Cheri on Top (3 page)

J.J. didn’t know how to answer her. All he could do was stare back at Cheri. She had the same soft, tawny brown eyes she’d always had, and they were wide with wonder at the moment. God, she was still so beautiful.

J.J. had made so many missteps in his effort to forget her. The biggest disaster had been Tanyalee, of course. But with Cheri now standing in front of him, just inches from his reach, he knew with certainty that it had all been in vain. He still wanted her. And he’d missed her lovely face, her sense of humor, her sweet mouth. He’d missed her something fierce.

“Oh, just go fuck yourself, DeCourcy,” that sweet mouth said. Cheri laughed and tossed her hair. “You know, you could’ve at least
pretended
to be decent about this. It’s not like I wanted to come here. Granddaddy begged me. I don’t relish the idea of being your boss. I would have been fine with never seeing you again as long as I lived. Get the hell over yourself.”

He had no time to react. Her hand was already on its way to making contact with his cheek. He couldn’t blame her. In fact, she should have smacked him upside the head that awful day in Tampa more than five years ago. God, how it pained him to remember. He’d just finished confessing his love for Cheri when Tanyalee called with the joyful news—she was pregnant with his baby. Cheri had been too stunned to slap him. Too horrified to move. Too angry to cry. And the next time he saw her was at the wedding, where she wouldn’t even look at him. It was as if he didn’t exist, as if Tanyalee were walking down the aisle with an empty tuxedo.

There had been no such hesitation today, and as Cheri’s hand sliced through the air and headed for his face, J.J. grabbed her wrist.

Their eyes locked. They both breathed hard. She yanked her arm and tried to spin away. He tugged back. She lost her balance and fell against him.

“Don’t touch me,” she hissed.

He stared at her open lips. Despite everything, he wanted her. Still. And now that she was here, warm and alive and in his grasp, he had no idea how to make it right. He didn’t even know where to begin.

One thing was for sure—he was fixin’ to kiss her.

*   *   *

Oh,
hell,
no.

Cherise felt herself frozen where she stood, her wrist imprisoned in J.J.’s grip, her knees starting to shake, her nose full of the crisp, clean scent of J.J. DeCourcy. She hadn’t been this close to him since that fateful day in Tampa, when J.J. had gone from charmer to snake in a matter of seconds.

And after that, she’d sworn to herself that she’d never get this close to him again.

But here she was, her lips about to meet his, a full-scale war going on between her body and her brain. Cheri tried to pull away. He wouldn’t let her go. Her skin was on fire beneath his fingers. Her mouth had gone dry. And Cheri’s brain circled and whirled and twisted around one single thought.
You ripped my heart to pieces! You married my sister! You married Tanyalee when you were supposed to be mine!

“My sister! Oh, dear God, my sister!”

Those words hadn’t come from Cheri, yet she’d surely heard them. She gasped and spun around, pulling from J.J.’s grasp in time to watch a huge, muddy form begin to push up from the mud.

Chaos exploded all around them. Everyone began to shout and move into action. Cheri didn’t know exactly what she was witnessing. Was that really the missing woman’s car? Was the old lady her sister? What the hell was going on here?

Then, with a sudden, sucking whoosh of air and mud, an entire car-shaped blob popped out of the ooze. Some of the recovery crew broke out in cheers.

J.J. moved close to her ear and whispered, “That right there, Cheri, is the sound of the past surrendering its secrets.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Cherise saw him flip open his reporter’s notebook and hastily scrawl some words down. She nearly laughed aloud. If anyone were already an expert on the subject of secrets, it would be J.J. DeCourcy.

“Has a kind of Edgar Allan Poe feel to it, don’t you think?”

She ignored him, fascinated by the sight of the car, swinging from the end of a huge chain like a monster-sized mud dauber nest.

“Who’s that tiny older lady?” she asked.

“Barbara Jean Smoot’s sister, Carlotta Smoot McCoy.”

That’s when the woman began to sob, bending in half at the waist with agony. Cheri gasped in concern. “I’m going to go to her. She needs somebody to lean on.”

J.J. responded but his words were overpowered by Carlotta’s loudest scream yet.
“Barbara Jean! Oh, God, my sweet sister!”

They watched as Carlotta ran under the police tape. She began clomping into the mud in a pair of worn house slippers. She didn’t get far. Several deputies went in after her, dragging her out of the mire and carting her back to dry soil.

