Exposure (3 page)

"Grace Melina Sands," Emma said with stern displeasure, "what have I told you about opening hotel-room doors or running out of them without me?"

"Woon't no caws or twucks, Mommy." Big tears rose in her eyes, and her bottom lip started to tremble. She dug her head harder into her mother's breast.

Elvis watched in horror. Jesus. He hadn't meant to get the kid in trouble. "This is a real safe place, Mrs. Sands," he hastened to assure Emma, his gaze bouncing from the child's miserable expression to Emma's face. A fat tear rolled down the baby's face as he shifted uncomfortably. Oh, God. He couldn't stand this. "She'd never come to any harm out in the hall—hell, no one here would dream of hurting her."

Gracie blinked at him in wonder, her tears instantly drying up. She might be too young to articulate the concept, but she recognized being defended when she heard it.

Emma considered him also. Privately, she was rather amused by the panic one little girl's tears could cause in such a huge, stern man. Clearly this guy was not a father. "Do you live here, Sheriff?"

"Yes, ma'am. Across the hall and down a couple in G." It was convenient to work and saved him the hassle of having to cook for himself or keep up a house and yard.

Emma decided to let them both off the hook. "Well, I suppose the situation here is a little different from some of the motels we've stayed at," she allowed. "And since we're going to be staying for at least a week . . ." She looked down at Gracie again. "We'll discuss the new rules in the morning, Miss Sands."

Sitting up straighter, she rolled her daughter off her torso and onto the mattress next to her. "I think we might as well put off your bath until then, too. It's been a long day. Meanwhile, why don't you go pick out your bedtime story. It's time to get you into your jammies."

Gracie scrambled off the bed and trotted over to the stack of books on the wide sill of the window that overlooked the town square. Out in the hallway Elvis shifted to his other foot. "Well, uh, I'll just close this and be on my way," he said. He started to do that, then hesitated for an instant, giving Emma an intent, unsmiling stare. "Good night, Mrs. Sands."

"Good night, Sheriff."

The door closed softly.

Gracie was back in moments, leaving a messy pile of discarded books on the floor beneath the window sill. Her gaze went expectantly to the doorway, and she stopped in her tracks when she saw the closed portal. She turned disappointed eyes on her mother. "Where'd man go, Maman? "

"Sheriff Donnelly went to his own room, angel. Come on over here. Let's gel your jammies on."

Gracie obediently climbed up onto the bed, and Emma began removing her clothes. "But doesn't he wanna wead Pokey Puppy?"

"I don't think he knows too much about reading to little girls," Emma said as she set aside Gracie's shoes and socks and unhooked her OshKosh overall straps, then peeled the bib down. She whipped the little ruffled-neck T-shirt over Gracie's head. "You have to go potty, sweetie?"

"Uh huh."

Emma had to wrestle the temptation to take over as she watched her daughter pull the Barney pajamas up her sturdy little body. For she did it slowly. Soooo slowly. "Okay, then," she said, rubbing her itchy palms against the seat of her pants. "Whataya say we collect your toothbrush and toothpaste and do this all in one trip."

As usual, since the day almost two weeks ago when she'd grabbed Gracie and run, Emma managed to hold it together as long as her daughter was awake to command all her attention. It was in the quiet hours when Gracie slept that she invariably fell apart.

She stood at the second-story window, arms wrapped around herself as she stared down at the dimly lighted square. Like most small towns, Port Flannery seemed to roll up its sidewalks shortly after nightfall. Oh, she imagined the tavern she'd seen down on the harbor was probably still doing a booming business, but up here it was quiet and still. The only sign of movement down on the shadowy grass common was a mongrel dog sniffing around the gazebo. As she watched he lifted his leg and anointed a patch of flowers that fronted the latticework. Emma pulled the shade and turned away from the window.

She was trying so hard to ignore the stack of videos in the bag on the shelf in the closet that it was self-defeating. The videos drew her, just as they'd done that day in Grant's library while she'd waited for him to arrive home. The day they had turned her entire life inside out.

She hadn't set out to invade his privacy that day. Ah, Dieu, Emma thought, trying to control a little bubble of hysteria, his privacy. Exhaling a bitter little breath, she hugged herself against a pervasive chill. There was an irony for you.

