I sat up. Jake looked as irritated as if the baby had been woken from its nap.
“Who is it?” I questioned, pinching the bridge of my nose.
He shrugged. “Some kid in a green pickup. I’ll talk to him. You take it easy.”
I pushed up from the sofa. “I’m fine.” The last thing I wanted was Jake thinking I needed coddling.
“Suit yourself.”
I went out onto the front porch flanked by Jake. Kevin O’Reilly, Boy Archeologist, was climbing out of one of those battered green forester trucks (minus the ranger insignia).
“Howdy,” he called strolling toward us.
Boy Howdy, in fact. He was a good-looking kid, no doubt about it.
“Hey.”
Kevin mounted the porch stairs, shooting a quick look at Jake, who stood there, arms folded like he was posing for Bodyguard Magazine. “I heard you had an accident. I came over to see how you’re doing.”
“A-okay.”
Self-consciously he handed over a two-pound box of See’s candy. “I don’t know if you like chocolate.”
I ignored the queasy roll of my stomach. “Who doesn’t like chocolate?”
“I don’t like chocolate,” said Jake.
Kevin looked Jake up and down. Jake looked Kevin up and down.
“This is my friend, Jake Riordan.” I introduced Kevin, “Kevin’s one of the archeologists I was telling you about.”
“Kevin O’Reilly,” Kevin said offering a hand.
They shook; I was relieved it didn’t turn into an arm wrestling match then and there. It was funny because Kevin did look like a younger version of Jake. They could have been cousins. Same gene pool.
“A pleasure to meet you — sir,” Kevin added politely. Jake’s eyes narrowed as though he were amused. I think it was amusement.
“Uh huh. You’re camped where exactly, Kevin?”
Kevin pointed out the ridge. “We’re right back behind that little mountain. In Spaniard’s Hollow.”
“Walking distance?”
“Sure.”
“Come in and have a cup of coffee,” I invited.
“No, I’ve got to get back.” Kevin glanced at Jake standing there like a monolith at my shoulder. “Dr. Shoup wanted to invite you to have dinner with us. We can show you around the site, answer any questions. Maybe reach an agreement before the lawyers get involved.”
“Sure. When?”
“Tonight.”
God not tonight, I moaned inwardly in an unsleuth-like spirit that would have bitterly disappointed Grace Latham. So it was a relief when Jake ground out, “We’ve got plans.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“Yes,” I said with a glance at Jake.
“Great,” Kevin said. He smiled at me, his green eyes warm. “Glad to see you’re up and around, Adrien.”
“Thanks.”
Jake and I walked back inside as Kevin reversed in a wide arc and drove away.
“That was nice of him,” I said.
Jake grunted.
“The others are more Poindexter. You’ll see. If you stick around that is.” I dropped the candy on the nearest chair and felt my way through the obstacle course of furniture. There was still something weird with my vision; it seemed cavern-dark inside the house after the brilliance of outdoors.
“Yeah?” Jake didn’t sound particularly interested. “What’s the fishing like around here?”
“Fishing or trolling?”
“Fishing.” He shut the door with a small bang that sent my nerves jumping.
“Good, I think. I don’t know about Lake Senex, but the rivers are full of trout and bass.” We were talking about fishing?
Apparently we were. “I should have brought my poles,” Jake said surprisingly. “I guess I can rent a couple in town when I pick up a fishing license.”
“Planning on staying?”
“Just till you wise up.”
“I’m flattered you think that’s a possibility.”
“Yeah, well it’s lucky I’ve rolled a lot of vacation.”
I tottered back to the couch and Jake asked, “You want some lunch?”
“Bastard.” I added fretfully, “Can’t you hear the tom-toms?”
“No. What do they say?”
“White man need more pain killer.”
“I thought you were the strong silent type.”
“Me? You’re obviously thinking of one of your leatherboy friends.”
I kept my eyes closed during the charged pause that followed this. At last Jake said mildly, “Since you’re feeling chatty, maybe you’ll fill me in on the drug charges.”
I rubbed my temples and said, “It’s a frame. My belief is Ted Harvey planted that crop.”
