Carnal Innocence (23 page)

Before Billy T. realized the intention, Tucker had
reached in and snatched the keys from the ignition. People often forgot he could move faster than a crawl.

“Or if you don’t,” Tucker added complacently.

“Shit for brains.” Billy T. shoved the door open. “I guess you’re hoping for another black eye.”

“Well, we’ll talk about that. Caroline, if you come a step closer, I’m going to be mighty unhappy with you.”

Billy T. slanted Caroline a leer, letting his gaze crawl up her legs, slide over her belly and breasts. “Leave her be, Tuck. Maybe after I’ve finished smearing you over the road, she’d like to come on and have a beer with a real man.”

That brought her chin up. “The only thing I see out here are a couple of sulky schoolboys. Tucker, I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but I’d like you to drive me home. Right now.”

Billy T. grinned and flipped away the toothpick. “Got you pussy-whipped already? Getting your plookie regular, Tuck?”

Outraged, Caroline stepped forward, only to be brought up short by the arm Tucker shot out.

“Now, that’s no way to talk about a lady, Billy T., but we’ll get to that in a minute. I figured we should have a word about my car.”

“Heard your car was down in Jackson getting the pleats ironed out of it.”

“You heard correctly. You and me, we never got along too well. And I don’t figure we’ll get along in the future, but I just can’t let what you did to my car go by.”

Billy T. snorted and spat. “Way I heard it, you wrecked that car.”

“Yeah, after you snuck into Sweetwater like a polecat and diddled with it.” Tucker knew Billy T.’s brain wasn’t his strong point, and lied with clear eyes. “Darleen let on how you poked those holes in the lines. Guess that wasn’t very loyal of her, after you gave her Josie’s lipstick.”

“She’s nothing but a lying slut.”

“That may be, but I reckon she’s telling the truth about this.”

Billy T. swung back the hair that fell across his
forehead. “And what if she is? You can’t prove it.” His lips stretched over his teeth in a sneer. “I can stand right here and tell you that I done it. I walked right down your fancy lane and poked holes in your fancy car. Darleen was feeling blue about your breaking Edda Lou’s heart, so I did it to make her feel better. And because I hate your ever-fucking guts. But you ain’t going to prove it.”

As if considering, Tucker took out a cigarette. “You may have a point there, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get off clean.” He broke off the tip of the cigarette, lighted it. Caroline took a step back. She recognized that tone, and that look. “It occurred to me that maybe somebody in my family might have taken my car out that morning. Maybe one of them who doesn’t handle the wheel as well as I do. You know, Billy T., that just pisses me off.”

“You want to do something about it?”

Tucker studied the tip of his cigarette. “I guess I do. I gotta say I don’t care for the idea of getting my face pounded on again.”

“You always was a chickenshit.” Grinning, Billy T. spread his arms. “Go ahead, take your best shot.”

“Well, since you put it that way.” Tucker kicked him squarely in the crotch.

Billy T. doubled over and a sound escaped him like air coming out of a pressure cooker. Still clutching himself, he went down on the side of the road. When Tucker crouched down and took a firm hold on his bruised genitals, Billy T.’s eyes rolled back in his head.

“Don’t pass out, boy, not until I finish what I’ve got to say. You may start thinking again once your nuts slide down from your throat, and I want you to think about this. Listening?”

“Ga” was about the only sound Billy T. could make.

“Good. You know who holds the note on your family’s land? Payment’s been late three months running. I’d sure feel bad if I had to foreclose. And that cotton gin where you occasionally find the time to put in a few hours a week? By coincidence, it so happens I own that, too. Now, you want to have a reprisal against me, I guess I can’t stop you. But you’ll lose your land, and your
job, and as God is my witness, I’ll do my best to turn you into a soprano while I’m at it.” He bore down with his fingers to make his point. All Billy T. could do was moan and roll into a ball. “I was mighty fond of that car,” Tucker said with a sigh. “And as it turns out, I’m fond of this lady here that you insulted. So, don’t mess with me again, Billy T. I’m not a skinny ten-year-old anymore.”

“Leave me alone,” Billy T. managed to get out. “You broke something. You broke my works.”

“Don’t worry, they’ll bounce back. That’s why they call them balls.” When he rose, Tucker noticed that Caroline had dropped the pup, who was now relieving himself on Billy T.’s shoes. He grinned, but gathered the dog up. “Now, that’s adding insult to injury.”

He turned to where Caroline was standing on the edge of the road, mouth agape, eyes wide. Tucker hitched the pup under his arm. “Come on, sugar. I’ll give you that ride home now.”

