by Karen Young
“Pearce will be too caught up in politicking to do much more than gripe. By the way, he did plenty of that when he turned up at the lodge yesterday. Of course, my mother will try crossing me at every turn, but I like a good fight.”
Anne thought of the ruckus to come with some dismay. Franklin’s insight was on the mark. Whether Buck realized it or not, his success in the highly competitive world of professional baseball had given him self-confidence he hadn’t had fifteen years ago when Victoria had banished him from Belle Pointe. Oh, to be a fly on the wall at the moment when Victoria realized that.
Anne’s mouth was curled with amusement as she turned up the next newspaper. September 1986, she noted. Front and center was a photo of several men dressed in hunting camouflage. Her smile faded at the headline. BUSINESSMAN KILLED IN HUNTING ACCIDENT. In the group photo were three Whitakers, John and Pearce and, standing between them, a very young, grim-faced Buck.
Buck leaned over to get a look. “What—” His question died as he read the headline. “Oh, shit.”
Anne looked up at him in confusion. “A man was killed and Pearce was involved? Why have you never mentioned it?”
Buck rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin. “What would be the point? It’s just one more piece of garbage in my family. I don’t like talking about garbage.”
“It says here that the man who was killed—Jim Bob Baker—was forty years old. You and Pearce were on a dove hunt with older men? How does that work? I never understood this culture of young boys handling guns.”
“Men have been hunting since they lived in caves, Anne. It’s an ancient sport. You make it sound barbaric, but it’s not. In fact, where I grew up it’s not only a sport, it’s a social thing.”
“I know that. But—” She tapped the newspaper, repeating, “A man was killed while hunting and you were there. This surely must have made a major impression on you and it just seems…odd that you never mentioned it.”
He was shaking his head. “Like I said, it’s in the past. Why can’t it stay there?”
She looked at him in silence for a long minute. “This is a good example of why we’re in trouble in our marriage, Buck. I discover small pieces of your life that you claim are best left in the past, because you’ve decided they’re meaningless. But I know they aren’t. They can’t be. You hate guns and you never go hunting, even though you’ve had dozens of opportunities. I thought surely you’d go on that African safari a couple of years ago with your friends, but you refused. Now that I’ve stumbled on this article, I understand why.” She paused. “So, talk to me.”
She saw that he was tempted to refuse. But then, with a heavy sigh, he pushed away from the table and went to one of the shelves stacked with boxes to the ceiling. With his back to her, he propped one arm high with his weight resting on his good leg, using his cane. “I was seventeen and Pearce was twenty,” he said quietly. “From the age of ten—maybe even before—I knew how to hunt. Pearce, too. It was something we did in season, whether dove or deer or turkey…whatever. Dove season opens in early September, on Labor Day. But there’s more to the pleasure of a hunt than the actual killing of your limit,” he told her. “It’s like I said, a—for lack of a better word—a social gathering of men.
“This happened the first day of the hunt. I was paired with Dad and Pearce was paired with Jim Bob Baker. It doesn’t always happen that a younger hunter is paired with a more experienced one, but Dad always insisted, that for safety’s sake, we do it that way. Baker was a businessman. He operated one of the largest cotton gins around here and Belle Pointe was one of his major customers. Which is why he was invited to the lodge for the hunt. It was an invitation that wasn’t extended to just anybody. As I said, it’s a social gathering as well as a sporting event.”
He paused and looked back at Anne, who listened in fascination.
“The night before the hunt, there was a lot of drinking.” As he expected, Anne looked unsurprised. “And eating. The menu is usually barbecue with all the trimmings. After, there’s usually a poker game. Some of the men go to bed early, others late. As you know, there are a lot of bedrooms at the lodge and—”
“No, I don’t know. I’ve never seen the lodge.”
He gave a short laugh. “Say the word and you can have a tour right now. In fact, bring your clothes and you can move in. Separate bedrooms.” He held up both hands, palms out. “Swear to God.”
Shaking her head, she waved his invitation off. “Tell me what happened, Buck.”
