Truth and Consequences (11 page)

Kathleen slumped in a chair on Tick Calvert’s deck and let the murmur of the river wash over her. Disappointment and defeat hung in the air.

“I would say I can’t believe we didn’t find anything, but when it comes to that oily son of a bitch, I’ll believe anything.” Altee sipped a glass of iced tea.

At the grill, Tick flipped burgers. He bounced on his heels, bare toes curling into the wood. “I could have lived without that biscuit-eating grin he gave me when we were leaving, too. He knew we wouldn’t find that damn gun.”

“He didn’t like us in his space, though, did he?” Kathleen tilted her head back, watching the low sun sparkle through tall pines. Remembering the anger and hatred in Jim Ed’s eyes, she shivered. His last words—
You’ll regret this, Palmer
—pounded in her head. He hadn’t shouted, had been calm and cold, almost whispering. Somehow, she’d feel safer if he’d ranted.

Silent and expressionless, Jason had stood by him.

“You know, it might not be such a bad idea for you two to bunk together for a while.” Spatula in one hand and tea glass in the other, Tick nudged Altee’s feet out of the way and sat on the edge of her lounge chair. “Alternate houses or something. You live close enough together for it not to be a hassle.”

Altee frowned. “I really wish you hadn’t said that. I was trying to convince myself there was nothing to be afraid of.”

“We’re going to end up shelving this case.” Distaste curled through Kathleen. Damn it, why did they keep getting away with their crimes? It sickened her. And Jason’s involvement made the nausea worse. “Just like all the others.”

“There’s always Harding. We haven’t searched his place. Maybe Reese gave him the gun for safekeeping.” Altee’s voice was quiet and Kathleen shot her a quick look, the queasiness worsening. She remembered the roll of bills in his hand the night before. Was that where the money had come from? A reward for loyalty and hiding evidence?

“Well, you can bet one thing—if Reese had the gun, it’s gone now that he knows we’re looking for it.” Tick twirled the spatula between his fingers like a baton. “You’d better find another way to tie him to those deaths.”

“Right.” Kathleen raked her fingers through her already disheveled hair. “We’d have an easier time finding a Sunday when Miles Shiver didn’t sleep through Brother Ray’s sermon.”

The phone rang, audible through the screen door, and Tick tossed his spatula at Altee. “Flip those for me, Price, while I get that.”

The screen door slapped shut behind him. Altee moved to the grill and Kathleen shaded her eyes with a hand, watching a lizard flit along the edge of the deck. Tension thudded at her temples. She should have gone to law school like her daddy wanted. She could have gone into corporate law…

“Kathleen, get in the truck.” The door flapped open and slammed against the wall. Tick hopped on one foot, tugging on thick work boots. His dark hair stuck out from under the edge of his volunteer firefighter’s cap. “Price, you too.”

Unease jerked in Kathleen’s stomach. She sat up and grabbed for her shoes. “What’s wrong?”

“That was dispatch.” Tick shut off the propane to the grill. “Your mama and daddy’s house is on fire.”

Smoke rolled over the roof, rising into a black column against the blue afternoon sky. Flames licked at the corners of windows, taking delicate nibbles before devouring the surrounding wood. One arm around her mother’s shaking shoulders, Kathleen stood on the cracked sidewalk and watched the destruction of her childhood home.

His silver head bowed, her father stood near the corner, talking to Sheriff Reed. The fire inspector was on site, and she’d heard snatches of conversation about arson and accelerants. Brilliant red trucks from three departments blocked the street and hoses snaked across the green lawn, her daddy’s pride. Voices yelled instructions and occasional curses against a backdrop of hissing, popping flames.

A rage to match those flames burned in Kathleen’s heart. So this was Jim Ed’s method of making her regret the legal invasion of his sanctum. Not her home, the small house on the lake, but her parents’. Showing her how easily he could get to those she loved.

One of the trucks belonged to the Haynes County volunteer fire department. Jim Ed manned a hose and she’d seen the flash of Jason’s sun-lightened hair earlier. The fury burned hotter. How dare he show up here, when for all she knew, he’d helped start the blaze. Maybe he’d added a few more hundreds to his bankroll.

“Hey, thought you might need this.” Altee appeared at her elbow, holding two paper cups of water.

“Thanks.” Kathleen flashed the semblance of a smile and took one of the cups, pressing it into her mother’s trembling hands. The pale skin with its blue veins and age spots had never looked so fragile. She glanced back at the house, then her mother’s stricken face. “Mama, come on. Let’s walk next door to Mr. Virgil’s office so you can sit down.”

