“Why what?”
“Why is Jason here rather than at home with you?”
David turned and thrust his hands into the pockets of his chinos. For a moment he stared out at the mist rising off the pool. “He’s going through a phase. He doesn’t like me very much at the moment.”
“And why is that?”
“Nothing to do with this. He feels more comfortable here with his grandfather. They’ve always been close.”
“And you haven’t?”
“Is that your business?” He turned to stare at her.
“It is if it impacts my case.”
“How could it impact your case?”
She sighed. “The kid is mad as hell at you. It’s possible he took out that anger on the first person to cross him. And that would be Waneath.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve always had a great relationship with my son. This is simply teenage rebellion—going away to school for the first time.”
“The district attorney is going to put all three of you under a microscope. If there’s anything I should know, you’d better tell me. As you may remember,” she said dryly, “I don’t react well to nasty surprises.”
“I promise you, my relationship with Jason has nothing to do with this case.”
She stared at him for a moment without speaking, then she said. “I’ll have to accept that for the moment.”
“So you’ll stay here?”
“Oh, what the heck, why not. It’s only for one night Arnold can cancel the motel reservations. We’re leaving for Atlanta tomorrow anyway.”
“Uh-huh. I’ll go tell the others. I’ll help Arnold get the bags out of your car.” He strode out and left the door to the dining room swinging.
She reached for the carafe of coffee and touched the glass instead of the plastic. “Damn!” She recoiled and looked down at her fingertips. She blinked back tears, not so much in pain, although her fingers stung, but in frustration and exhaustion.
She’d had about enough of all these people. She was worn out with being pleasant and acting domestic. Most of all, she was tired of forcing herself to look away from David’s familiar, and unfortunately, still too-handsome face. From his eyes, which always seemed to be searching hers out every time she looked his way. Mostly she was tired of trying to ignore the heat he generated in her from across a broad dining table.
She should feel nothing after all these years except contempt. Instead, she felt.like an iron filing being inexorably dragged toward a very destructive magnet.
DAVID STOOD in the dark under the portico of the guest house and watched Kate’s sleek silhouette move back and forth behind the sheer draperies that covered her bedroom window. One part of him felt like an overage Romeo pining beneath Juliet’s balcony. The other part felt like a peeping Tom. But he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Sleep was an impossibility.
He wondered whether she still slept naked.
He could tell even in her clothes that her body had grown richer with the years. He had married a lovely girl. In the years they’d been apart, she had evolved into a truly beautiful woman.
His body ached with sheer physical need. It had been much too long since he’d made love to any woman, and an eternity since he’d held Kate in his arms. No one had ever measured up to her. But then he hadn’t loved any other woman. Never would. He had long since admitted that to himself.
He wondered what she’d do if he shinnied up to her window.
Break a lamp over his head, probably.
How many years had he dreamed of seeing her again, of being able to apologize? Explain? But explanations would hurt her all over again. He wanted to hold her, not hurt her.
He’d come close to writing her a note after he’d read that her husband died, then decided it was not the time to notify her that they were both free. He’d fantasized about moving to Atlanta and trying to win her all over again.
But their lives had grown too far apart. Until now, he’d been tied to this land as though he were a serf in czarist Russia. He’d swom to stay until Jason was safely on his way in school. Now the plans he’d made, the people he’d contacted would all have to be put on hold until he got Jason clear of this murder charge. By that time the money he’d saved would probably be spent on Jason’s defense.
What if Jason were guilty? What if he’d lost his temper, hit Waneath and suddenly realized she wasn’t breathing? Was he capable of simply walking away and leaving her beside the road for someone else to find?
Just as he had when he’d messed up as a child. Of course, Melba and Dub had always tried to protect him, never really taught him to take responsibility. David had done what he could to oppose them, but Dub and his daughter had been a powerful team and David recognized that Jason found their way easier. That was human nature.
But eventually, you had to take responsibility.
As David had. Twenty years’ worth. Twenty years of living with the fact that he’d betrayed the only woman he’d ever loved.
David prayed Jason wasn’t guilty. He clung to that hope even as the evidence mounted against his child. The boy had inherited his mother’s temper, but basically, he was a good kid, talented and loving. He worshiped his grandfather, and until Melba’s death he and David had been as close as any father and son could be.
David understood his need to rebel, but if Kate was right and Jason had taken out his anger at his father on Waneath, how guilty did that make David for her death?
His gaze swung over to Dub’s window. Dub had prowled for over an hour before his light went out. When David called Dub “the old man” he used the term the way seamen did for their skippers or infantrymen their generals. Nothing to do with age; everything to do with respect and real affection.
In the few years since Melba’s death, he and Dub no longer agreed about much of anything. Certainly not about the way to run Long Pond or raise Jason: Dub had always been irascible, but lately he’d been downright grumpy. In fact, it seemed to David that Dub had aged more in the past three years than he had in the last seventeen.
Maybe he was imagining things. Dub couldn’t be worried about business. Even with Dub’s hidebound decisions not to try any of David’s experimental ideas, both cotton and soybeans had sold high this year.
