Best Kept Secrets (2 page)

She took a breath. "I'm Alexandra Gaither, Celina's daughter."

A stunned silence followed the announcement.

Pat Chastain, befuddled, finally asked, "Who's Celina Gaither?"

"Well, I'll be a sonofabitch." Angus flopped backward in his chair like a collapsing inflatable toy.

"Celina's daughter. My God, I can't believe it," Junior whispered. "I can't believe it."

"Somebody want to fill me in, please?" Pat said, still confused. Nobody paid him any attention.

The Mintons openly stared at Alex, searching her face for resemblances to her mother, whom they had known so well.

From the corner of her eye, she noticed that the toes of Lambert's boots were no longer wagging. He drew his knees in and sat up straight.

"What on earth have you been doing with yourself all these years?" Angus asked.

"How many years has it been?" Junior wanted to know.

"Twenty-five," Alex answered precisely. "I was only two months old when Grandma Graham moved away from here.''

"How is your grandma?"

"She's currently in a Waco nursing home, dying of cancer, Mr. Minton.'' Alex saw no merit in sparing their sensibilities.

"She's in a coma."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Thank you."

"Where have y'all been living all this time?"

Alex named a town in central Texas. "We lived there all my life--at least, as far back as I can remember. I graduated high school there, went to the University of Texas, and then, straight into law school. I passed the bar a year ago."

"Law school. Imagine that. Well, you turned out fine, Alexandra, just fine. Didn't she, Junior?"

Junior Minton turned on his charming smile full blast. "I'd say so. You don't look a thing like you did last time I saw you," he told her teasingly. "Best as I recall, your diaper was wet and you didn't have a single hair on your head."

Considering the reason for this prearranged meeting, his flirting made Alex uneasy. She was glad when Pat Chastain intervened again.' 'I hate to butt into such a touching reunion, but I'm still in the dark."

Angus enlightened him. "Celina was a classmate of Junior's and Reede's. They were best friends, actually. Rarely did you see one of them without the other two when they were in high school. Crazy kids."

Then, his blue eyes turned cloudy and he shook his head sorrowfully. "Celina died. Tragic thing." He took a quiet moment to collect himself. "Anyway, this is the first time we've heard a word about Alexandra since her grandma, Celina's mother, moved away with her." Smiling, he slapped his thighs. "Damned if it's not great to have you back in Purcell."

"Thank you, but--" Alex opened her briefcase and took out a manila envelope. "I'm not back to stay, Mr. Minton.

Actually, I'm acting in an official capacity." She passed the envelope across the desk to the district attorney, who looked

at it with puzzlement.

"Official capacity? When Greg called me and asked if I'd help out his top prosecutor, he said something about reopening a case."

"It's all in there," Alex said, nodding down at the envelope.

"I suggest that you peruse the contents and thoroughly acquaint yourself with the details. Greg Harper requests the full cooperation and assistance of your office and local law enforcement agencies, Mr. Chastain. He assured me that you would comply with this request for the duration of my investigation." She closed her attache with a decisive snap, stood, and headed for the door.

"Investigation?" District Attorney Chastain came to his feet. The Mintons did likewise.

"Are you working with the Racing Commission?" Angus asked. "We were told we'd be carefully scrutinized before they granted us a gambling license, but I thought we had already passed muster."

"I thought it was all over except for the formalities,"

Junior said.

"As far as I know, it is," Alex told them. "My investigation has nothing to do with the Racing Commission, or the granting of your horse-racing license."

After a moment, when she didn't elaborate, Chastain asked, "Well, then, what does it have to do with, Miss Gaither?"

Drawing herself up to her full height, she said, "I am reopening a twenty-five-year-old murder case. Greg Harper asked for your help, Mr. Chastain, since the crime was committed in Purcell County."

She looked into Angus's eyes, then into Junior's. Finally, she stared down hard at the crown of Reede Lambert's hat.

"Before I'm finished, I'm going to know which one of you killed my mother."

Two

Alex peeled off her suit jacket and tossed it onto the motel bed. Her underarms were damp and her knees were ready to buckle. She was nauseated. The scene in the D.A.'s office had shaken her more than she wanted to admit.

