"I don't know," I answered. "I can't say you're innocent, either. There's no proof either way. That's the problem."
I was surprised at his smile. "Who taught you to speak the truth?" he asked. "You've managed to escape the Delta training of your peers."
"My mother was a socialist," I replied and was rewarded with his laugh.
"I always heard the Delaneys were peculiar." He seemed to search my face. "Why did you visit my sister?"
"I need to find out the truth about the past."
"Why? Can't you simply leave it alone? What could it possibly matter to you?"
Desperation was creeping back into his tone, but he held my hand gently, his strong fingers beginning to knead the tender flesh between my thumb and fingers. He moved on to the firm base of my thumb, and his touch became increasingly erotic. My thumb gave one weak pulse in memory of Harold, which I squashed.
I could not tell him about Tinkie. She was my client, and I had an obligation to protect her. I captured his massaging hand with my free one and slowly turned it over. I bent to examine the palm. Tammy had said he was marked with trouble. He held his hand open, fingers slightly curled, like a trusting child. I brushed my fingertips across his palm and was surprised when I felt him tremble. I knew then that swooning was not something Margaret Mitchell had invented for her feckless Southern women. That I had the power to make him tremble was almost my undoing.
I focused on his palm. The base of his thumb was full and developed, and in the center of his palm, an unusual pattern of lines created an M. I could not see the tragedy that Tammy read, but I could feel his tension and pain. "I wish I could read the future here," I said.
"I wish I could change the past," he said.
I suppose that what happened next was inevitable. His hand moved around my head and then drew me gently toward him. My arms went to his shoulders and then slid around his neck. We rose together and stepped into an embrace.
With the first kiss, I was lost. Hamilton practiced no restraint. His kiss was consuming and alive with lust and pleasure and the strong, deep river of passion that is not a place for wading. We dove into that desire and swam straight for the bottom.
Silk is not an easy fabric to tear, but my blouse parted and fell. There was no time for buttons, no time for talk. He pushed me back onto the bed, and as he leaned over me, I remembered Jitty's description of Hamilton as the "dark master." She had been righter than she knew. In that secret core of myself that I had always guarded, I felt myself yielding to him in a way I had fought against my entire life.
Even as I caught his thick, heavy hair in both of my hands and pulled his face down to me, I realized how extreme my danger was. And I didn't care.
22
I wish I could report that my madness was fleeting, but it wasn't. Lying tangled in the sheets with Hamilton's head cradled on my breast, I thought about the bad choices I'd made in the past. I allowed myself to visualize their faces, and then to bid them good-bye. I forgave myself for being foolish and naive and needy and, sometimes, giving and strong. Though I hadn't honestly known what I was searching for, I accepted that I had found it.
I wasn't projecting a future for me and Hamilton— no fantasies of weddings and growing old together—but for the first time in my life, I was willing to consider that there might be a future with one particular man. Yes, it was hormones and chemistry and my age. Perhaps Harold had softened the ground, and Jitty had certainly prodded me to think about children and a family. It was all of those things, and so much more. Hamilton Garrett the Fifth had touched me in a place that no one had been able to penetrate. My heart and womb recognized him as "the one."
I was not allowing my brain to cast a vote. Not yet.
Hamilton breathed deeply and stirred, shifting so that his breath teased my nipple. Perhaps among my other vices, I was greedy. I whispered my fingertips along the sensitive skin of his waist and hip, and was rewarded with the feel of his eyelashes blinking open against my breast.
His lips began to do the job they were created to perform, dropping kisses as he moved, in tiny, teasing increments, down my body. Yes, I was greedy, and I reveled in my lust.
I was surprised to look out the window and see that the sun was coming up. The hours of the night had passed like moments, and I wondered if the morning light would end the fantasy.
Hamilton was as uninhibited when he was visible as he was in the dark. It was only the need for food that finally made us take notice of our surroundings.
"I'll make some eggs and toast," I offered, not believing that he was actually leaning back against the cherry headboard of my bed. It occurred to me that, though I'd tumbled in the cotton and the soft grass by the river, in the hayloft of the barn, the tack room and the spring house, the old slave quarters that were used as storage, and the front porch swing, I'd never actually made love under the roof of Dahlia House. It was fitting that it should be Hamilton.
