In the Midnight Rain (22 page)

"That would be your relative?"

He gave a nod. "It would. My triple great-grandfather, Ambrose Reynard. He was, by all accounts, a real bastard. Never met a woman he didn't seduce—white, black, free, slave, poor trash. Didn't matter. He scattered children from one end of the county to the other."

Ellie resisted making a comparison. Blue opened the door and held it for her, and he must have caught the wicked thought. "Don't say it," he said, and grinned. "Anyway, some of them got that land, but it was lost and the deeds were a mess. My daddy fixed it up with Gwen before he died."

"Is she related to Rosemary?"

"Not closely. Some kind of third cousin once removed or something like that."

"So she's related to Mabel, too?"

His mouth turned down. "I don't think so. Mabel was Rosemary's father's sister, right? This land came through their mother."

Ellie blinked. "Complicated."

"Just a normal day in the country, honey."

He held the door open for her and she ducked under his arm and into the low roar of Dome's. A country music song played cheerfully, adding a boisterous note to the rumbling of dozens of mostly men taking their midday meal. Two waitresses hurried among the tables, but took their time when they were actually talking to customers, stopping to make jokes and inquire after children. Ellie saw one waitress seat an older man with his buddies, and she took the salt shaker and put it in her pocket. The old man mounted a protest, but she could see he was pleased to be taken care of.

A man in a light linen suit, chewing on a toothpick, carried his bill to the counter. "Blue Reynard," he said heartily, smiling to show big white teeth. He stuck out his hand. "How you doin', man? I heard Stanford came out to look at that rain forest business of yours." Even as he spoke, his eyes strayed toward Ellie in the practiced crowd-roving of a born politician. He nodded at her.

Blue shook his hand. "How are you, Todd?" He gestured toward Ellie, shooting her a meaningful look. "Ellie, this is Todd Binkle. Todd, meet Ellie Connor, a well-known music biographer. She's here researching a book about Mabel Beauvais."

Binkle. Ellie managed to shake his hand—a stubby-fingered, but strong grip—calmly. "How are you?"

"Good to meet you." He had large eyes in a face that once had been sensual, but had grown heavy fleshed and swarthy with middle age. His hair, cut a little long on top, showed the first silvery threads. Despite his name, he had a decidedly Mediterranean look, Greek or Italian, perhaps. "Are you here to do some research?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Is that right." His gaze was somehow compelling, the way he looked at her with what appeared to be genuine interest. In his yearbook photo, that directness had looked arrogant. In person, she found it appealingly inclusive. "You be sure and let us know when it's published, and we'll see to it that you get a lot of play around here. You think you might be able to swing back through and do a radio show one morning?"

"Todd owns the local talk station, in addition to being an alderman," Blue said. "He's always looking for ways to promote the city."

"That I am." There was no apology in the words. "If we want any say in what kind of growth is coming to Gideon, we can't sit back and let it happen. We have to call in what we want.

The hostess rushed over to ring up his bill. As he pulled his wallet from his inside pocket, Ellie spied a heavy gold ring set with an enormous diamond on his wedding finger. It didn't look like a wedding ring, but you never knew with men. A divorced or single man would suit her purposes better than one who was married. She hated to think of upsetting someone's life with the pronouncement of, "Hey, guess what? I'm your daughter."

But with a strange sense of openness, she realized he really could be her father. And maybe it wouldn't be so bad. She smiled at him. "You're right about that, Mr. Binkle. And I'd love to come back when the book is published. Do you have a card?"

"Yes, ma'am." He gave Ellie an embossed linen business card that matched his suit. "I'll help you sell a whole bunch of books."

"Thank you." She noticed his eyes were green, like her own. "I'd be honored."

"Good to see you, Blue. Let me know what comes up with those experiments, all right?"

"Will do," Blue said. He waved at someone across the room. "Ah, there's Doc."

Binkle left and the hostess grabbed menus to seat Blue and Ellie.

"We're okay," he said to the hostess. "We're meeting Doc, over there."

"Y'all want tea or coffee?"

"Tea, please," Ellie said.

"Me, too."

"I'll bring it right over."

Quietly, Blue said, "He really is a contender, isn't he? Binkle, I mean."

