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And cash in he did. The success of Morganna, Mistress of the Night, had been nothing short of phenomenal.
“If you ask me,” Trace said in a drawl that harkened back to the Texas roots he shared with Gavin, “Morganna’s success has as much to do with her crime-fighting outfit as it does her sorcery.”
Because the comment came from a man Gavin considered a good friend, a man whose dogged devotion to the truth had eventually earned him his freedom, Gavin didn’t take offense. Especially since it happened to be true.
“Got a point there,” he said agreeably. His quick grin faded as his thoughts returned to Brigid’s house. “Although I never believed Brigid was a witch, unfortunately the kids in town do. Which is why they seem determined to break every window in the damn house.”
“I wish I had the resources to put a man on the place for a few nights,” Trace mused. “The problem with teenage vandalism is that it can lead down a rocky path straight to a jail cell.”
Knowing that the former big-city cop had put in his own time on the wrong side of the bars in the juvenile justice system, Gavin figured Trace knew what he was talking about.
“You know,” he said, “that’s not a bad idea. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me sooner.” The more he thought about it, the more he liked it. “I could do that.”
“Do what?”
“I could spend a couple of nights in the house. Wait for the kids to break a window, catch them in the act, then bring them to you for the scared-straight lecture.”
Trace’s expression was decidedly doubtful as he considered the proposed plan. “You’re not talking about being armed or anything?”
“Hell, Trace, you know I’ve never owned any guns. I just want those kids to leave the old lady’s house alone.”
“I hadn’t realized you were that close.”
“Neither had I,” Gavin admitted. “Until she was gone. Then I realized that somehow, when I wasn’t looking, she became the closest thing to a real family I’ve had in years.” He put some money on the table and stood. “Give Mariah a hug for me.”
Trace smiled at the mention of his wife’s name. Not a day went by that he didn’t consider himself the luckiest man on the face of the planet to have had such a gorgeous, sexy, intelligent, talented woman fall in love with him.
“She’s been away for four days wheeling and dealing in L.A., and as soon as she gets back tonight I intend to give her a lot more than a hug,” he said. “But I doubt your name will come up.”
Gavin laughed. “You’re a lucky man, Trace.”
“That’s what Mariah keeps telling me.” Trace grinned back. “You know, marriage isn’t such a bad institution, pal.”
“That’s what you keep telling me. And call me crazy, but having already experienced life in an institution, I think I’ll pass.”
“I’m serious.” Sober gunmetal gray eyes echoed Trace’s words. “From what I can tell, you spend all your time working.”
“When you love what you’re doing, it isn’t work,” Gavin automatically responded with the answer he usually gave to interviewers who remarked on his apparent lack of any life outside his work.
“Yeah, I read that quote in Newsweek.” Trace waved the words away with his left hand, his simple woven-gold wedding band gleaming in the buttery morning light. “I didn’t buy it then and I don’t now. The way it looks to me, all you’ve done is change your prison stripes for a denim jacket.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that the trappings may have changed. But although you’ve said that one of the reasons you came to Whiskey River was to enjoy life, you might as well still be spending your days behind bars.”
Gavin frowned. “That’s not a real attractive image you’re painting there, Trace.”
“If the boot fits,” Trace said mildly. “Mariah has asked you to dinner six times in the past month. And each time you’ve said you had to work.”
“I was up against a deadline.”
“That’s what you said. But you also just told me you mailed the new book off to your publisher this morning. So how about steaks tonight?”
“If Mariah’s been in L.A. for four days, the last thing you two need is me crashing your reunion.”
“Tomorrow, then.”
“I have this idea I thought I’d flesh out. About Morganna taking on a bunch of gang bangers—”
“See. That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” Trace folded his arms and shook his head. “You just finished a project. What the hell would be wrong with taking a few days R and R to recharge the batteries?”
“And do what?”
“Hell, I don’t know. Take up fishing.”
“I hate fish. Catching them and eating them.”
“Hiking, then. Or mountain climbing. Or go into Payson or Flagstaff and pick up a wild woman in some cowboy bar. When was the last time you got laid?”
Gavin took a moment to consider that question and realized that the fact that he couldn’t remember was not a good sign.
“You’ve made your point. Maybe I will have dinner in Flagstaff tonight.”
“Good.” Nodding his satisfaction, Trace stood and tossed a few bills onto the table beside Gavin’s. “Mariah will be glad to hear you’re at least attempting to have some kind of social life. She worries about you.”
“She’s just like every other woman in the world,” Gavin retorted as they left the café. “She can’t bear to see an unmarried man running around loose.”
“Believe me, pal,” Trace said as he stopped beside his black-and-white Suburban with the Mogollon County seal on the door, “there’s something to be said for spending your life in captivity with a gorgeous sexy woman.”
