Our Red Hot Romance Is Leaving Me Blue Page 10

  Besides jeans, she had brought a blue denim skirt and a simple white scoop-neck T-shirt with her. The skirt hit just above the knees. Not too short, but short enough to be cooler than long pants. A few swipes and brushes of cosmetics and her makeup was done. She hooked thong sandals between her toes and studied herself in the mirror. A half-Mexican, half-Anglo, demure, non-threatening young woman was what she saw, which was what she strived for, for that was what she was.

  Last, she put on her jewelry, something she loved and took great pride in wearing. Gran Bella, in her youth, had acquired wonderful antique sterling-silver pieces from the Mexican mining town of Taxco. Upon Sophia’s graduation from college, Gran Bella had given her the jewelry.

  A well-meaning friend, upon hearing Sophia lament the desperate state of her finances, had suggested she sell the jewelry. The Southwest style was high fashion and some of the jewelry pieces were originals signed by the artist. No doubt they would bring a premium price. But Sophia would never sell her grandmother’s jewelry, no matter how desperate things became.

  Shiny, hammered silver hoops hung from her earlobes. Two large silver-and-turquoise rings circled the ring fingers of each of her hands, and half a dozen silver bracelets with textures from rough hewn to smooth as glass ringed her left wrist. A silver Virgin Mary dangled from a thread-thin chain of tiny turquoise stones around her neck. The details of the pendant had been worn almost smooth by years of Gran Bella’s fingers rubbing it.

  Everything in place, she looked again at the clock on the bedside table and groaned. Not much more than an hour had passed. She thought she had surely drawn out the morning routine beyond that.

  Her room reeked of Mexican spices and onions, thanks to her run to Taco Bell the evening before. The sack of food had met her hunger needs last night and this morning the smell aroused her appetite again. Her thoughts turned to breakfast. She would take advantage of the free meal off the hotel’s tiny lobby. Maybe she would find a newspaper someone had left behind with an unfinished crossword or a sudoku puzzle. She could spend time on that, then she would drive slowly and take in the city of Odessa. And if worse came to worse, she would simply go to the meeting place and wait at the gate for the Domestic Equalizers.

  See, querida? a voice said inside her head. There is a solution for even the smallest of problems.

  Sophia left the hotel room in good spirits. The breakfast was passable, but there was no newspaper. Even driving slowly she figured she could kill maybe half an hour. Accepting that she would just have to arrive early and wait, she again read the directions Debbie Sue had given her and turned the car southwest toward Salt Lick.

  Before she knew it the two stanchions with the flags mounted on top came into her sight. The drive on a sunny morning in virtually no traffic had relaxed her and after having little sleep she began to nod. She came to a stop on the side of the road, buzzed down the windows and turned the engine off. She leaned her head against the driver’s seat headrest and drifted to sleep in seconds.

  Justin hurried from the convenience store a couple of miles from his house with the coffee filters he had bought in case Debbie Sue and Edwina and the psychic wanted coffee. A tiny white car he didn’t recognize was parked near his gate on the shoulder of the county road.

  He could see the silhouette of a person inside.

  He came to a stop behind the car, but the person didn’t move. He stepped out of his truck and walked up to the door. The window was open and he saw a woman asleep behind the wheel…And she was young and beautiful.

  She appeared to be Hispanic, just what his captain had suggested he seek on the sunny beaches of Mexico. But what was she doing here, parked on the side of the county road? Maybe she had run out of gas, but then why would she be sleeping?

  He leaned closer to assure that she was breathing and took a few more seconds to just look at her. Then he stopped himself. What was wrong with him? Less than twenty-four hours ago he had been crying out to his departed wife to reenter his life and make him whole again. This woman being parked here and annoyance at his own thoughts turned his mood to downright surly.

  A rapping against her car door and a male voice startled Sophia awake. “Hey, lady? Miss, are you all right? Ma’am?”

  Raising her head from its resting spot, Sophia peered at dark sunglasses on the face of a man. Her first impression was that he was handsome. “I’m waiting for someone—”

  “Parking here like this is dangerous,” he said sternly.

