Laney glared at him. “Excuse me, Dr. Trust Fund, I don’t have to stand here listening to your edicts.” Turning to Trudy, she said, “I’ll be in my room,” and stalked back toward the guest room. A moment later, a door slammed.
When he could trust himself to speak again, Ross asked, “Want me to call Gwen to come and get her? I don’t think Laney’s as mad at her as she is at all the rest of us…or at least, not yet.”
Gwen had such a knack for staying out of family squabbles, her siblings and her cousins had nicknamed her “Switzerland.” Which Ross thought beat the heck out of either Dr. Trust Fund or Becky Home-Ecky.
Trudy paused to consider, then shook her head, her brown eyes shining. “You know what? Laney can cry and curse and call me all the names she wants to. But my baby sister’s not pushing me away. Not this time.”
“You’re a better man than I,” Ross said.
When Trudy smiled, he hugged her and kissed the top of her head. “You change your mind or need any help, call me.”
“Where’re you off to in such a hurry?”
Ross frowned, thinking of the way Justine had played him. “I’m off to find the sheriff. And I don’t think that’s going to be a pleasant conversation either.”
A plate of Trudy’s cookies in hand, Ross headed for the Mustang, whose top he’d lowered in honor of the mild temperature and brilliant sunshine.
Still agitated, he turned on the stereo, where he’d left Laney’s CD, and headed for the outskirts of town. As Trudy’s
neighborhood fell away behind him, the song switched from a raucous dance tune to Laney singing the first plaintive notes of “Last Stop Till Eternity.”
Within a few bars, the hairs behind Ross’s neck rose as he fell under the song’s influence. And awareness settled like something cold and leaden in his stomach.
For the loneliness of this song, the yearning he heard in it, resonated with the knowledge of how those backing her had died. In the subtlety of Hart’s percussion, he heard the rhythm of men’s footsteps crunching through leaf litter. In the haunted swell of Jake’s accordion, Ross felt the rope as it was thrown over a thick limb. In the scrape of Caleb’s bow, Ross knew the rough-edged young man’s final gasp for breath.
Yet it was Laney’s sweet voice and the lyrics that formed the backbone of the serpent in the garden: the knowledge of these men’s, of every man’s, mortality.
Shadow soothes our heartache, Cools the sear of hot flesh. Spills like blood into wineglasses Raised to toast eternity…
Near the outskirts of town, Ross pulled the Mustang beneath an overarching span of tree limbs, his throat gone tight with prescient comprehension that this recording,
this song,
transcended zydeco or any musical boundaries, that it was going to be the one that catapulted Laney out of Preston County and into the public eye. If the woman he still thought of as his baby cousin could recover the will to chase it, success surely awaited. Success of the sort that led not only to recording contracts, but sold-out concert tours and Grammy nominations.
But there would be a price paid, in the form of the tragedy that made her song so poignant. The triple heartbreak could
form the basis of a legend, could make people listen long enough to hear the storyteller in the singer, but only if his cousin somehow found the strength to bear it.
Within moments, doubt crept in, with Ross reminding himself he was only a casual listener, and a seriously biased one at that. But Laney had assured him Simon Cordero thought the songs showed promise, that other people in the industry had said exactly the same thing.
He slipped the car back into gear, allowing the final notes to spin out onto the dusty road behind him, swirling small eddies of dried leaves into the air.
By the time he pulled into Justine’s driveway, Ross had switched off the music in an attempt to focus his thoughts. Near the house, he caught sight of Ed Truitt, in his broad-brimmed hat, a stack of boxes he was carrying tucked awkwardly beneath his chin. On a nearby patch of grass, Noah was dragging a stick back and forth while a young hound puppy leaped and snapped and yipped in its attempts to capture the prize.
No sign of Justine, but her ragged-out Expedition was parked beside her father’s pickup, so she couldn’t have gone too far. Taking a deep breath, Ross shut off the Mustang and climbed out of the car.
Though he’d come to confront Justine, Ross rushed to her father when his stack of boxes teetered. “How about a hand there?” he asked.
“Thanks, Doc.” Ed Truitt shifted his load to allow Ross access. “Think I bit off a little more than I could chew this time.”
