“A big mistake.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was a poker hound in my younger days, used to play cutthroat with your Granddaddy Benedict. If Berry wants to up the ante, well, I can do that. How many million do you think it would take to bankrupt Berry’s corporation?”
Kane stared at his grandfather, then a slow smile curved his lips. “You old devil.”
“Think we could win if we ask that much?”
“We could sure try.” His smile faded. “Berry won’t take it lying down, you know. Things could get nasty.”
“We’ll handle that when we come to it. In the meantime, you write up that offer so it’s all official.”
“If it’s what you want.”
“Good.” Pops rubbed his hands together with a dry, papery sound. “Now. Are you going to see that Miss Regina gets back to her motel room all right, or are you just going to stand there?”
To that question, there was only one correct answer. Kane gave it.
A half hour later, he pulled up at the entrance of the Longleaf Motel on the south edge of town. There was no doubt about where Regina Dalton was staying, since there was only one motel in Turn-Coupe. Built in the fifties, the main office had a certain retro stylishness in its inset of glass-brick wall and its sweeping, finlike roof angles. That benefit didn’t extend to the boxlike rooms behind it, though they were neat and clean. The clipped shrubbery and beds of bright annuals fronting each unit were a reminder that the owner, Betsy North, lived on the premises.
The car Regina had been driving sat outside a middle room. There were no others in evidence at this time of day, but Kane didn’t care to risk disturbing a stranger. He got out of his gray Nissan and walked into the motel office.
Betsy rose from her desk behind the counter and came to meet him. Round-faced, nicely plump, she had frosted blond hair and a comfortable manner. A third cousin of some kind on the Benedict side, she and Kane had attended high school together, known each other for years. They exchanged the usual pleasantries, then Kane asked casually, “You have a Regina Dalton registered?”
“Yep,” Betsy answered, her gaze bright and not at all fooled by his offhand manner. “Checked in yesterday afternoon. From New York. Leastwise, that’s what it says on her registration.”
“She in her room?”
“Just drove up.”
He nodded. “I suppose her car’s parked in front of the right unit?”
Betsy cocked her head to one side. “I’m not supposed to tell you that, though I might be persuaded if you were to drop a hint about why you want to know.”
Kane liked Betsy. Beneath her nosiness and love of being in the thick of things was a heart as wide and warm as all outdoors. She’d had a hard time these past few years, after her husband was killed while working on an offshore oil rig. She’d bought the run-down motel with his insurance settlement, cleaned it up, got rid of the trash and one-night-stand business. Now she was doing fairly well.
Neither fondness nor kinship was enough to make him satisfy her curiosity, however. The excuse he gave—delivery of a message from his grandfather—was a disappointment to her, he could tell, but she confirmed the room number for him anyway.
As he left the office, Kane knew very well that news of his visit would be all over town by daylight tomorrow. The best thing he could do to keep the gossip down would be to make his visit short and his departure as conspicuous as possible.
Outside the door with the correct number plate, he raised his hand to rap out a polite summons. While he waited, he shoved his hands into his pockets. This hadn’t seemed like a good idea when Pops had suggested it and felt like an even worse one now.
He wasn’t sure what had come over him back at Hallowed Ground. He’d thought he’d conquered that kind of impulse long ago. Pops’s explanation for the lapse was good enough, he supposed, but the incident bothered him. Not that he regretted it, in spite of everything.
It had been a long time since a woman had stirred him that profoundly. For a few seconds, he’d lost track of where he was, what he was supposed to be doing, everything except the enticing female in his arms. He wasn’t sure how far he might have gone, given the slightest encouragement. That uncertainty bothered him more than anything else.
There was no answer to his knock. His second try seemed to echo for miles, and he felt as if a million eyes watched him hovering outside the motel door. He was wondering if he ought to get a passkey from Betsy to find out if Regina had passed out from her head injury when he finally heard movement inside.
“Who is it?”
