by ML Gamble
What little color India possessed had gone out of her face as she listened to her husband’s description of what had happened at the hospital. She slumped onto the sofa and twisted her pearls. “The evening is being ruined. I’m sorry, but everyone is blowing this out of proportion. We should all be thinking of the coronation, not some idiot criminal.” She shook her head and buried it in her hands.
Miss Lou nodded toward the desk. It was obvious that India was at a breaking point, and she didn’t need spectators to see it. “Why don’t you call Clay, Baylor? See if he’ll come get us?”
Baylor marched to the phone. After several rings, he punched in the code for remote message retrieval and listened, swore under his breath, then returned the phone. “I’m not getting an answer, Lou. Elizabeth called. Sounds fine. Said she’ll call us first thing in the morning. But the damn thing broke off before she could leave her number.” He bowed to his hosts. “Bennett, India, thanks for everything. You folks go on to bed, we’ll call a cab.”
India snapped to attention and attempted to regain her composure. “No. I won’t hear of it. Jones!” she yelled, and a second later an elderly black man arrived at the study door. “Jones, please get the car and bring it around. I need you to take the judge and Miss Lou over to Fairbreeze.”
“Certainly. But I’ll have to use your daughter’s car. She took the Cadillac to take her young man home. He wasn’t feeling too steady.”
“That worthless little—”
“Bennett!” India cried out, her eyes huge. “Please, our guests have been through enough, here.”
Dr. Heywood looked sheepish, and hastily ordered Jones to get the car. The servant disappeared, leaving an awkward silence and tension thick as summer fog.
“Can I offer you some tea, or a brandy, Miss Lou?” Bennett finally said.
“No, thank you. How about you, India?” she said, aggravated that Bennett seemed oblivious to his wife’s fragile state. “It was a perfectly gorgeous dinner party, but I bet you didn’t eat a bite.”
India stared at the picture hanging over the fireplace. It was Bennett’s mother. She had been a Queen of Midnight, and was wearing a formal blue gown with her Queen pin proudly displayed on the bodice. “I didn’t eat a bite at any of the parties the year I was an electee. Mama made us diet. She was sure I was going to win, you know. Then Daddy had to kill that man.” India shook her head and tears began to run down her face.
Bennett Heywood went ashen with embarrassment at his wife’s behavior. Miss Lou and the judge averted their eyes. The scandal involving India’s father and his mistress, Elaine Gibbs, had ruined India’s chances for election to Queen of Midnight. But it was an old scandal, and seldom mentioned now.
Miss Lou felt a shiver of fear for India’s sanity. “India, darling, why don’t you let me get you some tea or something.”
India bolted upright and stared at Bennett, as if she hadn’t heard Miss Lou’s voice at all. “I think I’ll go up and check on Rosellen’s gown. She never hangs things up, you know,” she replied, then astounded them all by leaving the room without another word.
“Baylor, Miss Lou, my wife has put herself under so much stress,” Bennett began.
Miss Lou touched his arm. “Please. It’s a dreadful end to a perfect evening. Go up to her, Bennett. I think she needs to hear some kind words.”
“Thank you,” he said. He shook hands with the judge and left the room.
“Damn stupid contest, anyway,” the judge muttered.
Miss Lou stared at the painting of Bennett’s mother, a beautiful woman who had not, despite her night of glory as Queen of Midnight, led a very happy life. She looked intently at her husband, glad to see the news about Elizabeth had not upset him to an extent that was more than his regular medication could handle. “Let’s go home, darling.”
“You okay, Lou?” he asked, giving her a tender squeeze.
“Yes, I’m fine.” Which was more than she could say for the family who lived in the grand home they were leaving.
Chapter Six
Petey Connor and Ray Robinson waited for Cracker inside Petey’s van. It was parked in an alley on River Place, behind an abandoned restaurant just four blocks from Knights Landing Road.
“When is she coming?” Petey asked, slurring the words. He had been drinking since early afternoon. He was very, very drunk and even more frightened. Ray had told him about the fiasco at the hospital and Petey knew Cracker wasn’t going to be pleased.