Ellie raised her eyebrows. "Yeah. How weird."

He touched her arm, lightly. "It's all gonna work out just fine."

Doc stood up as they came close. "How you doin'?"

"Fine, Doc." Blue clasped his hand with easy grace. "Thanks for meeting us."

"My pleasure." As they settled in the booth, Doc said, "It's always a pleasure to talk about Mabel, you know. Not too many folks remember her anymore."

"Maybe the book will help revive interest," Ellie said.

He pursed his lips, nodded. "Tell me how I can help."

Ellie took out a steno pad she used for taking notes and glanced at the questions she'd put together yesterday. The waitress stopped by with tall glasses of iced tea and promised to be back in a few minutes to take their order. "Oh," Ellie said. "I guess I need to figure out what to eat. How are the cheeseburgers?"

"The burgers are great," Blue said, "but knowing you, it'll be the fries you want more of."

"Knowing me?"

"Yes, darlin'. Doc, you'd think she'd be a bird eater, wouldn't you? But she eats like a linebacker."

Ellie choked at the exaggeration. "Doc," she said, leaning over the table. "That is a lie."

"Good to see a woman eat," he said mildly. The benign dark eyes held a light of approval, but Ellie wondered if it was over her eating, or Blue's teasing.

"That's something you have in common with Mabel. She ate enough for three grown men and never did get even a little bit fat." With a fond smile, he leaned back. "I used to tell her she was gonna be big as a hog before she was through."

"That's exactly the kind of material I want," she said, and pulled the cap off her pen to scribble a note. "I haven't had much luck finding people who knew her well. Rosemary doesn't remember her very well."

The waitress stopped by and they ordered. Blue chuckled when Ellie ordered the cheeseburger and fries. She jabbed him with her elbow without looking at him.

Doc said, "You have any kin around here, Miz Connor? I keep thinking you look powerful familiar."

The question, coming so soon after meeting a man who might very well be her father, stopped her heart for the space of a breath. She pressed a hand to her breastbone, thinking it was the first time she'd ever known what it meant when she read, "her heart skipped a beat." Now she did. "No," she said, hoping no one caught her pause.

"Marcus said the same thing," Blue commented.

Ellie lifted a shoulder. "We all have a twin, they say." Carefully schooling her face, she looked at her notes, and made a decision. "Okay, Doc, I guess the biggest single thing I want to know is if you have any ideas about why she disappeared."

Bad move. Ellie watched as the weathered face visibly drew tight, closed. "I'm not willing to discuss that part."

He knew. The certainty prickled along the back of her neck, and tightened her stomach. But rather than alienate him, she simply nodded. "Okay, I can respect that." She put the notebook down and folded her hands on top of it. "Was she ever in love? My research shows that a lot of men loved her, but I don't see any evidence that she loved any of them back."

"We all loved her," he said, relaxing again. "She was a pretty woman, which you can tell by looking at the pictures, but it was more than that. It was like when she came into a room, you couldn't help looking at her." He shook his head, remembering. "Everybody. Old or young, black or white. Didn't matter. She just gave them that smile of hers, and they fell out."

For some reason, Ellie glanced up at Blue. He had that charisma, too. Even when he was sitting there quietly, one long leg cast out into the aisle because there wasn't enough room underneath. "I've heard that," she said, and gently restated her question. "Wasn't there anyone that caught her back?"

"There were a few she ran around with," he said gruffly. "With me, some. A fella out of New Orleans that sang. She ran with him for a long time, on and off." He twisted an empty sugar packet into a spike.

Ellie waited.

At last, Doc pursed his lips and let go of a sigh. "But there was one she really loved. Called himself Peaches." Old bitterness hardened his mouth. "Otis was his real name, and he wasn't nothing but a two-bit hustler bound for a bad end, but oh, Lordy, when Mabel got an eyeful of him, nothing would do but she had to have him."

Almost forty years had passed, but Ellie could see the name still sat like ashes on Doc's tongue. He lifted his glass and took a long swallow of tea.

"Why him, do you think?" she asked.

"I've wondered myself a thousand times. A lot of women liked him—he got over same way Mabel did. Charm like the devil's own snake, and a real snappy dresser."

"So, did he love her, too?"

