Best Kept Secrets

by Sandra Brown

  “I tend to agree with Joe. She’s a threat. She thinks one of us killed Celina, and she’s bound and determined to find out who.”

  “She struck me that way, too.”

  “Of course, she’s got nothing on any of us.”

  “Of course.”

  Junior looked at his father warily. “She’s sharp.”

  “As a tack.”

  “And no slouch in the looks department.”

  Father and son shared a bawdy laugh. “Yeah, she is good-lookin’,” Angus said. “But then, so was her mama.”

  Junior’s smile faded. “Yes, she was.”

  “Still miss her, don’t you?” Angus shrewdly studied his son.

  “Sometimes.”

  Angus sighed. “I don’t suppose you can lose a close friend like that without it having a lasting effect on you. You wouldn’t be human, otherwise. But it’s foolish of you to pine for a woman who’s been dead all these years.”

  “I’ve hardly pined,” Junior countered. “Since the day I figured out how this operates,” he said, touching the fly of his pants, “it hasn’t gone inactive for long.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” Angus said, frowning. “Anybody can get laid on a regular basis. I’m talking about your life. Commitment to something. You were upset for a long time after Celina died. It took you a while to pull your shit together. Okay, that was understandable.”

  He pushed the footstool of his chair and sat up straight, pointing a blunt finger at Junior. “But you stalled, boy, and you haven’t worked up a full head of steam since. Look at Reede. He took Celina’s death hard, too, but he got over her.”

  “How do you know he got over her?”

  “Do you see him moping around?”

  “I’m the one who’s had three wives, not Reede.”

  “And that’s something to be proud of?” Angus shouted, his temper snapping. “Reede’s made his life count for something. He’s got a career—”

  “Career?” Junior interrupted with a contemptuous snort. “I’d hardly call being sheriff of this pissant county a career. Big fuckin’ deal.”

  “What would you call a career? Screwing the entire female membership of the country club before you die?”

  “I do my fair share of work around here,” Junior argued. “I spent all morning on the phone with that breeder in Kentucky. He’s this close to buying that colt by Artful Dodger out of Little Bit More.”

  “Yeah, what did he say?”

  “That he’s seriously thinking about it.”

  Angus came out of his chair, booming his approval. “That’s great news, son. That old man’s a tough son of a bitch, I’ve heard tell. He’s a crony of Bunky Hunt’s. Feeds his horses caviar and shit like that after they win.” Angus slapped Junior on the back and ruffled his hair as though he were three, instead of forty-three.

  “However,” Angus said, his frown returning, “that just emphasizes how much we stand to lose if the racing commission rescinds that license before the ink on it is even dry. One breath of scandal and we’re history. So, how are we gonna handle Alexandra?”

  “Handle her?”

  Favoring his ailing toe, Angus hobbled toward the refrigerator to get another beer. “We can’t wish her away. The way I see it,” he said, twisting off the bottle cap, “we’ll just have to convince her that we’re innocent. Upstanding citizens.” He gave an elaborate shrug. “Since that’s exactly what we are, it shouldn’t be that hard to do.”

  Junior could tell when the wheels of his father’s brain were turning. “How will we go about that?”

  “Not we—you. By doing what you do best.”

  “You mean—?”

  “Seduce her.”

  “Seduce her!” Junior exclaimed. “She didn’t strike me as being a prime candidate for seduction. I’m sure she can’t stand our guts.”

  “Then, that’s the first thing we gotta change… you gotta change. Just seduce her into liking you… at first. I’d do it myself if I still had the proper equipment.” He gave his son a wicked smile. “Think you can handle such an unpleasant chore?”

  Junior grinned back. “I’d damn sure welcome the opportunity to try.”

  Chapter 6

  The cemetery gates were open. Alex drove through them. She had never been to her mother’s grave, but she knew the plot number. It had been jotted down and filed among some official papers that she’d found when she had moved her grandmother into the nursing home.

