Lancelot of the Pines (Louisiana Knights Book 1) (24 page)

“Don’t do this.”

Sheriff Tate rested his hand on the weapon at his belt. “I wouldn’t have to if you’d brought her in when I told you. But no, hell, no. You had to go all rogue on me, roping Trey into keeping her hid out under my nose, holing up here with her like a dog guarding a juicy bone. Damned if you didn’t get yourself shot for her, the way I hear it.”

Mandy stirred, switching her haunted gaze from Sheriff Tate to Lance. “You were supposed to bring me back here?”

“Days ago,” the sheriff answered for him.

“Good going, Lancelot,” Granny Chauvin said with tight-lipped approval.

“The order was pure bull.” Lance couldn’t keep the outrage from his voice as he stared at the sheriff, though he spoke to Mandy. “The pressure is on to find the killer. They have no other suspects, so you’re elected.”

“Oh, Lance.”

“Talk about bull!” the sheriff scoffed. “I don’t know what kind of spell she’s got you under—or maybe I do. Looks to me like it’s got you thinking with something besides your brain. You could be charged with being an accessory, you know. That’s on top of leaving the scene of an accident over toward Lafayette—which I know was you two from the description of the RV. But it ends right here, right now. I’m taking her in.”

It was too much. “You do that,” Lance answered with lethal intent, “and you can find yourself another deputy.”

“Now, Lance—”

“And what’s more, you won’t run unopposed in the next election.”

“Way to go!” Granny crowed.

“You threatening me?” His distant cousin gave him a stare that was no doubt meant to be intimidating.

“You could say that. Or you could say it looks to me as if Chamelot and Tunica Parish need a new sheriff.”

It was her worst nightmare. Yes, there had been some hint she was suspected of having Bruce killed, but how could anyone believe it? Their marriage had been strained, but that was no reason to murder him. The mere idea of it made her sick.

That Lance might have risked his job, maybe even jail time, to prevent her from being brought in was beyond belief. She was grateful, of course she was. The warm feeling it brought ousted some of her chill dismay. Yet she wouldn’t have had him risk so much, not for the world, not for her.

Why had he done it? Had he realized how much she hated the idea of being taken into police custody again? Or was it only that he thought it was right, because he believed in her innocence?

Both reasons might be valid. Or it could be something else altogether. She couldn’t tell. The stern cast of his features as he faced Sheriff Tate gave away nothing at all.

“You do what you have to do,” the law officer told him. “I’m through talking here.” Reaching back for the handcuffs that hung from his belt, he turned to Mandy. “Come along, lady. Let’s go.”

The cuffs were warm from his body. That was worse, somehow, than if they’d been cold. She started to tremble the instant they were clamped on her wrists, barely heard as she was read her Miranda rights. It was all such a vivid reminder of a time she’d done her best to forget.

Flashes of it tormented her now, the judge pronouncing her sentence in a bored monotone, as if taking away years of her life didn’t matter; the itchiness of the orange coveralls she’d had to wear, the smells of creosote based cleaner and resigned humanity, the resounding clang of the heavy outside door as it shut out the world and all her hopes and dreams.

“I’ll be right behind you,” Lance said with urgency in his voice.

“That’s right,” Granny said, lifting her bony chin as Mandy was led away. “And I’m calling Judge Martin the instant I get home. You hear that, Sonny Tate? You hear?”

Mandy was still shaking when they reached the sheriff’s office and she was led from the reception area to a long hallway. Lance strode along behind them. The sheriff slowed at a door with glass panels inset with a wire grid.

“Not here,” Lance said in a low growl. “The conference room.”

The two men stood glaring at each other. Then Sheriff Tate moved on. Unlocking a solid door at the end of the hall, he threw it open, strode inside, and then stood back while Mandy and Lance entered.

The conference room was long and narrow, with a bank of windows on one side that overlooked the town square, a coffee setup in one corner, and a long table of polished wood in the center. Mandy was waved into a seat on one side of the table, while the sheriff moved toward the head of it.

“Lose the handcuffs.” Lance’s voice was unrelenting as he pulled out a chair across from Mandy.

The sheriff rolled his eyes, but complied.

With the cuffs gone, Mandy sat rubbing her wrists. Lance met her gaze over the width of the table. “You have the right to a lawyer.”

It might be a wise move, but she shook her head. To wait for a lawyer to come and sit beside her seemed intolerable when she couldn’t imagine she would actually be held on the charge against her. However, watching the sheriff hunt around in a cabinet next to the coffee machine and then bring out a small tape recorder almost changed her mind.

He spoke into the recorder with the date, time and identities of all present, set it on the table between them, and then settled back into his chair. “Okay, Mrs. Caret, let’s start at the beginning. When did you first meet the deceased?”

It was difficult to force words through the tightness in her throat, but she managed it on the third try. “Almost nine years ago now. He was in court, representing someone else, the day I was arraigned on shoplifting charges. When the judge asked if I had a lawyer, I had to say no. Bruce stood up and offered to take my case.”

“Good of him, I’d say.”

It was hard to look past the sarcasm in that comment or the fact that she’d been through this with Lance already, though Mandy tried. “He did that, sometimes, if a case interested him.”

“And yours did.”

She gave him her best emotionless stare. “So it seems.”

“So you had a criminal record when the two of you got married.”

“Tate,” Lance said, a note of warning in his voice.

The sheriff turned his gimlet gaze across the table. “I’m establishing proven facts.”

“Doesn’t sound that way to me.”

The lawman snorted before turning back to Mandy. “Caret didn’t try to get you off on the shoplifting charge.”

