Where There's Smoke

by Sandra Brown

  Key wiped the saliva off her chin with his thumb, then rested his cheek on the top of her head. “It’s all right, Mother. Clark died knowing you loved him. He knew.”

  “Key.” She spoke his name, not reproachfully, but penitently. She managed to lift her hand and place it on his arm. “Key.”

  He squeezed his eyes so tightly shut, tears were wrung from them. When the ambulance arrived, he was still cradling her in his arms, cooing to her like a baby, rocking her gently.

  But by then Jody Tackett was dead.

  “Thank you, Mr. Hoskins.” Ollie had personally carried her groceries out to her car and stowed them in the trunk.

  “You’re welcome, Dr. Mallory.”

  “How is Mrs. Hoskins?”

  He pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket and unabashedly dabbed at his eyes. “Not much good. She sits in Tanner’s room a lot. Dusts it. Runs the vacuum over the rug so much, she’s worn down the pile. Doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep.”

  “Why don’t you bring her to see me? I could prescribe a mild sedative.”

  “Thanks, Dr. Mallory, but her problem isn’t physical.”

  “Grief can be physically debilitating. I know. Encourage her to come see me.”

  He nodded, thanked her again, and returned to his duties inside the Sak’n’Save. This was one of the supermarket’s busiest days of the year, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Texas Street was jammed.

  A crew of volunteers was hanging Christmas decorations, stretching strings of multicolored lights across the street and mounting a Santa wearing a cowboy hat and boots on the roof of the bank building. Passersby offered unsolicited advice.

  Despite the recent catastrophe, life went on in Eden Pass.

  Lara was about to back her car out of the metered parking slot when Key’s Lincoln loomed up directly behind her and blocked her exit. He got out and moved between her car and the pickup truck parked next to her.

  Noisy honking and a shout drew his attention back to the street. “Hey, Tackett, you gonna move this piece of yellow shit, or what? It’s blocking the whole damn street.”

  Key called back, “Go around it, you ugly son of a bitch.” Wearing a good-natured smile, he flicked his middle finger at his friend, Possum. He was still laughing when he reached the driver’s door of Lara’s car. He knocked on the window and peeled off his aviator sunglasses. “Hey, Doc, how’ve you been?”

  They hadn’t been alone together since the day Jody died. If he could be cavalier, so could she, although her heart was racing. “I thought you’d gone to Alaska.”

  “Next week. I promised Janellen I’d stick around till after Thanksgiving. She and Bowie will be celebrating their first one together. It’s important to her that I be here to carve the turkey.”

  “She brought him to meet me.”

  “The turkey?”

  She rolled her eyes, letting him know her estimation of his joke. “I like your brother-in-law very much.”

  “Yeah, so do I. I particularly like him because he’s touchy about folks thinking he married Janellen for her money. He works like a Trojan to prove he didn’t. He’s inspecting every Tackett well for safety violations. He’d blame himself for the disaster caused by well number seven, only Janellen won’t let him. He knew something was out of kilter. Time ran out before he located the problem, is all.

  “Anyhow, they’re gaga over each other. I feel like a fifth wheel. Once I’m gone, they’ll have the house to themselves. I’ve deeded over my half of it to her.”

  “That was generous.”

  “That house didn’t hold any good memories for me. Nary a one. Maybe they’ll make it a happy place for their kids.” Shaking his head, he chuckled. “Who’d’ve ever thought Janellen would elope?” In a quieter voice, he added, “Her timing was off a bit. She’ll go to her grave blaming herself for not being here when Jody had her stroke.”

  He was back to calling his mother Jody, but Lara remembered the tenderness with which he’d held her, calling her Mother as she died. “Did you tell Janellen about Clark?”

  “No. What would be the point? It was hard enough on her to learn that Jody had murdered your husband.”

  There’d been an inquest. Key had cited Jody’s dementia as the cause of her violent act. In her confusion, he told the judge, she’d linked Randall Porter’s sudden reappearance with Clark’s death. She killed him, thinking she was protecting her child. The court bought it. In any event, the killer was dead. Case dismissed. Sometimes the good ol’ boy system was the fairest.

