Best Kept Secrets

Two

 

 

 

Alex peeled off her suit jacket and tossed it onto the motel

 

bed. Her underarms were damp and her knees were ready to

 

buckle. She was nauseated. The scene in the D.A.'s office

 

had shaken her more than she wanted to admit.

 

She had left Pat Chastain's office with her head held high

 

and her shoulders back. She hadn't walked too fast, but she

 

hadn't dawdled. She had smiled good-bye to Imogene, who

 

had obviously been eavesdropping through the door because

 

she stared at Alex bug-eyed, her mouth agape.

 

Alex's exit line had been well rehearsed, well timed and

 

perfectly executed. The meeting had gone just as she had

 

planned it, but she was vastly relieved that it was over.

 

Now, she peeled off one cloying piece of clothing after

 

another. She would love to think that the worst was behind

 

her, but she feared it was yet to come. The three men

 

she had met today wouldn't roll over and play dead. She

 

would have to confront them again, and when she did, they

 

wouldn't be so overjoyed to see her.

 

Angus Minton seemed as full of goodwill as Santa Claus,

 

but Alex knew that nobody in Angus's position could be

 

as harmless as he tried to pretend. He was the richest, most

 

powerful man in the county. One didn't achieve that status

 

solely through benign leadership. He would fight to keep what

 

he'd spent a lifetime cultivating.

 

 

 

Junior was a charmer who knew his way around women.

 

The years had been kind to him. He'd changed little from

 

the photographs Alex had seen of him as an adolescent. She

 

also knew that he used his good looks to his advantage. It

 

would be easy for her to like him. It would also be easy to

 

suspect him of murder.

 

Reede Lambert was the toughest for her to pigeonhole

 

because her impressions of him were the least specific. Unlike

 

the others, she hadn't been able to look him in the eye. Reede

 

the man looked much harder and stronger than Reede the boy

 

from her grandma's picture box. Her first impression was

 

that he was sullen, unfriendly, and dangerous.

 

She was certain that one of these men had killed her mother.

 

Celina Gaither had not been murdered by the accused,

 

Buddy Hicks. Her grandmother, Merle Graham, had

 

drummed that into little Alex's head like a catechism all her

 

life.

 

"It'll be up to you, Alexandra, to set the record right,"

 

Merle had told her almost daily. "That's the least you can

 

do for your mother." At that point she usually glanced wistfully

 

at one of the many framed photographs of her late

 

daughter scattered throughout the house. Looking at the photographs

 

would invariably make her cry, and nothing her

 

granddaughter did could cheer her.

 

Until a few weeks ago, however, Alex hadn't known who

 

Merle suspected of killing Celina. Finding out had been the

 

darkest hour of Alex's life.

 

Responding to an urgent call from the nursing home doctor,

 

she had sped up the interstate to Waco. The facility was quiet,

 

immaculate, and staffed by caring professionals. Merle's lifetime

 

pension from the telephone company made it affordable.

 

For all its amenities, it still had the grey smell of old age;

 

despair and decay permeated its corridors.

 

When she had arrived that cold, dismal, rainy afternoon,

 

Alex had been told that her grandmother was in critical condition.

 

She entered the hushed private room and moved toward

 

the hospital bed. Merle's body had visibly deteriorated

 

 

 

since Alex had visited only the week before. But her eyes

 

were as alive as Fourth of July sparklers. Their glitter, however,

 

was hostile.

 

"Don't come in here," Merle rasped on a shallow breath.

 

"I don't want to see you. It's because of you!"

 

"What, Grandma?" Alex asked in dismay. "What are you

 

talking about?"

 

"I don't want you here."

 

Embarrassed by the blatant rejection, Alex had glanced

 

around at the attending physician and nurses. They shrugged

 

their incomprehension. "Why don't you want to see me? I've

 

come all the way from Austin."

 

"It's your fault she died, you know. If it hadn't been for

 

you ..." Merle moaned with pain and clutched her sheet

 

with sticklike, bloodless fingers.

 

"Mother? You're saying I'm responsible for Mother's

 

death?"

 

Merle's eyes popped open. "Yes," she hissed viciously.

 

"But I was just a baby, an infant," Alex argued, desperately

 

wetting her lips. "How could I--"

 

"Ask them."

 

"Who, Grandma? Ask who?"

 

"The one who murdered her. Angus, Junior, Reede. But

 

it was you . . . you . . . you. ..."

 

Alex had to be led from the room by the doctor several

 

minutes after Merle lapsed into a deep coma. The ugly accusation

 

had petrified her; it reverberated in her brain and

 

assaulted her soul.

 

If Merle held Alex responsible for Celina's death, so much

 

of Alex's upbringing could be explained. She had always

 

wondered why Grandma Graham was never very affectionate

 

with her. No matter how remarkable Alex's achievements,

 

they were never quite good enough to win her grandmother's

 

praise. She knew she was never considered as gifted, or

 

clever, or charismatic as the smiling girl in the photographs

 

that Merle looked at with such sad longing.

 

Alex didn't resent her mother. Indeed, she idolized and