Best Kept Secrets (38 page)

Reede made a snarling sound and lunged across the room at him. "You're responsible." He leaned down close to Plummet again, forcing him backward in his chair. "Reading about that probably gave you a real thrill, didn't it, you little prick? You're gonna pay for that animal, if I have to wring a confession from your scrawny neck."

So it went for at least another hour.

Alex's bottom grew tired and sore from sitting in the uncomfortable chair. Once, she stood up and paced the length

of the room, just to restore circulation. Plummet's fanatical eyes tracked her, making her feel so ill at ease that she returned to her seat.

"Mrs. Plummet?"

The preacher's wife flinched when the sheriff suddenly spoke her name. Her shoulders had been sagging forward with fatigue; her head had been kept slightly bowed. Both came erect and she looked up at Reede with awe and respect.

"Yes, sir?"

"Do you go along with everything he's told me?"

She shot Plummet a quick, sidelong glance, swallowed hard, and wet her lips nervously. Then, she lowered her eyes and bobbed her head up and down. "Yes."

Plummet's face remained impassive, though his lips were twitching with a smug smile longing to be full-blown. Next, Reede looked down at Alex. She gave him an almost imperceptible shrug.

He stared at the floor for ponderous seconds before barking out a deputy's name. The officer materialized in the doorway as though he'd been expecting his chiefs restrained but furious summons.

"Let him go."

Plummet closed his Bible with a resounding clap and stood up. He marched toward the door like a crusader dressed in full battle armor. He ignored his wife, who meekly trailed in his righteous wake.

The deprecations Reede muttered were vile and scathing.

"Have somebody keep an eye on the house," he told the deputy. "Let me know if anything he does looks suspicious or even slightly fishy. Damn, I hate to let that bastard walk out of here."

"Don't blame yourself," Alex said sympathetically. "You conducted a thorough interrogation, Reede. You knew going in you didn't have any real evidence."

He whirled on her, his eyes stormy. "Well, that sure as hell hasn't ever stopped you, has it?" He stamped out, leaving her speechless with indignation.

Alex returned to her cubicle, fumbled for the key in the bottom of her handbag, and bent to unlock the door. She felt a prickling sensation at the back of her neck that warned her a heartbeat before the sinister whisper reached her ears.

"You've been corrupted by the ungodly. You're consorting with Satan, showing no more shame than a whore who sells herself." She spun around. Plummet's eyes had regained their zealous glint. Spittle had collected to form white foam in the corners of his mouth. His breathing was labored. "You betrayed my trust."

"I didn't ask for your trust," Alex countered, her voice husky with alarm.

"Your heart and mind have been polluted by the ungodly.

Your body has been tarnished by the stroke of the devil himself. You--"

He was caught from behind and slammed against the wall.

"Plummet, I warned you." Reede's face was fierce. "Get out of my sight or you're going to be spending some time in jail."

"On what charge?" the preacher squealed. "You've got nothing to hold me on."

"Accosting Miss Gaither."

"I'm God's messenger."

"If God has anything to say to Miss Gaither, He'll tell her Himself. Understand? Understand!" He shook Plummet again, then released him. He rounded on Mrs. Plummet, who had flattened herself against the wall in horrified silence.

"Wanda, I'm warning you, take him home. Now!" the sheriff bellowed.

Demonstrating more courage than Alex would have expected from her, she grabbed her husband's arm and virtually dragged him toward the staircase. Together, they stumbled up the steps and disappeared around the corner at the landing.

Alex didn't realize how shaken she was until Reede's eyes moved to the hand she had pressed against her pounding heart.

"Did he touch you, hurt you?"

"No." Then, shaking her head, she repeated, "No."

"Don't bullshit me this time. Did he make any threats?

Say anything I could use to nail his skinny ass?"

"No, just garbage about me selling out to the unrighteous.

He considers me the traitor in the camp."

"Get your things. You're going home."

"You don't have to ask me twice."

