Miss Lizzy's Legacy (4 page)

“It's not rape when a woman's willing,” he said, then spun and walked to the door, his black duster swishing against the legs of his starched jeans. He stopped, one hand braced high on the door, then turned to look at her over his shoulder. “And you, sweetheart, were more than willing.”

* * *

Hours later Callie lay on her back, the sheet and blanket clutched to her chin, her eyes wide, staring at the ceiling overhead. Though the thermostat in the room registered a comfortable seventy-two degrees, shivers shook her body.

He'd been wrong. She hadn't been willing. She'd been desperate, almost crazy with her need for him. If he hadn't stopped when he did, she wasn't at all sure she could have found the strength to end what he had started.

Even now, with regret stinging her eyes and throat, an ache still throbbed between her legs, crying out for a satisfaction she knew she shouldn't want.

A sob rose in her throat, and she caught her lower lip between her teeth, holding it back. She'd always known there was more between a man and a woman than what she'd experienced. More than just a physical joining. There had to be a higher level, an almost spiritual experience that transformed a man and a woman when they touched. She'd never experienced that with Stephen, which explained her hesitancy in agreeing to set a date for their marriage.

But she had felt “that something different” with Judd Barker. God help her, but she'd felt it.

* * *

“Prudy, I want you to fax me everything you can find on Judd Barker.”

“The country-western singer?”

Callie juggled the phone between her ear and shoulder while she laced up her hiking boots. “Yes.”

“For heaven's sake, why?”

She caught the phone in her hand, tightening her fingers on the receiver as she lurched to her feet. “Look, I don't have time to explain right now. I'm on my way to the cemetery to see Papa's grave.”

“Papa's! He's not dead! You're supposed to be looking for his mother's grave. Callie, what is going on? Are you all right?”

Callie closed her eyes and pressed a hand to her forehead, not sure that she'd ever be all right again. Not after last night. But she wouldn't trouble Prudy with that now. “Yes,” she replied. “I'm fine. I'm just in a hurry. I'll call later and explain.”

She hung up before Prudy could demand an immediate explanation. Gathering up her jacket and purse, she headed out the door. She avoided the elevator and took the stairs, shrugging on her jacket as she went, hoping to escape the hotel without seeing anyone. She slipped out the side door and shoved sunglasses onto her nose. Thankfully, the wind was gone, the air crisp and clear, the sun almost blinding it was so bright.

She crossed quickly to her car, unlocked the door and tossed in her purse. Leaning over, she pushed the button to lower the top, then moved to the back of the car to snap the boot in place. A streak of black flashed past her, nearly making her jump out of her skin. She turned to find Baby perched in the back seat.

Glowering at the dog, she marched to the open door. “Out!” she ordered, her index finger pointing in the direction she expected him to take. The black Lab simply looked at her, his tongue lolling, his tail swishing across the leather seat. She planted a knee in the bucket seat, stretched to close a hand around the dog's collar and tugged. Baby braced himself and tugged just as effectively in the opposite direction. After a good two minutes of tug-of-war with the stubborn beast, Callie gave up.

“Fine,” she muttered under her breath. “You can ride along, but you better watch your manners,” she warned. “And no drooling on the seats,” she added as she twisted around and dropped down behind the steering wheel.

Gunning the engine, she peeled away from the curb, sending leaves spinning in whirlwinds behind her rear tires. After giving her sunglasses an impatient shove back on her nose, she dug into her purse for the directions Frank had given her earlier that morning for Summit View Cemetery.

Once she reached the cemetery, she'd prove Judd Barker to be the lying snake that he was, she promised herself as she braked for a red light. Her fingers drummed on the steering wheel in impatience. She'd walk the entire cemetery if necessary, look at every headstone and marker, and when she didn't locate one with William Leighton Sawyer's name on it, then she'd find Judd Barker and—

She glanced at her reflection in the rearview mirror. And what? she asked herself. Have him tarred and feathered and run out of town? The image drew a smug smile.