  He turned his blue stare full force onto Lara. “You could have told the truth at the inquest.”

  “As you said, what would be the point? No one would have believed me five years ago. I couldn’t prove anything then or now, and besides, it would only have dragged things out indefinitely. I was glad to finally see an end to it. The important thing to me was that Ashley’s death was avenged.”

  She’d had Randall’s body cremated. Since there had been a formal funeral for him years earlier, she didn’t feel she owed the public another spectacle. She’d held a private memorial in Maryland for him. Only a handful of former colleagues had been invited to attend.

  “What about the scheme Porter cooked up with Sánchez?” Key asked.

  “When the president called to extend his condolences, I told him that I didn’t agree with my late husband’s assessment of the situation in Montesangre. I said that you and I had witnessed firsthand El Corazón’s brutality to his own troops as well as his enemies. Speaking strictly as a citizen, I told him I wouldn’t want my tax dollars to support his regime.”

  “He called me, too. I told him the same thing, in language a little more blunt.”

  “I can imagine.”

  He leaned against the rugged pickup parked beside her and raised one knee, flattening the sole of his boot against the dented door. He looked like he belonged there, comfortable in his Texas uniform—denim jeans and jacket. The brisk autumn wind tossed his dark hair around his head. His eyes were a few shades deeper than the sky.

  She yearned for him.

  “I thought you were leaving Eden Pass, Doc.”

  “I changed my mind and reopened the clinic. The people here have accepted me now. Business is so good, I’ve rehired Nancy. She’s asking for an assistant.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.”

  During a noticeable lapse in the conversation, neither knew quite where to look.

  “Marion Leonard is pregnant,” she told him. “She wouldn’t mind your knowing. They announced it immediately. She was among my first patients after I reopened.”

  “Ah, that’s good.” He nodded sagely. “Then there was never anything to that rumor of a malpractice suit?”

  “I guess not.”

  They didn’t go into the role Jody had played in starting the rumor.

  “Did you read the TAF’s report when they published it in the newspaper?” he asked.

  After weeks of investigation, the federal agency had released their findings. The explosion at The Green Pine Motel had been caused by an illegal gas line running from Tackett Oil’s well number seven to the motel. The gas was being used to heat and cool the motel. A leak in the line had filled the infrequently used honeymoon suite with odorless natural gas. It had compressed to a highly combustible level. The spark from the electrical short was enough to cause the blast.

  Fergus Winston, against the advice of his attorney, pleaded guilty to all charges and was now weeks into his life sentence.

  Darcy had closed their house and left town. Gossip was rampant. Some said she held vigil over Heather’s grave by night and the prison by day, hoping for a chance to kill Fergus. Others said she had gone completely ’round the bend and had been committed to a psychiatric hospital. Still another rumor was that she’d latched on to a minor league baseball player and was shacked up with him somewhere in Oklahoma.

  “As I understand it,” Lara said, “Fergus tapped into the old flare lin
e.”

  “Right. They were common. They burned off the gas from a well. Then Granddaddy decided to market the gas in addition to the oil. He tapped off that line. Anyway, flare lines became illegal. Fergus knew about the one on that well, reopened it, and extended it to his motel. He had free gas for years and probably laughed up his sleeve about it.”

  Again they ran out of conversation. When the silence became uncomfortable, Lara reached for her ignition key. “Well, I’d better run. I’ve got frozen things in the trunk.”

  “Before that morning, did you know that Clark and your husband were lovers?”

  She didn’t expect the question. Her hand fell away from the ignition.

  He squatted down beside her car door so that their faces were on the same level. Loosely clasping his hands, he rested his wrists on the open window. “Did you?”

  “I had no idea,” she answered softly. “When I saw them, I went numb. But only for a moment. Then I went a little crazy. Became hysterical.”

  “Who called the press?”