He bent his head to catch the cool, precise sound of her voice through the door. Giving his name, he added, “Just checking to be sure you’re okay.”
“I’m perfectly fine. Good-bye.”
A moment before, he’d wanted nothing more than to get away. Now, the fact that she wanted to be rid of him made him reluctant to go. “You’re certain? No dizziness? No headaches?”
“Nothing whatever. If you don’t mind, I was about to take a nap.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. Sleepiness can be a sign of concussion. Maybe somebody should stay with you for a while.”
“You, I suppose?”
A grin quirked his mouth as he heard the sharpness in her voice. There had been a time when he enjoyed feistiness in women. “I’m the only one here.”
“I don’t,” she said with exactitude, “need your help. The last thing I require is for you to stay with me. Go away.”
“Not until I see for myself there’s nothing wrong.”
The safety chain rattled inside, then the door was flung open. “Fine. Look, then.”
She had taken off her suit and put on a chenille robe piped in satin, one faded to a color somewhere between gray and green and so soft from countless washings that it molded perfectly to her slender curves. Beneath its hem, her feet were bare. The makeup had been washed from her face, revealing the powdery paleness of her skin and bringing its dusting of freckles into prominence. Her eyes were no longer turquoise but a soft hazel color. Around their pupils were rust-gold flecks that made them sparkle with the same vibrant life as her cloud of coppery hair.
She looked fine, and perfectly dressed for a long, slow afternoon in bed with a man who could take the frost from her voice and the suspicion from her face. One word, a single come-hither gesture from the lady, and he’d volunteer for the position in one of her New York minutes. Strange, when he didn’t trust her an inch.
“Satisfied?”
The inquiry was not quite so belligerent as it had been before. She put a hand to the opening of her robe, drawing it closer together.
Kane cleared his throat, erasing the obvious answer from his mind. Instead, he said the first thing that came into his head. “Why do you wear contacts? You don’t need them.”
“Not,” she said stiffly, “unless I want to see something farther away than six feet.”
She released the front of her robe and reached higher to clasp the chunk of golden amber that hung on a chain at her throat. Before her fingers closed on it, Kane saw that a winged insect, like a firefly, was caught in the jewel-like resin. Perfectly whole, exactly centered in the heavy filigree setting, it appeared almost alive in its entrapment. He said, “I mean the colored lenses you had on earlier. You have beautiful eyes. Why change them? What are you trying to hide?”
“Nothing!” she said sharply. “Though I fail to see what difference it makes to you.”
She was absolutely right. It was just that the artifice bothered him in a way he couldn’t explain. In an effort to hold her at the door long enough to nail it down, he nodded at her necklace. “Nice. Something you found while working?”
For an instant, it seemed she wouldn’t answer. Then she said, “A gift.”
“He has good taste. It suits you.” Deliberately, Kane let his gaze wander from the amber to her freckles, which were the same burnished shade, then to her hair, which reflected identical hi
ghlights.
Color flooded her face and she looked away. “He wasn’t—that is, he was an elderly gentleman.”
“Really? A relative?” Kane felt his chest tighten. His grandfather was also an elderly gentleman.
“Yes, if you must know.” She avoided his gaze, veiling her expression with gold-tipped lashes.
Her voice, the words she used, disturbed him; still he tried the effect of an understanding smile. “Family is a good thing to have. I speak from experience, being related to three-quarters of the people in Tunica Parish.”
The vitality seeped from her face, leaving it grim. She stepped back to close the door. “Yes, well, if you’re happy now, I’ll go take my nap.”
“I don’t think I am,” he said just before the latch clicked. “I’ll check back with you tomorrow.”
There was no answer. Kane stood for a long moment before he turned and walked away. A frown meshed his thick brows as he crossed to his car.
He’d been right the first time. Something about Miss Regina Dalton didn’t add up. The feeling nagged at him, ringing in his mind like an unanswered summons from some distant and inaccessible room.
