Chesapeake Summer

by Jeanette Baker

Verna Lee was about to cross the road, make her presence known and enlighten the mysterious stranger as to the location of the impound parking lot when she was surprised yet again.

  Nola Ruth’s Lincoln Continental circled and came back, braking directly in front of Devereaux. Without a word, as if he’d been waiting for her to do just that, he climbed into the passenger seat. Together, they drove out of town in the opposite direction of the Delacourte’s big white house on the bay, taking the Highway 39 turnoff.

  Two

  The Crab Pot with its spectacular sunset views of the Chesapeake was the kind of restaurant that accommodated anyone with money to spend, no matter how casually or sophisticated he dressed. The bar, for those who preferred golf shirts and slacks as well as a lighter menu, could be found on the first floor. A spiral staircase led to the legendary restaurant on the second level. Complete with flickering candlelight, white tablecloths and the soft dance music of a bygone era, it offered its patrons the same comforts they enjoyed at home: elegance, seclusion and discretion.

  Two couples shared the best table on the second floor. Cole and Nola Ruth Delacourte had barely touched their gin and tonics. Amanda Wentworth sipped her sherry. Quentin Wentworth was well into his second martini.

  Nola Ruth’s eyes met her husband’s. The message was clear. How long do we have to stay?

  Cole barely lifted his shoulders.

  Nola Ruth summoned the warm delta charm ingrained in her from birth. “Amanda, tell us about Tracy and Tess. Are you enjoying their stay?”

  Amanda was about to open her mouth when the judge intervened. “We’d enjoy it a whole lot more if she planned on leaving anytime soon.”

  Nola Ruth looked bewildered. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Our Tracy has decided to get a divorce. Yes, sirree, a dee vorce.” He stretched out the word.

  “I’m so sorry,” Nola Ruth murmured. “How terrible for her.”

  The judge leaned forward. “What do you make of these kids, Cole? I’ve a good mind to deny their request, make ’em get along, tie ’em up together until they’re good and ready to come to terms. Divorce.” He shook his head. “What’s the matter with young people today? Why can’t they stay married like the rest of us?”

  “Maybe the time for tying up was before the marriage,” Cole replied dryly.

  “I told her not to hook up with that boy in the first place,” Quentin continued. “The Hennesseys are nothing more than dockworkers.’

  Nola Ruth bit her lip and remained silent, a Herculean feat considering that Russ Hennessey had courted her own daughter up until he’d gone away to school. That was before Libba had run off to California with Eric Richards, an actor. Nola Ruth shuddered, she still couldn’t bring herself to think of, much less utter, her son-in-law’s name.

  Cole was less inclined to keep his mouth shut. “There’s nothing wrong with Russ Hennessey. He’s done his family proud. I’m sorry to hear about the breakup, especially since they have a child.”

  Amanda Wentworth’s thin-lipped mouth frowned in disapproval. “Tracy and Tess will be fine.” She changed the subject. “You haven’t told us about Libba Jane. How long has it been since you’ve seen her?”

  “We flew out to California when the baby was born,” Nola Ruth replied shortly. “Libba’s in graduate school. We’re very proud of her.”

  “Daughters,” snorted Quentin. “More trouble than they’re worth. Give me a son any day.”

  Cole laughed. “We’re a bit long in the tooth to be starting over.”

  Amanda looked pointedly at her husband. “One would think.”

  A waiter approached the table. Wentworth waved him away. “I had an ulterior motive when I asked you to dinner, Cole.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “I intend to enter the senate race,” Wentworth continued. “I’d like your support.”

  Nola Ruth’s eyes widened, huge chocolate drops in the cream of her face. “But we’re Democrats, Quentin.”

  “People change parties.”

  “We don’t,” replied Nola Ruth, “especially when we agree on everything Clayton Duval stands for.”

  “What about you, Cole? Does Nola Ruth speak for both of you?”

  Cole Delacourte smiled. “You’ve been talking to the wrong people, Quentin. I’m a defense attorney. I specialize in civil rights cases, all of which you know. Who’s telling you that you need my support?”