Carlotta’s feet kicked in the air, flinging mud as she hollered, “HY-9871! Oh, it’s Barbara Jean! I know it is! Just check!”

Cherise looked at J.J.

“Yep,” he said. “That was the plate on Barbara Jean Smoot’s missing Impala.”

“Just check and see!” Carlotta screamed as she was restrained by deputies. “Oh, please, God! It’s Barbara Jean! Just check the license plate!”

Cheri took a single step toward the lady when the car began to sway back and forth on the chain, moving through the air, destined for a tow truck backed up to the edge of the lakebed. Thick globs of muck rained down from the undercarriage and the chain groaned and creaked, its metal-on-metal screech painful to the ears.

“Stay back,” J.J. said, placing his hand on her shoulder. “It’s not safe.”

“Good Lord!” Cherise shrugged away from J.J.’s touch. What a homecoming this was turning out to be! Cherise had no sooner crossed the Bigler city line than she nearly kissed a man she despised while a ghost got ripped from her grave! She hoped to God this wasn’t some kind of omen.

As a kid, Cherise had loved sitting on her daddy’s lap and listening to him and Granddaddy Garland talk about what might have happened to Barbara Jean. The newspapermen would stretch out in their rusted lawn chairs by the edge of Newberry Lake and rehash the story, the evidence, the possibilities, as Cherise cuddled into her daddy’s chest. The story of Barbara Jean Smoot was Bigler’s biggest news story ever, they’d say. It was the town’s most enduring mystery. And as they talked, Cherise would let her imagination run free. Oh, how she’d thought the tale of Barbara Jean was the best scary story she’d ever heard.

When she’d gotten older, long after her parents were gone, she and Candy would retell the story for the thrill of its high drama—a girl, not much older than they were, too beautiful for their sleepy mountain town; a man seen running away from her car before it disappeared into the lake; and a handful of people who swore they could still see the figure of a woman in a dress and tight blond ponytail, pacing the dock at night, her head bent as if she were scanning the dark water for the clues to her own death.

In her secret heart, Cherise had always believed she had something in common with the Lady of the Lake. Cherise knew what it felt like to walk around with a heart and a spirit about to bust through the seams of this stupid little town. If Barbara Jean had done herself in—or run away without having the decency to say good-bye—Cherise wouldn’t have blamed her one bit.

She sighed deeply. Yes, the dock and water had disappeared from Paw Paw Lake, but in her mind she could see the ghostly vision of a woman, searching in the dark for the pieces to her own puzzle. And the image was sharp enough to make her shudder.

*   *   *

J.J. studied Cheri as she stood with her arms clasped tight around her middle, shivering like she was cold. Turner had been right—she’d gotten a little too thin, though what remained looked damn fine packed into that short skirt.

She began to walk off.

“Cheri?”

She didn’t answer. He watched her march back to her decidedly low-end Toyota sedan, nearly taking a header into the dirt in her rush to get away from him and/or the drama of the crime scene.

J.J. wiped his hand roughly across his lips, his brain in flames, his head ready to explode. If he’d followed through with what he’d wanted—if he’d kissed her—it would have been the stupidest damn thing anyone had ever done in the course of human history. It would have ruined whatever remote chance he still might have to win her.

But.

Oh.

Her lips. How he wanted to taste them again.

“Back off!”

J.J. pulled his stare away from Cheri’s behind. Turner had just shouted for everyone to move away from the Impala, now being secured to the tow truck. The sheriff stepped forward and hoisted himself up on the truck bed, and, using a latex-gloved hand, he began to shove away forty years’ worth of mud from the car’s plate.

Carlotta screamed again. J.J. made his way toward the woman, knowing Cheri had been right—little Carlotta Smoot McCoy needed somebody to stand next to her, somebody who wasn’t wearing a uniform. And since J.J. was responsible for her being here, he knew it was the decent thing to do.

“Ms. McCoy. Is there anything—”

“I have nothing to say to you newspaper people!” She wagged a knobby finger in J.J.’s face and her eyes bugged out. “You did this to her! You left her to rot!
Murderers!
”

He took a step back, bewildered by her outburst, and kept an eye on her as the deputies led her away to a squad car. J.J.’s gaze wandered to the banged-up Toyota. Cheri hadn’t made much progress. She sat in her car, forehead against the steering wheel in defeat, trying to get the car to start. He listened to the engine grind away at itself, never even coming close to turning over, and called her a tow.

