Sandra Brown: Smoke Screen

Raley shared nothing personal with Delno, either. Not for the first two years of their acquaintanceship. And then one evening at sunset, Delno showed up at Raley’s cabin, bringing with him two Mason jars filled with a murky liquid that he’d fermented himself.

“Haven’t seen you in over a week. Where you been?”

“Here.”

Raley didn’t want company, but Delno elbowed his way inside anyway. “Thought you might be needin’ a swig or two.” Giving Raley one of his scornful once-overs, he added, “Lookin’ at you, I’d say my hunch was right. You appear to be in bad shape. Could smell you as I was coming up the steps.”

“You’re a fine one to criticize someone else’s appearance and personal hygiene.”

“Who’d you call?”

“What?”

“That blabbermouth that runs the cash register at the store? The one with her hair piled up high, wears long, dangly earrings? Told me you come in there last week, got a handful of change, and fed it into the pay phone outside. Said you talked a few minutes, then hung up, looking like you was ready to kill somebody. Got in your truck and took outta there without even paying for your groceries.”

He uncapped one of the jars and passed it to Raley, who sniffed the contents, then shook his head and passed it back. “So, I’m askin’,” Delno continued after taking a hefty swallow from the jar, “who’d you call?”

It was dawn before Raley stopped talking. By then, Delno had drained both jars. Raley was simply drained-emotionally, mentally, physically. It had been a painful but therapeutic catharsis. He had lanced a dozen wounds.

With nothing more to say and no breath left to say it, Raley looked over at the old man, who had listened for hours without making a single comment. The expression on the creased, leathery face was one of profound sadness. His eyes were naked and unguarded for the first time since Raley had known him, and Raley knew he was looking straight into the soul of a man who’d experienced indescribable heartache. It seemed Delno Pickens had collected all the misery and injustice in the world and packed it into that one hopeless gaze.

Then he sighed, and in one of the rare times they’d ever made physical contact, reached across the space separating them and patted Raley on the knee. “Go wash your armpits before the stink of you makes me puke up all that good liquor. I’ll cook you some breakfast.”

They never again referred to anything Raley had told him that night. It was as though the long night had never happened. But Raley never forgot the bleakness with which Delno had looked at him that morning. And this morning when he raised his head from staring into his coffee mug and looked up at Raley, he was wearing that same expression of despair.

“What’s the matter?” Raley’s heart hitched, automatically thinking disaster. A 747 loaded with passengers crashing into a mountain-side. A presidential assassination. A terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11.

“Don’t go and do somethin’ crazy, now, okay?” Delno said.

“What happened?”

Muttering dire predictions about “nothin’ good comin’ outta this,” Delno hitched his chin toward the TV.

Raley went over to the vintage set and turned the volume knob, then fiddled with the rabbit-ear antenna in the hope of getting a better picture.

The video remained erratic and the audio was scratchy, but within moments he had a clear understanding of what had happened and why Delno had dreaded telling him:

Jay Burgess was dead.

THEY DON’T BELIEVE ME, DO THEY?”

Britt addressed the question to the stranger whom she had retained as her attorney. It was now twenty-four hours since she’d discovered that Jay had died while lying beside her, and still she continued to hope that this was all a terrible dream from which she would soon awaken.

But it was all too real.

Shortly after her frantic 911 call, EMTs and two police officers had arrived at Jay’s town house. They’d been followed by the coroner and two detectives, who introduced themselves as Clark and Javier. They had questioned her in Jay’s living room while, in the bedroom, his body was being examined and prepared for transport to the morgue. She had gone to police headquarters with the detectives to give them her formal statement. After the last i was dotted and the last t crossed, she’d thought that would be the end of it, except for grieving.

But this morning Clark had phoned her at home. He apologized for the imposition but told her he and Javier would like to clear up a few details and asked if she would mind returning to the police station.

The request was issued in a friendly, casual manner, but it made her uneasy, uneasy enough to feel it would be advisable to have counsel meet her there. Her dealings with lawyers were limited to tax issues, real estate transactions, contracts, and her parents’ estate. She doubted the attorneys handling those matters had ever been inside a police station.

Needing a reference, she had called the television station’s general manager.

Of course the lead story on every station last night had been about Jay Burgess’s shocking death. Her fellow broadcast journalists had been discreet in their reports of her involvement, but no matter how they’d couched it, it was a hot story: The highest rated news reporter in the market, Britt Shelley, was now the one making news.

From the objective standpoint of a television journalist, she had to admit it was a juicy irony as well as a sensational story.

The general manager had commiserated with her situation. “What an awful ordeal for you, Britt.”

“Yes. It was. Is, actually. That’s why I’ve bothered you at home.”

“Whatever you need. Whatever I can do to help,” he’d said. She’d asked him to recommend a lawyer.

“A criminal lawyer?”

She’d been quick to assure him that she was only being prudent, that the interview-she didn’t even refer to it as an interrogation-was routine, a formality really. “Even so, I think I should have counsel.” He had readily agreed and promised to make some calls on her behalf.

When Bill Alexander had arrived at the police station, he’d been breathless and apologetic for being ten minutes late. “I got stuck in traffic.”

She’d hoped for someone imposing, authoritative, and charismatic, so it was difficult to hide her disappointment when the slight, unassuming, and frazzled Alexander proffered his card and introduced himself only seconds before they were joined by the two detectives.

By contrast, Clark and Javier personified central casting’s call sheet for tough detective types.

Yesterday, when the pair had arrived at Jay’s town house and realized they were talking to the Britt Shelley of Channel Seven News, they’d been dumbstruck and awkward, as people sometimes were upon seeing a TV personality out and among ordinary folk.

The detectives had apologized for having to detain her and put her through the police work on the heels of such a traumatic experience, but unfortunately it was their job to learn exactly what had happened. She’d answered their questions to the best of her ability, and they had seemed satisfied with her account.

This morning, however, the tenor of their questioning had changed, slightly but noticeably. They seemed no longer star-struck. Their inquiries had taken on an edge that hadn’t been there yesterday.

Britt was cooperative, knowing that reluctance to cooperate with the authorities usually signaled guilt, at least on some level. All she was guilty of was sleeping with a man who happened to die in his sleep. It was fodder for crude jests about Jay’s sexual prowess, and hers.

He went out with a bang. Wink, wink.