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  A DEAD RED HEART

  A DEAD RED HEART: Lalla Bains is done with Billy Wayne's lovesick antics. The last straw comes when he litters her beloved red Cadillac with poetry scrawled on paper snowflakes, but that doesn't mean she wants the homeless war veteran to drop dead at her feet—with a pair of blue handled scissors sticking out of his chest.

  Lalla, a high fashion model turned aero-ag pilot, certainly doesn't need any more distractions during the simmering summers in the San Joaquin Valley of California. Her tight-wad, widowed father is now a born-again lady's man, a disreputable crop-dusting competitor threatens her business, and last but not least, she worries whether the sultry redhead in the local police department is taking more than a professional interest in her honey, Sheriff Caleb Stone.

  But being the exasperating, pushy, tenacious gal she is, Lalla believes the dead man deserves a better homicide investigation than that of the creepy Modesto detective who seems to slither across her path every chance he gets.

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  A Dead Red Heart vs 6.6.12

  © 2011 RP Dahlke

  Published in the USA by Dead Bear Publishing

  A Dead Red Heart is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and incidents are entirely the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be copied, transmitted, or recorded by any means whatsoever, including printing, photocopying, file transfer, or any form of data storage, mechanical or electronic, without the express written consent of the publisher. In addition, no part of this publication may be lent, re-sold, hired, or otherwise circulated or distributed, in any form whatsoever, without the express written consent of the publisher.

  Credits:

  Many thanks to my friends, readers, fellow authors and family who kindly read and made suggestions for this story: My cousin Beth Phillips Englehart, authors: Victoria Heckman, M. Louisa Locke, Carol Towiss, Jinx Schwartz, and as always, my sweet husband, Lutz Dahlke.

  Thanks to Joe Maxwell, and "Hey Ray!" for patiently answering my questions about police work in the Modesto area.

  My Editors are:

  Christine LePorte. http://christineleporte.com

  And Lisa Cox PhD

  Book cover designed by Stan Tremblay. http://FindTheAxis.com

  Dog tags added by Karen Phillips: http:/karenphillips.com

  Many of the characters names in this book were borrowed from the roll call at Ceres High School... you know who you are.

  There is a real Pippa Roulette and she's a redhead and a pistol, just not this pistol!

  Dedications:

  To my granddaughters Simone & Hanna Shanahan

  to their daddy John Shanahan, my forever flyboy: 1964-2006,

  and to my daughter, Dettre Schmidt Galvan, who always inspires me.

  Chapter One

  "Billy Wayne? Wake up! Come on now," I said in disgust. "This is getting out of hand. You've got to stop this nonsense."

  I like having a man at my feet. Tough guys who grovel are my favorite, though I'm not averse to a little toe kissing when appropriate. I leave the toe kissing for those uneven date nights when my sweetie, Sheriff Caleb Stone, is not on duty and I'm not neck deep in summertime work as a crop duster. None of which had anything to do with the man presently draped across my feet. Dead drunk, I figured, looking down at the patriotic red, white, and blue ribbons binding his ponytail. I was too late for that heart-to-heart I'd come for; he was already out cold.

  Caleb warned Billy that his continued attentions towards me would be ill advised and considered harassment—his words, not mine. Caleb's belief that a fellow Marine should always be able to pull himself out of the fire didn't take into consideration that Billy's alcohol-doctored post-traumatic stress disorder was not conducive to any such persuasion.

  His obsessive interest in me stopped for about a week. Then, in the Save-Mart parking lot, I had to shove my way through a crowd surrounding my car. I stood with the rest of the slack-jawed gawkers ogling the fluttering white paper snowflakes acting as a second skin to my vintage Cadillac. With one hand I swiped up a handful, and with the other I waved off the spectators. "Practical joke, folks, nothing special."

  I didn't have the heart to report this latest infraction to Caleb. Billy Wayne, I knew, was shy, easily startled and would panic if Caleb should feel compelled to make good on his threat of a restraining order. Instead, I decided I would confront him myself. Make him understand that his attraction to me, though flattering, was never going to go anywhere.

