Lesser Crimes Read online

  "I'm not doing anything. I'm just cold."

  "Here," he offered the towels, and she started to undress.

  James wanted to look, and he shouldn't, so he left the room. It was the silence that lured him back. Lee was wrapped in one of the towels, with a smaller towel around her head. The moonlight made the white-gold chain around her neck gleam. He looked away from the double temptation of her cleavage and legs.

  "Why are you doing this?"

  "I'm not doing anything."

  "You need to go."

  "Why?"

  "Not going to explain it, you know."

  Scowling, she said, "You touched me."

  "What?"

  "You started it. You touched my arm."

  "That was just—"

  "You know what that was." She knelt on the bed. "Provocation."

  Maybe he could knock himself unconscious with the golf club, and then whatever she did wouldn't be his fault.

  “Won't people be looking for you?" he asked instead.

  "They're asleep. Billy won’t mind, and I don't care. Oh, James!" she suddenly cried, jumping out of bed and toward him. "What happened to your face?"

  The club kept her away once more. "Nothing."

  "Were you in a fight? Who d'you beat?"

  "You could try to keep the glee out of your tone."

  "Whoever you beat prolly deserved it."

  "Your accent seems to have multiplied."

  "Has it? I guess I can't help slippin’ back into it when I'm here." She swayed on her feet. "Is it horrible?"

  "No, it's adorable. You're adorable all over."

  She slapped down the club and moved closer to him. "Am I?"

  His back was to the wall. James couldn’t run, and her lips somehow latched on to his. An electric charge ran from his toes to his head, causing havoc on the way. As the towel fell from her head, he grabbed a fistful of her wet hair, so he could kiss her more deeply.

  That felt so good. She felt so good.

  Throw her on the bed. Pull the towel off, and her body will be there, all warm.

  Instead, he untangled his mouth from hers and pushed her. Oh, it would be so easy to give in. Being with Lee was like melting together in a sea of bliss, and the very air hurt his skin as he backed away, wielding the club once more.

  “Behave, Lee!”

  Unlike beating Hunter, making love to Lee would have consequences. For one, they wouldn’t do it just the once; people would know where she was going when she disappeared, and she would lose all the strange good will of her town.

  "Impossible," he told her. “I can pretty much blow all the commandments, except the adultery one, if a woman is living with her husband.”

  Her face fell, and she sneezed again, twice in a row.

  "You'll catch your death,” he said. “Sit over there for a moment. And put this on."

  He gave her a sweater, picked up her clothes from the floor and threw them in the dryer at the end of the corridor. When he returned, Lee was on an ottoman by the window, and her slumped shoulders tugged at his heart. It was as if she were facing defeat, and she had fought so hard for so long.

  Unwrapping the towel from her head again, he rubbed her hair dry. It was getting long.

  "You were right when you told Paxton to threaten that I'd never see you again," she said. "Even if it hurts, it's better to see you. I mean, it's better than to have you gone."

  James turned on the bedside lamp and lifted her onto the armchair, taking her place on the ottoman. "Well, I guess if I came back it's because I couldn't stay away. Remember the Neapolitan song?"

  "'Everything is sleeping or dying'?"

  "It also says, ‘Chist'uocchie te vonno 'nata vota vedè’."

  "Meaning?"

  "These eyes wanted to see you once more."

  "But you don't want to see me." She lifted her arms, her hands hidden by sleeves that were too long for her.

  "I want to, but I shouldn't."

  "I love Billy, but it isn't like that between us or I wouldn’t be here.”

  "Could you come and live with me?"

  She lowered her head and shook it.

  "Then you see the difference."

  "Because he needs care."

  "And I think all these people in your town who are giving you the benefit of the doubt now would turn against you."

  "Maybe. Because I'd be happy, then they'd all believe I killed Joe. I'd be happy with a beautiful man, and they'd all want me in jail."

  "The redhead keeps saying you take care of each other, but people take care of people who are in the same boat. You're one of them if you live like them."

