Texas! Lucky (11 page)

Sage slathered cream cheese onto a slice of low-calorie whole-wheat toast. "Well, are you?" she mumbled around the first creamy bite.

"Am I what?"

"Marrying Susan Young."

Lucky laid aside the newspaper. "Get serious. While you're at it, get your older brother some more coffee."

"Haven't you ever heard of women's lib?" she asked crossly.

"Sure, I've heard of it."

Picking up his mug, he wagged it back and forth while smiling at her guilelessly. With a theatrical sigh she fetched the carafe from the coffee maker and refilled his mug.

"Thanks, brat."

"You're welcome." She slid back into her chair. "All kidding aside, Lucky, if Susan Young has got it in her head that you're her prospective groom, you'd better be shopping for a diamond ring. When she doesn't get her way, she causes trouble."

"What more can she do? I'm already in trouble up to my gills."

A week had passed since his fight with Little Alvin. It had been the longest week of Lucky's life. The area around his right eye had run the gamut of rainbow colors, and was still a sick, jaundiced yellow. The red line across his abdomen had faded to pink. Together with Sheriff's Department deputies and insurance investigators, federal agents continued to sift through the debris left by the fire. Due to the unfavorable publicity, Tyler Drilling's client list had dropped drastically. The note payment was coming due in less than a month, and what little revenue had been trickling in had stopped altogether. Bankruptcy seemed unavoidable. There wasn't even a glimmer of light on the dark horizon.

"One good thing," Chase had optimistically remarked the evening before, "they haven't turned up any hard evidence against you. Without something that places you on the scene at the time of the fire, they haven't got a case. It's all circumstantial."

"That's a plus from the legal standpoint," Lucky had said. "But until the insurance company is satisfied that we were victims and not perpetrators, they aren't going to honor our claim. So, while I won't go to jail, we're still in hock."

They desperately needed verification of Lucky's whereabouts that night in order to eliminate him as an arson suspect. They desperately needed Dovey.

Thus far, however, his attempts to track her had led him nowhere except in circles. Daily he polled the patrons of the place, asking everyone who had witnessed the incident with Little Alvin and Jack Ed if he remembered anything about the elusive woman or her car. All the men remembered that she was a good-looking redhead. Beyond that, he had come up empty-handed.

A return trip to the motel to speak with the night clerk hadn't been productive either. The man remembered her, all right, but she had registered as Mary Smith, paid for one night with cash, and that was all he knew. The convenience-store clerk who had sold him the whiskey, steak, and aspirin had never seen him with Dovey.

"She couldn't have just vanished off the face of the earth!" Lucky had exclaimed to his family after his discouraging interview with the motel clerk. "She's somewhere, walking around, breathing, going about her business, eating, sleeping, having no idea of the havoc she's created in my life."

"Maybe not," Tanya had suggested.

He had stopped pacing and looked toward his sister-in-law. "What do you mean?"

"Maybe she's read about the fire in the newspaper and realizes she's your alibi, but hasn't come forward because she doesn't want to become involved."

"That's a possibility," Chase had said.

Because it irked Lucky to think so, he dismissed that worry. "It's only been in the local papers, and she said she wasn't from around here when Pat asked her. I think she was telling the truth when she gave Dallas as her address. She looked like a city girl."

But for the next several days he had logged a lot of miles on his Mustang, driving to neighboring communities and tracking down all the Mary Smiths on the lists of registered voters. He found several. One was eighty-two; one was middle-aged, blind, and living with her elderly parents; one was a coed. All were dead ends.

He considered combing Dallas, seeking out every Mary Smith, but he knew it would be a time-consuming chore and, in the end, an exercise in futility. Tongue-in-cheek, and very cleverly, she had used that fictitious name. Why? She hadn't known then that he would eventually be looking for her to serve as his alibi in a criminal investigation.

"Lucky, are you listening to me?"

Sage's impatient inquiry brought him back to the present. "Hmm? What? You were saying something about Susan?"

"I was saying that she's a spiteful bitch."

"How do you know so much about her? She was several classes ahead of you."

"But her legend lived on even after I got to high school."

"Legend?"

"Her meanness was legendary."

"Example?"

"She was so envious when one of her classmates was named Homecoming queen instead of her that she circulated the rumor that the girl had herpes."

Lucky gave a spontaneous burst of laughter.

"It's not funny!" Sage exclaimed. "The gossip ruined that girl's reputation and made the remainder of her days at high school pure hell. That's not all."

Propping her arm on the edge of the table, she leaned toward him. "Susan was named first alternate on the girls' varsity basketball team. The next morning, when the newly named team was suiting up for practice, a bank of lockers fell over on top of one of the girls and broke her arm. Susan was standing on the other side of the lockers."

"And it's believed that she pushed it over?"

"That's right."

"Sage, that's crazy. It's silly high school backbiting and nothing more."

She shook her head adamantly. "I don't think so. Some of my friends who have stayed in town and know Susan through clubs and such say she's a viper. If she wants to be the president of this or that, she'll do anything to get elected." Her eyes narrowed. "Now she's set her sights on you. She wants to be Mrs. Lucky Tyler."

"I wonder why?" he asked, honestly puzzled by Susan's fixation on him. They'd gone out steadily for the last few months, had shared a few laughs, smooched a little, but he'd never even breathed the word "marriage."

"That's easy," Sage replied to his rhetorically phrased question. "No other woman has had the distinction of marrying you. Those who keep notches on their bedposts prize the one you make. You're the local stud. It would be a feather in Susan's cap to break you."

"Local stud, huh?" he drawled, leaning far back in his chair.

"Will you stop with the conceit," Sage said with annoyance. "A man with gray chest hairs has nothing to be conceited about."

