Best Kept Secrets

by Sandra Brown

  “Don’t be too specific. I don’t want them forewarned.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thank you, Greg,” she said earnestly.

  “Not so fast,” he said, snuffing her enthusiasm. “If you trap yourself out there, I’ll disclaim you. The attorney general has made no secret that I’m his heir apparent. I want the job, and I’d like nothing better than to have a good-looking, smart broad as chief of one of my departments. That goes down good with the voters.” He pointed a nicotine-stained finger at her. “But if you fall on your ass now, I never knew you, kiddo. Got that?”

  “You’re an unscrupulous son of a bitch.”

  He grinned like a crocodile. “Even my mama didn’t like me much.”

  “I’ll send you a postcard.” She turned to leave.

  “Wait a minute. There’s something else. You’ve got thirty days.”

  “What?”

  “Thirty days to come up with something.”

  “But—”

  “That’s as long as I can spare you without the rest of the natives around here getting restless. That’s longer than your hunch and flimsy leads warrant. Take it or leave it.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  He didn’t know that she had a much more pressing deadline, a personal one. Alex wanted to present her grandmother with the name of Celina’s killer before she died. She wasn’t even concerned that her grandmother was in a coma. Somehow, she would penetrate her consciousness. Her last breath would be peaceful, and Alex was certain she would at last praise her granddaughter.

  Alex leaned across Greg’s desk. “I know I’m right. I’ll bring the real killer to trial, and when I do, I’ll get a conviction. See if I don’t.”

  “Yeah, yeah. In the meantime, find out what sex with a real cowboy is like. And take notes. I want details about spurs and guns and stuff.”

  “Pervert.”

  “Bitch. And don’t slam—ah, shit!”

  Alex smiled now, recalling that meeting. She didn’t take his insulting sexism seriously because she knew she had his professional respect. Wild man that he was, Greg Harper had been her mentor and friend since the summer before her first semester of law school, when she had worked in the prosecutor’s office. He was going out on a limb for her now, and she appreciated his vote of confidence.

  Once she had gotten Greg’s go-ahead, she hadn’t wasted time. It had taken her only one day to catch up on paperwork, clear her desk, and lock up her condo. She had left Austin early, and made a brief stop in Waco at the nursing home. Merle’s condition was unchanged. Alex had left the number of the Westerner where she could be reached in case of an emergency.

  She dialed the D.A.’s home number from her motel room.

  “Mr. Chastain, please,” she said in response to the woman’s voice who answered.

  “He’s not at home.”

  “Mrs. Chastain? It’s rather important that I speak with your husband.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Alex Gaither.”

  She heard a soft laugh. “You’re the one, huh?”

  “ ‘The one’?”

  “The one who accused the Mintons and Sheriff Lambert of murder. Pat was in a tailspin when he got home. I’ve never seen him so—”

  “Excuse me?” Alex interrupted breathlessly. “Did you say Sheriff Lambert?”

  Chapter 3

  The sheriff’s department was located in the basement of the Purcell County Courthouse. For the second time in as many days, Alex parked her car in a metered slot on the square and entered the building.

  It was early. There wasn’t much activity in the row of offices on the lower level. In the center of this warren of cubicles was a large squad room, no different from any other in the nation. A pall of cigarette smoke hovered over it like a perpetual cloud. Several uniformed officers were gathered around a hot plate where coffee was simmering. One was talking, but when he saw Alex, he stopped in midsentence. One by one, heads turned, until all were staring at her. She felt glaringly out of place in what was obviously a male domain. Equal employment hadn’t penetrated the ranks of the Purcell County Sheriff’s Department.

  She held her ground and said pleasantly, “Good morning.”

  “Mornin’,” they chorused.

  “My name is Alex Gaither. I need to see the sheriff, please.” The statement was superfluous. They already knew who she was and why she was there. Word traveled fast in a town the size of Purcell.

