Skeleton's Key (Delta Crossroads Trilogy, Book 2) (20 page)

“I thought you had moved on from Jaymee.”

“I have. I just stopped by to let her and Dani know what I’d found out.” Cage plumped the cushion with his fist. “And Dani had just come from Oak Lynn. Guess which asshole is back in town?”

Oren groaned. “Ben.”

“He’s involved in this somehow, I know it. Just haven’t figured out what he’s up to. And he’s already sniffing around Dani. Asked her out. Can you believe that?”

His father looked at him, hand hovering over his popcorn bowl, and then his face spread into a double-chinned smirk. “That’ll do it.”

“What?”

“Come on, boy.”

Cage pressed his head against the hard cushion and glared up at the ceiling. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sounds like you got a case of the jealousy.”

So what if he did? “Ben is a dickhead. And probably into some illegal stuff, maybe even murder. Dani doesn’t need to get mixed up with him. She might be stubborn as hell, but she’s a nice person.”

“You tell her that?”

Guilt prodded at him. “Not in so many words.”

Oren took another bite of popcorn and then drained his tea glass. “What
did
you say?”

“I may have mentioned she was incorrectly informed about the South, and that her interest in Ben was driven more by her misconceptions than actual attraction.”

His father’s belly bounced with laughter. “And I’m sure you said it just like that, too.”

Cage gritted his teeth. “Ben Moore. Of all the low–level, slick jerks around her for her to pine after.”

“She know you’re interested in her?”

“I’m not.”

“Don’t be a dumbass. You’re too old to play that game.”

He grunted but said nothing. His disgust over Dani’s interest in Ben had nothing to do with any sort of attraction. Ben caused a lot of pain in Roselea, had taken the Semple farm right out from under a good family who was just fighting to hang on to its heritage. And Dani didn’t seem like she was ready for any more anguish.

Another pang of remorse struck Cage as he remembered the hurt on her face before he’d left. Yes, she was overzealous and somewhat deluded about the Southern way of life, but her heart was in the right place, and that was getting more and more rare these days.

And she believed in his innocence, had even stood up to Landers for him.

“Damnit.” He wasn’t the sort of man to run off at the mouth without thinking. The events of the past few days had him twisted out of sorts. An image of Dani’s eyes filling with tears flooded his mind, and he sighed.

“You probably ought to apologize to the lady,” his father said.

“Yeah, I know.”

*     *     *

Hunger caused her
mind to wander. Laptop open and ignored, Dani’s gaze drifted to the rapidly filling diner seats. Roselea didn’t have a lot of restaurants, and Sallie’s home cooking supposedly made her kitchen the best in the city. Dani hoped the chicken and dumplings she’d ordered were as good as the hamburger she’d had during her dinner with Cage.

Irritation rolled through her. Try as she might, she couldn’t stop thinking about the intensity of his anger when he’d mocked her interest in the South. So what if she had a somewhat romanticized view of it? She’d done nothing but accept Ben Moore’s dinner offer. Cage had no reason to be jealous.

He’s not jealous, Dani reminded herself. He’s got a problem with Ben. That’s all.

A chorus of giggles caught her attention. A family of four had just come into Sallie’s, and the two children were being loud. Dani realized instantly they were tourists. The mother carried several shopping bags, and the father had the look of a harried man being dragged around against his will. As the family waited to be seated, the oldest child, a boy of maybe ten, complained that the houses all looked the same. And smelled old. His younger sister vehemently agreed.

“It’s too hot here,” the little girl whined. Her quick words stood out to Dani, their cadence a break in the rhythm she was slowly getting used to. This family was undoubtedly from somewhere above the Kentucky border, as Cage would say. “Why couldn’t we have gone somewhere fun like Disneyland? Or Sea World?”

“Your mother wanted to come down here,” their father said. “Enjoy the history.” He didn’t sound as though he were enjoying it. He checked his watch and then waved impatiently at Jaymee, who balanced three plates and a glass of water.

