by Sandra Brown
“Yes, ma’am. I still don’t care for any. Thanks, though.” He bent back to the application.
Janellen fidgeted with a paper clip, wishing she had left on the radio after listening to the morning news, wishing there were some form of noise to fill the yawning silence, wishing she weren’t so miserably ill-equipped when it came to making small talk.
At last he completed the form and passed it and the ballpoint pen back to her. She scanned the top few lines and was astounded to find that he was much younger than Key, actually two years younger than herself. It had been a rough thirty-one years for him.
Her eyes moved down the form. “You’re currently employed at The Palm? The honky-tonk?”
“That’s right, ma’am.” He cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders self-consciously. “I grant you, it’s not much of a job. Only temporary.”
“I didn’t mean to put it down,” she said hastily. “Somebody has to work in those places.” That came out sounding insulting, too. Her teeth closed over her lower lip. “My brother goes there all the time.”
“Yeah, he’s been pointed out to me. I don’t recall ever seeing you there.”
She got the distinct impression that he was trying to suppress a smile. In a nervous gesture, she moved her hand to the placket of her blouse and began fiddling with the buttons. “No, I’ve… I’ve never been there.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Janellen wet her lips. “Let’s see,” she said, referring again to the application form. “Before The Palm you were working at the state—”
She faltered over the next plainly printed word. Too appalled by her blunder even to look at him, she stared at his application until the lines and words ran together.
“That’s right, ma’am,” he said quietly. “I did time in Huntsville State Prison. I’m on parole. That’s why I need a job real bad.”
Mustering all her courage, she lifted her eyes to meet his. “I’m sorry that I don’t have anything for you, Mr. Cato.” To her consternation, she realized she meant it.
“Well,” he said, rising, “it was a long shot anyway.”
“Why do you say that?”
He shrugged. “Being I’m an ex-con and all.”
She wouldn’t lie and tell him that his prison record would have no bearing on his chance for employment at Tackett Oil. Jody wouldn’t hear of hiring him. However, Janellen was reluctant to let him leave without some word of encouragement. “Do you have other possibilities in mind?”
“Not so’s you’d notice.” He replaced his hat and pulled it low over his brows. “Thank you for your time, Miss Tackett.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Cato.”
He backed out the office door, closing it behind him, then sauntered across the concrete porch, jogged down the steps, and climbed into a pickup truck.
Janellen shot from her chair and quickly moved to the door. Through the venetian blinds, she watched him drive away. At the highway, he turned the pickup in the direction of The Palm.
More depressed than before, she returned to her desk. The paperwork was waiting for her, but she was disinclined to approach it with her usual self-discipline. Instead she picked up the application form that Bowie Cato had filled out and carefully reread each vital statistic.
He had put an X beside “single” to designate his marital status. The space for filling in next of kin had been left blank. Suddenly, Janellen realized that she was being a snoop. It wasn’t as though she were actually considering him for a job. She didn’t have one to offer him, and even if she did, Jody would have a fit if she hired an ex-con.
Impatient with herself for lollygagging away half the morning, she shoved Bowie Cato’s application into the bottom drawer of her desk and got down to business.
“Not that tie, Fergus. For God’s sake.” Darcy Winston cursed with exasperation. “Can’t you see that it clashes with your shirt?”
“You know me, sugar pie,” he said with an affable shrug. “I’m color-blind.”
“Well, I’m not. Switch it with this one.” She pulled another necktie from the rack in his closet and thrust it at him. “And hurry up. We’re the main attraction tonight, and you’re going to make us late.”
“I’ve already apologized once for running late. A busload of retirees from Fayetteville made an unscheduled stop at The Green Pine. Thirty-seven of them. I had to help check them in. Nice bunch of people. They’d been down in Harlingen for two weeks, building a Baptist mission for the Mex’cans. Holding Bible schools and such. Said those Mex’can kids took to snowcones like—”
“For chrissake, Fergus, I don’t care,” she interrupted impatiently. “Just finish dressing, please. I’m going to hurry Heather along.”
