Beth knew that, but Harlan had driven her to do even worse in the past. She smiled casually at the old man. Danny went to work, and she observed him do exactly what she’d have done to get the Chevy back onto the road.
“I’ll send someone back for it,” he offered.
“That’s not necessary. I’ll drive.”
‘‘Now, Mrs. Rockwood, you and I both know if I let you in that car, you’re just going to chase off after your husband when he doesn’t want you pestering him.”
The man was cannier than she’d bargained for. “And you know you’re over eighty,” she said sweetly, “and I could muscle my way past you if I had a mind to.”
To her surprise, he didn’t take offense. Instead he shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe he’d gotten roped into keeping an eye on this Yankee viper. “You haven’t changed.”
“Tell you what. I can drive your tow truck and you can drive my Bel Air.” Lord, she was starting to sound like Harlan.
“Likely enough, then, I’m out of a truck.”
Beth sighed. “Danny, Harlan’s in over his head this time. I know he is.”
“If he wanted your help—”
“He’d never ask for it, and you know it. Now, wouldn’t you want me on your side in a fight?”
“Hate for you to be on the other side, for sure.”
“Please understand, I’d never do anything that would endanger Harlan.”
Danny twisted his mouth to one side. “It’s endangering you I think he’s fretting over.”
“Without cause.”
“I reckon you’re right about that, but I promised Mr. Rockwood I’d look after you.”
“Then who’s going to look after him?”
“You’re going to sneak off no matter what I say, aren’t you? Truth to tell, ma’am, lie told me not to worry much if you did, as you won’t be able to find him anyhow.”
The rat. Beth kept her face expressionless and shrugged. “I guess you’re right about that. At least I can try to help him.”
“Well,” Danny said with a heavy sigh, “I’ve got too much work to do to chase after a Yankee who doesn’t have the good sense to do what her man asks her to do. You’ll do what you do, I reckon.”
Beth grinned. “I reckon I will. You’re not making me feel guilty.”
Wise, old eyes looked at her. “Didn’t expect I would.”
He had the good grace to wish her well when she headed off, only refusing to lie for her if Harlan checked in.
“I’d as soon hold onto an angry rattlesnake as you,” were his parting words.
Danny would have hog-tied her before letting her go if he’d realized she’d listened in on Harlan’s conversation and knew precisely where her ex-husband was headed.
If not before, she’d see that scheming rascal and the person who was meeting him at the Parthenon in downtown Nashville at noon on Tuesday.
Chapter Six
By ten o’clock Tuesday morning, Harlan had had two nights and one full day to regain his strength. Dressed in an old pair of jeans and a black T-shirt he’d had at the cabin in Coffee County, he walked along a shady Nashville street.
Beth was up to something. There hadn’t been a word from her since he’d turned her over to Danny. He had toyed with the idea of calling the country store in Coffee County or Mill Brook Post and Beam. He had resisted, concluding that anything he said or did would only egg Beth on. Best to say and do nothing.
All the same, he doubted she’d gone quietly back to home and job. He had no grounds for his suspicions. He hadn’t heard from her or the Stiles clan or read in the papers that she was in trouble. From the room he’d taken at a down-and-out Nashville hotel, he checked the messages on his answering machine.
Not a word from or about his ex-wife.
His suspicions arose from instinct. He knew her. Despite all her complaints about him, Beth herself wasn’t one to back off from trouble. She was a hothead who’d never been content to sit on the sidelines.
He suspected she was in hiding herself, waiting for him to resurface.
“She doesn’t know anything.”
Something about Beth always managed to get him talking to himself.
He stopped dead. The heat, the stress. He had to be seeing things.
“No.”
He moved slowly toward the curb, put out his hand toward the apparition. The metal under his fingertips was smooth and warm and very real. A 1965 Chevrolet Bel Air. Sea green. It was parked at an angle, a half block down from the building where Beth Stiles and Harlan Rockwood had spent their first months of marriage.
Harlan didn’t bother checking for the Vermont plates. There could only be one 1965 Chevrolet Bel Air outside junkyards and collectors’ fleets.
