Triple Exposure Read online

  The waitress placed two bowls of broccoli soup before them and refilled their coffee cups. They stopped talking until she left, when Nicky forced herself to ask, “Do you love him?”

  “I hate hurting him. I do love him, though not the way I love you. He’s a good man.”

  Nicky shook her head in violent disagreement. “A good man would want you to be happy. He wouldn’t try to keep you with threats.”

  Beth smiled wryly. “Give him a little time. It’s been a terrific shock.”

  They ate in relative silence, hurrying because Beth had only an hour to spare from work. Nicky choked on the food.

  As they hugged in the parking lot, she said, “You know, Beth, this would be easier to do if I knew when I’d see you again.”

  “I don’t know. I’ll call you. Say hello to Meg and Natalie,” Beth said as she lowered herself into the Probe.

  A stab of guilt brought a flush to Nicky’s face, and she turned away.

  On Thursday evening when Meg opened her apartment door, she carried a large, woolly gray cat which stared at Nicky out of enormous gray-green eyes. “Nicky, meet Figaro,” she said, grinning mischievously, then whispered, “Don’t tell Denise I played hooky Tuesday.”

  Was it only two days ago? It seemed much longer, but she had no intention of telling Denise anything. She was nervous just being here after their romp in the bed. She hadn’t begged out of the invitation to forestall suspicion and to escape Natalie and Dan.

  Figaro leaped to the carpet and stalked off with tail high. Meg said, “He doesn’t know he’s a huge hairball. He thinks he’s a prince.” She smiled radiantly. “Denise is in the kitchen, putting together an Italian banquet. Come on, let’s get a beer to go with the lasagna.”

  Nicky followed her through an immaculate living room into a warm kitchen and greeted Denise, whose thin face was flushed with heat. “May I help?” she offered.

  “You can keep me company. Meg, why don’t you do the salad?”

  Nicky looked around the kitchen, thinking it extraordinarily clean and uncluttered—like the living room, where there had been no magazines or books or newspapers lying around. Didn’t they read? She sat at the table and Figaro jumped onto her lap, nearly causing her to drop her beer. “He doesn’t feel like he’s all hair,” she remarked, watching him hunker down on her cotton slacks.

  “Shove him off when you get tired of him,” Meg advised. “By the way, I don’t think I’m going to the Friday night show. I’ll be out tomorrow to get Brittle ready for the weekend.” She winked at Nicky, who frowned in an effort to discourage any flirting.

  Denise turned from the pan where she was layering the ingredients. “Did you get the photos back from the Sunday show?”

  “I’ll pick them up tomorrow. I did talk to Saturday’s show management. They said a professional photographer would add to the horse show. They even have a table in one of the exhibit buildings reserved for me.”

  “I’ll help if I can. I sure can’t help Meg with the horse.”

  “That’d be great,” Nicky said, feeling another pang of guilt. She vowed never to allow herself to be compromised by Meg again. Then she glanced at Meg and an unwelcome and unexpected spurt of excitement reminded her of the old saying, the one about “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”

  Praising Denise’s lasagna with the fervor of one who has transgressed and is trying to make amends, she ate twice as much as she wanted and felt bloated when she finally admitted she was full. “I need to walk a mile or two.”

  “Good idea,” Meg agreed. “Let’s just clean up this stuff and do that.”

  “I’ll stay here. You two go. I’ve got work to do from my class.”

  “Denise is taking a women’s creative writing class,” Meg explained. “She writes some interesting stuff.”

  Denise beamed at the compliment.

  Outside, in the early September evening—already dark and a little crisp—Meg hugged her lightweight jacket to her and leaned into the wind. “I like the feel of fall and I like you.” She grinned.

  “Don’t wink at me around Denise or around anyone, for that matter. I felt like a scumbag in there. We can’t do what we did again. You understand, Meg?” She thought she meant it.

  Meg gave her a knowing smile. “Whatever you say.”

  “Let’s hike a few blocks, and then I better go home.”

