Exposure (15 page)

Gracie saved him from having to promise anything. Unseen by either of them she had climbed down off the window sill and came trotting across the room. She threw her arms around his leg and hung there, craning her head way back to look up at him. "You gonna kiss my mommy?"

Elvis pulled his eyes away from Emma and looked down at her daughter, wondering where that had come from. "I hadn't intended to," he replied honestly. But it sounds like a plan.

"You standin' weally close yike you was gonna." She considered him for a minute, then unloosed his leg and stepped back. "Gimme a kiss."

"Gracie," Emma started to reprimand her, but Elvis waved that away. He let go of her jacket and squatted down. Gracie immediately clambered up onto his knee and threw her arms around his neck. She planted a damp but enthusiastic kiss on his mouth. Then she pulled back and unhooked an arm to yank up her little flowered T-shirt. "Wanna wazzbewwy, too." She laughed herself silly when he blew a satisfyingly rude noise, long and loud, on her stomach. Then she jumped off his knee.

"Give Maman a kiss now," she demanded and commenced to dance a little wildly in place. "Kiss Mommy, kiss Mommy!"

"Grace Melina, that's enough," Emma said sternly. "You're becomin' somewhat obnoxious." She grimaced ruefully at Elvis as he rose to his feet. "I'm sorry," she said. "She's a little wound up." Turning to her daughter she held her hand out. "Come help Maman pick out somethin' to wear, cherie. You and Elvis are all dolled up—it's time I got dressed, too."

Gracie was instantly diverted. "Wear shoats," she demanded as she skipped along at her mother's side. Stopping at the open suitcase, she threw her arms around her mother's legs and rubbed her face against the satin nightgown as she looked up at her. "Yike me, Mommy; 'kay?"

"Shorts it is," Emma agreed. "If there are any in here, that is. Oh, yes, here's a pair."

"I'll go down and get the spare key to your room," Elvis offered. "You wanna go with me, Gracie girl? Then your momma can take her shower."

"Okey dokey." She left Emma's side in a red-hot minute and trotted over to his.

Elvis looked past her at Emma. "Take all the time you need," he instructed. "We'll unload the car."

"No; that won't be necessary," Emma swiftly assured him. "Remember your prom—"

"Right," he interrupted before she could suddenly recall that he hadn't actually promised a thing. "I'll leave the bags where they are. We'll come up with another way to kill twenty minutes, won't we, kid? And don't worry." Looking at Emma, he indicated Gracie with a slight tilt of his jaw. "I'm not gonna let her out of my sight."

"Listen, this is really very nice of you. But isn't it goin' to interfere with your work?"

"Nope. Day off." He gave her a lopsided little quirk of his lips and shrugged. "Even small-town sheriffs get one occasionally."

"In that case . . . and if you're sure it's not an imposition"—Emma had been gathering together her toiletries and a change of clothing and she met him at the door—"thank you, Elvis."

"No problem. Oh, and Gracie?"

"Yes, Shewiff?"

"This is for you, sweetheart." With those words, his left arm suddenly snaked around Emma's waist and yanked her to him, bending her backward theatrically. Emma's stack of clothes and toiletries clattered to the floor. Plunging his right hand into her silky hair, Elvis kissed her thoroughly while Gracie squirmed and giggled with delight.

Emma grabbed for the button plackets of his open shirt and just tried her best to hang on as sensations exploded inside of her like so many special effects in a Steven Spielberg movie. It was a joke ... in a dim corner of her mind she knew that. She wasn't about to make a fool of herself by kissing him back as if she were dying for it.

At least that was the plan, fuzzy-minded and nebulous as it was. Elvis must have had a different one. He didn't raise his head until his shirt was a wrinkled mass from her gripping fingers. Until her mouth was swollen and stung from kissing him back.

As if she'd been dying for it.

It was almost two hours later before the three of them walked away from town to a deserted stretch of beach. Elvis, who had developed an ironclad professional patience years ago, was ready to chew nails.

