Cry Wolf

Chapter Fourteen

Laurel wheeled her Acura into Meyette's Garage, dreading the thought of getting out of the car's air-conditioned comfort. She had shed her jacket, but the day had simply turned too hot to move. It was a day to be spent in a cool room with quiet music and a good book. That image would remain in her imagination, however, shimmering like a mirage for another hour or so.

Savannah had brought the car home with a near-empty tank and a coat of mud splatters from God knew where. Laurel had decided she would fill up on her way to Frenchie's Landing and wash the car herself after the heat of afternoon had subsided. The prospect of doing something physical, simple, and gratifying held enormous appeal. Just herself and her car in the shade of the driveway, a bucket and a sponge, Mozart playing softly in the background…

She pulled up along pumps of a type most stations had traded in for newer models ten years ago and got out, sending a smile to the mechanic who stuck his head out from under the hood of a putty-color Ford.

"Hey, Miz Chandler."

"Hey, Nipper."

"I'll be right with you."

"That's fine."

He beamed a smile at her, strong white teeth flashing in a lean face that was covered with grime and running with sweat. He was twenty-five, with a flat-topped hedge of brilliant red hair. Laurel thought he was probably something of a local heartthrob when he was clean, but she had only ever seen him tinkering under the hood of a car, looking like Pigpen grown up.

Meyette's was the kind of station that didn't exist anywhere but small, out-the-way towns. City folk would have shied away from the shabby buildings, the dark, dirty, cavernous garage. They might have found the old chest-type Coca-Cola cooler that squatted on the gallery by the front door quaint and might have tried to wheedle the antique away from the old rube who ran the place, but they would have let their bladders burst before asking for the restroom key and would have starved before trying a stick of the homemade boudin sausage Mrs. Meyette sold over the counter in the office.

The thought offered a margin of security. While Cajun country had become a trendy tourist draw, there were still parts of home that would never be violated.

Laurel 's gaze hit on Jimmy Lee Baldwin, who stood on the gallery of the garage, a bottle of Orange Crush in hand, and the word "violated" reverberated in her head. Her enjoyment of her surroundings dimmed. She couldn't look at him without thinking of the things Savannah had said about him. The man was slime. His mere existence was a violation against decent people. Preaching salvation and performing lewd sex acts on the side was a kind of hypocrisy that touched off an almost uncontrollable fury in her.

Straightening away from the side of the building as she marched toward him, he smoothed a hand over his slicked-back tawny hair, at the same time pasting on his too-white smile, making the two actions seem like cause and effect. He had sweated through his white dress shirt and rolled up the sleeves in a futile attempt to battle the heat. His skinny black necktie hung limply around his neck, pulled loose at the collar, and the button beneath it was undone. The crease in his black trousers had melted out, the total effect leaving him looking like a rumpled and disreputable traveling salesman.

"Miz Chandler, what a pleasant surprise," he said. He discreetly wiped the condensation from the soda bottle off on the side of his pants leg and offered his hand to her. He had given the subject of Laurel Chandler considerable thought as he had lain in bed this morning, the fan blowing across his naked body as he recuperated from his night's play. He wanted her if not as an ally, then at least out of the Delahoussaye camp. He was ready to pluck the rose of his future, but every time he reached for it, he was pricked by this lovely little thorn.

Laurel scowled at him as if he were holding out a dead rat for her inspection. "I don't see much of anything pleasant about it, Mr. Baldwin."

Jimmy Lee tightened his jaw against the urge to call her a snotty little bitch. He pulled his hand back and planted it at his waist. "There's no need to be hostile. We're not enemies, Miz Chandler. In fact, we could be allies. We fight on the same side, you and I. Against evil, against sin."

Laurel almost laughed. "Save the sermons for the poor fools who believe in you. We're not on the same side, Baldwin. I have my doubts that we belong to the same species. From what I've heard about you and seen of you, I'd have to say you're more closely related to things that crawl out from under dead tree stumps. Don't waste your time trying to charm me. I've dealt with too many snakes not to know one when I see one."

Fury burned hot in Jimmy Lee's belly. If there was one thing in this world he couldn't tolerate, it was a mouthy broad. He would have given just about anything for a chance to cuff her one, but he wouldn't have given up his shot at stardom, and Nipper Calhoun was too handy a witness.

He lifted his shoulders in a stiff shrug and stared down at her, his tawny eyes as cold and flat as gold coins. "That's not what I've heard about you," he said tightly. "The way I hear it, you point fingers at random."

