Where There's Smoke

by Sandra Brown

  Jody drew herself up. “He had his career mapped out and would have followed it, had it not been for that whore of a doctor that you’ve been jockeying around the countryside.”

  “That was an emergency situation, Mama,” Janellen interjected. “That little girl would have died if it hadn’t been for Key.”

  Letty Leonard’s accident had been a headline story in the local newspaper.

  “Thank you, Janellen,” Key said, “but I don’t need you to defend what I did. I would have done it for a dog, let alone a little girl.”

  Jody was fixed on only one aspect of the drama. “I told you to stay away from Lara Porter.”

  “I didn’t hightail it to the emergency room for her, for chrissake. I did it for the kid.”

  “Were you thinking of the kid when you bought the doctor’s supper?”

  Rather than appear surprised or guilty that she also knew about his and Lara Mallory’s barbecue dinner, he shrugged. “I hadn’t eaten all day. I was hungry. She happened to be along when I stopped.”

  Jody’s stare was hot with wrath. “I’m telling you one last time. Stay away from her. Do your drinking and whoring with somebody else.”

  “Thanks for reminding me. I’m getting a late start tonight.” He strode to the sideboard, poured himself a shot of whiskey, and tossed it back defiantly.

  Making a sound of disgust, Jody turned and left the dining room with a militant tread, climbing the stairs to the second story.

  “Why can’t you two get along?”

  Key rounded on his sister, prepared to make a defensive comeback. Her remorseful expression stopped him.

  “Jody starts it, not me.”

  “I know she’s difficult.”

  He laughed sardonically at her understatement.

  “Thank you for keeping my secret about Mr. Cato. Mama wouldn’t want an ex-con on the payroll, even if he has turned out to be an exemplary employee.”

  Key cocked an eyebrow. “Exemplary employee? Isn’t it too soon to tell?”

  “Mr. Cato isn’t the subject here,” she said primly before switching subjects. “Did you really take her to dinner?”

  “Who? Lara Mallory? Jesus, what’s the big deal? I popped into Barbecue Bobby’s for some ribs. She happened to be along because I was giving her a ride home from the airstrip. That’s all there was to it. Is that a hanging offense?”

  “She called me.”

  His anger evaporated. “She what?”

  “She called me last week. Out of the blue. I answered the company phone, and she identified herself. She was very gracious. She invited me to lunch.”

  He laughed. “She invited you to lunch?” The notion was ludicrous.

  “I was so taken aback, I didn’t know what to say.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said no, of course.”

  “Why?”

  “Key! This is the woman who ruined Clark’s political future.”

  “She didn’t rape him at gunpoint, Janellen,” he said wryly. “I doubt if she tied him to the bedpost, either. Unless it was for recreational purposes.”

  “I don’t see how you can joke about it,” she said crossly. “Whose side are you on?”

  “I’m on our side. You know that.” He stared into near space for a moment, bouncing the empty shot glass in his hand. “It might have been interesting if you’d accepted her invitation, though. I’d like to know what she’s up to.”

  “Do you think she’s up to something?”

  He thought about it for a moment. Admittedly his estimation of Lara Mallory had risen when he witnessed the determination with which she’d struggled to save the Leonard child’s life. He’d seen military medics less committed to saving a patient.

  However, despite the courage and skill she’d demonstrated in that crisis, she was still the key player in the scandal that had irreparably compromised Clark. She wouldn’t have come to Eden Pass without strong motivation. She wanted something. She’d said as much when she told him she was holding an IOU she intended to collect.

  You’re going to fly me to Montesangre.

  He hadn’t believed for one second that she was serious. She’d made clear her low opinion of that country. Wild horses couldn’t drag her back there.

  So why had she said that? To get a rise out of him? To throw him off track and keep him guessing about her true motives?

  “She wouldn’t have called you unless she wanted something from you,” he told Janellen irritably.

  “Like what?”