  "But I'm so tired of sacrifice," she whispered.

  "Then tell the truth, Lee."

  "What truth?"

  "That you didn't kill Joe. I know what happened."

  She huddled against the back of the chair. "You don't."

  He nodded. "I know that your mother killed Joe."

  "No, you don't know that!"

  "There's no one here listening to us, and I know it for a fact, Lee. The evidence is there."

  "You're never to say it!"

  "Calm down a bit. I've sworn not to do what you don't want."

  "Will you be quiet when they pass my sentence?"

  "I need to understand things first."

  She shook her head again. "You'll never understand."

  "All right." He turned to face her more squarely. "I'll tell you what I know. There are fingerprints from the three of you on that poker, all of them after Joe’s blood got on it. There was an attempt to wipe your sister's and your mother's prints, fresh blood put on the poker and your prints on top. At first that made me think Cora might have done it — and that your mother might have wiped her prints and placed hers on the weapon. You might have arrived then and told her it was best if you took the blame.” He stopped to let that sink in and added softly, “But that's not what happened, is it?"

  Lee said nothing. Her eyes had become glassy as she stared at the carpet.

  "Cora was never on the stairs," James pursued. "It was your mother who killed Joe."

  "That isn't even the worst part.”

  "No," James said. "The worst part is that she tried to frame a child for it."

  EIGHTEEN

  "You know that too?" Lee asked, lifting her eyes to his. There was a world of sadness in them.

  "Yes. I know that too, my sweet, and I'm sorry."

  "I guess I'm tired of a lot of things today,” she said with a sigh. “Even of keeping that to myself."

  "It's a lot to keep to yourself, Lee."

  She hugged her knees, wearing the serious expression that made her look like a little girl.

  “And for the sake of full disclosure, I should tell you I went to your mother’s,” he added.

  “James!”

  He shrugged. “Had to see it for myself. I saw the chink on the floor, where she dropped the poker from the stairs.” He took her hand. “Why don’t you tell me everything now?”

  Lee hesitated, too used to keeping her own secrets, but then she began talking in a low, lilting voice.

  "Mama used to keep that poker in the room, tucked between the mattress and edge of the bed. Joe would never see it, because he'd never make a bed in his life. She told me it was her insurance — that if Joe ever went crazy on her she'd bash his head in. To be honest, I didn't think she would. You know, the boy who cried wolf, a bark worse than a bite and all that. I thought it was just talk.

  "But that night I got a call from Cora. She said that something very bad had happened. She had heard an argument earlier, then Joe had left for a couple of hours, but she had stayed in her room. I'd given her an iPod, and she used to put on music not to hear things, but she said that there had been a big noise that shook all the house. Mama had come in to say that Joe had fallen down the stairs, but that everything would be all right. Mama asked Cora to take a little blue pill that was bitter, and then she came back with something wrapped in a towel. S
he unwrapped it just a little and asked Cora to hold it. Cora said she did what Mama asked, and that her hands got sticky, and that Mama washed them in a basin and told her to go to sleep.

  "That's when she called me. She had really struggled against falling asleep. Imagine, a child who had never taken any sedatives gets a full Valium in her system and doesn't go out like a light. That's how frightened and anxious she was. I said I was coming over, and that she was not, absolutely not to leave her room.”

  For a moment she stopped, and rocked back and forth, but she continued, “Everything wasn't all right. When I got there, around eleven o’clock, Joe was lying dead at the foot of the stairs. He had a pool of blood under him, and blood all over his face. I didn't have to touch him to know he was dead because his neck was twisted. There was blood on the stairs too, and the poker was lying next to him.

  "Mama had snapped. It was jealousy that made her do it. She saw Joe with Jada Phillips, she probably confronted him, things got heated and she lost her mind. He must have walked away during an argument, and Mama could never stand that from anyone. Once she scratched my arm real bad because I did that. 'Don't walk away when I'm talking to you!' It would have driven her crazy if she had seen Joe with Jada and then he had just walked away from her in the middle of a fight."

