Dangerous

by Lee Magner

  Paula whirled and hurried out of the office.

  “I love this town,” Clare murmured. “But, I’m afraid, I also love Case. And I don’t think that lying and hiding the truth is a very good foundation for anything, Paula.”

  She wished her friend had stayed to hear the words.

  And she wished that Paula had trusted her enough to tell her the whole truth.

  Clare wondered how much courage she was going to need to hear the complete, messy, disappointing truth.

  “Oh, Case…”

  She cradled her head in her hands and said a small prayer for them both.

  She met Case after work for dinner at Crawford’s Crossing, the one fancy restaurant that Crawfordsville could boast of.

  “Aren’t you afraid they’ll start throwing tomatoes at me for going out to dinner with you?” she teased as the waiter left them alone with their drinks and went to the kitchen to place their orders.

  Case nodded, but he also smiled lopsidedly.

  “I’m afraid it’s too late to keep you out of all this,” he admitted. “The best I can do is try to keep you out of the line of fire. So duck, and I’ll take the tomato for you.”

  Clare laughed, lifted her glass and touched it to his in a toast, then took a comfortable sip of her white zinfandel wine.

  “Mmm,” she said, savoring the taste. “This was a good year for grapes, whatever it was….”

  He smiled and took a swallow of his soft drink.

  “And an equally good year for whatever this is,” he said, indicating the mysterious ingredients that composed his cola.

  “You don’t drink, do you, Case?”

  “Not generally.”

  “Because of Seamus?” she asked gently.

  “Yeah. I didn’t want to end up in a gutter not knowing how a bloody knife got in my hand and no memory of how I’d gotten there.” He took another swallow of the soda and added, a little ruefully, “I’m not saying I’ve never had a drink at all. You remember at least one regrettable incident involving some adolescent male boasting about how many beers could be consumed during a lake party?”

  Clare covered her mouth and tried not to choke on her wine. Once it was safely swallowed, she nodded and wiped the tears of mirth from her eyes.

  “You and the others were lucky you didn’t end up in a hospital emergency room with alcohol poisoning.”

  He nodded and grinned.

  “Yeah, well, the hangover lasted a couple of days. I think that was the one and only time I tried that stunt.” He shrugged. “Sometimes at business dinners I’ll have to have some wine or brandy to honor the local customs. But generally, I stick with plain old fruit juices, punches, teas, coffees. Do you suppose the folks around here would find that too hard to believe?” he asked in amusement. “I’ll bet they think I down a quart of Rock and Rye with my eggs for breakfast and swig whiskey on the rocks with raw steak for dinner.”

  Clare laughed and shook her head.

  “Who knows what they’re imagining,” she said. “And who cares?”

  “I’ll drink to that,” he said, flashing white teeth in a steely smile. He lifted his glass and tilted it toward her in a toast. Then he took another swallow of the iced and bubbly liquid.

  She gazed at him over the rim of her wineglass, tilting it to slowly swirl the wine around the delicate goblet. They were sitting in the corner alcove, far away from the other few diners. No one was close enough to overhear their conversation. She thought it would be safe to broach the very delicate subject that had been worrying her all afternoon.

  “Paula Lightman came by to talk to me at the office today.”

  “Oh?”

  “She wanted me to get you to leave town.”

  He looked surprised, then cynically philosophical.

  “That isn’t startling news, I suppose,” he drawled.

  “Actually, she did say something that was…startling,” Clare said.

  She ran the tip of her index finger around the rim of the wineglass, stalling. Right now she didn’t know what Case’s reply would be to Paula’s claim that he had been Lexie’s lover. What if the answer was one that she didn’t want to hear?

  “Clare?” he asked quietly. “What did Paula say?”

  She felt ashamed asking him. Why was this turning out to be so hard to ask?

  “Look at me,” he said huskily. “Please.”

