Last Kiss Goodbye

by Rita Herron

  The sheriff stared at Matt for a long minute, eyes locked. “You didn’t have a run-in with anyone else while you were out there?”

  Matt’s expression turned lethal. “No. Who was murdered?”

  “I’m not at liberty to divulge the victim’s identity. We have to notify the next of kin.” Sheriff Boles turned back to Ivy with a smile. “Like I said, call me if you have any more problems, Miss Stanton, day or night. And if I were you, I’d keep my doors locked.” He tugged his hat lower on his head, then opened the door, the wind hurling rain inside. “In fact, if I were the two of you, I’d get out of town. There’s nothing for either one of you here anymore. Nothing but trouble.”

  Ivy barely suppressed a shudder. In the next second, she wondered if his comment had been a threat instead of a warning.

  AS SOON AS A.J. LEFT, A strained silence engulfed the room. The air was charged with tension, the accusations A.J. had posed lingering, leaving the rancid smell of suspicion. Did A.J. really think Matt had committed murder the first night he was back? What had happened to make his buddy distrust him?

  “I can’t believe someone knows who I am,” Ivy said in a strained voice. “But that is blood, isn’t it?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Yes, what did you think it was?”

  “I…wasn’t sure.” She paused, heat staining her cheeks. “I…don’t see red anymore. The color red. Not since that night.”

  The reality of her words slammed into him. He’d heard she’d been traumatized, had blacked out her memories. But she’d blocked out colors, as well? Maybe that explained her drab clothing. A woman like her should be dressed in pretty bright colors, not denim or brown.

  His earlier need to seek vengeance against her vanished, shame replacing his anger. “Let’s get you moved. Go ahead and pack your things.”

  Ivy licked her lips. “You don’t have to come with me, Matt.”

  He banked his own emotions. “I want to make sure you get safely situated inside.”

  Her gaze locked with his, fear still lingering. But something else—a different kind of emotion—flickered in her eyes. Regret? Surprise? Gratitude?

  She didn’t want to be alone. Any fool could see that. Although she was desperately trying to put up a brave front, she was terrified. Who could blame her? The bloody message on the wall and dead animal turned his stomach, and he’d seen worse shit in the pen. Things he would never discuss.

  That stupid macho part of him wanted to rescue her again. Wipe the fear off her face. Hold her until she stopped shaking.

  They reached for her suitcase at the same time. Her hand touched his, sending a shard of desire straight through him. She had the softest skin he’d ever felt. The most tender touch. And those hands were fine-boned, with long slender fingers. He wanted to twine her fingers in his, bring them to his lips, kiss the soft pads of each one, then feel them on his skin. Stroking. Teasing. Touching. Loving.

  Yes, she had the hands of an angel.

  But those hands shouldn’t be touched by a man’s dirty ones.

  Not by his hands, especially. Hands that had done things he wasn’t proud of.

  Hands that had shaken the devil’s more than once—hands that knew what it was like to murder.

  THE DEVIL HAD GOTTEN INTO him. That was the only explanation.

  Tommy Werth stared at his hands, turning the palms over to study the bruises and scratches, remembering the first time he’d taken the notion to kill.

  The idea had started in his mind years ago, but he’d put it on hold, like a phone call he didn’t want to answer. But the urge had grown stronger lately, that phone ringing incessantly, urging him to follow through. So often that the need had finally possessed him, possessed his body, as if someone else’s soul had slipped inside him.

  Whispering the things he had to do. Telling him it was all right. Urging him to choke his mama. That she deserved it.

  Suggesting ways he could pull it off and not get caught.

  Leave her out in the old junkyard. Hide her beneath the kudzu with the other ghosts of people long gone. Let the snakes and rats destroy any evidence he might have left behind.

  So that’s what he’d done.

  Squeezed the breath out of her. Watched her eyes pop wide open in shock and terror.