She had left Pat Chastain's office with her head held high and her shoulders back. She hadn't walked too fast, but she hadn't dawdled. She had smiled good-bye to Imogene, who had obviously been eavesdropping through the door because she stared at Alex bug-eyed, her mouth agape.

Alex's exit line had been well rehearsed, well timed and perfectly executed. The meeting had gone just as she had planned it, but she was vastly relieved that it was over.

Now, she peeled off one cloying piece of clothing after another. She would love to think that the worst was behind her, but she feared it was yet to come. The three men she had met today wouldn't roll over and play dead. She would have to confront them again, and when she did, they wouldn't be so overjoyed to see her.

Angus Minton seemed as full of goodwill as Santa Claus, but Alex knew that nobody in Angus's position could be as harmless as he tried to pretend. He was the richest, most powerful man in the county. One didn't achieve that status solely through benign leadership. He would fight to keep what he'd spent a lifetime cultivating.

Junior was a charmer who knew his way around women.

The years had been kind to him. He'd changed little from the photographs Alex had seen of him as an adolescent. She also knew that he used his good looks to his advantage. It would be easy for her to like him. It would also be easy to suspect him of murder.

Reede Lambert was the toughest for her to pigeonhole because her impressions of him were the least specific. Unlike the others, she hadn't been able to look him in the eye. Reede the man looked much harder and stronger than Reede the boy from her grandma's picture box. Her first impression was that he was sullen, unfriendly, and dangerous.

She was certain that one of these men had killed her mother.

Celina Gaither had not been murdered by the accused, Buddy Hicks. Her grandmother, Merle Graham, had drummed that into little Alex's head like a catechism all her life.

"It'll be up to you, Alexandra, to set the record right,"

Merle had told her almost daily. "That's the least you can do for your mother." At that point she usually glanced wistfully at one of the many framed photographs of her late daughter scattered throughout the house. Looking at the photographs would invariably make her cry, and nothing her

granddaughter did could cheer her.

Until a few weeks ago, however, Alex hadn't known who Merle suspected of killing Celina. Finding out had been the darkest hour of Alex's life.

Responding to an urgent call from the nursing home doctor, she had sped up the interstate to Waco. The facility was quiet, immaculate, and staffed by caring professionals. Merle's lifetime pension from the telephone company made it affordable.

For all its amenities, it still had the grey smell of old age; despair and decay permeated its corridors.

When she had arrived that cold, dismal, rainy afternoon, Alex had been told that her grandmother was in critical condition.

She entered the hushed private room and moved toward the hospital bed. Merle's body had visibly deteriorated since Alex had visited only the week before. But her eyes were as alive as Fourth of July sparklers. Their glitter, however, was hostile.

"Don't come in here," Merle rasped on a shallow breath.

"I don't want to see you. It's because of you!"

"What, Grandma?" Alex asked in dismay. "What are you talking about?"

"I don't want you here."

Embarrassed by the blatant rejection, Alex had glanced around at the attending physician and nurses. They shrugged their incomprehension. "Why don't you want to see me? I've come all the way from Austin."

"It's your fault she died, you know. If it hadn't been for you ..." Merle moaned with pain and clutched her sheet with sticklike, bloodless fingers.

"Mother? You're saying I'm responsible for Mother's death?"

Merle's eyes popped open. "Yes," she hissed viciously.

"But I was just a baby, an infant," Alex argued, desperately wetting her lips. "How could I--"

"Ask them."

"Who, Grandma? Ask who?"

"The one who murdered her. Angus, Junior, Reede. But it was you . . . you . . . you. ..."

Alex had to be led from the room by the doctor several minutes after Merle lapsed into a deep coma. The ugly accusation had petrified her; it reverberated in her brain and assaulted her soul.

If Merle held Alex responsible for Celina's death, so much of Alex's upbringing could be explained. She had always wondered why Grandma Graham was never very affectionate with her. No matter how remarkable Alex's achievements, they were never quite good enough to win her grandmother's praise. She knew she was never considered as gifted, or clever, or charismatic as the smiling girl in the photographs that Merle looked at with such sad longing.