“You’re just going to leave him there?” She craned her neck as Tucker pulled her to the Oldsmobile.

“That’s the plan. I was thinking we could go take in a movie tonight.”

“A movie,” she said blankly. “Tucker, I just stood there and watched you kick that man in the …”

“We call them privates in polite company. Scoot on over, unless you want to drive.”

Rubbing a hand to her temple, she did. “But that’s fighting dirty, isn’t it?”

“All fighting’s dirty, Caroline, which is why I dearly love to avoid it.” He leaned over to give her a quick kiss before starting the engine. In an absent move, he tossed Billy T.’s keys across the road. “Now, about that movie?”

Caroline let out a long breath. “What’s playing?”

“P
erhaps you’d like a glass I of water, Mrs. Talbot.” Darleen looked at Agent Burns through red-rimmed, swollen eyes ruthlessly outlined with Maybelline. “Yes, sir,” she said meekly. In the last forty-eight hours, she’d learned a whole lot about meek. “I’d be obliged.”

All solicitude, Burns rose to go into the bathroom and pour tepid tap water into a paper cup. He considered himself an expert interviewer—had even instructed a course on the subject. As he would have told his class at the FBI Academy, the first rule of a good interview is to know your subject.

Burns figured he had Darleen Talbot’s number.

Sympathy, flattery, and kindly authority. Those were the watchwords here. Burns estimated thirty minutes for the interview, including a four-minute prologue to gain Darleen’s confidence. Along with the paper cup, he offered Darleen a kindly smile. “I appreciate your making the time to come in and talk with me this morning, Mrs. Talbot.”

Cautiously, she brought the cup to her unpainted
lips. She’d lost her affection for red lipstick. “Junior said I had to.”

“Well, I know it’s difficult for a young mother to find the time out of a demanding schedule. Where is your
little one
today?” Burns crossed ask about family off his mental checklist.

“Ma’s watching Scooter. She likes to sit with him.” As her eyes darted around the room, lighting on anything but Special Agent Matthew Burns, she fiddled with the collar of her flowered blouse. “He’s her only grandson, you know. My two sisters both have girls.”

“A handsome boy, too,” Burns said, though he didn’t know if he’d ever laid eyes on the youngest Talbot.

“He is pretty. His hair’s as curly as a little lamb.” A ghost of a smile brightened her eyes. She figured— accurately—that the only reason Junior hadn’t tossed her out of the house was his attachment to his son. “He’s quick, too. He’s like greased lightning on his hands and knees. I don’t know how I’ll keep up with him once he starts toddling.”

“I’m sure he keeps you on your toes.”

More relaxed, Darleen set the cup aside. Why, the FBI man wasn’t so bad, she decided. People just didn’t know him. “Do you have young ‘uns?”

“No, I don’t.” Nor did the fastidious Burns intend to. Ever. “I’m afraid my work keeps me away from home quite a bit.”

“Looking for criminals.”

“Exactly.” He beamed at her, as if she’d just answered a very complex question. “And it’s concerned, responsible citizens like yourself who make my job easier.” Still smiling, he took out his mini recorder. “This helps me remember accurately.”

Darleen eyed the recorder with distrust. She began to twist her hands in her lap. “Shouldn’t I have a lawyer or something?”

“Why, certainly, if you wish.” Burns sat down behind Burke’s cluttered desk. “But I assure you it isn’t necessary for this kind of informal chat. I just need a little background information from you, on your friend
Edda Lou Hatinger.” He stretched out an avuncular hand to hers. “I know this is difficult for you, Darleen. May I call you Darleen?”

Why, he was just as polite as a waiter in a fancy restaurant. Though the comparison would have caused Burns to cringe, it made Darleen respond favorably. “That’ll be just fine.”

“Losing a friend is always painful, but in such a tragic way …” He trailed off, letting his silence offer comfort. “I’ll try not to upset you.”

It wasn’t difficult or even painful so much as terribly exciting, but she pulled out a ragged tissue and dabbed her eyes. “Talking about it just tears me in two. But I want to help,” she added bravely. “She was my dearest friend.”

“I know.” Pleased, Burns switched on the recorder. “Special Agent Matthew Burns, interview with Darleen Talbot re Edda Lou Hatinger. June twenty-five. Now then, Darleen, why don’t you tell me something about Edda Lou?”

Darleen blew her nose loudly enough to make Burns wince. “She was my dearest friend,” she repeated. “We went to school together, and she was my maid of honor. I guess she was like a sister to me.”

“And like sisters, I suppose the two of you exchanged confidences.”

