Smoke Screen

CHAPTER 12

SITTING ON THE TREE STUMP AT THE EDGE OF THE WOODS, Raley watched Delno take the dead rabbit and his trio of hounds and tromp off in the direction of his cabin. The dense foliage seemed to swallow him whole and left nothing to indicate his passage except a cantankerous, territorial blue jay.

Around Raley’s cabin, hardwoods fraternized with evergreens. In the spring, blooming trees and wild bushes created splashes of white and pastel. Even in the dead of winter, the palmettos and live oaks stayed green, giving the illusion of eternal summer.

The place could be really pretty, if one had a mind to spruce up the cabin, modernize the kitchen and bathroom, furnish it properly, add some amenities, some homeyness, some more sweet potato vines.

Impatient with himself, Raley pushed aside the daydream and the pleasing images it conjured.

He’d used his irritation with Delno as an excuse to get out of the cabin for a while. But even if Delno hadn’t interrupted, Raley would have fabricated a reason to go outside. He was used to living without air-conditioning. The summer heat and humidity no longer bothered him. Except today. Today the air within the four walls of the cabin had been stifling.

But the atmosphere couldn’t be blamed for his claustrophobia any more than Delno could. It was talking about the fire, and Suzi Monroe’s death, and all the crap that followed that had caused anger and resentment to build inside his chest until it became so constricted he could no longer breathe.

And then there was Britt Shelley.

He’d had to take a breather from her, too. When she’d asked what she could do to make up for all the ills she’d imposed on him, several possibilities had sprung immediately to mind. All of them tantalizing. All of them prohibited.

Last night, when he forced her to sleep beside him, he’d done it to make her uncertain and uncomfortable. Call it payback for all the grief she’d caused him.

But in all honesty, he’d also done it because he couldn’t resist lying down with a woman with whom he’d had a conversation-even a hostile one-that went beyond “How much?” or “I’ll be gone in the morning. This is just for tonight.” And usually he left long before morning.

Now, he thought sleeping beside Britt had probably been a gross strategic error. While the tactic had served its original purpose, it had also inflamed his imagination.

But skulking outside was taking a coward’s way out to avoid her, wasn’t it? He forced himself off the stump, across his yard, and up the steps. He went inside.

She was standing in the dead center of the room, arms at her sides, as though she’d been ordered to wait there for his return. She was backlighted by the western sun coming through the kitchen window. The ceiling fan caused strands of hair to lift and fall around her face in an airy dance.

She said, “It’s getting late. I should go back now.”

“Right.” He’d talked through all the morning hours and into the afternoon. Only now did he realize that most of the day was gone.

Self-consciously she tugged on the hem of the chambray shirt. It fell to midthigh on her. The sleeves had been rolled to her elbows. She’d buttoned all but the collar button. “I hope you don’t mind that I borrowed this. I couldn’t find my windbreaker.”

It was hotter inside than out, so she hadn’t put on his shirt because she’d caught a chill. More likely she’d finally realized how abbreviated her sleeping attire was. It wasn’t a slinky see-through negligee, all the critical parts were covered, but by lightweight fabric that clung and looked like it would dissolve if touched. Last night, he’d done the gentlemanly thing by putting the windbreaker on her before carrying her from her house.

“Your windbreaker is on the ground out by the truck,” he said. “I think one of the hounds used it for a pallet.”

“It’s okay.”

“Are you ready?”

She nodded.

“Need the bathroom before we head out?”

“I’m fine.”

“I’ll be right with you.”

In the bedroom, he changed out of yesterday’s shirt and put on a fresh one, realizing as he reached into his tiny closet that she must have recently rifled through it to get the shirt. He wondered why she’d chosen the chambray. It was old and soft from being washed so many times. Maybe it looked comfortable. Maybe she thought it would fit her better than the others. Maybe she thought the rest of his shirts were ugly.

He used the toilet, washed his hands, and was about to leave the bathroom when he decided to brush his teeth. He noted that the cap on the tube of toothpaste had been replaced since he’d used it that morning. Her doing, because he had a bad habit of leaving it uncapped.

She had cleaned her mouth, too. For some reason, knowing that stirred him.

He turned off the fan and locked the cabin door. She had already climbed into the cab of his truck by the time he got outside. He picked up her windbreaker, shook off the dirt before tossing it into the bed of the truck, then got in.

