Playing Dead in Dixie

by Paula Graves

  The question was, why?

  THE STRICKLANDS' HOUSE WAS a mirror of the people themselves, solid, simple, warm and inviting. A stone porch spanned the front of the clapboard house, the grays, browns and duns a pleasing foil for the moss green of the wood siding.

  Carly followed Steve's family through the sagging screened door, trying to ignore the laser force of Wes Hollingsworth's suspicious glare. Scalp prickling, she focused on the sprawling living room on the other side of the screen door, an over-stuffed museum of country kitsch, from the carved wooden owl perched on the pine mantle over the soot-black fireplace to the brown- and gold-checked sofa backed up against the far wall.

  Warm, buttery aromas wafted from somewhere near the back of the house. A tall, rail-thin woman came into the living room in its wake, wiping her hands on her apron. She gave Steve's sister Beth a hug and turned a tight, sympathetic smile toward Bonnie Strickland. "I've got everything set up in the kitchen. Y'all want me to stay around and help you clean up?"

  Bonnie returned the smile, but Carly could see the strain in her red-rimmed eyes. "Oh, Maddie, don't you even think about cleanin' up for us. I'll be happy to have something to keep me busy. But aren't you going to stay and eat?"

  Maddie shook her head. "Royce is supposed to be coming in this afternoon. Haven't seen him in a week. I promised I'd have him a hot meal on the table when he got here." She gave Bonnie a quick hug and glanced toward Carly, her blue eyes narrowing slightly. It was an expression Carly was getting used to. She'd seen it enough times during her trip south.

  She was an outsider.

  Bonnie turned to Carly. "Oh, where are my manners? Maddie, this is Carly Devlin. Carly, this is Maddie Bagwell. Carly was a friend of Steve's, Maddie."

  Carly tried not to flinch at the way Bonnie Strickland pronounced the word "friend." She might as well have called her Steve's girlfriend.

  And whose fault is that? a mean little voice whispered inside her head.

  Maddie gave Carly a brief, reserved smile. "Nice to meet you, Carly. It was good of you to come down for the funeral." She turned back to Bonnie. "I'll be at the house if you need me." She gave Steve's mother another hug and left, the screen door slapping shut behind her.

  Carly glanced at Steve's cousin Wes, who stood at the mantle, arms crossed, his gaze never leaving her, even when she caught him looking. He wasn't smiling.

  Definitely not as hospitable as the rest of the family, she thought. Too bad; he was good-looking in that corn-fed, aw-shucks way that reminded her of a few of the country boys she'd met in college. Earnest, hard-working, charming if you liked the type. Occasionally she had.

  His hair was as dark as hers but sun-kissed with streaks of honey brown a woman would gladly spend eighty dollars to replicate in a salon. He wore it short, the top just long enough to hint at natural waviness. His even features were roughhewn enough to be masculine rather than merely handsome, and his lean, muscular body suggested he was no stranger to physical labor.

  But his eyes were his most striking feature, dark and intense, with mysteries roiling in their murky depths. Wes didn't trust her; she could tell that without having to look any deeper. Definitely didn't buy into his aunt's assumption that Carly had been Steve's "friend."

  She'd have to live with that. After all, Wes couldn't know what kind of relationship she'd had with Steve, could he?

  During the hour she and Steve had shared together on the bus out of Atlantic City, Steve had practically told her his life story, all about the little Georgia town he'd outgrown somewhere around the time he graduated from high school, about the family he'd left behind. He'd been clear that he'd been estranged from them. He'd been equally clear about his regrets.

  What were the odds he'd have spilled his guts about his love life to his cousin?

  As guilty as it made her feel, it was probably in her best interest to let the Stricklands think she and Steve had been more than friends. She needed a place to lay low, to make a little money and save up some cash so she could move on to another town when Bangor, Georgia lost its charm or its safety in a week or two. Steve had told her his parents owned a store. If they offered her a job on the strength of their mistaken assumption that she might one day have been their daughter-in-law, she could live with it.

  She'd have to.

