Fathers and Sons (Harlequin Super Romance)

by Carolyn McSparren

  “Give it a rest, Arnold. I don’t look back, remember. What’s done is done. I don’t give second chances.”

  “Well, see that you don’t. You have better things to do with your life than spend it canning peaches and walking behind a plow.”

  Kate laughed. “I suspect the plow David uses is air-conditioned and cost a quarter of a million dollars. Besides, might be kind of fun. I’ve always wanted to learn to drive a tractor.”

  “Bite your tongue!” He hesitated. “Seriously, Kate, watch yourself with Canfield.”

  “Why do you dislike him so much?”

  “I like him all right personally. But it’s been less than a year since Alec’s death, and whether you realize it or not, you are vulnerable. You’re the sort of woman who needs a man around.”

  Kate gaped at the phone. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Well, you are.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are too. Whether you recognize it or not, you’re a very social animal and a born nurturer. I’ve seen you with your clients, remember. Born nurturers tend to go for the sort of man that doesn’t want to be nurtured. Mother Nature is a real bitch sometimes.”

  “So you don’t think he needs nurturing?”

  He laughed, and the bitterness was still there. “Oh, he needs it all right. Just doesn’t want it. I, on the other hand...”

  Kate waited.

  “Forget it. I may be late getting back from Jackson. I’ll see you in the morning after I’ve dragged my eyes open.”

  Kate nodded at the phone as though he could see her. “Arnold? Be careful, please. I’ve just gotten a glimpse of Big Bill Talley, Waneath’s daddy, on the boob tube. He is immense. I hope he’s a gentle giant, but don’t bet on it. Be really careful.”

  “That goes double for you, Kate. I’m in Jackson. You’re there. Watch yourself. Stick close to the motel.”

  “Will do.”

  She sat looking at the phone for at least a minute after she hung up. There was now no reason why she shouldn’t meet David for dinner. No reason except her own nerves. And a feeling of raw longing so intense that she found it frightening.

  So, she should face her fears. She took a deep breath, called David’s number, waited for five rings and then heard his answering machine pick up. Of course, he’d be at Long Pond or out in the fields or anyplace except in his house waiting to hear from her. She left a message telling him that she was free for dinner and would drive out to his place about seven. Then she called the motel office and found that no envelope had arrived from Memphis. So no autopsy. Bother. DNA might take as long as four months, but blood-typing on the fetus should be a piece of cake.

  She let her head fall back against the thin pillows and allowed her mind to drift. She told herself she needed to go over the case start to finish, but David’s face kept intruding. Not the face she remembered from their years together, the face that she had told herself she hated. She couldn’t seem to dredge that face up in her mind any longer. She saw him instead only the way he was now, with lines at the corners of his eyes and grooves starting at the corners of his mouth. And sadness buried so deep behind those blue eyes that they were like a chill mountain tarn.

  How much of that sadness was her doing? She could no longer avoid her part of the responsibility for the breakup of their marriage.

  She had never thought about what might have happened if she and David had confronted his infidelity and Melba’s pregnancy together. And then had confronted his lack of confidence in his acting ability together as well.

  Her mind shied away. She didn’t want to think about any of that. Nothing could change the past.

  But what did the future hold?

  Someone knocked tentatively at her door. She started, opened her eyes and called, “Yes?”

  Again that tentative knock. She rolled off the bed and went to the door. “Who’s there?” No answer. She put her eye to the view hole and saw the top of a head of brown hair. Female.

  She opened the door. The girl who stood outside jumped back as though she’d been threatened. Her eyes were wide and terrified behind her glasses. Kate looked at her mottled skin and the splatter of pimples across her forehead, at the lank hair and wide-legged jeans that hung from a tubby figure, and made a guess. “Coral Anne?”

  The girl ducked away.

  “Come in,” Kate said, and stood aside.

  Coral Anne scuttled in and motioned for Kate to shut the door behind her.

  Kate smiled what she hoped was a welcoming smile. She held out her hand. “I don’t think we’ve met officially. I’m Kate Mulholland.”

