No Way Home (5 page)

“You sure you don’t want coffee?” Jordan asked, pouring himself a steaming mug.

“No,” she said. She plunked the beer bottle down on top of one of his stereo speakers and shrugged off the work shirt. “I’ve got to get going.” She picked up her silk top from the well-worn Persian area rug and shook it out. Then she slid it on. Jordan turned in time to see her small, perfect breasts disappear from view beneath the expensive fabric.

“You’re leaving?” he said.

Amanda wriggled into her skin-tight stirrup-footed pants and sat down on a straight-backed chair to pull on her low lizard-skin boots. “That call is really early tomorrow and all my makeup and stuff is at home.”

“Ah,” Jordan said guardedly, not wanting to sound too relieved. “Well, I’m sure glad I ran into you tonight.” It was true. He was glad. But he was also glad to have the rest of the night to himself, to know that he would be waking up without having to face any awkward conversation or careful euphemisms about what it all meant.

Amanda withdrew a round mirror from her purse and gazed into it, wetting her lips. Then she zigzagged her polished fingertips, like an Afro pick through her fulsome hair.

“You look great,” Jordan said sincerely. He was suddenly aware of the slight thickening around his waist, and he crossed his arms over his chest.

“It was fun,” she said. “Maybe we can do it again sometime.”

“I’ll give you a call,” he said.

“I may have some free time this weekend.”

Jordan felt her trying to steer him, like a rudder. He veered out of it expertly with the standard excuse. “I’ll be out at my agent’s house in the Hamptons. He wants me to meet a couple of people.”

“Oh,” said Amanda, nodding knowingly. She walked over to the bookcase and picked up the bracelets she had left there. She peered at a photo in a cardboard frame that was wedged between his alarm clock and an ashtray. “You like them young,” she observed slyly.

Jordan’s dark, almost sullen eyes lit up. “My daughter. Pretty, isn’t she?”

“You were married?”

“Briefly. Years ago. Her name is Michele.”

Amanda cocked her head to one side. “She is cute. But that hair. She needs to have a good haircut. I could take her to my salon. They’d really do her right. Let me know the next time she’s coming in to town.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I usually take her fishing.”

“Fishing?” Amanda laughed as if that were the most preposterous idea she had ever heard.

Jordan shrugged. “Up in the country. She likes fishing.”

Amanda put the picture down and walked over to him. “With all those disgusting worms and everything? I can’t believe it.” She turned her face up to his, and her fingers played across his bare chest. Jordan’s stomach felt suddenly sour from the coffee and the tension of their encounter. It was always awkward, once the urgency of the moment had passed.

He bent down to kiss her and felt her lips linger on his for a minute. He hoped she was not going to change her mind about staying. “Maybe you want to come back to bed,” he said.

Amanda shook her head, content that he had asked. “Can’t,” she said. “I won’t get any beauty sleep with you.” She walked over to the door and he opened it for her, looking out into the hallway with its yellowed paint and worn linoleum.

“Have you got cab money?” he asked.

“Of course.”

He kissed her again, more warmly this time. Now that she was actually on her way, he felt stirred again by the scent and the shape of her body. “Good luck tomorrow,” he said.

She tickled his upper lip below the mustache with her tongue. “I’ll let you know how it turns out.”

“Why don’t you wait a minute? I’ll slip on some clothes and walk out with you. I want to make sure you get a cab all right.”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I’m just going one block over to Sixth.” He could see that she was pleased with the offer.

“No, you better wait,” he said.

“Southern gentlemen.” She sniffed, but she was grinning.

Some Southern gentleman, Jordan thought as he rooted through his pile of clothes on the chair for a pair of pants and a sweatshirt. It used to be that if you slept with a girl and didn’t marry her, you were considered a bum. Now, if you had your way with her and walked her to the corner in the middle of the night, you were practically a hero.

“All right,” he said, slipping into his moccasins, “let’s go.” As he pulled the door shut behind him, the phone in the apartment began to ring. He and Amanda looked at one another. Then he looked at his watch. “It’s nearly two o’clock,” he said, and a little frisson of fear ran through him. “I better get it.”

Amanda shrugged. “I don’t need an escort,” she said coolly, hiking the strap of her pocketbook up on her shoulder as if it were a rifle.

“Why don’t you wait?” he said, fumbling with the keys in the lock.

