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  “How come you’re early?” Jackie asked.

  “I walked over straight from the mayor’s office, with a bit of news I thought you and Arlene might find interesting.”

  Arlene sprayed Jackie’s hair until not even a hurricane force wind could have mussed it. “Wouldn’t be something about Kent Graham’s murder, would it? I swear, it’s the only thing this town is talking about.”

  “I can’t reveal any privileged information without endangering my job with the city, but since Penny Walsh overheard it, too, then the news is bound to be all over town before sundown.” Glenn crossed his hefty right leg over his left knee. “I could be persuaded to share my news if you’d get me a Coke.”

  Arlene patted Jackie on the shoulders. “Sit still. I’ll do your nails as soon as I get Glenn his Coke.”

  While Arlene raided the cola machine, Jackie whirled around in the swivel chair and gave her boyfriend a hard stare. “Is it something deliciously juicy?”

  Arlene popped the lid on the can and handed Glenn his cola. “Here’s your bribe. Now tell us.”

  Glenn’s face flushed slightly. “Y’all never will guess who might be coming back to town.” Tilting the cola to his lips, Glenn gulped down the refreshing drink.

  “What sort of news is that?” Standing, Jackie unsnapped her plastic cape and tossed it onto a nearby chair. Snips of shimmering platinum hair dropped to the floor. “Come on, Arlene, do my nails.”

  “So, who’s coming back to town?” Arlene followed Jackie to the manicurist’s table.

  “Don’t you girls want to guess?”

  “Lord, what is this, twenty questions?” Arlene sat across from Jackie, then lifted the woman’s hand into a dish of warm, soapy water. “Are we playing a game?”

  “The news is very interesting,” Glenn said. “Come on. I’ll give y’all a few clues.”

  “You’re acting totally ridiculous.” Jackie puckered her plump, pink lips into a pout.

  “It’s a man who left town fifteen years ago.” Glenn sipped from the cola can. “He lived over in Myer’s Trailer Park. You dated him a time or two, Arlene. And so did you, Jackie.”

  “You can’t mean Johnny Mack!” Arlene’s big hazel eyes widened; her mouth gaped open.

  “Johnny Mack is coming back to town?” Jackie asked, her voice quivering slightly. “But why would he come back, after all these years?”

  “Yeah, I wondered the same thing,” Glenn said. “While I was changing out the light fixture in Penny’s office, I heard Mayor Ware talking to the DA on the phone. Seems some guy claiming to be Johnny Mack Cahill had called the DA’s office and was asking some questions about Kent Graham’s murder.” Glenn finished off his cola and tossed the empty can into a nearby wicker wastebasket. “That phone call sure as hell upset James Ware. He called Miss Edith right away. Me and Penny heard every word.”

  “Wonder how Johnny Mack turned out?” Arlene smiled, then sighed. “Now there was a man for you. Even at twenty, he was a force to be reckoned with wasn’t he? Folks used to say the likes of him would wind up in jail for sure.”

  “I still say, why would he come back to Noble’s Crossing after all this time?” Jackie repeated her question. “He hated this town as much as it hated him.”

  “Well, it seems Kent Graham’s murder isn’t all Johnny Mack was interested in,” Glenn told them. “I heard James Ware ask the DA what possible interest the man claiming to be Johnny Mack Cahill could have in Will Graham.”

  “A very good question. Why would he be interested in Will Graham?” Arlene asked.

  “Are you saying that Johnny Mack Cahill is coming back to Noble’s Crossing because of that boy?” Jackie lifted her hand out of the water. “But why?”

  “Weren’t you listening, honey pie? That’s what the mayor wanted to know.” Crossing his big arms over his rotund chest, Glenn leaned back on the sofa.

  “Why would Johnny Mack give a hoot about Kent Graham’s kid?” Arlene asked. “Those two despised each other.” Arlene reached for Jackie’s hand, but she jerked it away.

  Jackie turned around to face Glenn. “That boy isn’t anybody to Johnny Mack. Doesn’t make any sense why he’d be interested.”

  “Could be the old rumors are true about Johnny Mack and Kent being half brothers,” Arlene speculated. “If that’s so, then Will would be Johnny Mack’s nephew.”

