Carnal Innocence (12 page)

His hands slid up, his thumbs just brushing the sides of her breasts. The blood began to swim in her head. “I suppose I have.”

“That’s the trouble I’m having with you, Caroline.
You just keep playing through my head. You could almost say I’m fixated.”

His eyes were level with hers, and so close she saw that there was a faint and fascinating outline of green around his pupils. “Maybe you should think of a different tune.”

He leaned closer, and when she stiffened, contented himself with a light, quick nip on her bottom lip. “I’ve always had the damnedest time doing what I should.” He lifted a hand to rub his knuckles over her cheek. She had a way of looking at him, Tucker realized, a straight, unwavering gaze that made him feel defensive, protective, and weak-kneed all at once. “Did he hurt you or just disappoint you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re skittish, Caro. I figure there’s a reason.”

The liquid warmth that had been spreading through her hardened into iron will. “Skittish is a word better applied to horses. What I am is uninterested. And the reason for that might be that I don’t find you appealing.”

“Now, that’s a lie,” he said mildly. “The uninterested part. If we didn’t have company right outside the door, I’d show you how I know it’s a lie. But I’m a patient man, Caro, and I never blame a woman who likes to be persuaded.”

Hot temper streaked to her throat, all but scalding her tongue. “Oh, I’m sure you’ve persuaded more than your share of women. Like Edda Lou.”

Amusement fled from his eyes, to be replaced by anger, then by something else. Something akin to grief. Even as he stepped back she laid a hand on his arm. “Tucker, I’m sorry. That was despicable.”

He lifted his beer to swill some of the bitterness out of his throat. “It was close enough to truth.”

She shook her head. “You pushed the wrong button, but that’s no excuse for saying something like that to you. I am sorry.”

“Forget it.” He set aside the empty beer, and as much of the hurt as he could manage. They heard Burke shout, and though Tucker’s lips curved, she saw that the
smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Looks like we’re finally going to eat. Go on, take that jar out. I’ll be along.”

“All right.” She paused at the door, wishing there was something she could say. But another apology was useless.

When the door swung behind her, Tucker laid his forehead against the refrigerator. He didn’t know what he was feeling, didn’t have words for it. He hated that. His feelings had always come so easily, even the bad ones. But this morass of emotion that churned inside him at odd times was new, unpleasant, and more than a little frightening.

He’d even dreamed of Edda Lou, and she’d come to him with her body torn and bloated with death. Moss and dank water had dripped from her hair, and her skin had oozed black blood as she pointed a skeletal finger at him.

She had not had to speak for him to know what she meant. His fault. She was dead and it was his fault.

Christ almighty, what was he going to do?

“Tucker? Honey?” Josie slipped into the kitchen to curl an arm around him. “You feeling bad?”

As bad as it gets, he thought, but let out a sigh. “Headache, that’s all.” He smiled as he turned to her. “Too much beer on an empty stomach.”

She stroked his hair. “I’ve got aspirin in my purse. Extra-strength something or other.”

“I’d rather have food.”

“Let’s go get you a plate.” She kept her arm around him as she walked to the door and onto the porch. “Dwayne’s already mostly drunk, and I don’t want to have to haul both of you home. Especially since I’ve got a date tonight.”

“Who’s the winner?”

“That FBI doctor. He’s just cute enough to eat.” She chuckled and sent Teddy Rubenstein a wave. “I thought I’d try him out for Crystal. She’s been sending a lot of looks his way.”

“You’re a true friend, Josie.”

“I know it.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s get some of those ribs.”

· · ·

Beyond the old slave quarters with their heat-baked stone, beyond the cotton fields smelling of fertilizer and pesticides, was the dark, horseshoe-shaped pond that Sweetwater was named for.

The water wasn’t so sweet now, as the poisons used to kill weevils and other crop pests seeped into the ground, generation after generation, and thence into the lake.

But if it wasn’t fit to drink, if most would think twice or more about eating any fish caught there, it was still a nice sight under a crescent moon.

Reeds danced languorously in the current and frogs talked and plopped. Cypress knees poked through the surface like old dark bones. The night was clear enough that you could see the gentle ripples on the surface made by mosquitoes and the creatures that snacked on them.

