Carnal Innocence (4 page)

If there was one thing Caroline’s mother had pounded into her head, it was dignity. She caught herself
before she could sputter. “You have no business being on the road at all. I should report you to the police.”

All that Yankee indignation tickled him. “Well, you can do that all right, ma’am. You call into town and ask for Burke. That’s Burke Truesdale. He’s the sheriff.”

“And your cousin, no doubt,” she said between her teeth.

“No, ma’am, though his baby sister did marry a second cousin of mine.” If she assumed he was a southern rube, he’d oblige. “They moved across the river into Arkansas. My cousin? That’s Billy Earl LaRue. He’s on my mama’s side. He and Meggie—that’s Burke’s baby sister—they run one of those storage places. You know, where people store furniture or cars or whatever by the month? Doing right well, too.”

“I’m delighted to hear it.”

“That’s neighborly of you.” His smile was as slow and easy as the water beside him. “You be sure to tell Buke I said hey when you talk to him.”

Though he was taller by several inches, Caroline managed to look down her nose at him. “I think we both know it would do very little good. Now, I’ll thank you to get off my property, Mr. Longstreet. And if you want to sit and watch the water again, find someplace else to do it.”

She turned and had taken two steps before Tucker’s voice—and dammit, it was mocking—called out to her. “Miz Waverly? Welcome to Innocence. Y’all have a nice day now, you hear?”

She kept walking. And Tucker, being a prudent man, waited until he figured she was out of earshot before he started to laugh.

If he weren’t up to his neck in quicksand, he’d enjoy teasing that pretty Yankee on a regular basis. Damn if she hadn’t made him feel better.

Edda Lou was primed and ready. She’d been worried that she’d botched things by going on a rampage after she heard Tucker had taken that bitch Chrissy Fuller over to Greenville to dinner and the movies. But
for once, it seemed, her temper had worked in her favor. That scene in the diner, and her public humiliation of Tucker, had brought him around as surely as a brass ring through his nose.

Oh, it could be that he’d try to sweet-talk her into letting him off the hook. Tucker Longstreet had the smoothest tongue in Bolivar County. But he wasn’t going to waggle himself loose with it this time. She was going to have a ring on her finger and a marriage license in her hand quick as a lick. She’d wipe the smug look off every face in Innocence when she moved into the big house.

And she, Edda Lou Hatinger, who’d grown up on a dirt farm with dusty chickens squawking in the yard and the smell of pork grease forever in the kitchen, would wear fine clothes and sleep in a soft bed and drink French champagne for breakfast.

She had a fondness for Tucker, and that was the truth. But she had more room in her thirsty heart for his house, his name, and his bank account. And when she swept into Innocence, she’d do it in a long pink Caddy. There’d be no more working the register at Larsson’s, no more scraping pennies together so she could keep her room at the boardinghouse instead of living at home where her daddy would as soon smack her as look at her sideways.

She’d be a Longstreet.

Weaving her fantasies, she pulled her rattletrap ’75 Impala to the side of the road. She didn’t question the fact that Tucker’s note had asked her to meet him back at the pond. She found it sweet. Edda Lou had fallen in love—as much as her avaricious heart would allow— because Tucker was so downright romantic. He didn’t grab and grope like some of those who sidled up to her at McGreedy’s. He didn’t always want to get right into her pants either, like most of the men she dated.

No, Tucker liked to talk. And though half the time she didn’t know what in the blue blazes he was talking about, still she appreciated the courtesy.

And he was generous with presents. Bottles of perfume, bunches of posies. Once, when they’d had a
spat, she’d made herself cry buckets. That had landed her a genuine silk nightie.

Once they were married, she’d have herself a whole drawerful if she wanted. And one of those American Express credit cards to buy them with.

The moon was full enough, so she didn’t bother with a flashlight. She didn’t want to spoil the mood. She fluffed her long blond hair, then tugged her skinny tank top down until her ripe breasts all but spilled over the edge. Her hot-pink shorts cut into her crotch a bit, but she figured the effect was worth it.