  She didn’t even consider avoiding his questions or glazing her answers with euphemisms. “The phone on the nightstand beside my bed rang. I woke up and answered it. The caller identified himself only as one of Clark’s close friends. He called him a few ugly names.” A spasm of pain flashed across Key’s face, but Lara went on doggedly.

  “He asked if I knew that Clark had dumped him in favor of my husband. Then he hung up. I took it for a crank call and turned to tell Randall about it. But he wasn’t in the other twin bed. I got up and went looking for him.”

  She bowed her head and rubbed her forehead with her thumb and index finger. “I found them in Clark’s bedroom. Later, I figured that same caller must also have notified the media and told them that an explosive news story was about to break at the cottage. Anyway, reporters arrived within minutes of my discovery. Clark became almost as hysterical as I. It was Randall’s idea to make it look like…” She raised her shoulders and sighed. “You know the rest.”

  Key muttered epithets to Ambassador Porter. “Why didn’t the guy on the phone come forward to contradict the tabloid stories about you?”

  “I suppose he lost his courage,” she replied. “Anyway, he accomplished what he wanted. He brought down Senator Tackett.”

  “You could have exposed them, Lara. Why didn’t you?”

  She laughed mirthlessly. “Who would have believed me? Randall had had affairs with women. Many of them. They would have sworn that he was wholly heterosexual, and he was.”

  His brows furrowed with perplexity.

  “He knew about Clark’s sexual preference, and used it,” she said. “One favor in exchange for another, I suppose. Randall wasn’t above that sort of cruel manipulation. He used Clark. He used me. He’d do anything to get what he wanted.”

  “Like pretending to be dead for years.”

  “Yes. And it didn’t bother him at all that our daughter was killed in a crossfire.” She hesitated to broach the next subject because it was sensitive for several reasons. “Key…” She averted her eyes from his. “I didn’t trust Randall to tell me the truth about his bisexuality. In fact, I suspect that he was also Emilio’s lover. Anyway, I ran extensive blood tests on Randall and me while I was still in the first trimester of my pregnancy. I didn’t want to transmit the AIDS virus to my child.

  “Both of us tested negative, but I never took another chance. The night I conceived Ashley—which was only a few weeks before the incident—was the last time I slept with Randall.” She met his direct gaze. “The very last.”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “But you have a right to know.”

  His unwavering gaze was disquieting. They were surrounded by noise and confusion, yet a ponderous silence stretched between them. She found comfort in the sound of her own voice.

  “Back to my credibility—the concept of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is a myth. Before I fully recovered from the shock of finding my husband in bed with another man, I was branded an adulteress who’d been caught in the act. If I’d come forward with the truth, it would have been regarded as nothing more than a vicious counterattack.”

  Sadly she shook her head. “Once I was photographed in my nightgown, being hustled from Clark’s cottage by my husband, I was labeled.”

  “I thought my brother had more integrity than to let someone else take the rap for him.”

  “He got swept up into Randall’s lie, just as I did. The consequences of it were so extreme that he really couldn’t consider telling the truth.

  “But, unlike Randall, it ate on his conscience. Giving me the medical practice here in Eden Pass was his way of making restitution, of telling me he was sorry.” She smiled wanly. “Don’t be too hard on him, Key. He’d lived as a closet homosexual for years. That must have been a terribly lonely and unhappy existence.”

  “I’m still wrestling with it, trying to reconcile the brother I knew with the man in bed with Randall Porter. I keep thinking about one summer when we went to camp together. Naturally, we did what adolescent boys do when they sneak off into the woods. We jacked off until we were sore. We had come-comparing contests, for chrissake. If we were that close, why couldn’t he tell me?”

  “Maybe he didn’t know then.”

  “Maybe. But by the time he was elected senator, he did. On election night, after his opponent had conceded, and all the hoopla died down, we got stinking drunk to celebrate.” He smiled at the fond memory. “The next morning, he had to meet the press with the worst hangover in history. He threatened to kill me for doing that to him. The last time I saw him alive, we still had a laugh over it.”

