The Salt Maiden (Leisure Romantic Suspense) Page 5

  But the food service worker had already escaped the private room, so Dana sighed and returned her attention to her long-distance conversation. “Sorry for the interruption, and I do appreciate the offer. It’s just that there’s no need for you to fly out. The swelling’s way down, and I’m getting around fine with crutches. In fact, I’m doing so well the hospital’s giving me the boot tomorrow.”

  “I would have made arrangements sooner if you’d called me. I would have been there for you, Dana.”

  Dana bit her tongue to keep from asking, Who the hell are you and what have you done with Isabel Huffington? Since Dana, long ago cast in the role of the good—or at least the functional—daughter, was normally the last person her mother worried over, it boggled the mind to hear her sounding so…maternal.

  Maybe, Dana thought, she should have allowed the hospital staff to call when she’d been flown in. Instead she had delayed, telling herself she was better off waiting until she felt well enough to make the call herself. For one thing, she had a dread of Isabel swooping in to order around the doctors and nurses—a behavior Dana had long ago concluded was her version of a touch-free hug. Now that the crisis was past, Dana admitted to herself that she’d feared even more that her mother wouldn’t care that she’d been hurt, that instead of showing up she would simply harangue Dana on the phone to get back to Devil’s Claw—for her darling Nikki’s sake.

  I am total scum, the poster child for sibling rivalry run horribly amok. Her face burning, Dana gave herself a mental kick.

  “They’re making you leave the hospital already?” Isabel asked. “Don’t those people know you were at death’s door?”

  She really did sound worried.

  “No. Because I wasn’t. Really, it was an extremely light dose of venom. I was lucky.” Dana glanced at her lower left leg, which had gone down to less than twice the size of her right. Though she had treated more than a few snakebites in canine patients, her stomach clenched at the thought of the lurid bruising beneath her bandages.

  “You’re flying back to Houston, of course. I’m sending you an open ticket. I’ll hire a driver to see to your car.”

  “Why would you do that? Angie’s still somewhere in Rimrock County. She has to be.” Dana took the snake incident as proof that she had come too close to finding her sister for someone’s comfort.

  “I want her to be found, too. But those awful people tried to kill you.” Her mother sounded both furious and frightened.

  “I’m sure they didn’t mean for me to die.” Dana was far from certain of it, really, but the knee-jerk denial seemed like a fitting penance for her childish jealousy. “They just wanted me to go home without messing up their chances for that project they’re so gung-ho about getting. They must think she’ll come back and start rabble-rousing again if I find her and get her cleaned up.”

  Either that or they know what’s happened to her and don’t want me to find out.

  “I won’t have this, Dana. I won’t lose you, too.”

  Dana’s stomach tightened, and her limbs went cold as the implication sank in. “Angie might still be alive.”

  “Of course she is. She has to be.” Her mother’s voice cracked on the last word, betraying a concern she wouldn’t—or couldn’t—voice.

  Dana hesitated a moment before admitting, “I’m really worried, Mom. Worried that the reason someone put that snake in my car is because he doesn’t want me finding out he’s done something to Angie.”

  Killed her, her subconscious whispered. Why can’t you just say it?

  “I’m not coming home, Mom. Not until I have her with me.”

  “But your leg is—”

  “I’ll be fine. The doctor’s sure of it. I’ve already been walking on—”

  “Dana, no. Whether Jerome approves or not, I’m sending out someone to help you—you remember Regina Lawler, don’t you? She’s good at getting to the bottom of things, and she’s volunteered to—”

  “Of all the reporters on the planet, not Regina. No, Mom.” A longtime friend of her mother’s, the forty-something Regina Lawler had been a popular Houston news anchor—until, in an unscripted, on-air meltdown, she’d called the news director a “perfidious prick” for demoting her to weekends in favor of some “bleached-blond bimbette out of Tulsa, Oklahoma.” Summarily canned—and blackballed from the major markets—Regina was desperate for a story that would put her back on top.