  “I’m serious. You’ve been in these parts for a long time. Before that, you were in Washington. You have influence. I could win if you came over to my side. Hell, you don’t even have to become a Republican. All I want is for you to suggest I’m your man.”

  Nola Ruth looked away.

  Cole set down his drink and met the judge’s glance without faltering. “I wish you luck, Quentin. I really do. But I’m not your man.”

  Amanda coughed. “I guess we should eat. It’s getting late.”

  Quentin ignored her. “Damn it, Cole—” He stopped, his gaze riveted to the dance floor, and the willowy, black-haired woman in the red gown that fit like a second skin.

  She melted into her partner’s arms, angle to curve, breast to bone, cheek to cheek, flame red against tuxedo black. Gracefully, erotically, they moved as one, her right hand extended, captured in his left, his right splayed across the naked base of her spine, her left resting on the back of his neck. Her lips were a whisper from his. It was abundantly clear to all who watched that their level of intimacy extended beyond the dance.

  The music rose and fell. Other couples box-stepped around them, their sedate steps a world apart from the intricate, air-light tango of leg and limb displayed by the woman in red and her partner.

  Quentin couldn’t tear his eyes away. His face burned. Lizzie Jones. Damn her. Damn her to hell. His fist clenched, shattering the delicate glass in his hand.

  “For God’s sake, Quentin.” Color flared across Amanda’s cheeks. She began mopping up the puddle of alcohol, broken glass and drops of blood.

  “Leave it, Amanda,” Nola Ruth counseled. “The waiter will take care of it.” She lifted her finger, signaling for help.

  Immediately, a white-coated server materialized at her elbow, assessed the damage, cleaned the table and returned with fresh linen and another martini before the music ended.

  Wentworth held a napkin under his hand. “Excuse me. I need to take care of this.” Instead of walking around the wooden dance floor, he strode through it, deliberately bumping into Lizzie and her partner. “Pardon me,” he said, reaching out to grip her arm. “I believe your escort has something that belongs to me.”

  The man laid a warning hand on the judge’s arm. “Mister, you’re out of line.”

  Lizzie Jones’s silvery laugh floated across the room. She mocked him. “What might that be, Your Honor?”

  He shrugged off her defender’s restraining arm. “Something for which I paid a great deal.”

  This time Lizzie’s eyes narrowed. Deliberately, defiantly, her hand slid up the judge’s chest. She moved closer, close enough so that her long black hair swung across his cheek, hiding their faces. “I belong to no one, Quentin,” she whispered in her subtly accented English. “Remember that. Go back to your wife.” Taking the lobe of his ear in her mouth, she bit down hard.

  He jerked away. Blood poured down his neck, forever staining the white shirt and dinner jacket.

  Lizzie leaned against her partner, threw Quentin a final smoldering glance and swept out of the room.

  Looking back, Cole would remember that it seemed as if all the breath and color in the elegant restaurant left with her.

  Nola Ruth was completely nonplussed. For the first time in her life she’d encountered a social situation for which her careful upbringing hadn’t prepared her. She simply sat and watched while Amanda, white-faced and silent, fumbled with the clasp of her purse, pulling out bills, throwing them on the table.

  Cole’s voice was low and controlled. “Don’t be ridiculous, Amanda. We’
ll cover the check. See to Quentin. I imagine you have a great deal to talk about.”

  Without a word, Amanda stood, crossed the room, circled her husband’s waist with her arm and led him away.

  “Should we follow them?” Nola Ruth asked. Her voice was high and breathless.

  “I don’t think so,” replied Cole. “If the situation were reversed, I wouldn’t want anyone else around at the moment.”

  Nola Ruth shook her head. “There isn’t the slightest possibility that you would ever find yourself in Quentin’s position.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “You’re that sure of me?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Why?”

  She smiled. “You’re crazy about me. You have been from the first.”

  Cole Delacourte studied the olive and cream beauty of his wife’s face and acknowledged her truth. “I’m that obvious?”

  “You are, and I’m grateful.” Nola Ruth shuddered. “I don’t think I could bear a scene like the one we just witnessed.”