Ray glanced at the luminous green dial of his watch. His breath was a plume of gray in the van’s frigid interior. “She told Cracker she would meet us in an hour. That was at two-fifteen. It’s three-ten now.”
A sound like a shot tore through the air.
Petey yelped and struggled to open the van’s rear door to admit Cracker Jackson, whose knuckles rapping angrily against the metal door had made the startling noise.
Cracker pulled the door shut with a vicious snap, and settled onto the bench Petey had installed. “Start at the beginning, Ray, and tell me how you managed to screw things up so royally.”
“I was doing fine until that cop showed up.”
“You were not doing fine. You acted like a third-rate amateur. And you’re damn lucky you got out of the hospital. I hear Chief Foley has put a very good description of you out on the street, Ray.”
“I didn’t even hurt that girl,” he began.
“You assaulted a damn debutante. And you got yourself looked at by Tommy Lee McCall. Some cowboy like McCall makes you, you’re made until they got your sorry hide behind bars. As of now, you’re out of this deal.” He reached into his heavy leather jacket and grinned when Petey and Ray both flinched. “You think I’m going to shoot you, Ray?” Cracker pulled out a roll of bills and counted off two hundred dollars, then tossed the money at Ray. “Take that and buy yourself a train ticket. I’d suggest you go back to Galveston—and don’t call us. We’ll get back to you when it’s safe.”
Ray snatched up the bills and stuffed them into his sweatshirt. “You going to drive me to the train station?”
“Yeah, we’ll drive you. As soon as we meet with our employer. Hey, Petey,” Cracker suddenly shouted at the third man, kicking his leg with his steel-tipped boot. “Are you awake?”
Petey nodded once.
Suddenly, headlights crossed the front windshield of the van and a dark sedan pulled up a few feet away. The three men inside the van waited, but the woman they had come to meet with made no move to get out of her car.
“I guess she wants me to pay her a house call,” Cracker snarled. “You stay here,” he said to Petey, then turned his glare onto Ray. “You come with me. You got the gun I gave you?”
“Why do I need the gun, man? You think something’s wrong?”
“I want you to be armed, just in case. Never can tell what an angry female’s planning to do, especially one as nutty as that one.” Cracker laughed—an ugly, rasping sound—then threw open the van’s rear door and jumped out.
He glanced over at the sedan and tried to see inside, but the tinted windows were too dark. Ray jumped down after him, fell to the ground and struggled clumsily to get up. He followed behind Cracker, and felt his chest pocket several times, fearful of the hard shape of the gun and the thought that he might have to use it.
Cracker stopped at the passenger side of the sedan and grasped the chrome handle. The door was locked.
“Hey, open the door!” he bellowed, his words echoing hollow in the thin, cold air.
Ray glanced back at the van, and saw Petey jump to the ground, motioning “What’s up?” with his hands.
Ray shrugged and turned back to Cracker, just as the sedan’s passenger window opened with a whine. Ray saw the flames from the shotgun at the same instant it extended its deadly bite into Cracker Jackson, killing the ex-cop before the sound of the explosion was over.
Ray screamed and fell to his knees beside Cracker’s dead body, which saved him from the full force of the second blas
t, which singed his scalp and filled his hair with blue smoke and gunpowder. The sedan skidded off with squealing tires and racing engine, but not before sending a third volley of shots at Petey, who had the good sense to throw his wounded body into a rolling dive under the van.
Ray bolted from the scene, away from Cracker’s bleeding, broken body, and from Petey screaming in pain. He was a block away when he realized a car was coming—her car was coming, fast behind him. He turned and screamed a curse in Spanish at the headlights, but the pathetic sound didn’t stop the driver. The car knocked Ray Robinson fourteen feet into the air with the impact of its heavy, American-made front bumper.
He was dead when he landed on the frost-covered asphalt, in the street in front of the Belle Fleur Elementary School.
The man in the gray pickup truck, parked silently across the street, watched for a moment as the sedan raced off. He knew who was driving it, and it made him sick. He blinked and looked at the guy on the ground. He had seen plenty of dead men, and he knew this guy was beyond any help he or anyone else could offer.