She’d found her purse on the floorboard. Taking a small hairbrush from it, she ran it through her hair, checked her reflection in the mirror of a compact, and sighed over what she saw. However, she didn’t bother to make repairs. After returning the compact and hairbrush to the handbag, she replaced it on the floorboard between her feet.

They rode in silence for as long as it took them to cover the four point seven miles to the main road. As he turned onto it, he said, “I’ll drop you at your car.”

She looked at her bare feet and pulled on the stringy hem of his shirt. “If I’m arrested before I get home, I’ll be taken to the police station like this.”

He glanced at her legs. “That would cause a sensation.”

“The last thing I want is to cause a sensation.”

“What? It’s not a ratings period?”

She shot him a dirty look. The snide remark had been as low as her sarcastic mention of a razor last night. But it got them safely off the subject of her shapely bare legs.

They rode in silence for another mile or so. When he finally looked over at her again, he saw that she’d laid her head back. Her eyes were closed. She was still except for her breathing. For a few seconds he watched the steady rise and fall of his old chambray shirt. It had never looked so good.

He cleared his throat. “There will be police officers staked out at your house. What are you going to tell them?”

“That I promise to go peacefully if they’ll let me change clothes.”

“I mean about why you weren’t at home when they came to arrest you.”

“I’m wondering that myself. Do I tell them I was kidnapped? Would they believe me?”

“Doubtful. Especially not after the date-rape-drug, memory-loss account of your night with Jay.”

“One story sounds as implausible as the other, doesn’t it?” Without moving her head, she opened her eyes and cut them toward him. “I don’t suppose you would come forward and admit that you’d taken me forcibly from my home in the middle of the night?”

He shook his head.

She closed her eyes again. “I didn’t think so, but thought I’d ask anyway.”

“I had my time in the spotlight. I didn’t like it. I’m working deep in the background now.”

“So I’ll have to face the music alone.”

“Just like I did.”

“Here we go again. Poor Raley.”

That sparked his temper. “I didn’t ask for your pity.”

She sat up straight and turned toward him. “Didn’t you?”

“No!”

“Well, you sure made certain I knew about everything you’d lost. Your reputation, your job, your-”

“My what? Finish.”

“Your fiancée.”

He fixed his eyes on the road ahead. “You’re just itching to know, aren’t you?”

“I asked Delno.”

“What he’d tell you?”

“He asked me what you’d told me about her, and when I said you hadn’t told me anything, he said it looked to him like you didn’t want me to know.” She waited; he remained stubbornly silent. “Why don’t you want me to know?”

“There’s nothing to know.”

“Bullshit.”

He gave a short laugh. “That’s a word your viewers have never heard from your sweet lips.”

“What happened with her, Raley?”

“God, don’t you ever give it a rest?”

“Not until I have the whole story. All I know is that her name was Hallie.”

“It still is.”

“Lovely woman. Smart, successful, pretty.”

“All of the above.”

“How long were you engaged?”

“A little over a year.”

“You planned to get married on April twelfth.”

“But we didn’t. End of story.” He almost expected another bullshit, but she didn’t respond right away. Although his eyes remained on the road, he could feel her staring at his profile.

After several moments, she said softly, “Raley, it was a lot for her, for any woman, to…”

“Forgive?”

“Absorb. Before she could even begin to forgive you, she had to absorb the fact that you went without her to a party that promised to be wild. A recipe for trouble.”

“She urged me to go, remember? She was glad I was taking a break from the investigation.”

“She was terribly naïve.”

“Say again?”

Knowing he’d heard her, she said with asperity, “Either Hallie was naïve or you were incredibly trustworthy.”

“Maybe a bit of both.”

“Maybe. I only know I would never have said ‘excellent idea’ to my fiancé going without me to a party hosted by Jay Burgess.”

“That makes you possessive.”

“Sensible.”

“Jealous.”

“Let’s move past this, okay?”

“No, let’s stick with it. What are you like, Britt? In a relationship, I mean. Are you a clinger? Insecure and grasping? Or do you do your own thing and let the guy hang on until he gets tired and lets go?”

His attempt to redirect the conversation from his personal life to hers didn’t work. She asked, “What happened after Jay picked up Hallie at the airport?”

He rolled his shoulders as though trying to throw off a heavy mantle.

“It would help you to talk about it.”

He gave her a look. “No, it would help you.”

“I deserve that, I guess. But this is off the record.”

“Why are you so curious? Voyeurism?”

“I didn’t deserve that.”