  Cole found his wallet, pulled out a hundred dollar bill. “I’ve lost my appetite. Let’s go home. Serena’s bound to have something in the refrigerator.”

  Nola Ruth gathered her wrap and purse and stood. “I’m sure I can manage something.” She hesitated.

  “What is it?”

  “Did you know about Quentin and Lizzie?”

  Cole nodded.

  “You never said anything.”

  “No.”

  “May I ask why not?”

  He looked at her steadily until the blush mounted along her cheekbones. “We all have skeletons, Nola Ruth.”

  Even though Quentin had consumed enough alcohol to test considerably over the legal limit, he still slid behind the wheel, requiring several attempts to insert the key into the ignition. Amanda didn’t protest. In her world, men were drivers, women passengers. Normally, she turned on the air conditioner, even on a cool night, ensuring that she arrived wherever she was going with every hair in place. Tonight she left the air off and the window open, allowing the wind to do its worst. They covered the twenty miles from the restaurant to home in silence.

  Tracy was watching television in the den. She turned down the volume and peered into the hall. “You’re home early.”

  Quentin, already halfway up the stairs, didn’t answer.

  “Your father isn’t feeling well,” her mother replied. “Go back to what you were doing, honey. We’ll be all right.” She followed her husband into their bedroom and closed the door.

  Quentin rinsed his wounds in the bathroom sink, pulled a towel from the rack and dried his hands, leaving rusty stains on the pale beige terry cloth.

  Amanda grimaced. Turning away, she dropped her purse on the bed and sat down in front of the vanity. Staring at her reflection, she carefully removed her jewelry: the pearls she’d inherited from her mother-in-law, the bracelet she’d purchased in Annapolis, the earrings she’d picked out for her birthday that Quentin paid for. Removing her wedding ring, she reached for her lotion and began smoothing it over her palms and the dry skin on the backs of her hands.

  Quentin came out of the bathroom, naked except for his shorts. Amanda studied his reflection in the mirror. He was forty-nine years old, a hair under six feet tall, fit and unlined. Except for his steel-colored hair, he looked ten years younger. She hadn’t aged nearly as well, another of life’s inequities.

  She watched while he pulled a fresh shirt and slacks from his closet and began dressing.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Out.”

  “Again?”

  He remained silent.

  “Answer me, Quentin.” His wife’s voice was cold. “You’re going to her, aren’t you?”

  Again, no answer.

  Amanda left her vanity to stand in front of him. She grabbed his arm. “I won’t have this, Quentin. I refuse to be humiliated this way any longer.”

  His lip curled. He pulled away and mimicked her. “‘I won’t have this, Quentin.’ Who are you to tell me what to do?”

  “I’m your wife, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “How unfortunate for you.” He buttoned his shirt, stepped into his slacks and zipped them.

  “I’ll divorce you. You’ll be ruined.”

  Removing clean socks from his drawer, he pulled them on and stepped into his shoes. “You don’t have the guts.”

  Amanda’s hands clenched. “Why are you doing this? She’s a prostitute. There isn’t a drunk or bum with an extra twenty dollars who hasn’t had her. For God’s sake, you’re a superior court judge. If you’re caught with her, you’re finished. Think of your family, your position. If it was anyone else, anyone but Lizzie Jones, I’d look the other way.” Her hands twisted. “In front of the Delacourtes, too. How could you?”

  It would be so easy to kill her. He would have, too, if he was someone else, or if there was any chance at all that he wouldn’t get caught. He waited, counting the long seconds until the bloodlust had left him. “Shut up,” he managed to say at last. “You can’t hold a candle to her. She’s a real woman, a desirable woman.” He gripped her shoulders and turned her toward the mirror. “This is you, Amanda. That miserable, dried-up excuse for a woman with the pinched lips is you. Don’t throw the Delacourtes in my face and, while you’re at it, take a good look at Nola Ruth, her clothes, her face, her body. Listen to her talk. Watch her move. Then compare yourself. You won’t have to ask why I go to Lizzie.”

  Amanda’s lips were pale as chalk. Her eyes were very bright. “Mark my words, Quentin. You’re going to hell, and sooner, not later.”