The lunatic was going to crash his meeting with Saul Rabinowitz.
“How?” Harlan looked for something to kick. “How did she find out?”
He clenched his hands into tight fists and smashed one down onto the roof of her eyesore of a car.
“The nosy little pain in the neck eavesdropped. Damn!”
He remembered turning around at Danny’s and finding her standing there, looking smug. He’d assumed she wouldn’t have been able to resist interrogating him if she’d overheard his conversation with Saul. What arrogance on his part. What stupidity. She had damned well learned to play her cards close to her chest.
“I should never underestimate that woman.”
Beth swung around the corner in bright orange shorts, a white T-shirt and sneakers. She walked briskly lost in her own thoughts and memories. Nashville was filled with them. Back in Vermont she could escape the tangible reminders of Harlan and their years together. Out of sight, out of mind.
She didn’t see Harlan until she almost bumped into him.
“You,” she exclaimed, and bolted.
‘‘Hey!”
He lunged after her. With long, loping strides, he trailed her around the corner, then cranked up his pace and caught up with her when she began to fade in the August heat. He reached out, grabbed her by the forearm, and spun her around in a whirl of sweaty hair and curses.
She snatched her arm free. “If I could breathe you’d never have caught up with me.”
“You never did like to lose.” Harlan saw her chest heaving as she gulped for air in the stifling humidity. He sighed. “Beth—dammit, what do I have to do to get through to you? I don’t want you here.”
She caught her breath. “So what?”
“So you’re not so different from me as you’d like to believe.” He noticed his teeth were clenched. She had managed to get to him again. “In my own way, Beth, I’m just as driven and absorbed as you are. I wouldn’t forget that if I were you.”
“Calling me driven isn’t going to stop me.”
“Let’s say you’re independent-minded and leave it at that.”
She scowled at him, looking every bit the stubborn Yankee she was. If only her eyes weren’t so damned blue. “I know you’re meeting Saul Rabinowitz. He’s an investigative reporter for the Manhattan Chronicle. Took me a day, but I found out.”
Harlan felt chilled. “Beth, how did you find out? Did you talk to anyone?”
“I’m not an idiot, Harlan. I knew he was probably from New York, and gathered whoever used you for a hockey puck would gladly do the same to him, if given the chance. I watch TV. I faked a story and a name and got the info I wanted, without giving away a thing I know—which is damned little.”
“Ever hear of minding your own business?”
She was unimpressed. “You made yourself my business when you snuck into my attic.”
“Well, I’m unmaking myself your business right now.”
“Dream on, Rockwood. You don’t tell me what to do.”
He had never met anyone so combative, so sure her way was the only way. Then her expression softened, and when she squinted, he saw the faint lines at the corners of her eyes and was poignantly aware of the passage of time.
�
��Beth. Oh, Beth. I’ve caused you enough misery.” He touched her cheek, brushed at a sweaty strand of hair that clung to her temple. “I can’t cause you more.”
‘Then talk to me, Harlan. You know I’m not going to give up until I have some answers.” She fastened her intense blue eyes upon him. “You’re right. I’ve had two days to think, and you don’t owe me an explanation.”
He shook his head. ‘‘No, I do. I came to your house, stole your car, turned your life upside down. Tell me, if I hadn’t been up in your attic, what would you have done about Jimmy Sessoms?”
“I like to think I’d have forgotten him by the next morning. That’s probably wishful thinking. Otherwise I wouldn’t have called your parents. To be honest, I’d have done everything 1 could to track you down myself. It’s not a matter of owing you or even of curiosity, but of doing what I feel is right. I don’t like to walk away when the going gets tough.” She was silent a moment, then said, “I did that nine years ago.”
“Beth...”
“No, don’t. It’s not easy being here, Harlan. Don’t make it harder.”
He placed his hand gently on her forearm. “I’ve got time. Let’s find a place and get something to drink.”
