Impossible Dreams (37 page)

Wiping his eyes, Matty shook his head. “The bad man
was here. I’m gonna
kill
him!”

Shocked to the core, Maya glanced up to see Cleo hovering in
the background, her expression stony but her eyes blurred with tears.

Maya hugged her nephew and lifted him in his arms. “Bad
men can’t hurt people if they stay away from them,” she said loudly
enough for her sister to hear. “We’ll chase him away like the
Boogie Monster.”

Swiveling on her heel, she walked out of the shop carrying
Matty to safety.

***

“It’s drugs, Selene, I know it is,” Maya
sighed into the phone. “How can I repay all of Axell’s kindnesses
by letting my sister smear his reputation? Axell
owns
that building. The
cops will be all over him. He’ll lose the building and maybe his license.
How can Cleo be so damned
stupid
?”

Selene never argued over Maya’s leaps of logic. She
accepted them at face value and worked from there. Maya wished Axell could be
so understanding.

Remembering just how much Axell had understood when
he’d come to her room last night, Maya brushed her hand over her wet
cheek. She’d always known how to spurn the attention of men, even when
she wanted it. Axell knew how to climb right over all her defensive barriers,
straight into her bed. Just remembering what he’d done to her last night
made her blush. Maybe “domineering” wasn’t entirely a bad
thing when coupled with understanding. She didn’t want to lose him
because of Cleo.

“Look, girlfriend,” Selene’s voice jarred
Maya back to the moment. “I’m not into that scene, but I know a few
people who are. I’ll sound them out, see if I can get the dude’s
name. If we turn her over to the cops — ”

“The whole story will hit the paper and Axell’s
name will be tarred in print. I may have to give up the school, Selene.”
Maya bit her quivering lip as she expressed the fear nagging at the back of her
mind.

“Say
what
?” Selene screamed.

“If I give up the school, the mayor will get off
Axell’s back, and even if Cleo gets busted again, no one will make the
connection without the mayor’s instigation. He’ll scratch
Axell’s back if Axell scratches his, is the way he put it.”

“That’s blackmail,” Selene snapped.
“You swim out of this school, Miss Fish, and you swim out for good.
I’ve got too much invested here, and I don’t mean just money. This
is my dream, too, you’ll remember.”

Maya pinched the bridge of her nose as she’d seen
Axell do. It didn’t help. Any way she looked at it, she risked losing her
husband, her sister, her best friend, and the dream of a lifetime.

Life had been much easier when she could just swim along on
her own.

“The lawyers promised to call back Monday,”
Selene continued. “If our lease is bona fide, the mayor has to go the
condemnation route. You got your Garden Club lined up?”

“Teamed with the Historic Society,” Maya agreed
numbly. What difference did saving the school make if she lost Axell and
Constance because of it?

She’d never fully realized the high price of a dream.

***

“How much do you know about drugs in this town,
Headley?” Axell asked as he kicked aside the fallen police tape
surrounding Cleo’s condemned building and unlocked the alley door.

“I’m semiretired, remember?” Headley
glanced around the alley with interest. “I don’t know nuthin’
’bout nuthin’.”

Axell switched on his flashlight and scanned the nearly
empty storeroom. “Don’t give me that. You’re a sponge. You
absorb information without trying. I’ve got two crackheads haunting my
kitchen and this alley, and someone’s using this storeroom. What are the
chances drugs are involved?”

“Drugs are involved in every crime in the
country,” Headley snorted. “It’s worse than Prohibition.
Government ought to tax the damned stuff and use the proceeds to build
crackhouses where the morons can fry their brains without hurting the innocent.
You’re better off messing with the mayor than these guys, kid.”

“They chose my restaurant for their crimes.”
Axell shoved aside old boxes and searched the walls for the cellar door.
“The police don’t have time to find out why, so I guess I
will.”

“That’s ridiculous. You make it sound like a
personal vendetta. Kids do drugs. They do it wherever they are. They happened
to be in your kitchen when they did.” Headley gingerly followed him into
the vacant interior.

“I fired their asses. They had no business back there.
Someone was setting me up. And I think that someone was in here that night. How
much more have you found out about our Yankee developers and their cash flow
problems?”