  He’d let her know that he was in charge now. That her reign as dictator had ended. He no longer had to listen to her mind-numbing chatter. To her bitching and ranting. Calling him weak. Ridiculing him because he had stupid allergies. Hoarding money from him while she blew all their cash on stupid garage sale finds, and that home shopping channel where she bought those ridiculous little trinkets. Ceramic kitty cats and frogs to sit around and collect dust. Hell, he’d dump them all in the trash tomorrow.

  Yes, he was free now. Free from his mother.

  A laugh rumbled in his chest as he let himself inside the house. He kicked off his boots, not bothering to wipe the mud off before traipsing across the white linoleum. She wouldn’t be here to fuss at him in the morning.

  Or ever again, for that matter.

  Adrenaline pumped through him as he grabbed a beer from the fridge, opened it and took a long swig. She couldn’t tell him not to drink anymore, either. Or what to eat or where to go or who he could hang out with.

  No, he was free of the old witch. Finally.

  He yanked his T-shirt over his head as he walked to the den, tossed it on the sofa and turned on the tube, settling the remote on MTV. The loud, heavy metal music rocked through him as the cold beer settled in his belly.

  His mother’s face floated into his mind again, and he smiled, adrenaline surging through him as he remembered the sight of her panicked expression. The first moment she realized he was going to kill her. Then the sound of her last breath, whistling out with her life, growing weaker, more feeble. The rain dripping down her cheeks like teardrops. The kudzu vine he’d wrapped around her neck until he’d choked the life from her.

  She would never scream at him again. Or call him a worthless ass or cuss him for being lazy and stupid. Because he had outsmarted her.

  Yes, he had just kissed his mother goodbye, along with all his problems.

  He cranked up the TV volume a little louder and strummed his imaginary electric guitar, keeping perfect time with the rhythm. Tomorrow he’d call his buddies and arrange a party to celebrate. Tell Trash to bring over some pot.

  Now the old biddy was dust in the wind, he could really start living.

  For a brief second, he remembered the spooky legends about the ghosts in the hollow. Imagined his mom’s skeletal face floating toward him. Saw her bones sticking out, the skin peeling away as she rotted. The worms and maggots feeding on her. The bony remainders of her fingers digging through the dirt, pawing upward through the vines and dirt to grab him.

  He threw his head back and laughed. Good thing he didn’t believe in all that shit, or else he wouldn’t sleep tonight for fear she’d return and haunt him.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A.J. MET HIS DEPUTY, Jimmy Pritchard, at the junkyard, his irritation mounting as he spotted Lady Bella Rue hovering close by, kneeling on the damp ground, sprinkling one of her weird concoctions around the edges of the oak tree, chanting as if she could commune with the devil. Though the rain had slackened, the sky was dark as Hades, the ground drenched and soggy. The stench of the chicken houses nearby, and a dead animal probably trapped below that kudzu, nearly knocked him on his ass.

  But so far, he hadn’t found a dead body.

  The old biddy seemed oblivious as to his arrival, which only proved that she was as a crazy as a loon, just like everyone said. He wanted to order her to leave town and bother someone else. But he was almost as unnerved by her as the children who ran from her and taunted her, calling her evil. Besides, he had enough problems to deal with now that Matt Mahoney and Ivy Stanton were back in town.

  Geez. He thought he’d squashed the guilt years ago. That the past was the past. But seeing Mahoney and Ivy Stanton today resurrected ba
d memories and the fear of being caught in his lies.

  The old woman paused and looked up at him from beneath her veil, her gnarled bony fingers powdery with whatever substance she was spreading around. His stomach knotted as he strode toward her, the ancient language she spoke in her chants a reminder of the old childhood rhymes about the evil in the town.

  Death in the hollow,

  Sin in the well.

  Blood on my fingers,

  Going to hell.

  Her eyes looked like two flat crystals piercing through him as if she could see inside his soul. He was scared shitless of what she might find. His weaknesses. Flaws. The lies. The secret fantasies.

  And what if she decided to cast one of her wicked spells on him? He’d heard of her magic, that she’d made her own husband’s dick shrivel up and nearly fall off because she’d found him cheating on her with one of the ladies from Red Row. Then she’d gone crazy and killed her own kid….

