Homecoming (16 page)

Tears filled Dana’s eyes, turning them into pools of shimmering gold. From whom did Georgia want to protect her? Who or what? And why hadn’t she testified at the trial that she did not believe her son-in-law had fired three bullets into his wife’s head as she lay sleeping?

Dana opened her eyes, determination radiating from their moist depths. Twenty-two years was a long time—long enough for her mother’s murderer to have passed away or to have left Hillsboro permanently.

Pushing off the cushioned rocker, she climbed the staircase to her bedroom. She had to change her clothes. If she was going to investigate a crime, then she needed to begin with two sources: the Greenville courthouse where her father had been tried for murder, because she would need a copy of the transcript of the trial proceedings. She would also need any newspaper clips covering
The State of Mississippi vs. Harry E. Nichols
.

Fourteen

Dana knocked, and then pushed open the door to the
Hillsboro Herald
. The gold letters on the frosted glass door identified Ryan Vance as publisher and editor in chief.

She stepped into a large pace littered with orderly chaos. Bundles of newspapers were piled high on two long tables, while corkboard walls were covered with paste-up ads. There were two facing desks, both with computers, and a man with thinning red hair sat at one, his fingers skimming over a keyboard. His head came around when she closed the door.

Eyes the color of shiny copper pennies widened as Dana moved closer. “Good afternoon. I’m—”

“Dana Nichols,” the red-haired man said, rising to his feet and completing her introduction. “I’d know you anywhere.” He had a high-pitched, nasal-sounding voice. He extended a freckled hand. “I’m Ryan Vance, editor of the
Herald
.”

She managed a skeptical smile. “You seem to have me at a distinct disadvantage.” She shook his hand.

“Please sit down.” He waited for Dana to sit down on a chair next to his cluttered desk. “You look exactly like your mother. What I mean is that you look exactly like she
did
before she died.”

Dana stared at the newspaperman, who appeared to be in his mid-forties to early fifties. His sedentary career
was evident by the softness in his slight body under a rumpled white shirt and khakis. His clothes were clean, although she doubted whether they’d seen an iron since leaving the factory where they were made.

“What do you know about my mother?”

She listened intently as Ryan revealed he’d been only twenty-three when he’d covered Dr. Harry Nichols’s murder trial for a Greenville newspaper. His father, who’d been editor at that time, had come down with an acute gout attack, and Ryan had temporarily assumed the responsibility of the running the weekly. He boasted that the paper’s circulation had tripled for the duration of the celebrated trial.

“Emotions were off the chart, half the populace of Hillsboro believing in Harry’s innocence, and the other half in his guilt. The beliefs went according to gender: the men openly condemning Dr. Nichols, while most women lamented that the handsome doctor was innocent.

“Alicia Nichols was a very controversial woman,” Ryan continued. “She was beautiful and extremely flirtatious. Whenever she walked into a room, women held onto their husbands as if they feared she could lure one of them away with a single glance.”

Dana peered closely at the editor, seeing a flush of color darken his face. “Did she sleep with other men beside her husband?” she asked, recalling her parents’ argument the night of the murder.

The color in Vance’s face deepened as he shook his head. “That I don’t know. Hillsboro was just beginning to integrate during that time, so there wasn’t too much mixing socially. The fact that the trial was moved to Greenville gave me the advantage over the Davises, because I was able to interview blacks and whites without suspicion. My father was respected for always reporting the truth.”

“And what do you believe was the truth? Was my father guilty of murder?”

Minute lines fanned out around Ryan’s eyes as he squinted at a photograph over Dana’s shoulder. “I didn’t believe he was capable of murder,” he said after an interminable silence.

She shifted her eyebrows. “You didn’t answer my question, Mr. Vance.”

“No, Miss Nichols. I don’t believe he killed her.”

Her expression softened. “Please call me Dana.” He nodded. “I’m going to need your help.”

Ryan angled his head, staring at a face that had bewitched him more than thirty years ago. He’d told Dana the truth—during that time segregation had kept the races apart, but that hadn’t stopped him or other white men from lusting after Alicia Sutton Nichols. There was something about her most men—young or old—could not resist. And he wondered if Dana, like Alicia, was just as provocative.

