Best Kept Secrets

by Sandra Brown

  Trying to make it appear as casual as possible, Junior moved her through the crowd, introducing her to those there who had signed their names to that subtly threatening letter.

  A half hour later they moved away from a couple who owned a chain of convenience stores throughout West Texas. They had invested heavily in Purcell Downs and were the most demonstratively hostile. By that time, though, word had gotten around who Junior’s date was, so they’d been laying for her.

  “There, that’s everybody,” he told her.

  “Thank God,” Alex whispered. “Are the knives still sticking out of my back?”

  “You’re not going to let that old biddy’s rapier tongue get to you, are you? Look, she’s a dried up old shrew who hates any woman who doesn’t have a mustache as thick as hers.”

  Alex smiled in spite of herself. “She all but said, ‘Be on the next stage leaving town… or else.’ ”

  He squeezed her arm. “Come on, let’s dance again. It will take your mind off your troubles.”

  “I need to repair the damages,” she said, slipping out of his grasp. “Excuse me.”

  “Okay. The little girls’ room is thataway.” He pointed down a narrow hallway.

  There was no one in the powder room when she went in, but when she came out of the cubicle, the judge’s daughter was standing in front of the dressing table, staring at her reflection in the mirror. She turned and faced Alex.

  Alex smiled. “Hi.”

  “Hello.”

  Alex moved to the sink and washed her hands. “We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Alex Gaither.” She plucked two coarse paper towels from the dispenser.

  “Yes, I know.”

  Alex dropped the used towels into the wastepaper basket. “You’re Judge Wallace’s daughter.” She attempted to break the ice in an atmosphere that was glacial and getting colder by the second. The woman had dropped all vestiges of the shy, insecure maiden she had assumed when Junior had spoken to her. Her face was stony and uncompromisingly antagonistic. “Stacey, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. Stacey. But the last name isn’t Wallace. It’s Minton.”

  “Minton?”

  “That’s right. I am Junior’s wife. His first wife.”

  Chapter 20

  “I can see that’s news to you,” Stacey said, laughing humorlessly at Alex’s dumbfounded expression.

  “Yes,” she replied in a hollow tone. “No one’s mentioned that.”

  Stacey’s composure, always intact, deserted her. Flattening a hand on her meager bosom, she cried out, “Do you have any idea the damage you’re doing?”

  “To whom?”

  “To me,” she shouted, pounding her chest. Immediately she dropped her hand and rolled her lips inward, as though mortified by her outburst. She closed her eyes momentarily. When she opened them, they were filled with animosity, but she appeared to have regained control of herself. “For twenty-five years I’ve had to live down the generally held belief that Junior Minton married me on the rebound from your mother.”

  Alex didn’t state the obvious, but guiltily lowered her eyes.

  “I see that you hold to that belief, too.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss… Stacey. May I call you Stacey?”

  “Of course,” she replied stiffly.

  “I’m sorry that my investigation has distressed you.”

  “How could it not? You’re dredging up the past. By doing so, you’re airing my dirty linen for all the town to see. Again.”

  “I had no idea who Junior’s first wife was, or that she even lived in Purcell.”

  “Would it have mattered?”

  “Probably not,” Alex answered with rueful honesty. “I can’t see that your marriage to Junior has any bearing on the case. It’s a peripheral association that I can’t help.”

  “What about my father?” Stacey asked, switching subjects.

  “What about him?”

  “This petty investigation of yours is going to cause him embarrassment. It already has.”

  “How so?”

  “The fact that you’re questioning his original ruling.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t help that, either.”

  “Can’t—or won’t?” Stacey held her arms straight at her sides and shuddered with revulsion. “I abhor people who trample on the reputations of others for their own personal gain.”

  “Is that what you think I’m doing?” Alex asked, taking umbrage. “Do you think I devised this investigation to advance my career?”

  “Didn’t you?”

  “No,” she answered, firmly shaking her head. “My mother was murdered in that stable. I don’t believe that the man accused of it was capable of committing that crime. I want to know what really happened. I will know what happened. And I’ll make the one responsible pay for making me an orphan.”

  “I was prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I see it’s only revenge you want, after all.”

  “I want justice.”

  “No matter what it costs other people?”

  “I’ve already apologized for any unhappiness it causes you.”

  Stacey made a scoffing sound. “You want to publicly crucify my father. Don’t deny it,” she snapped when Alex started to object. “No matter how much you deny it, you’re leaving him open to ridicule. At the very least, you’re accusing him of making a serious error in judgment.”

  To deny that would be a lie. “Yes, I believe he made a bad judgment in the case of Buddy Hicks.”

  “Daddy’s got forty impeccable years on the bench that vouch for his wisdom and integrity.”

  “If my investigation is petty, as you call it, it won’t affect his record, will it, Mrs. Minton? A lofty judge couldn’t possibly be brought down by a lowly public prosecutor with nothing except spite and vengeance for ammunition. Evidence would be necessary to support my allegations.”

  “You don’t have any.”

