CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Present
Two Days Later
In yoga pants and a tank top, with her hair all wound up on top of her head, Lucy stood at the kitchen window, looking at the yard beyond. Her parents were out running errands and she was alone in the house on a gentle morning, enjoying the peace and quiet of it.
After her encounter with Ruby, she’d gathered her things from the hotel and returned to Glory to stay for the remainder of her trip. She didn’t want to be away from the old house anymore. Something drew her back to it, the old homestead of her ancestors, and she didn’t want to leave.
In fact, she didn’t even want to go home to Los Angeles but she knew she had to, at least for a little while. But she’d made up her mind on that sex-filled afternoon with Beau two days ago that she was going to, indeed, buy Glory from her dad and restore it. Beau had promised he would help her and the thought of restoring an old home with him filled her with excitement beyond anything she could have ever imagined. The fairy tale she thought she’d lost when Kevin had walked out the door had returned, full-force, in the form of Beau Meade. Lucy never believed she could be so happy again.
So, she brought it up to her parents the day before, a solid offer to buy the home. Bill didn’t seem too keen on the idea but when Beau showed up later that night and sat around with Lucy and her parents, playing a card game with the three of them because there was no television in the house and no internet, he began to see why Lucy wanted to come back to Pea Ridge and take on the massive project of restoring the old house. There was something going on between Beau and Lucy, although it was very subtle, and Bill couldn’t have been happier. So what if his daughter wanted to fill up her time with the restoration of an old house? Now, there was a better reason for her to do it.
A certain sheriff who seemed quite fond of her.
Staring out of the kitchen window with a mug of coffee in her hand, Lucy grinned when she thought of her mother and father bickering gently about Beau Meade and the event of some kind of romance. Lucy wouldn’t confirm it but she wouldn’t deny it, even though she was bursting to. She liked Beau a great deal but she didn’t want her parents to know how much she liked him. They’d only known each other a few days and she didn’t want her parents to think she was rushing into anything. Maybe she was, but that was too bad. She hadn’t been this happy in a very long time.
A breeze was pushing the trees around outside the kitchen window and she could see the branches swaying in the wind. She thought she remembered someone talking about the fact that a storm was coming but, so far, the sky remained clear. She didn’t have much for the day planned other than maybe helping her parents as they continued to clean out the house, although Beau had mentioned something about having lunch or dinner together. Knowing him, probably both. She didn’t mind in the least.
With mug in hand, she wandered through the butler’s pantry and into the front dining room with the big floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the front yard. She thought about everything that had happened since she came to Mississippi, a somber trip that had turned into so much more than she’d bargained for – a death, a new romance, and old family mysteries had come to light, including a new family member that didn’t want anything to do with them.
In fact, Lucy didn’t even tell her parents about her encounter with Ruby. Given how her dad felt about the entire thing, she didn’t think he’d be able to take it, so she kept that incident tucked away, to be told to him at another time when he was stronger. More than that, it really didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things – Bill knew what he needed to know, and that was that he had an older half-sister from his mother, and he knew of his mother’s love affair with Ruby’s father. He knew what his mother went through and he knew even more of the evils of his grandfather. At the moment, that was really all he needed to know. Lucy didn’t see the point of burdening him further.
The wind was blowing a little harder now and, looking up at the sky, she could see clouds beginning to scatter across the horizon. As she walked into the entry, upstairs, she could hear her cell phone faintly ringing.
Taking the steep front stairs, she ended up in Mamaw’s bedroom, where she’d been sleeping, in time to see that she’d missed a call from Beau. Hitting the redial, she called him back. He picked up on the second ring.
“Hey,” she said. “It’s Lucy. You called?”
“Hey, sugar,” he said. Ever since their sizzling encounter in the hotel, he’d been calling by that pet name, which she thought was pretty dang cute. “Everything okay?”
