by Lee Magner
“Franklin, how do you remember all those little details about so many people?” she asked, amazed at the amount of time he obviously had to invest simply to run for election with any hope of winning.
“I like to be on top of things,” he said, amused that she’d ask. “I like to know who everyone is and what their personal problems and resources are. I want to know what makes them tick and where their weaknesses are. I want to control the world, instead of being controlled by it. It’s easy to remember things that are important to you.”
He blushed, realizing he’d been more serious and frank than he normally was.
“You’ve disarmed me, little Clare,” he teased.
“Oh, I doubt that, Franklin,” Clare rejoined with a laugh. “You always did have the armament of an armadillo.”
He glanced at her in surprise and something haunted the depths of his eyes.
“Not always,” he murmured.
Then, catching sight of his parents seated near the stage, he steered her in that direction.
“I have to pay my respects to the honorable mayor and his lovely wife, Honoria,” Franklin explained with deadpan sincerity.
Clare grinned. Apparently Franklin came by his “control” tendencies the old-fashioned way. He inherited them.
The mayor beamed at Clare. He was a robust man with ruddy cheeks and a waistline that had expanded just enough to make him look prosperous.
“And do you have everything well in hand, Mr. Mayor?” Franklin asked with a certain dry amusement.
“Indeed I do, my boy. I’ve alerted the appropriate authorities, and I’ve posted extra patrols. We’ll be safe in our beds as usual.”
“I’m sure,” Franklin murmured, a wicked grin forming.
Honoria leaned forward, not to be outmaneuvered in the conversation by her husband and son. She clasped Clare’s hand and smiled. Honoria’s smile had always reminded Clare of a snake about to strike, for some reason. She fought the urge to snatch her hand from Honoria’s grasp.
“Some of the ladies were going to try to prepare Walter and Anita for the news…”
Walter and Anita Clayton were the parents of Lexie Clayton, the girl Seamus was convicted of murdering.
Clare slapped her hand softly against her own cheek.
“They aren’t back from their trip to Anita’s niece’s wedding, are they?”
“No. They’re not.” Honoria looked to either side of her, as if someone who shouldn’t might overhear her comment. Clare couldn’t imagine why she’d bother. The subject was being discussed by virtually the entire community. Honoria intoned melodramatically, “This is going to be especially hard on them. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have suffered what they did.”
Honoria shook her head mournfully.
“And coming back from their niece’s wedding… You know she was almost the same age as Lexie?”
The sound of some brisk Western line dance music drowned out anything else Honoria had to say.
Not a moment too soon, from Clare’s point of view.
Franklin was engaged in glad-handing half a dozen men who ran small barbershops in and around the county.
Clare looked around and saw Paula Lightman not too far away. Paula was clinging to the arm of her fiance, and a few feet behind her was her brother, Peter. Clare motioned to Franklin that she was going to talk to Peter.
“Fine…” Franklin said with a pro forma flash of his teeth and a vague nod of acceptance. Then he turned back to the barbers.
Peter grinned at Clare and offered her his hand.
“Wanna dance?”
“Anything to get away from the conversations!” Clare said fervently.
“Uh-oh,” Peter said with a twinge of anxiety. “I guess I can’t ask you what’s going on, then, right?”
“Oh, you can ask, but I don’t have anything to add,” Clare said with a laugh.
They had joined the moving dancers and began going through the pattern of steps in tandem.
“Hey, Peter,” Clare said, “I thought you were dating someone.”
“Yeah. She lives on the other side of Jefferson.”
“Is she here tonight?”
“No. Uh, her daughter’s sick and she had to take her to the doctor and then get some antibiotics or something.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
Peter looked unhappy. “I’m not sorry. With everyone talking about Lexie’s murder, this isn’t a party I’d want her at.”
Clare saw a nervous tic appear in Peter’s right cheek, near his eye. Now what was bothering him? And why wouldn’t he want Lexie mentioned around his new lady friend?
“Mina—that’s the woman I’m seeing—she’s a widow. She has just the one daughter.”
“Oh. Um, have you known Mina long?” Clare said, trying to make conversation that wasn’t going to upset Peter.
She had always liked Peter. And she had felt great pity for the difficult situation he had been in a few years ago.
His parents had insisted that he follow their footsteps into the ministry, as they had followed their parents’. Peter had reluctantly agreed to attend a theological seminary run by his church. Unfortunately, Peter showed little aptitude for theological study or pastoral counseling, according to the ordained teachers running the school. They were aware that Peter did not feel called to the ministry. And that he could not bring himself to tell his parents that.
After receiving his degree, he finally had to explain to them that he was not going into the ministry, that he didn’t feel that was what he was supposed to do with his life. With the school agreeing with him, and offering to help him look for other types of work, his parents were forced to accept his change of plans.
“You know, Clare, if it hadn’t been for Lexie’s death… I, well, I might have become a minister.”
Clare’s head snapped back in surprise. “What? You never told me anything like that before!”
“I know. I never talked about… my calling. I felt called… but, you see, I’d been talking to Lexie the two months before her death—talking to her about… calming down. Well, you remember how she was…”
“Yes.” Clare remembered, all right.
