“You’re, really desperate for a fight, aren’t you?” Loving lowered his voice a notch. “Well, I tell you what, you little twerp. Maybe, just maybe, you’re gonna get your wish. Except it ain’t gonna be you and three buddies. It’s gonna be you and me. Period.” He smiled broadly. “Now that’ll give you something to dream about at bedtime, won’t it?”
Loving turned his attention to the others. “What I said before still goes. I know you know what’s been goin’ down. You ought to come clean. It’s the right thing to do, and some of you owe it to Ben to do the right thing.”
“You’re full of crap,” Matthews growled.
“Oh yeah? Well, I know this. If Kincaid knew something that could help you—any of you—when someone had trumped up charges against you, he wouldn’t hesitate a second to come forward. No matter what the cost. If he could help you, he would.” He paused, giving each of them a sharp look “It’s a pity none of you courageous do-gooders quite rises to his level.”
Without warning, Loving swung around and jabbed the sole of his shoe into Matthews’s backside. Matthews screamed, clutching his rear.
“Consider that payback,” Loving said. He started moving away before any of the others felt honor bound to intervene.
“That hurt like hell!” Matthews shouted, still holding himself. “What are you wearing?”
Loving lifted his foot and turned his heel up so they could see. “Cleats, you sorry son of a bitch. Didn’t I tell you I was on my way to a baseball game?”
19
“LEARNING ANYTHING?”
Ben felt delicate fingers light on his shoulders and give him a tender squeeze. “Christina, I’m glad you’re—”
He turned. The woman standing behind him was not Christina, but his client, Keri Dalcanton.
He immediately stiffened, embarrassed. “Sorry. Didn’t recognize your voice.” He closed the Catrona file, which he’d been pouring through since he returned to his office.
He pushed away from the conference table. “I didn’t know you were here. Kind of late, isn’t it?”
She gave a little shrug, which did interesting things to her close-fitting white T-shirt. “I don’t know. I guess I was feeling lonely and … well, worried. Thought I’d see how the case was going.” Her eyes were hooded and her voice strained. She struck Ben as being troubled, and unhappy, and … vulnerable.
Ben reached out sympathetically. Like a typical lawyer, he sometimes got so wrapped up in the difficult and time-consuming business of preparing a case for trial that he forgot there was another person to whom the case was more important than it ever would be to him—the defendant. “This must be awfully rough for you.”
She didn’t argue. “I—I just miss having someone to talk to.” Was it fear, Ben wondered, or uncertainty, or simply pervasive sadness—the strain of carrying an almost impossible burden for far too long. “You know I lost my job, and after all the publicity, none of the girls wanted to have anything to do with me. They were afraid the cops might go after them if they stood behind me, which was a real possibility. My parents are dead and Kirk has disappeared and I don’t know my neighbors and … and … it gets lonely sometimes.”
“I can imagine. I remember when I first moved to Tulsa. Didn’t have a place to stay, didn’t know anyone. Couldn’t stand my job, not to mention most of my coworkers. I was pretty lonely. I only had one friend. Fortunately, it was Christina, and she came over about three times a day.”
Keri smiled a little. “What’s with you two anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. Are you … close?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. I think so.”
“Intimate?”
“Me? And Christina?” Ben pressed a hand against his chest. “Oh, no. Just friends. Very good friends. We’ve been through a lot together.”
“Is there … someone else in your life?”
“Sure. There’s my mother, and my sister, my staff, my tenants …”
She laughed, then sat down in the chair beside him. “You know what I mean.”
It felt to Ben as if the temperature in this small conference room was rising sharply. He decided to change the subject. “How did you end up in Tulsa?”
“Oh, you don’t want to hear about me. It’s so boring.”
“You’re wrong. I do. Please.”
Keri cast her lovely blue eyes up toward the ceiling. “Well, you know I came from Stroud originally. You know where that is?”
“Sure. I see the signs every time I cross the turnpike.”
“Just a little flyspeck, compared to Tulsa anyway, but that was my hometown. My parents were killed in a car wreck while I was still in high school.”
“That must’ve been horrible for you.”
“It was. My daddy and I were close. I loved my mother, too, but—she was not like other mothers.”
“How do you mean? “
“She had a—a—mean streak, and for some reason, she always took it out on me. She liked to do cruel things to me. Even—nasty things. Ugly. Even when I was barely old enough to walk.”
“Keri—I—”
“It’s all right. It’s been a long time. Anyway, after they died, my brother Kirk and I got a job at the outlet mall. Probably half the town worked at the outlet mall.”
“Till the tornado came.”
“Right. I guess you’ve seen the pictures.”
Ben had. They looked as if a giant hand had swept down from heaven and ripped the guts out of the entire mall. He had never seen such horrible damage from a natural phenomenon.
“I guess we’re just lucky the tornado didn’t come during working hours. After that, there were no jobs anywhere in Stroud. I didn’t have anything to live on and neither did my brother. So we made our way to the ‘big city.’ Tulsa. Packed up everything I had in one suitcase and boarded a Greyhound. Except, as it turned out, there weren’t many jobs in Tulsa, either. Least none my daddy would’ve approved of.”
“How did you end up in that, um, gentlemen’s club?”
“Well, it seemed better than becoming a hooker, which is what happens to most of the sweet young things that come to Tulsa and can’t find work. I’d rather be bumping and grinding in a nice air-conditioned building than turning tricks on Eleventh Street.”
“Good point.”
“And to tell you the truth, I’ve always liked dancing, though I would’ve preferred to keep my shirt on. I love the music, the lights. It’s exciting.”
I’ll bet it was, Ben thought. Especially when you were on the stage.
“The guy who ran the joint was basically a sleaze, as you might expect, but at least he kept his hands off the girls. And he paid regular. I got a tiny place on the south side where Kirk and I could live. He’d fallen in with some church group, which was fine for him, but it didn’t bring any money home, so I was basically on my own.”
“Till you met Joe McNaughton?”
Her eyes turned downward. “Yeah.”
“How did you meet him?”
“Oh, pretty much like that cop was saying in court. He came to the club one night with a bunch of his buddies.”
“Must’ve been a rowdy bunch.”
“Oh, me and the girls always liked cops. They do tend to hoot and holler, but they don’t get vulgar and they keep their hands to themselves and they tip well. Especially if you let ’em slip it under your G-string.” Her face suddenly colored. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Relax. I’m your friend.” Ben placed his hand reassuringly on the side of her face and felt the warm smooth flow of her silvery hair. “So you met Joe at the club? “
“Outside, technically. After the show, after closing, he was waiting for me by the back door. I was almost out when I saw him in the alley.”