Where There's Smoke (83 page)

He turned his blue stare full force onto Lara.
 
"You could have told the truth at the inquest."

"As you said, what would be the point?
 
No one would have believed me five years ago.
 
I couldn't prove anything then or now, and besides, it would only have dragged things out indefinitely.
 
I was glad to finally see an end to it.
 
The important thing to me was that Ashley's death was avenged."

She'd had Randall's body cremated.
 
Since there had been a formal funeral for him years earlier, she didn't feel she owed the public another spectacle.
 
She'd held a private memorial in Maryland for him.

Only a handful of former colleagues had been invited to attend.

"What about the scheme Porter cooked up with Sanchez?"
 
Key asked.

"When the president called to extend his condolences, I told him that I didn't agree with my late husband's assessment of the situation in Montesangre.
 
I said that you and I had witnessed firsthand El Corazon's brutality to his own troops as well as his enemies.
 
Speaking strictly as a citizen, I told him I wouldn't want my tax dollars to support his regime."

"He called me, too.
 
I told him the same thing, in language a little more blunt."

"1 can imagine."

He leaned against the rugged pickup parked beside her and raised one knee, flattening the sole of his boot against the dented do-'r.
 
He looked like he belonged there, comfortable in his Texas uniform denim jeans and jacket.
 
The brisk autumn wind tossed his dark hair around his head.
 
His eyes were a few shades deeper than the sky.

She yearned for him.

"I thought you were leaving Eden Pass, Doc."

"I changed my mind and reopened the clinic.
 
The people here have accepted me now.
 
Business is so good, I've rehired Nancy.

She's asking for an assistant."

"Congratulations."

"Thank you."

During a noticeable lapse in the conversation, neither knew quite where to look.

"Marion Leonard is pregnant," she told him.
 
"She wouldn't mind your knowing.
 
They announced it immediately.
 
She was among my first patients after I reopened."

"Ah, that's good."
 
He nodded sagely.
 
"Then there was never anything to that rumor of a malpractice suit?"

"I guess not."

They didn't go into the role Jody had played in starting the rumor.

"Did you read the TAF's report when they published it in the newspaper?"
 
he asked.

After weeks of investigation, the federal agency had released their findings.
 
The explosion at The Green Pine Motel had been caused by an illegal gas line running from Tackett Oil's well number seven to the motel.
 
The gas was being used to heat and cool the motel.
 
A leak in the line had filled the infrequently used honeymoon suite with odorless natural gas.
 
It had compressed to a highly combustible level.
 
The spark from the electrical short was enough to cause the blast.

Fergus Winston, against the advice of his attorney, pleaded guilty to all charges and was now weeks into his life sentence.

Darcy had closed their house and left town.
 
Gossip was rampant.

Some said she held vigil over Heather's grave by night and the prison by day, hoping for a chance to kill Fergus.
 
Others said she had gone completely round the bend and had been committed to a psychiatric hospital.
 
Still another rumor was that she'd latched on to a minor league baseball player and was shacked up with him somewhere in Oklahoma.

"As I understand it," Lara said, "Fergus tapped into the old flare line."

"Right.
 
They were common.
 
They burned off the gas from a well.

Then Granddaddy decided to market the gas in addition to the oil.

He tapped off that line.
 
Anyway, flare lines became illegal.
 
Fergus knew about the one on that well, reopened it, and extended it to his motel.
 
He had free gas for years and probably laughed up his sleeve about it."

Again they ran out of conversation.
 
When the silence became uncomfortable, Lara reached for her ignition key.
 
"Well, I'd better run.
 
I've got frozen things in the trunk."

"Before that morning, did you know that Clark and your husband were lovers?"

She didn't expect the question.
 
Her hand fell away from the ignition.

He squatted down beside her car door so that their faces were on L the same level.
 
Loosely clasping his hands, he rested his wrists on the open window.
 
"Did you?"

"I had no idea," she answered softly.
 
"When I saw them, I went numb.

But only for a moment.
 
Then I went a little crazy.
 
Became hysterical."

"Who called the press?"

She didn't even consider avoiding his questions or glazing her answers wiffi euphemisms.
 
"The phone on the nightstand beside my bed rang.
 
I woke up and answered it.
 
The caller identified himself only as one of Clark's close friends.
 
He called him a few ugly names."
 
A spasm of pain flashed across Key's face, but Lara went on doggedly.

"He asked if I knew that Clark had dumped him in favor of my husband.

Then he hung up.
 
I took it for a crank call and turned to tell Randall about it.
 
But he wasn't in the other twin bed.
 
I got up and went looking for him."

She bowed her head and rubbed her forehead with her thumb and index finger.
 
