Best Kept Secrets (15 page)

Propping her fist on a generous and shapely hip, the madam's voice dripped sarcasm as she called up to him, "Do I have time to put the cat out first?"

Alex was unable to sleep, so she was awake when the telephone rang. It still alarmed her because of the hour. Instead of turning on the nightstand lamp, she groped in the darkness for the receiver and brought it to her ear. "Hello,"

she croaked, her voice hoarse from crying earlier. "Hello,"

she repeated.

"Hidy, Miz Gaither."

Her heart raced with excitement, but she said crossly,

"You again? I hope you're ready to talk, since you woke me from a sound sleep." She'd learned from Greg that reluctant witnesses were often more prone to talk when you diminished the importance of what they might have to say.

"Don't go gettin' hoity-toity with me, little lady. I know sumpthin' you want to know. Bad."

"Such as?"

"Such as who did in yore mama."

Alex concentrated on regulating her breathing. "I think you're bluffing."

"I ain't."

"Then, tell me. Who was it?"

"You think I'm stupid, lady? You think Lambert ain't bugged yore telephone?''

"You've seen too many movies.'' All the same, she looked suspiciously at the receiver she held in her hand.

"You know where the Last Chance is?"

"I'll find it."

"Tomorrow evenin'." He specified a time.

"How'll I know you?"

"I'll know you."

Before she could say anything else, he hung up. Alex sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, staring into the darkness.

She recalled Reede's warning about getting hurt. Her imaginative mind conjured up all the horrible things that could happen to a woman alone. By the time she lay back down, her palms were sweating and sleep was even more elusive.

Thirteen

"You'll never guess what she's up to now."

Purcell County's sheriff lifted the steaming coffee mug to his lips, blew into it, and sipped. It scorched his tongue. He didn't care. He needed a fix of caffeine in the worst way.

' 'Who are we talking about?'' he asked the deputy who was standing in the doorway of his private office, wearing a goofy grin that annoyed the hell out of him. He didn't like guessing games, and he was especially in no mood for one this morning.

The deputy jerked his head in the direction of the other side of the building. "Our resident prosecutor with the baby blues, perky tits, and the legs that go on forever." He kissed the air with a noisy, juicy smack of his lips.

Reede slowly lowered his feet from the corner of his desk.

His eyes glittered with a frigid light. "Are you referring to Miss Gaither?"

The deputy didn't have an overabundance of gray matter, but he knew when he'd gone too far. "Uh, yeah. I mean, yes, sir."

"Well?" Reede demanded darkly.

"That funeral parlor man, Mr. Davis, well, sir, he just called, raisin' Cain on account of her. She's over there now going through his files and all."

"What?"

"Yes, sir, that's what he said, Sheriff Lambert. He's good and pissed off because--"

"Call him back and tell him I'm on my way." Reede was already reaching for his coat. If the deputy hadn't sidestepped quickly, he'd have been ran down as Reede rushed through the door.

He was impervious to the inclement weather that had kept schools and most businesses closed. They could handle snow, but an inch-thick sheet of ice covering everything was another matter. Unfortunately, the sheriffs office never closed.

Mr. Davis met him at the door, anxiously wringing his hands. "I've been in business for over thirty years and nothing like this--nothing, Sheriff Lambert--has ever happened to me before. I've had caskets disappear. I've been robbed. I even had--"

"Where is she?" Reede barked, cutting short the funeral director's litany.

The man pointed. Reede stamped toward the closed door and wrenched it open. Alex, seated behind a desk, looked up expectantly. "Just what the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Good morning, Sheriff."

"Answer my question." Reede slammed the door and strode into the room. "I've got a hysterical undertaker on my hands because of you, lady. How'd you get here, anyway?"

"I drove."

"You can't drive in this."

"I did."

"What is all this?" With an angry swipe of his hand, he indicated the files strewn across the desk.

"Mr. Davis's records for the year my mother was killed.

He gave me permission to sort through them."

"You coerced him."

"I did no such thing."

"Intimidated him, then. Did he ask to see your search warrant?"