  The last time Dana had seen her, about two months ago, the woman had still been chain-smoking and profanely ranting—in spite of eight weeks of anger-management classes and all of Isabel’s attempts to distract her from her favorite topic. The very idea of being stuck with the reporter in Devil’s Claw was enough to make Dana break out in a cold sweat.

  “I wanted to keep this in the family,” said her mother, “but if the media’s our only chance of finding Angie…”

  Dana jumped at the sound of a firm rap at the room’s door. “Hang on a minute. Someone’s here.”

  Though she wasn’t expecting anyone, she put a hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. “Come in.”

  Jay Eversole stepped inside, his hat in hand and his expression serious. Far cleaner than he had been when she’d last seen him, the man looked like a Wild West fantasy in his tan-over-brown uniform, the silver star catching the light from the room’s window. Lynette would faint dead away, thought Dana.

  She twitched the sheet to cover her injured leg and then held up an index finger to signal him to wait. Uncovering the phone, she said, “Promise me you won’t do anything until we talk again. The doctor’s here to see me now. I’ll call you back this afternoon.”

  As she clicked off the phone, Eversole smiled. “Doctor, huh? That’s quite a promotion.”

  She shrugged. “If I’d told my mother it was you, she would have demanded I pass over the phone so she could give you an earful.”

  “What makes you think she hasn’t? Several times, including last night, after you got around to telling her about that snakebite.”

  Dana winced, imagining the conversation. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Upset mamas come with the territory. And your mother has every right to be unhappy, with one daughter hurt and the other missing.”

  Before she could say more, a tap at the door preceded another interruption, an elderly man in wire-rimmed glasses and a volunteer’s vest who was mostly hidden behind an enormous spray of mixed flowers. He set the vase on the bed tray.

  “Holy cow. Who died?” Dana asked.

  The man laughed, his mostly bald pate turning pink. “Only my lower back from hauling that behemoth up here.”

  He plucked out the card and passed it to her before wishing her a good day and a quick recovery.

  “Thanks,” she said, as he waved and left them. Shaking her head at the arrangement, she added, “My mother really has no concept of proportion…Weird.”

  She blinked at the tiny card, confused, then looked up. “It’s signed, ‘Bill Navarro.’ ”

  Jay grinned. “It’s a lonely life out there ranching with his brother.”

  “But I don’t know who he is…Oh, yeah,” she said, remembering a somewhat shaggy man, fortyish, with eyes creased by the sun and a thin layer of grime she’d come to associate with the men of Rimrock County. And a cowboy hat, of course. “He was one of those guys skinning the snake behind the café.”

  She made a face before adding, “He gave me his card before the helicopter showed up.”

  Jay snorted. “I have to hand it to him. Man sees an opportunity, he seizes on it.”

  “Like a pit bull, apparently.” Dana rubbed her nose, which itched from all the pollen.

  “That’s Bill in a nutshell. Pit bull. Might want to keep that in mind when you talk to him.”

  “Maybe just a note, then.”

  The sheriff nodded in approval.

  She sniffled, thinking she’d better have a nurse give the bouquet to a patient in need of cheering up, or she’d be sneezing her head off before day�
�s end.

  “So what brings you here?” she asked. If he had had more questions, he could have called her as he had the past two days. Unless he had some news he didn’t want to share over the phone. “Is it something about Angie? Ha-have you found her?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but there’s still no sign of your sister. I wanted to see for myself how you are, and I brought your car for you.”

  Walking to her bedside, he passed her the keys, attached to a fob made from a photo of her corgis. The glimpse of Ben and Jerry made her homesick. Probably the two were having a ball playing with Lynette’s Australian cattle dog at her place, but she could really use some wagging tails and canine kisses at the moment.

  “My car?” Bringing it seemed far beyond the call of duty.

  “I thought maybe you’d need it here, whenever you’re up to driving. Besides that, I’ve always wanted to see what one of those little numbers could do if you redlined it.”

