Paradise County (36 page)

“I’ve got to check the horses anyway, so I’ll walk home,” he said, accompanying them into the house.

“It’s raining,” Alex protested as Neely headed for the den with a murmured
thanks for dinner
to Joe. Seconds later Alex heard the TV.

“Honey, I don’t melt.” They were standing beneath the glittering chandelier in the entry hall, and the water droplets on his black hair glittered like diamonds. The green army coat he wore made his shoulders look very broad, and his height meant that she had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. His eyes were a luminous blue against his swarthy skin, and his gaze was warm and caressing on her face.

Alex’s gaze slid down to his mouth. His beautiful, sensitive mouth.

He picked up her hand, held it for a moment, then smiled at her with a crooked, heart-stopping smile as he carried her hand upward and pressed the back of it against his mouth.

His lips were warm and just faintly moist. Alex could feel the heat of his breath against her skin. Still looking at her, he turned her hand over, kissing her palm. Lightning bolts of sensation burned across the surface of her skin.

Her lips parted as she drew in a deep, shaken breath.

“Thank you,” he said. “For offering to help out with Jenny.”

Alex leaned toward him. She wanted that beautiful mouth on hers so badly that her knees were trembling… .

“Alex,” Neely called from the den. “Do you think we can scare up a sleeping bag somewhere? Tomorrow night, after the pep rally, there’s a lock-in.”

Joe dropped her hand and stepped back.

“Goodnight,” he said, and turned and walked out the door, closing it behind him.

Alex stared at the closed portal until Neely, calling to her again, broke the spell.

Thirty-two

P
op, you done anything lately I oughta know about?”

It was around ten the next morning. Joe had just gotten off the phone with Tommy. The sheriff had called, asking him to come by and see him as soon as possible. Tommy had refused to divulge what it was about over the telephone, but his tone had been sufficiently businesslike to alarm Joe. He’d known Tommy long enough to know when something was up. He’d made an appointment for ten-forty-five. Besides his kids, his dad was the only person Joe could think of that Tommy might need to talk to him about, and his kids were in school, where he couldn’t question them. So he’d gone in search of his dad.

“Joe, son, this son-of-a-gun just did three-quarters of a mile in 1:10!” Stopwatch in hand, Cary was just outside the training ring behind the barn, leaning against an open gate that looked into the ring as Joe came up behind him. As Victory Dance, carrying Lon Macleod, a local semi-retired jockey who worked for them as an exercise rider, had just galloped past the opening, Joe had little trouble deciphering the subject of his father’s excited speech.

“Listen, Pop, Tommy asked me to stop by his office and …” Joe got no further. His father turned and grabbed him by the arm.

“Joey, Joey, you’re not listening to me! This is him! This is the one! This is our ticket!”

Joe sighed, barely sparing a glance for big the red horse as he cantered past the opening again, although he did raise a hand in greeting to Macleod, who was now cooling the horse out after his workout.

“Pop, I got more important things to worry about right now than that worthless piece of horseflesh you talked me into paying thirty thousand dollars for. Tommy just called and asked me to come by his office as soon as he could. Said there was something he needed to talk to me about. Now, you tell me the truth: Have you done any hit and runs or anything like that you haven’t told me about lately?”

Cary looked at him in disgust. “Hell, no, I haven’t! Why do you immediately have to think any bad news has to do with me? You got three kids… .”

“I thought about that, but they’re not around to ask, so I’m asking you.”

“You ever think it might be about you? No, of course not. We should all be so perfect.”

“Pop …”

“Listen, Joey, I don’t give a crap about Tommy right now. This horse here has what it takes to run with the best of them. He can fly! He can flat-out fly!”

“You swear you haven’t done anything?”

“Joey, you’re not listening to me!”

“Well, hell, you’re not listening to me, either!”

They glared at each other, father and son, nose to nose, until Cary’s eyes welled up and he glanced away suddenly. “If you aren’t the spittin’ image of your mama when you get mad like that, I’ve never seen her. Louisa always was slow to anger, but look out when she did.”

“Ah, Pop… .” Joe’s anger drained away just as quickly as it had arisen, and he draped an arm around his father’s shoulders. His father had never been the same since the deaths of his wife and daughter. Even so many years later, just the mention of them could bring him to tears.

“I miss her, Joey. Her and your sister.” Cary’s voice was low. “Sometimes I miss them so bad.”

“I miss them too, Pop.” Briefly Joe tightened his arm around his father’s shoulders, then let it drop. That was more emotion than the two of them usually shared, he reflected, and immediately sought to lighten the atmosphere. “So you say that bag of bones did three-quarters of a mile in 1:10? You better get that stopwatch of yours checked. Hell, it’s older than I am.”

“It still works as good as when it was brand-new, too. Victory Dance is our ticket, Joey! I’m telling you, he’s our ticket!”

“You can tell me all about it later,” Joe said, glancing down the track to see Victory Dance coming toward them again, walking this time and blowing mightily. “I gotta go see Tommy, then I’ve got an appointment with some bankers at one to talk about getting financing to convert our operation to a public stable. Pick Jen up, would you? I might not be back in time.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Cary gestured at Macleod, waving him closer. “Lon, you tell this boy of mine that I’m not senile yet: that horse can run!”

Still on Victory Dance’s back, Lon nodded. “He can run, Joe.”

“Great.” Joe looked at his father. “Don’t forget about Jenny.”

“You think I’d ever forget about my little Gingerbread?” Cary was already focusing on the approaching horse and rider. “Lon, you think he’s toein’ out a little?”

