Best Kept Secrets(5)

Junior was a charmer who knew his way around women.

The years had been kind to him. He'd changed little from

the photographs Alex had seen of him as an adolescent. She

also knew that he used his good looks to his advantage. It

would be easy for her to like him. It would also be easy to

suspect him of murder.

Reede Lambert was the toughest for her to pigeonhole

because her impressions of him were the least specific. Unlike

the others, she hadn't been able to look him in the eye. Reede

the man looked much harder and stronger than Reede the boy

from her grandma's picture box. Her first impression was

that he was sullen, unfriendly, and dangerous.

She was certain that one of these men had killed her mother.

Celina Gaither had not been murdered by the accused,

Buddy Hicks. Her grandmother, Merle Graham, had

drummed that into little Alex's head like a catechism all her

life.

"It'll be up to you, Alexandra, to set the record right,"

Merle had told her almost daily. "That's the least you can

do for your mother." At that point she usually glanced wistfully

at one of the many framed photographs of her late

daughter scattered throughout the house. Looking at the photographs

would invariably make her cry, and nothing her

granddaughter did could cheer her.

Until a few weeks ago, however, Alex hadn't known who

Merle suspected of killing Celina. Finding out had been the

darkest hour of Alex's life.

Responding to an urgent call from the nursing home doctor,

she had sped up the interstate to Waco. The facility was quiet,

immaculate, and staffed by caring professionals. Merle's lifetime

pension from the telephone company made it affordable.

For all its amenities, it still had the grey smell of old age;

despair and decay permeated its corridors.

When she had arrived that cold, dismal, rainy afternoon,

Alex had been told that her grandmother was in critical condition.

She entered the hushed private room and moved toward

the hospital bed. Merle's body had visibly deteriorated



since Alex had visited only the week before. But her eyes

were as alive as Fourth of July sparklers. Their glitter, however,

was hostile.

"Don't come in here," Merle rasped on a shallow breath.

"I don't want to see you. It's because of you!"

"What, Grandma?" Alex asked in dismay. "What are you

talking about?"

"I don't want you here."

Embarrassed by the blatant rejection, Alex had glanced

around at the attending physician and nurses. They shrugged

their incomprehension. "Why don't you want to see me? I've

come all the way from Austin."

"It's your fault she died, you know. If it hadn't been for

you ..." Merle moaned with pain and clutched her sheet

with sticklike, bloodless fingers.

"Mother? You're saying I'm responsible for Mother's

death?"

Merle's eyes popped open. "Yes," she hissed viciously.

"But I was just a baby, an infant," Alex argued, desperately

wetting her lips. "How could I--"

"Ask them."

"Who, Grandma? Ask who?"

"The one who murdered her. Angus, Junior, Reede. But

it was you . . . you . . . you. ..."

Alex had to be led from the room by the doctor several

minutes after Merle lapsed into a deep coma. The ugly accusation

had petrified her; it reverberated in her brain and

assaulted her soul.

If Merle held Alex responsible for Celina's death, so much

of Alex's upbringing could be explained. She had always

wondered why Grandma Graham was never very affectionate

with her. No matter how remarkable Alex's achievements,

they were never quite good enough to win her grandmother's

praise. She knew she was never considered as gifted, or

clever, or charismatic as the smiling girl in the photographs

that Merle looked at with such sad longing.

Alex didn't resent her mother. Indeed, she idolized and



adored her with the blind passion of a child who had grown

up without parents. She constantly worked toward being as

good at everything as Celina had been, not only so she would

be a worthy daughter, but in the desperate hope of earning

her grandmother's love and approval. So it came as a stunning

blow to hear from her dying grandmother's lips that she was

responsible for Celina's murder.

The doctor had tentatively suggested that she might want

to have Mrs. Graham taken off the life support systems.

"There's nothing we can do for her now, Ms. Gaither."

"Oh, yes, there is," Alex had said with a ferocity that

shocked him. "You can keep her alive. I'll be in constant

touch."

Immediately upon her return to Austin, she began to research