Carnal Innocence (25 page)

She sipped. “So do I.”

“I’m concerned, Caroline, very concerned. I’ve heard talk around town that you’ve been seeing Tucker Longstreet.”

She settled back in the crook of the couch. “That’s the marvelous thing about small towns, don’t you think? If you sit in one place for more than five minutes, you hear everything.”

He stiffened like a poker. “Personally, I don’t care for rumor, gossip, or innuendo.” Her quick burst of laughter had him tightening his lips.

“I’m sorry. You made that sound like a rock group or a law firm.” She swallowed the next chuckle when he didn’t respond in kind. Laughing at him was certainly no way to soften him up so that he’d listen to a suggestion. “Places like this run on gossip, Matthew. I imagine it could even be helpful.”

“Indeed. However much I abhor such habits, I must take this professionally. You’d be wise to do the same. Tucker Longstreet is still being questioned regarding a vicious and brutal murder.”

Nerves had Caroline passing the glass from hand to hand, but her eyes remained level. “As I understand, several people are being questioned. I suppose that would include me.”

“Your involvement with this is merely that of an innocent bystander who happened to find a body.”

“There’s no merely about it, Matthew. I found the body, and I’m a member of this community. I have …” Her lips curved at the truth of it. “I have friends here, and probably numerous cousins of one sort or the other.”

“And you consider Tucker Longstreet a friend?”

“I’m not sure exactly what I consider Tucker.” She gave him a bland look. “Is that a professional question?”

“I’m investigating a series of murders,” he said flatly. “I have not crossed Mr. Longstreet off my list. I consider him someone to be watched, carefully watched. You may not be aware that he had relationships with the other two victims.”

“Matthew, I’ve been here for over two weeks. I’m well aware of it. Just as I’m aware that Woodrow and Sugar Pruett’s marriage is in trouble, and that Bea Stokey’s boy, LeRoy, got a ticket for speeding out on route One. Just as I’m aware that Tucker isn’t capable of doing any of those hideous things to those poor women.”

A long, patient breath, and Burns set aside his iced tea. It never failed to fascinate him how easily women could be taken in. “People were fooled by Ted Bundy’s charm and attractive looks. A serial killer is not someone you recognize as such in the everyday course of things. They are clever, manipulative, and often highly intelligent. And often, yes quite often, they themselves go for periods of time when they have no recollection of what they’ve done. And if they do, they hide it under a mask of affability or concern. But they lie, Caroline. They lie because what they live for is the kill. The anticipation of it, the skill with which they hunt, stalk and slay.”

He watched her pale and reached for her hand. “I’m frightening you. I mean to. Someone, very likely someone in this small rural community, is hiding behind a mask, and plotting the next kill. I will use all my skill, all my knowledge, to stop him. But it may not be enough. And if it’s not, he will kill again.”

She had to set the tea aside. She needed nothing cool now, not when her blood had turned to ice. “If that’s true—”

“It is.”

“If it is,” she repeated, “shouldn’t you be using all available assistance?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re an outsider here, Matthew. Your badge doesn’t change that. If anything, the fact that it’s federal makes you more of an outsider. If you want to help these people, then use Burke Truesdale.”

His smile was tight as he straightened his shoulders. “I appreciate your concern, Caroline, but the simple fact is you don’t know what’s involved here.”

“No, I don’t. But I do know about politics and authority. No one could perform with dozens of different orchestras under dozens of different maestros and not understand the food chain. My point is, Matthew, you—as I have been most of my life—are the outsider. Burke knows these people. You don’t.”

“Which is precisely part of the problem. He knows them, he sympathizes with them. He’s related to them or has old friendships to protect.”

“You’re speaking about Tucker again.”

“To be specific. The term is ‘good of boys,’ isn’t it? They toss back a few beers together, shoot some rabbits or other small creatures, and sit on their porches and talk about cotton and women.” He brushed a speck of lint from his trousers. “No, I don’t know these people, Caroline, but I know of them. The last thing I need to solve this case is to enlist Burke Truesdale to pave my way. I believe him to be an honest man. And a loyal one. It’s his loyalties that concern me.”

“May I speak frankly, Matthew?”

He spread his hands. “Please.”

“You’re behaving like a pompous ass,” she said, and watched his face fall. “That might work well in D.C. or Baltimore, but it doesn’t cut it here in the delta. If someone else is killed—as you seem to believe—then look to yourself and wonder if it might have been prevented. If you might have prevented it by having a liaison to these people instead of standing back all smug and superior.”

