After Dark (4 page)

    Graham Ware and this was Noble's
Crossing. Hel town. She still possessed enough power to have the likes
of Johnny Mack put six feet under, if she had I mind to. The movers and shakers
in Noble's Crossing were either relatives or people who owed her favor.
If Johnny Mack wasn't dead and he decided to come back to town and stir up
a stink, he'd be sorry She would see to it personally.

    "Harder, baby, harder,"
Arlene panted, her long red nails biting into her lover's fleshy buttocks.
"Give it to me, Jimmy boy!"

    With his round belly slapping against
Arlene's flat, stretch-mark-scarred stomach, Mayor James Ward thrust into
the luscious woman lying beneath him God, how he loved to fuck Arlene.
She was all woman and made him feel like a real man.

    "You've got the sweetest pussy
in the state and yon know it."

    Arlene lifted herself up, wrapping
her long, slim legs around James's waist. With one final plunge, he spilled
himself into her. She scored his buttocks with her nails. He groaned as
he shook in the aftermath then smiled when he felt her trembling and heard
her cry out as she climaxed.

    When he lowered himself to her side
on the small cot in the back of her beauty parlor, half his butt hung off
the edge. Scooting closer, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her shoulder.
"I can't get enough of you, sugar," James whispered in her ear,
then nipped the lobe.

    Arlene shivered. "You're going
to have to get your; clothes on and get out of here, Jimmy boy. I have
customers coming in right after my lunch break."

    "I can slip out the back way,
into the alley." James licked the moisture from Arlene's left breast.

    "One of these days, somebody's
going to see you sneaking out of here and tell Miss Edith." Arlene
traced the curve of James's spine with the tip of her sharp fingernail.

    "Nobody's going to see me. Besides,
I could think up some excuse to tell Edith. Right now, she's so wrapped up
in Kent's murder that she hasn't got time to be bothered with anything
else."

    "If I was Lane, I'd be throwing
myself a party to celebrate that bastard's death. If she did kill him, I
can't say I blame her."

    "What did Kent ever do to
you?" James jerked Arlene up against him so hard she gasped.

    "Not a damned tiling. I never
had anything to do with Kent Graham, but everybody in town knows why Lane
left him."

    "Didn't your mama ever teach
you that it wasn't polite to speak ill of the dead?" James grinned.

    "All my mama ever taught me
was that the way to a man's heart wasn't through his stomach." Slipping
her hand between their damp bodies, Arlene fondled James's limp penis.

    "I never knew a gal who enjoyed
sex as much as you do, except maybe Sharon Hickman."

    "Yeah, I suppose Sharon spread
her legs for just about all you Magnolia Avenue boys, didn't she?"

    James chuckled, remembering the
stunned look on Edith's face when Kent told the family about the letter
Sharon Hickman had sent him. A letter written on her deathbed.

    ‘’What are you thinking about, Jimmy
boy, screwing Sharon?"

    ‘’No, ma'am, I was thinking about
the next time you and I can get together," James lied.

    He wasn't fool enough to tell her
that he had been thinking about Sharon, nor did he dare mention what weighed
most heavily on his mind-the call he had received from the district attorney
this morning. Wes Stevens had said that someone claiming to be John Mack
Cahill had phoned him and asked a lot of questions about Kent Graham's
death and what the odds were that Lane would be arrested for the crime.
H had asked about Will, too. And this man had implied he was returning
to Noble's Crossing.

    But how was that possible? Johnny
Mack Cahill was dead, wasn't he? He'd died the night Buddy Lawle had dumped
his body into the Chickasaw River.

    "Why don't you figure out a
way for us to go of on another weekend trip the way we did in March,' Arlene
said. "I like it when we don't have to sneak around."

    "I'll see what I can do, sugar."
James stood, picked up his boxer shorts from the floor and slipped into
them.