  “I know who you are,” Coral Anne said, ignoring Kate’s hand.

  “Please, have a seat. Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Got any bourbon?”

  Kate blinked. “I meant a soft drink.”

  “Forget it.” Coral Anne looked around the room. “This place sucks.”

  “You could say that.” Kate sat on the bed and pulled her stocking feet up in front of her. After a moment Coral Anne perched on the edge of the desk chair.

  “My momma finds out I’m here she’ll kill me,” Coral Anne said.

  Kate nodded. She didn’t doubt it for a minute.

  “She told me she smacked you across the face?” The sentence had a question mark at the end of it, so Kate answered it.

  “She did. Good and hard.”

  Coral Anne snickered. “Lord, I would love to have seen that. My momma goes at it with both hands when she gets mad.”

  For “it” Kate read “me.” “She go at you?”

  “Me’n Waneath both.” Then the girl added proudly, “My daddy never lays a hand on either one of us. He’s a big ole pussycat, big as he is. But my momma, now, she has a temper.”

  Kate waited, then said, “So why did you come?”

  “To tell you it’s not Jason’s baby.”

  Kate sat up. “You knew about the baby?”

  Coral Anne nodded. “I’m the only one she told. We took one of those home-pregnancy things and I had to drive all the way out to the Dumpster by the levee to throw it away so Momma wouldn’t find it in the trash.”

  “You have a car?”

  “Sure. Got it for my sixteenth birthday. My daddy sells cars. Me and Waneath didn’t even have to share one.” She smiled. “Mine’s newer.” She sighed. “I guess Daddy’ll sell Waneath’s car. He had one of the guys drive it to his house and put it in his garage. Daddy cried. Said he couldn’t bear to look at it.”

  “I’m sorry. I know how hard that kind of thing can be for a parent.”

  “Do you? Really?” The eyes Coral Anne turned to Kate were intelligent behind their thick glasses. “If this was some kind of story, Waneath and me’d hate each other. I mean, she was beautiful, and me...” She looked down at her dumpy body. “But we didn’t hate each other more’n any pair of sisters. Mostly, we loved each other. My momma and daddy do not appreciate me,” she said candidly. “But Waneath did.” She laughed. “Shoot, she should. I did her damn homework.”

  “Even though you’re three years younger?”

  “I am probably some kind of genius,” Coral Anne said. “Maybe when I go off to Harvard or Oxford on a scholarship my momma’ll think I’m not such a mess.” She shrugged. “Momma doesn’t much value women unless they’re pretty. Says it’s a curse for a woman to be smart.”

  “Your momma’s wrong.”

  “Oh, I know that.” She tossed her head of lank brown hair. Juanita at Charlotte’s was right. Coral Anne would greatly benefit from highlights and a body wave. And a good diet and some aerobics classes. Whatever Coral Anne said, Kate suspected she’d be willing to swap a few IQ points for a date on Saturday night. If she was lucky, once she made it to Harvard, she’d find somebody who valued her for her brain.

  “Jason didn’t do it,” she said.

  “You seem very sure.”

  “He’s the closest thing to a brother I’ve got, and if he’d married Waneath like she wan
ted, he would really have been my brother. I’m sick of my momma and daddy bad-mouthing him and his family to everybody in town when I know damn well that baby wasn’t his.”

  Kate held her breath, then she said, “So, whose was it?” “She wouldn’t tell me. Said it was a stupid mistake, she was only trying to get back at Jason. Showing she could get any man she wanted to.”

  “When did she think she’d gotten pregnant?”

  “We just did the test last week. The way Waneath eats—excuse me—ate, her periods were never regular. She used to flat starve herself and throw up for two weeks before a pageant.”

  “She was bulimic?”

  “Not all the time. Won’t catch me doing that even if I wind up big as a house like my momma says I’m going to.”

  Kate was about ready to slap Mrs. Talley right back for her treatment of her younger daughter. Coral Anne, however, seemed remarkably levelheaded.