There was an aspect of arrogance built into most police work, an expectation of instant compliance that law enforcers became accustomed to receiving. If there were questions to be asked, a cop had the authority to demand immediate answers. Elvis wasn't in the habit of dealing with situations that included little girls whose needs had to be met before he could do his job.

Kissing Emma was clearly not the smartest thing he could have done this morning. It would have been okay if he'd just kept it brief and simple the way he'd originally intended. But no, he'd had to get all caught up in it. He'd tasted her mouth under his, so cool and controlled, and had thought, Oh no, doll, you can do much better than this. Gracie's giggles had faded into the background, blood had roared in his ears, and he'd lost himself in the pursuit of a response. Then when he'd gotten one . . .

Damn. He shook himself. No sense in dwelling on that now. Except to say that by the time he'd dragged himself away, instead of finding a pleased little girl, he noted that Gracie's giggles had disappeared and she stood staring up at him with huge uncertain eyes, her thumb tucked into her mouth.

What a dumb shit he was. Between them, he and Emma had generated enough electricity to make the body hair of anyone within a hundred-yard radius stand on end. Unquestionably Gracie had felt the vibrations, and too young to know what they were, had been made uneasy by the intensity of it all. He didn't even have to shut his eyes to see the look on her face when he'd finally released Emma and straightened up.

Gracie studied her mother. "He hoot you?" she asked around her thumb.

Emma dropped to a crouch and pulled Gracie into her arms for a quick hug. "Ah, no, bebe." Over her head she shot Elvis a dirty look, but was smiling gently when she moved Gracie away to hold her at arm's length. "Elvis was just playin' with Maman. He wanted to make you laugh."

Gracie glanced at Elvis dubiously, then looked back at her mother. "We go to our own woom now?" she suggested hopefully.

"We can't, angel pie." Emma tenderly finger-combed Gracie's curls away from her face. "I accidentally locked us out of it last night. Remember? You and Elvis are goin' down to get the spare key from Miss Ruby while I take my shower."

Gracie burrowed back into her mother's warmth, head pressed into Emma's breasts. "Don't wanna, Mommy."

Emma bared her teeth at Elvis, giving him a fierce look that said, You made this mess—do something! Elvis squatted down in front of her, laying his hand with careful tenderness on Gracie's back. It covered nearly half of it.

"Hey, Gracie girl," he murmured. "I'm sorry if I scared you. I guess I just got a little carried away." His eyelids lifted and his gaze pinned Emma's. Caught in the erratic energy of that on-again-off-again sexual intensity he projected like a neon tube on the fritz, she stared back, unable to look away, and licked her lips.

"You don't kiss my mommy no more," Gracie demanded indignantly into her mother's breasts.

Can't promise you that, kid. "How 'bout I kiss you instead," he suggested and leaned forward to press a kiss against her neck where it joined her shoulders. Gracie hunched her shoulder up to her ear, repudiating the caress.

"Hmm." He thought about it a second, then leaned around and blew a little "pfftt" on the other side of her neck. "Tha's not a kiss," she mumbled. "Tha's a wazz-bewwy."

"Well . . . yeah," he agreed. "But if I really kiss you it'll just make you laugh."

"Huh uh."

"Yes it will."

"Huh uh!"

"Bet it does." He rocked back on his heels. "Tell you what. If I'm right—if I can make you laugh—I gotta buy you . . ." He raised an eyebrow at Emma.

"A box of sidewalk chalk," she supplied.

"Right. A box of chalk. But if I'm wrong . . ." His voice trailed off and he gazed away, looking off into space, apparently forgetting he was in the middle of a conversation.

Gracie stood it for almost fifteen seconds. Then her thumb came out of her mouth and she raised her head slightly from Emma's cleavage. "What?" she demanded.

"Well, if I'm wrong and my kisses don't make you laugh, then I guess I gotta buy you a car."

She blew out an impatient breath at his monumental ignorance. "Can't dwive a caw."

"Oh. Well, then I guess I'll have to buy you a ..." He let it trail off again.

"Twike," Gracie supplied.

