Confessions (12 page)

“They were married?”

“For less than a day,” Matthew said.

“Our dear father crashed the honeymoon and succeeded in putting asunder what God had joined that morning in some tacky Las Vegas chapel,” Mariah divulged, shooting
the rancher a look every bit as lethal as the one he'd pointed in her direction.

Knowing Matthew Swann, Trace was not surprised. Although from what he'd been able to tell, Clint Garvey was a loner who tended to mind both his cattle and his own business, he was a very long way from a presidential candidate. Which would have made him a less than ideal son-in-law in Swann's eyes.

“I heard something else today,” he said to Matthew. “About your daughter and Garvey having resumed their relationship.”

“That's a goddamn lie.” His massive hands—strong enough to wrestle a steer into submission—curled into fists. “Some people don't have anything else better to do than spread filthy rumors.”

“I suppose you talked with your daughter about this?”

“There wasn't any need.” Matthew's steely gaze met Trace's implacable one, daring the younger man to call him a liar. “Like I said, it was a lie.”

Once again Trace thought about the message on Laura Fletcher's answering machine. And about that period of time Matthew Swann hadn't been able to be found. What if he'd returned home from Santa Fe to confront his daughter? What if he'd lost his infamous temper?

Trace dismissed that scenario. The rancher might have lost control enough to hit his daughter. But to shoot her, not once, but twice? Trace didn't think so.

Once again they were back to Garvey. The cowboy undoubtedly harbored resentment about Swann having broken them up once before. What if Matthew had returned to Whiskey River after that phone call and convinced Laura to give up her lover once again?

Several possible scenarios occurred to him. As he mulled over a few of the more likely, Trace found himself wishing for the good old days of the Wild West, when he
could have rounded up a posse and ridden out into the hills to track Garvey down.

The intercom on his desk buzzed, interrupting his thoughts. When he didn't immediately pick up, it buzzed again. Longer, more insistently.

Trace punched the Lucite button. “What is it, Jill?”

“The governor is holding on line one, Sheriff.” Jill's young voice was filled with awe.

Trace glared down at the blinking orange light, then out the window at the street crowded with news vans. He knew what was coming.

The governor had an election coming up. With his negative opinion rating climbing into the stratosphere, the one thing the politician didn't need was the murder of the wife of a U.S. senator during his watch. The only thing that would be worse for the man's reelection chances would be an unsolved murder.

Something Trace did not intend to happen.

But neither did he intend to take orders from a civilian. Even if that civilian happened to be the chief of state.

“Tell the governor I'm busy with a homicide investigation.”

“But, Sheriff—”

“I'll have to call him back.” His calm, no-nonsense tone brooked no argument.

“Yessir,” Jill obediently answered. But everyone in the room could hear the worry in her tone.

That little matter taken care of to his satisfaction, Trace leaned back in the chair, braced his elbows on the wooden arms and eyed what remained of the battling Swann family over the tent of his fingers.

“Now. Where were we?”

T
he governor was not a happy politician. The murder had been picked up by the national press; having run as a law-and-order candidate, he was insistent that Trace wrap the case up quickly.

Assuring the chief of state that was his intention, Trace hung up, only to be informed by Jill that a coalition consisting of the mayor, the county commissioners and various members of the Whiskey River Chamber of Commerce was waiting in his outer office. Although the desert cities tended to get most of their tourist dollars during the winter months, when snowbirds were fleeing midwestern blizzards, summer was high season in the rim country. That being the case, Laura Fletcher's murder was publicity they didn't need. They wanted Trace to solve the crime. And they wanted him to solve it now.

Trace was not surprised to discover that dealing with politicians was no different in Whiskey River than it had been in Dallas. And just as in Dallas, it left a bad taste in his mouth.

He left the courthouse by the back way and drove the
few blocks to The Shear Delight, which appeared to be a throwback to another time. Like the 1950s, Trace considered as he entered, setting the small brass bell on the inside door handle jingling.

The walls had been painted bubblegum pink. The shampoo sinks and miniblinds on the windows echoed the color scheme. In a futile attempt to modernize the look, someone had hung glossy black-and-white posters on the wall depicting trendy hairstyles that might look great in the big city or on Paris runway models, but weren't much in demand in small-town America.

The chair behind the reception counter was empty. An elderly woman, cloaked in a pink smock sat in a pink chair in front of a mirror. Beside the mirror was a framed beautician's license and a pair of K mart portraits of two grinning, freckle-faced kids. The woman looked at Trace with an avid curiosity she didn't bother to conceal.

“Hi,” Trace said.

She didn't answer.

“I'll be right out,” a woman's voice called from a back room.

Trace smiled at the customer, who was watching him carefully in the mirror as if he might be an escaped serial killer or rapist, and studied a gold trophy that was taking up a corner of the woman's station while he waited.

The bell behind him sounded. Trace glanced back as Mariah entered the salon. “I thought you'd be with your mother over at Peterson's.”

