In a Heartbeat - Elizabeth Adler [61]
“They’ve been trying for years to wean me from this. Ed too. I told him he might as well try to take away a mother’s milk.” Her wicked laughter was not a cackle now but the gentle, refined tinkle of the southern belle, a sound Mel knew well. “They tell me I’ve been dying of drink for fifty years now. Hah, and here I am, outliving all the doctors. And there’s always someone who can be bribed to break the law, get you what you need. But then I suppose you already know that,” she added to Camelia.
“Yes, ma’am, I do.” He guessed that by her age the bourbon could do her no harm. Good luck to her, he thought.
“I called you here,” she said, looking contemplatively at them, “because I thought you needed to know about the real Ed Vincent. And to know that his true name is Theo Rogan.”
Mel’s sigh of relief echoed through the shadowy room. Thank God, she thought. He is not Mitch. He’s not the killer. . . .
“But wasn’t Theo Rogan killed in the fire?” Camelia asked.
Mamzelle waved an imperious hand at him. “Now, now, don’t get impatient. I’ve known Ed for thirty years and I will tell you the whole story, but I must begin at the very beginning.” And she took another long slug from the tumbler, thinking about what she was going to say.
36
He was missing her—oh, how he was missing her. . . . The scent of her, the cool sexy scent that he would recognize even through the fog of Bloomingdale’s perfume department, a seductive mixture of her soft flesh and lilies and jasmine and summer. . . . A peachy smell . . . He smiled as he thought of it. . . . Where did you go? Oh, Zelda, where have you gone? . . . I hope you didn’t go there, not to Hainsville. . . . I can’t even bear to think of it, to think of you there . . . that place where my life ground to a halt, where my guilt and shame will never leave. . . .
He was back to that terrible night again. His birthday. The night Michael Hains had demanded to buy their pa’s land, and Mitch had cursed him when he had refused. He had thought Mitch was going to punch Pa, he was that angry . . . . but it was worse than that . . . oh, much worse. . . .
Theo had slipped out of the cabin and was running down the road, his backpack bouncing against his shoulders. The fierce wind howled all around him. It snatched his breath, sent him gasping and reeling, clutching at the trees to keep his footing. The entire forest was alive with the sound of it. It shook and trembled as the wind tore full-grown trees from the ground and sent heavy branches crashing.
He was relieved when he was finally out in the open, descending through the meadows onto the potholed blacktop lane that led to Hainsville. He picked up speed now, head bowed, running steadily through the rain with the wind behind him giving him a push, as though it knew of his urgent mission.
He had gone a couple of miles when he saw the gleam of headlights cutting through the darkness. Was Michael Hains bringing Mitch home? Unwilling to be caught, he dodged into the thicket of poplars bordering the road. Their slender trunks seemed to ripple in the wind, and the brittle, golden leaves covered him the way they had the children in the story Babes in the Woods.
He held his breath as the vehicle approached, peering from his hiding place, half blinded by its lights. As it whizzed past, he saw it was a pickup truck with two men in it. He didn’t know the truck, didn’t know the men, but guessed they were itinerant laborers. He pondered on where they could be heading. The road ended at Sorry-gate Farm, one of Hains’s properties, but they weren’t likely to be going there at this time of night. The only other place it led was to his own home.
A warning signal buzzed from his brain to his feet, and in a second he was running back the way he had come. Running fast down the center of the narrow road, oblivious to the rain, fighting the wind.
He was almost home when he saw it. A bright red glow against the lowering sky. “No!” he