by Nancy Gideon
She touched his cheek. The muscle beneath its sandpapery burr was locked down tight. He stared at her, into her, through her, his eyes fever and fire bright. But he didn't flinch until she spoke.
"Zach, trust me."
He swallowed once, as if pushing down a bowling ball, then again with a convulsive jerk. His stare delved into hers, searching fiercely through the tender mists for some reason to doubt, for some cause for concern. Nervous when he didn't find one.
Knowing that wild things like Zach Crandall grew dangerous when forced into a corner, Bess refused to back down to let him slip safely away. She kept him pinned with his back to the wall, holding him there with the most tenuous of bonds—belief. A belief she'd had in him once, only to have pulled it cruelly away. Was she asking too much to expect trust from him again?
He was maddening in his unwillingness to answer. Perhaps he genuinely didn't know how to. He responded, finally, but not in the expected manner.
His hand clamped on the back of her neck, hauling her up to him with breath-stopping force, to kiss her with mind-stunning fervor. He kissed her hard, trying to prove to her, or to himself, that he wasn't a nice guy deserving of her faith. Gentling the aggressive slant into an endlessly thorough seeking to suggest that perhaps he could be. That he wanted to be. And that was enough for Bess.
She slid off his mouth, standing, taking his hand in hers to lift and lead him to the stairs. He followed her wordlessly to the oppressive heat of the upper story where only a clattery old fan pushed at the heavy air. They paused at the side of her bed to undress, efficiently, without hurry, without concern. And after laying her down, Zach took a moment to provide belated protection. Then he took her slowly, satisfyingly to the edge of sanity and beyond, where she reveled in his hoarse cry of her name and in the explosive pleasure that followed.
She sighed with the gusty relief of a woman totally contented as he nuzzled her heat-glazed breasts and throat, working his way up to her smiling lips. He lingered there for a long, leisurely while before propping himself on his elbows to stare solemnly into her dreamy face.
An arrogant glint of masculine accomplishment gleamed in his eyes, a knowing that he'd rung her bells in a bold rendition of the Hallelujah Chorus. Passion, pride, possession blazed unashamed in that scalding gaze. But it couldn't quite eliminate the veil of caution filtering all the rest from her view. He still held himself back from one hundred percent commitment.
It wounded but she couldn't blame him. Especially since she knew he was right to reserve his unconditional trust.
She averted her head to stare out the window, the world losing its focus behind a sheen of tears.
"Zach, there's something I haven't told you."
She felt his body tense in slow degrees like wet rawhide tightening in the sun. "Oh?"
She released him, letting her arms trail limp and empty to the sides of her mattress. It wouldn't be fair to cling to him now, not as she watched his defenses gather behind a shuttered stare. It took a remarkably short time for the protective barriers to close her out completely.
He eased back off her, movements slow with reluctant caution. Then he turned away from her to collect his clothes, presenting her with a view of taut shoulders as he asked with detached calm, "What haven't you told me?"
She should have come clean with it immediately. Revealing things now smacked of secrets and mistrust. Wedges they didn't need between them.
"I told you what Doc Meirs said about the distinct shape of the murder weapon," she began.
He stopped in the middle of sliding on his T-shirt, then pulled it the rest of the way down. He was plainly puzzled and confused. "The pyramid. Yeah?"
"I think I know what it is." She let that spill out in a rush then took advantage of his silence to sit up and snatch at the sheets to cover herself.
But he didn't look at her. Instead, he asked with a professional remoteness, "So, when did you figure it out?"
"Just this morning, at the bookstore." She paused, waiting to see if he believed her, that she hadn't been withholding the information all along.
"And?" he prompted tonelessly.
She took a stabilizing breath. "And I think my mother killed him."
Zach wrenched about, his brow crowded with furrows, his stare piercing in its intensity. "What did you say?"
"I think my mother killed your father. I think she hit him with the pendulum weight from our clock in the store."