He rose stiffly. “I’m sorry, Caroline, that we’re
unable to see eye to eye on this matter. However you might feel, I must still advise you to curtail your involvement with Tucker Longstreet until this case is resolved.”

“I’ve discovered a terrible habit in myself of ignoring advice.”

“Your choice.” He inclined his head. “I’ll have to ask you to come in to my temporary headquarters tomorrow. Around ten, if that’s convenient.”

“Why?”

“I have some questions. Official questions.” “Then I’ll give you answers. Official answers.” She didn’t bother to see him to the door.

C
aroline didn’t even have to weigh her loyalties. Before Burns’s dust had cleared, she was scooping up Useless and heading for her car. The keys were dangling in the ignition, right where she’d left them.

Turning, she looked back at the house. She hadn’t locked the doors. Hadn’t even thought about it. Foolish, perhaps, considering the recent violence that had tainted Innocence. But to lock the doors without closing and latching the windows was even more foolish. And to do that meant trapping the heat inside.

In less than a month, she’d picked up country habits.

“I’m not going to be afraid in my own home,” she told Useless as she set him inside the car. He immediately propped his front paws on the dash, tongue lolling in anticipation of a ride.

“My home,” she repeated, studying the house, the fresh paint, the polished windows, the scarred porch rocker. With a sense of satisfaction and purpose she climbed into the car. “Come on, Useless, it’s time we took an active part in the grapevine.”

She backed down the drive, unaware of the figure that stood, shadowed by the line of trees, watching.

The Statler Brothers were wailing away from a four-foot boom box on the porch at Sweetwater. Keeping them company were Lulu and Dwayne. Lulu still wore her eagle feather and her combat boots. To complete the outfit she wore a splotched painter’s smock over Levis and a pair of ruby earrings with stones as big as pullet eggs.

She stood in front of a canvas, feet planted, body braced. More like a prizefighter going into round three, Caroline thought, than an artist. Dwayne was sprawled in the porch rocker, a tumbler full of Wild Turkey in his hand and the mild smile of an affable drunk on his face.

“’Lo, Caroline.” He gestured with the glass in greeting. “Whatcha got there?”

Caroline set Useless down and he immediately streaked off to sniff the bushes Buster had marked. “My dog. Good evening, Miss Lulu.”

She grunted, dabbed a little paint on the canvas. “My grandmammy ran a pair of Yankee deserters off her plantation in 1863.”

Caroline inclined her head. She’d come prepared. “My grandmother’s grandfather lost a leg at Antietam pushing General Burnside’s troops off the stone bridge.”

Lulu pursed her lisp and considered. “And when would that have been?”

“September 17, 1862.” Caroline smiled and blessed her grandmother’s carefully documented family Bible. “His name was Silas Henry Sweeney.”

“Sweeney, Sweeney. Seems to me there were some Sweeney cousins on my husband’s side—that’d be my second husband, Maxwell Breezeport.” Lulu squinted her eyes at Caroline and liked what she saw. The girl was fresh as a new quart of cream. And there was a sharp, stubborn look in her eyes, in the set of her chin, that Lulu approved of wholeheartedly.

The Yankee blood was probably diluted anyway,
Lulu decided, and besides, it was time Tucker settled down.

“You come down here to sashay around Tucker, have you?”

“Certainly not.” But Caroline found it impossible to take offense. “I have come to speak with him, though. If he’s here.”

“Oh, he’s around right enough.” Lulu studied her palette, then plunged her brush into a pool of virulent green. “Come on up here on the porch, girl, don’t be standing down there gawking at me while I’m working. Dwayne, where’s that brother of yours? Can’t you see this girl’s come to seduce him?”

“I have not come—” Caroline broke off and backed up a foot when Lulu leaned over to sniff at her.

“Pretty cagey not wearing perfume.” Lulu shook the dripping brush at her. “When a man’s used to women tarting themselves up, he’ll fall flat for the smell of pure soap and water.”

Caroline cocked a brow. “Is that so?”

“You know it’s so. You don’t get to be … how the hell old am I, Dwayne?”

“I think it’s eighty-four, Cousin Lulu.”

“Eighty-four? Eighty-four?” Paint dripped on her shoes. “You’re drunk as a polecat, Dwayne. No southern lady would ever reach the miserable age of eighty-four. It ain’t seemly.”

Dwayne considered his whiskey. He was well on the way to being sloshed, but he wasn’t stupid. “Sixty-eight,” he decided. “What I meant to say was sixty-eight.”

