by Karen Young
Claire was still on the sidewalk when she got outside. “Can I give you a lift?” Claire asked, jangling her car keys in her hand. “Or did Buck finally manage to get a car for you? I know how—”
When she stopped short, Anne looked to see why. A few feet away, a man stood propped against the door of a police vehicle. He straightened as they approached and Anne recognized Jack Breedlove.
Claire’s surprise was quickly overcome. “Well, what have we here?” she said, sauntering over to him. “Am I illegally parked?”
“You were,” he told her, “but since you left the keys in your car, I took the liberty of moving it.”
“You towed my car?” She looked outraged.
“No, I moved it,” he repeated.
A step or two behind Claire, Anne had time to observe the two former high school sweethearts. They were like wary animals, both sniffing danger. Anne found it interesting that Claire was almost taunting him. More intriguing was the look on his face as he watched her. No, she decided, they were not having an affair, but it wasn’t because they weren’t tempted.
Neither noticed as Anne left.
Except for two hours of physical therapy, Buck’s days were spent getting a handle on the situation at Belle Pointe. He started early and stayed late. It was physical work, dusty and exhausting and hard on his injured knee, which let him know it when he got back to the lodge at night. Pain and fatigue helped to keep him from thinking about his headstrong wife. It had been two weeks since he saw Anne off in her new car and he swore she would have to be the one to pick up the phone and make the next move.
The crews were overjoyed to take orders from him and his mother was oddly restrained in her interference. He’d expected major opposition from her, but after the first couple weeks, she gave him a free hand. Without trying to analyze her—and he’d never been able to in thirty-seven years—he did what he thought best for the crops and the crews and Mother Nature did the rest.
It surprised him to discover how much he’d missed Belle Pointe and the sheer satisfaction of growing cotton. Sometimes he got in his SUV and simply drove the boundaries of Whitaker land, imagining the changes he would make if he stayed. But the fields had already been planted this year when he decided to step in and he would be leaving before the crops were harvested. He had to keep reminding himself that baseball was his life. Not Belle Pointe.
He was sitting on the steps of the lodge nursing a root beer and brooding when he heard a car coming up the road to the lodge. Forgetting his aching knee, he stood up thinking Anne had finally come to her senses. But it wasn’t a Mercedes that stopped. It was a large, powerful black Lexus. Pearce.
“Shit,” he muttered, watching his brother. With the door still open, Pearce paused and stretched languidly, releasing a loud sigh. Then, taking his time, he lit up one of his big cigars. Apparently, he wasn’t carrying a grudge over their last encounter.
After a day of campaigning and who-knew-what-all else, he was dressed to the nines in suit and tie. To Buck, tired and dirty, his brother looked as fresh as a spring morning. It struck him that Pearce had inherited their mother’s knack for neatness. Buck, on the other hand, was like John Whitaker, casual about his appearance. Resigned to hearing another sales pitch, Buck turned and hobbled up the rest of the steps, taking the first chair he reached.
Pearce spoke from the bottom of the steps. “Wasn’t that your wife I passed a while ago driving that sweet little convertible?” He peered in the direction of the river as if pondering a troubling problem. “Hell, bro, it’s bedtime. Shouldn’t she be heading this way instead of going in the opposite direction?”
The thought of Anne tooling around at night doing God-knows-what hit him in the belly. And it was irritating that Pearce knew it and he didn’t. Damn it, what in sam hill was she doing? “It’s late, Pearce,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”
“Hmm, a little testy, are we?” He started up the porch steps at a leisurely pace. “You know, that’s the trouble when one of us Southern boys marries a Yankee gal. They’re stubborn up north, they think too much. They want to run the show. Now those are complications I don’t tolerate well. Me, I picked a pretty hometown girl, educated at Ole Miss. Maybe you should have looked around closer to home, Buck.”
“I repeat, was there anything on your mind other than my wife’s personality?”