  "Wes, why don't you go get Carly's bags out of Floyd's car?" Bonnie reached for Carly's hand, catching her by surprise. "You'll stay here with us while you're in town, all right? I won't take no for an answer. I can make up Beth's old bed. There's plenty of room, and it has a nice view of the woods out back."

  Carly started to shake her head, but Wes's look of sheer horror was annoying enough to shout down her guilty conscience.

  What could it hurt to accept a little Southern hospitality while she was in town? She'd help out Bonnie over the next couple of days, show she could be a good, trustworthy worker. Look into a job at the hardware store or maybe some other place in town, something that would pay enough for her to rent a room somewhere and maybe sock a little away until she could figure out what to do next. She'd make sure the Stricklands didn't regret their kindness. What could it hurt?

  "If it's no trouble," she found herself saying, her voice tight and raspy.

  "It would be so good to have a young person around the house again, wouldn't it, Floyd?"

  Carly glanced at Floyd Strickland, steeling herself for an echo of his nephew Wes's suspicion. But Floyd only nodded, his red-rimmed eyes full of an eager curiosity that made Carly's stomach turn flips.

  Another glance at Wes made her wish she'd given the envelope of cash to Steve's mother back at the graveyard and gotten out of town while the getting was good.

  Maybe it wasn't too late to do just that. She reached inside her purse, a long black vinyl bag she'd bought for a buck in a thrift shop back in Virginia before she headed south. The envelope she withdrew was a new one, a free Priority Mail pouch she'd picked up in the post office in Savannah because she couldn't give them the ten grand in the original envelope.

  The one stained red with their son's blood.

  She held the envelope out to Bonnie Strickland. "Steve gave me this, before he died. He'd gone to a casino in Atlantic City. One of those day trips. I wasn't with him at the tables, so I'm not sure how he won this. But he wanted you to have it."

  Bonnie took the envelope and opened it, her eyes widening as she caught sight of the cash inside. "My goodness."

  As Floyd, Beth and Beth's husband moved closer to see what was in the envelope, Wes stepped forward, taking the envelope from his aunt's shaking hands. His brows lifted as he caught sight of the stack of bills inside. He shot Carly a dark glare before turning his attention to a quick thumb-through of the bills. "There's ten thousand dollars here."

  Carly nodded. "Guess it was his lucky day."

  Five pained gazes turned to her, and she flushed a deep, horrified red as she realized the thoughtless cruelty of her flip comment. Mortification flooded through her, turning her skin hot, then cold. "Oh, my God, I'm so sorry, I didn't—"

  Beth crossed to Carly, took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. She smiled through a film of tears. "I reckon Steve probably thought so, too. Until the crash."

  "He wanted to come home," Carly blurted, shame loosening her tongue. "I think he was going to come home, but—"

  Wes pushed the envelope of money into his uncle's hands and caught Carly by her elbow. Her skin buzzed with a low-grade electrical charge, her fingers curling into her palms. She felt the same tilt-a-whirl feeling she'd felt earlier at the gravesite when they'd shaken hands. Off-balance, almost the way she had when the casino tour bus had left the asphalt and plummeted down the ravine.

  Like the world had dropped out from under her feet, pitching her into a dark, tumbling void.

  That couldn't be good.

  "Come show me where you left your bags." Wes's grip on her arm tightened as he pushed her toward the door.

  Outside, she pulled her arm from his
grasp and glared up at him, trying to regain control over her rubbery legs. "I don't like being manhandled."

  "And I don't like liars."

  She took a breath, trying to steady her rattled nerves. "I'm not lying. I was with Steve on the bus. He gave me the money."

  "Oh, that much I buy." Wes moved closer, his tall, broad body swallowing her in its shadow. He towered over her, a giant silhouette backlit by the sun, and spoke in a low, gravelly growl. "But you definitely weren't Steve's 'friend.'"

  She swallowed hard. "Maybe you didn't know Steve as well as you think. I mean, I know he wasn't as close as he'd like to be to his family."

  "Not to his folks, no," Wes agreed. He bent closer to her, near enough that she felt his warm breath wash over her cheeks. "But Steve and I kept in touch. I heard from him three weeks ago, and he definitely didn't have a new 'friend' in his life. And even if he had, it certainly wouldn't have been you."

