Carnal Innocence

the slate terrace and gestured toward one of the padded chairs under a striped umbrella. “Is Mr. Longstreet that hard a taskmaster?”
    “Oh, no, sir.” Reluctantly, Cy sat. “He never has enough for me to do, to my way of thinking. And he’s always telling me to slow it down and take it easy, real considerate like. Sometimes if he’s around late in the afternoon at quitting time, he brings me out a Coca Cola himself.”
    “A liberal employer.” Burns took out his pad and recorder. “Then I’m sure he wouldn’t mind you taking a short break to answer some questions.”
    “You can ask him yourself,” Tucker suggested. He strolled out of the kitchen door with a chilled bottle of Coke. “Here you go, Cy.” He set the bottle down in front of the boy. “Wet your whistle.”
    “Mr. Burns—he said how I had to come on out here and talk,” Cy began. His eyes were as panicked as a rabbit’s caught in the white stream of headlights.
    “That’s all right.” Tucker touched a hand to his shoulder briefly before scraping back a chair for himself. “Nobody expected you to work today, Cy.”
    With his lips pressed tight together, Cy stared down at the white table. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
    “Well, for the next few days you do what suits you.” Tucker pulled out his cigarettes. He figured he was down to a half pack a day by his current method and ruthlessly tore off half the tobacco. “Now, Agent Burns here’s having himself a busy morning.” His eyes stayed on Burns’s over the flare of his match. There was a warning there, as clear as the message Hatinger had written in blood. “So, why don’t you tell him what you can. Then maybe you’d like to drop a line with me for an hour or two.”
    Burns curled his lip at the idea of taking the boy fishing the day after his father had been killed. “I’ll let you know when we’re finished, if you’d like to go tie some flies.”
    Tucker helped himself to a swig of Cy’s Coke. “No.As I figure it, since the boy’s working here and staying here for the time being, I’m a kind of guardian. I’ll stay, unless Cy wants me to go.”
    Cy lifted those panic-dazed eyes to Tucker’s. “I’d be obliged if you’d stay, Mr. Tucker. I might get something wrong.”
    “All you have to do is tell the truth. Isn’t that right, Agent Burns?”
    “That’s exactly right. Now—” he broke off as Josie walked out wearing a paper-thin pink robe.
    “Well now, it’s not often a woman strolls out of her kitchen and finds three men waiting for her.” She moved closer to ruffle Cy’s hair, but her eyes were all for Burns. “Special Agent, I was beginning to think you’d taken a dislike to me. Why, you haven’t been around to talk but one time.” She eased a hip onto the arm of Tucker’s chair. When she reached over to pluck up one of Tucker’s cigarettes, she afforded Burns the best view in the house. “I was about to make something up just so you could investigate me.”
    He was stuffy, but he wasn’t dead. Burns found his throat clogged and his tie too tight. “I’m afraid I have little time for socializing while on a case, Miss Long-street.”
    “Now, that surely is a shame.” Her voice was as rich and heady as the scent of magnolias. With a flutter of her lashes, she handed Burns the pack of matches, then steadied his hand with her own when he touched the flame to the tip. “And here I’ve been pining away, hoping you’d find time to tell me all about your adventures. I bet you’ve had scads of them.”
    “Actually, I’ve had a few interesting moments.”
    “I’m going to have to hear all about them or I’ll just explode from curiosity.” She trailed a finger down her throat to where her robe met loosely over her breasts. If his eyes had been tied by a string to her hand, Burns couldn’t have followed the movement more closely. “Teddy told me you were the very best.”
    He managed to swallow. “Teddy?”
    “Dr. Rubenstein.” She sent him a sultry look under heavy lashes. “He was telling me you were the absoluteexpert on serial killings. I just love talking to brainy men with dangerous jobs.”
    “Josie.” Tucker sent her an arch look. “Weren’t you going to get your nails done or something this morning?”
    “Why, yes, honey, I was.” She shifted to hold out her hands. Her robe crept up another inch. “I don’t think a woman can be really attractive if she lets her hands go.” She rose then, satisfied that