"You've told me," she said softly. "You've done your job. More than your job. As always."
"What about the people who're waiting for this tape?" he asked.
"I help all that I can. I refuse to accept that burden."
"I'm the one who initiated the campaign for these tapes. I'm the one who set the Christmas release date. And I'll look like a fool," Michael said bitterly.
"Not to me." She kissed his forehead. "Never to me."
Michael looked down at his desk. "You're the boss."
I couldn't read anything into his tone, but Doreen straightened up and nodded at me. "I'm going to Zinnia with you."
"Zinnia?" Michael asked. "Why?"
"Sarah Booth has discovered that my mother may have been murdered."
"Is that right?" Michael looked at me, his dark eyes troubled. "I'm so sorry, Doreen. I didn't realize why you were canceling the studio."
"Reschedule for after the first, and apologize for me."
"I'll go with you to Zinnia," Michael said. "If there's murder involved, you shouldn't be alone."
"I'll be with Sarah Booth," Doreen said with the hint of a smile. "We'll be fine."
"But what if the murderer is still around?"
"I doubt he's hanging around the scene of the crime now," Doreen said. "My mother's been dead a long time."
"Sheriff Peters will be with us," I said. "We'll be perfectly safe." We didn't need an entourage if we were going to talk about a potential murder.
"There's a small problem," Michael said, one corner of his handsome mouth turned down. "Doreen isn't allowed to leave the jurisdiction."
"I'll talk with LeMont," I volunteered. "Maybe he'll be able to get her permission to make a day trip."
The Black Kettle was a casual bar with a big business. The place was packed, and I stood on tiptoe trying to catch a glimpse of LeMont. I finally located him at the bar, where he was holding a stool for me by draping his leg over it.
His dark suit was rumpled and he finished one beer and ordered another. Judging from his posture, he was either tired or had just finished a discouraging day.
"Ms. Delaney," he said as he shifted his leg and offered me the stool. "What can I do for you?" There was a snap in his voice.
"Thank you for meeting me," I said. It would be best to get right to the point. "Doreen wants to go with me to Zinnia tomorrow. There's some indication that her mother may have been murdered. I'm going to talk to a possible witness to the murder." I was stretching things a bit.
"Her mother was murdered?"
"Possibly," I said, wondering at his sudden interest.
"And you think it would be a good idea to have Doreen with you when you talk to this witness?"
Put in that frame, I could see it wasn't such a good idea. "She wants to go."
He took a long swallow of his beer. "If that's what you want, I'll talk with the judge."
Now I was curious. Detective LeMont wasn't in the habit of tossing favors out. He'd obviously discovered something that worked in Doreen's favor. "Why are you doing this?"
He shrugged. "I don't view Ms. Mallory as a flight risk. But what I think doesn't matter. It's up to the judge and he's going to say no."
I wasn't buying that flip answer. I remembered the baby bottle. "What have you found out? Whose fingerprints are on the baby bottle?"
LeMont gave me a long, calculating look. "Doreen's and the maid's, as you'd expect. And Reverend Oren Weaver's. We had his prints on file from when his house was burgled a few years back." He paused, studying my reaction. And what a reaction it was. My mouth opened wide in the mouth-breather moment of shock that my Aunt LouLane would have slapped off my face.
"Oren Weaver? Why would he touch that bottle?"
"I was hoping you could tell me. What would the mighty televangelist be doing holding a baby bottle for Rebekah Mallory?"
I shut my mouth and put a slightly more professional look on my face. "What does your investigation show?"
He grinned. "I'm just getting started. Now, I'll talk to the judge, if you'll tell me exactly what you know about the preacher man."
I was caught on the horns of a dilemma. I'd promised Doreen I wouldn't reveal her connection to Weaver, or the other men, unless I had to. LeMont was sniffing on the trail, but he hadn't picked up the scent of possible paternity yet. By not telling him, though, I was thwarting an ally in proving Doreen's innocence. And Doreen had possibly lied to me. She'd assured me that none of the potential fathers had ever seen Rebekah.
