High Noon

bastard.”
    She let out a laugh, then sucked air as it pinged her ribs. “I’d go crazy sitting home having Mama and Ava fuss over me for two weeks. He knows that. I’ll heal better if I’m working, and it makes a statement where a statement needs to be made. He knows that, too. He was probably after the three or four days all along. He’s a sneaky son of a bitch.”
    “Sounds like somebody I’d like.”
    “Probably. He got away with my weapon.”
    “What? Captain Dave?”
    “No. No, not the captain. Sorry, this whole thing’s scrambled my brain so I can’t seem to think in a straight line.”
    The cop who’d hurt her, Duncan realized. And since she was busy brooding over it, he gave her room.
    Just as he gave her room to be agitated as they approached Jones Street. “Want a bourbon and a cigarette first?”
    “Don’t think I wouldn’t. I’m about to take on multiple hysterical females.” She prepared herself with deep breaths as he drove down the brick-paved street. “Oh God. That just caps it.”
    “What?” Duncan shot her a glance, saw her fit on a stoic smile. Then saw the man who’d been strolling along in the dappled sunlight break into a run.
    “Phoebe! Phoebe, what happened?” The man wrenched the door open, reached down. “My God, what happened to you? Who are you?” He threw the words at Duncan like stones. “What the hell did you do to my sister?”
    “Carter, stop! Stop. He didn’t do a thing but help me.”
    “Who hurt you? Where is he?”
    People strolled along Jones—residents and tourists—and now, Phoebe noted, any number of those strollers had stopped to stare at the beat-up woman and the two men on either side of a flashy white Porsche.
    “You can stop shouting on a public street like a lunatic. Let’s go inside.”
    “They’re good questions.” Duncan came around to the passenger seat. “I’d like the answers, too. I’m Duncan. She’s got a lot of tender spots. We’ll need to be careful—”
    “I can take care of her.”
    “Carter, stop it. Do you want to add to the extremely crappy day I’ve had by being rude to a friend? I apologize for my ill-mannered brother, Duncan.”
    “No problem.”
    “Oh God, there’s Miz Tiffany and that ridiculous dog heading over from the park. I can’t deal with that. Carter, for the love of God, don’t make me deal with that. Help me get inside.”
    “Easy does it,” Duncan advised, and caught a glimpse of a woman, well past a certain age, with a blond bubble of hair, being led by a tiny, apparently hairless dog wearing a polka-dot tie. “She hasn’t seen you yet. I’d be ill mannered, too, by the way, in your place,” he told Carter as they got Phoebe to the sidewalk. “Still, under any circumstances, when I bring a woman home, I take her to the door.”
    Resigned to it, Phoebe allowed herself to be flanked, then all but carried up the steps. And with the overture complete, she thought, Here comes the show.
    When the door opened, Essie was already on her way down the hall. “I thought I heard you shouting, Carter. I…Phoebe! Oh my God.”
    She went white as paste, swayed.
    “Let me go,” Phoebe murmured, then hurried forward. “Mama. I’m all right, Mama. Breathe for me. I’m all right, I’m home. Carter, go get her some water.”
    “No, no.” Still ghostly pale, Essie lifted a hand to Phoebe’s cheek. “Baby girl.”
    “I’m all right.”
    “Your face. Reuben—”
    “Is dead, Mama. You know that.”
    “Yes. Yes. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Oh, Phoebe. What happened? Your face, your arm. Ava!”
    She’d snapped back, Phoebe noted. Still white as a sheet, but she’d snapped back.
    Ava rushed out from the back of the house. And there was, for the next several minutes, a mass of confusion, voices, movement, tears. Duncan closed the front door, stood back. He’d always figured if you can’t help, stay out of the way.
    “All right, stop now.”
    He could hear Phoebe’s voice, very calm, very firm, through the melee. She repeated the same order, once, then twice. And on the third, the words snapped out—a kind of verbal slap to the face—and shocked her family into silence.
    “I’ll explain everything, but right now I want everybody to just stop talking at once. I’ve been banged up, which is obvious, and all this badgering isn’t helping. Now—”
    “Mama.”
    As the verbal slap had shut down the hysteria, so did the single, quivering word stop what Duncan assumed might have been