Carnal Innocence

could start with the weather.” Tucker ignored Burke’s warning look. “Looks like we’ve got a storm rolling in. Might cool things off for a spell. Or we could talk baseball. Orioles’re playing the Yankees tonight. Birds got themselves a tight pitching staff this year. Might just pull it off.” Tucker sucked in smoke. “You a betting man, Special Agent?”
    “I’m afraid I don’t take an avid interest in sports.”
    “Well, that’s okay.” There was a yawn in Tucker’s voice as he angled the chair back. “I don’t take an avid interest in much of anything. Avid takes too much effort.”
    “Let’s get to the point, Tuck.” Since the look hadn’t worked, Burke tried his quiet, cut-the-bullshit tone. “Tucker knew the victim, Edda Lou …”
    “The word you’re scratching for is
intimately,”
Tucker provided. His stomach muscles clenched up on him again, so he shifted to crush out the cigarette.
    Burns settled in the third chair. In his fussily efficient way, he took a mini recorder and a pad from his pocket. “You wanted to make a statement.”
    “Like ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself’?” Tucker stretched his back. “Not particularly. Burke here thought you might want to ask me some questions. And being the cooperative sort, I’m here to answer them.”
    Unruffled, Burns switched on the recorder. “I’m informed that you and the deceased had a relationship.”
    “What we had was sex.”
    “Come on, Tuck.”
    He shot Burke a look. “That’s as honest as it gets, son. Edda Lou and I went out a few times, had some laughs, and tangled some sheets.” His eyes hardened, and he had to stop himself from reaching for another cigarette. “Couple weeks back I cut things off because she started talking marriage.”
    “You ended the affair amicably?” Burns asked.
    “I wouldn’t say that. I figure you already know about the scene in the diner a few days ago. It’s safe to say Edda Lou was pissed.”
    “Your term, Mr. Longstreet. I have it here”—he tapped his pencil on his pad—“that she was angry and agitated.”
    “You put those two words together with Edda Lou, and what you get is pissed.”
    “She claimed you’d made her promises.”
    Lazily, Tucker lowered his legs. The chair squeaked as he rocked it. “That’s the thing about me, Agent Burns, I don’t make them, ’cause it’s unlikely I’ll keep them.”
    “And she announced publicly that she was pregnant.”
    “Yeah. She did that.”
    “After which, you left the … Chat ’N Chew, is it? You left abruptly.” He smiled thinly. “Would it be safe to say, Mr. Longstreet, that you were … pissed?”
    “Having her come down on me in the diner, tellme—for the first time, in front of maybe a dozen people—that she was pregnant, and threatening to make me pay for it? Yeah.” He gave a slow, considering nod. “It’d be safe to say.”
    “And you had no intention of marrying her.”
    “Not a one.”
    “And being infuriated, embarrassed, and trapped, you had a motive for killing her.”
    Tucker ran his tongue over his teeth. “Not as long as I’ve got a checkbook.” He leaned forward. Though his face was hard, his voice flowed easily, like honey over corn bread. “Let me give you a clear picture of this, friend. Edda Lou was greedy, she was ambitious, and she was smart. Now, maybe there was a part of her figured she could intimidate me into a double-ring ceremony, but she’d have settled happily enough for a check with enough zeroes on it.”
    He rose, then forced himself to take a breath and sit on the corner of the desk. “I liked her. Maybe not as much as I once did, but well enough. You don’t sleep with a woman one week and slice her up the next.”
    “It’s been done.”
    Something dark came alive in Tucker’s eyes. “Not by me.”
    Burns shifted the recorder an inch to the right. “You were also acquainted with Arnette Gantrey and Frances Alice Logan.”
    “Me and most everybody else in Innocence.”
    “Did you also have relationships with them?”
    “Dated them some. Didn’t sleep with either.” His lips curved a little in memory. “Though with Arnette, it wasn’t for lack of trying.”
    “She rejected you?”
    “Hell.” In disgust, Tucker pulled out another cigarette. It seemed he’d picked a lousy time to try to quit smoking. “We were friends, and she didn’t want to wrestle. Truth is, she’d always had her eye on my brother, Dwayne, but he never picked up