Playing Dead in Dixie

by Paula Graves

  A moment later, Wes was on the phone. "Something wrong?"

  "Sherry's been holed up in Floyd's office for almost two hours. What if she's getting rid of evidence?"

  "Did you see any sign that she might be doing that?"

  "No," Carly admitted, leaning against the diner's warm brick facade. "But that doesn't mean she won't. I know you wanted to wait until Floyd's and Bonnie's anniversary . . ."

  "Where are you now?"

  "Charlie's Diner."

  "Order me a turkey and Swiss and a sweet tea. I'll be there in five minutes." He hung up.

  Well, great. One panicked phone call and now she was having lunch with Wes.

  She was supposed to be seeing less of him, not more.

  The bell over the door jangled as she entered Charlie's, drawing the gazes of the dozen or so customers scattered around the diner's interior. They gave her a look she was getting used to, the "there's that Yankee stayin' with the Stricklands" look. Several smiled and nodded, as acquaintances would, except Carly had never met most of them.

  Pasting a smile on her face, she spotted a booth near the back and headed for it.

  A pretty blonde wearing jeans and a dark red server's apron spotted her and grabbed a menu from the front counter. Carly recognized her as Katie, Charlie's daughter. She had been Carly's waitress the other handful of times she'd eaten at Charlie's during her lunch break. "Hey, Carly. I hear you had yourself quite a night last night. How's Shannon doin'?"

  Amazing how news got around a small town, Carly thought. "Much better."

  "Mama had bad sciatica when she was pregnant with Cody—that's my little brother. He's seven now. Mama suffered with it something awful." Katie started to hand Carly a menu. "What can I get you?"

  Waving off the menu, Carly ordered a grilled chicken salad and water with lemon for herself, and the turkey sandwich and sweet tea for Wes.

  "Oh, Wes's joinin' you for lunch." Katie tucked the order pad in her apron pocket and flashed Carly a grin. "He'll be wantin' a piece of peanut butter pie, although he'll pretend to debate about it for a few minutes. Want me to go ahead and put it on the tab?"

  "No, I'll let him handle that." Carly shook her head as Katie headed back to the kitchen to give the orders to the cook.

  She had to get out of this town before it started growing on her. "Like a fungus," she muttered aloud.

  The bell on the door rang again, and Carly looked up to see Wes enter. Almost everyone in the diner called out a greeting, and he took a moment to speak to several of them as he made his way toward the booth where Carly sat. He settled in across from her finally, greeting her with a nod as Katie arrived with a glass of water with lemon and Wes's sweet tea. Katie stopped for a moment to rerun the conversation about Shannon with Wes, then headed off to another table.

  "Small town grapevine. Someone in the intelligence community should study it," Wes murmured.

  "What makes you think they haven't?" Carly squeezed lemon into her water. "Look, I'm sorry for panicking on the phone. I'm sure the last thing you wanted to do with your lunch hour was talk me down off my ledge."

  "Well, look at the bright side. Now you don't have to drag yourself to my house after work when I'm sure you'd much rather go home and go to bed."

  She picked up her straw and poked at the slice of lemon floating in her water. Great, he'd just used "my house" and "go to bed" in the same sentence. As if her imagination wasn't active enough already.

  Wes cleared his throat. "Because, uh, you know, you didn't get much sleep last night, thanks to me."

  She looked up at him, quirking one eyebrow. His mouth twitched.

  "Thanks to you and Shannon," she corrected.

  He grinned. "That really didn't make it any better."

  She grabbed a packet of sugar and threw it at him. "Shut up."

  "Okay, business." Wes straightened his face and lowered his voice, although his eyes still glinted with amusement. "Today's Friday. How much evidence could someone cover up between now and Monday?"

  "A lot, if she had plenty of time alone with the books." Carly kept her voice low as well. No need for the whole town to know about what she and Wes were planning to do. "Probably not everything, though. Sherry doesn't have an accounting degree, does she?"

  Wes shook his head. "As far as I know, she's had only a couple of years at community college. I think she did take some bookkeeping courses."

