Chapter Nine
Keely had laughed at the predicament Hayes Carson was in with his cousin Macreedy, but it was impossible for her to talk about him or think about him without remembering her mother’s pained confession about Hayes’s brother, Robert.
She was feeling guilty about that when Clark phoned her.
“I’m sorry,” she said as soon as she recognized his voice.
“You are?” He hesitated. “Oh. I guess you mean about Nellie. Boone knew all along, Keely,” he added heavily.
“I thought I was pulling the wool over his eyes. I always underestimate him. He’d hired his girlfriend’s father’s detective agency to investigate Nellie.
I can’t say I’m really surprised at what he found out.
Well, I’m surprised that she was married and… fooling around with me, I mean.”
“Boone is very intelligent,” she said noncommittally.
“Yes, and he knows how to make people talk.”
She grimaced. “I didn’t mean to…”
“No! Not you. Me! He asked me what the hell I thought I was doing, leaving you at a dance alone all evening. He was furious.”
“But I was all right.”
“He knows that your father and his partner in crime might make a grab for you, Keely. I knew it, or should have known it, and I put you at risk. Boone said anything could have happened. I’m really sorry, Keely.
I was so crazy about Nellie that she was all I thought about.
You’re my friend. I should have been looking out for you. ”
It made her warm inside that Boone was worried for her safety. “It’s okay, Clark,” she said. “Honest, it is.”
“He gets hot about you,” he continued. “I’d almost say he’s possessive of you, but that’s ridiculous. He is fond of you, in his way, I think.” He paused. “There was some talk about the two of you at the dance. You went outside together…”
“To talk about you,” she countered. “He wanted to know where you were and what you were doing. He’s very insistent.”
There was a relieved sigh. “Yes, he is.” He paused again.
“Keely, you don’t want to ever get mixed up with him,” he said, in a stumbling sort of way that made her heart fill with disappointment.
“Something happened to him overseas. He hated women for years after that she-cat dropped him when he was wounded. God knows why he’s letting her lead him down the same path again.
Maybe he wants revenge. He doesn’t like women at all.
He just uses them. Sort of like me,” he added miserably.
Keely didn’t know what to say, how to answer him. “He’s not a bad person.”
“I didn’t say he was, just that he’s hateful toward women.
He’s keeping Misty on a tight rein, and he doesn’t watch his words when he talks to her.
It’s almost like he’s keeping her around for some mysterious reason, but he doesn’t really want to have anything to do with her.
He couldn’t care less if he’s late for a date, or if he doesn’t even show up.
She spends most of their time together complaining about the way he treats her, and about you. ”
“Me?” she exclaimed. “But why? Boone doesn’t give a hill of beans about me!”
“I don’t really know. She’s jealous of you.”
“That’s one for the books,” she mumbled. “She’s beautiful and rich. I’m plain and poor. I’m no competition at all.”
“I could dispute that,” Clark replied gently. “You have some wonderful qualities.”
“I’m no beauty.”
“Neither is she.”
Keely laughed softly. “Of course she is.”
“She’s not a beauty inside,” he said doggedly. “You are.”
“Thanks, Clark. You’re nice.”
“Nice.” He laughed. “Well, at least we’re still friends. Aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
“Then you can go riding with me from time to time. At the ranch. When Boone isn’t around,” he added with a wicked chuckle.
“We both know you’re not afraid of Boone,” she chided.
“Not much, anyway.”
“What did you tell Nellie, about not seeing her anymore?”
There was a long pause.
Her heart sank. “Clark, you’re not still seeing her?”
There was a longer pause.
“Her husband might hurt you. Really hurt you,” she warned.
He sighed. “You don’t understand. It’s complicated.”
“I guess I don’t,” she replied. “Be careful. Okay?”
“I’ll be careful. I know I have to break it off. But we had something special—on my side, at least. It takes a little time to adjust.”
“You watch your back,” she replied.
“I’ll do that. See you.”
“See you.”
She hung up, but she was worried. Clark was playing with fire.
If she and Boone were really friends, she’d tell him.
But Boone hadn’t called or come near her since the dance, when he’d kissed her so sweetly.
She’d dreamed about him, ached to see him, but she hadn’t had so much as a glimpse of him.
Perhaps he’d just been leading her on, she thought sadly, to get information about Clark and Nellie.
There was a miserable thought, and it kept her unhappy the rest of the day.
