Texas! Lucky (21 page)

Tanya threw her a lifeline. "How long have you been a journalist, Ms. Haines?"

"Going on five years," Devon replied, giving Tanya a grateful smile. "Ever since I graduated from college. I started out writing obits and fillers for a smaller newspaper in South Texas before getting the job in Dallas."

"I read your columns faithfully. They're very interesting."

"Tactfully put," she said with a soft laugh. "Sometimes my readers take issue with me."

"I don't always agree with your opinion," Tanya admitted with a smile, "but you always give me food for thought."

"I'm glad to hear that."

"Do you write at home, or do you go to the newspaper offices every day?" Sage wanted to know.

"Where do you get your ideas?" Chase asked.

"Y'all hush and let Ms. Haines eat her lunch," Laurie said, then disobeyed her own order and asked, "Do you use one of those word processors?"

Devon laughed. "I don't mind the questions. Really. I enjoy talking about my work."

She answered their questions in turn.

Lucky was interested in her answers himself, but tried not to let his interest show as he ate chicken salad that he didn't even taste.

His family was treating her like the Queen of Sheba. Hell, he was the one in trouble, not her. Why weren't they giving her the third degree about sleeping with strangers the way they'd given him?

Even as he posed these disgruntled questions to himself, he knew that if any of them breathed a disparaging word to her, he'd jump right down their throats in her defense.

"Who called Pat?" Laurie asked. She had parted the curtains and was looking through the window over the sink at the approaching patrol car.

"I didn't," Lucky said. "I thought we were going to wait until after lunch, Chase."

"So did I. I didn't call him."

Chase left his chair and moved to stand beside his mother at the window. "He's alone. The agents aren't with him." He had the back door opened before Pat even reached it. The sheriff stepped into the kitchen and removed his hat and sunglasses.

"Hi, everybody." Nodding down at the table, he added, "Sorry to interrupt your lunch."

"Please join us, Pat," Laurie said. "There's plenty."

"I can't, but thanks."

"Something to drink?"

"Nothing, thanks."

So far Pat had avoided looking at any of them directly and was uneasily shifting his weight from one foot to the other while restlessly moving his fingers around the brim of his hat—dead giveaways that this wasn't a social call.

Lucky pushed aside his unfinished plate and stood up. "What is it, Pat?"

Pat Bush looked at him with a beleaguered expression. He removed a folded document from the breast pocket of his uniform shirt. "I have a warrant for your arrest."

Sage and Tanya gasped. Laurie raised a hand to her chest as though someone had just wounded her. Devon's pale lips parted in surprise. Chase's reaction was volatile. He exclaimed, "What the hell?"

Lucky snatched the document from the sheriff, scanned it, then tossed it down onto the table. He muttered words his mother wouldn't normally have allowed spoken in her house. "I have an alibi," he told Pat, pointing down at Devon.

"So I see. Ma'am." After acknowledging her, Pat looked back at Lucky. "Once a warrant has been issued, I haven't got a choice. You'll have to come with me now. Chase can bring the lady in when they start to question you. It'll all be cleared up soon."

"Does he have to be placed under arrest?" Laurie asked.

"I'm sorry about it, Laurie, but, yeah, he does. He can finish his lunch though. I'm in no hurry to get back to town."

"Well, I'm in a hurry to get this mess over with. Let's go." Lucky stamped toward the door.

Pat caught his arm. "We've got to do this by the book. I've got to Mirandize you."

"Fine," Lucky said tautly. "But can we go outside? I don't want my mother to have to listen."

"Don't patronize me, James Lawrence," she said sharply. "I'm not a shrinking violet who needs protection from anything unpleasant. I fought your daddy's cancer for two years before losing him to it. I'm unwilling to give up another member of my family just now, so if they want a fight, they'll get one," she said staunchly.

"Way to go, Mother," said Sage, looking just as determined as Laurie.

Lucky winked at his mother. "Fix something good for supper, because I'll be home way before then." He went through the back door. Pat doffed his hat to the ladies and followed him out.

Pat read him his rights. "Hate like hell having to do this," he mumbled as he clamped the handcuffs around Lucky's wrists.

"Just do it and stop apologizing for it. I understand. It's your duty."

"I'm doubly glad you've got the woman."

"Why?" Lucky asked as he ducked his head and climbed into the backseat of the patrol car. Pat's grim tone of voice sounded discouraging and made him uneasy.

"'Cause they've got Susan Young, and she, my friend, is saying you did it."

* * *

One had to admire Devon's composure as she entered the interrogation room. The two federal agents smoked like chimneys, so the small room was filled with smoke. She was like a breath of fresh air as she entered with Pat.

He directed her to a chair; she sat down without compromising her straight, proud posture. Lucky tried to catch her eye and give her an encouraging nod, but she didn't even glance in his direction. Instead, she gave the agent her undivided attention.

Once the pleasantries were out of the way, he got down to business. "Mr. Tyler claims that he was with you the night his building burned to the ground."

Her green stare was cool and steady. "That's right. He was."

Pat sat down on a corner of the table in front of her. In a far less intimidating voice he said, "Tell us how and when you two met."

"As you know, Sheriff Bush, we met that same afternoon in a lounge on Highway Two Seventy-seven." A frown wrinkled her brow. "I'm not sure about the name."

"It doesn't have a name," Pat said.

"Oh. Then I guess that's why I don't remember it."

"Just tell us what happened," one of the agents interjected impatiently as he lit another cigarette.

Calmly Devon told them about going into the place to do research on her article on sexism. She admitted that it wasn't wise. "However, I was being as unobtrusive as possible. With absolutely no encouragement from me, two men approached my table and offered to buy me a drink. They refused to take no for an answer."