“Yeah, but it don’t seem to make no difference… .”

Shaking his head in exasperation, Joe walked away. His father was as fervent a believer in the eventual coming of
the one—
the great horse that would salvage his reputation, make Joe’s, and change all their lives—as a new convert was in his religion. Personally, Joe hoped his father was right, but he wasn’t putting any great reliance on it. In his experience, life just didn’t work out like that. He put more faith in his own efforts to put together a consortium of investors to buy Silver Wonder and a couple of the other horses as the basis for his public stable.

Hard work and initiative were what he put his faith in.

Not miracles. Not even miracle horses.

Tommy’s office was in the tiny town of Simpsonville, which consisted basically of a restaurant, a small shopping center, a few mom-and-pop stores of different persuasions, and the First Baptist Church, which, as the only two-story building in town, towered over the rest even if you didn’t count the steeple. It took Joe just about ten minutes to get there. Located in the small shopping center along with a Quik-Pik, a shoe-repair shop, and Gunther’s Hardware Store, Tommy’s workplace was, at first glance, just another glass-fronted store. But a sign on the door said
SHERIFF’S OFFICE,
and inside the counter was manned by a brown-uniformed deputy in a black vinyl chair who was busy filling out paperwork.

“Hey, Joe,” the balding, burly deputy, Billy Craddock, greeted him, looking up from what he was doing with a smile. In his sixties now, Billy had been deputy for as long as Joe could remember. Hell, in Joe’s rambunctious teenage days Billy had hauled him in for a talking-to more than once.

“Hey, Billy. Tommy in?”

“In his office.” Billy jerked his head toward the rear, and without waiting for a more explicit invitation Joe walked on back. Tommy’s office was a small room with cinder-block walls painted a delicate eggshell white. The room directly opposite had been outfitted with bars on the door and a single window to serve as a holding cell in case of need. Besides the occasional rowdy drunk or belligerent teen, Joe didn’t think anybody was ever put in there. If somebody had to be transferred to the Shelby County Jail in Shelbyville, either they’d sit in the office with Tommy waiting for a jail officer to come pick them up, or Tommy would drive them over himself. Simpsonville was that kind of town: friendly even to its wrongdoers.

Tommy had his feet up on his desk and his hands linked behind his head as he leaned back in his chair talking to Rob Mayhew, who was lounging (as well as one could lounge in such chairs) in the molded plastic chair in front of the desk. On the wall behind Tommy’s head hung a bulletin board crammed with flyers, including a prominent black-and-white picture of the FBI’s current most-wanted suspect. Tommy kept hoping that
one day a criminal with that kind of star power would wander into his orbit, and he’d be the one to take him down. There were also the usual missing posters. One, with double pictures of a pretty blond college-age girl and a boy of about the same age, looked to be new, and it was tacked on top of the flotsam underneath.

“So what’s up?” Joe said without preamble, walking into the room. He glanced at the other man, who was also a friend of long standing, now a lawyer. “Hey, Rob.”

Tommy and Rob both looked up at him for a couple of seconds without saying anything. Tommy lowered his feet to the floor and sat up.

“Why don’t you go ahead and close the door, Joe?” Tommy said.

Joe’s eyes widened. “Hell, Tommy, you’re starting to scare me,” he said, complying. “You want to go ahead and spit it out before I have a heart attack?”

“I’m here as your lawyer, Joe,” Rob said, standing and placing a hand on his shoulder. “And I’m telling you right up front that you don’t have to talk to Tommy or anybody. You don’t have to say a word. In fact, I’m advising you not to.”

“What?” Joe stared from Tommy to Rob.

“I called him for you, Joe. I didn’t think it was fair to try to talk to you without you having a lawyer. I felt like I’d be taking advantage of our friendship if I did.”

Joe looked at him as if he’d grown an extra nose. “What the hell are you talking about, Tom?”

“Are you willing to talk to me?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m willing to talk to you. About what?”

“I want to ask you some questions. And I want to tape-record this, if you don’t mind.” Tommy touched a small silver tape recorder that sat on his desk. Joe hadn’t noticed it before.

“Are you serious?”

“You don’t have to agree to this, Joe.” Rob’s hand rested on his shoulder. “And I’m advising you not to.”

“Yeah, I’m serious.
This
is serious. You might want to listen to your lawyer. And I’m telling you that as your friend, not as sheriff.”

“Jesus Christ, Tommy, would you cut to the chase? You can tape-record me from here to Sunday if you want to. And shut up, Rob. I know I don’t have to talk.”

“You giving me permission to tape-record, then, Joe?”

“Yes. Hell, yes.”

Tommy switched on the recorder. “I am talking to Joe Welch, on Tuesday the seventeenth of November at approximately eleven
A.M.
, with his permission, in the presence of his lawyer,” he said, and then looked at Joe. “Joe, I want to show you something.”

“If I tell you to shut up, Joe, you shut up right then,” Rob said urgently. Joe silenced him with a wave.

Tommy opened his desk drawer, pulled on a pair of thin white surgical gloves, then reached down on the floor near his chair to lift a black plastic garbage bag up onto his desk. He opened the bag to reveal another black garbage bag, tattered and dirty and clearly much older than the first. A musty smell began to fill the room. Handling the second bag carefully, Tommy opened it and extracted a battered woman’s purse, and the musty smell grew strong enough to make Joe grimace. The purse had once been saddle brown, but it was black in some places and moldy in others, and so flattened it looked like it had been run over multiple times by a truck.