Two
Alex peeled off her suit jacket and tossed it onto the motel
bed. Her underarms were damp and her knees were ready to
buckle. She was nauseated. The scene in the D.A.'s office
had shaken her more than she wanted to admit.
She had left Pat Chastain's office with her head held high
and her shoulders back. She hadn't walked too fast, but she
hadn't dawdled. She had smiled good-bye to Imogene, who
had obviously been eavesdropping through the door because
she stared at Alex bug-eyed, her mouth agape.
Alex's exit line had been well rehearsed, well timed and
perfectly executed. The meeting had gone just as she had
planned it, but she was vastly relieved that it was over.
Now, she peeled off one cloying piece of clothing after
another. She would love to think that the worst was behind
her, but she feared it was yet to come. The three men
she had met today wouldn't roll over and play dead. She
would have to confront them again, and when she did, they
wouldn't be so overjoyed to see her.
Angus Minton seemed as full of goodwill as Santa Claus,
but Alex knew that nobody in Angus's position could be
as harmless as he tried to pretend. He was the richest, most
powerful man in the county. One didn't achieve that status
solely through benign leadership. He would fight to keep what
he'd spent a lifetime cultivating.
Junior was a charmer who knew his way around women.
The years had been kind to him. He'd changed little from
the photographs Alex had seen of him as an adolescent. She
also knew that he used his good looks to his advantage. It
would be easy for her to like him. It would also be easy to
suspect him of murder.
Reede Lambert was the toughest for her to pigeonhole
because her impressions of him were the least specific. Unlike
the others, she hadn't been able to look him in the eye. Reede
the man looked much harder and stronger than Reede the boy
from her grandma's picture box. Her first impression was
that he was sullen, unfriendly, and dangerous.
She was certain that one of these men had killed her mother.
Celina Gaither had not been murdered by the accused,
Buddy Hicks. Her grandmother, Merle Graham, had
drummed that into little Alex's head like a catechism all her
life.
"It'll be up to you, Alexandra, to set the record right,"
Merle had told her almost daily. "That's the least you can
do for your mother." At that point she usually glanced wistfully
at one of the many framed photographs of her late
daughter scattered throughout the house. Looking at the photographs
would invariably make her cry, and nothing her
granddaughter did could cheer her.
Until a few weeks ago, however, Alex hadn't known who
Merle suspected of killing Celina. Finding out had been the
darkest hour of Alex's life.
Responding to an urgent call from the nursing home doctor,
she had sped up the interstate to Waco. The facility was quiet,
immaculate, and staffed by caring professionals. Merle's lifetime
pension from the telephone company made it affordable.
For all its amenities, it still had the grey smell of old age;
despair and decay permeated its corridors.
When she had arrived that cold, dismal, rainy afternoon,
Alex had been told that her grandmother was in critical condition.
She entered the hushed private room and moved toward
the hospital bed. Merle's body had visibly deteriorated
since Alex had visited only the week before. But her eyes
were as alive as Fourth of July sparklers. Their glitter, however,
was hostile.
"Don't come in here," Merle rasped on a shallow breath.
"I don't want to see you. It's because of you!"
"What, Grandma?" Alex asked in dismay. "What are you
talking about?"
"I don't want you here."
Embarrassed by the blatant rejection, Alex had glanced
around at the attending physician and nurses. They shrugged
their incomprehension. "Why don't you want to see me? I've
come all the way from Austin."
"It's your fault she died, you know. If it hadn't been for
you ..." Merle moaned with pain and clutched her sheet
with sticklike, bloodless fingers.
"Mother? You're saying I'm responsible for Mother's
death?"
Merle's eyes popped open. "Yes," she hissed viciously.
"But I was just a baby, an infant," Alex argued, desperately
wetting her lips. "How could I--"
"Ask them."
"Who, Grandma? Ask who?"
"The one who murdered her. Angus, Junior, Reede. But
it was you . . . you . . . you. ..."
Alex had to be led from the room by the doctor several
minutes after Merle lapsed into a deep coma. The ugly accusation
had petrified her; it reverberated in her brain and
assaulted her soul.
If Merle held Alex responsible for Celina's death, so much
of Alex's upbringing could be explained. She had always
wondered why Grandma Graham was never very affectionate
with her. No matter how remarkable Alex's achievements,
they were never quite good enough to win her grandmother's
praise. She knew she was never considered as gifted, or
clever, or charismatic as the smiling girl in the photographs
that Merle looked at with such sad longing.
Alex didn't resent her mother. Indeed, she idolized and