Chapter 3

It was a short drive from Paw Paw Lake into town, and Cherise spent it peering over the dirty passenger window of the tow truck, taking in the sights and sounds of the slice of Cataloochee County she knew best.

The sun was sparkling overhead and the late-spring trees were busting out into full leaf. As they rolled into town down the twisting state highway, Cherise noted the air smelled the same—clean and fragrant with an undertone of decaying forest and cold, clear creek water. They drove past the familiar concrete behemoth paper and fiber factory, out of commission since her childhood but still taking up space at the entrance to town. They drove up Main, past the liquor store, the hairdresser’s, the post office, and a string of mountain crafts stores that catered to the tourists on their way to the nearby Smoky Mountains National Park. The old tannery down by the river was still up and running, and the Piggly Wiggly had undergone a no-frills renovation since her last visit, and Cherise had to admire the grocery’s effort. Coming up on the right was the old three-story red brick
Bugle
building, still dapper and slickly groomed despite its age. And of course, hovering over everything were the mountains—solid but always changing, never-ending, looming but friendly at the same time, immobile waves rolling through a color palette of greens, blues, purples and browns, as familiar to Cherise as the sound of her own name.

It took about two minutes to pass through four of the six traffic lights in downtown Bigler. They turned right at the corner of Main and Boscombe, then took a left onto Willamette.

Cherise grinned at the sight of her grandfather and great-aunt waiting on the front porch, waving and smiling as the tow truck pulled into the drive. Aside from the fact that they were both a little whiter and decidedly more stooped, the moment could have been right out of Cherise’s high school days.

Little about the place had changed. Aunt Viv’s clapboard two-story house was still painted the hideous mauve color Candy long ago dubbed funeral parlor pink. The edges of the tidy front lawn were still bordered by pink and white peonies crippled by the weight of their own gawdy blossoms, and the porch was trimmed in a wild explosion of white rhododendron flowers. The same giant poplar towered over the property, leaving most of the house in shade.

“Thank you,” Cherise told the driver as she held out her last two twenties. “This is all I have … I mean, all the cash I have on me at the moment.”

The previously silent driver shook his head. “Already paid for, miss,” he said, jumping out of the truck.

Cherise exited the passenger side and headed toward the house. She managed a few steps up the drive when she stopped cold. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at what she saw. There he was—still at his politically incorrect post in front of the rhododendrons—Viv’s concrete lawn jockey. He was outfitted in the same bright red topcoat and the same white gloves, but the jockey had received a Caucasian makeover at some point in the past. The mauve paint that graced the house now coated his once dark cheeks, forehead, chin, and lips.

Cherise had to press her eyes closed for a moment and tell herself that Viv must have meant well. Somebody probably told her that having Mr. Bojangles in the front yard wasn’t exactly acceptable these days, and this was her way of evolving. Still … the expression “shoot me now” didn’t even begin to cover it.

Cherise was back in Bigler.

“Oh, now just look at you!” Viv hollered, holding her arms out wide, her striped blouse bursting at the buttons. “Come on up here, Cheri! Hurry up, now! I’ve missed you something terrible!”

Granddaddy Garland held on to the railing and took a cautious step down. “Look who it is! The new publisher of the
Bugle
!” He held his arms out, too. “Get up here and give us a hug.”

Cheri hurried toward them, and was immediately encased in kisses and squeezes. Aunt Viv smelled the same as she always had—a combination of Jean Naté, vodka, and sausage gravy with too much pepper. Granddaddy felt like a collection of bird bones under his short-sleeved dress shirt. Cherise was startled at how skinny he’d become—all the Newberry brawn was gone.

“Are you sure you’re not sick or anything?” Cherise escaped the hugs so she could study Granddaddy. His eyes were watery. Skin hung in crinkled swags from his cheeks and jowls. “Are you okay?”

“Lord-a-mighty!” His laugh was the same, and it rang out through the tree branches. “Hell no, I’m not okay. I’m about to turn eighty stinkin’ years old! I’m falling apart! And there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it!”

Viv grabbed Cherise by the elbow and pulled her toward the front door. “Garland, you’re going to scare the girl before she even gets unpacked.” Viv’s arm went around her waist. “We’re all getting old, sweetie, but we’re healthy as can be expected. The Newberrys live long lives, you know. Always have, and always will.”