Her mama’s spine stiffened. “I’m fine.”

With a triumphant roar, the fire flared up and the roof crashed in, tumbling three stories in a shower of sparks. The firefighters stumbled back, cursing. Kathleen gasped. Moaning, her mother fainted.

“Mama!” Kathleen dropped the other cup and scrambled to support her mama’s weight.
Oh, God, please be all right. Mama, please.
They slid to the ground, her mother’s head pillowed on Kathleen’s thighs. She glanced around, seeking her father. “Daddy!”

“I’ll radio for the medics.” Altee sprinted off.

“What happened?” Fear roughened her father’s voice. He knelt by them, reaching for his wife’s hand. His fingers slid over her wrist. “Her pulse is strong, thank God. Elizabeth? Open your eyes, darling.”

“She just fell.” Kathleen brushed damp hair away from her mama’s brow and loosened the collar of her white silk blouse, spotted from falling ashes.

“Kathy, let’s get her over to Virgil’s. We can put her on the couch there, get her out of this heat.”

She shook her head. “Daddy, you can’t lift her. You just had hernia surgery not a month ago—”

“Let me.” Grim face streaked with soot, Jason knelt by her side. Kathleen glared and opened her mouth to tell him to go to hell.

“Thank you, young man.” Her father’s relieved voice forestalled her, and Kathleen suffered Jason’s help in getting her mother to the small restored house next door that housed Virgil Holton’s law offices. With her mama settled on the couch, the arriving medics took over and shooed everyone but Kathleen’s daddy from the room.

The door closed in her face and Kathleen turned on Jason, her fury out of control. “How much did he pay you for this? Did you strike the match yourself?”

“He didn’t pay me a damn thing. I had nothing to do with starting that fire.”

“You bastard.”

He shook his head. “Kathleen, you don’t—”

“You did this.” Her voice rose with wild anger and she advanced on him, her hands clenched into tight fists. Her fingernails cut into her palms, nothing to the pain cutting into her heart. “You did this!”

He reached for her, hands gentle on her arms. “I didn’t—”

“You did.” She shoved him away, the urge to strike him unbearable. “If not personally, then by refusing to help me, to tell me what happened.”

“I can’t.”

“God, stop saying that!” She did hit out at him then, her palms slamming against his chest, shoving him away again. “That’s not true. You have choices, Harding.”

He grabbed her wrists, holding her forearms against his chest in a firm yet gentle grasp. She struggled against him, hating his touch.

The scent of smoke emanated from him, body heat branding her. “You don’t understand, Kathleen. I can’t help you.”

“I understand plenty.” She choked on sudden sobs, tears spilling over her lashes. God, she’d wanted him to be different, to be something other than the tarnished knight he appeared to be. “I understand you’re just another one of them. You’re just like all the rest.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“You’re no better than your cousin.”

He let her go, stepping back as though under the force of a blow. She glared at him, her anger a fierce pulsing in her veins. She flung a shaking hand toward the windows and the devastation beyond. “Look what you did. Look at my mama. She had nothing but praise for you, and
look what you did!
”

Face pale under its covering of soot, he stared at her. He swallowed, the muscles contracting underneath his skin. “Sugar, I swear it’s not what you think.”

The endearment and the intensity of his voice were her undoing. She couldn’t stand it, couldn’t bear to have him stand in front of her, lying, when she’d been so prepared to believe in him. “What else am I supposed to think? You’ve given me no reason to think otherwise. Don’t you understand that not stopping it makes you as guilty as they are? You might as well have blown those boys’ brains out yourself. Or did you? Were you there with him when he pulled the trigger? Did you see how scared they were? Hear them beg—”

“Stop.” Strong hands wrapped around her upper arms from behind and pulled her back against a tall, lean form. Tick spoke close to her ear. “Damn it, that’s enough.”

Exhausted, she sagged against his hold and stared at Jason. Her chest heaved, the absence of adrenaline leaving her body drained. She shook her head, rolling against Tick’s collarbone. “I hate you.”

Jason blanched.

The tears flowed harder and she crumpled, her hands over her face. His hold easing, Tick turned her against him. She clutched at his shirt, sobbing, unfurled dreams she’d not allowed herself to want disappearing like the smoke outside drifting into the sky.

Tick’s rough breath shook her body. “You’d better go, Harding.”

Heavy footsteps on the hardwood floor and the soft click of a closing door signaled his departure. She struggled for control. She hadn’t felt pain like this since the morning she went to get Everett from his crib and discovered his lifeless body.

