She heard the bitterness in her voice and knew that David would recognize her tone. Well, let him. She wadded up the paper from her cheeseburger and handed it to David. He’d eaten practically nothing, but he added his detritus to hers on the tray, set it into the holder beside the car and rolled up the window.
“We’d better get back,” he said.
As if in answer, her cell phone shrilled. She heard Arnold’s voice.
“I’m still trying to confirm that bail hearing this afternoon at four,” he told her. “So far I haven’t heard one way or the other. But we have an appointment with the sheriff and the D.A.”
“You have the arrest reports?”
“Yeah. And the sheriff is supposed to give us a copy of the autopsy.”
“Fine. We’re on our way back.” She turned to David. “Is there a motel in this place?”
“Dub may want you to stay at Long Pond.”
“No way.”
“There are five guest rooms. I don’t live there, Kate.”
“That has nothing to do with it. Arnold and I want our own space. I’ll only be here one night anyway. So, is there a motel?”
“Yeah, but hardly four star. The Paradise out on the bypass.”
She passed on the information to Arnold. “Call them and get us a couple of adjoining rooms if possible.” Out of the corner of her eye she caught the quick turn of David’s head toward her. She glanced at him and saw the speculation in his eyes. He was obviously wondering whether she and Arnold had a relationship that went deeper than business. Let him wonder.
David’s parking karma was not so hot this time. The courthouse square was full of cars.
“Let me out please, David. Then go home. There’s nothing you can do until the bail hearing.”
“How does that work?” He pulled into a loading zone under the watchful eye of a deputy sheriff.
“If the judge grants bail, then you have to hand over ten percent of the total amount to a licensed bail bondsman along with collateral for the rest in case Jason runs away. He gives surety to the court, and Jason is released pending his court appearance.”
“I don’t know whether we even have a bail bondsman in Athena.”
“Bound to. It’s the county seat. Look in the telephone book and make some calls. But be prepared for a hefty sum. Do you have a house you can mortgage?”
“I already mortgaged it to pay your retainer.”
“I see. Land?”
He shook his head. “Not possible. Not your problem. You concentrate on getting any kind of bail. We’ll come up with the money somehow.”
“I’ll try to get it as low as I can. That young man in the police uniform over there is getting antsy. Let me out. Go home. Make those calls, then try to get some rest. See you at four.” She felt an incredible impulse to lean across the car and kiss him goodbye as she’d done a zillion times before. She caught herself, opened the door and bolted up the marble courthouse steps as fast as her high-heeled pumps would take her.
THE ROOM IN WHICH the bail hearing took place was smaller than the average corporate conference room. A dozen scratched, gray, metal folding chairs sat in rows across the back. At the front, four of the same chairs stood behind a pair of six-foot deal tables, one on either side of a center aisle. In front of them at a similar table sat the judge beside his clerk. A court reporter was behind him and to his left, her fingers poised over the keys of her machine, ready to record the proceedings.
When Otis brought Jason in to sit between Kate and Arnold at the defense table, she realized he’d cleaned himself up. Maybe he’d even risked that shower after all, but he still wore shackles and handcuffs and prison orange.
After the preliminaries, the prosecuting attorney, an intense man in an ill-fitting blue suit, outlined the charges against Jason and inveighed against granting bail in any amount.
Whether Jason was guilty or not, Kate and Arnold had recognized five minutes into their meeting with Athena County district attorney James Roy Allenby that he viewed this case as a stepping stone to a bigger pond. He obviously realized the case had what lawyers called “legs.” Beauty queen murdered, possibly raped. Suspect from a prominent old family. Victim’s family newly rich. And a pair of hotshot Atlanta attorneys.
Kate listened as James Roy spent ten minutes playing poor little good ole boy from the sticks up against the powerful Delta elite. Kate recognized immediately that the judge was unimpressed. Fortunately, there was no jury to play to. If this case went to trial, her Beverly Hills haircut might become a liability. The Chanel suit would definitely have to go. The last thing she needed was to come across as the “pro from Dover” willing to use any big-city trick to get a guilty rich kid off a jail sentence he richly deserved.
She’d have to try for the motherly look. Difficult since she had so few good role models. Her stepchildren had been grown before she’d ever married Alec; her own mother had spent years as Queen of Denial, and David’s mother made Clytemnestra look like Mother Goose.
She realized she’d been wool-gathering and hoped that Arnold had been taking good notes, although Allenby merely seemed to be going over the same territory again and again. Finally, after an interminable harangue that nearly made her eyes cross, he sat down with a satisfied smirk in her direction.
