Confessions

by JoAnn Ross

  "Her reputation. But as we watched your press conference, we realized that you may suspect me of my wife's murder, which would keep you from pursuing the real killers."

  When Trace didn't respond, Alan cleared his throat, then said, "That's when Heather advised me to tell you the entire truth. "

  "The truth?" Trace wondered what else the senator's lissome young chief of staff had been advising him on. How to murder his wife, perhaps? Trace also figured he was not the only one who knew about the love letters.

  He figured right. "Although it pains me to admit it, even to my serf, Laura was having an affair." Another thrust of those long fingers ruffled what Trace estimated to be at least a fifty-dollar haircut. "You have to understand, such behavior was so unlike her, so absolutely uncharacteristic of the sweet, intensely moral woman I married, that I thought, if I merely waited it out, the entire unsavory affair would run its course."

  He looked up at Trace for confirmation that he'd made the correct choice.

  "I've heard that's often the case," Trace agreed obligingly.

  He felt no need to mention that in his own situation, Ellen had gone on to marry the municipal court judge she'd been sleeping with while still married to him, but in truth, Trace had never blamed his former wife. Just as it took two to make a marriage, it took two to break it.

  Hell, in his business, which wasn't exactly geared to domestic tranquility, divorce was not only unsurprising, it was almost expected.

  The senator cursed and dragged his hands down his face in a weary, defeated gesture. If it was an act, it was a good one.

  "And now you tell me she was pregnant." Alan closed his eyes again, as if the thought were too painful to consider. "With his child."

  She's also dead, Trace thought but did not say.

  "Do you happen to know who the other man was?"

  "Yes." The senator's expression hardened. His eyes turned to chips of blue ice. "Clint Garvey."

  His words confirmed what Jessica had already suggested. If the local rancher had been sleeping with Laura Fletcher, he was probably the man who'd gotten her pregnant.

  Was he also, Trace wondered, the man who'd killed her?

  Mariah was sitting alone at a chipped red Formica table in a corner of the snack bar, a foam cup in front of her. A cigarette burned in the plastic ashtray where an earlier one had been stubbed out. She was staring off into space and from her murderous frown, Trace suspected she was thinking about her brother-in-law. She was so deep in thought, she didn't hear him approach until he was standing in front of her.

  "How's the coffee?"

  She started at his sudden appearance, then quickly recovered, looking at her half empty cup. "I don't know."

  "Couldn't be any worse than the stuff from the courthouse machine."

  She shrugged disinterestedly as she drew in on the cigarette. When she exhaled, a wispy cloud of blue smoke rose between them.

  Trace turned around an industrial plastic chair and sat down, straddling it, his arms folded along the top. "You know, you should probably eat something."

  She flashed him a grim, humorless smile. "Now you sound like someone's mother."

  "But not yours," Trace guessed.

  "No." She shook her head, sending her hair fanning out in a gilt arc. The scent of flowers wafted on air heavy with the aroma of disinfectant. Her face closed up, like a wildflower sensing an impending storm and she ground out the cigarette with more force than was necessary. "Definitely not mine."

  Her slender shoulders slumped, making her appear smaller and more vulnerable. Rather than meet his steady gaze, she began chipping away at the cup, her scarlet fingernails tearing off pieces of white foam. Her lips had left a scarlet crescent on the edge of the cup. Trace frowned as he found himself wondering if Mariah's lips were as soft and succulent as they looked.

  Abandoning her destruction of the coffee cup, she put her elbows on the table, rested her chin on her linked fingers and looked straight at him. "Have you ever killed anyone, Sheriff?"

  A dark cloud moved over his face. "If you checked me out, you probably know the answer to that question."

  "I know that your department jacket listed a provoked and justifiable shooting. But I don't know how you felt about it."

  "Too bad you couldn't get anyone to lift the department's shrink's files for you."

  His eyes were flint. His granite jaw could have been carved on the side of Mount Rushmore. Mariah knew she was pushing. But although her professional contacts had assured her that Trace Callahan was a good, albeit unorthodox cop, it was important to her to know what kind of man the sheriff was.

