Stay (Dunham series #2)

by Moriah Jovan

  “With a little editorial spin on the side.”

  “I know Knox murdered Parley, but I never printed that because I couldn’t prove it. What I printed was that he was caught on video at Texaco at 1:17 A.M. on June 9, 1994. I also printed that the videotape mysteriously disappeared from the property room, because it did. That’s a fact. I printed it. I can’t help the conclusions people draw from the facts that I print.”

  Eric had to concede that point, too, but that still didn’t make him any less of a tool.

  “Get lost, Glenn.”

  The outer office door slammed hard enough to rattle the glass, but Eric only rolled his eyes and checked the clock: 9:45. It was still civilized to call people at 9:45 at night, wasn’t it?

  “Giselle? Hi, it’s Eric. Didn’t you tell me you trained with Miller Evanston when you were at BYU? And you’re a first black belt, right? . . . Uh huh. I know you just had a baby, but I’m calling because I’m in a bit of a bind since Knox left and I wanted to ask you if you’d be interested in a part-time job . . . ”

  An hour later, with memory lane having been well trod, he got to cross that thing off his to-do list, making his burden seem a little bit lighter.

  Next thing on his list: a secretary or two. Eric knew the value of good administrative assistants and he was going to get a couple or die trying. He picked up a pile of résumés and began to sort through them again.

  Too much to do and too little time to do it in.

  Too few resources.

  Too little sleep.

  Eric, you need to ditch your life for a couple of hours and go do whatever it is you do when you get all wound up. Meditate or whatever and then re-prioritize your to-do list. I’ve never seen you scattered like this. You’re losing it and we haven’t even started officially campaigning yet.

  Annie’s voice rang in his head. Between the court docket, regular office business, his dojo, campaign tasks, and all the meetings he’d had with the Republican and Libertarian leaders who vied for his attention, he hadn’t had a chance to turn around twice in the same spot. But . . .

  Annie had taken it upon herself to deal with quite a few campaign details.

  Giselle had agreed to a meeting to see if she would care to take over some of Eric’s karate class load.

  He did have one new lawyer, but one fresh grad didn’t hope to meet demand, and he’d stalled out on hiring administrative assistants.

  If he couldn’t get everything under control, he wouldn’t have time to start actively campaigning for attorney general.

  “Hell, I won’t deserve the job,” he muttered, then looked at the résumés in his hand. “Screw that. I’ll call a temp agency tomorrow.”

  Eric trudged through the sheriff’s office and walked home. It was twelve-thirty when he climbed into bed. Annie was asleep, so he wouldn’t be getting laid tonight even if he weren’t completely exhausted.

  Still, he lay awake, churning through his to-do list, nagged by his inability to prioritize effectively. Then his mind rolled back around to Glenn’s visit, and Eric felt a little bit of unease that perhaps the man could suss out the identity of the little girl who’d given Eric everything he had.

  * * * * *

  10: more Down Cellar in a Teacup

  Vanessa showed up at the wake, attracting every eye and dropping every jaw as she strutted by with purpose, feigning obliviousness to the looks. She’d known this would happen. She’d wanted it to happen; it was a power play and she’d learned about power from the best.

  Her mother raked her with her gaze, head to toe and back again. “Well, aren’t we uppity?”

  “Yes, I certainly am. You could use a little class yourself.”

  A snicker caught her attention and she saw a blond boy, not much shorter than Vanessa, standing next to Vanessa’s mother. She flinched when her mother cuffed the boy in the back of the head.

  “What’d you do to your hair?” LaVon demanded. “You look like a zebra.”

  “I went out in the sun to do productive things. What did you do to yours? Mix four different brands of discount bleach?”

  The boy snickered again, and again her mother cuffed him.

  Vanessa’s eyes narrowed and she was no longer amused, remembering how little a child had to do to earn one of those incredibly frequent painful slaps. “Ma, if you do that again, I’ll have you arrested.”

