She looked at her watch. “I’ll give you three minutes to think. After that, I’m going back inside and we’ll forget we ever had this conversation.”
The beat of the music inside the diner matched the ticking of the second hand on her watch and the thumping of her heart. One minute passed, then two. She’d pushed him too far, but she wasn’t sorry.
Bailey cleared his throat. “How about this? How about if we start talking again, just friends, and see where it goes.”
She looked at him, a steady look out of slanted blue eyes. “That might work.”
“Can I drive you home?”
“How do you know I’m ready to go home?”
He laughed. “That wasn’t hard to figure out. The look on your face when you saw Skylar Taft was plain enough for anyone with half a brain to figure out.”
“I shouldn’t leave Tess.”
“Why not? She’s a big girl. If she wants to hang out with Skylar and company, that’s her problem. Why inflict it on you?”
Since that had been her exact train of thought, Chloe couldn’t take him to task for insulting her stepsister. “I’ll go back and tell her I’m leaving.”
“Who are you gonna say you’re leaving with?” The headlights of a departing car caught her in their glare. There was no mistaking the set of her jaw and the sudden involuntary clenching of her fists. Chloe Richards was a fighter.
“Claiming you were my friend was never my problem, Bailey. I don’t need approval, not from anyone, but especially not from that group inside.”
He watched the door of the diner close behind her. “Go for it, Chloe,” he said out loud.
“Where have you been?” asked Tess. “I looked for you. I was ready to call your house.”
“I wasn’t worried,” said Skylar. “It’s not the first time Chloe has disappeared from a party. She’s got a mind of her own.”
“I’m going home with Bailey.”
Casey Dulaine’s mouth dropped. “As in his home or yours?”
Chloe ignored Tess’s shocked expression. “Not that it’s anybody’s business, but we’re going back to my granddad’s.” She glanced at each one of them, Skylar, Buzz, Scott, Casey, Joni Marcoux and, finally, Tess. “We have some catching up to do and this isn’t the place.” She threw twenty dollars down on the table. “Enjoy the shrimp.”
Tess caught up with her before she reached the door. “Are you crazy?” she hissed. “What’s going on?”
“I told you. Bailey and I have some catching up to do. He’s taking me home.”
“Just like that?” Tess demanded. “Do you have any idea what this looks like?”
Chloe’s eyes narrowed. “Why the third degree? You’re not my mother.”
“You’ll be the topic of conversation for the rest of the night.”
“I don’t care.” Chloe sighed. “Tess, this isn’t high school. I never have to see any one of those people again if I don’t want to.”
Two red spots appeared on Tess’s cheeks. “What about me? How can you be so selfish?”
“Excuse me?”
“Think about the position you’re putting me in. I either have to talk about you or defend you. If I go along with them, I’ll feel guilty and if I tell them where to get off, I won’t have a friend left around here.”
Chloe laughed. “Poor Tess. I give you permission to tell them I’m a slut. I won’t hold it against you. Will that make it easier?”
“Why is everything a joke with you?”
“Why are those people so important to you?” Chloe countered. “You’re living in NewYork. You want to be a lawyer. Who cares what they think?”
“All right, Chloe.” Tess’s voice was cold. “Have it your way.”
Chloe watched her walk away. Shrugging, she stepped out into the sultry night air and headed toward the red glow that was the tip of Bailey’s cigarette.
“All set?” he asked.
She nodded and held out her hand for his keys. “Let’s go. I’m driving.”
He handed them to her without protest and slid into the seat beside her. Above their heads, a panel in the roof opened automatically. “So, you faced down the dragons.”
Chloe looked up and saw stars. “I did.”
“Any casualties?”
“None that I know of.”
“Where shall we go?” he asked.
She backed out of the parking lot. “Home. Serena made peach cobbler. We can fill our stomachs and talk on the porch.”
“I have a better idea. Come to my house.”
She kept her eyes on the road. “Do you have a house?”