“Yes,” she said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
He grunted. “Well, I’ve got some not-so-good news,” he said. “Your cousin, Clyde, made bail this morning. I just wanted to make sure he hasn’t shown up at the house to cause trouble.”
“No, he hasn’t,” she said, sounding disappointed. “I thought the district attorney was going to file sexual assault and battery against him?”
A pause on the other end of the phone. “You’re not going to like this. Because Clyde has no criminal background, the D.A. filed common assault. Clyde’s out on bail and he’ll probably only get community service for what he did.”
“What the hell?” she said, outraged. “When did this happen?”
“Yesterday. I just found out about it this morning when the paperwork crossed my desk.”
Now, she was getting fired up. “That’s ridiculous. It’s not common assault. I have the bump on my head to prove it.”
Beau was clearly reluctant to tell her the all of it. “Well, based on the fact that you refused to go to the hospital right away and the fact that Clyde has no criminal record, the charges were reduced to common assault and Clyde was released on bail this morning,” he said. “I’m sorry, Lucy. I know he did more than that but the district attorney and the judge didn’t see it that way. Anyway, I’ll have a patrol run by the house every hour or so, just to make sure he stays away. I can’t imagine he’s too happy about having been in jail for the past few days.”
Lucy was disgusted as well as angry. “If he comes near me again, he’ll be lucky if pepper spraying him is all I do. I can’t believe they reduced the charges like that. Thanks a hell of a lot, Mississippi Justice System.”
Without much to say to that, Beau changed the subject. “How about lunch today?” he asked, sounding like he was offering her a consolation prize. “I’ll come a little early, around eleven?”
Lucy was still lingering on Clyde’s release. “Sure,” she said without much enthusiasm. “I’ll see you in a bit.”
“Okay.”
She hung up the phone, standing there for a few moments with it in her hand as she pondered her creepy cousin and the failure of justice as she saw it.
“Well, that just sucks,” she muttered to herself.
Tossing the phone on the bed, she headed back downstairs to refill her coffee cup. All the while, she was mulling over the fact that Clyde was now out on bail. Would he stay away from her? Or would he try to contact her again, now blaming her for him having ended up in jail? Although she’d known him her whole life, she really didn’t know him as a person. They’d never had an in-depth conversation and they’d never hung out for any length of time. He’d been creepy even as a child and wasn’t someone her parents or Mamaw allowed her to really play with. The only reason she was ever around him was because his mama was a cousin and family gatherings brought them together.
Truthfully, she wasn’t frightened of him and not at all worried that he would try to contact her again. She was fairly certain she could take care of him if he tried, the same way she’d beat the crap out of him when he’d grabbed her at the hotel. She hoped that would be enough deterrent for Clyde McKibben.
The back door of the house was open, with just the screen closed, letting some of that cool breeze into the house and helping blow away some of the old, musty smell of it. Lucy paused by the screen door, looking out over the back yard, which really wasn’t muc
h of a yard. Most of the property of Glory was the front and side yards, with the house backed up almost to the rear property line.
Moving back into the kitchen, she was starting to think of food along with the coffee and she opened up the old refrigerator to see what was left of Mamaw’s funeral food. No more chicken at all but there were a couple of casseroles, tightly wrapped, on the bottom shelf.
Setting her coffee mug down, she bent over to pull out the casseroles and see what they were, peeling up the edge of the cling wrap and sticking her finger into them. One was pasta and the other one had a flavor like taco pie. Thinking that taco pie might be good for breakfast, she was just pulling it out when something heavy hit her across the back of the skull.
The taco pie dish clattered to the floor and Lucy along with it. A few things fell out of the refrigerator as well, falling on the floor in a great racket as she hit the refrigerator on her way to the floor. Half-conscious, she struggled to come around, hardly realizing when someone grabbed her by the leg and pulled her away from the refrigerator and out into the middle of the kitchen floor. Then, someone was touching her thigh.
