Shameless (The Contemporary Collection) (15 page)

It might have appeared to an outsider that the men and children were all served first, while the women were forced to wait. Things were not quite as they appeared. The fact was that the women controlled the day, the gathering, and distribution of the food. They decided when everyone ate, and what, and no man dared touch food until given the signal.

The proceedings were also more orderly than they looked. A great many men had already had their plates heaped up by their wives. For them, it was a case of walking forward to get the food and drink, then wandering off to find a quiet place to eat it. Any man who had no woman to pile his plate with the best selections usually waited until the women had been served before he joined the line winding around the long tables. The well-brought-up southern male, chased out of his mother's kitchen from the time he was old enough to become demanding, learned early that if he wanted to eat, he had to wait until he was invited and take what he was given.

Reid hung back, turning his shoulder to lean against the oak tree. Several other unattached men nearby waited, too, while they finished a long and involved tale about bass fishing. Sheriff Bud Deerfield was among them, out of uniform but still carrying his handgun on his hip. Keith was also in the group.

Cammie, helping to dole out coleslaw and chicken and dumplings, watched Reid from the corner of her eye. Even after the other men began to ease in the direction of the good aromas, he still kept his place.

There was a small girl, perhaps five or six, moving slowly past him toward where her mother, big with pregnancy, sat. The child was carrying a laden plate with a fork balanced on top of it in one hand, and an over-full glass of punch in the other. As the little girl neared Reid she began to lose control of her load. Her plate tipped. She gave a despairing cry.

Reid moved swiftly. He caught the plate, then lifted the drink in a smooth movement just as it began to tip toward the front of the little girl's white pinafore. The smile the child gave him was beatific, the look in her eyes worshipful. She could not have been more impressed if he had been her own personal guardian angel.

Cammie was too far away to hear what the little girl said. But she saw Reid's face.

His eyes turned to liquid pools of pain. An instant later every expression, every nuance of emotion, vanished as if wiped away by a total exercise of will. Taking exquisite care not to touch the child, he transferred the plate and glass back to her as carefully as if they were living things. He recoiled from her then, backing away as swiftly as he had moved toward her in the beginning. Regaining his place under the tree, he pressed his back to the rough bark of the oak as though he meant to hold up the trunk by main strength.

There was a tightness in Cammie's throat, an aching constriction like the desperate need to cry, though she wasn't sure why. She swallowed hard against it. Reaching for a foam plate, she began to fill it. When it would hold no more, she poured sweetened tea over ice in a plastic glass, then picked up both plate and glass and turned toward where Reid stood.

Keith, moving with one or two other men to join the line in front of the tables, saw her coming in his general direction. He began to smile. As she came nearer, he put out his hands as if he thought the food she held was for him.

Cammie saw Keith and realized she should have given him a wider berth. It couldn't be helped. He had no right to expect her to feed him, no reason to think she might. With a lift of her chin, she sidestepped him, walking on to where Reid stood. She knew Keith jerked around with his hands on his hips, scowling at her back, but she didn't care.

“What's this?” Reid asked with a slight frown between his brows, though he automatically took the plate she thrust at him.

“It looked as if you were going to wait until everything was gone before making a move.”

“But you haven't eaten.” He attempted to press the plate and cup back into her hands.

“I will, in a minute.”

His gaze lost a little of its bleakness. His expression turned considering. “I'll wait for you.”

She hesitated. “All right, but only because I have something to prove.”

Surprise and doubt flickered in his eyes. He opened his mouth to question her, but she moved away before he could speak.

He was sipping his tea and surveying her return with fixed concentration as she joined him once more. He had somehow commandeered a pair of lawn chairs in her absence. As he steadied the back, she dropped down into one of them. He took the other. They set their tea on the ground beside their chairs as they settled their plates on their laps.

“Well?” he said.

She had had time to think of what she meant to say. She answered with composure. “I wanted to demonstrate that our disagreement isn't personal.”

“I see,” he said. He paused. “Isn't it?”

“Not as far as I'm concerned,” she answered, sending him a quick glance from under her lashes.

“That's nice to know.”

