by Hope Ramsay
Alex was, without question, the biggest a-hole in Last Chance, South Carolina.
It broke Jane’s heart to leave the CD player and CDs behind. For some reason those gifts seemed less like charity than the box of old clothes. But she left all of it that morning. She put on her old clothes and walked up the street to the bus stop.
She stood outside Bill’s Grease Pit, clutching a one-way Greyhound ticket to Columbia. She checked her watch; it was almost seven. The bus would be here in about five minutes.
She pressed her lips together, feeling the tears fill up her sinuses. She didn’t want to leave. But she had no other choice. She couldn’t bear thinking about what would happen when Ruby figured out the truth. And her heart wrenched every time she thought about Clayton P. figuring out that she was, in fact, Miss April in the Working Girls Go Wild calendar.
She had made a lot of bad choices in her life, starting with the doozy she’d made at seventeen. But she had recovered from those mistakes—at least until she allowed Woody West to sucker her.
And the main way she’d rescued herself was by posing for those photos. She had been eighteen years old, living in Florida, working at a fast-food place, and paying the rent had been a challenge. The only way to move up had been to find a better job, and that required financing her tuition to Beauty Schools of America. So those pictures, unfortunate as they might have been, had financed her future.
She knew the holy rollers in this little southern town would never understand that. And, Wednesday night notwithstanding, she had a feeling Clayton P. might not understand, either. She didn’t want to stick around to face that music. It would be better to leave now.
She looked down the deserted main street and knew a moment of deep longing and regret. A morning haze hung over the town and made it look mysterious and quaint. Last Chance, South Carolina, wasn’t very big, and there were a few empty storefronts on Palmetto Avenue, but right then, looking at it through the morning haze, it looked like a safe place. In the last two days, Jane had found kindness here for the first time in a long, long time. She didn’t want to leave, but she knew, firsthand, that kindness could turn in an instant. And she didn’t want to have to go through that.
Jane swallowed hard, trying to look on the bright side. Her two days in Last Chance had been eye-opening. Thanks to Clay, she had a positive plan for getting herself to Nashville, instead of relying on some weasel like Woody. As soon as she found a job and could scrape together a few bucks, she would replace that CD player she had left behind and buy all of Dolly’s CDs. She would learn that material, and she would get a regular gig with a country band instead of singing karaoke.
She only regretted that she hadn’t thanked Clay face to face last night or had a chance to sing “I Will Always Love You” for him and the crowd at Dot’s Spot. But maybe it was better this way, because Ricki was here now. And anyway, the man had settled down into the back of her mind the way winter settled into the Allegheny Mountains of her home. It would be a long, long time before she gave up his memory.
Chief Stony’s cruiser appeared out of the haze and glided up the street in her direction. She had been here long enough to know there were only two members of the Last Chance Police Department, Stone Rhodes and his deputy, Damian Easley. Jane had the distinct feeling neither of these guys ever slept.
The Crown Vic coasted up the street and came to a stop right in front of her. Chief Rhodes got out and strolled around the car, squaring up his Stetson so it shaded his eyes—an unnecessary action, since he wore mirrored sunglasses and the sky was overcast. The firm set of his jaw raised gooseflesh all along her back and arms. This was not a “howdy, ma’am” visit.
“Leaving so soon?” he asked as he came to a halt in front of her and hooked his thumbs into his utility belt.
Jane shrugged. “I decided there might be better opportunities in Columbia.”
A muscle twitched in his cheek. “Can I see your driver’s license, please?”
Oh, crap. She would have to haul out her expired license and get a lecture from him. Although she didn’t think there was any law against waiting for a bus with an expired driver’s license. And getting a lecture about her expired license would be better than making him suspicious by handing him the one that said “Mary Smith” on it.
She opened her purse and noted how Chief Stone went on alert. Hoo boy, the guy was bracing himself as if he thought she might be carrying a concealed weapon. His demeanor put her on instant alert. Something was going down here, and she had this awful feeling that it didn’t have a thing to do with the Working Girls Go Wild calendar.
