Skygods (Hydraulic #2) Read online

  I poured three glasses of wine as Molly listed Cassady’s virtues. Cassady was something of a hippie rover who’d found employment as an outdoor adventure guide in Lyons a few years back, and settled nicely into our circle of friends. He wouldn’t tell us where he was from, but I suspected Minnesota. Molly’d been panting after him since he first spoke that glorious “ya, you betcha,” and “nice weather, eh?” Jaime turned a little green and downed half her glass the instant I placed it in her fingers. I had a feeling she wouldn’t be joining us for many more girls’ nights. She smacked her lips appreciatively.

  “Good stuff, Trilby. Local?”

  I nodded, anxiously shifting as she leered.

  “You know, if the talk in Lyons about you and Cabral hooking up again is true, you’ll have to kiss your boozing days good-bye.”

  I twirled the stem of my wine glass between my fingers. “I’ve thought of that. If we decide to hook up again.”

  “Just think…no more of that mouth-watering, heady drink of the gods. Never again will you press it to your lips and let it slide down your throat, warming every beautiful pipe and gullet of your body. Mmmm.”

  “Wow,” Molly whispered.

  I shrugged, refusing to let Jaime get to me. “It’s a small price to pay to help him stay on the wagon.”

  She sighed. “You’re a lovesick, cherub-cheeked Kewpie doll, you know that?”

  Eleven o’clock rolled around and still no call from Samuel. Now I was worried. What if there was trouble with his plane? What if someone mugged him? Anything could happen in New York. For all I knew, he was slouched against a grimy wall of the subway system—

  And, providentially, my phone rang.

  “Oh thank God!” I mumbled, diving for it. Molly and Jaime stared at me strangely as my fingers fumbled to answer. “Hello?”

  “Kaye, it’s Samuel.”

  “Hi!” I shoved down the anxiety. “You got back to New York all right?”

  “Yes, several hours ago.”

  “Oh. Why didn’t you call?” I frowned, glancing at the clock again. “And for that matter, why are you still awake at one fifteen in the morning?”

  “Kaye.” Uh oh, not good. “I got my note in the mail today—the one I wrote to you.”

  I couldn’t miss that he’d said “my note” and “I wrote.” I moved our conversation to my bedroom and closed the door. “And?”

  “It’s my handwriting.” I also couldn’t miss the tremble in his voice.

  No. “Are you sure? I mean, it’s such a short note, anyone could have written it.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “And just a couple weeks ago, you were positive you couldn’t have written it.”

  “Kaye,” he persisted, “I’m sure. It’s my handwriting. A little more slanted and swoopy than normal, but without a doubt, it’s mine.”

  “But what if—”

  “Think about it. I obviously wanted you gone, as efficiently as possible. In normal circumstances, I would have reasoned with you. But I was high off my butt with no inhibition and frankly, little care for whom I was hurting. It makes sense. Who else would know how much a stupid note would affect you? You made me promise a long time ago never to send you packing with a tree house sign, that I’d tell you to your face. I was a bastard for doing it, and it worked. You divorced me.”

  By the time he finished his explanation, his voice had grown low and hoarse.

  “Samuel…” I didn’t know how to finish. Yes, it had been a bastard thing to do? Tell him it didn’t matter anymore because it was seven years ago?

  “I was arrogant,” he said quietly, “thinking I knew what was best for you. Even up to a few hours ago, I was so certain I could never again pull that stunt like I did with the keep-out sign on the tree house when we were kids—leaving you high and dry with no way down? I was ready to open your letter and find someone else’s writing on that sheet of paper. You think I’d be used to this—discovering what I’m capable of. But it always shocks me.”

  I had an odd feeling that he wasn’t really talking to me anymore. I cleared my throat, reminding him I was still here.

  “What if we had a handwriting expert examine it? I mean, there is a possibility you didn’t write it, correct?”

  He sighed. “No, Kaye. Just let that idea go. I’m sorry I put it into your brain.”

  I shook my head, even though he couldn’t see it. “No. I’m glad you told me what you were thinking. It makes the whole friendship thing a lot easier when we actually talk to each other,” I teased.

  “Yes, I suppose it does. I enjoy sharing my thoughts with you. But you know what I enjoy even more?”