As Ross took the boxes, Justine’s father glanced past the boy and puppy to the open back door. “Think I bit off a little more than I could chew in that case, too, while I was at it. My daughter’s in a real snit and a half. Can’t figure that girl sometimes.”
Ross followed him toward the doorway, his burden more bulky than weighty. “The dog?” he guessed. “You brought a puppy here without Justine’s blessing?”
“Well, hell,” Truitt defended himself. “Since when does a man have to ask the whole damned world’s permission to spoil his only grandson? Just look at the two of them. Any fool could see they’re meant to be together. Kind of takes me back to the days when…”
In the man’s expression, something clouded, and Ross heard him whisper, “It’s
Jelly,
damn it. What the hell have I done?” For all the sense that made.
Yet in spite of Ross’s own worry for his cousin and anger at Justine, he couldn’t help grinning at the sight of the radiant smile on Noah’s face. After witnessing the boy’s terror the afternoon he had disappeared, Ross thought he understood Truitt’s need to make his grandson happy. Still, bringing a puppy into a house was a huge decision. Not the kind to make without consulting the child’s mother.
Not for the first time, Ross sensed something off in Justine’s relationship with her dad. Something as uncomfortably out of balance as the stack of boxes Truitt had held beneath his chin.
As they reached the door, Justine appeared, her dark hair pulled up loosely and her jeans drawing his eye to curves that sent a jolt of raw, sexual awareness slicing through his body. It pissed him off that as angry as he was with her behavior, he could never completely focus on her as the sheriff, not when the woman in her called to him so loudly.
So he wanted her; what of it? He had always wanted Justine Wofford. That was no reason to allow her effect on his hormones to disarm him, nor his awareness of the vulnerability she hid so well to do the same.
Reminding himself that he’d come here about his cousin, he tore his attention from Justine’s body to the shift in her
expression, the change from irritation to wariness in her eyes.
Or maybe it was guilt over the stunt she’d pulled with Laney.
“Something I can help you with, Dr. Bollinger?” she asked him. “Everything all right with Laney?”
Though she kept her tone professional, Ross recognized the warning in her expression, the plea to keep the status quo. But he didn’t want the status quo. He wanted answers, right now.
“No, it isn’t,” he said. “Which is why I came to see you.”
At the harshness of his tone, Justine’s father jerked his head around with the same appraising look Ross had often seen from the man’s daughter. And Ross didn’t doubt for a moment that Truitt would come to her defense if things got heated, yet the old man didn’t look too worried. Probably remembering the way he’d helped with Noah, not to mention Ross’s quickness to volunteer to carry boxes.
“Where would you like these?” Ross asked him.
“You can set ’em on top of the washer here. I’ll haul ’em upstairs when I’m ready.”
Justine gave Ross a wait-a-minute gesture, perhaps to remind him that he was on her turf now.
“Is that it, Dad?” she asked her father, her voice confirming that there had been tension between them. “Any more still in the pickup?”
“Nope. That’s the last of ’em. Thanks for your help.” He rubbed the small of his back. “You need me to look after Noah? I could stand a break now anyway.”
“Thanks.” She looked over at Noah with the puppy. “He really does like it, doesn’t he?”
“Not ‘it.’ She’s a girl pup,” her dad told her. “Pure beagle, out of a litter from one of my friend’s little rabbit runners. Tell you the truth, Chili Pepper, when he offered a couple of
weeks back, I had a mind to keep her for myself. The house’s been feelin’ awful big and empty, and I thought it might be nice to have a dog again after all these years. Thought I might call her Penny and sit with her in my lap some evenings while I watched the TV. Probably a bad idea, making her a surprise. You want, I’ll take her back to my friend, tell him to find her a new home.”
“Penny, huh? Cute name. That’s a slick move, old man. What was it you said before about me being manipulative?” Justine’s voice held less heat than affection. “Guess I learned at the feet of a master.”
Her father offered no defense but looked at her expectantly.
“You and I both know that puppy’s going nowhere,” Justine said, “so you can save the sap. But let’s get one thing straight: I’m not cleaning any Penny puddles.”
“Deal.” Looking relieved, her father went outside to join Noah, with Justine shaking her head at his retreat, a wry smile pulling at one corner of her mouth.
