“Dane? Her clothes are wet. I could put them in the dryer and maybe she could wear …” She let her face ask the question as her eyes looked upstairs.
He knew what she meant. Mandy’s things, tucked and folded away in drawers, hanging in the closet, safe on shelves. Inviolable. Sacred. “Sorry. No.” He felt guilty but couldn’t bend.
“What about a bathrobe? Do you have a bathrobe?”
Fair enough. He bounded up the stairs to the bedroom to get it, tossed it over the railing, and Shirley took it down the hall. He hurried back down to wait.
When Shirley and Eloise returned, the young girl wobbled, hanging on Shirley’s arm with one hand and clutching his robe about her with the other. It hung from her like it was melting, and the hem almost touched the floor. She shuffled to the couch and sank into it, checking up and down herself for any breach of modesty. Her eyes had progressed from dopey to early morning drowsy and she didn’t seem too happy about having to wear that robe. “So here we go again,” she muttered.
Shirley started packing up her gear. “Okay, guess I’ve got an elk to cut up.”
Dane wasn’t ready for this. “You’re going?”
Shirley cocked an eyebrow Eloise’s direction and answered, “I understand you have a meeting.”
“But …”
“She’s all right for now. If she keels over, call me.” She extended a hand, and Eloise gave it a shake. “Nice to make your acquaintance, Eloise.”
“So nice to meet you,” said the girl.
“Her clothes’ll dry pretty quick.” Shirley grabbed her coat and kit, then paused in the kitchen door to ask Eloise, “You’re sure now?”
“I’ll be fine,” said Eloise, her head still a little too heavy for her neck.
“Okay.” Shirley headed through the kitchen for the side door and called out, “I told her you’re a gentleman so there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
And out the door she went.
So they’d had a little talk, the two of them. He looked at Eloise. “A meeting?”
Her eyes implored him through the drugs. “It’d be nice.”
Well, this was a nice little checkmate, so perfect she had to have planned it. It was awkward. It was even scary.
But he had questions of his own. “All right.”
chapter
21
Dane noticed his body language: he was towering over her and he wanted answers so badly his expression probably seemed unpleasant. He made himself relax, slid his chair back a few feet, and sat down.
And then they stared at each other. Her eyes fell away a few times, perhaps to deal with a thought, perhaps because she was still half asleep, but they always returned and met his gaze again. He was trying to read her; she was probably trying to read him.
“So what did you tell her?” he asked, nodding in the direction of Shirley’s exit.
“That I came out here to see you, but then I had a problem with some drugs.”
“What drugs?”
“I don’t know. I made it up.”
“You made it up? You lied.”
“Well, I didn’t know what to say.”
“So what did happen?”
She laughed an apology. “It sure could have gone better.”
“Tell me what happened.”
He could see she was thinking, coming up with something, her eyes shifting to the left as she worked on it. “I guess I don’t remember most of it.”
“Do you remember ingesting or injecting any drugs?”
“You sound like a doctor.”
“I’m not. Do you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Are you a drug user?”
“No. I don’t do drugs.”
“Do you remember running across my field?”
“Really? I mean, I did?”
“That’s where I found you. You fell down in my field.”
Those little tidbits helped her. “Oh! I think I hit my head! I was fixing a flat tire just a little ways up the road and I bumped my head with the lug wrench. I guess I wandered back here trying to get some help and finally conked out in your field.” She looked at him with a dull, spacey rapture. “And you rescued me, right?”
“I guess you could say that.”
“That is just so cool!”
“So who was that guy chasing you?”
Oh. Now she looked caught. “What guy?”
He cocked his head at her and raised an eyebrow.
She dug a little deeper. “You mean … who did you see?”
“I saw a man chasing you. Who was he?”
“Chasing me?”
“You were running from him.”
“I was?”
He held his forefinger and thumb a tiny gap apart. “You’re that far from getting thrown out of here, wet clothes or not.”
She searched through her brain another moment but gave up. “I don’t know—I mean, what did he look like?”
“Blond. Young, agile. Rough face. He looked like he’d been in a fight.”
“And he was chasing me?”
He leaned into this one. “Who was he?”
She shied back and replied, “Clarence.”
“Clarence. From the other night at McCaffee’s?”
She brightened and leaned toward him, managing a horse’s nod. “Yes! Remember him? He was my volunteer for the coffee mug trick.”
“His face is memorable.”
“He’s been there a couple times. He was there for my very first performance!”
“So?”
Now she didn’t know where to go. “So … what?”
“Why was he chasing you?”
“Um … are you sure he was chasing me?”
“You ran into my pasture, he was running after you, you were passing out, his face had blood on it and some really nice bruises, and he didn’t turn around until I threatened him.”
Her eyes got that wide, spacey look again, like she was looking at Superman … or Prince Charming. It made him cringe. “You threatened him?”
He held up a hand. “I’m lucky he bought it. I was waving that sword over there.”
She marveled at the sight of his stage sword, now resting on the floor against the wall. “You rescued me with a sword?”
“It’s a prop for a magic act.”
She brightened. “You used to stab your pretty assistant with it while she was curled up in a box!”
“My wife.”
“Far out. I always wondered how that trick worked. Is it a depth perception thing?”
Trying to change the subject? Nice try.“You say I rescued you. Did Clarence mean you harm?”
She looked away, rubbed her fingers, scratched her ear.
“Did he mean you harm?”
She had nowhere else to go. She nodded, then spoke as if confessing. “I got a flat tire and I pulled over and got out to fix it, and then these two guys—Clarence and another guy, named Lemuel—drove up and acted like they were going to help me, and when I wasn’t looking they gave me some kind of a super-zap like they were electrocuting me or something, and then they gave me a shot”—she pointed to the mark on her neck—“right here, and the next thing I knew I was waking up here on the couch.”
Well, it all fit. “They tasered you?”
“What’s that?”
“Taser. It’s an electric shock device that immobilizes the victim.”
“Oh! Whoa, yeah, I hope to shout!”
“So what about the other guy, this, uh … ?”
“Lemuel.”
“Yeah. What’d he look like?”
“He was cool-looking, Hispanic or Arab or Greek or something. But you might’ve seen him with Clarence the other night at McCaffee’s. They were both there.”
“But you don’t know them?”
“No.”
“But they jumped you, tasered you, gave you a shot to knock you out, chased you into my pasture. I take it you struggled.”
“I don’t remember anything after the shot.”
“Clarence looked like you’d landed a few.”
She enjoyed the thought of that. “Maybe I did.”
“But you don’t want to call the police.”
That got a reaction. “Ohhh, no! Let’s not, I don’t wanna … No, no police!”