White Hot

by Sandra Brown

  The carhop arrived with their lime slushes. Chris paid her and gave her a generous tip. He sipped from his straw and observed to Beck that the only thing wrong with the drink was that it was missing a couple shots of tequila.

  Irritated by his friend’s cavalier attitude, Beck said, “Chris, what is it going to take to wake you up to the fact that you are in a serious situation? What was that bullshit about the phone call? Couldn’t you come up with a better story than inviting Danny to Sunday dinner? They saw straight through that. And so did I. When Huff joined us that afternoon and asked if we’d heard from Danny, you didn’t mention talking to him by phone that morning.”

  “I forgot.”

  “You forgot.” Beck snorted. “Great. We’ve already discussed what a solid defense that makes.”

  “All right, Beck, you want to hear a better story? What if I’d told Red and Deputy Scott that I called Danny to ask him to meet me at the fishing camp that day? That’s right,” he said, seeing Beck’s astonishment. “That was the purpose of the call.

  “I didn’t mention it to Huff on Sunday afternoon because I had failed in my mission and I was in no mood for one of his tirades. And just how bad would it have looked for me if I’d told our esteemed lawmen the truth? Would you have preferred that?”

  Beck expelled a long breath. “No, that would not have been preferable.”

  Placing his unwanted drink in the cup holder in the dashboard, he stared through the windshield at the distinctive hood. He liked driving a pickup, but Chris favored fast, sleek, sporty, luxurious imports.

  “From here on, Chris,” he said, turning to him to emphasize his point, “don’t say anything to anybody. You’ve said too much already.”

  “Scott provokes me.”

  “He knows that. He baits you, turning your disdain of him to his advantage. You’ve got to learn to keep your mouth shut.”

  “You’re talking like you think I’m guilty. Beck,” he said, looking at him squarely. “I did not kill my brother. I was not at the fishing camp.”

  “Then why in the name of God did you ask him to meet you out there?”

  “Danny and I had argued the day before. I got nowhere with him. I saw him going off to church that morning and thought, Dammit, I didn’t make a dent. So I thought if I got him out in the countryside, in total privacy, we could have a calmer and more effective heart-to-heart.

  “It would also placate Huff to know that I’d made an earnest attempt to talk to Danny. Huff was seriously worried about the influence this religious nonsense was having on him and he wanted it to stop.”

  “Danny agreed to meet you out there?”

  “No, he didn’t,” Chris declared. “That’s what has me puzzled. He said he wouldn’t be caught dead—” He stopped, realizing what he’d said, and placed his hand against his forehead. “Christ.”

  “I get the idea, go on.”

  “Well, when Red showed up and told us that Danny had been found dead at the fishing camp, I was dumbfounded. First of all because my brother was dead, which was shocking enough. But second because of where he had died.”

  “You didn’t go out there?”

  He gave an adamant shake of his head. “I had told Danny that I would go, hoping he would change his mind and meet me. He said, ‘Don’t wait for me, Chris, I won’t be coming.’ It was so blasted hot that afternoon. I was hungover. Lazy. So I took him at his word and decided to hell with it, and didn’t go. But apparently Danny also took me at my word. He went, expecting me to be there.”

  “I don’t think you can sell a jury on the notion that Danny killed himself because you failed to show up.”

  “Is that meant to be sarcastic?”

  “Definitely. But it illustrates how many holes there are in your story.”

  “I’m well aware of that. Why do you think I’ve kept it to myself?”

  “Even from me?”

  “Especially from you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I knew you’d be pissed that I hadn’t told you in the first place.”

  Beck rested his head against the back of the seat and took a deep breath. Arguing with Chris over a fait accompli would be counterproductive. He now had to focus on damage control.

  “Give me your best guess as to what happened to Danny when he got out there.”

  “You shot down my best guess,” Chris said.

  “That somebody’s trying to frame you?”

  “That’s what I think. Have you talked to Red about Slap Watkins?”