He’d tried to get Dub in to his doctor for a checkup, but so far as Dub was concerned, a visit to a doctor was tantamount to a death sentence.
Not surprising he should feel that way, first losing his wife so young, and then Melba before she hit forty. He and Jason were the old man’s only remaining family, except for some shirttail cousins whom neither of them had ever met.
No matter how he and Dub fought, David would always love the old man. He was family, after all. And David knew that his father-in-law truly valued him no matter how often they disagreed. Dub probably felt like the old bull about to be displaced by the young bull.
They’d tried hard to keep things pleasant between them at least on the surface. To make it easier on both of them, David had moved into his own house two years ago. But lately their private fights had escalated. David had decided that the time for him to leave Mississippi had come.
Now leaving was no longer an option. At least until Jason was cleared and Dub was back to his old self.
David was trapped all over again.
THE NEXT MORNING, Kate found David already in the kitchen. She smelled fresh coffee and the aroma of hot bread. A pitcher of orange juice sat in the center of the table. As she walked into the room, he filled a glass and handed it to her.
“Sleep well?” he asked.
She lied. “Like a log. The minute my head hit the pillow.”
“You look great. Although I miss your long hair.” Kate blushed. “Lawyers don’t wear hair down to their rumps,” she said.
“In New York you kept it rolled up in a braid. Lawyers can do that, can’t they?”
“Not if they’re over thirty, they can’t. Is that real coffee? I don’t do decaf before noon.”
&nbs
p; He handed her a cup. “You still like it black?”
“Actually, I prefer double mocha latte with chocolate ice cream, but my thighs demand I drink it black.”
“I never managed to convince you your thighs were gorgeous.”
“Well, they’re okay, thanks to hours in the gym and a personal trainer who earned his degree in a torture chamber.”
“Impressive.”
Arnold wandered in, stared at them morosely and extended his hand without saying a word. Kate poured a cup of coffee and handed it to him. He sniffed, sipped and sighed. “Good.”
“He keeps to monosyllables until the third cup,” Kate said and sat down.
“Dub and Jason are still asleep,” David said. “Or they were when I checked. I don’t want a repeat of the denial game Dub pulled last night, so talk to me. Where do we go from here?”
“Officially we can’t demand discovery or a list of witnesses from the D.A. until after the indictment,” Kate said. She took a hefty swig of orange juice and set the glass down beside her plate. “The sheriff seems willing to cooperate, but the D.A. sees blood and a spot on Court Television. He wants to convict Jason so bad he can taste it.”
“Even if he’s not guilty?”
“It’s going to take incontrovertible proof of innocence to convince him to let go of his juicy prime-time lollipop.”
Arnold sat at Kate’s right and began smearing homemade fig preserves on a reheated roll from last night’s dinner. “One chance,” he croaked.
David turned to him. “Which is?”
“Find the guy.” He went over, poured himself another cup of coffee and stood swaying over the counter.
David looked at Kate.
“Find the real killer,” she translated. “Give your D.A. another raccoon to tree or whatever they say down here.”
“How do we do that?”
“Investigate.” Arnold said. He sat down and began munching another roll.
“We have an investigator who works for the firm,” Kate said. “He’s not cheap, but he’s good. If Jason didn’t kill Waneath, then whoever picked her up on the road is the most likely suspect.”
“Yes.”
“We’ve already asked for a private autopsy on your behalf.”
“You what?” Jason said from the doorway.
Kate turned to him. “Good morning. Another autopsy from a top forensic pathologist in Memphis. Arnold started the paperwork yesterday afternoon. The body should be delivered to Memphis this morning.”
“You can’t do that!” Jason said. He wore ragged sweats and an Athena High Panthers sweatshirt that sagged at the neck.
“It’s the obvious next step. The coroner in Athena isn’t even an M.D., just a funeral director. He barely touched the body. We want to have accurate data on time of death, cause of death, whether or not she was raped...”
“She wasn’t raped. Dad, you’ve got to stop her.”
“She knows what she’s doing.”
“We’ve also asked for a full toxicology screening to see whether there were any drugs in her system.”
“We were drinking beer, okay? I told you that. Listen, you work for me. And I say no.”
“And I say yes,” Dub spoke from behind Jason’s shoulder. “She may work for you, young man, but I’m gonna help pay the bill on this.”
“But Granddaddy...”
“Don’t you granddaddy me. We’ve got to nip this foolishness in the bud. I won’t have you going to trial over something you didn’t do.”
“I won’t go to trial, and if I do I’ll be acquitted. I mean, this is America, right? I mean it’s The Big Clock. The good guy always gets off at the last minute.”
“This is real life, not a movie,” David said.
“What the hell do you know? You always get off,” Jason snarled. A moment later they heard his bare feet slap the marble stairs as he ran upstairs.
“Ooooo-kay, that’s it,” Kate said, putting down her napkin and pushing her chair back. “Dub, have some breakfast. I’ll be right back.”
She reached Jason’s bedroom door only seconds after he slammed it. She knocked and called out, “Jason, let me in.”
“Go away.”