Beth ordered iced coffee. She sank against the wooden back of the booth in a dark, quiet corner of the tavern—the tavern where she and Harlan used to come as students for grilled hamburgers and frosty beers. Later on they’d fought there, and she’d come to feel like a Yankee outsider who didn’t like grits and complained about the heat as early as May. Everyone had known her as Harlan’s wife, a Rockwood. Her identity had begun slipping away. She’d blamed Harlan, because he was her husband, a Rockwood, a southerner, a part of this world—his world. And they lived in his world. If there’d been a way to compromise, she hadn’t been able to discover it, and neither had he. First he’d have had to come to terms with who he was, a hundred-percent Rockwood, not the rebel he’d believed himself to be. Just be yourself, he’d told her, as if it were easy, as if oppressive family pressures didn’t exist.
“I haven’t come in here in years.” He gazed around the old tavern, almost empty over an hour before lunch. Beth realized how much more at peace with himself he was now. As she was herself. Why were they risking the stability they’d created in their lives? Harlan continued, ‘‘Menu’s the same, though.”
“Prices are higher. This place makes me feel old.”
Harlan laughed. “I know what you mean. Time marches along, doesn’t it?”
“And people grow up.” A waitress delivered their iced coffees. Beth took a sip, relishing the cold liquid in her parched mouth. She couldn’t resist adding, “Some of us, anyway.”
Unabashed, he grinned. “Beth, I want you to know I haven’t been in a fight since we split. If I had, maybe I’d have handled myself better in this one. The fights I had while we were married were legitimate. I was into boxing. Sparring isn’t the same as a bar fight.”
She shrugged. It was an old argument. “A black eye is a black eye.”
“It’s not. With a legitimate opponent there are rules. You know he’s not going to kill you.”
“Not intentionally, anyhow. Don’t pretend you weren’t in your share of brawls.’
“My rebellious phase,” he said philosophically. “I thought you liked me best when I was rebelling against being a Rockwood.”
“I liked you best when you were just being yourself. That’s water over the dam, as they say. I don’t want to get bogged down rehashing the past. Whatever went wrong between us went wrong. So be it. Tell me about your fight in New York.”
“It wasn’t a fight. It was a beating. One man held me down, while...”
“Only one?”
“He was big. The other pounded me wherever he could land a punch.”
Harlan saw Beth wince. “Let’s just say they made their point.”
‘‘Which was?”
He bought himself a few extra minutes by drinking his coffee and chewing on a piece of ice. Neither the passage of time nor maturity had made Harlan enjoy telling other people his business any more than he had nine years ago.
“They knew I was meeting a reporter.”
“Saul Rabinowitz.”
Harlan settled back against the booth and didn’t meet Beth’s eye. “They wanted me to cancel and to give them his name. We ‘compromised.’ They beat me up so badly I couldn’t make my appointment. I also was unconscious and couldn’t give them Saul’s name. When I came to, I knew I needed to regroup. So I headed to Vermont. It was close, I knew you were there.” He shrugged, still bewildered by what had propelled him northward. “I figured it was the last place anyone would look for me.”
“Saul didn’t know what had happened?”
“He thought I’d chickened out. Figured I was a rich boy trying to stir up trouble—a tempest in a teapot, he said. He didn’t have much faith in what I could tell him, yet he didn’t mind chasing down a lead. For all I know, he’s cut his losses and won’t show today.”
“You’re protecting him?”
“As much as I can. I don’t want anyone getting hurt or, God forbid, killed over something I insist on pursuing.”
“I see.” Beth drank more iced coffee, felt less certain of herself and her mission. Had she endangered Harlan or Saul with her insistence on getting answers? “What hornet’s nest did you stir up?”
Harlan looked away, Beth sensed the concern and pain he was feeling. This wasn’t a game to him. “A bigger one than I imagined, apparently. You recall the horse swindle that almost ruined Char?”
Did she ever. “She lost everything and ended up living in a tent for a while, blaming you for having swindled her.”
Harlan managed a weak smile. ‘‘You didn’t rise to my defense?”
