Dark River Road (55 page)

“Just come home, asshole,” he’d said on the phone, “and stop being the Lone Ranger.”

It wasn’t that simple. For a person to go home, they had to have one. Mikey didn’t get that. He adapted easier. Accepted the inevitable and went on, just rolled with the flow and put it down to experience. Resolved it somehow. He wished he could do that.

On the surface, Cane Creek was a pretty town. Quaint, some might even call it, with its mixture of historical old homes and gracious newer ones, the quiet, tree-lined streets and the abundance of churches. But beyond the pretty park lay Sugarditch, across the tracks and sandwiched between fields, the trailers and houses set on cinder blocks and sinking into the red Mississippi clay a little more each year like dispirited transplants.

And Chantry knew the darker side of town, too, places beyond the main streets in the back alleys, the places he’d frequented at one time. There wasn’t much he hadn’t seen here at one time or the other.

It was crazy, but he found himself in the parking lot of the Tap Room, and he sat there for a while just looking at it. Not much had changed here, except maybe the parking lot repaved. Out back the dirt was paved, too, a stretch of black asphalt instead of the gravel and mud that’d been there the night Beau and Rafe caught him. They had to be out of prison by now for that drug deal, but he was willing to bet they hadn’t learned a damn thing. His step-brothers never had been quick on the uptake.

He didn’t go in, just sat there a while, watching men like Rainey walk in and stagger out. A way station to hell. He’d seen places like it all over the world and they were pretty much the same. In any language, any skin color, humans had an amazing capacity for self-destruction. He ought to know.

When he parked the black Range Rover in the motel parking lot he saw the desk clerk at the lobby window staring out like she was waiting on something. Donny’s cousin, probably, and ready to make a full report on his activities. Not that he’d ever been able to get away with much anyway, but he hadn’t quite expected such intense scrutiny. Maybe from Quinton, but he hadn’t thought too many other people would care he’d come back.

He’d stopped at a store and bought dinner, a hot pizza and six pack of cold beer, and he took it up to his room. The message light on his phone was flashing. He ignored it for a while, ate the pizza and drank two of the beers, then tinkered with the controls on the air conditioning unit to cool the room. It was stuffy, the air too warm. He hadn’t heard the compressor kick on. After a few minutes, he called the front desk to report it out of order, then he checked his phone messages. There were three.

The first was from Doc, telling him just to show up out at Dale Ledbetter’s Monday since he had a few things to do before he got there, and the second was from the real estate agent he’d talked to earlier. It seemed a rental house had become available after all, and the owner was willing to rent it for only six months if he was still interested. That was a big surprise. The third message was from Cathy Chandler Durbin, telling him to give her a call. That wasn’t such a big surprise.

He had no intention of getting tangled up with her again. It’d been great when they were kids, but they’d both moved on. He liked his relationships with women to be casual, with both knowing it was for the moment and no chance of a future. Cathy could be trouble.

Cable TV offered nothing interesting, so he stripped off his shirt and headed for the shower. When he got out, he heard knocking at the door. The air conditioner repairman he’d been promised. He wrapped a towel around his waist and went to the door.

When he opened it Cathy stood there, leaned up against the door frame with a sultry smile and six pack of beer. She’d changed into a dress that hugged her curves, done something with her brown hair to make it all loose and soft around her face. Her eyes moved over him slowly.

“Damn, I knew you’d look like that. Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

She didn’t wait for the invitation but slid past him, put the beer on the table and turned around to look at him with an expression of feline satisfaction usually reserved for a cat with a cornered mouse.

“Might not be a good time,” he said. “The air conditioner’s out and it’s hot in here.”

“Honey, getting hotter by the moment. Here. Have a beer. That’ll cool you off a little.”

She twisted a can free from the plastic loop and tossed it to him. He caught it easily, one hand still holding the edge of the towel around his waist. “Look, Cathy. This isn’t a good idea. I don’t need any trouble.”

“No? Then why’d you come back?” She pulled the tab on her beer then rubbed the can over her chest, and he remembered how she’d done that the first night they’d ever had sex, down on the river at Makeout Point. It’d worked pretty well on a fifteen year old boy.

“Business reasons.”

“Um. Business, huh.” She draped herself on the bed, propped up against the pillows and looking at him with a calculating smile. “It might be interesting to know just what business brings you back here.”

He had no intention of telling her about working with Doc. Word would get out soon enough about that. Leaving the door half-open, he set his unopened beer down on the table by the empty pizza box.