  “What’s this all about?” he asked his deputy. “I thought you said there was a murder.”

  His deputy cut a withering glance toward Lady Bella Rue. “She says there has been.”

  Holy Mother of God. “Lady Bella Rue?”

  “Yes,” she said in that small voice. “The body’s trapped in the kudzu.”

  He jerked the flashlight around. The junkyard was at least three miles across. Kudzu snaked all around the old vehicles, stretching across the hollow and up the mountainside as if it owned the town.

  “Did you witness the murder, Lady Bella Rue?”

  She pressed a hand to the rag knotted around her neck and murmured a Hail Mary. He refused to ask the significance of the knots.

  “Not exactly. But I know she’s there.”

  More of her hocus-pocus. “Listen, if you didn’t see someone hurt, or witness a crime, then why did you drag us out here tonight?”

  “She’s there,” Lady Bella Rue insisted, pointing toward the pit of kudzu. “Just look for yourself. I can see her fingers poking up through the leaves.”

  A.J. glanced at his deputy and barely suppressed a rude comment. Pritchard shrugged but remained a safe distance from the odd old woman.

  “Just look!” she trilled, as if they were both incompetent imbeciles.

  He grunted in frustration, but swung the flashlight along the edge of the junkyard closest to them, then dragged it at an angle across one square foot at a time. The wind howled behind him. A yellowish mist rose from the leaves like fireflies. Spooky as hell. About five hundred feet from them, the weeds rustled. Was it the wind? Leaves settling from the heavy rain?

  A ghost, maybe?

  His heart thumped faster as he walked along the edge of the junkyard, peering through the tangled vines with the flashlight beam. Flies buzzed around him. The smell of rotting vegetation grew more intense. A worm slithered across a rusted tire, then curled onto a wet leaf.

  Then he saw it. Long pointed fingers poking up through the brush.

  Jesus Christ. Lady Bella Rue was right. It was a woman’s hand.

  And judging from her outstretched fingers, she’d probably been struggling to escape, but she’d been trapped beneath the kudzu, left to die.

  IVY THREW THINGS INTO her suitcase, ducked into the bathroom and gathered her toiletries. Part of her was grateful for Matt’s masculine presence, another part felt unsettled as he watched her pack her personal items. An electric current had passed between them when she’d first looked into his eyes, an attraction she had never felt for another man. The desire to know him on a more intimate level plucked at her nerves, making them ping like an out of tune harp that had not been played in a long time.

  But a sexual attraction was ridiculous considering their past. That was what bound them together—the horrible night her parents had died. The answers that needed to be found were locked somewhere in her mind. And she had to gather the courage to search for them, not let this warning tonight deter her from accomplishing her goal. Because she could not give herself to any man until she felt whole. Alive. Not the dead shell of a person she’d been her entire life.

  She couldn’t resort to the patterns, the routines, the grays and blacks and browns.

  “Are you almost ready?” Matt asked in a gruff voice.

  She nodded, once again drawn by the pain in his eyes. The intense hunger radiating from him shook her to the core. At the same time, that raw masculinity frightened her. Matt obviously harbored a grudge, and for all intents and purposes, should hate her. But instead, she’d felt a protective aura about him, as if he wouldn’t allow any harm to come to her.

  She jammed her toothbrush and comb into the cosmetic bag, then carried it to the door and set the bag beside her suitcase while she stuffed her laptop into its case. The notes on the town she’d accumulated so far went next, along with her camera.

  “You really are writing a story on Kudzu Hollow?” Matt asked.

  “How did you know that?”

  He twisted his mouth as if he realized he’d just been caught in a lie. “I went to Chattanooga, to your office, to look for you.”

  Her breath caught. “How did you find out where I lived? I don’t use my real name.”

  “The Internet.”

  If he had found her so quickly, the person who’d killed her parents could, too. He might already be in Kudzu Hollow looking for her. And he might have left that warning….

  “Why come to me, Matt?” She grabbed her camera bag and laptop bag and slung them over her shoulder, anxious to leave the room. When she reached for her suitcase and cosmetic bag, he hauled them up instead.

