The Homecoming (42 page)

In a last-ditch rush, Sax and Cole and many of the vets Kara had come to know had put the final table in place before the rehearsal dinner, which was also taking place at Bon Temps. Kara was not at all surprised when Cole and Kelli asked all the workers to join them for the dinner.

When they left the final Mardi Gras mask for Trey to hang on the wall, Kara didn’t think she’d ever seen her son so excited. Or proud.

“Thank you,” she said to Sax as celebratory high fives were exchanged all around.

“Thank
you
,” he said back. Then he kissed her, at which point Trey dramatically covered his eyes, which had all the vets roaring with laughter.

Kara found it odd that she’d grown up in this town and had been sheriff for almost seven months, but this was the first time that she’d actually felt a true part of it.

She also found the occasion a little bittersweet, since she’d just hired a retired detective from Corvallis to fill John’s shoes—not that she believed that would ever be entirely possible. This was the last occasion in possibly a long time that she, Trey, Sax, and her mother would be together again.

“I’m going to miss you,” she told her mother as they stood together out on the patio beneath the purple-green-and-gold neon BON TEMPS sign.

“I’m going to miss you, too.” She put her arm around Kara’s waist and drew her closer as they looked out at the lights of the Shelter Bay Bridge. “It took us a while, but I think we’ve made it.”

“Like a sitcom mother and daughter. But better.”

“Much, much better,” Faith agreed. “Actually, my life right now is so much better than any fantasy.”

“You and John are good together.”

“We are.” Faith paused. “You don’t think it’s too soon? After your father’s death?”

“Who’s to say what too soon is?” Kara thought back on the conversation she’d had with Sax about her mother and John leaving on their shared adventure. “You were a wonderful wife. You were lucky to have Dad and he was fortunate to have you. But life moves on, and I couldn’t be happier for you. Even though I do wish you two could’ve found an adventure closer to home.”

They’d been assigned to Mali, in Africa, as part of a worldwide malaria relief effort.

“We’ll visit often,” Faith assured her. “No way would I miss watching my grandson grow up. Or your wedding.”

“I don’t remember saying anything about getting married.”

“It’s obvious you and Sax love each other. Marriage is the next logical step.” Another pause. “John and I were thinking of having a Christmas wedding ourselves. Or maybe on New Year’s Eve. We’ll already be back here, all together, and celebrating it would add to the season’s festivities.”

“That’s a great idea.”

“I was also thinking that just perhaps . . . we might make it a double wedding.”

Kara and Sax hadn’t talked about marriage. But that didn’t mean that Kara hadn’t been thinking about it.

“Unless you wouldn’t want to share the day,” her mother said when she didn’t immediately respond.

“It sounds lovely.” Her mother hadn’t been there for her first marriage. The idea of sharing the occasion with her the second time around was surprisingly appealing. “Maybe just a bit premature.”

“You’ve had a lot on your plate,” Faith said understandingly. “You’re right to take your time. And fortunately, thanks to Sax’s restoring Bon Temps, you don’t have to worry about a venue.”

“There is that.”

“There’s something I want you to know,” Faith said. She turned toward Kara, her expression as serious as Kara had ever seen it. Even more than when they were discussing the possibility of Kara’s father being murdered. “I won’t deny that your having Sax in your life, and in Trey’s life, makes my leaving a little easier. But”—she held up a hand as if expecting Kara to argue—“that’s only because I know he makes you happy. I also know that you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself and my grandson. Because you are, honestly, the strongest woman I know.”

Okay
. That did it. Kara felt her eyes misting up. “Thank you. That means a lot. Especially coming from the strongest woman
I
know.”

“Well, then.” Her mother smiled. “Now that we’ve expressed our mutual admiration, what would you say to taking our magic bracelets inside and finding our men?”

After an embrace that, for the first time Kara could remember, didn’t feel the least bit awkward, Kara said, “Sounds like a plan.”

“Do I have to wear a tie?” Trey asked, coming close to a whine.

“If I can wear a neck strangler, you can put up with it for few hours,” Sax told him without pity. “Here. Come into the bathroom and let me show you how to tie it.”

