“Oh, Dad,” he said again.
“I mean it. You can’t expect Neva to dig out this pigsty.”
“Yeah, okay.”
David squeezed Jason’s shoulder and walked to the door. Jason followed him. “Dad?”
David turned and found himself wrapped in his son’s muscular arms. He felt tears start and hugged the boy back. He couldn’t remember the last time Jason had touched him, much less hugged him. David held him for a long moment before Jason released him and turned quickly away.
David let his hand linger on Jason’s shoulder a moment, then unlocked the door and shut it gently behind him. He stood for a moment in the hall with his shoulder against the wall, his eyes closed. Twenty-year-old secrets and lies were being revealed before his eyes. Maybe exposure would lead to healing.
He started down the stairs. Before he reached the bottom step, Dub came out of his study, still holding the folded newspaper.
“That woman sat across from me at lunch and let me make a total jackass of myself,” Dub said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That ex-wife of yours!” He turned on his heel and stormed back into his study, evidently expecting David to follow.
David strolled after him.
Dub threw the paper down on his desk. “Sat right there while I went on about Melba snatching you from your poor little dumb wife who didn’t have brains enough to hold on to you!”
David leaned against the door frame. “Oh, boy.”
“Did not say a single word about who she was. Just talked about how hurt the girl must have been. You made a pure-D fool of me, David.”
“You handled that pretty well all by yourself, I’d say.”
Dub’s face was dangerously red. “What the Sam Hill possessed you? Hiring that woman, bringing her here and pretending she was a stranger?”
“She’s good at what she does. I knew that if anyone could get Jason out of this, she could.”
“Out of what? Some little scrape should a’ been handled long before it got this far?” He slapped the paper. “Instead we got us a humongous scandal gonna make Long Pond the laughingstock of the county.”
“Relax, Dub, before you blow a gasket. Sit down.”
Suddenly Dub deflated, felt his way around the desk and sank into his chair.
David rushed to him. “Dub?”
“Let me have a glass of water.”
David rushed to the bar and brought him one. Dub drank greedily.
“Let me call a doctor.”
“No.” Dub waved him away. “I’m fine.” He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. “Can’t believe that woman let me go on that way.”
So that was the real problem. Dub hating to look like a fool.
Dub opened his eyes. “Get rid of her.”
“No.”
“I mean it. We’ll hire somebody from Jackson. Don’t want her or that Selig at Long Pond again.”
David stood over him. The old man seemed to be breathing normally, and his color had dropped to his normal farmer’s tan. “Dub, this is my choice, not yours. I’m paying her. Jason is my son. This is not negotiable.”
He expected an immediate explosion. Instead, Dub simply waved him away with a sigh. “What the hell does it matter anyway. Damage is done.”
“I’m sure Kate won’t hold your remarks about Melba against you. She knows you were looking at it strictly from your own point of view.”
“Should have told me,” he grumbled.
“Probably, but I didn’t think anyone would connect her with me, and I’m sure she didn’t either. She went back to her maiden name 20 years ago. Then she married Mulholland.” He touched Dub’s shoulder. “Let it go. We’ve got worse problems than a little wounded vanity.”
Dub looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “Yeah. Like Jason moving to Hollywood and you moving to China.”
David walked to the bar and opened a soda from the small refrigerator. “I’m not leaving tomorrow. Maybe not at all.”
“Should be me.”
David wasn’t certain he’d heard correctly. “I beg your pardon?”
“You ever wonder why I got my degree in political science?”
“Good basic degree.”
Dub shook his head, pulled himself erect and walked over to stare up at the portrait of his wife and daughter that hung over the fireplace. His rage seemed to have been replaced with a mood that was almost wistful.
“I passed the foreign-service exam first try,” Dub said. He stuck his hands in his pockets and turned his head to look at David. “You got any idea how tough that is? Most people—even if they have advanced degrees—take two, three times to pass.” He poked a finger at his chest. “I damn near maxed the thing.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Yeah. Going into the foreign service. Wanted to see the world, work in embassies, maybe even get to be an ambassador someday.” His voice had grown stronger, but suddenly the strength seemed to go out of it. “Then my daddy had his stroke. I came home to Long Pond. Married Melba’s momma. Went to farming. Never did get to join the foreign service.” He shook his head. “Ought to be me going to China.”
“I’m sorry,” David said. “I didn’t know.”