  “Who the hell knows? Possibly something as Mickey Mouse as a keepsake of Clark’s childhood. Or something as abstract as public approval. You’re a well-respected member of the community. Maybe she thinks that being seen with you would give her the acceptance she needs to make a go of her practice. Next time she calls—”

  “If she does.”

  “I think she will. She’s a gutsy broad. When she calls, reconsider. Lunch with her might be interesting.”

  “Mama would have a fit.”

  “She doesn’t have to know.”

  “She’d find out.”

  “So what? You’re a grown-up. You’re allowed to make your own decisions even if they don’t set well with Jody.”

  She placed her hand on his arm and spoke earnestly. “Please, Key, for both your sakes, make peace with her.”

  “I’m trying, Janellen. She doesn’t want to make peace with me.”

  “That’s not true. She just doesn’t know how to give in graciously. She’s old and crotchety. She’s lonely. She doesn’t feel well, and I think she’s afraid of her mortality.”

  He agreed on all points, but that didn’t solve the problem. “What do you want me to do that I haven’t already tried? I’ve bent over backward to be polite and pleasant. I even brought her flowers. You see how much good that did,” he said bitterly. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to bend at the waist and kiss her pinky every time I see her.”

  “I’m not asking you to pamper her. She’d see straight through any insincerity and only resent you for it. But you could be less prickly. When she began talking about work, you could have told her about some of your recent jobs.”

  “I shouldn’t have to display my achievements like merit badges. I’m not out to impress her. Besides, she’s not interested in what I do. She thinks flying is a hobby. If I was the pilot of Air Force One, it wouldn’t be good enough for her.”

  He returned the shot glass to the tray, his motions slow and heavy with discouragement. “Jody doesn’t want me here. The sooner I leave, the better she’ll like it.”

  “Please don’t feel like that. And don’t go away with this thing festering between you. She’s still devastated over Clark’s death, and because she can’t tolerate that weakness in herself, she overcompensates by lashing out at you.”

  “I’ve always been a convenient whipping boy. She hasn’t liked me since the day I was born and Daddy failed to send her six dozen yellow roses.”

  “He hurt her, Key. She loved him, and he hurt her.”

  “Loved him?” he repeated with a bitter laugh.

  Janellen looked serious and a bit puzzled. “She loved him very much. Didn’t you realize that?”

  Before he was able to refute her, the doorbell rang.

  “It’s going to get better between you. You’ll see.” She pressed his arm before releasing it. “I’ll get the door.”

  Rejecting his sister’s optimism, he decided to have another whiskey. He swallowed the shot whole. It stung his throat, seared his esophagus, and in all probability would upset his stomach. He didn’t enjoy drinking as much as he once had.

  He didn’t enjoy most things as he once had. When had taking a woman to bed become more trouble than it was worth? He was soured on life in general and didn’t know why.

  He had blamed his recent disenchantment on his sprained ankle and the bullet wound in his side. But his ankle only bothered him occasionally now, and his wound had healed, leaving only a little ten
derness and a pink scar to remind him of it.

  So what was wrong with him?

  Boredom.

  He had too much idle time in which to think. His thoughts invariably turned to Clark’s accidental drowning and all the loose ends of the theories dangling like the ragged hem of a shroud. Key wanted the facts, yet was cautious not to root them out, afraid he’d learn something he didn’t want to know. Every rock he’d overturned lately had ugly worms beneath it. He decided that some things were best left undisturbed.

  Thank God he was actively flying again. He hadn’t flown Letty Leonard to Tyler for the publicity it would generate, but since then his phone hadn’t stopped ringing. He’d already flown some good contracts and had scheduled even more. He didn’t particularly need the money, although it was always welcome. What he desperately needed was the activity and the sense of freedom that only flying afforded him.

  For his peace of mind, he was in the wrong state, the wrong town, and the wrong house. He wanted to find a place that was completely different from anything he’d experienced, where the language was foreign and the food was strange. Some exotic place where the people had never even heard of the Tacketts.