“We never had secrets from each other. My own blood sisters, Belle and Starita? Why, I could never talk to them the way I could to Edda Lou.” Another tear squeezed out, and she caught it with her knuckle.

“And I’m sure she felt equally sympatico with you.”

Darleen frowned over the word. “I expect.”

“I can see that you’re an understanding, open-hearted woman. No doubt Edda Lou depended on you.”

The image had her preening a bit. “She did tend to lean on me. I never minded.”

“With you being a married woman, I’m sure Edda Lou came to you for advice—advice about the men in her life.”

Advice hell, Darleen thought. Edda Lou had liked to brag. But Darleen didn’t think she should say so. “We
talked a lot. I guess we talked on the phone every single day.”

“And at the time of her death, was Edda Lou involved with anyone in particular?”

“Well, sure. Everybody knew she was all wrapped up in Tucker Longstreet. She could’ve had lots of other boyfriends. Edda Lou kept herself up real nice, you know. She studied pictures in magazines for hairdos and makeup tricks and all, and she wouldn’t step out of her room without doing her face up just so. But she’d set her sights on Tucker. Once she hooked him, I was going to … I mean to say, once they’d set a date, I was going to be her matron of honor. We went to Greenville and picked out dresses and everything.” And wasn’t it a shame she’d never have a chance to wear that pretty pink organdy gown with the puffy sleeves and the big bow?

With encouraging nods Burns made neat notations on a legal pad. “Mr. Longstreet and Edda Lou were to be married?”

Darleen licked her lips and stared at the recorder. She was torn between loyalty and truth—with truth standing in for self-preservation. Her episode with Junior had her inching back. “Edda Lou had her mind set on it.”

“And Mr. Longstreet?”

“Well … she’d’ve brought him around. Edda Lou wasn’t one to let loose once she got her teeth in something.”

“So you believe she would have convinced Mr. Longstreet to propose?”

“I guess you could put it like that.”

“Pressured him?” Burns was still smiling benignly. “Could she have known about some weakness, some problem, that would have convinced him to, let’s say, come up to scratch?”

Darleen thought about that awhile, then to Burns’s disappointment shook her head. “No, Tucker’s not one for problems. He just shakes them off. Thing is, I tried to tell Edda Lou the reason he cut things off with her was because she was getting too pushy. Men don’t like to be shoved into marriage.”

Darken drew from her vast scope of marital bliss. “You take my Junior? I just waited around, real calm and ladylike, for him to scrape up the courage to ask me. If I’d’ve been the one to bring up marriage, he’d’ve been off like a shot. Men just naturally resist the idea of settling. And that’s what I told her,” Darleen said with a knowing nod. “But she wouldn’t listen. Stubborn that way. And she was dead set to live at Sweetwater. I mean, to be with Tucker,” she corrected herself. “Edda Lou was wild for him.”

“I’m sure her feelings ran very deep,” Burns murmured, and Darleen smiled through the sarcasm. “She and Mr. Longstreet had an altercation the day she died.”

“Edda Lou came to see me right after.” Darleen wiggled more comfortably in her chair. It was just like Perry Mason, she thought. “She was spitting fire, too. You see, Tucker’d broke things off with her, and she’d figured on laying back a few weeks, until he couldn’t stand being without her anymore. That’s just how she put it. She figured with the sex being so good and all, he’d come sniffing back ’round quick enough.” She caught herself and flushed. “What I mean to say is, she knew he loved her.”

Face expressionless, Burns nodded. “I understand completely.”

“She was starting to get a bit itchy. And then Tucker starts seeing Chrissy Fuller—her being divorced now and all. Well, Edda Lou wasn’t going to put up with that, not for a New York minute. She tracked Tuck down at the Chat ’N Chew and told him what was what.”

“And claimed that she was pregnant.”

Darleen pressed her lips together and stared down at her shoes. “I reckon she made a mistake about that. She was that upset, you see, because Tucker was maybe going to slip away.”

“Is that what she told you when she came to see you that afternoon?”

“She was that upset.” Darleen began to twist her fingers together. “A woman’s bound to say things when she’s got a broken heart. She was storming up and down my front room. Said he wasn’t going to toss her away like
used goods. He wasn’t going to do to her what his daddy had done to her daddy.”

“Excuse me?”

Darleen perked up. It was always rewarding to be the first to pass along gossip—even if the gossip was more than thirty years cold.

“Years ago Edda Lou’s daddy had been courting Miss Madeline—Tucker’s mama? Or, well, he wasn’t courting exactly, as people say who remember. But he wanted to. He really was set on marrying Miss Madeline, even though her daddy was a state senator and all and he was just a dirt farmer. Edda Lou used to say it was like a Cinderella story in reverse. But the thing was that Miss Madeline was crazy for Beau Longstreet. The more in love she was with Mr. Beau, the more Austin Hatinger wanted her. He never had much use for the Long-streets.”