“Ah, but that’s my point. I do.”
Trace laughed at the obvious reference to the fictional Morganna. “I was talking about a flesh-and-blood woman.” He unlocked the door and climbed into the driver’s seat. “Have fun tonight. You’ve earned a night on the town. Just don’t try to drive back up that mountain after drinking. I’d hate to have to scrape you off the pavement.”
“More than two beers and I’ll crash in a motel. Or better yet, in some winsome young thing’s bed.”
“Always helps to keep a positive outlook,” Trace agreed with a grin.
Gavin was walking across the parking lot when he heard Trace call out his name. He turned and saw that the sheriff had rolled down the driver’s window. “What now?”
“Don’t forget protection.”
Gavin had a choice. He could be either annoyed or amused. He opted for amusement. “Yes, Mother.”
2
THE DRIVE TO her parents’ home in Santa Cruz took only two hours, although Tara felt as if she were a time traveler, journeying back to the 1960s. Her parents lived in a commune that had been established by a group of counterculture rebels who’d found the San Francisco Haight-Ashbury hippie scene too commercially artificial for their tastes.
They’d been part of the small band of flower children who’d traveled down the coast, pooled their scant resources and bought a small dairy farm with the intention of using the proceeds from the milk and ice cream to fund their various artistic enterprises.
Serendipity had proven to be their ally. More than one of the commune members had achieved fame and fortune. Among the former residents was a world-famous balladeer, a Pulitzer prize-winning novelist and, of course her father, who could boast, if he were so inclined which he wasn’t, that the past three First Ladies had been seen wearing bracelets fashioned in his workshop.
And as if to prove that Mistress Fate did indeed have a sense of humor, last year Contented Cows, Inc.—specializing in dairy products from cows fed organically grown dandelions—had been purchased by C. S. Mackay Enterprises, which had allowed the band of former anticapitalists to pay off the mortgage on the two-hundred-acre site.
It was here Tara had grown up, one of several children granted a freedom unknown to the average kid in suburban America. During her preschool years, clothes had been optional, and although studies were never neglected, the teaching methods at the commune school had definitely not come from mainstream textbooks.
Science had been more often than not taught outdoors, beneath the wide sky overlooking the sea. All those hours spent exploring tide pools and charting stars and Pacific storms and growing the gardens that supplied the extended family with vegetables had intensified Tara’s affinity for nature.
Music and art were as important to the members of the small community as the air they breathed, and censorship, of course, was unheard-of. The commune library was extensive and varied, and was one of the reasons Tara’s love of the written word had flourished.
Such a freewheeling atmosphere might be nirvana for someone wanting to grow up to be another Michelangelo or Georgette Heyer. A budding John Lennon or Bob Dylan would never lack for musicians to jam with. And there wasn’t an adult in residence who wouldn’t stop work to listen to a child’s poem.
But Tara had always had the need for some boundaries in her life. She could still recall, vividly, when as a seven-year-old she had accompanied her parents to a Renaissance fair in Midland, Texas, and had been overwhelmed by the vastness of the country. The flat west Texas landscape, with its horizons stretching far in the distance on all four compass points, had made her feel as if she were adrift on a small dinghy in the middle of the ocean.
Later, she’d often felt exactly the same way living in the commune. While other teenagers all over the world were rebelling against authority, demanding freedom, Tara found the dictates of following one’s own star unnerving.
The lack of boundaries had given her more than her share of anxiety attacks, and had definitely inhibited her social life. It was only when she’d discovered her love for mathematics, and the purity of numbers whose values never changed and always did what they were supposed to do—so long as you followed the rules and theorems—that she’d begun to feel comfortable.
From that day forward, she’d buried herself in her textbooks and, to the good-natured amusement of the adults in residence, had become the first math nerd in the artistic communal family.
Her mother was waiting for her outside the house her father had designed—a wonderfully sprawling series of cubes and towers perched on a rocky cliff overlooking the ocean. It was daring even for this community, and whenever anyone asked Darren McKenna what he would do when the house inevitably slid into the sea, he promptly answered, “Build another one, of course.”
Her father never had been one to look beyond the moment. Which made him the opposite of his daughter, who could, with a quick glance at her leather-bound organizer, tell what she’d be doing at any given hour weeks into the future.
“Tara, darling.” Her mother’s flowing skirt swirled around her legs as she spanned the distance between them. “Welcome home. It’s been too long.”
As she returned her mother’s embrace, Tara breathed in the scent of custom-blended jasmine and gardenia and felt instantly comforted.
“It’s good to be here.” It was true, Tara realized with some surprise. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she’d entered the gates with a sense of relief, a sense of homecoming.
Her mother leaned her head back and gave her a long maternal look that gave Tara the feeling that she could see all the way inside her. To her heart. Her soul.