“Well… I—”
“You what, Peter?” she probed gently.
“I got a little too involved with my counseling with her…and I prayed for God to forgive me and save Lexie…” His voice drifted off and he glanced out into the sea of people surrounding the dance floor. “It wasn’t long after that she was murdered.”
Clare squeezed his arm. The music tapered off into silence and people milled around a little on the dance floor. She pulled him gently to the side where they could talk even if the music started again.
“When I was a child I thought my father could walk on water,” Peter said. “I wanted to be like him…and I felt called to follow him for years when I was little. Maybe I was, or maybe I was just a child in awe of his father.”
The proud, awesome glow in his eyes brought a lump into Clare’s throat.
Peter frowned. “But we are all human, and I finally got old enough to see him more clearly, and about then, I began to doubt my ‘call.’ Lexie brought it back out of me. She was such a fiery, foolish young girl…”
Clare heard the anguish and warmth in his voice.
“Were you in love with her, Peter?” she whispered, aghast that she had never realized how deeply he felt about her.
He blushed and withdrew a little.
Then he glanced into the crowd and saw someone that made him become grim faced. Clare looked in the same direction. It was his parents.
He looked at Clare and deliberately shifted the subject away from him and his feelings.
“Were you infatuated with Case Malloy?” he countered.
“In awe of him,” she hedged.
Peter lifted one eyebrow dubiously. Then he laughed bitterly and would have begun to dance again, but Clare declined.
“I think I’ll see if Franklin’s ready
to eat,” she demurred. “After all, it is a picnic, and if I don’t eat here, I miss dinner.”
“Do you think Case will come back and try to talk to his father?” Peter blurted out as she turned to go.
“How would I know? I haven’t talked to him in years,” Clare said, crossing her fingers and hoping this wasn’t exactly lying.
“I thought he was close to you. And I just thought he might drop by to talk to you, if he came to town. If you see him, tell him… tell him I hope he’s okay.”
Clare nodded.
He stood there, a lonely figure in the midst of swirling dancers with fringe on their sleeves and cowboy boots on their feet.
Clare remembered how panicked his sister Paula had been about dredging up Lexie’s death. Now Peter seemed to be fraying around the edges at the same thing.
Was everyone overreacting? Clare wondered.
She wished she could leave the picnic and drive out to Luther’s place and see if Case had arrived.
She wanted to make sure he was safe and that the nervous citizens of Crawfordsville hadn’t tried to flatten his tires. Or worse.
Case passed through the outskirts of town when the moon had risen high overhead. The festivities down at Lake Iroquois had begun winding down, but the sounds of laughter could still be heard as he drove by the turnoff to the lake.
He remembered three picnics he had attended years ago. The flash of youthful smiles. The quicksilver gleam of bare female flesh darting through lakewater in the moonlight. A forbidden activity, but one a few rebellious youths occasionally indulged in, though not usually around any big event. No one wanted to get caught. It was, after all, a very small town.
Clare had been the kind of girl who never did anything wrong. Even when she stuck her neck out for him, it seemed like something a fierce angel was doing, instead of some scarlet woman.
A grin spread slowly across his face. Clare had tried to pretend she was a rascal, but down deep in her heart, she was a shy tomboy who hadn’t had the remotest clue about real male hungers. And it had annoyed her no end that he’d been around other girls and knew exactly what she was missing out on.
And he’d loved it. Loved her angry innocence. Her curiosity tinged with feminine fear. It had made him want to wrap his arms around her and carry her off somewhere and tease her until she was spitting like a little wildcat. He’d thought it was crazy at the time, to feel that way about her. It still seemed sort of crazy to him, actually, all these years later.
But the sensation came back with aching clarity.
He’d been crazy about her. And determined to keep her on that pedestal and out of his clutches. And any other lecherous man’s clutches.
And then that last summer, he’d teased her once too often about being so pure. And she’d startled him with that damn bet.
“Well, why don’t you show me what I’m missing?” she’d dared him defiantly. “I think kissing’s very overrated, and I’ll bet you can’t kiss any better than anyone else around here.”
“Oh, and you’ve kissed a lot of guys, have you?” he said sarcastically, making not the slightest effort to conceal his amusement.
The red color in her cheeks was the first warning. Clare was angry.
Too late he realized that he’d gone too far. She wasn’t taking it anymore.
“I’m sixteen,” she’d declared loftily. “I’ve been kissed. Lots.”
He’d laughed. Really laughed. That had been a bad move.
Now, years later, he knew that had been the final straw. But back then, he’d been too young, too brash, too careless about the consequences to restrain himself.
“All right, Mr. Kisses-better-than-anybody,” she said silkily. “Are you afraid to show me what I’m missing?”
Well, now, that put him in a difficult spot, because he was afraid to show her. He was afraid he wouldn’t be able to let her go, once he got started. He’d had some dreams about kissing her…
He’d frowned and shoved his hands in the back pockets of his jeans.
“Naw, I’m not afraid,” he said curtly. “But I’d no sooner kiss you than you’d go skinny-dipping.” There. He figured she’d never do anything like that. Not if her life depended on it.
