Paradise County (40 page)

More wagons were arriving behind them. Alex could hear the growl of tractors and the rattle of wooden wagon beds as the clumsy vehicles climbed the hill, then the sudden cessation of motion-related noise as they stopped. Shouts and shrieks of laughter and the thud of running feet replaced the previous sounds as each wagon’s occupants plunged on foot toward the bonfire, engulfing Alex and the others, who were still moving at a walk, in wave after wave of celebrating teens. The good news was, the surging crowd separated them from the Whelans before they ever even reached the bottom of the hill. The bad news was, the crowd itself was impossible to escape.

“Give me an
R!”

“
R!”

“Give me an
O!”

“
O!”

“Give me a
C!”

“
C!”

The cheers were deafening. Instead of going directly toward the bonfire Joe skirted the growing crowd around it. Long tables had been set up at the far end of the field, Alex saw. Covered with white paper tablecloths, they held everything from raw hot dogs ready to be skewered and roasted over the fire to soft drinks and ice to a mound of Oreo cookies. Adults worked behind the tables. Most were women, although there were a few men. A line of cars and trucks was parked off to one side, which explained how the workers had beaten the first hay wagon to the field.

“Hungry?” Joe asked.

Alex realized that she hadn’t eaten, but the long answer was, not for food.

“No,” she said.

“Me neither.”

They kept walking. Alex stumbled over a rough spot in the grass for what must have been the dozenth time. Joe’s hand tightened around hers, keeping her from falling to her knees.

“Princess, do you
own
any tennis shoes?”

Knowing that he was taking a swipe at her heels, Alex smiled sweetly at him. “Why, yes, I do. I wear them when I play tennis.”

“You might try breaking them out for occasions like pep rallies.”

“If I had known that I’d be outside hiking through cow pastures, I might have. On second thought, combat boots seem more appropriate. Do you think that maybe you could slow down a little bit? Then my high heels might not be a problem.”

He laughed, and slowed his pace marginally. “Am I walking too fast? Sorry. I’m trying to get out of the way before the whole town spots us and comes over to talk.”

That goal was so in keeping with Alex’s own desires that she was perfectly willing to walk as fast as he thought was necessary to accomplish it, high heels or no. “In that case, I take it back. Lead on.”

“Eli’s getting an award tonight, so I want to hang around and watch. And Jenny’s singing. After that …”

“After that?” she asked when he broke off.

“After that we can do whatever we want.” They had reached a spot near the woods where the shadow of the tall trees blended with the darkness of the night to offer a degree of extra privacy. The glow from the fire provided some illumination, and there were a few other people in the vicinity, but still the spot was on the edge of the crowd, and away from the back-and-forth traffic to the food tables.

“And that would be?” Alex asked, looking up at him as they stopped.

“I don’t know. Maybe we could grab a hot dog or something.” He grinned at her, carried her hand to his mouth in a gesture that left her melting inside, then shifted his attention to the front of the bonfire where a man with a bullhorn was shouting something that Alex could not, at the moment, understand.

The knuckle he’d kissed burned. She shivered. Joe glanced down at her.

“Cold?” he asked, his gaze moving disparagingly over her extremely chic and expensive blazer and sweater. It was clear from his expression that his opinion of her choice of clothing for the evening’s event matched his opinion of her choice of shoes.

She wasn’t cold, not really. Although the night had turned chilly she was burning up inside.

But she had no intention of telling him that. Yet.

“A little,” she lied.

“Here.” Clearly distracted by the hoopla going on in front of the bonfire—cloth dummies were being thrown on it as if it were some kind of auto-da-fé—he let go of her hand, slid out of his jacket, and dropped it over her shoulders.

As the slithery blue folds enveloped her, Alex didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Here she was, in her elegant Jil Sander outfit, her Manolo Blahnik heels sinking into the dirt of a cow pasture in the middle of nowhere, draped in the ugliest coat she had ever seen in her life, watching a bizarre ritual that she cared absolutely nothing about.

And the sad part about it was, she was actually glad to be there.

The presence of the man beside her meant she was exactly where she wanted to be.

Grasping the edges of Joe’s jacket, she pulled them closer so that the jacket wouldn’t slide off. It was still warm from the heat of his body, and it smelled of him. Alex inhaled, then smiled a little at her own idiocy.

“Go, Eli!” her sex-bomb hollered, cupping his hands around his mouth. Surfacing briefly, Alex realized that Eli now stood in front of the cheering crowd, accepting something that looked like a—canned ham? It didn’t make much sense, but then she’d missed every word the master of ceremonies (or whatever the man with the bullhorn was called) had said. She clapped dutifully as Eli held the canned ham (surely not!) over his head like a coveted trophy, then winced as Joe let loose with a piercing wolf whistle almost in her ear.

When her ears had stopped ringing, she nudged him with an elbow.

“Tell me something,” she said when he looked down at her inquiringly. “Did they just give Eli a canned ham?”

“You’re not paying attention,” Joe chided.

“So did they or didn’t they?”

“They did. It’s the annual award for showmanship on the basketball court. Meaning Eli’s a ham, get it? He dribbles behind his back a lot.”

“Oh, I see,” Alex said. “You must be very proud.”

Joe grinned.

The cheerleaders cavorted, the crowd yelled some more, and somebody tapped Alex on the shoulder. She glanced around, surprised.

“Don’t tell me you’re a Rockets fan?” It was the dentist, the one she had met on her never-to-be-forgotten mission to fire Joe, with a thin thirty-something brunette in tow. The woman smiled at Alex. Alex smiled back.

“Looks like it,” Alex said lamely.

“Hey, Ben, they’re gonna be something this year, don’t you think?” Joe had looked around and discovered the newcomers.

“Goin’ all the way.”