  “Anyway, I tried to get her to say who the father was, but she wouldn’t tell me. I think she was embarrassed. She told me she’d been drinking. My guess is one of those jocks at college took advantage of her.”

  “She shouldn’t have been drinking, period. Obviously that doesn’t stop any of you, does it?”

  “Get real. There’s always somebody willing to supply beer and stuff. Anyway, she said it was after Jason left for Pepperdine. She was scared he was going to dump her.”

  “Did she plan to marry him?”

  Coral Anne rolled her eyes. “Oh, sure. He was going to give her a ring at Christmas. Right. Maybe in 2050.”

  “And if he didn’t?”

  “She was really scared. Momma would’ve been real disappointed. ’Course, Momma would just kill her if she found out about the baby.”

  “And your daddy?”

  “He’d have been miserable, but he’d have stood by Waneath. She kept hoping she’d lose it, you know.”

  “Do you have any evidence as to who the baby’s father was?”

  “No, but I can testify she said it wasn’t Jason’s.”

  “That might not be such a good idea,” Kate said.

  Coral Anne frowned. “Why not?” Then her eyes widened. “‘Cause he might a’ killed her when he found out she’d been cheating on him with somebody else?”

  Kate nodded.

  “He’d never do that. There’s not a mean bone in that boy’s body,” she said, and sounded as though she was repeating something she’d heard an adult say.

  “Could she have told someone else, told the father perhaps?”

  Coral Anne shook her head. “Nope. We were each other’s best friends.” For the first time Kate saw Coral Anne’s eyes begin to tear up. “But sending Jason to jail won’t bring her back, will it?”

  “No, it won’t.” Kate reached out and touched Coral Anne’s shoulder. Coral Anne shook her off and stood.

  “Listen, I got to get out of here before somebody recognizes my car. You tell Jason I know he’s innocent, whatever anybody else says.”

  “Why don’t you call him and tell him yourself? He’s feeling pretty miserable.”

  “Yeah, I guess I could call him from the car,” she said. “I sure can’t call him from home.”

  “Thanks for coming over,” Kate said as she ushered Coral Anne to the door of the motel room. “I really appreciate what it took for you to do it.” She opened the door a crack, and saw that the parking lot was in deep shadow. The curtains at the office were closed and there was no sign of Myrlene. “Where’d you park?” she asked.

  “Around the corner in back,” Coral Anne said as she slipped by Kate. “I’ll call Jason.” She scuttled around the corner of the building, and a moment later a Camaro, already gray in the fading light, careened around the corner and into the street. Coral Anne drove as crazily as Jason. Maybe everybody under the age of twenty-five in Athena drove like lunatics.

  Kate went back inside and shut the door, then sank into the chair Coral Anne had just left. Momma would just kill her if she found out. She hated to think that Mrs. Talley could have killed her own child and left her by the side of the road, but mothers did kill their children. As a matter of fact, in cases where children were killed, statistically, mothers were most often responsible.

  Had Mrs. Talley been tucked up at home in her marital bed, shared with Big Bill, at the time that Waneath was killed? If David had been cruising the roads looking for Jason, might Mrs. Talley, or alternatively Big Bill, have been doing the same thing? Was Big Bill really a pussycat? Or more like a Bengal tiger?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  KATE FOLLOWED her nap with a long and luxurious soak in the bath. Her shoulders ached from pure tension. What she needed was a good session at the gym with her trainer or a Rolfing session with her masseuse.

  A voice in the back of her head told her there were better ways to dispel tension. She slapped the thought down. That kind of trouble she definitely did not need.

  Still, she found herself taking extra care with makeup, wearing her best slacks, her silkiest sweater in just the right color of green to pick up the green tints in her eyes. She told herself she would not under any circumstances wind up in bed with David, but she’d be pretty disappointed if he didn’t make a pass or two.

  “Just let him hanker a little,” she told her reflection. She picked up her purse and walked out of her room. This might turn out to be quite an evening.

  The parking lot was not well lit at the best of times. At six forty-five on an early December evening, it was downright sepulchral. She moved quickly to her car, and was just getting her key in the lock when she heard the grate of a footstep behind her on the gravel.