“We rolled out early, me and Pearce all paired up with grownups as Dad demanded. There were so many birds that it didn’t take long to kill our limit that day. By midmorning, most folks had drifted back to the lodge. Finally, it was only Pearce and Jim Bob still out.” His gaze wandered to the newspaper lying on the table with its dark headline. “We heard Pearce yelling before he reached the lodge. I remember running out to meet him. He was frantic. Pearce hardly ever got rattled, but he was more than rattled that day. He said there’d been an accident, that Jim Bob was back at a clearing near the river and he’d been shot.
“It was a pretty sophisticated group of Tallulah society at the hunt and a couple of the men were doctors. With Pearce leading, we all rushed out there.” He gazed beyond her, as if seeing it all again. “There was so much blood….”
Anne put a hand over her heart. “You were only seventeen,” she said, imagining the scene. “It must have been devastating, seeing a man die of a shotgun wound.”
“I didn’t see him die,” Buck said stonily. “When we got there, Jim Bob was already—he’d passed away.” He poked at the toe of his Nikes with the cane. “He’d been shot with his own gun.”
“How exactly did that happen? If he was an experienced hunter—”
“Pearce said the two of them came to a fence,” Buck said, interrupting her. “He climbed over and instead of Jim Bob laying his shotgun down or handing it over to Pearce, he was holding it when he climbed the fence. Somehow it fired and hit him in the throat. We’re talking a twelve-gauge shotgun. A twelve-gauge can do some damage.”
Anne knew very little about guns and even less about shotguns, but she had a vivid imagination. “He didn’t have the safety on to climb a fence?” she asked incredulously. “Even I know you’re not supposed to climb a fence without taking that precaution.”
“It was the general consensus that he forgot. Pearce said they’d just taken a few shots at some birds.”
After a long minute, Anne said, “The headline called it an accident. Was there ever any doubt?”
He gave her an odd look. “Why would you ask that?”
Her shoulders went up in a who-knows gesture. “Just—I don’t know. I’m a reporter. And something about the way you look, I guess.”
He hoisted himself onto the table and laid the cane across his lap. “I’ve never told anybody else this, but I didn’t go to bed when most everybody else did that night before the hunt. I was outside on the porch. There’s a swing out there. I was lying on it, looking at the stars or doing whatever a seventeen-year-old kid does. Anyway, I heard voices coming from a footpath that’s about twenty yards from the house. Since we had a bunch of guests, it wouldn’t have been unusual, except whoever was doing the talking didn’t sound friendly. It was two people and both were mad and cussing like crazy.”
Leaning forward, he braced the heels of his hands on the edge of the table and stared at his feet, frowning, as if the memory still troubled him. “I could only hear bits and pieces, but I knew it was my brother and I recognized the man he was arguing with. It was Jim Bob.”
“What was the argument about?”
“Money. Something about the cotton gin and the contract with Belle Pointe. And some other personal stuff that—” He stopped. “Personal stuff.”
“What kind of personal stuff?”
He picked up the newspaper and tossed it in the box. “It never made any sense and it’s—”
“Personal. Okay, I get the picture anyway.
” She wondered if Buck realized that keeping a part of the events of that day locked away from her was as hurtful as not telling her any of it. He either trusted her or he didn’t. And it was plain he was a long way from seeing that.
Still focused on that day, Buck raised a hand and rubbed the back of his neck. “The police came…and the coroner…and the media.” There was irony in the slant of his smile when he looked at her. “TV and newspaper. It was my first brush with negative publicity.”
“What did Pearce say when you confronted him? When he knew you’d heard him arguing, he must have known you’d have a thousand questions. He must have known you’d be suspicious.”
“He told me that the misunderstanding between him and Jim Bob had been cleared up while they were hunting before the accident. He told me to forget it.” With his hand still at the back of his neck, he met her eyes. “And I did.”
“You did? He expected you to just forget about it and you did?”
With a glance at his watch, he eased off the table, taking care not to put pressure on his knee. “Is there another box you want me to take down before I leave?”