“In a manner of speaking. I’m renting the Busby house while they’re up north visiting their daughter.”
“I didn’t know you were friends.”
He grinned. “I made them an offer they couldn’t refuse.”
Chloe shook her head. “We’re going to my house. Next time, maybe, we’ll do yours.”
“Don’t you trust me, Chloe?”
“I’m surprised you trust me,” she countered. “According to you, I’m the one hanging around you like a fly on a honeycomb.”
This time he laughed, a low rich chuckle that made her glad she was sitting down. “Okay, sweetheart, we’ll go to your house. I only hope everybody’s asleep. If not, you’ll be facing down a few more dragons tonight.”
“Maybe.” She leaned back against the headrest and smiled into the wind. “But this time I won’t face them alone.”
Libba Jane was digging through her purse for her keys when Chloe walked into the kitchen with Bailey. Her eyes widened with that strained look Chloe had memorized from the more difficult moments in her life.
“Why, Bailey, how lovely to see you again,” her mother lied.
“Thank you, Miz Hennessey.”
Chloe’s mouth twitched. No matter what the circumstance, her mother always defaulted to the Beauchamp manners. “We came home for cobbler and ice cream.”
“Granddad said you’d gone out with Tess.”
“I did, but I met Bailey and we decided to come home.”
“You didn’t leave Tess?”
“Actually, I did, but she wasn’t alone.”
“Who—”
Chloe lifted her hand to end the conversation. “Trust me, Mom. It’s better this way.” She looked pointedly at the keys in Libba’s hand. “Were you leaving?”
“Yes. I stopped by to have a word with Granddad.”
“Keeping late hours at work, Miz Hennessey?” Bailey drawled.
“No. I came from home. Everyone was asleep and I was restless.”
Chloe frowned. Her mother was babbling. “Well, like I said, don’t let us keep you.”
“Oh. Right. I’ll say good night. Don’t stay up too late.”
“We’ll be fine. Stop worrying.”
“You’re right. Bye, Bailey. I’ll see you tomorrow, Chloe.”
“Good night, Miz Hennessey.”
Minutes later, they heard the sound of a car pulling away.
Bailey chuckled. “In the future, remind me that you’re a match for any dragon, Chloe Richards.”
She reached for two bowls in the cupboard. “That’s my mother you’re talking about.”
“Now that I think about it, you’re a lot like your grandma, Nola Ruth. Your mama’s a pussycat compared to the two of you.”
Heaping two bowls full of cobbler, she set them in the microwave and pushed the power button. “How well did you know my grandmother?”
He sat down at the table. “I knew her by reputation only.”
Chloe scooped vanilla ice cream from the carton onto the warmed dessert and handed Bailey his. “I wish I’d known her before her stroke.”
Bailey dug into his cobbler. “This is great.”
“She was hard on me when I first came here,” Chloe continued, “but that didn’t last long.”
“She had quite a temper.”
“I heard that, too.”
“Heard it. Hell, I saw
it. It isn’t something I’d forget. I must have been about seven, walking home from town. She comes speeding down the road in that big car of hers when suddenly she pulls over and the passenger door opens. Out steps this tall, well-dressed black guy. Miz Delacourte gets out on her side and starts shouting, moves in real close to him and pokes his chest. Then he gets mad right back and grabs her wrist. She yells and he lets her go, turns around and walks right past me as if I don’t exist. Then she gets back in the car and drives away.”
Chloe stared at him, her cobbler forgotten. “You’re kidding.”
“No. I’m not. That’s the way it was.”
“I wonder what it means.”
Bailey was making a serious dent in his dessert.
“Did you notice anything unusual about him?”
“The whole situation was unusual.” He thought a minute. “The guy wasn’t from around here. His accent was different.”
“I can’t imagine why my grandmother would be arguing with a black man, unless he was Verna Lee’s father.”
“That’s a leap.”