“Yessiree, definitely testy,” Pearce said, grinning through a smoke cloud. “And I wouldn’t be out here in the woods at this hour if you’d answer your goddamn phone. Middle of the day all I get is your voice mail, so this was the only time and place I’d be sure to find you.” He was at the top of the stairs now. “I guess being in the public eye you learn how to make yourself scarce when you want.”
“If you had serious business with me, you could have found me at Belle Pointe.” Buck rubbed at the ache in his knee, anticipating a headache. “I’m there at daylight every day.”
“But not up at the big house. I don’t need to see anybody bad enough to chase ’em around five thousand muddy acres.” He strolled across the porch and sat down in the swing. “I never liked mucking around in the fields.”
Buck finished off his root beer and set the can on the step beside him. “With Will Wainwright gone, you should be glad I don’t have the same problem.”
“The damn cotton will get planted and picked and ginned whether you manage it or somebody else does. Plenty of people around who could do the job, but Mama has a bug up her ass now you’re here. Whitaker pride and all that shit. Naturally, you rolled right over for her. Damn, Buck, I thought you were smarter than that.”
“Was there anything else on your mind, Pearce?”
He fumed a minute. “Two things. I heard you visited the chief of police. I know y’all were friends back when you were kids. I hope the only reason you dropped in was to talk about old times.”
“We talked about our rowdy pasts, yeah.”
“And what else?”
Knowing it would rile Pearce, Buck allowed himself a half smile. “He might have mentioned his campaign.”
His brother nearly lost the tenuous hold on his temper. “You think that’s funny? Let me ask you this.” He pointed his smelly cigar at Buck. “Why would you avoid your own brother, then stroll into my opponent’s office giving the impression that Breedlove is your man? Why would you do that, Buck?”
“I don’t expect you to believe this, but I dropped in to see Jack because he and I are old friends and I haven’t seen him in years. I’m not responsible for whatever interpretation anybody puts on that.”
“I don’t want you going near him again!” Pearce got up abruptly, sending the swing jerking wildly on its chains. “And I want you to put down the rumors that you’re supporting him. I want you to get active in my campaign. Be visible.”
“We’ve discussed this before, Pearce.” Buck stuck out the leg with the bad knee. “You see this? Until I’m able to walk without taking a chance on tearing something loose again, I wouldn’t be much good stumping for you.”
“You don’t seem to have any difficulty walking around in a fucking cotton field!”
“I’m riding around in a pickup out there and you know it.”
“Okay. Okay.” Sensing he was getting nowhere, Pearce struggled to calm himself. “So tomorrow come to my office and talk about stuff you could do…like calling some of your influential friends with big bucks.” He glanced at the front door. “Better yet, let’s go inside and discuss it now. Firm up a plan.”
Buck stood up, not to fall in with Pearce’s plan, but to let him know he was done talking. “It’s late and I’m tired. One of the reasons I don’t want to get involved is just what you’re suggesting, calling people and asking for money. It’s not gonna happen, not from me. And frankly, right now, I’ve got too much going in my life to have time for that.”
“Like what? You aren’t playing baseball.” The sparks from his cigar arced across the porch steps as he tossed it. “You’re on a fucking vaca
tion, Buck!”
Buck sighed and opened the door. Sooner or later, he’d have to tell Pearce flat out that not only was he not going to campaign for him, but he wasn’t going to endorse him either. But for tonight, he’d had about as much of his brother as he could take. After those remarks about Anne, the only thing he might share with Pearce was a brief discussion of the weather. And even that was iffy. As he made to step inside, Pearce caught his arm.
“Hold on, I’m not done. I didn’t get to the second reason I’m out here in the sticks.”
Buck paused, going stone-still as he looked at Pearce’s hand on his arm. In the dark, his reaction could only be felt, but it was enough for Pearce to hastily remove his hand.
“Ah, it’s about Anne.”
