Shameless (The Contemporary Collection)

by Blake, Jennifer

  “Nobody talks to me like that, sister,” he began, grating ugliness in his tone.

  “Nor would I, if you hadn't pushed it,” she replied, countering him with a sharp refusal to be intimidated. “Since you have, there are a few other things on my mind. To start with, I don't appreciate you sneaking around spying on me, or following me.”

  “That's ridiculous. I was just driving by the Fort—”

  “Sure you were,” she said in scathing disbelief. He had made a tactical error by defending himself, but she didn't intend to allow him to recover from it. “For another thing, you may have thought it was smart to encourage Keith to force himself on me to stop our divorce, but you came close to getting your brother killed then. Not that you cared. All you wanted was to be sure you got your precious money for the mill. Money, that's what you love, and Keith knew it. That's why he was afraid to tell you he was up to his ears in gambling debts. That's why he was so desperate that he embezzled from the mill instead of coming to you for help!”

  All expression vanished from Gordon Hutton's face, leaving it dull and stupid with shock, there in the stabbing brilliance of his car's headlights. His voice was hoarse as he said, “He what?”

  “Embezzlement. A half million, at least. And you never missed it, never even guessed it was gone. Reid had to discover the loss.”

  He opened his mouth for a gasping breath. “I don't believe it. Keith wouldn't do that. Why, taking money from the mill would be like taking it out of his own brother's pocket.”

  “Reid's too, you might remember,” she reminded him.

  His eyes blinked as he absorbed the implications of what he had heard. “That's why Sayers went after him—”

  “If you mean the day Keith got beat up, that wasn't Reid. The best bet is that it was a reminder from the people he owed.”

  “God.” Gordon's face turned pasty and his shoulders sagged. “I'd have helped him find the money if he'd come to me. Why would he — the Huttons don't do things like that. Ah, God, it'll kill Mama when she hears.”

  Cammie felt a stir of compunction. He had cared after all, it seemed. He also had his pride: in his family, in the mill, in a long tradition of fair dealing. There had never been any indication that he or his father, or his grandfather before him, had been anything except honest men. To know that his brother had held none of it of value must be a blow.

  Abruptly, he straightened. “If Keith took the money, it was because of you, because he hated you having more than he did.”

  “I'm not to blame for his ego problems.”

  “You made him feel half a man. But I don't believe any of it, not of my brother. You're a lying bitch. It's not enough for you to force him from his home and destroy him — you have to ruin his name, too.”

  Cammie gave him back stare for stare. “Keith did a fine job of ruining himself without my help.”

  Gordon lifted a fist, shaking it in front of her face. “Shut up! Shut your lying mouth. If I hear you're spreading this story, I'll make you the sorriest woman who ever drew breath. You're just trying to queer the mill deal by making out there's financial problems. I won't stand for it. You hear me? I'll see you dead first!”

  “Be very careful,” she said, her voice lethal in its softness. “The last man to threaten me didn't live long.”

  His head came up. “You mean — Keith?”

  She made no reply, only watched him with an unwavering gaze.

  He took a step backward. Swearing under his breath, he whirled and threw himself into his car. He backed down the drive so fast the smell of burning rubber was left hanging in the air. Within seconds his taillights had disappeared and the sound of his engine was dying away.

  Cammie let out the shuddering breath she had not known she was holding. She turned away, fumbling with the keys in her hand, though she was shaking so badly that she couldn't seem to untangle the back door key from the rest.

  A shadow moved near the steps. She halted with a small scream catching in her throat.

  “It's only me,” Reid said.

  There was something in his voice, a wariness she had never heard before. There was no smile on his strained features. His chest was rising and falling as if he'd been running. She had left him so short a time ago. He must have started through the woods for Evergreen almost the instant she was out of sight.

  When she made no answer, he went on, “I saw the car, heard voices, when I made my usual patrol. I thought you might need help. You didn't.”