“It was a first offense with mitigating circumstances. He thought I’d get no more than probation if I entered a guilty plea.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No.”

“Why was that?”

“The testimony of the guy who caught me. He said I’d taken a necklace with a diamond chip, along with the other things, but I hadn’t.”

“Why would he do that?”

“So the cost of what I’d picked up would total more than five hundred dollars. He told me nobody would believe I hadn’t taken the necklace, and it would mean the difference between a sentence of six months or five years.”

“You make it sound as if he had it in for you.”

“He did.”

“So he threatened you when he stopped you from going out the door with stolen goods.”

She gave a quick shake of her head. “It was in his office while we waited for the police.”

“Where, according to the record, you caused him grievous injury and permanent bodily harm.”

“If you want to call it that.”

“But you did something to him?”

“What would you do if some creep tried—” She stopped, closed her lips tightly across her teeth.

“Tried to what?”

“Nothing.”

Lance spoke then, though he looked at the wall above her head. “Tell him, Mandy.”

“Tell me what?” Sheriff Tate divided a glance between the two of them.

Lance already knew the details. That should have made it easier, but didn’t. “The guy said he wouldn’t call the police if I was nice to him. Preferably, on my knees. When I refused, he tried to force me. I bit him.”

“You bit him.”

“It seemed logical, considering where he was holding my head.”

“Grievous bodily harm. I see.” The sheriff put a hand to his mouth, rubbed down his chin before he went on. “So you have a history of violence.”

She closed her eyes. “Not a history. It was that once.”

He grunted at that. “So tell me about these mitigating circumstances.”

Mandy glanced at Lance and then away again. She didn’t want to talk about it, couldn’t stand to talk about it. It cut too deep, allowing the pain of guilt to well up inside until her heart ached with it. And yet, what choice did she have?

“The things I stole weren’t for me.”

“Sure they weren’t. Let’s see if I can remember from the report. Besides a box of Twinkies and couple of bags of chips, I think it was a bottle of perfume and maybe a hoodie. Besides the necklace, of course. That sound about right?”

She shrugged. What could she say? It was true, after all.

“Doesn’t sound like stuff for anybody else to me.”

“They were for Clare, my sister. She was in a mental institution.”

Lance sat back in his chair, bracing his hands on the edge of the table, as he stared at her. She’d never told him that last part, she knew; it was too private, too hurtful.

“Touching,” the sheriff said. “And how did you intend to pass them along to her?”

“I had a way.” She stared at the reflection in the window glass with the dark night behind it as she recited the dry yet horrific events. The way her mother had been taken away by the police, the scary business of Family Services removing her and Clare from their apartment, then the news of their mother’s death and being separated from her sister.

“She was younger than you, this sister?”

The question was strictly for the facts; there was scant sympathy in it. Mandy answered it with the dry truth.

“She was six and I was ten. I’d always taken care of her when our mom was working. She was—was what’s called a special needs child, had Asperger’s Syndrome. I was the only one she would ever speak to, and then it was in a whisper now and then. Without me, she had no one. She was terrified of strangers, and all at once everyone she knew was going to be a stranger. I tried to tell them, but they wouldn’t listen. They said she needed to be institutionalized. When I cried and screamed, I was sedated. For weeks.”

The room was quiet. Mandy could feel Lance’s gaze on her face, but she couldn’t look at him. She didn’t want or need his pity, but if he had none for her, she didn’t want to know it that either.

“That was when you were ten. You were fourteen when you were turned over to juvenile justice.”

She shook back her hair while wishing she had her clasp to hold it in place. “Yes, well, it was also after several different sets of foster parents and a few times of running away and being brought back. The last time I ran away, I was barely fourteen but looked older, so it wasn’t as easy to find me.”

“Which still leaves several months unaccounted for.”

“I lived on the street, part of a group of kids who knew the score and had good places to hide. Some of them had electronics and were good at hacking into the state databases. They found Clare in an institution for the mentally ill. She’d become little more than a zombie.”

“You found out how she was doing, as well as where she was, did you?”

The look she gave the sheriff was blank. She could almost feel herself falling back into the unresponsive state she’d perfected as a teenager. It put mental distance between her and authority so it became unnecessary to feel. When she spoke her voice was a dull monotone.

“There are ways to get into almost any public database or public building if you have the nerve to use them. I saw Clare a few times after I located her. It took a while to break through to her, actually be sure she knew me. I told her how to avoid taking the medication they were giving her to make her so spaced out. She was getting a little better, might have been able to walk out of that place with me eventually if I’d had more time.”

“But you were arrested instead.”

She inclined her head. “I don’t know what she thought when I didn’t come again, don’t know how she acted or what they did to her, but by the time I was able to see her again, she was worse than she’d been before.”

“Which was?”

“After my time was reduced for good behavior and I was released. After Bruce said he’d take care of me and do everything he could to get Clare out of that place if I—if I would marry him.”

“You’re telling me you married him for your sister, not for his money?”

“I married him because he was a power in the legal community and had the status and wealth that brings, wealth he was willing to use to help Clare.”

“Sounds like the same thing to me.”

It wasn’t, but how to explain it to someone who didn’t want to understand? “Fine. I married him for his money.”

The sheriff looked at Lance. “Which makes you a common gold-digger, doesn’t it.”

Lance’s features were set in brooding lines, and his crossed arms folded over his chest. Mandy remembered then that his ex-wife and been a money-hungry female who qualified in spades for the title she’d been given. It increased the hollow sensation in her chest, made her want to cry out that she wasn’t like that, had never been like that.

But was it true? Would she have agreed to marry Bruce if he’d had no money, no power in the legal system that might have helped her free Clare?