  Her eyes were lost again, as if she were in her mother’s living room with a dead man at her feet.

  "It was hard to get up those stairs without stepping in blood,” Lee continued. “I don't know if I managed it. Mama was sleeping and so was Cora. I tried to wake Mama, and I couldn't. She would open her eyes and they'd roll back in her head; she was just snoring away. Then I thought I'd take Cora, and I'd call Caleb or Noah, or the chief — someone. I was so angry at Mama, because I knew she had tried to frame Cora and she'd let her take the blame. A child! Her child!"

  James had to prompt her this time, "And then?"

  "And then …” Lee gave another small shake of the head. “And then I saw Mama lying there in that mess that was her room, with all the medications to keep her calm and help her sleep, and the ashtray full of cigarettes, and all the bottles of nail polish and cream, and everything she used to try and look beautiful. She had made a mess of her life, but she had been so young when she had me — younger than I was. Her father had thrown her out, and my father had never defied his mother to help her. It was as if she had been nothing."

  Lee's eyes welled with tears that fell in two fat drops over her cheeks. James resisted the impulse to wipe them away; she needed to get to the end of her story, once and for all.

  "This girl who had been so beautiful and feisty had become human trash," Lee went on. "No one had ever, ever helped her, not even her own mother. Everyone had turned their backs on her when she most needed it. Was it her fault that she only ever considered herself and her own survival? I don't know. But at that moment I thought that I was her daughter, and that if I didn't love her and help her, then no one ever would. Then all her chances would be gone. She kept trying to get men to love her without understanding they wouldn't, not for long. That it was Cora and me who could give her love. She was just throwing our love away, because she didn't understand."

  The tears had stopped flowing. "Mama was so used to surviving. I knew she would fight and say she hadn't killed Joe. I'd have had to force Cora to give all the details of what Mama had done to the police. I knew people would believe us. That thing of me saying I'd kill Joe, no one believed that. They don't believe it now. But they'd know my mother was capable of killing him.

  "Can you imagine? My mother's two daughters would have to stand there, blame her and send her to prison.” She took his hand, “James, I couldn’t do it. Instead, I wiped the poker. I thought I'd done it pretty well, but I guess I was in a hurry, and the handle is difficult to clean. I rolled it in Joe’s blood and put my prints on it. I left plenty more prints as I walked out of the house. I took Mama’s car and emptied my account in Charlotte early the next morning, before they could stop me, and I took the plane to New York."

  He caressed her hand with his thumb. “How did you get away? You were so young!”

  She gave a wry smile. "Thanks to my grandmother, I had met a few criminals in juvenile detention. I guess I had made connections. One of the girls knew people who knew someone, and he got me a French passport because I speak French.”

  James smiled. “Do you?”

  “Oui. Also courtesy of my grandmother. She descends from the Huguenots who came over, and so did my grandfather. She thought it would be the right thing for me to go to French school.”

  “Je ne savais pas,” he said.

  “Non. Je ne pouvais pas te le dire. Mais maintenant, je te raconte toute ma vie.” I couldn’t tell you, but now I’m revealing my whole life.

  “Tu es pleine de surprises.” You’re full of surprises. “Back to the story, then.”

  “I went to Portugal and got a job — but it would have taken me forever to have enough money to get Cora over, and I was afraid for her. By that time, I had met Quinn, who knew the guy who made my passport, and he had ideas. At first, they were just crazy 'what if?’ scenarios, but as time went by, they became 'why not?' scenarios. 'Why not, we're smart, we can pull this off...' ”

  “I’m not sure I like Quinn,” James said pensively. “But I’m not sure I dislike him either.”

  "Oh, you two would fence with words and insults for a while, but you’d like each other in the end.”

  “Would I, when he helped you find idiots like me?”