Jane pulled out her wallet and handed him her license. The chief took off his sunglasses and put the wand through a loop on his shirt pocket. He studied her ID for a long time, and Jane’s hands got wet, and her mouth went dry, and her Greyhound bus pulled up.
“Uh, that’s my bus,” she said. “Can I go now?”
He looked up, his green eyes deadly. “I don’t think you’re going to make that bus, ma’am.” He looked over at the bus driver and waved him off. The Greyhound pulled out in a cloud of dust and diesel fumes.
“Your license is expired,” he said.
“I don’t drive much,” she answered.
“I’m going to have to keep this.”
She watched her ID disappear into his shirt pocket. She was in deep, deep trouble, even though she had never done anything illegal in her whole life.
“That was my bus you just waved off, you know. The Greyhound only comes through here once a day. And—”
“You mind telling me where you were last night after eleven o’clock?” he asked.
“I was at the apartment above the Cut ’n Curl.”
“Alone?”
“Of course I was alone.”
“So you don’t have an alibi.”
“An alibi for what?”
His shoulders raised and lowered a fraction of an inch. “Someone broke into Lovett’s Hardware last night and made off with more than a thousand dollars in cash. It looks mighty suspicious that you’re leaving town this morning.”
She put her fists on her hips. She was not going to let this guy push her around. She was innocent, and he’d just fixed it so she had to stay in town another day. “Are you trying to tell me I’m a suspect in a robbery just because I’m standing here waiting for a bus?”
“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to come with me to answer a few questions.”
“But that’s absurd. I’m not—”
“Please do not make me cuff you, because I will.”
The chief was serious. He thought she had knocked over the hardware store. “You think I robbed the store?”
The muscle in his cheek twitched again. “That’s a possibility I haven’t ruled out yet, but that’s not why I’m taking you in for questioning.”
He snagged her by the upper arm in a firm grip.
Jane dug in her heels and tried to resist. In the next instant, she found her cheek pressed up to the warm metal of his cruiser’s hood and her right arm twisted back behind her back. It happened so fast that she didn’t have an instant to get scared or to even feel any pain when Stone Rhodes slapped a pair of handcuffs on her.
“I told you not to resist. Resisting an officer of the law is not a smart move—not for a woman in your position, anyway.”
“I have a right to know why you’re doing this,” Jane said in a voice that was surprisingly calm given the fact that she was terrified.
“Ma’am, you have the right to remain silent, anything you say can be used against you in a court of law…” Chief Rhodes continued his recitation of her rights. When he was finished, he pulled her away from the hood, opened the car’s back door, and started pushing her down into the seat.
As the first instant of shock wore off, a million scenarios danced through her head. Woody had been found dead somewhere with her luggage in the back of his Coupe DeVille, and someone thought she had bumped him off. Only then she remembered
that the luggage tags didn’t say Wanda Jane Coblentz. They said Mary Smith. Maybe Clay had told Stone about the two different IDs.
Disappointment and something like despair hollowed out a place in her middle. She had known this feeling once before, in Lexington, and she had been running from that for the last seven years.
Clay pushed through the doors of the hardware store, then turned around and relocked them. He stretched out the kinks in his back and yawned. That couch in Pete’s office was about as lumpy as a three-humped camel.
He needed a shower and a new lease on life.
Unfortunately, there were roadblocks in the way of those needs. He’d have to face Ricki for the shower, since she was crashing in the guest room of his little saltbox house on Baruch Street. Facing Ricki right now seemed like a monumental task.
And as for a new lease on life—well, that was not in the cards. Especially after last night, when Cousin Alex had accused him of stealing the thousand dollars from the hardware store.
Why would he do a thing like that? Clay wasn’t wanting for money. He didn’t even take a salary for helping out at the store. He was doing it for Pete and Arlene—a notion completely lost on Alex.