If she played her cards right, Tucker would have her out of them in no time. Just thinking of it made her damp. Nobody did it like Tucker. Why, sometimes when he was touching her, she forgot all about his money. She wanted him inside her tonight, not only for the thrill of doing it outside, but because the timing was just right. With luck her claim about being pregnant would be fact before morning.

She moved through the thick leaves, the vines, through the heady smells of wet and honeysuckle and her own perfume. Moonlight spilled onto the ground in shifting patterns. Country born and country raised, she didn’t shiver at the night sounds. The plop and peep of frogs, the rustle of marsh grasses, the high song of cicadas or rude hoot from owls.

She caught the glint of yellow eyes that might have been a coon or a fox. But they vanished when she stepped closer. Some small victim squealed in the grass. Edda Lou paid no more attention to the sound of the creature’s death than a New Yorker would have to the commonplace wail of a siren.

This was the place of the night hunter—the owl and the fox. She was too pragmatic a woman to consider herself as prey.

Her feet were silent on the soft ground and marshy grasses. Moonlight filtered over her, turning the skin she religiously pampered into something almost as elegant as marble. And because she was smiling, certain in her victory, there was a kind of hot beauty to her face.

“Tucker?” She used the little-girl voice that was her way of wheedling. “I’m sorry I’m late, honey.”

She stopped by the pond, and though her night vision was almost as sharp as a cat’s, saw nothing but water and rock and thick vegetation. Her mouth thinned, erasing the beauty. She’d purposely arrived late, wanting to keep him sweating for ten or fifteen minutes.

In a huff, she sat on the log where Tucker had sat only hours before. But she didn’t feel his presence. Only annoyance that she had come running when he’d crooked his finger. And he hadn’t even crooked it in person, but with a stingy little note.

And wasn’t that just like him? Edda Lou thought. Making her go all soft, saying how he wanted to be alone with her, then pissing her off because he was late.

Five minutes, she decided. That was all he was getting. Then she was going to drive on up the road, right through those fancy gates and up to the big house. She’d let Tucker Longstreet know that he couldn’t play around with her affections.

At the whisper of sound behind her, she turned her head, prepared to flutter her lashes. The blow to the base of her skull had her tumbling facedown in the earth.

Her moan was muffled. Edda Lou heard it in her head, and her head felt as though it had been split in two by a dull rock. She tried to lift it. Oh, but it hurt, it hurt! When she started to bring her hands up to hold the ache, she found them stuck tight behind her.

The first quiver of fear pierced through the pain. Opening her eyes wide, she tried to call out. But her mouth was gagged. She could taste the cloth and the cologne that scented it. Her eyes rolled wildly as she fought to work her hands free.

She was naked, and her bare back and buttocks were scraping into bark as she wriggled against the tree. She’d been tied hand and foot to a live oak, her feet expertly cinched so that her legs were spread in a vulnerable
v.
Visions of rape danced hideously through her mind.

“Edda Lou. Edda Lou.” The voice was low and harsh, like the scrape of metal against rock. Edda Lou’s terrified eyes wheeled in their sockets as she tried to find the source.

All she saw was the water and the thick black of clustered leaves. She tried to scream and choked on the gag.

“I’ve had my eye on you. I wondered how soon we’d get together like this. Romantic, isn’t it, being naked in the moonlight? And we’re all alone, you and me. All alone. Let’s have sex.”

Paralyzed with terror, she watched the figure slip out of the shadows. Saw the moonlight glint on naked skin. Saw it flash for one hideous instant on the long-bladed knife.

Now it was terror and revulsion she felt as she recognized what was coming toward her. Her stomach clenched and rolled, and she tasted sickness on her tongue. But the figure came closer, gilded by a fine sheen of sweat and smelling of madness.