  She squirmed a little. “Yes. He was good with hacking and stuff, and he would figure out what jobs we should try. We started slowly, then we graduated into more elaborate jobs. It was maybe a year before I had enough to take Cora to Europe.”

  “And your wonderful mama let her child go, of course.”

  Lee shrugged. “The arrangement was that I'd send her money, and she understood that it was better for Cora."

  "No kidding."

  "Cora knew I was wanted for Joe's death. I told her I hadn't done it, but that I had had to run away and change my name. Poor baby, she never put two and two together. She had forgotten that night and all about Mama making her hold the poker. It was all erased from her memory." Lee shrugged. "Must have been the trauma, or the Valium. She was a child. She accepted my story, my fake name, everything. We chose a school she liked, and I went to see her as often as I could.”

  "And what exactly does she think you do?"

  "Corporate stuff. When she asks for details I go on about such complicated things that she changes the subject herself." Lee stopped to look at him. "But I told you before. It wasn’t all noble sacrifice. There was something about stealing that I loved."

  He waved a hand. "All right.”

  "It felt scary and good, and I wanted more of it. When I saw how rich people lived, I wanted to take things from them. They had so much!"

  James gave a small laugh, although there was no real mirth in it. "We rich assholes are misunderstood, you know."

  "You were never an asshole."

  He narrowed his eyes. "Never once?"

  "Maybe a little. More of an arse-hole, though."

  "And you never wanted to stop stealing?"

  "Yes. You were our retirement plan. You had the Eye of the Cat."

  "How would you ever have been able to sell that and not be caught?"

  "There are ways. Collectors who'll do anything to have something beautiful, even if they have to keep it hidden, like a fetish. Or we could split the rock, but I always thought that was a pity."

  "That was a cursed rock," James said grimly. "Do you think you'd have stopped, if you had got away with it?"

  She thought about his question for a second. "No, not really. But do you think you'd have caught me, if I hadn't wanted you to?"

  He showed his surprise. "I wouldn't?"

  "I dawdled like a turtle."

  "Did you?"

  "Yes. I didn't know it myself, but I wanted you to catch me and—"


  "And? Spank you?"

  Lee threw her head back to laugh. "Maybe. And make me confess all that I'm telling you now." Her smile died. "And forgive me."

  "You're not getting me to touch you, not even with the tragic confession and the big eyes." He couldn't help taking her hand again, though. "Magpie, I don't want you to suffer anymore. It's enough now."

  "James, I can't have my mother in jail. I know you think I’m stupid, but I just can’t.”

  "She doesn't seem to care if you go there."

  "It doesn't matter. Above all, above everything, I don't want Cora ever to know that her own mother would have framed her for murder. Cora believes Mama loves her — why do you think I keep her away? We have only a few chances to be truly loved in life, and our mother should be the greatest one. When that fails, people are never right. The next people to love us will be our children, and we'll make a muddle of it because we weren't loved before."

  "Is that what you think?" He dropped her hand. "You think there's only DNA love, and that's it?”

  "It's the love that lasts."

  "Seriously?" James couldn't help sounding angry. "Look at the mess your life is! You'd call that love?"

  "In a way."

  "In a very bloody sick way."

  "They're the ties you can't break, no matter what you do."

  "Don't be primitive Lee.”

  "Who do you love?" she asked, also angrily. "Your sister. You married a woman and you couldn't love her."

  "Because she was the wrong woman!" he shouted. "Wrong for me."

  Lee turned sideways on the chair, still hugging her knees and looking away from him.

  He stood. "What the hell will it take, Lee?"

  "I don't know what you mean," she said in a small voice.

  "I mean that when someone cares for you, you don't incriminate yourself for a murder you didn't commit. You don't let yourself go to jail forever — because that person will suffer."

  "But Cora—"

  "I'm not talking of Cora, I'm talking of me. What do you think I'll feel if you go to jail?"

  Again, she looked away. "You'll survive."

  "Oh, all right. So, if something happens to me, if I have an accident or—"

  "Don't say that!"