Lost in Tennessee (34 page)

“Do you have an alibi for the time of the fire?”

“Alibi? It was an accident, and it was years ago, Jeb. How am I supposed to remember?” Butch snapped at his brother. He hated being dragged back into his sins. Why hadn’t he insisted Tessa install a sprinkler system? Smoke alarms weren’t enough when you worked with fire.

Kate rubbed her thumb in a circle in Butch’s palm. He dropped his head to her shoulder, curling around her.

“I worked that night. In Nashville. I remember because I had to borrow gas money from Trudy, and she pissed me off, lecturing me about sending Tessa money. I went home after the gig, too broke to go out drinking. I was asleep when Mom woke me with the phone call.”

Jeb took notes furiously, pausing to ask Butch for details on particular topics. Butch didn’t have any animosity toward Tessa. Tessa had left him because of indifference. The spark that drew her to him like a fly to a flame had faded. She wanted a new flame and Butch just accepted it. Jeb rubbed a hand through his hair when Butch admitted it didn’t bother him that Tessa called him for money.

“I don’t understand how you couldn’t at least be annoyed that a woman who walked out on you would call you when she needed money.”

“It wasn’t like that, Jeb.”

“It was exactly like that, Butch. Why can’t you see that?” When Butch didn’t respond, Jeb forced himself to sit back down. “Let’s talk about Angie.” They covered old ground again, looking for new dirt.

Jeb turned to a new page in his notebook. “Based on what Margie Russell told me, Angie really had gotten involved with a preservation society that had a project to protect Northern Pine Snakes and their habitat. I did some research on the organization and contacted the lead staff member. He had his doubts about her. She seemed more interested in what they could do for her than vice versa. She wanted to be front and center. Their fundraising chair had recently left, so he gave Angie a chance. The organization is legitimate, as far as I can tell. What money they raised went to remediation and protection projects, including buying land through a trust. The part about finding foster homes seemed to be an interpretation of a project to develop a temporary habitat while permanent projects were constructed. Thanks to the scene at the Sly Dog, everyone in town knew Angie was hitting Butch up for money, and most all of them knew it wasn’t the first time.”

“Angie was Angie, Jeb. She wasn’t devious, not the way everyone is making her out to be.”

Jeb glared at his brother. “She lied to you about her pregnancy. She let you pay, out of the goodness of your heart, for her to live a carefree life. How are you not pissed off about that?”

Kate turned to look at Butch. Her fingers ran soothingly across his arm.

He kissed her lips, smiling when she blushed. “It was only money. It doesn’t matter now.”

Jeb swatted Butch’s knee with his notebook. “What about Fawn? According to her assistant, she was going after everything you two had.”

Comfortable in his own skin again, Butch looked at his brother’s tightly drawn face. “She pretty much laid that out at our meeting. Fawn always thought she was entitled to more than she earned. What she didn’t do was listen. Finch drew up the pre-nup. She was entitled to what she came in with, plus half of what we gained during our marriage. She started working at the soap a few months after we were married and spent nearly everything she made that first year. Then she said she needed some time to decide if she wanted a husband. I moved into my cabin, I wrote the new album, did some studio work but laid pretty low. There weren’t a lot of gains to be split.”

“Did she know that?”

“One of the great things about Fawn was she didn’t let reality get in her way. She was good at fantasy and had a way of drawing people into it. She was an excellent stage actress.”

Kate squeezed his hand. “I’ve been so caught up in my own drama, I didn’t stop to think what this must be like for you. You loved these women.”

Butch closed his eyes. “I thought I did. At one time, in my own way. The divorces were expensive and inconvenient, but shouldn’t they be? And for the record, I didn’t marry any of them expecting to divorce later. I certainly didn’t want any of them dead.”

Jeb brought them back on topic. “So Mom, Dad, Finch, Hyde, Trudy, and anybody Mom told, which by the time the gossip circuit was done could have been half the town, knew Tessa was shaking you down.”

Butch scowled at Jeb’s choice of words, but Jeb rolled right along.

“The entire town knew about Angie and the snakes, and thanks to the internet and media, the entire world knew about the bar fight with Fawn in Nashville.”

“Doesn’t exactly narrow the field, does it?” Tom walked to the bright window and looked out.