“That’s better.” Lulu smudged paint on her cheek. “A dignified age. You go on in, Yankee, work your wiles on that poor, hapless boy. Just so you know I’m on to you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Unable to resist, she took a peek at the painting. It was Dwayne, cocked back in the rocker, clutching a hugely proportioned glass of whiskey. The style was somewhere between Picasso and the caricatures for
Mad
magazine. Dwayne’s face was
green, his eyes cracked with broken red lines. Poking up from his head were long purple donkey’s ears.

“Ah, an interesting concept,” Caroline commented.

“My daddy always said anybody who drinks for a living’s bound to make an ass of himself.”

Caroline looked from the portrait to the artist. In that single silent exchange she realized that Cousin Lulu wasn’t as crazy as she pretended to be. “I wonder what reason anyone would have for choosing to drink for a living.”

“For some, life’s reason enough. Dwayne, where’s that brother of yours? This girl’s waiting and I can’t paint with her breathing down my neck.”

“Back in the library.” He took a comfortable swallow of whiskey. “Just go on in, Caroline. Third door down on the right of the hall.”

Caroline stepped in. The house was so quiet, it immediately crushed her urge to call out and announce herself. The light had that mellow golden quality she associated with museums, but the silence was more like that of a lady’s elaborate boudoir while the mistress was drowsing.

She began to have doubts that anyone was there at all. She caught herself tiptoeing down the hall.

The door to the library was shut tight. As she put her hand up to knock, she pictured Tucker inside. Stretched out on the most comfortable flat, cushioned surface, hands cocked behind his head, legs crossed at the ankles. He would, of course, be taking his early evening, post-afternoon, pre-bedtime nap.

She rapped softly and got no answer. With a shrug, she turned the knob and nudged the door open. She’d just wake him up, she told herself. She had things to tell him and the least he could do was stay awake long enough to listen. Because while he was busy sleeping away his life, things were …

But he wasn’t on the curvy love seat under the west window. Nor was he sprawled in the wing chair facing the stone fireplace. Frowning, Caroline turned a circle, taking a curious scan of the walls of books, an excellent Georgia O’Keeffe, and a dainty Louis XV side table.

And saw him behind a sturdy oak desk, bent over a pile of papers and books, with his fingers skimming casually—no, she realized—
skillfully
over the keyboard of a sleek little office computer.

“Tucker?” There was a world of surprise in the single word. He answered with a grunt, typed in some more data, then glanced up. The distraction on his face cleared instantly.

“Well, hey, Caroline. You’re the most welcome thing I’ve seen all day.”

“What are you doing?”

“Just running some figures.” He pushed back from the desk to stand, looking lean and lazy in a T-shirt and chinos. “Nothing that can’t wait. Why don’t we go on out on the back porch, sit, and watch the sun set?”

“It won’t set for two hours or more.”

He smiled. “I’ve got time.”

She shook her head, evading him when he came around the desk to reach for her. Holding him off with one hand, she moved closer to the desk to see what he’d been up to.

There were ledgers, printouts with columns of figures, invoices, receipts. Eyes narrowed, Caroline ran her finger over files.

LAUNDROMAT, CHAT ’N CHEW, HARDWARE, GOOSENECK UNIT 1, ROOMING HOUSE, TRAILER PARK
.

There was a pile of paperwork about cotton—seed, pesticide, fertilizer, market prices, trucking companies. Another pile consisted of various prospectus folders and stock reports.

Dragging a hand through her hair, Caroline stepped back. “You’re working.”

“In a manner of speaking. Are you going to let me kiss you or not?”

She only waved him off, trying to think it through. “Bookkeeping. You’re keeping books.”

He grinned. “Honey, it’s against the law only if you keep two sets. Which my granddaddy did, successfully, for twenty-five years. So I guess it’s more accurate to say it’s against the law only if you get caught keeping two sets, which he never did and lived to his dying day as a
pillar of this community.” He sat on the-edge of the desk. “If you don’t want to sit on the porch and neck awhile, what can I do for you?”

“You use a computer.”

“Well now, I admit I was prejudiced about it at first. But these damn little things save buckets of time once you get the hang of them. I’m all for that.”

“Do you do all of this?”

“All of what?”

“This!” Frustrated, she grabbed up a pile of papers and shook them at him. “Do you keep all these records, these books? Do you run all of these businesses?”

He stroked a hand over his chin thoughtfully. Then he punched a few buttons, and the monitor winked off. “Mostly they run themselves. I just add the figures.”

