by Karen Young
She looked at him. “Is it really, Buck?”
With a wry half laugh, he shook his head, rubbing the side of his neck. “Well, it was my life until I found myself caught up in a rash of shit in Tallulah that I never counted on. I admit I’m struggling trying to decide what I want, Claire.”
“Do you think Pearce set that fire?”
“Damn. I thought the door was closed when I jumped him this morning. Did you hear everything?”
“Did you think I was going to go downstairs like a good girl when I knew something pretty serious was going down with you and Pearce? Not likely. And I got an earful. I have a right. I almost lost Paige in that fire.”
Buck’s gaze focused on a slow-moving combine in the field. “I know Pearce pretty well, warts and all. When we were kids, I could tell most of the time when he was lying. He was good at it. And as he got older, he got better and better. Today…” Buck shook his head. “…today he seemed truly insulted when I accused him of setting the fire. Actually I knew he didn’t set it, but I thought one of his stooges had probably done the deed for him. Now I’m not so sure.”
“I think you’re right,” Claire said.
He gave her a quick, surprised look. “Just based on overhearing our conversation?”
“I know him, too. But if he didn’t do it, who did, Buck? And why? Was this person downstairs when Paige showed up, or had he set the stage, so to speak, and gotten out?”
“Did you ask if she heard anything or saw anything?”
“I did. She told me no, nothing.” She pushed at a pebble with the toe of her pointy shoe. “Those archives are full of years and years of Tallulah history. What could he want down there? And did he find it? Did he take it? How would we know? It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack, isn’t it, Buck?”
“Yeah. But I’m working on it. With Anne. And we’ll figure it out.”
“Good. I want to know everything, so keep me posted, you hear me?” She glanced again at her watch and they fell into step together, heading for her car. “Promise me, Buck.”
“Yeah, okay. But you can’t tell Jack anything we’ve discussed here, Claire. Just think. It’s a helluva situation. As a cop, I’d like to keep him abreast of everything we do, but he’s Pearce’s opponent. What we’re talking about is merely suspicion, but to Pearce it’s deadly. Talk about a conflict of interest! If Pearce isn’t guilty, the scandal would destroy his campaign and his law career.”
“Jack wouldn’t do that,” Claire said loyally.
“Maybe not, but I need to hear your promise that you’ll keep everything you’ve heard confidential until we prove something.”
“Promise,” she said, raising a hand. “Think about it, Buck. My situation as Pearce’s estranged wife, as of today, is even more of a conflict, so my lips are definitely sealed.”
“Good girl.” He gave her a quick, sturdy hug. “And who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky and the cops at Tallulah PD will solve the crime without us.”
Twenty
While Buck and Claire were stirring the pot at Belle Pointe, Anne was still sleeping. The ring of her cell phone woke her. Not moving, she lay in Buck’s bed with the scent of him all around her. On her. In her. The night had been one long loving reunion. After taking a shower together, they’d fallen into bed and slept hard until he woke her again. Making love with him that time had been slow and easy, an erotic middle-of-the-night dream. Back to sleep again and then again in the darkest hour before dawn. Neither could seem to get enough.
But he was gone now. She vaguely remembered the sound of the shower and then next thing, the smell of him fresh with aftershave and vibrating with male energy as he dropped a soft kiss on her naked breast and murmured, “I love you.” Eyes closed, she’d smiled and burrowed back under the covers.
Wrapped in a sheet, she stumbled out of the bedroom and followed the sound of the cell phone to her purse lying on the table at the front door. “Hell—” It was a croak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Hello?”
“Anne? Oh, dear, I woke you up, didn’t I? I’m so sorry. I apologize.”
Beatrice. “Ah…it’s okay. Past time to be out of bed anyway.” She glanced around looking for a clock, but there wasn’t one in sight. “Is everything all right? Is Dad—”
“He’s fine. Look, I’ll call you a bit later after you and Buck have had your breakfast and then—”
“Buck isn’t here, Beatrice. He was up very early heading for Belle Pointe. I’m not even sure when it was.”
