Tucker wasn't paying conscious attention to any of the morning sounds and scents. He absorbed them in the same absent way he absorbed the chilled juice, black coffee, and toast.
He was performing one of his favorite daily rituals: reading the mail.
As always, there was a stack of fashion catalogues and magazines for Josie. He tossed them one at a time onto the padded seat beside him. Each time a catalogue plopped, Buster would shift his rheumy old eyes hopefully, then mutter in canine disgust.
There was a letter for Dwayne from Nashville, addressed in Sissy's childishly correct handwriting. Tucker frowned at it a minute, held it up to the sunlight, then set it aside. He knew it wasn't a request for child support. As family bookkeeper, he made out the monthly checks himself and had sent one two weeks before.
In keeping with his filing system, he tossed bills on another chair, personal correspondence was shoved over to the other side of the coffeepot, and those letters obviously from a charitable organization or some other group sneakily begging for money were tossed in a paper sack at his side.
Tucker's way of handling them was to dig into the bag once a month, choosing two envelopes at random. Those would receive generous contributions, whether they were for the World Wildlife Fund, the American Red Cross, or the Society for the Prevention of Hangnails. In this way, Tucker felt the Longstreets were fulfilling their charitable obligations. And if certain organizations were confused when they received a check for several thousand dollars one month, and nothing for several years thereafter, he figured it was their problem.
He had problems of his own.
The simple routine of sorting the mail helped shift those problems to the back of his mind, at least for the moment. The fact was, he didn't know what his next move should be, since Edda Lou wasn't even talking to him. She'd had two days to follow up on her staggering public announcement, but was apparently playing possum. Not only hadn't she contacted him, but she wasn't answering her phone.
It was worrying-particularly since he'd had a taste of her temper and knew she could lash out with the stealth and skill of a water moccasin. Waiting for the sting made Tucker jumpy.
He piled up the 'YOU ARE A WINNER' envelopes Dwayne liked to ship off to his kids, and found the lilac-colored and -scented stationery that could only belong to one person.
'Cousin Lulu.' His grin flashed and his worries drained away.
Lulu Longstreet Boyston was from the Georgia Longstreets and a cousin of Tucker's grandfather. Speculation put her age in the mid-seventies, though she had stubbornly clung to sixty-five for many years. She was spit-in- your-face rich, a dainty five foot in her sensible shoes, and crazy as a June bug.
Tucker flat out adored her. Though the letter was addressed to my longstreet cousins, he ripped it open himself. He wasn't about to wait until Dwayne and Josie wandered back from wherever they'd gone.
He read the first paragraph, written with a hot-pink felt tip, and let out a hoot.
Cousin Lulu was coming to call.
She always phrased it just that way, so you could never tell if she'd stay for dinner or settle in for a month. Tucker sincerely hoped it was the latter. He needed a distraction.
The last time she'd come to call, she'd brought along a whole crate of ice cream cakes packed in dry ice, and had worn a paper party hat with an ostrich feather poking through the pointy top. She'd kept that damn hat on for a full week, waking and sleeping, saying she was celebrating birthdays. Anybody's birthday.
Tucker licked strawberry jam from his fingers, then tossed the rest of his toast to Buster. Leaving the rest of the mail to be picked up later, he started toward the door. He was going to tell Delia to have Cousin Lulu's room ready and waiting.
Even as he swung open the door, Tucker heard the dyspeptic rattle of Austin Hatinger's pick-up. There was only one vehicle in Innocence that made that particular grunt-rattle-belch sound. After giving one brief thought to going inside and barring the doors, Tucker turned and walked out to the porch, prepared to face the music.
Not only could he hear Austin coming, he could see him, by the stream of black smoke rising up between the magnolias. With a half-hearted sigh, Tucker waited for the truck to come into view, and pulling a cigarette out of his pocket, broke off a fraction of the tip.
He was just enjoying his first drag when the truck pulled up and Austin Hatinger rolled out of it.
He was as grizzled and bulky as the old Ford, but was held together by sinew and muscle rather than bailing twine and spit. Beneath his grease-stained planter's hat, his face looked as if it had been carved out of tree bark. Deep lines flared out from his walnut-colored eyes, scored his wind-burned cheeks, and bracketed his hard, unsmiling mouth.
Not a speck of hair showed beneath the hat. Not that Austin was bald. Every month he drove into the barber shop and had his gray-flecked hair buzzed. Perhaps, Tucker sometimes thought, in memory of the four years he'd served in the Corps.
Austin-who would be the first to tell you he was a God-fearing Christian-had never gone in for such frivolities as dancing girls.
He spit a stream of Red Indian into the gravel, leaving a nasty-looking puddle of yellow. Beneath his dusty overalls and sweaty work shirt-which even in the heat Austin wore buttoned clear to the top-his chest was broad as a bull's.
Tucker noted that he hadn't brought out any of the rifles slotted into the rack in the back window of the cab. He hoped he could take that courtesy as a good omen. 'Austin.' He came down one step, a sign of marginal friendliness.
'Longstreet.' He had a voice like a rusty nail skidding over concrete. 'Where the hell is my girl?'
Since it was the last question Tucker expected, he only blinked politely. 'Excuse me?'
'You godless, rutting fuck. Where the hell is my Edda Lou?'
The description was a little more along the lines of what Tucker had expected. 'I haven't seen Edda Lou since day before yesterday, when she went at me in the diner.' He held up a hand before Austin could speak. There was still something to be said for being part of the most powerful family in the county. 'You can be as pissed as you want, Austin, and I'd expect that to be mighty damn pissed, but the fact is I slept with your daughter.' He took a long, slow drag. 'You probably had a pretty good idea what I was doing when I was doing it, and I don't figure you liked it much. And I don't figure I can blame you for it.'
Austin 's lips peeled back from yellowed, uneven teeth. No one would have mistaken it for a smile. 'I shoulda skinned your worthless hide the first time you came sniffing around her.'
'Maybe, but seeing as Edda's been over twenty-one for a couple years or more, she does her own choosing.' Tucker drew on the cigarette again, considered the tip, then flicked it aside. 'The point is, Austin, what's done's done.'
'Easy to say when you planted a bastard in my daughter's belly.'
'With her full cooperation,' Tucker said, slipping his hands into his pockets. 'I'm going to see to it that she has everything she needs while she's carrying the baby, and there'll be no pinching on the child support.'
'Big talk.' Austin spat again. 'Smooth talk. You've always been able to get your tongue around words real good, Tucker. Now you listen to a few. I take care of my own, and I want that girl out here, now.'
Tucker merely lifted a brow. 'You think Edda's here? She's not.'
'Liar! Fornicator!' His grating voice rose and fell like an evangelist's with strep throat. 'Your soul's black with sin.'
'I can't argue about that,' Tucker said as agreeably as he could, 'but Edda Lou's not here. I've got no reason to lie about that, and you can take a look for yourself, but I'm telling you I haven't seen or heard from her since she made her grand announcement.'
Austin considered barging into the house, and he considered just what kind of fool that would make him. He wasn't about to play the fool for a Longstreet. 'She ain't here, she ain't nowhere in town. I tell you what I think, you sonofabitch, I think you talked her into going to one of those murder clinics to get rid of it.'
'Edda Lou and I haven't talked about anything. If that's what she's done, she came up with it all on her own.'
He'd forgotten just how fast the big man could move. Before the last word was out of his mouth, Austin had leapt forward, grabbing him by the shirt and lifting him clean off the steps.
'Don't you talk that way about my girl. She was a God-fearing Christian before she got hooked up with you. Look at you, nothing but a lazy, rutting pig living in your big, fine house with your drunk of a brother and whore of