There was an undercurrent of irony that made her uncomfortable. She eyed him uncertainly. “You don't mind, do you?”

“Being used to squash nasty rumors, especially about being tried and found … lacking? Feel free anytime. Or use me any way, for that matter.”

“I think,” she said with a haze of color riding her cheekbones, “that the talk ran more along the lines of a woman found lacking.”

It was an instant before he spoke. “And that bothered you?”

She picked up a piece of fried chicken, looked at it, then put it down again. “Let's just say that I prefer to keep people guessing.”

“That's easy,” he returned. “We could always disagree in public and have a private affair.”

Her lips compressed before she forced them to relax. Her voice not quite even, she said, “Or vice versa.”

“A private disagreement and a public affair? I'm amazed, but not unwilling. Would you like to start right here with a passionate kiss, or shall we just wander off down by the lake and grope each other in plain view?”

She met his gaze for long seconds, and was not sure whether what she saw there was mockery or audacity, or a combination of both.

“Neither,” she said on a sharp breath.

“No? Too bad.”

“Will you please be serious?”

“Oh,” he said dryly, “but I am.”

She closed her eyes, then opened them again. Her voice tight, she said, “All right, I can see you aren't going to listen until you have your pound of flesh. I'm sorry I called you a voyeur. Does that make you happy?”

“No,” he said, the word vibrant with annoyance.

The man was totally unreasonable. And ungrateful, since he hadn't tasted his food. Cammie gathered her feet under her, getting ready to rise.

Reid shot out his hand to hold her in her seat. “It doesn't make me happy,” he said, “because I've decided after careful consideration that you may be right.”

It was the last thing she had expected. She stared at him, snared by the rich blue color of his eyes and the candor of his gaze. His fingers pressing warm and firm into her skin were such a vital reminder of things she had tried to forget that she felt disoriented, not quite certain what to say next. It was a relief when he spoke into the silence.

“I hadn't thought of how it might seem to you, my — call it spying, for lack of a better word. I shouldn't have sneaked around like that. Or else I should have kept my mouth shut about it.”

She laughed, she couldn't help it, as she heard the wry note in his voice, saw the downward tug of his mouth. He was so obviously without regret for his activities. “And you wish you had not let me know.”

“You might say that,” he agreed.

His gaze as it rested on her face was intent. His hold on her arm had loosened. It was a moment before Cammie realized that his thumb stroked her wrist, feathering back and forth over her pulse, noting its swift beat.

How easy it would be, she thought, to slip into an affair, private or not, with Reid Sayers. She would never have believed it. How had it come to this so quickly? How had it happened that she could be so easily moved by this man out of all others?

It wouldn't do. He had told her flat out that he had nothing to offer her. She believed him. Sex without strings was fine for one night, but she was going to need more than that one day, someday when she was finally free.

It was a shame.

She removed her arm from his grasp with firmness, but without haste. He didn't try to hold her, and she appreciated that. Summoning composure and what she hoped was a look of polite interest for the sake of their audience, she embarked on the kind of small talk that she could carry on in her sleep.

It was not one-sided. Reid asked questions, and actually listened to the answers. She found herself telling him about the first-place ribbons she had taken in judged shows with her watercolors, of the rose-covered arcade she wanted to build from the house at Evergreen to the gazebo, of a porcelain holder for hat pins she had sold that morning at the antique shop, and of her ambition to travel around the world on a freighter.

In return she discovered that he liked lasagna, but didn't care for spaghetti, that his French friend in New York was Jewish and the two of them played computer chess on weekends, that he despised cellular phones but had one anyway, and that he had always wanted brothers and sisters. She found out, too, that he had a special interest in music. He collected 78-speed classical jazz records that he played on an ancient Motorola phonograph, but used a state-of-the-art stereo for his favorite classical composer, Haydn. And he often used a midi-interface system with a keyboard attached to his computer for his favorite pastime of writing country music.

“You mean beer-drinking music?” she asked with a faint smile.

“Songs about heartache, and also about the love of a good woman,” he said. “Don't you care for it?”