“So,” Burns interrupted with some hope of making a long story short. “There’s been bad blood between the families for some time.”

“Real bad. He and Mr. Beau almost took each other apart at a church social. My daddy was one of the ones that pulled them apart, and he tells the story now and then.”

Burns cleared his throat. “That’s very interesting, Darleen, but—”

“What I’m trying to say is, because of all that, the way her father saw Beau as taking what was his, Edda Lou thought she deserved Sweetwater. And she went after Tuck, ’cause … well, he’s real good-lookin’ and he ain’t stingy with his pennies like his daddy was. But mostly I guess she liked the ideal of riling her pa. So she was pretty hot about him—Tucker, I mean—telling her right there in public that he didn’t want her. So she says to me: ‘He’s going to eat those words, Darleen. You wait and see.’”

“Did she happen to tell you how she was going to make him eat them?”

“She was going to get him alone somewhere and let nature take its course.” Darleen sent Burns a coy wink. “She took real good care of herself, Edda Lou did. Kept
herself up and knew how to dress so men would look twice.”

“Any men in particular?”

“Before Tucker? She kinda played the field. Had John Thomas Bonny stuck on her last winter, and before that Judson O’Hara and Will Shiver. And there was Ben Koons, too. Though he was a married man and she never took him seriously.”

Burns noted down the names in meticulous block printing. “With a woman as attractive as Edda Lou, there might have been a man who remained … stuck on her after she’d committed herself to Mr. Longstreet.”

“Oh, Edda Lou liked to brag that men didn’t get over her in the wink of an eye. She could’ve had any of them.”

“I see. What about Toby March?”

“Oh.” Darleen picked up the paper cup and drank the rest of the water. “Well.” “Yes?”

“There is nothing to that, Mr. Burns. No indeed. Edda Lou like to tease some. That was just her way.”

“She teased Mr. March?”

“It was just a little game.” Darleen brought her thumb to her mouth and began to gnaw on the nail. “Edda Lou wouldn’t be interested in a black man. Curious maybe.”

“And she was curious about Mr. March?”

“It was just to hit back at her daddy. He’d walloped Toby some years ago. Gave him that scar. And Edda Lou’s brother, Cy, he was friends with Toby’s boy. Austin Hatinger raised holy hell about that. So Edda Lou just liked to flirt with Toby because he’d get all stiff and flustered.”

“Did she have an affair with him?”

“I can’t say.” Darleen chewed the nail down to the nub. “It wasn’t nothing serious. She was just teasing.”

But it might have been serious for a black man, Burns thought. A married black in a small southern town where some lines were deadly to cross.

“When did she tease him, Darleen?”

“Oh, mostly after Tucker cut her off. That’s when
Toby was doing work at the boardinghouse. But she wouldn’t have done anything, really. Why, her daddy would have killed her. He’d have strung Toby up, and he’d have skinned Edda Lou alive. If he didn’t get to it himself, Vernon would have done it for him. Edda Lou and Vernon didn’t have any use for each other, but Vernon couldn’t have held his head up if it got around that Edda Lou’d—you know—with one of Toby’s kind.”

Burns smiled. That gave him three more suspects. Three more motives. “Thank you, Darleen. You’ve been a big help.”

While Toby and young Jim hammered away at the braces on her back porch, Caroline took aim at a chicken-and-rice soup can. And missed.

“Sight a little more to the right,” Susie advised. “You jerk toward the left whenever you pull the trigger.”

“I don’t know why I’m doing this.”

“It’s comforting. Hold your breath this time. Right before you nudge the trigger.” Susie pursed her lips when Caroline fired again, missed again. “You’ll do better once you learn to keep both eyes open. But I’d give this year’s Fourth of July contest a pass.”

“I’m going to hit one, just one, before I move from this spot.”

“Maybe it’d help if you thought of that Luis again.”

“Nope. I’ve just about gotten that out of my system.”

“Well, hell, here I’ve been hoping you’d have a weak moment and tell me all the gory details.”

“More clichéd than gory. I caught him with another woman.”

“Oh.” Susie pursed her lips and thought about it. “Do you mean caught him with, or
caught
him with?”

“Capital-C caught.” She steadied her hand and took aim. “I walked in on him while a big-busted flute player was giving him an oil change.”

“My, my. Did you cut off his dipstick?”

The gun wavered as Caroline laughed. “No. I’m afraid this took place during my wimp period.”