by Paula Graves
“Up here, you get a little warnin’ that winter’s comin’,” Lila agreed with a nod. “Reckon you didn’t get no warnin’ of the accident, did you?”
“I don’t know.” Sara’s brow furrowed. “I don’t remember.”
“But you remember it was colder.”
“I think so.”
“The day had been a cold one, too. Cloudy like it was gonna rain, but it never did. Not ’til after dark.”
“Donnie kept saying we should stay with his parents, but I wanted—” Sara stopped, her eyes snapping open. “I remember that conversation.”
“Go on and sit back, sugar. Close your eyes again and just answer my questions, best you can.” Lila’s fingers never faltered on the knitting needles, and the rhythmic creaks of her rocking chair kept a steady cadence. “Your man wanted to stay with his folks, but you wanted somethin’ different?”
“I wanted to get out of Purgatory,” she said quietly, settling back against the cushions. “I’m just not sure why.”
“Do you remember where you was havin’ that talk with your man? In the car? Over dinner in town?”
“Outside.” A tiny crease formed over the bridge of her nose. “It was cold and windy, and there was just a hint of rain in the air. I told Donnie I wanted to leave Purgatory, but he said it was gonna rain and we ought to stay with his folks until morning.” As she relaxed, Sara’s voice had settled into a familiar Appalachian twang, sloughing off the veneer of years in the city to expose her mountain roots.
“Outside where?” Cain asked.
His grandmother shot him a warning look and he swallowed an epithet. He’d promised he’d stay a spectator.
His interjection didn’t seem to bother Sara. She said, “It was a house, I think. We were parked on the street, so I guess maybe we’d gone to see someone.”
“Who’d you go see?”
Sara’s brow crinkled again. “Donnie had been making trips up here when he’d get a couple of days off in a row, lookin’ up folks Renee had gone to school with. People who might remember something about her life at the time of the murder. He looked for Cain, but he couldn’t track him down.”
That’s because he’d been in the Army, Cain thought. Lila would have told Donnie that much if he came around asking, though probably not how to reach him. Cain had been determined to steer clear of his father, and at the time he joined the Army, the old man was still alive.
“Can you take a look around you?” Lila asked quietly. “Just turn yourself around right there where you are, where you remember bein’, and tell me what you see.”
“It’s a neighborhood,” Sara answered after a moment of thought. “One of those subdivisions they’ve built out past the marble quarry. Right close to the city limits.”
“Do you know anyone who lives out there?” Lila asked.
Sara’s brows lifted. “The Allens, I think. Coach Allen and his wife bought a house out there right before we graduated. I remember because Becky Allen hired Donnie and a couple of other guys on the baseball team to come help them put up a fence to keep their dogs from wandering into the street.” She opened her eyes and looked at Lila first, then Cain. “We went to see the Allens that night.”
“Are you sure?” Cain asked.
Sara nodded. “I remember. Donnie wanted to talk to the coach because during her senior year, Renee had worked in the athletic department to get some internship credit for college. Donnie wanted to ask the coach if he remembered anyone coming to see Renee when she was working in the office.”
“Did he?” Cain asked. He’d almost forgotten about Renee’s internship with the athletic department.
“He said she mostly worked hard, kept to herself. Only person he saw her with, for the most part, was you.”
He supposed that was probably true. Despite his aversion, at the time, for team sports, he’d come up with excuses to haunt the athletic office while she was working her shift, worried that some popular, good-looking jock would come along and snatch her away if he wasn’t on guard.
After her death, he’d had far more painful things to remember about her.
“I wonder why the Allens never told anyone that we’d been by to visit that evening,” Sara murmured, her brow creased with puzzlement. “I mean, after the accident, I know the sheriff’s department went looking for witnesses. Surely they’d have tried to figure out where we were driving from.”
“They did,” Cain said with a nod. “They spread word they were looking for people who might have talked to you before the accident.”
“And the Allens never came forward?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I reckon you’ve done enough for today,” Lila interjected, stilling the creak of her rocking chair and flashing Sara a smile. “But you just come on back whenever you want. I’ll be right here, and we can commence rockin’ and hummin’ again.”
Sara reached across to clasp Lila’s hand. “You’ve given me somewhere new to look for answers. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You just did, darlin’.” Lila put her knitting back in the bag hanging from the rocker and looked up at them brightly. “I’m fixin’ greens and pintos for lunch. Either one of you want to stick around for it?”
“That’s very tempting,” Sara said as she stood, sounding sincere, “but I really need to go see Coach Allen now.”
“I’ll go with you.” Cain grabbed his jacket, kissed his grandmother’s cheek and followed Sara to the door.
Chapter Ten
“What do you mean he’s not here?” Sara’s tone went from friendly to sharp in the span of a second, and considering the annoyance flashing in her dark eyes as she towered over the sweet-faced, middle-aged secretary in the Purgatory High School principal’s office, it came as no surprise to Cain that the woman looked visibly shaken.