"Yeah, I'll have to buy you a trike. So, whataya say? Should I give it a try?"

" 'Kay."

Elvis bent his head and pecked kisses at the contour of her neck. For several moments she remained steadfast to her desire to stay unaffected, but then she started to wriggle. He puckered up and really put his heart into it, planting noisy kisses onto her neck with abandon. A snort escaped her. Then she danced in place, muffling her giggles against Emma's breasts when he went to work on her soft little nape.

Fingers tugged at his hair, and he raised his head. He found himself staring into Emma's brown eyes. Enough, she mouthed.

He immediately rocked back on his heels. "Told ya," he said to the child while staring at the mother.

"I guess that means I owe you a box of sidewalk chalk, huh?"

Gracie turned around to face him. "A big box," she negotiated. "With yots of colors."

He rose to his feet and extended his prosthesis to her. "A big box," he agreed. "Whataya say we go down to Mackey's and see what they've got?" His breath stayed dammed up in his chest until she reached out to link her fingers through the hook.

It was one obstacle tackled, but by no means the last one.

He was accustomed to most folks on the island giving him a wide berth; that was a fact of life he'd enured himself to years ago. But when he walked into the cafe with Gracie on his shoulders he was promptly surrounded by every diner, waitress, and cook in the place. Evidently her disappearance yesterday had generated a great deal of concern.

Elvis would have been a whole lot happier without the attention. He had no desire to explain his mother's involvement in yesterday's situation to all these islanders, at least not before he'd a chance to talk to her about it. If Emma decided to press charges against Nadine, then his mother was going to be plain out of luck, but until that happened he'd prefer her participation didn't become fodder for the rumormongers. She was only marginally tolerated by some factions on the island as it was.

It worked out to his benefit that the sudden press of strangers made Gracie shy. She unknowingly provided him with a grace period by remaining silent, one little hand clutching nervously at his hair. He couldn't see her face, but he'd bet his last dollar she was sucking on her thumb and staring at everybody with those big brown eyes of hers.

"Give the kid a little room, folks," he suggested genially enough, but the authority in his voice was enough to back people up a pace. "I know your sentiments are generous ones and that you've been concerned for her safety, but I think all this attention is making Miss Sands a little nervous." To Ruby he said, "Mrs. Sands locked herself out of her room. She sent me down to fetch the spare key."

The expression on Ruby's face openly marveled that Elvis Donnelly would fetch and tote at any woman's whim, but she didn't argue about it; she simply went to her office to get him the key. And that, in the final analysis, was all he cared about; he was basically a bottom-line kind of man. He just wanted to get them out of there before Gracie regained her friendly tendency to chatter indiscriminately. He lived in fear of her telling all and sundry that her mother had slept in Sheriff Elvis' bed last night, or, God, even worse, that she had seen his penis. Jesus. That was all it would take to ruin her mother's reputation on Flannery Island.

Emma was well regarded here. There were quite a few, in fact, who practically treated her like a lifelong islander, which, he knew better than most, was nothing short of exceptional. Damned exceptional. People who had lived here fifteen years were still considered newcomers. And some lifelong residents, like himself, would always be considered outsiders.

Her popularity could change in the blink of an eye, however; few knew the vagaries of this closeminded little village better than he. Just let it be known that not only Emma, but her little angel of a daughter as well, had slept in his bed last night and they'd probably be stoning her in the streets, accusing her of God knows what perversions.

He managed to collect the key a few moments later and escape, slipping unseen with Gracie through the back door. It was one more obstacle down. But he was giving up counting them. It seemed he just solved one problem and another cropped up to take its place.

"I'm hungwy." Gracie regained her voice only moments after they had slipped out. Elvis held onto her legs and jogged down the alleyway. She tugged on his hair. "Elbis? I'm hungwy."

"Yeah, I heard you. You're going to have to hang on though, Beans, until we get back to the boarding house." She was going to have to hang on longer than that, because he wasn't taking her back in the cafe, but what the hell, that would be Emma's problem.

