In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (3 page)

“Third one this month.”

Mary Bernice shook her head. “Edna Mae would be better off if she just dug into her deep pockets and laid out a couple hundred for some rims.” She laughed. “But then she wouldn’t have these clandestine meetings with you, would she?”

Gabe grabbed his chest with his free hand. “Oh, God,” he gasped. “Does
everyone
know about me and Miss Edna?”

“Child, please!” Mary Bernice shot back. Her dark cinnamon eyes glowed in the sheen of her chocolate face. “You can’t hide your sleazy affairs in Jasper County, baby!”

Gabe’s face turned solemn as he looked up at Mary Bernice. “I guess we’ll just have to meet over in Powesheik County then, huh?”

Nodding sagely, the black woman eyed him with humor. “Honey-child, y’all will have to go all the way out of state for the folks in small-town Iowa not to know your business!”

Mary Bernice Merrill was a transplanted South Carolinian, having migrated to Iowa with her husband of thirty-five years when Delbert Merrill got a job with the local meat-packing plant. Her accent had not faded in the ten years since she had been forced to live in a state she found as backward as the hills of Tennessee. So indisposed was she to her adopted state, she had refused even to give birth to her last child in Iowa, going home instead to stay with her mother, Louise, during the last trimester of her pregnancy.

“No self-respecting Southern woman would allow a child of hers to be born in this iceberg!” she’d snapped when Gabe had questioned her. She’d rolled her eyes. “Besides, when Del retires, we’re going home, son! We might have snow in Columbia, but we don’t have blizzards!”

Gabe felt a great deal of homesickness wash over him whenever he had dealings with Mary Bernice. Both their accents tended to deepen as they spoke together, and their common, unbreakable bond of Southern man and woman no matter race, class, or creed, bonded them. They were, and always would be, despite however many years either of them stayed in Iowa, outsiders to the clannish residents of that state. And they knew it.

“Tell yo’ sugar mama to get herself some rims, baby,” Mary Bernice advised Gabe as he left the warehouse.

“Here you go, Miss Edna,” Gabe said as he extended the flat box toward her. “Try not to hit any more potholes, okay?”

Edna Mae took the box and brought it to her thin chest, batted her eyes, and puckered her lips in a seductive kiss.

“Why, thank you, sir.” Her lids fluttered madly. “You know, I always rely on the kindness of strangers.”

Gabe snorted at her make-believe, exaggerated Blanche Dubois, and eyed her with a stern look. “It ain’t nice to make fun of folks, ma’am,” he drawled.

Edna Mae’s eyes were alight with mischief as she winked at him. “If you were thirty years older, or I was thirty years younger, I’d give Annie a run for her money.”

Gabe nodded. “I bet you would.”

Lifting a cool hand to his face, Edna Mae caressed his lean cheek and leaned toward him. “Damned right, I would.” She searched his handsome face. “You’re my kind of man, Gabe James.”

Gabe took her hand and kissed the palm. “And you’re the kind of woman who’d tempt a man to sin, Edna Mae Menke.” He’d arched one thick brown brow in a lecherous, Clark Gable-like salute.

“Lord, but I bet you give Annie her money’s worth!” Edna Mae chuckled.

“Us Southern boys try, Miss Edna,” he agreed. He took her hand and helped her through the maze of boxes once more. “Speaking of the South, when are you leaving for Naples this year?”

Edna Mae thought of her cozy condo on the Gulf of Mexico and sighed. “It may be spring before I get there this year, son. But I’ll be thinking about you all while I’m there!”

Buckling her seat
belt in the parking lot a while later, Edna Mae could still feel the tingle of the young man’s kiss in her palm. She flexed her fingers, looked down at the score of lines running through her slightly trembling hand. Age was not something she had either dreaded or bemoaned until that very moment. Glancing up into the rear view mirror, seeing the old woman gazing forlornly back at her, Edna Mae knew there was a first time for everything.