“I’ll be right with you,” she said.

“Slow,” the father said to the mother. “Everything down here is. Even the traffic moves like a snail.”

“Shush,” she said. “You’ll piss off the locals.”

He already had, Dani noticed. A couple around Dani’s age sat in the booth nearest the complaining family, and the woman’s lips were thinned, most likely in the effort to hold her tongue. The husband drank his tea and shook his head.

Dani knew what he was thinking: Yankees.

She was grateful when Jaymee seated the family at the opposite end of the diner, but her happiness was short-lived. A bell signaled another customer’s entrance, and her heart plummeted into her nervous stomach when Cage walked through the door. She tried to hunch down in the seat and hide behind her laptop, but his height made her an easy target.

He slipped into the seat across from her. “Figured you might be here.”

“Smart of you.”

“Wasn’t it? I might make detective yet.”

She refused to acknowledge his sarcasm, keeping her eyes on the computer screen. Too bad she couldn’t think straight enough to remember what she’d intended to research.

“I wanted to apologize.”

Dani cocked her head just enough to peek around the Mac’s screen. “Really?”

“Yeah. What I said at Jaymee’s, I was out of line. I let personal history between Ben Moore and me get in the way. I’m sorry.”

“I appreciate it.” She tapped her fingernail against the computer’s chrome surface, unable to meet Cage’s eyes. She wanted to tell him she wasn’t as one-dimensional as he apparently thought she was, that she realized the South wasn’t some scene out of a Faulkner novel. But her throat was too dry.

“So,” Cage said. “What are you working on?”

“Just some research.”

“On John James?”

Now she matched his gaze. “Going to make fun of me some more?”

“No.” He shrugged and then stretched a long, tanned arm over the back of the booth. He’d showered and changed, and the black t-shirt he wore hugged his muscular chest. She forced her eyes back onto his face.

“I don’t think the bones are his, but it can’t hurt to try to find out. And I get why you want to know.”

“Thank you.”

Jaymee stopped at their table. Fine lines around her mouth and eyes betrayed her frustration. “Swear to God, I’m about to spill hot gumbo on that damned Yankee dad. No offense, Dani.”

“None taken. He seems like an ass.”

“He’s typical,” Jaymee said. She nudged Cage’s shoulder. “You want anything?”

“Nah. Mom made chicken fried steak. I ate too much. I’ll just keep Dani company.”

“You do that.” She winked at Dani. “Your food should be out soon.” She hurried off, ponytail swishing. Cage watched her retreat, an expression Dani didn’t care for crossing his handsome face.

“You have feelings for her,” Dani said.

“Excuse me?”

“For Jaymee. It’s obvious.”

“We’ve been friends a long time.”

“But you’d like to be more.”

“Once upon a time, yes.” He looked embarrassed. “For a long time, actually.” He rested his chin on his hand, dragging his thumb over his lower lip, his eyes boring into Dani’s, “I’ve moved on.”

She swallowed. “That’s hard to do.”

“Tell me about it.”

“What happened to Jaymee?” Dani couldn’t stop the question. “With the Ballards? Ben mentioned it this afternoon, and Grace didn’t want to talk about it.”

Cage grimaced. “Ben would mention that.”

“I don’t want to argue about him,” Dani said. “And the rest is none of my business, I know. But this town seems to be up in everyone’s lives, so I figure I should join the club.”

“She’s had a rough life. Things happened that were out of her control, and she wound up in the middle of Rebecca Newton’s murder.”

“As a suspect?”

“No. But my sister and Rebecca were killed by the same person, and Jaymee…figured out who. That’s all I’m going to say,” Cage said. “You really want to know, you can look it up. But she’s trying to get past it.”

“And she’d be pissed at your gossiping.”

“Wouldn’t you be?” Cage tapped the laptop. “So where to first?”

