Shameless (The Contemporary Collection) (28 page)

As she sat listening to the drone of the plane, feeling its vibration, she thought of the woman who might have hurt Reid. Was it possible she was the one? It pained her to think so. She could not imagine failing to return his love if he ever decided to give it. He had so much to offer a woman.

I
am nothing if not constant.

He had said those words to her not so long ago. She wondered just what he'd meant by them, how far into the past they extended. She would give a lot to know.

He was so protective, so concerned for her. No woman could ask for a more careful or considerate lover. How much did that stand for, if it stood for anything?

She loved him. She had suspected it for days, but had known beyond a doubt as she watched him hold Michelle's baby so carefully in his strong hands.

It was strange to admit it, perhaps, when she had thought him capable of murder. The heart wasn't logical, of course, or particularly bright. It could be swayed by a glance, a smile, a single word. It had few principles, less sense.

Chimes sounded. The stewardess came over the intercom, announcing the approach into their home airport at Monroe. Cammie checked her seat belt. It was a small airport with a short runway and an approach through the turbulent air currents over the Ouachita River. Landing was always steep, bumpy, and a bit hairy. She reached to slip her hand into Reid's. He turned his head, his eyes warm, steady, reassuring.

She wished she had taken a plane to Paris.

AS CAMMIE AND REID PASSED THROUGH TOWN
on the way to Evergreen, they saw Bud Deerfield sitting in his patrol car parked close to the pizza place. Cammie lifted a hand to wave. Seconds later her cousin pulled out behind them. He followed them into the drive and rolled to a stop a few feet from their rear bumper. Cammie got out and walked toward the sheriff while Reid took her overnight bag from the back of the Jeep.

“I don't mean to tell you your business, Cammie,” Bud said as he hauled himself out of the car and came to meet her. “But I have to say I've seen you do smarter things than this.”

Cammie lifted a brow as she followed the tilt of his head toward where Reid was setting her suitcase on the steps. Her voice sharp, she said, “I don't see what intelligence has to do with it.”

“Well, I'll tell you. I've had people yapping at me about this little jaunt of yours and Sayers's ever since you left. Seems they think there's something funny about you going off so soon after Keith's funeral. It bothers them, makes them wonder about things.”

“For crying out loud, Bud! My divorce was almost final!”

“Almost is not enough, not around here. They know Keith had a mind to patch it up with you, because he said so to everybody who would listen. They think maybe he was balking at giving you the divorce and you got mad. Folks watch all these TV shows about husbands killing wives, wives hiring men to kill husbands, and so on. They're asking themselves if maybe this big brouhaha between you and Sayers over the mill sale wasn't just a smoke screen. They're wondering if the two of you didn't get rid of old Keith between you.”

It was so farfetched that Cammie stood for long seconds with her mouth open. Finally, she said in despairing tones, “Where do these things come from?”

“God knows; I sure don't,” he said, but set his hands on his hips.

She met his straight gaze. “You don't believe it, do you?”

He wagged his head slowly from side to side. “Don't make any difference what I think; I still have to pay attention. And I say you should have known how it would be, should have known better than to go gallivanting off with Sayers in the middle of all this as if you didn't have a brain in your head.”

Reid spoke then as he moved to stand beside Cammie. “It was my fault, my idea.”

“Anyway, it wasn't like that at all,” Cammie added in anger. “We had a perfectly good reason.”

The sky was reflected in the surface of his badge as Bud rocked back on his heels. “I sure hope it's one you can trot out for people, because I'm taking heat about this business. People are wondering why I haven't brought somebody in to answer a few questions.”

“People like Gordon Hutton?” Cammie did not bother to hide her cynicism.

“Among others. I'd like to keep this all nice and friendly, but it would help if you'd do your part, Cammie. Otherwise, it may have to get unfriendly.”

His message delivered, Bud did not linger. As he climbed back in his patrol car and drove off, Cammie stood staring after him with a crease between her eyes.

Reid lifted a hand, running it over his hair and clasping the back of his neck. “It looks to me like it might be better if I make myself scarce.”

“Why?” Cammie demanded. “We've done nothing wrong.”

“And nothing right. We both know how things are in Greenley.”

