Richfield & Rivers Mystery Series 3 - Venus Besieged (4 page)

Straddling
her back, I held her hips tightly between my knees and let my hands begin at
the base of her head, massaging her delicate ears and beautiful neck muscles
before straying briefly to brush my hand between her legs. Then on the way back
up I squeezed the muscles in her arms and released them slowly, massaging down
her spine, every bone, and intermittently stroking between her thighs, finally
focusing on her small soft buttocks, massaging their round perfection with my
right hand, while I slipped my left hand underneath her and performed a slowly
orchestrated, erotic kneading.

Her
body responded immediately, telling me she could only give in as I slid on top
of her and inside her, pushing with my pelvis against her back with every
stroke of my hand as she moaned and surrendered with one final thrust of her
small and sensual body. Rolling off her, I lay by her side, loving her, I now
believed, like I had never loved anyone.

"I
want this every night," she whispered.

Dappled
sunlight came through the window and for the first time I could see Callie
clearly—her gorgeous blond hair in damp curls, her eyes dreamy, and her body
thoroughly sated. She kissed me and clung to me.

"I
swear I could stay like this for weeks and never sleep or eat," I
whispered.

"We
have to get Elmo. He's been in the car for over an hour, unless you've lost
him."

"He
needs a girlfriend." I sighed at having to leave. "I'll go get him
and the luggage. Don't move. I want to come back to you exactly like
this."

I
got out of bed and grabbed my jeans off the rocking chair in the corner of the
small bedroom as a dark figure whooshed past the window like a shadow, a person
without form. I gasped and drew back.

"Someone's
outside," I whispered and threw my clothes on as Callie reached for hers.
"I don't think we locked the door."
I
should be a hell of a
lot smarter than that. What kind of crazy fool goes to a cabin in the woods and
leaves the door unlocked? Someone who’s in love,
I thought.

"There
shouldn't be anybody around here. The cabins are all empty until midweek for
Thanksgiving."

"Well,
there is.
Damn, I left my gun in the other room.
I crept into the dark
living room and groped from surface to surface until I felt the barrel of my
.38, palmed it, headed for the back door, and swung it open, pinpoints of
morning light penetrating the valley darkness. Seeing no one, I dashed for the
car and clicked open the lock to check on Elmo, whose teeth were chattering.

"Relax,
I'll be right back," I told him. Striding around the entire cabin, with
the gun aimed midair, I searched for signs of humanity. When I panned down to
the ground I spotted the fresh tracks. Large paw prints like those of a dog,
but too big for anything but a wild animal.

"Teague,
are you alright?" Callie stood on the porch above me.

"Check
out the size of these prints." I pointed the flashlight at the ground only
now beginning to take on light.

"Looks
like a wolf," Callie said quietly.

"So
you know what a wolf's paw prints look like, because I don't."

"Yes,
a wolf." She stared into the woods but her mind had traveled much farther,
searching the ethers for answers while I was left to examine the ground.

By
now Callie's connection to the cosmos and the messages she received through
some intergalactic-wireless-weirdness were almost routine to me. No longer
shocked by her comments about messages she received from the dead or the
near-dead, I accepted her and all she knew, felt, or divined.

I
guess that means I'm finally ready for her.
I thought about our very first meeting when she'd admitted we were
destined for one another, but insisted I wasn't ready.

"Go
back inside while I get Elmo. I don't want you wandering around with a wolf in
the area."

Callie
didn't obey, her antennae always up for signs she was being bossed, commanded,
or diminished.

"Please,
for me," I added quickly.

This
time she stepped back inside the house and I went to the car, hooked Elmo up,
and let him sniff around the pine needles and relieve himself before I unloaded
the luggage. It only took me about ten minutes but Callie, unable to stay
inside, was once again standing on the porch staring into the woods.

"In
Native American cultures, the wolf often represents wisdom, death, dying,
rebirth, and outwitting the enemy. It also confers the ability to pass
unseen." Callie seemed to be remembering things she had heard long ago.

"Passing
unseen worked for this one. So, based on the size of those tracks, the wolves
here must get as large as bears."

"Wolves
can be a totem—a personal-power animal for tribal people."

"Why
are they roaming around at dawn instead of off getting a latte at the
lake?" I said as I retrieved kindling from the cabin porch and carried it
inside for a fire. Callie preceded me, holding the door open so I could make
several trips.

I
immediately located a small desk and hooked up my laptop, creating a space
where I could work and see the creek; put a few bottles of wine in the small
fridge, along with the cheese; then stacked crackers and other items I'd
brought in the cabinet. I was happy to see Callie had already provisioned it;
she was far smarter about what foods we needed to actually create a meal.

My
idea of food was singular in nature: crackers I could eat out of a box, cheese
I could slice and eat out of a package, or a frank I could eat wrapped in
nearly anything that would bend and be digestible.

Callie's
language about food always sounded less like eating and more like
dating—broccoli
went with
cream sauce and
complemented
the filet,
asparagus
picked up
salmon's flavor and could be
accompanied by
brown
rice, and certain foods
could absolutely not go together
or the evening
would be ruined. The whole idea made me smile, and I sneaked up behind Callie
and kissed her on the neck.

"What
are you smiling about?" She turned, giving me her full attention, and
gazed into my eyes. "What were you doing right before you left L.A. to
come here?"

Her
intense focus took me by surprise. I froze.
Does she know about Barrett, has
her cosmic connection kicked in? Maybe she mentally saw me with Barrett.

"What
do you mean?" I replied, aware I sounded guilty.

"Just
that. You told me you had a meeting last night with Barrett about the
script."