  “Could be,” Glenn said. “But I got my own notion about why he’d come back to town, if he thought that Will and Lane needed him.” Glenn glanced from his girlfriend to Arlene and then back to his girlfriend. “We all know Will’s adopted, so that means, somewhere, Will has a real mama and daddy. Right?”

  “Right,” Arlene said. “Lord have mercy! Now I know who Will reminds me of. He looks like Johnny Mack did when he was a kid. Why didn’t we see it before now, Jackie? You and I were as close to Johnny Mack as anybody in this town.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Jackie said.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Cummings, but the truth is that you and I both dated Johnny Mack.”

  “Everyone knows that you dated him on and off for years, whenever a certain someone else wasn’t available, but I never really dated him. He pursued me…and I shunned him.”

  “Lightning’s going to strike you dead, Jackie Jo Cummings.” Arlene laughed, a hoarse, throaty, lifetime smoker’s rumbling chuckle. “You were as hot for Johnny Mack as every other girl in town.”

  “I was not! I found him uncouth and crude and—”

  “And exciting,” Arlene said. “We all did. He was the boy even the Magnolia Avenue girls fantasized about.”

  Glenn cleared his throat. “Well, explain this to me, ladies, if Johnny Mack is Will’s natural father, why on earth would Kent and Lane have adopted him?” Glenn shook his head and grunted. “Johnny Mack and Kent sure weren’t friends, and they certainly didn’t run with the same crowd.”

  “Nobody ran with Johnny Mack,” Jackie said. “He was a loner.”

  “So maybe the answer doesn’t lie with Johnny Mack. Maybe it lies with whoever Will’s real mother is,” Glenn said. “Could be that Lane and Kent knew when they married they could never have a child of their own and someone in town told them about a girl with a child she wanted to give away. Nobody knows where they got that boy.”

  Arlene tapped her long fake nails atop the manicurist’s desk. “I feel sorry for Will, and sorry for Johnny Mack if Will really is his son.”

  “And for the poor girl who had to give away her lover’s baby?” Glenn asked as he exchanged a pensive glance with Arlene.

  “I think y’all are assuming an awful lot.” Jackie laid both of her hands flat atop the desk. “Do my nails! Glenn and I are supposed to be at Heartbreakers by seven, and I still have to go home and change. This is my one night off this week, and I want to make the most of it.”

  “I guess we could narrow down the possibilities,” Arlene said. “Every girl in town didn’t sleep with Johnny Mack that last summer before he left town. He was mostly fooling around with the Magnolia Avenue girls.”

  “Any smart girl from Magnolia Avenue could have gotten an abortion.” Jackie snatched her hand out of Arlene’s grasp, inspecting the beginnings of her manicure. “So that means Will’s mama was probably trash just like Johnny Mack. Now, wouldn’t that be something? The bastard son of white trash being raised in the lap of luxury as the child of Lane Noble Graham. If Miss Edith suspected such a thing, she’d have a heart attack and keel over dead. Can you imagine her having Johnny Mack Cahill’s child as her heir?”

  “Well, my money’s on Johnny Mack being the father,” Glenn said. “But who could the mother have been? There weren’t many women between the age of sixteen and sixty who would have said no to Johnny Mack.”

  “I think there’s one possibility that we’ve all overlooked,” Jackie said.

  “What’s that?” Arlene asked.

  “That Lane Noble is Will’s natural mother.”

  Johnny Mack checked into the Four Way, a clean but ine
xpensive motel on the other side of the river. The place hadn’t changed much over the years. Some new furniture. A fresh coat of paint. A bigger neon sign.

  Johnny Mack glanced at his watch. Nearly six-thirty. He wanted to shower and change before he called on anyone here in Noble’s Crossing. For the time being, he didn’t want anyone to suspect just how successful he was. How rich and powerful. Later, when it served his purposes to reveal the truth, he would let everyone know just who they were dealing with.

  Picking up his suitcase, he tossed it on the bed, snapped open the lid and reached inside for his favorite pair of faded black jeans. Even though he was accustomed to tailor-made suits, linen shirts and silk ties, he was still more comfortable in jeans and boots. Despite his innate ability to wheel and deal with the best of them, he found the most pleasure in the days he spent at the ranch. Although the Hill Country was peaceful and serene, somehow he never felt quite as lonesome there as he did surrounded by people in Houston.