The corner of Cammie's mouth tightened briefly before she sighed in acquiescence. “You know, I think I just might be able to get used to someplace like New York, where nobody knows who you are, or gives a damn.”

“In the meantime, we have to deal with here and now.” Reid stepped close to brush a quick kiss across her mouth. “I'll call you,” he said, his gaze direct. “Don't forget to lock your doors.”

Cammie watched him pull away down the drive before she went into the house. She had never felt so alone in her life.

She busied herself unpacking her suitcase, putting the dirty clothes into the wash, hanging away what was left. Persephone, not knowing exactly when she would return, had left nothing cooked for dinner in the refrigerator. Cammie took a pound of ground chuck from the freezer and set it out to thaw with some vague idea of making spaghetti.

At loose ends, then, she wandered around the house, watering and grooming houseplants, picking up a piece of half-finished needlework and putting it down again, leafing through a gardening magazine. She was so unsettled in her mind, however, that she couldn't concentrate on anything. It was a relief when the phone rang.

The voice of her great-aunt Beck came through clear and irascible over the line. “Where in the name of Heaven have you been? I've been calling and calling, and you're never home.”

“The answering machine was on; you should have left a message,” Cammie said.

“I hate those tomfool machines, make a person feel like an idiot, talking to somebody who's not there. I like answers when I ask questions.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Cammie said with a private grin. “What can I do for you?”

“You can get yourself over here. There's something I've been wanting to tell you for ages. You don't hear it soon, I'm liable to turn senile and forget. Or pass on.”

“That'll be the day,” Cammie said.

“Smarty-pants,” Aunt Beck said, and hung up with a sharp click.

The elderly woman was in a better mood by the time Cammie had driven the eight miles of country roads out to her house. The only thing that set her up more than making her relatives step around was having a visitor.

Aunt Beck had her little rituals. She enjoyed hot tea, a rare habit in Greenley, where iced tea reigned supreme. More, she liked it made just so and served from her ancient Georgian silver service into eggshell-thin china cups. Something dainty to eat was a necessity, and so were damask napkins with a tatted edging done by her own hand.

Cammie usually enjoyed the small ceremony, and copied it on occasion when she felt the lure of family tradition. Now it strained her patience, since Aunt Beck refused to impart whatever was on her mind until after the choice of exotic tea blend had been made, the water boiled and poured, and the tea in the cups.

Finally the elderly woman settled back in her chair. They ran through the usual civilities. Aunt Beck then asked about Cammie's version of Keith's death, and listened carefully to the answers. With these things out of the way, the old lady sat for a moment, watching Cammie with a shrewd light in her eyes. When she spoke at last, it was in an entirely different tone.

“I told you, didn't I, that I knew Reid's grandfather, Aaron? That was Justin Sayers's son?”

Cammie felt stillness close over her like a cloud. “I think you mentioned it.”

“A handsome boy he was, too. I let him kiss me once out behind the barn when I was a giddy girl. But there was your great-uncle, and nothing ever came of it.”

Cammie allowed herself to show only mild curiosity as she reached for a finger sandwich. She was half afraid her unpredictable great-aunt would change the subject if she guessed her intense interest.

“Yes, well. My sister Maybelle was older, and she married first, married your grandfather Greenley. What you might not know is that the reason that came about was because our mother was Lavinia Greenley's best friend, and one of the few people who stood by her in her troubles after her husband was killed. It was natural that their children should get together, so to speak.”

“I had never heard that,” Cammie said, pausing with her sandwich halfway to her mouth. “Is it possible — do you remember Lavinia?”

Her great-aunt's smile was sardonic. “As if it were yesterday. My mother was widowed early and never remarried. She and Lavinia had a lot in common. In their later years the two of them traveled here and there all over the South and Southwest, even Mexico, in a beat-up old Ford coupe. They used to visit the old plantations that were going to rack and ruin back then, before preservation became a big deal; they were great pals with Cammie Garret down at Melrose close to Natchitoches, the woman who took in all the writers and artists. You were named for that Cammie, you know, in a roundabout way.”

“I didn't, no.”

The old woman gave a decisive nod. “Everything has a purpose, I always say.”

“So Lavinia built a life for herself when all the scandal was over,” Cammie suggested in order to get the subject back on track.

