by Sandra Brown
Interesting coincidence? Mentally Bowie scoffed. He didn’t believe in coincidence. But they could cut out his tongue and feed it to a coyote before he’d tell the deputy what he’d seen.
“Clark’s passing—that was a tough time for ol’ Jody,” Gus was saying.
“Yeah.”
“She ain’t been the same since that boy died.”
“And on top of that, that woman doctor moved into town and got the gossips all stirred up again.”
The deputy stared into near space for a moment, sorrowfully shaking his head. “What possessed her to come to Eden Pass after what happened between her and Clark Tackett? I tell you, Hap, folks nowadays ain’t worth shit. Don’t care nothin’ about nobody’s feelings but their own.”
“You’re right, Gus.” Hap sighed and slapped the deputy on the shoulder. “Say, when you get off duty, come have a beer on the house.” Bowie was impressed by Hap’s diplomacy as he steered the deputy out of the storeroom and through the empty bar, expounding as he went on the sad state of the world.
Bowie lay back down on the sleeping bag, stacked his hands behind his head, and stared up at the ceiling. Cobwebs formed an intricate canopy across the bare beams. As Bowie watched, an industrious spider added to it.
Momentarily Hap returned. Taking a seat on a case of Beefeater’s, he lit a cigarette, then offered one to Bowie, who accepted and tipped his head forward as Hap lit it for him. They smoked in companionable silence. Finally Hap said, “Might ought to think about looking for another job.”
Bowie propped himself up on one elbow. He wasn’t surprised, but he wasn’t going to take the news lying down—literally. “You firing me, Hap?”
“Not outright, no.”
“I had nothing to do with that bitch.”
“I know.”
“Then why am I catching the flap? Who is she anyway? You’d think by the way y’all talked about her that she’s the Queen of Sheba.”
Hap chuckled. “To her husband she is. Fergus Winston is superintendent of our school system. Owns a motel on the other end of town and does pretty good with it. He’s ’bout twenty years older than Darcy. Ugly as a mud fence and not too bright. Folks figure she married him for his money. Who knows?” He shrugged philosophically.
“All I know is, anytime Darcy can shake Fergus, she’s out here looking for action. Hot little piece,” he added without rancor. “Had her myself a time or two. Years back when we were just kids.” He pointed the lighted end of his cigarette toward Bowie. “If a thief did break into her bedroom last night, she might have shot him for not raping her.”
Bowie shared a laugh with him, but the humor was short-lived. “Why are you letting me go, Hap?”
“For your own good.”
“As long as I don’t personally serve liquor, my parole officer said—”
“It’s not that. You do the work I hired you for.” He regarded Bowie through world-weary eyes. “I run a fairly clean place, but lots of lowlifes come through the door every night. Anything can happen and sometimes does. Take my advice and find a place to work where you ain’t so likely to run into trouble. Understand?”
Bowie understood. It was the story of his life. He just seemed to attract trouble no matter what he did or didn’t do; and an honest, hardworking sort like Hap Hollister didn’t need a natural-born troublemaker working in his bar. Resignedly he said, “Employers ain’t exactly lining up to offer jobs to ex-cons. Can you give me a few days?”
Hap nodded. “Until you find something else you can bunk here. Use my pickup to get around if you need to.” Hap anchored his cigarette in the corner of his lips as he stood. “Well, I got a stack of bills to pay. Don’t be in a hurry to get up. You had a short night.”
Left alone, Bowie lay down again but knew he wouldn’t go back to sleep. From the start he’d known that there was little future in working at The Palm, but the job had also provided lodging. He had thought—hoped—that it would be a temporary respite, like a halfway house between prison and life on the outside. But no. Thanks to a broad he didn’t even know, and to some son of a bitch committing a B and E, he was back to square zero.
Where he’d been stuck all his life.
Chapter Three
Jody Tackett and her son gazed at each other across the distance that separated them. It was a gulf that hadn’t been spanned in thirty-six years, and Key doubted it ever would be.