  “I told you already. I wanted to know why you hadn’t come forward to tell the police what happened that night.”

  “You thought all these years that I remembered and that I didn’t speak up?” She swallowed, searching his face. “Why would I do that?”

  He shrugged. “I…don’t know. Because you were too scared. Maybe you knew the killer and was afraid of him. I realize going to Chattanooga didn’t make sense. But nothing made sense at the time.”

  She paused at the door, the room suddenly too warm. “But it does. If I saw the person who killed my parents, Matt, I probably was scared. The therapist I saw afterward said I was traumatized and repressed my memories.”

  Matt nodded, and they walked outside. The rain had dwindled slightly, although the wind shook the trees, spraying the ground and cabin. A fine mist drizzled down from the porch awning, but she ignored it and followed Matt past his cabin to the one on the opposite side. Shuffling her bags into one hand as he opened the door, he flipped on the lamp, throwing a dim, watery light across the room. Basically, the cabin was identical to her other one, only the quilt design varied, and a photo of a hawk hung above the bed.

  Matt placed her bags on the floor, then folded his arms across his chest.

  “Would you like some coffee or tea?” Ivy asked as she put down her own bags, suddenly anxious about being alone.

  “Coffee sounds good.”

  She nodded, rummaged in her bag for the few food items she’d brought. Finding the can of coffee, she spooned grounds into the coffeemaker, added water and hit the on button. Trying to calm herself with the mundane chore, she found mugs inside the pine cabinet.

  “Have you learned anything while you’ve been here?” Matt asked.

  She shook her head. “Nothing concrete. Basically, I’ve been doing background research for my article. Taking pictures of the countryside and local sites. Learning about the legends.”

  “Have you driven out to the trailer park yet?”

  She poured them both some coffee and squeezed her own mug between her hands, remembering the eerie feeling that had overcome her earlier.

  “No, but I stopped by the junkyard. It looks the same, only more grown over, choked by weeds and kudzu.”

  Matt cleared his throat, his voice level, but his eyes spoke volumes. He wanted answers. “Did being at the junkyard jog your memory?”

  She bit her lip, then forced hersel
f to meet his intense gaze. “I remembered playing in the cars as a child. Pretending to drive them, imagining they were magical, that they could take me far away.”

  “You don’t remember running through the junkyard that night? Falling in the mud?”

  She blinked, her hand trembling. “That really happened?”

  His throat worked as he swallowed. “Yes.”

  “You were there?” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “You came out of nowhere,” she said softly. “You scared me to death.”

  “You thought I was going to hurt you.”

  Her chest squeezed as he absentmindedly stroked the scar on his cheek. “But you picked me up and carried me to that van.”

  More pain flashed on his face. Memories of the ordeal that had followed? His arrest, conviction? Years in jail…

  “I’m so sorry, Matt. I…want to remember everything that happened. I wish I could have kept you out of jail and made the real killer pay.”

  “Do you?” His harsh voice sliced through the quiet. “Then you believe I am innocent?”

  She brushed a strand of hair from her cheek with a shaky finger. “The evidence said you are.”

  “But a jury convicted me fifteen years ago.”

  “Are you trying to make me pay, Matt? Make me feel guilty?”

  He averted his gaze, a muscle ticking in his jaw as his expression hardened. “No.”

  “You saved me that night. I…I should be thanking you.” She started to reach out and touch his arm, force him to feel her regret, to understand that she believed in his innocence, that she wasn’t frightened of him.

  But that would be a lie.

  Not that she feared he was a killer, but he made her feel things she’d never felt. Made her ache to comfort him and feel his arms around her. Tempted her to tear down her own protective walls.

  But those walls kept her safe. Kept the demons at bay.

  “I do want to find the real killer,” Ivy said softly.

  His shoulders tensed as he moved closer. Their gazes locked, tension thrumming between them. He lifted his hand, rubbed a finger along her cheek, and his voice grew husky, “Even if it puts you in danger, Ivy?”