“Oh, she was something else. There weren't many of the politicians she didn't know back then, nor much that went on at the state house down in Baton Rouge that she didn't have her say about. She supported Huey Long when he was first getting started — and kept up a connection with other members of the Long political machine for years. That was how she came to donate the land for the game reserve.”

Cammie sat forward. “You know about her land transactions?”

Aunt Beck gave her a crooked smile. “Why else do you think I called you?”

“The mill land?”

“Especially that. I never heard such ridiculous stuff in my life as this business Wen Marston has been telling me about you owning the mill land. The very idea, thinking Lavinia had no right to give that acreage away if she took the notion. Lavinia was as sharp as they come, and Justin Sayers was no dummy. Why would they arrange their business in any such haphazard manner? It makes no sense whatever!”

“I have to agree, but there does appear to be some kind of legal problem because of the secret divorce.”

“Secret divorce, my eye; it was no secret in the family. You, of all people, Cammie, ought to know better. As for the land, I have no patience with all these people who take it for granted that whatever property Lavinia had must have come to her from Horace. Did it never occur to any of you that she might have had control of the property herself, in her own right?”

Cammie put down her teacup with a sharp click, afraid she would drop it. She felt stunned, not so much by the revelation her great-aunt had just made as by the fact that she herself had fallen into the same stereotypical way of thinking as everyone else. She said slowly, “If you mean that Lavinia had a legal right to sell the land, then she must have owned it before the marriage, or else bought it after the divorce. But if she had bought it, there should have been some record….”

Aunt Beck's head was high and her dark old eyes were bright with scorn. “She inherited it when her mother died — her mother's people had been in this parish every bit as long as the Greenleys, maybe longer. So it made not a particle of difference whether Horace divorced her in that sneaky fashion. She had a perfect right to give away her property, and anything else she might have fancied, to Justin Sayers!”

Cammie picked up her cup again, holding it in one hand while she ran a finger around the rim. Her tone pensive, she said, “I've thought a lot about their affair in the last few days, for obvious reasons. I suppose nobody can say what really happened after all this time. But since you knew her, why do you think she came back here again after running away with Justin to the Northeast like that?”

“It's my belief Lavinia came back because of her son. He was so young, not quite three. It's hard for a mother to leave a child, even for a lover. Of course Horace held on to the boy, wouldn't let her see him. He wasn't a forgiving sort of man.”

“He had his revenge.”

“You could say so, though I don't think it gave him much pleasure. Divorce was a sin in his day, and he was a godly man.”

“Do you think Lavinia killed him because of it?”

Aunt Beck was silent so long Cammie thought she might not have heard. She was about to repeat the question when the elderly woman finally spoke.

“Things were different back then, some seventy odd years ago. There was no such thing as a crisis center, and nobody noticed much if a man knocked his wife around, especially if she had shamed him by running off with another man. I heard my mother say one time that Lavinia was entitled to whatever peace she had found, because her married life had been hell on earth. I think if she killed Horace Greenley, she had good reason.”

Cammie absorbed that idea for a moment before she said, “What about afterward? Why did she and Justin never get together? I mean, I know he was married by then, but he could have divorced his wife if he cared at all for Lavinia. They could have gone back East and started over if theirs was such a great love affair.”

“I gather there were a lot of reasons. Lavinia was never arrested for murder, but the suspicion was there. A decent woman could get away with a lot back then, but there might have been some serious questions if she had upped and married her lover before her husband was cold in his grave. Then, the woman Justin had married on the rebound was a nice, sweet lady who was going to have a child; she didn't deserve to have her home broken up because of Lavinia's mistakes. More than anything else, though, I think Lavinia was ashamed: ashamed of leaving husband and child and breaking her marriage vows, ashamed of the wreckage of her marriage, ashamed of destroying a human life, ashamed that she had so misread her own heart that she betrayed her love to return to her husband. She had ruined everything, you see, and so deserved to lose everything.”

“You think it was her, something inside herself, that kept them apart?”

“Well, I know my mother thought so. She always said that Justin Sayers would have walked through fire for Lavinia. It's likely he would have given up his marriage if she had asked it. But she didn't. Then he had a son, and she couldn't ask him to leave his child behind, since she hadn't been able to do the same for him.”