“You were exhausted. Anyone would be.”
Feeling her brain finally kick in, Anne headed to the kitchen, holding the sheet in place with one hand. “What time did Dad get home last night?”
“Late. You know how he feels about that newspaper. He was so relieved that there wasn’t too much damage. I know this sounds harsh, but whoever did this is a despicable person. I just thank God both you and Paige were spared.”
“Buck did appear in the nick of time,” Anne said, reaching for a can of coffee. His suspicions about Pearce’s involvement were better left unsaid until they found proof.
“You say he’s at Belle Pointe?”
“Yes.” Anne smiled, spotting a sprig of honeysuckle stuck in a wineglass in the center of the table. She picked it up and sniffed it. It was particularly thoughtful since he had to descend those beastly porch steps to get it and then climb back up to leave it on the table. At this rate, his knee would never heal.
“I was wondering,” Beatrice said, “if there was anything on your schedule for the next couple of hours.”
Anne’s gaze roamed around the kitchen and finally spotted a clock. Ten-fifteen. Lord. “No, nothing special. Did you need me to do something for you?”
“Actually, I’d like to come out there if you don’t think Buck would object since I know he likes his privacy.”
“Of course. You’re welcome here. You should know that.” Anne frowned. “Are you sure everything’s all right? Is Dad—” She was struck with a horrible thought. “Dad isn’t sick, is he? Did the fire—”
“Franklin’s fine. In fact, he’ll be coming with me.”
It all sounded very casual, but Anne heard something in Beatrice’s voice that wasn’t at all casual. Something was up, she decided, as nothing short of an emergency kept her stepmother from opening Hodge-Podge. And in the hour it took the Marshes to get to the lodge, her mind raced with a dozen questions.
She opened the door as soon as she heard their car and went out on the porch to greet them. A quick search of their faces told her nothing, but Beatrice’s smile as she climbed the steps seemed a bit off.
“Blueberry muffins and some fruit,” her stepmother said, handing over a basket after kissing Anne’s cheek. “I know Buck wasn’t expecting company and I wasn’t sure he’d have much in the way of breakfast food that you like.”
“Surprisingly, he did,” Anne said, giving a heartfelt sigh as she inhaled the aroma of warm muffins. “But nothing as delicious as fresh muffins.”
After a hug from Franklin, she ushered them inside. “Fortunately, there is coffee, but I need to make a fresh pot, so let’s go to the kitchen. It’s my favorite place.”
“It’s beautiful out here,” Beatrice said, looking around, “the lodge, the grounds—the view—just beautiful. It’s easy to understand its appeal to Buck, considering how he must live constantly in the public eye in St. Louis.”
“It is quiet and peaceful,” Franklin said and added, “maybe a little too quiet and peaceful.”
Anne turned from the counter with the coffee carafe in her hand. “I bet I know what you’re going to say.”
Franklin met her eyes directly. “Someone set that fire last night and we don’t have a clue as to the reason. You’ve been the only person interested in those archives since I’ve been associated with the Spectator. Maybe it wasn’t intended to hurt you—or Paige—then again, maybe it was.”
“Oh, Dad—”
“And just now, yo
ur moth—Ah, Beatrice and I passed a man parked in a pickup at the turn from the main road onto this lane. I think you should call Buck and tell him. Or Jack Breedlove. I don’t like it that someone’s hanging about.”
“Are you serious?” Anne went to the window and looked out toward the levee. “I don’t see anyone.”
“He’s out near the main road. And he didn’t seem inclined to move on in spite of the hard look I gave him as we passed.”
“He’s a huge man with a shaved head.” Beatrice gave a distasteful shudder. “He looks like a thug.”
Anne picked up her cell phone and dialed Buck’s number. It rang several times before he finally answered.
“Hey, sweetheart.” His tone was low, suggestive. “Did you finally wake up?”
“Buck, someone’s parked on the main road. Dad says he seems to be watching the lodge.”
“Franklin is there?”