  So that's why I was now in the alley behind Mr. Kim's Chinese restaurant. I held my breath against the smell of garbage and knelt down to shake Billy Wayne's shoulder. He rolled away and onto his back, murmuring something I couldn't hear. I followed his eyes as they drifted down to his dogtags chained to a dark stain spreading across his nearly new white T-shirt, and his hands clutched to blue handled scissors sticking out of his chest.

  In the gusty twilight, his paper snowflakes whirled up into the air and cartwheeled merrily down the dark alley towards freedom. I leaned in their direction, aiming for flight, for help, for anything that would get me away from this horror, and I would've succeeded too, except for the tight grip he had on my ankle. I squatted down next to him. "Billy, please, let me get you some help," I said, gently pulling his fingers off my ankle.

  He was trying to speak, his breath choppy gasps as he struggled for air. "Too late," he said. "The more there is the less you see."

  A speck of light shifted into shadow, crept across the dirty walls and disappeared. I jerked to my feet. "Help!" I croaked. The sound echoed back to me like a bad recording. Whatever I thought I'd seen was gone. I knelt again and touched his neck for a pulse. It was there and then it wasn't.

  With a strangled sob, I struggled to get myself under control, and turned to go for the help he no longer needed.

  Chapter two:

  The owner of Mr. Kim's Chinese Restaurant gently set me down in front of a good strong cup of hot green tea laced with plenty of sugar. I felt the touch of his fingertips on the back of my hand, lighter than a thought, and just as quickly withdrawn. I looked up into the fathomless black eyes set into deep worry wrinkles and heard the weedy chime of his native Vietnamese in his American English. "Miss Bains, you too close to ghost. Not safe here. You must stay away."

  With these words of wisdom, he silently disappeared behind the doubtful barrier of swinging glass beads to the relative safety of his kitchen.

  Caleb entered the front door trailing one of his deputies behind him, and I immediately felt the tension creasing my forehead ease a bit. His deputy, Kenny Everett, passed Caleb for Mr. Kim, but Caleb simply held up his hand, indicating that he should leave it. Having served as military MP in Japan, Korea and eventually China, Caleb's version of an interrogation with the elderly Vietnamese would be quietly respectful. He sat down across from me and cupped warm hands around my cold ones. "Hey. You okay?"

  "Fine, fine," I said, hanging onto the small porcelain teacup.

  He nodded thoughtfully, doing that humming thing he always does when he's thinking. "You said he was alive when you found him? Did he say anything to you?"

  I felt ashamed that I could ever have thought Billy a nuisance. How could I think he was an embarrassment to me, when now the poor guy was dead; and with only me, the woman who rejected him, to hear his final words—such as they were.

  "He whispered some nonsense about being able to see—or maybe it was the more you see, the less you see. Not something I'd choose as my dying words, that's for sure. Not me. I'd be screaming the name of the bastar
d that did it." I felt a chill run through me, and clenched my teeth to keep them from chattering.

  Caleb gave my cold hands a gentle squeeze. "Billy Wayne could be hard to take when he was off his meds. We'll find out who did this." Caleb was one of the few people who'd bothered to take an interest in a fellow Marine who'd fallen on hard times, especially after his succinct communication dipped into one syllable sentences.

  He drew me up, and I leaned into him, my forehead to his, begging for the wrestler's hug I usually got, the one that would confound my breathing, and leave me clearheaded again. Instead, he took my elbow, and passing his sergeant, said, "I'm taking her around to the alley."

  I dug in my heels at the mention of the alley. "Is this really necessary? I already gave them a statement. Can't do it, Caleb, not again."

  But no amount of heel dragging was going to change his mind.

  "Take a deep breath, Lalla. It's not like you haven't done this before, so better now while it's fresh, right?"

  Yes, I'd had the practice. Hard to believe it was only a year ago I'd found the body of a young woman whose greed had finally gotten the better of her.