"No."

"Do you have one?"

"No. But I can get one."

"Not without probable cause."

"I want proof positive that Celina Gaither's body is not interred in that grave at the cemetery."

"Why didn't you do something sensible, like get a shovel and start digging?"

That silenced her. It took her a moment to recover. At last she said, "You're in a surly mood this morning. Rough night?"

"Yeah. I got laid, but it wasn't very good."

Her eyes dropped to the littered table. "Oh. I'm sorry to hear that."

"What, that I got laid?"

She gazed back up at him. "No, that it wasn't very good."

They shared a lengthy stare. His face looked as rugged and craggy as a mountain range, but it was one of the most appealing she'd ever encountered.

Whenever they were together, she was involuntarily aware of him, of his body, of the way she was drawn to him. She knew her attraction was unethical and reckless, from a professional standpoint, and compromising, from a personal one.

He'd belonged to her mother first.

Yet, too often she wanted to touch him or to be touched by him. Last night she'd wanted him to hold her longer while she cried. Thankfully, he'd had better sense and had left.

Who had he gone to? Alex wondered. Where and when had the unsatisfactory lovemaking taken place? Had it been before or after he'd come to her motel room? Why hadn't it been any good?

Several moments elapsed before she lowered her head and resumed sorting through the files.

Not one to be ignored, he reached across the table and placed his hand beneath her chin, jerking it toward him. "I told you that Celina was cremated.''

She jumped to her feet. "After you and Judge Wallace put your heads together and discussed it. That seems a little convenient to me."

"You enjoy imagining things."

' 'Why didn't Junior mention that Celina had been cremated when he saw me in the cemetery? I'm thinking that maybe she is buried there. That's why I'm going through all these files."

"Why would I lie about it?"

"To keep me from having the body exhumed."

"Again, why? What difference would that make to me?"

"Life imprisonment," she said tightly, "if the forensic report implicated you as her murderer."

"Ah . . ." At a loss for a word foul enough, he slammed his fist into his opposite palm and ground it against the tough flesh. "Is this what they teach you in law school--to start grasping at straws when all else fails?"

"Exactly."

He planted his hands firmly on the desk and leaned far across it. "You're not a lawyer, you're a witch hunter."

That stung because Alex did feel like one. This search had a vigilante desperation to it that left a bad taste in her mouth.

She sat back down and laid her hands on top of the open files.

Turning her head away, she stared out at the winter landscape.

The naked branches of the sycamore trees on the lawn were encased in tubes of ice. Sleet pellets made tiny pinging sounds against the windowpanes. The sky and everything below it were a dead, dismal gray. Lines of distinction were imprecise. The world was monochromatic--without light and shadows.

Some things, however, were black and white. Chief among them was the law.

"That might be true if there hadn't been a crime, Reede,"

she said, bringing her head back around. "But there was.

Somebody went into that stable and stabbed my mother."

"With a scalpel. Right," he said scoffingly. "Can you envision Angus, Junior or me wielding a surgical instrument?

Why not kill her with our bare hands? Strangle her?"

"Because you're all too clever. One of you made it to look like a mentally unbalanced man had done it." She splayed her hand upon her chest and asked earnestly, "In my place, wouldn't you want to know who that someone was and why he did it? You loved Celina. If you didn't kill her--"

"I didn't."

' "Then, don't you want to know who did? Or are you afraid that her killer will turn out to be somebody else you love?"

"No, I don't want to know," he said emphatically. "And until you obtain a search warrant--"

"Miss Gaither?" Mr. Davis interrupted, entering the room.

"Is this what you're looking for? I found it in a file cabinet in my storeroom." He handed her a folder, then scuttled out under Reede's baleful stare.

Alex read the name typed across the top of the file. She glanced at Reede, then eagerly opened the cover. After scanning the first of several forms, she sank into her chair and reported huskily, "It says here that her body was cremated."

Her heart feeling like lead, she closed the folder and rhetorically asked,' 'Why didn't my grandmother ever mention that?''

"She probably didn't think it was significant."