He took her coat off the rack near the door. He didn't hold it for her; in fact, he almost threw it at her, but Alex was touched by his evident concern for her safety. He pulled on his leather, fur-trimmed jacket and cowboy hat as they went upstairs and out the front door.

The Plummets must have taken his advice and left. They were nowhere around. Darkness had fallen. Most of the square was deserted. Even the B & B Cafe had closed for the night. It catered to the breakfast and lunch crowd.

Her car was cold when she slid beneath the steering wheel.

"Start your motor to warm it up, but don't leave till I come around in my truck. I'll follow you to the motel."

"That's not necessary, Reede. As you said, he's probably a coward. People who make threats rarely carry them out."

"Yeah. Rarely," he said, stressing the word.

"I can take care of myself. You don't have to worry about me."

"I'm not. It's me I'm worried about. You asked for trouble when you came here, and you're getting it. But no female assistant D.A. is gonna get raped, maimed, or killed in my county. Got that?"

He slammed her car door. Alex watched him disappear down the dark sidewalk, wishing she'd never heard of him or his infernal county. She commissioned him to the fiery hell Plummet frequently expounded upon.

When she saw the headlights of the Blazer approaching, she backed her car into the street and aimed it in the direction of the motel that had been home for far too long. She resented being escorted home.

She let herself into her room and locked the door behind her, without even waving her thanks to Reede. Dinner was a tasteless meal ordered off the room-service menu. She thumbed through the yearbooks again, but was so familiar with them by now that the pictures hardly registered. She was tired, but too keyed up to go to sleep.

Junior's kiss haunted her thoughts, not because it had sparked her sensual imagination, but because it hadn't.

Reede's kisses haunted her because he had so effortlessly accomplished what Junior had wanted to.

Angus hadn't needed a script to know the kind of scene he'd walked into when he had entered the hangar and found her with Reede. His expression had been a mix of surprise, disapproval, and something she couldn't quite put a name to.

Resignation?

She tossed and turned out of fatigue, frustration, and yes, fear. No matter how many times she denied it, Plummet disturbed her. He was a wacko, but his words held a ring of truth.

She had come to care what each of her suspects thought of her. Winning their approval had become almost as important as winning her grandmother's. It was a bizarre fact, one she had difficulty admitting to herself.

She didn't trust Reede, but she desired him and wanted him to reciprocate that desire. For all his laziness, she liked Junior and felt a twinge of pity for him. Angus fulfilled her childhood fantasies of a stern but loving parent. The closer she came to uncovering the truth about their connection to her mother's death, the less she wanted to know it.

Then, there was the cloud of the Pasty Hickam murder lurking on the horizon. Reede's suspect, Lyle Turner, was still at large. Until she was convinced that he had killed the Mintons's former ranch hand, she would go on believing that Pasty had been eliminated as an eyewitness to Celina's murder.

His killer considered her a threat, too.

So, in the middle of the night, when she heard a car slowly drive past her door, when she saw its headlights arc across her bed, her heart leaped in fright.

Throwing off the covers, she crept to the window and peeped through the crack between it and the heavy drape.

Her whole body went limp with relief and she uttered a small, glad sound.

The sheriffs Blazer executed a wide turn in the parking lot and passed her room once more before driving away.

Reede thought about turning around and going to where he knew he could find potent liquor, a welcoming smile, and a warm woman, but he kept the hood of his truck pointed toward home.

He was sick with an unknown disease. He couldn't shake it, no matter how hard he tried. He itched from the inside out, and his gut was in a state of constant turmoil.

His house, which he had always liked for the solitude it provided, seemed merely lonely when he opened the squeaky screen door. When was he ever going to remember to oil those hinges? The light he switched on did little to enhance the living room. It only illuminated the fact that there was nobody to welcome him home.

Not even a dog came forward to lick his hand, wagging its tail because it was glad to see him. He didn't have a goldfish, a parakeet, a cat--nothing that could die on him and leave another vacuum in his life.

Horses were different. They were business investments.

