Where There's Smoke

“Anyway, just yesterday Elmo told me that Miss Winnie Fern’s reported a man standing outside her bedroom window watching her undress for six nights straight. She claims she can’t describe or identify him because he always hides behind her rose o’ sharons where he ‘manipulates himself to sexual climax,’ is the way she put it to Elmo. If he kept a straight face it’s better than I could do.

“There’s no window-peeper jacking off behind Miss Winnie Fern’s rose o’ sharons any more than there’s a man in the moon, but she hasn’t had a thrill like that in years, so what’s the harm?”

“In other words, you feel that you’ve provided a community service?”

“Could be. People in a small town like Eden Pass need something to generate excitement.” He moved closer, close enough to catch the scent of her perfume. “What about you, Doc?” he asked in a low pitch. “What are you doing to generate some excitement, seeing as how Eden Pass doesn’t have any legislators to seduce?”

She shuddered with indignation, and immediately Key realized he had lied when he told her he didn’t see what had attracted his brother. Anger flattered Lara Mallory. With her head thrown back in that haughty angle, she could have been the proud bust on the prow of a sailing ship.

Except that she was softer. Much softer. He thought of softness each time the south breeze flattened her clothes against her body or lifted strands of hair away from her cheeks. She also had a very soft-looking mouth.

Not liking his train of thought, he asked, “Picked out your next victim yet?”

“Clark wasn’t my victim!”

“You’re the only married woman he ever got mixed up with.”

“Which indicates that he was more discriminating than you.”

“Or less.”

Furious, she turned on her heel and would have stalked away if his hand hadn’t shot out and brought her back around. “Since you started this, you’re damned well going to hear me out.”

She shook back her hair. “Well?”

“You said that my accusations were unfair.”

“That’s right. They’re grossly unfair. You don’t know anything about my relationship with Clark, only what you’ve read in the tabloids or deduced in your own dirty mind.”

He grinned. She had just placed her slender foot into the snare. “Well, you don’t know doodle-dee-squat about my relationship with Darcy, or with anyone else for that matter. Yet you ambush me out here and start preaching sin like a fire-breathing Bible thumper. If it was wrong for me to jump to conclusions about you, shouldn’t it be just as wrong for you to hang me without a trial?”

Before she had time to reply, he released her, slid into the front seat of the yellow Lincoln, and started the motor. Through the open window he added, “You’re not only a whoring wife, you’re a goddamn hypocrite.”

Chapter Seven

Lara drove aimlessly. The night was clear and warm. The breez

e served only as a conveyer of the heat that emanated from the earth of this vast, hard place.

Texas.

“Texas isn’t just a place,” she had heard Clark say many times. “It’s a state of mind. Xanadu with cowboy boots.”

Lara had never set foot on Texas soil until six months ago, when she claimed the gift he had bequeathed her. She had brought with her preconceptions influenced by Hollywood—the barren, windswept landscapes interrupted only by rolling tumbleweeds like in Giant, and Hud, and The Last Picture Show. Those movies had accurately depicted Texas, but only the western portion of it.

East Texas was green. The verdant forests were comprised of some hardwoods but mostly pines, their trunks dark and straight and aligned so perfectly that Nature could have used a ruler to space them. In the springtime these forests were dappled with patches of pastel color from blooming dogwood and wild fruit trees. Herds of beef and dairy cattle grazed in lush pastures. Lakes brimming with fish were fed by rivers and creeks that had a history of overflowing their banks.

And everywhere there was space, large tracts of land that Texans took for granted if they had never traveled to the crowded Northeast, which most of them scorned as a breeding ground for perverts, pinkos, and pansies.

They had no use whatsoever for Yankees.

Their children pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, but the native-born considered themselves Texans first, Americans second. The blood of the heroes of the Alamo flowed in their veins. Their heritage was rich with larger-than-life characters, and although their state carved a prominent notch in the Bible Belt, they were conversely boastful of bandits and ne’er-do-wells who had become folk heroes. The more notorious the character, the more popular the legends.

If Lara was having a difficult time understanding the people, she had instantly admired their land. County roads radiated from Eden Pass like the spokes of a wheel. Upon leaving the high school, she had selected one at random and had been driving without a destination for about an hour. She was well outside the city limits, and although she couldn’t pinpoint exactly where she was, she didn’t feel lost.

Steering her car onto the gravel shoulder, she cut the engine. As the motor noise died, she was engulfed by the sound of a discordant choir of cicadas, crickets, and bullfrogs. The wind rustled the leaves of the cottonwood saplings growing on the banks of the shallow ditches that lined the road.

She folded her hands over the steering wheel and rested her forehead on them, berating herself for letting Key Tackett get the best of her.