  She bristled at the certainty in his voice. What was he saying, that a nice Southern boy from a good family wouldn't be caught dead dating some Yankee bimbo like her?

  "See," he added, his voice dropping to a low, smug drawl, "Steve's last two 'friends' were named Christopher and Sean."

  As his words sank in, Carly's heart plummeted to her knees.

  "Steve was gay," he said. "And you're a liar."

  Chapter Two

  Consternation flitted across Carly Devlin's face, confirming Wes's suspicion. "You didn't know he was gay, did you?"

  She looked up at him through a thick fringe of black lashes and said nothing. A lock of hair had slipped free of its pins, falling to coil along her cheek. Wes thrust his hands in his pockets to foil the ridiculous urge to tuck that lock of hair behind her ear.

  "You met him for the first time on the bus, right?"

  Again, she said nothing, but he saw the answer in her expressive green eyes. She looked away from him, as if aware how much she was revealing with that wary gaze.

  "What'd you do, see him hit it big at the craps table?" Using what his colleagues at the police department called his "lull-the-perp" voice, Wes stepped closer, willing her to look at him again. "Can't blame a girl for wanting to get closer to the guy with ten grand burning a hole in his pocket."

  She did look at him then, eyes flashing green fire. "If I wanted that ten grand, I could have taken it when he gave it to me at the crash site. No one would have ever known."

  "But you let my aunt and uncle think you were closer to Steve than you were. Why? What's in it for you?"

  She went pink again, lowering her lashes to hide her eyes. "I could use a job. Steve told me they own a store."

  He huffed, surprised by the answer. "You came all the way to little bitty Bangor, Georgia, for a job? There are a whole lot more jobs in Savannah. They're bound to pay more, too."

  "I didn't want a job in a big city."

  "Funny, you seem like a big city kind of girl."

  "Maybe I don't want to be a big city anymore," she said.

  His head was starting to ache, not entirely due to the hot sun beating down on the top of his bare head. "Look, I don't know what kind of angle you're playing here—"

  "Who says there's an angle?" She took a step back from him, taking her body heat and her light floral scent with her.

  Wes squelched the urge to close the distance between them. "Everybody has an angle, sugar."

  "So, what's yours?" she asked.

  "We're not talking about me."

  "Maybe we should. You said everybody has an angle—sugar. What's yours?" She cocked one perfect black eyebrow at him, knocking his world off kilter.

  Damn, she was good-looking. And slippery as a swamp bass. Just when he thought he had her number, she surprised him again.

  His trousers were starting to feel tight in the inseam. Hell, his whole body felt two sizes too small. On the day of his cousin's funeral of all days.

  He was lower than a snake.

  Her uplifted eyebrow forced him to answer when all he wanted to do was run as far from her as possible. "Actually, I have a couple of angles. I care about my aunt and uncle. I don't like folks taking advantage of them. And second," he added, pausing for full effect, "I'm the chief of police here in Bangor. And we don't like con artists 'round here."

  Her lips curved in a wide smile, baring straight white teeth and carving dimples in her cheeks. "You like to throw your weight around, don't you, Chief Wes?" Her eyes laughed at him. "Good ol' Chief Wes, who got hammered after his senior prom and thought he saw a ghost at the old post office. Yeah, Steve told me all about you, Chief Wes."

  He hated the way she said "Chief Wes," like he was some toothless hick sheriff with a rusty old peashooter and a jailhouse full of nothing but moonshiners and chicken thieves.

  He had all his teeth and his gun was a Glock 9mm, damn it.

  The screen door creaked open behind him. "Wes, what's takin' so long?"

  He wiped the frown off his face and turned to face his aunt. "Carly and I were just getting to know each other."

  Carly made a soft snickering sound beside him, sending a flood of heat into his neck.

  "Don't keep the girl out in the heat, honey, she's not used to it. Carly, come on back inside. Wes can find your things all by himself."

  Ignoring the amused look Carly shot him as she walked past him toward the porch, he let out a soft litany of curses under his breath and went to his uncle's car.

  In the back seat, he found a battered canvas tote, slightly larger than a gym bag. He glanced over his shoulder in time to see Carly and Bonnie disappear inside the house.

