Carnal Innocence (24 page)

“You seem to be over it now.”

“The wimp period or Luis? I am. Pretty much.” She missed again, swore, and buckled down. “Dammit, I’m going to hit one. It’s just a matter of practice. Nobody knows more about practice than a musician.” She lifted the gun, sighted in. “I’m going to make that goddamn can sing.”

She clipped the side, and while it didn’t precisely sing, the quick bang was enough to satisfy her.

“Nice going, Dead-eye.” Susie gave her a congratulatory pat on the back. “Why don’t you take a break?”

“Why don’t I?” Caroline meticulously unloaded. Unlike Susie, she was less than comfortable carrying a loaded gun. “I did better than yesterday. It took over two hours for me to hit one of those stupid cans. Today it took”—she checked her watch—“only an hour forty-five.” For lack of a better place, she dumped the spare ammo in her pocket. “Want a drink?”

“I thought you’d never ask.” They started back toward the house. “You’re keeping Toby and Jim busy. I like the new blue paint. Really freshens the place up.”

“They’re going to do the porches, too. In white. Can we get through here, Toby?”

“Sure, just mind your step. Afternoon, Mrs. Truesdale.”

“Hey, Toby. When you’re done here, why don’t you come on by and shame Burke into fixing my side door? It still sticks.”

He grinned, wiping his face with his bandanna. The dirt from under the porch clung to his skin, settled wetly into the creases. “Now, I told him what needed to be done there. Musta been six months ago.”

“He tells me he’s getting around to it.” She stepped around the toolbox. “I guess he’s got a lot on his mind.”

Toby’s smile faded. “Yes’m. Jim, you hold that board steady now.” He kept his eyes on his hands as Caroline ushered Susie into the kitchen.

“Well now, there’s that little pup I’ve heard so much about.” Susie crouched down to where Useless was huddled under one of the kitchen chairs—a position he’d assumed since the first shot was fired.

“Yeah, my fierce guard dog.” Caroline watched as he trembled and whined and licked at Susie’s hand. “I must have been crazy.”

“No, just soft-hearted. Thanks.” She stood, accepting the glass of iced tea Caroline offered. “I’ve been meaning to stop on out before. It’s been real hectic since Marvella got engaged.”

“I heard about that.” Noting the look in Susie’s eyes, Caroline searched through the cupboards for something high in sugar and low in nutrition. She settled on the cupcakes she’d bought to treat Jim at lunch. “Here, have some chocolate and preservatives.”

“Thanks.” Susie sniffled and tore at the cellophane. “I swear, I’ve been as bad as a leaky faucet ever since it happened. I just think about it and off I go.” She bit into the cupcake. “I knew it was coming, of course. They’ve been mooning around each other for two years. When they weren’t mooning they were scrapping, and that’s a sure sign.”

“But she’s your little girl.”

“Yeah.” Susie swiped at a tear. “My baby. My first baby, I’m okay when I get caught up in the wedding plans, but if I just sit and think about it, I start dripping.”

Caroline eyed the second cupcake, and decided she deserved it. “Have they set a date?”

“September. Marvella’s always been partial to chrysanthemums. She wants the church full of them, and her five bridesmaids in fall-colored dresses. She’s got her own ideas, all right. Russet and gold, she says.” Firing up, Susie licked crumbs from her fingers. “Now, I say russet’s like red, and seems inappropriate for a church wedding, but she’s set. Won’t even talk about pastels.” Susie caught Caroline’s look and grinned. “I know, I know, colors aren’t so important as why. It’s just easier for me to think about them, and the music, and if we’re going to have the reception outside at the house or if we should rent out the Moose Hall.” She gave a slow sigh. “Burke and I had a justice of the peace wedding.”

“I’m sure between you and Marvella everything’s going to be beautiful.”

“I’d feel better if I could talk her into rose instead of russet.” She polished off the cupcake. “We’re going down to Jackson this weekend to shop. You’re welcome to come along if you’d like.”

“I appreciate that. But I don’t have anything to shop for.”

“When a woman needs an excuse to shop, she must have something on her mind.”

Caroline licked some of the sticky white filling off her fingers. “I guess I do. I guess we all do.”

“Burke’s hardly been home to do more than fall into bed for a couple of hours since Austin took off.” She tilted her head. “Honey, you’re not worried that he’s going to come back here and bother you?”