"But I want my bweakfast, Shewiff."

"You want to eat your breakfast with your momma, dont'cha?"

"Oui."

"Well then?"

She heaved a heartfelt sigh. "I shoo am hungwy."

He bought her a Twinkie to tide her over when he purchased the box of sidewalk chalk. Sticky fingers gripped his hair occasionally on the walk back to the rooming house, and he didn't even want to think about the probable evidence that was on her face. Emma was no doubt going to have his hide for loading her up with preservatives before breakfast.

His plan was to take the Sands females to breakfast somewhere—preferably The Razorback on the other side of the island, where they wouldn't be interrupted. Maybe then he could finally get the damn story from Emma. How was he supposed to plan his next move when he didn't even know what the hell was going on?

She agreed to the breakfast. "But if you think I'm gonna sit there and discuss this in front of my bebe, cher, then you aren't as smart as I gave you credit for." She lowered her voice. "This has to do with hidden cameras and depravity and the man she thinks is her grandfather, for pity's sake. She'd never understand all that."

Christ. Like he was supposed to be patient after being teased with that?

But of course she was right. It wasn't exactly something you could discuss in front of a little girl barely three years old. And he didn't even bother to suggest that they find a sitter for Gracie. After yesterday, Emma wasn't likely to let the kid out of her sight, and he could hardly blame her.

So they collected an old blanket off Elvis' shelf and Gracie's yellow sand pail and shovel, added to these the new box of chalk, and set off at Emma's suggestion for the grocery store to collect food for a picnic breakfast. Then they hiked down the beach away from town.

Emma got out the food while Elvis spread the blanket over a smooth patch of sand they'd found in the lee of a huge beached log. Gracie was enchanted with the idea of a picnic and squatted next to the blanket watching as each item appeared.

"Come over here." Emma held a hand out to her, and Gracie scrambled to comply. But instead of being handed something to eat as she'd expected, her mother started slathering lotion all over her exposed skin. "Maman!" she protested.

"Sorry, cherie. But we've got to get this sunblock on you before we do anything else."

"We could dwink the little owange juices foost." She was totally enamored of the individual-sized containers.

"No. We cannot. There!" Emma blew a little raspberry on the side of Gracie's neck and let her up, wiping the excess lotion onto her own thighs. "All done. You can dig in now."

After breakfast Emma picked the box of colored chalk out of the sand bucket and, with Gracie at her heels, walked around the area. Every time she came across a large rock she drew the outline of a design on it. Finally, when Gracie was all but dancing with impatience, she handed her the box.

"Color in the pictures, angel pie."

"I'll make 'em weally pwetty!"

"I know you will. Here's your bucket, cherie. Better take it along in case you come across a shell or a rock you can't live without." She ran her fingers through her daughter's blond curls. "I'll be over on the blanket talking with Sheriff Elvis if you need me, okay?"

" 'Kay." Gracie picked a fat stick of hot-pink chalk out of the box, and tongue poking out of the side of her mouth, started filling in the flower her mother had drawn.

Emma sat silently on the blanket, knees drawn up to her chest, just watching her daughter for several moments. She could feel Elvis' impatience mounting. When he shifted suddenly she knew without a word being spoken that he was about to start throwing his authority around.

"I decided after Charlie died that I wasn't ever again going to get close to anyone," she said abruptly. "Grace Melina being the exception, naturally." She didn't turn her head to look at him, but divided her attention instead between her daughter, who was decorating a rock with slashes of color and gleefully disregarding the outlines her mother had drawn and the view just beyond her of giant boughs of evergreens framing sun-dappled water.

"Charlie was your husband, right?"

She nodded, hugging her knees closer to her chest. "The people I love have a nasty habit of dying suddenly," she said without emotion. "Charlie was twenty-five. We'd only been married eleven months, and one morning he was this happy-go-lucky guy and that afternoon he was"—she shook her head in disbelief—"dead."

"How was he dead, Em? Was he the victim of a crime?"