  “He expectin’ you?” one of the deputies asked belligerently, after spitting tobacco juice into an empty Del Monte green bean can.

  “I believe he’ll see me,” she said confidently.

  “Did Pat Chastain send you over?”

  Alex had tried to reach him again that morning, but Mrs. Chastain had told her that he’d already left for his office. She tried telephoning him there and got no answer. Either she had missed him while he was in transit, or he was avoiding her. “He’s aware of why I’m here. Is the sheriff in?” she repeated with some asperity.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I haven’t seen him.”

  “Yeah, he’s here,” one officer said grudgingly. “He came in a few minutes ago.” He nodded his head toward a hallway. “Last door on your left, ma’am.”

  “Thank you.”

  Alex gave them a gracious smile she didn’t feel in her heart and walked toward the hallway. She was conscious of the eyes focused on her back. She knocked on the indicated door.

  “Yeah?”

  Reede Lambert sat behind a scarred wooden desk that was probably as old as the cornerstone of the building. His booted feet were crossed and resting on one corner of it. Like yesterday, he was slouching, this time in a swivel chair.

  His cowboy hat and a leather, fur-lined jacket were hanging on a coat tree in the corner between a ground-level window and a wall papered with wanted posters held up by yellowing, curling strips of Scotch tape. He cradled a chipped, stained porcelain coffee mug in his hands.

  “Well, g’morning, Miss Gaither.”

  She closed the door with such emphasis that the frosted-glass panel rattled. “Why wasn’t I told yesterday?”

  “And spoil the surprise?” he said with a sly grin. “How’d you find out?”

  “By accident.”

  “I knew you’d show up sooner or later.” He eased himself upright. “But I didn’t figure on it being this early in the morning.” He came to his feet and indicated the only other available chair in the room. He moved toward a table that contained a coffee maker. “You want some?”

  “Mr. Chastain should have told me.”

  “Pat? No way. When things get touchy, our D.A.’s a real chickenshit.”

  Alex caught her forehead in her hand. “This is a nightmare.”

  He hadn’t waited for her to decline or accept his offer of coffee. He was filling up a cup similar to his. “Cream, sugar?”

  “This isn’t a social call, Mr. Lambert.”

  He set the cup of black coffee on the edge of the desk in front of her and returned to his chair. Wood and ancient springs creaked in protest as he sat down. “You’re getting us off to a bad start.”

  “Have you forgotten why I’m here?”

  “Not for a minute, but do your duties prohibit you from drinking coffee, or is it a religious abstinence?”

  Exasperated, Alex set her purse on the desk, went to the table, and spooned powdered cream into her mug.

  The coffee was strong and hot—much like the stare the sheriff was giving her—and far better than the tepid brew she’d drunk in the coffee shop of the Westerner Motel earlier. If he had brewed it, he knew how to do it right. But then, he looked like a very capable man. Reared back in his chair, he did not look at all concerned that he’d been implicated in a murder case.

  “How do you like Purcell, Miss Gaither?”

  “I haven’t been here long enough to form an opinion.”

  “Aw, come on. I’ll bet your mind was made up not to like it before
you ever got here.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It would stand to reason, wouldn’t it? Your mother died here.”

  His casual reference to her mother’s death rankled. “She didn’t just die. She was murdered. Brutally.”

  “I remember,” he said grimly.

  “That’s right. You discovered her body, didn’t you?”

  He lowered his eyes to the contents of his coffee mug and stared into it for a long time before taking a drink. He tossed it back, draining the mug as though it were a shot of whiskey.

  “Did you kill my mother, Mr. Lambert?”

  Since she hadn’t been able to accurately gauge his reaction the day before, she wanted to see it now.

  His head snapped up. “No.” Leaning forward, he braced his elbows on the desk and gave her a level stare. “Let’s cut through the bullshit, okay? Understand this right now, and it’ll save us both a lot of time. If you want to interrogate me, Counselor, you’ll have to subpoena me to appear before the grand jury.”

