The Jaguar's Romance Read online

“Motivation. Our suspect was involved in your grandfather’s affairs. Given his temperament, I doubt he gave his friendship for the sake of it. Also, considering the number of transactions, banking and real estate among them, there is a very green elephant in the room that we’re ignoring.”

  She pursed her lips and squinted at him. “I was kinda wondering where grandpa came up with the money to do all the things he did.”

  “Exactamente. Money is a more solid motive than unrequited love. This house, the bar, a sawmill, expanding an orchard—this would all be quite expensive, even a hundred years ago. I need to look into the financial end.”

  ***

  The big cat stalked the pristine woods. Oscar had shifted into his spotted form, the rosettes on his coat a better camouflage than the melanistic all-black pelt he would don in the night. Feline senses and the map in his human consciousness led him much farther from the farmhouse than he would have thought.

  Sally had mentioned that her grandfather had replaced a cabin with the house. He had assumed the two had stood on the same spot. Yet a mound covered with moss a half mile up an overgrown dirt road proved different. Keen feline eyes picked out the regular cuts in the shrouded logs.

  Water sounds drew him to a swift-running stream. Oscar silently prowled the bank. His inner feline detected a small herd of deer. The human mind forced the cat to focus on the task at hand. When the doe and her two fawn started and leapt away, the jaguar continued a much different hunt.

  The structure on the stream remained mostly intact, though softened by moss and overgrown with ferns. Blocky, hand-hewn beams remained unharmed. Upon nearing, his hackles rose. The undeniable scent of bear permeated the place. A familiar odor drifted by faintly, the smell of almonds out of place in the woods. Still, his keen sense detected the mill empty. Oscar carefully moved within.

  Darkness shadowed large frames that once housed the mechanisms of the sawmill. Broken and rotted gears of wood made the floor uneven, the far end of the invaded by ivy. Through the open windows, he saw the remains of a waterwheel that lay collapsed against the bank.

  Despite the decay, Oscar saw the design resembled an oversized table saw. A carriage was used to haul logs over a buzz saw blade, the slot evident though the saw itself was gone. All of this had been connected to the power source by a confusing array of gears and shafts, mostly wood and rotting on the floor. A few rusting pipes and cams lay about in the loam.

  Beneath the detritus, the floor was made of natural stone. Where the carriage sheltered the floor from debris, he spotted a rusty steel rectangle. His eyes immediately slipped from it. From the ruins, he could not determine why operators of the mill would need to get below the carriage. But what did a detective know of sawmills?

  Glancing around, Oscar detected signs of occupation, none of it recent. Despite the mill consisting solely of open windows and a roof, he could feel the walls closing in on him. He hurried out, moved across the stream. A few moments’ prowl brought him to a tall fence. Catching a whiff of ozone, he stopped short. He recognized an energized fence with enough power to shock deer away from the goods within. It stood eight feet tall, topped with barbed wire.

  Oscar stepped back, finding decent footing. Then, with four running steps, he leapt, easily clearing the fence, and landed in the orchard. Long past harvest season, the fields were empty. While no expert, he examined fruit-bearing trees, and a small grove of nut trees. Beyond the forest clearing, Mount Hood rose, the summit obfuscated by clouds. Upslope from the fruit trees, Oscar spied fields, his senses telling him of lavender and nursery plants, of rye and onions. What used to be two different farms now stood connected by a narrow clearing.

  Though lovely and perhaps prosperous, Oscar couldn’t imagine the operation of the orchard amounting to much wealth. Yet Sally’s grandfather had built a house, a sawmill, a bar. Where had he come up with the cash?

  Answers didn’t lie out in the wilds. With another leap, he cleared the fence. Loping strides brought him back to his clothes, carefully folded and bundled in his trench coat. He needed to visit the county assessor’s office. There wasn’t much time before his evening rendezvous.

  Chapter Ten

  After Oscar left the cellar, Sally reexamined the paperwork. It was true, all of the building, the starting of a new business, would require a lot of money. She tracked at least a grand for the building of the bar. Yet nowhere in the diaries was money mentioned, other than the insurance pay out from her great-uncle dying in the Great War.