Dani welcomed the subject change. “Well, Civil War records can be hard to come by. There are all sorts of personal accounts, of course, but all of the databases depend on whether or not the person’s paper trail survived. I’ve already tried a couple of places–familysearch.org and the National Archives.”

“Nothing?”

“Family search is like Ancestry.com. It’s usually family members tracing their lineage. Since the Laurents have no known living descendants, nothing is coming up.”

“And the National Archives don’t have anything? He served with General Lee in the Army of Northern Virginia. That’s pretty well documented.”

“You’re right. And they no doubt have something, just nothing online. I could order the microfilms of service records, but those will take weeks to get here.”

“Well, the historical foundation has records,” Cage said.

“They have records from Roselea. Back in those days, the records relied on information given to them by the family, which could be biased. I want some sort of non-local proof that John James served under Lee.”

“Meaning you want someone with authority to say you’re right.”

“That’s generally the best way to research.” Dani typed her last option into the search bar. “I’m hoping the National Parks Service will have the information. I was just about to check them out when you distracted me.”

“You looked like you were already distracted.”

She made a face. “People watching.”

“Good times. And the Park Service? Why would they have war records?”

The site had finally loaded. “Because, they have been working on the Soldiers and Sailors Civil War database for quite a while now. It’s just an index with pretty basic information, but the entries are supposed to be based on what’s listed in the National Archives. His full name was John James Laurent, right?”

“Far as I know.”

“He’s here. John James Laurent. Enlisted in 1860 with the Mississippi 18
^th
Infantry as a Lieutenant. Transferred in 1862 to the 21
^st
Infantry and then to the Army of Northern Virginia. Left Confederate Army as a Colonel.”

“So our history’s right,” Cage said. “Confirmed by your sources. Make you feel better?”

Dani was too distracted to worry about the hint of sarcasm in his voice. She closed the laptop. “I just don’t understand.”

“What?”

“Well, Roselea’s a small town. It was even smaller when John James died. And while I may not know as much about the South as I thought, I do know you all take your Civil War heroes very seriously.”

“That’s true.”

“Does John James have his own monument? There’s nothing in the park–what about the cemetery?

“Nope. We’ve only got one Civil War monument, and his name is on it.”

“But you’d think he’d have a special monument.” Dani rapped her fingernails against the table. “Why didn’t CaryAnne have something put up?”

“You’d have to ask her.” Cage grinned. “Since she’s not around, I’m not sure you’ll ever have the answer.”

“Unless we already do.”

“The bones.”

“Right. CaryAnne didn’t memorialize his grave because she didn’t want to draw attention to it. Because he isn’t there.”

“But how on earth are you ever going to prove–or disprove–that?”

“I have no idea.”

H
e insisted on
following Dani back to Magnolia House. It was the gentlemanly thing to do, Cage told her. He’d make sure she got inside safely, as if there were monsters hiding inside the old house.

Cage was fairly certain he just wanted to see her again.

But that made no sense. She came from a different world than he did, and she was everything he’d never been interested in. Dani was pretty enough but was too blond, too fair, with too many freckles on the bridge of her nose for his taste. And more bullheaded than any woman he’d ever met–including Jaymee.

Why couldn’t she trust the history he and Jaymee had given her? He supposed it was her academic nature, but Roselea’s hand-me-down stories were a source of pride for its residents–another Southern trait she was yet to fully understand. Instead of taking a hundred plus years of local teaching as fact, she’d needed an official government website for verification.

He didn’t understand her. But he couldn’t stop thinking about his dad’s comment, that Cage was jealous because he was interested in Dani.

His brain was murky, clogged with confusion. When he looked at Jaymee, he no longer felt sadness. Or jealousy. Even longing. He felt…guilt. But why should he? She was with Nick and had urged Cage to move on. He’d assumed that meant just accepting the two of them would never be together–that he would have to come to terms with the hollow ache that lived inside him. Go through life numb and consider that a win.