High Noon (29 page)

“First.” He stepped aside, gestured. There was a black sedan of some sort at the curb. “Second, this is Hugo Boss, or maybe Calvin Klein. I can't keep that sort of thing straight—so now that I think about it, it may be Armani. And I may be rich but I grew up not two spits from where that kid spent his short sixteen years. Not in a mansion on Jones. So don't call the pot, honey.”

She stared a moment, then shook her head. “A few minutes ago something that should've made me laugh just couldn't. Now this just strikes me as funny. Or maybe it's just ridiculous.”

She reached forward, flipped back the side of his jacket to find the label. “I was right about the designer. Never test the mother of a mini-fashionista.”

“Points for you.”

“No, for you.” Irritable and let down, she thought. Yes, she knew the signs. “Thanks for coming to go with me. I was keeping the mad on the front burner so I wouldn't feel too much of the sad. And I neglected to remember one thing.”

“Which one thing?”

“This isn't about me.” She stepped down. “So, you've got a shiny black sedan. Sort of dignified.”

“I thought about bringing the pickup, but that seemed wrong. And the SUV's just too big.” He shrugged as he opened the car door. “I'm a guy. I have cars. It's what we do.”

“As I have a car that is well on its way to becoming a heap, I appreciate being able to go in one of your manly fleet.” She put a hand on his over the door handle. “I'm used to going alone, and I suppose that leads me to think I should. But I don't always want to, and I also appreciate you figuring that out before I did.”

Because she looked as if she needed it, Duncan leaned down to touch his lips to hers. “I'm making a study of figuring you out.”

 

The funeral home was small, the parking lot already crowded with cars and people. Phoebe saw reporters on the edge of the property. Some were doing interviews, others trying to hunt them up.

“Probably another way in,” Duncan commented.

Avoiding the press was priority one, so she'd already prepared for it. “There's a side door, I checked. I thought I'd slip in and out that way. Five minutes. There'll be representatives from the department here. That's SOP on a homicide—and in this case, it's image, too. I'm not officially here.”

“Got it.” He found a place on the street, then glanced down at her heels. “Can you hike a block in those?”

“I'm a girl. It's what
we
do.”

When they were on the sidewalk and he took her hand, she looked up at him. And for the second time since she'd met him, Phoebe thought,
Oh, well. Damn.

“What?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” She looked away again.

Hell of a time for her heart to start thumping, she decided, hell of a time for it to trip and fall. They were on their way to pay their respects to the mother of a dead boy. And she stumbled face-first into love.

It made no sense at all.

“Sure you want to do this?”

She knew she didn't. If she couldn't face the idea of training a puppy, how the hell was she supposed to deal with falling in love? But, of course, since he couldn't read her mind, he wasn't speaking of the big, long drop she'd just taken.

“I want to do it, for Charlie and his mother. And I guess part is about me. I need the ritual of it. I don't do well when I'm mad and sad, and I'm having a hard time putting either, or both, of those feelings away for very long.”

Slipping into the side door was simple enough. But before Phoebe could congratulate herself on avoiding the gauntlet out front, she found herself faced with another inside.

A group of people clustered in and around a small parlor to the side of the main viewing room. The squeak of the door had heads turning. Conversations stopped instantly.

They weren't the only white faces, Phoebe noted. A few were scattered in. But her face had been on television. She saw recognition in some of the stares aimed her way, and resentment in others.

The crowd parted for a tall man, or maybe it parted for the anger pumping off him. “You got no place here. You get the hell out before—”

“You don't speak for me.” Opal pushed forward. She looked a decade older than she had in the diner, with her eyes sunken dark in her face as if they'd never find light again. “You don't speak for my boy or for me.”

“This here's for family. It's for neighborhood.”

“You going to speak to me of family now, my brother? Where was my family when I needed them? You were up in Charlotte. You weren't here in the
neighborhood.
You don't speak for me.” She drew herself up. “Lieutenant Mac Namara.”