“You don’t really think there’s a
connection, do you?” Headley inspected a box of trash as Axell tried the
knob of a door in the far wall. “Real estate is booming. They’ll
cover their cash flow with a few loans.”

“Headley, you’re not helping here.” Axell
tried the back door key in the cellar lock. “The mayor’s risking
his career by approving a road through the school grounds. If a loan would
solve the problem, he wouldn’t be after Maya.” The key didn’t
fit. Axell jiggled it in irritation.

“Drugs are to this century what alcohol was to the
last.” Headley gingerly removed an old hypodermic from the trash and
wielded it for Axell to see. “Only kids are more involved today, so they
don’t have fancy nightclubs. They have places like this. The city is
spilling into suburbia, Holm. We’re smack in its path.”

Axell grimaced at the evidence that someone was using the
place for drugs. He’d have the council expedite condemnation proceedings
and get the place torn down. He ought to find out who owned it. Maybe Maya
would know.

“You know, I’ve been thinking about that kid
named Alyssum,” Headley replied irrelevantly, returning the needle to the
trash. “He was working construction with some crew out of Texas about
thirty years ago. Nice kid, ambitious.”

Axell tried every key on his ring, but none worked on the
cellar door. He pulled out a credit card and tried jimmying the lock.
“Maya said she was born here. Probably her father. You should be telling
her this. I doubt she knows much about her parents.”

“The kid quit sharing my bottle after he got married.
Seems his bride had an alcoholic mother and wouldn’t tolerate
drinking.”

The credit card trick didn’t work on old doors. Giving
up in disgust, Axell jammed the card back in his wallet and picked his way
around trash bags toward Headley. He had the sneaking suspicion the reporter
was leading up to the connection between Pfeiffer and Maya and her sister.

“Don’t take that route, old friend,” Axell
warned. “Maya isn’t interested.”

“I just thought you ought to know,” Headley
replied, leaning on his cane as he opened the alley door. “The
bride’s maiden name was Arnold, if I remember rightly. Her mother was the
black sheep of the family, a little too freewheeling for the postwar years. She
ran a seamy nightclub during the fifties when the county was dry and had a
daughter out of wedlock. Scandal, even if it was before my time.”

Before his time, Axell snorted to himself. Headley had probably
helped build the nightclub. As they hit the sunshine outside, the name
“Arnold” hit him smack between the eyes.

Maya could be related to the mayor, from the wrong side of
the blanket.

Oh, hell, first Pfeiffer, now the mayor. He must have been
out of his mind that day he’d walked into The Curiosity Shoppe to speak
with Constance’s teacher. Maybe that “Fate” Maya kept talking
about had switched sides from her to him. Maybe he just ought to stand here and
hope a bolt of lightning struck him.

“I suppose you’re going to tell me next that the
mayor’s family ran Maya’s family out of town?” Axell asked in
resignation as they wended their way through the alley and back across the
street to the restaurant. This was a small Southern town. The mayor’s
family wouldn’t like evidence of any scandal around once they took up
politics. Ralph’s father had been mayor back in the seventies.

“Actually, I hadn’t thought about that, but the
chances are pretty good.” Headley beamed at him with approval.
“Want me to find out?”

“I think I’d rather not know,” Axell said
gloomily.

He needed to get his life back in order again, he decided as
he drove toward home later. Maya had been right. He liked all his soldiers in a
row, and he didn’t see why he couldn’t have them that way just
because marriage had added a few extra complications.

Constance was safe and happy; that was the important thing.
She was blooming like a wildflower under Maya’s attentions. So the
marriage was definitely not a mistake. It had accomplished just what he’d
hoped.

And then some. Axell ruthlessly shoved aside all thoughts of
Maya sprawled across her bed in the morning sunshine, her hair an auburn tangle
across the pillow, her breasts taunting creamy cones awaiting his taste. He
wasn’t a sensual man, he told himself. The sex was convenient, but he
didn’t need to dwell on it.

So, if Constance and sex were in order, what else needed
reorganizing? What were his priorities here?