  In the alley, city homicide detectives acknowledged the right of a fellow police officer to be there. Their acceptance very pointedly did not extend to me. I shrugged off the sour looks and turned away. The view didn't get any better. I turned away from the sagging bundle against the wall that once was Billy Wayne Dobson, and instead concentrated on working up enough energy to return Detective Gayle Rodney's sneer. In my limited experience, Rodney was better with toothpicks than he was at solving crimes. I ought to know since last year I solved his murder investigation for him. Fat lot of good it was going to do me now.

  Rodney took the toothpick off his lip and raked lazy-eyed glances over my body, his drawl confirming our mutual contempt.

  "Miz Eula Mae Bains."

  Caleb's quick squeeze on my elbow reminded me to behave.

  "It's Lalla, as you well know, Detective." Not that I wasn't proud of my namesake. God knows, I'd be thrilled to have enjoyed the spirited eighty-nine years of my great-aunt Eula Mae, but Lalla was bequeathed to me by my deceased brother, and I wore it with pride.

  Rodney shrugged and pretended to consult his notebook. "You came here to see Billy Wayne?"

  "I did," I answered tightly.

  "You do this often? Come to meet homeless guys in dark alleys?" Rodney made it sound dirty, like I might be the type who was bent just enough to step into garbage stained alleys, and engage homeless men in some illicit behavior.

  "I wasn't here to rifle through his shopping cart, and as far as conversation went, it wasn't much. He was pretty far gone by the time I got here."

  "Was he a problem for you?"

  "Not really."

  The damp clay eyes lit up, amused at my obvious discomfort. "Sure he was. Snowflakes, right? All over that pretty red Caddy-lac." He squeezed one eye shut and pointed an imaginary gun at my face. "He left love notes on it, snowflake love notes, I heard. Bet that made you mad."

  "You can holster the loaded finger, Detective. If he had glued toys all over my car and stood it on end in the middle of town, it still wouldn't be enough for me to kill him."

  He snorted, but holstered the doubtful weapon. "He say anything to you before he croaked?"

  "I don't think it would make sense to you."

  Caleb pinched the skin under my elbow, but I could feel his mood lift under the scowl he kept up for benefit of the detective. His fingers gently stroked my skin in a message that said, relax.

  I had to agree, now wasn't the time to hoist the verbal repartee.

  "He was right there, leaning against that wall next to the garbage can. He said something I couldn't understand then fell down across my feet. I rolled him off, and that's when I saw... I saw the scissors sticking out of his chest."

  Caleb whispered something to Rodney, and the detective's eyes shuttered once, then his chin jerked up in dismissal.

  "Can you make it home by yourself?" Caleb asked, walking me out of the alley.

  "Sure," I said, doing a stiff march beside him. "I'm fine, fine."

  His sigh calculated the shock of the last hour, the high octane oolong and sugar ride I'd been on for the last fifteen minutes, and how long it would take me before I plowed into a stop sign. He signaled his sergeant who promptly stuffed me into a sheriff's car.

  "I'll come out tomorrow, give you a lift into town for your car, okay?"

  "I'm fine, fine," I bleated, my head bobbing like a marionette.

  He squatted down next to the car window. "Lalla, look at me."

  Instead of doing as he asked, I stared at the matching flyspecks on the windshield. I knew I was not at my best; white around the mouth, my troubled eyebrows bunched up against a recent horror that wasn't going to go away anytime soon.

  I licked at dry lips. "Then it was some kind of altercation with another homeless guy?"

  "Maybe. Not your problem anymore, okay? Okay, sweetheart?"

  When I nodded, he said, "I'll call you." Then he stood up and slapped the roof of the car, turned, and walked back to the huddle of detectives.

  He'd been right to insist I ride home with Kenny. I was out of steam, the last of my adrenaline left in a puddle on the dark pavement of the alley behind Mr. Kim's Chinese Restaurant.