  LaVon’s jaw worked, but she said nothing and Vanessa felt free to leave her there and find a seat where she could watch people in relative peace. She did have to admit that being here, not forced to be gracious, being able to let loose, was fabulously cathartic.

  Knox had finally explained why he demanded she go to her sister’s funeral. “You’re in the power position now and you need that closure.”

  “So it’s not about Simone?”

  It’s not about Eric?

  “No. It’s about your mother. Trust me. My mother was a bitch, too, and I want you to go give her hell.”

  Vanessa hated it when he was right, which, well, he was always right. Besides, she knew how much Knox had hated his mother and that put her fears about any other motives he might have to rest.

  Vaguely wondering who the boy was, she started to watch him. It only took a few seconds to figure out he was Simone’s son. Possibly twelve years old and Vanessa had not known of his existence. He didn’t seem too terribly heartbroken over his mother’s death and she couldn’t blame him.

  She felt the first stirrings of pity for the child; she had had protectors in Dirk, then Knox, who’d kept LaVon off her back. Vanessa couldn’t begin to imagine how miserable this boy must be with both LaVon and Simone over him.

  Vanessa refused to stand in the family line at the wake that night, refused to sit with the family up front during mass the next day, and refused to drive to the cemetery at the front of the line after the funeral. She stood about fifty feet away from the tented gravesite, observing the whole mess, and wondered how LaVon had managed to come up with the money for the funeral and grave, much less the nice casket.

  Somebody else must have paid for it. LaVon would have left Simone to be buried in a potter’s field.

  “Hi.”

  Vanessa looked at the stranger who had sidled up next to her, an otherwise smallish man but for a little bit of a pot belly. He seemed . . . dapper. That was the word. His clothes—straight out of film noir—weren’t expensive, but they were of good quality material and they’d been altered to fit him well. He removed his fedora to reveal a regrettable comb-over of mixed brown and gray strands, and his eyes bugged a little behind his stylish glasses. He wore a decent cologne, not overwhelming and not so thin as to be considered cheap.

  “Hello,” she murmured, wondering which way he would approach this and how fast she’d be tomorrow’s headline.

  “You’re Vanessa Whittaker.”

  “Last time I checked.”

  “You’re Simone’s little sister?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re the TV chef. Vittles, right?”

  Vanessa sighed.

  “I’m Glenn Shinkle, from the Chouteau Recorder, and I was wondering if I could get an interview? Apparently,” he said wryly, “no one here knows who you are, except me.”

  “That does seem to be the case, doesn’t it?”

  He pursed his lips. “Or at least of your mother’s crowd. Why is that, do you think?”

  She laughed for the first time since she’d hit the county line.

  If LaVon didn’t know about Vanessa’s life, it would be a result of her complete disinterest in computers or the internet, even if she could afford such, and a complete disinterest in Vanessa’s whereabouts or doings. While LaVon had always lived and breathed celebrity gossip, Vanessa didn’t occupy the realms of celebrity LaVon would follow. LaVon had never cooked, so Vanessa couldn’t imagine she’d watch cooking shows.

  If LaVon did know about Vanessa’s little corner of fame or anything about Whittaker House, she’d have kept it to herself, ev
er mindful that any misstep would bring the wrath of Knox Hilliard down upon her head.

  Vanessa suspected the latter. After all, LaVon could keep a secret better than a dead man if she had sufficient motivation.

  Finally, she cast a vague gesture toward all the people gathered under and around the tent set up over Simone’s grave and said, “I have no idea.”

  His eyes narrowed slightly. “Miss Whitta—”

  “Mr. Shinkle,” she murmured, laying her hand gently on his arm. “I’m at my sister’s funeral.”

  As a reproof, it was a gentle one, but he seemed the sort to understand and respect it. He flushed a little, but nodded and put his fedora back on his head before trotting off.

  Vanessa sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. She turned back to watch the mourners gather and chat and disperse in small, ever-moving clusters, then glanced at her watch. Noon. If she left now instead of staying for the family meal, she could make it home for dinner with more than an hour to spare.

