Best Kept Secrets (36 page)

"Do better than that. Make a date, see her."

"Okay."

"I mean it!"

"I said, okay!" Junior shouted.

"And something else, just so you'll hear it from me first.

I've asked Reede to rejoin ME."

"Huh?"

"You heard me."

"What . . . what'd he say?"

"He said no, but I'm not taking that as final." Angus walked toward his son until they were nose to nose. "I'll tell you something else. I haven't decided who'll be working for whom if he takes the job."

Junior's eyes reflected his pain and anger.

Angus poked him hard in the chest. "You'd better get busy and do what I told you to do, or one of two things could happen. Either Reede'll be sitting at your desk, assigning you jobs like cleaning out the stables, or all of us will be making license plates in the Huntsville prison. Either way, you won't have afternoons to while away playing poker."

Angus stepped back and gave the edge of the table a vicious kick with the pointed toe of his lizard boot. It toppled over, sending cards, poker chips, ashtrays, and bottles of beer crashing to the floor.

Then he marched out, leaving Junior to clean up the mess.

Thirty-one

The waitress set down two chicken salads served in fresh, hollowed-out pineapples and garnished with sprigs of mint.

She asked Junior Minton if he and his guest needed refills on iced tea.

"We're fine for now, thanks," he said, flashing her his hundred-watt smile.

The country club's dining room offered a view of the golf course. It was one of the few rooms in Purcell County that didn't reek of Texana. The soothing pastel decor would have fit in anywhere. Junior and Alex were among a small number of luncheon diners.

She applied her fork to an almond sliver. "This is almost too pretty to eat. It beats the B & B Cafe's blue-plate special all to heck," she told him as she munched on the nut. "I'm sure if I ever saw the inside of the kitchen, I'd never eat there. It's probably crawling with roaches."

"Naw, they chicken-fry them and serve them as appetizers."

Junior smiled. "Do you eat there often?"

"Often enough. I've had gravy, which comes on everything, and chili up to here."

"Then, since you refused to go out with me last night, I'm glad I insisted on lunch today. I've frequently had to rescue ladies who work downtown from the high-calorie clutches of the B & B. The menu is hazardous to their waistlines."

"Not that this is much more slenderizing," she said, tasting the rich, creamy salad dressing.

"You don't need to worry about that. You're as slender as your mother."

Alex rested her fork on the edge of her plate. "Even after having me?"

Junior's blond head was bent over his plate. He raised it, noticed her earnest curiosity, and blotted his mouth on the stiff linen napkin before answering. "From the back you'd be taken for twins, except that your hair is darker and has more red in it."

"That's what Reede said."

"Really? When?"

His smile faltered. The question had been posed a little too casually to be taken that way. A telltale crease formed between his brows.

"Soon after we met."

"Ah." The furrow between his brows smoothed out.

Alex didn't want to think about Reede. When she was with him, the practical, methodical, professional detachment she prided herself on disappeared. Pragmatism gave way to emotionalism.

One minute she was accusing him of first-degree murder, the next, kissing him madly and wishing for more. He was dangerous, not only from her viewpoint as a prosecutor, but as a woman. Both facets of her, one as vulnerable as the other, suffered under his assault.

"Junior," she said, after they'd finished eating, "why couldn't Reede forgive Celina for having me? Was his pride that badly damaged?"

He was staring out the window at the golf greens. When he felt her eyes on him, he looked at her sadly. "I'm disappointed."

"About what?"

"I thought--hoped--that you accepted my invitation to lunch because you wanted to see me." He let out a discouraged breath. "But you just want to talk about Reede."

"Not Reede, Celina. My mother."

He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. "It's okay. I'm used to it. Celina used to call me and talk about Reede all the time."

' 'What did she say when she called and talked about him?''

Junior propped his shoulder against the window and began to play with his necktie, idly pulling it through his fingers.

"I usually heard how wonderful he was. You know, Reede this, Reede that. After your father got killed in the war, and she was available again, she was afraid that she'd never get Reede back."

"She didn't."