  “You’re refusing to cooperate with my investigation?”

  “I didn’t say that. This office will be at your disposal per Pat’s instructions. I’ll personally help you any way I can.”

  “Out of the goodness of your heart?” she asked sweetly.

  “No, because I want it over and done with, finished. You understand? So you can go back to Austin where you belong, and leave the past in the past where it belongs.” He got up to refill his coffee mug. Over his shoulder he asked, “Why’d you come here?”

  “Because Bud Hicks did not murder my mother.”

  “How the hell do you know? Or did you just ask him?”

  “I couldn’t. He’s dead.”

  She could tell by his reaction that he hadn’t known. He moved to the window and stared out, sipping his coffee reflectively. “Well, I’ll be damned. Gooney Bud is dead.”

  “Gooney Bud?”

  “That’s what everybody called him. I don’t think anybody knew his last name until after Celina died and the newspapers printed the story.”

  “He was retarded, I’m told.”

  The man at the window nodded. “Yeah, and he had a speech impediment. You could barely understand him.”

  “Did he live with his parents?”

  “His mother. She was half batty herself. She died years ago, not too long after he was sent away.”

  He continued to stare through the open slats of the blinds with his back to her. His silhouette was trim, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped. His jeans fit a little too well. Alex berated herself for noticing.

  “Gooney Bud pedaled all over town on one of those large tricycles,” he was saying. “You could hear him coming blocks away. That thing clattered and clanged like a peddler’s wagon. It was covered with junk. He was a scavenger. Little girls were warned to stay away from him. We boys made fun of him, played pranks, things like that.” He shook his head sadly. “Shame.”

  “He died in a state mental institution, incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit.”

  Her comment brought him around. “You’ve got nothing to prove that he didn’t.”

  “I’ll find the proof.”

  “None exists.”

  “Are you so sure? Did you destroy the incriminating evidence the morning you ostensibly found Celina’s body?”

  A deep crease formed between his heavy eyebrows. “Haven’t you got anything better to do? Don’t you already have a heavy enough caseload? Why did you start investigating this in the first place?”

  She gave him the same catchall reason she had given Greg Harper. “Justice was not served. Buddy Hicks was innocent. He took the blame for somebody else’s crime.”

  “Me, Junior, or Angus?”

  “Yes, one of the three of you.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Grandma Graham.”

  “Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.” He hooked one thumb into a belt loop, his tanned fingers curling negligently over his fly. “While she was telling you all this, did she mention how jealous she was?”

  “Grandma? Of whom?”

  “Of us. Junior and me.”

  “She told me the two of you and Celina were like the three musketeers.”

  “And she resented it. Did she tell you how she doted on Celina?”

  She hadn’t had to. The modest house Alex had grown up in had been a veritable shrine to her late mother. Noting her frown, the sheriff answered his own question. “No, I can see that Mrs. Graham failed to mention all that.”

  “You think I’m here on a personal vendetta.”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Well, I’m not,” Alex said defensively. “I believe there are enough holes in this case to warrant reinvestigation. So does District Attorney Harper.”

  “That egomaniac?” he snorted contemptuously. “He’d indict his own mother for selling it on street corners if it would move him any closer to the attorney general’s office.”

  Alex knew his comment was partially true. She tried another tack. “When Mr. Chastain is better acquainted with the facts, he’ll agree that there’s been a gross miscarriage of justice.”

  “Pat had never even heard of Celina until yesterday. He’s got his hands full chasing down wetbacks and drug dealers.”

  “Do you blame me for wanting justice? If your mother had been stabbed to death in a horse barn, wouldn’t you do everything possible to see that her killer was punished?”

  “I don’t know. My old lady split before I was old enough to remember her.”

  Alex felt a pang of empathy for him that she knew she couldn’t afford. No wonder the pictures she’d seen of Reede had been of a very intense lad with eyes much older than his years. She’d never thought to ask her grandmother why he looked so serious.