  She raised her eyes and gazed into his. They were the color of the lake at its deepest. They could be hard with anger or hot with passion or cold with contempt. Right now, they were filled with a tender concern that made her want to cry.

  She refused to do that, and took a deep breath.

  “She said if we keep poking around in the town’s past, looking for some other possible murderer, we’ll only dredge up scandals about decent people who made a few unfortunate mistakes once a long time ago.”

  “I see.” He put his glass down and stared at it. Then he gazed across at her. “Anybody I know?” he asked with a slight smile.

  “Yes. One in particular who you know very well.”

  “She told you Lexie was pregnant, didn’t she?”

  Clare’s face crumbled into dismay.

  “How did you know?” she asked, feeling as if the ground was opening up and swallowing her.

  “Lexie told me.”

  He stared at her, tilting his chin ever so slightly, in that stubborn, vulnerable way he had years ago. He’d looked like that when he’d been picked on by Franklin or some of the older boys and men for something he didn’t do, or, because of his poverty, something he simply lacked the resources to do.

  Clare reached out and covered his hand with hers.

  “Whatever happened, it was a very long time ago,” Clare said slowly. “And this is here and now. And you and me, Case. I’m on your team. Remember?”

  Her heart was aching, but she knew it was the truth. Whatever had happened between Case and Lexie was ancient history. She’d never be able to change it. But she could accept it as part of Case’s young manhood and go on.

  “The baby wasn’t mine,” he said softly. He smiled a little when he saw the look of confusion on her face. “If Paula said I was Lexie’s lover, she… exaggerated.” He sighed. “I was involved with Lexie, but I stopped short of becoming one of her conquests. She had problems, and I already had enough of my own. I might have been a wild, rebellious kid, but bedding Lexie was one act of rebellion I did not engage in.” He captured her hand as she weakly withdrew it. The warmth of his gaze and the strength of his hold on her sent the same message. “There was only one girl around here I really wanted to get between the sheets with. And I wasn’t about to ruin her life by succumbing to that desire, no matter how hard it was.” He grinned rakishly. “And, baby, it was hard.”

  Clare blushed and laughed with him. From the way he was looking at her, she knew he was talking about her. It wasn’t as much a surprise as it would have been a month ago, but it still took some getting used to. He’d kept it a secret for a very long time.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me, Case?” she whispered. “You knew I was crazy about you. Didn’t you?”

  He lowered his gaze and rubbed his hand softly against the sensitive flesh of her palm.

  “I thought it was sort of hero worship. Maybe a fascination with someone older, with a bad reputation. Maybe I seemed like forbidden fruit. Hell, I didn’t know. You’d been like a kid sister to me, and I thought you’d end up hating me if I changed the ground rules and treated you like you were my girl.”

  “But I practically begged you to seduce me!” she exclaimed, laughing in feminine outrage at his obtuseness.

  “Oh, don’t remind me,” he moaned. “I thought I’d never be able to walk again. Or sleep again. You drove me nearly out of my mind and I had to keep acting as if it was no big deal.”

  “Case!” She was shocked. “I didn’t know. You mean… I wasn’t a failure as a femme fatale?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Oh, no,
baby. You were a flaming success. It’s a miracle I didn’t end up in an asylum out of unsatisfied lust that night on your porch swing.”

  She caught her lower lip between her teeth and smiled like a minx who’d finally caught her prey.

  “Case Malloy,” she murmured. “You sound as if…”

  He raised his eyebrows, waiting for her to finish.

  Clare thought it might be wiser to keep the thought to herself for now. Because if she were wrong, it might scare him away. But he sounded as if he’d been in love with her back then. At least, a little bit.

  She smiled and the radiance was like the summer sun coming up over the lake on a beautiful, clear day.

  She raised her glass and he touched it with his.

  “Here’s to new partnerships… and the solving of old mysteries,” she said.

  They tipped up their glasses and finished their drinks.

  “Now who had the sauteed trout?” the waiter asked as he swung a huge cork-bottom tray off his shoulder and placed it on a folding serving table beside him.