Zach blinked and shook his head incredulously. "Wait a minute, your mom killed him?"
Bess hurried on with her tortured confession. "I think she went to your house that night and I think she struck him down. And I think she did it because she thought he was you."
He just stared at her so she blundered on with her conclusions.
"She knew, Zach. She knew you and I had been together. Sh-she told me she'd see you dead before she'd let me be with you again. I—I didn't think she'd actually—" She couldn't finish, her words muffled behind the shield of her hands, as the guilt, the culpability washed through her. She expected Zach's anger, his accusations, but not his cool logic.
"I can imagine her going after me with a gun or maybe turning me into Sheriff Baines, but why would she pick such a—strange weapon to carry halfway across town to take me out in my own house?"
Bess jerked her hands down in dismay. "How can you be so analytical? I just told you my mother is a murderer! My mother. My mother." The shock of it just kept getting bigger until her teeth were rattling together with it in the clammy August heat. Then a deeper fear racked her. "I—I didn't know. Zach, I swear to you I didn't know anything about it. I just found out this morning. I didn't—"
The rest was drowned out as he pulled her into a loose hug. "Oh, baby, I never thought for a second that you did. You're the one person in this world whose honesty I trust."
And that assurance burned more deeply than any condemnation.
Because she wasn't being honest with him. And the longer her secret went unspoken, the greater the consequences should it be discovered. The greater the risk of him never forgiving her.
"What now?"
Her tiny voice sparked a huge protectiveness in Zach. He stroked her hair and continued to mash her against him.
"Now I start putting the pieces together." When she trembled fitfully, he kissed the top of her head and murmured, "Baby, we don't know anything for sure. We don't have the weight. We can't place your mom at my house. I've still got a whole slew of questions that are a long way from finding answers. But I promise you one thing, Bess. I won't do anything with what I find out until we talk about it together. Okay? Okay?"
She nodded slightly, and he cursed under his breath, wishing he could offer more assurances. Feeling he had to.
"No matter what turns up, it's not going to change how I feel about you. You hear me, Bess? It won't change anything."
She remained stiff within his embrace.
He glanced at her bedside clock, then dragged his gaze away from the rumpled sheets, swallowing down a killing wish for the right to snuggle back into them with Bess, to coddle her all night until her fears were put to rest. But he couldn't. He had work to do. Faith would be back soon. His own family was waiting for him. The combination of things conspired to wrest him from where he wanted to be.
"Bess, I've got to go. I wish I didn't have to."
Her head nodded, accepting the practicality of their situation more readily than he ever could. "I know. It's all right."
His palms met the velvety bare skin of her back where the sheet parted behind her. They made small circles, lost in the feel of her. Finally, when he didn't make the first move, she sniffed and leaned away.
"I'll be fine, Zach. Don't worry about me."
Don't worry. His gut did a triple-gainer somersault. How could he not worry leaving her shivery and pale, looking as dangerously frail as blown glass caught in a tornado. The last thing he wanted her to think was that his plan had been to bed her and run. It wasn't
. Running from Bess Carrey wasn't an option. But since she valued the town's opinion of her, so should he; a town more 1890s than 1990s in its liberal thinking. That meant no compromising visits, even if it meant compromising his desire to be near her.
"I got my father's cab ledger," he told her, just to talk and ease the ache of separating from her. "Maybe it'll tell us something." He didn't mention the stolen bank records. He didn't know why, for certain, but it had to do with a deep-down need to keep her in the dark where trouble might be lurking. Lloyd Baines was trouble.
"And I've got the kitchen to finish." She managed a wobbly smile that fractured his honorable intentions. His words rumbled.
"I'd give anything to tumble you back into those covers for the next week or two, but since I can't, I'd better get the hell outta here." He kissed her hard and fast, pleased to see some of the resilience return to her gaze. That made it possible, but still not easy, to walk out of her room.