* * *
She and her mother were getting along better than they ever had, although Keely lived in terror that her father, or worse, Jock, might just show up at the door.
Ella had talked to a Realtor about the house and land.
She had to take Jock’s threat seriously, she said, and she didn’t want to go to jail.
Keely was worried that the secret might come out anyway. She felt guilty just knowing about it.
Things got worse when Hayes showed up at the vet’s office where she worked in the middle of the next week. He was somber and worried. He asked Keely out into the parking lot, away from the crowd in the waiting room, where they could talk undisturbed.
“What’s wrong?” Keely asked him apprehensively.
“It’s about your father,” he began hesitantly. His face became hard. “I’ve heard something. A little gossip. It involves my brother…”
“Oh, heavens!” Keely ground out. “I’m so sorry!”
The expression on her face spoke volumes. She never could keep secrets, and this one had cost her many a night’s sleep. If Hayes pushed, she’d have to tell him. She went pale.
“You know, don’t you?” he asked quietly. “Tell me, Keely.”
She wrapped her arms tight around herself. “If I do, my mother will go to jail,” she said miserably.
“If you don’t, your mother may die,” he countered. “Your father was seen at a roadhouse over in Bexar County two days ago.”
She actually gasped. “With Jock?”
“The person who saw him didn’t know about the other man. Probably wouldn’t recognize him. What does Brent have on your mother, Keely, and what has it got to do with my family?”
She leaned back against his patrol car, looking at him with dead eyes. “My father was apparently dealing cocaine before he left here with me, and he had some pure stuff. He made a deal with…” She stopped and bit her lip. She hadn’t thought how it would sound.
Hayes seemed to know. He shifted his tall frame. “I know what my brother was,” he said quietly. “You don’t have to pull any punches on his account. He’s long dead and buried.”
She drew in a long breath. “Yes, but he was still your brother and you loved him,” she said gently. “I loved my father. I never dreamed…” She stopped. “Your brother saw my father make a drug buy. My father offered him a small fortune in cocaine not to tell you.”
“So that was it.”
“My father gave it to your brother. He didn’t tell him that it was a hundred-percent pure. Your brother had his supplier inject him with it. That’s why he overdosed.” She lowered her eyes. “I’m so ashamed!”
“No!” He moved forward and framed her face in his big, warm hands. “No, Keely, it’s not your shame or your guilt! You’re as much a victim as Bobby was. Don’t take that burden on your own shoulders. It’s their crime, not yours!”
Tears were rolling down her cheeks. Hayes felt for a handkerchief, but he didn’t have one.
Keely laughed as she tugged a paper towel out of her jeans pocket.
“I always carry them around,” she explained, dragging at her eyes.
“We’re constantly cleaning up messes. Some dogs get sick when they’re brought here. ”
“I can sympathize with them,” Hayes said with a forced smile. “I don’t like going to doctors myself.”
She blew her nose. “I wanted to tell you. I couldn’t. I haven’t been close to my mother, until the last few days, and I knew if I told, she could go to prison.”
“What for?” he asked heavily. “There’s no evidence.
Every-body directly connected with the case is dead.
The woman who gave Bobby the drugs was Ivy Conley’s sister, Rachel.
She died of a drug overdose herself not long ago.
She left a diary and confessed that she’d given Bobby the overdose,” he said surprisingly.
Actually Keely knew Ivy, who had just married Stuart York, her best friend’s brother.
Hayes looked thoughtful. “Your father and Rachel handed Bobby the gun, but he pulled the trigger himself, figuratively speaking. Bobby was an addict from the time he was twelve. I knew and tried to stop him. I never could.”
“You mean, Mama won’t go to jail?” she worried.
“No.” He hesitated. “But your father will, if I can find one damned thing to pin on him,” he added in the coldest tone she’d ever heard him use.
She felt sad, because her father had been kind to her.
She hadn’t known about his dark past, and she’d loved him.
It was hard to know that he was one jump ahead of the law.
She wondered why, what he’d done to get in so much trouble that he was running scared.
“If he’s running, and he needs money,” she reasoned out loud, “he must be desperate to get away.”
He pursed his lips. “You think like a detective,” he mused.
“He’s done something bad,” she continued. “Or Jock has, and he helped.” Her eyes were sad as they met Hayes’s. “He was good to me, those two years I lived with him. If he’d never got mixed up with Jock again, he might have stayed changed.”