  “What?”

  “When you tell me your thoughts.”

  “Well, right now I’m wishing I knew what your home looks like. This is embarrassing, but I have no clue where you live—the Upper East Side?”

  “No, Inwood, near Fort Tryon Park. I’m a Westsider.”

  I blinked, surprised. So much for my visions of Samuel as a well-heeled, silk-stocking snob. “Maybe you can send me a picture so I can visualize you there.”

  I could hear his smile. “I’ll do that. It’s beautiful, lots of trails and wooded areas overlooking the Hudson River and the bluffs. At the base of my bluff is north Broadway, and it’s a different world—grittier, vibrant. I think you’d like it. Kaye?”

  “Yes?”

  He cleared his throat. “For what it’s worth, the content of that note is a complete and utter lie. It was a lie then and it’s a lie now. Do you believe me?”

  “Yeah,” I exhaled. “I believe you.” I glanced at the time, knowing I needed to let him go. “Good night, Samuel.”

  “Good night, Kaye. I miss you.”

  When I returned to the living room, Molly and Jaime lifted significant eyebrows at me.

  “Are you going het on me, lover?” Jaime quipped.

  I rolled my eyes. Ever since I’d pretended to be her lesbian life partner in a desperate bid to get answers from Samuel, she’d been merciless.

  “I suppose this year’s Pride rally is out,” she continued. “I want my Bryn Mawr sweatshirt back. Oh, and I’ll need to turn in my dossier of Samuel’s evils.”

  I slapped a hand to my forehead. “Frickin’ monkey junk, I completely forgot about that thing. Yes, burn it, shred it, whatever you need to do. I’ll get rid of mine, too.”

  “Are you ever going to tell Cabral about our little research project?”

  I thought of my lie list and the whole mess of crap we’d cleared up. But so much still lingered, like the embarrassing lengths I’d been willing to go for revenge. Heck, we hadn’t even gotten around to talking about Samuel’s public intox arrest several years ago. Would he be ticked over Jaime’s and my plotting? Oh yeah. Would he forgive me? Yes, he would. Maybe if I explained I was concerned about Caroline’s manipulations.

  Caroline Ortega, Samuel’s publicist extraordinaire. She was an enigma. She obviously hated me. But how much of her was genuine and how much was show? Samuel was certain he’d written the note, but I wasn’t so sure.

  “Molly, did I tell you that Caroline was the woman who helped me in New York City all those years ago?”

  “No!” Her eyes widened.

  Molly scooted over and I sat next to her on the sofa. Taking a deep breath, I launched into the tale of how Caroline had been the one to scrape me off the floor of the debauched brownstone where Samuel resided and offer the haven of her frilly bedroom. She’d called me Samuel’s “addiction,” and the idea hardened in my brain like one of his trilobite fossils.

  I stared at my hands, debating. “Molly, do you remember me telling you about the note Samuel left in my backpack, in New York?”

  She nodded, digging between the cushions for the remote and muted the television.

  “For seven years, I just assumed Samuel had written it. But now…I don’t know.”

  Her expression was rife with confusion. “Kaye, honey, why would someone else write the note?”<
br />
  “Maybe because they thought I was a burden. Maybe Samuel’s dad—”

  “No way,” Molly interrupted. “Alonso Cabral would never do something like that, especially to you and Samuel. But what if…” Molly bit her lip, unsure if she should voice her suspicions. “What if Caroline wrote it? You said she was there, right?”

  “See, that’s what I was beginning to wonder, but I didn’t know if it was just bias talking. Why would she do that, though?”

  Molly took another sip of wine. “Well, picture this. Caroline is miserable with Togsy, the magical loser fiancé. She sees Samuel is brilliant, handsome, and she’ll do anything to snag him. The only problem? He’s married, albeit, the marriage is shaky. So then you arrive and find him…you know. The perfect opportunity. He’s high as a kite; you’re passed out in her bedroom.” She grabbed a handful of popcorn and dumped it in her bowl. “She doesn’t think, she acts. She digs through the house and finds a sample of Samuel’s handwriting—maybe a Post-it on the fridge, notes from a class. Very carefully, she forms a note, mimicking his letters.”