“Alex, you remember Ben? This is his wife, Tracy. Their boy Steve is our sixth man.”

Whatever, Alex thought, but she smiled as if she knew just what Joe was talking about. Really, if she wasn’t almost dizzy with desire for the
man she’d be tempted to hit him over the head. She was not standing out here up to her ankles in cow pies just to listen to him talk about basketball.

“This is Miss Haywood, Tracy,” Ben said to his wife. Tracy’s gaze slid from Alex’s face down to Joe’s coat, which Alex still clutched closed with both hands.

“I guessed,” she said. Something in her tone made Alex wonder again just what, exactly, was being said about her around town. Probably, she thought, she didn’t want to know.

“Alex,” Alex said, letting go of one side of Joe’s coat to hold out her hand.

“Tracy.” They shook hands, and Ben and Tracy turned to watch the proceedings with them. A group of about thirty little girls was lining up in front of the bonfire now, and Alex realized that Jenny was getting ready to sing.

In the darkness, it was hard to differentiate one from another. Alex had to look really, really hard to find Jenny. She was in the middle row, third from the left. With the firelight playing over her, it was impossible to discern the pink streaks in her hair, or anything except the most general outline of her dress.

“See why I wasn’t too worried?” Joe said in her ear, then clapped wildly as the girls finished “America the Beautiful” and launched into “My Old Kentucky Home.”

When the group’s performance was finished, the girls ran off. They all clapped again, and remarked on how beautiful the singing had been.

“Dad, can I have five bucks?” It was Josh, swaggering up with a group of his friends. Alex hadn’t seen him previously; he and his friends must have been on a different hay wagon. Tonight he had a heavy gold chain around his neck and a ski cap pulled low over his ears. Alex had to smile, even as she glanced at Joe to see how he would react to his son’s punk look. It didn’t seem to bother him. He forked over some money, and the boys disappeared.

“Alex, are you hungry? ’Scuse us, guys, I think we’re going to go scare up some food.”

Before Alex could reply, Joe grabbed her elbow through the coat and turned her in the direction of the food tables.

“See you later!”

“Bye!”

With his friends’ good-byes echoing in their ears, Alex was marched away.

“Talk about Grand Central Station,” Joe muttered under his breath, skirting the tree line while heading in the general direction of the white-covered tables. Then he looked down at her.

“Hungry yet?”

“Not really.”

“Good,” he said, and, grabbing her hand, he pulled her into the woods.

Thirty-six

U
p until about forty minutes previously, if it hadn’t been the worst day of his life it had been right up there in the top ten, Joe thought. It had taken a while for the ramifications of what Tommy had told him to sink in. When it did, the horror of the situation made him literally sick to his stomach: he’d had to stop and buy some Tums on the way to his next meeting. Laura’s purse and shoes found, the former stained with what was possibly human blood; a garbage bag full of ashes—Laura reduced to ashes?
Laura?
Her face—her young face, full and rosy and laughing, the way she had looked back when he’d first met her—kept appearing in his mind’s eye. God, as a boy and young man he had loved her madly. They’d all warned him against marrying her, his friends, his dad, his mom, and Carol. A party girl, they’d called her, and they’d been exactly right. But he’d been so sure that what he and Laura had was unlike anything anyone had ever felt before that he hadn’t listened, he’d married her—and then of course he’d reaped what he had sowed. By the time he’d filed for divorce, he had hated her. Eventually he had quit hating her, just like, years earlier, he had once quit loving her. But now, long after every emotion he had ever felt for her had died stone cold dead, the thought of Laura reduced to a garbage bag full of ashes could still make him sick.

If Laura
was
in that bag—and she couldn’t be, things like that just didn’t happen around here—then she sure hadn’t gotten in there by herself, as Tommy had said. Somebody had put her there. Somebody had killed her, and put her body in that bag.

That meant that a murder had been committed. Someone had murdered Laura, apparently years ago. In Paradise County? No way.

He
sure hadn’t killed her, although as Rob had warned him the spouse was always the prime suspect, and then there was the history of his relationship with Laura, too. Everybody for miles around knew about that. Fortunately, everybody knew him, too. He didn’t anticipate being charged with Laura’s murder. He didn’t think.

But if there had been a murder, and he hadn’t done it, then who had?

The thought, when he bent it around his friends and neighbors, was mind-boggling.

But then, Laura had been wild, out of control, into men and drugs. Maybe she’d gotten into something way over her head, some drug deal or something… .

God, he hoped not. That would just be piling it on. More muck for the gossips to rake over when, if, it all came out.

Whatever else Laura was or had been, she remained the mother of his kids.

God, if this thing were true, if it was Laura in that bag—and he prayed to God it wasn’t—he would have to tell his kids.

Wait, he’d told himself when the thought with its attendant hideous images had first occurred to him, just wait. Right now, all anybody knew was that an old pair of shoes and a purse of Laura’s with unidentified stains on it had been found in a garbage bag in a field, along with another garbage bag containing bones and hair. Tommy wasn’t even positively sure yet that the remains were human, let alone Laura’s.

No need to jump the gun. When he knew something for sure, then he could get sick to his stomach. Then he could tell his kids.

For now, the best thing to do, the only thing to do, was try not to think about it, and wait.

About an hour and a half after his meeting with Tommy had concluded,
he’d met with a conference room full of bankers and other investors in Louisville. They’d listened courteously to his plans for buying some of the Whistledown breeding stock and establishing his own racing stable. They’d gone over his business proposal with a fine-tooth comb. Then they’d bottom-lined him.

It was a good plan, a workable plan, a plan they’d be willing to back—as long as he assumed a fair portion of the risk. What that meant, in the end, was that as well as his expertise, labor, and current facilities, he was going to have to pony up about a quarter million dollars in cash.