is the other kiln going to be fixed?” called one of the potters, a thin, nervous man whose slick, clay-covered hands deftly pulled an elegant vase skyward from a greenish mass of porcelain. “And the other wheel? There’s a lot of people waiting. And what are you going to do if the rain doesn’t stop?”

“l’ve called three repairmen in Santa Barbara,” I said. “The cheapest wants a hundred bucks just to drive up and look at them. We can’t afford it until we bring in some money.”

His dark, goateed face frowned. “People are depending on this. Can’t you get Constance to spring for it?”

“You know the co-op is supposed to be self-supporting. I can’t go running to Constance every time something breaks.”

He grunted, eyed the vase with a scowl and turned off the wheel.

“I’ll try again,” I said. “And I’m working on the rain angle. Has anyone seen Eric?”

“Last I saw, he was heading toward the woodshop or your office,” a woman at one of the quilt frames said.

“Thanks,” I said and leaned over to inspect the quilt they were working on. “Robbing Peter to Pay Paul?”

The quilters laughed. “Right again,” one of them said.

It was a game we had going the three months I’d worked here. I prided myself on my ability to recognize almost any traditional quilt pattern. It was knowledge I’d picked up from the infamous Aunt Garnet on visits with Dove to Arkansas when I was growing up. I walked down the hallway past the rows of workrooms, stopping briefly to peek into the woodshop. Inhaling the sweet, pine-scented air, I smiled at the rows of primary-colored rocking horses lined up and ready for their future owners, and waved at Ray, the only occupant this early. A big-shouldered man with a red walrus mustache, he was a talented carver of duck decoys and one of the most genial members of the co-op. He waved back and gave me a bushy grin.

Opening the door to my small office, I caught my quarry enthusiastically pounding away on my word processor. His latest venture, a university extension course in writing romance novels, had caused problems between us before.

“Eric,” I said, “we have to get those quilts hung today. You know the pre-showing is Friday night. Can’t you do that on your own time?”

He looked up at me with sleepy, thick-lashed, brown eyes even I had to admit were sexy. “Tell me what you think. ‘Dack’s tongue thrust into her ear like a dental probe. Cassandra melted like fresh butter from her father’s dairy farm into helpless desire. When he pressed his throbbing sword of manhood ...”

“That’s terrible,” I said, groaning. “I can’t believe you actually read that out loud to a classroom of strangers.”

“It must be good,” he said, grinning his two-hundred-watt smile. “Three women have asked me out for coffee after class. I think I’ve found my calling.”

“You’re despicable,” I said, laughing in spite of myself. “You’re just taking that class to hit on women.”

“Nah.” He grinned and winked. “Really, there’s a lot of money in this stuff. Women buy these books like candy. It’s a gold mine.” He went back to tapping. “Sybillia says I have real potential. She’s helping me.”

“Who?”

“My teacher.”

“Her name sounds like a social disease. Anyway, you have a job to do. You can get back to your throbbing swords later.”

“One sword, Benni. He only has one. How long has it been for you, anyway?” He waved me away as if I were a pesky horsefly. “One more page.”

I walked across the room to the outlet. “File it now or I pull the plug on Dack and Cassandra.”

“Just a minute.”

“Now.” I reached for the plug.

“Oh, all right.” He punched the file key on the word processor with a flip of his hand. “If you were nicer to me, I might have considered dedicating the book to you. But now ...” He heaved an exaggerated sigh.

“I’ll try and live with the disappointment. I need you to hang those quilts. Constance will kill us, or rather me, if things aren’t perfect on Friday night.”

He slipped the data disk into the black plastic file on my desk. “Mine has the red label,” he said. “Please don’t read it without my permission.”

“Out.” I pointed toward the museum. “Work.”

“Slave driver,” he said.

“Reprobate.”

His dark eyebrows wrinkled in confusion.

“You want to be a writer,” I said. “Get a dictionary.”

He tossed his head and marched, in what I assumed was an artistic snit, through the door, slamming it with a bang.

I sat down at my desk and contemplated what I should do next. Knowing Dove would ask the next time she called, I made an attempt to locate my cousin Rita. After calling her house without luck, and trying Trigger’s Saloon, where her boss said he hadn’t seen her since night before last, I left it at that, figuring I’d made a semi-valiant effort. She’d wander back around eventually, probably when she needed money.

The door of my office flew open.

“Help me,” Maria Chenier demanded. She slammed a large foam cup and white paper bag down on my desk, then collapsed in the black-and-chrome office chair across from me.

I reached for the cup. “How?”

“That’s a bribe,” she said. “I’m in desperate need.” She shook her curly black hair, spraying fine droplets of water across my desk blotter, then crossed her long, boot-clad legs. At almost six feet tall with strong, even features and a figure that sent most men into adolescent stuttering, she looked anything but desperate.

“Need is such a relative word,” I said, opening the cup lid and taking a quick sip of coffee. “What do we really need? Water, air, food ...”