“No, it isn’t. Think about it. My grandmother was Verna Lee’s mother. Verna Lee is black. It all fits. He came to town looking for his daughter. Maybe my grandmother didn’t want anyone to know. The whole thing came out only four years ago. Maybe the body found on your land is the same man you saw with my grandmother.”
“That’s a long shot, Chloe. I don’t think Nola Ruth was the murdering kind. She wasn’t big enough for one thing. You aren’t trying to say that your granddad did it for her, are you? Because if you are, I’d consider you a candidate for the loony bin.”
“No. I didn’t really know my grandmother very well, but there’s no way Granddad would kill anyone.”
“No way.”
She leaned forward, the bright hair falling over her cheeks. “Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”
“About what?”
“About the body on your land?”
Bailey didn’t answer for a long minute. When he did, his words sent a warning shiver down Chloe’s spine.
“No good comes from dredging up secrets of the past.”
Seventeen
The blaring of the alarm jarred Verna Lee from a sound sleep. Bleary-eyed, she rolled over and glanced at the clock. It couldn’t be five already. She felt as if she’d been unconscious no more than ten minutes. Pulling the covers over her shoulders, she turned, reaching out to tuck the pillow under her cheek when the palm of her hand hit the hard plane of a man’s chest, taut muscle, wiry hair, a ladder of rib bones and heat, heat beneath her hand, leaping to her chest, flowing through her body, penetrating deep into the center of her belly.
Instantly, she was awake. Blue eyes looked down at her, moving over her face. A hand cupped her breast. She closed her eyes. Did she want this? Good Lord, what a question. She smiled. Yes, she wanted it, never more than now, at this moment, with this man.
What was so satisfying about rough hands on her skin, warm lips on the slide of her throat, the slope of her breast, about the long, delicious wait for her mind to relax, readying her body to open and stretch and welcome the sharing of an act of intimacy so tender, so complete, so primal, so familiar and instinctive that, since the dawn of man, it remained unchanged?
Later, much later, the smell of rich chicory floated down the hall. Through the fog clouding her brain, it registered that someone was making coffee. Footsteps sounded on the floor. She felt the sudden depression of the mattress. The coffee smell was stronger. A half smile lifted the corners of her mouth.
Wade’s breath tickled her ear. “Good morning, Sleeping Beauty.”
She opened her eyes. “Are you talking to me?”
“I am. In two minutes you’ll have some home-brewed New Orleans coffee, the twenty-dollar-a-pound variety.”
“It sure smells good. To what do I owe this unusual honor?”
“You said to wake you at seven, but I was hoping you’d reconsider.”
She smiled her sensational smile. “What did you have in mind?”
He traced her spine with his finger. “Sleeping late. Breakfast in bed. Another round similar to the one we had earlier.”
She sat up, clutching the sheet to her breasts, her curls wild around her face. “You’re certainly tempting, but I have a business to run and you have a murder to solve.”
He leaned over, his breath toothpaste clean, and kissed her mouth. “I’m disappointed, but there’s always tonight.”
A tiny vee appeared between Verna Lee’s eyebrows. “This was fun, Wade, but it was strictly impulse for both of us. We’re not a thing. We don’t know each other.”
“You’re one straightforward woman, Verna Lee. Those are supposed to be my lines.”
She shrugged one honey-gold shoulder. “I didn’t think you’d say them.”
“Or maybe you wanted to say them first.”
She flushed. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s because I’m a realist. This isn’t Baltimore. There are people who would object to our seeing each other.”
“You can’t live your life that way.”
“It’s worked so far.”
“I like you, Verna Lee. I’ve always liked you. You’re different.”
“You like things that are different.”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“Yes,” she said. “I think there is. It would be all right if you liked something that happened to be different. But it isn’t all right if you chase after what’s different just because it is.”
Wade Atkins had learned a few things in his forty-five years, and one of them was patience. He looked at her, a half smile playing on his lips. “Are you willing to share my shower, or do you want to go first?”