  She had heard that the phrase “buy the farm” referred to military men’s insurance paying off mortgages when the soldier died in battle. Still, that didn’t smack of actual wealth. How could a man living alone make enough money off a ten-acre orchard to build and run a bar, or build a sawmill? Of course, she had no idea what a sawmill would cost, but she knew it took a lot to keep the bar afloat.

  The farmhouse was really nice, despite the creepy vibe it gave her. All the French doors, tile, plaster work and other fancy stuff must’ve cost big, even back in the day. As she studied the paperwork, she did find a mention of income from the orchard. It made less than a thousand dollars a year. Sally wasn’t sure what that was at the turn of the last century, but it didn’t sound like much.

  A few papers later, she found the sale of the orchard and surrounding land to the neighboring farmers. There wasn’t even a mention of a sawmill on the document. The information she had on her grandfather’s finances was certainly incomplete. Still, she knew there was a huge chunk of income missing. What could it have been?

  Time escaped her as she searched through the paperwork, still not coming up with answers. Her cell phone said it was afternoon by the time she took a break. Damn. She knew that Oscar had planned a date for tonight, and she wanted to—

  What? Catch him in the act? Support her decision to have nothing to do with that sexy hunk of man? Make herself depressed?

  No, it simply irked her that he would plan a hook-up with some other woman right after making love to her. The son-of-a-bee. She called Ava, and asked her if she could take over the Squirrels Nuts for the night. It wouldn’t be busy, it was a weeknight and there was no football game. She Googled the name of the place on her phone. The Maritime Club was on Northwest 4th Avenue, just past the Burnside Bridge in Portland. A quick glance at Yelp told her it was a jazz joint. It seemed like the perfect place for a man who stepped out of a black-and-white movie to meet a dame.

  In her apartment, she looked over the sad lack of clothing in her closet. If there were a particular outfit you wore to spy on a cheating boyfriend, Sally was pretty sure she didn’t have it. She settled on her only dress—a chunky sweater dress with a big cowl to distract from her boobs, patch pockets and three-quarter sleeves. She paired this with leggings that had big stars on them—too cute! With boots on her feet and a pashmina to further conceal her bosom, she plugged the club’s address into her phone’s GPS.

  Freezing fog gripped the roads, making for patches of black ice, so she drove slowly around Mount Hood and west toward the city. Sally felt a little excited—she rarely got the chance to go out with the bar and all. At the same time the idea of visiting a club on her own, to possibly catch Oscar in the act, put her on edge.

  She found parking just across the street from the Maritime Club. A few patrons smoked out front. Sally sat, listening to the tics of her engine cooling. For a while, she considered driving back home, maybe grabbing some fast food, finding a movie on TV and calling it a night.

  Nope. Oscar occupied every other thought in her brain. The only way to shake her feelings for him was to see him for who he really was—a womanizer who was already halfway into some gal’s pants even while he was in another’s. A player. A scoundrel. A masher.

  Sally giggled at herself. Masher! Where did that come from?

  With a little of the tension relieved, she talked herself into one drink—just one—and if Oscar didn’t show, she was heading for the best drive through food she could think of. French
fries always had a soothing effect on her.

  She paid her five dollars at the door and slunk to a table that seemed the most out of sight. When a waitress came by to take her drink order, Sally was so busy scoping the place that she nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “Um, whatever’s on tap.” Sally, despite owning a bar, wasn’t much of a drinker.

  The waitress raised tired eyes from her pad. “We have twelve beers on tap.”

  “You pick.”

  The waitress scribbled. “Anything from the kitchen?”

  Sally brightened up. “Do you have French fries?”

  “Order of poutine. Music starts at eight.”

  Poutine? Sally had a vague idea of what that was. As long as fried potatoes were part of the mix, she was okay with it. She fiddled with her big scarf, eyes panning the crowd. Well, the crowd of three. Wondering if she should have worn a hat to hide her face, her eyes kept straying toward the door. No sweet young thing sauntered in. No Oscar, either.

  A tiny stage was mostly taken up by an upright piano under a spotlight, a drum kit and stand-up bass stood against the shadowy curtain behind it. Thumping and squealing ensued as a man set up microphones.

