A South Texas Christmas

Neil reached for his coffee. “No need to worry. Worry can’t change anything. Besides, I never wanted to be rich.”

Which couldn’t be more true, Neil thought. He’d never been a man obsessed with acquiring a fortune. He lived modestly, on a place out of town, where the only neighbors he had were coyotes and sometimes bear. He’d purchased the land with money that his father had left him when he’d died of a sudden heart attack. James Rankin had only been forty-five years old at the time. His father’s premature death was an everyday reminder to Neil that money couldn’t buy happiness or immortality.

“Well, you’ll never be destitute,” Quito remarked fondly. “So if a client didn’t keep you at the office, what did?”

“Connie!”

“Your secretary? What’s the matter with her?”

“Nothing. She answered the phone,” Neil quipped.

Quito chuckled. “Isn’t that what you pay the woman to do?”

“I pay her to do what I tell her to do. And I told her not to answer the phone,” he said with a grimace. “On top of that, she made me talk to the caller.”

“What a hell of a thing for her to do,” Quito said with wry humor.

Seeing that his friend was practically laughing, Neil grinned. “Okay. Call me crazy, but I’ve had a hell of a week. I’m not a private investigator, Quito, but ever since I put that damn picture of Darla Carlton in the San Antonio Express, I’ve had to try to play Mike Hammer.”

Quito chuckled. “You’re showing your age with that reference. And that shouldn’t be so hard for you, Neil. You already have the playboy part down.”

“You’re as sharp as a tack today, old buddy,” Neil retorted, while thinking the sort of experience he’d had with women wasn’t likely to be helpful with Ms. Raine Crockett. She didn’t sound like the type who could be easily charmed by a man. “So why don’t you advise me as to how to deal with nut cases?”

Quito glanced at him. “Is that what this last caller was, too?”

Neil released a weary breath and started to answer, but the waitress appeared with their food. Neil waited until she’d served them and the two men had started to eat before he continued the conversation.

“Actually this one wasn’t a kook. In fact, she sounded pleasant enough, only a little strange. And two things she said did intrigue me.”

“The caller was a woman?”

Neil nodded as the conversation with Raine Crockett played over in his mind. He realized he was eager to talk with her again. And not just because she might accidentally be a lead to Darla Carlton. There had been something innocent and vulnerable in her voice. Her words had touched him in a way that had taken him by complete surprise; a fact that he wasn’t about to share with the sheriff. Quito would think he was crazy and Neil would probably have to agree with him.

“A very young woman,” Neil answered. “Her name is Raine Crockett.”

“And what was so intriguing about this Raine Crockett?” Quito asked, then added, “I might be able to help.”

“I’m probably going to need it,” Neil told him as he picked up his fork and shoveled it into the potatoes and gravy. “First of all, she said she was calling from a ranch north of Goliad, Texas. That’s not all that far from San Antonio.”

Quito nodded with deduction. “That’s where Linc’s stepfather was from.”

“Right,” Neil responded. “Now add that to the notion that this young woman said her mother’s past identity had been lost.”

Quito frowned. “What the hell does that mean? The mother doesn’t know who she is?”

Neil turned a palm upward in a helpless gesture. “Don’t know yet what it means. And this young woman was reluctant to explain anything over the telephone.” Scared was more like it, Neil thought, and he was eager to find out why. “But she had the timing right. Her mother apparently lost her memory twenty-four years ago. That’s when Darla disappeared.”

“Could just be coincidence,” the sheriff told him in a dismissive way.

“Could be,” Neil agreed. “But I’m calling her back this afternoon and I’m going to do my damned best to get some answers from her.”

Quito was silent for a few moments as he ate and thought about Neil’s words. Then he warned, “You’d better be careful, Neil. There’s plenty of con artists out there just waiting to pounce on people searching for missing family members. You might turn around twice and realize she’s taken you for a ride.”