  “This afternoon, obviously before Scott obtained the phone records. I told him about our confrontation with Watkins last night in the diner, told him that Danny had recently rejected his job application, and what Watkins had said to us, as well as what he’d said to Sayre and me.”

  “And Red’s reaction was . . . ?”

  “That it was thin, but that he wouldn’t put anything past Slap Watkins. He said he would look into it and keep an eye on him.”

  Chris frowned. “That’s not much of a commitment, but it’s something, I suppose.”

  “How could Watkins or anyone else have framed you, Chris? Who else would have known about the phone call to Danny arranging a meeting?”

  “No one. But somebody following Danny, looking for an opportunity to kill him, would seize it when he was alone, in a remote spot like the fishing camp.”

  “And he would use a shotgun owned by the family?”

  “He would if he wanted to pin the murder on a member of that family,” Chris returned angrily. “He could have somehow restrained Danny, then taken down the shotgun and shot him in the mouth. Every fishing camp I know of has some kind of firearm around.”

  Beck thought about it as Buddy Holly waxed poetic about Peggy Sue. “I didn’t reload the shotgun before replacing it above the door when we were there. The killer would have had to find the shotgun shells, and only those of us who go there would know where they’re kept. The place was dusted for prints. None except mine and those of family members were found.”

  “That’s easy. He would know to wear gloves.”

  Which brought up another sensitive topic. “Chris, what were you wearing?”

  Before they’d left the sheriff’s office, Deputy Scott had asked Chris to produce the clothes and shoes he’d been wearing on Sunday afternoon. Chris claimed not to remember what he’d had on. But the point was moot anyway, he said. Anything he’d worn on Sunday, Selma would already have laundered or taken to the dry cleaner.

  “Like I told Scott, I don’t remember,” he said now. “Slacks, a golf shirt. I don’t remember.”

  “When I got to the house, you were wearing a striped shirt with a button-down collar and a pair of black Dockers.”

  Chris gave Beck an arch look. “You’re noticing my wardrobe now? Have you gone queer on me?” Then he laughed. “No, you haven’t gone queer. Given the way your tongue was mating with Sayre’s tonsils.”

  Beck refused to be diverted. “I remember what you were wearing because when I got to your house, I was on the verge of melting. The back of my shirt was damp, just from the short drive over. I noticed the difference in us. You looked like you’d stepped out of a bandbox. You had just cleaned up, hadn’t you?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “It’ll make a difference if Selma is put on the witness stand and has to testify under oath what she found, or didn’t find, in your clothes hamper between Saturday afternoon after you left for Breaux Bridge and Sunday afternoon. She’ll have to testify that you took a shower in the vicinity of three o’clock, after Danny was shot in the head sometime between one and two-thirty.” Beck looked at him hard. “Did you leave the house on Sunday?”

  Chris stared at Beck with an unwavering gaze, then relented with a drawn-out sigh. He raised his hands in surrender. “Guilty.”

  Beck felt a weight as solid as an anchor land against his chest, but he tried to keep his anxiety under control and his voice even. “Where did you go, Chris? And w
hy did you have to shower and change clothes shortly before I got to the house?”

  “Remember that nasty incriminating evidence on Monica Lewinsky’s dress?” He spread his hands wide and grinned. “Caught without a condom. Can you believe it? At my age. I had to pull out before I came.”

  “Who were you with?”

  “Lila. I knew George was playing golf with Huff. So I went over to her place for some afternoon delight.”

  “For chrissake, why didn’t you tell me this? When you were first questioned about how you spent your Sunday afternoon, why didn’t you say you were with someone? Lila is your alibi.”

  “That’ll go over real well with the sheriff.”

  It took Beck a moment to connect the dots; then he groaned, “Oh, shit.”

  “Right. Lila is Red’s sister’s daughter. I couldn’t have been killing my brother because I was going down on our sheriff’s niece. I’d rather avoid telling him that, although right now I’m not feeling too kindly toward him.”