He forced a smile. “Hi, Jody.” He’d stopped using any derivative of Mother years ago.
“Key.” She turned a baleful gaze on Janellen. “I guess this is your doing.”
Key placed his arm across his sister’s shoulders. “Don’t blame Janellen. Surprising y’all was my idea.”
Jody Tackett harrumphed, her way of letting Key know that she knew he was lying. “Did I hear you say the coffee was ready?”
“Yes, Mama,” Janellen replied eagerly. “I’ll cook you and Key a big breakfast to celebrate his homecoming.”
“I’m not so sure his homecoming is cause for celebration.” Having said that, Jody turned and walked away.
Key let out a deep sigh. He hadn’t expected a warm embrace, not even an obligatory hug. He and his mother had never shared that kind of affection. For as far back as he could remember, Jody had been unapproachable and inaccessible to him, and he’d taken his cues from her.
For years they had coexisted under an undeclared truce. When they were together, he was polite and expected the same courtesy to be extended to him. Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn’t. This morning she had been flagrantly hostile, even though he was her only living son.
Maybe that was why.
“Be patient with her, Key,” Janellen pleaded. “She doesn’t feel well.”
“I see what you mean,” he remarked thoughtfully. “When did she start looking so old?”
“It’s been over a year, but she still hasn’t fully recovered from… you know.”
“Yeah.” He paused. “I’ll try not to upset her while I’m here.” He looked at his sister and smiled wryly. “Is there a pair of crutches in the house?”
“Right where you left them after your car wreck.” She went to the closet and retrieved a pair of aluminum crutches from the rear corner.
“While you’re at it, get me a shirt, too,” he told her. “Mine didn’t make it home last night.”
He ignored her inquisitive glance and pointed at the shirts hanging in the closet. She brought him a plain white cotton one that smelled faintly of mothballs. He put it on but left it unbuttoned. Securing the padded braces of the crutches in his armpits, he indicated the door with a motion of his head. “Let’s go.”
“You look pale. Are you feeling up to this?”
“No. But I sure as hell don’t want to hold up Jody’s breakfast.”
She was already seated at the kitchen table sipping coffee and smoking a cigarette when Key hobbled in. Janellen went unnoticed as she began preparing the meal. Key sat across from his mother and propped his crutches against the edge of the table. He was keenly aware of his bearded face and mussed hair.
As always, Jody was perfectly neat, although she wasn’t an attractive woman. The Texas sun had left her complexion spotted and lined. Having no tolerance for vanity, her only concession to softening her appearance was a light dusting of dime store face powder. For all her adult life she had kept a standing weekly appointment at the beauty parlor to have her hair washed and set, but only because she couldn’t be bothered to do it herself. It took twenty minutes for her short, gray hair to dry under the hood dryer. During that twenty minutes a manicurist clipped and buffed her short, square nails. She never had them polished.
She wore dresses only for church on Sundays and when a social occasion absolutely demanded it. This morning she was wearing a plaid cotton shirt and a pair of slacks, both crisply starched and ironed.
As she ground out her cigarette, she addressed Key in a tone as intimidating as her stare. “What’d you do this time?”
Her w
ords were accusatory, clearly implying that Key was responsible for his misfortune. He was, but it wouldn’t have mattered if he had been a victim of whimsical fate. Accidents had always been his fault.
When he’d fallen from the branches of the pecan tree that he and Clark had been climbing together, Jody had said that a broken collarbone was no better than he deserved for doing such a damn fool thing. When a Little League batter hit him in the temple with a bat, giving him a concussion, he’d been lectured for not keeping his mind on the game. When a gelding stepped on his foot, Jody had accused him of spooking the horse. When a firecracker exploded in his hand and busted open his thumb on the Fourth of July, he’d been punished. Clark had gotten off scot-free, although he’d been shooting off firecrackers alongside his brother.