It isn't rape when a woman's willing. And you, sweetheart, were more than willing.
A shiver chased down her spine at the memory and her frown disappeared.

She despised him for his cockiness. She despised him more because he'd been right.

A horn blared behind her and a man's voice yelled, “Hey! What shade of green do you want?”

Scowling at the man in the rearview mirror, she shifted into first gear, pressed the accelerator to the floorboard, then tossed back her head and laughed when she saw the look of surprise on his face when she left him in a cloud of dust.

Frank's directions proved easy to follow, and within minutes she drove between the limestone pillars and black wrought-iron gates marking the cemetery's entrance. The cemetery was laid out just as Frank had described. A tree-lined drive led to a center island where the United States flag and that of Oklahoma waved and snapped in the wind. The island served as the hub while narrow paved lanes fed off of it like spokes, dividing the cemetery into neat sections.

Callie parked beneath an elm tree and sagged back in her seat as she looked around, overwhelmed by the number of markers scattered across the hill. “Come on, Baby,” she muttered in resignation as she climbed from her car. “We might as well get started.”

Baby bounded out of the back seat and trotted along beside her. They walked for over an hour, with Baby occasionally darting away to chase a squirrel up a tree or a rabbit into his burrow. With each passing marker, Callie's original purpose for the trip was forgotten as emotion built, tightening her throat. Infants, young children, young wives. Each marker she read reflected the hard life of the early settlers of Guthrie and the tolls it took. One in particular caught her attention, and she stopped, studying the grave of a mother and infant buried together.

Sighing, she walked on to the next marker. The surname BODEAN topped the double-wide marker and below it the names Jedidiah to the left and Mary Elizabeth to the right.

Mary Elizabeth?
She knelt in front of the marker and, using her thumbnail, scraped away the gold-brown moss which had attached itself to the etchings in the granite and noted the dates. The age according to the year of birth would be approximately right for her great-great-grandmother's, but the stone read that the woman had died in 1938. That would have made her sixty-seven years of age when she'd passed away, and Papa's mother had died in childbirth.

Certain that she was wasting her time, she took a pen and paper from her purse and jotted down the dates of the couple's births and deaths in order to check them with the court records later.

With a little less than half the cemetery covered, she pushed to her feet. “Come on, Baby. Let's go.” She strode off, but stopped and looked back when she heard Baby whimpering. The dog stood at the edge of the plot, clawing at the ground. Dead grass and dirt flew beneath his front paws.

“Baby! No!” Callie ran to clamp a hand around the dog's collar and haul him back. “You mustn't dig here.” Feeling responsible for the dog's desecration of the grave site, Callie dropped to her knees to scrape the dirt back in place. She bit back an oath when her finger rammed something hard. Curious, she smoothed the dirt away and saw the edge of a flat granite stone. Using the palm of her hand she whisked away the dirt and dead grass covering it, then shoved her sunglasses to the top of her head.

William Leighton Sawyer

Infant Son of Mary Elizabeth Sawyer

June 14, 1890

She sat down hard on her heels and dragged her hands to her knees. “No,” she murmured, shaking her head in denial. “No, it can't be.”

She dug her nails into the fabric at her knees, clinging to reason. William Leighton Sawyer hadn't died at birth. He had lived a very full life, fathering two sons himself while parlaying the Boston Sawyers' wealth to new highs in Texas oil.

He'd outlived both his sons and saw three of his grandchildren—one of which was Callie's mother—start their own families, giving him four great-grandchildren. He had ruled the dynasty he'd created from the eighteenth floor of the office building he owned in downtown Dallas before he'd been forced into retirement at the age of ninety-eight by Callie's father and a handful of greedy relatives who couldn't wait for him to die so they could get their hands on his money.

They'd said he was crazy, although the legal papers they'd drawn against him read mentally incompetent. Callie had never considered him crazy. Eccentric, yes, but who wasn't in their own way?

Throughout her life, she'd heard the stories about Papa. How his mother had run away from home, chasing after some smooth-talking stranger on his way to the Oklahoma Territory to seek his fortune. How the man had gotten her pregnant and abandoned her without marrying her once they'd arrived in the wild territory. And how she'd died giving birth to Papa.