No. That wasn’t true. Because if that were true, then Jason Harding was important. From this point on, Harding was nothing.

She deserved this pain for hoping for something outside the narrow confines of her life—work, friends, her parents. Falling in love, wanting commitment and a family of her own meant nothing but pain. She knew that, had learned that lesson all too well.

Why had Jason been the one to shake her heart awake from its long slumber? Why not the man currently holding her, stroking her hair, whispering the same soothing nonsense she’d heard him use with his three-year-old niece? Why not Sheriff Stanton Reed or the chicken farmer or any of the other good, decent men she knew?

She heaved a shuddering sigh, her forehead against Tick’s chest. Losing Everett had ended her marriage and put her heart into a deep, painless sleep. It wouldn’t slumber this time. Instead, Jason’s betrayal would be its death knell.

Jason strode across the Palmers’ yard, anger and hurt jerking beneath his skin. Faced with her accusations, he’d wanted to spill the truth, force her to believe in him. Instead, he’d had to leave her in Calvert’s arms, and the image lingered in his brain, taunting him with what he’d never have—the right to hold and comfort Kathleen.

In the waning light, the wreckage of the house smoldered, firefighters hosing down the occasional flare. The devastation mocked him, the death of something fine and pure. Whatever chance he’d had with Kathleen was gone. Anything she felt for him was gone and, by the time he finally broke through the wall of corruption in Haynes County and could reveal his true self, it would be too late.

In the street, Jim Ed helped roll up the hoses. He glanced up at Jason’s approach and grinned. Malevolent joy glittered in his eyes and Jason’s stomach turned. Why had he ever conceived of loyalty to this man? Kathleen was right—Jim Ed’s only loyalty was to himself.

Jason met his cousin’s gaze and forced a grin in return. His determination to take down the corruption drew strength from his pain and loss. He wouldn’t have Kathleen, but he could rid a certain kingdom of its dark elements. He could help bring back Camelot.

He could do that much. He knew it as certainly as he knew one other fact—he would do whatever it took to keep Kathleen safe from Jim Ed.

Whatever it took.

Sunglasses shaded her stinging eyes from the just-rising sun. She followed one of the trodden dirt paths, surrounded by family plots, marble headstones and the occasional memorial statue. Her throat ached, from the smoke inhaled the day before and the tears shed during the night. Coming here this morning, as she had for fourteen years on this date, seemed poignantly apt.

She’d buried all of her adolescent dreams of love and family with her son. She should have left them entombed. Today she’d put them back where they belonged.

Birds twittered in the branches above and a squirrel scampered along a wrought-iron fence. The dirt and scattered gravel crunched beneath her tennis shoes. She tucked her hands in the pockets of her faded jeans and drew in long breaths of the damp morning air. Her chest ached. Just the exertion of climbing the hill. That was all. Not because she still fought the ravaging sobs that threatened.

She wouldn’t report for work today and smother her pain in the minutiae of investigation as she always had before on the anniversary of Everett’s birth. No, today she would meet her father at what had been their home, talk with the insurance adjusters and pick through the wreckage to see what could be salvaged.

Near the top of the hill lay the Palmer family plot, her baby cradled among generations of Palmers. Unlike many of the plots covered with protective gravel, lush green grass blanketed the graves in her family section. The waist-high iron gate creaked when she opened it.

Everett’s grave occupied one small corner of the parcel. A baseball in a dew-dappled plastic cube rested next to his headstone, and she touched it, imagining Tom placing it here. Day-old flowers from her father’s garden wilted in a glass vase.

A bench stood waiting nearby, but she abandoned it to kneel on the damp grass next to the headstone. She traced the name etched into the pure white marble.

Thomas Everett McMillian IV.

Tears hovered on her lashes and she let them fall free. No need to pretend here. Her fingers drifted over the dates of his birth and death, not quite three months apart.

“Hey, Ev.” Her voice emerged raw and tear-clogged. “It’s Mama. You know what? You’d be fifteen today. Getting your learner’s permit, probably pestering me to let you drive on the way to school. Playing baseball, I know, because your dad is so crazy about the sport. Getting ready to finish your first year of high school.”

If I hadn’t screwed up. If I’d gotten up when I heard you cry. If I hadn’t gone back to sleep. Oh, Ev, I’m sorry, sorry you missed out on so much because I wanted another hour of sleep.

Fingers pressed to his name, she cried for all she’d lost, for all he’d never gotten to be or do. For the destruction her parents faced. And for the crushing disappointment her fascination with Jason had turned out to be.

