In the Dreaming Hour

by Kathryn Le Veque

  Lucy wasn’t stupid. She knew they were right but she was just hoping it was nothing more than a normal bump. She didn’t have time for a head injury. Infuriated, she caught sight of Clyde as paramedics put a bandage over the lip she’d split.

  “Damn that little prick,” she growled. “You put him in jail and keep him there. I’m going to have him charged with everything I can think of.”

  Unsteadily, she stood up from the curb, growling because her suit pants were now dirty and one of the hems at the bottom had torn loose. Her expensive Jimmy Choo pumps were scuffed and that, more than anything, infuriated her.

  As she handed the icepack back to the paramedic and lamented her scratched shoes, she failed to see the black unmarked sheriff’s unit pull in to the parking lot, the very same car she’d been riding in not an hour before. Brushing off her pants and brushing off the concerns of the paramedics, she was startled to hear Beau’s voice.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Lucy’s head snapped up, face to face with him. “I’m fine,” she said, realizing she was very glad to see him. “Who told you?”

  He shook his head. Somehow, his hands made it on her shoulders as if to see for himself that she was okay. There was reassurance in that touch. “I heard the call go out,” he said. “When dispatch mentioned this hotel, I just had this feeling. Call it a hunch. What in the hell happened?”

  Lucy pursed her lips irritably and pointed to the ambulance where Clyde was being forced into a supine position by the paramedics. “He came up behind me and grabbed me,” she said. “He lifted me up off of my feet and tried to walk me over to the trees right here next to the parking lot. I managed to get him off of me and pepper spray the shit out of him, but he’s going down now. I’m going to have him charged with everything I can.”

  Beau’s jaw ticked as he turned to look at Clyde, being strapped down to the gurney now. He shook his head faintly, obvious displeasure in his expression. He turned to the deputy who had been interviewing Lucy.

  “Who’s going in with the suspect?” he asked.

  The deputy threw a thumb in the direction of another deputy who was interviewing one of the hotel staff several feet away. “Whitaker,” he said. “But I can go if you want me to.”

  Beau nodded. “Go,” he said. “Don’t let that boy out of your sight. Have the doctors check him out and when he’s clear, get him over to the jail and keep him there. I’ll be over to the station later on and have a talk with him.”

  The deputy nodded his head and, passing a glance between Beau and Lucy, headed over to the ambulance. Lucy watched the deputy walk away but Beau had already returned his attention to her, seeing the golf ball-sized lump on the right side of her head near her temple.

  “You need to get that looked at,” he said softly.

  Lucy’s fingers flitted up to her head, gingerly touching the lump. “I can’t,” she said. “I’ve got that appointment with Mamaw’s lawyer in a few minutes.”

  “Can it wait an hour?”

  She made a face, knowing he was probably going to pester her until she went to the hospital. That being the case, she was resigned to the fact that she was about to give in to his concern. It felt good to have a man be concerned over her again.

  “I can call him,” she said.

  “Do it.”

  Begrudgingly, Lucy pulled her cell phone out of her purse, which still contained the journal and Mamaw’s letter. The purse had flown off her shoulder at the beginning of the fight and was therefore relatively unscathed.

  As Lucy called Mo Guinn’s office to push her appointment back an hour, Beau walked over to the deputy who had been taking Lucy’s information. Taking the notebook out of the man’s hand, he read over the notes regarding the assault, shaking his head when he came to the conclusion. He could hardly believe Clyde McKibben had been stupid enough to try and assault his cousin. The creepy stalker had now gone too far. He handed the notebook back to the deputy.

  “I’m going to take the victim over to the hospital,” he said. “She’s agreed to go.”

  The deputy nodded. “Good,” he said. “She’s got a knot on her head that needs to be looked at.”

  “It will be.”

  “Do you know her, then?”

  Beau nodded. “A little,” he said. “She’s a defense attorney from Los Angeles. She’s working on a… a case out here. Information gathering and all that. I’ve been helping her.”