Kate shifted across Butch’s lap. “What if someone was trying to protect Butch?”

“Go on,” Jeb said. “What are you thinking?”

She looked up at Butch. “If a woman was making calls for money to Tom, like the ones you were getting, I’d get in her face.”

Tom turned around, leaning against the wide window frame. “Aw, you do love me.”

“I wouldn’t actually do anything to her. If I was going to hurt anyone, it would be Tom for being stupid enough to get involved in the first place and being stupider for not walking away.”

Tom cringed. “Ouch. Not feeling the love now.”

“So, Butch,” Jeb said. “Who loves you enough to go after someone they think is threatening your financial security?”

“I swear I don’t know. There’s only you, Mom, and Dad. You were out of the country when Tessa died.”

Jeb winced. “Lucky me. Dad would have been more likely to kick your ass, and Mom would have done it differently.”

Butch nodded. “She would have used the gossip circuit to drive them to insanity and eventually suicide.”

Kate’s eyes grew huge. “Wow.”

“Don’t worry, honey. She likes you.”

Jeb closed his notebook and stood looking down at Hyde. “Whoever it is, is here. My gut tells me there is more to Kate’s involvement than convenience or coincidence. Same for what happened to Hyde.”

Kate popped out of Butch’s lap and paced the length of the room. “I’m not shaking Butch down for money. I don’t want his money. I have plenty of my own with the project back on course.”

Butch blew her a kiss. “You just use me for kinky sex. It’s all right. I’m good with that.”

Tom gagged. “Maybe the game is changing. Maybe it did start out as protecting Butch from money-grabbing ex-wives. But Kate’s different. She has her own career, her own company, her own money. Maybe now it’s not about protecting Butch from Kate but protecting Butch from himself.”

Butch came to his feet, staring Tom down. “I don’t need protecting from myself.”

“Says you.” Jeb leaned back in the chair. “Let’s follow this through. Kate lives with Butch, and maybe the killer feels she’s taking advantage of him as much as the ex-wives were.”

“Then wouldn’t the killer feel the same way about me?” Tom shook his head. “I haven’t been threatened or implicated in any of this. It can’t be just that.” Tom’s brows lowered, and he pursed his lips.

Jeb pressed him. “Is there something you’re not saying?”

Tom rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t want turn attention toward someone with no real proof, like what happened to Katie.”

“We’re running out of ideas,” Jeb said. “If you’ve got one, share it. You should know by now I’m not going to run off and arrest someone just because we’re talking.”

Tom took a deep breath. “To an outsider, there are some funny things. Maybe they’re normal to you, but…”

Jeb pinned him with a glare. “But?”

“The way Trudy treats Butch isn’t normal.” Tom blurted it quickly, like a boy admitting to breaking his mother’s favorite dish.

“No,” Butch said, the denial instant and complete.

Jeb held his hand palm out to silence his brother. “Go on.”

“Friends don’t walk into friends’ houses and make dinner. Friends who want to be girlfriends do. In Nashville, she hung on Butch constantly. She maneuvered Butch into buying her things.”

Butch frowned. “She didn’t maneuver me.”

“Yes she did,” Jeb said flatly. “She always does, and you always let her.”

Tom shrugged his shoulders apologetically. “Butch, even Fawn thought she was your lover.”

Butch shook his head. “We’re friends. Trudy and Hyde and I have been friends since the second grade. Wherever we went, she went.”

“Wherever you went, she followed,” Jeb corrected.

Butch’s head was going to explode. Were they really having this conversation? Was his flesh-and-blood brother really turning on the woman that had been a sister to them? “You want it to be her, Jeb?”

“I don’t. I love Trudy, too. But I have to look at this differently. Impartially. And this makes some sense. She’s always been a little too interested in you.”

“Bullshit, Jeb. You can just cross Trudy off the list. I don’t believe it, and I won’t believe it until you bring me some proof. Did you talk to Trudy about Angie?”

“Of course I interviewed her. She had an altercation with the deceased, but at the time of Angie’s death, Trudy worked in the fields.” Jeb flipped back through the pages of his notebook. “She finished late afternoon. I checked the fields, and they had been turned.” Jeb blew out a hard breath. “I want you to think long and hard about the people you know, Butch. Local girls you’ve dated, girls you’ve flirted with, girls who have given you long, adoring looks.”

