LITMIR.BIZ

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drove by my house just to spy on me,” Kilraven said with mock disgust. “What is the world coming to when a man can’t have a cup of coffee with a guest?”

      “A cup of coffee at a picnic table, outdoors, in freezing temperatures. Something wrong with the sofa in your living room?”

      “If people can’t see you, they guess what’s going on and they’re usually wrong. I didn’t want Winnie subjected to gossip,” he added quietly. “She’s an innocent.”

      Jon’s eyebrows went up over twinkling eyes. “And how would you have found that out?”

      Kilraven glowered at him. “In the usual way.”

      Jon pursed his lips. “Imagine that!”

      “It’s not serious,” came the short reply. “She’s a friend. Sort of. But I asked her to the house because I wanted to know why she painted that picture that was a dead-ringer for Melly’s raven drawing.”

      Jon sobered at once. He remembered his brother’s visit that night with the painting. “And?”

      “She said she started to paint a landscape,” Kilraven replied with a puzzled expression. “She didn’t know why she painted a raven, or those colors on the beads. She didn’t know how I knew it was her, either. I’ve never even told her that our ranch is called ‘Raven’s Pride.’”

      “We have those flashes of insight because it runs in our family,” Jon reminded him. “Our father had a cousin who was notorious for his very accurate visions of the future.”

      Kilraven nodded. “I wonder where Winnie’s gift comes from. She doesn’t know. Funny,” he added, “but Gail Rogers, the detective who’s helping me with our case, has those premonitions. She gets some gossip when she pegs a suspect that nobody else connected with a case.”

      The intercom buzzed. Jon answered it.

      “Agent Wilkes is on his way in with Agent Salton, and you’re all due for a meeting in ASAC Grier’s office in ten minutes,” Joceline said in a voice dripping with sugar. “Would you like coffee and donuts?”

      Jon looked surprised, as he should have. Ms. Perry never volunteered to fetch snack food. “That would be nice.”

      “There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts shop around the corner,” she reminded him. “If I were you, I’d hurry.”

      “I’d hurry?” he repeated.

      “Yes, because my job description requires me to type and file and answer phones. Not be a caterer,” she added, still sugary. She hung up.

      “One day, so help me, she’ll drive me to drink and you’ll have to bail me out of some jail where I’ll be surrounded by howling mad drug users,” Jon gritted.

      Kilraven patted him on the shoulder. “Now, now, don’t let your blood pressure override your good sense.”

      “If I had good sense, I’d ask for reassignment to another field office, preferably in the Yukon Territory!” he said loud enough for Ms. Perry to hear him as he opened his office door.

      “Oooh, polar bears live there,” she said merrily. “And they eat people, don’t they?”

      “You wish, Ms. Perry,” he shot back.

      “Temper, temper,” she chided.

      Jon was almost vibrating, he was so angry. Kilraven smothered laughter.

      “I’ll call you,” he told his brother. “And thanks for the information.”

      “Just don’t go off half-cocked and get in trouble with it,” Jon said firmly.

      “You know me,” Kilraven said in mock astonishment. “I never do anything rash!”

      Before Jon could reply, Kilraven walked out the door.

      RICK MARQUEZ STILL had his arm in a sling and he was like a man standing on a fire ant hill. “They won’t let me come back to work yet,” he complained to Kilraven. “I can shoot with one hand!”

      “You haven’t had to shoot anybody in years,” Kilraven reminded him.

      “Well, it’s the point of the thing. I could sit at a desk and answer phones, but oh, no, I have to be at 100 percent before they’ll certify me fit for duty!”

      “You can use the free time.”

      “Yeah? For what? Watering Mom’s flowers?”

      Kilraven was studying the dead bushes at the front porch. “They look dead to me.”

      “Not those ones. These ones.” He let Kilraven into the living room, where huge potted plants almost covered every wall.

      Kilraven’s eyebrows lifted. “She grows bananas and coffee in the house?” he exclaimed.

      “Now how do you recognize coffee plants?” Marquez asked with evident suspicion. “Most people who come in here have to ask what they are.”

      “Anybody could recognize a banana plant.”

      “Yes, but not a coffee plant.” Rick’s eyes narrowed. “Been around coffee plants somewhere they don’t grow in pots?”

      Kilraven grinned. “Let’s just say, I’m not a stranger to them, and leave it at that.”

      Rick was thinking that coffee grew in some of the most dangerous places on earth. Kilraven had the look of a man who was familiar with them.

      “I know that expression,” Kilraven said blandly, “but I’ve said all I’m going to.”

      “I know when I’m licked. Coffee?”

      “I’d love some.” He gave Rick a wry glance. “Going to pick the beans fresh?”

      Rick gave the red berries a curious look. “I do have a grinder somewhere.”

      “Yes, but you have to dry coffee beans and roast them before you can use them.”

      “All right, now you’re really making me curious,” Rick told him.

      Kilraven didn’t say a word. He just kept walking.

      They went into the kitchen where Rick made coffee and Kilraven fetched cups. They drank it at Barbara’s kitchen table, covered by a red checkered cloth with matching curtains at the windows. The room was bright and airy and pretty, like Barbara herself.

      “Your mother has good taste,” Kilraven commented. “And she’s a great cook.”

      Rick smiled. “Not a bad mother, either,” he chuckled. “I’d probably be sitting in a cell somewhere if she hadn’t adopted me. I was a tough kid.”

      “So was I,” Kilraven recalled. “Jon and I kept our parents busy when we were boys. Once, we got drunk at a party, started a brawl and ended up in a holding cell.”

      “What did your parents do?”

      “My stepmother was all for bailing us out. Our father, however, was an FBI agent,” he added quietly. “He told her that rushing to our defense might make us think we could get away with anything and we might end up in more serious straits. So he left us there for several days and let us sweat it.”

      “Ouch,” Rick said, wincing.

      “We were a lot less inclined to make trouble after that and I only recall getting drunk and going on a bender once in my adult life.” That had been after he found his wife and child dead, but he didn’t elaborate. “Of course, we were really mad at Dad. But now, looking back at it, I’m sure he did the right thing.”

      “Life teaches hard lessons,” Rick agreed.

      Kilraven nodded. “And one of those lessons is that we don’t go alone to a meeting with a potential informer. Ever.”

      Rick

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