Her pleas and prayers were smothered by the gag. Thin streams of blood ran down her back and legs as she twisted desperately against the tree. The hands were on her, squeezing, stroking. And the mouth. Hot, frightened tears slid down her cheeks as the mouth closed hungrily over her defenseless breasts.

Slick with sweat, the body rubbed against hers, doing things she didn’t want to believe could be done to her. Her weeping was mindless now, her body shuddering at every touch of the wet mouth, the intruding fingers, the smooth flat of the buck knife.

For she had remembered what had happened to Arnette and Francie, and knew they had felt this same numb terror, felt the same sick revulsion in the last moments of their lives.

“You want it. You want it.” The breathless chant rolled over the dull buzzing in Edda’s brain. “Whore.” The knife turned, slicing delicately, almost painlessly, down Edda Lou’s arm. As the mouth closed greedily over the wound, Edda Lou slumped into a half faint.

“No, you don’t.” A hand slapped playfully across her face to revive her. “No sleeping on the job for whores.” There was a quick, almost giggly laugh. Blood smeared the smiling lips. Edda Lou’s glazed eyes opened and fixed. “Better, that’s better. I want you to watch. Ready?”

“Please, please, please,” her mind screamed. “Don’t kill me. I won’t tell, I won’t tell, I won’t tell.”

“No!” The voice was husky with arousal, and Edda Lou smelled her own fear, her own blood, when that face leaned close to hers, with madness shining out of eyes she’d known very well. “You’re not worth fucking.”

One hand ripped aside the gag. Part of the pleasure, the need, was to hear that one high scream. It was cut off as the knife slashed Edda Lou’s throat.

Caroline sat straight up in bed, heart thudding like a Maytag with an unbalanced load. She was clutching both hands to it, nearly ripping her thin sleep shirt in reaction.

A scream, she thought wildly while her ragged breathing echoed in the room. Who was screaming?

She was nearly out of bed and fumbling for the light when she remembered where she was and sagged back against the pillows. Not Philadelphia. Not Baltimore, or New York or Paris. She was in rural Mississippi, sleeping in the bed her grandparents had slept in.

Night sounds seemed to fill the room. Peepers, crickets, cicadas. And owls. She heard another scream, eerily like a woman’s. Screech owls, they called them, she remembered now. Her grandmother had soothed her one night during that long-ago visit when the same rusty cry had awakened her.

Closing her eyes, Caroline listened to the long whooo-whooo of another, better-mannered owl. Country sounds, she assured herself, and tried to ignore the creaking and settling of the old house. Soon they would seem as natural to her as the whoosh of traffic or the whine of distant sirens.

It was just as her grandmother had told her. She was safe as a bug in a rug.

T
ucker sat on the side terrace where purple clematis wound up the white wicker trellis. A hummingbird streaked behind him, iridescent wings a flashing blur as it hovered to drink deeply from one of the wide, tender blooms. Inside, Della’s Electrolux hummed busily. The sound drifted through the screened windows to mix with the drone of bees.

Underneath the glass table sprawled the aged family hound, Buster, a huddle of loose skin and old bones. Occasionally, he worked up the energy to thump his tail and look hopefully through the glass at Tucker’s breakfast.

Tucker wasn’t paying conscious attention to any of the morning sounds and scents. He absorbed them in the same absent way he absorbed the chilled juice, black coffee, and toast.

He was performing one of his favorite daily rituals: reading the mail.

As always, there was a stack of fashion catalogues and magazines for Josie. He tossed them one at a time onto the padded seat beside him. Each time a catalogue
plopped, Buster would shift his rheumy old eyes hopefully, then mutter in canine disgust.

There was a letter for Dwayne from Nashville, addressed in Sissy’s childishly correct handwriting. Tucker frowned at it a minute, held it up to the sunlight, then set it aside. He knew it wasn’t a request for child support. As family bookkeeper, he made out the monthly checks himself and had sent one two weeks before.