“She decided she wasn't up to it.” Mariah shoved her hands into the pockets of her skirt and frowned. “I took her to the lodge and volunteered to stay, but she wanted to take a nap.

“So, I called your office. When Jill told me you were on your way over here, I thought I'd see what you were up to.”

Trace decided he'd have to have a little chat with Jill. “I don't suppose you'd believe I was getting a haircut.”

“In this place?” Her gaze circled the salon. “Not a chance. Lord, it hasn't changed since Nadine Jones caused all my hair to fall out by leaving the perming solution on too long. Nadine was the hairdresser from hell. You've heard the term, a bad hair day? Well, she invented it.”

“That's why I fired her,” that same voice called out from the back room.

The woman who belonged to the voice appeared a moment later. Patti Greene was in her late twenties. Her short curly hair was the hue of a new penny and just as shiny. She was wearing a long black skirt and black halter top that gave her a city look and proved an attractive foil for her hair, even as it appeared a bit startling in the midst of all the bright pink. She was pushing a pink plastic cart loaded with perming rods.

“I thought that sounded like you, Mariah.” Neither her expression nor her tone were welcoming. She glanced over at Trace. “What kept you?”

Trace wasn't surprised she'd been expecting him. News traveled fast in a small town. “I've been busy. Investigating a murder.”

“Yeah.” She gathered up a stack of white tissue squares and handed them to the elderly woman who was avidly watching the exchange in the mirror. “I heard your news conference on the radio.”

She used the tail of the black comb to separate a few strands of snowy hair, then held out her hand to the client, who handed over one of the papers. “I suppose I should say I'm sorry, Mariah.”

There was an underlying tension in the salon Trace didn't quite understand. “Only if you mean it.”

Patti shrugged. “I guess I do. But you know, in a way,
she had it coming. Stealing another woman's man obviously runs in the Swann family.”

A little stung by the accusation, Mariah decided that The Shear Delight wasn't the only thing that hadn't changed since she'd left Whiskey River. Patti had hated her then. And apparently, time had done little to change things.

“I didn't steal Jerry from you, Patti. You'd already given him back his ring when he asked me to the Spring Fling.”

“We had a fight. We would have made up.” She rolled the paper and the hair up tightly onto a purple curler. “If you hadn't come between us.”

Mariah wasn't about to rehash old grievances. But she had to know. “Whatever happened to old octopus-hands Jerry, anyway?” The school dance had been their first and last date after the high school quarterback had tried to wrestle her clothes off her on the seat of his father's pickup truck.

“I married him.” Patti's and Mariah's eyes met in the mirror. “You were right to dump him. He was a creep.” She separated another bunch of hair, pulling a bit too tightly, which caused the woman to let out a little squeak of protest. “Left me with two kids, a maxed-out Visa card, and a trailer whose roof leaks.”

Trace, who'd met innumerable women just like Patti during his days as a patrolman answering domestic violence calls, suspected she'd been counting on her relationship with Garvey to solve her financial problems.

“I'd like to talk with you about Clint Garvey,” he said. “And Laura Fletcher.” He glanced toward the back room. “Privately.”

“I'm busy.” She took another paper and folded it around the white hair. “But whatever you have to ask, you can ask out here. In case you haven't noticed, Sheriff,
this isn't the city. We don't have any secrets in Whiskey River.”

“All right.” Trace gave her a long hard look in the mirror. “I hear you've been making threats.”

“About cutting Clint's balls off with my scissors?” Patti shrugged. “Sure. I also threatened to shoot him through his cheating black heart.” This time the curler was pink. “Laura's too.”

“I guess you're a pretty good shot.”

Patti followed his gaze to the Annie Oakley trophy she'd won for marksmanship at last fall's county fair. “Best in the county,” she agreed. “One of these days the chauvinist pigs who run that fair are going to open the men's competition up to women, and I'll prove it.”

She was picking up speed. Trace watched her fingers fly as she rolled up the perm. “Doesn't take a lot of talent to shoot a person at close range,” he said.

“Sure as hell doesn't,” she confirmed. “And for the record, Sheriff, I didn't kill Laura.”

“You threatened to,” he reminded her.

“Hell, yes.” She shot a glance at Mariah in the mirror. “I threatened to kill you, too, remember? Over Jerry.”

“I remember.” Mariah nodded. “He wasn't worth it.”

“You're telling me,” Patti muttered. “And as good as Clint is, he isn't worth leaving my kids to do hard time for. No man is.”

The hard look she sent Trace's way seemed to include him in that less than admirable group.

“Look,” she said, when he didn't answer, “I have a habit of shooting off my big mouth. Things have been hard these past years, what with two kids to feed and Jerry leaving me with all the bills just when I bought this place.” She wrapped some cotton around the woman's neck and secured it with a clip. “When Clint started com
ing around, I thought he was Prince Charming. You know, the answer to all my prayers.”

Trace and Mariah both nodded.

“Then one day Laura comes back to town without her husband, and suddenly Clint tells me that he just wants to be friends.”