Dwayne had shifted from the beer he’d drunk at Burke’s barbecue to his favorite, Wild Turkey. The bottle was only a quarter empty, but he was feeling miserably drunk. He’d have preferred to sit in the house and drink until he passed out, but Della would have laid into him. And he was sick to death of women picking at him.

The letter from Sissy had him eagerly fueling his anger with whiskey. She was going to marry her shoe salesman. He didn’t care about that, he told himself. He didn’t give a flying fuck if she married some asshole who put his hands all over other people’s feet. Christ knew he didn’t want her—never had, if it came to that. But he’d be damned if she’d dangle his kids in front of him to try and soak him for more money.

Expensive private schools, expensive clothes. He’d come through, hadn’t he, even when Sissy and her slick-haired lawyer had made it next to impossible for him to so much as see either of the boys. “Limited supervised visitations” they called it. Just because he liked to have a drink now and then.

Scowling at the dark water, Dwayne guzzled more whiskey. They’d made him out to be some kind of
monster, and he’d never laid a hand on those kids. Sissy either, if it came to that Though he’d been sorely tempted a time or two, just to show her her place.

But he wasn’t a violent man, Dwayne reminded himself. Not like his own daddy had been. He could hold his liquor just fine, and had proven it since he was fifteen. And Sissy Koons had known just what she was getting when she’d spread her legs for him. Had he blamed her for getting pregnant? No sir. He’d married her, bought her a nice house and all the pretty clothes she wanted.

Given her more than she’d deserved, Dwayne told himself now, remembering the letter. If she thought he was going to let that guitar-playing shoe hawker adopt his blood children, she had another think coming. He’d see her in hell first. And he’d be damned if he’d buckle under to that veiled threat that she’d take him back to court if he didn’t increase his monthly child support payments.

It wasn’t the money. He didn’t give a damn about money. Tucker took care of all that. It was the principle. More money, she’d said in her wheedling way, or your sons’ll be wearing another man’s name.

His children, he thought again, his symbol of his own immortality. And he had a fondness for them, of course. They were his blood, after all, his link to the future, his shackles to the past. That was why he sent them presents and candy bars. But it was a whole lot different if you had to deal with them face-to-face.

He could still remember how Little Dwayne— who’d been no more than three—had wailed and cried when he walked in on his daddy during a mean drunk. Dwayne had been getting a lot of satisfaction out of smashing Sissy’s company glasses against the wall.

Then Sissy had run in, scooping up Little Dwayne as if his father had been tossing
him
against the wall instead of the gold-rimmed tumblers. And the baby had started to bawl.

Dwayne had just stood there, wanting nothing more than to bash all their heads together.

You want something to cry for? By God, I’ll give you something to cry for.

That’s what his daddy would have said, and the lot of them would have trembled in their boots.

He thought maybe he had said it, too. Maybe he’d screamed it. But Sissy hadn’t trembled, she just screamed back at him, her face all red, her eyes full of fury and disgust.

He almost slapped her. Dwayne remembered he came within a hair of knocking her sideways. He even lifted his arm and saw his father’s hand on the end of it.

Instead, he stumbled out and drove off to wreck another car.

Sissy had the door bolted when Burke hauled him home the next day. And that had been a powerful humiliation. Not being able to get into his own house, and having his wife shout out through the window that she was going down to Greenville to see a lawyer.

Innocence had been ripe with talks for weeks about how Sissy kicked Dwayne out of the house and tossed his clothes through the upstairs window. He had to drink himself into oblivion for days to be able to take it with a shrug.

Women just messed up the natural order of things. Now here was Sissy, popping back to do it again.

What made it worse, what made it bitter, was that Sissy was going to do something with her life. She’d shed Sweetwater as easily as a snake sheds skin, and was moving on. While he—he was bound and mired in generations of Longstreet obligations. The expectations a father passed on to his son. A woman didn’t have that to tie her down.

No, a woman could do just as she damn well pleased. It was easy to hate them for that.

Dwayne tipped back the bottle and brooded. He watched the dark water, and as he sometimes did, imagined himself just walking into it, going under, taking a big, deadly drink, and sinking to the bottom with his lungs full of lake.

His eyes still on the surface, he drank, drowning himself in whiskey instead.