  "I'd rather hear it from you," she said quietly. Firmly. When he didn't answer, she studied him for a long time. "You didn't like it." While researching her television scripts, Mariah had discovered there were too many cops who got off on the Dirty Harry bravado bandied around local cop bars.

  "No." Trace thought back on the nightmares, the nausea, the discomfort of having to accept the back slaps and congratulations of his fellow cops for successfully taking one of the bad guys off the street. "I didn't."

  Mariah nodded, satisfied again that this was a good man. An honest man. A cop who took his responsibility to society seriously.

  They exchanged a long look. Unbidden and unwanted, tension suddenly sizzled, like a downed hot electric wire snaking across a rain-slick street. Mariah was momentarily rattled by the rising heat in Trace's slate eyes. For his part, Trace viewed the answering flames and silently cursed himself for inviting a complication he definitely did not need.

  Something was happening, Mariah realized as she felt every atom in her body responding to Trace in a distracting, dangerous and highly disturbing way. She could have wept with relief when the strident blare of a hospital code from the speaker overhead shattered the suspended moment.

  An instant later, Trace's walkie-talkie began stuttering. Grateful for the interruption, he plucked it off his belt. "Yeah?"

  His short, harsh tone caused a moment's hesitation on the other end. "Sheriff?"

  Trace softened his tone and prayed for patience. "Yes, Jill?"

  "Oh." Another little pause. "You didn't sound like yourself." When he didn't answer, she said, "You have to come back to the office, right away. We have a three-eleven in progress."

  "An indecent exposure?"

  "Oh. No, that's not right." The young voice wavered with stress. "Let me look it up—"

  Trace exchanged a what-can-you-do look with Mariah, who smiled faintly in return. "Jill—"

  "Here it is. I meant a four-fifteen F. A family disturbance," she added unnecessarily. Outside the hospital, an ambulance was pulling up to the emergency room doors. The vehicle's radio caused interference, but through the static Trace and Mariah heard "crackle Matthew Swann crackle crackle and his wife crackle crackle yelling at each other something awful. Crackle. You'd better get back crackle right away."

  Mariah cursed. World War III had obviously broken out in Whiskey River. "She's probably not exaggerating."

  "I'm on my way, Jill."

  "Thank you, Sheriff." Even over the annoying static, the relief in the young dispatcher's tone was easily heard.

  Trace stood up. "Do you want to go fight with your brother-in-law, or would you rather come along and play referee?" Trace asked.

  "Actually, given my druthers, I'd rather be lying back on the beach, while some tanned and ridiculously sexy Hollywood hunk from 'Baywatch' rubs sun block on my back," Mariah answered. "But, as I have to continually remind myself, life isn't television."

  She stood up as well, swallowed the remainder of the now-cool coffee and tossed the cup and the shredded pieces into a nearby trash bin.

  "The senator's not going anywhere," she decided. "I'd better come with you. Because if my parents are in top form, you're definitely going to need backup on this call, Sheriff."

  Minutes later, as he pulled up in front of the courthouse, Trace viewed the white stretch limo parked along the curb i
n a space clearly marked with a red-and-white No Parking sign.

  After an absence of more than a quarter of a century, Maggie McKenna had returned to Whiskey River.

  "Better fasten your seat belt, Sheriff," Mariah warned. "Because it's going to be a bumpy night."

  They could hear the argument raging all the way down the hallway. A man's voice, deep and angry, bellowing like a bull, countered by a woman's higher, no less angry tone. Whenever the two combatants would pause for breath, Jill's voice chimed in like a triangle in a preschoolers' rhythm band, ineffectually trying to be heard.

  Trace and Mariah paused outside the office door. Through the frosted window they could see the outline of a woman pacing. The minute Trace and Mariah entered, Jill took advantage of her boss's appearance and escaped. "I'm behind on my filing," she said as she dashed past.

  Watching her race down the hallway, Mariah experienced an urge to join the young dispatcher. Then she embraced her mother.

  Watching them, Trace considered that while Margaret McKenna had been unable to stop the march of time, she'd definitely managed to slow aging to a crawl. Although he knew she had to be in her fifties, she could have passed for a decade younger.