  Another couple was seated at a nearby table, and the opportunity for intimate conversation was lost for the rest of the evening.

  “Maybe we could sit on your swing awhile after dinner?” Case suggested after they’d reached the dessert-and-coffee stage of the meal.

  Clare nodded and became serious. “There are a few things we need to talk about.”

  He agreed. And there were a few things he simply wanted to do—like kiss her delectable mouth until they were both delirious with joy.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked softly, feeling a trickle of anticipation slide over her skin.

  “You know damn well why I’m looking at you like this,” he said, grinning. “And I’ll show you as soon as we hit the shadows of your front porch.”

  “Can we leave now?” she whispered huskily.

  He reached in his wallet, paid the bill, took her hand and headed for the door without another word.

  Chapter 11

  Crawfordsville was decked out in red, white and blue for Memorial Day.

  Swags hung on buildings around the courthouse square. Streamers fluttered from mailboxes and car antennae.

  And in the cemeteries, row upon row of small American flags had been planted next to the graves of veterans.

  Clare walked through some of the older sections of the cemeteries, photographing the headstones before their engraving was worn smooth through decades of wind and rain. For some stones, it was already too late.

  There were pioneer graves in one small area of what had once been a farm. One belonged to a man who had served in a militia during the revolution. His descendants who still lived in town had stuck a small plastic flag by his bleached white stone monument in prideful remembrance.

  There was one grave of a man who’d served in the War of 1812, survived it and lived till the eve of the Civil War. His small flag was placed over his grave every year by the county historical society, since all his descendants had long since moved west to Missouri, Oregon and California.

  The Civil War veterans had managed to achieve a more organized representation, with rows of ornately carved tombstones inscribed with poetry and cherubs and angels. And everywhere there were little red, white and blue flags, fluttering in the sultry breeze, courtesy of the local chapter of the DAR. Clare was not exactly clear on why the Daughters of the American Revolution were caretaking a Civil War memorial. It had all the earmarks of an intriguing story, though, she thought. Some colorful anecdote she could put in the footnotes of her local history, if she ever got one written.

  The ladies’ auxiliaries of the local churches always spent a Sunday in May making sure that no fallen veteran’s grave would go without a small flag on Decoration Day, and this May had been no exception. Honoria Bonney had coordinated the effort.

  Clare saw Honoria in the distance, walking beside the mayor, looking positively regal in her suffragette-style cotton dress. Clare lifted her camera and snapped the shot. Then she turned back to the rest of the cemetery stones.

  Row upon row of fallen fighters were spread out across the level ground, becoming more numerous as more recent years were reached. There was the Spanish American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam. The older generations had mostly gone to their final rest, as time had taken its toll on them. The younger ones, though, weren’t yet overtaken by the grim reaper. And yet, death always hung over them, and, eventually, it would cut them down.

  And when it did, a small flag with white stars on a field of blue and bold stripes of red and white would flutter over their last resting place, too. Their hands were joined here, across the endless ocean of time.

  Clare reached the edge of the newest section and let her camera dangle from her wrist.

  “The flags make an impression, don’t they?”

  Clare flinched, startled by the unexpected voice coming from behind her shoulder.

  “I didn’t hear you coming, Reverend,” she exclaimed. It was just Peter and Paula’s father, though, and she quickly was at her ease again.

  The Reverend Roland Lightman surveyed the cemetery’s decorations thoughtfully.

  “You know, I like to come here sometimes, and think.”

  Clare remained silent. The minister seemed lost in his own thoughts, talking to himself as much as he was to her.

  “I never served in the military, you know,” he said. He smiled wanly. “And I often wondered if I would have had the courage to be a good soldier, if I’d had to go.”

  Clare was tempted to say the easy thing, to tell him that of course he would have risen to the challenge. But he seemed to be really troubled about something, and a quick reassurance from her didn’t seem an adequate response somehow.

