Tap Dance (28 page)

They were quiet, surrounded in silence in the moments afterward.

"Feeling better,
Pyari
?" he asked at long last.

"Yeah, honey.  My heart still hurts to think she's gone, that she was hurting when she died.  But nothing I can say, do or feel is going to bring her back," he heard her say as she entwined her fingers with his.   "Have they found Greg, yet?"

"Yes, one of his employees gave us an address and he was found," Ram said on a yawn.

"I'll need to contact him to see if he'll need help with the arrangements," she murmured thoughtfully.  "Then we'll probably need to contact her friends and let them know."

"I called Aaron and explained that you wouldn't be in for a few days," Ram said and then yawned hugely again.

"Close your eyes, Ram," she whispered.

"Why?"

"Just close them, honey," he heard her say from very far away.

*.*.*.*.*

It had taken me a while to figure it out, but that stupid alarm that he had set up with the police scanner only went off if he didn't answer his cell phone right away.  So when I moved myself from the bedroom, I took his cellphone with me and turned off the house phone on the nightstand.

I may not be the Chief of Police but I sure as shit would be acting as Ram's defensive lineman to protect him from being freaking jarred awake.  I wasn't certain, but it seemed as if my man was just about ready to collapse.  In fact, I was kind of surprised that he was able to put so much energy in our earlier activities since he seemed absolutely exhausted.

The first thing I did was call Tim and explained that Ram couldn't be disturbed for a while and asking him to take the call-outs which he immediately agreed to do.   I made a mental note to ask Ram to give him a raise or a promotion or both.  Although, I don't think that's how it worked in law enforcement.  But, still, Tim should still be rewarded in some way.

I called Cait and asked her to take care of Floyd since I didn't know how long I'd be busy.  She was so sweetly sympathetic and kept offering to help any way she could.  She'd been here, in this place where the people that were family were taken from you unexpectedly.  I loved having her in my life.

I called and left another voicemail for the rat bastard but he still wasn't picking up.

I was thinking of the others that I needed to contact when I heard the first peals of the doorbell.  I flew to the front door and yanked it open, determined that Ram was going to get the sleep he so desperately needed.

It was Paul, standing there on the front porch.  Standing there with his mouth open, his eyes moving up and down, from my head to Ram's shirt to my bare feet and back up again.

Shit.

"Ah, hey, Paul," I said, taking a half-step back to hide the lower portions of me behind the door.

He blinked a couple of times before speaking.

"Marianne.  Uhm, is the Chief here?"

"He's sleeping, Paul.  Can it wait?"

Paul's eyes widened as he processed all the information.  When his eyebrows finally came down from his hairline, I knew he got it.  And by the way those eyebrows kept moving down and moving together, I could tell he didn't like it.

"The Chief?" he said incredulously.

"Yeah, Paul."  I wasn't going to play coy, not when I wasn't ashamed of being with Ram and I'd been caught dead to rights.

I waited and watched.  He was such a good guy and I hated that he found out this way.

"Tim said he was going to take over until Ram's back on his feet." I finally said into the silence.

"Uhm.  Okay.  Sure," Paul said.  "I'll talk to the Chief later, then."

He gave me a long look, a long searching look.

"If this is what you want, Marianne, then I'm glad for you," he said softly.

See what I mean?  Totally good guy.

"Thanks, Paul.  For what it's worth, I'm sorry," I said softly back.

"Sorry about your aunt, Marianne."

"Thanks, I appreciate it."

He gave me a brief grin before turning away and I softly closed the door behind him.

I stood there for a few moments wondering if there had been a better way to handle that but I couldn't think of any.

I finally crawled into bed with Ram, molding myself to his back around four in the morning. I fell asleep with my nose pressed into his back, breathing in his wonderfully spicy scent and feeling his heartbeat against the arm I'd wrapped around him.

The loud voices woke me right up, though. 

I glanced at the clock and saw that it was only just after seven and from the way the light was streaming through the windows I could figure that it was in the morning. 

Ram was no longer beside me. 

I listened and his was one of the loud voices that was echoing down the hall.

I grabbed my yoga pants from the reading chair and made sure all the buttons on Ram's shirt that I'd slept in were completely buttoned before I made my way down the hall.

"…were you going to tell me, Patel?  Huh?  Or were you even going to bother.  Christ, these podunk, small towns…"

"It has nothing to do with the investigation, Grant, and you know it."  Ram's voice was a growl.

"Do you know how this fucking looks, Patel?  Do you?"

"She is not your concern.  She is not a suspect.  She is nothing to you but a couple of lines on your fucking report."

Okay, now was not the time for me to make them aware of my presence, because I could pretty much figure I was the 'she' in all of those sentences.  Not to mention, I didn't want the Matrix agent to know that I had, until about two minutes ago, been firmly ensconced in my boyfriend's bed.

"Then you explain it, Patel.  Explain it to me and the rest of the world why the same sort of break-in, the same sort of destruction happened at her fucking aunt's house.  She is involved.  I don't know just how yet but you can't deny there's a connection between the two."

"No, I can see the connection.  But until we get all the information from the lab…"

"By the time we get the goddamn results, it may be too late."

"I know that, Grant.  My team is working the crime scene by the book.  We've already gotten approval to fast track the results.  If you have any other ideas or can pull any more strings to get things moving quicker, I'm all for them."

