Shameless (The Contemporary Collection) (25 page)

Back at Evergreen, she changed clothes, pulling on a pair of jeans and a coral-colored knit top. She ate lunch, then went out and stared at the flats of impatiens she'd bought. In a sudden flurry of energy, she pulled up the pansies and ornamental kale that were beginning to fade after blooming during the winter and early spring, and set the new bedding plants in their places. She even planted the hibiscus she had bought for the urns that always sat on either side of the back steps.

It was only surface motion. As she worked, her thoughts were elsewhere.

Keith's death, from all reports, had been a professional job, a single shot to the head. Yet, any person in his right mind who wanted to see him dead would have waited until hunting season. At that time the woods — even the game reserve — were full of men with rifles; a shooting could easily be made to look accidental. The way the killer had gone about it seemed to indicate a person who acted out of uncaring rage, or else was sublimely confident of getting away with it.

Neither category applied to Reid. Cammie thought that if he had wanted to remove Keith, he would have killed him cleanly and quietly, then buried the body so deep and in such a hidden spot that it would never have been found except by purest accident.

Then again, that might be what she and everyone else was supposed to think. It was possible he had made the killing crude, knowing a too-efficient disappearance or death would have been like an arrow pointing straight at himself.

Again and again, Cammie went over the stark assurance Reid had given her that he did not kill Keith. She wanted to believe him, but it was so difficult. It made perfect sense that he would rid her of Keith's harassment, so long as she accepted that he was the kind of man who operated from implacable will and within his own flexible version of morality.

The trouble was, her assessment of his character, combined with what he'd said to her, made it just as possible that she was misjudging him. And she could not decide which would be more devastating: to be proven completely right or completely wrong.

Going back and forth in her mind was driving her crazy, and had been for days. This morning was the first time she'd seen him since the night he was at Evergreen. His behavior at the funeral gave her no help in making a decision. There must be something that would aid her.

She decided that staying away from him, avoiding any extension of their relationship, wasn't going to help her understand Reid. In fact, she might have to get as close as possible to him, in order to break through his defenses, to find out the truth once and for all. It was the only way she would ever have any peace.

Cammie tugged off her gardening gloves and left them lying on the back steps with her dibble and empty flower flats. A short time later, she was pulling into the drive at the Fort.

Reid wasn't in the house. Lizbeth gave her a long, considering look, then pointed out the direction he'd taken when he went into the woods.

The trail led to the Big Woods, the tract of virgin timber that lay behind the paper mill and was joined on its north boundary with the game reserve stretching around the Fort. It was rough going for a while, until she reached the old-growth timber. There, the huge, towering pines and oaks, bays and gums and ash trees, met overhead, closing out the sunlight so that the underbrush thinned, then disappeared. What was left was a brown forest floor where mushrooms, moss and thick layers of leaves made a soft cushion underfoot. It was an open, echoing space where bird calls and the distant chatter of a squirrel had a ringing quality. They vibrated around her in the still air as if she were in a giant sound chamber.

Cammie stopped to catch her breath. Not only had she been walking fast, but she'd come quite a distance. The dubious wisdom of chasing a man she thought capable of murder into this kind of deep woods skittered across the surface of her mind. She pushed it from her as she concentrated on finding him.

Somewhere nearby she heard a tapping, knocking sound. She smiled as recognition came. Turning from the dim path, she moved in the direction of the noise.

A moment later she saw its cause: an Indian head woodpecker. The size of a small rooster, with a gray-brown body and a red cockade that began at its shoulders and covered its entire head, the bird was clinging to the side of a pine dying from pine beetle damage. The sun glinted with a copper flare across its feathers as it drilled busily, making a series of holes around the tree trunk. It stopped long enough to cock its head toward her approach. Discovering no imminent danger, it went back to its search for insects and larvae.

It had been a long time since Cammie had seen one of the rare birds. She felt a certain nostalgic wonder at the sight, a little like a medieval female coming upon a unicorn in the woods. The world would be poorer if such fascinating creatures become extinct. She watched it for some time, turning back to the trail only after the red-cockade winged away deeper into the woods.

It was the music that guided her to Reid. She heard it from some distance away, a soft and lovely melody in a minor key played on a guitar. It reminded her of old folk airs such as “Greensleeves” and “Scarborough Fair,” yet with something added, an unexpected, upbeat strength.

He was sitting at the edge of a fern glade. A guitar was cradled in his arms as he sat against the thick trunk of an ancient white beech tree. Just beyond him the green whorls of ferns clustered around a seeping spring in the side of a low hill above a creek. They raised their new fiddle heads out of the greenery and the deep mulch of last year's brown leaves.

There was a shaft of sunlight caught in his hair, turning it to gold. It shifted in bright gleams as he bent over the strings of his instrument. His face was absorbed as he played, then stopped, went back and replayed several bars of his melody, changed it slightly, then played it again.

It was music that could, and should, be accompanied by words. It was the beginning of a song, a ballad, perhaps, of love and loss. Beer-drinking music. The only outlet, as he had said, for a common man's emotions.

She thought of backing away, of leaving before he knew she was there. She should have known better.

“Don't run away,” he said without looking up. “Come sit down, and tell me what you're doing here.”

Her voice was tart as she moved to a spot not far from him and dropped down on a half-rotted log. “Looking for you, naturally.”

He sent her a hooded glance before returning to his intricate fingering of the guitar strings. “Why? Do you need another killing done? Mawley giving you trouble already?”

“I thought,” she said in constricted tones, “that you were sure I could handle that kind of thing myself.”