“Not a chance. When I found out what had happened, or what Char thought had happened, I would have helped her string you up. Never mind that you were ultimately proved innocent. Trouble has a way of finding you, Harlan.”
He didn’t argue that point. “Initially I blamed an unscrupulous horse trainer for the whole mess. He’d switched my yearling for a dead ringer, who was a dud. I could have found out sooner if I’d had any inkling what was going on. I assumed the trainer had sold my yearling to an unsuspecting buyer overseas. I launched my own investigation of the incident. Now I’m convinced the buyer wasn’t so unsuspecting.”
“He put the trainer up to the switch?”
“Precisely.”
“Can’t you get the law after him?”
“Would it were so easy. He’s a foreigner and seldom sets foot in the States. Right now I’m concentrating on presenting evidence of his irregularities to Saul. I’ll let him write an article and see how the cookie crumbles, so to speak. I’m hoping at least to get this guy barred from racing, if not thrown in jail. I had no idea he was capable of violence. I have a feeling horse swindles are the least of his dirty dealings.”
Beth had the same feeling. “Aren’t you worried about libel?”
“There’s no reckless disregard for the truth here and no falsehoods. That’s why I went to Saul. He’s the best.”
“So you’ll be his background source.”
“Yes”
“How did the bad guys find out you were onto them?”
“I’m not a pro, Beth. I tipped them off somehow. Perhaps I should have hired a P.I. I didn’t know if I was barking in the wind or really onto something.”
“And more fun to do your own dirty work.”
“More satisfying, maybe. I wouldn’t say fun.” He studied her with hooded eyes. “Word got back to him. It doesn’t matter how. He tried to stop me.”
Beth turned away from his probing gaze. “You’re not the kind of rich boy who backs off after getting his nose bloodied. No, you came back for more.”
“In my place, what would you do?”
She looked at him for a long time, exhausted by two near sleepless nights on the road, by being kept awake wondering, and by the onsla
ught of memories. Then she declared, “I’d meet with Saul Rabinowitz.”
The Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee, a replica of the original in Athens, Greece, was located in picturesque Centennial Park, where Harlan and Beth had spent countless evenings strolling hand in hand. Now she pushed her memories aside and observed her ex-husband from the edge of a parking lot. Even in his shabby clothes, he looked as straight-backed and confident as ever.
Without so much as a glance over his shoulder, he disappeared into the cavernous interior of the art museum, an unusual location for a clandestine meeting with an investigative reporter.
Since Beth had crossed the Mason-Dixon line, heading south, she had been enveloped in nostalgia. Again and again, she’d recalled Harlan as he had been. Today, for the first time, she was aware of seeing him as he was now. He had carved out a place for himself in the long, daunting Rockwood tradition, as she had in the tradition of the Stiles family. He could no more not be a Rockwood than she could be anything but a Stiles. It was so damned simple—and sad. He was comfortable with who he was, and she was comfortable with who she was. Did that mean they couldn’t be anything more than occasional lovers?
She squinted in the bright, hazy sunshine. Was Saul already inside the Parthenon, waiting for Harlan?
“Harlan, Harlan,” she murmured. His name felt good on her lips. If she could come out of this mess feeling peaceful when she thought about him, then her time hadn’t been wasted and her emotions rubbed raw without reason. He was handsome, honorable, and more sensible than he had ever been. Yesterday, to pass the time, she had driven past the Rockwood estate and past his own immense Greek Revival house on the Cumberland River. He was as much a part of the central Tennessee basin as were its rolling hills and sleepy rivers.
He was content to be in Tennessee.
Well, she was content in Vermont.
Why was she feeling so depressed, then?
Harlan didn’t need her. She should be relieved and go on with her own life. Get back to her pets and on with fixing up old Louie’s place.
She had agreed to let Harlan meet Saul in peace, it was all he had asked of her. He had promised nothing himself. He hadn’t offered to see her afterward and tell her what had happened. He hadn’t suggested they ride off to Vermont together and wait for the dust to settle. Hadn’t mentioned the future beyond noon and Saul. She had refused to ask him what he thought she should do. What she should do was her own decision.
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