  Her hair, pulled back into a chic French roll—all the better to display still striking cheekbones that looked as if they'd been sculpted with a chisel—gleamed the hue of burnished copper. Remarkably, her thickly lashed eyes were every bit as dramatically green as they'd appeared to be on movie screens. The faint lines fanning out from their kohl accentuated corners added character rather than age.

  Trace wondered how she managed to keep that milkmaid pale complexion living in southern California, land of endless sunshine. Her wine-hued lips were full and lush, almost as lush as the female body currently clad in a black silk pantsuit that he suspected cost as much as his last truck. As his quick gaze skimmed over the voluptuous breasts draped in that jet silk, reckless memories of lustful teenage fantasies flooded back.

  "Ms. McKenna," he greeted her, trying not to appear like the bumbling sex-crazed schoolboy who'd secretly kept the photo of the actress that had come with his wallet. Trace didn't want to repeat J.D.'s earlier starstruck performance toward Mariah. "I'm Sheriff Callahan." He held out his hand. "I'm sorry about your daughter."

  Maggie had never been anything if not direct. "Sorry isn't going to catch Laura's murderer." She shook his extended hand with her right, while jabbing the burning cigarette in her left at him like a weapon. "I want to know everything you're doing to solve this crime, Sheriff. Chapter and verse."

  She might physically resemble Laura Swann Fletcher, but the energy radiating from her, like a shimmering scarlet aura, along with the crackling impatience, reminded Trace of Mariah. Like mother, like daughter, he figured.

  "We've got roadblocks out all over the county." He took off his hat and tossed it in the direction of an oak hook on the wall. For a suspended moment, every pair of eyes in the room—every pair but Trace's—followed the black Stetson's flight.

  Mariah was not all that surprised when it landed precisely on target. Neither apparently was Trace, who had already pulled out his notebook. "The medical examiner spent the morning compiling evidence, and—"

  "I want to know why I wasn't notified immediately," Matthew Swann broke into Trace's explanation.

  Mariah's father was a large man, with a thick shock of silver hair and a hard, solid body like one of his Brahma bulls. His face was tanned to the same hue as the hand-tooled leather belt he was wearing with his jeans.

  "My dispatcher attempted to notify you in Santa Fe, Mr. Swann." Trace took the ashtray back out of the drawer and put it on the corner of his desk for Maggie to use. "But you'd checked out of your hotel."

  "Probably off screwing some little blond barrel racer half his age," Maggie said, her voice dripping with venom. "While his daughter was being murdered in her bed."

  Matthew turned on her. "I was alone, dammit!" His bushy pewter brows plunged downward toward a nose that had obviously been broken on more than one occasion. "And you're a fine one to talk. After all those years of getting smashed at Denim and Diamonds, then spreading your legs for half the cowboys in Whiskey River."

  Maggie's eyes were shooting emerald sparks. "That's a lie!" She sucked in a huge breath and tossed her head in that same furiously haughty gesture Trace had witnessed in Mariah.

  "Although no one could have blamed me if I did indulge in an occasional afternoon delight," she jeered at her former husband through a cloud of exhaled smoke. "Since the only useful stud around the Swann ranch was the four-legged one you kept out in the barn to service your precious mares."

  The argument Trace and Mariah had interrupted resumed, hot and heavy. Mariah turned away, walked over to the window, gazed out at the park and wished she was anywhere else but here. Hearing her parents tearing away at each other reminded her of those long-ago nights when, frightened by their battles, she'd crawl into bed with Laura, who'd held her tight, distracted her with fairy tales and promised to always take care of her.

  But who was taking care of you, Laurie? Mariah wondered now. As the familiar guilt clenched her heart, she leaned her forehead against the glass and closed her eyes.

  "Ms. McKenna," Trace said, in a low voice that somehow managed to be heard above the increasingly bitter accusations flying back and forth across his office. "Mr. Swann. In case it's slipped your minds, I have a murder to solve. I don't have time to waste listening to the two of you act out a rerun of 'Divorce Court.'"

  A stunned silence fell over the office. Mariah opened her eyes and slowly turned around. She doubted anyone had ever dared to speak to either of her parents that way.