Her eyes suddenly connected with Lucky's. Inadvertently she had used the phrase that they had frequently batted back and forth. He figured that everybody in the room could hear the sizzle of the current that arced between them. Devon quickly averted her head.

She told the rest of the story, perfectly corroborating Pat's and his own account. She verbally led the investigators into the motel room.

"I opened my door to Mr. Tyler because he was hurt." That was a slight distortion of fact, but only he could testify otherwise, and he wasn't going to. "I tended to his wounds," she said. "He was in no condition to drive, so he … he stayed there with me all night, and was there when I left the following morning, which was around six o'clock."

Lucky looked up at his two accusers and gave them a gloating smile. "Now, can we cut the rest of this crap?"

They ignored him. One motioned Pat off the corner of the table and assumed that position directly in front of Devon. "Are you a licensed physician, Ms. Haines?"

"What the—"

Devon overrode Lucky's angry exclamation. "Of course not."

"But you felt qualified to take care of a knife wound and a black eye that, by all accounts, came close to blinding him?"

"On the contrary, I didn't feel qualified at all. I advised Mr. Tyler to go to a hospital, but he refused."

"How come?"

"You'll have to ask him."

"I did," the agent replied, frowning. "He, in turn, asked me, given the choice, would I rather spend the night in a hospital emergency room or with you."

Through the pall of tobacco smoke, she gave Lucky an injured, inquisitive, incredulous look. "It was a joke, Devon. A joke."

Paler than she had been only moments before, she turned back to the agent. "I was only concerned about Mr. Tyler's injuries," she said quietly. "He'd received those injuries while protecting me, so I felt somewhat responsible. When he refused to get medical help, I did the best I could to take care of him. I thought that was the least I could do to repay him for coming to my defense."

"Did you sleep with him, too, to pay him back for coming to your defense?"

Lucky was out of his chair before his next heart-beat. "Now just a damn minute. She—"

Pat's hand fell heavily on his shoulder and spun him around. "Sit down and shut up."

Pat looked ready to kill him, but Lucky realized that Pat was acting in his best interests. He flung himself back into his chair, glaring balefully at the agent.

"Well, Ms. Haines?"

"Mr. Tyler appeared to be exhausted. I believe he'd had quite a lot to drink. He certainly shouldn't have been driving. When he asked me to let him stay, I let him stay. He hinted at internal injuries."

The two agents looked at each other and shared an arrogant, just-between-us-boys laugh. "And you believed him?" one asked.

"I'll have to remember to use that line myself," the other chimed in.

Lucky didn't have a chance to come out of his chair this time. The sheriff's hand was on his shoulder, anchoring him in his seat. But he snarled at the two agents who were making this as difficult for Devon as they possibly could. They seemed to enjoy her embarrassment.

"I didn't know if he had internal injuries or not," she said sharply. "And neither do you." Her chin went up a notch. "His eye was battered. He could have had a concussion or any number of head injuries too. I did what I thought was best."

"And you're to be commended for your charity," one drawled, winking at the other. "You said he was there in the morning when you left around six o'clock."

"That's right," she replied curtly. Her contempt for them was plain. Knowing how she felt about sexism, Lucky realized that their taunts were intolerable to her. Under the circumstances she was holding up well.

"He was still sleeping when you left?"

"Yes. Soundly."

"He'd been that way all night?"

She faltered, but finally answered, "Yes."

"How do you know?"

"I know."

The agent stood up and slid his hands into his pockets. "Couldn't he have slipped out, driven back to town, set a torch to the garage where they kept all that heavily insured equipment, then returned to the room without you ever knowing he was gone?"

"No."

"It wouldn't have taken him more than, hmm, say two hours."

"He didn't leave."

"You're sure?"

"Positive."

"You sound so definite."

"I am."

"There's a fair amount of space in a motel room to move around, Ms. Haines. Couldn't he have—"

"We were sharing not only the room, but the bed," she stated, her eyes flashing. "If you wanted me to admit that, why weren't you man enough to come right out and ask instead of pussyfooting around?"

"Amen," Lucky intoned.

"Mr. Tyler and I were sleeping in the same bed," Devon continued. "A double bed. Very close to each other, out of necessity. And if Mr. Tyler had gotten up and left the room, he would have awakened me. I'm not that sound a sleeper."

God, she was terrific. Lucky wanted to give her a standing ovation. Or a kiss. Or both. She'd cut the s.o.b.'s down to size. But they weren't giving up entirely.

"Did you sleep without waking up through the night?"

Lucky recognized the trap and hoped that Devon did. If she said yes, they could claim that he had sneaked out and returned without her knowledge, planning all along to use her as his alibi. Her alternative was to admit that she had been intimate with a stranger.

"No." At greater risk to herself, she had opted for the latter choice. Lucky admired her spunk, but suffered for her pride. "I woke up once."

"What for?"

Despite Pat's restraint, Lucky shot from the seat of the chair. "What the hell difference does it make?"

Pat shoved him back down, stepped in front of him, and used his own body as a shield between Lucky and the agents, whom Lucky was prepared to tear apart with his bare hands.

With Lucky temporarily quelled, Pat appealed to the agents. "Look, you two, Ms. Haines has volunteered to come here. You know she's married and that this is uncomfortable for her. Take it easy, okay?"

They ignored him. "Answer the question. Ms. Haines."

She glared at the agent, cast Lucky a swift glance,
then
lowered her head to address her damp, clenched hands lying in her lap. "During the night, Mr. Tyler and I … were physically intimate."