  “I believe I will before I’m finished. If your father’s reputation suffers as a result…” She drew a deep breath and raised a weary hand to her forehead. Her expression was earnest, her words heartfelt. “Stacey, I don’t want to ruin your father’s career or besmirch his tenure on the bench. I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings or cause any innocent bystander grief or embarrassment. I only want to see justice done.”

  “Justice,” Stacey sneered, her eyes narrowing with malice. “You’ve got no right to even speak the word. You’re just like your mother—pretty, but shallow. Single-minded and selfish. Uncaring of other people’s feelings. Unable to see beyond your own superficial desires.”

  “I take it you didn’t like my mother very much,” Alex remarked, her voice laced with sarcasm.

  Stacey took her seriously. “I hated her.”

  “Why? Because Junior was in love with her?”

  Alex reasoned that if Stacey were going to hit below the belt, she might as well, too. It worked. Stacey fell back a step and groped for the dressing table to support herself. Reflexively, Alex extended a helping hand, but the judge’s daughter recoiled from her touch.

  “Stacey, I know that Junior married you only a few weeks after my mother was killed. You must realize how odd that strikes me.”

  “It might have seemed sudden, but we’d been dating for years.”

  That surprised Alex. “You had?”

  “Yes. And for most of that time, we’d been lovers.”

  Stacey threw that piece of news at Alex like a dart, sharply and triumphantly. All it served, however, was to make Alex pity her more. She had the full picture now of a plain girl, hopelessly in love with the affable and handsome football hero, willing to sacrifice anything, including her pride, to have even scraps of his attention. She would do anything to keep him near her. “I see.”

  “I doubt it. Just like Junior, you’re blind to the truth.”

  “What is the truth, Stacey?”

  “That Celina was wrong for him. Like everybody else, she constantly compared him to Reede. Junio
r always came out in second place. I didn’t care how he measured up to anybody. I loved him for what he was. Junior didn’t want to believe it, but in spite of your father and you, Celina would have always loved Reede.”

  “If she loved him so much, why did she marry my father?” That question had been plaguing Alex for days.

  “Celina and Reede had a falling out the spring of our junior year. As soon as school was out for the summer, she went to visit cousins in El Paso.”

  “That’s where she met my father.” Alex knew this much of the story from her grandmother. “He was going through boot camp at Fort Bliss. Soon after they were married, he got shipped to Vietnam.”

  Stacey sneered, “And after he died, she wanted to take back up with Reede, but he wouldn’t have her. That’s when she kindled Junior’s hopes. She knew he’d always wanted her, but he never would have pursued it, on account of Reede. It was disgraceful how she played up to Junior, involving him with her pregnancy. She might have toyed with the idea of marrying him, but it never would have happened as long as Reede Lambert drew breath.

  “Your mother kept Junior dangling by a thread of hope. She made his life miserable. She would have gone on making him miserable if she had lived.” The former Mrs. Minton drew a choppy breath that caused her shapeless chest to stagger as it rose and fell. “I was glad when Celina died.”

  A spark of suspicion leaped into Alex’s eyes. “Where were you that night?”

  “At home unpacking. I’d just returned from a week’s vacation in Galveston.”

  Would she lie over something so easily checked? “You married Junior right away.”

  “That’s right. He needed me. I knew that I was only a panacea for his grief, just like I’d always known when he made love to me that it was Celina he really wanted. But I didn’t care if he used me. I wanted to be used. I cooked his meals, took care of his clothes, nurtured him in bed and out.”

  Her expression changed as she lapsed into a private reverie. “I overlooked the first time he was unfaithful to me. I was crushed, naturally, but I could understand how easily it had happened. Whenever we went out, women flocked to him. What man could resist such a strong temptation? The affair didn’t last long before he lost interest.” She clasped her hands and studied them as she spoke softly. “Then there was another. And another. I would have tolerated all his lovers if only he’d stayed married to me.

  “But he asked me for a divorce. At first I refused. He kept on and on, telling me that he hated hurting me with his affairs. When I was left no option, I granted the divorce. It broke my heart, but I gave him what he wanted, knowing, knowing,” she repeated with emphasis, “that no other woman would ever be as right for him as I was. I thought I’d die with the pain of loving him too well.”

  She shook herself out of the reflective mood and beaded on Alex. “And I still have to stand by and watch him move from woman to woman, all the time searching for what I can and want to give him. I had to watch him dance and flirt with you tonight. You! My God,” she sobbed, tilting her face toward the ceiling and pressing her fist to her forehead, eyes squeezed shut. “You want to ruin him, and he still can’t see beyond your pretty face and body.”

  She lowered her hand and glared at Alex. “You are poison, Miss Gaither. I feel the same way about you tonight as I did twenty-five years ago.” Closing the distance between them and putting her narrow, angular face close to Alex’s she hissed, “I wish you’d never been born.”

  Alex’s attempts to compose herself after Stacey’s departure had been in vain. Her face was pale and she was trembling as she walked out of the powder room.

  “I was about to come in and get you.” Junior was waiting for Alex in the hallway. At first he didn’t notice her troubled expression. When he did, he was instantly concerned. “Alex? What’s the matter?”

  “I’d like to leave now.”

  “Are you sick? What’s—”

  “Please. We’ll talk on the way.”