“There’s a plate of fresh cookies in the car,” Ross called after him. “I’d be grateful if you’d take them off my hands before I finish ’em myself.”
“Have Noah wash his hands first,” Justine said before ushering Ross into the kitchen. “Nice of you to share.”
“Just spreading the wealth.”
“Something to drink?” Justine asked as she pulled out glasses from the cabinet. “I’ve got water, soda, iced tea. Beer, too, if you want one.”
“This call isn’t social. I came to talk to you.”
When he ignored her gesture toward one of the chairs around the kitchen table, Justine forgot about the drinks and turned to study him, leaning against the counter. “What’s the problem, Ross? Why’d you come to the house?”
When he’d wanted to meet with her before, when they were lovers, he’d always called her cell phone. But he had
never turned up uninvited; it was an unspoken rule between them.
A rule of the old order, the one that hadn’t worked. “I came to ask you what the hell was up with you going straight to Laney last night when you knew I’d be at work. I told you I was going to bring her in to talk today. I said I would call.”
Justine shrugged. “Your cousin’s neighborhood was on my way home, so I thought I’d swing by, in case Laney might be ready to chat.”
“Don’t play games with me. You and I both know Trudy’s house wasn’t on your way home. And you didn’t just happen to ‘swing by.’ You went to see Laney because you knew I wouldn’t be there, giving her advice if she needed—”
The glass clacked against the countertop as Justine set it down. “You’ve been advocating for an attorney from the start. What do you know about Laney, Ross, that you don’t want me to find out?”
“I don’t know anything”—
except that Laney’s pregnant
—“except that you’re suspicious. You’ve been suspicious of her from the start, and on what evidence? That Roger Savoy, a man who hated you, for God’s sake, had a
feeling
Laney might’ve hung that noose for attention?”
“A noose that looked a hell of a lot like the one that ended up around his neck. And the one found on my son.”
“What the hell are you implying?”
“I’m not implying anything, just stating a fact you ought to know. Along with the fact that I’ll do anything I have to in order to find out who shot a man I was responsible for keeping safe.”
“Not my cousin. When Savoy was shot, Laney was probably already in the hands of whoever drugged and raped her.”
There was an ominous pause before Justine responded, a pause that made Ross wonder if she doubted some part of the story.
“My God, Justine. You saw her that night, half-dead from
the cold and out of her mind. And left in the same spot where her friends were murdered. Why aren’t you looking for the man who did it? Surely he’s the most obvious suspect.”
“Of course he is,” she said, “and after what was done to Laney, I’d certainly expect your cousin would be eager to tell me whatever she recalls to help catch this son of a bitch. Except she keeps saying she remembers nothing. Nothing at all from the moment she turned the key to lock her mother’s house. Until then she’s quite clear, but afterward, she claims it’s all blank.”
Ross had his own misgivings regarding Laney’s story. His own doubts she was being truthful when she’d claimed Jake as the father of the child she was carrying. Was he making a mistake in not sharing that part? Withholding information that might lead to a murderer and rapist?
He thought of what Debbie Brown had said about Justine:
I know that personality. I’ve lived with it myself. People like that never question their goals, never think twice about doing whatever they have to do to achieve them. And they don’t give a damn who they have to barrel over, if you get in their way.
Could he risk allowing Justine to steamroll his cousin?
“After the LeJeune girl smacked me with that golf club,” Justine said, “I couldn’t remember…still can’t recall the moment it happened. And for a while I couldn’t remember much about what happened in the hour or so prior, except for ragged bits and pieces that grew clearer as the days passed.”
“Remember me warning you about that when you were brought in? Happens a lot in head injuries.”
“But as far as anyone can tell, Laney wasn’t hit in the head. And from what the toxicologist tells me, the mechanism’s different when someone’s been given a drug like scopolamine. It suppresses the formation of new memory but doesn’t erase what went on before the drug was taken. At least, not nearly so neatly.”
Ross could poke holes in her reasoning, could explain that
physical and emotional trauma and even hypothermia could affect memory, but instead he waited to hear Justine out.
“Laney couldn’t—or wouldn’t—even venture a guess about whom she meant to stay with, or what she might have had to eat or drink with someone. Because she got that drug inside her somehow. More than likely in the company of somebody she thought she could trust.”