"I have to go home," he said, swinging his legs off the bed. And what legs they were. Strong, muscled, a manly amount of dark hair. I decided food wasn't important.
I stood beside him, delighting once again in how my head tucked beneath his chin. "I'm not that bad a cook," I said, not wanting to let him leave. Once he donned his clothes and walked out, I would be left with the repercussions of my actions. This was the part of a new romance that I hated the most. There were other egregious stages, but this was the worst. I had a rush of queasiness as my brain began to demand a hearing on the matter.
Once Hamilton left, the bogeyman of what-ifs would begin to climb on my back, and there was one granddaddy bogeyman I didn't want to confront. What if the man I'd just made love with had killed his mother?
The ordinary old what-if's—what if he doesn't call, what if he was only pretending, what if he's married— those wouldn't hold a candle to the big one.
He pulled me against his chest and looked down with speculative eyes. "I'll take a shower, okay?"
"Then I'll make some breakfast." It was an excellent compromise.
Wearing sweatpants, socks, and my old flannel shirt, I hurried down to the kitchen and began rummaging around the refrigerator. Over breakfast, I would raise some of the issues I should have asked about last night. I would do it in a chatty way, some morning conversation as we sipped our coffee and smiled at each other. I'd shown the man I trusted him enough to let him in my bed. It was only rational that he might consider putting his touchy pride aside and answering a few questions.
Cracking the eggs into a bowl, I realized that he had never actually stated that he didn't kill his mother. He asked me what I believed. It was a technicality worthy of a lawyer. Once he had a few bites of my famous omelet, he'd tell me anything I wanted to know. I realized that it was borderline lunacy to bask in my culinary skills. Next I'd be wearing flip-flops and polyester. But I couldn't help myself. I wanted to feed the man who'd expended so much energy taking my womb from singing Gregorian chants to crooning "Wonderful Tonight."
I also wanted to ask him about the magazine clipping I'd found in his coat pocket the night of Harold's party, and about his strange conversation with the man behind the hedge. The catch was I didn't want him to know I'd been spying. I put on a pot of coffee and checked to make sure the juice was fresh. As I turned the heat up on the sausage in the pan, I thought I heard the sound of the shower running. I began crumbling Parmesan cheese into the eggs.
Outside it was bright and sunny, a perfect December day. I caught a glimpse of the bumper of Hamilton's car, parked out behind the old barn, that sly devil. I considered pulling a spark plug wire to detain him for a bit longer. That was just my greed and insecurity acting up. Perhaps I'd do a little Christmas shopping instead. For the first time in years, I liked the idea of the approaching season. The knock at the back door almost made me drop the bowl of eggs.
"Sarah Booth!" Tinkie called out. "Are you busy?"
I thought of hiding, but I saw her face at the window, and she saw me. She held Chablis up a
nd waved a little paw at me. "Let us in, it's cold out here."
I opened the door, realizing it wasn't locked. Hamilton's entry, at least, wasn't a mystery. "Tinkie," I said, trying to come up with an excuse to make her leave before she saw Hamilton's car.
"Kincaid has decided—at the very last minute—to make this a costume luncheon," she said, her voice filled with wrath. "That's just like her. Get the drop on everyone with a beautiful costume while we're cutting up paper sacks and trying to be inventive."
I had to laugh. I'd completely forgotten Kincaid's party. But I had not forgotten Hamilton upstairs, and I wanted Tinkie gone. "Wear some overalls and a kerchief," I suggested.
"You think it's funny because you don't care. That coffee sure smells good." She opened the cupboard and got a cup. In a moment she was installed at the kitchen table, eyeing the bowl of eggs. "My Lord, Sarah Booth, how many eggs are you going to eat? Do you know the fat grams? And cheese?" She sniffed. "And sausage? Maybe I wouldn't mind a bite or two. You've got plenty here for both of us, if I do say so myself."
I desperately tried to think of a way to get rid of her. Where was Jitty when I needed her to rattle a chain or moan?
