Carnal Innocence

cotton before he reached his car.
    He folded himself into his Porsche—an impulse buy of six months before that he’d yet to grow tired of. He weighed the comfort of air-conditioning against the excitement of wind slapping his face, and opted to leave the top down.
    One of the few things Tucker did fast was drive. Gravel spat under the tires as he slammed into first and streaked down the long, meandering lane. He swung around the circle where his mother had planted a bounty of peonies, hibiscus, and flashy red geraniums. Old magnolia trees flanked the lane, and their scent was heavy and pleasing. He flicked by the bone-white granite marker where his great-great-uncle Tyrone had been thrown from a bad-tempered horse and had broken his sixteen-year-old neck.
    The marker had been set by Tyron’s grieving parents to honor his passing. It also served as a reminder that if Tyrone hadn’t chosen to test himself on that mean-spirited mare, he wouldn’t have broken his stubborn neck, and his younger brother, Tucker’s great-great grandfather, wouldn’t have inherited Sweetwater and passed it down.
    Tucker could have found himself living in a condo in Jackson.
    He was never sure whether to be sorry or grateful when he passed that sad old piece of stone.
    Out through the high, wide gates and onto the macadam was the scent of tar going soft in the sun, of still water from the bayou behind the screen of trees. And the trees themselves, with their high, green smell that told him, though the calendar claimed summer was still a week away, the delta knew better.
    He reached for sunglasses first, sliding them onto his face before he chose a cassette at random and punched it into its slot. Tucker was a great lover of fifties music, so there was nothing in the car recorded after1962. Jerry Lee Lewis shot out, and the Killer’s whiskey-soaked voice and desperate piano celebrated the fact that there was a whole lot of shakin’ going on.
    As the speedometer swung toward eighty, Tucker added his own excellent tenor. His fingers drummed up and down on the steering wheel, looking like piano keys.
    Barreling over a rise, he had to swing wide to the left to avoid ramming into the back side of a natty BMW. He tooted his horn, not in warning but in greeting as he skidded around the elegant maroon fender. He didn’t slack his speed, but a glance in his rearview mirror showed him the Beemer was stopped, half in and half out of the lane leading back to Edith McNair’s house.
    As Jerry Lee switched into his raw-throated “Breathless,” Tucker gave a passing thought to the car and driver. Miss Edith had passed on about two months before—around the same time that a second mutilated body had been discovered floating in the water down at Spook Hollow.
    That had been sometime in April, and a search party had been whipped up to look for Francie Alice Logan, who’d been missing for two days. Tucker’s jaw clenched when he remembered what it had been like, trudging through the bayou, carrying a Ruger Red Label and hoping to hell he didn’t shoot off his own foot, or find anything.
    But they’d found her, and he’d had the bad luck to be with Burke Truesdale when they did.
    It wasn’t easy to think about what the water and the fish had done to sassy old Francie, the pretty little redhead he’d flirted with, dated a time or two, and had debated sleeping with.
    His stomach clenched and he bumped up the volume on Jerry Lee. He wasn’t thinking about Francie. Couldn’t. He’d been thinking about Miss Edith, and that was better. She’d lived to be nearly ninety and had passed on quietly in her sleep.
    Tucker recalled that she’d left her house, a tidy two-story built during the Reconstruction, to some Yankee relative.
    Since Tucker knew that no one within fifty miles ofInnocence owned a BMW, he concluded that the Yankee had decided to come down and take a peek at his inheritance.
    He dismissed the northern invasion from his thoughts, took out a cigarette, and after breaking a thumbnail-length piece from the tip, lighted it.
    Half a mile back, Caroline Waverly gripped the wheel of her car and waited for her heart to slide back down her throat.
    Idiot! Crazy bastard! Careless jerk!
    She forced herself to lift her trembling foot off the brake and tap the gas until the car was all the way into the narrow, overgrown lane.
    Inches, she thought. He’d missed hitting her by inches! Then he’d had the gall to blast his horn at her. She wished