The blow to her pride landed, but Laurel didn't bat an eyelash. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction. "It doesn't matter what you've heard about me. All you need to hear is what Judge Monahan has to say. As of today you are hereby ordered to cease and desist your harassment of the Delahoussayes and are forbidden from setting foot on their property. I'm pleased to give you the news in person," she said, flashing him a nasty smile. "The paperwork will be delivered. You have yourself a real nice day, Mr. Baldwin."

She turned and pranced away toward Meyette's office, prim little nose in the air. Jimmy Lee watched her go and felt all his carefully stacked plans for his big campaign tumble around him like a house of cards. Before he could stop himself, he had lunged after her and clamped a hand down on her shoulder, meaning to spin her around and tell her a thing or two about playing hard ball.

Jack stepped out of the shadows of the garage and hooked the toe of his boot in front of the preacher's ankle. As Laurel twisted away from the man's touch, Jack pulled back, and the Revver went sprawling, facedown in the dirt. Baldwin 's breath left him in a painful grunt.

"Oh, hey, I'm sorry, Jimmy Lee," Jack said without a drop of sincerity. "I guess I wasn' lookin' where I was goin'."

Baldwin shoved himself up onto his hands and knees, coughing and spitting dirt in between curses. He shot a vicious look at Jack over his shoulder, his face burgundy beneath the layer of gritty dirt.

"Bon Dieu!" Jack exclaimed with exaggerated shock. "There's some words comin' out your mouth I never seen in the Bible!"

"I doubt you ever cracked the spine of a Bible, Boudreaux," Jimmy Lee snarled. He hauled himself to his feet, trying in vain to dust his clothes off. His eyes locked on Jack in a stare as hard and cold as a billiard ball.

"Well," Jack drawled, "mebbe I never have read it, but I looked at the pictures." He put on a quizzical look and scratched his head. "Do you think Jesus got his tan at Suds 'n' Sun too?"

Jimmy Lee glared at him for a second, his jaw working to chew back his rage.

"What do you think, Miz Chandler?" Jack arched a brow at Laurel.

Laurel stared at him for several seconds, caught completely off guard by his appearance, to say nothing of his question. She hadn't expected to see him here, hadn't finished preparing herself for speaking to him after what had happened in the courtyard. She had strategies filed away in her brain for every kind of courtroom situation, but she had no strategies for near-miss sexual encounters. She had no string of lovers in her past to draw experience from. Her ex-husband was the only man she had ever been seriously involved with, and while Wesley was a good man, an intelligent man, a kind man, he wasn't the kind of man Jack was.

He was shirtless and tan. He held a cherry Popsicle in his left hand, his elegant musician's fingers deftly holding the stick so the thing wouldn't drip on him. He brought it to his mouth and nipped off a corner.

"This is quite a day for me," he said, his dark eyes glittering with mischief. "I get to see a lawyer speechless and a television preacher wearing his dirt on the outside for once."

"I don't have to take this from you, Boudreaux," Jimmy Lee said, his voice low and thrumming with anger. He raised an accusatory finger and shook it in Jack's face. "Mr. Big-Shot Best-Selling Author. You're nothing but a no-account, alcoholic piece of trash. All the money in the world can't change that."

"Naw," Jack said, his pose deceptively casual, one leg cocked, his right hand propped at his waist. He heaved an exaggerated sigh and hung his head. "A man is what he is."

In the blink of an eye, he had Baldwin by the shirt front and slammed up against the side of the building. That quickly the mask of humor was gone, and in its place was a fury that burned like hot coals in the depths of his eyes.

"A man is what he is, Jimmy Lee." He ground the words out between his teeth, his face inches from Baldwin 's. "You, you're a piece-of-shit con man. Me, I'm the guy who's gonna kick your balls up to your throat and knock your teeth down to meet 'em if you ever lay a hand on Miz Chandler again." He let the fire shimmer in his eyes for a moment longer, then flashed an unholy smile. "Have I made myself perfectly clear, Jimmy Lee?"

Slowly he loosened his hold on Baldwin 's shirt front. Smiling affably, he made a token attempt to smooth out the fabric and brush off some of the dirt, then stepped back and dropped his hands to the waist of his jeans.

"Mebbe you just better go on home and change, Jimmy Lee. You don' want people lookin' at you and thinkin' you had a run-in with the devil and lost."