  “What if I’d been a hitchhiker and liked the looks of your, uh…your, uh, car?…Have you been drinking?”

  His attitude brought her defenses forward. “Excuse me? You are not the law, are you?”

  “Indirectly, yeah. I’m a firefighter and EMT.”

  “I haven’t broken any laws. I don’t think you have any right to ask me questions.”

  “Look, you’re a beautiful woman. God knows who you might attract sitting here alone like this on the side of the road. Beyond that, I’ve gone to plenty of accident sites where people were parked on the side of the road and got rear-ended. Just a whole lot of them have been killed or crippled.”

  “I only closed my eyes for—”

  “A few minutes,” he said finishing her sentence for her.

  “Yeah, I hear that all the time too.”

  “You’re being very—”

  “Rude? Mean? Nasty?”

  Sophia’s seldom-aroused temper began to rise. “Sir, why do you keep interrupting me and putting words into my mouth?”

  “If I don’t wake you up and shock some sense into you, me or somebody else could be putting a breathing tube into your mouth.”

  The message hit home and Sophia softened. After all, he was only trying to help and his advice was wise. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Apparently not. Do me and yourself a favor. Pull your car inside that gate and wait for your friends.” He gestured toward the other side of the cattle guard. “You’ll at least be off the road.”

  Without another word he turned and stomped back to a pickup parked behind her rental car. He drove around her, through the gate and up a long caliche road without a backward glance, churning dirt and caliche behind him. Sophia watched him in stunned silence. In a matter of seconds he was out of sight.

  “Jerk,” she muttered, but she started the engine, obediently eased across the cattle guard and parked just inside the gate.

  His display of anger continued to disturb her. She should have offered her right hand. People rarely rejected a handshake. Touching him might have at least given her some insight into his psyche. There was a reason why this handsome-looking man was so mean inside. But he had hardly given her the opportunity to shake hands or even say much. She sighed, willing the incident out of her mind. She doubted she would ever see him again.

  But as her eyes focused on the road the stranger’s pickup had taken, a familiar voice came to her: Do not be so quick to judge, Sophia.

  He did call you beautiful.

  Justin watched in his rearview mirror. He couldn’t tell if the woman had moved her car as he had instructed, but there would be a rise in the driveway soon that would give him a perfect view. If he saw she hadn’t left the county road’s shoulder, he might just go back and move her himself.

  His reaction to the potential danger wasn’t out of the ordinary for him. Jumping into the role of mega-hero wasn’t new for him either. But what was new—and unsettling—was how the young woman in the car had affected him. His reaction had been sexual and raw and he felt ashamed. He smacked his head with the heel of his hand. God, did I just call her beautiful? What would Rachel think?

  eleven

  Forgodsake, Ed,” Debbie Sue grumbled, “we’re gonna meet an old lady from El Paso, not the Pope.” Sitting in her pickup in front of Edwina and Vic’s cream-with-powder-blue-trim mobile home, big engine idling and wasting gas, she tapped her horn for the second time.

  It was Saturday morning and they had accomplished a mirac
le in re-scheduling their salon customers for the day. Debbie Sue had already wasted enough of the bonus time squeezing into her Wranglers; she wanted to waste no more.

  She still hadn’t figured out the necessity for her and Edwina to meet with Isabella Paredes and her granddaughter, but she was willing to go along rather than make waves. Besides, they were killing two birds with one stone, so to speak. They had already told Justin they would install surveillance equipment today.

  Toward the end, in the backseat of the pickup were a couple of motion-sensitive cameras that could blend into any décor and capture a picture of any human who crossed its eye, as well as an innocuous hardbound book that was, in reality, a motion-activated DVR. The book’s title, How To Do Home Plumbing Projects, was sure to be ignored by most people who saw it.

