Loe raamatut: «Yesterday's Scandal»

CHAPTER ONE

TAILLIGHTS GLOWED red in the darkness ahead of him as Mac Cordero drove along the rural outskirts of Honoria, Georgia. He wasn’t deliberately following the other vehicle. They just happened to be headed in the same direction on the narrow, hilly road bordered by thick woods on the left and a rain-swollen river on the right.

Mac had no particular destination in mind. He was merely killing time on this Friday evening, delaying his return to the no-frills motel where he would be staying until he made better arrangements for the next few months. He had things to accomplish in this oddball town, and the renovation of the 1920s-era Victorian-style house he’d recently purchased was the excuse he’d use if anyone asked why he was here. The real reason he was here—well, sometimes that even seemed like a mystery to him.

Because it was a warm, early-June evening, his windows were down, letting in the fresh, woodsy air and the sounds of night creatures. Neither lifted his mood, nor eased the frustration that he had accomplished so little since his initial visit to Honoria several weeks earlier. He was no closer now to solving the mystery that had brought him here than he’d been when he’d decided to pursue it.

The small car ahead of him began a steady ascent up a steep, blind hill. Mac shifted in the seat of his truck. All in all, it had been an unproductive day. He was beginning to wonder if boredom was all that awaited him here. He hated being bored.

A squeal of brakes brought him abruptly out of his thoughts. His hands tightened on the steering wheel when the taillights ahead of him swerved suddenly and erratically, then veered off to the right side of the road—straight toward the river. At the same moment, a light-colored van topped the hill in the center of the road, speeding, weaving, making no effort to slow down. Acting on instinct, Mac jerked his wheel to the right, pulling his truck to the side but stopping before it went over the edge. The van sped past, disappearing behind him.

Muttering a curse, Mac didn’t waste time trying to get a license-plate number, but jumped from his truck and ran to the edge of the road. The slow-moving river looked like black ink in the darkness, shimmering with multifaceted reflections of the three-quarter moon overhead. He saw no sign of the car he knew had gone over. Kicking off his shoes, he prepared to dive in.

A head broke the water in front of him as he started to jump. He heard a loud gasp for air, followed by what might have been a broken cry of pain and fear. A moment later, he was in the cold water, reaching the woman just as she went under again.

He grabbed her arms and hauled her to the surface, noting automatically that she was lightweight, slender. His hands easily spanned her waist as he treaded water and supported her until she caught her breath. It was difficult to see her features in the shadows, but he got the impression she was somewhat younger than his own thirty-three years.

Reassured that she was stable, he asked urgently, “Is there anyone else in the car?”

“No. I was alone.” Her voice was a choked whisper. “It…took me a while to get out. I had my windows down, but…”

“It wasn’t as long as it must have seemed to you.” He was aware that she was trembling so hard her teeth were chattering. The water was cool, but not frigid. Sensing that shock was about to set in, he tightened his grip on her. “Can you swim? Are you injured?”

“I…I don’t know,” she managed to say, clinging to him. “I hurt, but I don’t know exactly where yet.”

Because it made sense to him, considering the circumstances, he merely nodded and wrapped an arm around her to help her toward the bank. He would assess her injuries once she was safely out of the water, he decided, beginning to swim with steady, rescue-trained strokes.

The bank was steep, mud crumbling beneath his hands and feet as he helped the woman out of the river. It wasn’t easy to swing her into his arms and carry her up to the side of the road. Hard shivers racked her, and he could hear her teeth chattering. Damning the darkness that kept him from seeing whether she was bleeding anywhere, Mac settled her on the gravel beside the road. “I’ll be right back.”

He dashed to his truck, water streaming off him, his wet socks providing little protection from the rocks on the roadbed. Ignoring his discomfort, he snatched his cellular phone and dialed 911. Grabbing the lightweight jacket he’d tossed into the passenger seat earlier, he gave the emergency dispatcher a clipped summation of his situation, requested an ambulance and then hung up.

The woman was curled into a fetal ball when he returned to her. He suspected that if there was enough light, he would see that her lips were blue. She wore a T-shirt and shorts, and her feet were bare. She’d probably lost her shoes in the river. She lay in a puddle of water, trembling.

“I’ve called for help,” he said, wrapping his jacket snugly around her. The thin fabric seemed to make no difference at all; she seemed hardly to notice it. Shock, he thought again, and shifted her onto her back, pushing her knees upward so that her legs were higher than her head.