  “You drop this case, you hear?”

  She froze, then she jabbed at the lock and twisted the key. She recognized that voice from the television. Big Bill Talley, all two hundred and fifty cheerful pussycat pounds, was making his move.

  Kate pivoted, prepared to kick his kneecap and rake him with her keys if he came at her.

  He swayed three feet away, his face mottled and streaked with tears, a pint of sour-mash bourbon clutched in his paw.

  “That boy’s got to die for what he did to my baby.” His voice caught in a sob. “Don’t you go getting him off.”

  “Mr. Talley...”

  “He killed my baby!”

  Kate opened the car door an inch. She’d had plenty of experience with drunks as clients. They changed from maudlin to enraged in an instant. One minute that bottle could be hanging limply from his hand, the next he might turn it into a weapon and smash it into her face. She prayed Coral Anne’s daddy remained a pussy-cat even when he was drinking and miserably unhappy.

  Arguments and explanations would have no effect on him. In his present condition he probably wouldn’t listen. If he listened he wouldn’t agree.

  She felt desperately sorry for him, but frightened for herself as well. She needed to put a locked car door between her and him just in case he did turn ugly. “Go home, Mr. Talley,” she said gently. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  Platitudes.

  He took a step toward her, his face twisted with grief. “My loss?” His voice rose dangerously. “That’s what my baby is to you? A loss?”

  “A terrible loss. I lost my husband recently. I understand your grief. But convicting the wrong man won’t bring her back.”

  “He’s the right man! Don’t you use some lawyer trick to get him off, you hear me? He’s got to pay.”

  Kate heard the grief and the rage in his voice. Even a gentle man could go over the edge when his pain became too great to endure. “Please, Mr. Talley, let me call somebody to come get you...”

  A light went on in the office, and the door began to open. Big Bill cried, “Oh, foot!” and staggered into the darkness at the end of the building.

  “Anything wrong?” Myrlene’s mother called from the office door.

  Kate leaned back against her car. She could feel her heart hammering against her ribs. She took a deep breath and said in what she
hoped was a normal voice, “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “Who was that doing all that yelling?”

  “Just some guy who’d had a little too much to drink and thought I might like some company for dinner. No problem.” That sounded pretty lame, but it was the best Kate could do on short notice. She certainly didn’t want Myrlene’s mother making an issue of this. Once he sobered up, poor Bill Talley would probably be horrified at what he had done.

  KATE PROTESTED, but Myrlene’s mother called the sheriff’s office anyway to report a near mugging. Kate intended to keep her own counsel. No sense in making a bad situation worse—not in a town where she was the outsider. Big Bill would look like the victim—which he certainly was—and garner all the sympathy. Everybody would shake their heads in sorrow at the terrible pass to which a good man had been brought by a wicked big-city woman.

  “No, I can’t identify the man,” Kate said for the fourth time. She sat in a patched imitation-leather chair in the motel office while a young deputy sat across from her with a look of concern on his face. “Except to say that he was big and not young.”

  “How you know that, ma’am?”

  “His voice was deep.”

  “You must have seen him.”

  “It was dark.”

  “You sure kept your head better than I would,” Myrlene’s mother said, “I’d a’ fainted dead away.”

  “Like I said, I don’t think he meant to hurt me.”

  She turned to the deputy. “The man was upset that I wouldn’t go to dinner with him. Period.”

  “Maybe he wanted your purse,” Myrlene’s mother said, as though that were a comfort. “Getting so not even a town like Athena’s safe any longer.”

  “Kate?” David ran into the office, reached down, grabbed her upper arms and hauled her out of the chair and into his arms. “You all right? Sheriff Tait called me and said there’d been some kind of dustup.”

  For a moment she let herself relish the feel of him, the warmth of his body, then she shook him off. “No. I am mad as hell, and very, very hungry.” She turned to the deputy. “We both know this isn’t going anywhere, so I’m going to dinner. Okay?”