He looked at her again, then swore under his breath. “Okay. But you’re going to be disappointed. There was no big scene, no fireworks, nothing you can dramatize on TV.”

She just looked at him expectantly.

Where to start? Taking a breath, he began. “I was still at the police station when Jay got back. He’d taken Hallie directly to her place from the airport. He told me she was upset. Very. Then he patted me on the back. ‘But she’s strong. She’ll be okay.’

“Wickham and McGowan said they had nothing further at that time; I was free to go. I left the police station and went straight to Hallie’s condo. I rang the bell, but she didn’t answer. I used my key and went inside. She was curled up in the corner of the living room sofa, hugging a pillow to her chest, crying.”

He hesitated on the threshold, but when she didn’t scream for him to get out and leave her alone, he went in and gently closed the door. Mail that had been dropped through the slot in the door during her absence still lay scattered on the floor. He stepped over it. All the shades were drawn. She hadn’t turned on any lights, so the living room was dim.

They looked at each other across the space separating them, and his heart cracked in two when he saw the misery in her streaming eyes.

This was so different from the homecoming they’d planned. He projected onto his mind’s eyes a corny reunion, like a scene from a commercial or a romantic movie, where the background goes gauzy when the lovers make eye contact. They move toward each other with breathless anticipation, and when they meet, they share a protracted kiss. Or maybe they embrace and spin together, giddy and in love.

He and Hallie had had moments like that, where they’d laughed for no other reason than the pure joy of knowing that they’d found in each other the perfect partner, or quiet times when they exchanged a look and a smile, content in a cocoon of shared silence.

He wondered if it were possible for them ever to have moments like that again. God, he hoped so. Perhaps this experience would strengthen their relationship. But first they must survive it.

He walked to the sofa and sat down. He didn’t touch her, nor she him. She continued to sob quietly. He wanted to take her in his arms, tell her how sorry he was, how much he loved her, how everything was going to be all right. He would make it all right. But he allowed her to cry, hoping this was the first step in the healing and forgiving process.

Easily half an hour elapsed, although time had no relevance. He would have sat there forever, waiting for a signal from her that it was okay to speak. Finally, she blotted her eyes and wiped her nose and looked at him. In a gravelly voice she said, “Raley?”

The question mark placed at the end of his name conveyed her profound disbelief that they must even engage in this conversation. She was waiting for an explanation. He laid his arm along the back of the sofa and looked into her face. He said the only thing he could think to say, but it came from the bottom of his soul. “Hallie, I am sorry.”

Somehow, they came together then, clutching each other, crying together. It was the first time since waking up that morning that he’d been able to let go of his own emotions. He wept for the girl who had died, for the crisis his life was in, for the terrible heartache he was causing this woman he loved.

Finally, he pulled himself together, wiped his face, clasped her hand between his. “I’m going to tell you everything. Exactly as it happened. Then if you want to hit me, or order me to leave, or-”

“Just tell me, Raley.”

So he did. He didn’t spare a single detail, even when it was difficult to speak the self-incriminating words. She deserved the absolute truth.

“I should have excused myself the moment she approached me. I should have said no thanks to the drink and left as I’d planned to. I didn’t see her and think, Hallie’s out of town. I’ll cheat. She’ll never know. Jay will keep my secret. I swear to you, Hallie, it wasn’t like that. I have no excuse except that she was hot looking, and she was being friendly, and I guess I needed the flattery.”

“My loving you isn’t flattery enough?”

“Yes. Of course. But-”

“But your buddy did your job for you. He saved lives and became a hero. That’s what’s been eating at you, isn’t it?”

“A bit, yeah.”

The confession saddened her. “You don’t have anything to prove to me, Raley. Or to yourself. No one questions your work ethic, your knowledge and skill, certainly not your valor.”

“I know,” he said a bit testily, which he instantly regretted. “But, ever since the fire, I can’t help being just a little ticked off that Jay had done what I was supposed to do. So when this chick picked me out of the crowd, yeah, I admit it, it did my ego good. Anyway, I didn’t walk away. I ask your forgiveness for that. But for the rest of it…” He moved closer to her. “Hallie, I know-I can’t prove it, but I know-the margarita she gave me must’ve been spiked.”

“Jay told me that.”

“You know my tolerance level. Several sips of a margarita, no matter how strong, wouldn’t have made me stupid to the point that I’d jeopardize my relationship with you. I wouldn’t risk losing you for a night with another woman, any woman. It wouldn’t happen. The only explanation is that I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t in control.”