The fact remained, however, that she had merely been killing time that afternoon, not looking to pry into areas she had no business intruding upon. She'd seen Grant retrieve and replace the key to the cabinet a dozen times; but she had always assumed the tapes were records of business transactions and had respected the fact that they were kept behind lock and key for a purpose. That afternoon she had simply been passing the time by reading the dates on the video box spines. March 14, 1982 had naturally drawn her attention.

That was the day she had met the man who would become the closest thing she'd ever known to a father. The day she'd tried to steal Grant Woodard's Silver Cloud Rolls-Royce.

She wasn't supposed to have been involved. Big Eddy let her hang around the shop pestering him, the other mechanic, and the two auto-body men, but he was adamant about keeping her on the sidelines when it came to actually stealing the cars they chopped. He always said he might be nothing but a car thief, but he was damned if she was going to become one as well.

Eddy was funny that way. He made her go to school, made her brush her teeth morning and night, didn't let the other men in the shop talk too dirty around her. He taught her to drive a car before she was twelve, showed her how to break down an engine, pound out dents, and paint an automobile. But he kept her apart from the real meat and potatoes of the operation. He wouldn't let her do any of the fun stuff at all.

So she decided to heist this one on her own.

They'd seen the car often on the fringes of the Garden District, and because her brother and the men who worked with him raved about it every time they saw it, Emma just naturally assumed it would be a car they'd chose to steal. She wanted to beat them to the punch, to present it to them as a fait accompli, an acquisition she could point to as proof positive that she could handle this aspect of the job as well as any guy could.

Carefully obeying all speed limits, she was driving it back to Big Eddy's shop when a large black sedan forced her to the side of the road. She hadn't been in the car five minutes.

Before she had time to react, two very large men with thick necks and flat, cold eyes climbed out of the sedan and crossed over to rip open the driver's door. One of them stood to one side, his back to the car, his eyes scanning the area while the other leaned into the automobile. He stared at her without expression for a moment, then reached in and removed the keys from the ignition. "Get outta the car, sister."

They bundled her into the sedan and drove without speaking for several miles, eventually parking in the underground garage of a modern downtown office building. The two men then escorted her to an elevator and rode with her in silence to the seventeenth floor. After a delay in the reception area that lasted only the time it took to mutter a few low-voiced words into a telephone on the mahogany desk, she was ushered into an inner sanctum. When the door closed behind her, her guards remained on the other side of it.

Emma twitched her shoulders and straightened her clothing, swiping at streaky blond bangs with the back of her hand as she looked around the plush office and then out the floor-to-ceiling windows across the room to the spectacular view beyond. Huh. She wasn't scared.

Her heart slammed up against the wall of her chest when the high-backed forest green leather chair suddenly swiveled around to face her. A middle-aged man, distinguished and rich looking, regarded her soberly. Emma knuckled her hair away from her eyes again, raised her chin, and stared back at him.

"So," he finally said conversationally, "this is what a car thief looks like."

Considering how badly she'd wanted to do everything the men in Eddy's shop did, the depth of her hatred for the appellation surprised Emma. But she sucked on her lower lip to disguise its sudden trembling and swaggered around the room, picking up and discarding objets d'art that even she could tell were priceless. Turning one over in her hands, she examined it with the same lack of awe she'd display for a dime-store figurine before finally placing it back on the shelf where she'd found it. She glanced over her shoulder at the man across the room. "I prefer to call it auto liberation."

"Call it what you like, child," he said mildly. "It still carries five to ten in the penitentiary."

She had to squeeze hard to prevent her bladder from emptying itself where she stood. But she hadn't played poker with Big Eddy and his cronies for the past couple of years for nothing. She turned to face her adversary fully. "Get serious, cher," she managed to scoff with credible scorn. "I'm fourteen years old, and that makes me a minor. Juvie's don't go to the pen, least not unless they murder someone."

"I see." The man picked up his desk phone and turned it around to face her. Tapping the receiver with expensively manicured fingertips, he suggested coolly, "In that case I suggest you place a call to your lawyer."

"Huh?"

"A big-time professional auto liberator such as yourself surely has a high-dollar mouthpiece on retainer. Don't you?"

She didn't reply. She simply stared at him with her brave belligerent eyes and trembling lower lip, and he heaved a sigh. "Call your parents," he suggested in a resigned voice.

She shuffled her feet and rolled her shoulders. "Don't have any," she muttered sulkily.