Well, at least the crisis at the store had saved him from the possibility of having Ricki climb into bed with him. He wasn’t sure he could resist her if she did a thing like that.
But Clay wanted to resist. Ricki couldn’t be his soulmate, could she? A soulmate wouldn’t run off with someone else, would she?
Well, the crisis at the store had been kind of a good thing, in that sense. It had given him distance from Ricki, in addition to this crick in the neck.
He chuckled out loud. “Shoot,” he said to himself as he stretched his back a second time. “I’m starting to think like Wanda Jane, putting a positive spin on everything that happens.”
He was hugely disappointed that he hadn’t had a chance to talk or sing with Wanda Jane. Ricki, Ray, Dottie, and Dash had all conspired to scare her away before that could happen last night. But she was still here, so there was hope. And if he bought all that crap from Miriam Randall, then Jane was in the running for the position of his soulmate.
An adolescent anticipation clutched his gut. He was looking forward to catching sight of that little gal. And when he saw that dark hair, and those deep brown eyes, and those curves, his heart would do a little dance in his chest. It was going to take a whole boatload of will power not to find some excuse to pop into the Cut ’n Curl just to get a glimpse of her. Yup, soulmate or not, he was definitely in lust with Jane.
Clay turned from the door, and that’s when he noticed Stony’s cruiser up by Bill’s Grease Pit. His big brother was handcuffing some poor soul who was laid out flat on the hood of his car.
Clay’s mood improved some more. It sure did look like Stone had nabbed the bad guy. Maybe his brother had recovered the money, too, which would be good, since Lovett’s Hardware was holding on by its fingernails. It was comforting to know that Stony was on the case—making an arrest right there in front of God and everyone.
Which wasn’t exactly a huge crowd this time of morning in Last Chance, but that hardly mattered.
His brother pulled the suspect back off the hood of his cruiser, and Clay’s heart slammed right up against his windpipe. That wasn’t some poor soul his brother was manhandling. It was Wanda Jane. And this wasn’t what he’d had in mind for his first glimpse of her today.
Something deadly gripped his chest, and he took off up the street. He arrived just about the time Stone slammed the back door and locked Jane in.
“What in the hell are you doing?” Clay demanded.
Stone turned, squared his hat, and started walking around the cruiser toward the driver’s side. He said nothing.
“Stony, answer me.”
His brother stopped. “Look, Clay, this isn’t your business, so just back off, okay?”
Clay looked down through the car’s back window. Jane was sitting there wearing the clothes she’d been wearing last Wednesday night. Her face had turned the color of ashes, and tears streamed down her cheeks.
She stared straight ahead, her hands cuffed behind her back, looking just like a scared jackrabbit. Clay ducked down and pressed his hand against the glass. She looked up at him, visibly struggling against her emotions.
Wanda Jane had to be guilty of something. After all, she carried two IDs, each with a different name. But somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to believe she was a bad person. Down on her luck, on the run, in need of rescue—yeah, he could believe all those things. But she wasn’t bad. She just needed some help.
He nodded down at her, trying to let her know he wasn’t going to let Stone haul her off without trying to help her out of this jam.
He looked up at his brother, who was standing in the open doorway on the driver’s side studying him. “Back off, Clay,” Stone said. “We all know you collect needy people. But you don’t need this kind of trouble.”
“And what kind of trouble would that be?”
“In a word…” His brother’s gaze narrowed. “Murder.”
CHAPTER 10
Woody West strolled up to the ticket agent at the Atlanta bus station and prayed to God Almighty that he might turn up some sign of Mary Smith. The bus station was his last chance.
It was amazing how a broad as dumb and naïve as Mary could disappear so completely. In fact, the woman had disappeared so fast and so good that he suspected she might have scammed him. Maybe Mary wasn’t as dumb or naïve as she appeared. Maybe she worked for Freddie the Fence, too, and knew from the get-go that the little jade necklace was worth millions.