“Don’t see why I need to learn. Only person in this town who ever wears one is stupid Mr. Gardner.” Who, needless to say, had not been invited to the wedding.

“There’s a big wide world outside Shelter Bay,” Sax pointed out. “Some places folks actually think ties are a big deal. And if you become a Marine, like your dad, you’ll definitely have to know how to tie a squared-away knot.”

“Okay,” Kara’s son said on a long, drawn-out sigh of surrender.

Sax put Trey in front of the mirror, stood behind him, and looped around his neck the piece of polyester printed with whales that Trey had picked out for himself on yesterday’s shopping expedition.

“We’ll do a four-in-hand. Because that’s the easiest to start with.” Sax put his hands over Trey’s so they could tie it together. “You start with the wide part, here. Where the orca is.” He began crossing it over the shorter, narrower part of the tie.

“Now turn it back underneath.”

Trey’s teeth were worrying his bottom lip as he concentrated. “Like this?”

“Perfect.” Sax grinned up at Kara. “Kid’s as good at this as he is pounding a nail. . . . Now, bring that orca back around the front again.”

A few steps later, her son was standing there in the proper slacks and dress shoes he’d also objected to her buying, his corn-silk cowlicks slicked down, and in his face, so like his father’s, Kara saw the man he would become.

“You look so handsome,” she said, sniffling a little. “So grown-up.”

“Geez, Mom.” Trey looked over at Sax. “She’s gonna cry.”

“Women get emotional on wedding days.”

“But Mom’s not getting married.”

“Doesn’t matter. That’s the way they’re wired.”

“I’m glad I’m a guy.”

Sax ruffled the hair Kara had so carefully combed only minutes earlier. “Me, too.”

As if Mother Nature were smiling on the happy couple, the day of Cole and Kelli’s wedding had dawned bright and sunny.

The ceremony, limited to family and close friends, was held in the intimate parlor of the Shelter Bay lighthouse keeper’s cottage, which had been restored with antiques replicating how the keeper’s family would have lived during the 1870s.

Cole introduced a black-haired stranger with unsettling steel gray eyes as Gabriel St. James, a former Marine war photojournalist and friend, who Kara couldn’t help noticing didn’t speak more than a dozen words the entire day. And he certainly didn’t appear to be in a very celebratory mood.

The bride was beautiful, as all brides should be. The food—all but the cupcakes, which were presented in a cake-shaped display and proved as delicious as they’d been billed—had been prepared by the groom’s mother, and it was the best Kara had ever eaten. And the music, performed by the groom’s family, was definitely enjoyed by all.

Watching the man she loved, jacket off now, tie loosened, hips swiveling, strumming that sexy red electric guitar, sent Kara’s thoughts spinning back to the night of the prom, when he’d wowed all the girls, undoubtedly made more than a few boys jealous as hell, and for a fleeting second she’d actually forgotten until now, had had her thinking,
Mine.

And now he was.

As if reading her thoughts, he looked straight at her, winked, and just as he’d done the night of the prom, he handed his guitar off to another band member so he could dance with her.

“Did I tell you how sexy you look in that dress?” he asked as they swayed to a slow ballad. His lips brushed her temple, which had healed without leaving any scar. His warm breath feathered her hair.

“About a dozen times.” It was a flowered silk sundress with thin straps, a low back, and a short, flirty skirt that showed off her legs. With it she was wearing a pair of ripe peach-colored skyscraper sandals. She leaned against his solid strength and inhaled the seductive male scent not due to any expensive aftershave or cologne, but his alone. “But I wouldn’t mind hearing it again.”

“How about this?” He pulled her against an erection he made no attempt to conceal. “As much as I’m enjoying dancing with you, I’m really looking forward to getting you home and taking that dress off you.”

Her sexual senses, as they so often were with this man, were vividly alive.

“I’ll help you,” she promised.

Then, because they were getting close to making vertical love in public, she put a little space between them. “That was a huge surprise, seeing Trey playing the guitar onstage.”