"I
did meet her. We went to dinner just before I left to come be with you."

"Is
she why you left L.A. early?"

"What
do you mean?" I realized how completely stalling and stupid I sounded, but
she'd caught me off guard.
She came at me obliquely, so she knows
something's up.

"This
is a pivotal time for women, Teague. We have to be very careful. People will
try to steal women's power."

I
saw it first and, following my startled expression, Callie whirled in time to
see it too—the shadow-shape flashing past the window despite the fact it was
morning now. Its timing was bone-chilling as we spoke about danger to women,
but my salvation because it obliterated the Barrett topic.

Reaching
again for my .38 on the desk, I swung the door open suddenly and almost tripped
over the newspaper, which made me relax.
Newspaper boy,
I thought, not
wanting to find danger lurking in this quiet town at a time when I was focused
on my lover and my work. The shadow was obviously benign and merely associated
with the delivery of a morning rag with a masthead reading
The Sedona Sands.

Callie
took it from me, rummaging through its pages while answering my other questions
about who owned this cabin and how she'd found out about it, explaining that
she'd rented it from a woman she'd met one summer who now lived near the
reservation.

From
where I was standing I could see the picture in the newspaper: a crime scene
with police standing around some shrubbery next to a cliff, torn pieces of
material on one of the bushes, and an inset photo of a wolf's head. The
headline read WOLF KILLING STILL MYSTERY.

I
leaned in to read the body copy about the possibility of wolves roaming the
area in packs and residents who insisted they weren't taking out the trash at
night without toting a gun. There were other quotes from animal-rights
activists who insisted that stories like these turned people against perfectly
peaceful animals who were already endangered due to overdevelopment of their
native habitat.

Callie
looked perplexed and finally said, "Women are under attack from men, not
wolves—"

"And
you know that because—"

"I
feel it."

I
tapped the inset photo of the wolf's paw print. "As much fun as it is to
blame things on guys, I don't know any whose feet are triangular with four
toes." But Callie was preoccupied and went to the computer she'd set up on
the countertop, its surface made from a long, lacquered split log. The counter
separated the kitchen from the large main room whose floors were six-inch
planks of darkened wood worn smooth from decades of boots scraping across them.

Slivers
of light sliced through the panes in the big wooden window casings, defying the
orange burlap draperies. The invading ribbons of light wrapped around me and
across the burnt-orange leather couch and armchair and splayed across the
arrowhead-shaped slats of a weatherworn oak rocker that had most likely set the
tempo for more leisurely days.

"Are
you looking at an astrology chart, because every time you look at the planets
my love life goes south."

"I'm
looking up wolves. Did you know they can travel twenty miles a day searching
for food?"

"I
do that when I leave the Valley to eat in Bev Hills," I said, kissing her
to distract her.

"And
their jaws exert 1500 pounds of pressure per square inch so that they can break
open the bones of large animals and eat their marrow."

"I
don't
do that. I don't even like to take a nutcracker to a lobster
claw."

From
her expression, I could tell Callie was about to chastise me for constantly
horsing around, but before she could deliver the message, my cell phone rang
and I answered to Barrett Silvers's voice.

For
the first time since I'd known Callie, I felt like I was sneaking around on
her. I had nothing to hide but, because I feared Callie thought I was
concealing something, I began behaving as if I had something to cover up, and
before I knew it, I was code-talking.

"Hi.
Good. Same here. Yep. Safe trip. Good. Really. I'll start work tomorrow and let
you know." My words came out cryptically, and I sounded, even to me, like
I was in covert activities for the CIA. When I hung up, Callie was staring at
me with a questioning look—the kind that asked if I had anything I'd like to
share.

"Barrett
Silvers wanting to know if I'd gotten here and if I'd started writing."

"Doesn't
sound like strictly business," she said as a statement of fact, then
picked up the newspaper and headed for the deck.

"Damn,"
I groaned softly. "Look," I began as I blocked her path to the porch,
"Barrett's a very strange woman and she has the hots for every writer she
works with and I'm simply another writer she'd love to screw if she could
but—"

"You've
forgotten I'm psychic."

"Your
being psychic is irrelevant because I didn't sleep with her."

"Did
you have any sexual contact with her?"

As I
was about to deny I had, my mind flashed on Bill Clinton when his squirming
psyche, bad timing, and the need for an immediate response forced him to utter
those infamous words, "I never had sexual relations with that woman."
I felt empathy for Bill.

If I
could have Tivoed the entire Barrett telephone scene, I would have been able to
point out to myself that cryptic phone conversations could only result in my
ending up like horny politicians. From Callie's expression, I intuited that the
only acceptable cryptic phone conversation might be to tell a neighbor her
house was on fire or to give quick instructions on how to staunch bleeding.
Otherwise, I had better talk long enough for Callie to determine what I was
talking to another woman about. Her obvious jealousy seemed out of character
for a psychic woman whose desire to be with me had seemed, from the beginning,
intermittent at best.

"This
is so unlike you," I said, remembering the best defense is a good offense.

"No,
it's exactly like me. You've asked me to commit to you, so I'm asking you how
truthful you've been."

At
that moment I realized, for me, truth came in Starbucks' sizes. I could serve
up a tall truth—"She likes me." Grande truth— "She kissed
me." Or venti truth—"She fucked me." I couldn't go venti; the
words wouldn't come out of my mouth.

As
if saved by the gods, I heard a knock at the door and we both turned and looked
toward the sound, then at one another as Callie opened the door. Standing in
the doorway was a tall, broad-shouldered woman of indeterminate age, with long
straight hair that flowed over her right shoulder like black, silky fringe.