“Yes, with Beatrice. We’re…ah, having coffee. Should I call Jack Breedlove to send someone out? The man’s not exactly trespassing since he’s not on lodge property, but couldn’t Jack—”
“No, he couldn’t.” Buck chuckled. “All of you just relax. It’s Pug Morris, one of my men here at Belle Pointe. I called Oscar before I left this morning and he sent Pug. He’s your bodyguard.”
Still holding the phone, she turned and found Beatrice and Franklin anxiously watching her. “Do you think that’s necessary, Buck?”
“Better safe than sorry. If you’re alone at the lodge, Pug is on duty.”
“We’ll talk about this when you get home tonight,” she stated.
“Yes, ma’am. Gotta go. Love you.”
“You, too.” She was frowning as she broke the connection and faced Beatrice and Franklin. “Buck has decided I need a bodyguard.”
“Good idea,” Franklin said, clearly approving.
“Yes, indeed,” Beatrice agreed, “even if he looks like a terrorist.”
When nobody spoke for a minute or two, Anne was more convinced than ever that something was up. “The coffee will be ready in a few minutes.”
Franklin touched his wife’s waist gently. “Here, Bea, you take this chair. We’ll all be more comfortable sitting down for this.”
Watching them dither, Anne released a breath of exasperation. “What? What is it?” She looked from one to the other. “Just tell me straight out, Dad.”
Franklin turned a troubled gaze to the window as if to search for words. “It’s something that will be easier to understand if I give a bit of background, Annie-girl.”
She watched him rub the side of his face with an unsteady hand and was filled with a deep foreboding. Still, he seemed unable to find words.
“Franklin,” Beatrice said, gently prodding.
“Yes, yes. You know I came to Tallulah in 1970 with that PBS crew out of Boston, Anne. I was fascinated with the Mississippi Delta, not just because of the civil unrest but, oh, lots of other things. Some of our great novelists were born right here. I guess you could say I was in a state of mind to be enchanted.”
He rose out of the chair abruptly and moved to the window. “I was enchanted all right,” he said, almost to himself, looking not at Anne, but at the peaceful scene outside. “It wasn’t just the place, but the people. One person in particular.” He took a breath. “I was a married man. My wife—Laura—was sick. Multiple sclerosis is a cruel disease. I loved her, but there were parts of our relationship that—” He stopped. “That’s no excuse. I was young. I was healthy. Maybe it was inevitable that I would be unfaithful.”
“Oh, Dad…”
He tensed at the way Anne said his name. “So when I met this beautiful young woman who was home for the summer from college, so bright, so talented—so healthy—I was enchanted.” He cleared his throat, still facing outside. “I’m ashamed to say that I took advantage of that darling girl. We had an affair. She was nineteen and I was twenty-four. Some might call it a summer fling, but it was more than that to me. My God, it was everything to me. I fell so hard and fast in love with her that I lived in hell wondering how I was going to live without her. And I had to live without her, do you understand? I couldn’t divorce Laura. She was sick. She was…” With his hands clenching on the rim of the sink, his voice grew rough and almost inaudible. “She was sick.”
Anne pressed hard against her mouth with the fingers of her hand. She felt an oily lurch in her stomach. Her father—Dad!—her knight in shining armor, the rock of her childhood, had betrayed her mother. With another woman.
Beatrice spoke up in a quiet voice. “Franklin, let me—”
“No. It’s for me to tell.” But he seemed enveloped in his thoughts. A minute passed. Two. Then, as if gathering courage, he turned around and faced Anne squarely. “I wish that was all that I had to tell you. I wish I could finish right there. Tell you that after being so dishonorable, that I’d gone back to Boston and not too much harm was done. But it wasn’t to end that way, Annie-girl.”
He paused as the coffeemaker gave off three beeps signaling it was ready, but nobody noticed. All three were frozen in place.
“I did go back to Boston and about two months later I received a letter. There were consequences to our affair. She was pregnant. Her family was sending her to live with an aunt in Atlanta. She would have been disgraced if she’d stayed in Tallulah. In those days—well, her father never got over it. He died without forgiving her.”
