Johnston - Heartbeat (16 page)

The orchestra played a loud, up-tempo version of “The Yellow Rose of Texas” while cowboy “Yee-haws!” and shouts of “Remember the Alamo!” resounded. The string lights snapped back on as confetti rained down on them and red, white, and blue helium-filled balloons floated in the sky over the Alamo. The whole place suddenly resembled a political convention with the next presidential candidate on the platform.

Jack looked around and realized it was one of those utterly Texan moments from which myths and fables arose—totally ridiculous, yet almost glorious at the same time.

“Mrs. Woodson Wainwright will partner this descendant of the Alamo in a dance, which we hope you’ll all join,” Victoria said.

It was clear to Jack from the brief expression that crossed Maggie’s face, that this was the first she’d heard of it. But she smiled graciously at the old man and helped him off the steps and onto the dance floor, spotlighted the entire time.

The orchestra began playing a familiar-sounding forties tune and the dance floor, which was already filled with people, separated visibly into smiling, happy couples. A few began singing the words to “I’ll Be Seeing You,” and soon everyone had joined in.

Jack stood along the adobe wall that had served as part of the Alamo fortress, watching Maggie dance with the World War II veteran, knowing he couldn’t very well cut in on a Descendant of a Hero of the Alamo. He kept a close eye on Maggie, not at all sure she wouldn’t take advantage of the opportunity to sneak away and avoid answering his questions.

He watched her move to the music, admiring her grace. He saw her mouthing the words to the song and smiling at the old man, then looking for Jack . . . and finding him.

Jack knew he’d never hear that tune again without thinking of Maggie. He would always remember her eyes as they looked at that moment. Desolate . . . and yearning.

The instant the dance ended, he was at her side. He edged her through the crowd, but Victoria Wainwright caught them before they got away.

“You can’t be leaving so soon,” she said to Maggie.

“I’m tired, Victoria,” Maggie said.

Jack wondered why Maggie hadn’t added, “And furious with you!” but took one look at the tension between the two women and realized it wasn’t necessary. Victoria knew exactly how Maggie felt. She just didn’t care.

“Get out of my way, Victoria,” Maggie said.

“I’ve stood by for ten years and watched you pretend none of it ever happened,” Victoria said. “But I don’t intend to let you forget, Margaret. You killed them all with your selfishness and your—”

Maggie tried to step by her, but Victoria grabbed her forearm, her blood-red nails tearing into Maggie’s flesh and leaving deep gouges. Jack caught Victoria’s wrist and tightened his hold to force her to free Maggie. The three of them stood connected in the violent tableau until, with a grunt of pain, Victoria let Maggie go.

Jack instantly released her. “Go wait for me by the gazebo, Maggie.”

“I can handle this myself, Jack. Why don’t you go—”

“I’m not leaving without you,” Jack said.

Victoria clapped. “Quite a lovely scene of devotion.” She eyed Jack and warned, “Just don’t turn your back on her. You may not live to regret it.”

Victoria stalked away and left them standing there, Jack fighting back the reckless urge to strangle the woman, and Maggie trembling with . . . fear? No. It was rage, Jack realized. Very controlled rage.

“Shall we go?” he said.

“You heard Victoria’s warning. Are you sure you still want to take me home?”

“I can take care of myself.”

Maggie’s lips curved. “It’s a good thing you didn’t say you could handle me.”

“I was going to say that next.”

“Be glad you didn’t,” Maggie said, heading for the Rivercenter.

The drive home was as silent as the drive to the gala had been, but the space between them seemed electrically charged. Jack’s hackles were still up from the confrontation with Victoria, and his heart was pounding hard in his chest. It took him most of the drive back to Maggie’s condominium to figure out why.

“This is far enough,” Maggie said, when he pulled up under the portico at 200 Patterson.

Jack scowled at the attendant, who was careful to keep his face blank. “I’ll see you to your door,” he said. By the time Jack got around the truck, Maggie had already let herself out. He laid his callused fingertips on the small of her back beneath the satin stole, a constant flesh-to-flesh touch that she fled as she moved quickly ahead of him into the elevator.