"Do you have a guardian?"

Emma picked up the phone and punched out the numbers to Eddy's garage.

An hour later a white-faced Eddy was hustling her out of Grant Woodard's office. His grip had her up on her toes and trotting alongside him in order to prevent her arm from being wrenched from its shoulder socket. When the elevator doors slid open Eddy hurled her inside with such force she cannoned into the mirrored back wall. "Hey," she exclaimed indignantly, grabbing at the handrail to keep her balance. Rubbing her bruised arm, she turned to face her brother.

"A Rolls-Royce." he snarled. He was across the elevator in a flash, looming over her. As the doors swooshed closed he was already bending down to thrust his face aggressively close to hers. "Against everything I've ever wished for you, Emma Terese Robescheaux, you went out and thugged a car.

And not just a regular, easily turned around Camaro or Jeep, oh no." He swore with creative fluency in Cajun French. "No, you gotta heist yourself a Silver Cloud, Rolls-fuckin'-Royce!"

"Well y'all always raved on about it so," she yelled back at him, but she was savagely interrupted when he grabbed her shoulders and shook her hard once. And then again. Soon her head was flopping.

"Hell, yeah, I raved on," he agreed between tightly clenched teeth. "It's probably one of the best-made automobiles in the world, But just how the hell did you think we'd get rid of it? Mon Dieu!" he growled impatiently. "That's not even the point. I've told you and I've told you, Emma: you're bettah than a common car thief. By God, I oughtta turn you over my knee and blistah your butt!" Instead he jerked her into his arms and held her so tightly she could barely breath. "Jesus, Em."

The pounding of his heart beneath her ear gave Emma the courage to admit, "I was scared, Eddy. I was so scared." His arms tightened even more. "I'm sorry he yelled at you," she whispered. "That wasn't fair."

Mr. Woodard had been so low-key with her that it had caught her by surprise to hear him light into Eddy the moment her brother had arrived. He'd dressed him down for a solid forty-five minutes before he'd finally let both of them go.

To her surprise, however, Eddy pulled back and looked down into her face. "No," he disagreed. "I deserved everything he said. And we got off light, sugah. That man could have made a whole lotta trouble for the two of us."

Watching her fourteen-year-old self now on the VCR, seeing the vulnerability and the fear so obvious behind the bravado and knowing that her entire life had been violated by hidden cameras, Emma had to wonder just how much trouble Grant actually had made for them.

It made her go cold, because even now, knowing what she did, suspecting other things, she still couldn't begin to estimate the damage he might have wrought. She thought she knew the worst.

But, ah, bon Dieu, what if she didn't?

Grade leaned heavily against Emma's calves for the third time in ten minutes. She emitted a heartfelt sigh. "Do sumpin' now, Maman? "

Emma just barely managed to suppress a sigh of her own. Replacing the spark plug she had removed with a fresh one, she lifted her upper body out from under the hood of Ruby's car and looked down at her bored daughter. "Soon, angel pie," she promised. "Maman's got to finish tuning up Miss Ruby's car first."

"Issa dumb caw," Gracie muttered under her breath. Emma gritted her teeth and disconnected the rest of the old spark plugs. She hadn't considered this aspect of the situation when she'd been so busy patting herself on the back last night for scoring a paying job.

"Hello," said a tentative feminine voice and Emma raised her head. Gracie's weight lifted from her legs.

Trying to locate the source of the voice, Emma's gaze skimmed the neatly kept back wall of the boarding house. No one stood at the back door or emerged out of the shadowy stairwell that led down to the basement entrance. Her gaze moved on to the little she could see of the narrow path that hugged the side of the building. It connected the small back parking lot, where she was currently working on Ruby's car, to the main walk at the front of the establishment. As she watched, a pretty brown-haired woman of approximately her own age stepped out of the shadows and walked toward her. She hesitated by the dumpster, smiling uncertainly at Emma.

"I hope I'm not intruding," she said softly.

"No, of course not," Emma replied politely, although she was beginning to wonder if this was going to be one of those jobs destined for constant interruption. Then she shook off the tension. When it came right down to it, it wasn't as if she were racing to beat the clock. She straightened out from under the hood again.

"Oh, good." The woman's voice lost its tentative quality and she walked over to Emma. She stopped, feet together, posture erect, and thrust out her hand. "Clare Mackey."