But there was one time when Jody’s wrath had been justified. If Key hadn’t been so drunk, if he hadn’t been driving ninety-five on that dark country road, he might have made that curve, missed that tree, and gone on to fulfill his mother’s ambitions for him to be the starting quarterback on an NFL team. She would never forgive him for messing up her plans for his life.
Based on past experience, Key knew better than to expect maternal sympathy. But her judgmental tone of voice set his teeth on edge.
His reply was succinct. “I twisted my ankle.”
“What about that?” she asked, raising her coffee cup toward the wide Ace bandage swathing his middle.
“Shark bite.” He threw his sister a wink and a grin.
“Don’t smart-mouth me!” Jody’s voice cracked like a whip.
Here we go, Key thought dismally. Hell, he didn’t want this. “It’s nothing, Jody. Nothing.” Janellen sat a cup of steaming coffee in front of him. “Thanks, sis. This is all for me.”
“Don’t you want anything to eat?”
“No, thanks. I’m not hungry.”
She masked her disappointment behind a tentative smile that wrenched his heart. Poor Janellen. She had to put up with the old lady’s crap every day. Jody had an uncanny talent for making every inquiry an inquisition, every observation a criticism, every glance a condemnation. How did Janellen endure her intolerance day in, day out? Why did she? Why didn’t she find herself a respectable fellow and get married? So what if she wasn’t madly in love with him? Nobody could be as difficult to live with as Jody.
Then again, Jody wasn’t as critical of Janellen as she was of him. She hadn’t been that way with Clark either. He seemed to be cursed with a talent for inciting his mother’s anger. He figured it was because he was the spitting image of his father, and God knows Clark Junior had provoked Jody till the day he died. She hadn’t shed a single tear at his funeral.
Key had. He had never cried before, or since, but he’d bawled like a baby at Clark Junior’s grave, and not because his daddy had always been an attentive parent. Most of Key’s recollections of him centered around farewells that had always left him feeling bereft. But whatever rare, happy memories of childhood Key had revolved around his daddy, who was boisterous and fun, who laughed and told jokes, who always drew a crowd of admirers with his glib charm.
Key was only nine years old when his father was killed, but with the inexplicable wisdom of a child, he’d realized that his best chance to be loved was being buried in that grave.
As though reading his mind, Jody suddenly asked, “Did you come home to watch me die?” Key looked at her sharply. “Because if you did,” she added, “you’re in for a big disappointment. I’m not going to die anytime soon.”
Her expression was combative, but Key chose to treat the riling question as a joke. “Glad to hear that, Jody, ’cause my dark suit is at the cleaners. Actually, I came home to see how y’all are getting along.”
“You’ve never given a damn how we were getting along before. Why now?”
The last thing Key felt like doing was tangling with his mother. He wasn’t exactly in top physical form this morning, and Jody always disturbed his mental state. She was lethal to a sense of humor and an optimistic outlook. He’d wanted to make this reunion easy, if for no other reason than to please his long-suffering sister. Jody, however, seemed determined to make it difficult.
“I was born here,” Key said evenly. “This is my home. Or it used to be. Aren’t I welcome here anymore?”
“Of course you’re welcome, Key,” Janellen said urgently. “Mama, do you want bacon or sausage?”
“Whatever.” Jody gestured irritably, as though brushing off a housefly. As she lit another cigarette, she asked Key, “Where’ve you been all this time?”
“Most recently Saudi Arabia.” He sipped his coffee, recounting for Jody what he’d told Janellen earlier, omitting that it had been Janellen’s request that had brought him home.
“I was flying wild well-control crews to and from a burning well. Hauled supplies every now and then, had a few medical emergencies. But they were finishing up there, and I didn’t have another contract pending, so I thought I’d hang around here for a spell. You might find this hard to believe, but I started missing Eden Pass. I haven’t been home in more than a year, not since Clark’s funeral.”
He sipped his coffee again. Several seconds passed before he realized that Janellen was staring at him like a nocturnal animal caught in a pair of headlights and that Jody was scowling.