"I don't know about love. They sure got together. Peaches bragged his way through half the country about Mabel Beauvais being sweet on him, though he knew better than to do it much around me. Oh, yeah, they were like a couple of minks for a while there."

Ellie scribbled as fast as she could.
Otis "Peaches" McCall,
she wrote in her spidery long hand, and commented aloud, "A man brave enough to call himself Peaches had to be pretty sure of himself."

"That was a name some woman hung on him and it stuck. He didn't do nothing about it. Used to brag about being sweeter to eat than a Georgia peach."

Blue laughed out loud. "Bold SOB."

Doc scowled. "Maybe I shouldn't have told that to a lady. Sorry."

"Oh, no!" Ellie was still making notes, but she waved her hand eagerly. "This is great material."

"Don't go makin' it sound like she was some fast woman or something, now, because she wasn't. Till she met that fast-talking weasel, I don't know that she ever slept with another man."

Ellie nodded. Privately she thought that was doubtful, but Doc obviously needed to remember her a particular way. "My goal isn't to write an exposé," she said. "I'm just trying to find the real woman, the flesh-and-blood person who wrote all that great music."

The waitress delivered their order, still steaming. Ellie's stomach growled at the food on the heavy ceramic plate the woman set in front of her, piled with curly fries.

Blue leaned close. "How are you going to talk and eat and take notes at the same time?"

She lifted her hands and wiggled her fingers. "I'm ambidextrous," she said. She doctored the burger with ketchup and mustard, then cut it in half, salted the fries, and positioned her notebook on the table beneath her right hand. Taking up the hamburger in her left hand, she said, "So when did she meet him?"

Doc laughed, showing big teeth that were only faintly yellowed with age and tobacco. "You're something, girl, you know it?"

"Thank you."

He cut into a small steak. "They met in fifty-one, and might have gone a long time, 'cept Peaches got himself shot one night outside Hopkins'."

Ellie's nerves stilled. "Shot? When?"

He frowned, and his mouth worked. "Musta been about fifty-two. Summer, 'cause I remember it was hot."

"Who did it?"

"Never really was decided. A lot of men in that club that night had good reason to kill him. Somebody waited in the trees just outside, and shot him clean through the heart. He died before he hit the ground, and no amount of screaming by any woman could bring him back. We all figured it was Jake Horace. He'd been threatening for better than a year, and Peaches still wouldn't leave his woman alone."

"Was Mabel with him?"

He shook his head, chewing his steak. Ellie availed herself of the opportunity to eat some of her own food, and when the first fry, hot and salty and perfectly cooked, hit her tongue, she let go of a small noise of approval. "You were right," she said, offering Blue one.

He took it and grinned. "Usually am."

Doc spoke. "Mabel was out of town when it happened, but she was there by morning."

"Do you know the exact date?" Ellie said, pen poised.

He narrowed his eyes. "Must have been around July"

"Fifty-one or fifty-two?"

"Fifty-two."

Ellie looked at the facts on the page. Three months later, Mabel walked off a Dallas stage and was never seen again. She chewed on the inside of her cheek for a minute, trying to decide if she ought to pursue that angle or let it go.

Blue took the decision from her. "Hell, Doc, that wasn't but three months before she disappeared. Looks pretty cut-and-dried—grief stole her music."

Carefully, Doc put down his fork. "It might look that way, son. But with God as my witness, that wasn't the reason."

"You know, but you're not telling," Blue said.

"That's right. And more than that, I'm not ever telling."

"Can't you at least tell me why you don't want us to know?" Ellie asked. "It's the most tragic mystery I've ever come across in my career."

Even after forty years, his eyes looked dangerously misty. "It was that, all right."

"You loved her."

"I did, Miz Connor. From the time she was a little bitty girl until this very day. She deserved somebody who'd take care of her secrets. That somebody is me."

The Lovers

The night was thick as gauze and hot as bathwater; the forest dark and mysterious. It frightened her a little, but she knew where she was going.

A hand shot out and snagged her off the path, and she
cried out her surprise until his mouth came down on hers, hungry and rich, making her swallow the fear. They fell backward into the space beneath the spreading boughs of a pine tree, where a blanket had been carefully spread.