  His usual patrol. She had known, of course, even if she hadn't admitted it to herself. That consideration was wiped from her mind, however, as she realized what he had heard.

  The words she had spoken to Gordon could have sounded more like a threat than the warning she had intended. And he already thought it was possible that she had killed Keith. Or so he had pretended.

  “You're wrong,” she said. “I did need you.”

  “Why,” he asked, tipping his head to one side. “Would you like me to kill him for you instead. Is that why you're keeping me around, after all?”

  It wasn't an offer. Nor was it a joke. He meant to ask if she would like him to murder Gordon instead of doing it herself. He had suggested something similar before in order to provoke a rise from her, and in retaliation for making him admit he was capable of it. This time he was deadly serious; he really thought she wanted Gordon dead.

  Cammie flashed him a look of stark and painful disbelief before she whirled from him. She stumbled as she pounded up the steps and across the porch. It took her the third try to put her key into the lock. She pushed inside, slamming the heavy door behind her.

  She need not have hurried. Reid did not come after her. When she looked out the window, there was no one there. He was gone.

  It was a long time before she slept that night. Images came and went in her mind, changing like a kaleidoscope equipped with sound. Keith and Reid in the dark at the lake. Reid with the little girl at the family reunion. The shadowy figure of a man who was not Reid watching Evergreen. Wen in her boat crossing the lake. The Reverend Taggart speaking of marriage. Reid and Charles with their heads together in front of the computer. Gordon and his mother at Keith's funeral. Bud accusing her of stupidity. Aunt Beck talking of old scandal and new. Gordon stomping from his car. It seemed there was a pattern there somewhere, some answers that she needed, if she could only see them.

  She wondered, as she replayed the words Reid had said to her, if her doubts of his innocence had the power to hurt him as his did her. It was a strange idea, perhaps, since it would only be possible if he was, in fact, innocent. But didn't it show that if he thought she might be guilty, then he could not be? He could not suspect her of a crime he had committed himself. That was elementary. But only if it was possible to trust him.

  Shall I kill him for you?

  She had been so certain of his meaning as she faced him there at the steps. Yet, in the dark hours of the night, her doubt returned. It was possible she had misunderstood, and the words had been an offer of service after all. Wasn't that the position he had taken with her from the beginning: unrelenting, altruistic, all too competent service?

  There were dark circles under her eyes and the tightness of a tension headache behind her forehead when she got up early the next morning. The idea of staying at home with nothing to do except think, staying where people could find her to complain or accuse, was intolerable.

  She decided it was time to reestablish some semblance of a routine to her days. She had been neglecting the antique store. It was unfair to leave Wen to carry on alone for so long. Pulling a full skirt of grass-green twill and a matching cotton sweater from her closet, she began to get dressed.

  Cammie spent the morning at the shop, helping unpack the most recent acquisitions from an estate sale. There was a great deal of junk in it: rusting silverplate, furniture store prints in flaking gilt frames, boxes of old books from which silverfish ran at the slightest touch, a collection of salt and pepper shakers shaped lik
e farm animals. But there were also several pieces of Rockingham and Majolica earthenware, a Limoges porcelain chocolate service, plus a rosewood parlor set from the 1860s that still had the original silk brocatelle upholstery.

  The grimy work and change of interest, not to mention Wen's caustic and irreverent comments on the things people thought worthy of saving, gave a lift to Cammie's spirits. She was beginning to feel halfway normal by the time noon rolled around.

  Wen had gone to the kitchen in the back to heat homemade vegetable soup for their lunch. Cammie stayed in the front with a customer. She was wrapping the Britanniaware candlestick that the woman had bought when the brass shop bell rang.

  The lanky shape and fine blond hair of the woman who stepped inside were instantly recognizable. Keith's girlfriend, Evie Prentice, flashed a quick, tense smile, but made no move to approach, wandering instead toward a grouping of old teddy bears. She bent to pick one up, caressing it softly, then held it an instant against the swell of her body under the oversized T-shirt she wore. When she put it back down, there was a wet sheen of tears in her eyes.