  "She may not know how to cover up all her tracks. Assuming it's her, of course. But I still wish I could think of some way to keep everyone away from Floyd's office as much as possible."

  Wes sat back, head cocked to one side and his brow furrowed. "Well, you're still new at the job. You probably need help out on the sales floor from an experienced employee now and then, right? And who's more experienced and dedicated than Sherry?"

  "That could work. If it's Sherry who's cooking the books."

  "Even if it's not. Sherry's really the only one you have to worry about. She's the one with a valid reason to be in the office for any length of time, besides Floyd. If you can keep her out of the office as much as possible, you're fine. Anyone else lurking around the office can be warned off by threatening to tell Floyd."

  ""And either way, the evidence will still be there Monday night." Carly nodded. "Okay, I can do that."

  Wes reached across the table and touched her hand. "Relax, okay? Think of it this way. If Sherry is the one committing fraud, your being all twitchy and nervous around her is only going to make her suspect you're on to her."

  "And more likely to try to cover her tracks before Monday," Carly agreed. "You're right." She took a deep, calming breath.

  Katie approached with their lunches. Wes waited until she left before speaking again. "Do you think you're up to staying at work today until six? That will cover today. She's off Saturday, I know. She and her mother always watch Georgia football games together, and Saturday's the season opener. The hardware store is closed on Sundays—"

  "So all I'd have to worry about is the rest of today and Monday," Carly finished.

  "I'll figure out a way to make sure you close on Monday night." Wes took a bite of his turkey sandwich.

  "Oh, wait, we forgot about Shannon." Carly dropped her fork and looked up at Wes. "Floyd and Bonnie are never going to agree to go to the bed and breakfast and leave Shannon and me alone at the house."

  "You're right." Wes frowned. "Well, I'll offer to stay at the house with y'all overnight, but that means I can't be at the office with you Monday night."

  "Are you okay with that?"

  He looked at her for an uncomfortably long moment. "Yeah, I'm okay with it. Because you know that if you do anything to hurt my aunt and uncle, I'll hunt you down. No matter how far you run. Right?

  His obvious distrust put a painful dent in her heart, but she forced herself to nod. "Right."

  Wes's gaze intensified. "You'd be better off telling me what I want to know about you. Because I'm going to do everything I can, within the law, to find out who you really are and what you're really doing here in Bangor."

  Dread skittered down her spine. She didn't doubt him for a moment. Given enough time, he'd put together the clues she accidentally dropped here and there until he followed her bread crumb trail back to the Palais Royale Casino and Dom Manning.

  And get them both killed.

  WES FOUND AN OVERNIGHT LETTER from the NTSB waiting on his desk when he returned from lunch. He dropped into his chair, tore open the mailer and withdrew the papers inside.

  The official investigation would not be finished for several months, blah, blah, blah. Thirty-eight on the bus, thirty-seven accounted for so far. Twenty-two survivors, fifteen dead—his heart clenched at the memory of Steve's body, cold on a slab—and one missing. A passenger manifest showing thirty-eight names, but nothing to tell him which of the names belonged to the living and which to the dead.

  No details. Nothing beyond the sketchiest of information a friend on the NTSB had sent as a courtesy.


  Wes dropped the papers on his desk and leaned his head back, closing his gritty eyes against the midday sunlight pouring through the window next to his desk. He was a good five or six years past the age where he could stay up all night and not feel the consequences.

  And lunch had hardly been a relaxing affair.

  Carly was afraid of something. He'd seen it in her wary eyes when he told her he was going to uncover her secrets. She had blanched, her eyes growing wide and dark with a quiet, bloodless terror that had turned his insides to ice.

  Someone was looking for her. He could feel it, a storm gathering on the horizon, pregnant with menace. And it wasn't just Carly standing in its path. It was the whole town. His family. His friends.

  How was he going to protect them all?

  He was so damned tired. Tired and worried and frustrated. Not just by Carly's secrecy but by his own inability to keep his distance. She was getting to him, in big ways and little ways, until he didn't know whether he was protecting his family against her or protecting her against—

  —what? An abusive boyfriend? An angry husband? The police? The federal government?