  He’d traveled all over the world searching for a place where nobody knew that he was Clark Tackett’s brother. It was an ongoing quest. Eventually strangers would put two and two together. “Tackett? Any kin to the former senator from Texas? His kid brother? Well, I’ll be damned.”

  Clark had been the measuring stick by which Key had been judged all his life.

  “Key is almost as tall as Clark now.”

  “Key can run almost as fast as Clark.”

  “Key isn’t as well behaved as Clark.”

  “Key didn’t make the honor roll, but Clark always does.”

  He’d eventually exceeded his brother in height. During adolescence, he’d surpassed him as an athlete. But unfavorable comparisons had followed him into adulthood. Incomprehensible as it seemed, he’d never been jealous of Clark. He’d never wanted to be like his brother, but everyone else thought Clark was the example to which he should aspire. Jody thought so more than anyone.

  As a kid, it had hurt him that she so obviously favored Clark. She’d bandaged his skinned knees but never kissed them. Rather, she’d rebuked his recklessness. His small gifts, the pictures he’d colored at school, were glanced at and set aside, never cherished, never taped to her vanity mirror.

  When he was a teenager, he resented her coldness toward him. Blatant disobedience and rebellion had been his way of dealing with her favoritism for Clark. She only approved of him when he was throwing touchdown passes for the Eden Pass Devils, but that was self-aggrandizement and had little to do with him personally.

  Off the gridiron, he went out of his way to show her just how little he cared one way or another, although deep down he cared a great deal and couldn’t understand why he was so unlovable.

  But with maturity came the acceptance that his mother simply didn’t love him. She didn’t even like him. Never had. Never would. He’d given up trying to analyze why, and, frankly, he didn’t much care anymore. That’s just the way it was. Clark had been caught in a bedroom scandal involving a married woman, but Key was the one accused of “whoring.”

  Several years ago, having finally reached the conclusion that winning his mother’s tolerance, if not her love, was a lost cause, he’d decided that it would be to everyone’s advantage if he made himself scarce, a decision that also satisfied his innate wanderlust.

  Now, even that was being stymied.

  He was restless and bored, and the questions surrounding his brother’s death were tethering him to their home. He needed to go looking for anonymity again, but whenever he was tempted to pack up and truck it, a vision of his sister’s imploring face saddled him with guilt.

  Her concerns were valid and justified. Aging and the loss of control that accompanied it were frightening to a woman as strong-willed as Jody. In good conscience, Key couldn’t leave Janellen to handle her alone. He’d come to agree with Janellen’s fear that Jody’s forgetfulness and confusion were harbingers of something much more serious than senility. If a medical crisis did occur, he’d never forgive himself if he were thousands of miles away and unreachable. No matter that he wasn’t her ideal of a son, Jody was still his mother. For the time being, he belonged in Eden Pass.

  “Key?”

  Lost in thought, he turned at the sound of his sister’s hesitant voice.

  “There’s someone at the door to see you.” She was looking at him in a peculiar, quizzical manner.

  “Who is it? What does he want?”

  “It’s a woman.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Lara arched her back, stretching the stiff muscles and holding the position for several moments. Gradually she relaxed and rubbed her eyes before repositioning her reading glasses on the bridge of her nose.

  After eating an early dinner while watching the evening news, she had forgone watching prime time TV because it offered nothing enticing. Any enjoyment derived from reading fiction had been sadly reduced since that morning in Virginia. No novelist could conjure up a plot with as many twists, pitfalls, and calamities as those in her life the last five years. It was difficult to sympathize with a protagonist whose dilemma was mild when compared to her own.

  With nothing to do for entertainment, she had decided to read through her patient files. The intricacies of medicine never failed to engross her.

  While other students in her class had complained all through medical school, for Lara it had been like a vacation. She relished the required hours of study. Having unlimited access to textbooks and perplexing case histories was a luxury. She gorged on them like a gourmand with an endless supply of delicacies.