“Ted Harvey being your handyman?”
“Not so handy as it turns out.”
“What’s your arrangement with him?”
I opened my eyes, surprising an expression on Jake’s face I didn’t recognize. His gaze met mine briefly, veered away.
I said, “He lives here rent free. I pay the utilities and a hundred bucks a month for him to keep an eye on the place. He’s supposed to take care of any repairs, and arrange to have someone from town come and clean up every so often.”
“Aren’t you the guy always short of cash?”
“Yes, and if I had any brains I’d sell the place.” But it had been in my family for over a century. Nor would I ever be able to afford anything comparable on my own.
“And your theory is that Harvey is growing and selling pot on the back of your property?”
“I don’t know about selling it, although he seems like an enterprising chap; I think he forged a letter to the Tuolumne College Archeology Department.”
“Why?”
“Why did he forge it?”
Patiently Jake reined me in. “Why do you think Harvey forged it?”
“For one thing he’s the only person in a four hundred mile radius who had access to my stationery or signature. For another, the college was instructed to make checks payable to the Pine Shadow Ranch.”
“To the ranch?”
“As though it were a business entity, you see? Then Harvey, I’ll make you a bet, cashed those checks locally without any hitch because everyone knows he handles the ranch maintenance.”
“But you don’t know this for a fact?”
“I didn’t have a chance to check on it.”
“It’s not bad,” Jake admitted. “Small towns tend to be informal about that kind of thing. Everybody knows Harvey, knows he works for you. Someone might assume you had authorized him to act on your behalf; that would set a precedent.”
“A bit of forgery, a bit of larceny, a touch of chicanery. I wonder which one got him killed — and why the body was moved.”
“Now that’s a jump.”
“When I described the man I’d seen to the sheriff the first name he suggested was Ted Harvey.”
“But he’d think of Harvey anyway since Harvey lives on the premises.”
That was true. I hadn’t considered that.
“But Harvey’s missing.”
“Says who? How do you know he’s not on a fishing trip?”
“His truck is here.”
“Maybe he’s with friends. Or he could be lying low. How do you know he didn’t hit you?”
“Why would he?”
“Maybe he doesn’t like visitors after ten o’clock? Maybe he’s used to dealing with folks less civilized than yourself?” He rose. “What do you have to eat around here?”
I left him to figure it out, leaning back and closing my eyes. Jake had a point. I needed to see a recent picture of Harvey. Criminal investigation begins with the victim. At this point we were not even sure who our victim was.
After a few minutes of listening to Jake bang around the kitchen, and trying to convince myself I didn’t feel so bad, it struck me that I had really underplayed this concussion thing in my own writing. Jason Leland was routinely knocked on his noggin and an hour later was back to chasing bad guys backstage, upstage and all around the town. The reality was a shattering headache to end all headaches, blurred vision, a touch of nausea, and pulverized neck and shoulder muscles. But at least the old ticker was still keeping time.
* * * * *
When I woke several hours later, Jake was outside reducing the timberline to a pile of kindling. For a time I stood at the window admiring the bronzed musculature of his bare chest as he sweated and chopped wood with manly ferocity. He looked right at home, ax in hand, his blond hair shining like miner’s gold in the mountain breeze.
Yep, my vision was definitely improved.
Wandering into the kitchen, I found canned stew simmering on the back burner. A taste off the wooden spoon informed me Jake had doctored it up with several cloves of garlic and the vintage Tabasco sauce in the cupboard. If anything could clear his sinuses it was this recipe.
I was having a bowl when Jake walked in buttoning up his shirt.
“You look better,” he observed giving me a close look.
“I feel better.”
He washed up at the sink then dished out a bowl of stew at the stove. Getting a beer out of the fridge, he sat down across from me.
“You know we could probably pay someone to drive the Bronco. You could come back to LA with me.”
I put my spoon down. “I already told you —”
“I know what you said; now hear me out.”
I waited.
“I think maybe you have stumbled onto something here. I checked out Harvey’s trailer while you were sleeping and I’m pretty sure it’s been ransacked.”
“I think it always looks like that.”