Cherise had just barely stepped over the threshold when those words came out of Viv’s mouth. She wouldn’t correct her, of course. There was no need. Right there on the foyer wall hung Cherise’s father’s high school graduation portrait, and he was gazing down at them, a sardonic glint in his eye, gently reminding them that he’d bucked the family trend.

Loyal Newberry sported a buzz cut in the colorized photo, along with a bow tie and Buddy Holly glasses. He possessed a smile that could knock the wind out of a person.

By thirty-one, he was dead, along with Cherise’s mother, Melanie, and the Newberry girls came to live with Aunt Vivienne in the pink house on Willamette. Cherise had been seven. Tanyalee, five.

The official story was that the couple just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Cherise knew better. It was her fault they were dead. She’d even heard Aunt Viv say as much. Cherise often wondered if her life would have been different if only she hadn’t chosen that particular night to sneak downstairs and eavesdrop on the grown-ups. Would life have been easier if she’d never overheard that particular conversation, those particular words?

“Now you come on in here and relax yourself some,” Viv said. “I’ll get you a sweet tea and a slice of peach cobbler.” Though Viv was only a few years younger than her brother, she was still a sturdy woman, and she shoved Cherise down into the armchair by the side window. This wasn’t exactly unexpected. Viv had never gently “guided” anyone toward anything, whether it was a chair, a meal, a prom dress, or a man.

Cherise looked around the front parlor. She could have been inside a time capsule. The same white lace sheers hung at the bay windows. The same Hallmark Precious Moments knickknacks adorned the side tables. The same embroidered doilies were laid upon every upholstered head or armrest in the room.

Granddaddy situated himself on one end of the sofa and shook his head. “She’ll never change,” he said, wistfully. “Thinks she’s in charge of the whole damn world.”

Viv called out from the kitchen. “I’ll holler down to Hazel and have her send up Tater Wayne! He’ll unload your suitcases and take ’em up to the guest room! He’s going to be so excited to see you after all this time!”

Cherise smiled bravely at her grandfather.

“Tater’s been taking care of the place for Viv the last few years, mowing and weed-whacking and doing repairs she can’t manage herself.” He glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice so his sister wouldn’t hear. “She’s slowing down some. I won’t let her drive anymore. And since I had to let Tater go at the paper during the layoffs, it seemed like a perfect solution.” Granddaddy lowered his voice another notch. “Tater didn’t have much luck finding another job—what with his eyeball flopping around the way it does. It makes most folks a little uncomfortable.”

Cherise nodded. “I remember.” Of course she did. She’d known Tommy “Tater” Wayne and his wayward left eyeball since he moved to Bigler in the second grade.

“As a matter of fact, I’ve arranged for him to help you clear out the lake house.” Granddaddy leaned forward and balanced his scrawny elbows on his knees. “It may take a few days to tidy things up over there.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. Granted, the last time Cherise had set foot in the lake house was a dozen years before, but she’d always cherished her memories of the old cottage and its rough-hewn beams, quaint but spotless kitchen, and shiny pine floors. It was a magical, light-filled place where the lake breezes blew the curtains, the screen door slammed all day, and the crickets and frogs ruled the nights. It was where she’d experienced moments of pure happiness and belonging before her parents died.

Maybe she’d been foolish to assume Granddaddy and Aunt Viv had managed to keep it up all these years. Maybe it was nothing like her memories.

“You said it just needed a good sweeping,” Cherise pointed out. “I thought you meant how it is at the beginning of every summer season.”

Granddaddy nodded soberly. “I did say that, yes I did, but I might have misstated the situation a bit. See, we’ve not spent much time out there lately.”

“Lately?”

“Well, let’s see. Tanyalee and J.J. only lived there for six months, so that would make it ’round about five and a half years since anyone’s been out there.”

Cherise let the back of her head fall against the doily, a sense of dread settling over her. She’d been in town fifteen minutes and she’d seen a ghost pulled from a slime pit, discovered her grandfather was at death’s door, and nearly locked lips with Satan himself.

And now Granddaddy admitted he’d lied to her, that the lake house—part of the package he’d used to lure her back to Bigler—had been abandoned for over five years and, worse still, had been the unholy love nest of her sister and J.J. prior to that. She wasn’t aware the couple had set up housekeeping there, and never would have agreed to this if she had.

