Southern Comforts

by JoAnn Ross

  “But it was Cash who fired him,” Chelsea reminded her. A headache was threatening. She rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “Not Roxanne.”

  “Well, sure. But he probably wasn’t thinking real straight. I mean the guy was the classic alcoholic. He probably managed to kill off most of his gray matter.”

  “You’ve got a point.” Little white dots were swimming in front of her eyes. Her tongue felt thick, making it difficult to speak.

  “Chelsea?”

  Jo’s voice sounded as if she were underwater. Chelsea tried, with effort, to lift her suddenly heavy head and look at her.

  “Is everything okay?” Now the words were drawn out, like an old-fashioned 45 rpm record playing at 33 speed. “You look funny.”

  Chelsea opened her mouth to answer, but she couldn’t get the words out. Sweat was pouring down her face, dripping onto the white Irish linen tablecloth, which struck her as strange, since she was suddenly freezing. Her teeth began to chatter.

  The last thing she remembered was struggling to stand up, desperate to get to the phone to dial 911. But her watery legs wouldn’t hold her and she crumpled, surrendering to the darkness.

  Chelsea’s head felt as if someone had split it in two with an ax and her mouth felt as if she’d been eating cotton balls. Her eyes were filled with grit. She tried to open them, but couldn’t. Tried to pry her lids open with her fingers, but someone had tied her wrists together behind her back, rendering her helpless. Her bound wrists had also been lashed to her ankles, she realized through the thick fog clouding her mind. Someone had tied her up like a stuffed pig.

  Now all she needed, she decided on a silent, hysterical giggle, was someone to put an apple in her mouth. Then she could be the entree at a Roxanne Scarbrough luau.

  The thought amused her. Enough so that she was actually smiling as she drifted off back into the dark, cold nether-world of unconsciousness.

  When she roused again, Chelsea realized that she was in a car, being driven over a bumpy, unpaved road.

  But where? she wondered groggily.

  And why?

  Having no answer, she lost consciousness once again.

  The next time she woke, she found herself gagged, tied to a chair in a small, rustic room that reminded her of what the inside of Cash’s former slave cabins might have looked like.

  Her head was pounding and she feared she was going to throw up. She swallowed down the unpleasant taste that bubbled up in her throat and although it took a mighty effort, she managed to turn her head and take in her surroundings.

  The floor was dirt, the walls created of some sort of limestone and shells. The roof was tin. Rain pounded down on the tin, sounding like a snare drum. There was a narrow army green cot in a corner of the room. A single lightbulb hung from the ceiling on a black wire.

  Roxanne was lying on the floor beside the cot, similarly bound and gagged. Her hair was a filthy blond tangle around her dirty face. She had two black eyes, and there was an ugly gash on the side of her face. She was a mess. But she was, Chelsea saw with relief, still alive. Her blue eyes, as they met Chelsea’s were wide with shock and terror. For the first time since meeting her, Chelsea knew exactly how the life-style expert felt.

  “Well, well. Sleeping Beauty is finally awake,” the dry voice said.

  Chelsea turned toward the doorway, her eyes asking Jo, Why?

  “I thought I might have killed you,” the filmmaker said with a casualness that was even more terrifying than anything else that had happened to Chelsea thus far. To be able to speak so easily of murder denoted either a very evil—or very sick—mind. “Which would have been a shame. Since you’re a very important cog in this little wheel we’re building.”

  She entered the cabin, tossed some bags of fast food onto the cot, then came over to Chelsea and looked down at her.

  “I’m going to untie your gag. But I’ve got to warn you, you’ll be very, very sorry if you scream. Not that it would help, because there’s no one around for miles. But it gets on my nerves. And believe me, Chelsea, I can be very unpleasant when I get nervous.”

  She flashed a smile toward the other bound woman. “Isn’t that right, Roxanne?”

  Roxanne managed a half nod that made Jo laugh.

  When she went over to the cot, picked up her leather purse and pulled out a knife, Chelsea’s blood turned to ice.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, apparently reading the fear in Chelsea’s gaze. “I’m not going to hurt you. Not yet, anyway.” She sliced through the thick gag with the shiny blade. “There. Isn’t that better?”