“You’re a fraud.” She slapped the papers down again. “All that lazy-southern-wastrel routine—I’d rather sleep than sit. It’s just a front!”

“What you see is what there is,” he corrected her, amused by the way she was pacing around the room. “It just seems to me that you have a different definition of lazy up north than we do down here. Down here we call it relaxed.” He gave her a pained look. “Honey, I sure wish you’d learn to relax. The way you stir up the air in here is tiring me out.”

“Every time I think I’ve got a handle on you, you shift. Like a virus.” She turned back. “You’re a
businessman”

“I don’t think that description suits me, Caro. Now, when I think of a businessman, I think of somebody like that Donald Trump or Lee Iacocca. All those fancy suits, messy divorces, and bleeding ulcers. Of course, there’s Jed Larsson, and he wears a suit only on Sunday as a rule, been married to his Jolette as long as I can remember. But he does suffer from some bad heartburn.”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“No, I was getting around to it. You could say I oversee some ventures now and again. And since I have a gift for figures, it doesn’t take much effort.”

She dropped down on the love seat and scowled at him. “You’re not wasting your life.”

“I always figured I was enjoying it.” He walked over to join her. “But if it’ll make you happy, I could give wasting it a try.”

“Oh, just shut up a minute. I’m trying to think.” She folded her arms across her chest. Hapless? she thought. Wasn’t that what Lulu had called him? What a joke. The man knew exactly what he was doing, and he’d obviously been doing it his own way, in his own time, for years. Hadn’t she seen it herself? The way he could give you that sleepy-eyed grin one minute, then drill right into your brain with a look the next?

“The other day, before that business with Bonny, did you say that you and Dwayne worked in the fields?”

“We’ve been known to.”

“And you once mentioned that Dwayne had a degree he didn’t use. But you didn’t say if you had one.”

“Can’t say I actually graduated. I never could get the hang of sliding through school like Dwayne did. I studied some business management and accounting, though.” He smiled easily. “Didn’t take much thought to figure out it’s more comfortable behind a desk than sweating in a cotton field. Want me to dig up my college yearbook?”

She only hissed out a breath. “I can’t believe I actually came over here to protect you.”

“Protect me?” He slid an arm around her shoulders so he could sniff at her hair. “Sugar, that’s awful sweet of you. God, you smell good. Better than cherry pie cooling on the windowsill.”

“It’s soap,” she said between her teeth. “Just soap.”

“It makes me crazy.” He began to nuzzle her neck. “Dead crazy. ’Specially this spot right here.”

She shivered as he nipped under her jaw. “I came here to talk to you, Tucker, not to … oh.” Her words trailed off as he began doing sneaky, seductive things behind her ear.

“You go ahead and talk,” he invited her. “I don’t mind a bit.”

“If you’d just stop that.”

“Okay.” He switched from her ear back to her neck. “Go ahead.”

As her better judgment began to dim, she tilted her head back to give him more access. “Matthew Burns came by.” She felt his lips pause, his muscles tense, then gradually, gradually, relax again.

“I can’t say as that surprises me. He’s had his eye on you. A blind man on a galloping horse could see that.”

“It had nothing to do with … It wasn’t personal.” The hell with her fuzzy brain, Caroline decided, and turned her lips to meet Tucker’s. She let out a quiet sigh as he pleasured them both with slow, nibbling kisses. “He was warning me off you.”

“Hmmm. Much to my frustration, you haven’t been on me yet.”

“No, he was talking about the case. The murder.” A light flashed on in her brain and she jolted back. “The murder,” she repeated, then stared down open-mouthed at her gaping blouse. “What are you doing?”

He had to take a steadying breath. “I was just working on getting your clothes off. Seems I’ve been working on that for some time now.” He sat back again, studying her. “And it looks like it’s going to get put off again.”

She fumbled her buttons back into place. “I’ll let you know when I want to be undressed.”

“Caroline, you were letting me know just fine. Until you started thinking again.” To douse some of the fire, he got up to fix a drink. “Want one?” He gestured with the decanter.

“No.”

“Well, I do.” He poured two fingers of whiskey.

She lifted her chin, “You can be just as annoyed as you like, but—”

“Annoyed?” His eyes flashed to hers before he lifted the glass. “Sugar, that’s a mighty mild word for what you work in me. I’ve never had a woman stir my juices with less effort than you.”

“I came here to warn you, not to stir anything.”

“My point exactly.” He finished off his drink,
thought about having another, and opted for half a cigarette instead. “Who’s Luis?”