Tinkie eased Chablis to the floor. "She'll be fine," she assured me. "She's perfectly trained."
Perfectly trained for destruction. I could have told her about a pillow and a pair of heels. "What's on your mind?" I drained the sausage and put the eggs on to cook. The sooner I fed her, the sooner she would leave.
"I read your report," she said.
"It's a little early for conclusions," I said, hoping that the evidence of my nocturnal appetites didn't show. I sidled over to the toaster and tried to check my lobes and neck to make sure there were no marks of passion. When I caught a distorted image of Tinkie, slumped at the table, it dawned on me that she might be about to fire me.
She waved her hand at my look of concern. "Something's bothering me."
I slipped into a chair. "What?"
"Why did Hamilton come home now? I mean why now, after all this time? He's been gone for years, and now he's out there in that big old house all alone. Maybe you should back off this case. What with Delo getting killed and Sylvia Garrett's night out from the institution, maybe it would be best if we dropped this whole thing." Her manicured nails twisted the tablecloth into tiny little knots.
"What's really wrong, Tinkie?" I picked up my mug.
"I've been thinking. Maybe I'd rather keep Hamilton as a fantasy. You know, the dangerous man that I dallied with . . . and escaped without injury. I had a talk with Hamilton at Harold's party. He said Oscar was a good man. He made me feel okay about marrying him." She bit down on her lip, but this time it was not a sensual effect, it was to stop her tears. "Maybe it would be better for everyone if you quit asking questions."
I was relieved to see that Tinkie's interest in Hamilton had waned. That somewhat redeemed the fact that I'd just crawled out of bed with him. But something else was going on here. "I can't stop right in the middle of everything."
Tinkie's hand on my arm was so sudden I almost knocked over her coffee. "You have to stop," she said, eyes wide and lashes spiky from unshed tears. "You have to stop this instant, Sarah Booth."
"You don't have to pay me the rest of the money," I said, knowing that I would suffer greatly for that stand on principle. After all, she was backing out of the deal, not me. She really should pay all she promised.
"It isn't the money," she answered. Her nails, changed from Red Passion to Tangerine, dug into my forearm. "It's the fact that you're creating a lot of problems for some people."
"Who?" I asked, suddenly very interested.
"I can't say," she sniffed, and I thought she was going to cry. "Your eggs are burning," she said instead.
I got up and flipped the omelet. Even in grammar school Tinkie could be mulish. I'd never get the information out of her if I tried to force it.
"Okay, Tinkie, if that's the way you want it. I have another client, anyway."
"Who?" she asked, frowning.
"I can't reveal that. But as far as you're concerned, I've retired. If my other case happens to bleed over into this area, I'll stay on the lookout for people I'm pissing off."
"Sarah Booth, you think this is a game. Well, it isn't." She stood up. "Oscar said there was—" She stopped.
"The eggs are ready," I said, pretending I hadn't heard her slip. So it was Oscar, rumbling about me and my business. No surprise. I put a plate in front of her. "My special recipe," I said.
Tinkie caught my hand again. "Sarah Booth, there's talk that Hamilton killed Pasco Walters, too. You know Pasco's car ran off the road in Memphis. He went in the Mississippi River and drowned. They didn't find the body for a week."
"Hamilton was in Europe when Sheriff Walters drowned. Eat while it's hot." Maybe Oscar was afraid of losing Tinkie. He had plenty of money, but most of it, and his position at the bank, had come through his marriage to her. If he'd discovered that she had a yen for Hamilton, he might be trying a flanking maneuver.
Tinkie toyed with her food. "You have to stop asking questions, Sarah Booth." She looked up into my eyes and I saw real fear. "It was wrong of me to start this, and now it has to stop. Delo Wiley is dead. Hamilton is here, right here in Zinnia, and he's a man capable of any deception, any crime."
I knew another side of Hamilton. He was a capable man, on many levels and in many positions. There was a primal force in him that made sex more compelling than chocolate. That didn't make him a triple murderer. Necessarily.
"Tinkie, Oscar has figured out that you gave me ten thousand dollars, and he's trying to spook you into behaving." That was the logical explanation. He was also the biggest gossip in Zinnia—quite an accomplishment, and a fact I delicately didn't point out.