“Oh, it’s probably some old flame,” she said airily, but she stood there poised, waiting for a denial.

Jordan was already through the door. It’s bad news, he thought. It could only be bad news at this hour. His first thought was of his mother. She was nearly seventy now. She lived alone in Felton, although his older sister, Jeni Rae, lived in Chattanooga, which wasn’t far. His mother was healthy, but anything could happen at that age.

“I guess I’ll head out,” Amanda said uncertainly. She took a pair of sunglasses out of her purse and put them on, even though it was the middle of the night.

“Okay, okay,” Jordan called out. He said a silent prayer for his mother as he stumbled across the clothes on the floor toward the phone. Just as he lifted the receiver, his gaze fell on the picture of Michele. For a moment his heart froze. Then he dismissed it. She was young and, at long last, healthy and perfect. Her whole life lay ahead of her. No, he thought. Maybe it was a friend. Or somebody from the soap who’d had a few and needed to talk. Everybody had problems they wanted to unload. And for an actor, two in the morning wasn’t that late. That’s right, he reminded himself. That’s right. It’s not that late. “Hello,” he said calmly into the phone.

Amanda thrust her lower lip out and looked at him with narrowed eyes behind her dark glasses. She gave a little huffy sigh, but he did not turn around. She slammed the door behind her.

Jordan held the phone to his ear and listened to Lillie’s words. He asked a few questions and said he understood. And he thanked her for calling him. Then he fumbled, blindly, with the telephone receiver until he finally was able to hang it up, and he sat down in a chair in the corner of the room.

All night he sat there silent, alone, in a rage, in a sweat, and, finally, as the dawn came, in a fearful recognition of his loss. For the one good, right thing he was trying to do in his life was over. His only child was gone.

SOMETIME DURING THE NIGHT
Lillie had lain down on her bed for an hour or two, but she did not sleep. The sheriff had forbidden her and Pink to return to the crime scene with him or to go to the morgue. The doctor had come in the middle of the night but she’d refused the tranquilizer he prescribed. No one would allow her to leave the house and so, at four in the morning, she began to clean it.

Now the kitchen windows were bare. Stripped of their covering, they glinted in the harsh light of the day. The cotton eyelet curtains, still damp from the morning washing, were heaped in a plastic laundry basket on the kitchen table. In the middle of the floor, Lillie bent over the ironing board, meticulously pressing the first set of valances into crisp perfection. She heard the knock at the back door but she did not look up from her task.

“Grayson,” she said.

“Yes’m…” Grayson, who was slumped over the kitchen table, his smooth forehead sunk in his hand, got up at once and headed toward the back door. Before he had a chance to reach it, the door opened and Brenda Daniels burst into the kitchen. Her frosted blond hair was blowzy, the lines around her mouth and on her forehead looked as if they had been dug with an awl. She was clutching a foil-covered plate. She stopped still and stared at her friend.

“Lillie, what on earth are you doing?” she exclaimed.

Lillie looked up at her almost fearfully, her dark eyes sunken in her pale face. The iron trembled in her clenched fist. Her dark hair stood out in wild curls around her head. “I’m ironing.”

“She’s been like this all morning,” Grayson said tiredly.

“Put that away, honey,” said Brenda.

Lillie set the iron carefully down on the trivet and walked to her friend. The two women clung together. Brenda sobbed while Lillie stared, dry-eyed, over her shoulder.

“Oh, Lillie-Lou,” Brenda whispered, using a name she hadn’t called her friend since childhood. “I can’t believe it. I can’t.”

“Believe it,” Lillie said in a soft voice.

“Sit down here,” said Brenda, guiding a reluctant Lillie to one of the kitchen chairs. “Gray, are you all right, honey? That’s buttermilk fudge,” she said, pointing to the plate she had dropped on the table. “I know you like it, honey.”

“Gray’s been a good boy,” Lillie said absently, as if she were describing a tot. “A big help to me. He helped me to get these curtains down. He’s gonna help me get them back up when I’m done.”

Lillie was drumming her fingers impatiently on the table. Brenda took her friend’s restless hand and kneaded it. “How is Pink coping?”

Lillie shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s…he went back over to the…there this morning.”

“Why? Oh, my God, how could he stand to be near there?”