Lucy wasn’t quite lucid but her sense of self-survival kicked in and she began to fight, kicking and swinging her arms, thrashing violently against what was a blurry figure at this point. Head swimming, sight blurred, the blackness of unconsciousness threatened but she fought against that, too, shaking her head, trying to right her vision. She couldn’t even see what she was fighting against but she knew, instinctively, that she was in a good deal of trouble. Fear clutched at her.
“Stop, stop!” a male voice said as hands tried to touch her, grabbing at her arms and legs as she kicked about. “You don’t need to fight, Lucy. Stop kicking!”
Oh, God… she knew that voice!
Feeling sick and dizzy, Lucy began to fight harder, knowing that somehow, someway, Clyde had come into the house. It was his voice she heard, echoing in her swimming head like a nightmare. Jesus, she’d been standing right by the back door and hadn’t seen a thing outside. She hadn’t heard anything at all, not a sound of footsteps or the creak of a door. Not a damn thing! In a panic, she struggled to roll away from him as he continued to try and touch her.
“Get the hell away from me!” she snarled. “Get the fuck away from me, you asshole! Don’t you touch me!”
Clyde was standing there with the instrument he’d used to knock her over the head with, a copper sauce pan that had been hanging by the stove with several other hanging pans, right by the door that led to the back porch. Pots like that made perfect weapons and when he’d come into the house, he’d found one quickly. Mamaw’s pot storage had made that all too easy for him.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Clyde insisted, trying to grab her hand as she slapped him away. “I could have knocked you out, but I didn’t. See? I don’t want to hurt you but you need to listen to me. You never listen to me, Lucy, and now it’s gotten us into all kinds of trouble. Why don’t you ever want to be friendly to me?”
Lucy was coming around a bit now, at least well enough that her vision was starting to clear. She had a hand up against the back of her aching head and her ears were ringing as she ended up huddled against the cabinets, cowering from Clyde as he stood there with the pot in his hand.
“You son-of-a-bitch,” she hissed. “I’m going to charge you with everything I can think of and you won’t be getting out of jail after this. What in the hell is wrong with you? I told you I don’t want to talk to you. I told you to stay the hell away from me. What part of that didn’t you understand?”
Clyde still hadn’t dropped the pot, which concerned Lucy. He could easily use it again. He looked at her as if he really had no idea what she meant.
“All I want to do is talk to you,” he repeated.
“I don’t want to talk to you!”
His brow furrowed. “Why not?” he asked, growing edgy. “I’ve never given you no reason to be mean to me! Why are you so mean to me?”
He was waving the pot around as he spoke and Lucy didn’t want to be hit again because she was woozy enough. She was coming to think that it would be in her best interest to keep things calm, at least for a minute or two until she could shake off the effects of that saucepan against her head. But once she felt strong enough, she was going to beat the shit out of him. This time, he wouldn’t walk away because she had a feeling, right now, he fully intended to do far worse to her than he’d done to her in the parking lot.
She could see it in his eyes.
God, this old house had seen so much evil in it. Laveau and his evil still clung to the house like a film, covering everything, embedded in the very walls. One more evil within these old walls would just add to that film, solidifying it, turning this place into a true house of horrors. Lucy thought too much of the house and all of the good memories there to let one more act of violence hurt it. It wasn’t in her nature to surrender.
She had to fight.
“Fine,” she said, her voice trembling with rage. “What do you want to talk about?”
Clyde looked rather surprised by her reaction. “I just wanted to talk to you.”
“So talk.”
He crouched down a few feet away from her, the pot still in hand. Lucy eyed it warily because he didn’t seem inclined to put it down. Furthermore, she didn’t seem to be feeling much better. The bump on her head a few days ago, now coupled with a fairly serious blow, and she felt hugely nauseous and unsteady. Even if she could fight him, she wasn’t sure how well she could do it. For the first time, Lucy began to feel the pangs of panic.