    While he finished dressing, he
glanced over at Arlene, and his sex grew hard again. Damn, what he would
give to have her in his bed every night. He had been married to Edith for
ten years, and for the first four he'd wondered if she had emasculated
him completely with her position of power in their marriage. Then he
had renewed his affair with Arlene right after her second divorce. It
had started out as nothing but a good time for both of them. Somewhere
along the way, they had gotten serious.

    They'd been secret lovers when
they were teenagers, but he had known he could never marry her. They were
from different sides of the Chickasaw River. His parents would never
have accepted a girl like Arlene. Now he wished he had told his parents
and the whole town to go to hell. He wished that he'd had the balls to defy
his family. If they had married and left Noble's Crossing twenty years
ago, Arlene's two kids would be his, and they wouldn't have to sneak around
to be together.

    There were times when he thought
he really had the guts to ask Edith for a divorce, but then he would remember
all her beautiful money. The old bat would chew him up and spit him out in
little pieces if he ever left her, especially for someone like Arlene
Vickery Cash Motes Dothan, a three-time divorcee who came from the other
side of the river.

    For now, he was trapped in a loveless,
childless marriage. He would have to wait a little longer, until he
had enough money stashed away so he, Arlene and her two kids could leave
Noble's Crossing and never look back. By the time Edith found out about
what he had done, it would be too late for her to do anything about it.

    Driving along Magnolia Avenue in
broad daylight for the whole world to see, Johnny Mack wondered if he was
a fool. His last memory of Rich Man's Land, as the locals often called
this area, had stuck in his mind for fifteen years. As much as he had tried
to forget everything and everyone associated with Noble's Crossing,
she had been the one and only thing he'd never been able to forget. She
had saved his life that night-the night some good ole boys, headed by
Buddy Lawler, had beaten him senseless behind the Nobles' house, tossed
him into the Chickasaw River and left him for dead.

    He wondered if she still lived on
Magnolia Avenue. Had she gone home to her mother after the divorce? Of
all the women he had known in Noble's Crossing, of all the women who had
played a part in his life back then, it never ceased to amaze him that Lane
Noble was the one who haunted him to this day.

    Not Sharon Hickman, despite the
friendship and hot sex they had shared. Not grande dame Edith Graham,
who had bedded him as an act of revenge against her husband. And not even
Mary Martha Graham, with all her pale strawberry blond beauty and her
heartbreaking sadness.

    Why Lane Noble? Lane Noble Graham.
The mother of a boy who might be his son.

    She had been a smart, quiet girl
with the kind of looks a guy wouldn't notice. But he had noticed her.
He'd noticed how different she was from her friends, those snobby little
blue-blooded debutantes. When around their social set, the others never
had acknowledged their acquaintance with him, although sooner or
later he had fucked them all. But Lane, whom he'd never touched, always
had a shy smile and a1 warm hello for him.

    The night Kent Graham had stood on
the sidelines, watching while Buddy Lawler and his cohorts beat] the
hell out of him, Johnny Mack had known in his! gut that they meant to kill
him. And he would have died that rainy September night if shy, sweet little
Lane Noble hadn't found him on the riverbank, after he had dragged himself
out of the cold, deadly water. Johnny Mack slowed briefly in front of the
Noble home, a house built before the Civil War and occupied by the
Noble family for six generations. He had spent three days and nights in
that house, fifteen years ago. Lane had hidden him away, nursed him back
from near death and given him the only good memories he had of Noble's
Crossing.

    One by one, the stately mansions
along Magnolia Avenue came into view as Johnny Mack eased the rental car
down the street. Even if other things in this one-horse town had changed,
been improved and modernized, nothing-absolutely nothing-had changed
on Magnolia Avenue. Same fine homes, neatly manicured lawns and an invisible
sign telling the rest of the world, "Private Property, Keep
Out."