Emma regarded her with interest. Showing the other woman her own surgically gloved hand, she didn't offer it. "Sorry, I'm filthy," she said, then inquired, "as in the general store Mackeys?"

"Yes, 'fraid so."

"It's a very nice shop," Emma said sincerely. "I bought all this stuff there this morning." She indicated the sack of car parts next to the front tire and the empty boxes littering the lot at her feet. Then Gracie's squirming, and the way she was all but dancing in place awaiting an introduction, made her recollect her manners. "Oh, I'm sorry chere," she said. "I'm Emma Sands, and this is my daughter Gracie. Gracie, say hello to Mrs. Mackey."

Gracie needed no second urging. "Hi!" she said, staring up at the newcomer with delight. "I'm twee."

Clare Mackey squatted down to place their faces on a more equitable level. "Hello, Gracie," she replied solemnly. "I'm Clare Mackey. What a very pretty jacket you have on."

Gracie glanced down to admire her windbreaker for a second before raising her eyes back up to her new acquaintance. "Pwetty," she agreed. "It's lellow."

"Yes, I can see that. Yellow's a very good color on you."

Gracie preened and Emma gave Clare a wry grin. "Where were you this morning when I was fighting with her about putting it on? Y'all's June here is much cooler than we're accustomed to, but June is June as far as Gracie's concerned, and she thought she should be wearin' next to nothin'."

"It's summoo time, Maman," Gracie insisted, picking up her end of this morning's argument. Then she let it drop. The windbreaker debate was old news; she had more important things on her mind. "My fishies are lellow, too," she told Clare, picking up a foot and thrusting it toward her new acquaintance.

She teetered in place. "Some of 'em are. The west of 'em are owange."

Clare studied the hand-painted fish on the tiny sneaker. "Um hmm," she finally murmured with judicious admiration. "Most attractive." She looked up at Emma. "Listen, I couldn't help but overhear your conversation a few minutes ago, and I wondered if perhaps you'd allow me to entertain your daughter while you finish tuning up Ruby's car."

Emma could see it was a sincerely tendered offer, lacking dark or perverse undertones, but her immediate reaction was to snatch Gracie out of the woman's reach. The reason she and her daughter were on the run was all too predominant in her consciousness every waking hour of the day to allow her the luxury of taking anyone strictly at face value. "Oh, that's very generous of you, Mrs. Mackey," she replied uncomfortably, "but I don't think . . ."

"I meant right here in the parking lot where you could still keep your eye on her," Clare hurried to explain. "Of course you wouldn't allow her to go traipsing off with a virtual stranger. But I'd be happy to keep her occupied while you work on Ruby's car. And I'd very much enjoy spending a little time getting to know her."

"Well, in that case . . . thank you." And don't you feel like ten kinds of a fool, cherie. The smile Emma drummed up was a weak one. "That would be very helpful."

By contrast Clare's smile was unforced and dazzling. "It's settled then. And, please, won't you call me Clare?"

For the first time since the other woman had appeared at the corner of the boarding house Emma gave her a natural smile, the infectious wide and friendly grin that her daughter had inherited. "Thank you, Clare," she reiterated, this time more comfortably. "And I'm Emma."

The tune-up went much more smoothly after that. Emma listened to Clare and Gracie as she worked on Ruby's car and occasionally she even came up for air long enough to add a comment of her own.

She was nearly done, pouring in the first quart of new oil, when Elvis Donnelly sauntered around the side of the building.

For a man so big, he moved like a cat. His walk was fluid, silent; padding across the parking lot, he came to a halt in front of Clare and Gracie. He gazed down at them. "Hey, Clare," he said neutrally.

She peered up at him and shaded her eyes with a hand. "Hey, Elvis."

He tipped his chin to indicate Gracie. "See you've got yourself a brand new friend." Then he turned to Emma and nodded. "Mrs. Sands."

"Hello, Sheriff Donnelly," she said cheerfully, wondering if the man ever smiled. "I really do wish you would call me Emma, cher. Mrs. Sands is so formal." Setting the empty oil can on the tarmac at her feet, she stooped to puncture a full one with the pouring spout. Looking up at him, she added for no good reason that she could think of, "Besides, I don't think of myself as a Mrs. Charlie—urn, that was Mr. Sands—died before Gracie was even born." Then she shrugged uncomfortably, wondering why she'd felt compelled to tell him that. "At any rate, it's a title I didn't have much time to get accustomed to."