"Has she retrieved the fucking CDs yet, Patel?"

"God,  Grant.  Cut her some slack.  She just lost her aunt."

"This investigation is a lot more important that the individual pieces." Grant said tightly.

"You are a fucking piece of work," I heard Ram say.

The room was quiet for a long time.

"You need to put her on the back burner, Patel."

"You still haven't told me why me seeing her comprises the case."

"Because," I heard Agent Grant say softly but firmly, "if she is withholding evidence and we found out about it, then you'll be implicated along with her.  Is that what you want?"

"What is she withholding?  For Christ's sake, you haven't got anything on her except suspicions and even those are the 'what if' kind.  Nothing concrete, nothing you can base a case on.  Plus, she has access to the CDs which are supposed to be so important to the case, right?"

"Fuck, Patel.  Wake up and smell the coffee.  Your little girlfriend is in this up to her elbows and you have your head in the sand."

I tiptoed back down the hall and sat on the edge of Ram's bed.

Agent Grant was warning Ram to stay away from me. 

From me! 

All because of my prior marriage to asshat.  I must have said or done something in the interview that made him think I was guilty.  Of what, I didn't know. 

I loved how Ram was fighting against Grant's prejudice. 

But I didn't want him to be blamed for anything, especially nothing to do with the shit Steve had involved me in.

I heard the front door close and eventually Ram made it back down the hall.

"You okay,
Pyari
?" he asked leaning against the door jam.

"Are you putting your job in jeopardy by being with me, Ram?"

"You heard?"

"It was kind of hard not to, if you want to know the truth," I said softly.

We looked at each other.

"I love you,
Pyari
," Ram said, his face very serious.

"And I love you, honey," I said equally as serious.  "I'll just get dressed and go."

"I'll take you."

I stopped and looked at him.  "Why?"

"Because your car is still at the hospital."

Oh, yeah.  Duh.

I sighed. 

This was such bullshit.

I turned my back to him as I took off his shirt and replaced it with my bra and t-shirt. 

"How long do you think this case is going to last?" I asked.

"I don't know," Ram said softly.

"Will you come back to me when it's finished?"  It was a hard question for me to ask him, because in some way, on some level, this really felt like we were saying goodbye.

The air behind me moved before his arms wrapped around my waist.

"I will always come back to you, beloved.  Always."

"Beloved?  That's new."

"No, it's not new.  It's just the English translation for what I've always called you."

It took me a minute to get what he meant. 

Pyari
. 

Beloved.

Oh. My. God.

If you would've asked me, I would've said I didn't have any more tears left inside me to shed.

I would've been wrong.

Chapter Thirty One

We buried Aunt Estella on Friday morning, right next to my uncle.  It was a beautiful day and there was a great turnout. 

Greg had finally pulled his head out of his ass and stepped up by taking care of all the arrangements.  He and I were dealing with her death, her murder, the best we knew how.  We had both learned at an early age, with our dads dying, that life is fleeting and it's easier to let the grief come when it hits. 

That it takes time to heal.

Ram was at the service, only giving me a kiss on the cheek.  The look we shared when he glanced back at me went straight to my heart.  

And I kept it there with both hands.

*.*.*.*.*

I went straight from the funeral to Shady Acres.  I needed to let my mom know about Aunt Estella.  In the younger years, they had been great friends and my aunt was a frequent visitor after I had to put Mom in the nursing home.

"Hey, Mom," I said softly coming through the door of her room.  She was sitting in a rocking chair I had gotten for her after she complained that the chairs in the home didn't 'move'.  Back when we lived in Cortez, she had a rocker/recliner which became her base of operations after Daddy died.

I picked up her hand and saw her startled eyes turn towards me.

"How're you doing today?" I asked softly, my eyes moving over her face to try and judge if she was 'here' or lost back in her past.

"I'm fine," she said slowly and I could tell she was trying to, struggling to, remember me.

"It's me, Momma.  Marianne."

"Why do you look so old, Marianne?  Have you been in my makeup again?"  This was a common question she'd asked since the illness had hit.  But, at least this time, she wasn't yelling at me that I couldn't possibly be her sweet little girl.

"Mom?  Aunt Estella passed," I said softly wondering how she was going to process this information.  Back in the day, they had been the best of friends and were so very close.  Even when Mom was not in the here - and - now, she always remembered who Estella was and it had made me kind of jealous.

"Of course she did, dear.  He told me already."

Wait…what?

"Who told you that, Mom?"

"You know," she said firmly.  "Him.  The beautiful one."

"I'm sorry.  I don't know who that is," I said slowly.

She looked around her room and then leaned towards me.

"The dark angel," she whispered glancing all around again.

I didn't know how to respond.  Was she having visual hallucinations now?

"He told me that Estella died when he hit her on her head with one of Greg's trophies," she continued on a whisper.

"He said he would kill me next if he didn't get what he wanted," she said, sitting back in her rocker with a smile.

Excuse me?

"Did he tell you what he wanted?"  I was willing to play along because this was scaring the ever-loving shit out of me and I needed more information before I got the authorities involved.  And, by authorities, I meant Ram.

"No.  He said I knew what he was speaking about and I better watch my a-s-s."  My mom had never been much of a person to swear, even forsaking anything even similar sounding to a curse word.