Tami Hoag - Cry Wolf

Savannah bared her teeth, an expression made eerier by the blue mask she wore across her eyes like something left over from Mardi Gras. "You don't want to know."

"Yes, I do! What the hell-"

"No," she said coolly. "I distinctly remember you telling me you didn't want to hear about my sex life. You didn't want to hear that Ronnie Peltier has a cock like a jackhammer or that the Revver likes to play whip-me, whip-me games or that I like to do it with-"

"Stop it!" Laurel yelled. Flinging her sister's arm away, she stepped back, as if Savannah 's admission was so repulsive, she couldn't stand the idea of touching her or breathing the same air. "Dammit, Savannah, why do you have to do that? Why do you have to degrade yourself that way?"

"Because I'm a slut." Savannah threw the word like a dagger, her temper tearing through what little self-control she had left. She stalked toward Laurel, eyes narrowed behind her mask, lips pulled back. "I'm not a shining little bright-eyed heroine. I'm what Ross Leighton turned me into."

"You're what you want to be," Laurel fired back. "Ross hasn't laid a hand on you in fifteen years-"

"How do you know?" Savannah sneered, backing her into the hall table. "Maybe I still fuck him twice a week for old time's sake."

"Shut up!"

"What's the matter, Baby? Don't you want to hear about how I spread my legs for our dear old stepdaddy so you wouldn't have to?"

The words stung like nettles in Laurel 's heart. "I didn't have any control over what Ross did to you," she said, her voice choked with emotion. "You can't blame me, and you can't blame yourself. It's stupid to spend the rest of your life punishing yourself for something that was beyond your control."

Savannah stepped back, her expression beneath her mask a combination of cynicism and incredulity. "My God, aren't you the little hypocrite?" she said softly. "What the hell have you been doing with your whole damn life?"

Laurel stared at her, stunned, weak. Her knees felt like water, and her stomach tightened like a fist.

Mama Pearl rumbled into the hall, wringing her plump hands in a red checked dish towel, a scowl folding her forehead into burls of flesh. "What the world goin' on out here?" she demanded. "All I hear is yellin' an' cursin' like to burn the Almighty's ears! What goin' on?"

Savannah pulled her temper in and wrapped it tight around her as she adjusted the sash on her kimono. "Nothing, Mama Pearl," she said calmly. She picked a piece of dead leaf out of her hair and crumbled it between her fingers. "I just came down to get a pot of tea."

Mama Pearl looked to Laurel for corroboration. Laurel straightened her glasses and picked up her purse, her hand trembling visibly. "I have to go," she mumbled, refusing to meet anyone's eyes, focusing on maintaining some semblance of control.

She walked out of the house and into the sauna heat of midmorning on wobbly legs, thinking that after what she had just been through, a trip to the courthouse was going to be a piece of cake.

The air-conditioning in the sheriff's office was fighting a losing battle against the afternoon sun that came glaring in through the window. Sheriff Duwayne Kenner stood behind his desk with his hands on his slim hips, overseeing the futile attempts of two maintenance men who were trying to install a new venetian blind.

"Get the goddamn bracket straight," he growled. "And the left one's half an inch higher than the right. What the hell you boys thinkin'-that y'all can tip the whole goddamn courthouse so the shade'll hang straight?"

The maintenance man on the right shot a glance over his meaty shoulder, blinking at the sweat that dribbled down his shining dark forehead and into his eyes. His blue shirt was soaked down the back and sides, the tails crawling up out of the low-riding waistband of his pants, giving glimpses of a generous tube of fat around his middle. He gulped a breath and mumbled the expected, "No, sir."

The other man-younger, thinner, harder, darker-set his jaw at the word "boy" and dropped his end of the blind so that the blazing sun struck Kenner full in the face.

"Jesus Christ!" The sheriff took a quick step back, snapping his head to the side and squeezing his eyes shut. The badge pinned to the chest of his sweat-stained khaki uniform shirt glinted like gold.

The younger man's mouth flicked up on the corners. "I's sorry, Sheriff Kenner," he said in an exaggerated drawl.

"Your sorry black ass," Kenner grumbled under his breath. He jerked around, muttering about the squandering of tax dollars on equal opportunity programs, and faced the young woman who had come into his office a full five minutes ago to speak with him.

Laurel Chandler. Ross Leighton's stepdaughter. While Kenner curried favor with Leighton, he was in no particular hurry to listen to the girl. Everyone in town had heard about her-making wild accusations up in Georgia, blowing the case, losing her marbles over it. She was trouble. He could smell trouble a mile off-even when it was wearing perfume.

Laurel sat in the visitor's chair, sweat trickling down her sides and between her shoulder blades. Her linen jacket was wilted, her temper frayed down to the nub. While her morning's efforts had gone smoothly, she had a feeling Kenner was going to be a whole different story. He had the unmistakable aura of a redneck about him. He looked fifty, tough and sinewy, with the lean build of a cowboy. His steel gray hair was thinning fast on top, but she doubted anyone ribbed him about it. If Kenner had a sense of humor, the Klan backed the NAACP.

He regarded her with hard, dark eyes, his impatience charging the air around him, his mouth set in a grim line that would have done Clint Eastwood proud. "What can I do for you, Miz Chandler?" he asked in a flat tone that indicated both his level of interest and his lack of willingness to do anything at all for her.

Laurel took a deep breath of stifling, sweat-tinged air and shifted on her seat. "I wanted to make you aware of the situation between the Delahoussayes of Frenchie's Landing and Reverend Jimmy Lee Baldwin. He's been harassing them and disrupting their business. I've spoken with Judge Monahan on their behalf."

Kenner perched a skinny buttock on one corner of his desk, picked up a pack of unfiltered Camels, and shook one out just long enough to hook his lip over. "Seems a might drastic," he said, cigarette bobbing as he tore a match from a book and struck it.

" Baldwin is not only making a nuisance of himself, he's defaming the Delahoussayes and inhibiting their right to free trade."

He took a deep pull on the cigarette, pretending to consider the facts as she had presented them. "He hadn't hurt anybody, has he?"

"Is that your criterion for action?" Laurel asked coolly. "You wait until someone has resorted to physical violence?"

Eyes narrowing to slits, Kenner blew twin streams of smoke out his slim nose and pointed a finger at her, shaking ash down on the cheap linoleum floor. "I do a damn good job in this parish, Missy. Everywhere around us they got dead girls stacked up like cordwood and drug dealers crawling around thick as copperheads in canebreaks. You don't see that here, and I'll tell you why-'cause I know damn well whose ass to kick."

"I'm sure you do."

"You're goddamn right I do." He took a quick drag on his smoke and shot a glare over his shoulder at the maintenance men, who were making an unholy racket with the blind. "And I'll tell you this-I got better things to do with my time than chase around after that television preacher, tellin' him where he can piss and where he can't."

Laurel rose gracefully, smoothing the wrinkles from her trousers, schooling her temper. Kenner was hardly the first jerk she'd ever come up against. "I don't care where he pisses, Sheriff," she said smoothly. "I don't care where he does anything, as long as he doesn't do it at Frenchie's Landing. Judge Monahan has granted a temporary injunction until the formalities can be taken care of. Diligent as you are, I expect you'll do everything in your power to see that Reverend Baldwin respects it."