Elvis' stomach clenched and he took an involuntary step in her direction before he caught himself.

Don't be a fool, man; she's just giving you a little general information. Look at her, for Christ's sake. Then go home and take a good look in the mirror.

A little hand tugged at the knee of his Levies. "Shewiff? How come you don't say hi to me?"

He looked down at the little girl with the loopy blond curls staring up at him with big brown eyes and felt something melt in his chest. "Hiya kid," he said softly.

"Hi," she said brightly. "My name is Gwacie, and I'm fwee years owd, you know. One, two, fwee." She ticked out her fingers for him to count, and after he'd nodded and said, "Uh huh," uncomfortably, she held out her arms to him. "Up," she demanded.

He looked in panic first to her mother and then to Clare, but both women simply returned his look with interested speculation, as if wondering how he'd handle the situation. He turned back to Gracie. "I'm, uh, on duty now," he told her.

And discovered that excuse cut no ice. "Up!"

He stooped down and picked her up, carefully scooping his prosthesis under her little butt and placing his hand on her back to keep her steady as he rose to his feet.

She looked down at the hook that stuck out next to her hip. "Where's yoah hand, Shewiff?"

"I lost it in an explosion."

"Oh." Experimentally, she poked at the hook with her little fingers and he snapped it opened and closed. Gracie snatched back her hand with a screech, then cautiously reached out to poke at the foreign apparatus once again. Again he snapped the hook open and closed, and jerking her fingers out of harm's way she giggled. She looked up at him. "You funny man," she said on a deep chuckle.

Elvis could honestly say that wouldn't be the first characteristic most people would come up with to describe him. Tucking his chin into his neck he watched her closely as she occupied herself checking out the bits and pieces pinned to his khaki shirt. She bobbed her torso up and down on her perch as her dimpled fingers explored the grooves on his gleaming badge and then moved on to slip under the epauletlike loops of material on his shoulders. She pulled a pen out of his breast pocket, turned it end for end in examination, and then restored it to the pocket upside down. She moved on to slowly trace a tiny fingernail along the engraving on his name tag.

"Do you know how to read?" Elvis asked her. What with programs like Sesame Street and stuff, he figured kids these days probably learned that kind of thing pretty young.

"Uh huh." She skipped her finger along his title, which was etched white into the brown plastic pin, softly punching first Sheriff, then E., then Donnelly. "It say Me . . . Donald's . . . today!"

A corner of Elvis' mouth tipped up in a crooked smile, exposing several white teeth, and Emma stared. She'd been slowly pouring the new oil into the crankcase and watching him with her daughter, fascinated by the gingerly way he held her and the way his ruined face softened when he looked at her. It occurred to her for the first time that the sheriff had probably been quite a handsome man at one time. Actually, he still was; the livid scar just had a tendency to snag one's attention first. But if one took the time to look beyond that . . . Well. Seeing that one-sided smile now, spare as it was, made muscles deep in her belly clench and release.

Then she sucked in her breath and held it, for her daughter's attention had locked onto the angry red scar on the sheriff's face. Gracie pressed her shins against Elvis hard stomach and bobbed on his arm a couple more times as she considered it. He continued to hold her as carefully as ever, but he'd gone very still and once again his face was coolly expressionless.

Finally, Gracie raised a soft little hand to carefully pat the raised scar tissue from zig to zag. "You get owie in a 'splosion, too?"

"Yeah."

She peered with concern up into Elvis' electric blue eyes. "Does it hoot?"

"Not so much any more." And the pain hadn't been the worst of it anyhow. What had really set his teeth on edge was the thick, numb feeling he'd experienced from eye socket to chin before the severed nerves had finally knit back together again. That, and the way people stared at it.

Placing her little hands on the broad ridge of his khaki-covered shoulders Gracie pressed her shins more firmly into hard abdominal muscle and raised her rump up off his arm. Leaning forward, she gave his cheek, where the scar bisected it, an enthusiastic if slightly damp kiss. She plopped back onto her perch and smiled happily up into Elvis' face. "All bettew," she said. Then she blew a raspberry on his throat just under the angle of his jaw and wriggling, commanded peremptorily, "Down now."

As he set her gently back onto her feet, for the first time in a pretty lonely life Elvis Donnelly thought he just might be in love.