  "You can't talk to me that way, Callahan," Matthew Swann blustered. Anger flushed his darkly tanned cheeks a deep scarlet. "Do I need to remind you that I happen to be on the board of supervisors of this county? The very same board that hired you can also fire you."

  He shot Trace the intimidating glare that had served him well for nearly seventy years. The Swann name was synonymous with power in Mogollon County. A man accustomed to getting results on demand from those who served him, Matthew Swann expected nothing less from Whiskey River's sheriff.

  "I can have your badge for insubordination."

  "Oh, shut up, Matthew," Maggie snapped at her former husband. "The sheriff's right."

  She sat down in one of the brown visitor's chairs, put the cigarette out in the ashtray, then clasped her hands neatly in her lap, as repentant as a Catholic schoolgirl called to the Mother Superior's office.

  "I'm truly sorry that you've had to witness such an unattractive display, Sheriff Callahan. All I can say in my defense is that this man has always brought out the worst in me."

  When Matthew opened his mouth, obviously intending to respond to the dig, Trace raised his hand and cut him off. "Why don't you have a seat, Mr. Swann." He claimed his own leather chair behind the desk.

  Mariah's father folded his arms across his massive chest. "I'd rather stand."

  "Obstinate old goat," Maggie muttered under her breath.

  "Bitch," Matthew muttered back.

  Mariah couldn't stand it another minute. "Would you two just shut up!" Her voice and her legs were trembling. "Laura's dead, dammit!"

  She dragged both her hands through her hair in a gesture of absolute frustration. Trace watched as she battled angry tears and won. "Your daughter's dead and all you two can do is behave like a pair of bratty five-year-olds insulting each other in the kindergarten sandbox."

  "Don't you dare talk to your father that way, girl," Matthew threatened.

  "Or what?" Mariah challenged, caught up in old family feuds herself. "You'll lock me in my room? Send me to bed without my supper? Whip me?"

  "Perhaps if you'd had a few more trips to the woodshed when you were younger, you'd have a little respect for your elders."

  "Respect has to be earned, Matthew," Maggie broke in. "Although I'll reluctantly admit you've managed to buy it on more than on
e occasion."

  Fed up, Trace pushed himself out of his chair, took his hat from the hook on the wall and began to walk out of his office.

  "Where the hell do you think you're going, Callahan?" Matthew bellowed.

  Trace glanced back over his shoulder. "I told you, Mr. Swann, I don't have time for this."

  Maggie rose with a lithe grace and went over to where Trace was standing in the doorway, half in and half out of the office.

  "Please, Sheriff." She placed a beringed hand on his arm. Her nails had been lacquered a deep rose. "If we promise to be on our best behavior, will you tell us what you know?" She was looking up at him through her thick fringe of black lashes, her green eyes coaxing compliance.

  "Hell, Callahan," Matthew grumbled, "don't be so damned thin-skinned."

  Trace exchanged a quick glance with Mariah, whose own expression revealed they were thinking the same thing. That this was probably as close as he was ever going to get to an apology from the headstrong rancher.

  "It's simply a matter of priorities," he explained with a patience he was a very long way from feeling.

  "We'll be good." Maggie's hand was now stroking his arm in a distinctly feminine fashion. "We promise." Her melted emerald eyes hardened as they flicked over to her former husband. "Don't we Matthew?" Her voice turned as flinty as her eyes.

  "I just want to know what you're doing to catch the son-of-a-bitch who murdered my daughter."

  "And we want to see her," Maggie said.

  "Your daughter's body was taken to Peterson's Funeral Home," he divulged. "I can take you over there—"

  "No," Mariah broke in. "I'll do it."

  Trace gave her a grateful look. "All right. Why don't we all sit down. And I'll fill you in on what we have so far."

  All three Swanns did as instructed.

  Trace told them as much as he could, including the fact that Laura had been pregnant. He did not tell the victim's parents that it was not her husband's child. Not because of any moral judgment call on his part, but he didn't want the news to get out until he'd tracked down Clint Garvey. According to J.D., whom he'd sent out to the Garvey spread, the cowboy, who still hadn't returned, appeared to have conveniently disappeared.