Butch slapped his palms against denim clad legs. “Adoring looks? You can’t be serious.”

“Maybe their fathers. Brothers, too.” Tom pointed at Kate with his chin. “Family gets their own ideas of what should be.”

Jeb’s brows pressed together for a moment before he shook his head, scattering the expression. “That might work for framing Kate and murdering Fawn, but not necessarily for murdering women he’d already divorced. No. For now, we focus on who has their sights on Butch. Which brings us back to the start. I think Katie is in the most immediate danger. But, there’s every reason to think through some warped sense of logic that any of us may be perceived as a threat. We all need to have our eyes and ears open at all times.”

Chapter Eighteen

K
eeping eyes and ears open was one thing; hiding in the house another. After dinner, they went to the Sly Dog to relax and feel alive. Jeb didn’t approve, but outvoted three-to-one, he went along. Saturday nights, the Sly Dog always rocked. Tonight, the band whipped the crowd of construction workers and cowboys into a frenzy. Butch worked his way up to the bar, made an opening in the crowd, and snagged the bartender’s attention.

“Looks like a good night tonight.” Butch looked over the packed house.

“Better with you here. You class up the joint. Interested in playing later?”

“We’ll see. Right now I just want a beer.”

Tom and Jeb echoed the order.

“Speaking of classing up the place, what can I get you, sweetheart?” the bartender asked Kate.

Kate flashed a grin a mile wide and full of fun. Butch had surprised her with a cute, blue dress cut low in the back and short on the leg. Kate had been pawing through her half of the meager closet when Butch tossed a white box on the bed. She accepted the gift quietly, hugging the cloth to her chest and spent twenty minutes putting on makeup and pinning her hair up on the sides so a red waterfall cascaded down the back.

“I want something tall and strong.”

The man next to Kate signaled the bartender. “I got what the lady ordered.” The man flexed his muscles.

Kate laughed at his antics.

Butch did not. “She’ll have what I’m having.” He wrapped a proprietary arm around her waist.

The woman was a trouble magnet, twice as much in a dress. Butch didn’t let go of Kate until they were at the table Trudy guarded for them with the fierceness of a bulldog. Trudy dove for Butch’s hand and led him to the chair next to hers. Butch dragged Kate along with him, pulled a chair out, and tugged until she sat.

Tom sat next to Kate, keeping his eyes on the crowd. “I like this place. The night is long, the shots are strong, the short skirts are just right.”

“Ain’t that the truth?” The words turned in Butch’s head. He took out his phone and made a note.

The night is long, the shots are strong, the short skirts are just right.

Butch considered the picture Tom had painted, looking over the dance floor like a lion selecting a gazelle. He wore cowboy boots, a battered pair of jeans, and a cotton shirt that showed off the pump from the hundred pushups he did before leaving Butch’s house.

Tom swallowed half his beer in one long gulp and let the bottle smack on the table. “Don’t wait up for me.” He threaded through the crowd, his gaze on the two girls dancing without a man between them. Both had long legs, long hair, and excellent credentials north and south of the border. Tom slid in between the girls like the crème filling between Oreo cookies and moved like he belonged there.

“How does he do it?” Jeb asked.

Kate laughed as Tom had both women by the hand, turning them in sexy circles. “You look up the word ‘confidence’ in the dictionary, and there’s a picture of Tom.”

Jeb spun his bottle on the table, gulped down a swallow, spun it again. “Does he ever get turned down?”

“Well, that depends who you ask. Tom is a firm believer that when one door closes, another opens up. Go join him. He’ll share. Probably.”

Jeb looked at Kate as if considering. He finished off his beer and swaggered over to the trio. Tom shook his hand, introduced the ladies, and delivered the blonde into Jeb’s keeping for the next song.

Loud and animated chatter made the table lively. Trudy and her best girlfriends sat with Kate and Butch. Trudy told their Nashville adventure again, the size of that fish story growing.

“And so I said ‘Do you know who I am? I’m Butch McCormick’s best girl,’ and I threw my drink in his face.” Trudy’s arms wrapped Butch’s bicep while she told the tale of the security guard at the Opry.

Trudy touched him. Sure. But it didn’t mean anything. She’d done that as long as he could remember.

Kate leaned over to him. “Dance with me.”