He knew Dana Nichols was a journalist. He’d remembered her name in a picture caption under an award-winning syndicated article exposing years of sexual abuse in an upstate New York group home for girls. It hadn’t been her name as much as her face, her uncanny resemblance to Alicia Nichols, that had captured his rapt attention.

“How?” he asked.

She smiled, the gesture crinkling her golden eyes. “You covered the trial, so you were familiar with all of the players: prosecutor, defense attorneys, witnesses, and the jurors.”

He lifted red-orange eyebrows. “Are you saying you want to talk to them?”

“Yes. And that includes the fire marshal, coroner, crime-scene technicians, and the former sheriff.”

“Even if all of them are still alive, do you think they’d be willing to open up to you?” Ryan questioned.

Her smiled faded. “Why shouldn’t they?”

“You’re a stranger to them, Dana. An outsider. Hillsboro is a strange little town. It has always hid its dirty little secrets well.”

Dana stared at the newspaperman, her smooth forehead furrowing. “You live here now?”

Ryan nodded. “I moved here after I brought the
Herald
. I’ve always liked Hillsboro—even twenty-two years ago when I came here for the first time to talk to your grandmother.”

This disclosure forced Dana to sit up straighter. “What did she tell you?”

“Nothing. Georgia Sutton refused to talk to me, the Davises, or her neighbors about her daughter’s murder or the trial. The only person I remember her interacting with was her lawyer.”

“Eugene Payton,” Dana said softly, wondering just how much the elderly man knew. Had Georgia confided in him? She mentally added Mr. Payton’s name to her list of interviewees.

A shiver of frustration swept over her. She had four months—less than 120 days to attempt to clear her family’s name. “There has to be someone who’d be willing to talk to me about my parents.”

“I doubt it,” Ryan countered, pulling his lower lip between his teeth. “I happen to know you’re a journalist,” he countered sheepishly. “I read a syndicated article on the work you did on that residential group home for adolescent girls.

“Come work for the
Herald
. If you want, you can start today with editing copy while you do your investigating. Folks will get used to seeing you around here and connect you with the paper. After a couple of weeks I’ll have you cover a story about something of
interest. I’ve begun a column I call
Hillsboro: Then and Now
. I select a date in history, profiling a particular person or event. I also feature a current event or person, which always makes for a lot of excitement because anyone I interview must sign a statement attesting they will not disclose the contents of their interview before that edition of the paper is released. It’s a gimmick, but the paper’s circulation has doubled since the start of the column.”

Dana had to smile. “That’s very clever.”

Ryan lifted a shoulder under his short-sleeved rumpled white shirt. “It sells copies. The Davises started the
Herald
as a hometown paper, and I plan to continue the tradition.”

Dana knew the newspaper editor was right about small towns. It was easier to glean information from intelligence agencies than tight-lipped residents, many of whom would carry secrets to their graves.

She wanted to reject Ryan’s offer. She had a job in Carrollton, and she hadn’t come to Mississippi to work for a small-town weekly, even if it was only on a temporary basis. However, she was also familiar with people’s unwillingness to disclose things to a reporter unless she granted their request for complete anonymity; she’d earned a reputation for never disclosing her sources. She was also aware that if she didn’t get the editor’s cooperation, then her investigation would be certain to hit a roadblock, if not a dead end.

“I’ll accept your offer,” she said reluctantly, “but I’m going to need time to go through your morgue. I’d appreciate it if you pull the microfiche on the issues covering everything from the police investigation to the trial. I also plan to visit the courthouse in Greenville to secure a copy of the transcript from my father’s trial.”

Ryan’s eyes danced with excitement. “I can help
with that. I have a cousin who works in court records. I’ll call her and tell her to have the copies ready for you. You’ll have to fill out a request form and pay a fee for each page. Now, about working here. You can set your own hours as long as you get your assignments completed before each Wednesday. Everything goes to the printer on Wednesday. We drop off the mail subscriptions at the post office Thursday afternoons. Everyone likes to get their
Herald
for the weekend.”

