Cantina Valley (A Ben Adler Mystery Book 1) by Trevor Scott

and she wore no makeup.   But Ben didn’t think she needed any.
    “I didn’t bring any extra clothes,” she said.   “I wasn’t expecting to stay.”
    “You’re fine,” he said.   “Coffee is on.   Do you like bacon?”
    “Who doesn’t?”
    “More than a billion Muslims.”
    “Their loss.   More for us.”
    “Great.”   Ben used a fork to turn the bacon.
    “I hear another shower.   Sonya got back?”
    “Yeah.   She said the roads were crazy.   You’ll have to wait a while before heading back to Portland.”
    “You keep trying to get rid of me.”
    He smiled and shook his head.   “Not at all.   I like your company.   I just figured you might have things to do before work tomorrow.   Also, maybe your brother tried to call you.”
    “I didn’t even think about that,” Maggi said.   “Am I crazy, or did I hear Italian last night?”
    “Sonya is fluent in three of the romance languages,” he explained.
    “Yeah, it sounded like she was very passionate about it.”   Maggi smiled and turned her head toward Ben’s bedroom.
    Just then Sonya came from the shower wearing a set of Ben’s tight silk long underwear tops and bottoms.   Despite their flexibility, they were a little baggy on her.
    “Nice look,” Ben said.
    “Just temporary,” Sonya said.   “I have to get going.   I’m meeting my mother for mass.   Do you have any eggs to go with that bacon?”
    “Coming up,” he said.
    The two women drank coffee and ate bacon while Ben cooked them fresh eggs gathered that morning.   When they were done, Sonya changed quickly and headed out the door.   But first she gave Maggi a hug and whispered something in her ear, which seemed to shock the attorney.
    Ben sipped on his coffee and said to Maggi, “I hope she didn’t offend you.”
    “Not at all,” Maggi said.   “She told me she would understand if I wanted to sleep with you.”
    “I feel so cheap,” he said.
    “She left before I could tell her that I didn’t need her permission,” Maggi said.
    “Sonya is an interesting woman.   She goes to the Catholic church religiously.”
    “Is there any other way?”
    “In Europe I go architecturally.”
    “You’re not a believer?”
    “I believe that Sonya believes,” he said.   “I’m just not sure.   I’m not sure how someone can blindly believe in something they can’t see.   Something they can’t confirm.   And it bothers me that I don’t have this faith.   I would certainly like to believe.   What about you?”
    “I am a firm believer that Jesus Christ died for all of us,” she said.
    “That’s great, Maggi.   I hope you don’t think less of me for not fully committing.”
    “I believe you’re a good man, Ben.   And that’s all that God would ask of his children.”

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    14
     
    After Maggi left for Portland, Ben hung around the house the rest of the morning, trying his best to understand his relationship with Sonya and his new friendship with Maggi McGuffin.   He liked the both of them a lot.   Maybe that was why he had never married.   Part of the reason, he guessed.   That and the fact that he had been constantly on the go with the Air Force for over 20 years.   It would have been nearly impossible to establish and maintain a relationship under those circumstances.
    He also got back on the short wave radio, but the conversation he had experienced earlier in the morning was no longer there.
    So, just after noon, he got in his truck and drove down the road to his closest neighbor’s house.   Jim Erickson, the man with the seemingly flammable bovines, had owned his property longer than anyone in the Cantina Valley.   He was like the unofficial keeper of the oral tradition.   But Jim was also very religious, so Ben had to wait for the man and his wife to get back from church.
    Jim answered the door still wearing his best western attire, right down to his shiny cowboy boots—not those he wore around the