“So where’s Brad?”

“How should I know? He does his own thing now. Works at the casino for Chris. He gets all he wants elsewhere, and I’m free to do the same.”

“Chris Quinton?”

“Yep. He runs the casino for his grandfather, but you probably already know that.”

He did. He’d done some checking of his own before he came back, knew that old man Quinton had bought into a casino up in Tunica, was raking in money hand over fist and getting richer by the day. Back in the late eighties he’d spearheaded the campaign to legalize riverboat gambling in Mississippi, after purchasing several tracts of land along the riverbanks above Mhoon Landing. The first casino had opened to great success, but those built on land closer to Memphis were where profits were best. And Quinton had been right there with his hand in the till. Not surprising.

“I didn’t know Brad worked for him,” he said.

“Sure. Boyhood loyalties. They’re all making lots of money and happy about it.”

“Nothing like the bond formed by mutual greed.”

Her head tilted again. “You really are cynical, aren’t you.”

“Did you think I’d changed?”

“Maybe. Still have those blue eyes that give women shivers, and your hair’s still dark and a little too long so that you look dangerous, but you’ve changed in other ways. You’re—harder. All sharp edges now, when once you at least had this
 . . .
kind of sweetness.”

“We all grow up.”

“Some of us. Brad didn’t.” She shrugged. “I’m not sure I have. You were always grown.”

Drops of water ran down the side of his face from his wet hair, and he raked a hand through it. “Yeah. Maybe I was at that. Look, this isn’t exactly the right time for this.”

“For what?” She uncurled from the bed, short hem of her dress riding up so high he could see she wasn’t wearing any underwear. “For catching up on old times? Or for—other things?”

She’d moved close, beer in one hand, long painted nails gliding lightly over his bare chest and lower, to the top of the towel around his waist. All good intentions aside, he couldn’t help a sharp intake of breath when her fingertips feathered over his belly and made his muscles tighten. It reminded him just how long it’d been since he’d been with a woman, even while he knew this wasn’t what he wanted.

He caught her wrist when she tugged at his towel, held her, fingers gripping tightly. Her eyes widened, but instead of putting her off, it made her lean closer. “Um. You’re not so easy this time, Chantry.”

For a moment he just looked down at her, recognizing the haze of desire in her eyes, and wondered if it was in his, too. Some things a man just couldn’t control that well, and his body had reacted on its own. But he still had free will, still knew better than to start something he wouldn’t want to finish.

He might have said something to ease the moment, but a voice from the doorway took care of that for him.

“Looks like I got here just in time. Or are you just beginning?”

It took him a minute to recognize her. There wasn’t much resemblance in the green eyed girl and the cool eyed woman who stared back at him now, but everything registered at once, how it probably looked to her, the fact that he cared how it looked, and Cathy’s sudden laugh.

“You really have shitty timing, Cinda. Go away.”

“Certainly. Sorry for the interruption.”

“Cinda—wait.” He let go of Cathy’s wrist and grabbed at the door, catching the edge before she could slam it shut. “It’s not what it looks like.”

She turned to look at him, blonde hair catching the last rays of the late afternoon light, her eyes cool and remote. “No? It hardly matters to me if it is or isn’t. I just came by to deliver some information on real estate listings for rental homes. You were at my office earlier today and there seemed to have been some kind of miscommunication. It’s all straightened out now. Nancy Owen will handle it for you.”

“That
 . . .
was your office?” A stupid thing to say, but he couldn’t come up with anything that wouldn’t sound even worse.

“Yes. Here. Some listings. Please call Nancy if you find any of them interesting.” She thrust a folder into his hand. It had a card stapled to the top, but he didn’t even glance at it, just tossed the folder to the table by the empty pizza box.

“Thanks. I’ll look over it and call you.”

She was already walking away. Tall, slender, with the curves of a woman. He didn’t try to call her back, just let her go. There wasn’t much he could say right now anyway.

“Well,” Cathy said when he turned back around, her hands on her hips and her head to one side, “that was awkward.”

“Just a little.”

“Guess all those rumors were true, huh. Not that I didn’t figure they were anyway. Never can tell, though. Sometimes it’s just a case of ‘love the one you’re with.’ I can take a hint. Maybe later?” She walked to the door, turned around to smile at him. “It’s been too damn dull around here lately. I have a feeling that’s all about to change. Welcome home, Chantry Callahan.”

Right. Some homecoming.