She liked Wade Atkins. She liked him more than she thought she would. But Verna Lee had experienced enough of life to know that it was the differences between people that drove them apart. And Wade and she were different, an understatement if she’d ever heard one. She swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I’ll go first.”
Two hours later she was mixing up her homemade chicken salad with fresh sprigs of rosemary, a herb that grew wild in the marshy wetlands outside of town. Humming to herself, she added to her roasted chicken equal parts regular and low-fat mayonnaise, a culinary secret that would brand her a heretic here in Marshy Hope Creek.
“Anybody here?” a voice sang out.
“I’ll be with you in a minute, Libba Jane,” she called from the back of the café. “Help yourself to coffee, or anything else you want.”
“I want chocolate milk,” Gina said, looking hopefully at her mother.
“I don’t have any chocolate milk, baby,” Verna Lee called out. “Chocolate inhibits the absorption of calcium. If you want chocolate, just have it.”
Libba frowned. She’d grown to appreciate Verna Lee, but sometimes her preoccupation with all things healthy rankled. “I guess everything doesn’t have to be good for you.”
“Like I said, if you want chocolate, have a Hershey’s Kiss. There’s a jar by the register.”
“Can I have milk?” asked Gina.
“I’ll get it,” Libba said hastily. She poured a glass of milk, set it on the counter, found two silver, foil-wrapped Hershey’s Kisses and settled the little girl into a chair. “Here,” she said, handing her the chocolate and pushing the milk, complete with straw, toward her. “Will you sit here quietly while I talk to Aunt Verna Lee?”
Gina nodded and began the arduous task of pulling the foil from the candy.
Verna Lee laughed. “I thought you were opposed to sugar?”
“I’ve adjusted,” replied Libba. She walked to the back of the café and leaned over the counter. “Can I help you with anything?”
“I’m nearly finished. Why don’t you pour us some iced tea. I tried a new recipe. It’s been slow this morning. Maybe it’s too hot for coffee. I sure hope it picks up by lunch.”
Libba returned with two glasses of clear, green-tinted
liquid. Positioning herself on a tall stool, she sipped tentatively. Immediately, her forehead cleared. “This is delicious. It’s sweet and yet tart at the same time. What did you put in it?”
“Lemongrass and dissolved sugar water.” Verna Lee’s golden eyes rested on her sister’s face and narrowed skeptically. “What’s going on, Libba Jane? Don’t tell me nothing, because I can see it. You always were an open book.”
Libba flushed. “Is that so terrible?”
“Not at all.” She leaned forward. “Now, what gives?”
Libba Jane considered her options and decided on the truth. “Did you ever consider looking for your father?”
Verna Lee stared at her. “What makes you think I didn’t?”
“Did you?”
“I considered it.”
“And?”
Verna Lee sighed. “I decided against it.”
“Why?”
“You’re certainly full of questions today. Do you mind telling me why this subject suddenly interests you?”
Libba turned her glass around and around on the counter, leaving conjoined circles on the gleaming wood. “Wade mentioned something to my daddy the other night that shook him pretty badly.”
Verna Lee said nothing.
“He told me that a man named Anton Devereaux was arrested for speeding fifteen years ago.” She swallowed. “Apparently, Mama bailed him out of jail.”
“Wade told me the same thing,” Verna Lee admitted. “But why should that concern your daddy after all this time?”
“Anton Devereaux is your father, Verna Lee.”
“I’ve never heard from my father, Libba Jane. I never even knew who he was. Neither of my parents wanted me in their lives, and you still haven’t answered my question. Why should something our mother did fifteen years ago bother Cole Delacourte now?”
“Daddy thinks it may have something to do with the body found on Bailey’s land.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Libba bit her lip and looked back at her daughter. “Are you okay over there, Gina Marie?” She was blowing milk bubbles with her straw. “Do you want to come here and sit with Mommy?”
Gina shook her head. Reluctantly, Libba turned back to matters at hand. “I know it sounds silly, but—” She frowned. “Do you think Daddy’s mind could be going just a little bit? He’s getting older.”
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