Annie James sat
back on her heels and stared across the expanse of the rafters. In her hands, now cold and nearly numb from the frigid air around her, were a sheaf of newspaper clippings, magazine articles, photostat copies of articles which had most likely been found in library stacks and newspaper morgues, and page after page of notes written in her husband’s undisciplined scribble. The articles had one thing in common and this unifying component was now the source of both bafflement and high concern for the young woman.

Looking down at the top article, Annie scanned the headline and winced. She fanned through the other articles, one by one, before laying them aside and digging deeper into the assortment of papers in the foot locker. As she brought out each additional clipping or article, her concern grew, knitting her brows together as she read.

A rumble of thunder shook the roof over her head, causing her to look away from her reading, but when she lowered her eyes once more to the collection of things in the foot locker, which was not all papers and notes, a shudder went through her slim frame. She slowly replaced the stack of articles into the footlocker, then pulled down the lid, shutting out the wealth of knowledge she had garnered in an hour’s time.

Getting painfully to her feet because her legs were numb, her toes tingling with fiery stabs of cold-induced agony, Annie trudged to the ladder, turned, and made her way shakily down into the garage. Settling the attic ladder back in place, she opened the kitchen door and went into the cheery warmth of her home, seeking a warmth she wasn’t sure she’d ever find again.

The drive home
was nerve-wracking that night. Highway 6 was crusty with ice, slick along the sharp turns that wound their way through cattle and corn country. The sand trucks had not ventured out in the last twenty-four hours and the road conditions in Central Iowa could best be described as deadly serious.

Gabe listened to Des Moines’ KIOA radio station, 93.3 on the dial, and frowned as the sultry voice of the station’s traffic girl informed him that conditions were worsening around the state. He listened for a moment and just as an ‘oldie-but-a-goodie’ began to warble through the air waves, he snapped off the radio, cutting off Roy Orbison in mid-vibrato.

“All I need,” he growled as he slowed the car down another five miles per hour. He sat hunched over the steering column peering nervously at the rain and ice-slick road ahead of him. Some fool behind him was riding his bumper, flashing his brights to get him to speed up. He’d already turned his driver side mirror all the way down to alleviate the piercing high beams shooting his way, and he’d flipped up the rear view mirror as well, but the idiot behind him didn’t seem inclined to pass whenever there was a clear stretch of unlined road.

Ahead, the faint glow of the street light that marked his turning lit the dismal night in a pale yellowish-white halo, and it was to this beacon that Gabe steered his course. His anger at the motorist behind him, the slippery condition of the black top and the inability of his heater to provide enough air to warm his legs and feet, combined to give him a blinding headache that was throbbing at his right temple and bringing nausea to his throat.

“Get the hell off my ass, you bastard,” he snarled, slowing down another mile or two per hour when the car threatened to slide to the right as he took a meandering left-hand curve. He tapped his brakes in an attempt to warn off the clown behind him, but the half-wit didn’t seem to understand, or care. Gabe ground his teeth, a reaction that increased the pain in his temple.

“Son-of-a-bitch!”

Five hundred yards down the dark road, the highway stretched out without a car in sight. The turn Gabe was to take was fast approaching. He slowed down still more for he knew the turn onto the gravel road would be treacherous at best, and heard the fool behind him lay on the horn in protest.

“Up yours, asshole!” Gabe shouted, nearly losing control of his car as the driver behind him swung out into the passing lane and shot by with an icy spray of rain and sludge flung onto Gabe’s windshield momentarily blinding him. As the triple-edged wipers swept away the obstruction, Gabe got a glance at the Mississippi tag on the car. Even as he glared at the retreating car, he saw the taillights wobble from side to side, saw the bright red of the brake lights come on before the harsh flare of high beams swept in an arc across the ebony countryside, then settle to weaving brake lights again.

Grinning viciously to himself, Gabe knew the idiot from Mississippi, a breed of Southerner most native Floridians despised for their inability to drive safely anyway, had done a doughnut on the slick pavement.

