'Don't it just?' Josie strolled up, snapping her purse shut. She carried her pretty little pearl-handled derringer inside among her other necessities. Right now she was almost disappointed that she hadn't had cause to use it. She kept her back to Tucker, whom she'd yet to forgive. 'Cy, honey, you're going to be the talk of the annual Innocence Fourth of July Carnival.' She kissed his cheek and made him blush. 'You bleeding anywhere, Jim?'
'No, ma'am. I landed on my butt, is all.' He was busy brushing himself off with hands that shook from excitement. 'Me and Cy, we coulda took him.'
'I'll just bet you could.' Josie squeezed Jim's bicep and rolled her eyes appreciatively. 'We got us a couple of strapping young boys here, Caroline. I wonder if I could impose on you two to accompany me to the lemonade stand? It seems my gentleman escort has deserted me for another woman.' She nodded toward the Scrambler, where Teddy and Cousin Lulu where taking another round. 'Men are such fickle creatures.'
Jim puffed out his chest. 'We'll go with you, Miss Josie. Won't we, Cy?'
'Is it all right, Mr. Tucker?'
'It's just fine.' He passed a hand over Cy's hair, left it lie there a moment. 'It is just fine, Cy.'
Cy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. 'I know it. I didn't run. I'm not running from him or anybody anymore.'
Tucker let his hand slide off Cy's shoulder. He thought it was a pity that youth and its simplicity were so soon and permanently lost. 'Running away and walking are two different things. Keeping clear of Vernon won't change what you did for yourself tonight. But it might keep your mama from any more grief. You think about that.'
'I guess I will.'
'Go on with Josie.' He watched them walk away with some regret, and something colder, that was suspicion.
'I guess I'm going home,' Dwayne said, narrowing his eyes against the spinning lights.
'You sober enough to find the house?' Tucker asked him.
'I haven't had much-and tossed up what I did.' Dwayne offered a weak smile. 'I never did have the head for those whirly rides.'
'Or the stomach,' Tucker agreed. 'You get sick every blessed year.'
'I don't like to mess with tradition. Delia and Cousin Lulu came with me, but I don't think they're ready to leave just yet.'
'Caro and I'll get them home.'
'That's fine, then. 'Night, Caroline.' He sauntered off alone, moving beyond the lights and music and into the shadows. Tucker nearly called him back. It didn't seem right that his brother should look so lonely. Then Dwayne was gone, and the moment passed.
'Well…' Caroline tossed the bloody tissues into a trash basket. 'You certainly show a woman an interesting evening.'
'I do what I can.' Hearing the strain in her voice, he slipped an arm around her. 'You're upset?'
'Upset?' she countered. 'You could say so. It upsets me to see that boy have to fight his own brother. He's lost two members of his family and is estranged from the rest of them just because he's different. It's hard to see him have to face those kinds of demands and pressures, those choices, when he's only half grown.'
Tucker drew her around to face him. 'Who are we talking about, Caro? You or Cy?'
'It has nothing to do with me.'
'Maybe you're shifting things around. Looking at him and seeing yourself at his age, facing something you couldn't fight with your fists.'
'I didn't fight at all.'
'You took your stand later, and in a different way. That doesn't make it any harder when what you're standing against is family.' He led her back a little, where they could stand and watch the lights and the colors and the knots of people. 'You want to make it up with your mother.'
'There's nothing-'
'You want to make it up,' he said again with a quiet assurance in his voice that stopped her from arguing. 'I know what I'm saying. I never settled things with my father. I never let him know what I thought or felt or wanted. I don't know if he'd have given a damn. And that's just it. I don't know because I never worked up the gumption to say it all to his face.'
'She knows how I feel.'
'So you start from there. On your terms. I don't like to see you sad, Caroline. And I know what kind of pull family brings.'
'I'll think about it.' She tilted her head back to study him. He was looking beyond the midway, into the lights. There was something in his eyes that had her moving closer. 'What are you thinking about?'
'Family,' he murmured. 'And what runs through the blood.' Deliberately, he smiled, but that glint in his eye remained. 'Let's go check out that Ferris wheel.'
Tucker pulled her back into the crowd and the noise. But he was thinking. If Austin had been capable of murder, perhaps Austin's son was equally capable.
The sins of the father, he mused. It was a quotation that would have suited Austin down to the ground. Perhaps Vernon carried that same violent and twisted gene.
As the Ferris wheel began its slow backward arch, Tucker draped an arm around Caroline's shoulders.
He was sure of one thing. Among the laughter and lights of the carnival, a murderer hunted.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
'There's coffee on the stove, Tuck.' Burke yawned over his bowl of raisin bran. 'I don't believe I've seen you up and around this early in twenty years.'
'I wanted to catch you before you went into your office.'
'My office.' Burke's lips twisted into a grimace as he held out his morning mug so that Tucker could top it up with hot coffee. 'Don't you mean Burns's office? My butt hasn't felt the seat of my own chair in three days.'
'Is he getting anywhere, or is he just blowing smoke?'
'He's generated more paperwork than the Bank of England. Faxes, Federal Express packages, conference calls to Washington, D.C. We got us a bulletin board with pictures of all the victims tacked to it. Vital statistics, time and place of death. He's got stuff referenced and cross-referenced till your head spins.'
Tucker sat down. 'You're not telling me anything, Burke.'
Burke met Tucker's gaze. 'There's not much I'm free to tell you. We've got a list of suspects.'
Nodding, Tucker took a sip of coffee. 'Am I still on it?'
'You've got an alibi for Edda Lou.' Burke took a spoonful of cereal, hesitated, then set it down again. 'I guess you know Burns has taken a real dislike to you. He doesn't think much of your sister saying you were up playing cards with her half the night.'
'I'm not too worried about that.'
'You should be.' Burke broke off when he heard someone moving around in the living room. A moment later the Looney Tunes theme warbled from the television. 'Eight o'clock,' he said with a smile. 'That kid's got it down to a science.' He picked up his coffee. 'I'll tell you this, Tuck. Burns would like nothing better than to hang this whole thing around your neck. He won't do anything that's not straight and legal, but if he can find a way to reel you in, it would give him a lot of pleasure.'
'What we got here's a personality clash,' Tucker said with a thin smile. 'They got a time of death on Darleen yet?'
'Teddy's putting it at between nine p.m. and midnight.'
'Since I was with Caroline from about nine on, the night Darleen was killed, that ought to ease me out of the running.'
'With a series of murders like this, it's not just a matter of motive and opportunity. He's got a head doctor who worked up a psychiatric profile. We're looking for someone with a grudge against women-especially women who might be a bit free with their favors. Someone who knew each victim well enough to get them alone.'
Burke's flakes were getting soggy. He scooped them up more for fuel than enjoyment. 'Darleen's a puzzle,' he