As best he could, he tried to explain how his body had responded as any man’s would to the sexual stimulation, but that he, his heart and soul and mind, hadn’t even been present. “Do you believe that? If you don’t, I might as well stop here.”

Her eyes searched his. “I believe you, Raley. I do. I just can’t get past how you could let yourself get into a situation like that at all.”

“You wanted me to go to the party, Hallie.” He said that in a tone that wasn’t contentious. He wasn’t trying to shift blame, and he certainly didn’t want to start an argument.

“I know, I know.” She closed her eyes for a moment.

When she opened them, he could tell she had fortified herself to hear more. He talked her through the harrowing experience of waking up and finding Suzi Monroe dead beside him. He told her about his series of conversations with the detectives.

“Do they believe you?” she asked.

“They seem to. Jay did, and you know how persuasive he can be. He didn’t mention drugs again, but he blamed the alcohol. Combined with my fatigue, it hit me hard. He impressed upon Wickham and McGowan that I wasn’t entirely responsible for my sexual escapade. I for damn sure wasn’t responsible for the way Suzi died.”

He told her about Candy coming to his rescue even though she was technically representing the other side. “She called me names and said if she was you, she’d never speak to me again.”

Hallie gave a weak smile. “Sounds like her.” Then she sighed and asked him if he’d like a Coke. They went into the kitchen and sat on barstools, knees touching as he explained what Jay had told him to expect in the days to come.

“I gave them a urine specimen, which will be tested. The semen in the condoms is on its way to the lab.” He pretended not to see her wince. “There will be an autopsy. Jay says a lot will hinge on that. They’re going to keep the incident under wraps, treat it like an accidental overdose, which I’m positive it was.”

Hallie remained silent for a while, studying the top of her Coke can. “Why would she drug you, Raley?” Lifting her gaze to his, she repeated, “Why?”

“I guess to make sure she got laid.”

“You’ve described her as hot looking. There are always men on the prowl at Jay’s parties, looking for wild and willing girls just like you’ve described Suzi Monroe. Why would she single you out and drug you if all she wanted was to get laid?”

“I don’t have an answer to that.”

She stared at him for several seconds more, then looked away. “Do your parents know?”

“I called them from the police station and laid out the whole story. They were at a loss for words. A girl died while in my company, in bed with me. Naturally they were stunned. At first. Then they wanted to rush right down, lend support, find me an attorney. I told them not to come, that for the time being I was doing okay.”

“But they believed you.”

“Unequivocally.”

He was hoping she would say she believed him unequivocally, too, but what she said was, “My folks will have to be told.”

“Let me tell them. It was my mistake.”

“They’ll be…God, I can’t even imagine.” She covered her face with both hands. “Shocked.”

“I think shock is a fair reaction to news this bad.”

“When all their friends hear, they’ll be so embarrassed.”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that. Jay is keeping it out of the news.”

Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. She looked at him mournfully. “Why did this happen to us?”

“Because I was stupid. Goddamn stupid.” He cupped her face with his hands. “But you can’t for one instant doubt that I love you, and that I would give anything, anything, to erase the last twenty-four hours.”

Unable to speak, she nodded.

He drew her to him then and kissed her lips, softly, keeping the contact tender. “We’ll get through this, Hallie.”

“Yes.”

“It’s painful right now, I know, but I’ll make it right.”

They hugged each other tightly. Burying her face in his neck, she whispered, “I just hate it so much.”

“I hate it more.”

“I’m sorry, so sorry.”

He thought she meant sorry for the situation, sorry that it had happened to him. Maybe at the time, she had meant that. But later, he wondered if she’d been telling him what she knew then: She was sorry, but there was no possibility of the relationship surviving.

One day melded into the next. Hallie shared his disappointment when he was drawn off Brunner’s investigation and put on temporary suspension. He couldn’t prove that he had been a victim, too, but he felt that Hallie believed him and was ready to defend him wholeheartedly.

Initially.

But then the heat was turned up. Unhappily, Candy informed him that Fordyce was considering an indictment, and the possibility of that got leaked to the media. Jay and the others had kept the investigation quiet up to that point, but once the story was leaked, it spread through the community like an oil slick.

Some blond reporter, new to Channel 7, seemed to have made his situation her pet project. Her reports portrayed Suzi Monroe like a novice in a convent. The autopsy confirmed that she’d died of drug-induced heart failure, but the question of who had encouraged her to snort that much cocaine was raised. He was the likely suspect.