Sara might not be a cop anymore, but she could still be pretty damned intimidating.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said when she finally found her voice, “but he and his assistant coach are in Nashville for a seminar on college-recruiting rule changes. There’s so many nitpicky things you have to worry about these days to stay in compliance with the NCAA, our coaches like to stay on top of it. They’ll be back here Wednesday morning.”
“Maybe you could talk to Becky Allen,” Cain suggested as he walked Sara back to her truck.
“She did call me, asking if I wanted to come over for dinner some night. It kind of took me by surprise, actually. It’s not like we were great friends with her and the coach.” She looked at Cain over the truck cab as she unlocked her door. “My stomach is growling. You hungry?”
“I could eat,” he said with a smile, wondering if she’d given any thought to what kind of rumors might spread if people saw the two of them eating together in public.
“I heard there’s a new Lebanese place in town. What’s it called?”
“Tabbouleh Garden,” he supplied.
“Right. Kelly Partlow told me about it.” She pulled open her door and slid inside. When he’d settled in the passenger seat, she added, “In fact, isn’t that where she ran into you last week?”
“It is.” Cain smiled at the memory of Kelly’s exuberant invitation to the alumni get-together. “She’s a force of nature.”
Sara laughed, catching Cain by surprise. It was a big, full-throated, uninhibited sort of laugh, the kind that made him want to laugh along. “She is definitely a force of nature. I sometimes wonder how she and I ever managed to become friends. We’re so different.”
“Are you? So different, I mean.”
Her laughter faded as she turned her curious gaze toward him. “Yeah. Very different. She’s a social dynamo—always wanting to be out and about. I prefer a night in, curled up in a chair reading a good book.”
He smiled at the picture her words painted. “Literature or pop fiction?”
“Either. I’m not that picky.” She buckled her seat belt and started the truck. “So, what’s good at Tabbouleh Garden?”
“I had the falafel plate. It was excellent.”
“There’s a great little place in Birmingham with the most amazing falafel wraps,” she said as she pulled out of the high school parking lot and headed the truck toward town. “Donnie never cared much for Lebanese food, but I couldn’t get enough of it. Thank goodness one of my fellow detectives loved the place. I could talk him into going there to grab lunch at least once or twice a week.”
“What did your fellow detective friend have to say about your leaving the police force?” he asked, curious.
“Garrett retired last year.” She glanced at him as she pulled to a stop at a traffic light. “I think that was really the beginning of the end for me. I couldn’t seem to connect with any of the other detectives on the squad, and I just didn’t have the heart to stick around Birmingham after that.”
“So you came home.”
Her lips curved in a half smile. “I guess I did.”
Tabbouleh Garden was doing brisk lunch-hour business, but Cain and Sara didn’t have to wait long to get a table. The same pretty waitress who had served him and Darcy the previous week greeted them at the door and led them to a table in the corner of the room.
The waitress returned in a few minutes with the drinks they’d ordered—tea for him, limeade for her. She took a sip of the drink and gave a low moan of pleasure that sent fire blazing through his blood. “This is the best limeade I’ve had since Moakley’s went out of business. Do you remember Moakley’s?”
“Doesn’t everybody?” He didn’t add that, while he’d certainly heard of the old soda shop where all the kids in town had hung out after school, he’d never actually been there. He’d never had two dimes to rub together in those days. His father had refused to let him take an after-school job, demanding that Cain go straight home to take care of the chores. And going to Moakley’s on the weekends was out as well, since his father had liked to keep Cain on a short leash.
“They had the best limeade. And they always put a slice of fresh lime in the cup.” She laughed again, and the rippling sound was almost as sexy as her previous moan of pleasure had been. “My brother, Patrick, used to work at Moakley’s during the summer, and whenever I was being a bratty pest—which was often—he’d swear the next time I ordered a limeade at Moakley’s, he was going to put vinegar in the cup instead.”
“Patrick was a couple of years ahead of me in school, I think.”
She nodded, giving him a thoughtful look. “Donnie used to want to set him up with Renee, but Patrick already had one foot out of Purgatory by the time Renee was old enough for him to give her a second look. And Renee was such a homebody.” She sighed, her fingers playing at the edges of the menu that sat on the table in front of her. “I’d forgotten that about her.”
“She loved this town,” Cain agreed. “I think her parents wanted her to go off to college and see the world, but she didn’t want to leave Purgatory.”
“I wonder how much her reluctance had to do with her mystery lover.”
He’d wondered the same thing, especially after her death. “I think Renee was just a mountain girl at heart. She used to love Crybaby Falls especially. She loved the whole romantic, tragic history of the place.”
“The myth of the heartbroken Cherokee maiden, leaping to her death with her newborn baby?” Sara grimaced. “Tragic, maybe. Not sure I consider it romantic.”
“Even after losing Donnie?” As soon as the words left his mouth, he kicked himself. What the hell was he thinking, asking something so personal? “I’m sorry. That was such a stupid question. Forget I asked it.”
“It’s okay.” She reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. “I’m really a little tired of everyone tiptoeing around me these days.”
“At least they don’t run the other direction when they see you coming.” He grimaced before the last word tumbled from his lips.
Sara’s lips quirked at the corners. “Now who’s pitying you?”