  He had spent fifteen years tying to escape from his past, trying to become someone other than the town bad boy. And he had spent the past ten years trying to atone for the mistakes he had made when he’d been too young and stupid to realize that actions had consequences.

  God in heaven, had he gotten some girl pregnant that last summer here in Noble’s Crossing? Had he really left behind a child?

  Just as he stripped out of his clothes, the cellular phone in his jacket rang. He reached down on the bed, slipped his hand inside the pocket, lifted the phone and flipped it open.

  “Cahill.”

  “Johnny Mack, I’ve got a report sitting on my desk that I think will interest you,” Benton Pike said.

  “An update from the PI?”

  “Yep.”

  “Did he get the information I wanted?”

  “He sure did. We know who John William Graham’s natural mother is.”

  Chapter 5

  “He’s registered at the Four Way,” Police Chief Buddy Lawler said. “From the description the desk clerk gave me, it could be Johnny Mack.”

  “He registered under the name Johnny Mack Cahill, right?” James Ware merely wanted to confirm what his old friend had already told him. “And he paid for a week in advance?”

  “What are the odds it could be Johnny Mack?” Buddy paced the polished oak floor in the paneled study of the Graham mansion. “We both know that he was fish food fifteen years ago. How could he have survived that beating, let alone had the strength to swim ashore?”

  “He was as tough as they come.” James poured himself a drink from the bottle of Scotch he kept on his desk. Nodding toward the liquor, he asked, “Care for some?”

  “No. I’m keeping a clear head until I find out for sure who our visitor is.”

  “And what are we going to do if it turns out to be Johnny Mack?” James lifted the glass to his lips, took a sip and swallowed.

  “Let’s say it is him,” Buddy suggested. “He’s stayed away for fifteen years. Why would he return now?”

  “Wes Stevens said that this man—whoever the hell he is—called his office and inquired about Kent’s murder and about Lane and Will. It’s possible that he’s found out the truth about Will.”

  “How the hell would he have found out?” Buddy removed his tie, undid the top button on his shirt and loosened the collar. “Unless he’s kept in touch with someone here in Noble’s Crossing all these years.”

  “The same someone who might have helped him fifteen years ago,” James said. “Someone who knows what we did to him.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions. We don’t know anything for sure. We don’t even know if this man really is Johnny Mack Cahill.”

  “Sure we do.” James downed the remainder of his Scotch, set the glass aside and wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand. “He was the kind of guy you couldn’t kill. We should have known he wasn’t dead. If he made it to shore, just about any woman in this town would have helped him.”

  “I know one woman who wouldn’t have helped him,” a distinctly feminine voice said.

  Both men turned toward the door which had just opened. Edith Ware’s red lips curved into a closed-mouth smile as she walked into the room. Thin and petite, with her cinnamon hair cut in a stylish chin-length bob, Edith did not look like a woman nearly sixty.

  “How much did you overhear?” James asked.

  “Oh, don’t fret, my love. I’ve known your dirty little secret for quite some time. You men were all too adamant about Johnny Mack being dead. I finally confronted Kent with my suspicions one night when he’d had a little too much bourbon.”

  “Why didn’t you say—” James glared at his wife.

  “Miss Edith, I promise that whoever this man is—Johnny Mack Cahill or somebody just using his name—he’s not going to cause any problems for this family as long as I’m police chief.”

  Edith clasped Buddy’s shoulder, her perfect, sculptured red nails biting into the material of his jacket. “I know I can count on you to keep things under control. But if this man is Johnny Mack returned from the dead, then I suggest we bide our time and see exactly what he’s up to. Could be he’s come back for revenge.”

  When James groaned and Buddy slapped his right fist against the open palm of his left hand, Edith narrowed her gaze on the portrait hanging over the ornate Jacobean desk. John Graham posed with his arm around his son. Their son. John Kent Graham. “Or perhaps Johnny Mack has come back for Will,” Edith speculated.