  “I don’t understand,” Chelsea managed to croak. Her mouth was as dry as sawdust. From fear and whatever drugs Jo had slipped into her iced tea. “What do you want from me?”

  “What do you think? I want you to write a book, of course. About Roxanne.”

  “I thought that was what I was doing.”

  “You’re right.” Jo sighed. “I suppose it would be more correct to say that I want you to write a tell-all biography of Cora Mae Padgett.” This time the smile she flashed at Roxanne was as lethal as the knife she held in her hand. “My very own mommy dearest.”

  When Chelsea still hadn’t returned by late afternoon, Cash began to worry. He hadn’t wanted Chelsea to go to Roxanne’s today. He understood ambition, but, as he’d argued with her, someone had killed George Waggoner. And set fire to Belle Terre. Someone who was still running around loose.

  She’d scoffed at his fears, assured him that no one would have any reason to kill her, then drove away from Rebel’s Ridge. Leaving him to pace and worry.

  What if George hadn’t been the target? What if the perpetrator had gone to Belle Terre to torch it, was discovered in the act, and killed George to cover up his—or her—crime?

  What if this person had a grudge against Roxanne? What if he or she tried again?

  Chelsea’s independent spirit was one of the reasons he’d fallen in love with her. She was more than capable of making her own decisions. But dammit, this one was wrong. Really, really wrong. And there was no way he was going to let her die in the name of feminine independence.

  Grabbing his keys from the hook by the door, he climbed into the pickup and took off, scattering gravel as he tore out of the driveway.

  Twenty minutes later he was at Roxanne’s Tudor house, arriving just as Dorothy was coming out the front door.

  “Where is she?” he demanded.

  “Who? Chelsea? Or Roxanne?”

  “Chelsea.”

  “I don’t know. I thought I’d stop by after bringing Mama home from the doctor’s, to see if Roxanne had any work for me to do, but no one was here.”

  A frisson of terror skipped up his spine. “Chelsea’s rental car’s here.”

  “I know. But Roxanne’s Mercedes is missing, so I assume they probably took it out to Belle Terre to inspect the damage.”

  That was a possibility, Cash decided, desperate to have his fears prove unfounded.

  “Although there’s something that bothers me,” Dorothy said, on an afterthought.

  “What’s that?”

  “I found a broken glass of iced tea on the floor of the kitchen. Along with Chelsea’s duffel bag. Have you ever noticed how many pens and notebooks she keeps in that thing? I can’t imagine her leaving it behind.”

  Neither could he. Cash cursed.

  “I’m going to call the sheriff,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “To tell him we’ve got a possible kidnapping.”

  Dorothy’s eyes grew wide behind the lenses of her black-framed glasses. “A kidnapping?”

  “That’s right.” A fist was twisting his gut in two. “And another possible homicide.”

  Dorothy’s horrified expression echoed his own bleak mood.

  He couldn’t lose her, Cash told himself fervently as he had no choice but to wait for Sheriff Joe Burke to arrive.

  They’d find her. Safe and sound. And he would marry her in some fancy New York chur
ch in a three-ring circus of a formal ceremony that he’d hate but would put up with because every bride was entitled to the wedding of her dreams. He suspected he’d be required to wear a morning coat. And drink champagne beneath a striped tent. And smile and make small talk with all her mother’s snobby Long Island friends. But he’d do it. For Chelsea. Because he loved her.

  And they’d have babies. Lots of babies. With bright copper hair and big green eyes like their mother. And years later, they’d sit together on the green glider on their veranda overlooking the river and watch their grandchildren chasing fireflies, and they’d both agree that they were the luckiest people on the planet. Because they had each other.

  Cash did not believe all this because he was by nature an optimist.

  He believed it would come true because the alternative was too horrible to contemplate.

  He loved Chelsea. She loved him.

  Everything had to turn out okay. As the sheriff’s car pulled up in front of the house, red-and-blue rooftop bubble light flashing, Cash refused to allow himself to think otherwise.

