Best Kept Secrets (52 page)

"At that point in time," he said, making no effort to deny her allegations, "the boy didn't care what happened to him.

Celina's death hit him so hard, he was married to Joe's girl almost before he realized it. Know what? I'm not sure he could have made it those first few months if Stacey hadn't taken such good care of him. I never regretted making that deal with Joe."

"Who were you protecting?"

Changing the subject abruptly, he said, "You look a little worse for wear this morning. Did Reede ride you that hard last night?"

Embarrassed, Alex ducked her head. "Junior told you?"

"Yes." He pulled on his boot, wincing as he worked the sore toe into it. "Can't say that I'm surprised--disappointed, but not surprised."

She lifted her head. "Why?"

"Like mother, like daughter. Reede always had an edge over every other man with Celina. Who knows why? That's just the way it was. Chemistry, I think they call it nowadays.''

He set his foot on the floor and leaned back against the tufted sofa. "What's between you two?"

"It's more than chemistry."

"So, you love him?"

"Yes."

He drew a worried expression. "I'll caution you like a daddy would, Alex. Reede's not an easy man to love. He has a tough time showing affection, and an even tougher time of accepting it. As old as he is, he's still bitter about his mama up and leaving him when he was a baby."

"Is that why he found it impossible to forgive Celina for getting involved with Al Gaither and having me?"

"I think so. He tried not to let on like it hurt him. Walked around here with a chip on his shoulder as big as Texas. He hid his feelings behind that I-don't-give-a-damn veneer, but he was crushed just the same. I could tell. He didn't hold it against you, you understand, but he could never quite forgive your mother for cheating on him."

"What about Junior?"

"Junior couldn't forgive her for loving Reede more than she loved him."

"But neither one of them killed her." She met him eye to eye. "It was you, wasn't it?"

He stood up and moved to the window. He gazed out on all that he had built from nothing and was liable to lose. The ponderous silence in the room lasted for several minutes.

Finally, he said, "No, I didn't." Then, turning slowly, he added, "But I wanted to."

"Why?"

"Your mother played games, Alex. She liked to. When I first met her, she was still a little tomboyish. Things might have gone fine if she'd stayed like that. But she grew older and realized that she had a power over both of those boys--

sexual power. She began to use that in her games."

Alex's heart began to ache. She scarcely breathed. It was like watching a horror movie and waiting for the monster to finally rear his head. She wanted to see the whole picture, but yet, she didn't. It would probably be ugly.

"I could see it happening," Angus was saying, "but there wasn't much I could do about it. She played them against each other."

His words echoed what Nora Gail had told her. The temptation was just too strong.

"The older they got, the worse it got," Angus continued.

"The solid friendship between the boys was like a shiny apple. Celina ate away at the core of it like a worm. I didn't like her very much." He returned to the sofa and sat down.

"But I desired her."

When Alex was sure her ears hadn't deceived her, she couldn't hold back her gasp. "What?"

Angus smiled crookedly. "Remember, this was twenty-five years and thirty pounds ago. I didn't have this," he said, rubbing his protruding belly, "and I had more hair. If I do say so, I was still considered a lady-killer."

"It's not that I doubt your appeal, Angus, it's just that I had no idea--"

"Neither did anyone else. It was my little secret. Even she didn't know . . . until the night she died."

Alex groaned his name. The monster of truth wasn't only ugly, it was hideous.

"Junior stormed out on his way to drown his sorrows in booze. Celina came into this room. She sat right there, where you're sitting now, and cried. She told me she didn't know what to do. She loved Reede in a way she'd never love another man. She loved Junior, but not enough to marry him. She didn't know how she was going to raise you alone. Every time she looked at you, she was reminded of the mistake that had changed her future forever.

"On and on she went, expecting me to sympathize, when all I could see was what a selfish little bitch she was. She'd brought all her hardships on herself. She didn't give a damn how she hurt other people or played with their lives. She only cared about how things affected her."