“Nice going, asshole,” he said and chuckled as he eased onto his turnoff. “Hope you shit your britches, bubba!”

The two-mile drive along the gravel road that led to Rock Creek State Park was worse than he would have imagined or desired. The slipping and sliding was enough to intensify his headache to such a degree, he could actually taste bile in his mouth when he took the ninety-degree turn onto his street. His house, one of several lake homes built on the southeastern side of the state park, was on a slight incline and he could see from the glistening concrete that the driveway was slick with ice. Before he could pick up the remote unit to raise the garage door, light came on in the garage and the fiberglass panel began to lift.

“Thank you, darlin’.” He grinned.

He idled on the icy pavement until the door was all the way up, then his tires spun for a second on the slick surface until the front wheel drive dug in and the car shot up the incline, crunched over the ice, and slid gently into the safety of its brightly-lit berth.

Gabe drew in and let out a nerve-cleansing breath, then unbuckled his seat belt. Of all the things he hated most about Iowa, winter driving was right at the top of his list.

Taking up the small bag of groceries he’d remembered to get from the supermarket, he opened the car door and headed for the button on the wall beside the kitchen door. Pushing it, the garage door shuddered for a moment as though it, too, was shivering with the cold, then began to lower. The dog down the street barked his disapproval.

“Annie?” he called, setting the bag containing bread, milk and coffee on the kitchen table. When he didn’t get an answer, he shrugged out of his gloves, jacket and muffler, draping them on the hall tree beside the door, and called to his wife again. “Honey?”

There was a pleasant smell of homemade soup and toasted coconut filling the U-shaped kitchen. Something was bubbling away on the center island stove and Gabe lifted a lid to peer into a big pot of marinara sauce. Lifting another lid, he spied Brunswich Stew, a Southern winter mainstay he had taught his wife to make. Lowering the oven door, he saw a fruitcake steaming away in a pan of water.

He frowned. There were at least four things cooking in the kitchen and the counters were laden with oatmeal cookies, a lasagna, and two casseroles.

His frown deepened.

The only time Annie ever went into a frenzy of cooking was when she was upset or worried. The vast array of food prepared was a sure sign of trouble.

“Honey?” he called again, leaving the kitchen for the semi-darkness of the den. There was a shaft of light coming from their guest bedroom, so he made his way among groups of furniture to the half-closed door. Pushing the door all the way open, he was surprised to see his wife standing next to the closet, her back to him. “Babe?”

Annie tensed, took a deep breath, before turning to face her husband.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, his brow furrowing. “Has something happened?” He looked around. “Where’s Kibby?”

“He’s at Al’s, remember?” She asked.

“He’s okay, isn’t he?” Gabe asked. His love for the little dog evident in his worries look. “There’s nothing wrong with him is there?”

Annie slowly shook her head. “Kathy’s Pom is in heat and Al is going to introduce them.” Annie explained. “Remember?”

“Oh. Right,” he acknowledged, blushing. “But you’ve been cooking.” It was a dumb thing to say. It sounded foolish even to his own ears, but he knew Patricia Ann Cummings James as well as he knew himself. His words were not so much an accusation as a statement of understanding.

“I need to talk to you,” she said, blanching at the fear that darkened his brown eyes. She waved her hand in negation. “Nothing’s happened. I just need to talk to you.”

He couldn’t quite bring himself to breathe a sigh of relief. There was still a look on his wife’s face that he had never seen before. It was a look that warned him he sure as hell wasn’t going to like hearing whatever it was troubling Annie.

“Did I do something, darlin’?” he asked. His lips twitched in his manly attempt at apologizing. “Did I
forget
to do something?”

“It’s nothing like that, Gabe,” she answered. He became aware that her hands were gripped together in front of her, the knuckles white with the pressure. “I just have something I need to ask you.”

He looked at her for a moment. Her eyes were haunted, worried.

“Okay.”

He moved into the room and sat on the foot of the bed. Patting the silken coverlet for her to join him, he was even more concerned when she shook her head in refusal. His shoulders slumped.