  On Friday, after mowing, she hooked up to Dan’s stock trailer. He warned her, “Remember, give yourself plenty of time to stop. Don’t crowd anyone. That’s a lot of weight behind you.” Dan studied the truck and trailer. “Brittle should have one of those fancy trailers.”

  “He’s lucky you let him use this, or Meg’s lucky, is more like it. You’re good to us.”

  He smiled, his face ruddy from the sun and wind, his eyes squinting in the light. “Just be careful around corners and stopping and you’ll be all right. And thanks for getting me off the hook. I’ve been away too many weekends.”

  Meg’s Rabbit was parked in front of the barn when Nicky bounced down the driveway, the empty trailer clanging behind her. Scrappy barked alongside and looked chagrined when she got out of the truck. “Didn’t know it was me, did you? Such a smart doggy.” She bent to pat his black curls and briefly glimpsed his small, white teeth. “You have such a nice smile.”

  Standing on a wooden box, clipping Brittle’s ears, Meg chewed her tongue in concentration. Horse hair rained around her. Tater, nickering for attention, pranced on the other side of the closed gate. Nicky stopped to wonder at the changes wrought in just a few months.

  “I’m about done here. I’ll wash him early tomorrow morning. Thanks for getting the trailer.”

  Nicky asked, “What time do you want to leave tomorrow?”

  “Seven, eight o’clock.” Meg gave her a warm smile. “Nattie invited me to dinner. Do you mind? Denise is meeting with her writers’ group.”

  “Why should I mind?” she asked, knowing that she would feel awkward around Natalie with Meg there. “I have to get my photography stuff ready.”

  She set her camera with film, tripod, pads of receipts and order forms, a metal box with change, and the developed photographs near the back door. Then she allowed herself to look at the answering machine. She always felt slightly nauseated when there was a message from Beth, but she couldn’t sit around the house waiting for her call, could she?

  Beth’s recorded words—“I’ll be out Saturday afternoon around two. See you then.”—filled her with despair. She couldn’t even tell her that she would be gone, or where. Glancing at the clock, she took a chance and called the law firm and was rewarded with a taped reply. Banging down the receiver, she returned to the kitchen.

  Natalie was busy at the stove, her back to the room. “Aren’t you going to be gone tomorrow?”

  “Yep. Will you be here?” Natalie looked slimmer, she thought, her dark hair falling in shiny curls to her shoulders.

  “I’ve got to work tomorrow. Why don’t you leave a note on the back door for Beth and ask Dan to watch for her?”

  Warming to her sister, Nicky thought it nice of her to care. “I’ll do that.” She waited for Natalie to turn around, suddenly wanting to see her face, to see if there were changes in it, too. “You asked Meg to dinner?”

  Natalie’s waves bobbed in a nod. She was all business at the stove, taking her cooking seriously. “Would you get me the soy sauce, please? And if you want, you can set the table.”

  Dinner was the usual good fare, although Natalie had less time to cook. The four of them were pleasantly relaxed with each other, but Nicky was too distracted about Beth’s message to enjoy herself.

  The next morning she taped a note to the back door before leaving with Meg and Denise. Quiet, making only necessary talk, they each sipped from cups of coffee. The truck windows were rolled down one-quarter of the way, and snatches of a meadowlark’s song reached Nicky’s ears. The cool freshness of morning drifted into the cab. By afternoon, at the horse show, Nicky kne
w, the air would be thick with dust and the ground hot and dry.

  One of the fairground exhibit buildings was open for refreshments, and Denise helped her set up a photography display. Nicky had several photo enlargements from the last weekend’s horse show to pin to the pegboard backdrop and an album of proofs to page through on the table provided. Denise offered to stay and handle any orders so that Nicky could roam the grounds with her camera.

  Cleaning off her camera lens, Nicky glanced at her watch as Meg’s Amateur Western Pleasure class entered the ring. It was four-fifteen. She figured Beth would have been here by now if she was going to come. Didn’t Beth want to see her badly enough to drive the distance? Didn’t she have enough spare time? Her guts twisted in the familiar knots brought on by these thoughts.

