Read Online Cactus Heart by Jon Talton - Free Book Online Page B

dress.”
    I continued to look outside, just like she was doing.
    I heard a word that sounded like “blue.” Then she said, very clearly and not in an old-lady voice, “It was navy blue. It was the first store-bought dress I ever had in my life.”
    I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want to break the spell.
    â€œYou bought it in Phoenix?”
    â€œIt was a present. From someone very dear to me.”
    I spoke carefully. “From Jack? Jack Talbott?”
    I turned to face her and she merely shook her head. Then her voice seemed to gather strength and timbre from being used again. “Jack Talbott. I haven’t thought of him in years.”
    Now it was my turn to be silent.
    â€œHe was just a boy, really. We were so young then. He had a hard life and didn’t know any other way of getting by in the world, so he drank, he ran with women, he fought, he had a very quick temper.” She paused.
    â€œHe was your lover?”
    She strained to hear. “Lover?” she asked loudly. “They told me never to talk about that, never.”
    â€œIt’s okay.”
    She inhaled loudly. “He always treated me like a lady, like a queen.”
    â€œHow did you meet him?” I leaned against the wall. Maybe the distance between us made her feel safe.
    â€œI worked at the Owl Pharmacy on Adams Street,” she said. Her sentences had a very even cadence until the last two words, when they felt an emphasis whether they needed it there or not. “Is it still there?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œWe’d come from Oklahoma in 1936 and papa worked off and on in the produce sheds down by the railroad tracks. But a truck backed over him one day and he died.” She paused and breathed heavily. “So mother worked as a maid, but she died of TB, and I got a job at the drug store. I could eat lunch for free at the soda fountain.”
    She reared her head up a little and took another deep breath. “He was walking by one day on the sidewalk, and I was inside by the pharmacy counter, and we saw each other through the window. And he turned back and came inside. I didn’t want to seem easy, but I couldn’t stop looking at him, couldn’t stop smiling. And he couldn’t either. What is your name?”
    â€œDavid Mapstone.” I could see Heather starting back in the room, but she picked up on my eyes and came in slowly, quietly, behind us.
    â€œJack Talbott worked for Mr. Yarnell. Jack wanted to open his own garage someday.” She raised her head again, as if inhaling the memories. She paused. “Mr. Yarnell took kindly to him. Mr. Yarnell was a kind man.”
    She licked her mouth with a huge gray tongue. “Do you believe in love at first sight, David Mapstone, sheriff’s deputy? Do young people still believe in that?”
    I shrugged not-so-wisely. “I’ve seen it happen.”
    â€œNever met a girl in stir who didn’t believe,” Frances Richie said. It was strange to hear a woman who looked like a grandmother use a word like
stir
so casually. But she was nobody’s grandmother.
    â€œWhy did Jack take the twins?” I was so damned clever. Just toss in the hard question after the softballs.
    â€œJack.” It was the only thing she said. She rubbed her eyes.
    I repeated the question and she stared at the wall.
    â€œDid you know he was kidnapping Andrew and Woodrow Yarnell?”
    Her heavy head seemed to slip down a bit. Then she started to snore and for a long moment I thought she was gone. Then she raised her head and met my eyes, and her gaze was suddenly intense.
    â€œI had a hat with that dress, David Mapstone,” she said, sounding the syllables of my name like they were a strange, lost language. Her eyes were bright with tears. “It was the prettiest thing I ever owned. A little, blue felt slouch fedora, but for a girl. Like in the movies. I felt like a movie star. The jail matron in Phoenix