  The sky looked cold and unfriendly. The sun was suspended just above the western horizon like a giant orange disk, brilliant but brassy. Tombstones cast long shadows across the dead grass.

  Using discreet signposts for reference, Alex located the correct row, parked the car, and got out. As far as she could tell, she was the only person there. Here on the outskirts of town, the north wind seemed stronger, its howl more ominous. She flipped up the collar of her coat as she made her way toward the plot.

  Even though she was searching for it, she wasn’t prepared to see the grave. It rushed up on her unexpectedly. Her impulse was to turn away, as though she’d happened upon an atrocity, something horrible and offensive.

  The rectangular marker was no more than two feet high. She wouldn’t have ever noticed it if it weren’t for the name. It gave only her mother’s date of birth, and date of death—nothing else. Not an epitaph. Not an obligatory “In loving memory of.” Nothing but the barest statistical facts.

  The scarcity of information broke Alex’s heart. Celina had been so young and pretty and full of promise, yet she’d been diminished to anonymity.

  She knelt beside the grave. It was set apart from the others, alone at the crest of a gradual incline. Her father’s body had been shipped from Vietnam to his native West Virginia, courtesy of the United States Army. Grandfather Graham, who had died when Celina was just a girl, was buried in his hometown. Celina’s grave was starkly solitary.

  The headstone was cold to the touch. She traced the carved letters of her mother’s first name with her fingertip, then pressed her hand on the brittle grass in front of it, as though feeling for a heartbeat.

  She had foolishly imagined that she might be able to communicate with her supernaturally, but the only sensation she felt was that of the stubbly grass pricking her palm.

  “Mother,” she whispered, testing the word. “Mama. Mommy.” The names felt foreign to her tongue and lips. She’d never spoken them to anyone before.

  “She swore you recognized her just by the sound of her voice.”

  Startled, Alex spun around. Pressing a hand to her pounding heart, she gasped in fright. “You scared me. What are you doing here?”

  Junior Minton knelt beside her and laid a bouquet of fresh flowers against the headstone. He studied it for a moment, then turned his head and smiled wistfully at Alex.

  “Instinct. I called the motel, but you didn’t answer when they rang your room.”

  “How did you know where I was staying?”

  “Everybody knows everything about everybody in this town.”

  “No one knew I was coming to the cemetery.”

  “Deductive reasoning. I tried to imagine where I might be if I were in your shoes. If you don’t want company, I’ll leave.”

  “No. It’s all right.” Alex looked back at the name carved into the cold, impersonal gray stone. “I’ve never been here. Grandma Graham refused to bring me.”

  “Your grandmother isn’t a very warm, giving person.”

  “No, she isn’t, is she?”

  “Did you miss having a mother when you were little?”

  “Very much. Particularly when I started school and realized that I was the only kid in my grade who didn’t have one.”

  “Lots of kids don’t live with their mothers.”

  “But they know they’ve got one.” This was a subject she found difficult to discuss with even her closest friends and associates. She didn’t feel inclined to discuss it with Junior Minton at all, no matter ho
w sympathetic his smile.

  She touched the bouquet he’d brought and rubbed the petal of a red rose between her cold fingertips. In comparison, the flower felt like warm velvet, but it was the color of blood. “Do you bring flowers to my mother’s grave often, Mr. Minton?”

  He didn’t answer until she was looking at him again. “I was at the hospital the day you were born. I saw you before they had washed you up.” His grin was open, warm, disarming. “Don’t you think that should put us on a first-name basis?”

  It was impossible to erect barriers against his smile. It would have melted iron. “Then, call me Alex,” she said, smiling back.

  His eyes moved from the crown of her head to the toes of her shoes. “Alex. I like that.”

  “Do you?”

  “What, like your name?”

  “No, bring flowers here often.”

