Fathers and Sons (Harlequin Super Romance) (23 page)

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Authors: Carolyn McSparren

BOOK: Fathers and Sons (Harlequin Super Romance)
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“I’d forgive the devil himself if he could get Jason out of this mess.”
“I’m doing my best, and so is Arnold. Don’t underestimate him. He’s the real mover and shaker. I just stand up in court and run my mouth. He’s the ventriloquist. I’m just the dummy.”
“Shoot, I don’t believe that for a second.” For the first time, Dub’s mouth twitched in a smile. “When you leaving?”
“Can’t wait, huh? Give me a couple more working days before you kick me out. The autopsy report’s due any minute from Memphis. With any luck it’ll have enough evidence to clear Jason.”
Dub sat up, his eyes narrowed. “How you figure that?”
“No idea, but what passed for an autopsy here didn’t do much except take blood and urine samples and say that Waneath appeared to be pregnant and to have met her death by blunt trauma, probably with a tire iron. Let’s hope a full autopsy by a qualified pathologist will add some facts to that. Facts that help rather than hurt—things like analysis of the rust on the tire iron. Blood-typing of the fetus. Worst case—we won’t learn anything helpful. Best case—we’ll have some indications leading to another suspect.”
“Can’t have that boy standing trial for something he didn’t do, even if it does keep him at Long Pond instead of California.”
“Keep your fingers crossed. Now, I really did come to see Neva.” She stood, but Dub did not stand with her. For a southern gentleman of his generation, that denoted sheer exhaustion or complete oblivion. She left him staring at the fire with his hands on his knees.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
 
K
ATE PULLED UP at the motel and picked up the flat package from the back seat. Even after her visit with Neva, she’d only been able to come up with a single present, and that one was for Arnold. In one of Athena’s small antique shops she’d found a framed Daumier print of a French nineteenth-century lawyer. Arnold would love it.
But she’d found nothing for David. She wondered for a moment how he’d react if she were to wrap herself up and tie a bow around her waist.
The problems between them hadn’t been expunged by one night of passion, no matter how glorious. She was afraid he was right when he said she could never fully trust him again. And that would destroy any chance they had for happiness together.
He didn’t deserve that.
“Mrs. Mulholland?”
Kate turned to see Myrlene trotting down the walkway waving a thick manila envelope. “Momma said this came in the mail for you. I thought you might want it right away.”
Kate took it. The autopsy report. “Thanks, Myrlene. I definitely do.”
“You look like you could use an extra hand,” Myrlene said. “Here, let me take that.” She took Arnold’s print while Kate dug in her purse for the room key.
“Thanks. Just put it on the bed.”
“Okay.” Myrlene lingered, obviously looking for a little gossip.
Kate, who longed to slit open that envelope, tried to keep the impatience out of her voice. “You know that Jason’s out working with Jimmy?”
“Yeah. He called me at lunch. Going to take most of the day to replace that flywheel. Mr. Canfield ought to buy a new truck. That one’s got almost two hundred thousand miles on it.”
“No doubt you’re right.” Kate smiled, but did not sit down. She fought the urge to shove Myrlene out the door and slam it behind her.
“Well,” Myrlene said. “Guess I’ll get back to work. Saw you with Mr. Canfield this morning. He sure is a hunk.” She turned with her hand on the doorknob. “Funny, the most eligible hunks in town are three generations of the same family.” She shrugged, smiled and left.
Kate grabbed the phone and dialed Arnold’s room. “Wake up, sleeping beauty. Autopsy report’s here.”
“Right. Don’t open it until I get my pants on.”
 