He walked away a few paces and poked his toe at the Popsicle he had dropped, frowning. Dismissing Baldwin entirely, he dug some change out of his pocket and headed for the little white freezer that hummed laboriously beside the Coca-Cola cooler. He could feel Baldwin 's eyes boring into his back, but didn't give a damn. There was nothing any two-bit cable TV preacher could do to him. He didn't run a business, and he already had a bad reputation. He shot an inquiring look at Laurel.

"You want a Popsicle, 'tite chatte?"

"You're messing with the wrong man, Boudreaux," Baldwin said, his voice trembling with rage and humiliation. "You don't want to tangle with me."

Jack flicked a glance at him, looking supremely bored with the whole scene. "That's right, preacher. I don' want to tangle with you. I got better things to do with my time than scrape you off the bottom of my shoe, so mebbe you oughta just stay the hell outta my sight."

Jimmy Lee shook his head, a strange look of amazement dawning on his face. "You don't know who you're dealing with," he muttered, then turned on the heel of his wingtip and stalked off toward his car.

Laurel watched him walk away, then turned toward Jack, stepping up onto the gallery. He stared down into the freezer as cold billowed up out of it in a cloud.

"For someone who claims not to be anybody's hero, you seem to spend an awful lot of time coming to my rescue," she said.

"Mais non," Jack mumbled, reaching in for a Fudgsicle. "Me, I was just having a little fun with Jimmy Lee while my carburetor gets looked at."

He didn't want her reading anything into his actions, he told himself. But the truth was that he didn't want to look at those actions too closely himself. He didn't want to dig too deep for the reason behind the rush of anger he'd felt when Baldwin had put his hand on her. He didn't own her, would never have any claim on her, and therefore had no business feeling jealous or overprotective.

Conditioned response. That was what it was. How many times had he rushed at Blackie when the old man reached out and put a hand on Maman or Marie? Countless times. They had called him their hero, too. But he hadn't been anything but a kid full of rage and hate. Small and weak and worthless, and Blackie had shaken him off more times than not. He wasn't small or weak anymore. The feeling of slamming Baldwin up against the building had sent a rush of adrenaline and power through him that was still buzzing in his veins.

He glanced at Laurel as he unwrapped his treat, trying to defuse her concentration with a teasing smile. "Besides, I didn't want you to pull your gun out and shoot him. Day's too hot to have a corpse laying around out in the sun." She made a disgusted face, and he chuckled to himself. "Popsicle or Fudgsicle, angel? What do you think?"

Laurel narrowed her eyes as he blatantly dismissed her line of questioning. "I think you ought to make up your mind, Jack," she said. "Are you a good guy or a bad guy?"

"That all depends on what you want me for, darlin'," he murmured, his voice rough and smooth at once, beckoning a woman to reach out and touch him.

Laurel 's heart beat a little harder; nerve endings he had awakened and tantalized the night before stirred restlessly. She frowned at him. "I don't want you for anything."

Jack leaned across the open freezer. "It's a good thing you're not under oath, counselor," he whispered.

"Close the freezer, Boudreaux," she said sarcastically, "before your hot air melts all the Popsicles."

She went into the station and paid for her gas, spending a few moments chatting with Mrs. Meyette, who asked after Aunt Caroline and Mama Pearl, told her she was too thin, and made her take half a dozen sticks of boudin with her. When she came out, Jack was nowhere in sight.

She staunchly refused to acknowledge the disappointment that slid down through her. She had better things to do with her time than spar with him, and she had to assume he had better things to do, as well. He was supposed to be some hot-shot best-selling author, but he never seemed to work. It seemed to her he was always at Frenchie's or giving her a hard time. And it took no imagination at all to picture him spending the rest of his time sprawled in a hammock asleep with that awful hound sacked out right beneath him.

Trying like a demon not to picture him at all, she drove home and changed out of her slacks into a cool gauzy blue skirt and a loose-fitting pale blue cotton tank. The house was silent, the shades drawn. Mama Pearl had left a note on the hall table: Gone to card club. Red beans and rice in the pot. Eat, you! Monday. Wash day. Red beans and rice for supper. Laurel smiled at the comfort of tradition.

There was no sign of Savannah. Laurel wasn't sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. She didn't like the memories from their morning's argument lingering in her mind like acrid smoke, but she didn't know how they would clear the air, either. They had both said things that would have been better left unsaid. They couldn't go back and change their childhoods. Laurel wanted to leave it all in the past, to start fresh, but Savannah dragged her past around with her like an enormous, overloaded suitcase.