When she heard the door shut behind him in the kitchen below, Bess balled herself up in the still-warm sheets, mind numb with dread.
Her mother, a murderess. Cold-blooded in her manipulations as she preached virtue and practiced the most heinous of mortal sins. How could she? How could she live with what she'd done, go on as if nothing had happened, as if a man weren't lying dead by her hand and an innocent woman imprisoned for her crime? How could Bess not have seen the madness behind her mother's puritanical pride? How could she be so naive as to blindly follow the same rigid rules as a woman who killed to save her name from disgrace? What did that make her? What would that make her when the good people of Sweetheart discovered the truth?
Where would that leave her if Zach uncovered the rest?
Slowly, the guilt ebbed away, leaving a flat, glaring fury. Mother, how could you do this to me, your own daughter? How could you try to kill the man I love just to keep me under your control? How could you pretend you acted for my good when it was your vanity behind it all?
You hypocrite!
Wiping her eyes, she rolled off the bed, showered and dressed once more in her shabbiest attire. Then she went down to the kitchen to beat up a batch of fresh paste. And began to apply the patterned paper to her mother's bare walls with a vengeance.
* * *
"Zach?"
Tucking his father's ledger behind him, Zach stepped into the living room where his mother occupied her favorite rocker. A book was open across her knees, something he never would have seen years ago. His dad wouldn't have allowed her the luxury of idle time.
"Hi, Mom. How you feeling?"
She wasted no time. "Have you thought about what I said to you?"
"Yes," he told her, his candor gruff and to the point. "But nothing's changed."
That wasn't quite true. Everything had changed since he left the Carreys'. A whole new set of consequences just dropped onto his shoulders. He didn't know how much more he could support before collapsing under the burden.
"Then I guess I'll answer your questions."
He stared at her in surprise, then approached with strange reluctance. Opening up the past was like taking a trip to hell and back, it wasn't pleasant or without tremendous cost. His mother looked so suddenly frail and old. He hesitated.
"Are you sure you're up to it?"
"Let's get it over with, Zach, so we can finally bury it between us."
He nodded, feelings of regret and remorse plaguing him already. He couldn't sit down but instead went to stand at the fireplace. It hadn't worked for as long as he remembered, its bricks loose and chimney soot filled. Like the foundations of his family, it needed a good sweeping and some basic repairs to become functional again.
"What can I tell you that you don't already know?"
"I got copies of our old bank records. Someone went through a lot of trouble to steal them before I got the chance to look at them. Why? What was someone afraid I'd see in a bunch of old deposits?"
She didn't hesitate. "Inconsistencies."
He turned, frowning at her in his bewilderment. "What do you mean?"
"Your father worked for Charlie, driving his cab, working on cars for seven years. He made a decent wage, not an extravagant one. So how did a man with a modest job deposit two thousand dollars in our bank account every six months?"
"Not from tips," Zach murmured as his mind spun with possibilities. "Did you ask him about it?"
"He was furious that I found out. I thought he was afraid I'd ask for an accounting or for a fair share. I didn't get either. And I never asked about it a second time."
Zach's jaw tightened. He needed no explanation. "What did he do with the money?"
"Gambled, drank, spent it on cocktail waitresses mostly." No resentment sparked in her voice, just an age-old weariness.
"How did he get the money? Cash? Check?" A paper trail had to start someplace.
"It just turned up in the account. Sam didn't put it in. He would never have let that kind of money sit in a bank. If he had it in his hands, he'd have spent it right then."
"While you worked two jobs to put food on the table. The son of a bitch."
Mary made no comment. She'd long since given up justifying or apologizing for the brute she married.
So close. He was so close to solving everything. Frustration left a bitter taste. If only he had those bank records… Asking again would create all kinds of questions he preferred not to provoke.
"Mom, did you save our old passbooks?"
"Sam took care of all the finances. They'd be with his things. Melody put them in the attic. If he kept them, they'd be there."