“The heck I will.” She opened the door. The room was at least as big as the guest room in which she’d slept, and every wall was papered with movie posters. The horizontal surfaces were drowning in clothes, shoes, papers, books, pages of what appeared to be scripts in shiny black covers. There was a big computer with an oversize screen on the desk in the corner, a scanner, some other equipment Kate couldn’t identify and a big handheld video camera on a tripod in the corner. It was the room of a creative male slob with a great many interests, none of which included order. It was also the room of a male who was used to having someone else pick up after him.
“Good grief,” Kate said. “Is that an original Revenge of the Jedi poster over your bed?”
“Yeah. Cool, huh?”
“Expensive. They’re very rare.”
“My dad gave it to me for Christmas last year.” He turned away and Kate saw his fists clench at his sides.
“Enough small talk. Sit down.”
“I didn’t ask you up here.”
“Don’t be a jerk.” Kate pulled out the chair from behind his computer desk, stacked half a dozen scripts onto the floor on top of at least a dozen others and sat. After a moment in which she was afraid he’d simply walk out, Jason sat on the edge of the bed with his knees apart and his hands hanging between his knees. He refused to meet her eyes.
“You are obviously planning to use your twenty-five years in Parchman as the basis of a documentary,” Kate said.
“Hey!”
She opened her hands. “What else can I think? If you really believe that innocent people don’t go to jail in this country, you have been watching too damn many movies. I recommend you watch The Shawshank Redemption and Cool Hand Luke. Then tell me prison life is what you want.”
“Listen, you’re my lawyer, you’ve got to do what I tell you, right?”
“Within reason.”
“Then go down to that D.A. and see what kind of a deal you can make me.”
Kate’s heart fell. “So you did kill her.”
Jason swarmed off the bed and bolted toward the window. Kate came up out of her chair. For a moment she was afraid he planned to jump.
“I’m responsible for her death.”
“You hit her with your tire iron?” Kate tried to keep her voice level.
He turned to look at her. “What tire iron? No. Man, I’d never hit a woman, and I don’t even have a tire iron.” He seemed genuinely puzzled.
“Why not? They come with the car.”
“Yeah, well, last August I was trying to break my out-board-motor mounts loose on the ski boat and I kind of dropped the tire iron in the lake.” He shrugged. “I guess I forgot to get another one.”
Kate took a deep breath. “That’s one of the things the police have against you—your missing tire iron. If you didn’t hit her, then responsible or not, you are not guilty of her death.”
“But I left her on the road in the middle of the night. Man, it was real warm for Thanksgiving weekend, you know, but it was still cold. And I just drove off and left her.” His voice broke, and Kate suddenly saw not a truculent young man, but a very frightened nineteen-year-old boy, eaten up with guilt and pain.
“Tell me something, Jason. You’ve been at school for less than three months and California is a long way to fly for Thanksgiving. Why did you come home?”
He flushed. “It’s just the three of us, you know? I thought my granddaddy would be lonesome.”
Not his father, but his grandfather. Kate continued gently, “How about you?”
“Yeah, okay, I missed everybody, all right? It’s not like we can’t afford it or anything.” He turned back to the window. “Man, I wish now I’d gone to Carmel like they wanted me to.”
“Who wanted?”
“Some friends, that�
��s all.”
“So you came home when?”
“I told you this yesterday.”
“Tell me again.”
He heaved a cavernous sigh and sat on the bed. “My dad picked me up in Memphis about eight Wednesday night. Thursday we had Thanksgiving dinner around two, and then I lazed around here watching football for a while.”
“Who called who?”
“Waneath called me. Said some of the old crowd were getting together Saturday night and would I pick her up. I mean, she sounded like it was no big deal, you know?”
Kate nodded. “But it was.”
“The party was out at the Blue Jack. We had a couple of beers, and I was having a good time seeing everybody, but Waneath kept trying to drag me out. Finally we had a fight about it.”
“But still you went.”
“Yeah. I mean she was my date, right?”
“And you thought you’d have sex.”
“Okay, so I thought we’d have sex. What’s wrong with that? It’s not like it was the first time.”
“Can you show me where you were?”
For the first time Jason hesitated. “Why’d you want to go over there?”
“I want to see the place you say you left her.”
“I did leave her there. I mean, we had sex, and then she hit me with...” He took a deep breath. “Okay, this is the truth.”
It was Kate’s turn to heave a sigh. “Well, finally.”
“She wanted us to get married.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“She told me we could get married at Christmas, and then she could go back to California with me.”
Kate narrowed her eyes. “To do what? Go to school?”
He shrugged. “To be the next Pamela Lee to hear her tell it.”
“And you weren’t interested.”
“I’m a freshman in college, for God’s sake. I don’t want to get married!”
“Then she told you she was pregnant.”
“No! She never told me she was pregnant. I didn’t know she was pregnant until the sheriff told me.”
“It wasn’t yours?”
“No way.”
Kate leaned back in the desk chair and stared at him wordlessly. He squirmed. She was certain he was still holding something back, but she didn’t think that something was an attack with a tire iron. She could see him making Waneath get out of the car, but more likely she got out of her own free will, expecting him to sweet-talk her back in so that they could make up.
Fathers and Sons (Harlequin Super Romance) Page 6