“He wanted to see the sheriff. I guess he just wants to know if they’ve found anything. You know, you feel so helpless. You just can’t quite believe that there’s someone out there, you know, taking a walk, or reading the paper, or enjoying his lunch, that did this thing.”

“I know,” said Brenda, “I know. I’d kill him myself. So they still think it was that Ronnie Lee Partin. That’s what the TV said.”

“I don’t know, Brenda. I suppose it’s possible. But why? Why?”

“Because he’s an animal,” Grayson said, picking up a piece of fudge.

“Well,” said Brenda, glancing apologetically at Gray, “was she…you know…molested?”

“The coroner examined her at the scene last night. He didn’t think so, according to the sheriff,” Lillie said in a tight voice. “They can tell more when…the autopsy. But no, probably not.”

“Thank God,” said Brenda.

“This is great fudge, Aunt Brenda,” said Grayson.

“I’m glad, darlin’. You enjoy it. But what was she doing over there at the Arches at that time of night? Grayson, do you know why she would have gone down there?”

Grayson put the fudge plate down on the table and stared into it. “She was supposed to come home with me. I was just hanging around with some kids. I didn’t see her for a while. I figured she went home. I don’t know why she went down there. It’s in the opposite direction from home.”

“Unless she was coming home,” said Brenda, “and someone picked her up.”

“I don’t know,” Lillie said wearily. “I can’t think now.”

“Of course you can’t,” said Brenda. “I’m sorry.”

The front doorbell rang. “Gray,” said Lillie.

“Yes’m.” He was on his feet and out the door before she had finished. She smiled sadly at his disappearing figure. “He’s running interference for me. I can’t face people. And it started hours ago. I don’t know how people found out so fast.” Lillie gestured vaguely to the counter, which was dense with covered dishes and plates of food. “People want to help,” she said.

“I know,” said Brenda. “I had to come when I heard from Pink. But why didn’t you call me last night, honey?”

Lillie smiled weakly at her friend. “I know you and your beauty sleep.”

Brenda began to cry again, weeping into the soggy Kleenex in her hand. “It just can’t be, Lillie. That little smidge of a thing. And all you went through. Before you married Pink you and I took her to that hospital in Pittsburgh, remember?”

Lillie nodded and her narrow shoulders started shaking. Tears twinkled in her dark eyes and ran down her cheeks.

Brenda clasped her friend’s hands. “You go ahead and cry, honey. You have to cry. You need to.”

“I need to finish these curtains,” Lillie said, weeping.

“Oh, for God’s sakes, you crazy woman,” Brenda exclaimed. “I’ll finish the damned curtains. Washing the curtains,” she fumed, getting up and extracting the tangled wad of fabric from the basket.

Grayson appeared in the kitchen doorway, his face set in a stony expression. “You’ve got company,” he said.

Lillie started to protest but Gray interrupted her. “He wouldn’t leave.”

Lillie looked up and saw the man standing in the doorway behind Grayson. The first thing she thought was how odd it was to see Jordan Hill in a tie. He never wore a tie, not even on the day they were married. His eyes were puffy, but his drawn, handsome face was composed.

Brenda slapped the curtain down on the ironing board and jerked the iron off the trivet. “Well, well,” she said in a chilly voice. “Nice of you to come.”

“Hello, Brenda,” he said, but he was looking into Lillie’s eyes. Then he shook his head and dropped his gaze to the floor. He shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “Lillie,” he said in almost a whisper.

She could feel the inflection of his voice like a dark, silent bell, sounding all the way through her, her name spoken as if it were a plea. There was a blissful time in her life, a rapturous time when Michele was conceived, when she could deny him nothing if he spoke her name. The odd sense of déjà vu died away, and her heart felt wintry and gray again.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

Lillie shrugged and looked away from him.

“Is there any news?”

“No, nothing.”

“My mama wanted to come but the doc made her take a sedative. She’s taking this so hard.”

“I know, I called her,” Lillie said numbly. “I don’t want her to get sick. The funeral will be bad enough for her.”

“I need to know the arrangements,” said Jordan. “Is everything settled?”

Lillie looked faintly surprised. In a cool voice she said, “If there’s anything special you want for her…”

“No, no, whatever you decide will be fine.”

The room fell silent and then Gray said in a loud, stilted voice, “My mother is tired.”