She heard the door behind her open and close as she stood to address the judge, but she didn’t turn around to see who had come in. She assumed that David had returned, possibly with Dub. For a moment she felt a flutter of disquiet, but quelled it. David had never seen her in action in a courtroom. She longed to impress him, but knew she’d have to forget all about him if she expected to perform adequately. Given the short notice she’d been given to prepare, all she could hope to be was adequate. With luck that would be enough.
The judge was close to retirement age—possibly past it—but from the button-bright black eyes he turned on her, she didn’t make the mistake of underestimating his intelligence or his knowledge of the law. She had caught his exasperation at Allenby’s emotional tactics. The best thing to do would be to lay out the facts—or lack of them. If she lost here, she’d appeal his decision. Somewhere up the line she’d probably win bail, but in the meantime Jason would be stuck in the Athena jail, and David would be even more frantic than he was at the moment.
“Your Honor, this is hardly the time to argue the merits of the case against my client, although the evidence is tenuous. It basically amounts to arresting the handiest suspect without bothering to do much investigating.”
“Counselor,” the judge said, “don’t tell me what you’re
not
going to tell me and then proceed to tell me.” But there was a slight upward tic to his dewlaps when he said it.
“Yes, sir. My client has ties to the community that go back over a century. He has no intention of leaving Athena. He wants his name cleared. He doesn’t even have an outstanding parking ticket. He’s never been in any trouble. He was an A student all during school. He was on the honor roll and in the Beta Society in high school. He was a finalist for a national merit scholarship—”
“All right, Counselor, I get the picture.”
“Your Honor,” Allenby interrupted, “I’m sure he has both a passport and the money to use to leave the country.”
“We’ll surrender his passport,” Kate said. “Immediately. He’s already under a hardship because he’s going to college in California and won’t be able to go back to school...” Beside her, she heard Jason shift and an irritable sound issue from his throat. She glanced down at him. Surely he didn’t dream they’d let him fly back to Malibu? Assuming Pepperdine would even let him in the doors under the present circumstances.
“We do want a speedy trial, Your Honor, in the event that the charges aren’t dropped for lack of evidence. This young man is functioning under a cloud. He has the complete support of a very close-knit family. He just wants to get this over and move on with his life without suspicion hanging over him. We ask for bail in the amount of twenty thousand dollars.” David should be able to come up with two thou—not that the judge was likely to agree to that. Kate heard the disgusted snort from Allenby and sat down beside David.
Jason leaned over and whispered, “I can’t miss school.”
“Shut up,” Kate said out of the corner of her mouth.
“But—”
“Shut up.” She smiled at the judge.
His eyes swept the room behind her. He rubbed his hand down his jaw and Kate heard a scritch as though he hadn’t bothered to shave this morning.
“Well, y’all,” he said, “I can see both your points. But this is not a capital murder case—nobody’s asking for the death penalty here. So I pretty much got to set bail, but just to make sure I got everybody’s attention—” he glanced at Jason with a raised eyebrow “—I’m setting it a tad higher than defense counsel’s request.” The gavel fell. “Bail is set at five hundred thousand dollars.” The judge stood and turned to leave the room. Everyone but Jason scrambled to their feet and stood as he prepared to leave the room.
Otis reached over, grabbed Jason by the collar of his jumpsuit and hauled him to his feet.
“Five...” Jason sputtered. “Jeez. We’ll never be able to come up with that.”
From over her right shoulder Kate heard a booming bass voice, “Hey, Pete, y’all take a personal check in this place?”
The judge stopped with his hand on the door, turned back and grinned at the man behind Kate. “You wouldn’t try to kite a rubber check on the people of the sovereign state of Mississippi, would you, Dub?”
“Hell, no, y’all’d catch me. Never did like jail ever since you and me got busted running beer from Memphis down to Oxford that time and our daddies had to come get us out the next morning.”
The judge laughed, shook his head and shut the door to his chambers behind him.
“Granddaddy.” Jason sighed. It was as though the archangel had finally showed up just as the lions started nibbling Daniel’s toes.
“Miz Mulholland, I’m Dub Mays,” the man said and stuck out his hand. “Damn foolishness dragging y’all down here for something this silly.”
She blinked. Rape and murder silly? She took her first good look at him.