He shook his head with self-derision. "That didn't stop me from wanting her. I wanted her more than ever. I think I justified it to myself because I figured she deserved no better than lust from a horny old man like me." He took a deep breath. "Anyway, I made my pitch."

"You told her you . . . desired her?"

"I didn't come right out with it, no. I offered to set her up in a house out of town, someplace close. I told her I'd pay for everything. She wouldn't have to lift a finger, just be accommodating when I could come see her. I expected her to bring you along, of course, and Mrs. Graham, too, though I doubt your grandma would ever have agreed to it.

In short," he concluded, "I asked her to be my mistress."

"What did she say?"

"Not a goddamn thing. She just looked at me for several seconds, and then she burst out laughing." His eyes chilled Alex to the bone when he added raspily, "And you know how I hate having my ideas laughed at.''

"You filthy old son of a bitch."

Simultaneously, they turned toward the intrusive voice.

Junior, his face contorted with outrage, was standing in the open doorway. He pointed a shaking, accusatory finger at his father. "You didn't want me to marry her because you wanted her for yourself! You killed her because she turned down your despicable proposal! You goddamn bastard, you killed her for that!"

The road seemed bumpier than usual. Or maybe she was just hitting all the ruts because her eyes were blurred with tears. Alex fought to keep the Blazer on the road to Reede's house.

When Junior had launched himself at Angus and begun to beat him with his fists, she had run from the room. She couldn't stand to watch. Her investigation had turned son against father, friend against friend, and she simply couldn't stand any more. She had fled.

They'd all been right. They'd tried to warn her, but she had refused to listen. Compelled by guilt, headstrong and fearless, armed to the teeth with an unshakable sense of right and wrong, cheered on by the recklessness of immaturity, she had excavated in forbidden territory and disturbed its sanctity. She had aroused the ire of bad spirits long laid to rest. Against sound counsel, she had kept digging. Now those spirits were protesting, making themselves manifest.

She had been brainwashed to believe that Celina was a fragile heroine, tragically struck down in the full bloom of womanhood, a heartbroken young widow with a newborn infant in her arms, looking out on the cruel world with dismay.

Instead, she had been manipulative, selfish, and even cruel to the people who had loved her.

Merle had made her believe that she had been responsible for her mother's death. With every gesture, word, and deed, whether overt or implied, she had made Alex feel inadequate and at fault.

Well, Merle was wrong. Celina was responsible for her slaying. By an act of will, Alex unburdened herself of all guilt and remorse. She was free! It no longer really mattered to her whose hand had wielded that scalpel. It hadn't been because of her.

Her first thought was that she must share this sense of freedom with Reede. She parked the Blazer in front of his house, got out, and ran across the porch. At the door, she hesitated and knocked softly. After several seconds, she pulled it open and stepped inside. "Reede?" The house was gloomy and empty.

Moving toward the bedroom, she called his name again, but it was obvious that he wasn't there. As she turned, she noticed her handbag, lying forgotten on the nightstand. She checked the adjoining bathroom for items she might have left behind, gathered them up, and dropped them into her handbag.

As she snapped it closed, she thought she heard the familiar squeak of the screened front door. She paused and listened.

"Reede?" The sound didn't come again.

Lost in sweet reverie of the night before, she touched Reede's things on the nightstand--a pair of sunglasses, a comb that was rarely used, an extra brass belt buckle with the state seal of Texas on it. Her heart swelling with love, she turned to go, but was brought up short.

The woman standing in the doorway of the bedroom had a knife in her hand.

Forty-six

"What the hell is going on here?"

Reede grabbed Junior's collar and hauled him off Angus, who was sprawled on the floor. Blood was dribbling down his chin from a cut on his lip. Oddly enough, the old man was laughing.

"Where'd you learn to fight like that, boy, and why haven't you done it more often?" He sat up and extended his hand fllo Reede. "Help me up." Reede, after giving Junior a warming glance, let go of his collar and assisted Angus to his feet.

"One of you want to tell me what the devil that was all about?" Reede demanded.

f. When the Jeep had arrived, he had driven straight to the 4 ranch house, where an anxious Lupe had greeted him at the door with the news that Mr. Minton and Junior were fighting.