"Sarah Booth, what's going on in that head of yours?" LeMont's eyes were flat and I had the sense that he needed to move or drown.
But my word had been given. "I can't help you," I said.
He rose from his stool, finished his beer, and smiled. "I got a call from that sheriff of yours. He's mighty fond of you."
And LeMont was pretty damn good at throwing curves. "What did Coleman say?"
"It wasn't so much what he said as how he said it." He arched his eyebrows. "None of my business, though. I got my hands full in New Orleans."
I leaned against the bar. "What about the judge?"
"You won't help me, but you still expect me to help you?" He furrowed his brow. "Okay. I'll talk to the judge because I know it won't do a bit of good. And you're gonna owe me." He pushed his glass back. "I'll find out how Weaver's involved in this anyway. "
He walked out of the bar, never once turning around to look back at me. I ordered a vodka martini, dirty, and sat at the bar until it was gone. With just a hint of a buzz, I made my way to Hamilton's apartment and the comfort of his arms.
AS THE sun edged over the horizon, I drove across Lake Pontchartrain, my body sated and my thoughts on Arnold LeMont. True to his word, LeMont did call the judge. True to LeMont's prediction, the judge refused to let Doreen leave New Orleans. On this Friday morning, I was traveling alone, and glad for the solitude.
I'd spent the night in the arms of a fantasy. The movie theater of my mind had been given a whole new reel of images to play again and again. The last one was of Hamilton sleeping, a dark stubble on his handsome face, his hair rumpled on the pillow, and a smile on his lips.
Now I was heading back to Zinnia, back to my normal life. Or was it normal? In the past few days I'd slipped my mooring. I was drifting. Life in New Orleans bore no resemblance to life at Dahlia House. I was caught in a time warp, where memory was more real than anything else. But memory fades.
As I was heading back to Mississippi, the last few hours in Hamilton's bed seemed more like a dream than reality. Yet when I was spooned against Hamilton, it had felt so real, so perfect. I'd run my fingertips across the light sprinkling of dark hair on his arms, felt his fingers curl around mine, known the sensual delight of his leg pressed firmly against my own, sunk into solace with the rhythm of his breathing.
Now the highway stretched in front of me, a washed-out gray in a blur of pine trees and fallow fields. And this was my reality. I was hurtling through time and space at eighty miles an hour as the sun rose to my left, jewels of dew glittering all around me.
Behind me was Hamilton. In front of me was my home. And Coleman.
I drove in a turmoil of emotions, stopping twice for coffee and a bathroom. When I finally turned down the drive, Dahlia House awaited me through an alley of leafless sycamore trees.
Sweetie Pie greeted me with a chorus of barks, her tail whipping my legs as she whirled around me. In the back pasture, Reveler whinnied a welcome.
I rushed into the house.
"Hold up your hands," Jitty said in a gunslinger voice.
"Jitty?" She stood in the doorway of the parlor, her elegance as cold as her attitude.
"Hold them up. Let me see."
I slowly held up my hands, palms out. "What's wrong with you?"
"What's wrong with you is the better question." She stepped closer and I caught a fragrance that reminded me of my mother's mother, Grandma Baker.
"Evening in Paris?" It was a light, talcumy
odor.
"Which would be Evening in a New Orleans Hotel Bed without Benefit of a Ring if you were wearing it."
It was instantly clear what was eating at Jitty. "I thought you'd be happy that Hamilton was back in the States."
"For how long? Long enough to put a ring on that finger and make you an honest woman?"
I took a deep breath. "I am an honest woman, Jitty."
"Liar."
She spoke with such certainty that I felt my temper rise. "I am not a liar."
"You the worse kind of liar. You lie to yourself. You go on about how you're satisfied with a few nights in Hamilton's arms. That ain't the truth. You want him here, in Zinnia. Full-time."
"I'm not so certain about that." Truth be told, I wasn't certain about anything. And Jitty was giving me a pounding headache.
"A full-time husband might interfere with your daydreams about that sheriff leavin' his wife and takin' up with you."
"I've never asked Coleman to leave his wife. Never."