  Cammie finished what she was doing and rang up the sale. When the door bell had clanged with the customer's departure, she moved slowly toward Evie. Her gaze rested on the dark circles under the girl's eyes as she said quietly, “How have you been, Evie?”

  “Fine, just fine.” Evie's smile was overly bright as she swung to face her.

  “I looked for you at the funeral, but you weren't there.”

  The smile faltered. “That kind of thing is for families. I know Ed down at the funeral home; he let me in after everybody else left. I got to say good-bye, and that was — the main thing.”

  “And the baby? You're feeling all right?”

  “Yes, but — I saw your car out front, and you were so nice before. I thought—”

  Cammie touched the other girl's hand briefly. “There is something wrong, then; I thought so. I expect you would like to sit down. Come over here and tell me about it.”

  There was a back corner where a motley group of old chairs were pulled up around a potbellied stove with ornate chrome trim. There was no fire in the stove today, but the corner was quiet and out of the way. Cammie gestured toward a rocking chair, while she took a side chair with swan-neck arms.

  “I guess just about everything is wrong,” Evie said as she settled into the rocker. She looked at Cammie, then glanced away again with color rising under her pale skin. “I don't mean to say anything bad about Keith, really I don't. I loved him and I — I think I would have been good for him. But he left me in sort of a mess.”

  “How is that?” Cammie made the words as encouraging as possible.

  “Well, he was paying the note on my trailer and the utilities, buying the groceries. He made me quit my job, so the only thing coming in was what he gave me. I didn't like it — with the other men I let come around, I kept working so as to be independent, see? Not that there was that many, only one or two. But there was the divorce coming up, and it seemed important to Keith to be supporting me. At least, until lately. Anyway, he got behind on the trailer note, and I always had to remind him when there was nothing left to eat. I had a little saved, but it — didn't last long. With him gone now, I've got no money. And nobody will hire me, not with the shape I'm in, not in this town.”

  “I can imagine.” From the bitterness of the last words, Cammie thought the other girl had not had an easy time of it with her job-hunting.

  “I purely hate the idea of going on welfare, though I guess I've got as much right as anybody. I've already seen about having the baby over at the medical center in Shreveport, where it won't cost anything, so that's all right. But what I'd really like is to get away from Greenley and everything that's happened. Only there's not much chance of that, what with everything being the way it is.”

  Beyond where they sat, the door from the back opened and Wen stuck her head out. As she saw who Cammie was talking to, her face went blank with surprise. Cammie gave a slight shake of her head. Wen rolled her eyes but withdrew, though she left the door open a crack.

  Evie Prentice, oblivious to the byplay as she stared down at her hands resting on her swollen abdomen, went on. “I hate to come bothering you again, but I don't know where else to turn. My last hope was Reverend Taggart. I thought maybe there was some church fund—” She stopped, as if to regain control, then went on again in broken tones. “You'd think a preacher would know all there was about forgiveness for sin and Christian charity, wouldn't you? But he had nothing for me except a sermon. Told me I had made my bed, and I could lie in it with whoever paid the price. Only thing I despise more than welfare is a hypocrite.”

  There was pain and desperation in the girl's voice. In an effort to help her regain her composure and save her the necessity of asking, Cammie said, “Tell me how much you need.”

  Evie looked at her with doubt and hope shining through the tears in her light blue eyes. “I couldn't take your money. Honestly, I couldn't. But Keith said — he promised he would take care of me and the baby, no matter what. I know it's weird to ask you, but I thought maybe you knew of a bank account or something he might have set up for us.”

  There was nothing, Cammie knew that with absolute certainty. The only thing Keith had left at the bank was an overdraft. “I'm not sure what he may have done,” she said, “but I can look into it for you.”