  Gradually his smile faded. He stared into near space. “I wish he’d had enough confidence in me to tell me.”

  “Would you have accepted it?”

  “I’d like to think so.” He pinched his eyes shut for a moment. “Jody’s opinion of homosexuals was no secret,” he said bitterly. “I think Hitler had more tolerance. It must have been quite a scene when Clark told her.”

  “I’m sure it was devastating to them both.”

  “Whatever she said to him pushed him over the edge.” He stood up and slid his hands into the rear pockets of his jeans, palms out. He looked down at his feet, rolled back on the heels of his boots, then let them fall forward to slap the pavement.

  “She was good at that, you know, pushing people to the edge. Good, hell.” He scoffed at his understatement. “She wrote the book on it. She knew exactly which screw to turn, and when, and how tight to turn it. She just couldn’t leave people in peace to be what they were. Not Clark, or Janellen, or me, or my daddy.” He glanced up suddenly. “She left me a letter.”

  Lara cleared her throat. “Yes, Janellen mentioned it.”

  “Did she tell you what she wrote?”

  “No. Only that each of you found a letter to be opened on the occasion of Jody’s death.”

  “Yeah, well the date on mine indicated that she wrote it while we were in Montesangre.” His mouth turned down at the corners, and he raised his shoulders in a half-shrug. “She said that everybody was under the impression that she hated Daddy for chasing other women and leaving her for extended periods of time. But the truth of it, according to her letter, was that she loved him. To distraction, she said. Beyond reason. Those are quotes.”

  He kept his head down, his eyes on his boots. “She loved him, and he hurt her. Badly. The letter said that every time he, uh, took another woman, it was like a knife in her heart because she knew she wasn’t pretty and vivacious. Not the sort of woman who could hold his interest. She knew that the only reason he married her was to get out of a scrape. But he never knew, or if he knew he didn’t care, that she truly loved him.

  “To his way of thinking it was a marriage of convenience. Jody got to run Tackett Oil like she wanted; he used his marriage as a safety net if his philandering got him into a fix. Not a bad bargain except that Jody loved him, so his infidelities hurt her.”

 
He removed his hands from his back pockets and rubbed them together, then turned up one palm and studied it as though trying to make sense of the crisscrossing lines. “And,” he said around a deep breath, “her letter said that the reason she was always so hard on me was because I was exactly like my daddy. Looked like him, had his temperament, liked nothing better than to have a good time. Later I even raised hell and womanized like him.

  “She… she, uh, said she had loved me all along, but that it hurt her to even look at me. The day I was born, he was with another woman. I was a living reminder of that, so it was impossible for her to show me any love. Mostly, in an odd sort of way, she was afraid I’d reject her love, just like my daddy did. So she didn’t chance it.”

  He rolled his shoulders, a brave attempt to appear indifferent. “That’s what she wrote me. Crap like that.”

  “I don’t think it’s crap and neither do you.” He raised his head and looked at her. “Jody loved both her sons, Key. She fought to the bitter end of her life to protect Clark from scandal.”

  “Then why’d she struggle with her last few breaths to tell me about him?”

  “Because she wanted you to know that Clark had disappointed her. He’d always been her fair-haired child and you knew it. She refused to die until she’d balanced things out. That was a tremendous personal sacrifice for her, which should prove to you how much she loved you.”

  He squinted, but she couldn’t tell if it was from the sun’s glare or because he’d been struck by an enlightening thought. “This personal sacrifice stuff is a big thing with you.”

  She tilted her head, looking at him with misapprehension. He launched into an explanation. “You didn’t keep Clark’s secret because you were afraid no one would believe you. You kept quiet because you loved Clark. You told me so yourself on the way to Montesangre.

  “It was friendship, never a sexual thing. Even though Randall Porter was a roach on pig shit, you wouldn’t have cheated on him while you were legally married. I learned that for myself. But you respected Clark as a statesman and loved him as a friend. That’s why you didn’t squeal on him even though he’d betrayed you.