  “If you’re forced to produce an alibi, can we count on her to back you up?”

  “I’d rather not involve her,” Chris said with a slight wince. “Besides being Red’s niece, I don’t know that she would jeopardize her marriage to George by owning up to an affair. She makes fun of him constantly, but he’s spoiled her rotten, buys her anything she wants. He’s besotted, and as long as she puts out occasionally it’s an arrangement that makes them both happy. She would probably lie to protect that feather bed she’s made for herself.”

  “You were with her for two hours?”

  “Well, I wasn’t watching the clock, but that sounds about right.”

  “Did anybody see you at their house?”

  “We take great pains to prevent that.”

  “All right. We’ll hold Lila in abeyance, to be used only if absolutely necessary.”

  “It won’t be necessary,” Chris said. “They’ve got nothing but circumstantial evidence. I know from experience, having been falsely accused of murder before, that that isn’t enough.”

  “This time is different, Chris. This time they’ve got a body.”

  “Right. The body. I try not to think about that. I’m glad that Red could identify Danny, instead of one of us having to. But you saw the inside of the cabin. It was a mess, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s why they wanted to see your clothing. The shooter would have been spattered with—”

  “Beck, enough. Okay?”

  “Don’t get queasy yet. If it goes to trial, they’ll show crime scene photos.”

  “It won’t go to trial. Or if it does, it won’t be my trial.”

  They were quiet for a while and let the last chorus of—and this was ironically chilling to Beck—“Jailhouse Rock” play out. Chris finished his drink, then out of nowhere asked, “Have you fucked Sayre yet?”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Look at the man’s expression. Surprise. Innocence. Righteous indignation. Why, the idea never entered his mind.” He laughed. “Have you?”

  “You’ve got more than that to worry about,” Beck said tightly.

  “I’m not the only one who has noticed some electricity there. Huff remarked on it, too.”

  “There is no ‘it.’ ”

  “Hm. I guess the steam rising off the two of you there in your kitchen was due to the barometric pressure.”

  Beck gave him a baleful look.

  “If it’s not you that’s keeping her here, then what is?” Chris persisted. “She hates Destiny and everybody in it, especially if his name is Hoyle.”

  Beck didn’t tell him that Sayre suspected him of killing their younger brother. Surely that would bother Chris as much as it bothered him. He was also concerned about what Sayre might do to try to prove herself right. She wasn’t easily intimidated, and just from the short time he’d known her, it had become evident to him that once she set her mind on something, she was damned and determined to see it through.

  “Your dick is your business,” Chris said.

  “Thank you.”

  “But I’d be less than a friend if I didn’t offer you a word of caution. Sayre is—”

  “Look, don’t go there. All right?”

  Chris shot him a wry grin. “Beck, my friend, you took the words right out of my mouth.”

  chapter 19

  It was hot.

  That was one thing you could say about coastal Mississippi in the summertime, and the summer of 1945 was no exception. It was so hot that even grasshoppers died of heatstroke. Tomatoes ripened and burst open on their vines before they could be picked.

  Although one time, when Huff and his daddy were really hungry, they’d gathered up some busted tomatoes from off the ground of somebody’s garden, dusted the dirt and ants off them, and ate them for supper.

  Huff was eight years old that summer. Everybody you met was carrying on about the victory over the Germans. Whipping the Japs was only a matter of time. There were parades in the streets of nearly every town they traveled through. People waved flags, not the usual Stars and Bars, but the U.S. flag.

  Huff didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. The war hadn’t affected him and his daddy much. His daddy hadn’t been in the armed services. Huff didn’t know why that was, because most men his daddy’s age wore a uniform of one sort or another. Passenger trains were packed full of soldiers and sailors, and on one occasion he and his daddy shared a freight car with two black men in uniform. Huff hadn’t liked that. His daddy hadn’t either, and ordinarily he would have told them to get the hell out and find themselves another freight car. But his daddy had said it was all right this once because those boys were fighting for their country.