“You haven’t been sleeping well,” Lina diagnosed.
“Now you’re monitoring my dreams?” Tara tried for a friendly flippant tone and had to cringe when the words came out overly defensive.
“Actually, it was the shadows beneath your eyes that gave you away,” Lina said mildly. “And the fact that you’re too pale. Even for someone living in the city.”
“I’ve always been fair skinned.” Her ivory complexion had been the bane of her existence during her teenage years when she’d struggled to gain the golden tan the boys seemed to admire so on the other California girls.
“True. In that respect, as well as so many others, you take after your grandmother,” Lina agreed. “But you’ve always had an inner glow.” She reached out and trailed the back of her hand up Tara’s cheek. “It’s missing.”
“It’s only stress. One of my clients is a computer company that just completed negotiations for buying a software firm. I’ve been working nearly around the clock combing through years of back financial statements.”
After graduating from Cal Poly University with an M.B.A., Tara had taken a top-level job in the financial department of a San Francisco Fortune 500 company. She’d continued to go to night school and had earned her C.P.A., but apparently she was more like her parents than she’d thought because she began to find the corporate atmosphere stifling. Eventually, she’d struck out on her own, becoming a consultant, and although she worked harder than she ever had as an employee, she enjoyed the ability to pick and choose her jobs.
“All the more reason to take a break and visit your mother.” Although Lina’s tone was characteristically mild, she could not keep the seeds of worry from her expressive hazel eyes.
“We’ll have tea out on the patio. And we’ll talk. About your work, your vacation. And whatever else you’d like.”
“I definitely don’t want to talk about Brigid’s house.”
“Of course you do, dear.” Lina laced their fingers together and led Tara into the house. “That’s why you’re here.”
Tara did not even try to argue. There was no need. Because, although she hadn’t realized it until this moment, once again, her mother was right.
As she sat overlooking the sun-gilded waters and sipped a cup of lemon balm tea, and helped herself to a second helping of the smooth yellow custard made with crushed marigold petals from her mother’s garden, Tara could literally feel the tension that had her shoulders tied up in knots slipping away.
“This is nice,” she murmured, enjoying the sight of sea gulls diving for fish out amidst the breakers. “I hadn’t realized how long it’s been since I’ve taken a breather.”
“You work too hard.”
Tara knew her mother’s comment was not criticism but merely observation. She opened her mouth to argue, but knew she could never lie to this woman.
“I know.” She sighed. “But it’s not as if I have a choice.”
“We always have a choice, dear.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” Tara flared, her nerves more on edge than she’d thought. “You dropped out thirty years ago. Some of us prefer life in the real world.”
“Reality is where you find it, I suppose,” Lina murmured, frustrating Tara even further.
As much as she truly loved her mother, she could not remember a single instance in her life when she’d been able to get a good argument going with her. Although Lina Delaney never withheld her feelings, neither would she try to force others into agreeing with her. She was, truly, a free spirit.
“Speaking of reality,” Tara said, wanting to steer the subject away from her work, “I read in the paper that you’ve started working for the FBI.”
Although her mother had never used her powers of second sight for profit, over the years stories of her psychic ability had become public knowledge. So much so that Lina’s assistance was routinely requested by law enforcement officials who, while not exactly admitting belief, had solved more than one case with information given to them by Lina Delaney.
It was Lina’s turn to sigh. Her gaze became distant as she looked out toward the horizon where a line of fishing boats trawled for tuna. “They thought I might be able to help them locate that serial killer who seems to be moving across the country.”
“And?”
Lina briefly closed her eyes, as if to shut out the images she’d received from the evidence the police had collected in three western and two southern states. “I believe I may have provided some assistance.”
Tara saw the pain etched in deep lines on her mother’s tanned face. “I’m sorry.” She reached out and took Lina’s hand in hers. “It was rough, huh?”
“It wasn’t pleasant.” Lina linked their fingers together. “It also reminded me how very fortunate we are to have each other. All those young female victims had no one to care about them.”
“Yes, they did.” Tara squeezed her mother’s hand. “They had you.”
Lina smiled at that, a warm smile that for Tara had always been capable of soothing the cruelest of pains. “A bit late, I’m afraid,” she said. “But thank you.” Her expression sobered. “I know you said you don’t want to talk about Brigid, but there’s something I must tell you.”
“What?” Tara asked with a sigh of resignation.
“I don’t believe her death was from natural causes.”
Tara felt the shock all the way through her body. “What do you mean? Surely she wouldn’t have…”
“No. Of course your grandmother wouldn’t have taken her own life. She relished every moment too dearly. But I’ve been receiving the most disturbing vibrations. And whenever I dream of the night she died, there’s always a shadowy figure in the background. And a force so powerful it chills my blood.”