He hoped not. If that were true, then he was a dead man. The Colombian was losing patience, and the only way Woody could pay off his gambling debts was to find Mary and the necklace and make the delivery Freddie the Fence had hired him to make.
So he’d spent the last twenty-four hours backtracking to the Dew Drop Inn and working his way outward in concentric circles. He’d turned up nothing, except an FBI tail, which he had lost last night around three in the morning. The bus station was a three-mile walk from the bar where he’d last seen Mary. He doubted she had walked all that way in spike heels, but he couldn’t rule it out either.
“Can I help you?” the ticket agent asked.
“Uh, yeah,” Woody said as he pulled out a creased photograph of Mary Smith—the one from the Working Girls Go Wild calendar. Man oh man, that girl had a set on her. Those little teeny-weeny suspenders covered up her nipples, but left everything else visible to the eye. “I’m looking for this woman. I think she might have bought a bus ticket to Nashville or Fort Myers sometime on Wednesday.”
The man took the paper and studied it for a moment, his eyes going wide as he took it all in. “Don’t reckon she was dressed like this, huh?”
“No, sir, she would have been wearing a little white tank top, a jean jacket, and a pair of jeans.”
“High-heel boots? Big satchel of a handbag?”
Excitement clutched at Woody’s gut. “Yep, that would be her.”
The ticket agent handed back the paper. “You her boyfriend or something?”
“Or something.”
“She run out on you?”
Woody dug deep in his pocket and pulled out his last twenty-dollar bill and slid it across the counter. “I’m her brother,” he said earnestly.
The agent took the bribe. “Yeah, I seen her. She bought a ticket to Last Chance.”
“A ticket to where?”
“Last Chance, South Carolina. I remember because she was in a hurry, and it was one of the stops on the first bus leaving. She remarked that the place sounded hopeful, and I thought she must be nuts or a little slow on the uptake. Last Chance sounds like a place I wouldn’t ever want to visit, even if it were the last place on the face of the earth.”
Tricia waited until the ticket agent finished his conversation. She stepped up to the counter until her big belly brushed against the edge. Her
belly seemed to be in the way all the time these days.
That thought left a pang of despair in its wake. The baby was in the way of more than just her reach. The baby was a definite roadblock to her happiness.
How could she have been so stupid? How could she have traded in a caring and responsible man for the likes of Chad Ames? Forget the fact that Chad made her heart go pitty-pat, or that the man had lit her up in bed, or that she loved him with all her heart.
All of that was immaterial.
Chad Ames wasn’t father material. In fact, he’d said as much to her face last night. He wasn’t going to marry her. He wasn’t going to settle down with her. He wasn’t even committed to taking care of the child he’d fathered.
He was, in a word, the most selfish and immature man she had ever met. He had literally pushed her out of their hotel room in Atlanta, where he and Tumbleweed were performing, leaving her pretty much stranded.
She could go back to Nashville, lick her wounds, and think about suing for child support. Or she could try to fix what she had stupidly broken a year ago. It seemed like fixing the broken stuff was a better plan than going back to Music City.
“I’ll take one ticket to Last Chance,” she said to the agent.
The man looked down at her. “So what’s happening in Last Chance these days?”
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It just seems like there are a bunch of women headed in that general direction. And that seems odd to me on account of the fact that I might sell one ticket to Last Chance every month or so. It ain’t exactly a tourist spot, you know?”
She gritted her teeth. “Yes, I know. Can I have my ticket, please?”
“Sure. Bus leaves in ten minutes.”
Jane tried to rub away the feeling of the handcuffs on her wrists. She sat in a small, windowless room on a cold metal chair with her hands resting on a gray Formica-topped table. The walls were white, and the floors looked like the same linoleum they used in Value Mart stores—utilitarian and dingy.
Jane was alone. Chief Rhodes had locked her in. In a minute, he would return and maybe then he might tell her who she was supposed to have murdered.