  If the Army would take niggers, Huff couldn’t understand why they hadn’t wanted his daddy. He figured it was because of him. What would have happened to him if his daddy had been sent away to kill Nazis and Japs? They moved around so much, never living in any one place for long, that maybe the Army didn’t even know his daddy’s name. Or maybe the Army was just like everybody else—they flat didn’t want his daddy, thinking him no’ccount, or dim-witted, rather than just poor and uneducated.

  His daddy had lived through the Great Depression. Huff wasn’t sure what that was, but he knew it was bad. His daddy had tried to explain it, and from what he said, Huff gathered that the Depression had been like a war, because it affected the whole country, but the enemy had been poverty. His daddy’s family had lost that war.

  But they’d always been poor. That was why his daddy didn’t have but three years of schooling. He’d had to work in cotton fields alongside his own daddy, and sometimes even his ma. “Her hands a-bleedin’ and with a baby or two hanging on her tit,” he would say, looking downcast.

  His daddy’s folks were dead now, like Huff’s own mother. When Huff asked what had killed them, his daddy had said, “Being poor, I reckon.”

  That summer of ’45, jobs were even harder to come by because so many soldiers were returning from the war, looking for work. There wasn’t enough to go around. So it was like a miracle when Mr. J. D. Humphrey hired his daddy to work in an auto salvage yard.

  It was hot, dirty work, but his daddy was grateful for the job and put his back to it. When somebody came to J. D. Humphrey’s place looking for a spare part for an early model car, his daddy would forage through acres of junked autos until he found what the customer needed.

  At the end of every day, he’d be covered with filth, smeared with grease, bleeding from mean scratches made by rusty metal, his muscles aching from pulling motors from stubborn chassis. But he was so glad to have steady work, he never complained.

  Huff hung around the junkyard with him. He was small for his age and shy about talking to anybody except his daddy. He would be allowed to do odd jobs, like fetching a needed tool from the shed or stacking retread tires. Mr. J. D. Humphrey even gave him a cast-off inner tube that had been patched so many times it wasn’t worth anything. He played with it in the dusty yard while his
daddy worked from sunup to sundown every day except Sunday.

  His daddy told him that if things kept up, he might be able to go to school when it commenced in the fall. He was a little late starting, his daddy told him, but he was sure he could catch up to the other kids in no time.

  Huff couldn’t wait to go to school like other boys. Many times, he’d watched them from a distance as they laughed and horsed around in the school yard, tossing a ball to each other or chasing girls who squealed and giggled and wore ribbons in their hair.

  That summer their home was an abandoned shack. The folks who had lived there before had left a lot of trash behind, but also a cotton mattress on the floor and a few pieces of rickety furniture. He and his daddy kicked the varmints out and moved in.

  The night that changed Huff’s life forever was typically hot, but even more humid than usual. Sweat didn’t evaporate but rolled along your skin, leaving muddy trails until it finally dripped off, landing in the dust and making damp little craters like first raindrops. It was hard to take a deep breath because the air was so thick and oppressive. On their walk home from the junkyard, his daddy had remarked on how hot and still it was and predicted a storm before morning.

  They had just sat down to eat their evening meal of cold bacon, corn bread, and wild plums that they’d picked from trees along the road when they heard a car approaching the shack.

  No one ever came to visit them, so who could it be?

  Huff’s heart clenched up like a fist, and he had to push down a swallow of dry corn bread. It must be the owner of the shack, wanting to know just what the hell they were doing in his house, sleeping on his mattress, eating off his three-legged table. He would kick them out, and they wouldn’t have a place to stay anymore.

  What if they couldn’t find another place to live before school started the Tuesday after Labor Day? Huff had been living for the Tuesday after Labor Day. His daddy had marked it for him on the calendar with the picture of the naked lady that hung in Mr. J. D. Humphrey’s office. That was when he could join the rest of the kids on the school playground and maybe learn to play their games.