Alex didn't resent her mother. Indeed, she idolized and adored her with the blind passion of a child who had grown up without parents. She constantly worked toward being as good at everything as Celina had been, not only so she would be a worthy daughter, but in the desperate hope of earning her grandmother's love and approval. So it came as a stunning blow to hear from her dying grandmother's lips that she was responsible for Celina's murder.

The doctor had tentatively suggested that she might want to have Mrs. Graham taken off the life support systems.

"There's nothing we can do for her now, Ms. Gaither."

"Oh, yes, there is," Alex had said with a ferocity that shocked him. "You can keep her alive. I'll be in constant touch."

Immediately upon her return to Austin, she began to research the murder case of Celina Graham Gaither. She spent many sleepless nights studying transcripts and court documents before approaching her boss, the district attorney of Travis County.

Greg Harper had shifted the smoking cigarette from one corner of his lips to the other. In the courtroom, Greg was the bane of guilty defendants, lying witnesses, and orderly judges. He talked too loud, smoked too much, drank in abundance, and wore five-hundred-dollar pinstriped suits with lizard boots that cost twice that much.

To say that he was flashy and egomaniacal would be gross understatements. He was shrewd, ambitious, ruthless, relentless, and profane, and would therefore probably carve out quite a niche for himself in state politics, which was his driving ambition. He believed in the reward system and appreciated raw talent. That's why Alex was on his staff.

"You want to reopen a twenty-five-year-old murder case?"

he asked her when she stated the purpose of the conference she'd requested. "Got a reason?"

"Because the victim was my mother."

For the first time since she'd known him, Greg had asked a question he didn't already know the answer to--or at least have a fairly good guess. "Jesus, Alex, I'm sorry. I didn't know that."

She gave a slight, dismissive shrug. "Well, it's not something one advertises, is it?"

"When was this? How old were you?"

"An infant. I don't remember her. She was only eighteen when she was killed."

He ran his long, bony hand down his even longer, bonier face.' 'The case remains on the books as officially unsolved?''

"Not exactly. There was a suspect arrested and charged, but the case was dismissed without ever going to trial."

"Fill me in, and make it short. I'm having lunch with the state attorney general today," he said. "You've got ten minutes.

Shoot."

When she finished, Greg frowned and lit a cigarette from the smoldering tip of one he'd smoked down to the filter.

"Goddamn, Alex, you didn't say that the Mintons were involved.

Your granny really believes that one of them iced your mother?"

"Or their friend, Reede Lambert."

"By any chance, did she provide them with a motive?"

"Not specifically," Alex said evasively, loath to tell him that Merle had cited her, Alex, as the motive. "Apparently, Celina was close friends with them."

"Then why would one of them kill her?"

"That's what I want to find out."

"On the state's time?"

"It's a viable case, Greg," she said tightly.

"All you've got is a hunch."

"It's stronger than a hunch."

He gave a noncommittal grunt. "Are you sure this isn't just a personal grudge?"

"Of course not." Alex took umbrage. "I'm pursuing this from a strictly legal viewpoint. If Buddy Hicks had gone on trial and been convicted by a jury, I wouldn't put so much stock in what Grandma told me. But it's there in the public records."

"How come she didn't raise hell about the murder when it happened?"

"I asked her that myself. She didn't have much money and she felt intimidated by the legal machinations. Besides, the murder had left her drained of energy. What little she had went into rearing me."

It was now clear to Alex why, since her earliest recollections, her grandmother had pushed her toward the legal profession. Because it was expected of her, Alex had excelled in school and had ultimately graduated from the University of Texas Law School in the top ten percent of her class. The law was the profession Merle had chosen for her, but thankfully it was a field that intrigued and delighted Alex. Her curious mind enjoyed delving into its intricacies. She was well prepared to do what she must.

"Grandmother was just a widow lady, left with a baby to raise," she said, building her case. "There was precious little she could do about the judge's ruling at Hicks's competency hearing. With what money she had, she packed up, left town, and never went back.''