and kissed her again--affectionately, not passionately--then
returned to the driver's side of the car and got out. ", At the door, he gave her a chaste good-night kiss, but his
expression was indulgent and amused. Alex knew he thought she was just being coy and that wearing her down was only
." a matter of time.
She was so befuddled by his come-on that it was several
minutes before she noticed that the red message light on her
telephone was blinking. She called the motel's front desk,
retrieved her message, and called the specified number. Even
before the doctor got on the line, she knew what he would
say. Nevertheless, his words shocked her.
"Miss Gaither, I'm terribly sorry. Mrs. Graham passed
away earlier this evening without ever regaining consciousness."
Twenty-one
Alex knocked and waited until Reede called out, "Come in,"
before entering his office. "Good morning. Thank you for
seeing me on such short notice."
She sat down in the chair in front of his desk. Without
asking, he poured her a cup of coffee to her liking and placed
it in front of her. She thanked him with a nod.
"I'm sorry about your grandmother, Alex," he said as he
resumed his seat in the creaky swivel chair.
"Thank you."
Alex had been away for a week, handling the details of
her grandmother's funeral. Only Alex, a handful of former
coworkers, and a few of the nursing home patients had at
tended the chapel service. After the burial, Alex had begun
the unwelcome chore of clearing out her grandmother's room
at the nursing home. The staff had been kind, but there was
a waiting list, so they had needed the room emptied immediately.
It had been an emotionally stressful week. As she had sat
staring at the modest casket, while organ music played softly
in the background, she had felt an overwhelming sense of
defeat. She had failed to fulfill the promise she had made to
herself and to her grandmother: She hadn't produced Celina's
murderer in time.
More defeating than that, she had failed to win her grandmother's
absolution and love. That had been her last chance;
she wouldn't have another.
She had given serious consideration to throwing in the
towel, telling Greg that he'd been right, and that she should
have taken his advice from the beginning. He would enjoy
seeing her humility, and he would immediately assign her
another case.
That would have been the easier course. She would never
have to enter the city limits of Purcell again, or cope with
the hostility that flew at her like missiles from everyone she
met, or look into the face of this man, who generated myriad
ambiguous feelings inside her.
From a legal viewpoint, she still had a case too weak to
stand up in court. But from a personal perspective, she
couldn't quit. She had become intrigued by the men who had
loved her mother. She had to know which one of them had
killed her, and whether or not she was responsible for her
mother's murder. She would either have to deny her guilt,
or learn to live with it, but she couldn't let it go forever
unresolved.
So, she had returned to Purcell. She was staring into the
pair of green eyes that had haunted her thoughts for a week,
and they were as compelling and disturbing as she remembered.
"I wasn't sure you'd be back," he told her bluntly.
1
"You should have been. I told you I wouldn't give up."
; "Yeah, I remember," he said grimly. "How was the dance the other night?"
His question came out of the blue and evoked a knee-jerk
response. "How did you know I went?"
"Word gets around."
"Junior told you."
"No."
"I can hardly stand the suspense," Alex said. "How did
you find out I went to the Horse and Gun Club?"
"One of my deputies clocked Junior doing eighty-one that
night out on the highway. Around eleven o'clock, he said.
He saw you in the car with him." He was no longer looking
at her, but studying the toes of his boots. "You sure were
in a hell of a hurry to get back to your motel."
"I was ready to leave the club, that's all. I wasn't feeling
well."
"The barbecue didn't sit well with you? Or was it the
people? Some of them make me sick to my stomach, too."
"It wasn't the food or the people. It was, well, one person:
Stacey Wallace . . . Minton." Alex closely watched for his
reaction. His face remained impassive. "Why didn't anyone
tell me that Stacey had been married to Junior?"
"You didn't ask."
Miraculously, she was able to hold her temper in check.
"Didn't it occur to anybody that their hasty marriage might
be significant?"
"It wasn't."
' 'I reserve the right to decide the significance of it myself.''
"Be my guest. Do you think it's significant?"
"Yes, I do. The timing of Junior's first marriage always
struck me as strange. It's even stranger that the bride turned
out to be the judge's daughter."
"That's not strange at all."
"Coincidental, certainly."
"Not even that. Stacey Wallace had been in love, or lust,
with Junior since the day she first laid eyes on him. Everybody
knew it, including Junior. She certainly made no secret of
her devotion. When Celina died, Stacey saw her chance and
seized it."
"Stacey didn't strike me as an opportunist."
"Grow up, Alex. We're all opportunists when we want
something bad enough. She loved the guy," he pointed out
impatiently.' 'He was sick over Celina's death. I guess Stacey
figured her love could make his hurt go away, that it would
be enough."
"It wasn't."
"Obviously. She couldn't make Junior love her back. She
sure as hell couldn't weld his zippers shut." Vexed, he
gnawed on the corner of his lip. "Who spilled the beans
about this? Junior?"
"Stacey herself. She confronted me in the powder room
and accused me of upsetting her life by reopening this case.''
"Gutsy lady," he said, nodding approval. "I always liked
her."
"Oh, really? Did you sleep with her, too? Or did the Gail
sisters keep you satiated?"