“How can I not? It's the only music with a recognizable melody line and words that aren't an assault on good taste, not to mention decency. Besides,” she added flippantly, “there are so many new, good-looking male singers.”

“Modern-day troubadours, telling stories in song and rhyme — poetry for the working man, and the only outlet he's allowed for his feelings.”

“He might try sharing them with the woman in his life,” she said wryly.

Reid shook his head. “Too risky. What if she doesn't understand? Or understands too well and despises him? Or pities him?”

Cammie met his dark gaze, caught by the unexpected sensitivity. Or perhaps it was not so unexpected. She gave a slow shake of her head. “You're a surprising man.”

There was a sudden flash of something bright and hot, like spring lightning, in his eyes. It lasted only an instant before he turned it off, turned away. Still, she had felt its glow, and felt the shift of her heart in her chest.

Reid Sayers, she realized, was a man who kept much of what he was, what he thought and felt, well-hidden. He was firmly armored within himself, immune to probes and wayward curiosity. She wondered what it would take for him to open up and allow someone to touch his essential self. It did not seem likely that she would ever find out.

It really was a shame.

“YOU PROBABLY DON’T REMEMBER ME,” the
young woman said. She perched nervously on the edge of the living room sofa with its soft pattern of salmon, aqua, and yellow flowers on a cream background.

She was right, Cammie didn't, though she searched her mind diligently for some connection. The girl's last name, Baylor, was one of the old family names in and around Greenley, but Janet Baylor didn't ring any bells. The other woman's face was vaguely familiar, with its pale skin and softly molded features topped by ash-brown hair that just missed being mousy. The impression might, however, have come from no more than a family resemblance.

“Really, there's no reason you should,” Janet Baylor said. “I was four years behind you in school. You know how it is, the younger kids remember the older ones, but the older ones hardly know anybody more than a year younger is alive? But I remember you most of all because when my little dog my daddy had just bought for my birthday got run over, you were in your car right behind the truck that did it. You stopped and picked Rocky up, and took my dog and me to the vet.”

“Oh, yes,” Cammie said as a flash of memory returned. “That must have been years ago. Did everything turn out all right?”

Janet Baylor smiled as she gave a nod. “Rocky's ten, getting on up there for a dog. But he wouldn't be around if weren't for you, and I've never forgotten it, nor how kind and concerned you were that day. That's why when I found out about the stuff at the courthouse, I was disturbed in my mind. They told me to keep it quiet, but it seemed wrong. Finally, I knew I had to come and tell you about it.”

Persephone came into the living room just then, bearing a small tray holding the glass of water that was all Janet Baylor had requested. Cammie had offered coffee or soft drinks with cake, but it had been refused. She thanked the housekeeper and passed the other woman her water and the linen napkin edged with Brussels lace that Persephone had considered appropriate. It was only when these formalities were out of the way that she spoke.

“I don't understand what you're saying. What did you find at the courthouse?”

The other woman swallowed a sip of water. She looked at Cammie, then away again. “Well, it's like this. I work in town as a paralegal with Lane, Endicott and Lane. Mostly, it's routine: filing mortgages, checking judgments, chasing probates and successions that kind of thing. Then a few weeks back, we had a request from the mill to do a title search, looking up the old lease agreement with Justin Sayers, and also the original land deed for the property where the mill sets.”

Cammie felt a tremor along her nerves of something that could only be called excitement. Janet Baylor was talking about the land supposedly deeded to old Justin by her great-grandmother Lavinia. She had always known there was something odd about that transaction.

“I'm with you so far,” she said, giving the other woman a smile of encouragement.

Janet Baylor nodded. “I found the lease from Justin Sayers to Sayers-Hutton Bag and Paper, ninety-nine years, all signed and notarized; no problem. But I couldn't find hide nor hair of the deed from Lavinia Anne Wiley Greenley to Justin Sayers. Nothing. Zilch. It should have been listed or filed in three different places. There was no sign in any one of them.”

“Are you suggesting that it was misplaced sometime in the last hundred-odd years — or stolen?” Cammie's gaze was narrow with cogent thought.