“If you speak my wife’s name again, Pearce, I swear to God, I—”
“No, no. Just hear me out. It’s nothing like…you need to listen to this.”
With the door still open, Buck folded his arms across his chest. “What?”
“Word is Anne’s all fired up over Tallulah history.”
The damn archives again. “And your point?”
“Is she really writing a book?”
“I suppose it’s a possibility, provided she can hit on a theme.”
“What kind of a theme?”
“Hell, I don’t know. She’s been fascinated with the Mississippi Delta since she was a little girl. Her daddy wrote a book, remember?”
“How’s she going about doing her research?”
“She works at a newspaper, Pearce. The archives are right there, she has a free hand and a journalist’s curiosity. Seems obvious.” He gave a shrug of his shoulders. “She’s doing what journalists do. What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that I’m in a serious political campaign,” Pearce said. “I don’t want to give Jack Breedlove any ammunition to hurt me.”
Buck paused, studying his brother’s dark profile. “What does that have to do with Anne?”
Pearce bent his head, as if weighing his words, before looking directly at Buck. “Does she know about the hunting accident?”
A scuffling, fluttering sound came from under the eaves. A nesting female, the owl was probably agitated by interlopers on her territory. Buck knew the feeling.
“Well, does she?”
“Hmm?”
Pearce ground his teeth. “Does Anne know about Baker?”
“Yeah. It was on the front page of an old issue of the Spectator.”
“Did she ask any questions?”
He looked at his brother. “Yeah, she asked questions. She’s a reporter, did I mention that?”
Pearce rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s ancient history, Buck. I hope you told her that.” When Buck failed to reply, he went on, “Look, I’ve got enemies, people who would love to dredge up that old story and get some political mileage out of it.”
Buck studied him for a minute, thoughtfully. Then, his decision made, he closed the door to the lodge and faced his brother squarely. “Since you’re the one bringing it up, Pearce, there’s something that happened the night before Jim Bob died that I’ve been curious about for a long time.”
“I’m telling you, it’s ancient history.”
“Yeah, you said that. But humor me. And remember, you brought it up.”
Pearce grunted. Not looking at Buck, he studied the horizon with an inscrutable expression.
“You clammed up when I asked about the argument you and Jim Bob had that night over Baker’s contract with Belle Pointe to gin Belle Pointe cotton.”
“He was overcharging us.”
“I didn’t care about that then and I don’t care about it now. But the one thing that’s bothered me all these years is what he said about our mother.”
Pearce’s head lifted, like an animal sensing danger. “I don’t remember anything like that.”
“Then let me refresh your memory. I may not have his exact words, but it was something like, ‘If I talk, your mother will finally get the punishment she deserves.’ What did he mean by that, Pearce?”
“Did you hear me? I don’t remember that, but hell, everybody was drinking that night, you too, so you can’t rely on memory after all these years.”
“Just answer the question, Pearce.”
“My argument with Jim Bob was about him gouging Belle Pointe on ginning our cotton. He had this too-sweet deal going and I’d just found out about it. I told him Dad might be okay with it, but I wasn’t. I don’t remember anything about Ma.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Pearce glared at him. “Are you calling me a liar?”
Buck returned the look without flinching. “I’m saying I don’t believe you.”
After a beat, Pearce shrugged. “Believe what you want. I know what happened.”
“And I heard what I heard. To this day, I don’t have a clue what he meant by that crack about Mother. I was seventeen, and even though I didn’t get along with her, I didn’t want to look too hard at anything that might be embarrassing to her. So between my own concerns and you letting me know I was treading on delicate ground by pushing for an explanation, plus Dad lecturing me about the Whitaker name, I let it go. But now I’ve decided I want an answer. Whatever it turns out to be, I’m not going to embarrass Mother, but you won’t be able to stop me this time.”
Pearce’s tone vibrated with rage. “I’m telling you now like I told you then, Buck. Leave this alone. With this campaign, the eyes of the whole fucking state are on me! You go dragging old skeletons out of a closet, it could be a disaster. I want this senate seat. The next step is D.C. Do you know what that means? Don’t you get it?”