"No." She shook her head. For a moment she didn't elaborate; she simply stared out at the water. Then without looking at him, she said in a low voice, "He drowned. He'd gone fishin'—I didn't go along because I was hugely pregnant, and, well, anyhow ... he didn't come back." She could remember as if it were yesterday the police knocking on their door that evening to inform her of the accident. They'd confirmed the worst of the myriad fears that had sent her pacing from window to window for hours, watching for his return after he had failed to come home.

She lapsed into another silence. Finally she said, "I thought it was me, you know—for years I believed that. . . that I was cursed or something. First Big Eddy. Then my friend Mary Louise at Tulane. Then Charlie. You can't imagine how carefully I watched over Grace when she was an infant. I was convinced that something awful was going to happen to her—SIDS, that she'd choke, something." She turned her head and finally looked at him, resting her cheek against her updrawn kneecap. "But I'm not cursed," she said fiercely. "I'm the . . . obsession ... of a man I thought of as my surrogate father. Grant Woodard."

"He's not your real father?"

"No. Oh, praise God, no. At least I have that much to give thanks for, cher." She observed his bafflement and said, "Perhaps I had better explain."

For the next several minutes she chronicled the events that originally led to her meeting Grant Woodard, the way Woodard had befriended her and her brother. "When Big Eddy was busted and he knew he was goin' to be sent up, he went to Grant and asked him to take care of me." She laughed bitterly as she met Elvis' eyes. "We thought we were so lucky that someone was willing to take me in. Someone who wasn't one of Eddy's car-thuggin' buddies. Bon Dieu, lucky." She practically spat the word and shook her head at their naivete. "Merde."

"What does that mean, Em?"

"Huh? What does what mean?"

"Merde. What does it mean?"

She looked him in the eye. "Shit."

"Ah." A corner of his mouth kicked up. "Sounds a lot more elegant said in French, doesn't it? Anyhow"—he waved it away—"go on. I didn't mean to interrupt." He studied her profile for a moment as she went back to watching Gracie squat in front of a boulder and happily smear it with color. "So you think Woodard might have had something to do with your brother's arrest?"

"Oui," she confirmed flatly. "And there's no 'might have' about it, cher, I flat-out believe he's responsible for Eddy being arrested, period. I think he also arranged to have my brother killed a few days before he was supposed to have been released from prison." She turned her head to look at him. "I think he's responsible for the hit-and-run that killed my friend Mary Louise back when we were in college and for Charlie's drowning." Her eyes didn't waver, neither did they blink. "I'm sure that as a policeman this must sound pretty paranoid." She uttered a weary laugh. "Heck, cher, if anyone had suggested such a thing to me before this spring, I would have said they were crazy. For years, after Big Eddy was sent to prison and before I had Gracie, Grant Woodard was the closest thing to a family I had." Raking her hair off her forehead, she eyed him steadily. "But I don't doubt it for an instant. I've tried to convince myself I must be wrong, Elvis—I really have—but I don't believe it. Not anymore. And if I'd had any doubts before, yesterday would have quelled them."

"You think he was behind Gracie's kidnapping?"

"Do you think your mother came up with that scheme all on her own?"

No. He loved his mom, but he had never been blind to her shortcomings. She wouldn't in a million years have had the imagination to conceive of such a convoluted, daring plot.

He gave a succinct nod to concede the point. "What you're suggesting takes both money and connections. Does Woodard have the wherewithal and the power to do all these things?"

"And then some," she said without hesitation. "As an adult I never thought much about how he earned a living—I suppose because on some level I didn't want to examine it too closely. But I'll tell you somethin', cher. As a kid, nobody had to tell me that while a portion of his business undoubtedly is legitimate, the primary purpose of that portion is to serve as a front for an even larger part that is not. Those two guys I told you about, the ones who picked me up in the Silver Cloud the day I heisted it? They were goons, Elvis. He has always surrounded himself with goons. A legitimate businessman has no need to do that."

"Well then, I guess the big question that remains, Emma, is, why did he go to the lengths that he did?"

His eyes locked onto hers. "Wouldn't you agree?"