  Unlike her parents, none of her instructors or classmates berated her for her unquenchable thirst for knowledge, or repeatedly told her that the study of medicine was unsuitable for a well-bred young woman and that there were much more acceptable avenues of interest to pursue.

  She’d graduated third in her class at Johns Hopkins, excelled as an intern, and had been offered her pick of hospitals in which to serve her residency. Naturally, she’d enjoyed the grudging admiration of her colleagues, but the real reward lay in healing. A grateful patient’s simple “thank you” surpassed the accolades of her associates.

  Heartbreakingly, those rewards came few and far between now. That’s why Lara enjoyed perusing her files, charting a patient’s progress from diagnosis to cure.

  She was roused by an approaching car. Expecting it to drive past, she watched with puzzled interest when it entered her driveway and wound around to the rear of the clinic. She laid aside her reading material and quickly left her office. As she made her way through the clinic, she experienced a twinge of déjà vu. This was disturbingly similar to the night Key Tackett had appeared on her threshold, his side bleeding from a gunshot wound.

  It was so similar that she barely registered surprise when she opened the door to find him standing on her back steps. Only this time he wasn’t alone.

  Lara gave the girl a curious glance, then looked at him. “I keep regular office hours, Mr. Tackett. That’s something you seem to forget. Or ignore. Or is this a social call?”

  “Can we come in?”

  He wasn’t in a mood to spar with her. A frown was pulling his eyebrows together, and his lips were compressed into a stern, narrow line. If he had come alone, Lara probably would have slammed the door in his face. She was on the verge of doing so anyway when she gave the girl a closer look and saw that she’d been crying. Her eyes and nose were moist and red, and her face was mottled. She was clutching a damp tissue so tightly her knuckles had turned white.

  Beyond these visible signs of distress, she appeared to be a perfectly healthy girl in her late teens. She was stoutly built, with a deep bosom and full hips. Her face was pretty, or would have been if she’d been smiling. Her shoulder-length hair was straight and dark. Because of the bleak expres
sion in her brown eyes, coupled with her obvious misery, Lara couldn’t shut her out.

  She stepped aside and motioned them in. “What can I do for you?”

  The girl remained silent. Key said, “This is Helen Berry, Dr. Mallory. She needs a doctor.”

  “You’re ill?” Lara asked the girl.

  Helen glanced furtively at Key before saying, “Not exactly.”

  “I can’t help you unless you tell me what the problem is. If it’s a general checkup you need, you can be the first patient I see tomorrow morning.”

  “No!” the girl protested. “I mean… I don’t want anybody to know… I can’t…”

  “Helen needs you to examine her.”

  Lara turned to Key, who’d spoken for the girl. “Examine her for what? If she’s not ill—”

  “She needs a gynecological examination.”

  Lara gave him a wide, inquiring stare that demanded further explanation. He remained silent, his expression immutable. The girl was anxiously gnawing her lower lip.

  “Helen,” Lara asked gently, “were you raped?”

  “No.” She gave her head a hard shake. “Nothing like that.”

  Lara believed her and was greatly relieved.

  “I’ll wait out here.” Key executed an abrupt about-face and stalked down the hallway to the dark waiting room.

  His exit created a soundless vacuum. It was several seconds before Lara let out her held breath. She gave Helen Berry a reassuring smile and said, “This way, please.” The girl followed her into an examination room, where Lara pointed her onto the table.

  “Don’t you want me to undress first?”

  “No,” she replied. “I’m not going to do a pelvic examination until I have more information. Besides, my nurse isn’t here to assist me. I never conduct an examination like that without an assistant.”

  That was for her protection as well as the patient’s. In a sue-crazy society, doctors were paranoid about malpractice suits. Because of the scandal that haunted her, she was more vulnerable than most.

  Her patient’s eyes filled with fresh tears. “But you gotta examine me. I gotta know. I gotta know right now so I can decide what to do.”