"You haven't asked, but that don't mean you haven't thought about it."
I wasn't going to lie. I had thought about Coleman leaving Connie. He didn't have a real marriage. She'd tricked him back to her with the most low-down trick in the book. "I've never encouraged him to break his wedding vows. And he won't."
"No, he won't. And that leaves you standin' on the outside lookin' in. You know, eighty years ago, a woman didn't have the right to pop in and out of bed with men. Back then, she'da been run out of town on a rail. It wasn't fair, because men could do as they pleased and never suffer a bad reputation. But this today ain't good. A man won't buy the cow, Sarah Booth, when he's gettin' the milk free."
Jitty shimmered, as if a heat wave had rippled through her.
"Don't you dare disappear," I hissed. But it did no good. She was gone and I was left alone with her bitter words of wisdom.
20
I met Coleman at the crossroads beside Playin' the Bones, a fine blues club run by Ida Mae Keys and her son Emanuel. The club looked great. There were new shells in the parking lot and a marquee announcing the latest blues act.
There was also a long, tall lawman. To my surprise, Coleman was in his pickup, and he wore jeans and a flannel shirt. The blue of the plaid colored his eyes a deeper shade. I watched him walk toward me with pleasure and sadness. Two men could not be more different than Coleman and Hamilton. Even if I had the chance to choose, could I?
"You look pensive," Coleman noted, getting into the passenger seat of the convertible. The top was down and the October sun flooded the interior of the car with golden warmth.
"Tired, maybe." Or was it guilt I was oozing? I'd been in bed with Hamilton only six hours before. Coleman wasn't a fool. "How do we get to Coot's?"
"Turn left here and head back toward Blue Eve. He's on Cotton Gin Road."
I drove with my eyes on the road ahead. Coleman watched me, drawing his own conclusions, and keeping them to himself.
Coot's house was a surprise. The man was an alcoholic. I'd expected a trailer with a mountain of beer cans in the backyard. Instead, the log cabin was neat and clean.
"Coot built it himself," Coleman said. "He cut the trees over by Oxford, had them milled, hauled them back here, and put it together himself."
"He must not drink as much as people say." I'd known a few alcoholics, among them family members. It was a road littered with unrealized dreams, broken promises, and half-truths. The cabin spoke of another kind of man.
Coot didn't wait for us to knock. He came out the front door and walked toward us. To my surprise, he was smiling. He was a man in his sixties, but he looked younger. Lean and freshly shaved, he smelled of Old Spice.
"I've been waiting for you," he said. "Ever since you called, Coleman, I've been waiting. I haven't had a drink in two days." When he held out his hand to shake mine, I saw the tremors.
We went inside and Coot served us strong coffee in hand-fired mugs. We settled around his small kitchen table.
"Tell me about Lillith's daughter," Coot said. "I hear she's beautiful."
"She is," I said. "Strikingly beautiful. And in a world of trouble."
"I know," he said. "I want to help her."
I wondered if he'd done the arithmetic, too, and figured out that Doreen might be his daughter.
"You never knew Doreen?" Coleman asked.
"Lillith was peculiar." Coot sipped his coffee. "She was private in a way that I see now was unbalanced. At the time, it was just convenient. I suspected she was pregnant, but she said she was going to see her mama for a few months. She was gone seven. When she came back there wasn't a sign of a baby. She left like that sometimes. Could be gone a week or several months. I didn't think much about it at the time. You know, I just didn't let it register. Lillith and I were together for the good times."
"Where did her mother live?" I asked.
"Natchez. I regret now I wasn't more attentive. If Doreen is my child, I want to try and make it up to her. I would have married Lillith. Ever since I heard about Doreen, I can't help but think about what life might have been like. We could have made a family."
Coot obviously wasn't aware that there had been three children. I didn't see where it was necessary to pour salt into his wound.
"Tell us about the night Lillith died," Coleman suggested.
"Well, it was a cold night. Musta been December or somewhere along there." He lowered his gaze. "My mind slips sometimes. I forget things. It makes me ashamed."