“It was an old Martin I used to drag around with me because it’s smaller than the average model,” he said against her lips. “I figured it’d be a good fit for him. He’s been practicing in secret for weeks. To surprise you.”

“Well, he certainly did that.” She reached up and traced his lips with a fingernail she’d painted for the occasion in a peach that matched her new shoes. “I can’t begin to tell you—”

She saw the sudden, hard alertness steamroller over the building lust in Sax’s eyes an instant before someone cleared his throat behind her. She turned and came face-to-face with Kyle, his expression as serious as she’d ever seen it. He looked, she thought, like an actual cop.

“Sorry to interrupt, Sheriff,” he said in a brusque tone that even sounded like a cop’s. “But a call came into the station I think you really need to handle.”

She’d turned her phone off before leaving for the lighthouse, telling everyone that she was off the clock today. For Kyle to come here, the call had to be very serious.

“I’ll be right back,” she told Sax.

“I’ll come with you.”

The three of them made their way through the celebrating throng to the outside
gallerie
, which, Trey had informed her, was Cajun for
porch
.

She dialed the long-distance number on the piece of paper Kyle handed her.

Cait McKade answered on the first ring. “We’ve got a match,” she said without preamble. “Thanks to Sax’s finding that bullet, I can finally tell you who killed your father.”

“Gerald Gardner killed Ben?” Faith asked, clearly stunned. “Surely there’s some mistake. He’s admittedly a very unpleasant man. But a murderer?”

Not wanting to disrupt the reception, after asking his parents to watch Trey, Sax joined Faith, John, Kyle, and Kara in the office of Bon Temps.

“Yeah, I’m having a hard time with it, too,” Kara said. “But Cait McKade says the prints on the bullet Sax dug out of that tree match the ones of Gardner on file with IAFIS.”

“That’s the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, maintained to be the largest biometric database in the world,” John explained to Faith.

“We lucked out that, since he’s in a fiduciary business, his prints got put into the system in the first place,” Kara said.

“Lucky,” Faith said flatly in a tone that suggested her husband certainly hadn’t been lucky.

“We can’t bring Ben back.” John took hold of her hand, linked their fingers together, and brought their joined hands to his chest, against his heart. “But I promise you, Faith, we’ll put the bastard who killed him behind bars.”

“For the rest of his life,” Kara agreed. Although the cop in her had found Sax’s initial supposition about her father being murdered intriguing, she’d honestly thought all along that her father’s death had been caused by an accident. The same way Harlan Fletcher had shot Danny.

“But why?” Faith asked. “What would his motive be? The only connection I can think of to Gerald Gardner is when Ben bought a patrol car at the GM dealership in Newport, instead of at Gardner Ford. But losing a customer is no reason to shoot someone.”

“It’s partly a hunch, but Dad was looking through old cold cases and the only one I can find he’d made recent notes on had to do with Celia Vernon’s case.”

“The Vernon girl,” Faith asked. “Was that the girl who went to high school with you? The one Ben picked up—more than once—for underage drinking?”

“That’s her.” Celia’s file had been extensive, but mostly minor busts—alcohol, marijuana, breaking curfew. Unlike the missing girl’s mother and stepfather, both of whom had thick police jackets.

Kara filled her in on what Sax had told her. Along with their visit to Mrs. Vernon.

“That poor girl,” Faith murmured.

“She didn’t get many breaks, that’s for sure,” Kara agreed. The contrast between her life and Celia’s had her feeling a bit guilty for ever complaining about her own mother.

“
A Place in the Sun
,” Faith murmured.

“What?”

“It’s an old fifties movie, based on Theodore Dreiser’s
An American Tragedy
. Montgomery Clift gets this girl—Shelley Winters—who works at his uncle’s factory, pregnant. But he’s also involved with Elizabeth Taylor, who plays a socialite and represents the wealthy, privileged life Clift’s character aspires to. So he kills Winters by throwing her overboard while they’re out on a lake. In the end, he’s convicted of murder.

“If Gerald was the father of Celia Vernon’s child, since she’s not the type of girl a boy from his family would be expected to marry, that would provide a motive for him to have killed her. And later kill your father if he discovered Ben was looking into the case.”