"I found them in Clark's bedroom.
 
Later, I figured that same caller must also have notified the media and told them that an explosive news story was about to break at the cottage.
 
Anyway, reporters arrived within minutes of my discovery.
 
Clark became almost as hysterical as I. It was Randall's idea to make it look like .
 
. "

She raised her shoulders and sighed.
 
"You know the rest."

Key muttered epithets to Ambassador Porter.
 
"Why didn't the guy on the phone come forward to contradict the tabloid stories about you?"

"I suppose he lost his courage," she replied.
 
"Anyway, he accomplished what he wanted.
 
He brought down Senator Tackett."

"You could have exposed them, Lara.
 
Why didn't you?"

She laughed mirthlessly.
 
"Who would have believed me?
 
Randall had had affairs with women.
 
Many of them.
 
They would have sworn that he was wholly heterosexual, and he was."

His brows furrowed with perplexity.

"He knew about Clark's sexual preference, and used it," she said.

"One favor in exchange for another, I suppose.
 
Randall wasn't above that sort of cruel manipulation.
 
He used Clark.
 
He used me.
 
He'd do anything to get what he wanted."

"Like pretending to be dead for years.

"Yes.
 
And it didn't bother him at all that our daughter was killed in a cross fire."
 
She hesitated to broach the next subject because it was sensitive for several reasons.
 
"Key .
 
. ."
 
She averted her eyes from his.
 
"I didn't trust Randall to tell me the truth about his bisexuality.
 
In fact, I suspect that he was also Emilio's lover.

Anyway, I ran extensive blood tests on Randall and me while I was still in the first trimester of my pregnancy.
 
I didn't want to transmit the AIDS virus to my child.

"Both of us tested negative, but I never took another chance.
 
The night I conceived Ashley which was only a few weeks before the incident was the last time I slept with Randall."
 
She met his direct gaze.

"The very last."

"I didn't ask."

"But you have a right to know."

His unwavering gaze was disquieting.
 
They were surrounded by noise and confusion, yet a ponderous silence stretched between them.
 
She found comfort in the sound of her own voice.

"Back to my credibility-the concept of innocent until proven guilty' is a myth.
 
Before I fully recovered from the shock of finding my husband in bed with another man, I was branded an adulteress who'd been caught in the act.
 
If I'd come forward with the truth, it would have been regarded as nothing more than a vicious counterattack."

Sadly she shook her head.
 
"Once I was photographed in my nightgown, being hustled from Clark's cottage by my husband, I was labeled."

"I thought my brother had more integrity than to let someone else take the rap for him."

"He got swept up into Randall's lie, just as I did.
 
The consequences of it were so extreme that he really couldn't consider telling the truth.

"But, unlike Randall, it ate on his conscience.
 
Giving me the medical practice here in Eden Pass was his way of making restitution, of telling me he was sorry."
 
She smiled wanly.
 
"Don't be too hard on him, Key.
 
He'd lived as a closet homosexual for years.
 
That must have been a terribly lonely and unhappy existence."

"I'm still wrestling with it, trying to reconcile the brother I knew with the man in bed with Randall Porter.
 
I keep thinking about one summer when we went to camp together.
 
Naturally, we did what adolescent boys do when they sneak off into the woods.
 
We jacked off until we were sore.
 
We had come-comparing contests, for chrissake.
 
If we were that close, why couldn't he tell me?"

"Maybe he didn't know then."

"Maybe.
 
But by the time he was elected senator, he did.
 
On election night, after his opponent had conceded, and all the hoopla died down, we got stinking drunk to celebrate."
 
He smiled at the fond memory.

"The next morning, he had to meet the press with the worst hangover in history.
 
He threatened to kill me for doing that to him.
 
The last time I saw him alive, we still had a laugh over it."

Gradually his smile faded.
 
He stared into near space.
 
"I wish he'd had enough confidence in me to tell me.

"Would you have accepted it?"

"I'd like to think so."
 
He pinched his eyes shut for a moment.

"Jody's opinion of homosexuals was no secret," he said bitterly.
 
"I think Hitler had more tolerance.
 
It must have been quite a scene when Clark told her."

"I'm sure it was devastating to them both."

"Whatever she said to him pushed him over the edge."
 
He stood up and slid his hands into the rear pockets of his jeans, palms out.

He looked down at his feet, rolled back on the heels of his boots, then let them fall forward to slap the pavement.

"She was good at that, you know, pushing people to the edge.

Good, hell."
 
He scoffed at his understatement.
 
"She wrote the book on it.
 
She knew exactly which screw to turn, and when, and how tight to turn it.
 
She just couldn't leave people in peace to be what they were.