It was, he was fairly sure, the warning bell for his internal lie detector.
3
“You got everything you need here?”
Regina looked up at the question. The blonde with the bouffant hairstyle who stood poised in front of her table wasn’t her waitress. That she was addressing her was a mystery, then, nearly as much of one as why her smile was so friendly. Voice abrupt, Regina answered, “Yes. Why?”
“They’re taking care of you. That’s good.”
She must mean the coffee-shop staff. By Regina’s standards, the service was so snail-like she had a strong urge to snap her fingers, grousing, “Come on, come on.” But it was a pleasant enough place in a homey, unpretentious fashion, with crisp red gingham curtains at the windows and matching geraniums on the sills. Her waitress had been kind, even motherly; the coffee was ambrosial and exactly the right temperature, and refills were frequent and free. More than that, Regina had no place to go after breakfast. She had also realized after the first half hour that it was not her waitress’s fault the words “leisurely breakfast” were, in Regina’s experience, a contradiction in terms.
“I’m fine,” she answered, and even managed a polite smile.
“You have any problem, you just let me know. I’m Betsy North, and I own the place, for my sins. Say, didn’t I see you yesterday with Sugar Kane?”
“Who?”
The woman looked quizzical. “Kane Benedict, you know. He’s a great guy, isn’t he?”
“Oh.”
Regina lifted her coffee cup, using it as a refuge from the other woman’s encroaching curiosity. Sugar Kane. She’d heard nicknames were common in the South, but couldn’t quite make this one match the man she’d met.
Betsy North chuckled and she put a hand on her ample hip. “Didn’t know about that, huh? You gonna ask me how he got it?”
It was the last thing Regina was inclined to do. She wasn’t used to instant camaraderie with strangers. The motel owner seemed a likable enough person, but she wasn’t sure how to take her. Lowering her coffee again, she began, “I really don’t—”
“Guessed already, I expect.” The woman laughed, a rich, bawdy sound without the least self-consciousness. “Sweet as sin—with all the consequences, that’s our Kane.”
“Really,” Regina commented, though it was difficult to keep the wry interest from her voice.
“Yeah, he’s quite a guy. Good as gold, but you never can tell what he’ll do next. Runs in the family, you might say. I should know, since I was a Benedict before I married. You wouldn’t understand what that means, not being from around here. From up north, ain’t you?”
“As a matter of fact—”
“New York, right? There’s the accent, of course, but you got the look, like the lawyers who’ve been crawling all over the place on account of Crompton’s Funeral Home. Say, you’re not one of them, are you?”
Regina shook her head in answer. She might have brushed Betsy North off with a few well-chosen words had it not suddenly occurred to her she might learn something from her. “The look?”
“Kind of gray-faced and uptight and dressed in dark clothes, as if they don’t see the sun more than once in a month of Sundays, never have any fun, and all shop at the same place.” Her eyes widened, and she added hastily, “Not that you don’t look nice, you do. I mean, that hair makes you a standout, no matter what you put on. But I see a resemblance.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Regina said dryly. She considered the tailored brown-knit dress she wore with a wide leather belt as sophisticated without being severe. It was possible to see, however, that it might not appear that way to a woman dressed in terra-cotta jeans, a shirt printed in desert-sunset colors, and with silver earrings set with rhodochrosite stones dangling from her earlobes. She went on innocently, “But these lawyers. What have they to do with Mr. Crompton?”
“Plenty,” the woman answered with emphasis. Her lips thinned an instant before she launched into a tale of how a big Northeast funeral service conglomerate had been knocking off small funeral homes across the South, that was until they made the mistake of tackling Sugar Kane’s grandfather.
“Mistake?” Regina murmured by way of encouragement.