Dana nodded. “I’d like to begin tomorrow morning with the microfiche.”

“I’ll have them ready for you. Meanwhile, I’d like you to set up an interview with one of Hillsboro’s newer residents.” Ryan stood up and walked over to a table stacked with back issues. Sorting through the dates, he picked up three, handing them to Dana. “He’s Dr. Tyler Cole. He’s a bachelor and the latest medical director at the Hillsboro Women’s Health Clinic. If you read what I’ve written in these back issues, then you’ll glean an idea of what to ask for.”

Her expression did not change when Ryan mentioned Tyler’s name, despite the rush of heat singing her face. Ryan wanted her to interview the man who’d pursued her with the quiet, determined stalking of a hungry predator. Focused and relentless, he’d temporarily become a part of her life and she his.

She’d slept under his roof, shared his bed, yet he hadn’t made an attempt to share her body. She knew he was physically attracted to her, and she marveled at his resolute promise they would not make love with other until the time was right for both of them. She vacillated, wanting to sleep with Tyler, and then changed her mind because of the short time they’d known each other.

What she felt for Tyler, shared with him, she had never experienced with the men whom she’d known
or been involved with. Men who she doubted would share her bed but not her body. And there was no doubt Tyler was as virile as any normal male. The obvious difference was that he was in total control of his mind
and
his body.

She gave Ryan a direct stare. “If Dr. Cole is the column’s Now, then who are you profiling for the Then?”

“Your great-grandfather Dr. Silas Nichols.”

Dana felt a rush of uneasiness. Had the editor decided to write about one of her ancestors because she’d returned to Hillsboro? “When did you decide to profile him?”

Ryan turned back to his desk and picked up several printed pages. He handed them to Dana, watching intently as she perused the schedule of names and dates for upcoming issues. A date on the lower left of the page indicated it had been revised the month before. The profile on Dr. Silas Nichols was due to run in three weeks. That meant she had to interview Tyler and write the column before that time.

“Your return to Hillsboro had nothing to do with my decision to write about your great-granddaddy,” Ryan explained. “The fact that he was Hillsboro’s first resident black doctor was a history-making event. And because there were rumors that he’d saved the life of a prominent white Hillsboro citizen, that’s something our current citizens should be made aware of. Less than twenty years after Dr. Nichols purchased his house from the widow of a former Confederate officer, Hillsboro had become an all-black town.”

Her gaze fused with Ryan’s. “How many words?”

“Try to keep it under seven hundred fifty for each time frame.”

She handed him back the schedule. “Give me the contact data on Dr. Cole, and I’ll set up an appointment with him.”

What the editor did not know was that she had the numbers to Tyler’s home phone, cell phone, and pager. She’d been to the man’s house not once but twice. She’d eaten at his table, slept in his bed, and found herself falling in love with him despite her resolve not to get involved.

Pressing a button on his computer, the
Herald
’s editor in chief scrolled through a listing of names, printing out the data he’d collected on Dr. Tyler Cole. He handed her the single sheet of paper.

She picked up a phone on one of the desks, dialing the number to the Hillsboro Women’s Health Clinic, asking to speak to Dr. Cole after she’d identified herself as a reporter from the
Hillsboro Herald
. The woman who answered the call identified herself as Ms. Lincoln, informed Dana Dr. Cole was out of the state and wasn’t expected to return until the end of the week. Dana left her name and number and a message he call her upon his return.

She schooled her expression not to reveal her uneasiness. When she and Tyler parted the night before, he’d promised to call her after office hours Monday evening. She hoped his absence wasn’t the result of a family emergency.

Folding the paper, she put it in her purse, gathered the back issues, thanked Ryan, and walked out of the office. It was only the first day, but she knew she’d made an ally in Ryan Vance. He would be able to confirm or deny most or all of her findings, and she prayed she would uncover the truth before her leave expired.