  But. When Nephew approached her with some stealth and muttered, “Aunt Vanessa, will you come to my school tomorrow night? There’s a program and I’m in it . . . ” she hadn’t the heart to refuse him. He’d spoken to her as if she were a regular, sympathetic part of his life, not a random relative he’d just met.

  A whole lot of people Vanessa didn’t know spoke to her that way, which meant he’d watched her on TV enough to feel as if he knew her.

  “Sure, kid. What time do you want me to pick you up?” He told her, then scampered off before she could ask him his name, in case LaVon caught him talking to the family traitor. She knew exactly how much he’d risked to do so. He probably saw her as his protector now simply because she’d stood down his grandmother.

  Very few women and only a handful more men could make LaVon Whittaker back down, and now Nephew knew Vanessa was powerful enough to do that. LaVon wouldn’t dare do anything to that boy while she was in town.

  Too bad she’d start in on him again once Vanessa left.

  Thus, Vanessa decided to go back to the mobile home after the burial just to see if she could get a few licks in at her mother, but the conversation she’d imagined didn’t come to pass the way she’d intended. Instead, she saw her father in a broken-down wheelchair, on oxygen, trying to wheel his way through a fog of cigarette smoke and people who didn’t notice he existed, much less make room for him to pass by.

  She shoved through the tight cliques, trying to go to him and wheel him out to the deck.

  “Ma,” she snapped when she realized LaVon was right in front of her father, ignoring his distress. “Why don’t you get Pops an electric wheelchair?”

  LaVon flushed and her jaw worked. Vanessa had embarrassed her in front of her friends. Good.

  “’Cause we don’t have the money for it, Vanessa,” she finally said, nasty as always.

  “Oh, hey, here’s a thought: Quit smoking and maybe A—Pops wouldn’t have to have so much oxygen and B—you’d have the money.”

  LaVon slapped her face.

  The entire assemblage fell silent and stepped back to watch this. Nephew observed Vanessa warily, as if he were afraid her power over LaVon was just an illusion.

  “How do you like that, Vanessa?” she sneered. “Ain’t no Knox Hilliard in town to protect you no more.”

  “Well, that’s true enough,” Vanessa drawled. “What, exactly, do you think the new prosecutor would do with you if I went to him to have you charged with assault?”

  The tension was suffocating.

  “And wouldn’t Dirk laugh his butt off when you needed an attorney?”

  LaVon’s mouth tightened.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Then Vanessa turned and continued with her self-appointed task of getting her father outside for some fresh air. LaVon didn’t wait until she was out the door before starting in on the new prosecutor.

  That was a show for Vanessa’s benefit, to drive home the point that LaVon had not forgotten her betrayal, much less forgiven her for it. Vanessa still wanted to curl up in a little ball of humiliation whenever she remembered watching Eric, waiting and hoping for some kind word, some sign that he knew what she’d done and felt some gratitude. A mere “thank you” would have thrilled her thirteen-year-old heart beyond reason.

  But he’d given her that look and walked away.

  “ . . . ting married to that bitch Annie Franklin.”

  “When’s the wedding again?”

  “December something.”

  Vanessa didn’t stop, didn’t betray in any way how unexpectedly hard that news hit her behind her breastbone. She wasn’t sure her mother actually knew of her little-girl crush of so long ago, but it didn’t matter. Any news about the prosecutor that could be used to trash him would get the point across to Vanessa.

  She wasn’t sure why she cared. After all, she was sleeping with a man half the women in the country had wanted—including LaVon, judging by the Nash Piper shrine that covered the main wall of the trailer’s living room. The wreckage of Nash’s plane deep in the Smoky Mountains had been found readily enough, but his body had never been recovered. Yet here was LaVon, still keeping vigil two and a half years later.

  Why didn’t it surprise her LaVon would have built a shrine to a dead man?

  “Typical,” Vanessa muttered.

  With great determination, she finally got her father out on the deck, where he hacked and choked, and she pulled up a dilapidated lawn chair to sit next to him and look at the twilight sky.