  Chelsea couldn’t believe what she was watching. Jo had set up a generator to run a VCR and television in the fishing cabin, subjecting Chelsea to videos depicting Roxanne having sex with Vern Gibbons and George Waggoner. There was also one distasteful episode where Roxanne threatened to terminate Cash if he didn’t sleep with her. Loving Cash, and knowing him as she did, Chelsea was not the least bit surprised when he turned the predatory woman down.

  She watched George blackmailing Roxanne about her former life, and, it seemed, her stepfather, a man named Jubal Lott. Although it wasn’t clear to Chelsea which of the deadly duo had actually killed the man, she could certainly understand why Roxanne had been willing to pay him to keep quiet. It also answered her question as to why Waggoner had been hired to work at Belle Terre.

  She cringed at the gruesome scene of George’s death. When the heavy hammer came down, crushing his head, her stomach roiled. Bile rose in her throat. With an effort, she forced it back down.

  “I don’t understand,” she said to Jo, “why you killed him.”

  “Because he was my father, of course,” Jo explained.

  “That’s not true!” Roxanne cried. Although Jo had removed her gag as well, this was the first thing she’d said.

  “The videotape doesn’t lie.” Her eerily serene behavior reminded Chelsea of the calm before a very violent storm. “I can see it’s time for a little more show-and-tell.” She put in another tape and pushed Play. “You see,” she said after the scene depicting George reminding Roxanne about her pregnancy had played. “You can’t lie about this, Mama. You and that alcoholic murderer made a child together.”

  “That’s true. But I got an abortion.”

  “Liar.” Jo reached into her purse and pulled out a paper. “This is my birth certificate. And although it has the names of my adoptive parents on it, please notice the date. And here—” she whipped out another piece of paper “—are hospital records showing that Cora Mae Padgett was a patient at the same time.”

  “How did you get those records?” Roxanne asked.

  “You’d be surprised what people will hand over when you tell them you’re filming a movie,” Jo said. “It was a small hospital, Mama. I was the only baby born that day.”

  Roxanne stared at Jo as if seeing her worst nightmare come to life. She hadn’t looked this bad watching Belle Terre burn to the ground. For the first time, Chelsea thought she looked every one of her fifty years.

  “George wasn’t your father,” Roxanne repeated. It did not escape Chelsea’s attention that she did not deny the accusation that she was Cora Mae Padgett. Or even that she might be Jo’s mother.

  “I was pregnant when I married him. But I was afraid the baby might be Jubal’s. Surely you can understand that under the circumstances, I had no choice but to get an abortion. Three years before you were even born.”

  “You’re my mother,” Jo insisted.

  Roxanne let out a slow, stuttering breath. “You may be right. When I was a sophomore in college, I got pregnant again. It wasn’t anyone important, just a professor who promised to give me an A in my art history class if I slept with him.”

  “Beats studying,” Chelsea couldn’t resist muttering. Her comment earned a hot look from Roxanne and a conspiratory smile from Jo.

  “So this professor was my father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not George.”

  “No. Not George.”

  “Oops.” Jo giggled. “Looks as if I made a little mistake. She shrugged philosophically and flashed a grin toward Chelsea. “Oh well, the guy was a creep anyway. No one will miss him.”

  Unfortunately, Chelsea found she couldn’t disagree with that statement. Jo turned back to Roxanne. “You were saying?”

  Although it was hot and steamy in the cabin, Roxanne was trembling as if she’d been set adrift, buck naked, on an arctic iceberg. “Do we have to do this?”

  “If you want to stay alive.”

  “All right.” Roxanne shuddered, took another deep breath and continued. “I’d planned to get another abortion, but I was upset and distracted on the way to the motel where the procedure was supposed to take place and crossed the street against the light. I was hit by a car and ended up with a broken back that forced me to spend six months in the hospital in traction. Since abortion was still illegal at the time, I had no choice but to carry the baby to term.”

  “So, unwilling to sidetrack your lofty career goals by becoming a mother, you gave me up for adoption and never looked back.”