How on earth had tiny Melba Mays ever come from this tall, elegant man with his hawk nose and mass of shining white hair? He wore the Delta farmer’s universal uniform, but slicked up for the occasion. He had on immaculate chinos with a crease that would probably slice butter, a starched plaid logger’s shirt, and when Kate glanced down at his feet she saw that someone had spit-shined his brown engineer’s boots. His face was the color and consistency of tanned leather, and the palm of the hand he offered her felt as though he’d lined it with rhinoceros horn.
“I never expected bail quite this high,” she said.
He waved a hand. “Shoot, just to be on the safe side, I set up a million five with Acme Bail Bonds out of Jackson yesterday.” He grinned. “Good thing this happened in November. Most Delta farmers say they are solvent one day of the year—that’s the day between the time they pay off last year’s crop loans and sign the papers for this year’s. That day generally comes along about November.” For the first time he looked at Jason. “You all right, boy?” he asked. Kate heard the love behind the gruffness.
“Yessir.”
“He’s fine, Dub,” Otis said. “I been looking after him.”
Dub nodded and shook Otis’s hand. “Thank you, Otis.”
“We got to take him back down and get him processed,” the guard said. “You take care of the bail with Harry in the office.”
“You did bring his passport?” Arnold asked.
Dub nodded and handed the passport to Arnold. “Foolishness. This is all a damn-fool misunderstanding.” He grinned at his grandson. “Ain’t it, boy?”
Jason nodded as though his grandfather’s words could hypnotize him into believing it really was all foolishness.
“Arnold, why don’t you and Mr. Mays...” Kate began.
“Call me Dub, sugar, everybody does.”
Sugar? “Fine, Dub. You and Arnold take care of the bail. I’ll go down to the jail and wait for Jason to get his things on. Arnold, where’d you park the rental car?”
“Dave’s waiting by the jail in my Cadillac,” Dub said. “He’ll drive you all. Mr. Selig can drive me back to Long Pond in his car.”
“Long Pond?”
“Our homeplace.”
“Mr. Mays—Dub—I’d really like to check into my motel,” she said.
“Motel? Heck fire, woman, you got any idea what that motel is like? Shoot, half the time they rent rooms by the hour. Y’all can stay at Long Pond. Besides, we got to have us a council of war about this foolishness.”
She started to protest, then realized she was too tired to fight. “We’ll discuss it later.” As he turned away, she said, “If David’s waiting outside, you must have had a good deal of faith that I’d manage to secure bail.”
He grinned. “With ole Pete on the bench? Shoot, he’d never deny any kin of mine bail.”
CHAPTER THREE
K
ATE LEFT Arnold and Dub settling up with the clerk of the court for Jason’s release and walked down the ancient marble steps to the foyer, then down one more flight to the cells. The jail area had its own door that opened onto an alley where she assumed David waited in Dub’s Cadillac.
Good thing. They didn’t need to parade through the main square of Athena with Jason in tow.
She was stuck riding with David once more, but this time Jason’s presence would keep them from talking about anything personal.
David had already given hints that he wanted to rehash old times. The last thing she wanted was to wallow in memories of his defection—me worst personal defeat of her life.
No, she didn’t need to hear David’s apologia for cheating on her and getting Melba Mays pregnant. That was self-explanatory. And absolutely, totally, and completely unacceptable.
She’d watched her mother ignore her father’s infidelities ever since she was old enough to recognize sexual betrayal. She had sworn that no man would ever betray her that way and get away with it.
When she’d finally told her mother why she had kicked David out, her mother had tried to convince her that any dog gets one bite. Despite her own anger, she’d wanted Kate to forgive and forget.
Yeah. Right. Kate could have put up with almost anything else from David, so, of course, that was what he had done. It was downright biblical—that which she had greatly feared had come upon her.
On the other hand, she’d never dreamed that Alec would die on her. Not at fifty-six. He’d had one mild heart attack before she met him, but during their marriage his cholesterol had been perfect, he’d worked out four times a week in the company gym in the basement of their offices. He’d jogged and eaten right and kept his weight down.
He’d been on medication to keep his blood thin and his pressure down. That tended to make erection difficult for him, but they’d managed. Even if she had felt physically deprived, she would never have taken Alec’s impotence as carte blanche to take a lover.
But men felt differently about sex. She’d never known what she’d been unable to provide David sexually, what had sent him careening into Melba’s arms the first time she showed up in New York. So far as she was concerned, their sex life had been great. More than great. David took her places she’d only read about. Of course, since she’d come to his bed her junior year in college as a virgin, she didn’t have any frame of reference, but she’d loved making love with him. He always seemed satisfied and content afterward. Still, she’d failed somewhere. Otherwise he’d never have turned to Melba.