He put on his parking lights and rolled off down the street, in the opposite direction from the sedan, wondering how the horror of the night was going to come together. His lights slid over the school’s nativity scene, which stood right next to a poster hawking tickets to the Queen of Midnight Ball.
THE MORNING WAS NOT going well, Elizabeth decided. She scolded herself for thinking there was any way it could have gone well, what with the judge, her mother, and the charming Mr. Tommy Lee McCall all intent on running the show. Especially since the “show” in this case was herself, whom they were all treating like she wasn’t even there. “Excuse me, Daddy, but—”
“Hang on, Elizabeth,” the judge ordered, his hand held up for silence. He turned his attention back to Tommy Lee, whom he had been questioning for the better part of the past twenty minutes. “Now let me get this straight. You are telling me that if I call someone at the FBI, my word isn’t enough to get them looking into these piece-of-trash letters someone sent Elizabeth?”
“I’m just saying, Judge Monette, that since the letters weren’t sent through the mail—”
“I don’t give a great goddamn about that. Those sons of b—”
“Daddy, please listen for a minute and stop swearing,” Elizabeth interrupted. She frowned right back at her father, who was glaring at her with the same degree of frustrated animosity he’d been aiming at Tommy Lee.
“Elizabeth, darling, come sit down,” Miss Lou interjected, patting the kitchen chair next to her. “You and your daddy both need to calm down a little. We’re all on the same side here, right, Mr. McCall?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tommy Lee agreed, smiling first at the judge, then at Elizabeth.
They both stood their ground.
“Just don’t go off calling in the militia, Daddy. That’s all I want. When Chief Foley gets here, you can discuss things with him. Mr. McCall told you twice he has retired from the force and can’t act in any official capacity.”
The judge sat and beckoned to Elizabeth to take the empty seat beside him. “I’m sorry, sugar. But I can’t believe you didn’t come to us with this nonsense about the letters, as soon as it happened. And why in the hell you didn’t call me about the car…”
Elizabeth held her hands in the air to stop his scolding. “I know. I know. But I thought I could handle it, that it wasn’t any big deal.”
“It is a big deal,” Tommy Lee countered. He was leaning against the counter, a cup of coffee in his hands. His eyes were bright and he looked none the worse for his roll on Government Boulevard yesterday.
Unlike her, she thought, who was black-and-blue and bleary-eyed. Elizabeth pulled the sweater her mother had brought around her and winced as her knees protested her walking over to the table to join her parents. She picked up the mug Sissy Lane had poured full of steaming coffee and brought it to her lips. The aroma revived her and she met her father’s stare. “Mr. McCall is right, Daddy. It’s a big deal, if it was intentional. I’m just not so sure that it was.”
“Do you think Elizabeth was attacked because she is an electee, Mr. McCall?” Miss Lou queried, her eyes wide. “I mean, do you think someone would want to hurt her just because of that?”
Tommy Lee joined them at the table, turning a chair around backward and resting his arms on the curved back. “Could be. It could also be because of the other matter.”
“What other matter?” the judge barked.
Elizabeth sighed. She had really planned to run this conversation in a smoother, less sensational manner, but everyone else had their own agenda and kept getting off track. She had hoped to find a good time to tell her parents that she had met Tommy Lee because she’d wanted to hire his sister, the private detective, but her parents had burst in demanding all the details about her accident and the hospital attack, and now things were a jumble.
So much for her famous organizational skills. “My adoption.”
Miss Lou gasped and met her husband’s gaze. “I thought you were going to keep that a private family matter, Elizabeth.”
“Not that we’re ashamed of anything like that,” Judge Monette added hastily.
“Look, I know it’s hard to discuss this openly after keeping it hidden so long, but I decided to find out more about my—” her voice caught as she wrestled with her conflicting feelings of wanting to be frank but also afraid of hurting the two people she loved more than anyone else on earth “—birth parents. You know how I’ve struggled with those images—’night terrors,’ you used to call them—I’ve had since I was little. I thought it was time to try and solve the whole mystery, not just the part you two knew about.”