  Lingering more than a minute or two would raise suspicions, so he unzipped the bag and quickly scanned the contents. Clothes, mostly. He wasn't much of an expert on fashion, but the stuff seemed pretty average, except a sun-warmed pair of silk panties that flowed over his fingers as he felt around the bottom of the bag. They felt expensive.

  Tucked in one corner of the bag he found a small leather change pouch, full to bursting, and unzipped it. Atop a handful of loose change, mostly quarters, he found a large wad of bills.

  He counted the bills. Around two hundred and fifty in mostly tens and twenties, a few ones. A few consecutive serial numbers, suggesting most of the cash came from the same place. He memorized the first few digits; he'd check them later against the cash Carly had given his aunt.

  Beyond the money, there was nothing else in the pouch. No credit cards, no i.d. Nothing to tell him who she really was.

  Replacing the money pouch, he searched the rest of the bag, finding nothing of interest. With a growl of frustration, he zipped up the bag, tucked it under his arm and headed back for the house.

  CARLY FELT LIKE A CRIMINAL.

  It wasn't just the way Wes's dark eyes followed every movement she made, as if mentally sizing her for leg irons. It was the way Bonnie Strickland smiled at her, a sweet, teary smile utterly lacking in suspicion. The way Floyd showed her Steve's room, going through the mementos and trophies, the certificates and yearbooks, years of a life that had passed too soon, and passed from their presence even sooner.

  "He and Wes played baseball together, pitcher and catcher. Steve had a good arm. Scouts came from all over to watch him pitch his senior year." Floyd ran his fingers over a scuffed baseball sitting atop a pine dresser. "He just never seemed interested in pro ball."

  "He liked art better," Carly murmured, drawing on her memory of their conversation on the bus. Steve Strickland had worked at an art gallery in Richmond.

  "Art, music—he tried his hand at writing movies for a while. Never got far with that. He always seemed to want something more than he had."

  Carly's stomach twisted slightly. She had that in common with Steve. Maybe that's why they'd hit it off. Two kindred spirits, both searching for that something that would make them finally stop rambling and settle somewhere.

  Carly had begun to think that "something" didn't really exist. Life wasn't a race to the finish line. There was no finish line, just
leg after leg of the race. Most of the time, that was fine with her. Nice scenery, occasionally a friendly stranger to share a few miles of road with her. Could be worse.

  Could be trapped back at the starting line, watching the other runners pass her by on their way to new, exciting places.

  "Wes put your things in Beth's room." Floyd led her out into the hall and down to the next door. Inside, she found a room decorated in pale yellow and accents of green, including a windowsill garden of jade plants and ivy. A yellow and white quilt lay atop the double bed. Wedding ring pattern, she thought, remembering Granny Mairi's cream and coral version of the same quilt. Fresh white linens lay folded atop the quilt.

  Everything looked homey. Like she was part of the family.

  Now she really felt like a creep.

  "Floyd, I need your help in the kitchen." Bonnie stuck her head through the doorway, flashing Carly a tear-stained smile. "I can't reach the aluminum foil. I was going to send Wes home with a plate for J.B." She started to follow her husband out when she caught sight of the folded linens on the quilt. She stepped into the room, calling over her shoulder, "Wes, why didn't you make Carly's bed for her?"

  "I can do it," Carly said quickly, gently steering Bonnie away from the bed. "You have so much to do, and you did tell me to make myself at home. At home, I make my own bed."

  Fresh tears welled in Bonnie's eyes, and she gave Carly a quick, impulsive hug before heading back to the kitchen.

  Carly's heart sank to somewhere around her knees, weighted by shame. She dropped to the edge of the bed, closing her eyes.

  What had she been thinking, coming here? Wes was right; she could have gotten a job in Savannah. Nothing that paid well--she couldn't exactly give out her social security number, now that she'd left her purse and I.D. at the edge of the river. Someone would have found it and added her name—her real name—to the victim's list. Dom Manning knew she'd hopped one of the casino tour buses, since the casino security cameras would have caught it. Agent Phillips surely knew, too. They'd both figure her for dead.