  I got excited along with Molly. “Oh!” I snapped my fingers. “And Caroline’s a calligrapher. A very good one.”

  A groan interrupted our eager theorizing. “Now I remember why I don’t have any girlfriends—they screw up your head,” Jaime snarked. “The problem with your theory, niñas, is Cabral doesn’t write in calligraphy. Caroline’s an artist, not a master forger. Look, I get why you don’t want to think your boy toy wrote this thing. But now you’re making up a fairy tale with Caroline as the villain so you can vindicate the guy you love, plain and simple. Don’t be embarrassed, that’s the way women work.”

  “But you’re the one who told me Caroline was a manipulator. It makes perfect sense. She wanted Samuel, so she twisted the situation—”

  “No, she didn’t want him, not then. Remember, Caroline was engaged to Togsy at the time.”

  “That doesn’t mean she didn’t want Samuel,” Molly cut in.

  Jaime scowled at Molly. “I found an old engagement announcement in the Raleigh News & Observer featuring one Caroline Ortega and Lyle Togsender. They were childhood sweethearts, like you and Cabral. She proposed to him. She didn’t want Samuel. She wanted Togsy.”

  “But Togsy was a drug addict,” I fired back.

  “So was Samuel.”

  Ouch. That shut me up.

  Molly put a calming hand over mine. “Maybe she didn’t write the note, Kaye. Jaime’s right—as much as Caroline’s horrendous, we shouldn’t accuse her unless we have all the facts.”

  “But Samuel’s first instinct was that he didn’t write it.”

  “Of course he thought he didn’t write it,” said Jaime. “Put yourself in his place. You said he can’t remember what happened that night, and that’s got to be scary as hell. Seven years later, he suddenly finds out that hurray!—he didn’t screw that brunette woman you found him with. Now he’s going to question everything. You skip in and tell him he wrote you a note—something he hasn’t heard about until now. So he wants to believe that maybe he didn’t write it, that someone was messing with him like the brunette did. But look at the facts. Just because someone’s high doesn’t mean they can’t write a note. Samuel wrote a book while he was doing cocaine.”

  I bit my lip and forced that stubborn Trilby pride to bow out.

  Jaime studied me with shrewd eyes, then took a deep, courtroom breath. “Look, I understand why you want to put this on someone else, but it’s one stupid note. Let it go. Have I ever told you why the Latin neighborhood shuns me?”

  “I heard you made your ex-husband’s life a living hell.”

  “Yeah, prick. Juan deserved it. Most of it. Mothballs in his gas tank, gay porn subscriptions sent to his house—those were genius. But it wasn’t enough.” Jaime threw back her wine and swilled it in her mouth. She set the glass on my coffee table.

  “I hated that woman for falling in love with him when he was mine. For a home wrecker, she was always kind of sweet. Juan, on the other hand, was a horny, egotistical jackass. The only brain he had was in his other head, so there was no way Juan didn’t get into this woman’s pants. I was convinced they were humping like bunnies and I was very vocal about it, despite what Juan’s buddies told me. But I went too far.” She dragged a hand over her eyes, her head falling back against the couch. “I called Juan’s father pretending to be his weeping, ‘pregnant’ mistress. You don’t know Juan’s dad—he’s a tool. The aftermath was awful. Juan’s father went off on the woman, her parents, on Juan, pretty vicious.”

  “Let me guess—they really weren’t sleeping together,” I said.

  Jaime shook her head, eyes down.

  “Wow, Jaime,” Molly murmured.

  “Yeah, it was horrible. I left them alone after that, but it was too late. Once the families figured out what I’d pulled, the damage was done. It’s amazing I still have a law practice. I guess there will always be a need for divorce lawyers, right?”

  “Man. I am never stealing from your cookie jar,” I said.

  “My point is, divorce is never black and white, and the other woman isn’t always evil. Hell, she probably fought her attraction for a long time. Now I can see, plain as day, they love each other, as wrong as it was.” She leaned forward, hard black eyes meeting mine. “Stupid pranks are one thing. But if you love the asshole, don’t start accusing his friends and family to make yourself feel better, unless you’re absolutely sure they’re guilty.”