Dub sighed and shrugged. Then he turned a savage face to David. “Jason has to come home to Long Pond. Maybe if you and Melba’d had a bunch of boys, one of ’em could have played Hollywood, but you didn’t. You had Jason. You take over from me, he takes over from you. That’s the way it’s always been and it’s the way it’s gonna be.”
“We’re not serfs,” David said quietly.
“Hell, yes, we are!” Dub snarled. “We’re bound to the land every bit as much as some damn Russian peasant under the czars and don’t you ever forget it!”
“No.” David said quietly. “I love Long Pond. I’ll stay as long as you need me, even if I have to fight you tooth and nail for every innovation I want to make. That’s my choice—for now. But Jason’s free to make his choices, and if that means Hollywood, then so be it.”
“I won’t have it!” Dub shouted. “If I have to, I’ll get married again and have me another son, and I’ll damn well live to be a hundred so I can pass Long Pond on to him and Jason can starve.”
“Dub?” It was Neva Hardin’s voice. She stood in the doorway, her hands wrapped in her apron, an expression of concern on her face. “You come on to lunch now. It’s getting cold.”
Dub turned blank eyes to her. Suddenly he seemed like a very old man. “We’re coming.”
“You will stay?” Neva asked David. Her eyes pleaded. He glanced from her to Dub and nodded. “So long as we don’t talk business. I’ll give Jason a holler.” As he passed Neva, she touched his hand. At the foot of the stairs he turned back to Dub. “You and I can discuss this later. Jason doesn’t need any more problems at the moment. Agreed?”
For a moment he thought Dub would refuse. Then the older man’s face caved in and his shoulders sagged. He nodded. A moment later he pasted a social grin on his face and walked off behind Neva to the dining room.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I
REALLY NEED to talk to Coral Anne Talley,” Kate told Arnold Selig over his fourth cup of coffee at the small coffee shop across the street from the Paradise Motel. When he gave her an uncomprehending stare, she continued, “Waneath’s little sister?”
“Good luck.” He looked up from the Athena newspaper in his hand. “I see District Attorney James Roy Allenby’s fine Italian hand in this news story,” he said.
“Really?”
“Our boy James Roy is no country rube. I get the feeling he could give any big-city spin doctor a run for his money as a media manipulator. Have you read this article?”
Kate shook her head. “Only the headline.”
“The gist of it is that the May-Canfield clan plans to use its money to buy Jason a slap on the wrist for killing Waneath, and that you and I are a pair of legal shysters who will use any trick in the book to get the kid off. You’ll be interested to know that you have just extorted a fortune in California from a poor, harried female doctor for a greedy, money-grubbing woman named Sunny Borland.”
Kate nearly choked on her coffee. “Let me see that.” She read with increasing annoyance. “This is just short of libelous. It’s not quite lies, but it sure comes close. Who is this Annabelle Wiggins anyway?” She pointed to the byline on the story.
Arnold wiggled his eyebrows. “I called my new best friend, Sheriff Tait, the minute I read the thing. It would seem Miz Wiggins...” He drew out the “mizzzz” so that it had more than its usual complement of z’s “Miz Wiggins is a thirty-five-year-old divorcée who moved here from Jackson after divorcing the esteemed Mr. Wiggins for flagrant disregard of his marital vows, took a job on the paper and began taking casseroles to David Canfield.”
Kate’s eyebrows went up.
Arnold shrugged. “The man’s a very eligible widower. He probably has enough sweet-potato pies in his freezer to last through the next millennium.”
“And did Miz Wiggins’s suit prosper?” Kate asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. She had to stop thinking of David as an ex-husband. He was precisely what Arnold said he was. No reason he shouldn’t date and bed the entire female population of Athena County.
Arnold grinned and shook his head. “Apparently David has developed a reputation for playing hard to get. Miz Wiggins moved onto greener pastures. Guess who?”
Kate grinned. “Mr. James Roy Allenby.”
Arnold nodded. “The
newly divorced
Mr. James Roy Allenby. I’m spending the afternoon in Jackson at Whitman, Tarber and McDonough, getting the papers completed to file for change of venue. You better hope we get it.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come down to that. When does the grand jury meet?” she asked.
“James Roy has called a special session on the eighteenth of December to consider Jason’s indictment. If we waive time, the trial will probably take place in April or May, if we’re lucky. If we fight for change of venue, that could set it back six months.”
“Jason might as well write off his freshman year. The courts won’t let him leave the state.” She sat back. “I suppose he could register at the junior college for spring semester. Maybe those credits would transfer to Pepperdine next year.”
