Free After Midnight by Merline Lovelace Page B

the last thing Ron Clark said before he killed himself.
    The problem was, Steve had been a cop for too long to believe in coincidence. More intrigued than ever, he pulled on a lazy smile and pumped Maggie Calhoun for more information.
     
     
    Jess wasn’t sure when she first noticed the sideways glances. Right after the fireworks display that lit up the night sky and poured showers of green and red and blue stars into the pond, she thought afterward. Certainly well before the lavish cocktail party began to break up.
    She didn’t have any doubt as to the source of the murmured rumors that whispered through the crowd like a hot, dry wind through a wheat field. She’d turned her back on the sheriff’s tete-a-tete with Maggie Calhoun, but hadn’t missed the glances the blonde sent her way shortly when she drifted back inside and sidled up to her husband. After a brief exchange, Dub Calhoun’s smile had slipped and he’d pinned Jess with a long, hard stare.
    She’d expected the stares, Jess reminded herself grimly during the long drive home. Sooner or later, she’d expected the rumors to begin. What she hadn’t expected was the little sting that accompanied each intercepted glance and murmured aside. Or the familiar anger that ignited little fires just under her skin.
    Her bunched fist hit the Mustang’s steering wheel. She was so sure she’d put the anger behind her, dammit. She hadn’t allowed herself to get all tight and raw like this in decades. Not since the night Steve Paxton’s pauncy predecessor had pounded on the door to Helen Yount’s trailer, suggested she pack herself, her belongings, and her kid into their rattletrap of a car, and escorted them out of town.
    As Jess pulled into the garage attached to her condo, the memories of that humiliation rushed at her like demons of the night. Letting herself in through the kitchen door, she by-passed the living room and went straight down the hall. Her clutch purse hit the seafoam-green chair tucked in the alcove off her bedroom. Her high heels thudded into the gray carpet, one after another, as she kicked them away.
    With each uniform item she yanked off and tossed on the bed, the images grew sharper. She could almost see the sheriff’s jowls, hanging loose and flabby like a bloodhound’s dewlaps. Hear again his genial warning that Helen had best put a long stretch of miles between herself and the Blue Crab.
    She could hear, too, the taunts she’d endured from the older kids at the regional elementary school she’d attended. They’d called Helen trailer trash, had jeered and quoted their daddies as saying the waitress served up sex along with the Blue Crab’s watered down whiskey. Jess had never heard the term whore until the day she took two boys down into the schoolyard’s dirt playground.
    The sheriff had come to their trailer that night, too, she remembered, and suggested Helen put a check-rein on her kid before she got into a fight she couldn’t get out of. Jess had never told her mother what sparked that particular brawl, just as she’d never asked why Helen often dragged home only short hours before dawn some nights.
    Eight-year-old Jessie Yount might not have heard the term whore before, but she’d learned to recognize the particular stench men left on her mother’s body.
    Nothing good ever came of the night, she thought savagely, yanking on her favorite T-shirt. Nothing!
    With the T-shirt skimming her high-thigh bikini briefs, she retreated to the kitchen and slapped together a ham and cheese on rye. Armed with the sandwich, a giant-sized bag of Lay’s potato chips and a diet Coke, she settled in front of the TV for a serious bout of late night movies.
     
     
    Inevitably, the rumors began to circulate the squadron.
    Jess had expected that, too, since most of the civilians she commanded had lived in the local area all their lives. It took less than a week after the gala in DeFuniak Springs for the ugliness to get back to her.
    She heard them