Only marginally aware of his own soggy, chilled condition, he smoothed wet, nape-length hair from the woman’s face. His eyes had finally grown accustomed to the darkness and he could make out the woman’s features. Her skin was so pale it looked like porcelain in the milky moonlight. He took another guess at her age—mid- to late twenties, perhaps. Her hair looked dark, but it was hard to tell for certain. “What’s your name?”

“Sharon.” Her voice was faint, but coherent, to his relief. “Sharon Henderson.”

“I’m Mac Cordero.”

She pulled a hand from the folds of his jacket and reached out toward him. “Thank you.”

He cradled her icy fingers in his larger, somewhat warmer ones. Their gazes met and held. Her eyes glittered in the moonlight. He knew his own face was in shadow, but he offered a faint smile of encouragement. “You’re welcome.”

She shivered again and he tightened his hand. He felt as if something passed between them at that point of contact—warmth, emotion…something. Most likely he was overreacting to the dramatic turn the evening had suddenly taken. When he’d complained of boredom earlier, he certainly hadn’t been hoping for anything like this.

A dark Jeep with a flashing light on the dash topped the hill and braked to a stop across the road. The driver stepped out of the vehicle and crossed to them swiftly, kneeling at the woman’s other side. “Sharon?” he said, recognizing her immediately, “Are you hurt?”

“I don’t think so,” she answered, but didn’t sound quite convinced.

“An ambulance is on the way. Can you tell me what happened?”

“I was leaving Tressie’s house after dinner. There was a van—it came out of the driveway on the other side of the hill without stopping. I swerved, but it ran me off the road—almost as if it was intentional.”

“I saw the van,” Mac added. “It never even slowed down.”

The other man looked at him. “Chief Wade Davenport, Honoria Police Department,” he introduced himself.

“Mac Cordero. I happened to be following behind Ms. Henderson’s car, and I saw the accident.”

“Judging from your appearance, I take it Sharon’s car went into Snake Creek?”

Mac frowned. Snake Creek? Hardly a name to inspire confidence. He hated snakes. Yet he knew that even had the water been crawling with them, he’d have gone in after her. Years of training and practice had kicked in the moment he’d seen someone in trouble. You could take the cop out of his uniform, he thought ruefully, but it was a hell of a lot harder to break those old cop habits.

“My car.” Sharon turned her head to look mournfully toward the edge of the road. “I just made the final payment.”

Davenport patted her shoulder. “Let’s not worry about that right now, okay?”

A siren broke the deceptively peaceful silence of the night. Davenport glanced in its direction, then turned his attention back to the soggy couple in front of him. “You said the van pulled out of the driveway just over the hill?”

Sharon nodded. “Yes. The driver didn’t even pause to see if anyone was coming from either direction.”

“That’s the Porter place. The Porters left for vacation three days ago.”

“You think the van was there to rob them?” She sounded appalled.

The police chief glanced at Mac, who had already leaped to that conclusion, then looked back at Sharon. “I’ll check that out as soon as you’re taken care of. I don’t suppose either of you got the number of the license plate on the van.”

“No.” Mac shook his head, knowing he’d be able to provide little detail. “I thought it was more important to make sure no one was trapped underwater.”

“You made the right call.” Davenport stood as an ambulance pulled up behind the Jeep. “I’ll have more questions for you later, if you don’t mind, Mr. Cordero.”

“I’ll tell you everything I saw—but I’m afraid it wasn’t much. It all happened too quickly.”

Two uniformed paramedics—a man and a woman—approached with swift efficiency. Only then did Mac realize that he was still holding Sharon’s hand. She clung to him when he would have released her, as if he were her only lifeline in frighteningly uncharted waters. He had to gently peel her fingers away so the medics could do their jobs.

He hadn’t been cold when he’d knelt beside her, holding her hand. Now, as he stepped back, he felt a chill penetrate his wet clothing. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his slacks and winced when the waterlogged fabric clung to him. Fortunately, his wallet was in the truck, so the only thing he’d ruined was a good leather belt. His shoes were still by the water’s edge. He’d get them as soon as the ambulance left.

Wade Davenport returned from using the radio in his Jeep just as Sharon was being loaded onto the ambulance. “I’ll come to the hospital in a few minutes to see about you,” he promised her.

“All right,” she answered automatically, though she was still looking at Mac. “Mr. Cordero…”

He stepped closer to the gurney. “Yes?”

“Thank you.”

She had already thanked him. He answered as he had before, “You’re welcome.”

He watched her—and was watched in return—until the ambulance doors closed between them. Only when the ambulance had driven away did he turn back to the chief of police, prepared to answer his questions.

