Cemetery Road. Greg Iles
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“It is,” Jet says, but her tone sounds contemplative rather than indicative of assent.
After Betsy passes on, I turn as though looking casually around. “Jet Matheson!” I cry, feigning surprise. “What are you doing here? Spying on the enemy?”
Through her sunglass lenses, I see Jet’s eyes cut over to the Prime Shot tent. “You could say that,” she answers in a theatrical voice. “But God knows I want success for this town. I just want it to be on the up-and-up.”
She’s wearing sapphire stud earrings and a silver pendant necklace that hangs just above the neckline of her sundress. Beads of sweat glisten around the pendant, which appears to be an Arabic symbol. Smiling at her, I glance quickly around, taking in everyone standing within thirty feet of us. A couple of faces look familiar, but none do I know well. Of course, that doesn’t mean they don’t know me.
“I’m jealous,” I tell her. “I’m way too busy to take off early. I’m working overtime every day this past month.”
“I’ll bet.” She reads my negative reply as the coded positive it was. Looking back toward her husband, Jet says in a louder voice, “I need to get back to the tent. Could you bring me a Sprite or something? Paul wants me close today for some reason. Arm candy, I suppose.”
“Sure, glad to,” I tell her, forcing another smile, but feeling almost dizzy with disorientation. I’m not sure whether her request was serious or she was using it to break away from the queue—and from me. “What’s that symbol mean?” I ask, pointing at her necklace.
She smiles, and her brilliant teeth shine against her dark skin and red lips. “Peace, of course. Salam.”
“Ah. We could use some of that, all right.”
No one but me would have noticed the flash of emotion in her eyes.
“Thanks for the Sprite, Goose,” she says brightly, using my high school nickname, which will instantly put distance between us for anyone within earshot. As she turns to walk away, she catches hold of my wrist in a seemingly casual gesture of thanks, but she squeezes so hard that pain shoots up my arm. Then she lets go and recedes into the crowd, her dark shoulders and long neck making her easy to follow to the Prime Shot tent.
Her painful squeeze communicated intense emotion; the problem is, I can’t read it. Was she reassuring me of our bond, despite the public charade? She doesn’t usually risk that kind of thing. Was she signaling fear? Even desperation? A combination of all three? The moment she touched me, I felt myself getting aroused. I hope my face isn’t flushed, but it’s hard to control that response when a woman touches you like that—especially the woman you’ve been fucking every day for twelve weeks.
THE TOUGHEST ACTING job in the world is behaving normally in the presence of someone with whom you’re having illicit sex. Most people who find themselves in this situation think they can handle it, but the truth is sooner or later people pick up on intimacy. Even if they don’t see it, they feel it. They notice a hitch in the breathing, an altered tone of voice, a difference in the way you deal with space around someone. And, of course, the eyes. Reality abides in the eyes. What keeps most of these situations from exploding is the tendency of the betrayed not to see what their eyes and other senses tell them.
After my surprise interaction with Jet, I have to decide whether she was serious when she asked me to deliver a Sprite to the Prime Shot tent. To do so will mean interacting with her husband, Paul, whom I have known since I was three years old. Also with her father-in-law, Max, who’s one of the most powerful members of the Poker Club. Since Paul might have watched us talking in the refreshment line, the best choice is probably to take Jet the drink.
Prime Shot Premium Hunting Gear was founded by Wyatt Cash, a Bienville native who made some money as a professional baseball player, then parlayed it into a wildly successful company that makes everything from custom camouflage clothing to all-terrain vehicles. Most of the Poker Club members on hand today have gravitated to Cash’s tent, although I see a couple of older members at the Bienville Southern Bank tent, paying court to its octogenarian founder, Claude Buckman.
“Yo, Goose!” Paul Matheson calls as I approach the Prime Shot tent. “Wassup, man?”
At six feet even, Paul is a slightly smaller version of his father. Blond, gregarious, still muscular at forty-seven. There’s no one on earth with whom I have a more complex history.
“Just covering this Chinese fire drill,” I tell him. “Jet passed me in the drink line and asked me to bring her a Sprite.”
“What a gentleman. We got beer in a cooler back here. Scotch if you’re feeling frisky.”
“At eleven A.M.? I’ll pass.”
“Hey, this is a celebration day. All day, all night.”
I hand him the Sprite. “Can you make sure Jet gets this?”
“I’ll take it myself,” Jet says, stepping up from behind me and brushing my cheek with a kiss. God, this woman has nerve.
She moves on through the bodies under the tent, stopping to speak to her paralegal, who’s talking to one of the Prime Shot girls. Paul steps closer to me. “I heard about Buck, man. I’m sorry as hell. I know how close you two were.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“What do you think happened?”
“Don’t know. Guess I’ll wait to hear from the police.”
Paul snorts. “Like you’ve never done once in your life. Come on, man.”
“I really don’t know. Accident seems unlikely. Floating into that snag would be a stretch. That’s a wide river.”
“Yeah.” Paul lowers his voice. “You think somebody stuck him out there? Wasted him, then tried to hand the cops an accident on a platter?”
“Buck wasn’t going to win a popularity contest during this past week.”
“No shit. I sure hope it was an accident.”
“He didn’t die where they found his truck,” I say, watching Paul from the corner of my eye. “Somebody staged that.”
This intrigues him. “You have proof of that?”
“Call it intuition. But your buddy Beau Holland sure seems on edge about the whole thing.”
“Fuck Beau Holland,” he says with venom. “He ain’t my buddy.”
“Did you say you want to have sex with Beau Holland?” asks a deeper male voice.
Max Matheson claps his son on the back, then laughs heartily. “Hey, Goose, how’s it hanging?”
I nod but say nothing. Back when he coached us as boys, Max would ask this to trigger responses like “Long and loose and full of juice.”
“Heard about Buck,” he says, then takes a pull from what looks like Scotch on the rocks. “Bad luck.”
“Maybe.”
Max’s eyes linger on mine long enough for him to read my emotions. He’s always had that gift, the predator’s lightning perception. “That river can kill you quick. You know that better than anybody.”
“Jesus, Pop,” Paul says. “Shut the fuck up, why don’t you?”
Max clucks his tongue. “All right. Guess I’ll leave you girls to it.”
As he slides away, Wyatt Cash walks up wearing navy chinos and a Prime Shot polo beneath an olive blazer.