  What was behind that big, black cloud bruising the horizon?

  "YOU LOOK BEAT," Shannon observed.

  Carly dropped onto the end of the bed. "That's because I am beat."

  "I thought you were supposed to be home by four." Shannon put aside the sketch book propped on her belly.

  "The store was busy. I offered to stay a little longer to help out." And to keep an eye on Sherry Clayton, Carly added silently. By the time she got back to the store after lunch, Sherry was back on the sales floor, waiting for Carly to return so she could take her own lunch break.

  As far as Carly could tell, Sherry hadn't gone back into Floyd's office for the rest of the day. Carly had waited with Floyd until he closed, taking advantage of his inattention to do a quick check of the drawers and file cabinets. Nothing seemed to be missing, although Carly hadn't had time for more than a cursory look.

  Friday was safely out of the way. Just three more days to sweat it out before she finally got her chance to take a long, hard look at the hardware store's books.

  "What do you think of this outfit?" Shannon held out her sketchpad toward Carly.

  Carly took a look. "Oh, Shannon, this is gorgeous."

  "I've never designed a wedding dress before, but this one sort of came to me, out of the blue."

  It was a sleek confection of shimmery white—silk, Shannon's notes said—with a draped neck and plunging back. Sleeveless and floor-length, with a modest, lace-edged train.

  It took a couple of seconds for the rest of the sketch to register in her weary brain. When it did, she looked up sharply at Shannon. "Just came to you out of the blue?"

  Shannon's cheeks turned pink, and she smiled sheepishly. "I'm a romantic. So sue me."

  "I wish I looked that good." The face of the dress model was a stylized rendering of Carly's own face, from the sweep of dark hair to the full, raspberry-pink lips.

  "Who are you kidding? You look better." Shannon blew a curly red tendril away from her face. "Perfect body, perfect features, perfect skin—"

  "Perfect mess of a life," Carly finished for her. "Besides, you're no slouch yourself."

  "I'm a beached whale with freckles," Shannon countered flatly. She rubbed her belly. "Scooter will pop out of me sooner or later, and I'll lose at least some of the weight, but I'm always going to look like Pippi Longstocking."

  Carly chuckled at the image. "You're beautiful, and you know it."

  Shannon's eyes grew suspiciously bright. "It's sweet of you to say that."

  "Sweet? I'm from Jersey, babe. We don't do sweet."

  "I bet Wes thinks you're sweet."

  Carly made a face. "Wes thinks I'm trouble."

  "Men love trouble, Carly. They live for it." Shannon's comment was light enough, but Carly sensed a dark thread of pain just beneath the surface. Remembering what Wes had told her about Shannon's late husband, she could understand why.

  "You need a bath," Shannon said, filling the thick silence that had fallen between them.

  Carly arched an eyebrow. "Gee, thanks."

  Shannon chuckled. "Let me rephrase. Go soak your head."

  Carly laughed. "Yeah, that's a lot better."

  "Seriously, you look ready to drop. Go take a nice, long soak in the tub, and then get a good night's sleep. I don't need you to baby sit, really. Bonnie will be in here any minute with Jackson to put him down for the night, anyway. Go. I'll see you in the morning."

  Carly wasn't about to argue. The thought of a hot bubble bath and a nice soft bed was tempting enough to make her drool. "Yell if you need me."

  "Will do. G'night, Carly. Sweet dreams of you know who." Shannon giggled as Carly made a face on her way out of the bedroom.

  Five minutes later, Carly was neck deep in bubbles, half asleep. In the luxury of heat and fragrance, it was easy to pretend that she was just a normal girl, doing normal girly things like soaking in a hot bubble bath and daydreaming about a hunky man with broad shoulders and smoldering brown eyes.

  What kind of name was Hollingsworth? she mused, her eyelids drooping. Sounded sort of English. The English had settled this part of the United States, hadn't they? She was pretty sure Georgia was one of the original thirteen colonies.

  Maybe his ancestors had come over on the Mayflower. No, that didn't seem quite right. Starched pilgrims and Wes Hollingsworth's sinful sexiness didn't quite jibe.