  “Or to help Lane,” Buddy said. “If he knows about Will, he might know what Lane did for that boy.”

  Edith slid her hand down Buddy’s arm and ran her fingertips over the bulge in his jacket created by the shoulder holster he always wore. “Someone in this town has known all along where Johnny Mack was, and that person is the one who summoned him back to Noble’s Crossing. We want to make sure he doesn’t stay long enough to make waves. It shouldn’t be too difficult for you to find a way to make him disappear again. Give him fair warning that he isn’t wanted in Noble’s Crossing now any more than he was wanted fifteen years ago.”

  “And if he doesn’t heed the warning?” Buddy asked.

  “Let’s take this one step at a time,” Edith said. “First let’s find out who this man is and proceed from there.”

  “It’s going to rain.” Lillie Mae cleared the dishes. from the kitchen table. “I feel it in my bones.”

  “I wish it would rain,” Lane said. “It’s so hot and humid I can hardly breathe when I go outside.”

  “I don’t see how you two can discuss the weather as if everything’s all right!” Will shoved back his chair, shot straight up and stomped out of the room.

  “Go see about him.” Lillie Mae nodded toward the den. “God only knows why Sharon wrote that letter to Kent. If she’d had any idea what her confession would do to Will and to you and—”

  Lane placed her arm around her housekeeper’s shoulders. For many years, she and Lillie Mae had shared a special relationship, closer than many mothers and daughters. For fifteen years they had been bound together by two secrets, one that had been revealed a few months ago when Lillie Mae’s only child, Sharon, had died.

  “Maybe what she did was wrong, but I think she did it for the right reason.” Lane hugged Lillie Mae, then turned and headed toward the den.

  Lane found her son standing by the row of windows overlooking Magnolia Avenue. She walked up to him, but didn’t touch him. Knowing him so well, she gave him enough time for his quick temper to cool.

  The street outside lay in early evening shadows. A hot breeze shimmied through the trees that lined the enormous brick walkway outside their ante-bellum home. The home her ancestors had built before the Civil War. The home that had been part of her parents’ legacy.

  “The only way to stay sane when the whole world’s gone crazy is by keeping things around you normal, by going on with life’s little mundane matters.” Lane glanced at her son, the child to whom she had devoted her lif
e. Not a boy any longer and yet not quite a man. Fourteen and fragile and vulnerable as only the very young and innocent can be. Her poor, sweet baby. Innocent no longer. Kent had taken that away from him, too, when he had heartlessly ripped Will’s heritage from him and unmercifully shattered his sense of identity.

  “Whose child am I?” he had asked her as he lay in her arms and cried the day of Kent’s death.

  “You’re mine,” she had said. “Mine.”

  “Our lives won’t ever be normal again, will they?” Will’s voice caught with emotion. A voice already as deep and husky as his father’s had been.

  When he laced his long fingers together and moved them back and forth, Lane watched her son’s nervous habit and remembered another young man who used to lock and unlock his fingers whenever he felt agitated or uncomfortable.

  “You’re right. Our lives won’t ever be the same,” she said. “But someday we’ll put all of this behind us and—”

  “Why won’t you let me tell them the truth about what happened that day?” Will faced his mother, his gaze colliding with hers.

  “You don’t know what happened that day. The police understand that the shock of Kent’s death has caused your partial amnesia.”

  “I know you didn’t kill Da—Kent. We both know you weren’t even here when I found his body.” Moisture glimmered on the surface of Will’s black eyes. “If you’d just let me tell Chief Lawler what I do remember.”

  “No!” She reached out for him, took his big hand into her small one and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “We’ve been over this time and time again, Will. If you tell Chief Lawler what you remember, it will look as if you might have killed Kent. And we know that’s impossible, don’t we?”

  “Do we, Mama? Do we really know it’s impossible? If I can’t remember anything that happened after I hit him, then how—”

  “You hit Kent once,” she reminded Will. “Once. You do remember tossing the bat aside after you hit him that one time. And the autopsy plainly stated that Kent was hit repeatedly. Someone else picked up your baseball bat and killed him.” She grabbed Will’s shoulders and gave him a stern shake. “Do you hear me? You did not kill him!”