He moved in agitation to the porch railing, keeping his back to Buck. “I admit we had words that night, me and Jim Bob, but it was about the contract to gin Belle Pointe cotton, nothing else. An argument like that could have happened anytime, but then the next day he was dead. If you’d told what you overheard, it would have turned into a major scandal.”
“As I recall, that was your argument to shut me up before, Pearce. Everything you’re saying now, you said then. But what I’m asking about now is the part about our mother that I didn’t mention then. Why are you so hot? Why deny it? Who knows, it may not mean anything. What Jim Bob said may be the words of a man who had too much to drink. Hell, maybe he had a thing for Mother, I don’t know. But you do know and I think that was what the argument was really about.”
“I don’t remember anything about Mother,” Pearce repeated stubbornly. “And you go stirring up old shit, you may not escape getting some of the stink on you. Any scandal touching the Whitakers at Belle Pointe or me in my campaign is bound to reflect on you, too. Did you think of that?” He gave Buck a hard look. “I don’t believe you’re in a position to take that chance. You’ve already stepped in it a couple times lately. What’s to keep the Jacks from deciding you’re more trouble than you’re worth?”
“That sounds like a threat to me,” Buck said very softly.
“It’s whatever you want to call it. And while you’re thinking it over, you need to have a talk with your wife and rein her in. Another hit piece like she did on me at the Spectator and I’ll begin to think you’re working for Breedlove. I won’t stand for it.”
Buck cocked his head. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. If she can’t write something damn good about me, I don’t want her writing anything.”
“First of all, Anne has a mind of her own. Any attempt to—as you say ‘rein her in’—has the opposite effect. You may be able to bully Claire, but Anne’s made of different stuff.”
“I want her to stop nosing around in family stuff that’s none of her business!” Pearce said belligerently.
Buck refused to be riled. “Actually, my wife is family now, but if you’re aiming to discourage her, you’re sure going about it in a strange way.” He watched Pearce puff up, ready to argue. “Think about it, Pearce. Between your heavy-handed threats and Ma’s visits to c
all her off, she’s now convinced there’s something in those old issues of the Spectator you don’t want her to find. And I’m thinking she’s right.”
Narrow-eyed, Pearce balled his fists in a threatening stance. “First you show up after fifteen years of ignoring Tallulah and Belle Pointe, strutting around and playing up your big-time baseball career, then next thing you finagle your way in at Belle Pointe agitating for change. And somehow, Mama caved. I don’t know how or what you said that she went for it, but it’s bullshit and it smells.”
“Maybe she believes I’ve got Belle Pointe’s best interests at heart,” Buck said mildly. “We both know you always put your own interests above all else.”
“So now you’re ready to derail my campaign and sully the name of Whitaker over something you imagined you overheard fifteen years ago! You think I’ll just sit back and let you do all that?” He gave a short, humorless laugh. “Hey, bro, you think you’ve seen hardball before, but you cross me on this it won’t be hardball, it’ll be a goddamned bloodbath.”
Buck’s eyes glinted as he shrugged and spread his hands. “So bring it on…bro.”
Seventeen
Buck waited only long enough after Pearce left to take a quick shower before heading off to try and catch Anne at the Marshes’. It worried him that Pearce believed Anne might somehow damage his campaign, because when Pearce was scared, he was dangerous. Buck had seen that once before and he didn’t intend to stand by with the possibility of his wife being in harm’s way.
After ringing the doorbell at the Marshes’ he dropped his gaze to his feet as he waited. Best case scenario, Anne would answer the door. He’d done all he knew to let her know he was sorry for his initial reaction about her pregnancy. But now it was time—past time—for her to be a little less stubborn, to show that she was willing to work with him to save their marriage. He straightened abruptly as the door was opened by Franklin Marsh.