In keeping with his filing system, he tossed bills on another chair, personal correspondence was shoved over to the other side of the coffeepot, and those letters obviously from a charitable organization or some other group sneakily begging for money were tossed in a paper sack at his side.

Tucker’s way of handling them was to dig into the bag once a month, choosing two envelopes at random. Those would receive generous contributions, whether they were for the World Wildlife Fund, the American Red Cross, or the Society for the Prevention of Hangnails. In this way, Tucker felt the Longstreets were fulfilling their charitable obligations. And if certain organizations were confused when they received a check for several thousand dollars one month, and nothing for several years thereafter, he figured it was their problem.

He had problems of his own.

The simple routine of sorting the mail helped shift those problems to the back of his mind, at least for the moment. The fact was, he didn’t know what his next move should be, since Edda Lou wasn’t even talking to him. She’d had two days to follow up on her staggering public announcement, but was apparently playing possum. Not only hadn’t she contacted him, but she wasn’t answering her phone.

It was worrying—particularly since he’d had a taste of her temper and knew she could lash out with the stealth and skill of a water moccasin. Waiting for the sting made Tucker jumpy.

He piled up the
YOU ARE A WINNER!
envelopes Dwayne
liked to ship off to his kids, and found the lilac-colored and scented stationery that could only belong to one person.

“Cousin Lulu.” His grin flashed and his worries drained away.

Lulu Longstreet Boyston was from the Georgia Longstreets and a cousin of Tucker’s grandfather. Speculation put her age in the mid-seventies, though she had stubbornly clung to sixty-five for many years. She was spit-in-your-face rich, a dainty five foot in her sensible shoes, and crazy as a June bug.

Tucker flat out adored her. Though the letter was addressed
TO MY LONGSTREET COUSINS
, he ripped it open himself. He wasn’t about to wait until Dwayne and Josie wandered back from wherever they’d gone.

He read the first paragraph, written with a hot-pink felt tip, and let out a hoot.

Cousin Lulu was coming to call.

She always phrased it just that way, so you could never tell if she’d stay for dinner or settle in for a month. Tucker sincerely hoped it was the latter. He needed a distraction.

The last time she’d come to call, she’d brought along a whole crate of ice cream cakes packed in dry ice, and had worn a paper party hat with an ostrich feather poking through the pointy top. She’d kept that damn hat on for a full week, waking and sleeping, saying she was celebrating birthdays. Anybody’s birthday.

Tucker licked strawberry jam from his fingers, then tossed the rest of his toast to Buster. Leaving the rest of the mail to be picked up later, he started toward the door. He was going to tell Della to have Cousin Lulu’s room ready and waiting.

Even as he swung open the door, Tucker heard the dyspeptic rattle of Austin Hatinger’s pick-up. There was only one vehicle in Innocence that made that particular grunt-rattle-belch sound. After giving one brief thought to going inside and barring the doors, Tucker turned and walked out to the porch, prepared to face the music.

Not only could he hear Austin coming, he could see
him, by the stream of black smoke rising up between the magnolias. With a half-hearted sigh, Tucker waited for the truck to come into view, and pulling a cigarette out of his pocket, broke off a fraction of the tip.

He was just enjoying his first drag when the truck pulled up and Austin Hatinger rolled out of it.

He was as grizzled and bulky as the old Ford, but was held together by sinew and muscle rather than bailing twine and spit. Beneath his grease-stained planter’s hat, his face looked as if it had been carved out of tree bark. Deep lines flared out from his walnut-colored eyes, scored his wind-burned cheeks, and bracketed his hard, unsmiling mouth.

Not a speck of hair showed beneath the hat. Not that Austin was bald. Every month he drove into the barber shop and had his gray-flecked hair buzzed. Perhaps, Tucker sometimes thought, in memory of the four years he’d served in the Corps.
Semper Fi.
That was just one of the sentiments he had tattooed on his cinder-block arms. Along with it, rippling over muscle, was the American flag.