And so do you, Baby. She could almost hear her sister's voice, angry, accusatory.

"What the hell have you been doing with your whole damn life?"

Looking for justice.

There was a difference, she insisted. She was an attorney; that was her job. She wasn't trying to change the past. She wasn't trying to atone for anything.

The word "liar" drifted through her mind, and she slammed down on it before it had the chance to do more than rattle her nerves. She had to go out and take care of some business. No doubt by the time she got home, Savannah would be here, begging forgiveness for the nasty things she'd said, promising she hadn't meant any of them. That was the way their fights usually ran. That was the way Savannah 's temper ran-hot and cold, from emotional conflagration to contrition in a flash. She was probably off somewhere right now thinking about coming home to red beans and rice and a side order of apologies.

Savannah stared out at the heat. It seemed so thick, so oppressive, she thought she could see it hanging in the air above the bayou, pressing down on everything. It permeated the cabin, seeping in through the screens, soaking into everything, bringing with it the wild, feral scent of the swamp.

She brushed at the stray tendrils of hair that had escaped her topknot and shifted restlessly from one bare foot to the other. Sweat coated her skin like a fine mist, despite the fact that she wore nothing but a pair of ragged cutoff jeans and a black bandeau bikini top with a sheer white blouse hanging open over it.

The quiet was getting to her. She had promised Coop she wouldn't disturb him, but the day had come to a complete standstill. Even the birds had fallen silent beneath the blanket of heat. The sense of expectation that was so much a part of the swamp had thickened until everything waited, breath held, for something unknown, unseen.

The two-room cabin squatted on stilts above the murky green water. From Savannah's vantage point, no solid land was visible, only bald cypress, their thick hard trunks thrusting up from the water, scruffy, stubby branches sticking out like deformities, knobby knees jutting out at the bases. They looked like tortured creatures that had been cast under an enchantment and petrified so that they resembled death. Floating on the surface around their trunks were sheets of delicate green duckweed and rafts of water hyacinth, shimmering violet and looking deceptively fragile beneath the brutal sun. Lily pads lay scattered like an array of deep green Frisbees tossed randomly across the bayou.

She could see a partially submerged log lying at the edge of a thicket of cattails and knew it could well be an alligator. Not far to the south, the jagged stump of a dead cypress had become home to a nest of herons, and the pair posed there, motionless, looking like a woodcarver's exquisite craftings, their long necks arched and tucked, black beaks as straight and slender as fencing foils.

The birds' stillness irritated Savannah. She wanted them to squawk and fly away, huge wings beating the air. She wanted the gator to lunge for one of the fish that dimpled the surface of the water as they rose unseen to catch insects. She wanted the air to stir, wanted to see the reeds sway. Most of all she wanted Coop to move.

He sat at a rough plank table that was pushed up against one screened wall, staring out, making notes from time to time, nearly as motionless as the surroundings. He had bought the cabin as a fish camp, but he never fished when he met her here. He mostly stared. "Absorbing the profound intensity of life in the swamp," he'd explained once. He would sit there for hours, seemingly doing nothing, then he would come to her and they would make love on the old moss-stuffed mattress.

This was their secret hideaway; an idea that usually appealed to Savannah. She liked going out on the bayou in her old flat-bottomed aluminum boat, not saying anything to anybody, winding her way into the dense, lush wilderness to meet her lover. But today something about the arrangement grated on her. She blamed it on the fight she'd had with Laurel.

"Why do you have to do that? Why do you have to degrade yourself that way?"

She jerked around and burned a hole in Cooper's broad back with her glare. "Haven't you stared out that screen long enough?"

Coop sat back, wincing a little at the stiffness that had settled in his joints. He scratched a hand back through his blond hair like a man just waking from a long, deep sleep, and looked at Savannah over his shoulder. He was struck as always by her raw sexuality and by the soft, stunning natural beauty she had seen fit to make slightly grotesque with collagen and silicone. She was so alluring, so flawed, she never failed to captivate him utterly.

He longed to turn and jot those thoughts down in his notebook, but he refrained. Savannah 's mood seemed as volatile as the weather-a tense stillness that hid a building storm. Instead, he put down his pen, rose and stretched.

"I don't mean to ignore you, love," he mumbled in his low, smooth voice. "But I have to get my notes made. I'm doing an APR broadcast from N'Awlins next weekend."