  When my widowed father announced that he was up for a triple bypass, and would I mind taking a few days to come home and help him settle his effects, since he probably wasn't going to live much longer, I packed a bag and flew home from New York City leaving behind a wobbly career as a runway model, and a disastrous divorce from a philandering Puerto Rican baseball player. That was four years ago, and since then my hypochondriac parent has decided he's going to live after all. I stayed, and now run what's left of my dad's cropdusting—make that Aero-Ag, to be PC—business. Unfortunately, all of it is now in free fall what with environmental issues, pest control issues, and all the housing developments blotting out the farmland that used to be the mainstay of our business.

  Others may have something to say about a childless, twice divorced, forty-year-old ex-New York model hiding out in Modesto, California. But except for the new school that may or may not be built at the end of our runway, life is pretty good. Or it was, until I tried to talk some sense into Billy Wayne Dobson.

  The porch and hallway lights were on, and lights flickered from under the door of the TV room where my dad and his arthritic Chihuahua, Spike, have bunked since the fire last year singed his eyebrows, most of the interior, and definitely the last of my patience.

  Spike, hearing the drop of my keys onto the hall table, trotted up to greet me with a tail wag and a snarl, showing me a few teeth.

  "Teeth cleaning needed again? I'll speak to him for you." He took my comment with his usual disdain, saluted me with a squeaky fart, and limped down the hall.

  "Don't stay up because of me," I muttered, following after him. I didn't intend to do anything other than open the TV room door wide enough for Spike to slip through, and close it again. No sense in going over today's debacle. Any time I can procrastinate on a much deserved lecture works for me.

  In the dim overhead light of the hallway, I peered at what I thought was a note my dad had left for me. Tomorrow's work? I looked closer. Tacked to the door, were three hand printed letters. Done with a fine point Sharpie, I supposed. Nice and black. It said, DOA.

  I read it again. DOA. Something to do with the dog? Dog on…? Done? Arrival? The only DOA I knew of was... D-O-A. as in Dead On Arrival.

  A chill ran through me. I reached out to turn the knob, and giving the door a violent shove, slammed the heavy oak against the wall.

  The TV was on, his feet in white socks dangling over the edge of his Barca lounger, his eyes closed, head lolling to one side.

  "Dad?" I stood at the threshold, waiting for some sign that he was okay.

  "Dad?" I breathed the word again, then barked, "Dad!"

  With no response, I c
harged into the room, turned on the lamp next to his chair and lifted his limp wrist to feel for a pulse. He was warm, his pulse strong, and steady. I gathered his thin frame into my arms, crying, "Oh, thank God! Daddy, wake up."

  And he did, grumbling and sputtering, "What the hell's going on? Is the house on fire again?"

  I squatted down next to him, wiping at my tears and laughing. "I thought.... Oh Dad, I'm sorry I woke you, but I have to go call Caleb, and then we need to talk."

  Chapter three:

  Caleb and I stood together watching the forensics team pack up and file past, shaking their heads, the signal for no sign of a forced entry.

  "Lots of prints to sift through," one of them said. "Though not much chance that the intruder left any of his own."

  Closing the front door on the last one out, Caleb drew me into his arms and hugged me close, and thankfully squeezed me until I gasped. Then expelled a quick giggle; a reflexive gesture to the explosive emotions I'd been through today.

  "This may not have anything to do with Billy Wayne's murder," Caleb said. "But, in any case, I'll put a man outside your house."

  "Don't," I said, pulling back and then leaning my forehead onto his. "I'll set the alarm. Noah didn't 'cause he thought I'd be home before dark. He fell asleep with that damn TV on and wouldn't have heard the Second Coming." I felt my voice quaver with the effort. "I've been sent a message and the bastard has made his point crystal clear. Mr. Kim was right. I shouldn't have been there."

  "I can move my gear into your house for the duration."

  I did a rueful grin. "You know how I am in the middle of the season," I said. "Three a.m. start-up time, planes flying in and out all day. I don't sleep more than four or five hours a night this time of year. You here, I wouldn't get any rest at all. Besides, message sent, duly noted."