  Two more people came in, an elderly couple. Had Sally eavesdropped wrong? Suddenly, none of that mattered. The bored waitress sat a steaming plate in front of Sally. French fries smothered in gravy with some kind of fried balls of stuff throughout. Mesmerized, she tentatively bit into one of the deep fried nuggets. Her heart soared as she discovered cheese. Where had poutine been all her life?

  A rim shot nearly pulled her attention away from the junk food. This was followed by a bass run and a couple saxophone honks. When the piano hit a high, dissonant chord and the high hat beat a hot jazz sizzle, she turned toward the musicians. All of them were dressed in zoot suits with broad-brimmed hats. Stand-up bass played three descending notes, piano chords lifting. Sally was not a jazz enthusiast, but she was pretty sure she knew this tune.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, alligators of every stripe,” the pianist spoke into the mic, “From Portland, Oregon and points surrounding, please welcome the Undercover Dicks.”

  Polite applause followed, until the saxophonist blew the sneaking notes of the Pink Panther theme, and the tiny crowd went wild. Or, as wild as six people could go.

  Sally wasn’t sure if the band was any good or not. Besides, her focus was elsewhere. No new people had entered the club, and certainly no hottie hookup for Oscar. Nor was the man in question anywhere in evidence. Well, it was still early, but her drink was finished. That was all the time she promised to this silly adventure.

  Just as she got ready to leave, she heard the pianist say, “Pitter Panther Patter.” He played some jaunty chords, and then, “Oscar.”

  The bass followed the call of the piano, the player lifting his head with the music. It was Oscar’s fingers running up and down the fretboard, a half-smile on his curved lips.

  Holy cow, was this Oscar’s rendezvous? In concert with her jaw, Sally’s butt dropped back to her seat. The song ended quickly, the band breaking into something familiar. Sally thought she’d heard it in a movie. Oscar retreated to the shadow backstage.

  Sally continued to stare at him, until at one point, his hat brim lifted and she was greeted with the eye shine of a cat. She wondered whether it was time to flee when the waitress sat a second beer in front of her. Okay, fine, Oscar knew she was here. Might as well stay for the set.

  “I like a woman to see me sweaty and disheveled for only one reason,” Oscar said after the set was finished and he pulled out a chair. He wiped the sweat from his brow with a silk handkerchief.

  Sally gulped down her remaining beer. “I thought you were pretty good.” Her voice sounded small in her ears.

  “So, you have discovered my secret. You are the only woman who ever has. I thought you were a fair detective when you went through your grandfather’s papers. Now, I’m wondering why you are a bartender and not a professional investigator.” His expression went from stern to teasing.

  Sally relaxed a little. “Well, I was majoring in archaeology at the time I inherited the place. I was hoping for an Indiana Jones kind of life, foreign travel, adventure. But I guess I guilted myself into running the place in my father’s honor.”

  “You could still sell it, return to school.” Oscar held two fingers up at the waitress.

  Sally made a face. “Funny, but when someone actually offered to buy the bar, I got all bent out of shape about it. Maybe I like it more than I let myself believe. But what about you? You could make a living playing music.”

  “Alas, I’m mostly an enthusiast. I’m certainly no Mingus.”

  Sally didn’t know what a Mingus was. Instead, she glanced around the room. Two or three other people showed up, but the place was hardly packed. Her own bar would have three times as many customers right now, even without the attraction of jazz. The thought came colored with a little self-reproach. “I guess it might be tough to make money at it. But if you love it?”

  “If I devoted myself to the bass, I could probably find a way to play professionally. However, I am not so dedicated. Not when the world is so full of curiosity, of mystery. Music is too human an endeavor for one who shares an animal soul. My mother loved to play piano. She could have been a professional. Yet her inner cat proved too much a distraction.”

  Sally shrank at the thought. “Will that happen to me? Is owning a bar something a bear does, or will she get bored?”

  “You will have to see. My mother never stopped playing, but neither did she make music her life.”

  “Was your father a musician?” she asked.