For the rest of the evening hours, he sat in the dusty crawl space opening boxes of memories as raw as unhealed wounds. Touching his father's belongings made his skin crawl with the associations they carried with them. He pushed impatiently through stacks of gambling hunches scribbled out on bar napkins, phone numbers for women named Fanny, Jewel and Starr. His head ached from breathing the stale air in harsh snatches, from the pressure of grinding his teeth in helpless hatred. He stared hard at a collection of photographs: his parents when they were first married standing in front of their new home, his dad all smirky grins, looking so much the way he did now it made his gut hurt; his mom happy, pretty and so alive. He'd never seen her look like that since. He tossed them aside. Family bills. He shone the flashlight down as he flipped through them. Medical receipts and past due notices. For his shoulder, his ribs, his fingers, symbols of what had broken inside him long ago that couldn't be set or mended by time.
He drew in a shaky inhalation and forced himself to concentrate.
Utility payments. Closer.
Mortgage statements. Closer still.
Insurance policies and claim forms for cars wrecked in drunken tangles with posts, poles and abutments.
Bank statements.
He jerked the stack out onto his lap with a fierce elation. If Sam Crandall came into unexplained wealth, he was either doing something illegal or had caught someone else in the act and was cashing in on it.
"Let's see what you were hiding…"
* * *
Chapter 18
« ^ »
The bank records read like a blueprint for blackmail. Only who and why were missing; the important details making the rest absolutely useless.
He'd meant to go through the cab log but, mentally and emotionally exhausted, he put it aside for morning. He slept in his clothes, the papers and book tucked beneath his mattress. Shifting nightmares chased away the benefits of rest; the maniacal figure of Joan Carrey stalking him with murderous intent, Bess's accusations ringing a death knell on all his dreams: How could you? She was my mother! How could you ruin my family's name just to save your own? Then the stalking figure metamorphosed from mother to daughter.
He woke in a drenching sweat. Head pounding, thoughts gritty, he stood in a mercilessly cold shower, trying to exorcize the demons that danced behind his closed eyes. His nightmare was just a harbinger of things to come.
He had to consider what it would do to Bess to have her mother exposed as a murderer. Bess, to whom propriety, opinion and past history meant everything. Do what you feel is right, she'd told him. Right for whom? Not for her, not once the gossipmongers got their teeth in the scandal. Not for his mother, who stood to suffer more from the baring of old scars than she would gain from any revelation of a new truth. Not for the town who preferred its skeletons remain buried and its injustices amended with a friendly inclusion but no apology.
He shut off the water and leaned into palms braced against wet tiles.
Who would benefit from the rectification of a two-decade-old crime?
His father was dead. A tragedy to none, himself included. His mother had already done the time, a sacrifice she accepted to cleanse her soul of blame. The community favor was gradually turning toward him. And there was Bess, sweet, blameless Bess who would bear the brunt of it all as a victim to her mother's last cruel bid for control. No one wanted the truth to be told. No one cared who killed Sam Crandall. Not even the man's own family.
So why not leave it alone? Why not let it go?
Dampness fell from his wet hair, from his hunched shoulders, from his tightly closed eyes. Cold chills claimed his nervous system, raffling through him on a rapidly spreading rash of gooseflesh.
Who was he trying to punish with his quest for the truth? A town for turning its back on the misfortunes of his family? His mother for not rescuing them from a life of abuse? Bess for not believing in him enough to take a risk on his love?
Or himself, for running away all those years ago, leaving others to deal with what he was afraid to face? His father. His failure. His fear of Bess's rejection.
What would change if Joan Carrey was named a killer?
He climbed out of the shower, shaken beyond the capacity for clear thought. Even a vigorous toweling couldn't restore warmth.
Carrying his father's logbook and the bank statements, he walked to Sophie's for some of her paint-stripping coffee. There was no confident strut in his step, no sassy grin for those who bid him good morning. He slipped into a back booth, wishing for solitude, wishing for an answer.