Savannah 's eyes lit up like a child's. "You'll take me with you?"

It was more a statement than a question. Coop doubted she even heard him when he said, "We'll see." She was already racing ahead, making plans for them to meet in one of the cottages of the Maison de Ville, chattering about dinner in her favorite restaurants, the shopping she would do, the clubs they might visit.

Of course, he wouldn't take her. While he loved her, he knew that love must be contained within very definite boundaries. If he allowed it to escape the small pen of Bayou Breaux, it would run wild and in its delirium destroy itself and them. Like a fine wine, it was something to be sipped and savored. Savannah would drink it all in greedy, sloppy gulps, spilling it down her, splashing it all over, laughing madly.

He stroked a hand over the back of her head down to her neck and smiled with pleasure as she arched into his touch like a cat.

"Let's get you out of these clothes," he murmured, stepping away from her, reaching for one cuff of the gossamer blouse she wore.

"No." Savannah pulled her hand back, smiling shyly to cover her shame. Laurel 's words were too fresh in her mind. Coop would think the same when he saw the marks on her wrists-that she degraded herself. She didn't want to hear that from him, not today. Today she wanted to pretend they had a normal life. She sent him a coy look. "I want to wear it for you."

He said nothing, but stood and watched as she shed the bikini top and the cutoffs, leaving only the sheer white blouse to cover her. The picture she presented was more tantalizing than if she had been completely naked. She knew because she had stood in front of the mirror in her room and studied the look. Provocative. Dressed but not decent. The sheer fabric was a misty barrier that invited a man to reach past it to the treasures of her lush feminine body.

Time lost its meaning for her. They could have been in bed a week. She wanted it to last forever. With his slow, gentle lovemaking, Cooper made her think it could last forever, that they had all the time in the world instead of just a few stolen hours.

And time meant nothing as they lay together afterward, skin sticky with their mingled sweat, the air redolent with the exotic musk of sex and perfume, the dusty scent of the moss-stuffed mattress. They lay touching, despite the heat, limbs tangled, hearts thudding slowly, their breathing shallow, as if to keep from disturbing the peace that had settled around them.

This was happiness, Savannah thought, being here with Coop. She loved him so much it frightened her. Too good to be true. Too good to be hers. Sex with him was so different from what she sought out with others. With others she felt wild, wicked. With Coop there was nothing depraved, debauched, dissipated, dissolute. She felt all the things she had spent her life yearning for but never finding. She shivered a little at the thought. Too good to be true.

"Will you marry me, Coop?" The words seemed to spill directly out of her overflowing heart, and instantly a part of her wished them back, because she knew deep down what his answer would be.

The air hummed with silence for a few moments, then with the electric whine of cicadas, then with the tension of an answer unspoken. Tears stung Savannah 's eyes and seared her heart like acid, and all the gold wore off the afterglow, leaving her feeling like what everyone said she was-a slut, a whore, not deserving of anything like the love of a good man.

"Why do you have to degrade yourself that way?"

Because that's what whores, do, Baby.

Coop sighed and sat up with his back against the headboard as Savannah got out of bed. "I can't give you that commitment, Savannah," he said sadly. "You know that. I have a wife."

She stepped into her shorts and jerked them up, her fingers fumbling with the fastenings as she shot him a burning look from under her lashes. "You have a vegetable."

"I can't abandon her, Savannah. Don't ask me to."

Frustration swelled and burst inside her like a festered wound, its hot, caustic poison shooting through her, penetrating every muscle, every fiber. Unable to stand it, she clamped her hands on her head and doubled over, a wild animal scream tearing from her throat.

"She doesn't even know who you are!" she sobbed.

He just sat there, looking handsome and sad, his blue eyes locked on her as if he were gazing at her for the very last time, memorizing her every feature.

"But I know who I am," he whispered, that low, smooth voice capturing futility and fatalism and a sense of inevitability she recognized but didn't want to hear.

He would never leave Astor as long as she was alive. And Savannah knew he would never marry her because wife was not the role he had cast her in in his real-life drama of the South. Unless she could purge herself somehow, cut out and dispose of what she had been all these years, and that seemed as impossible a task as cutting out a piece of the ocean.

She stared at him through tear-washed eyes for several silent moments, thinking she could feel her heart shatter like a glass ornament. Then she turned and left the cabin without a word, hating him, hating herself for what she was… and for what she would never be.