  Oscar smiled. “A doctor. A surgeon. He worked for Doctors Without Borders when he met my mother. He wanted her to come to the States with him, be a doctor’s wife and mother. Alas, Mama could not leave the rainforest behind. When I became of age, I jumped at the chance to experience America. I’ve been experiencing it ever since.”

  “Did your father want you to be a doctor?”

  His eyes went distant. “My father understood that I could not tie myself down to a career, as he did. It kept him from his true love, and from his son for many years. His vocation, noble as it was, seemed a prison to me.”

  An obvious question came to her. “Why didn’t he fix your wrist?”

  Oscar self-consciously rubbed the scar. “He was not around when it happened.”

  “But you’re a shifter, why didn’t it heal?”

  He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders as if steeling himself. “It happened when I was a child. My jaguar was still a kitten. Still, I remember it well. I was exploring our lands, both as a boy and cat. The sounds of an animal in distress drew me—it was a saíno, a small pig. It seemed to be snared in a tunnel of vines, but as I neared, I saw that it was in a cage. Of course I wanted to play. Though very young, I was clever enough to see a release to the trap. When I let the pig out, it barreled into me, and the trap closed.”

  Oscar held up his wrist, examining the scar.

  “I do not know whether men were trapping the pig for food, or because it was a nuisance. Either way, I could not free myself. I changed from boy to cat and back again, but still I was trapped. Day turned to night, and still I could not move. I thought to pull my hand off rather than endure this. Luckily, by dawn, my mother found me. But because I was mangled both as human and feline, it took many months to heal.”

  Sally sat for a long time, sad for Oscar as a boy. At the same time, it explained a lot of his behavior. Sitting with his back to the wall, parking where there were no other vehicles, speaking of freedom in reverent tones.

  Seeing the lost, hurt look in his eyes, she changed the subject. “I guess my father wanted me to own a bar, whatever his reasons.” Sally shrugged. “At least I’m my own boss.”

  Drinks arrived. “One microbrew draft and one Screaming Orgasm.” The waitress set the creamy cocktail in front of Oscar and gave him a wink. Growling in Sally’s mind emitted fro
m her audibly. It made the waitress’ lidded eyes open fully, and she stepped away quickly from the table.

  Oscar sipped his drink, ignoring the exchange. But he wasn’t ready to let the subject go. “You are perhaps seeing this incident as something that affected my entire life. So what happened to you, cariña, that makes you hide yourself away.”

  “I don’t hide myself away!”

  “Tonight, no. Tonight you are a vision” As uncomfortable as she was with this line of questioning, she was happy to see Oscar smirk. Still...

  “You’ve dressed yourself, presented yourself, in such an attractive manner in order to spy on me. So why not all the time? What was your trap, Sally?”

  The steam of embarrassment rose inside her. “I just don’t like attention. I developed early, you know, in junior high. Everybody thought I was stuffing my bra or whatever. There was pinching and teasing, from both the boys and the girls. It was easier just to put on some larger clothes.”

  Oscar angled his head, eyes lidded. “Still, at some point all the girls became young women.”

  She shrugged. “I guess I just got comfortable dressing like that.”

  He downed his drink. “¡Mierda! You are vivacious, intelligent, and very sexy. Let that part of you free, cariña.”

  Sally looked at Oscar’s wrist. Maybe on the outside he was the epitome of freedom, but on the inside he still feared being snared. She understood that in a big way. Inside, she was still a pre-teen, trying not to stand out. “I don’t know how.”

  “You must follow your heart. It is all any of us can do in this life. I feel your lack of confidence confines you. You must do the things that make you happy.”

  Maybe it was the beer, or the dim lighting, but the words escaped her before she could self-edit. “It would make me happy if you kissed me.”

  “Ah! There’s a bit of confidence. That would make me happy as well.” He leaned in, his lips gentle at first. But Sally was overcome by his words, by secrets he had not shared with anyone. Greedy lips devoured his. She tasted the heady cocktail on his tongue, her chin brushing his damp, rough one. From that light friction, a fire built up inside her. Oh, how she wanted this beautiful man. It seemed to go on for only a few seconds, but the sudden crack of the snare drum parted them.