11.
He made a pot of coffee and sat on one of the wooden chairs. It wobbled on an uneven leg. “You might as well try to relax. He won’t come back—especially not as long as my car’s parked out there.”
“You’re awfully sure it was Joe, aren’t you.”
“Had to be. But I’ll keep the gun handy if you want.”
She turned around and looked up into his face. Her head hardly came up to his shoulder. “You’re all right. Have I said thank-you yet?”
“No point trying to keep books on it.”
“Well I like you, and that’s not just gratitude.”
She was offering herself and it made him smile. “I don’t think I ought to ask just yet. You might change your mind.”
“I’m known for that ”
“You might decide to say no.”
“I’m not usually known for that.” She smiled quickly, and her face straightened equally quickly. “I don’t know what made me say that. You get in bad habits, you start talking like that because it’s easier than slapping people’s hands all the time. I’m not a tramp—why do I keep sounding like one with you?”
“Basic biology. Somebody shoots at you and it makes all the juices run. Why do you think the birthrate goes up in wartime?”
“You’re weird,” she said. “Weird.” She spent a while looking at nothing in particular before she looked at Watchman, his clothes, his bearing.
Her eyes betrayed her nervousness. “You’re a long way from your Reservation, aren’t you.”
“Too far.”
“There ain’t no such animal.”
“Wrong,” he said. “It’s no good pretending.”
“Come off it. I went through that bullshit a long time ago. When my lily-white husband ditched me I came crawling home and swore I’d never leave the Reservation again as long as I lived. Don’t you think I know what it feels like? But you’ll get over it. You’d get bored to death if you had to go back to wherever you grew up and live there again. It’d be like going from college back to second grade.”
“Maybe.”
“It’s got nothing to do with race,” she said. “The Reservation’s a small town and you’re a city boy now.”
“And you’re a city girl?”
“I’ve been wondering how I’ve stayed out here this long. When this mess is over I’m moving back to Phoenix.”
“Just like that.”
“Just like that,” she said. “Now tell me the truth, could you go live at home again?”
“Things would be a lot simpler.”
“Things are a lot simpler in the grave,” she said.
Angelina inspected the clothes closet and left the door open while she wiggled out of her skirt and found a hanger to put it on. She was wearing pink-and-yellow patterned bikini pants. It didn’t embarrass her to have him watch and he didn’t turn away. She hooked both hands inside the collar of her cowboy shirt and wrenched it apart; all the pearl snaps parted and she let it slide down behind her off her wrists, her movement made sensual by her awareness of his attention.
She grinned suddenly. “One place I worked in Showlow, they asked me if I’d mind going topless. I told the guy I am topless. After that they made me keep my clothes on.”
He answered her smile in kind.
CHAPTER FIVE
1.
SHE STIRRED against him, thrusting her haunch back; she was curled against his belly, her body in the shape of a Z. She made a little sound in her throat and turned over and kissed him drowsily but with great passion. He was only half awake but it roused him.
She drew back abruptly; a mischievous voice: “Okay. What’s my name?”
He laughed at her. “I forget. But it’ll be nice to have you around to pick up the soap when I drop it in the shower.”
“Sam?”
“Mmmm?”
“That big red body’s got a sensational vocabulary.”
“I’m glad you speak the language.”
“This is a hell of a thing to ask.…”
“Go ahead.”
“Am I as good as she was?”
He sat up on the edge of the bed. “You’re right. It was a hell of a thing to ask.”
He glanced at the clock. Getting on for five o’clock. He mixed up a can of frozen orange juice and drank half a quart of it sitting on the edge of the bed with sunlight starting to leak in through the slatted venetian blinds. No point going back to sleep now. He started trying to sort out the facts of the case in his head but within five minutes Angelina was getting up with a bed sheet around her like a toga.
“Sam? I’m sorry.”
“Forget it.” He managed to smile. Dishevelment suited her, she looked childlike and drowsy and so desirable that he went to her and gathered her against him. Her voice came up, muffled against his chest:
“I really am. It was a rotten thing to say.”
“If you still want the answer.…”
“I hate to admit it but I do.”
“You have a lot more fun than she had,” he said. “That means we both have a lot more fun.”
“I’m glad.” She disengaged herself and palmed the hair back from her temple. “Do you want to come back to bed or should I make us some breakfast?”
“Breakfast. I’ve got to hit the road.”
She went to the kitchen. “What do you like?”
“Fried eggs, piece of toast, a lot of black coffee.”
“A man after my own heart.”
He looked straight at her. “I may turn out to be exactly that.”
She gave him once again her brief unfinished smile. “Let’s not talk like that yet.”
“Fair enough.”
He showered and dressed in yesterday’s Levi’s and shirt. The coffee made a good smell and he followed his nose to it.
“I’ll call Will Luxan and tell him I’ll be away from work for a while. He won’t ask questions, he never does. He’s a good man.”
“I expect he is,” Watchman said. “I also expect he knows more about Joe than he’s willing to tell me.”
“He might talk to me. I’ll ask him on the phone. Where can I reach you if I find out anything?”
“I’ll have to reach you,” he said. He got the scratch pad from the phone stand and scribbled on it. “That’s my partner. If you need anything that’s his home number. During the day you can leave a message for him at Highway Patrol headquarters. I think you’d better stick close to this house until we’ve got things straightened out up here.”
“I get the feeling you’re beginning to believe me about Joe,” she said. “I hope it isn’t just because of—sleeping together.”
He shook his head. “It’s because I trust you.”
She was sitting across the table from him. Her eyes squeezed out tears very abruptly and she reached for his hand. “I think that’s the nicest thing anybody’s said to me in a hell of a long time,” she said and then she began to blubber. “Look at me, I can’t stop!”
He laughed at her.
2.
On the phone Wilder said, “God damn it this isn’t a homicide investigation. Just find the son of a bitch. Let his lawyer worry about whether he got a raw deal.”
Watchman was a little angry. “There are guns going off, man. People are going to get hurt.”
“Why? Because somebody took a warning shot to, scare you off the Reservation? Come off it, they may be tough up there but they’re not killers. They gave up massacring wagon trains a hundred years ago.”
“You don’t get this,” Watchman said stubbornly. “Joe Threepersons has a rifle. Now why would a man get himself a rifle unless he had it in mind to shoot somebody?”
“You said yourself he’s hiding in the hills up there. Living off a few cans of food. He’s probably figuring to shoot himself some game. Besides, a lot of those guys would rather go down shooting than get arrested. It doesn’t mean he’s out to murder somebody.”