"No."

"Surely, she didn't expect him to be glad about Al Gaither and me."

"No, she knew better than that. Neither of us had wanted her to go away for the summer, but there wasn't much we could do about it once she'd made her mind up," Junior replied. "She went. She was there. We were here, three-hundred-plus miles away. One night, Reede decided to borrow

a plane and fly us there to bring her back.

"That son of a bitch had convinced me that he could get us there and back safely before anybody realized the plane was missing. The only person who would notice would be Moe Blakely, and in his book, Reede could do no wrong."

"My God, you didn't do it?"

"No, not then. One of the stable hands--Pasty Hickam, in fact--overheard us plotting it and told Dad. He gave us hell and threatened us within an inch of our lives not to ever try something that crazy. He knew all about Celina trying to make Reede jealous and advised us to let her have her fun.

He assured us that she would eventually tire of it and come home, and everything would be just like it had been before."

"But Angus was wrong. When mother came back to Purcell, she was pregnant with me. Nothing was ever the same."

She toyed with her iced tea spoon for a long, silent while.

"How much do you know about my father, Junior?"

"Not much. How about you?"

She raised her shoulders in a small shrug. "Only that his name was Albert Gaither, that he was from a coal-mining town in West Virginia, that he was sent to Vietnam within weeks of his marriage to my mother, and that he stepped on a land mine and died months before I was born."

"I didn't even know where he came from," Junior told her regretfully.

"When I got old enough, I thought about going to West Virginia and looking up his family, but I decided against it.

They never made any attempt to contact me, so I felt it best to leave it alone. His remains were shipped to them and interred there. I'm not even certain if my mother attended his funeral."

"She didn't. She wanted to, but Mrs. Graham refused to give her the money to make the trip. Dad offered to pay her way, but Mrs. Graham wouldn't hear of that, either."

"She let Angus pay for Mother's funeral."

"I guess she thought that was different, somehow."

"Al Gaither wasn't any more to blame for the hasty marriage than Mother."

"Maybe he was," Junior argued. "A soldier going off to war, that kind of thing. Celina was a pretty girl out to prove her allure."

"Because Reede wouldn't sleep with her."

"He told you about that, huh?"

Alex nodded.

"Yeah, well, some of the girls he did sleep with flaunted it in Celina's face. She was out to prove she was woman enough to snare a man. Gaither no doubt took advantage of that.

"To your grandma, his name was a dirty word. Because of him, your mother missed her senior year of high school.

That didn't go down too well with your grandma, either. No, she had a real ax to grind with Mr. Gaither."

"I wish she had at least saved a picture of him. She had thousands of pictures of Celina, but not a single one of my father."

"To Mrs. Graham, he probably represented evil, you know, the thing that changed Celina's life forever. And for the worse."

"Yes," she said, thinking that Junior's words could apply to how her grandmother felt about her, too. "I don't even have a face to associate with the name. Nothing."

"Jesus, Alex, that must be rough."

"Sometimes, I think I just sprang up out of the ground."

In an effort to lighten the mood, she said, "Maybe I was the first Cabbage Patch kid."

"No," Junior said, reaching for her hand again, "you had a mother, and she was beautiful."

"Was she?"

"Ask anybody."

"Was she beautiful inside as well as out?"

His brows drew together slightly. "As much as anyone is.

She was human. She had faults as well as virtues."

"Did she love me, Junior?"

"Love you? Hell, yes. She thought you were the most terrific baby ever conceived."

Basking in the glow of his words, Alex left the country club with him. As he held open the passenger door of his Jag, he stepped close to her and laid his hand along her cheek.

"Do you have to go back to that stuffy old courthouse this afternoon?"

"I'm afraid so. I have work to do."

"It's a gorgeous day."

She pointed at the sky. "You liar. It looks like it's about to rain--or snow."

He bent his head and kissed her quickly. Leaving his lips in place, he whispered, "Then an even more pleasurable way of passing time indoors comes immediately to mind."

He kissed her more firmly, and expertly parted her lips.