Austin—who would be the first to tell you he was a God-fearing Christian—had never gone in for such frivolities as dancing girls.

He spit a stream of Red Indian into the gravel, leaving a nasty-looking puddle of yellow. Beneath his dusty overalls and sweaty work shirt—which even in the heat Austin wore buttoned clear to the top—his chest was broad as a bull’s.

Tucker noted that he hadn’t brought out any of the rifles slotted into the rack in the back window of the cab. He hoped he could take that courtesy as a good omen.

“Austin.” He came down one step, a sign of marginal friendliness.

“Longstreet.” He had a voice like a rusty nail skidding over concrete. “Where the hell is my girl?”

Since it was the last question Tucker expected, he only blinked politely. “Excuse me?”

“You godless, rutting fuck. Where the hell is my Edda Lou?”

The description was a little more along the lines of what Tucker had expected. “I haven’t seen Edda Lou since day before yesterday, when she went at me in the diner.” He held up a hand before Austin could speak. There was still something to be said for being part of the most powerful family in the county. “You can be as pissed as you want, Austin, and I’d expect that to be mighty damn pissed, but the fact is I slept with your daughter.” He took a long, slow drag. “You probably had a pretty good idea what I was doing when I was doing it, and I don’t figure you liked it much. And I don’t figure I can blame you for it.”

Austin’s lips peeled back from yellowed, uneven teeth. No one would have mistaken it for a smile. “I shoulda skinned your worthless hide the first time you came sniffing around her.”

“Maybe, but seeing as Edda’s been over twenty-one for a couple years or more, she does her own choosing.” Tucker drew on the cigarette again, considered the tip, then flicked it aside. “The point is, Austin, what’s done’s done.”

“Easy to say when you planted a bastard in my daughter’s belly.”

“With her full cooperation,” Tucker said, slipping his hands into his pockets. “I’m going to see to it that she has everything she needs while she’s carrying the baby, and there’ll be no pinching on the child support.”

“Big talk.” Austin spat again. “Smooth talk. You’ve always been able to get your tongue around words real good, Tucker. Now you listen to a few. I take care of my own, and I want that girl out here, now.”

Tucker merely lifted a brow. “You think Edda’s here? She’s not.”

“Liar! Fornicator!” His grating voice rose and fell like an evangelist’s with strep throat. “Your soul’s black with sin.”

“I can’t argue about that,” Tucker said as agreeably as he could, “but Edda Lou’s not here. I’ve got no reason to lie about that, and you can take a look for yourself, but I’m telling you I haven’t seen or heard from her since she made her grand announcement.”

Austin considered barging into the house, and he considered just what kind of fool that would make him. He wasn’t about to play the fool for a Longstreet. “She ain’t here, she ain’t nowhere in town. I tell you what I think, you sonofabitch, I think you talked her into going to one of those murder clinics to get rid of it.”

“Edda Lou and I haven’t talked about anything. If that’s what she’s done, she came up with it all on her own.”

He’d forgotten just how fast the big man could move. Before the last word was out of his mouth, Austin had leapt forward, grabbing him by the shirt and lifting him clean off the steps.

“Don’t you talk that way about my girl. She was a God-fearing Christian before she got hooked up with you. Look at you, nothing but a lazy, rutting pig living in your big, fine house with your drunk of a brother and whore of a sister.” Fine spit sprayed Tucker’s face as Austin’s skin turned a mottled, angry red. “You’ll rot in hell, the lot of you, just like your sin-soaked father.”

As a matter of course, Tucker preferred to talk, charm, or run his way out of confrontations. But there was always a point, no matter how he tried to prevent it, when pride and temper kicked in.