  The deputy looked over at Lucy, now on her cell phone. “Oh,” he said. Then, he snorted. “I knew she wasn’t from around here before I ever saw her identification.”

  “Why?”

  The deputy looked over at Clyde, lying on the gurney. “Because she beat the snot out of that boy,” he said. “At first, he tried to make it look like she was the one who assaulted him, but a couple of maids from the hotel saw the assault through a window and came to tell us what they saw. They said he walked up behind her and grabbed her, just like she said.”

  Beau frowned. “He really tried to say she assaulted him?”

  The deputy nodded. “Yup,” he said. “I don’t expect he’s going to be going after another woman any time soon after this. He’s really beat up.”

  Beau was disgusted by the entire thing but impressed by Lucy’s strength. As he’d said to her before, he couldn’t imagine anyone ever getting the better of her. She was a strong woman.

  “Get him over to the hospital, then,” he said. “I’m going to hang around here and see if she needs anything. I’ll see you at the station later on.”

  The deputy nodded and headed off to climb into the back of the ambulance while Beau went back over to Lucy. She was just hanging up the phone when he reached her.

  “He can see me in an hour and half,” she said. “Are you really going to make me go to the hospital now?”

  “I am,” he said firmly. “Come on.”

  “I can go by myself.”

  “No, you can’t. I’m not letting you out of my sight again. You might get into trouble.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “Then you know you don’t have to go with me.”

  “I know I don’t have to.”

  “Then why –?”

  “You talk too much.”

  He had her by the arm, pulling her away from the scene as the deputies wound up their investigation and the ambulance drove away. Putting Lucy in the passenger seat, he shut the door and rounded the car, climbing in and firing up the engine. In little time, they were heading to Pea Ridge Medical Center and it began to occur to Lucy why he was taking her.

  No, he didn’t have to. But he evidently wanted to.

  The realization made her grin.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ~ We Don’t Talk About It Anymore ~

  “Stop carrying on, Caroline,” Laveau said. “What happened was God’s justice. It’s nothin’ to be upset over.”

  Caroline sat in one of her fine chairs in the parlor on a bright autumn morning, the day after the birth of her first grandchild. Odd how everything looked so bright and cheery outside, when everything inside of Glory was cold and dank. So much sadness and misery. She held a handkerchief to her nose, sniffling into it.

  “You speak of God when it’s convenient for you,” she said. “All you’ve done this whole time is curse Him for what happened with Victory. And now you think He’s carried out justice for you?”

  Laveau had been heading out to the plantation office when he caught his wife in the parlor, sobbing over the dead baby. He’d paused on his way out to offer some comfort, a rare gesture for him, but now he was sorry he’d bothered. His wife was angry with him and he just didn’t understand it.

  “God took back what oughtn’t to have happened in the first place,” he said as if she were an idiot. “God knows when there’s been a mistake. He was just makin’ it right, that’s all.”

  Caroline looked away from him. “Then you go tell your daughter that
,” she said. “You go tell her that God was just cleaning up after a mistake.”

  Laveau sighed unhappily. “She knows it was a mistake,” he said. “She knows she made a terrible mistake by lettin’ that… that boy touch her, and now the mistake has been righted. And I don’t want to hear about it anymore, ya hear? Leave well enough alone around this house. There will be no more mistakes like that, not ever.”

  Caroline simply shook her head, wiping at her eyes. “It wasn’t her fault that she was raped,” she whispered. “She didn’t do anything but you blame her all the same.”

  Laveau’s mood was sinking fast. “I took care of the man who touched her,” he fired back. “He’s dead and Victory is lucky she lived through it all. She’s lucky I didn’t punish her, too!”

  Caroline’s head snapped to him. “You spent the last several months punishing her,” she said angrily. “You kept her locked up like a prisoner. She didn’t do anything but you were ashamed of her just the same. It wasn’t fair, Laveau.”