She unlocked her front door and turned to keep him at bay. “Good night, Jack. I—”

He reached behind her, shoved open the door, and edged her inside. “We have some talking to do.”

She walked away from him, gathering the satin stole protectively around her, before she turned to face him. “What is it you want from me?”

“The truth, Maggie.”

“About what?”

“About you. About your past. Tonight was the second time I’ve learned some startling information—unbelievable information—about you from a third party.”

“I’m not a murderer, Jack. I’m not a horrible person.”

“What happened to your kids, Maggie? What happened to your husband?”

“My sons drowned, Jack,” she said in a hard, cold voice. “And Woody died.”

“That isn’t enough, Maggie. I want to hear all of it. How did they drown? How did he die? The truth. Everything you’ve been hiding from me, starting with why you never mentioned one of your sons is still alive!”

Her eyes went wide with fright before she turned and ran for the bedroom, abandoning the satin stole, which floated toward the carpet.

Before it could land, he caught her, shoving her back against the wall, pinning her there with his body. He swore under his breath when he realized he was hard and ready, and what he really wanted to do was put himself inside her.

But he couldn’t. Not with all the lies of omission that stood between them. He felt so much, too much, all of it feral. His eyes burned into hers, and what he saw made his gut twist.

Hopelessness . . . and raw anguish blurred by tears that spilled as she tried
to
blink them back. She was rigid as a fence post held taut by barbed wire. When he reached out to brush a tear from her cheek, she bucked against him, inflaming him even more.

“I don’t owe you anything, Jack. If you don’t let me go
this instant,
I’ll—”

Jack backed up, his breathing choppy, his pulse pounding at his temples, his hands balled into fists to keep him from reaching for her again. “I’ll find out the truth, Maggie.”

“Nobody knows the truth but me, Jack. It’s nobody’s business but mine.”

“The police in Minnesota—”

“Despite Victoria’s accusations, no charges were ever brought against me.”

“What happened to the son who didn’t die, Maggie? Where is he?”

She looked as though he’d kicked her in the stomach. “I can’t tell you that, Jack.”

“I need an answer, Maggie.”

“Brian’s someplace safe,” she said. “Someplace where he can be cared for properly.”

Safe from whom?
Jack wondered. Then he remembered how upset Victoria had been that Maggie wouldn’t tell her where her surviving grandson was.
Safe from his grandmother?
Jack thought with horror.

“Do you see him, Maggie? Do you visit your son?”

“Of course I do! What kind of mother do you think I am?”

He forked a hand though his hair, leaving it askew. He didn’t want to believe the worst of her, but for an innocent woman, she had an awful lot of secrets. “I don’t know what to think of you, Maggie.”

Her shoulders squared, and her chin tilted up in defiance. But he saw the defeat in her eyes.

What was it she had lost?

The same thing he had lost, Jack realized. Any hope of a relationship . . . even a superficial sexual one.

“I still want you, Maggie.”

She hissed in a breath, and the pulse at the base of her throat speeded up, but her stance didn’t soften. “Go home, Jack.”

Jack stood where he was another moment, feeling the heat of her, smelling the scents of her and him mixed up together. She was right, of course. He was crazy to want her when he knew so little about her . . . about her secrets. The physical attraction between them had to be resisted. At least until a few more things got settled. “Good night, Maggie.”

Jack stood looking at her for another heartbeat, then headed for the door.

“Jack.”

The sadness in her voice stopped him. He glanced at her over his shoulder, repressing the urge to reach out to her. “Yes, Maggie?”

“Goodbye.”

“I’m not going far. And I’ll be back.” He needed to finish things between them one way or another. He didn’t want the memory of her, of wanting her, haunting him the rest of his life.

All he had to do was unearth the real killer. Then he’d come back and find out what secrets kept Maggie Wainwright locked in such a barren life.

Halfway down the stairs, Jack realized he had left Maggie alone and upset with four bottles of booze. What if she found the liquor she’d bought for him too tempting to resist?

On the other hand, it wasn’t his responsibility to keep her sober. In fact, if he’d learned anything from having an alcoholic for a mother, it was that there wasn’t much you could do to separate a determined alcoholic from her bottle except put her in an institution somewhere. Jack reminded himself he was better off staying out of it.