"It's okay, Coot," Coleman said. "We all forget. This happened a long time ago."
Coot looked up, his dark green eyes so intense that I was mesmerized. "It was a long time ago, but I dream it every night. I smell the smoke and I wake up choking. I see the flames between me and the bedroom, and I see Lillith standing in them, frozen, unable to move, the flames licking up to her waist. I see myself running out the front door. Running outside and saving myself. Saving myself and leaving her."
He got up and went to a cabinet to get a bottle of Wild Turkey. "I didn't want to be drunk when you got here, but I've got to have a shot right now."
"It's okay," Coleman said. "This isn't an interrogation, Coot. You're helping us." He paused. "And maybe helping yourself. There was nothing you could have done to save Lillith. The coroner said she died of smoke inhalation before the flames got to her."
"I saw her. She was standing in the flames."
Coleman got up and got two more glasses. He poured both of us a shot. "All these years you've been carrying a burden of guilt that wasn't necessary. Your mind played a trick on you. Lillith was dead." He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a coroner's report. "I made this copy for you."
Coot took it and read it slowly. "She was really dead? I just imagined I saw her?"
"She was really dead."
"I shoulda come forward and said I was there with her. But I couldn't. Folks didn't know Lillith like I did. They thought she was crazy and wild, consumed with that religion of hers. She was that, but she was kind and loving. Sometimes we'd go to the river for a picnic and I'd lie in the grass with my head in her lap. She'd stroke my hair and I'd forget everything that troubled me. She was a wonderful woman when she wasn't raving."
The woman he revealed fascinated me. I'd known Lillith only as a lunatic.
"Why was she the way she was?" That was an answer I might be able to take to Doreen.
"I can't say. She'd be taken in spells. They'd come on her and she'd say she had to preach. She said God was telling her to spread the Word."
"She didn't just preach. She terrorized us about sex. And yet she was sleeping with you." I needed to understand the paradox of her personality.
"When she got on one of her holy spells, she'd run me out, chasing me with pans of hot water or knives. She'd tell me I was Beelzebub, come to tempt her. She'd say that I had taught her to like wallowing in wickedness and that we'd both burn in the fires of hell. Then she'd grab that Bible and go to town to preach."
; "How could you endure that?" I asked.
"Most of the time she was a woman who enjoyed loving." He shook his head. "Heck, she could turn me inside out. Lillith didn't go no half-measures. She could wring a man out. Once I had a taste of her, I couldn't quit."
"But she believed it was wrong. Sinful."
He shrugged a shoulder. "We'd go along for weeks, then she'd have one of her holy fits. She'd run me off, but in a few days, she'd drive up to my house with homemade biscuits and sausage. She'd be back to normal, hungry for loving."
I wanted to ask him why he never got her psychiatric help, but I remembered the era when all this took place. People didn't pop into their therapist's office on their lunch hours. Mental illness was feared worse than venereal disease.
"Tell us everything that happened the night of the fire," Coleman said, pulling us back on track.
"Lillith and I had a fight. So I was sleeping on the sofa."
"What did you fight about?" I asked.
"We were both getting old. We'd been lovers for nearly thirty years. She wasn't troubled by her spells as much as she was by some bad dreams. I was still working and I wanted to marry, make sure she had insurance, get her some medical attention, that kind of thing. She didn't want to marry. She said she couldn't sanction a relationship that was born in sin. She said God would frown on two sinners asking for his blessing.
"I got in a huff and slept on the sofa. Like I said, it was a cold night. I stoked up the fireplace real good, put some big logs on, and then I went to sleep. The next thing I knew, the house was on fire."
"You don't recall hearing anything unusual?" Coleman asked.
Coot's brow furrowed. "Maybe, now that you mention it. Lillith was talking to herself. That wasn't normal. If she got a spell, she went straight to Main Street, no matter the time of day or night. She didn't waste time talking to herself."
"What did she say?" I asked, praying he'd remember.
"Spawn of Satan," Coot said without hesitation. "That's all I remember. I just went back to sleep. We'd both been drinking quite a bit."
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