Darcy stalked along the upstairs hallway of their spacious home toward their only child’s bedroom. “Heather, are you ready?”
She knocked out of habit but entered without waiting for permission. “Heather, hang up that damn phone and get dressed!”
The sixteen-year-old cupped the mouthpiece. “I’m ready, Mother. I’m just talking to Tanner until it’s time to leave.”
“It’s time.” Darcy snatched the receiver away from her, sweetly said, “Goodbye, Tanner,” then dropped it back into its cradle.
“Mother!” Heather exclaimed. “How rude! I could just die! You’re so mean to him! Why’d you do that?”
“Because we’re expected at the schoolhouse right now.”
“It’s not even six-thirty yet. We’re not scheduled to be there until seven.”
Darcy wandered over to her daughter’s dressing table and rummaged among the perfume bottles until she found a fragrance she liked, then sprayed herself with it.
Piqued, Heather asked, “What’s wrong with your perfume? You have dozens to choose from. Why do you use mine?”
“You spend too much time on the phone with Tanner,” Darcy said, ignoring Heather’s complaint.
“I do not.”
“Boys don’t like girls who are too available.”
“Mother, please don’t meddle in my jewelry box. You leave it in a mess every time you open it.” Reaching around Darcy, Heather flipped down the lid.
Darcy pushed her aside and defiantly reopened the lavender velvet box. “What have you got stashed away in here that you don’t want me to see?”
“Nothing!”
“If you’re smoking joints…”
“I’m not!”
Darcy rifled through the contents of the jewelry box but found only an assortment of earrings, bracelets, rings, pendants, and a strand of pearls that Fergus had bought for Heather the day she was born.
“See? I told you.”
“Don’t sass me, young lady.” She slammed down the lid and scrutinized Heather with a critical eye. “And before we leave, wipe off about half of that eye shadow. You look like a tramp.”
“I do not.”
Darcy popped a Kleenex from the box and shoved it into Heather’s hand. “You’re probably behaving like one, too, every time you’re out with Tanner Hoskins.”
“Tanner respects me.”
“And pigs fly. He wants to get in your pants, and so will every other man you ever meet.”
Dismissing Heather’s protests to the contrary, Darcy left the room and went downstairs. She felt pleased with herself. She believed parents should never let their kids get the upper hand and so she stayed on Heather like fleas on a hound. Every minute of Heather’s day was reported to Darcy, who insisted on knowing where her daughter was, whom she was with, and for how long she was with them. According to Darcy Winston, only an informed parent could exercise the control necessary to raise teenagers.
By and large, Heather was obedient. Her active school schedule didn’t allow much time during which she could get into trouble, but in the summer, when free time was easier to come by, opportunities for mischief-making were plentiful.
Darcy’s vigilance wasn’t based so much on maternal instinct as it was on memories of her own adolescence. She knew all the
tricks a youngster could pull on gullible parents because she had pulled each one herself. Hell, she’d invented them.
If her mother had been more strict, more observant of her comings and goings, Darcy’s youth might not have been so short-lived. She might not have been married at eighteen.
Her father had deserted her mother when Darcy was nine, and although she was at first sympathetic with her mother’s dilemma, Darcy soon became contemptuous of her. Over the years, her contempt grew into open rebellion. By the time she was Heather’s age she was running with a wild crowd that got drunk every night and frequently traded sex partners.
She graduated high school by the skin of her teeth—actually by giving a blow-job to a biology teacher with thick glasses and damp hands. During the summer following commencement, she got pregnant by a drummer in a country-western band. She tracked him to De Ridder, Louisiana, where he denied he’d ever met her. In a way, Darcy was glad he claimed no responsibility. He was a no-talent loser, a dopehead who spent his piddling portion of the band’s earnings on substances he could smoke, snort, or shoot into his veins.