Locks clanged and voices murmured from the cells.
As she waited for the door to open and Jason to emerge, she heard the click of heels coming down the stairs behind her, and an instant later a woman’s voice. “Are you that lawyer from Atlanta?”
She turned to see a plump partridge of a woman wearing too much makeup, and with dyed blond hair that looked as though it had been set with concrete. The woman’s red-rimmed eyes seemed crazed, and her too-red lipstick was smeared at the corners of her mouth.
“I’m Kate Mulholland,” she said warily.
“How do you live with yourself?” The woman’s voice sounded as though she were running it through a cheese grater. She took a step toward Kate, who backed up instinctively.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You got that little demon out, didn’t you?”
Kate saw that the woman was on the verge of tears.
“The judge granted bail, yes.”
“So that, that...killer—” she spat the word “—goes home to his fancy house and sleeps in a soft bed. Do you know where my little girl is sleeping?”
Kate gulped. Waneath’s mother.
The woman pointed over her shoulder, “She’s over there naked on a steel table.”
“Mrs. Talley, I’m so sorry for your loss.” It was the standard response, and Kate knew how weak it sounded, but she didn’t know what else to say.
“You
should
be sorry. You’re going to get him off, aren’t you? You and your fancy clothes and Dub’s big money. Those people think they can get away with anything. He killed my baby! He deserves to die like she did.”
“I know you’re upset—”
“Upset?” The woman’s mouth twisted. “Oh, yes, I am definitely upset. Are you a mother?” She peered into Kate’s face. “No, you’re not. I can see that. If you were a mother you’d know. You wouldn’t get him off.”
The door behind Mrs. Talley opened, and Otis stepped through. Behind him stood Jason wearing his own clothes, free of shackles. Kate prayed that Waneath’s mother wouldn’t hear the sound, wouldn’t see Jason standing there.
“Mrs. Talley, do you have anyone with you? Anyone who’s looking after you?” she asked, and realized how patronizing she sounded as the words left her mouth.
“You think I’m crazy? I’m not the one who’s setting a killer free. I hope you rot in hell!”
Kate caught the movement out of the corner of her eye only a second before Mrs. Talley slapped her across the face with enough force to snap her head against the wall behind her. The sound reverberated down the narrow hall.
For a moment Mrs. Talley stared at Kate openmouthed, as though she’d been struck dumb by the force of her anger. Then she spun and ran toward the alley door just as David opened it. Her hands covered her face, and Kate could hear her sobs. She wasn’t even aware that the man who held the door for her was Jason’s father.
“Mrs. Talley?” he said to her retreating back, and turned toward the tableau in front of him. “Kate? What’s going on?”
Otis shoved Jason ahead of him and came to her. “You want to file charges, Mrs. Mulholland? She assaulted you.”
Kate’s cheek stung. She tasted her own blood where her teeth had been forced against her lips. She blinked back tears of pain and shook her head. “No, Otis, no. Forget it.”
“But ma’am...”
“That’s the last thing we need. Is Jason free to go?”
“Yes’m, if you’re sure.”
“I am. Come on, Jason, let’s get you out of here.”
His eyes were wide and frightened, but he came.
“Jason.” His father reached out to embrace him, but Jason glanced at him with a look of such loathing that he stepped back in confusion.
“You coming?” Jason said over his shoulder to Kate. “Before the lynch mob shows up?”
Outside in the alley Kate shoved Jason into the back seat and ran around to the passenger side. David climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine.
In the back seat Jason slumped down as though he didn’t want anyone to see him. Kate heard the electronic locks click. Fortunately the car’s windows were tinted, so nobody could see in.
“What happened in there?” David asked.
“Nothing,” Kate replied. “Mrs.Talley was upset about Jason’s bail. She thinks Dub is buying his freedom.”
“She’s had Jason and Waneath engaged for three years. Every time I saw the woman in church I could almost see her figuring out the decorations for the wedding in her head. And now even
she
thinks he killed Waneath?”
“Yeah. Man, you find out who your friends are real quick when you get arrested for murder, am I right?” Jason said.
“You are righter than you know,” Kate said, swiveling to look at him. “So you are going to keep a very low profile. You’re not to leave the house, not go out to dinner, call your friends, anything, until we see how the wind blows.”
“So you’re saying I’m still a prisoner, right?”
“In a sense, yes. Waneath hasn’t been buried yet. You want to run into the entire football team from the high school after they’ve had a few beers?”
“Man, I can’t believe this.”