  “Would you? Really?” The tears in Evie's eyes overflowed, running in wet tracks down her face. “I was so embarrassed, so ashamed to face you with my problems and how it was with me and Keith. I just—”

  “Never mind,” Cammie said soothingly. “I'll look into the money situation and call you in a day or two. All right?”

  “I can't thank you enough. I — I loved Keith, and I was furious when he told me he was going back to you. But I never blamed him for wanting to, not really. I see what he was after.”

  “I don't think you do,” Cammie said. “If it's any comfort, I think his sudden change of heart had more to do with money.”

  Evie Prentice scanned Cammie's face, her drowned gaze considering. Slowly, it turned desolate. “No—” she said with a catch in her voice. “I don't think it is — any comfort, I mean.”

  Cammie walked to the door with Keith's girlfriend. As Evie drove away, Wen came from the back to stand beside her.

  “So you're going to find the money to help Keith's main squeeze.”

  “She was more than that,” Cammie answered absently.

  “Yeah, she was the other woman, the one he was shacked up with, the one he was going to use to make you a laughingstock just as soon as he had what he wanted.”

  “Maybe.”

  “So is it because you're sorry for her, or because you want her out of your hair?”

  “Maybe I'm grateful to her for freeing me of Keith.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “It's possible,” Cammie protested.

  “Yes, and maybe you're a softhearted idiot.”

  “Softheaded, you mean.”

  “That, too.” Wen muttered an expletive. “Cammie, honey, you can't fix the world.”

  “Yes, I can,” she answered with a determined lift of her chin. “Or at least my part of it.”

  19

  I DID NEED YOU.

  Those words were driving Reid insane.

  Nearly as disturbing was the answer he had made to them.

  The two phrases had rung in his mind all night and half the morning, along with the confrontation he had witnessed between Cammie and Gordon Hutton. He hadn't slept; the thought of eating made him feel sick to his stomach. Long ago he'd learned the difficult lesson that sleep and food were needs you didn't ignore if you wanted to stay alive. Nothing, not even the explosion at Golan, as he referred to it in his mind, had gotten past his defenses enough to disturb these basic habits. Until now.

  He was losing his carefully built numbness. It was being stripped away bit by bit, leaving nerves and feelings as exposed as worms discovered
under thick mulch. Try as he might, he could find no protection for them, no surcease from the raw pain.

  It had begun at Golan, of course; he wouldn't deny that. But it was being close to Cammie that had made him so exquisitely vulnerable.

  The Fort seemed like a prison, and Lizbeth's eyes, as they followed him, were all too knowing. She had always understood him better than most. She had a husband and family of her own and a farm north of town, but in his memories of growing up, she was always in the house.

  He could remember one hot summer when he was maybe four or five years old, standing beside her in the kitchen where they were now, watching while she drank a glass of water. The inside of her mouth, he noticed, was as pink as his own. After that, he'd always known she was the same, under her soft brown skin, as he.

  She turned her head now, sparing him a glance from the green onions she was chopping for a casserole. “What's the matter, Mr. Reid, the mulligrubs got you?”

  “You might say that,” he answered, propping his elbow on the table and resting his head on one fist. Keeping his gaze on the coffee cup he was turning in slow circles, he said, “Tell me something, Lizbeth, just what does it take to please a woman?”

  She tilted her head forward to give him a look under her brows. “Now, you know that as well as I do.”

  “I'm serious,” he protested, “and I don't mean sex or money or muscles or things like that.”

  “Are we, by any off chance, talking about a certain woman in town, or just women in general?”

  He gave her a straight look without answering.

  “I thought so,” she said with a judicious nod. “In that case, I'd say there's not much you can do except to love her. She'll either come around or she won't.”

  “I had a feeling you were going to say that.”

  “Then why did you go and ask me? Seems like what you need is to get your mind off things for a while, maybe go fishing.”

  “And get out from under your feet?”

  She shook her head before she turned her broad back on him. “You know better than that.”