DAVID STOPPED by the cotton gin, saw that there was no one there—not surprising. The cotton had all been baled and shipped. No reason to work night and day this late in the year. Maintenance could start on Monday morning. He had a list on his computer of parts to be ordered for the farm equipment. He drove around the barren fields aimlessly, unable to focus on anything except Kate.
Finally, he pulled into a small grocery and bought himself a cold drink and a ham sandwich. Then he drove down by the lake to eat a solitary lunch. He did love winter in the South. Plenty of people hated it. Barren trees, too much mud, weather that flip-flopped from warm and sunny to black glare ice and sleet in an hour. He didn’t want to leave all this for life in a city. But he also didn’t want to lose Kate again.
He sighed, gathered up the remnants of his meal and dropped everything into a trash barrel. Then he climbed back into Dub’s car. As he leaned over to slide behind the wheel, a flash of red caught his eye. Dub was downright finicky about his cars. David reached down in front of the passenger seat and picked up the small red oval object.
For a moment he had no idea what it was. Then he felt a rush of adrenaline as his subconscious mind identified it. He’d seen that color enough times, seen talons like that every time Waneath came over to visit Jason. It was an acrylic fingernail. Waneath’s color.
He closed his eyes and felt that sandwich threaten to come back up.
Waneath had lost a fingernail the night she died. The sheriff had scoured the spot where Jason parked, scoured the crime scene, but had not found it. He predicated that she had lost it fighting with her attacker.
Now here it was, lying on the floor of Dub’s car. That could mean only one thing. Waneath had been in this car the night she died.
But why? When? Why had Dub not mentioned it? Jason never drove the Cadillac. Besides, he’d been driving his own car that night.
Thoughts tumbled through his brain as he started the car and backed out into the road.
It was time for Dub to answer a few questions.
 
“GIVE IT HERE!” Arnold said, and reached for the still-unopened envelope.
“Well, don’t stand there, open it!” Kate said as she plumped down on her bed. Arnold pulled the sheaf of papers and photographs from the envelope and ran his eye down them quickly.
“She was barely two months pregnant,” Arnold said. “That lets Jason off the hook. Oh, God, look at what the first autopsy missed.”
“What?”
“The pregnancy. It was ectopic.” He dropped the papers on the bed and walked out of the room.
Kate found him standing across the parking lot staring up at the bare December trees.
He turned to look at her as though he didn’t see her. “Sorry, Kate.”
“Arnold, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. Sometimes I don’t think about Shirley for weeks, and I think I’m getting better, and then something like this...”
“Can you face it? Do you want to go back to Atlanta?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He put his arm around her.
The gesture startled her. He was not a touchy person. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him hard. She felt his body stiffen into resistance, then he relaxed and gripped her back.
After a moment he broke the hug and stepped back. “Won’t that raise a few Athena eyebrows!” He glanced at the motel-office window. The curtain fluttered, and he curled his lip at it. “It will be all over town in a nanosecond that Jason’s lawyers are canoodling on the lawn.”
She linked her arm through his. “Passion in the pines?” “Let’s get back to work.” They started back to the room, its door still open.
“So, what else did the death doctors in Memphis find out about our corpse?” Arnold picked up the report again.
Kate noted that his hands shook slightly. He was considerably more upset than he let on, but she took her cue from him. He wanted glib, then glib it would be.
“I’ll be damned!” he said. He shoved Kate over and sat beside her. “Look at this. There was pink dust in her hair.”
Kate grabbed the report from his hand and ran her eye down it. Then she glanced up at Arnold. “We’ve been seeing this all wrong.”
“We’re not the only ones. You know what this could mean, don’t you?”
“I’m afraid I do.”
“We have an obligation to our client. We have to clear him any way we can. We’ll have to turn this over to the D.A.”
“Not until we’re certain of what we’re talking about.” She stood and pulled open the bureau drawer. She pulled out the crime-scene photos and tossed them on the bed. “Now these pictures begin to make a little sense. Look at them.”
Arnold picked up the photos and fanned through them. “What am I looking for?”
“Her knees. And her feet and legs.”
“So? She apparently walked away without her panty hose.”
“They were in Jason’s car, but we already know that. That’s not what I mean.” Kate leaned over the bed. “I never really paid attention before. See the bruises on her knees? They were made before she died or the blood wouldn’t have pooled there the way it did. And the spots of mud and dirt on her legs? And the scratches? They’re just visible, but the autopsy makes a note that she has several small scratches from briars or something on her ankles and calves.”
“Yeah?”
“So look at her shoes, Arnold. They’re perfectly clean. Polished, nearly new leather pumps.”
“I’m not with you.”
Kate took a deep breath. “Her legs are dirty, the soles of her feet are filthy. Her knees are bruised. The crime-scene reports mud
inside
the shoes, Arnold, but the shoes themselves are clean on the outside. Wherever she walked, she walked barefoot.”
“The last of November?”
“It was warm, remember—well into the sixties even that late at night. Otherwise I doubt she and Jason would have been too comfortable making love in the back seat of his car.”
“He never said she was barefoot when she walked away from him.”
“No, he didn’t. We’ll have to ask him, but I don’t think she was. Even mad as he was, I doubt he’d have let her go tramping off down the road in her bare feet. Come on, Arnold, we need to take a ride out to where Jason left Waneath and then out to Long Pond. I have a very, very bad feeling about this.”
 