“Maybe it’s time to tell us the truth,” David said quickly.
Too quickly. Kate glanced over at him and realized he was looking at his son in the rearview mirror. She remembered that set of his jaw—it signified either real anger or real fear. Maybe both. So he wasn’t as certain of his son’s innocence as he’d tried to convince her he was.
Kate twisted around in time to catch the sullen expression in Jason’s eyes as he looked daggers at the back of his father’s head. “I didn’t do anything, you know.”
“Until we can persuade a jury of that, people are always going to think you did.” Kate said. “So why don’t you tell me what really happened?”
Jason stared at her. “I thought my lawyer was supposed to believe me.”
“The first rule you learn in law school is that clients always lie. Sometimes they do it just to make themselves look better, and sometimes because they’re guilty, and sometimes when they don’t know they’re doing it, but they lie. Just the way you lied to me this morning.”
“The hell I did.”
“Jason,” his father said in a warning tone. “Watch your language. Mrs. Mulholland is trying to help you.”
“Oh, sure, by calling me a liar. Listen, I’m sick and tired of all this. I’m going to take a nap. Wake me when we get to Long Pond.” With those words, he keeled over onto the leather seat, wrapped his arms around his body and closed his eyes.
“So that’s it for now.” Kate sighed.
“Kate, what did I miss in there?”
“Waneath’s mother is understandably very upset. That’s par for the course, although I’d like to know how she got down there without somebody stopping her. I think if she’d had a gun she’d have used it on me, Otis, Jason, you and God knows who else.”
“You’re serious.”
“Indeed I am. As it was, she made do with her hand. She slapped me.”
“She what?”
“Keep your eyes on the road. Those ditches we’re driving between look as though they might be full of alligators. God, this country is flat!”
“So that’s what Otis meant when he asked if you wanted to press charges?”
“Yeah. A good coating of makeup should cover her handprint on my cheek. I don’t think I’m going to have a black eye, although—” she ran her tongue over her teeth “—the inside of my lip is cut.”
“Sweet heaven, Kate, if I’d thought I was putting you in any danger, I’d never have brought you down here.”
“I know that.” Without thinking she laid her palm on his forearm. The car shimmied and then righted itself. She snatched her hand away.
How could the electricity between them have lasted twenty years?
They drove in silence along back roads, narrow and lined with stubby trees. On either side stretched flat fields, already plowed or still covered in the stubble of this year’s soybeans and cotton. Suddenly David pulled over to the side of the road and leaned across her. “That’s Long Pond,” he said, pointing across the field.
The house was large and luminously white, with a Palladian colonnaded front porch and second-floor balcony. It loomed up no more than a mile across the fields as though it were a giant riverboat riding seas of mud and dirt. A few immense old trees in the yard swayed leafless in the late-November breeze.
“My Lord,” Kate whispered.
David started the car again. Several miles down the road he turned right, and after another couple of miles or so turned again between gleaming white board fences into a gravel driveway that ran past barns, silos and outbuildings to a turnaround at the front steps of the house.
Now Kate saw that the lawn was small for such a big house. Land must be too precious to waste on luxuries like grass. The house was surrounded by big azaleas that would bloom gloriously come spring.
Arnold’s rental car stood in the parking area under a broad naked pin oak. David stopped at the front steps and reached around to shake Jason’s shoulder. “Wake up, son, you’re home.”
Jason grumbled, sat up and opened the car door.
“I’ll put the car in the garage. Dub is very particular about his automobiles,” David said.
Jason half stumbled up the front stairs and across the porch with Kate following. As he reached the double front doors, they opened, and a tiny woman, like an elderly wren, flew out.
“Jason!” She threw her arms around him and dragged him inside. “You go right upstairs now and scrub that jailhouse stink right off you and put on some clean clothes. I laid ’em out for you on your bed.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jason said. He said over his shoulder, “I’m going to sleep for a week. Don’t call me for dinner.”
The woman turned and held out her hands to Kate. “You must be Miz Mulholland. I’m Neva Hardin, Dub’s housekeeper.” She took both of Kate’s hands and pulled her into the front hall. “Thank you for bringing my boy back home.”
Kate had no idea how old the woman was. Her face was as wrinkled as an apple doll, but her spine was straight, and she moved with the grace and speed of a young woman.
Kate smiled down at the woman, but looked up when she heard Dub’s booming bass. “Get yourself on up to your. room, boy,” Dub said. “Then when you look halfway human, come and join us on the back porch for a little afternoon libation.”