Paradise County (43 page)

Or maybe he still wouldn’t care.

“I don’t think this is a good idea, Neels,” Eli protested uneasily even as he floored it down the road. “My dad is mad enough already. If he catches us sneaking around Whistledown when I’m supposed to be at the pep rally
… God.
I don’t want to be there.”

“He won’t catch us,” Neely promised. “You can cut the lights, and I swear I’ll be so fast. Eli, if I don’t go get that stuff out of my room, Alex will search or your dad will search or they’ll call the
cops
and they’ll search, and they’ll find it. I’ll be
toast.
If they bring the cops into it, I might even have to go to jail.”

“You’re too young to go to jail,” Eli said sourly. “Detention center, maybe.”

“Like that’s a big improvement.”

“What if they’re in the house?” Eli asked uneasily. “God, I don’t want to run into my dad. He’s never going to get over this as it is.”

“If they’re in the house, we won’t go in. Besides, they won’t be. They have to take your grandpa home, and stay with him until he’s settled down. That’s bound to take a little while. They won’t be at Whistledown yet—we’ve got a little time.”

“Shit, Neely. I can’t believe I’m doing this.” Eli sounded so miserable that Neely looked at him curiously.

“Is your dad, like, going to beat you up or something over this?” From the way Joe had looked, she could imagine that happening very easily. Never having had a relationship with hers, she wasn’t quite sure how a father would react to something like this. From the look on Eli’s dad’s face, his response was going to be something bad.

Eli shot her a disgusted look. “No, he’s not going to beat me up. He’s going to ground me for the rest of my life, probably, and take the keys to my truck and make me work my ass off around the property and God knows what else. And he’s going to say that I let him down. And I have. It’s always been Josh he worried about doing something like this, never me. He trusts—trusted—me.”

Eli ended on what was almost a forlorn note.

“I’m
sorry,”
Neely said again, scooting even closer, which, since she was sitting right beside him on the bench seat, was kind of hard to do. “Who would have thought we’d run into your dad in the woods?”

“Yeah.” Eli sounded dispirited.

“He was probably shagging my sister, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, God, Eli, here’s the turn—you
missed
it!” She looked over her shoulder as he drove right past Fields Lane.

“You think I’m going right down the middle of the street?” Eli asked savagely. “What if they should be driving out, or something? I’m going back through the fields. Hang on.”

The truck slowed, and seconds later pulled into a gravel lay-by, where Eli doused the lights. From there, they went bouncing over the fields in the dark.

“Can you
see
anything?” Neely hissed, hanging on to the dashboard with both hands.

“I can see Whistledown. Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.”

Neely could see Whistledown too, a square, gracious shape on top of the hill just ahead. Lights glowed from the windows—both she and Alex preferred to leave the lights on when they were gone. The driveway seemed to be deserted. Beyond Whistledown, on down the hill, the Welches’ house was dark.

“They must still be at Grandpa’s,” Eli said, sounding relieved as he echoed her thoughts.

“Told you.”

The truck bumped to a halt not far from Whistledown’s back door. Neely fumbled in her bag for her key.

“I’ll wait here and keep a look out,” Eli said. “Get in there and get the damned stuff and
hurry up.”

Thus adjured, Neely scrambled out of the door.

Forty

T
he predator was in Whistledown’s basement, on his way down to Cassandra, when he realized he’d left his drill right in the middle of Alexandra’s bed. Now that, he told himself, she would notice.

Of course, she would have no idea how it got there. It might be amusing to watch her try to figure it out.

But no, he cautioned himself. She might call the police. His fingerprints were on that drill. If the police came, if they were curious, if they ran a fingerprint check, they would come sniffing around him.

Life was like that. A series of
ifs.
A successful man always had to keep an eye out for the
ifs.

So he headed back upstairs to retrieve his drill. He went up the back staircase, moving swiftly for his size because he was anxious to get down to Cassandra and then go on home. Really, with the late nights he’d been keeping lately, he was starting to feel a little run-down.

Maybe he should start taking Geritol. He smiled at the thought, and was still smiling when he heard footsteps hurrying toward him along the upstairs hall.

His eyes widened. He was near the top of the stairs—too late to go back. He looked around the narrow stairwell with its smooth walls:
nowhere to hide. He could feel the adrenaline start to pump through his system at the idea that he was, perhaps, about to be discovered. In a way, because of the rush it gave the body, fear was almost as good as sex—wasn’t he always telling Cassandra and the rest of them so?

He reached toward his back pocket, fumbling with the button, pulling out his taser… .

The little sister, Cornelia, appeared at the top of the stairs.

Forty-one

F
or Alex, the ride home with Joe and Cary was a nightmare. Cary cursed explosively as he struggled in vain to free himself from his son’s hold. Joe made only the occasional terse remark, interspersed with variations on telling his father to shut up. Alex, who was concentrating on driving, said nothing. The stench of liquor was so strong in the enclosed cab that she finally had to roll down a window or be sick. At last, as they neared their turnoff at Fields Lane, Cary did shut up. Surprised, Alex glanced around Joe to find Cary slumped against his son’s shoulder.

“He’s passed out,” Joe said, sounding grim. They were driving past Whistledown now, and Alex spared a sideways glance for the dignified old house on top of the hill. With the interior lights that she always left burning when she was out at night shining through the windows, the house had an air of expectancy, as if it were waiting for her to get home. An instant later, her gaze snapped back toward the second-story porch. There was a man standing there, exactly where he had been before. With a brightly lit window as a backdrop, the image was clear….