DAVID STOOD OVER Dub, who had not moved since Kate left. He held out his hand. On his palm lay the small red fingernail.
“What the hell’s that?” Dub asked.
“One of Waneath’s fake nails,” David said. “Guess where I found it?”
Dub blinked, then shrugged. “No idea.”
“I found it on the floor of your car.”
“So?”
“She lost it the night she died. That means she was in your car, Dub. Why?”
“What?” Dub sprang from the chair, his fists clenched at his sides. “What the hell are you talking about, boy?”
“Don’t lie to me, Dub,” David said, his anger fighting with his weariness and despair. “Did you kill her?”
Dub’s face turned a fiery red. “You’re crazy! Why would I kill her? I didn’t even see her that night.”
David shook his head. “Then somebody drove your car, and I don’t think that’s possible.” He looked into Dub’s eyes. The older man dropped his. He was breathing hard. “She came to you, didn’t she, to ask you to drive her home? Why on earth would you kill her, Dub?”
“Stop saying that!” Dub was almost howling. “I didn’t kill her. It wasn’t like that!”
David leaned his backside against Dub’s desk. “Then you know who did, and it wasn’t Jason. How in hell could you put him through this? I thought we all loved each other.”
“Oh, right, you love me, Jason loves me.” Dub threw up his hands and strode over to the fireplace to stare up at the portrait. “You’ve been a damn prisoner for twenty years just waiting for your chance to break out of jail.” He turned malevolent eyes toward David. “Now you’ve got your chance—you and that ex-wife of yours. God, Melba hated that woman!”
“Melba hated Kate because she knew Kate was the only woman I ever loved, ever could love.” David heard his own voice rising. “Hated Kate because she felt guilty over what she’d done to her, to me, to us. Kate did nothing to her, nothing except fall into the trap she set. So did I.” He ran his hand over his head. “Hell, so did Melba. It was a bigger trap for her than for me. You want to feel sorry for somebody, feel sorry for your daughter—the woman you taught that it didn’t matter who you trampled all over as long as you got what you wanted.”
“I’ve never done that. I’ve treated you like the son I never had.”
“Yes, and I’ve paid you back a hundred, a thousandfold, and glad to do it. Because I respected you, respected what you’d made of Long Pond and of yourself. Because however mistaken you were, you loved Melba, and I thought you loved Jason.”
“I do!” It was a wail.
“That’s your idea of love? To let him go to jail for something you did?”
“He’d never have gone to jail. I wouldn’t have let that happen.”
“But you’d let him sweat bullets, sit in that jail, go up before a judge in handcuffs and chains, put him through hell?”
“Yes!” Dub shouted. “Yes. Oh, I didn’t like it, but then I thought, hell, the boy’s had it too easy all these years—it’s all been handed to him on a silver platter. Doesn’t appreciate it, never did. Doesn’t appreciate Long Pond. Wants to go off and make fool movies. Maybe a couple of nights in jail, maybe a little worry’ll knock that nonsense right out of his head. Know who his real family is, where his loyalties lie. He can’t go back to that California school now, can he? He’ll go to Mississippi State and take agriculture and come home to Long Pond. Do what he should have done all along.” The face he turned to David was stricken. “I had to give up my dreams for Long Pond. Why the hell shouldn’t he?”
“You really believe that?”
“Yes.” Dub said, and suddenly he thrust his great silver head straight up and pulled himself erect. He stood in front of that portrait of his wife and daughter like a prince or a duke. “This is his destiny, the same way it’s yours. I promised my daddy, and I won’t break my promise.”
“So you killed Waneath to keep Jason in Athena?” David shook his head. Could Dub be this crazy?
“I tell you, I didn’t kill the woman!”
“Well, somebody sure as hell did.”
“No, they didn’t.” Suddenly Dub collapsed and sank into the wing chair on the side of the fireplace. He dropped his head into his hands. “It was an accident.”

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