  “It was the best thing to do,” Roxanne insisted. “For both of us.”

  “For you, maybe. But not for me.”

  “That’s not true! You’ve told me all about your parents. Your father was in the military. An officer, I believe. You traveled around the world. Your parents adored you.”

  “Beneath his fancy dress uniform, my adoptive father was a brutal, autocratic redneck who terrorized the men under his command and beat up his wimp of a wife for kicks. When I got old enough, he beat me up, too. He used to play games. One of his favorite pastimes was playing Russian roulette during dinner. He’d point his revolver at me or my mother and pull the trigger.

  “When the cylinder came up empty, he’d laugh. And sometimes he’d put the gun down. Other times he’d try again. Every so often, just to remind us that he could kill us, he’d shoot into the wall over our heads. It was a fun life, Mama. Thanks for making it happen.”

  “How could I have known?” Roxanne argued plaintively. “The woman at the agency—”

  “Don’t talk to me about that agency!” Jo yelled, displaying her first sign of temper so far. “It was a fucking baby mill. They bought babies, then sold them to the highest bidder. Like you sold me, Mother. For ten thousand dollars.”

  “I was assured they were good people.”

  “Don’t give me that shit. I know you. I’ve been living with you for weeks. I’ve been watching every little secret aspect of your life. You’re a scheming, heartless, opportunist bitch. And we both know you would have sold me to Genghis Khan for ten thousand dollars.”

  She reached into the purse again and pulled out a revolver. “This was my adoptive father’s gun. I inherited it when he died when our house burned up. It seems he tragically fell asleep with a cigarette.” She laughed. “Which, of course, proves that it’s true what the Surgeon General says about smoking being hazardous to your health.”

  Chelsea had never seen so much hatred in one person. It was both terrifying and horribly sad at the same time.

  Jo put the barrel of the gun against Roxanne’s temple. The older woman closed her eyes and cringed. Jo pulled the trigger.

  “Well,” she said cheerfully, when the click seemed deafening in the heavy silence, “I guess you lucked out this time. We’ll try again. Later.”

  She handed Chelsea a pen and a yellow legal pad. “Start writing. I tell you, Chelsea, this revised version o
f the Roxanne Scarbrough story is going to shoot you to the top of the bestseller list.”

  Chelsea had no doubt she was right. She hoped she’d be alive to see it published.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “I gotta tell you, son,” Joe Burke said. “Having your lady friend disappear when you’re already a suspect in a murder ain’t the best thing that could happen to you.”

  “I didn’t kill Waggoner,” Cash insisted yet again.

  “You weren’t home all night with Miz Cassidy, either.” When Cash didn’t answer that, the sheriff nodded. “That’s kind of what I thought. She seemed like a real loyal little gal. But someone ought to warn her that lyin’ to a law enforcement officer during a criminal investigation could get her in big trouble.”

  “I’ll tell her,” Cash said, his impatience escalating with each minute they wasted. “As soon as we find her.”

  “That could be a mite difficult. Seeing as how we don’t know where to start looking.”

  “Jo McGovern’s got her,” Cash said.

  “You got any proof of that, son?”

  “Yeah.” Not worrying whether his actions had been legal, Cash had entered the house and gone straight to the kitchen where he’d heard the faint whirring sound of a camera in the eerie stillness. Opening the pantry door he located the hidden camera.

  Jo had documented her crime well. The sheriff, Cash and Dorothy watched the videotape as the young woman stirred the drug into the iced tea. Watched an unsuspecting Chelsea drink it. Then watched as she slid off the chair onto the floor and was dragged, feet first from the room.

  The sheriff turned to Dorothy. “You’ve spent a lot of time with Ms. McGovern. Do you have any idea where she might have taken off to?”

  Dorothy shook her head. “I have no idea.”

  “Dammit,” Cash exploded. “She must have said something.”

  “Mostly she just talked about her film.”

  “You went sightseeing with her the first day Roxanne brought Chelsea out to Belle Terre,” he remembered.