  “This is an untenable situation, Mr. Lambert. You are a suspect.” She stood up and retrieved her purse. “Thank you for the coffee. I’m sorry to have bothered you so early in the morning. From now on, I’ll have to rely on the local police department for assistance.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  Alex, already making her way toward the door, stopped and turned. “What?”

  “There is no police department.”

  Dismayed by that piece of information, she watched as he reached for his hat and coat. He stepped around her, pulled open the door for her, then followed her out.

  “Hey, Sam, I’m leaving. I’ll be across the street.” The deputy nodded. “This way,” Reede said, taking Alex’s elbow and guiding her toward a small, square elevator at the end of the hall.

  They got into it together. The door creaked when he pulled it closed. The sound of grinding gears wasn’t very reassuring. Alex hoped it would make the trip.

  She tried to help it along by concentrating hard on their ascent. All the same, she was fully aware of Reede Lambert standing so close to her that their clothing touched. He was studying her.

  He said, “You resemble Celina.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Your size, your mannerisms. Your hair’s darker, though, and it has more red in it. Her eyes were brown, not blue like yours.” His gaze moved over her face. “But there’s a striking resemblance.”

  “Thank you. I think my mother was beautiful.”

  “Everybody thought so.”

  “Including you?”

  “Especially me.”

  The elevator jerked to an abrupt stop. Alex lost her balance and fell against him. Reede caught her arm and supported her long enough for her to regain her balance, which might have taken a little too long, because when they separated, Alex felt light-headed and breathless.

  They were on the first floor. He shrugged into his jacket as he guided her toward a rear exit. “My car’s parked out front,” she told him as they left the building. “Should I put more money in the meter?”

  “Forget it. If you get a ticket, you’ve got friends in high places.”

  His smile wasn’t as orthodontist perfect
as Junior Minton’s, but it was just as effective. It elicited a tickle in the pit of her stomach that was strange and wonderful and scary.

  His quick grin emphasized the lines on his face. He looked every day of his forty-three years, but the weathered markings fit well on his strong, masculine bone structure. He had dark blond hair that had never known a stylist’s touch. He pulled on his black felt cowboy hat and situated the brim close to his eyebrows, which were a shade or two darker than his hair.

  His eyes were green. Alex had noticed that the moment she had walked into his office. She had reacted as any woman would to so attractive a man. He had no paunch, no middle-aged softness. Physically, he looked two decades younger than he actually was.

  Alex had to keep reminding herself that she was a prosecutor for the sovereign state of Texas, and that she should be looking at Reede Lambert through the eyes of a litigator, not a woman. Besides, he was a generation older than she.

  “Were you out of clean uniforms this morning?” she asked as they crossed the street.

  He wore plain denim Levi’s—old, faded, and tight—like the jeans rodeo cowboys wore. His jacket was brown leather, and fitted at the waist like a bomber jacket. The fur lining, which folded out to form a wide collar, was probably coyote. As soon as they’d stepped into the sunlight, he’d slid on aviator glasses. The lenses were so dark that she could no longer see his eyes.

  “I used to dread the sight of a uniform, so when I became sheriff, I made it clear that they’d never get me in one of those things.”

  “Why did you always dread the sight of one?”

  He smiled wryly. “I was usually trying to outrun it, or at least avoid it.”

  “You were a crook?”

  “Hell-raiser.”

  “You had run-ins with the law?”

  “Brushes.”

  “So what turned you around, a religious experience? A scare? A night or two in jail? Reform school?”

  “Nope. I just figured that if I could outchase the law, I could outchase the lawbreakers.” He shrugged. “It seemed a natural career choice. Hungry?”

  Before she had a chance to answer, he pushed open the door of the B & B Café. A cowbell mounted above it announced their entrance. It was the place where things were happening, it seemed. Every table—red Formica with rusted chrome legs—was full. Reede led her to a vacant booth along the wall.