  Without further argument, Junior took her arm and steered her toward the cloakroom, where he asked the attendant for their coats. “Wait here.” Alex watched him reenter the club, skirt the dance floor, and move to the table where they had eaten dinner. After a brief exchange with Angus and Sarah Jo, he returned in time to claim their coats.

  He hustled her outside and into the red Jaguar. He waited until they were a good distance from the club and the car’s heater was pumping warm air before he addressed her across the plush interior. “All right, what gives?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you were married to Stacey Wallace?”

  He stared at her until it became a driving hazard, then turned his head and fixed his eyes on the road ahead. “You didn’t ask.”

  “How glib.”

  She laid her head against the cold passenger window, feeling like she’d just sustained a beating with a chain and was due to enter the ring for round two. Just when she thought she had finished sorting through all the pieces of the various liaisons of Purcell, another intricate twist emerged.

  “Is it important?” Junior asked.

  “I don’t know.” She turned her shoulders toward him and rested the back of her head on the window. “You tell me. Is it?”

  “No. The marriage lasted less than a year. We parted friends.”

  “You parted friends. She’s still in love with you.”

  He winced. “That was one of our problems. Stacey’s love is obsessive and possessive. She shackled me. I couldn’t breathe. We—”

  “Junior, you screwed around,” she interrupted impatiently. “Spare me the banal explanations. I really don’t care.”

  “Then why’d you bring it up?”

  “Because she confronted me in the powder room and accused me of ruining her father’s life with this investigation.”

  “For crissake, Alex, Joe Wallace is a big crybaby. Stacey mothers him. I don’t doubt for a minute that he’s whined and carried on about you something awful in front of her. It’s a ploy to get her sympathy. They feed each other’s neuroses. Don’t worry about it.”

  Alex didn’t like Junior Minton very much at that moment. His cavalier attitude toward a woman’s—any woman’s—love reduced him in Alex’s eyes. She’d watched him tonight, doing just as Stacey had described, moving from woman to woman. The young and old, attractive and homely, married and unattached, all seemed to be fair game. He was charming with each, like a mall Easter bunny working the crowd, doling out treats to greedy children who didn’t realize they’d be better off without them.

  He seemed to take their fawning as his due. Alex had never found that kind of conceit commendable or appealing. Junior took for granted that he would elicit a response from every woman he spoke to. Flirting was an involuntary action to him, as natural as breathing. It would never occur to him that someone might misinterpret his intentions and suffer emotional pain.

  Perhaps if she hadn’t had the conversation with Stacey, Alex would have smiled indulgently, as all the other women had, and accepted his suaveness as part of his personality. But instead, she now felt irritable toward him and wanted him to know she couldn’t be so blithely dismissed. “It wasn’t just the judge Stacey took issue with. She said I was stirring up memories of her marriage to you, airing her dirty linen. I get the impression that being your ex has been a real trial for her.”

  “That’s not really my problem, is it?”

  “Maybe it should be.”

  Her harsh backlash surprised him. “You sound mad at me. Why?”

  “I don’t know.” The flare of her temper had been short and sweet. Now, she felt drained. “I’m sorry. Maybe it’s just that I always pull for the underdog.”

  He reached across the car and covered her knee with his hand. “An admirable quality that hasn’t escaped my notice.” Alex picked up his hand and dropped it back onto the leather seat between them. “Uh-oh, I’m not off the hook yet.”

  She resisted his smile. “Why did you marry Stacey?”

 
; “Is this really what you want to talk about?” He wheeled the car up to the breezeway of the Westerner Motel and shifted the gear into Park.

  “Yes.”

  Frowning, he cut the engine and laid his arm along the seat, turning toward her. “It seemed like the thing to do at the time.”

  “You didn’t love her.”

  “No shit.”

  “But you made love to her.” He raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “Stacey told me that you’d been lovers for a long time before you got married.”

  “Not lovers, Alex. I took her out every now and then.”

  “How often?”

  “You want it plain?”

  “Shoot.”

  “I called on Stacey whenever I got horny and the Gail sisters were busy, or had their periods, or—”

  “The who?”

  “The Gail sisters. Another story.” He waved off the questions he could see rising in her mind.

  “I’ve got all night.” She settled more comfortably against her door.

  “Doesn’t anything escape you?”

  “Very little. What about these sisters?”

  “There were three of them—triplets, in fact. All named Gail.”

  “That stands to reason.”

  “No, it wasn’t their last name. Their names were Wanda Gail, Nora Gail, and Peggy Gail.”

  “Is this a joke?”

  He drew an x across his chest. “Cross my heart. Reede had already initiated them, so to speak, before I arrived on the scene. He introduced me to them.” He snickered, as though recalling a particularly sordid incident of his youth. “In short, the Gail sisters put out. They liked putting out. Every guy in Purcell High School must have had them at least once.”

  “Okay, I get the picture. But when they were unavailable, you called on Stacey Wallace, because she put out, too.”

  He looked at her levelly. “I’ve never coerced a woman. She was willing, Alex.”

  “Only for you.”

  He shrugged an admission.

  “And you took advantage of that.”