“I’ll say. Made Kane madder than hell, as you can imagine. He filed a whole blizzard of injunctions and whatnot, then topped it off with a whopping lawsuit that stopped the guy who owns this Berry Association in his tracks. Showed him there were folks in this town who didn’t care for his shady business practices. The very idea—canceling the private, funeral home–owned burial policies for old ladies so they have to depend on their kids to foot the bill when they die instead of the insurance they’ve been paying on most of their lives. Makes me so mad I could spit, and I’m not the only one. Yes, sir, Berry found out right quick that nobody here cares two bits for his money and power, not when it comes to right and wrong.”
“So it’s Kane, rather than his grandfather, who is pushing the suit?”
“Oh, I don’t know as I’d say that, exactly. I think Mr. Lewis looks on it as a matter of honor not to take this lying down. But Kane’s the man Berry and his raft of high-powered lawyers will have to beat in district court when push shortly comes to shove.”
“You think he has a chance, then?”
“You got me.” Betsy North shrugged, then her lips tightened. “All I know is, I’d sure hate to see Mr. Lewis done out of what belongs to him.”
“He seems like a nice man.”
“One from the old school, a real gentleman. Done a lot for this town over the years—scholarships, civic stuff, donating land for things like the nondenominational church and the new middle school. Why, I could tell you—But you don’t want to hear all that.”
“You’re related to him, too?”
The woman’s rich chuckle broke out again. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But no such thing. So, you gonna be around here long?”
Regina wasn’t sure how to reply to that, even if she wanted to try. While she was making up her mind, a deep, masculine voice answered, “She’ll stay as long as we can keep her.”
Betsy spun toward the man approaching from the doorway behind her. “Damn you, Kane, what do you mean slipping up on me like that?”
“Not you,” he said with a lazy smile, “but your customer.” To Regina, he said a quiet good-morning, adding, “Mind if I join you?”
She waved briefly at the chair across the table. Perhaps he could give her some idea of when his grandfather would see her again.
A speculative look came into Betsy’s eyes as she watched Kane slide into the seat. She offered to bring him coffee. When he declined, she said with wry humor, “Fine, then. I can tell when I’m not wanted. I’ll check on you guys later.”
As she moved away, Kane said, “So has Betsy been after your life story?”
“We hadn’t got that far,” Regina answered. The words were more abrupt than she intended. He was every bit as disturbing as she’d thought the day before, though casually dressed this morning in a knit shirt and pressed chinos. With his presence, the coffee shop seemed to take on new life: the sunshine through the windows was brighter, the decor livelier, the smells of coffee, bacon and maple syrup overlaid by frying onion actually becoming appetizing.
“Don’t let it get to you,” he recommended. “She doesn’t mean anything by it.”
“I’m aware of that.”
A muscle tightened beside his jaw at her tone, but he let the subject drop. With a brief but intent glance at the bruise that still marked her temple, he asked, “How’s the head?”
“All right.” She sipped at the coffee she still held, but it was cold. She set the cup in its saucer with a clatter and pushed it aside.
“No pain or nausea?”
His polite concern made her feel a little ungracious. She unbent enough to say, “I had a headache, but took something for it when I went to bed. It was gone this morning.”
He nodded. “What do you plan to do for the day, then?”
“Go back out to Hallowed Ground to talk to your grandfather, of course. I have a job to finish.”
“I could drive you, maybe after lunch.”
She gave him a direct look. “That won’t be necessary.”
“It’s the least I can do. Besides, I’d feel terrible if you blacked out and ran off the road or something.” He propped an elbow on the table, watching her closely.
“I won’t do that, I assure you.”
“I’d rather not take the chance. If something happened, I’d feel it was my fault.”
She shook back her hair, her gaze cool. “Afraid I’d sue you?”
His laugh was a brief sound that made a chill slither down her spine. “Hardly. Not with the best lawyer in town ready to spring to my defense.”
“Yourself?” Disdain shaded her voice.
“My partner,” he corrected with a hint of steel in the words, then went on without pausing, “Why don’t you want me to drive you? What are you afraid of?”
Kane Page 3