Case could still recall the feel of the smug grin that was spreading across his face when she spoke and shattered his cool.
“Case, do you mean if I go skinny-dipping, then you’ll show me your techniques in kissing?” Her eyes had narrowed and she’d stared at him. Daring him. Oh, yes. Her dander had really been up.
He must have looked like a gaping fool, he thought.
Because she’d smiled and turned on one heel and marched behind the nearest berry bush without waiting for him to reply.
“Shows what you know. I go skinny-dipping all the time,” she called over her shoulder. It had sounded a little breathless, but he’d been too stunned to pay much attention to that.
He’d just stood there, wondering how in the hell he was going to keep treating her like his kid sister after this. Then the light had glinted on the lakeshore about a hundred yards away. Salvation.
Clare was tossing her khaki shorts and peach-colored cotton knit tank top onto the thick branches of the bush, but Case dragged his gaze away from her clothing to take a closer look at the lake’s edge.
It had just been a quick shift of light, seen from the corner of his eye, but now he knew what it was.
Another couple. They had dived into the lake. The motion of their naked bodies in the moonlight was what had attracted his attention. He squinted, but couldn’t make out who they were. They were too far away. He heard what sounded like soft laughter, and splashing of water as one of them grabbed the other.
He’d never been so grateful for an unexpected interruption before or since.
“Clare, get your clothes on. We’re leaving.”
“What?” Had there been a note of uncertainty in her voice? He’d been too wrapped up in his own relief to be sure. Back then, he hadn’t really cared, either, to be honest. He was too grateful for a way to get her away from that bush with her clothes on.
“You heard me. We’re going. I don’t have time for this little game. But there’s another couple here, so if you’d like to go skinny-dipping with them…”
Khaki shorts were plucked from the bush. The peach-colored tank top followed, moments later.
Clare reappeared, wearing her clothes and a vulnerable, uncertain expression on her face.
He’d reached out and snagged her wrist in his hand and pulled her along after him as he strode down the path toward his motorcycle.
He’d shoved one of the helmets at her and swung a leg over the bike, settling himself on it with a determination that would brook no resistance on her part.
He could still feel her arms slide around him, her hands flatten across his chest, her legs press against the backs of his thighs. The ride home had been a kind of heavenly torture.
But when he got to her house, things had gone from bad to worse. He shook his head, trying to chase the memories back into oblivion.
Oh, yes. Case remembered the last May town picnic he’d been to. Vividly.
So he didn’t swing by the picnic to say hello to the old crowd. He drove on, leaving the dancing lights, the beat of the dance music, the laughter wafting across the soft late-spring night.
And he kept on until he got to Luther’s farm.
There was a car parked across the road from the driveway that led up to the farmhouse. There were a couple of guys sitting in it. Cops, probably. The car was unmarked, but otherwise looked as if it usually had a flashing red light on it.
Case shook his head. He hadn’t been back for an hour and the police were already staking the place out. Or maybe they were staking out his old man, he thought bitterly. That, of course, was the more likely prospect. No one knew that he was coming back, except Luther and Clare.
Clare.
He forced his thoughts away from her.
He drove up to the hou
se and parked near the front porch. The house was dark. Case figured Luther and Seamus must have gone to bed.
Well, it was late. He’d taken a chance coming out this late, but he’d never shied away from risks.
He killed the engine and rubbed the back of his neck. He was tired. And he wanted to think. Should he try to wake up Luther? Luther wouldn’t mind, but Case didn’t want to disturb the old man’s rest. Still, it was a long drive back to the hotel over in Jefferson. Maybe a ten-minute nap would help, he thought.
He rolled down the window to let in the fresh, country air.
Something dark and covered in fur hurtled up through the open window, snarling and growling and snapping its gleaming white teeth.
Case threw up his arm to protect the side of his face and shouted an expletive when canine teeth sank into his forearm.
The unmarked car down by the county road roared into life. Engine at full throttle, it plowed up the driveway. Red light flashing. Siren wailing.
It squealed to a stop next to Case’s car and two men leapt out. They both leapt right back as the snarling fury turned from attacking Case to cornering them.
Case had never seen grown men scramble onto a car roof faster.
“Luther! Call off your damned dog!” shouted one of the lawmen as he perched on the roof on his car. “Luther! Luther, wake up! I don’t want to shoot your dog, but I will if he comes one mouthful closer to me than he is right now!”
Case shook his head and laid his forehead on the steering wheel. It was always some damn thing here, he thought irritably. That’s why he hated this town. Just purely hated it.
The front door rattled and Luther Fitch, wrapped in a wornout flannel robe, stepped out onto his porch.
“Down!” Luther commanded with great irritation.
The dog backed away from the cars and looked at Luther, wagging his tail sheepishly.
Luther pointed toward the barn.
“Barn!”
The dog trotted off to the barn, casting a downtrodden look over his shoulder at Luther.
“Sorry, Case,” Luther grumbled. “I forgot about the dog.”
“Yeah. I noticed,” Case muttered as he stepped out of the car.