“No chance,” Neil said with a shake of his head. “I’m not that dumb. At least, not where women are concerned.”

His friend grunted with amusement. “Since when?”

Neil chuckled. “All right,” he conceded. “I’ve made a few bad choices in my lifetime. But the lessons have made me wiser. Never believe a pair of pretty blue eyes.”

Quito glanced across the table to Neil. “What about green ones? Or brown? Or gray?”

Laughing, Neil held up a hand. “Whoa, buddy. I can only deal with one color at a time. And I haven’t seen Raine Crockett’s yet.”

A week later, Neil shoved up the cuff of his white shirt to expose the face of his watch. It was past twelve thirty. Far past. And so far he had not seen any sign of Ms. Raine Crockett.

Maybe the young woman was one of the con artists that Quito had been warning him about, Neil thought, as he studied the people milling about him. Maybe she’d lured him down here to San Antonio just for kicks, just to watch him squirm and know that she’d caused him to lose time and money.

Restless now, he rose from the wrought-iron bench and walked over to the river’s edge. At this section of the river walk in downtown San Antonio, the nearby shops were richly decorated with Christmas trees and colorful blinking lights. Shoppers were thick and people carrying parcels were strolling the sidewalks while enjoying the warm afternoon.

This morning in New Mexico he’d left blowing snow and temperatures in the twenties. When he’d stepped off the plane at Stinson Municipal Airport, he’d been hit with sunshine and balmy south winds. If Raine Crockett turned out to be one more kook, he could at least say the weather and the scenery had been an enjoyable break from winter in Aztec.

And speaking of scenery, he thought, as he noticed a slim young woman walking quickly in his direction, he could look at this sort of Texas rose all day long. Honey-brown hair swished and bounced against the tops of her shoulders as her long, shapely legs carried her forward. Black high heels were strapped around her ankles and a sweater type dress of powder blue covered her shapely body.

Black sunglasses shielded her eyes from the bright Texas sun, but even so, he could see that she was beautiful, like a graceful rosebud among a patch of prickly pear.

He was still admiring the woman when he realized she was walking straight up to him. Powder blue. She was wearing powder blue, he thought with sudden dawning. This was Raine Crockett. The woman he’d been waiting to meet!

While he tried to gather his shocked senses, she stopped a few feet from where he stood next to the ragged trunk of a Mexican palm tree. Her smooth forehead was creased with uncertainty as she studied him.

“Pardon me, sir,” she said. “Is your name Neil Rankin?”

The south Texas accent slowed her words and made his name sound more like a melody. He felt his heart jerk with odd reaction.

“That’s me,” he said. “Are you Ms. Crockett?”

Nodding, she slipped the glasses from her face and offered her free hand out to him. “Yes, I am. Hello, Mr. Rankin.”

Her hand was small and warm inside his. He shook it, then held it firmly between the two of his.

Smiling faintly, he met her gaze with a directness he’d acquired in law school. She had green eyes, he noticed instantly, a cool, willow-green that reminded him of early spring when the air still had a nip to it.

“Thank you for meeting with me.” She let out a long breath that told Neil she must be nervous about this rendezvous. Well, he could tell her that he wasn’t exactly calm himself. He hadn’t been expecting to meet with a woman like the one standing before him. He’d expected someone with average looks, not an ingenue in a siren’s clothing.

“No. I should be the one thanking you, Ms. Crockett. I know this whole thing has caused you a lot of inconvenience.”

Hell, Neil, what has come over you? he silently cursed himself. He was the one who’d been sitting around in airport terminals, shuffling luggage and booking a hotel room. He was the one who’d had to leave his law office and put off more important and profitable clients.

His being here was his own fault, though. He was the one who’d allowed Ms. Crockett to persuade him to fly down here to San Antonio when he should have stuck to his guns and told her a big, flat-out no. He should have told her he couldn’t go traipsing off to another state just to check out a woman’s hunch.