"She saved everything, Celina's clothes, her things. Why wouldn't she have taken the ashes?"

Suddenly, she leaned forward, rested her elbows on the table, and supported her head with both hands. Her stomach churned mutinously. Fresh tears were building behind her lids, making them sting. "God, this is morbid, but I've got to know. I've got to."

After taking a few deep breaths, she reopened the file and began to flip through the various forms. Reading one, she sucked in her breath sharply.

"What is it?"

She lifted the sheet out of the folder and handed it to Reede.

"This is a receipt for all of mother's funeral expenses, including the cremation."

"So?"

"Look at the signature."

"Angus Minton," he read softly, thoughtfully.

"You didn't know?" He shook his head. "It appears that Angus paid for everything, and wanted to keep it a secret from everybody." Alex drew a shuddering breath and gazed at Reede inquisitively. "I wonder why."

Across town, Stacey Wallace entered the room that served as her father's office away from the courthouse. He was bent over the desk, poring through a legal tome. "Judge," she chided him affectionately, "as long as you're taking the day off, you should really take it off."

"It's not an official day off," he grumbled, giving the wintry view through the window a disgusted glance. "I've needed to catch up on some reading. Today's the perfect day for it, since I can't get to the courthouse."

"You've been working too hard and worrying too much."

"You're not telling me anything that my ulcer hasn't already."

Stacey sensed that he was extremely upset. "What's wrong?"

"It's that Gaither girl."

"Celina's daughter? She's still pestering you?"

"She came to my office yesterday wanting a court order to have the body exhumed."

"My God!" Stacey exclaimed in a disbelieving whisper.

She raised a pale hand to the base of her throat. "The woman sounds like a fiend."

"Fiendish or not, I had to deny the request."

"Good for you."

He shook his head. "I had no choice. The body had been cremated."

Stacey pondered that. "Seems like I remember that now.

How'd she take that news?"

"I don't know. Reede delivered it."

"Reede?"

"I called him last night. He volunteered. I would guess she didn't take it well."

"Do Angus and Junior know about this?"

"I'm sure they do by now. Reede would have told them."

"Probably," Stacey murmured. For a moment she was

#quiet. Then she roused herself and asked, "Can I bring you anything?"

"Not so soon after breakfast, thanks."

"Some hot tea?"

"Not now."

"Cocoa? Why don't you let me--"

"Stacey, I said, no thanks." He spoke with more impatience than he intended.

"I'm sorry I bothered you," she said dejectedly. "If you need me, I'll be upstairs."

The judge gave her an absentminded nod and dipped back into the leather-bound legal volume. Stacey quietly closed the study door. Her hand listlessly trailed the banister rail as she went upstairs to her bedroom. She didn't feel well. Her abdomen was swollen and achy. She'd started her period that morning.

The mid-forties seemed a ludicrous time to be suffering cramps like a teenager, although Stacey supposed she should welcome these monthly fluxes. They were her only reminders that she was a woman. No children came to her asking for lunch money or help with homework. No husband demanded to know what she had cooked for dinner, or if she'd picked up his cleaning, or if he could expect sex that night.

Daily she lamented not having all that glorious chaos in her life. As regularly as some people said prayers, Stacey enumerated to God the amenities of life that he had denied her. She longed for the racket of children running through the house. She yearned to have a husband reach for her in the night, to nuzzle her breasts and satisfy her hungering, restless body.

Like a priest who takes up self-flagellation, she went to her bureau, opened the third drawer, and took out the photograph album with the embossed white leather cover.

She opened it with reverence. One by one, she fondled the precious mementos--a yellowed newspaper clipping with her picture, a small square paper napkin with silver letters spelling out two names in one corner, a crumbling rose.

She leafed through the plastic binders, gazing at the photographs pressed between them. The people posing for the pictures in front of the altar had changed very little over the years.

After nearly an hour of masochistic reverie, Stacey closed the album and replaced it in its sacred drawer. Stepping out of her shoes so as not to spoil the comforter on her bed, she lay down and drew her pillow against her chest, snuggling it against her curved body like a lover.