SORE MUSCLES CLENCHED when Sharon shifted in her seat Sunday evening, causing her to wince. She immediately regretted doing so when the man on the other side of the restaurant table frowned and asked, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

Since it was at least the tenth time he’d asked in the past couple of hours, Sharon had to force herself to answer patiently. “I’m fine, Jerry. Still a little sore, but the doctor assured me that was to be expected.”

Jerry Whitaker didn’t look satisfied. He seemed convinced that her injuries from Friday night’s mishap were worse than the few scrapes and bruises she had told him about.

He’d been out of town for the weekend, and when he’d returned that afternoon, talk of the accident had been all over town—no surprise in Honoria, where rumors zipped from household to household with the frantic speed of a metal ball in an arcade pinball machine. Having lived here since adolescence, Sharon had learned to discount most of what she heard, but Jerry still tended to take the local gossip much too seriously.

“Tell me more about your business trip,” she encouraged him, trying to change the subject. “How was the weather in Charleston?”

Her attempt at diversion failed. “Fine,” he answered automatically, then returned to his questions about her. “Have you talked to Chief Davenport since I called you this afternoon? Have there been any further developments in the investigation of the Porter robbery—any leads on the van that ran you off the road?”

Resigned to rehashing it all again, Sharon looked down at her plate. “Nothing. It’s as if the van disappeared off the face of the earth. If Mr. Cordero hadn’t seen it, I would have wondered if I had imagined it.”

Jerry’s scowl deepened. “Ah, yes. Cordero-the-hero. That’s what they’re calling him around town, you know.”

Sharon wrinkled her nose. “You’re kidding. That’s so corny.”

“Have you heard some of the stories going around about what happened Friday night? Mildred Scott told me you drowned and Cordero brought you back to life with CPR. Clark Foster said you were trapped in the car and Cordero had to break a window to pull you out, nearly drowning himself. And then there’s the version Gloria Capps is spreading—that you cut yourself on broken glass and almost bled to death before Cordero saved you by using his necktie as a tourniquet.”

“That’s ridiculous. He wasn’t even wearing a necktie.” She shook her head. “It’s all ridiculous. I was already out of the car when Mr. Cordero jumped in to help me. I’m sure I could have made it out of the river on my own.”

She didn’t want to sound ungrateful for Mac’s help, but she didn’t like hearing she’d been cast as the hapless victim in so many improbable scenarios. She’d been taking care of herself—and the rest of her family—for a long time. It wasn’t easy to let anyone else take charge, even briefly.

“Of course you would have made it out on your own.”

Sharon didn’t know whether Jerry’s attitude was due more to his faith in her or his jealousy that Mac Cordero had become such a romanticized figure in Honoria. Jerry had lived in this town all his life. He’d taken over his father’s insurance office a few years ago, but an insurance salesman was rarely regarded as dashing or heroic, terms that had been applied to Cordero in the numerous retellings of Sharon’s accident.

She’d been dating Jerry casually for three or four months. They shared several common interests and had passed many pleasant evenings together. She’d been aware from the start that their relationship owed more to circumstance than chemistry—there weren’t many singles their age in Honoria—but she wasn’t looking for romance, only occasional companionship, which Jerry provided without making too many demands in return.

“I really don’t understand all this fuss over the guy,” he muttered, slicing irritably into his steak. “He’s a contractor, for Pete’s sake. Not even a particularly shrewd one, if he thinks he’s going to make a profit on the Garrett place.”

“I’ve heard he specializes in restoring old houses. He must know from experience whether or not the Garrett house is worth renovating.”

Jerry shook his head stubbornly. “That eyesore is going to require a small fortune just to make it livable again. It should have been condemned years ago. The location’s not bad, even if it isn’t close to the golf course, like all the best new homes. Tear it down and start from scratch, that’s what I would do. Maybe even subdivide—it sits on a three-acre lot. That’s enough land to put in quite a few houses and more than pay for the initial investment.”

Just what Honoria needed, Sharon thought. Another tacky subdivision filled with cheaply built, cookie-cutter houses on undersize lots. “Some people love the old, the historic,” she murmured. “The Garrett place was practically a mansion when it was built in the early part of the twentieth century. It must have been beautiful.”

“Maybe it was then, but now it’s just old.” Jerry shook his head in bafflement. “I’ve never understood what people see in beat-up antiques when they can have shiny new things, instead.”

She wasn’t surprised by Jerry’s attitude. He had a taste for flash. He traded cars nearly every year when the new models debuted, and was always upgrading his computers and electronic equipment. The past held little appeal for him—his eyes were firmly fixed on the future. She saw no need to remind him that she had a soft spot for antiques. It was something he just couldn’t understand.