  Over the past few years, as their funds had allowed, the Domestic Equalizers had accumulated gadgets of varying levels of sophistication, including an eavesdropping device they had acquired in New York City. Some of their equipment was already outdated. It seemed that one device had no sooner been paid off before another came on line with the promise of being better, quicker, quieter and unfortunately, most times, cheaper. Debbie Sue longed for newer and better equipment, but as difficult as keeping up with current technology was, neither she nor Edwina was excited about spending Styling Station funds on equipment for the Domestic Equalizers to use. The beauty salon was still their bread and butter.

  Debbie Sue kept her complaints about their equipment to a minimum. Even outdated stuff beat none at all. And it sure beat sitting and waiting for hours on end eyeballing a subject or the haphazard method of putting a watch under a tire to be crushed when the vehicle moved, forever freezing the time of its departure.

  After agreeing to work for Justin, Debbie Sue had done her homework online and learned the devices ghost hunters used—infrared thermometers, ion counters and/or electromagnetic field detectors, things that were too costly to consider. She was glad to leave ghosts and the spirit world to Sophia and let the Domestic Equalizers concentrate on earthbound subjects known as humans.

  The double-wide’s screen door opened and closed again, giving her hope that Edwina was on the way out.

  Minutes later, Debbie Sue had her hand on her pickup’s door latch, set to march into the mobile and hurry Edwina up, when the skinny brunette appeared wearing bright yellow jeans and some kind of white, floaty tunic top with a huge turquoise-and-yellow floral pattern. She was typically accessorized—enormous earrings, a black-and-white cowhide purse the size of a third-world country, half a dozen bangle bracelets clicking on each wrist, makeup worthy of a beauty pageant queen and in one hand, a Sonic Route 44 Dr Pepper. If the locals who knew her saw her any other way, they would think she was ill. Debbie Sue sighed and watched her gingerly make her way down the five wooden steps that led from a small wooden porch attached to the double-wide.

  To take those steps any way other than carefully would be irresponsible, because the woman was wearing three-inch wedge heels on size-ten feet. The shoes could easily be described as her trademark since she was rarely seen wearing any style but that one.

  Edwina climbed into the pickup and plopped onto the passenger seat. She deposited her belongings, reached for the seat belt, buckled it snugly and heaved a great breath. “What are we waiting for, Dippity-Do? Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Debbie Sue knew debating the number of minutes she had been waiting would be pointless. She rarely won an argument with Edwina. Not because she was always wrong, but because she usually wearied of trying to sort out some of Edwina’s logic and gave up.

  She slowly backed out of the caliche driveway to avoid spraying the area with dirt and dust. “What’s Vic doing today, working on his bike?”

  “Lord, yes. Since he got that damn motorcycle he’s become obsessed with getting it in top shape and meeting his old navy pals at Terlingua again. What about Buddy, is he home?”

  “He started work on the deck on the back of the house. He was so eager to get at it, we didn’t even eat breakfast. I’m surprised at how well he’s doing. He’s never built anything in his life.”

  “Wait!” Edwina threw her arm across the cab and struck Debbie Sue’s shoulder. “I forgot something!”

  “No. You. Did. Not.” Debbie Sue put firm emphasis on each word. “I’ve used a quarter tank of gas waiting for you.”

  “Well you could’ve turned off your motor.”

  “Ed. Whatever it is, if you don’t have it now, you’re not going to.” She cast an eye at Edwina’s purse. “Besides, you’ve got everything in the world in that overnight case you call a purse.”

  “But—”

  “Forget it, Ed. We’re already late. I’ve gotta drive like a bat out of hell to get to Justin’s on time.” Debbie Sue steered her pickup toward a left entrance to the Odessa highway. Looking over her shoulder, she pressed the accelerator and the pickup’s engine responded. “I’m starving. I was hoping we’d have time to run through Hogg’s drive-thru and grab some breakfast, but too late for that.”

  They rode without talking all the way through Big & Rich booming from the radio with “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy).” When the commercials began, Debbie Sue turned down the radio. “What were you doing, anyway? I was beginning to think you’d backed out on me, that you’d changed your mind about meeting this psychic.”