"Gray!" he exclaimed. He bent his head down to investigate the wedge of chest showing through his parted robe. "Those are blond."

"Susan's determination to have you, coupled with this nonsense about the fire, worries me."

"Those lighter hairs are blond, Sage."

"Will you forget the hairs! I was only kidding, for heaven's sake."

His sister's concern touched him, but he couldn't take her warnings about Susan seriously. Granted, the woman was a schemer. She was unquestionably selfish, and could have taught the green-eyed monster a thing or two about jealousy. But he hadn't exactly been born yesterday. Susan would have to practice some mighty refined chicanery to outsmart him.

Reaching across the table, he patted the top of Sage's unruly blond head. "Don't worry, brat. I wrote the book on how to take care of women."

"You don't—"

Her protest was cut short when a knock sounded on the back door. "That'll be Mother," she said, leaving her chair to open the door. "Oh, Pat!" she said with surprise. "We were expecting Mother back from an early trip to the produce stand down the highway."

"Mornin', Sage, Lucky." Pat stepped into the kitchen and removed his Stetson. "Got an extra cup of coffee?"

"Sure."

He thanked Sage for the cup of black coffee she poured him, blew on it, removed the matchstick from his mouth and sipped it, then stared into it for several silent moments. The coffee was a tactical delay.

If Pat had come in an official capacity to impart bad news, Lucky figured he would make it as easy on him as possible. "Why don't you tell us why you came out this morning, Pat?"

The family friend lowered himself into a chair across the table from Lucky. After glancing uncomfortably around the kitchen, he finally looked directly at the younger man.

"Have you bought anything at Talbert's Hardware Store recently?"

"Talbert's Hardware?" he repeated with puzzlement. "Oh wait, yeah. I bought some railroad flares a few weeks back."

Pat Bush blew out a gust of air. "Where were you storing them?"

"In the—" Lucky refocused sharply on the sheriff. "In the garage that burned."

"They, uh, they've determined that the fire was caused by gasoline touched off by railroad flares. Nothing fancy. Simplest thing in the world."

Sage sank into the chair beside her brother and laid her hand on his shoulder. He plowed his fingers through his hair and held it back by settling his forehead in his palm. It was unnecessary for Pat to explain the significance of that find.

"I shouldn't be telling you this, Lucky," Pat said. "I'm here as a friend, not a law officer. Just thought I ought to warn you. They're preparing a case against you. Looks like now they might have enough probable cause to arrest you."

When the sheriff stood to go, Lucky roused himself. "Thanks, Pat. I know you're going out on a limb to tell me."

"When your daddy was dying, I promised him I'd look after Laurie and you kids. That pledge is more important to me than the oath I took when they pinned this badge on me." He moved toward the door. "Sage," he said, replacing his hat before stepping outside and pulling the door closed.

"Lucky," she said miserably, "what are you going to do?"

"Damned if I know."

In a fit of temper he hissed a vile word and banged his fist on the table. The blow rattled every piece of glass in the kitchen, even though it was somewhat cushioned by the newspaper he'd left lying open on the table. His jaw grinding with aggravation, he stared down at the newsprint sightlessly, periodically spiking his enraged silence with a curse.

Suddenly his whole body tensed. He grabbed up the newspaper and held it close to his face. "I'll be damned," he whispered in awe. He laughed shortly. Then he laughed loudly.

In one motion he dropped the newspaper and stood up, sending his chair over backward and crashing to the floor. He left the kitchen at a run. By the time Sage caught up with him, he was taking the stairs two at a time.

"Lucky, what in the world…?"

He disappeared at the top of the landing. She ran up the stairs after him and flung open the door to his bedroom. He was hiking a pair of jeans up over his hips.

"What's the matter? What are you doing? Where are you going?"

He pushed her aside on his way out of the room, wearing only his jeans, carrying a shirt and his boots with him.

She charged down the stairs after him. "Lucky, slow down! Tell me. What's going on?"

He was already vaulting into his open convertible when she bounded across the front porch after him. "Tell everybody I'll be back by nightfall!" he shouted over the roar of the Mustang's revving engine. "By then I'll be able to clear this whole thing up."

* * *

"Here's that reference material you wanted from the morgue." The gofer dumped a mountain of files on her desk.

Holding the last bite of her lunch sandwich between her teeth, she frowned at the extent of the research material and mumbled, "Thanks for nothing."

"Anything else?"

She bit into the sandwich, chewed, swallowed, then blotted her mouth with a paper napkin. "Coffee. From a fresh pot, please," she called after the young man as he dashed off. He was a college student who interned at the newspaper three afternoons a week. He hadn't been there long enough to become jaded. He was still starstruck and eager to please.

Her position as editorial columnist entitled her to a glass cubicle of an office, but the constant noise and hustle from the sprawling city room filtered into it. To anyone unaccustomed to newspaper offices, the incessant noise and motion would have been distracting. She didn't even notice.

That's why she wasn't attuned to the change in the climate that occurred when a man stepped off the elevator and asked for her.

His appearance had an immediate effect on the women in the room. It wasn't only that he was tall, slim-hipped, blond, blue-eyed, and handsome. It was the purposeful way he crossed the city room, as though it were a battlefield on which he'd just won the day and was about to collect the spoils of war. Even the most feminist among them secretly fantasized about being part of those spoils.

He also attracted the curiosity of the men, who, to a man, were glad they didn't have to tangle with him. It wasn't that he was of such an intimidating size, though his shoulders were broad and his chest wide. No, it was the expression on his face that was quelling. His jaw was set with inflexible resolve. His eyes were steady and unblinking; they could have been focused on a target caught in the crosshairs of a rifle sight.