“No, no nothing like that,” the woman said, looking alarmed. “I'm thinking that it was maybe destroyed back in the twenties, when they had the big fire in the courthouse.” She frowned. “Even then, some notation of it should have been in the register for the latter part of the 1890s — that old book is still in good shape. There are two other possibilities.”

She paused, passing her tongue over her lips as if they were suddenly dry. Cammie had begun to suspect what Janet Baylor was going to say. Cammie watched her closely as she said, “Yes?”

Janet Baylor took a deep breath, held it a moment, then let it out in a rush as she squared her shoulders. Lifting her chin, she said, “The first is that the deed was never filed for some reason, that it's floating around somewhere, or buried in some safety deposit box. The second is that there never was a deed.”

Never was a deed
…

Cammie, staring at the marble mantel across from the sofa, heard the echo of the words in her head. If there was no deed, then the mill land — and perhaps the buildings on it — belonged to the Greenley heirs, the descendants of Lavinia Greenley and her husband Horace. It would mean—

“There was something else.”

Cammie turned her head sharply as the girl's stiff voice jolted her awareness. “Yes?”

Janet Baylor twisted the glass in her hand, then reached out to set it on the tray that had been placed on the low table in front of them. Her fingers were trembling so badly that the water sloshed over, puddling like liquid crystal on the silver. “Oh, I'm sorry.”

“It doesn't matter,” Cammie said. “Go on.”

With her long, thin lashes quivering, shading her eyes, the other woman clasped her hands in her lap. “Well, I was digging into the old Greenley succession, thinking maybe the deed had been misfiled, or maybe there was some complication, such as a previous mortgage or maybe a connection to another, larger land transaction. It was in there that I found the divorce papers.”

“What? Mine?” Cammie asked, her brows drawing together in puzzlement.

Janet Baylor shook her head. “Horace and Lavinia Greenley's.”

“You must be mistaken. There was no divorce. That would have been a terrible scandal in those days.”

“But there was, in 1890, two years before Horace Greenley passed away. I saw the paperwork with my own eyes. It was signed by Horace as plain as day; the signature matched a half-dozen other examples in the file. But the papers were in a sealed envelope, and Lavinia Greenley had never signed them. I think it's possible that—” She stopped, then tried again. “There's nothing to show that Lavinia ever knew about it.”

Cammie shook her head. “That can't be right. The two of them were living together as man and wife when Horace died, they had a child just a few short months before then.”

“I know,” the other woman said, nodding, “I looked it up.”

“But that would mean—” Cammie began, then stopped. The thought in her mind was of her own great-grandfather, Jonathan Wiley Greenley, firstborn child of Horace and Lavinia, and nearly five years old when Horace had died. There had also been the daughter born to Horace and Lavinia after their reconciliation following Lavinia's affair. There were quite a few descendants to the second child, people she had called cousins for years — including Wen Marston and the sheriff, Bud Deerfield. If there had been a divorce in 1890, then that later child, the daughter, was illegitimate. Her descendants were still related by blood, of course, but not in the full legal fashion they thought. They had never had a true claim on the Greenley estate, it seemed.

Strange. Not that it made any difference. It was all so long ago, and straightening out the legal complications would cost more than it was worth, even if anybody cared. She certainly didn't.

“What it means,” Janet Baylor said, “is that it doesn't matter whether there was ever a deed to the mill land or not. What it means is that Lavinia Greenley, when she deeded the land, if she deeded it, had no legal right to make the transfer. She had no widow's usufruct of her former husband's property. The most she could have done, legally, was to hold it for her minor son, your great-grandfather, Jonathan Wiley Greenley.”

Janet Baylor was now watching Cammie expectantly. Cammie stared at her, trying to understand the significance of what the other woman was saying. She saw the faint outlines of it, but her mind would not quite encompass it.

The pale, brown-haired woman leaned toward her. “Don't you see? Horace and Lavinia's son and only legal heir, Jonathan Wiley Greenley, had two sons and a daughter. The daughter died young of polio. The oldest son married at twenty-three, during World War Two, but was killed at Guadalcanal; he never had children. The only surviving child was your father. You are his only child, the only legal descendant. The mill land belongs to you. And the ninety-nine-year lease expires in less than two years.”