"The Gail sisters, huh?" He barked a short laugh. "I know
Stacey didn't talk to you about Purcell's notorious triplets."
"Junior filled in the gaps."
"Must have been quite an evening."
* 'Most revealing.''
"Oh, yeah?" he drawled. "What'd you reveal?"
She ignored this well-placed insinuation. "Reede, what
was the rush? Junior wasn't in love with Stacey. For the sake
of argument, let's say he talked himself into marrying her.
Why did they marry when they did?"
"Maybe she wanted to be a June bride."
"Don't make fun of me!" She shot out of her chair and
moved to the window.
He whistled low and long. "Boy, are you ever in a rotten
mood."
"I just buried my only living relative, remember?" she
flared.
He cursed beneath his breath and raked his fingers through his hair. "For a minute there, I did forget. Look, Alex, I'm sorry. I remember how bad I felt when I buried my old man.''
She turned to face him, but he was staring at nothing.
"Angus and Junior were the only ones out of the whole
goddamn town who came to the funeral. We didn't even hold
it in a church or the funeral home, just at the grave site.
Angus went back to work. Junior returned to school so he
wouldn't miss a biology test. I went home.
"Not long after lunch, Celina came to my house. She had
skipped school just to come and be with me. She knew I'd
feel low, even though I hated the son of a bitch while he was
alive. We lay down together on my bed and stayed there until
it got dark. She knew if she didn't go home, her mother I would get worried. She cried for me because I couldn't." ; When he stopped speaking, there was a ponderous silence
in the room. Alex was still standing by the window, motionless
and transfixed by his story. Her chest hurt with heartache
for the lonely young man he'd been.
"Was that the first time you made love to Celina?"
He looked straight at her, got out of his chair, and approached
her. "Since you broached the subject of love lives,
I how's yours?"
The tension snapped, as did her temper. "Why don't you
stop beating around the bush and come right out and ask?"
"Okay," he sneered. "Has Junior made it into your pants
yet?"
"You bastard."
"Has he?"
"No!"
"I'll bet he's tried. He always tries." His laugh was deep
and stirring. "Bingo." He raised his hand and stroked her
cheek with the backs of his fingers. "You're blushing, Counselor."
She swatted his hand aside. "Go to hell."
She was furious with herself for blushing like a schoolgirl
in front of him. It was none of his business who she slept
with. What bothered her most, however, was that he didn't
seem to care. If she had to describe that glint in his eyes she
would call it amusement, possibly contempt, but certainly
not jealousy.
To retaliate, she asked suddenly, "What did you and Celina
quarrel about?"
"Celina and I? When?"
"The spring of your junior year. Why did she go to El
Paso for the summer and start dating my father?"
"Maybe she needed a change of scenery," he said flippantly.
"Did you know how much your best friend loved her?"
His goading grin vanished. "Did Junior tell you that?"
"I knew before he told me. Did you know, at the time,
that he loved her?"
He rolled his shoulders forward in a semblance of a shrug.
"Nearly every guy in school--"
"I'm not talking about infatuation with a popular girl,
Reede." She grabbed his shirtsleeve to show just how important
this was to her. ' 'Did you know how Junior felt about
her?"
"What if I did?"
"He said you would have killed him if he'd tried anything
with her. He said you would have killed them both if they
had betrayed you."
"A figure of speech."
"That's what Junior said, too, but I don't think so," she
said evenly. "There were a lot of passions stirring. Your
relationships with each other were overlapping and complex."
"Whose relationships?"
"You and my mother loved each other, but you both loved
Junior, too. Wasn't it a love triangle in the strictest sense of
the word?"
"What the hell are you talking about? Do you think Junior
and I are a couple of queers?"
Unexpectedly, he grabbed her hand and flattened it against
Jus fly. "Feel that, baby? It's been hard more than it's been
soft, but it's never been hard for a fag."
Stunned and shaken, she pried her hand away, subconsciously
rubbing the palm of it against her thigh, as though
it had been branded. "You have a redneck mentality, Sheriff
Lambert," she said, supremely agitated. "I think you and
Junior love each other the way Indian blood brothers do. But
you're competitive, too."
"I don't compete with Junior."
"Maybe not consciously, but other people have pitted you
against each other. And guess which one of you always came
out on top? You. That bothered you. It still does."
"Is this more of your psychological bullshit?"
"It's not just my opinion. Stacey mentioned it the other
night, and not at my prompting. She said people always
compared the two of you, and that Junior always came in
second."
"I can't help what people think."
"Your competitiveness came to a head over Celina, didn't
it?"
"Why ask me? You've got all the answers."
"You had the edge there, too. Junior wanted to be Celina's
lover, but you actually were."
A long silence followed. Reede regarded her with the concentration
of a hunter who finally has his quarry in the cross
hairs. The sunlight streaming through the blinds glinted in
his eyes, on his hair, on his eyebrows, which were slanted
dangerously.
Very quietly, he said, "Good try, Alex, but I'm not admitting
anything."
He tried to move away then, but she caught his arms.
"Well, weren't you her lover? What difference does it make
if you say so now?"
"Because I never kiss and tell." His eyes slid down to her
pulsing throat, then back up. "And you should be damned
glad I don't."
Want surged through her, as warm and golden as the morn