“I don’t know.” Restless, Caroline rose. “I can’t quite dismiss it, though there isn’t a reasonable motive for him to do so.” She looked out the window, and her eyes were drawn to the line of trees, and the memory of what lay beyond them. “It’s more, Susie. I suppose it feels like everything else has been covered up by this search for Austin Hatinger. I can’t forget that just a couple of weeks ago I walked out there by the pond and found his daughter.”

“Nobody’s forgotten about Edda Lou. Or Francie or Arnette either. It’s just if you think about it too much, you go crazy.” She lowered her voice. “That Agent Burns is talking to everyone in town. He interviewed Darleen just this morning. Happy told me about it. The thing that’s making it hard is he’s not working with Burke. He’s working around him. Doesn’t want the local law messing with his federal case, I suppose, but it’s a mistake. Burke knows these people, and they trust him. They don’t trust some shiny-shoed Yankee.”

Caroline had to smile and look down at her own shoes. “Mine haven’t been polished in weeks.”

“Oh, it’s different with you.” Susie waved Caroline’s northern connections aside. “Your kin was here. Of course, you could say that you and that Burns fellow speak the same language.”

Caroline lifted a brow. “You could, but I don’t think it’s quite true.”

“It seemed to me he had a lot of respect for you.”

“For Caroline Waverly, musician. There’s a difference.” On a sigh, Caroline sat again. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re dancing around, Susie?”

“It’s just that I was thinking, with you and Agent Burns in the same circles, so to speak, he might listen if you made a suggestion.”

“What suggestion would that be?”

“He can’t keep cutting Burke out like this,” Susie blurted out, and scowled down at the chocolate crumbs. “I’m not just speaking as Burke’s wife, because I love him and know this is eating at him. I’m speaking as a woman, as part of this community. Whoever killed those girls needs to be caught, and it’s going to be a whole lot harder without Burke smoothing the way with people, and getting them to open up.”

“I agree with you, Susie. I do. But I really don’t see how I can help.”

“I just thought you might find the opportunity to mention it. In passing.”

“How’s this? If the opportunity presents itself, I’ll try.”

“I guess he didn’t do anything for you,” Susie said. “Romantically speaking.”

Caroline gave a quick laugh and shook her head. “No, he didn’t. And no man will again who thinks of my music first and me second.”

“Oh. That sounds like a story.” All anticipation, Susie propped her chin on her hands.

“Let’s just say I was involved with a man who thought of me more as an instrument than as a woman. Agent Burns looks at me the same way.”

“Did you get your heart broken?”

Caroline’s lips curved. “Cracked, a little.”

“Well, the best way to shore it up again is a nice fling with an easy man.” She touched her tongue to her top lip. “I heard you went to the movies with Tucker the other night.”

“Why am I surprised?”

“Josie mentioned it to Earleen. I’d think Tucker Longstreet’d be a nice, painless cure for a broken heart.”

“Cracked,” Caroline corrected her. “And we just went to the movies. That doesn’t constitute a fling.”

“A man who brings a woman roses is laying the groundwork for one.” She grinned as Caroline shut her eyes. “He stopped by and took Marvella out for lunch while he was down in Rosedale picking them out.”

“They were just a neighborly gesture.”

“Uh-huh. Once Burke brought me a real neighborly bunch of violets. Nine months later we had Parker. Now, don’t get all flushed and bothered,” Susie said with a wave of her hand. “I’m just being nosy. And I thought if you had any … neighborly interest in Tucker, you might want to know that Agent Burns is asking a lot of questions about him.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Questions that apply to Edda Lou.”

“But …” Caroline felt her heart give one uncomfortable thud. “But I thought that he wasn’t a suspect because he was home the night she was killed.”

“Maybe the FBI would like to find a way around that. Of course, he’s asking questions about a lot of people.” She looked deliberately toward the back door, and the porch beyond where Toby was humming “In the Garden.”

“Susie.” Caroline bit her lip and lowered her voice. “That’s absurd.”

“You may think so, and I might, knowing Toby and his Winnie all my life the way I have, but Agent Burns has different ideas.” She leaned closer. “He went by and talked to Nancy Koons. Wanted to know if Edda Lou and Tucker had had any fights there in the rooming house. If he’d shown her any violence. And he asked her about Toby, too.”

