Sweet Poison (22 page)

At two ten, Serena came out of the bar alone. She walked quickly across Emerson with her head down. Corey stood as she reached her car.

“Serena?” He said her name as gently as he knew how.

She squinted into the darkness. When she saw who it was, she shoved her key into the door lock.

Corey rushed up. “Just give me two minutes, okay? That’s all I ask.”

A car drove past. The headlights lit up Serena’s face.

“My God, how’d you get the shiner?” The shame in her eyes told him everything. “It was that guy. Johnny. Why’d he hit you?” He touched her face.

She pushed his hand away. “If you have to know, it was because of you.”

“Me?”

“Because you came by the house. We got into a fight about it. He thinks I’ve been seeing you behind his back.”

“How long have you been dating that dirtbag?”

“A few years.”

“Has he ever hit you before?”

“None of your damn business.”

She tried to yank the door open, but Corey pressed his hip against it. “You deserve so much better than him.”

“You mean you?” She brushed her hair defiantly away from her face. “I shouldn’t even be talking to you. My mother warned me you’d come back, that you wouldn’t leave me alone.”

“Are you still taking your marching orders from that old hag? Is she
still
controlling you?”

“Nobody controls me. Not my mother, not Johnny, and for sure not you. I mean, shit, Corey. I can’t even believe you’re here talking to me. I read all about what you did in the papers. You tried to rape another woman. But this time she ended up dead.”

“I never touched her,” he shot back. “It was a setup. It had to be. Somebody heard I was out of prison. They figured they could put the screws to her and foist the blame on me.”

“Listen to yourself. You’re not making sense. I suppose next you’re going to tell me you didn’t even know her.”

“No, we’d met. I’ve been donating some of my free time over at Raymond Lawless’s campaign office. Charity was, too. I talked to her a few times, but I never touched her, Serena. Look, I’m not stupid. I know asking you to believe in me is asking a lot. But you loved me once, just like I loved you. Think about it. Was I ever even the least bit rough with you?”

“You’ve got a temper,” she said grudgingly.

“So do you.”

“Yeah, but your temper is different. It’s like striking a match. It just … erupts white-hot in an instant.” She tried again to get in the car, but Corey moved in front of her, grabbed her arms, looked her square in the eyes.

“I blame your mom,” he said, trying to rein in his fury. “Somebody must have talked you out of telling me about Dean.” He could feel her body go rigid. “It was her, wasn’t it.”

“You don’t know anything.”

He pulled a snapshot and a small flashlight out of his jacket pocket. Shining the light on the photo, he said, “Look at that. Who is that little boy?”

She took the picture from his hand, studied it for a few seconds. “It’s—”

“It’s Dean.”

“Yeah. No,” she said, looking up into his eyes.

“You’re right. It isn’t Dean. It’s me when I was his age. We could be twins. Dean’s my kid, isn’t he.” He saw in her eyes that he was right. “You can lie to me all you want, but he’s my boy. And that’s the truth.”

She dropped her chin to her chest. “I don’t know what to do. Who to believe.”

“Believe me,” said Corey. “Believe that … that ever since I saw Dean the other night, I’ve been walking on air. A son. I’ve got a son!”

She looked up at the stars, as if she was searching the sky for answers. “Okay, yeah,” she said finally. “He is our child. I found out I was pregnant right after you were arrested. I wanted to tell you. I almost did once. But then you took that plea bargain. Everyone said that meant you were guilty.”

“No, no. Listen to me. My lawyer didn’t think I’d have a prayer of getting off if I went ahead with a trial. If a jury found me guilty, I might’ve had to serve a whole bunch more time. It was my choice. Maybe I made the wrong one. But I had to take someone’s advice because I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me any of this?”

“I did. I wrote you a ton of letters.”

Her head flicked back like a startled bird. “I never got any letters.”

“You were living with your mom. I sent them to you at her address.”

“I never saw even one of them.”

Corey turned, slammed his fist against the hood of the car. “Do
you see now why I hate her? She did everything she could to undermine us. I never raped that woman, Serena. I took the plea bargain because it was the best I could do with a raw deal.”

She still didn’t look completely convinced, but her resolve was beginning to crack. “If there was only some way you could prove it to me.”

“I can’t prove it any more than I can prove I love you. Did you feel like I loved you all those years ago?”

“Yes,” she whispered, her lips barely moving.

“I still do. I want a second chance. Don’t you think you owe me that? And I want to get to know my son.”

She nodded but didn’t say anything.

“That guy you’re with—Johnny?”

“What about him?”

“He’s not good for you or Dean. Does he own the house?”

“No, I do.”

“Then toss him out.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why?”

“Because … because—”

A faint breeze tinkled the wind chimes on a porch a few houses away from them.

Corey couldn’t stand her weakness. He tipped her face up. “I’ll get rid of him for you.”

“Corey, no.”

He held up his hands. “I won’t hurt him. I’ll just make it clear that he needs to stay away. For good. Tomorrow … what time could I come by when he’s not around? I’ll help you move his stuff out.”

“He’s not working tomorrow. He’ll probably stick around and watch old movies.”

“Boy, you sure as hell found yourself a winner.”

“Shut up.”

“How about Monday or Tuesday?”

“Tuesday he’ll be gone in the afternoon and evening.”

“Okay. I’m gonna give you my cell number. You call and tell me what’s a good time.”

“I don’t want Dean around when he comes back.”

Corey felt momentarily jealous. “Does Dean actually like him?”

“Hell, no. Dean can’t stand him. I just don’t want him around if there’s going to be … you know … any problems.”

“Is there someplace he can go?”

“I can take him over to my mom’s, give her some excuse.”