  She had checked with Denise after every class throughout the day and found that, not only had she taken more than a dozen orders, there were people asking for posed portraits of their horses. So she had spent the greater part of her time taking shots of horses—either mounted or at halter, in the show ring and outside it—and made enough to at least pay her expenses. She thought it an immensely successful day, a new beginning of sorts and knew that she owed at least some of this success to Denise.

  When they had loaded Brittle into the trailer, with his usual assortment of ribbons, and piled into the truck cab, they were tired, dirty and jubilant. As exultant as Nicky could be under the circumstances, she missed Beth and was inadvertently indebted to Denise. Did success always have a price?

  Stopping on the way home, Nicky offered to buy dinner. An argument ensued over who owed what. Meg felt she should be doing the buying. Nicky had to agree with her but suggested a compromise. “You pay for the gas. I, at least, owe Denise a free meal.”

  All day she had been sitting on herself. Wanting to be home to see Beth, she knew she had to put that thought out of her mind. This had been an opportunity to make some bucks. She wasn’t sure that she would skim much profit, after taking so many pictures of the same animals in different poses and then paying to have the film developed, but horse photography was still a learning process for her. She had decided to talk to someone at Photoplay, maybe work a deal with them.

  And now, as they walked toward the truck-stop restaurant, she looked back with longing at the truck and trailer parked under a light, where they had left Brittle munching on hay. She wanted to jump in the cab and hurry home, just in case Beth was still waiting—although she knew the chance of that was so slim it was almost nonexistent.

  Calling from a pay phone, she let the ringing continue until the machine came on and her own voice spoke in her ear. She listened to herself talk for a few seconds, still hoping someone would pick up the phone. In her mind’s eye, she saw the interior of the old farmhouse with Scrappy probably sneaking a nap on the furniture—forbidden territory for him.

  Meg looked up when she approached the booth. “Anyone home?”

  She shook her head and slumped on the bench opposite Denise and Meg. Smiling a little, she asked, “You racked up another Amateur Ail-Around trophy today?” Meg ducked her head and grinned. “Modesty doesn’t become you, Meg.”

  “He’s just a great horse. It’s not me—I know that.”

  “Denise, order the works. Would you like something to drink?”

  “Vodka and tonic and a steak dinner,” Denise said. “How does that sound? You know, they’re supposed to have pretty good food here.”

  “I think we should all celebrate,” Nicky said.

  Before Meg climbed into the truck, she walked around the trailer to take a peek at Brittle. Denise and Nicky waited in the supercab. Night had fallen while they were in the restaurant, and a lot of the heat had escaped into the atmosphere. Nicky shivered at the sudden drop in temperature.

  When Meg shrieked, Nicky was watching her through the side-view mirror. She was anxious to start home in case Beth had left a message. A chill of apprehension swept through her. “What is it?” she asked, jumping out of the truck, thinking perhaps something had happened to Brittle.

  “He’s gone!” Meg cried, running around the trailer and opening the tailgate. She searched the ditch, calling, “Brittle, Brittle.”

  They reached home around midnight, the three of them dog-tired and silent. The police had been called after everyone at the truck stop had searched in vain for the horse. Hoof prints had been found in the ditch nearby and along the shoulder of the road on the other side, where there were also tire tracks from a vehicle and trailer. The conclusion finally drawn was that the horse had been loaded into another trailer across the road and taken away. No one had seen anything.

  Nicky remembered the first time she’d seen Brittle clamber into a trailer. He was so well-mannered, she thought, he’d do whatever was asked, he’d climb into any trailer.

  She had no heart even for Beth’s handwritten letter, left with Natalie. She stood holding it while they hashed over Brittle’s disappearance with Dan and Natalie. They could hear Tater calling for his lost companion from the pasture gate. Nicky ached.

  In bed, after a shower that failed to soothe her, she opened the envelope and read:

  Nicky, my love,

  I understand your not being able to change your plans, because I know other people were involved. I didn’t know I could get away until yesterday, and you couldn’t have been more disappointed than I was today. So, you’re filling your weekends now. I suppose that’s good and I won’t attempt to discourage you from doing whatever you need to do to get through this. I’ll call you as soon as I can. Let’s have lunch again at The Hermitage Monday.