“Because I don’t see how you didn’t press him for details. A man was dead. And under circumstances that seem suspicious, to say the least.”
He moved to the stairs. “Did I mention I’ve arranged for your rental car? It’s another Mercedes. I figured you’d want to stay with the same brand you’re driving in St. Louis.”
“At least, tell me you had a conversation with your father about this.”
He stopped at the foot of the stairs, his gaze fixed on the crook of his cane for a long minute. Then he turned and looked directly at her. “I did. And I could tell he was troubled about the way Baker died. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect something about Pearce’s story didn’t set well with him. Anyway, I got a feeling that he didn’t want his suspicions confirmed.”
Holding her gaze doggedly, he added, “How was I going to tell him something like that? What words would I use? Think about it. Once either of us said it out loud, it couldn’t be taken back. I was thinking all this and before I decided one way or the other, he launched into a lecture about our responsibility to the Whitaker name. Being a Mississippi Delta Whitaker wasn’t just about the land, he said, or the property or our roots going back five generations. No, he reminded me of the various family holdings that provide employment in the community. Didn’t I realize that a scandal would jeopardize more than just Belle Pointe? After all, I was soon leaving to go to college and would not be around to suffer the consequences. So, as a Whitaker, I had a duty to the people of Tallulah that trumped all others.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “So he knew—or suspected—what you were going to tell him?”
He was no longer looking at her. “I don’t know what he knew or suspected. The subject was never mentioned again and I went off to school and tried never to think of it again. And don’t assume I’m proud of weaseling out the way I did. I had a shitload of excuses—it would hurt my dad, it would damage the Whitaker name, it would open a can of worms and, yes, I admit it, although Pearce was directly involved, it might reflect on me and I had a baseball scholarship and didn’t want to be tainted by suspicion of—” He stopped, refusing to say the word.
“Suspicion of murder, Buck. Say it.” He was shaking his head, so she added, “The thing you haven’t explained is why he did it…if he did.”
“I don’t know. I—”
When he stopped, she studied his grim profile and guessed he did know something. What was it he’d said earlier? That he overheard something when Pearce argued with Baker, but it was too personal to tell her. Was he going to tell her now?
“Actually, I think it could be something to do with my mother.”
“Your mother? How? Why?”
“It was something Baker said,” he told her, turning his head to meet her eyes. “This is something else I’ve never told anybody before.”
“The ‘personal’ thing you mentioned?” She made quotation marks with her fingers.
“Yeah. I heard Baker say to Pearce, ‘If I talk, your mother is going to get the punishment she deserves.’”
“But you don’t know what he meant?”
“No.”
“And you didn’t ask?”
“No.”
“I wonder if your father knew…or if he suspected something about his wife.”
Buck started up the stairs. “We’ll never know the answer to that, will we?”
She watched him climb the stairs thinking that in the litany of excuses he gave for keeping quiet, he hadn’t mentioned protecting any secret his mother might have. “This is just so incredible, Buck,” she murmured.
Buck, now at the top of the stairs, looked down at her. “I keep trying to tell you, I come from a screwed-up family.”
Beatrice and Paige appeared within minutes of Buck leaving. As Paige clambered down the stairs in her combat boots, Anne quickly folded the issue of the Spectator that reported the hunting accident and tucked it out of sight.
“What was wrong with Uncle Buck?” Paige asked, big-eyed with curiosity. “He looked like he was really mad.”
“What have I told you about asking personal questions, Paige,” Beatrice chided, taking the stairs more cautiously than the teenager. She waved a hand in front of her nose and made a face. “Gracious, Anne, it’s more dusty than usual in here. What have you been doing?”
“Digging up the past,” Anne said with a vague look around the room. “That tends to stir up dust.”
“It can stir up more than dust,” Beatrice said, regarding her with a keen eye. “Is this a bad time? Paige is supposed to be organizing the material sent by the Vanderbilt professor, but she can always do something upstairs.”