Tests confirmed that the semen in the condoms was his.

He called Hallie immediately upon receiving this news and told her he’d be at the bank when she got off work. He wanted to intercept her before she could get home, turn on her television, and hear a discourse about her fiancé’s semen from the smiling blondie who seemed to take particular delight in his misfortune.

He picked up Hallie at the bank, drove to White Point, parked, and climbed the steps onto The Battery. Looking out over the choppy water of Charleston harbor, he told her about the result of the lab tests. “I don’t know what she and I did. But we had some form of sex.”

Hallie didn’t say anything for the longest time, just stared into the shifting patterns of sunlight and cloud moving across the water. When she did speak, she said, “I’d like you to take me back to my car, Raley.”

“Hallie-”

“Please, Raley. I can’t talk about it any more right now.”

Maybe she’d been clinging to the hope that the semen wouldn’t be his, that it was all a hoax, or a terrible mix-up. But that afternoon seemed to change her. After that, even when they were together, he felt her distancing herself in small but noticeable increments. Her kisses became dry and chaste, her hugs listless. Conversations were strained. They talked around the subject, but it was always there.

The scandal overshadowed their lives and sucked all the happiness from them. Even when they tried to ignore it, it was slowly consuming them.

Finally, when they were only going through the motions of being a couple, he asked her point-blank if she wanted to call off the wedding.

“Do you?” she said.

“You know I don’t. But I don’t want to keep you attached to me if you don’t want to be.”

“I do. But…”

She didn’t share with him whatever that major qualifier was, the reason why she was rethinking their engagement. He supposed he could take his pick. Was it that he was still under suspicion for criminal wrongdoing? Or that she was being publicly humiliated because her fiancé’s name was being bandied about on TV every night? Everyone in Charleston knew that he’d had some kind of sexual congress with Suzi Monroe, which was reason enough to break an engagement even if he was innocent of the other allegations.

Taking her hand, he said, “Hallie, I love you. I want to marry you. My feelings for you haven’t changed. But I don’t want you to remain tethered to me out of a sense of obligation.”

“It’s not like that, Raley. I swear it’s not.” She paused, then said, “We’re both under a lot of stress. In this kind of emotional climate, neither of us can or should make a life-affecting decision. It’s hard to think of marriage when we’re dealing with this. We must get past this before we can take a giant step forward. I think we should give ourselves some time and space to sort things out.” Her expression was one of appeal and earnestness. “Don’t you?”

He leaned forward and cranked up the air conditioner. Resettling in the driver’s seat, he glanced at his passenger, who asked, “Did she return your ring?”

“Not then. And I didn’t ask for it. What I did was agree to her terms.” He gave a bitter laugh. “I guess I was a little generous on the time and space I gave her.”

“What happened?”

“I rented the cabin and started spending days at a time there. Jay seized the opportunity.” He cut another glance at Britt, whose lips parted with surprise. “It wasn’t enough that he had any woman he wanted eating out of his hand, eating him,” he added crudely. “He had to have Hallie, too.

“He had bemoaned the fact that she was the only woman in Charleston he wanted but couldn’t have. She thought he was teasing. Like a sap, so did I. He wasn’t. He took advantage of my distance and her vulnerability, and she…”

Raley had been humiliated by the speed and ease with which Jay had replaced him, in Hallie’s bed, in her heart. Even after all this time, it hurt and infuriated him. “Maybe she’d wanted him all along, too. Anyway, she mailed the engagement ring to my folks. I told them to throw it away, sell it, give it to the next homeless person they saw. I didn’t care.”

For a time, the only sounds in the cab were the swish of the tires against the pavement and the ticking of the analog clock in the dash. He didn’t know if Britt was afraid of saying the wrong thing, of speaking a trigger word that would send him over the edge, or if she was pondering what he’d told her.

Maybe she was working out the time line, wondering if Jay had been romancing her at the same time he’d been sleeping with Hallie. In any case, she didn’t say anything for the next several miles.

Finally he said, “We’re about five minutes from the airstrip. You’d better be thinking of what you’re going to tell the police, but before you say anything to them, you should notify your lawyer.”

She nodded, absently. “Was that why Jay set you up to take a fall? If he did, that is. Was Hallie the reason he made certain you got into bed with Suzi at his party? Did it then go terribly wrong?”

Ruminating out loud, she continued. “Jay didn’t count on Suzi overdosing and dying in his guest room. All he planned was to catch you with your pants down while Hallie was out of town, and then make certain she found out about it so he could make his move on her.”