  “You…you drove it here so you could race it?”

  He pointed at her, smiling. “Gotcha. I promise you I shifted through those gears like an old lady. Mostly.”

  She couldn’t help smiling back. Marlboro Man was making a convert of her in the cowboy department. Pretty soon she’d be drooling over the rodeo-guy pictures Lynette kept by her desk at the clinic.

  “So, how’s the leg, Doc?” he asked.

  “It’s Dana, please. And it’s better, thanks. They’re springing me tomorrow.”

  “I’m glad. You had us pretty worried.”

  She wondered whom he meant by “us.” Certainly not Judge Hooks. The only thing that worried that glorified fry cook was the thought of her returning. Had he sent the sheriff on a mission to keep her far away? The thought tossed a bucket of cold water over her new big-hat-and-boots fixation.

  “I appreciate your bringing me the car,” she said, “but you know, I’ll still have to go back to Devil’s Claw to take care of Angie’s things.”

  “My deputy and I’ll see to ’em,” he said. “We can have them boxed and shipped, though it might take me a week or two to arrange to have that loom trucked. We’ll want to make sure it’s not damaged in the move.”

  She looked hard into Eversole’s blue eyes. “Such a friendly, helpful bunch.”

  “We’re just—”

  “Trying to make sure I have no reason to return to Rimrock County?”

  She had expected an argument, but he said nothing; nor did he look away. His expression grave, he only stood there as the silence between them took on weight.

  Dana couldn’t stand it any longer. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

  He frowned. “I haven’t found out who put the snake in your car. No one saw anything. Or so they’re saying.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t mean to stop investigating. And I haven’t given up on finding your sister, either. But I’d feel better if you stayed away till I get to the bottom of all this.”

  “Or until Nikki Harrison dies and I lose interest.”

  His expression darkened. “That’s the second time you’ve made that accusation. You were wrong before. You’re wrong now. I don’t want you hurt again, that’s all. Or maybe killed this time.”

  Dana picked up her water cup from the rolling bedside table and sipped from the bent straw. But she couldn’t swallow back the question that still nagged her. “Like Angie, do you mean? You believe…You think she’s dead, don’t you?”

  He hesitated before answering. “I don’t know that.”

  “You suspect it.”

  “I think it’s a possibility. One that would explain a few things.” He pulled the room’s single chair by the bedside.

  She rearranged the sheets for better coverage. “Why? Why would anyone kill Angie? I know she was making noise about getting together some protest, but…”

  “But what?”

  Dana grimaced. “This isn’t easy to say about my own sister, but it’s true. She’s binged on drugs her whole adult life, and God knows she’s an alcoholic. Sure, she got worked up about this and that from time to time, but she was bound to lose her focus, fall off the wagon. Then she’d forget about the salt-dome project.”

  “Maybe she convinced the wrong folks she was serious, that she could be a problem. That project, it’s pretty important to the people around Rimrock.” He hesitated, brushing dust from his hat.

  She waited him out, sensing there was something more on his mind.

  “Haz-Vestment’s held a series of meetings to gain community support,” he said. “I’ve been reading through the transcripts and…”

  “And what?”

  He shook his head. “I’d already heard that their spokes-woman’s a real piece of work. Flashy dresser, lots of jewelry, real compelling way about her. Shook the right hands, kissed the right asses, made a lot of slick-sounding promises.”

  Dana nodded, recognizing the type. “Sounds like half the veterinary pharmaceutical reps I’ve met. Only she came to sell a company, not a product.”

  “Oh, yeah. She was selling, all right. Selling dreams of a Devil’s Claw with fresh, clean-running water, of workers moving in and spending money in local businesses. Young females among them.”

  “Water, workers, and women. Sounds like the Devil’s Claw trifecta.”

  Jay smiled wryly. “According to the transcripts there weren’t many dissenters.”

  “Other than Angie…”

  He nodded in confirmation. “And she was shouted down every time she started asking questions.”