“Mrs. Johnson, I'm sorry to intrude. I wanted to pay my respects to you and Charlie. I won't stay.”

“Lieutenant Mac Namara.” Opal stepped forward and embraced Phoebe. “Thank you for coming here,” she said quietly. “Thank you for not forgetting.”

Emotion flooded Phoebe's throat, stung her eyes, ached in her heart. “I won't ever forget.”

“Would you come with me, please?” Clutching Phoebe's hand, Opal turned. The man who'd spoken stood barring the way. “Don't you shame me. Don't you shame me so that this is the last time I look at your face.”

“Your sons are dead, Opal.”

“My sons are dead. And I have something to say.” She walked through the crowd of mourners to the front door.

Her fingers twined in Phoebe's trembling ones. “Opal—”

“I've been afraid of so many things,” Opal said. “Most all my life. Maybe, I'd been braver things'd be different. I don't know, and it's hard not to question God's will. But I'm going to do this one thing, this one thing. And maybe, maybe, I won't be so afraid.”

When she stepped out the front door with Phoebe, reporters shouted out, cameras whirled. Priority one, she thought, had been thoroughly breached. But there was a woman who'd lost her sons, who was clinging to her, who didn't give a damn about protocol.

“I got something to say.” Opal's voice cracked, and her hand tightened like a vise on Phoebe's.

“Y'all been calling my home, and my mother's home. Calling where I work. I told you I wanted my privacy, but you won't give it. I got such sorrow in me, and I asked you to respect my grief. But you come 'round my house, my mama's, you call on the telephone. Say you want me to tell you what I got inside me, what I think, what I feel. And some of you? You offer me money to talk to you.”

Questions boomed out.
Did you…Have you…How did you…
Opal's arm shook as if with a spasm as she turned those dark, sunken eyes on Phoebe. “Lieutenant Mac Namara.”

“Let's go back inside, Opal,” Phoebe murmured. “I'll take you back inside, to your family.”

“Stand here with me, please. Would you stand here with me so I can do this?”

Opal closed her eyes, then lifted her voice over the storm. “I've got something to say here, something to say for free, and you'll just
hush
if you want to hear it. My sons are dead.”

In the silence that followed, Phoebe heard Opal's indrawn sob. “My boys are dead. Both killed. Guns and bullets took their bodies, but it was something else took 'em before that. They had no hope. They had a fever of anger and hate and blame, but no hope to cool it. I wish I could've given them that, but I couldn't get it into them.

“You want me to blame somebody. You want to see me point my finger, to scream and cry and curse. You won't. You want me to blame the gangs? They got part of it. The police? They got part. Then so do I got part, and my own dead babies, they got part. There's plenty of blame to spread around. I don't care for that. Doesn't matter about that.”

She pulled a tissue from her pocket to mop her tears. “I know this woman standing beside me talked to my boy, and listened to my boy. For hours. And when that terrible thing happened that took my boy away so I can't ever have him again? She ran toward him. Didn't matter to her who was to
blame.
She ran to him to try to help. And when I could see again, when I could see, what I saw was her holding my son. And that's what matters.

“Now I got nothing more to say.”

Ignoring the hurled questions, Opal turned for the door. Her body shook lightly as Phoebe put a protective arm around her shoulders.

“I'm going to take you to see my Charlie now.”

“Okay, Opal.” Taking Opal's weight, Phoebe walked toward the viewing room. “Let's go see Charlie.”

 

Phoebe's knees felt a little weak by the time she returned to the car. It was funny, she thought, how joints often took the brunt of emotional upheavals.

Duncan merely ran a hand down her arm, then started the ignition.

“I need to make a call,” she said, and pulled out her phone. Impulse again, she reminded herself. She seemed to be doing a lot on impulse these days. “Mama? I'm going to be going out awhile if you don't need me back. Yes, all right. Tell Carly I'll come in and kiss her good night when I get home. I will. Bye.”

She drew in a deep breath. “All right?”

“Sure. Where do you want to go?”