Reede had run into the den and found the two men locked in combat, rolling on the floor. Junior had been throwing earnest, but largely ineffective, punches at his father's head.

' 'He wanted Celina for himself,'' Junior declared, his chest heaving with exertion and fury. "I overheard him telling Alex. He wanted to set Celina up as his mistress. When she said no, he killed her."

Angus was calmly dabbing at the blood on his chin with a handkerchief. "Do you really believe that, son? Do you think I would sacrifice everything--your mother, you, this place--for that little chippy?"

"I heard you tell Alex that you wanted her."

"I did, from the belt down, but I didn't love her. I didn't like the way she came between you and Reede. I sure as hell wouldn't gamble away everything else in my life by killing her. I might have felt like it when she laughed at my offer, but I didn't." His eyes roved over both the younger men.

"My pride was spared when one of you did it for me."

The three men exchanged uneasy glances. The past twenty-five years had dwindled down to this crucial moment. Until now, none of them had had the courage to pose the question.

The truth would have been too painful to bear, so they had let the identity of the murderer remain a mystery.

Their silence had been tacitly agreed upon. It had protected them from knowing who had ended Celina's life. None had wanted to know.

"I did not kill that girl," Angus said. "As I told Alex, I gave her the keys to one of the cars and told her to drive herself home. The last time I saw her, she was leaving by the front door."

"I was upset because she turned me down," Junior said.

"I made the rounds of the beer joints and got shit-faced. I don't remember where I was or who I was with. But I think I would remember slashing Celina to ribbons."

' 'When dessert was passed around I left,'' Reede told them.

"I spent the night humping Nora Gail. I got to the stable about six that morning. That's when I found her."

Angus shook his head in bafflement. "Then everything we've told Alex is true."

"Alex?" Reede exclaimed. "Didn't you say she was just here?"

"Dad was talking to her when I came in."

"Where is she now?"

"She was sitting right there," Angus said, pointing at the empty spot on the sofa. "I didn't see anything after Junior came sailing toward me and knocked me down. Felt like a goddamn bull falling on me," he said, jovially socking his son beneath the chin. Junior grinned with boyish pleasure.

"Would you two cut it out and tell me where Alex went?"

"Calm down, Reede. She's gotta be around here somewhere."

"I didn't see her when I came in," he argued stubbornly as he rushed into the hall.

"It couldn't have been but a couple of minutes in between,"

Junior said. "Why are you so anxious about--"

"Don't you get it?" Reede asked over his shoulder. "If none of us killed Celina, whoever did is still out there, and he's just as pissed off at Alex as we've been."

"Jesus, I didn't think--"

"You're right, Reede."

"Come on."

The three men rushed through the front door. As they were clambering down the steps, Stacey Wallace wheeled into the drive and stepped out of her car.

"Junior, Angus, Reede, I'm glad I caught you. It's about Alex."

Reede drove the Jeep like a bat out of hell. At the crossroads of the highway and the Mintons' private road, he caught up

: with the deputies who had delivered him the Jeep and flagged down the patrol car.

"Have you seen my Blazer?" he shouted to them. "Alex Gaither was driving it."

"Yeah, Reede, we did. She was headed back toward your place."

"Much obliged." To his passengers he shouted, "Hang on," and executed a hairpin turn.

"What's going on?" Stacey asked. The Jeep's top was off, so she was clinging to the roll bar for dear life. In her staid world, nothing this death-defying had ever happened.

Trying to detain the Mintons and Reede had been impossible.

They had almost mowed her down in their haste to scramble into the Jeep. She'd been summarily told that if she must speak with them right then, she had to go along. She had climbed into the backseat with Junior, while Angus sat in the front seat, next to Reede.

"Alex could be in danger," Junior shouted into Stacey's ear to make himself heard. The cold north wind sucked the words out of his mouth.

"Danger?"

"It's a long story."

"I went to her motel," Stacey shouted. "The desk clerk told me she might be at the ranch."

"What's so important?" Reede asked over his shoulder.