The music ceased with a sudden, twanging discord as he ripped his fingers across the strings. He put the guitar aside. Staring straight ahead, he drew a deep breath and let it out again. Only then did he turn his head in her direction. “Forget I said anything. Just tell me what you need from me.”

Whatever personal feelings he might have, it seemed, had been put aside while he attended to what she might ask. She said, “There was something you wanted to tell me the other night about the fight between you and Keith at the mill. I stopped you at the time. I think maybe I shouldn't have. Would you tell me now?”

A blue spark shone between his narrowed eyelids before he gave an abrupt nod. In succinct phrases he explained the visit of the two thugs to Keith's office, and also what followed with Gordon.

She sat in frowning silence when he finished. Then she said, “I see how it must have been. Keith and Gordon were trying to pull a fast one about the mill title, so you beat them to the punch?”

“Meaning?” His voice was stringent.

“You paid Janet Baylor to strip the courthouse records and get out of town. Without that proof, everything was back the way it was, as far as ownership of the mill. You and the Huttons were even again.”

“And you were out?” he said. “Then I must have miscalculated by getting rid of Keith, since it puts you back in the game again.”

“You know about the will.” It wasn't a question. When he shrugged without replying, she went on. “With it, my stake is not so large as it might have been. You may not like Gordon Hutton, but the two of you apparently want the same thing. I'm outnumbered on the selling issue.”

“You always were.”

He meant, she saw, in the fight to stop the sale, and in public opinion. She said stubbornly, “The money hasn't been paid yet.”

There was no rise to that bait. His voice even, he said, “It was Keith's activities that concerned me most; what he had been up to could have been serious. So far as I can tell, there's been something like a half million paid out from his department on bogus ink and chemical invoices in the last six months — and who knows how much before then. The discrepancies skew the mill's bottom line, could make it look like a high-risk investment.”

“He was stealing?” she said in puzzlement. “But… why, when it was his own company?”

“Not quite his alone,” Reid said dryly. “It was also Gordon's, and I don't think he was anxious for big brother to find out. Or me, when I stuck my nose into the operation. As for why, you said yourself he was strapped for money. The reason obviously has something to do with the visit paid him by the strong-arm boys. Did you ever suspect Keith of betting on the ponies? Or high-stakes gambling?”

“He was a regular at Louisiana Downs; it was entirely too close to Greenley,” Cammie said with a crease between her brows. “And he enjoyed Vegas. I never knew him to go overboard either place, but I haven't been around him much in the last few months.”

“It should be possible to find out, if you want to go that far.”

She watched him a moment before she said bluntly, “How far?”

“To New York.”

Her own laugh surprised her. “Oh, sure. Just like that.”

“I told you about Charles Meyer, the friend of mine who lives up there,” he said, sitting forward, his face serious. “He's a genius — and I use the word in its exact sense — with computers. He still works for the Company, and even the Bureau at times, in a quiet way. His title is normal enough, but his real job is to infiltrate computer networks worldwide for the purpose of gathering information — and to see to it nobody can return the favor.”

Cammie watched Reid for a long moment, hoping for enlightenment. It didn't come. Finally, she said, “I don't see the connection.”

“There has been for some time a concentrated federal effort to keep tabs on organized crime. Louisiana has been a target area because of New Orleans and the Marcellos crime family, with its Cuban and South American connections. Surveillance has been stepped up since the introduction of racing in the state, also the more recent lottery and casino gambling. If Keith had a brush with that kind of operation, there will be a record.”

“So why not just call and ask your friend to find out?”

“I would prefer to look at the data myself. It could be sent via modem over the phone lines to my computer setup at the Fort, but that's a little too sensitive to risk. More than that, I can't take the chance of exposing Charles's contribution.”

“Yet you mention it to me,” she said.

“Yes,” he agreed, his gaze steady.

It was an indication of trust in her discretion, her integrity; it could be nothing else. She was warmed by it, and amazed. At the same time, she was wary of the complications there might be in venturing into such murky matters with Reid.

“There's no reason for me to go,” she said.

He arched a brow. “Not even for the proof of your own eyes?”

“I will accept your word,” she countered.

He held her gaze while his own turned slowly crystalline with pleasure, and something more. “Will you now?” he said softly.

Where had that ready assurance come from? Cammie did not know, but she would not deny it. “Why not?”

And with those words the moment shifted, stretching with aching tension between them while the woods around them grew breathlessly still.

He held out his hand to her. When she placed her fingers in his warm grasp, he drew her toward him with an effortless flexing of muscles. He encircled her waist with his arm and settled her against his side in the bed of ferns and cushioning leaves.

“I can't tell you,” he said in soft satisfaction against her temple, “how many times I've thought of doing just this.”

It was crazy. She should have kept away from him, retreated from his touch, should drag herself free this minute. It was depraved to come so close to a man who might be a murderer. Yet even as her mind clanged with the warning, her body settled against him, absorbing his warmth and hard strength, and the fresh masculine scent of him.

She tilted her head back against the firm muscles of his shoulder, watching the play of light and shadow across the planes of his face, the shimmer of sunlight along the strands of his hair, which shifted in the light breeze. She could see the reflection of her own features in the dark, widening pools at the centers of his eyes. As he leaned toward her, touching his mouth to hers, she allowed her lashes to flutter down with a sigh of completion.

Sweet, firm, giving, his kiss was all that and more. He invited her participation, teasing, encouraging with warm lip surfaces, the lap and play of tongue and the application of delicate suction. Unhurried, he traced every curve and ridge and indentation of her lips, every quilted-silk segment of the inner lining, every sleek taste bud and tracery of her tongue. It was as if his need to know her had no boundaries, no restraints, found no detail too small to be noted, explored, learned.