    That was where he had made his mistake
all those years ago. He had trespassed. And no one, especially Kent Graham,
had ever forgiven him. Hell, nobody had cared what he did or who he screwed
as long as he stayed on the other side of the river, with the likes of Sharon
Hickman. But once he had set his sights a little higher, all hell had broken
loose, and his flirtations with the Noble's Crossing debutantes had nearly
cost him his life.

    Fifteen years ago he had sworn he
would never come back to this goddamn town. But that had been before he
found out he might have left behind a child.

    "They say his head was smashed
in so bad his own mama wouldn't have recognized his face." Arlene
Dothan lifted Jackie Cummings's silver blond hair and twisted it into a
neat French twist. "Lord knows. Kent Graham wasn't one of my favorite
people, but it gives me shivers thinking about how he died."

    "If you ask me, the boy was somehow
at the root of all Lane and Kent's problems. People are saying that Kent and
Will fought like cats and dogs. That's what comes of adopting a
child." Jackie preened in the wall-wide mirror over the beauticians'
work stations. "No telling what sort of people that boy came,
from."

    "I never could figure out
why Lane and Kent rushed into adopting a child so soon after they married."
Arlene slipped in the hairpins to secure Jackie' French twist.
"I've heard folks say they thought Ken was probably sterile. What do
you think, Jackie? You're bound to have heard something, now that you're
living there on Magnolia Avenue and working as a nurse to poor little
ole Mary Martha."

    "I have no earthly idea whether
Kent Graham was sterile or not," Jackie said. "I do know Miss
Edith doesn't want to believe that boy isn't her grandson. Seems she thought
he was Kent's child by one of his old girlfriends. But right now her main
concern seems to be Mary Martha. You know that woman hasn't said a sensible
word since the day after Kent's funeral. Of course, she's been unstable
for years, and we all know she doted on that brother of hers. No wonder she
went off her rocker completely."

    "I used to think what a lucky
little boy Will Graham was to have been adopted by Lane and Kent, to be a
member of those families," Arlene said. "You know a lot of
folks in Noble's Crossing are of the opinion that Will could have been
one of John Graham's bastards, and he got his own son to adopt the boy to keep
him in the family."

    "I've never believed that tale,"
Jackie said. "It's true that John Graham couldn't keep his pants zipped,
and he probably left a few bastards spread out over the state; but he never
bothered bringing any of them into the family."

    Arlene picked up the bottle of salon
hair spray. You know, I've seen Will now and again over the years. He's a
handsome boy and quite a young gentleman."

    "He's awfully close to Lane,"
Jackie said. "She made him a good mother. Of course, that didn't
surprise anybody, did it? But Kent surprised us all, the way he turned
out. He sure had us fooled, didn't he?"

    Some people blame Lane. They say
when she left him four years ago, his drinking got worse. But I think
they're wrong to blame her. Those folks don't know beans about what Lane
might have put up with for those ten years she was married to him.'' Arlene
shook] her head, lamenting Lane's fate. She knew what it was like living
with a bad man, a man who didn't mind using his wife's face for a punching
bag.

    "Anyone who knows Lane knows
she didn't kill Kent. She's just not the type to murder somebody."

    "I understand she's holding
up real well, all things considered," Arlene said. "Guess
you've heard what some folks are saying-that the boy killed Kent an she's
just covering for him."

    "She's spoiled him rotten,
that's for sure. And it doesn't help people's opinion of him that he's so
good-looking and such a charmer, even at fourteen. Folks are bound to be
jealous of a boy like that who seems to have everything."

    Biting softly into her bottom lip,
Arlene looked down at Jackie. The woman was a loyal customer and an acquaintance
of long-standing, and for those reasons, she wouldn't correct her misconception
on Lane's son being spoiled rotten. "Will Graham is a good-looking
boy, now that's for sure. And the last time I saw him, he put me in mind of
somebody. There's something awfully familiar about him. I can't quite
place who he reminds me of, but sooner or later, it'll come to me."

    The entrance door opened. A
rush of hot air swept into the cool comfort of Arlene Dothan's Kut and
Kurl beauty salon.