Oh, God—Candy had been right. She’d warned Cherise that the reality of her homecoming wouldn’t be the pretty picture Garland had painted over the phone. And now Cherise began to wonder if she could count on anything he’d promised, including the paycheck.

What the hell was I thinking?

Her body began to tremble. She let out a small squeal of desperation.

“We’re sure happy to have you back,” Granddaddy said. Then he hollered over his shoulder. “I’ll take some of that sweet tea!”

Viv scurried back to the living room with a tray, shaking her head. “He’s a sly one,” she said to Cherise. “He’s waiting for the day I forget he’s diabetic. Here you are, dear.” She handed Cherise a glass decorated with yellow daylilies and green leaves, the same tumblers she’d had since Cherise was a kid. That was followed by a giant slice of warm peach cobbler, vanilla ice cream melting over its golden brown crust.

“Diabetic?” Cherise asked.

“And here’s yours, Garland. Unsweetened as always.” Viv handed him an identical glass followed by a microscopic piece of cobbler, then sat on the opposite end of the sofa.

“The doctor told me about three years ago, but I’m managing just fine,” he told Cherise with a wink.

“Well.” Aunt Viv clasped her hands on her lap and smiled. Now that her aunt had stopped moving, Cherise could get a good look at her outfit. Pink pedal pushers. A tucked-in pink-and-white-striped blouse. A pink sun visor. White tennies with pink laces. Pink lipstick.

One thing could be said for Viv—she was consistent.

“You look wonderful, Cheri,” she pronounced. “So skinny you’d have to run around in the shower to get wet, but we’ll fix that up in no time.”

“I thought I’d take you down to the
Bugle
this afternoon, give you the grand tour,” Granddaddy said.

“Uh … okay.” A tour? Granddaddy knew she could find her way around the nineteenth-century office building blindfolded. From her toddler years on, Cherise, Tanyalee, and Candy had had the run of the place with his blessing. There wasn’t a better hide-and-seek location in all of western North Carolina. But if he wanted to give her a tour, she’d go on a tour.

Cherise took a sip of tea, then buried her fork in the cobbler. She brought it to her mouth, clasped her lips around the warm explosion of texture, and tasted the sweet, tart, rich perfection.

Oh, dear God
. She had to close her eyes for a moment as the pleasure blasted through her taste buds, leaving her dizzy. She opened her eyes and dug in for another bite.

No wonder Garland had diabetes.

Eight bites later, Cherise placed the empty dessert plate on the side table. It was then that she noticed Granddaddy and Aunt Viv staring at her in silence, shamelessly scouring her from her heels to her hair, naked curiosity in their eyes.

“I ran into some commotion off Highway 25 on my way into town.” Cherise offered that tidbit as she wiped her mouth with a napkin, hoping the conversation would end her elderly relatives’ intense scrutiny of her appearance, not to mention her eating habits.

“You don’t say?” Granddaddy asked. “Over at Wim’s construction site, no doubt. There are always earth movers and trucks going in and out.”

“No,” Cherise said, noting that her grandfather must not have heard the news. Maybe he’d already vacated the publisher’s chair in spirit if not in body. When she was a kid, nothing happened in Bigler without him knowing. “I think it’s a crime scene. Turner’s there with a bunch of his deputies. They’re pulling an old car out of the muck, and I think it might be the car the police were looking for all those years ago, you know, Barbara Jean Smoot from the the ‘Lady of the Lake’ legend.”

Every muscle clinging to Granddaddy’s frail frame tensed. His eyes went wide beneath his bushy white brows. “I better call J.J.”

“He’s already there.”

Cherise didn’t miss the quick glance between her relatives.

“How nice he was there to welcome you to town, then,” Viv said.

Cherise laughed, thinking that J.J. had been as welcoming as a sex-deprived pit bull. “A veritable one-man Welcome Wagon,” she said.

“Breaking news, eh? All the more reason to head down to the paper.” Granddaddy pushed himself up from the couch with some assistance from Viv, which he tried to shake off.

“I surely don’t think Cheri wants to go to work right off the bat.” Aunt Viv stood with him, steadying him at the elbow. “At least let the girl unpack and freshen up. And her car is out of commission. Do you think we should give her the Cadillac to drive while her little foreign car gets repaired?”