Fifteen

It was early Tuesday evening when Tyler was finally able to dial the area code and then Dana’s telephone number; he sighed in relief when hearing her voice come through the earpiece. He’d left Hillsboro, Mississippi, within two hours of receiving a call from a New Jersey-based pharmaceutical company requesting his presence at an FDA hearing on the approval of a controversial drug deemed safe for pregnant and lactating women.

He’d been waiting for the call for several months, but was told the hearing had been postponed until late summer. Once the call had come through, Imogene Lincoln was given the task of calling patients and rescheduling appointments. A part-time OB-GYN and a physician’s assistant were called in to cover Tyler’s cases for the week, with a possibility his stay in Washington would be extended an additional week.

“I have a message you called.” His soft voice was filled with repressed laughter. “I take it you miss me.”

Dana laughed. “I don’t think so, Dr. Cole. I didn’t know you had such an inflated ego.”

It was Tyler’s turn to laugh. “Never with you, Miss Nichols.”

“Where are you calling from?”

“Georgetown. I’m staying with a cousin. I’m here for a weeklong FDA hearing. Hold on a minute.”

Teresa Kirkland toddled across the room, his watch clasped tightly in her chubby little fist. Tyler moved off his chair, picked her up, and eased his watch from her fingers. Teresa shrieked an ear-piercing scream while squirming to free herself from her godfather’s firm grip. Holding her under an arm in a football carry, Tyler placed the curly-haired little girl in a playpen filled with stuff animals and soft toys. She stared up at him, electric-green eyes wide with uncertainty. Her lower lip quivered, her eyes filled with tears, but she did not cry. Sighing audibly, she reached for a faded terry-cloth rabbit, pressed it against her coal-black hair, rolled over on her side, and closed her eyes.

It was Tyler’s turn to sigh as he returned to his telephone call with Dana. Teresa usually put up quite a commotion when placed in the playpen. Since she’d begun walking on her own she’d exhibited an uncanny sense of independence. She did not want to be held or confined.

“What are you doing, babysitting?” Dana asked when he came back to the phone.

“I told my cousins I’d look after their daughter while they went out to dinner. Jolene warned me not to let Teresa out of her playpen, but I felt sorry for her, so I let her hang out with me. Her mother says Teresa has a habit of flushing things down the toilet. Every bathroom door in the house has to remain closed whenever the toilet bandit is on the loose.”

“How old is she?”

“She just celebrated her first birthday. She’s incredibly beautiful and very, very bright. I know I sound biased, but she does happen to be my goddaughter.”

“If she’s all you say, then you have a right to be biased.”

He nodded even though she couldn’t see him. Interacting with Teresa April Kirkland had evoked a deep
yearning for fatherhood. He wanted children. He’d even settle for one child. The desire to father a child was strange, foreign, despite the number of babies he’d delivered since he’d become a doctor. Every child he’d assisted in bringing into the word he deemed a miracle. The entire cycle of conception, confinement, and birth was a miracle.

And he knew who he wanted to carry his babies—Dana Nichols!

“I’m sorry I left without contacting you. I got a call before just before midnight, telling me I was to come to D.C. for a ten
A.M.
meeting.”

“There’s nothing worse than a last-minute meeting.”

“I agree. These hearings were planned sometime ago, but I hadn’t expected them to convene at this time. Are you all right?”

“Why wouldn’t I be all right, Tyler?”

“You called my office.”

She told him Ryan Vance had hired her on a part-time basis to work for the
Herald
, and that the editor had assigned her to interview him for the
Hillsboro: Then and Now
feature column.

Tyler’s smile was dazzling. She had gotten a job with the Hillsboro newspaper. Maybe, just maybe, she would change her mind and remain in Hillsboro permanently.

He’d always shied away from interviews, preferring to let his work speak for him. But Dana was different. He was falling in love—no—he was in love with her. And because he was he would agree to do anything for her.

“How soon would you want to conduct the interview?”

“As soon as possible. Your segment is scheduled to run in three weeks.”

“I don’t think I’m going to be here more than a
week. However, if I’m not back by the weekend, then I’ll call you and give you the interview over the phone.”

“Thank you, Tyler.”

“No. Thank you, Dana.”