  “Nessie,” he rasped once his coughing fit had wound down. “I want you to know how glad I am you came back for your sister’s funeral.”

  “I didn’t have a choice, Pops. My business partner made me.”

  “Oh?” he asked, his forehead wrinkled. “If she’s your partner, how does she make you?”

  “He. And he’s got a bit of a temper. It gets nasty.”

  “Why did he make you come?”

  “To make sure Simone was really dead. In case you didn’t notice, I don’t care about Simone. She got what she deserved. Live by the sword, die by the sword. And LaVon’s even worse.”

  Her father’s nostrils flared, but since she had no investment in being warm and gracious at this moment, she had no qualms about stating her opinion. That harshness, that refusal to be cowed or apologize, which she’d learned from a master, was something she very rarely needed to break out. Today, with her family, she felt not only justified but obligated to push the envelope, shred it, and set it on fire.

  Not Laura’s modus operandi.

  “If it’s the truth, it should be spoken. If it’s not the truth, may I rot in hell. Pops, really. Let me take you home with me. I have a good setup. Fresh air, good food, pretty land. You can have your own little cottage or live in the main house, whatever you want. I can find things for you to do—one of my tenants is going to be a fly-tying shop and there’s a sharecropper on the back of my property who’d like to chew the fat with someone his age. I have a big lake with bass and channel cats and bluegill, and a clear stream with plenty of trout. You could fish all day long if you wanted.”

  He looked at her, his face ancient, his turquoise eyes cloudy and bloodshot. He was only fifty-two, but he wouldn’t live much longer. Vanessa sighed and tried to hold back unexpected tears.

  “I won’t leave your mother, Vanessa,” he murmured, a note of reproof in his voice. She didn’t know when he’d divorced himself from reality, but she couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t stood by her mother.

  She didn’t know if that was admirable or pathetic.

  “And I don’t like the way you’re talking about her.”

  A wave of resentment hit her when, in a flash, she remembered all the times he could have rescued her from her mother’s cruelty but had turned a blind eye, always leaving it for someone else to do. Granted, he had attempted to assuage the pain once LaVon had finished with her, to kiss her and hug her and sing to her, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t stand up t
o LaVon.

  “Okay, Pops,” she said quietly, before she said something she’d regret to this kind but weak man. “I’m leaving now. Here’s my number—” She wrote her number on the back of an old to-do list she found in her purse, and tucked it inside his shirt pocket. “Call me if you need anything.”

  He caught her hand. “I watch you on the television, Nessie,” he whispered, surprising her. “The boy, too. I’m proud of you.”

  She stared at him in wonder. “You— But Ma—”

  “She don’t know about Vittles, about Whittaker House. It’s my own little secret,” he confided. “You an’ me. I can . . . pretend . . . I had a hand in raisin’ you, but I know who really raised you an’ I’m ashamed o’ that. I wouldn’t take your charity now ’cause I don’t deserve it.”

  “You don’t deserve to be abused the rest of your life, either.”

  “Won’t be much longer,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’m just waitin’ to find out if heaven’s as purty as that place you got. Just to know you—my little girl—built that. It’s all I need to die happy, Nessie.”

  She found herself walking around the town square at midnight because she couldn’t sleep with her father’s fatalism echoing around her head, and she couldn’t get the cigarette smoke out of her expensive clothes. How had she forgotten that little detail?

  Sunday. She’d leave Sunday. She would’ve left the next day and been home in time for dinner if she hadn’t promised Nephew—dammit, what was that kid’s name, anyway?—she’d go to his program. None of the rest of his family would be there.

  Her attention was caught by the glint of glass panes reflecting the street lamps when the courthouse doors opened. A tall man with short black hair, in black pants and a loose black kimono-type jacket locked the door behind him. He rolled his head one way, then another. He rolled his shoulders over and under, then cracked his neck. He seemed to have some sort of black strap slung around his neck. He turned and walked slowly, rather bowleggedly, across the lawn—away from her.

  Again.

  And she wouldn’t go begging for . . . what? Exactly? A “thank you”?