He reached the guardhouse and waited for the scrolled iron gate to open. The longer he sat there, the more agitated he became. He backed up instead of going through the gate and made a U-turn to the right—almost sliding into the empty gully where the San Antonio River would have run, except for the drought—and headed back toward the upscale condominium. He hadn’t gone twenty feet before Maggie passed him headed the opposite direction in a white Mercedes coupe with a black cloth top.

She never saw him. Her eyes
were
riveted to the road in front of her. If he drove all the way back to the entrance, she’d be long gone before he got turned around. Jack jerked the wheel and crushed a couple hundred dollars’ worth of impatiens and begonias alongside the road as he turned his truck back around.

He caught up to Maggie just as she turned off Patterson and headed south. Jack followed her to I-35. Was she heading back downtown to the gala? Before she reached the MacArthur Freeway she headed west on I-10. The southwest side of town was mostly poor and mostly Spanish-speaking. Why would she be heading in that direction?

At least she hadn’t stayed home to drink, Jack thought. That was small comfort, however, because there were plenty of bars in southwest San Antonio. Maybe she was going to see her son. Jack hoped so. If he could see the boy, see where she kept him, how she related to him, it would answer a lot of his concerns.

Maggie exited into one of the poorer neighborhoods and turned west again, deeper into Spanish-speaking San Antonio.

Jack pulled to the curb as she edged her coupe between two pickup trucks at a rowdy cantina. He started to get out of his truck, then realized Maggie was still sitting in the coupe. When a couple of drunks shoved open the wooden door and left the bar, the music was loud enough that Jack heard the twang of string guitars from a really wretched Mariachi band from where he was parked halfway down the block.

After the two men left in a rusted-out pickup, Maggie opened her car door and got out. Her sleeveless white knit top was tucked into skin-tight jeans that were tucked into bright red cowboy boots. The garish neon lights from the cantina turned her flesh green, like a piece of surreal art. This strange Texas barfly was another part of Maggie . . . one he had no desire to know.

Jack started to get out of his truck, determined to stop her from going inside. Before he could act, she was back in the coupe. Stones sprayed as she backed out of the gravel parking lot and headed south again. He followed her south and west until they were in a section of San Antonio he was familiar with only because it had been singled out in San Antonio police statistics for its vicious gangs, illegal drug sales, and drive-by shootings.

Maggie pulled into the parking lot of what he thankfully realized was a Catholic church. It was old enough to be built of adobe, rather than brick or cement. After she hurried inside, he parked his truck beside her coupe, wondering whether either vehicle would be there when they came back out.

He got his Colt from beneath the truck seat, checked the rounds, and stuck it in the back of his tux trousers under his jacket, where he could get to it if he needed it. Then he headed for the door she had entered and stepped inside.

Stairs led down into a stygian gloom. Jack took his gun out and put his back against the adobe wall as he eased down toward the voices he could hear below him.

Drugs,
he thought disgustedly.
She’s jumped from alcohol to drugs. Probably needs them to deal with the guilt of killing her husband and father-in-law
. . .
and drowning her sons.
An insidious voiced added,
And killing a bunch of kids?

The stairs went down a long way. The place must have been a refuge from Indians once upon a time. Or maybe a wine cellar for the priests, he thought more cynically. When he got
to
the bottom of the stairs, Jack took a quick look around the corner, then laid his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, and slowly let out the breath he’d been holding.

“Jesus,” he said. “Lord Jesus, help me.”

Chapter 11

It was an AA meeting. After his mother died, Jack had sworn he’d never go to another one with anybody. Damned if Maggie hadn’t tricked him into coming here! His conscience—not to mention Captain Buckelew—would never let him hear the end of it if he didn’t stay and make sure she got home safely.

A man at the front of the room announced, “My name is Hector, and I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hey, Hector,” the crowd responded.

Jack slipped the Colt into the back of his tux trousers and eased into a metal folding chair on the aisle at the back of the room, which was filled almost to capacity. He knew there were nonsmoking AA meetings, but this wasn’t one of them. A smoky haze drifted over the audience, most of whom also held Styrofoam cups of coffee.