When she returned to Eden Pass, her future looked dim. Fortuitously, she stopped for breakfast at The Green Pine Motel. Flashing his horsy, toothy grin, Fergus Winston, who was settled into middle-aged bachelorhood, greeted her at the door of the busy coffeeshop.
Instead of perusing the menu, Darcy watched Fergus ring up the cash register receipts. Halfway through her first cup of coffee, she reached a life-altering decision. Within two hours she had a job. Two weeks beyond that, she had netted a husband.
On their wedding night, Fergus believed with all his heart that he’d married a virgin, and several weeks later, when Darcy announced that she was pregnant, it never occurred to him that her child had been sired by anyone except himself.
In all the years since, it still hadn’t occurred to him, although Heather had been almost eight weeks “premature” and had still weighed in at a healthy seven and a half pounds.
Fergus didn’t have time to dwell on these inconsistencies because Darcy kept his mind on the motel. Over the years she had convinced him that a clever businessman spent money in order to make it. He had revamped the food service, updated the motel’s decor, and leased billboards on the interstate.
On one point Fergus stood firm. Only he had access to The Green Pine Motel’s ledgers. No matter how persuasively Darcy cajoled, he alone did the bookkeeping. She surmised that he wasn’t reporting all his profits to the IRS, which was all right with her. What annoyed her was that, given access to the books, she probably would have been able to find loopholes that he’d overlooked. But in sixteen years of marriage he hadn’t budged from his original position. It was one of the few arguments between them that Darcy lost.
Having remained a bachelor for so long, he was totally smitten with his young, pretty, redheaded wife and their daughter and considered himself the luckiest man alive. He was a generous husband. He’d built Darcy the finest house in Eden Pass. She’d had carte blanche to furnish it out of design studios in Dallas and Houston. She drove a new car every year. He was an adoring parent to Heather, who had twined him around her little finger as easily as her mother had.
He was unflappable and unsuspecting, even when Darcy took her first extramarital lover three months after Heather was born. He was a guest at the motel, a saddle salesman from El Paso on his way to Memphis. They used room 203. It had been easy to tell Fergus that she was going to visit her mother for a few hours.
In spite of her frequent infidelities, Darcy was sincerely fond of Fergus, mainly because his position in the community had considerably elevated hers and because he gave her every material thing her heart desired. She smiled at him now as he came downstairs arm in arm with Heather. “You two make a handsome pair,” she said. “Everybody in town is going to be at that meeting tonight, and all eyes are going to be on the Winston family.”
Fergus placed his arm across her shoulders and kissed her forehead. “I’ll be pleased and proud to stand at the podium with the two prettiest ladies in Eden Pass.”
Heather rolled her eyes.
Fergus was too earnest to notice the gesture. “I’m just sick about the reason for this town meeting, though.” He sighed as he gazed into his beloved wife’s face. “I shudder when I think that a burglar could have harmed you.”
“It gives me goose bumps, too.” Darcy patted his cheek, then impatiently squirmed free of his embrace. “We’d better go or we’ll be late. On the other hand,” she added with a smug laugh, “they can’t start without us, can they?”
Chapter Six
Lara had specific reasons for wanting to attend the town meeting.
If Eden Pass was experiencing a crime wave, she needed to be aware of it. She lived alone and needed to take precautions to protect herself and her property.
It was also important to her future in Eden Pass that she become actively involved in all facets of community life. She’d already bought a season ticket to the home football games and had contributed to the fund to buy a new traffic light for the only busy intersection downtown. If she was seen frequently in everyday settings, like the Sak’n’Save grocery store and the filling station, maybe the townsfolk would stop perceiving her as an outsider. Maybe they would even accept her, in spite of Jody Tackett.
Her third reason for wanting to attend the meeting was far more personal. She found it curious that the outbreak of crime coincided with Key Tackett’s coming to her back doorstep with a bleeding bullet wound. It was highly unlikely that he’d been breaking into the Fergus Winston home with burglary in mind, but it was a jarring coincidence that, for her peace of mind, she wanted laid to rest.