“For God’s sake, Alex, watch the road!” Joe yelped.

Attention recalled to the road, Alex quickly corrected her swerve
toward the ditch. Then, wide-eyed, she glanced back at Whistledown again. The man was gone. She blinked, and looked again.

No one was there.

“Joe,” Alex said urgently. “The man on the porch … I just saw him again.”

“Oh, God, not tonight.” Sounding dispirited, Joe looked toward Whistledown, but of course there was nothing to be seen. They had already passed it by this time, but when she glanced back at the house it was clear that the soft incandescent glow coming through the windows was unobstructed now.

“But Joe, I saw …”

“Honey, let me deal with one crisis at a time, will you please?” Joe sounded indescribably weary, and Alex, after a swift glance at his face, said nothing more. Whatever she had seen, she could worry about it later. There were more urgent matters to deal with at the moment. Maybe, she told herself, what she had seen was just her imagination, or a trick of the light.

But she didn’t believe it.

The gravel lane that led to Cary’s house began near Joe’s driveway, then angled on around the barn and up toward the woods.

“Open the door, would you please?” Joe said to her when they were parked in front of the house, and he was hoisting his father over his shoulder. Alex nodded, and went ahead of him up the pair of wooden steps to the narrow porch that ran the length of the house. Unlocking the door, she swung it wide. Joe, with Cary limp as a bag of feed over his shoulder, walked past her into the house.

Alex followed him, closing the door and looking for a light switch as Joe, with the surety of someone who knew his way around, headed off through the darkened house, disappearing around a corner. She found the switch and flipped it. Immediately a lamp came on, and Alex discovered that she was standing in the living room. The house had a fairly open arrangement, and to her left, beyond a half wall that held a gray telephone sitting atop a phone book, was a small kitchen. The kitchen
was strictly utilitarian, with inexpensive-looking wooden cabinets, white appliances, and a small round table in the center.

Ahead of her, a hallway branched left. As Joe had disappeared down it with Cary, Alex presumed that it led to the bedrooms.

The living room itself was small and neat, with plain white plaster walls, a comfortable-looking couch slipcovered in red corduroy, and a gold tweed armchair and a bentwood rocker, both placed at right angles to the couch. The white ceramic bean-jar lamp she had turned on with the flipping of the light switch sat on a pine end table at the end of the couch. Its twin, at the couch’s other end, remained dark. An oblong coffee table sat in front of the couch, and a good-sized TV stood against the opposite wall. Framed pictures crowded the top of the TV, and Alex crossed to look at them. They were family shots, some of a much younger Joe and Cary with a woman and a girl who Alex presumed were Joe’s deceased mother and sister, one of Joe in the black cap and gown of a graduate, and several of what were obviously school pictures of Cary’s three grandchildren. The one that caught Alex’s eye was a picture of Joe, younger and looking seriously handsome in a navy suit with a white shirt and a red tie, and a woman with Eli and Josh when they were toddlers. The boys sat on Joe’s knees, and the woman stood behind him. The adults and a perhaps three-year-old Eli were smiling for the camera. Baby Josh looked like he was ready to howl. Alex’s attention fixed on the woman: Joe’s then wife. She was a pretty woman, in her early twenties, with thick straight golden blond hair that fell almost to her waist. Her hand rested proprietarily on Joe’s shoulder. Alex studied her face. It was round and rosy, smiling and very young.

This was Eli’s and Josh’s and Jenny’s mother. Joe’s ex-wife. Laura, Joe had said her name was.

Alex was still looking at the picture when Joe walked into the room. Wide-shouldered and slim-hipped in his sweatshirt and jeans, he stood for a moment without saying anything, running a hand through his hair as he met her gaze. He was so handsome he made her heart beat faster, and so dearly familiar that just his presence made her feel warm inside. He looked tired, and slightly careworn. As his eyes touched on the picture,
registering which one it was, Alex put it down and crossed the room toward him.

“Did you get your father taken care of?”

“Yeah. He’s out cold. Won’t surface before noon tomorrow, and then he’ll have a hangover that won’t quit.” His gaze met hers, and his mouth twisted wryly. “God, this has been a hell of a day.”

“I’m sorry about Neely,” Alex offered quietly.

He made a sound that was a cross between a laugh and a snort, then picked up her hand and carried it to his lips, pressing his mouth to the palm. Her hand seemed to sizzle where his mouth touched.

“You are not your sister’s keeper,” he said with a slight, curling smile, holding on to her hand as he moved toward the couch and dropped down. He pulled her down beside him, and she snuggled close against his side while he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Propping his booted feet up on the coffee table, crossing one ankle over the other, he tipped his head back against the cushions and slanted a look down at her. “I realize you can’t control her. Just like I can’t control Eli. When children reach a certain age, they have to make their own decisions. You hope they’re going to be good ones, but you never can tell. I don’t blame your sister for what Eli did, either. He knew better.”

“What are you going to do to him?”

“Ground him until high-school graduation, probably, and work his butt off around the farm until he’s so tired he won’t feel like getting into trouble.” His voice was grim. Then he took a deep breath, and looked up at the ceiling as the lines around his eyes deepened. “I would have bet my life Eli wouldn’t do something like that. I guess I would have lost.”