“What did she tell him?”

“Next to nothing, because she didn’t like the way he asked.” Susie drew lines in the moisture of her glass. “That’s why he needs to bring Burke in. Burke knows how to approach people. They’ll talk to him. I have to figure he’ll be out this way again soon, since you were the one who found the body.”

“There’s nothing I can tell him.”

“Honey, seems to me he might be interested in the fact that Tucker’s coming around here.”

Caroline rubbed at an ache centered in her forehead. “My personal life is none of his business. That I will tell him.”

Long after Susie left, Caroline worried over every point of the conversation. She listened to Toby and his son pack up for the day and worried some more. Alone, she wandered through the house, trying to pinpoint her part in the whole picture.

She was a stranger. Yet her family had sprung from Innocence. She hadn’t known Edda Lou, yet she had been the one to find her. She’d never spoken a single word to Austin Hatinger. But he’d shot at her.

She didn’t know Matthew Burns. Oh, his type certainly, but not him. Still, it was true that they moved in the same circles, knew the same places, spoke the same language. How that could help solve a crime was beyond her. Yet Susie had made her feel responsible.

She was—for lack of a better term—involved with one of the suspects. Another was working for her.

So she felt even more responsible.

Oh, she knew all about responsibilities. They snuck up on you, attached themselves to you like tiny, thirsty leeches until you were sucked dry.

She’d had a responsibility to her parents, to her music, to her teachers, her maestros, her fellow musicians, to her fans. And, as he’d insisted right up to the last, she’d had a responsibility to Luis.

Oddly enough, she’d come to Innocence to escape from responsibility for a little while, only to find herself bogged down in it all over again.

She could do nothing. She understood that now. It had always been her choice, and she had always chosen to give in rather than fight back.

But wasn’t it different this time? Wouldn’t she be giving in by doing nothing? Though she doubted she had anything to offer, she was involved. Not just with
Tucker, but with Innocence. And for the time being, Innocence was home.

“All right, all right.” She pressed her fingers to her temples. “I’ll go talk to him. I’ll make a few quiet suggestions, Yankee to Yankee.”

She snatched up her purse and was heading out the front door when Matthew Burns turned into her drive.

Well,
Caroline thought with a sigh.
It must be fate.

“I’ve caught you on your way out,” Burns said as he stepped from his car.

“No—that is, yes.” Caroline smiled and altered her plans. “But I have a few minutes yet. Would you like to come in?”

“I would. Very much.” The moment he stepped onto the porch, Useless began to growl behind the screen door.

“He’s just a puppy,” Caroline assured Burns. “A little leery of strangers.” She opened the door and scooped the dog up.

“Cute,” Burns commented, but Caroline heard the word
mongrel
clear as a bell.

“He’s excellent company.” She decided against setting Useless outside and carried him with her into the parlor. “Can I get you something? Iced tea, coffee?”

“Iced tea would be wonderful. I’m afraid I’ll never get used to the heat.”

“Heat?” Caroline said with the same amused derision she’d heard from so many of the locals. “Oh, it doesn’t get hot until August. Please have a seat. I’ll be right back.” She snickered to the dog as she went into the kitchen. When she returned, Burns was standing, hands linked behind his back, frowning at the bullet hole in her sofa.

“An interesting conversation piece, isn’t it?” She set the tray of drinks down. “I’ve about decided not to have it repaired.”

“It’s deplorable. Hatinger shooting into this house without any concern that you might have been hurt. He didn’t even know you.”

“Fortunately, Tucker thought quickly.”

“If he’d thought at all, he wouldn’t have put you in such a dangerous position.”

Caroline took a seat, understanding that Burns’s stiff manners wouldn’t permit him to do so first. “Actually, I don’t believe Tucker was aware that Austin was out with a rifle. It came as quite a surprise to both of us. Would you like lemon or sugar?”

“Just a little lemon, thank you.” He took his place on the couch, shifting slightly to face her. “Caroline, as I’ve loved your music for years, I feel as if I know you.”

Her smile remained pleasant. “It’s funny how often people make that mistake. Actually, the music I play belongs to numerous composers and isn’t mine at all.”

He cleared his throat. “What I mean is, I’ve admired your talents, and followed your career, so I feel a certain connection. I hope I can speak frankly.”