The high school auditorium, the pride of the consolidated school’s campus, was frequently used as a community center. Lara arrived early, but the parking lot was already jammed with cars, minivans, and pickup trucks. The meeting had been deemed “vitally important” by the local newspaper. In it Sheriff Elmo Baxter had been quoted as saying, “Everybody ought to be at this meeting. It’s up to the citizens of Eden Pass to stop this rash of crime before it gets out of hand. Nip it in the bud, so to speak. We have a clean, decent little town here, and as long as I’m sheriff, that’s how it’s going to stay.”
His urging had yielded a good turnout. Lara was just one of a crowd who flocked toward the well-lighted building. As she entered the auditorium, however, she was singled out. In her wake she left whispered conversations. They were absorbed by the din created by the crowd, but she was aware of them nevertheless.
Trying to ignore the turned heads and gawking stares, she smiled pleasantly, greeting those she recognized—Mr. Hoskins from the supermarket, the lady who clerked in the post office, and a few who’d been brave enough to cross Jody Tackett’s implied picket line to seek her professional services.
Rather than taking one of the available seats in the rear of the auditorium, which would have been convenient but cowardly, Lara moved down the congested center aisle. She spotted Nancy and Clem Baker and their brood. Nancy motioned for her to join them, but she shook her head and found a chair in the third row.
Her courage in the face of so much adverse attention was a pose. It was discomforting to know that tongues were wagging and that dozens of pairs of eyes were aimed at the back of her head, most of them critically. She knew that personal aspects of her life were being reviewed in hushed voices so that the children wouldn’t hear about the brazen hussy in their midst.
Lara could not control what people thought or said, but it still hurt to know that her character was being bludgeoned and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do to prevent it. Her only means of self-preservation would be to remain at home, but to her that was not a viable option. She had every right to attend a community function. Why should she be cowed by gossips and people so spineless they allowed themselves to be influenced by an aging old bitch, as she had come to think of Jody Tackett.
Obviously Mrs. Tackett had a much higher opi
nion of herself. When she made her fashionably late entrance, she strode down the center aisle looking neither right nor left. She felt that friendliness was either a waste of time or beneath her dignity. In any case, she didn’t stop to chat even with those who spoke to her.
Her bearing was militant, but she wasn’t as physically imposing as Lara had expected. Clark had described his mother in such elaborate terms that Lara recognized her, but she had formed a mental picture of Jody that fit midway between Joan Crawford and Joan of Arc.
Instead, Jody was a short, stocky, gray-haired woman who was average in appearance and attired in clothing that was high in quality but low in fashion flair. Her hands were blunt and unadorned. Her features were harsh to the point of appearing masculine, and she embodied the iron will for which she was known.
A hush fell over the crowd as she moved down the aisle. Her arrival was as good as an announcement that the meeting could begin. Indubitably she was Eden Pass’s number-one citizen, deferred to by all.
Lara was perhaps the only one in the auditorium who realized that Jody Tackett was seriously ill.
She had the telltale wrinkles of a heavy smoker around her mouth and eyes. Beyond that, her skin was friable. Bruises and splotches dotted her arms. As she extended her hand to the mayor, Lara noticed that her cuticles were thick. Such clubbing was symptomatic of pending arterial problems.
Following on Jody’s heels was a woman who appeared to be about Lara’s age. Her smiles were genuine but uncertain. She seemed uncomfortable with sharing her mother’s limelight. Janellen perfectly matched Clark’s description. He had once referred to his sister as “mousy,” but he hadn’t meant it unkindly.
“Daddy doted on her. Maybe if he hadn’t died when she was so young, she would have eventually blossomed. Mother didn’t have much time to cultivate her. She was too busy keeping the business together. I guess growing up around Key and Mother and me, all Type A’s, made sis shy and soft-spoken. She rarely got a word in edgewise.”