Cactus Heart by Jon Talton Page A

talk.”
    â€œAre you okay? Is Sharon okay?”
    He looked at me like I was an idiot. I held up my hands in surrender and we sat in silence. Finally, I went into the kitchen and came back with two beers. He took one in his massive hand, studied the label with disgust—it was a Sam Adams—but he drank.
    I was suddenly aware that I was naked under the robe and my crotch was still delightfully wet from Lindsey, and all in the presence of the chief deputy. He didn’t seem to notice. I had never been good at guy talk, where everything real was submerged subtly beneath words of sports and work and women. And I was particularly at a loss in Peralta’s company, where his sheer presence overwhelmed everything like a mountain dropped into flatlands. So we sat. I thought of Lindsey, of her body and expression as she pleased herself atop me. The twelve-foot-tall bookshelves that Grandfather had built kept watch over us.
    â€œTell me you own a television, Mapstone,” he said at last. “Even you’d want to watch the History Channel.”
    So I took him into the little study and he took over Grandfather’s desk chair. With the tube on ESPN, he became a contented self-contained unit. I went back into the living room and read for a while, James Morris’
Pax Britannica
, immersing myself in the adventures, characters and follies of the British Empire. It was the kind of book I wish I could write, but now, at forty, I knew I might never have the time or the talent. Still, Lindsey gave me a bookmark with George Eliot’s quote: “It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
    Later, when I could hear Peralta snoring, I went to the linen closet, pulled out a comforter, carefully spread it over him and shut down the house for the night.

9
    The trill of the phone pulled me out of a hard, dreamless sleep into a sun-filled room. I was just in my bedroom, seven forty-six on the digital clock next to the photo of Lindsey from the San Diego trip.
    Lorie Pope’s voice jumped at me. “David, did I wake you?”
    â€œNo,” I groaned and swung out of bed onto unsteady feet.
    â€œYou always needed at least seven hours of sleep, as I recall,” she said. “So last night must have been interesting.”
    â€œNot the way you think.”
    â€œReally?” she said. “Isn’t that a wonderful word?
Interesting.
May you live in interesting times.” She laughed her fine, crystal laugh.
    I pulled on some shorts and walked to the kitchen, where I poured orange juice and drank it in one long swallow.
    â€œI don’t have anything new to leak, my dear.” I pulled aside the blinds and looked into the yard. The oleanders and bougainvillea needed trimming, the joys of a nine-month growing season.
    â€œI’m calling to make a deposit, my love,” Lorie said. “It’s only fair.”
    I could hear computer keys clattering in the background of her voice.
    â€œRemember your skeletons in the wall? And the man who was executed in the kidnapping? Jack Talbott? Remember he had a girl with him?”
    â€œRight. Frances Richie.”
    â€œShe’s still alive,” Lorie said.
    I sat at the wicker kitchen table, my heart pounding a little harder. “Really?”
    â€œI shit you not,” she said. “She is still at the women’s unit at Florence, where she has been since 1942.”
    â€œHow did you find this out?”
    â€œI’d like to say it was terrific shoe-leather reporting, but actually, somebody called and left the tip this morning. One of the clerks passed it along to me.”
    I thanked her and hung up. Frances Richie had been twenty-four when she was arrested with Jack Talbott in Nogales. That would make her about eighty-two now. A true life sentence.
    My head a little clearer, I went to see if everything of the night before had merely been a strange dream. The living room was sunny and serene behind the