Slowly he returned his coffee cup to the saucer. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” Janellen said hastily. “Do you need a refill on coffee?”
“Yeah, but I’ll get it. I think the bacon’s burning.” Smoke was rising from the frying pan.
Key hopped to the counter and poured himself a coffee refill. He needed another pain pill, but he’d left them upstairs in his bathroom. In spite of the doctor’s orders, he’d washed down two of the tablets with a tumbler of whiskey before going to bed. That had gotten him through the night.
Now, the pain was back. He wished he had the gumption to take the bottle of brandy that Janellen used for baking from the pantry and lace his coffee with it. But that would only give Jody another reason to harp on him. For the time being, he’d have to live with the throbbing pain in his side and the heavy discomfort in his right ankle.
As cavalier as he’d been about his injuries, he winced involuntarily as he hopped back to his seat. “Are you going to tell us how you got so banged up?” Jody asked.
“No.”
“I don’t like being kept in the dark.”
“Believe me, you don’t want to know.”
“I have little doubt of that,” she remarked sourly. “It’s just that I don’t want to hear the sordid facts from somebody else.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s not your concern.”
“It’ll be my concern once it gets around town that on your first night home you wound up in the hospital.”
“I didn’t go to the hospital. I went to Doc Patton’s place and found a lady doctor there who’s pretty as a picture,” he said with a wide grin. “She treated me.”
Janellen dropped a metal spatula, which clattered onto the top of the cooking range. At first Key thought that hot bacon grease had popped out of the skillet and burned her hand. Then he noticed the hard, implacable expression on Jody’s face and recognized it as fury. He’d seen it often enough to know it well.
“What’s going on? How come y’all are looking at me like I just pissed on a grave?”
“You have.” There was a low, wrathful hum behind Jody’s words. “You’ve just pissed on your brother’s grave.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Key—”
“The doctor,” Jody said, angrily interrupting Janellen and banging her fist on the table. “Didn’t you notice her name?”
Key thought back. He hadn’t been so badly hurt that certain attributes had gone unnoticed—things like her expressive hazel eyes, her attractively disheveled hair, and her long, shapely legs. He’d even made a mental note of the color of her toenail polish and the fragrance she wore.
He recalled these intimate details, but he didn’t know her name. What could it matter to Jody and Janellen? Unless they were prejudiced against all women in the medical profession because of one.
As he considered that thought, he began to experience a sick gnawing in his gut. Jesus, it couldn’t be. “What’s her name?”
Jody only glared at him. He looked to Janellen for an answer. She was nervously wringing out a dry dish towel, misery etched on each feature of her face. “Lara Mallory is the name she goes by professionally,” she whispered. “Her married name is—”
“Lara Porter,” Key finished in a low, lifeless voice. Janellen nodded.
“Christ.” He raised his fists to his eyes and mentally pictured the woman he’d met the night before. She didn’t match the bimbo featured in all the tabloid photographs. None of her deft mannerisms or candid expressions corresponded with the mental images he’d painted of Lara Porter, the woman who’d been his brother’s downfall, the woman who some political analysts hypothesized had changed the course of American history.
Finally Key lowered his hands and gave a helpless, apologetic shrug. “I had no way of knowing. She never gave me her name, and I didn’t ask. I didn’t recognize her from the pictures I’d seen. That all happened… what?—five, six years ago?”
He hated himself for babbling excuses, knowing full well that the damage had been done and that Jody wasn’t going to forgive him no matter what he said now. So he took another tack and asked, “What the hell is Lara Porter doing in Eden Pass?”
“Does it matter?” Jody asked brusquely. “She’s here. And you’re to have nothing to do with her, understand? By the time I get finished with her, she’ll tuck tail and slink out of town the same way she slunk in.
“Until that time, the Tacketts and anybody who wants to stay on speaking terms with us are to treat her with nothing except the contempt she deserves. That includes you. That especially includes you.”
She jabbed her cigarette toward him to make her point. “Have all the sluts you want, Key, as I’m sure you will. But stay away from her.”