  He dropped his arms and laughed cruelly. “My, my, Amanda. If I thought you were actually threatening me, I might have a little respect for you.”

  She stepped away from him. “Take it any way you like. You and your fancy woman will pay, and that’s a fact.”

  Three

  In the purple night of the swampland, the moon was white as bleached bone and the stars so brilliant and numerous they blanketed the sky like a spangled mantle. Still, it was dark, too dark to be driving alone on the dirt road bisecting the wetlands. Quentin Wentworth wasn’t concerned about safety or darkness. He knew the twists and turns of the path as well as he knew the lines of Lizzie’s body. He’d become intimately familiar with both over the past eight years and even though neither was in his own best interests, he had no intention of abandoning Lizzie or the road that led him to her.

  He knew exactly when and where his obsession began. Cybil’s Diner was a trucker’s pit stop, a dive, not up to his usual style. He no longer remembered why he’d allowed himself to be talked into a card game in the back room. He did remember that he’d lost nearly every hand. He’d never been a gambler. Deciding to cut his losses and quit while he was still sober enough to drive home, he’d stumbled out of the small room into the smoky dimness of the bar. A jazz band played on the makeshift stage. They were good enough for Quentin to cross his arms and lean against the wall, waiting until the song ended. Gradually, his eyes adjusted to the light and he could pick out the couples on the floor.

  He told himself he wasn’t looking to start anything, but the woman caught his eye immediately. She was young, early twenties at most, and her body moved with the lissome grace of a professional dancer. Her hair was long and straight and very dark. He couldn’t see her features in the dim light of the room, but he watched two men cut in to partner her within the same score. His brain had barely registered its intent before he found himself crossing the room, stepping into the squeeze of dancers. He reached for her arm and looked down into her face. She was lovely, ivory-skinned with black eyes and sharp features, clearly of mixed race, mostly white with a hint of Indian or dark blood. Her lips were painted a deep, vivid red. She looked back at him, steadily, without a hint of coyness, knowing exactly what it was he wanted.

  The hammering began in his left temple. Heat speared through his chest and down into his groin
. The music began again. He pulled her into his arms. “Who are you?” he asked through her curtain of hair.

  She looked at him through lashes thick as feathers. “Don’t you recognize me, Judge Wentworth?”

  He had to think to breathe. “No.”

  “I’m Benteen Jones’s daughter, Lizzie.”

  “Lizzie.” He tested the name on his tongue. “Lizzie.” She smelled like the star jasmine bushes his mother had planted around the porch when he was a boy.

  He held her closely, pressing against the blade of her hips, the lines of her legs, the lush roundness of her young breasts. Moving her hair aside he kissed the flesh below her ear and moved down to the spot where her neck and shoulder met. He felt the intake of her breath, the slight stiffening of her back. He turned her head to find her mouth but she resisted.

  “For you, I’m expensive,” she whispered.

  He ran his hand down her body, cupping her buttocks. He was rock hard. “How much?”

  “Two hundred.”

  It could have been two thousand and he would have paid. “Where?”

  “This way,” she said, keeping hold of his hand. She led him out the door, away from the light to the back of the lot where a dented Ford station wagon sat parked under the trees.

  It was the first and only time he paid for the pleasure of Lizzie’s body.

  That was eight years ago. If he’d been a betting man, he would have laid odds their affair wouldn’t last six months. They were polar opposites. He was a superior court judge, well educated, well traveled, highly respected, with family money behind him. She’d barely graduated from high school, never ventured more than fifty miles from Marshy Hope Creek and, by the time she was fourteen years old, she was turning tricks to keep Benteen Jones in liquor and tobacco. And yet, he kept coming back.

  To describe a woman like Lizzie by laying out only the facts would be the same as describing Gone With the Wind after reading the book jacket. Quentin had never known anyone like her. She laughed easily and often, and she made him laugh, as well. Her compassion was equal to her irreverence, and her lack of inhibition, unusual in a woman, turned him inside out. Her sense of humor showed itself in a thousand different ways and after he’d been with her he felt renewed. He felt young.