  “The letter does reflect what Samuel said to me in New York,” I conceded. “‘Go home, and don’t you ever come back here again.’”

  Jaime nodded. “Sometimes the simplest answer is the correct answer. Occam’s razor, bitch.”

  But the truth was, I’d rather blame Caroline than Samuel. If it turned out she had written the note, Samuel would have no choice but to eliminate her from his life. And despite her help in getting him clean and making him a success, that jealous, wicked part of me still wanted her gone.

  “Out of all the questions you could ask me, you want to know my history with Caroline?”

  My ire fermented over Samuel’s attitude during our weekly Q-and-A, until the tip of my tongue was bitter. Why on earth was he surprised I wanted to know more about his relationship with the woman who, up until a month ago, he’d chosen to give his heart to? I told him as much, and he sighed.

  “Kaye, she didn’t have my heart. You know this.”

  I strummed an angry, disjointed chord, refusing to back down.

  It was Sunday evening after a weekend of climbing in the mountains. Hector, Luca Guzman, and I had killed our muscles and blistered our hands scaling the National Park in hardcore training for the Longs Peak winter climb. Now I was tucked into my cozy apartment, the fragrance of baking chocolate chip cookies wafting from my oven. I’d dug out my heating pad and rested it on my sore shoulder muscles. My guitar was in my lap and Samuel was on speakerphone. A darn good evening, until he questioned my question.

  He relented. “Kaye, I’m sorry I’m so bent out of shape. It’s no excuse, but it’s been a rough couple of weeks.” Jagged exhaustion edged his voice. Worry began to replace anger and I wondered if that exhaustion ever went away. “If I tell you my entire history with Caroline, will you quit fretting about her?”

  I harrumphed, neither a yes nor a no.

  Samuel continued. “I first met Caroline when I was a sophomore at CU. Togsy and I were in the same major classes and became what you would call casual friends.”

  “You mean drug buddies?”

  “Yeah, eventually,” he admitted. “Caroline would fly out to Colorado a couple times a semester to visit…”

  Samuel explained that Caroline was also a writer, but her real desire had been to be a senior editor with Berkshire House Publishing where she’d been interning. Togsy had shared one of Samuel’s workshop pieces with her and she’d seen his potential. For months, she’d pestered him for his work-in-progress book, but he’d refu
sed, insisting he didn’t want anyone to read it until it was completed. But Samuel did send her his short stories, none of which had been picked up by publishers. It wasn’t until he moved to New York, broken by drugs and disappointments, that he had folded and allowed her to read Water Sirens.

  “She agreed the story was rough,” he said, “but saw the marketability of the book—especially if I intended to make it a series. We spent hours poring over the manuscript when I wasn’t high and she wasn’t cleaning up Togsy’s messes. It was a hard time for all of us. She wanted her fiancé sober and I wanted to get so high I wouldn’t remember your name.”

  Then I visited and subsequently slapped him with divorce papers, setting the wheels in motion for Samuel’s long battles in rehab. Though Samuel didn’t say it, I got the impression Caroline expressed her disapproval of my actions quite frequently.

  Once Alonso and Sofia talked their son into therapy and detox, it only highlighted Togsy’s failures. Lyle grew to resent Samuel. Then Samuel’s book deal came through and it was the last straw for Lyle Togsender. Just after Christmas, he broke his engagement to Caroline and moved out of the brownstone.

  “Caroline was devastated. I think, more than anything, that’s why she fought so hard to help me. My mother told you about my trouble in Raleigh and the court-ordered rehab?”

  “Yes.” Samuel politely refrained from mentioning that I had his arrest record. My oven timer buzzed and I set my guitar aside to pull out the tray. He talked while I laid warm cookies on a cooling rack.

  “I spent six months in a rehab center while Caroline worked tirelessly to edit my book for publication. She was adamant, and it was good to have her in my corner, though I didn’t really appreciate it at the time. In a way, she was vicariously helping Togsy through me. He wouldn’t accept her love and support, so I was the next best thing. My achievements are inextricably tied to hers. It’s caused problems in the past. The men she’s dated usually end up upset over the time she spends promoting the Water Sirens series. And the women I’ve dated think she’s a controlling shrew—not that those relationships went anywhere, anyway.”