But when his tongue touched hers, she recoiled. "No, Junior.

'' She was angered by the impropriety of his kiss and shocked by its failure to stir her sensually.

His kiss didn't cause her veins to expand and her blood to pump through them with a new, feverish beat. It didn't cause her womb to contract with a craving so severe she didn't think it could ever be appeased. It didn't make her think that, God, if he didn't become a part of her, she was going to die.

About all Junior's kiss did was alert her to the fact that he had misinterpreted her friendship. Unless she stopped it now, some dangerous groundwork, disturbingly reminiscent of the past, would be laid.

She eased her head back. "I need to work, Junior. And I'm sure you've got work to do, too.'' He mumbled profanely, but conceded with good humor.

It was as he stepped back so she could get into the car that they saw the Blazer. It had crept up on them, and was now only a few yards beyond the hood ornament of the Jag.

The driver, whom they could see through the windshield, had his hands folded over the steering wheel and was watching them from behind opaque aviator glasses. He was sitting dangerously still and unsmiling.

Reede pushed open the door and stepped to the ground.

"I've been looking for you, Alex. Somebody told me you'd left the courthouse with Junior, so I played a hunch and came here."

"What for?" Junior asked touchily, laying his arm across Alex's shoulders.

"We've located Fergus Plummet. One of the deputies is bringing him in now."

"And that gives you the right to interfere with our date?"

"I don't give a shit about your date," Reede said, his lips barely moving. "She said she wanted to be there when I questioned Plummet."

"Will both of you please stop talking about me as though I'm not here?" The tension that had arisen between the two of them because of her was untenable. It resembled the triangle between them and her mother too well. She shrugged off Junior's arm. "He's right, Junior. I want to hear what Plummet has to say for himself."

"Now?" he whined.

"I'm sorry."

"I'll come with you," he said brightly.

"This is official. Duty calls, and I'm on the state payroll.

Thank you for lunch."

"You're welcome." He gave her a soft peck on the cheek and said, loud enough for Reede to hear, "I'll call you later."

'"Bye." She rushed toward the Blazer and climbed in, though her high heels and slender skirt posed some problems.

Reede pretended to be impervious to her difficulties. He sat behind the steering wheel glowering at Junior while Junior glowered right back. The second her bottom landed in the seat, Reede floored the accelerator.

When they reached the highway, he swung onto the macadam with enough impetus to plaster Alex against the passenger door. She gritted her teeth and hung on until he straightened out his turn and they were speeding along the center stripe.

"Have a nice lunch?"

"Very," she answered crisply.

"Good."

"Are you upset because you saw Junior kissing me?"

"Hell, no. Why should I be?"

"Exactly."

Secretly, she was glad he had arrived when he had. The interruption had relieved her of having to turn Junior down flat. Feeling a trifle guilty over that, and trying to set things back on a professional track with Reede, she asked, "Where did they find Plummet?"

"Right where I suspected. He was hiding inside one of his deacons' houses. He came up for air, and one of my deputies nabbed him."

"Did he come peaceably?"

"He's no idiot. He's only being questioned. We really can't make a formal arrest yet. They should beat us to the courthouse by just a few minutes."

As moods went, Junior was in the black hole of Calcutta.

There was no peace to be found anywhere, though his Jag streaked through the streets of town at an indiscriminate speed in pursuit of it.

Angus was on his back. His mother was on his back because Angus was. Last night she had sternly commissioned him to get off his ass--not in those terms, exactly--and do something that would make his father proud.

Sarah Jo found the idea of having Reede Lambert back at ME untenable and, using a harsher tone than she had ever used with him before, told her son that it simply must never happen.

"Angus wants you, not Reede."

"Then, why did he offer him a job?"

"To wake you up, darling. He's only using Reede as a subtle threat."

Junior promised her he'd do his best. But when he had called Alex and asked her to have dinner with him, she'd turned him down, saying she had a headache. She did agree to meet him for lunch today. And then, when everything had been going great, Reede had showed up and snatched her out of his grasp again.