There was a pause. “For what?”

“For being you.”

“Tyler, don’t—”

“Don’t what?” he interrupted. “Don’t love you? Well, it’s a little too late for that because I
do
love you. I
am
in love with you. It’s taken two days away from Hillsboro and
you
for me to come to that conclusion. The night we went to Three J’s I told you I was a very patient man. Well, I lied, Dana. Right now I don’t have a great deal of patience. In fact, I have
nada!

“The moment I set foot on Hillsboro soil again, I’m coming for you, Dana Nichols. Don’t say you haven’t been warned, because I intend to court, woo, seduce, entice, pursue, lure, and tempt you in agreeing to sharing my life and our future.”

There was a full thirty seconds of silence before Dana’s sultry voice came through the wire again. “You’re a crazy man, Tyler Cole.”

“Yeah, I know,” he said, chuckling softly. “Crazy about you.”

“Good night.”

“Good night, baby.”

Tyler ended the call, his heart beating loudly in his chest. He’d opened up to a woman, stripped himself bare emotionally, and she’d called him crazy.

Well, dammit! He was crazy because he was in love, in love for the first time in his life. And whatever he had to go through to get Dana to share his life, he’d do.

Tyler remembered a plaque Martin Cole had hanging on a wall in his office when he was a young boy
that read:
I’m going to have a piece of everything I want. Some of if may not work out, but I’m still going to have a piece of it anyway
.

When Tyler asked his father about the inscription, Martin explained that his everything had become his wife—the mother of his children, not the family conglomerate, ColeDiz International, Ltd.

He smiled at Teresa, sleeping peacefully with her head resting on her stuffed toy. He’d thought medicine was his everything until he met Dana. Now she was his
everything
.

Tyler sat with his cousin Michael in a room off the kitchen in the Kirklands’ expanded Georgetown home. Renovations were close to completion. A newly installed breezeway connected the house to a two-story guest cottage, and the rear of the house was expanded up and out for three additional bedrooms and two baths.

“I could’ve saved myself a lot of time and money if I hadn’t demolished the house when I first purchased this property,” said Michael.

Tyler smiled, his dark gaze fusing with his first cousin’s light-green eyes, the color a startling contrast in a rich gold-brown face made even darker by the summer sun. Michael’s last name may have been Kirkland, but he was still a Cole. His father, Joshua, was the late Samuel Cole’s illegitimate son. Tall, dark, slender, and intellectually gifted, Michael had become an integral component in the most prominent African-American family in the United States.

“You didn’t know that you’d end up a married man with children,” Tyler said.

Michael nodded. “You’re right about that. Living in an expanded twenty-five-hundred-square-foot carriage
house suited me just fine. Even with the original three bedrooms, it would’ve been okay for Jolene and me, but with one baby and another on the way, it was beginning to feel cramped. And every time Emily, Chris, and their three kids, and Salem, Sara, and their three showed up at the same time, this place looked like a love-in with two, sometimes three, in a bed.”

Tyler chuckled. “When I heard you grumbling about space, I decided to have a house designed with more space than I actually needed. Thirty acres, four bedrooms, six bathrooms, and a three-suite guest house should more than work for me.”

“Damn,
primo
,” Michael swore softly, “What are you expecting? A battalion?”

“Not quite that many. You know for yourself how it is when the entire family gets together. Give the Coles, Kirklands, Lassiters, and the Delgados a few more years and they’ll be able to fill a soccer stadium. Aaron told me Clayborne’s thinking about proposing marriage to a fellow med student once they graduate.”

A slight frown furrowed Michael’s forehead. “How old is Clay?”

“He turned twenty-three in May.”

Michael shook his head. “You better talk to your godson-nephew,
primo
. Twenty-three is a little young for marriage, especially if they’re both faced with residencies and internships. That’s a lot of pressure for a young couple to go through without trying to keep a marriage afloat.”

Tyler held up his hands. “I’m out of that discussion. Somehow Regina isn’t as upset by the news as Aaron. Meanwhile, I thought it would’ve been the reverse.”