Hers. The mill land, and by extension the mill itself, were rightfully hers. The words recurred in Cammie's mind, slowly gathering force.

She said, “The Swedish company isn't interested in renewing the lease. They want to buy outright.”

Janet Baylor gave a quick, hard nod. “If you want to prevent the mill buy-out, all you have to do is refuse to sell.”

The exultation that swept through Cammie was fierce. She could save the trees, save the land, save the red-cockades. The battle was over before it had begun. As the owner of the mill, she could structure the ecology of the parish as she saw fit. Nothing and nobody could stand in her way. The relief, the sheer, glorious gladness of it, bubbled in her veins like champagne. The smile that curved her mouth shone brilliant in her eyes.

Then slowly, surely, the effervescent joy began to go flat.

If the town died, she would be solely, completely responsible in a way she would not have been before, when there had been other people acting with her in opposition to the buy-out. It was a sobering thought.

“There's another angle,” Janet Baylor said. “It just came to me last night — and is a big part of the reason I decided to see you this morning. If you own the land, and are the only heir, then you should have been getting the money for the lease all these years. On an annual basis, the lease amount Justin Sayers agreed to doesn't amount to much, a dollar per acre per year. But if you add it up over a hundred years and compound it at an average interest rate — as a court might order after litigation — the total comes to a considerable amount. That's money the mill owners would owe you, whether you decide to sell or not.”

Cammie stared at the other woman while what she had just heard revolved in her head along with a burgeoning suspicion. She hesitated, then said with care, “I think you mentioned that you discovered all this several weeks ago. Does that mean that the results have been passed on to whoever requested it at the mill?”

“Yes, it has.”

“And do you mind telling me — or do you know? — who it was who contacted Lane, Endicott and Lane?”

Janet Baylor nodded once. “The way I understand it, the request came from Gordon Hutton.”

Cammie had not known she was holding her breath until it left her in a soft rush. Reid had hardly been home long enough to have authorized the work of the paralegal, but it still might have been done by his father. In that case, it was unlikely that he would not know the results. With Gordon behind it, the same thing did not necessarily follow.

There was one person, however, who almost certainly had known. That person was her ex-husband.

Contempt gathered inside Cammie, spreading as it grew. The reason for Keith's sudden interest in nullifying the divorce petition and taking his old place as her husband was glaringly apparent. Under Louisiana's community property laws, half of everything she gained during the course of their marriage was legally his. If the mill was sold, and she was awarded ownership by the courts, he would collect half. Even if the sale fell through, he stood to rake in a share of the huge sum that might come from the old lease.

But if the divorce petition was granted before everything was settled, then he would miss his honey-fall. He would get nothing. Nothing at all.

She would see to it, Cammie thought, that he got exactly what he deserved.

Bringing her mind back to the woman beside her with difficulty, she said, “I can't tell you how grateful I am to you for coming to me. But you won't get in trouble for it, will you?”

Janet Baylor pressed her lips together before she answered. “I don't exactly know. You'll want to use what I've told you, I expect, otherwise there's no point. But when you do, do you think you could — forget how you found out about it?”

“I'm sure I could do that, yes,” Cammie agreed, reaching out to touch the other woman's hand.

They both smiled with understanding at the same time.

Late the next day Cammie decided to talk to Reid. She had mulled the things she had learned over in her mind for more than twenty-four hours. Yet the more she thought about it, the more angles she found to consider, the more possibilities and unanswered questions. She was tired of what she had come to feel was a useless mental exercise. Most of all, she was tired of the doubts.

Regardless, the new aspect that had been placed on the contention between Reid and herself was not the only thing on her mind. There was another suspicion that had gradually crowded out most considerations.

It had to do with Reid's confession that he had watched her the night of her meeting, and also as she was growing up. No matter how many times she went over what had been said that evening, she could not remember him saying those were the only times that he had watched. Nor could she recall any hint of a promise that he would never do it again.

Those lapses, she had come to believe, were significant. She intended to test the idea.

She made her arrangements early. It was not that there was that much to do, rather that she didn't trust leaving anything until the last minute.