  Besides, he looked like he had a little Native American blood. Didn't she read somewhere that most native Southerners had at least one Indian ancestor?

  Something like that.

  Her eyes slid shut and she sank lower in the suds until her chin rested in the warm water. She could picture him as an Indian, dressed in a buckskin loincloth, his dark skin glistening in the sun . . .

  Hmm, did Indians in the south have loincloths?

  They damned well should have had loincloths—

  "Lottie?"

  The voice was soft. A little gravelly. Inflected with just a hint of the old country. Carly tried to open her eyes, but nothing happened.

  "Did you think you'd get away from me, Lottie girl?" the voice asked. Dominick Manning's voice, smooth and deadly. "Did you think I'd fall for your trick?"

  Her heart clutched in her chest. Nausea roiled deep in her belly, greasy and cold.

  She struggled against her curiously unresponsive body, tried to move her arms, her legs, tried to open her eyes, open her mouth to release the scream building like a flood inside her throat.

  She felt his breath on her cheek. "I'm coming, Lottie. He won't be able to save you."

  She broke through the paralysis and shot up in the tub, sending water sloshing over the rim onto the tile floor. The scream beating at the back of her throat squeezed out as a soft, broken croak. Eyes darting, she took a frantic look around the bathroom. The door was closed. Nothing looked out of place.

  She was alone.

  Gasping for breath, she wrapped her arms around herself, trying to still the shudders rippling through her. Her heart hammered against in her chest, feeding the queasy sensation in the pit of her stomach.

  A dream, she thought. She'd fallen asleep in the tub, opening her mind to her worst nightmare.

  I'm coming, Lottie. He won't be able to save you.

  She rose to her feet, holding onto the towel rack to keep from toppling over as her shaking knees threatened to buckle. Her stomach bucked and rolled, forcing her into movement. She made it to the toilet without a second to spare.

  When her stomach was empty and the dry retches subsided, she sank back against the cold porcelain tub, tears squeezing from her eyes.

  Dominick Manning might be a gambler at heart, but he didn't take foolish chances. The meticulously cooked casino books would have been replaced already, leaving only Carly's testimony—and the photocopies she'd secretly stashed away in her sister's safe deposit box in Phi
lly—between him and beating the rap. She would be the only loose end.

  And Dominick Manning didn't leave loose ends.

  Sooner or later, all the other bodies from the bus crash would show up downriver. Everyone would be accounted for except her. And Dom would know.

  He wouldn't just let it go. Not with a grand jury investigation hanging over his head.

  Her time was running out.

  Chapter Nine

  GEORGIA'S QUARTERBACK DROPPED into the pocket and found a receiver downfield. Threading the needle, he timed the pass perfectly, just as the receiver broke free of close coverage. The receiver snagged the ball, tucked it under his arm and zigzagged through the remaining defenders toward the goal line.

  "Yes!" Wes grinned at his father. J.B. grinned back.

  Thank God for Georgia football, the one thing he could still share with his father without reservation.

  Sometimes they included Floyd in their male bonding ritual, settling in most Saturdays from September to November to watch the Bulldogs on the gridiron. They met at J.B.'s house for the sake of convenience, Wes and his father sharing the couch and Floyd—who was only related by marriage, after all—seated a little apart in the overstuffed armchair near the fireplace.

  Floyd made a grumbling noise and put down his bowl of popcorn. "I've got to head out, fellows."

  J.B. gestured at the television. "A quarter to go yet."

  Floyd pushed himself out of the arm chair. "I know, but Bonnie's home watching after Shannon and her little boy, and someone's got to pick up Carly at the store—"

  "I'll pick her up," Wes offered.

  J.B. and Floyd cut their eyes at each other. A slow grin spread across his uncle's face.

  "Which you knew I'd offer to do," Wes guessed.

  Floyd sat down. "You ain't exactly hidin' it, boy."

  "I'm looking out for you, Floyd. Stranger in town—a good lawman's got to keep an eye on her." He didn't even try to make the excuse sound believable. He wasn't buying it himself.