He plowed a fist into Austin’s midsection, surprising the older man enough to make him loosen his grip. “You listen to me, you sanctimonious bastard, you’re dealing with me, not my family. Just me. I told you once I’ll do right by Edda Lou, and I’m not telling you again. If you think I was the first one to get her on her back, then you’re crazier than I figured.” He was getting himself worked up, and knew better. But the embarrassment, the annoyance, and the insult outweighed caution. “And don’t think being lazy means stupid. I know damn well what she’s trying to do. If the pair of you think that screams and threats are going to have me dancing down the aisle, then think again.”

The muscles in Austin’s jaw quivered. “So, she’s good enough to fuck but not good enough to marry.”

“That says it plain enough.”

Tucker was quick enough to duck the first swing, but not the second. Austin’s ham-sized fist shot into his gut, stealing his breath and doubling him over. He took a rain of blows on the face and neck before he managed to find the wind to defend himself.

He tasted blood, smelled it. The fact that it was his own sent a ripe, dazzling fury pouring through him. He didn’t feel the pain when his knuckles rammed into Austin’s chin, but the power of the punch sang up his arm.

It felt good. Damn good.

A part of him continued to think with a silver-edged clarity. He had to stay on his feet. He would never match Austin for size or strength, and had to depend on agility and quickness. If he was brought down, and managed to get up again, he’d likely do so with broken bones and a bloody pulp for a face.

He took one just beneath the ear and heard the archangels sing.

Fists thudded against bone. Blood and sweat flew out in a grisly spray. As they grappled, lips peeled back in animal snarls, Tucker realized it wasn’t simply his pride he was defending, it was his life. There was a dull gleam of madness in Austin’s eyes that spoke more clearly than hard grunts or sneering curses. The sight of it had a snake of panic curling in Tucker’s gut.

His worst fears were realized when Austin came at him, head down, bulldozer body behind it. He let out a long triumphant cry as Tucker’s feet skidded on the gravel and he went flying backward into the peonies.

His wind was gone. He could hear the pathetic wheeze of air struggling to get down his throat and into his lungs. But he still had his fury, and he had fear. When he started to scrabble up, Austin fell on him, one beefy hand closing over Tucker’s throat, the other pummeling his kidneys.

Even as he levered a hand under Austin’s chin, frantically struggling to pry the head up and away, his vision dimmed. All he could see were those eyes,
bright now with the pleasure of the kill, blank with madness.

“Send you to Satan,” Austin chanted. “Send you to Satan. Should’ve killed you before, Beau. Should’ve done it.”

Feeling his life passing, Tucker went for the eyes.

Austin threw back his head and howled like a wounded cur. When his hand slipped off Tucker’s throat, Tucker sucked air in big greedy gulps that burned and revived.

“You crazy sonofabitch, I’m not my father.” He choked, gagged, and managed to haul himself to his hands and knees. He was terrified he would toss his breakfast into the crushed peonies. “Get the hell off my land.”

He turned his head and felt a moment’s thrill of satisfaction at seeing Austin’s bloodied face. He’d given as good as he’d got—and a man couldn’t ask for more. Unless it was a cool shower, an ice pack, and a bottle of aspirin. He started to sit back on his heels. Quick as a snake, Austin’s hand darted out for one of the heavy stones that circled the peonies.

“Good Christ” was all Tucker could manage as Austin levered the stone over his head.

The shotgun blast had them both jolting. Pellets skimmed through the peonies.

“I’ve got another full barrel, you bastard,” Della said from the porch. “And it’s aiming right at your useless dick. You put that stone back where you got it, and mighty quick, ’cause my finger’s dripping sweat.”

The madness was fading. Tucker could actually see it drain out of Austin’s eyes, to be replaced by a violent but somehow saner anger.

“It probably won’t kill you,” Della said conversationally. She was standing on the edge of the porch, the 30–30 resting comfortably on her shoulder, her eye at the sight and a grim smile on her face. “You might have another twenty years to pee in a plastic bag.”