Paige wedged herself between the two women, her eyes fixed on Anne’s face. “I was right! Buck is pissed off about something, isn’t he? Wow, this week is turning out to be just full of interesting stuff. First my mom and now Anne.”
“Paige…” Beatrice gave her a stern look.
Anne closed the flaps on the box. “There is something you can do, Paige. I picked up one of the cartons and the bottom split open. The contents spilled out over there in the second aisle. Would you find a new box to put it in, please?”
“Don’t you want to hear what freaked out my mom?”
“Not really,” Beatrice said dryly.
“Even if it’s really juicy?” she said, giving them a sidelong glance.
“Juicy usually means personal,” Anne said, fighting a smile.
Paige appeared to consider that with her elbow resting on one arm, tapping her forefinger against her lips. “Hmm, is a love affair personal?”
“Yes!” Both Anne and Beatrice exclaimed together.
She grinned. “Just kidding. How about if it happened when my mom was in high school?”
“It’s still personal,” Beatrice said in a forbidding tone. “And those newspapers won’t jump in that box all by themselves.”
“I’m gonna pick the stuff up, Beady. In a minute.” She backed to the table where Anne was working and hoisted herself up much as Buck had done a few minutes before. “Okay, here’s the deal. Claire and I were on our way to school Monday and she was stopped for speeding in a school zone.” Swinging her legs, Paige waited for a reaction. Undaunted at getting none, she continued. “Well, anyway, guess who stopped her?”
“The police?” Beatrice suggested.
“Jack Breedlove,” Paige announced, with dramatic emphasis on the name. “Her old high school boyfriend.”
“And your point?” Beatrice asked.
“Beady!” Paige put her hands on her hips. “You already know the story, don’t you? Like, you know everything that ever happened in Tallulah.” She switched her attention to Anne. “Mom and Jack Breedlove went steady for a whole year when she was in high school.”
“Hmm, kids don’t go steady nowadays?” Anne remarked mildly.
“She only t
old me that because I saw how freaked out she was when he was talking to us and I wasn’t going to shut up until she told why. And get this. When he leaned down and looked at her with those sunglasses, she just about had a kitten! She was, like, so freaked.”
“People do get nervous when they’re stopped by the police,” Anne said.
“It was more than nervous,” Paige insisted. “It was way, way more than nervous. I mean, he looks a lot like Brad Pitt, so I can understand it in a way. He’s hot.” She waggled the fingers of her right hand suggestively. “Then they said a lot of stuff, back and forth, you know? And finally she just said, ‘Give me the ticket, Jack.’ Real snippy. Almost mean.” Paige laughed. “So he, like, just gave it to her, not saying a word and boy was she the embarrassed one when he said it wasn’t a real ticket, but just a warning.”
“She must have been relieved,” Beatrice murmured.
Paige hiked up a shoulder. “I guess. And then…the strangest thing. He said it was good to see her.”
“That’s strange?” Beatrice lifted an eyebrow.
“Then she said that was something easily remedied.” Paige waited as if dangling a lure, then gave an impatient sigh when nobody bit. “Here’s the kicker. He said, ‘What’s changed…am I now welcome in your world?’ And Claire went, like…white. As. A. Ghost!”
“Paige, please do not refer to your mother by her first name,” Beatrice requested.
“Okay, okay. So what I want to know is this.” She paused dramatically. “Is Jack Breedlove my real father?”
Both women stared at her. “Of course not!” Beatrice said, recovering first. “You know who your father is.”
Paige shrugged and bent to the job of stacking up the material spilled on the floor as if her question were a perfectly logical conclusion instead of something from outer space. “Well, it seemed kind of interesting—if it had been true. And Mom did act really weird while they talked. I wonder if my dad was the reason they broke up?”
Beatrice, who was leaving, stopped at the stairs. “Claire’s parents were the reason they broke up. Your mother was sixteen years old when she dated Jack Breedlove. He couldn’t be your father because he joined the army and was in Kuwait when Claire got pregnant. Do the math.”