“You’re such a pretty woman,” Clyde said, looking at her in a way that made her skin crawl. “Why wouldn’t you talk to me on the night of Ms. Victory’s funeral? You ran away from me.”
Lucy was coming to think there was something seriously the matter with Clyde, like he had a screw loose. She’d heard Beau mention that once but she didn’t give much thought to it until now. He was talking like a serial killer did, gently and kindly, before ramming a knife down his next victim’s throat.
“I had just lost Mamaw,” she said. “I wasn’t feeling sociable.”
Clyde reached out and touched her foot, which she quickly yanked back. He frowned. “You felt sociable enough to talk to Sheriff Meade,” he pointed out. “Don’t lie to me.”
Lucy tried to move away from him as best she could, but the cabinets were behind her and next to them was the wall. She was, literally, cornered and trying not to give in to the terror that was slowly building in her chest.
“He happened to be here,” she said. “I didn’t go out of my way to talk to him. And I told you not to touch me.”
Clyde stood up now. “You can’t tell me what to do,” he said, a rumble of hazard in his tone. “You did a lot of terrible things to me, being mean to me and then having me arrested. You had no right to do that.”
Lucy tried to stand up but he swung that saucepan at her again, barely missing her head. She fell back to the floor and crawled away, trying to get some distance from him as he followed.
“Clyde, if you hit me with that pan again, I’m going to make sure you stay in jail forever,” she threatened, although her voice was quivering. “You need to get out of here. My parents are going to be back any moment and if they find you here, my dad is going to hurt you. Do you understand me? Don’t you even get that what you did to me was wrong?”
Clyde was stalking her; for every inch she moved away from him, he closed the gap. “It’s your fault,” he said. “If you didn’t want me to talk to you, you wouldn’t dress the way you do or look the way you do. Look at what you’re wearing now; it’s sexy.”
Lucy was losing control of her fear because the look in his eye was seriously predatory. I can’t believe this. I’m going to get raped by this freak! “I’m in my own home wearing pajamas,” she said loudly. “I’m not out in public dressed like this! Get the hell out of here, Clyde. I’m not going to tell you again. I’m going to start screaming my
head off and everybody is going to hear me.”
Clyde shook his head. “No,” he said frankly. “You won’t do anything. I’m going to show you why you should talk to me, Lucy. Once you see what I can do, you won’t be mean to me anymore.”
Lucy was horrified. “Don’t you even think it,” she said. “I want you to get the hell out of here now. If you leave now, I won’t tell my parents you were here but if you stay, if you try something, so help me I’ll tell everybody and have your stupid ass thrown in jail!”
So much for trying to keep the situation calm. Without warning, Clyde came down on top of her and tried to hit her in the head with the saucepan again. Lucy held her hands up, trying to protect her head, and trying with all of her might to kick him in the groin.
A hell of a struggle went on as Clyde tried to brain her and she tried to land a foot in his crotch and, all the while, Lucy was getting pummeled pretty hard by that copper pot. It was heavy and it hurt. He lifted it at one point and tried to grab her hair, but she made contact with his belly with a hard kick.
Momentarily stunned, Clyde fell off of her and Lucy scrambled to her knees, struggling to her feet so she could make a run for it, but Clyde grabbed her by the foot again and pulled her back. She fell onto the floor, hard, and he climbed right up over her as she lay on her belly.
Now, she was in a position she definitely didn’t want to be in as Clyde used his body weight to keep her down. He put a forearm across the back of her neck, pinning her, as a hand reached around her torso and squeezed her right breast.
“You’ll like it,” he said, saliva on his lips. “Don’t fight me anymore because you’ll like what I do. The women always do.”
Lucy twisted and fought as much as she could, but he had her pinned good as he used his body weight on his arm to pin her head down. In fact, she was starting to black out because she couldn’t breathe. There was too much weight on her neck. She began to scream and yell, at least as much as she was able, and Clyde tried to put his fist in her mouth. She bit him and he slapped her.
In the Dreaming Hour Page 25