“My, my, we are sure of ourselves, aren’t we?” Arnold grinned at her.
“Hey. I’m sure he didn’t do it. That’s why I need to speak to Coral Anne Talley. Maybe Waneath told her about the guy she was seeing.”
“The problem with that is twofold,” Arnold said. “First, if you go near the Talleys they’ll probably shoot you. Second, she’s sixteen. You can’t talk to her officially without a parent present.”
“And third, I can’t get a warrant to depose her this early in the process. Well, damn.” She began gnawing on the cuticle of her index finger, realized what she was doing and quit. She looked down at her hands. The nearly clear polish that covered her nails had begun to chip and flake. “I wonder if Myrlene knows somebody who could give me a manicure?” she asked.
“Might take the opportunity to infect you with blood poisoning,” Arnold said dryly.
“Maybe Myrlene knows where Waneath had her hair done. If she was seeing anybody, the hairdresser would surely know. Might be time for a little wash and blow-dry.”
Arnold gaped at her. “That egomaniac hairdresser you go to in Atlanta will kill you if you let somebody else mess with your hair,” he said. “You said you had to get his permission and approval to have it cut in Hollywood.”
“Ah, but Michel will never know unless
you
call him up and snitch.” She smiled at him sweetly. “And you like your job, don’t you, Arnold dear?”
“Woman, you are crazy.” Arnold said, and slid out of the booth. “Come on, let’s go back to the motel. I’m hoping for the report on Waneath’s autopsy sometime today.”
As she paid their check, Kate asked over her shoulder, “Will they release her body to the family now?” She glanced up into the avid eyes of the woman at the cash register and wished she’d kept her mouth shut. At least until she was out of earshot.
Arnold caught the glance, smiled back and kept his mouth shut. As they crossed the street, he said, “The funeral home should be able to pick up the body from the morgue in Memphis today or tomorrow. I asked the sheriff to notify the family.”
“I hate to say this, but one of us needs to go to that funeral,” Kate said.
“I’ll go. I’m extremely forgettable. You, on the other hand, are not.”
“Arnold, you stand out in Athena like an elk in Times Square. And I know the way you feel about funerals.”
“And you don’t? You think Canfield and Mays will attend?”
“They’ll want to. So will Jason. She was his friend. He should go, but it may lead to trouble if he does. Damn. I have no idea what to advise.”
“Don’t borrow trouble. Wait until the thing is scheduled.”
“Yeah.” She left him at his door. “If I don’t see you today, we can meet for dinner. There’s got to be someplace to go other than that café. If you’re going to be in Jackson, call me and I’ll meet you. It’s only a forty-minute drive.”
He nodded. “I’ll leave you a note if the autopsy report actually shows up.”
“Fine. I’m off to find Myrlene.”
Myrlene’s cart stood in front of an open door to a room at the back of the motel. Kate tapped on the door frame and called out. She heard running water shut off, and a moment later, Myrlene stuck her head out of the bathroom.
“Hey, Mrs. Mulholland,” she said. She seemed genuinely happy to see Kate, but a moment later she blushed and stammered, “I—I sure am sorry about the other night. Sometimes Jimmy has fewer brains than God gave a goose.”
“That’s okay.” Kate leaned in the door frame and held out her hands. “I just realized my hands are a mess, and I could use a shampoo. Are there any really good beauty shops in Athena?”
“Well, Momma gets hers done at the Crimp and Curl on the square.”
Kate thought about Momma’s hennaed and overpermed ’do and repressed a shudder. “Where did Waneath get hers done?”
“Oh, she went to Jackson.”
Kate’s heart fell. “Do you go to the Crimp and Curl too?”
Myrlene sniffed. “No way. Bunch of old hens. I go to Charlotte out by the bypass.”
“Think she could fit in a manicure?”
“Sure. Waneath used to have her nails done there sometimes. You want me to call her for you?”
Kate nodded, and fifteen minutes later drove into the strip mall opposite the shopping center. She decided that a manicure by itself was safe enough, and wouldn’t put her life in jeopardy with Michel in Atlanta. Every eye turned to her when she walked in the front door. Charlotte had wasted no time notifying everyone in the shop about who she was. Several women surreptitiously slid copies of the Athena newspaper into their handbags and studiously avoided her eyes. Lord, how she hated this! The chances that anyone would open up while she was here were slim.