· · ·

At a table at McGreedy’s Tavern, Josie was just heating up. Next to the beauty parlor, the tavern was her favorite spot in town. She loved its dark, whiskey-soaked walls, its sticky floors, its rocky tables. She loved it every bit as much as she loved the equally boozy but much more elegant parties she often attended in Atlanta and Charlotte and Memphis.

It never failed to cheer her up to walk into that smoke- and liquor-tainted air, listen to the country sounds on the juke, to the voices raised in anger or amusement, the snap of pool balls from the room in the back.

She’d brought Teddy here to down a few beers at her favorite table—under the head of the scarred old buck McGreedy had bagged back when people were pinning I like Ike buttons to their lapels.

She slapped Teddy on the back, hooted with laughter at an outrageous joke he’d told her, then reached for her cigarette.

“You’re a pistol, Teddy. You sure you haven’t got a wife hiding somewhere?”

“Two exes.” Teddy grinned through Josie’s haze of smoke. He hadn’t had so much fun since he’d rigged a cadaver with fishing wire so he could make the arms and legs move in time with “Twist and Shout.”

“Now, that’s a coincidence. I’ve got two of my own. First one was a lawyer.” Smiling, she drew the word out into two elongated syllables. “A fine, upstanding young man from a fine, upstanding Charleston family. Just the kind of husband my mama wanted me to hook on to. Nearly bored me to death before the year was out.”

“Stuffy?”

“Oh, honey.” She tilted her head back so the cool beer slid straight down. “I tried to shake him out of it. I gave a party, a fancy dress ball for New Year’s? I came as Lady Godiva.” Cocking a brow, she ran her hand through her wild black hair. “I wore a blond wig.” Her eyes glittered as she rested her chin on her hands. “Just the wig. Old Franklin—that was his name—Franklin just couldn’t get himself in a partying mood.”

Teddy could easily imagine her in nothing more than a fall of blond hair, and figured he’d have parried just fine. “No sense of humor,” he commented.

“You said it. So naturally, when I decided to go husband-hunting again, I looked for a different kind. I met a rough, tough cowboy type on a dude ranch up in Oklahoma. We had some high old times.” She sighed, reminiscing. “Then I found out he was cheating on me. That wasn’t so bad, but it turned out he was cheating with cowboys instead of cowgirls.”

“Ouch,” Teddy said, wincing in sympathy. “And I thought it was rough just having my wives tell me I had a disgusting job.” He gave Josie a wink. “Women don’t usually find my work suitable for conversation.”

“I think it’s fascinating.” She signaled for another round, shifting so that she could rub her bare foot over his calf. “You have to be smart, don’t you? Running all those tests, finding out who killed someone just by cutting up, you know. A corpse.” Her eyes glowed as she leaned closer. “I just don’t see how it works, Teddy. I mean, how can you tell about a killer from a dead body?”

“Well.” He slurped up some beer. “It’s pretty technical, but in easy terms, you just put all the puzzle pieces together. Cause of death, time and place. Fibers, maybe blood that doesn’t belong to the victim. Skin scrapings, hair samples.”

“Sounds creepy.” Josie gave a delicate shudder. “Are you finding out stuff about Edda Lou?”

“We’ve got the time, the place, and the method.” Unlike some of his colleagues, he wasn’t bored by shop talk. “Once I conclude my tests, I’m going to correlate my findings with the county coroner’s on the other two women.” Sympathetic, Teddy patted her hand. “I guess you knew all of them.”

“I sure did. Went to school with Francie and Arnette. Arnette and I even double-dated some—in our wild, misspent youth.” She grinned into her beer. “And I guess I knew Edda Lou all her life. Not that we were good friends. But it’s scary, thinking about her dying.”

She cupped her chin on her hands. There was a gypsy look about her, that long, curling black hair, the
golden eyes and golden skin. She’d exploited the image that day by adding wide hoops to her ears and baring her shoulders in a red elastic-necked blouse. Teddy’s mouth watered just looking at her.

“I guess you can’t tell if she suffered much,” Josie said softly.

“I can tell you most of the wounds were inflicted after death.” He gave her hand a comforting squeeze. “Don’t you think about it.”

“I can’t help it.” Her eyes flicked down to her fresh drink, then back to his. “To tell the truth—I can tell you the truth, can’t I, Teddy?”