"Oscar wasn't telling me this. He was talking on the phone with someone else."
"He has a videotaped confession, no doubt," I scoffed.
Tinkie scooped Chablis into her arms. Though Tinkie had lost interest in her food, Chablis remembered my Delta-famous sausage omelet and tucked in as well as she could with her underbite. "I've fantasized about Hamilton for so long, dreaming of how he'd come home and realize that he loved me. That we would leave the Delta together and make a new life somewhere, a place where I didn't have to conform to what everyone thought I should be." She closed her eyes. "I'd like to style hair," she said. "Isn't that silly? Me, Tinkie Bellcase Richmond. Four years of college, a banker husband, an estate, and security to last an eternity. But what I'd really like to do is go to cosmetology school and build those incredible hair sculptures that black women wear. I want a hair show in Chicago!"
I was struck dumb. I had a vision of Tinkie in a pink smock erecting a towering mass of gleaming black hair into a pattern like I'd seen on the lamp in Sylvia's nuthouse room. Art deco. That was what it was called.
I went to Tinkie and awkwardly patted her shoulder. I couldn't give her any words of solace. There was no way her husband or her father would ever allow her to pursue her dream. "Maybe you could buy some wigs and practice while Oscar is at work." It was the best I could do.
"It's stupid. Go ahead and say it," she said, finally collecting herself. "It's a stupid fantasy, but Hamilton was part of it. And now I find out that as stupid as my hair design dream is, my crush on Hamilton is even stupider. All of these years, I've pinned my hopes on a freaking murderer!"
"Tinkie," I said gently. "You can't be calling Hamilton a murderer." It wasn't my job to resurrect Hamilton's reputation, but if he was going to hang around Dahlia House, I didn't want folks thinking he was coldblooded. "There's no proof."
"But there is. Physical evidence."
"What?" I asked, willing to humor her if she'd leave sooner.
"That's what I overheard Oscar talking about. Veronica Garrett's brake lines were cut, and it was Hamilton's knife that cut them."
I stopped her before she could get cranked up. "That's just gossip." I'd heard that cut-brake-line theory from
a number of people, but no one had verified it. Technically, Fel hadn't denied it. He'd said he wasn't a mechanic.
She shook her head. "I wish it were. The lines were cut. Oscar was talking with Gordon Walters. He's the one who told Oscar about the brake lines. And about the knife. Hamilton's knife. It was found in the house."
I felt a surge of anger. "Gordon's just stirring trouble." And he was doing a damn good job of it. For whatever reason, he had it in for Hamilton.
"He's not, Sarah Booth. That's what I had to tell you. Gordon confessed that he took part of his father's report out of the records—the part about the cut brake lines. He'd heard you were poking into things and that you were going to write a book. He knew his father had acted improperly by not pursuing the wreck, so he went into the records and pulled that report. Fel wouldn't talk about it because it would incriminate him, too, for covering up a crime. Gordon thought if he could purge the records, you wouldn't be able to find anything. He was protecting his father's name. See, Pasco chose not to pursue Veronica's murder, because he knew who did it."
I swallowed, only partially successful at blocking a few graphic memories of the night before. "As sheriff, he was obligated to file a charge and bring Hamilton to trial. It's ridiculous that he would choose to ignore a murder." I fought her facts with everything I had.
She nodded, stroking Chablis's little head. The dog had gone into a cholesterol coma. "Think what you're saying. The Garretts were one of the most respected families in the state. Mr. Garrett was dead; Veronica was dead. Sylvia claimed the knife was hers. Sheriff Walters took the easy way out and did nothing. Sylvia went to Glen Oaks, and Hamilton was exiled to Europe."
My heart was racing, and a cold sweat had begun to trickle down my spine. I felt dizzy and nauseous. I had all the symptoms of betrayal.
"Do you really expect me to believe a sheriff would allow a murderer to go free?"
Before she could answer, Chablis leaped from the table and squeezed her six-ounce self through the kitchen door. There was wild and excited yipping from the stairs.
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