  It was the most Caroline had ever talked back to him and Laveau was sincerely trying not to let her ruin his day. He could have easily slapped her for what she’d just said but he didn’t. He refrained, instead, moving towards the front door.

  “It’s over with now,” he said, taking his hat from the rack by the door and putting it on his head. “She’s going to want to go back to school and see her friends again, but I’m going to have a long talk with her before she does about how things are going to be from now on.”

  “And how’s that?”

  “No more parties, no more things outside of this house,” he said. “If I even decide to let her go back to school, she’s to go there and then come right back home again. That’s all she’s going to do. I don’t want her giving any more colored boys ideas about her.”

  Caroline was stricken by his heartlessness. “Is that what you think?” she asked, aghast. “You think that she gave some colored boy an idea about her and that’s why all this happened?”

  Laveau opened the front door. “She’ll talk to anybody,” he said with disapproval. “She’s got to learn not to be so friendly. She got herself into trouble with it but that trouble is over now. And we don’t talk about it anymore. You got that?”

  Caroline simply looked away from him, sniffing into her handkerchief, once again. She heard the front door slam and her husband’s shoes as he stomped cross the porch and down the steps. After that, she didn’t hear him anymore and she was glad. She’d never really loved him but she’d only come to hate him recently. A black, thick hate as heavy as delta mud. She couldn’t stand the sight of him.

  Overhead, her daughter was still asleep from the anesthesia Dr. Latling had given her the night before. She’d remained unconscious all night and the doctor had come back around dawn to check on his patient. She was still unconscious but he informed Caroline that her daughter was simply sleeping. Exhaustion had caused her to be sensitive to the ether. But that lengthy unconsciousness also meant that Victory had no idea she’d given birth to a dead baby and it was Caroline’s job to tell her daughter that when she finally awoke.

  When Lillian finally came to tell Caroline that Victory was awake, it was with a heavy heart that Caroline made the trek up to her daughter’s room to tell her what had happened.

  Caroline would remember Victory’s screams of grief until the day she died.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Present

  “Well,” Bill said. “Your meeting with Mo went pretty much as I expected. He didn’t tell you anything we didn’t already know. Essentially, this whole estate belongs to me, such as it is. The only thing I’m happy about is that there aren’t any serious debts. Mama made sure she paid everything off with the funds she had. The only thing we’re looking at right now is the hospice care bill, but considering how long she’d been ill, I consider that a small price to pay. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about that right now. Let’s talk about what Clyde did to you, Lucy. Honest to Pete, I’m so mad right now I could kill that guy.”

  Bill, Mary, Lucy, and Beau were standing around the old kitchen of Glory because Bill and Mary had been finishing up an early dinner when Lucy and Beau came in through the back door bearing two distinct stories – one of Lucy’s meeting with Mo Guinn and then – in a passing mention – the reason behind the massive lump on her temple.

  Lucy hadn’t wanted to upset her parents with tales of Clyde’s assault but those hopes were for naught – they were upset and angry. As Lucy tried to soothe her mother, Beau found himself in the role of trying to keep Bill Bondurant calm.

  “He’s going to be in jail for a while,” Beau assured the angry father. “In fact, I need to head back over to the station to follow up on the case. Trust me when I say he’s going to pay for what he did. In fact, he already paid for it a little when your daughter walloped the tar out of him. McKibben has been known to us for a while as a nuisance more than anything, but he’s never been so bold about going after women. He’ll think twice before doing anything like this again, I’m betting.”

  Mary was inspecting the bandage on Lucy’s head as Bill, his gaze on his daughter, shook his head in disgust.

  “Tommie and I told him to stay away from Lucy in no uncertain terms the other night,” he said. “Obviously, he didn’t listen. Does his mother know what he’s done?”

  Beau shrugged. “By now, she probably does,” he said. “How is he related to ya’ll, anyway?”

  Bill’s gaze was still on his daughter. “His mother’s mother was a cousin to my mother,” he said. “He’s a distant cousin, but down here, there are no distant cousins. Everybody thinks they’re all part of the close family no matter how removed their relations are and Clyde likes to think he’s right down in Lucy’s back pocket. He never leaves her alone.”