  “Asking questions?” Dana echoed, imagining her sister on the warpath. “Or screaming accusations?”

  “My deputy told me she was carrying on about the rape of the earth or…No, that wasn’t it. She talked about the Salt Woman being defiled.”

  “The Salt Woman?” Dana found herself thinking of the digital photos Jay had e-mailed to her before she’d made the drive to Devil’s Claw, when he’d asked her if she could identify her sister’s things. One in particular came to mind—of the tapestry on the abandoned loom, with its tightly woven field of starlit desert backing the resplendent figure of an impossibly beautiful old woman, her white hair whirling around her naked body, her thin legs stepping forward, her dark, determined eyes locked on an unfinished horizon. The detail was incredible, by far the best work of Angie’s she had seen. “Is there some significance?”

  Eversole shrugged. “Not that I’ve ever heard of. And from the way Wallace talked about it, I got the idea it didn’t mean anything to him either.”

  Dana thought of her sister’s long-standing interest in mythology and wondered if there might be some connection. She’d do an Internet search on this Salt Woman once she regained access to the laptop locked in her trunk. Probably a waste of time, she thought, just one more of her sister’s drunken outbursts.

  With a sigh she changed the subject. “Before, when you were talking about those transcripts, I got the idea something bothered you about them. Was it the way that spokeswoman honed in on exactly what people in your county wanted?”

  Again he hesitated before answering. “No, I’d have expected Miriam Piper-Gold—that’s the woman’s name—to make promises. And like I told you, I looked into Haz-Vestment’s reputation, found they’ve made a name for themselves with good corporate citizenship.”

  “So what was it, then?”

  He frowned off into space, his gaze shifting to the open blinds and the clear blue sky beyond them. “It was the warnings. Piper-Gold was pretty subtle, but she referred several times to the nervousness of her investors, how they’d been bitten twice when communities that seemed ready to welcome them ended up balking after considerable money had been spent. There was apparently some lawsuit by out-of-town interests. Environmentalists reacting on emotion and not facts, as she put it. The L-word came up a few times, too.”

  “L-word?”

  He smiled. “Liberal. That’s not something you call your worst enemy in Rimrock County.”

  “Why
does that not surprise me?”

  “Because you salad-munchin’ eco nuts are all so intuitive.”

  A laugh slipped free before she asked him, “So she was hinting, I presume, that Haz-Vestment wasn’t interested in gracing a community of misguided hippies with its facility?”

  “Exactly.”

  Dana’s smile faded as the gravity of Eversole’s concern sank in. “And my sister was the one ‘misguided hippie’ in the county.”

  As her eyes burned, she held off tears by telling herself the scenario he was suggesting wasn’t so much different from the one she had imagined when she’d first heard about the salt-dome project. At the time Dana had figured that Angie’s potential interference was the reason no one was too eager to find her sister. Though the specter of Angie’s death had since crept into Dana’s thinking, the suspicion had seemed almost as unreal as the thought of someone putting a live snake in her car. Until Jay Eversole admitted he shared her fear, Dana had been able to hold on to the idea that this was simply another false alarm, one of the countless rehearsals for grief that Angie had put her family through over the years.

  “I promise you”—his blue gaze never wavered—“I’m going to find out what happened. And if there’s any way—any possibility whatsoever—that your sister’s alive somewhere in Rimrock County, I will personally escort her back to Houston so she can get her marrow tested. You can count on that, Dana.”

  Since he’d be working in a county where nepotism was a way of life, where infighting was the only organized sport, and the name Vanover appeared to be a curse word, she would have to be an idiot to buy what he’d just said. Maybe she was, or maybe hearing him call her by her first name had kick-started dormant hormones, because she did believe him.

  But then, she had believed in Alex Hilliard, too, right until the moment his damned text message lit up her cell phone’s screen.

  Chapter Six

  I think I saw her last night, her white hair gleaming in the starlight as she strode across the flats. The Salt Woman, wandering the desert, looking for a home among those worthy of her gift.