“But, you mean you think those dreams mean something?” Miss Lou asked, her voice trembling.
“Yes, I think they are memories, not nightmares.” Her voice was low and clear, like that of a child put on the spot but unwilling to take the easy way out and lie. “I think I saw my mother killed.”
Miss Lou gasped, then covered her mouth. Tears filled her eyes. The judge looked away, and his hands shook as he laced them together.
“So she hired me to help,” Tommy Lee explained. His voice was calm but he was moved by Elizabeth’s handling of a most delicate situation. The banged-up beauty sitting across from him was certainly much more than just a debutante.
“My sister’s a private investigator. Specializing in paternity cases, adoption information, stuff like that. Elizabeth came to her but got me instead. We’re going to try and track down what happened to her parents.”
“Well, all I’ve got to say about that is she nearly got herself killed, twice, since she met up with you,” Judge Monette said, grabbing his cup like it was a life preserver.
“Daddy,” Elizabeth began, “don’t start—”
“Baylor,” Miss Lou interrupted in a hoarse voice. “Don’t blame Mr. McCall for that. We owe him a lot for saving Elizabeth—not once but twice. I think you owe him an apology.”
The old man made a sound in his throat but put the mug down slowly. “Thank you for saving our girl, Mr. McCall. But am I to understand that what Elizabeth thinks she’s remembering is the real reason behind those attacks on her?”
“In my opinion, it can’t be ruled out.”
“But that’s crazy,” Miss Lou sputtered. “She’s been ours for twenty years, for heaven’s sake! Surely no one would worry about what a child might remember!”
“But I was someone else’s before then, Mama,” Elizabeth countered. “I’m sure there was a terrible tragedy involved. I need to find out what it was. Now, more than ever.”
“She’s right,” Tommy Lee agreed. “Because if the attacks are related to her looking into her adoption, then even if she stopped looking, she wouldn’t be safe. None of you would. Someone doesn’t want her to find out something.”
“But who?” Judge Monette asked. He ran his gnarled hand through his thick gray hair. “We never knew the names of her parents. The atto
rney who handled the case, and the judge, said we would never be able to find out. I don’t know much about adoption law, but I do know that sealed records are sealed records. I couldn’t get a look at the ones closed by another judge.”
“The lawyer who contacted you was Emmett Peach. Right, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know if he’s still around?” Elizabeth questioned.
“No, I don’t. He’s my age or older, though. So he’s probably retired if he’s not dead.”
“Baylor!” Miss Lou admonished. “Honestly.”
The judge relaxed for the first time that morning and winked at his daughter. “Your mama doesn’t like to admit she’s married to an old man.”
Elizabeth grinned. “Tommy Lee thought we might start with Mr. Peach. See if he remembers anything he can tell us.”
“Who was the judge on the case, Mr. Monette?” Tommy Lee asked. “He might be able to tell us something, too.”
“Dead men tell no lies,” Baylor replied, all seriousness again. “That gentleman was Mr. Harrison Goughis III. He’s long dead. His sister, Tela, was a good friend of Lou’s. When did old Harrison meet his Maker?”
“In 1992, I think,” Miss Lou answered. “A year later we lost Tela. Remember we flew in during that hurricane for her funeral in Belle Fleur.”
“Tela?” Tommy Lee asked, the hairs on the back of his neck rising. “What was Tela’s last name?”
“She was born Tela Goughis, but married Brett Rose. Her daughter Tammy Rose is an electee this year,” Miss Lou told them. She patted her daughter’s arm. “I bet you are sick of me relating everything to that Pageant. But that’s how I met Tela. She and I were electees the same year.”
Tommy Lee met Elizabeth’s wide-eyed glance. “So the judge who handled Elizabeth’s adoption was Tammy and Luvey’s uncle?”
“Yes,” Miss Lou replied. “But you’re not suggesting that young woman has anything to do with what happened to Elizabeth, are you? Why, she’s the most timid little thing.”