“This is beginning to sound like a plan.” In the moonlight, her hair looked so soft it was all he could do not to touch it. “I’ll be there when you break it off with him. If he tries anything, believe me, he won’t try it again.”

“You promised you wouldn’t hurt him.”

“Not unless he starts something.” He closed his hand around hers. “I won’t pressure you, babe. We’ll take it slow. But I would like to start seeing you again. And … of course, there’s Dean. Maybe, after a while, you’d let me take him to a movie or something. We don’t have to tell him right away that I’m his dad. I just want another chance at the life that was stolen from me.”

Drawing her against him, he kissed her. Softly. Just a whisper. She felt so right in his arms. He could tell she still had her doubts, but with time, he was confident he could erase them. Just like he was about to erase Johnny.

I
t was a case of too much liquor and too little sleep.

Jane stayed in bed late on Monday morning, her head aching and her emotions raw. She should have been up at six, to work by seven, but here it was, nearly ten, and she was still in bed. All she wanted was to stay right where she was until everything stopped hurting. She figured she’d passed through the seven stages of grief about five times since Kenzie left. She seemed to be alternating at the moment between guilt and anger with denial pretty well out of the way and flat-out depression beginning to settle in like a bad case of the flu.

When the phone rang, her body jerked. Her first thought was that it might be Kenzie calling to say she’d changed her mind, that she’d given it some thought and decided to give Jane another chance. But that idea carried with it its own kind of aggravation. Was Jane the only one who’d failed? The question circled in her mind until the ringing stopped. She could have looked at the caller ID, but the fact was, she didn’t feel like talking to anyone at the moment, not even Kenzie. She waited until the red light blinked, indicating that someone had left a message. Reaching over, she hit *98 and then clicked on speakerphone before dropping the receiver back on the hook.

“You have one new message,” said a perky female voice. “First message.”

“Jane, hi, it’s Mary.”

Jane groaned, rolled away from the phone and pulled the blanket up over her head.

“I was wondering if you’d had a chance to do any digging into Charity Miller’s murder? Maybe you’ve talked to your PI friend? If you know anything, could you call me? Corey had a terrible day on Saturday. One of the neighbors posted a bunch of flyers all over the neighborhood. Seems some people called a meeting. There’s talk of trying to oust him from my home. Can they do that? Corey saw the flyers and got terribly agitated. Actually, so did I. I’m just so upset I don’t know what to do with myself, Jane. Corey left for work a couple of hours ago. He got home late again last night. He never says where he’s been, and I worry about him almost all the time now. I thought about going to Charity’s funeral this morning. I hear it’s at eleven, over at a Methodist church in Merriam Park. I’d like to pay my respects, but it seems kind of wrong for me to go, don’t you think? I’m feeling a bit muddled at the moment.”

“Join the club,” mumbled Jane.

“Call me when you get a moment.”

Sitting up, Jane swung her legs out of bed and ran her hands through her badly tangled hair. As soon as Mouse saw that she was still alive, he jumped up from his bed in the corner and trotted over to give her a good morning lick.

“Oh, Mouse,” she said, kissing the top of his muzzle. “I feel like shit.” She rested her cheek on the top of his head. He seemed to have a pretty good sense of when a lot of activity would put him in the doghouse, as it were. “But I suppose you need to go outside.”

He whined, lifted a paw. “You know, I wouldn’t say this to anybody but you, but I think I like dogs better than people.”

She moved to a standing position, careful not to jog her head. “Let me get myself a couple of ibuprofen and then I’ll let you out.” She eased her way down the hallway, hand pressed against the wall to steady herself,
and finally made it to the medicine chest in the bathroom, where she downed three pills. After letting Mouse out into the backyard, she started some coffee brewing, then returned upstairs for a shower. She was glad Mary had said something about Charity’s funeral. Even though she would have preferred to spend the day sleeping, ignoring her responsibilities and proving to all who cared to take note that she could be as derelict and undependable as the next person, she was deeply curious about who would turn up at the church. If she was going to start doing some investigating, that seemed like a good place to begin.

Since the thought of eating made her stomach lurch, she was able to leave the house in record time. The ibuprofen had pretty well silenced the jackhammer in her head. Unfortunately, it had no magical power over the ache in her heart. Still, after two cups of strong black coffee, she felt confident that she could pass for a reasonably put-together human being. This was another example—she’d been collecting them lately—of pretense oiling human interaction and thus making sanity possible. A dark thought for a dark day.

After looking up the address, Jane drove over to St. Paul, finding a space in the back parking lot. She entered through the arched double doors, looking around to see if she recognized anyone. She did. Almost everyone who’d ever worked with Charity at her father’s campaign office was there. The organ inside the sanctuary piped a suitably gloomy dirge over the assembled crowd. Spying her father standing in the vestibule next to Elizabeth, Jane edged her way toward them. She was once again reminded of how tired her dad looked, which reminded her of his dizzy spell on Thursday night as well as the conversation she’d had with Peter on Friday. She wondered if Peter had had a chance to talk to Elizabeth yet. To get her dad to see a doctor would take a united front. Maybe even a couple of thugs with guns.

“Janey, hi,” said her father, giving her a hug and a kiss.

Elizabeth put her hand on Jane’s arm. “Good to see you, honey.” Elizabeth had joined her dad’s law firm several years ago. She was an attractive woman in her late fifties with a brilliant legal mind—in her father’s opinion. She’d spent the last ten years involved in appellate
law, but when Jane’s dad had left to run for governor, she’d been made a full partner and was now working directly with defendants during their initial trials. Another lawyer her father had worked with for almost a decade, Ted Kaplan, had also been made a full partner several years ago. And thus, the Lawless Law Firm had morphed into Lawless, Kaplan & Piper.

“I didn’t know you’d be here,” said Jane.