Cousins from Boston who'd come to Texas to visit during the summers would whisper stories of how Papa was considered the renegade in the family, just like his mother. It was that streak of wildness that had carried him to Texas, they'd said, much to the dismay of the grandparents who'd taken him in and raised him as their own. Papa had thumbed his nose at them all and their high-society ways and proceeded to build a fortune that made the Boston Sawyers look like poor white trash in comparison.

Always strong and full of energy, but with the power of his businesses stripped from him, Papa's health had quickly faded and his focus had shifted to his past. His mother had become his obsession. Her life in Oklahoma and his part in her death seemed to haunt him. He wanted to find where she'd been buried and ensure she'd received a proper burial. Although the rest of the family had pooh-poohed his request as just one more outrageous demand from a crazy old man, Callie had agreed to help him.

A tear streaked down her face followed quickly by another, then another, until her shoulders shook with sobs as she stared at the slab of granite. Guilt stabbed at her, for her reasons in agreeing to help Papa weren't purely unselfish. Yes, she loved him and wanted to help him, but she'd also wanted to get out of Dallas, and Papa's request for help had been the excuse she'd needed.

With the deadline quickly approaching for a signed commission sculpture she couldn't seem to create, and Stephen's and her mother's constant pressure for her to set a wedding date, she'd needed to escape it all. In her mind, that put her in the same category as the rest of her family. Selfish, greedy and spineless. She'd thought she could locate the grave, take a picture for Papa and maybe find a few tidbits of information about his mother for him, then spend the rest of her vacation working out her own personal problems.

And now this.

Baby dropped down beside her, nuzzling his snout against her hand. Hardly aware of her movements, she shifted a hand to scratch his ears. He lifted his head and licked at the tears on her cheek, whimpering low in his throat.

“Oh, Baby.” Callie threw her arms around the dog's neck and buried her face in his fur. “Now what am I going to do?”

“You can start by letting loose my dog.”

Callie opened her eyes to find a pair of scuffed boots planted not a foot from her knee. She raised her gaze, skimming it over jeans and a black duster until her eyes met the accusing ones of Judd Barker.

She immediately turned away, hiding her tears. Heat flooded her face as she remembered all too clearly the way she'd responded to him the night before. “I didn't steal your dog,” she mumbled.

“Didn't say you did,” Judd replied, although that was exactly the thought that had crossed his mind when Frank had told him he'd seen Callie drive away earlier that morning with Baby riding in the back seat of her car.

Callie dropped her hands from around Baby's neck and swiped at her cheeks. “You insinuated as much. But the truth of the matter is, your dog jumped in the back of my car and wouldn't get out. It was easier to just let him ride along.”

Judd hunkered down beside them, placing a hand on Baby's head. “When he sets his mind on something, he's hard to sway.”

Callie sniffed and gazed off in the distance, refusing to look at him.

Judd nodded in the direction of the stone. “I see you found what you were looking for.”

Without favoring him a glance, Callie replied sharply, “I don't know that I have.”

“Seems clear enough to me. There's the stone bearing the name William Leighton Sawyer, infant son of Mary Elizabeth Sawyer. And there—” he said with a nod toward the larger upright stone “—is the grave of Mary Elizabeth Bodean. What more proof do you need?”

She snapped her head around to glare at him. “I don't know for a fact that Mary Elizabeth Sawyer and Mary Elizabeth Bodean were one and the same person.”

The streak of tears on her face took Judd by surprise, for he couldn't imagine what the woman would have to cry about. The grave was more than a hundred years old, so she couldn't have any affection for the infant buried there. Which led him to believe that more than likely she was crying because she'd been caught in her lies. Still, the tears moved him. He tucked his duster behind his hip and dug in his back pocket for a handkerchief. He held it out to Callie.

“It's clean,” he assured her when she hesitated.

“Thanks,” she mumbled grudgingly as she accepted it. She mopped her eyes, then blew her nose.