Anne’s heart was beating fast now. She stood up abruptly, moved to the coffeemaker. She had no desire for coffee, but she couldn’t just sit and wait for the second shoe to fall. Dear God, this couldn’t end the way she was thinking.
Franklin moved to Beatrice and rested a protective hand on her shoulder. She instantly reached up and covered it with her own. “I responded to that letter, of course, but only after I confessed to Laura what had happened…and told her the consequences. I wanted to be punished. I wanted her to yell at me, to call what I’d done despicable and vile, but she simply asked what I intended to do about the baby. My God, as if it was in my power to do anything about the baby. And then Laura said the words that changed everything. She said, ‘The baby is your child. Your responsibility. Of course, we’ll adopt the baby.’ And so we did.”
Motionless at the window, Anne felt as if she stood before an abyss. One step and she would fall into an empty, bottomless pit. She turned and met the eyes of her father. Her father. She knew the shock of it was on her face. With a hand braced on the counter behind her, she asked, “Are you going to tell me the name of this woman?”
“I think you’ve already guessed who it was, Anne,” Beatrice said softly.
“You,” Anne whispered, staring into eyes as blue as her own.
“Yes.”
A tumult of emotion roared through Anne. Denial. Betrayal. Fury. Franklin and Beatrice were her birth parents. Not some unknown teenage couple who found themselves in dire straits, forced to give up for adoption a child they couldn’t properly care for. And not some promiscuous woman whose lifestyle was screwed up by an unwanted pregnancy. Not an overloaded single mom who couldn’t afford another illegitimate baby. Lord, there were a dozen scenarios she had conjured up to explain how she’d come to be given up by her birth mother, but never had she expected anything like this. But she should have, she told herself. It was all so disgustingly obvious now. Everything that had perplexed her about her father’s bizarre decision to move to Tallulah was suddenly crystal clear. Beatrice’s inexplicable opening of her heart to a stepdaughter almost sight unseen was plain now. Shamefully so.
Watching her struggle to take it in, Franklin said, “Any negative thing you’re thinking about my behavior I’ve already called myself a thousand times over, Anne.”
“I knew he was married,” Beatrice said in a voice that quivered slightly. “I’m as guilty as he.”
Anne stared at them. She had been a fool not to guess. She’d been trusting and naive. And they’d played on her naiveté, played her like a violin. She’d been comp
letely taken in by the spectacle of two people their age finding love. Being so obviously in love. Oh, it was disgusting.
“Did you continue to betray my mother on those business trips you took before she finally, conveniently, died?”
It was a cruel jab, but Franklin took it standing straight and unflinching. “No. I never saw Beatrice again until three years ago. I never wrote her. Never called her.”
Beatrice, visibly shaken, rose from her chair, looking every year of her age. “That’s true. Franklin never did, but Laura did. I’ll tell you about that when you decide you’re ready to listen. When you’ve decided what you want to do.”
Anne stood silent, simply shaking her head.
“I know you went to get your laptop last night because you’re using the Internet to try and find your biological parents. You can imagine how we felt—Franklin and I—when you almost lost your life over a mystery we could have cleared up with a word.” She gave Anne an imploring look. “But when should we have spoken up? At the wedding? I wanted a chance to get to know you before telling you something that was bound to upset you. I was afraid your loyalty to your m-mother would be a barrier between us that we might never overcome. And then you called to say you were coming to stay with us. It was like a gift from the gods. I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to tell you everything, most of all how much I love you. Have always loved you. But you were all caught up in your problems with Buck. I couldn’t add any more stress to your life.”
“Thinking I might have some genetic reason for miscarrying added stress to my life,” Anne said bitterly. “You could have eased my mind with a word.”
“Don’t think I haven’t lain awake night after night since you arrived thinking just that,” Beatrice said with a sad smile. Her eyes were suspiciously bright, but her chin came up. “I’ve loved your father all my life,” she said quietly. “I could never be sorry for that summer. You asked once if I had any regrets for a life lived without children. Now you know the greatest. That I was denied seeing you grow up. But I have one other regret. I wish we’d been able to spare Laura knowing.”