Angrily, she brushed the tears away, refusing to cry over him anymore. She had no one to blame but herself. From the beginning she’d known who he was and couldn’t cry foul when she discovered what he truly was.
Just another one of them.

Down the hill footsteps crunched on loose gravel and indistinct male voices drifted with the morning breeze. She wiped her wet cheeks. Who else was out this early? When she visited the cemetery, she usually ran into a couple of the county’s elderly widows, but that was always well after nine. It was barely seven now.

She glanced down the hill in the direction of the voices. A tall oak shaded the plots at the base of the hill and Tick Calvert, clad in khakis and a sheriff’s department polo, leaned one arm against the sturdy trunk. He frowned, gesturing with his free hand.

Kathleen narrowed her eyes. He stood near his father’s grave and paused, the other voice filling in the gap. The direction of the breeze had changed and the tone of the other man’s voice carried better.

A shiver ran through her. Oh, Lord. Her entire being recognized that voice.

She shifted her position to gain a better glimpse of the area below. Gray sweat pants and a perspiration-dampened T-shirt, both emblazoned with ARMY in big, block letters. Brown hair, streaked by the sun. A mouth, drawn in a tight line now, that had moved on hers with passion and heat.

Jason Harding. What the hell was Tick doing with Jason?

She watched, the certainty settling over her that this was no chance meeting. If Jason, out for a run, had come across Tick visiting his father’s grave, they’d have passed a few words and gone their separate ways. What she witnessed now was an intense conversation.

As he talked, she watched Jason’s mouth move. He spoke quickly, brows drawn together in a tense line. As if aware of her scrutiny, he turned his head, searching the hill. Kathleen pressed against the fence, holding her breath.

What was going on?

“So you were with him all afternoon?” Calvert lit a cigarette and tucked his lighter back into his pocket.

Jason shrugged. “Yeah. He was in a snit because things were out of place in the house after the search. We spent the afternoon putting them back, until we got the fire dispatch.”

“Did he make any calls? Take any?” Calvert took a drag and blew out a slow stream of smoke.

“I’ve already told you he didn’t.” Frustration crawled along his skin. “I’m telling you, I don’t see how he ordered it. He was there all afternoon, and I was with him.”

Doubt hovered in the look Calvert shot his way. “The whole time?”

Hadn’t he already answered that question four times? “Yeah.”

Calvert scuffed a shoe in the dust. “What about Stacy?”

“She left to pick up the kids from school.”

“When?”

“About two-forty-five.”

“Son of a gun.”

“You think he used
Stacy
to order the fire?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Stacy? Have you gone crazy? She’s like the poster girl for the perfect soccer mom—”

“She’s also lived with the man for sixteen years and he controls every aspect of her life. She’s never worked outside the home, he gives her an allowance, tells her where to go, what to wear, who she can associate with.”

“How do you know all that?” Jason frowned. “Wait, let me guess. FBI surveillance.”

“No. Quilting circle at my mama’s church. It’s amazing what elderly women will tell you when they’ve known you since you were in diapers.”

Jason chuckled. “Yeah. But Stacy? You really think she knows what he’s doing?”

“I’m pretty darn sure she doesn’t ask where the money comes from to pay for that house and her clothes and the new car he buys her every other year. Does she know she ordered an act of arson? Probably not. He probably had her stop off at the station with a message.”

“So it could be any of them.” Jason rubbed a hand over his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was one thing to keep an eye on Jim Ed, something else again to keep tabs on twelve other men.

A grimace twisted Calvert’s mouth. “That’s assuming it’s someone in the department and not in Reese’s circle of friends. I’ll get Price started on running down alibis today. You can probably plan on being pulled in for questioning in the next couple of days.”

Jason nodded and glanced away, his gaze trailing up the hill. Sunlight glinted off pale marble. That last image of Kathleen wrapped in Calvert’s arms pulsed in his head.

He cleared his throat. “How’s Kathleen?”

“She’ll be fine.” Calvert’s voice was even. “She’s a strong woman and she’s been through worse.”

That strong woman who’d been through worse had been devastated the day before. Devastated and ready to believe he was to blame. Her voice rang in his head.
I hate you.
He’d fallen into a fitful sleep with the words echoing in his brain and woken to their mocking presence this morning as well.

Calvert glanced at his watch. “Listen, Harding, when this is all over, she’ll understand.”

“Yeah.” With the memory of her tear-filled gaze still haunting him, he couldn’t dredge up any optimism. When this was all over. Right. As far as he and Kathleen were concerned, it was already over.