“That was pretty pathetic,” he agreed as the waitress headed toward them with their orders.
“You sort of give off this vibe,” Sara commented as she picked up her falafel wrap and gave it a considering look. “Like you’re daring people to come close enough so you can snap your sharp teeth at them.”
He frowned. “I do that?”
“A little.” She took a bite of the wrap. Her eyes closed and she released a soft moan of satisfaction.
Heat flooded through his veins as he watched her enjoyment of the food and wondered how responsive she might be to other sensual pleasures. “Good?” he asked.
She nodded, her eyes opening to meet his gaze. “Really good.”
“You might want to get your baklava to go,” he suggested in a soft growl.
Her dark eyes widened slightly as she clearly understood his meaning. “Does it bother you?” she asked, a smile flitting across her lips. “My open display of pleasure?”
“Bother? Yeah, you could say that.” He leaned closer, his heart pounding against his sternum. “But only because we’re in public.”
Her head cocked slightly. “We don’t have to be. In public, that is.”
“I think maybe we do.” He sat back, fighting the urge to reach across the table and touch her flushed face.
She sat back as well, her expression thoughtful. “I don’t have any expectations.”
“You should. You’re a woman who should always have expectations.” He forced his attention to his own food, not ready to follow his baser instincts where Sara Lindsey was concerned. She might think she was a woman who could scratch a sexual itch without worrying about the consequences, but he could never see her that way.
Maybe that wasn’t fair to her. Maybe he was being a sexist pig, putting her on some sort of pedestal she didn’t ask to occupy.
Maybe he knew, deep down, that he wouldn’t be able to walk away so easily himself?
“Do you have expectations?” she asked a few minutes later.
He looked up. “About you?”
“About anyone.”
“No.”
“Maybe you should, too.”
He couldn’t quell a wry smile. “I’ll take your opinion under consideration.”
“Your father really did a number on you.”
He looked down at the remains of his lunch, no longer hungry. “I really don’t want to talk about my father.”
“I remember thinking how cruel he must have been to give you a name like Cain.” She looked at him over the rim of her glass as she took a sip of limeade. “The original murderer.”
“Well, since I was the only one who survived my birth—”
“You didn’t kill your mother.”
“He used to tell me, from the time I was old enough to understand, that I’d killed my twin brother in the womb and killed my mother coming out.”
“The bastard.” Her voice trembled with intensity.
“Yeah, well. Made me grow up tough, I guess.”
“No kid should have had to listen to that kind of garbage.”
No, he thought, no kid should. But on the whole, he’d preferred the words, which his blessing of a grandmother had taught him to ignore with the power of her love, than the beatings.
Not even Lila’s love could prevent the bruises and broken bones.
Sara seemed to read his mood, changing the subject to college football and Tennessee’s chances for a bowl bid. They concluded, by the time the waitress brought the check, that everything hinged on the sophomore who’d won the quarterback position in the preseason, and they left the restaurant debating the head coach’s controversial choice.
What had been a sunny day was beginning to turn gloomy, storm clouds scudding eastward toward the mountains. “Rain’s comin’,” Sara said, and Cain managed a weak smile at the broadening of her accent. Back in town a few days and she was already picking up the mountain twang again. He was as guilty of that, he supposed, as she was.
You can take a fella out of the m
ountains...
“Cain?” Sara broke the silence a few minutes later as she turned off the main road and headed back up the mountain toward his grandmother’s place.
“Yeah?”
“This is going to be a strange question, I know, but—do you think it’s possible Coach Allen could have been the father of Renee’s baby?”
“You’re right. That’s a strange question.”
“I know. I just—don’t you think it’s strange he never came forward to tell anyone Donnie and I visited him the night of the accident?”
“Yeah, but it’s a big leap to go from that to murder.”
“I didn’t say he murdered her.” The first fat raindrops splatted against the truck windshield, and she turned on the windshield wipers. “But could he have been the person Renee was involved with?”
He gave the question a moment of thought. “Jim Allen wasn’t much older than us students back then. I guess he was probably young enough to see a pretty eighteen-year-old coed as a viable sexual conquest. If he was the sort to cheat on his wife.”
“Donnie once told me he thought Coach Allen and his wife were having trouble. He said he’d overheard something that made him wonder.”
“I’m not sure you can base an investigation on something someone overheard nearly twenty years ago.” Cain had been the focus of some nasty rumors in his day, based on not much less than what Sara was describing.
“I don’t know how soon the cops are going to get a DNA profile on the baby Ariel Burke was carrying. But if it proves a familial match with the baby Renee was carrying—”
“We still don’t have a DNA profile to match it to.”
“So maybe we need to get our hands on Coach Allen’s DNA.”
Cain looked at Sara. She had both hands gripped tightly on the steering wheel, her gaze aimed forward toward the rain-slick road. But there was a trembling tension in her profile, reminding him of a hawk that had just spotted prey.
“What do you have in mind?” he asked cautiously. “Taking Becky Allen up on her dinner invitation?”
“If I have to. But there may be a way to get our hands on it while flying under the radar.”