  Roland Lightman let his gaze travel over the field of stones, and his eyes blinked repeatedly.

  Clare thought it was from the brightness of the sun, but then she saw the glittering in his eyes, and she realized that he was trying not to cry.

  “Reverend Lightman,” she said, genuinely concerned. “What’s the matter?”

  He sighed and sniffed and, with some embarrassment, wiped a tear from his lashes.

  “It isn’t easy to die,” he observed. His voice was stronger now, almost as it sounded when he was delivering a sermon on Sunday morning. “But in many ways, it is harder to live.” He paused. “There are so many temptations in life, so many wrong choices that we can make. Just one wrong choice can have… devastating consequences….”

  Clare thought he was beginning to sound like Paula on the day she came to the office, pleading for Clare to stay out of the dirty laundry. Good heavens, did the Reverend Lightman suspect his son had been sleeping with Lexie? Or worse, did he know it for a fact?

  The minister was still not looking at Clare. But he continued talking.

  “I’ve tried to be an example for my flock,” he said humbly.

  “Reverend Lightman, you are much loved and respected by everybody in Crawfordsville, but especially by the members of your congregation,” Clare assured him.

  He smiled sadly. “But I do not deserve that respect.”

  “Reverend! Of course you do.”

  “No. I have lived the life of a very arrogant man. In my arrogance, I tried to appear as a model of perfection. No man is perfect, Clare, and I am among the most imperfect.”

  Clare tried to object, but he spoke over her objection.

  “And I am deceitful. A hypocrite. A man who pretends to be something he is not.”

  Clare began to have a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  “Reverend Lightman, are you going to ask me to persuade Case to leave Lexie’s death alone? To keep Seamus’s memory buried?”

  The minister shook his head sadly. “No. No, I’m not. I’m sorely tempted to, you understand, but no. I’m praying that this tribulation will be an opportunity for me to learn humility, and forgiveness. I could have learned the lessons many years ago, but I
preferred clinging to my own earthly pride. I wanted a son who would walk in the light, untouched by anything unclean or evil. And I fear that in my desire to keep him away from…bad influences—”

  “Lexie?”

  “Yes, bad influences like Lexie… Well, I got too involved with the young woman myself.”

  Clare stared at him, thunderstruck. Reverend Lightman and Lexie? She wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t heard him say it.

  “My wife…doesn’t know.” He hung his head and closed his eyes as if against a terrible, terrible pain. “She is so gentle hearted, such an obedient daughter of her faith, that she will be crushed if she learns of my weakness.”

  Clare’s mind raced. Was this the other thing that Paula was anxious to hide? Or was the comment about Peter a fabrication? No, he’d admitted that he’d gotten overinvolved with Lexie. Clare wondered just what the Reverend Lightman and Peter meant when they said they’d been “involved” with her.

  Clare cleared her throat..

  “I’m sorry, Reverend Lightman. I wish I knew what to say to make this burden easier to bear.”

  He smiled unhappily. “Sometimes a heavy burden must simply be borne. And the bearing in itself can make us stronger.”

  “Well, that’s a good way to look at a difficult problem like this,” she agreed comfortingly. “I hate to ask you, but were you—I mean, when you say you were involved with her, do you mean…”

  “I had carnal knowledge of her.” He looked as if a lash were falling on him as he said the words. He bowed his head in shame, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Once. Just once. Although there had been other times when she had… when we almost…” He cleared his throat and shook his head. “Just once.”

  “Does anyone in your family know this?”

  “I think my son might have suspected. He was Lexie’s friend and confidant. He was trying to help her with some worries that she had. She’d come to our house and sit in the kitchen and he’d listen to her and counsel her. And she’d make eyes at me when he was out of the room, because she had discovered my weakness for her. I had hoped that she’d leave him alone. I asked her to seek counseling from a full-fledged minister. But she wouldn’t. And then she began having him meet her at her house, and other places, and I began to worry…”