His license. He had to protect his liquor license. It was
his livelihood, his means of taking care of his family. He’d prefer to
err on the side of paranoia and believe someone was up to sneaky tricks by
sending those druggies into his place. This was a small town — not so rural any
longer, but small. The cops should be able to spot a dealer from a mile away.
They’d know where he lived. Something was not right with this picture.

He didn’t want to believe that flaw was Maya’s
sister. For Matty and Maya’s sake, he prayed she was clean and could stay
that way. For the sake of his license and reputation, she’d damned well
better be. Maybe he could hire someone to work in the store and keep an eye on
her. Cleo would pitch a fit. Maybe he could say he was renting out that unused
corner...

He pulled into the driveway behind an unfamiliar car
blocking his access to the garage. Now what? He didn’t know anyone who
drove white Fords. The damn thing looked like a rental.

Climbing out of the Rover, Axell heard the musical chimes of
childish laughter. Rolling his shoulders and relaxing some of the tension his morning’s
detective work had generated, he sauntered in the direction of the backyard,
past the cascade of petunias Maya had planted in pots on the driveway wall.

An obscene blue plastic pool jarred the sedate view of
landscaped lawn. He’d intended to eventually build a real pool, but
he’d wanted to wait until the kids were older.

The kids...

Axell swallowed past the lump in his throat at the thought
of the children he’d once intended to have. He still had Constance, and
now, Alexa, and it looked as if he had Matty again. He frowned at that as he
strolled over to watch the horseplay in the pool. He’d thought Cleo had
taken her son for the weekend.

Maya looked up from where she was happily planting colorful
banks of impatiens around the spindly boxwood. He hated to tell her, but those
plants would croak in the noon sun. He’d already figured out she knew
diddle-all about flowers but chose them for their colors. He had to admit, they
cheered up the boring yard.

“Axell, there you are!”

That wasn’t the musical greeting he’d
anticipated. Maya’s sunny smile froze as she raised her eyebrows and
jerked her head in the direction of the deck.

Oh, shit. Sandra. The chalkboard-scratching tones finally
registered. Axell checked the deck, recognized the plastic bubble of hair, and
grimacing, bent over and kissed Maya. “I’m getting that
beeper,” he whispered against her welcoming lips. “I want to know
when to run next time.”

“Forget that, mister. She’s your problem. Just
be lucky I haven’t roped her to the deck and planted petunias between her
teeth.”

With that enchanting image to contemplate, Axell headed for
the deck. The kids were apparently too engrossed in a watery battle to greet
him. Alexa slept in her shaded basket. All was well with his world except for
the blond fly in his suntan oil.

“I told her you wouldn’t appreciate that trailer
park trash in your yard,” Sandra complained as he reached the stairs.
“But she wouldn’t listen. Constance will be wearing tattoos and
those dreadful pink plastic shoes before long. Whatever could you have been
thinking?”

Biting his tongue, Axell vowed to buy Constance the first
pair of pink plastic shoes he found.

Wearing a pressed linen shorts set and oversized sunglasses,
Sandra sat beneath the patio umbrella sipping an iced drink. With her manicured
fingers, she gestured at Maya. “Just look. She’s planting impatiens
in the sun. They’ll be dead by morning.”

Axell thought he recognized the grim determination in the
set of Maya’s chin as she shoved her trowel into the loose mulch beneath
the shrubs. The yard wasn’t so large that she couldn’t hear every
word of Sandra’s shrill complaint.

“And what brings you back to our part of the
country?” he asked calmly, checking the cooler Maya had brilliantly
provided to prevent the kids from running in and out in their wet suits. He
smiled as he discovered a bottle of spring water.

“I came to check on Constance,” Sandra replied.

Translation: She’d had a fight with her family in
Texas and had hastily repaired to her North Carolina friends for sympathy. When
her husband had been alive, it had worked in reverse.

“Well, I’m certain Constance is delighted to see
you.” Unscrewing the bottle top, Axell settled into a lounge chair. He
was aware of Maya out of the corner of his eye, but strangely enough, he
didn’t feel compelled to shield her from Sandra’s venom. He thought
Maya had his former mother-in-law’s number and could take care of herself
better than he could. His gypsy had backbone. It was a rather relaxing
revelation.