“Jay wouldn’t go to all that trouble just to get a woman. Even Hallie.”

“But you believe he arranged for you to wake up in bed with Suzi.”

“With dead Suzi.” She looked at him with patent incredulity. He turned his head and nodded. “Yes, Britt. Jay planned it all. He coached Suzi on what to say to me, things like red suspenders being a turn-on, and my occupation being manly. Jay put words in her mouth that he knew would stroke my bruised ego. He knew it was going to take more than big tits and good legs to get me into bed with her.”

“She came on to you with a drugged drink in hand.”

“Provided by Jay. I’m sure of it. Once I was compromised and he had the condoms to prove it, he saw to it that she snorted enough cocaine to kill her.”

“Raley…” She shook her head with disbelief. “You’re accusing your oldest friend of murder.”

“Yes.”

“Why would Jay do that? Why?”

“Because my getting drunk and fucking Suzi Monroe wasn’t catastrophic enough. That would have caused me personal problems, probably cost me my relationship with Hallie, but it wouldn’t have affected other areas of my life.

“But Suzi dying of a cocaine overdose while in bed with me, now that took on the scope of total ruination. An incident like that, indefensible because of a temporary memory loss, could destroy a man’s life. It would shut him down completely. Along with anything he was doing.”

He stopped at the intersection of two country roads and looked at her. After several seconds, he saw understanding crystallize in her eyes. In a low, barely audible voice, she said, “Your arson investigation.”

He said nothing, merely took his foot off the brake and accelerated through the intersection. Just beyond it, he turned onto an unmarked, unpaved road. The next mile and a half was riddled with potholes. The ride was rough.

“I remember this,” Britt said. “Last night I was hanging on for dear life.”

“You were playing possum.” She had feigned sleep while his hand was under her, groping for the seat belt. She probably thought he had copped a free feel or two while fumbling around, but he really couldn’t find the damn latch. It had been stuck between the seats. He considered explaining that now, then thought it was best not to mention it at all. He didn’t want her to know how well he remembered it.

Her car was parked against the rusted, corrugated tin wall of the dilapidated hangar where he’d left it. He pulled up beside it, but neither made a move to get out of the truck. He left the motor running long enough to lower their windows, then turned off the ignition.

It would be dark before she got back to the city. The sun had already set. A few stars had appeared. Not nearly as many as were visible above his cabin. The breathtaking night sky was one of the benefits of living so far from a large city.

That, and the pervasive quiet, and the absolute privacy.

Although the price one paid for absolute privacy was loneliness.

Britt was taking in the scenery through the windshield. “Pretty.”

“About seventy yards that way is the river,” he said, pointing with his chin. “The Edisto,” he said, reading her perplexity. “It forms the eastern edge of the ACE Basin. The Combahee, the western side. The Ashepoo sorta splits the difference.”

“I’ve never really gotten out and explored the area.”

“You should.”

She smiled apologetically over her indifference to the topography. Then, “What happened between Jay and Hallie?”

He looked in the direction of the river. “He broke her heart. She expected faithfulness, which wasn’t in Jay’s character. Not even in his vocabulary. He got what he wanted, which was a hard-won notch on his belt. Maybe two since Hallie was my fiancée. In effect, she and I both got fucked by Jay Burgess.”

He realized he had clenched his hands into fists and was feeling the rage he’d felt when he learned how his best friend had betrayed him with Hallie, then discarded her. To Jay, she’d been just another conquest. “She caught him cheating, scooped up the pieces of her broken heart, and left Charleston.”

Feeling Britt’s inquiring gaze on him, he said, “I waited a couple of years and then decided to try and contact her. I used a pay phone at the general store and called her folks, the only way I knew of reaching her.

“Soon as I identified myself, I got an obscene tongue-lashing from her dad. See, they believed what your news stories had implied about me. But before he hung up, he told me-no, he crowed it, proudly, triumphantly-that Hallie had married an extremely successful orthopedic surgeon in Denver and they were expecting their first child.”

Even insects had abandoned the airstrip. Without their night music, there was nothing to break the heavy stillness. The clock in the dashboard ticked. That was all.

Raley heard the rustle of fabric as Britt shifted, turning toward him. She bent her left knee and tucked that foot beneath her right leg.

“Before I go back and throw myself on the mercy of Clark and Javier, I think you should tell me about your investigation into the police station fire.”