“Drawers emptied out; the couch cushions and bed mattress ripped open? The fridge dumped over?”
“Well … no.” No, that was different. That explained what had been going on in Harvey’s trailer the night I’d been knocked out.
Jake studied me thoughtfully. “If Harvey’s dealing then you may have wandered into the middle of a local drug war.”
“Here? In Calavares County?”
“You scare me when you say things like that,” he said seriously.
I guess it did sound a bit Our Townish. “Okay, I know the drug problem has reached the suburbs, but this doesn’t feel like a drug deal gone bad.”
“Please don’t use the word intuition to me or I will slug you. Aren’t you the guy who told me one of the golden rules of mystery fiction is that detectives may not solve the crime by use of intuition and/or acts of God?”
Jeez, who knew he was listening that closely? “That’s in books, Jake,” I protested. “Aren’t you the guy who told me a cop’s gut instinct is one of his best tools?”
“You’re not a cop, baby. You’re a bookseller. You don’t have a gut instinct. You have a knack for nearly getting yourself killed.”
I batted my lashes. “I didn’t know you cared.”
His eyes held mine briefly. “The hell you didn’t.”
“What can happen with you here to protect me?”
Jake made a sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh which blew soup from his spoon across the table. How could you resist such a big lug?
“Just don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said.
* * * * *
After dinner Jake built a bonfire in the fireplace and we had our coffee and See’s candy in front of its crackling warmth. For a guy who didn’t like chocolate, Jake consumed his fair share. He also showed a propensity to lick his fingers. I found this distracting: the slow slide of his pink tongue up his naked finger. He had big hands, strong hands, but the fingers were long and sensitive, and I kept wondering what those hands would feel like on my body.
Had he ever had sex with a guy that didn’t involve ritual and role-playing? What was he like in bed with a chick?
“Here’s mud in your eye,” I said. We clinked coffee mugs. I’m not sure what was in his but mine was straight coffee. Concussion and alcohol don’t mix, although by now my headache merely felt like the worst hangover of my life.
Despite his misgivings, Jake seemed more relaxed than I’d ever seen him. I speculated it was because we were so thoroughly alone, unobserved by curious or judging eyes.
“How’s the book going?” he asked idly, glancing at my open laptop. “What’s it called, Death for a Ducat?”
“Wrong play. You’re thinking of Hamlet.” Jake snorted at the idea he would be thinking of any such thing. “Mine’s based on Titus Andronicus, the play so bad Shakespearean scholars have tried for centuries to prove Shakespeare didn’t write it.”
“Good choice. So tell me what your book’s about.”
I had told him several times what my book was about, but I had known even then he wasn’t really listening. I offered the highlights and Jake rolled his eyes or shook his head depending on how far out of touch with reality my plot machinations seemed.
“Aren’t you supposed to write what you know?”
“What do I know? I’m a thirty-something gay man with a dodgy heart. I sell books for a living. Who wants to read about that?”
“Good point.”
“I don’t have a lot of practical experience with crime.”
“You seem to be a magnet for it though.”
“Don’t try to cheer me up.”
Jake grinned his crooked grin and reached for another chocolate. “It is a little suspicious from a cop’s perspective.”
I set my coffee cup on the wooden floor and stretched widely. Despite the coffee I was crashing. This was the longest stretch of time I’d spent with Jake. I kind of hated for it to end.
“How old is this place?” he queried, staring up at the wide and blackened ceiling beams.
I focused on him with an effort. “This room was part of the original stage stop. It was built in 1847. The rest of the building isn’t quite as old. My great great grandfather started ranching in the early 1900s. He added on to the existing structure.”
“It’s a nice chunk of property.”
I nodded.
“Funny to think of your relatives walking around these rooms, sitting where we are.”
“Yep.” Not something I really thought about, but yes, I was the last of the line. At home in Pasadena that seemed incidental, but here I had a sense of history, of generations.
Jake seemed to be pursuing a train of thought. He eyed the stacks of books, which I had neatly separated between paperbacks and hardcovers. “So this is kind of a working vacation for you?”