But every once in a while, one would become special, like Double Time. That had hurt. He tried not to think about it.

Refugee camps in famine-ravaged countries were better stocked with provisions than his kitchen. He seldom ate at home. When he did, like now, he made do with a beer and a few saltines spread with peanut butter.

On his way down the hall, he adjusted the furnace thermostat so he wouldn't be frozen stiff by morning. His bed was unmade; he didn't remember what had gotten him out of it so suddenly the last time he'd been in it.

He shed his clothes, dropping them in the hamper in the bathroom, which Lupe's niece would empty the next time she came. He probably owned more underwear and socks than any man he knew. It wasn't an extravagance; it just kept him from having to do laundry frequently. His wardrobe consisted of jeans and shirts, mostly. Having several of each done up at the dry cleaner's every week kept him decently clothed.

While he brushed his teeth at the bathroom sink, he surveyed his image in the mirror. He needed a haircut. He usually did. There were a few more gray hairs in his sideburns than the last time he'd looked. When had those cropped up?

He suddenly realized how lined his face had become. Anchoring the toothbrush in the corner of his mouth, he leaned across the sink and peered at his reflection at close range.

His face was full of cracks and crevices.

In plain English, he looked old.

Too old? For what? More to the point, too old for whom?

The name that sprang to mind greatly disturbed him.

He spat and rinsed out his mouth, but avoided looking at himself again before he turned out the cruelly revealing overhead light. There was no need to set an alarm. He was always up by sunrise. He never overslept.

The sheets were frigid. He pulled the covers to his chin and waited for heat to find his naked body. It was at moments like this, when the night was the darkest and coldest and most solitary, that he wished Celina hadn't ruined him for other relationships. At any other time, he was glad he wasn't a sucker for emotions.

At times like this, he secretly wished that he'd married.

Even sleeping next to the warm body of a woman you didn't particularly love, or who'd gone to fat months after the wedding, or who had let you down, or who harped about the shortage of money and the long hours you worked, would be better than sleeping alone.

Then again, maybe not. Who the hell knew? He would never know because of Celina. He hadn't loved her when she died, not in the way he'd loved her most of his life up until then.

He had begun to wonder if their love could outlast their youth, if it was real and substantial, or merely the best substitute they had for other deficiencies in their lives. He would always have loved her as a friend, but he had doubted that their mutual dependence was a healthy foundation for a life together.

Perhaps Celina had sensed his reservations, and that had been one of the reasons she'd felt the need to leave for a while. They had never discussed it. He would never know, but he suspected it.

Months before she left for El Paso that summer, he had been questioning the durability of their childhood romance.

If his feelings for her changed with maturity, how the hell was he going to handle the breakup? He had still been in a muddle about it when she had died, and it had left him wary of forming any future relationships.

He would never let himself get that entwined with another human being. It was deadly, having that kind of focus on another person, especially a woman.

Years ago, he'd sworn to take what women could expediently give him, chiefly sex, but never to cultivate tenderness toward one again. He would certainly never come close to loving one.

But the short-term affairs had become too complicated.

Invariably, the woman developed an emotional attachment'

that he couldn't reciprocate. That's when he'd started relying on Nora Gail for physical gratification. Now, that had soured.

Sex with her was routine and meaningless, and lately, he was having a hard time keeping his boredom from showing.

Dealing with a woman on any level demanded a much higher price than he was willing to pay.

Still, even as he lay there mentally reciting his creed of eternal detachment, he found himself thinking about her.

At this advanced stage of his life, he'd started daydreaming like a sap. She occupied more of his thoughts than he would have ever thought possible. At the edges of these thoughts was an emotion very akin to tenderness, nudging its way into his consciousness.

Nipping at the heels of it, however, was always pain: the pain of knowing who she was and how irrevocably her conception had altered his life, of knowing how decrepit he must appear to a woman her age, of seeing her kiss Junior.

"Dammit."

He groaned into the darkness and covered his eyes with his forearm as his mind tricked him into witnessing it again.