“I think your place would be just fine. Then you can fix me a nice cold drink of an alcoholic nature. And after we've had a nice cold drink, you can take me up to bed.”

“That fits pretty well into my schedule.”

“That's good, because it seems to be just the thing that was missing in mine.” She leaned back, flipped through issues that were on her mind. “Duncan, what do you think of a man who decides to marry a woman named Mizzy who's a dozen years younger than he is?”

“How big are her breasts?”

Phoebe's lips twitched as she stared up through the sunroof. “I don't have that information.”

“It's pretty relevant. Who's marrying Mizzy?”

“Carly's father.”

“Oh.”

Sympathy and speculation, Phoebe thought, in a single syllable. “I know I shouldn't care, but of course I do. I know I'll get over that—which is comforting. He's moving with her to Europe, which infuriates me, and which I won't get over even though I know it's stupid. It doesn't matter if he's around the corner or thousands of miles away, he's not going to love that sweet child, or pretend he does.”

“But if he's around the corner, so to speak, you can keep hoping he might eventually.”

“That's right.” That, she realized, was exactly, perfectly right. “Opal Johnson couldn't push hope into her sons, and they needed it. I can't—or haven't—let go of mine when it's a useless weight.”

“How does Carly feel?”

“Carly doesn't care.” They soared over the water, where boats skimmed below the span of bridge. “She's healthier about it than I am.”

“She has you. A kid knows she's loved, absolutely, she's got a healthy base.”

He hadn't had that absolute love, she remembered, but had built his own base. “I haven't told her about the wedding yet. I will, when I'm not so mad. I don't think he'd have bothered to tell me about all this except the child support checks will be delayed while he changes banks. Changes his damn dollars to Euros and back again. Whatever.”

“So you're pissed he's moving to Europe.”

“Oh, I'm just pissed altogether.” And suddenly just a little amused at the entire business. “I don't care who she is, no woman likes being traded in on the Mizzy model. Especially when the trade-in has a lot higher mileage.”

“I bet the Mizzy model is high maintenance and can't handle the curves nearly as well.”

“Hopeful thought. I'm telling you all this because it factors into my overall mood, which is restless and conflicted, and a little aggressive.” The faintest smile curved her lips as she tilted her head to study his profile. “I'm wondering how you feel about aggressive women.”

“Am I going to find out?”

“I believe you are.”

“Oh boy.”

When they were inside his house, she decided the cold drink could wait. They'd both probably need a gallon of cold liquid after they were done. Since he'd been considerate enough to wear a tie, she grabbed it and, strolling toward the stairs, pulled him behind her.

“Bedroom's up here, I assume? We didn't get that far last time.”

“To the right, all the way down. Last on the left.”

When she glanced over her shoulder, her eyes sparked on his. “I bet the view's lovely. We won't be paying much mind to that for a while, but I bet it's lovely.”

She tugged him inside. She got the impression of space, of strong colors, tall windows. And best of all, a big iron bed.

“Now.” She turned, tugged the knot on his tie loose. “This may hurt a little.”

“My tolerance for pain is rising as we speak.”

Laughing, she yanked his jacket off, flung it aside. Then backed him toward the bed, where she gave him a little shove until he sat. With slow, deliberate movements, she straddled him so the skirt of the sober business suit hiked high on her thighs.

“Now, gimme that mouth.”

She used her teeth on it, her tongue, and all those wildly veering emotions coalesced into one hard, hot ball of lust. Her fingers got busy with his shirt, flipping open button after button until she could run her hands over flesh, scrape her nails over him. The quickening of his breath, the urgent way his hands streaked over her, made her feel invincible.

She let him peel her jacket off, tug the tank over her head. And, arching back, invited his lips and hands to feast and to take. The way he took, the way he feasted, electrified.

She was clamped around him, arms and legs. The most seductive of traps. A careless rake of his fingers and her hair came spilling down, fragrant red rain. A quick flick and her breasts, white satin, filled his hands.