  Edwina crossed her arms over her flat chest, lifted her nose and sniffed as if she were offended. “I was fixing your breakfast. Unlike some people I know, Vic and I did have breakfast. Sausage patties and Vic’s homemade biscuits and cream gravy. I was putting a sausage patty dipped in gravy between a biscuit for you. And a Styrofoam cup of fresh-brewed coffee. I was putting it all in a sack, but I set it down when I had to hurry up and grab my purse. I didn’t pick it up again.”

  Debbie Sue gasped and stared agape at Edwina’s profile. She really was hungry and no one made better biscuits or gravy than Vic. “Ed, dammit, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I just did tell you.”

  They made the rest of the trip without talking, with Edwina staring straight ahead, arms crossed over her chest and Debbie Sue mentally snarling and gnashing her teeth. She turned up the radio, needing to be calmed by George Strait’s sweet voice crooning “How ’Bout Them Cowgirls.”

  As they approached Justin’s cattle guard, Debbie Sue saw a white economy car parked just inside the gate, to the side and away from the driveway. “Guess that’s them.”

  “I only see one person,” Edwina said, leaning forward and squinting.

  “Me too. And she looks young. Didn’t you say Isabella Paredes is old?

  “Older than I am. Hell. She’s older than my mother.

  “Maybe she’s laying down in the backseat.”

  “What backseat? Hell. Maybe she’s dead.”

  “Ed, don’t say that.”

  “Sorry. You know I’m kidding. What I can remember about her is that she’s a pretty small woman. That was fifteen or so years ago. Maybe she’s shrunk some more.”

  “Now that’s entirely possible. Just look at Maudeen. If she gets any smaller she’ll just disappear.”

  “Oops, I think she’s spotted us.” Edwina hunkered down.

  “Don’t pull up beside them on my side. I don’t want to be the closest. She might remember me. You talk to them.”

  “Oh, Ed, she isn’t gonna remember you after fifteen years. You said you only saw her the one time. But I don’t mind doing the talking.”

  Stopping within a few feet of the car, Debbie Sue killed her pickup motor, slid out of the cab and started walking toward the white car. “Sophia?”

  The driver’s door opened and the woman got out. “Yes. Debbie Sue?”

  Sophia was a girl, almost a kid, Debbie Sue determined. Couldn’t be more than twenty-five years old. “Nice to finally meet you.” Debbie Sue glanced into the car’s interior, but spotted no other occupant. “I don’t see your grandmother.”

  Sophia shift
ed her stance, pushed her hair back and bit her lower lip.

  Debbie Sue was proud of the fact that since she had become a hairdresser, she had also become “bilingual.” Thanks to her experience listening daily to women and their ups and downs—and a few men—she understood body language as well as she understood English. She had no trouble translating that this girl was nervous. Something was terribly wrong. Maybe the older woman was sick. Hell. Maybe she was dead, just like Edwina had said. “I hope she isn’t ill.”

  When Sophia didn’t reply, Debbie Sue tilted her head and narrowed her eyes, studying the girl’s face. “Sophia?”

  Sophia began talking in a gush, spilling a story of the recent loss of her grandmother. She wept intermittently, stopping occasionally to dab at her eyes with her fingers.

  Fuck!

  As Sophia talked, concern for Justin Sadler and his money grew in Debbie Sue’s mind and she hated that she had recommended to him that he pay this woman’s travel expenses. Debbie Sue listened without interrupting, mostly because her brain was scrabbling for what to do next. She glanced over her shoulder once to reassure herself that her partner was still seated in the pickup. If Edwina heard what was going on with Sophia, she might have one of her fits. Dealing with one person having a meltdown and bawling was hard enough. She didn’t need one of Edwina’s fits on top of it.

  Debbie Sue dug deep and struggled for genuine sincerity. “I’m sorry for your loss, Sophia. But why didn’t you tell me this when I called you the first time?”

  “I was looking for a second job when you called,” Sophia said. “I’m broke. It took every cent I had just to make this trip. I don’t want to sound like I’m whining, but Gran Bella was ill for such a long time. Between the medical bills and the funeral expenses—”