  “Oh, that. Only on holidays. Angus and I usually bring something out on her birthday, Christmas, Easter. Reede, too. We split the cost of having the grave tended.”

  “Any particular reason why?”

  He gave her an odd look, then answered simply, “We all loved Celina.”

  “I believe one of you killed her,” she said softly.

  “You believe wrong, Alex. I didn’t kill her.”

  “What about your father? Do you think he did?”

  He shook his head. “He treated Celina like a daughter. Thought of her that way, too.”

  “And Reede Lambert?”

  He shrugged as though no elaboration was necessary. “Reede, well…”

  “What?”

  “Reede could never have killed her.”

  Alex settled deeper into her fur coat. The sun had set, and it was getting colder by the moment. When she spoke, her breath fogged the air in front of her face. “I spent some time in the public library this afternoon, reading back issues of the local newspaper.”

  “Anything about me?”

  “Oh, yes, all about your Purcell Panther football days.”

  As he laughed, the wind lifted his fair hair. His was a much lighter blond than Reede’s, and it was finer, better controlled. “That must have made for some fascinating reading.”

  “It did. You and Reede were cocaptains of the team.”

  “Hell, yeah.” He crooked his arm as though showing off muscled biceps. “We thought we were invincible, real hot snot.”

  “Her junior year, my mother was the homecoming queen. There was a picture of Reede kissing her during halftime.”

  Studying that photograph had made Alex feel very strange. She’d never seen it before. For some reason her grandmother had chosen not to keep it among her many others, perhaps because Reede Lambert’s kiss had been audacious, full-fledged, and proprietary.

  Undaunted by the cheering crowd in the stadium, his arm had been curved possessively around Celina’s waist. The pressure of the kiss had angled her head back. He looked like a conqueror, especially in the muddy football uniform, holding his battle-scarred helmet in his other hand.

  After staring at the photograph for several minutes, she began to feel that kiss herself.

  Coming back to the present, she said, “You didn’t become friends with my mother and Reede until later on, isn’t that right?”

  Junior pulled up a blade of grass and began to shred it between his fingers. “Ninth grade. Until then, I attended a boarding school in Dallas.”

  “By choice?”

  “By my mother’s choice. She didn’t want me picking up what she considered to be undesirable habits from the kids of oil-field workers and cowhands, so I was packed off to Dallas every fall.

  “My schooling was a bone of contention between Mother and Dad for years. Finally, when I was about to go into high school, he put his foot down and said it was time I learned there were other kinds of people besides the ‘pale little bastards’—and that’s a quote—at prep school. He enrolled me in Purcell High School that fall.”

  “How did your mother take it?”

  “Not too well. She was definitely against it, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. Where she came from—”

  “Which is?”

  “Kentucky. In his prime, her old man was one of the most successful breeders in the country. He’d bred a Triple Crown winner.”

  “How did she meet your father?”

  “Angus went to Kentucky to buy a mare. He brought it and my mother back with him. She’s lived here for over forty years, but she still clings to Presley family traditions, one of which was to send all the offspring to private school.

  “Not only did Dad enroll me at Purcell, he also insisted that I go out for the football team. The coach wasn’t too keen on the idea, but Dad bribed him by promising to buy new uniforms for the team if he’d take me on, so…”

  “Angus Minton makes things happen.”

  “You can bank on that,” Junior said with a laugh. “He never takes no for an answer, so I went out for football. I’d never even touched one, and I nearly got the crap kicked out of me that first day of practice. The other boys naturally resented me.”

  “For being the richest kid in town?”

  “It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it,” he said with an engaging grin. “Anyway, when I got home that night, I told Dad that I hated Purcell High School and football with equal amounts of passion. I told him I preferred pale little bastards any day of the week over bullies like Reede Lambert.”

  “What happened?”

  “Mother cried herself sick. Dad cussed himself into a frenzy. Then he marched me outside and threw footballs at me till my hands bled from catching them.”

  “That’s terrible!”