She slid into the chair opposite the manicurist, an artistically made-up heavyset woman with skin the color of mocha latte. She looked at Kate’s hands and shook her head. “Whoa, honey, you have not been looking after these nails.”
“Uh, I’ve been kind of busy the last few days.”
The woman looked up and grinned. “I’m Juanita. Let’s see what we can do.”
Around her, conversation had begun again, but eyes turned her way from time to time.
“You do most of the girls in town?” Kate asked.
“Uh-huh.” Juanita wiped a cotton ball wet with remover over her thumbnail.
Kate lowered her voice. “I understand you gave Waneath Talley a manicure now and then?”
Juanita looked up quickly. Her brown eyes were extremely perceptive. She nodded. “Uh-huh. Did her fill-ins when she didn’t have time to get to Jackson. Never had her hair done here though.”
“How about her family?”
“Coral Anne, now, Charlotte been cutting her hair since she was a baby.” She arched an eyebrow. “Guess Mrs. Talley doesn’t feel like wasting a trip to Jackson on that child.”
“You wouldn’t happen to remember the last time Coral Anne came in, would you?”
“Couple of weeks.” Juanita dropped the cotton into the wastebasket beside her and picked up an emery board. “She sure could use a little highlighting and a body wave. Got hair the color of Long Lake after a bad storm—pure mud. Child has nice hands, though. I made her stop biting her nails.”
“You said you did Waneath’s fill-ins. She had acrylic nails?”
Juanita laughed. “Lord, yes. Could not grow a nail to save her life. Been wearing fakes since she was thirteen.”
Kate remembered the scarlet talons waving from Jason’s videotape and Waneath’s incredible body. “Did she ever have plastic surgery that you knew of?”
Juanita threw back her head and laughed. Instantly all activity in the salon stopped and every head turned to her. She looked around, took a deep breath and snickered. After a moment, activity resumed and Juanita whispered, “Added a little on the top and took a little off the bottom, if you know what I mean.”
“Liposuction?”
Juanita nodded. “Everybody in town knows she went off to Birmingham two years ago wearing an A-cup and size-eight jeans and came back wearing a C-cup and size-four jeans.”
“Two years ago?” Kate gaped. “She was seventeen years old!”
“You know you can’t have breast implants and nurse a baby?” Juanita said.
Kate shook her head.
“Guess she didn’t plan on nursing anyway. Probably would have figured out a way to have some other woman carry it if she’d ever gotten pregnant.”
Kate glanced up at Juanita, but she seemed oblivious to what she’d said. So the Athena gossip hadn’t yet picked up on Waneath’s delicate condition. “Was Waneath dating anybody special that you know of?” she asked.
“Lord, honey, she wouldn’t tell me. Didn’t seem to me like she was much interested in boys except for Jason.”
Twenty minutes later Kate tipped Juanita extravagantly, paid her bill and left feeling every eye in the shop on her as she climbed into her car.
She drove to the junior-college campus and almost automatically checked for David’s car in the faculty parking lot. Not there. But then, it was after eleven. His ten o’clock class would be long over by now. She grabbed a cup of coffee in the school cafeteria and sat in a corner wondering whether every attractive male that walked past had known Waneath, then she went in search of Professors Thomasson and Vasquez.
She caught Thomasson outside his noon class. He looked harried, and ropy rather than muscular, but his shock of iron-gray hair and pale blue eyes might well attract co-eds. She noticed that he wore no wedding ring, and that there were tufts of black hair on the backs of his knuckles. He smelled strongly of a nauseatingly sweet aftershave.
She crossed him off instinctively. Waneath was much too canny to fall for this poor imitation of Richard Gere. Five minutes later, his vehement denials of involvement with Waneath ringing in her ears, she went in search of Vasquez.
She heard a deep male voice behind his office door, knocked and entered at his invitation. Vasquez stood and came around the desk with his hand outstretched the moment she told him who she was. He clasped her right hand in both of his and held on while he led her to the wooden chair across the desk from him.
He wore elderly jeans that seemed painted on his lean, muscular legs, and were worn a paler blue over the considerable bulge at his crotch. His black turtleneck sweater stretched over his chest and shoulders. He was only about five foot seven or eight, and had snapping black eyes, more than the normal complement of blinding teeth, and a head of black curls that would have made Shirley Temple envious.
Maybe Waneath had decided to go for a man who was as pretty as she. If he were the father of her baby, the combination of this guy’s genes with Waneath’s would probably have produced an exquisite child.