  Beau scratched his chin. “That’s not surprising,” he said. “I think he’s a few bricks short of a load, quite honestly.”

  “He’s a psychopath.”

  “That, too.”

  Bill grunted unhappily, displeased with the entire situation. “Well,” he said. “I suppose ya’ll are handling it the best way you can. I appreciate that.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  The situation was settled, for the most part, but Bill still seemed frustrated by it. He sighed heavily and went over to the sink, pouring out a half-full cup of coffee that had been sitting on the counter. He was clearly trying to move away from the subject of Clyde, trying to busy himself with other things.

  “We dropped by Aunt Dell’s today just after lunch, Lucy,” he said after a few moments. “She said you and the sheriff went to visit her today.”

  Lucy, who was standing over next to her mother, was caught off-guard by the statement. “We did,” she said quickly; maybe too quickly. “Uh… did she say why?”

  Bill didn’t seem to notice her swift reply. “Not really,” he said. “But she did seem upset. Was she like that when you were there?”

  Lucy nodded. “A little bit, I think,” she said, wanting to throw her parents off the scent of why they were really at Aunt Dell’s. “She seemed tired and upset but she didn’t tell me why. We just chatted with her a bit and left.”

  Bill accepted the explanation. “What did you talk about?”

  Lucy glanced at Beau before answering, just to make sure he went along with whatever she said. “Family,” she said. “You told me that Aunt Dell would be the one to ask about Laveau Hembree, so I did. She basically said everything you did.”

  Bill bent over his wife’s shoulder to look at the bump on Lucy’s head. “Hmmm,” he said, peering at the bump for a moment longer before standing straight and moving away. “I’m curious why you were there, Beau. Are you following my daughter around now? Should I be worried?”

  Beau grinned. “I’ll tell you when you need to be worried,” he teased. In no way did he want Bill to know that his attention towards Lucy went beyond polite courtesy. In fact, he didn’t even want Lucy to know but he was comin
g to suspect she did, anyway. “Truthfully, the night of Ms. Victory’s funeral, when Lucy was trying to get away from Clyde, she and I had a nice talk back here in the kitchen. She… well, she mentioned wanting to ask her Aunt Dell about some family history and I asked if I could tag along. Someone like Dell Alexander would know a lot about my family history, too. I just wanted to hear what she had to say.”

  It wasn’t exactly the truth. They hadn’t spoken about Aunt Dell the night they’d met but they had spoken about her the next day at breakfast, but Beau wasn’t so sure he should mention he’d had breakfast with Lucy. Bill might really think something was up then. Still, he tried to sound convincing, as if the whole thing was quite casual. It must have worked because Bill seemed to buy it.

  “Did she tell you anything you didn’t know?” he asked.

  Beau shook his head. “Most everything she spoke of was about Laveau Hembree,” he said. It was the truth. “She mentioned my great-granddaddy a couple of times. She said everyone around here used to call him The Puppet. I hadn’t heard that one.”

  Bill nodded to the revealed fact. “Me, either,” he said. “That’s a new one.”

  “Dad, what do you know about a guy named Stephen Latling?” Lucy suddenly asked.

  Both Bill and Beau looked at her in surprise – Bill because he hadn’t heard the name in a while and Beau because she brought it up at all.

  “Stephen Latling?” Bill repeated. “I know of him but I don’t know personally him. Why?”

  Lucy wondered how long she was going to burn in purgatory for telling her parents such half-truths. “I ran into him today,” she said. “He didn’t seem too friendly. He seems to be one of those people in town who have a hatred for anything Hembree or Meade.”

  Bill’s expression grew pensive. “Stephen Latling,” he muttered again, more to himself. “His daddy was the town doctor many years ago. He tended my mother on more than one occasion and he was the doctor who took my tonsils out back when I was about five. He was very old then. How’d you come across him?”