Jerry’s thoughts were still focused on Mac Cordero. “The guy’s just a contractor. I don’t know why so many people around town want to make him into something else. The rumors about him are absurd. Why can’t they just accept that he’s exactly what he says he is?”

The mildest speculation cast Cordero as an eccentric multimillionaire who fixed up old houses for his own hideaways. Some whispered that he was an agent for a Hollywood superstar who wanted a place to escape the press occasionally. The most incredible story she’d heard suggested he was working for an organized-crime family preparing the Garrett house for a mobster who needed to get out of New York City.

“You know how rumors get started around here,” Sharon reminded Jerry. “Because Mr. Cordero chooses not to share information about his personal life, people entertain themselves by filling in the blanks with colorful details.”

“So what do you know about him?” Jerry’s question proved he wasn’t as averse to gossip as he pretended—something Sharon already knew, of course.

“I don’t know anything more than you do. I didn’t exactly have a lot of time for personal chit-chat when I met him. All I can tell you is he seemed very…capable,” she said for lack of a better description.

As much as she hated to admit it, even to herself, she had been in trouble Friday night. Yes, she’d managed to get out of her sunken car on her own, but she’d been shaken and disoriented. She probably would have gotten to the shore on her own—at least, she hoped so—only to find herself stranded on a rarely traveled country road without a car or a phone. As frightened as she had been, there had been something about Mac Cordero that had reassured her. Maybe it was the strength of the rock-hard arms that had supported her until she’d caught her breath. Or the steady way he’d held her gaze when he’d assured her that help was on the way. Or maybe it had been the way her hand had felt cradled so securely in his.

It embarrassed her now to remember the desperation with which she had clung to the stranger who’d pulled her from the water. At the time, she’d simply been grateful to have someone to hold on to.

“Would you mind if we talk about something else now?” she asked, uncomfortable with the feelings those memories evoked. “It seems that all I’ve talked about for the past two days is the accident.”

“Of course. So, what about your car? Have they pulled it out yet? Were you able to salvage anything?”

This time she didn’t bother to hold back her sigh. There appeared to be nothing she could do to distract Jerry. Pushing her unsettling thoughts of Mac Cordero to the back of her mind, she concentrated on her dinner, answering Jerry’s questions with as little detail as possible.

She could only hope something would happen soon to get the town talking about something else.

“I’VE INTERVIEWED everyone I could think of who might’ve seen something suspicious around the Porter place, Wade. We’ve put the word out all over town that we’re looking for the light-colored panel van that was seen leaving the scene of the crime. We’re getting nothing. Apparently, the only two people who saw the vehicle were Sharon Henderson and that Cordero guy.”

Chief Wade Davenport raised his gaze from the accident reports scattered in front of him to the skinny, dejected-looking deputy on the other side of the battered oak desk. “Keep asking, Gilbert. Someone had to see something.”

Ever the pessimist, Gilbert Dodson gave a gloomy sigh. “I’ll keep asking, Wade, but I’ve talked to everyone but the chickens now.”

Wade leaned back in his creaky chair and steepled his fingers in front of him. “Then maybe you should start interviewing chickens.”

Shoulders slumping, Gilbert nodded and turned toward the door. “I’ll get right on that, Chief.”

Wade muttered a curse as his office door clicked shut. He tended to take it personally when anyone broke the law in his town. There’d been a rash of break-ins about a month ago, and the culprits had never been caught. Now there’d been another—the Porter place. They’d been quietly and efficiently cleaned out by whoever had been in the same van that had almost killed Sharon Henderson.

The break-ins were connected. Wade was sure of it, even though he had no evidence to support his hunch. There wasn’t that much crime in Honoria, and there hadn’t been any breaking and entering going on in almost five years. Not since the O’Brien kid and his buddies had thought it would be “fun” to start their own crime ring. Kevin O’Brien was twenty-three years old now and had done his time. The first thing Wade did when the current burglaries began was to check on Kevin’s whereabouts. As far as he could tell, there was no connection this time.

Which meant he had another thief operating in his town, victimizing and endangering his friends and neighbors. And that made Wade mad.

Narrowing his eyes, he picked up the report that had been filed by Mac Cordero, the “mysterious stranger” everyone had been gossiping about. It was interesting that the previous burglaries had taken place while Cordero was in town a few weeks back buying the old Garrett place. Now there’d been another one, only days after Cordero returned to begin the renovation project. Cordero “just happened” to be driving down that back road at the same time the Porter place was being cleaned out. Maybe there was no connection there, but Wade didn’t like coincidences.

Wade’s wife and kids lived in this town. It was his job to keep them—and the other residents—safe. He turned his attention to Cordero’s statement again, looking for anything that resembled a clue.