  Love always,

  Beth.

  She fell asleep after reading the letter three times. In her dreams someone stole Scrappy and sold him for ten thousand dollars.

  Chapter Ten

  Sitting across the table from Beth, Nicky told her what had happened over the weekend.

  Beth looked puzzled. “But why would anyone kidnap Brittle?”

  Shrugging, hoping nothing terrible was happening to the horse, Nicky said, “Beats the hell out of me. Janet Larson—she’s one of the horse show people—implied it might be to end his winning streak, but that seems a rather drastic solution.” She had spent Sunday with Meg. They had gone to the horse show and spread the word that Brittle had been stolen. “Meg has his papers. She says he can’t be shown or sold as a Quarter Horse without them.” Nicky sighed, afraid to give voice to Meg’s worse fear, in case saying it might make it happen, but she said it anyway. “Meg’s afraid he’ll be sold for meat.”

  “Horse meat is used to make dog food, you know.” Beth stared at her in disbelief. “Well, now what?”

  “Now we look for him, I guess. Meg was going to put some ads in newspapers and in the horse magazines. She was going to the sale barn.” A chill crawled across her scalp and down her back. She changed the subject. “So how did you get away Saturday?” Her gaze traveled greedily over Beth’s tanned face, paused at her lips, then followed the curve of her neck to her breasts, which were concealed by a tailored blouse. The need to do more than stare nearly overwhelmed her. She busied her hands with eating, forcing her attention elsewhere. “Was Mark out of town or something?”

  “Yes,” Beth admitted. “I brought Matt out to ride the pony, but I didn’t know how to tack him up.”

  Throwing her napkin on the table, Nicky exploded, “Shit, Beth. Is anything ever going to change? Because I need to get on with my life.” Surprised at her own outburst, she found herself panting from the unexpected anger. Did she really mean what she had just said? Probably not.

  Looking around at the only other occupied table on the porch, Beth leaned forward. “No scenes, Nicky,” she said firmly. Nicky knew how Beth hated calling attention to herself and thought she had gone into the wrong profession for her to be so self-conscious. “I’m doing the best I can. Be patient with me, please. And eat your food.”

  Nicky considered her spinach salad. It looked too good to waste. Putting her
napkin back in her lap, she ate. “What about Tater?” The pony hadn’t been ridden since Mark had found that unfortunate card. “He’s lonesome. Maybe you should move him somewhere else.” She wondered if everyone hurt themselves trying to inflict pain.

  “I’ll bring Matt out Friday after work. Could Meg be there? I’ve got the board money with me.”

  Nicky accepted the check. She needed it, after all. “I’ll tell Meg.”

  When they said goodbye in the parking lot, Nicky said petulantly, “I’m horny. A little loving would be nice.”

  Beth held her in a hug and whispered in her ear, “I feel the same way. I’ll look at my calendar. Maybe I can get away Wednesday at noon.”

  Nicky envisioned years of noon rendezvous once or twice a week. She was not overly enthused at the prospect.

  “Tell Meg I’m sorry about Brittle.” She peered at Nicky from the plush seat of the Probe.

  Nicky climbed into her truck and drove home. She had stopped at Photoplay that morning with her rolls of negatives from the weekend shows. Tomorrow she would start working one day a week, receiving for her labor free developing services.

  September sunshine differed from summer sunshine. It was mellower, as if its intensity had been burnt out, and it cast a soft, diffusive glow over the landscape. Flocking redwing blackbirds gathered shoulder to shoulder on telephone wires. Their calls reached her ears over the sound of the truck engine and the wind blowing through the open windows.

  Changing clothes and shutting Scrappy in the house, Nicky drove the Massey out of the barn and was met by the sight of her mother’s Volvo rocking toward her down the driveway. She pulled the fuel knob and coasted to a stop.

  “What are you doing on that thing?” her mother asked, emerging from the driver’s side.

  It surprised Nicky to see her alone. “This is Dan’s mowing tractor.”

  She took a step closer to where Nicky sat high off the ground. “Do you know how dangerous farm machinery is?”

  “I’m careful, Mom.”

  “Is your sister in the house?”