  “Not really. He had my interests at heart. He knew, even if I didn’t, that out here, you’ve got to play, eat, drink, and sleep football. Say,” he interjected, “I’m rambling on. Aren’t you cold?”

  “No.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Want to go?”

  “No, I want you to keep rambling.”

  “Is this a formal interrogation?”

  “Conversation,” she replied, tartly enough to make him grin.

  “At least put your hands in your pockets.” Taking one of her hands in each of his, he guided them to the deep pockets of her coat, tucked them inside, and patted them into place. Alex resented the intimate gesture. It was presumptuous of him and, considering the circumstances, highly inappropriate.

  “I gather you made the football team,” she said, deciding to ignore his touch.

  “Junior varsity, yes, but I didn’t play, not a single game, until the very last one. It was for the district championship.”

  He lowered his head and smiled reflectively. “We were down by four points. A field goal wouldn’t have done us any good. There were only a few seconds left on the clock. We had the ball, but it was fourth down and miles to go because of penalties. Both the A- and B-string wide receivers had been injured in the previous quarters.”

  “My God.”

  “I told you, football’s a blood-drawing sport out here. Anyway, they were carting the star running back off the field on a stretcher when the coach looked toward the bench and barked my name. I nearly wet my pants.”

  “What happened?”

  “I shrugged off my poncho and ran out to join the team in a time-out huddle. Mine was the only clean jersey on the field. The quarterback—”

  “Reede Lambert.” Alex knew that from the newspaper accounts.

  “Yeah, my nemesis. He groaned audibly when he saw me coming, and even louder when I told him the play the coach had sent in with me. He looked me right between the eyes and said, ‘If I throw you the goddamn football, preppie, you fuckin’ well better catch it.’ ”

  For a moment Junior was silent, steeped in the memory. “I’ll never forget that as long as I live. Reede was laying down the terms.”

  “The terms?”

  “Of our becoming friends. It was then or never that I had to prove m
yself worthy of his friendship.”

  “Was that so important?”

  “You bet your ass. I’d been in school here long enough to know that if I didn’t hack it with Reede, I’d never be worth shit.”

  “You caught the pass, didn’t you?”

  “No, I didn’t. In all fairness, I can’t say that I did. Reede threw it right here,” he said, pointing at his chest, “right between the numbers on my jersey. Thirty-five yards. All I had to do was fold my arms over the football and carry it across the goal line.”

  “But that was enough, wasn’t it?”

  His smile widened until it germinated into a laugh. “Yep. That marked the beginning of it.”

  “Your father must have been ecstatic.”

  Junior threw back his head and howled with laughter. “He jumped the fence, hurdled the bench, and came charging out onto the field. He swooped me up and carried me around for several minutes.”

  “What about your mother?”

  “My mother! She wouldn’t be caught dead at a football game. She thinks it’s barbaric.” He chuckled, tugging on his earlobe. “She’s damned near right. But I didn’t care what anybody thought about me, except Dad. He was so proud of me that night.” His blue eyes shone with the memory.

  “He’d never even met Reede, but he hugged him, too, football pads and all. That night was the beginning of their friendship, too. It wasn’t too long after that that Reede’s daddy died, and he moved out to the ranch to live with us.”

  For several moments, his recollections were private. Alex allowed him the introspective time without interruption. Eventually he glanced up at her and did a double take.

  “Jesus, you looked like Celina just then,” he said softly. “Not so much your features, but your expression. You have that same quality of listening.” He reached out and touched her hair. “She loved to listen. At least she made the person talking think she did. She could sit so still and just listen for hours.” He withdrew his hand, but he didn’t seem happy about it.

  “Is that what first attracted you to her?”

  “Hell, no,” he said with a leering smile. “The first thing that attracted me to her was a ninth-grade boy’s adolescent lust. The first time I saw Celina in the hall at school, she took my breath, she was so pretty.”