Where There's Smoke

“She’s had a stroke.” Lara moved Key aside and knelt beside his mother. “Call 911.”

“Don’t bother. I’m dying. I want to. I can now.” Jody’s words were slurred, the consonants only partially formed, the sounds left open, like her lips. The vowels were guttural. But Jody was forcing herself to be understood. “Couldn’t let him.”

“Couldn’t let him what, Jody?” Key knelt beside her. “Couldn’t let him what?”

Lara called 911. For the second time in twelve hours she requested two ambulances—one for Jody, one for Randall. Then she returned to her place beside Jody and wrapped a blood pressure cuff around her upper arm. “She must have come in right behind me,” she told Key. “He fell exactly where he was standing when I left.”

“Couldn’t let him tell about Clark.” Jody struggled with the words.

“Don’t talk, Mrs. Tackett,” Lara said gently. She released the cuff and firmly pressed her fingers into Jody’s wrist to take her pulse. “Help is on the way.”

“What about Clark?” Key supported the back of Jody’s head in his palm. “What did Randall Porter know about Clark that you didn’t want him to tell?”

“Key, this isn’t the time. She’s critically ill.”

“She blew your husband’s brains out!” he shouted at Lara. “Why, goddamnit? I want to know what drove my mother to murder. Do you know?”

“You’re upsetting my patient,” she replied tightly.

“Christ. You do know. What was it?”

She remained silent.

He looked down at Jody, realizing, as Lara did, that she was frantically trying to impart something before it was too late. “Jody, what was it? Did Porter know something about Clark’s drowning? Was it a political assassination staged to look like an accident? Did Clark know that Porter was still alive?”

“No.” Imploringly, Jody rolled her eyes toward Lara. “Tell him.”

Lara shook her head slowly, then emphatically. “No. No.”

“Lara, for God’s sake. He was my brother.” Key reached across Jody and took Lara’s chin, forcibly turning her face toward him. “What do you know that I don’t? What did Porter know that was such a threat to Clark, even dead? Whatever it is, it’s why Jody didn’t want you in Eden Pass, right? She was afraid you’d leak a secret.”

“Porter…” Jody wheezed. “Porter was…”

“No, Mrs. Tackett,” Lara pleaded. “Don’t tell him. It won’t solve anything and will only hurt him.” She looked at Key. “Don’t ask her. It crushed her. She committed murder over it. Leave it alone. I beg you, Key, leave it alone.”

Her pleas fell on deaf ears. He bent low over Jody, until his face was inches from hers. “Porter was what? Plotting something with Clark? Was Clark caught up in a political intrigue he couldn’t get out of? An illegal arms deal? Drugs maybe??

?

“No.”

“Tell me, Jody,” he urged her softly. “Try, please. Tell me. I’ve got to know.”

“Randall Porter was—”

“Yes, Jody? What?”

“No, Key. Please. Please.”

“Shut up, Lara. Randall Porter was what, Jody?”

“Clark’s lover.”

For several seconds Key remained motionless. Then his head snapped erect and his eyes drilled into Lara’s. “My brother and Porter…?”

Lara sank against the wall, defeated. The secret she had wanted desperately to reveal for five years, she now wished could have died with Jody Tackett, so that she wouldn’t have to watch the disillusionment spread over Key’s face like a dark ink spill.

“They were lovers?” His voice was as brittle and dry as ancient parchment. It crackled on each word.