Moving from a chair to the love seat where Tyler lay sprawled with his feet resting on a matching ottoman, Michael said quietly in Spanish, “This is off the record. And if I hear my words back, I’m going to
plead the Fifth. Jolene said your sister told her that she’s looking forward to becoming a grandmother, so she’s in favor of Clayborne proposing marriage.”

Tyler’s jaw dropped. “No!”

“Sí, primo.”

“Por Dios!”
Tyler groaned, crossing himself. “Regina’s only going to be fifty-one in July. What’s the rush?”

“I don’t know the answer to that one and I don’t want to know. My father always told me that it’s much safer not to try and figure out what makes a woman who she is. You accept her and roll with it. Speaking of rolling, what’s up with you? I know you didn’t build that mansion to roam around it by yourself.”

Averting his head, Tyler stared at the water flowing from a large indoor fountain in a corner of the Japanese tearoom. “I believe I’ve found someone to share it with me.”

Michael’s eyes widened until his dark-green irises were visible. “Tell me about her.”

Tyler told him everything about Dana, from the time he’d rescued her from mentally disturbed Leon, to treating her burned hand, and to their seeking shelter from the killer tornado, leaving nothing out. He also disclosed her reason for returning to Hillsboro.

“So, she’s the one you want to help with her investigation?” Tyler nodded. “I put in a call to Merrick Grayslake, but he hasn’t gotten back to me. There are times when he disappears for several months, and then he’ll show up at my door without warning. He still frightens the hell out of Jolene, so I’ve asked that he call before dropping by.”

Tyler tried recalling when he’d heard the name before Michael said he would contact him on behalf of Dana. “Didn’t he come to your wedding?”

“Yes.”

“Tall, thin. Kind of sinister-looking, with gray eyes.”

“He’s the one.”

Tyler remembered there was something both intriguing and menacing about the man who’d had all or most of the single women at the wedding reception flirting with him.

“So …” Whatever Michael was going to say was preempted by the soft chiming of the phone on a low table in a corner. Moving quickly, he picked it up before it rang a second time. After dinner, Jolene and Teresa had retired for bed, while he and Tyler cleaned up the kitchen.

“Hello.” His laser-green eyes crinkled as he flashed a wide grin.
“Bon soir, ma belle.”

Tyler sat smiling, knowing his cousin was speaking to his sister Arianna. Michael, fluent in at least six languages, always addressed Arianna in French.

“Don’t bother to call your brother because he’s here,” Michael said, switching fluidly to Spanish. “Yes, of course. We’ll see you this weekend.” He handed the cordless instrument to Tyler. “It’s Arianna.”

“Welcome home, gypsy, and congratulations on your impending motherhood.”

“Thank you, brother,” Arianna crooned softly. “It’s good to be back. I’m calling because Mom and Dad are putting together a little celebration to welcome Silah and me home, and to make an official announcement about the baby. I’m looking at the schedule Aunt Nancy’s Timothy set up for air travel. The New Mexico branch of the family will arrive Thursday afternoon. You were to be picked up Friday afternoon, but since you’re already in the Virginia area, then you will come in with Michael and his family Friday morning.”

Timothy Cole Thomas, who had assumed the presidency of a company his grandfather had begun more than half a century ago, had continued the air-travel
decree set down by Samuel Claridge Cole. The family mandate that all who claimed Cole or Kirkland bloodlines were forbidden to fly on commercial airlines would mean the use of the GIV Gulfstream jet belonging to ColeDiz International, Ltd. The edict was still in effect after more than forty years, following the abduction of Tyler’s sister. Martin Diaz Cole, the family’s reigning patriarch, had stubbornly refused to lift the ban even though Regina would soon celebrate her fifty-first birthday.

“Tyler?”

“Yes, gypsy?”

“It’s good to be home.”

“It’s good to have you back.”

He hung up, experiencing a gentle peace he hadn’t felt in a very long time. His younger sister was back to stay, he was to become an uncle for the third time, his cousin’s wife was expecting another child who would continue their legacy, and he had fallen in love with a woman whom he would willingly give up everything he owned to claim.