I guessed that this was about as close as he would come to asking what had triggered my Bat-Outta-Hell. I prefer frankness, but our friendship was so delicately balanced, I wasn’t sure it could survive plain speaking. Not at this point.
“Yeah, something like that,” I replied. “Turns out Granna was a mystery buff. She’s got a collection of first editions to rival the Library of Congress.” I filled him in on the thrilling discovery that my favorite mystery writer had a male pseudonym. “I’ve got this theory that Inspector Bull and Mr. Pinkerton are closeted gays.”
I was mostly joking but Jake said crisply, “See, that’s the kind of queer thinking I despise. According to the fags everybody who’s anybody was really homosexual. You name it. Michelangelo, Alexander Hamilton, Errol Flynn, Walt Whitman. It’s pathetic.”
His angry scorn silenced me.
“You’re just kidding yourself if you believe being a fag is common or normal or some lifestyle choice.” His gaze was hard and shiny like river pebbles.
“I don’t think it’s a choice. It isn’t for me anyway.”
He said bitterly, “It sure as hell isn’t for me.”
If it were, Jake would choose not to be gay. No news there.
I squeezed the back of my neck, trying to ease the pain knotting my bruised muscles. Jake continued to glower into the fireplace, the shadows flickering across his profile.
Cowboy wisdom: never itch for something you ain’t willing to scratch for.
“I’m going to turn in,” I said.
No answer.
I rose and went into the bedroom, stripped off and rolled myself in my sleeping bag, the flannel feeling like a caress on my aching body. The old feather mattress felt like a cloud beneath my tired bones. A dusty cloud, granted. I sighed and then nearly jumped out of my skin when Jake spoke from right above me.
“Roll over. I’ll rub your back for you.”
“Uh —” My voice made a sound it hadn’t made since it changed.
I turned on my belly and Jake unzipped my bag like you’d unpeel something soft and vulnerable in its shell, which is how I felt as he laid his big hands on my shoulders.
“Relax.”
Oh sure. I caught my breath then expelled it as Jake rested his palm on the small of my back. He didn’t move, didn’t speak. I waited; the hair at the nape of my neck prickled. There was something unpredictable and dangerous in the silent dark.
There was a whole lot about Jake I didn’t know or understand.
“Stop thinking,” he said quietly. “Just let go. Let yourself feel.”
I closed my eyes and concentrated on the weight of his hand, the dry warmth of his skin, the length of his fingers. Hard hands. Callused fingertips. But the touch was comforting. You wouldn’t think that something as simple as someone resting their hand on your back could comfort, but it did. The heat from his hand seemed to wash through my body, suffusing my nerves and muscles. I could feel that touch through to my genitals, as though he had cupped my balls.
He flattened the heel of his hand against the base of my spine, smoothing back and forth. I felt my spine lengthen, my hips spreading. It wouldn’t take much to turn this into something else, but Jake’s touch was non-erotic. He began to knead my back and shoulders, slowly, thoroughly, but still easy, still … gentle. He worked his way along the length of my arms, lightly stroked the back of my fingers. I shivered. Within a couple of minutes I was utterly relaxed, basking in that healing warmth.
I murmured my pleasure. He made a soft sound that could have been a hushed laugh.
Resting his hand on my tailbone once more, Jake positioned his other palm in front and slid his hand up the length of my spine as though erasing the kinks, vertebra by vertebra, until the pads of his fingers pressed into the base of my skull. He gave the back of my neck a gentle squeeze and I gave another shiver.
“Better?”
I nodded.
Jake repeated that careful pushing motion over and over until I was melting through the flannel bag lining into the ticking of the old mattress. I felt flushed, boneless, totally at ease. My head stopped hurting for the first time since I’d left the hospital. You hear about the healing power of touch. I felt it now — and from the last person I’d have expected.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been treated to a simple back rub. There was a lot to be said for being touched, stroked, petted.
At long last Jake’s hands stilled.
“Good-night,” he whispered.
“‘Night,” I mumbled on the edge of sleep.
A moment later sleep disappeared in a jolt of awareness as Jake kissed the nape of my neck and ... departed.