She shook her head as she took a bottle of solution and began applying the foul-smelling lotion to the rolled up hair. “Friends. When a man tells you that, you know it's over. I also knew why.”

“Because of Laura?” Mariah asked, earning a sharp look from Trace.

“She already had one husband, dammit,” Patti complained. “Why couldn't she just have stayed in Washington? Where she belonged?”

Neither Trace nor Mariah answered. Trace pulled a card from his pocket and put in on the station beside the gilded trophy. “If you hear anything—”

“Yeah, I'll let you know.” She glanced over at Mariah. “How long you going to be staying around?”

“As long as it takes.”

“Well, if you need someplace to invest all that Hollywood money, give me a call. I've got a good clientele, but that son of a bitch Jerry ran off with my redecoration fund. After working in Phoenix, it's embarrassing—not to mention depressing—owning a place that looks like a
Steel Magnolias
set.”

“I'll give it some thought,” Mariah said.

Patti shrugged. “Sure you will.” She didn't sound like she was going to hold her breath.

“Tough lady,” Trace said as they left the salon together.

It was Mariah's turn to shrug. “She's had a tough life.” They'd reached her Jeep. Mariah took her keys from her
purse, then stopped, looking up at him. “You said Laura was pregnant.”

“Two months.”

Mariah reached into her purse for the cigarettes, crumpling the pack with shaking fingers when she found it empty. “You know, it's goddamn true.”

“What's true?”

“That timing is everything.” Her remarkable eyes—replicas of her mother's, albeit turquoise rather than emerald—glistened. For a brief moment Trace thought she was going to cry, but she resolutely blinked the moisture away. “Is Alan the father?”

“He says he's not.”

“I assume you're planning to have him tested.”

“Yes. I am.” He paused again. “How much do you know about Garvey's relationship with your sister?”

“Only what I've already told you.”

“He undoubtedly harbored resentment over the breakup.”

“I'm sure he did,” Mariah agreed. “Wouldn't you?”

“Probably.” Several possible scenarios occurred to him. He mulled over a few of the more likely. “If he and your sister—”

“Laura,” Mariah interrupted. “She has a name, dammit. But you haven't once used it.”

There was a reason for that. When a homicide cop started thinking of murder victims by their names, it made them too real. Real enough that they tended to start haunting nightmares.

“I didn't mean—”

“Yes, you did.” She sighed. “And I know why you do it. But I'm asking you, just this once, to acknowledge that Laura was a living, breathing, warmhearted person.”

“If Garvey and
Laura
—” he watched her brief, satisfied nod “—had recently gotten back together, the preg
nancy would probably cause her to confront the problems in her marriage.”

“High time, too,” Mariah muttered.

“Being a senator's wife is no small deal. Being First Lady is even a bigger prize. If she'd decided to get an abortion—”

“She wouldn't.”

“You're not exactly an unbiased observer,” Trace reminded her. “You didn't believe she'd take a lover, either.”

“I'm glad she did,” Mariah said on a burst of heartfelt emotion. “I'm glad she experienced joy before she died.”

Trace thought about the semen in the M.E.'s report and figured that it might have not been exactly joy, but Laura Fletcher's last hours had not been without some pleasure.

“What I'm trying to say is that if she was considering an abortion, there's always a chance that Garvey would have viewed that act as murdering his unborn child.”

“So he murdered her?”

“It's been known to happen.”

“You don't have to convince me, Sheriff. Since I wrote a similar story for an episode of ‘Law and Order.' But the flaw in that reasoning is that if Clint killed Laura, he'd end up murdering his child as well.”

“Murder isn't always logical.”

“Tell me about it,” Mariah muttered as she unlocked the Jeep. She did not protest when Trace put his hand on her elbow to give her a lift up into the high seat. “So, what are you going to do now?”

“Try to sort out some loose ends. Arrange for the senator to be tested, and find Garvey. Among other things.”

“Are you going to talk with Heather?”

He was, but decided he didn't have to tell Mariah everything. “Who's running this investigation, anyway?” he asked mildly.

She flashed him a quick, false smile. “You are, of course.” She turned the key in the ignition. “I've got to get back to the lodge. Maggie should be awake.” Mariah didn't want to admit to this man who already knew too many of the Swann family secrets exactly how afraid she was to leave her mother alone for very long. “But I'll keep in touch.”

Trace had no doubt of that. He shut the driver's door, then watched her drive away.

He had people to see. Things to do, he reminded himself as he returned to the office. He couldn't—wouldn't—allow himself to become distracted. Even as he reminded himself of that, Trace couldn't quite shake the memory of her scent which had sneaked under his skin and was lingering in his mind.

 

The courthouse square looked like a satellite tracking station. The streets on all four sides of the redbrick building were blocked with television vans, the call letters painted on the sides revealing that media from all the bordering states were now on the scene. White saucers, like giant woks perched on top of the vans, tilted skyward, as if trying to pick up signals from outer space. Black, orange and yellow cables twined across the lawn like fat, colorful snakes. Reporters were still camped all over the steps.