In High Cotton: Neely Kate Mystery #2 Read online

  “Physical danger? Until this morning, I would have said no, but I’m still convinced I’m not in immediate danger.”

  “Did you tell Kate we were goin’ to the fundraiser dinner together?”

  “No, but she knows you’re datin’ Dena and she knows what a controlling witch she is, so it’s safe to say she has an inside source who knows what’s goin’ on in your life.”

  He pressed his lips together. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she plans to crash the dinner. At the very least, she’s trying to stir up trouble. Exhibit A is in your basement. Do you plan to tell your boyfriend about Kate’s escape and surprise?”

  Panic shot through my blood. Jed was probably freaking out that he couldn’t get ahold of me.

  “I suspect he already knows she’s escaped and is probably tryin’ to call me now to make sure I’m okay. I need to get my phone.” I got up to go get it.

  Joe grabbed my wrist and held me in place. “How would he know she’s escaped?”

  I hesitated, then said, “He’s had her watched.”

  “Why?”

  I couldn’t tell him he’d been linked to Skeeter Malcolm, but I could give him something. “I’ll tell you how this all started, but just let me go get my phone and plug it in, or he’s gonna be scared to death for me and show up poundin’ on the front door like you just did.”

  He stared up at me with searching eyes. “He really cares about you?”

  I didn’t answer, because while I thought the answer was yes, my recent doubts held back the affirmation.

  But Joe took my silence as affirmation enough. “Go get your phone, but we’re not done with this conversation.”

  I nodded. I wanted to tell him more. I just wasn’t sure how much was safe for him. I truly didn’t want to put him in a difficult position.

  I ran upstairs and snatched my phone and cord, then ran back down. I’d considered catching Rose up to speed, but her shower was still running, and Joe had purposely held back finding a body. I wanted to see what he ultimately planned to do about that.

  I ran down the stairs and found Joe pouring another cup of coffee for himself. He must have gulped some down while I was grabbing my phone because neither of us had touched our cups while we were talking.

  I plugged my phone in at the counter, and the battery light flashed on the screen.

  “Don’t you be callin’ or textin’ him yet,” Joe said. “We need to establish some ground rules.”

  I spun around to face him. “Ground rules?”

  “Yep. If I’m gonna help you with this, there need to be rules and I need to trust that you’ll follow them or my ass is on the line.”

  I shook my head. “Joe…”

  “I’m helpin’ you, Neely Kate, that part isn’t in dispute. At this point, I need to know what you did and what your boyfriend is doin’ about it. I have half a mind to drag his ass over here to ask him himself.”

  My heart leapt into my throat. “Joe. Don’t.”

  He walked over to the table and sat down. “Rose’ll be done with her shower soon, so you better start spillin’ or she’ll walk in on your confession. And I take it you still want to keep this from her, so let’s get to it.”

  “Confession.” My blood turned to sludge. “Should I get an attorney?” I asked, my voice shaking.

  “What?” he asked in dismay. “No.” He groaned and ran a hand through his hair, making it stand up in weird places. “Poor word choice on my part in light of everything else. I just want to know what happened, Neely Kate.”

  I sat down in my chair and clasped my hands around my coffee cup. “I still don’t think I should tell you everything. If you find out and don’t report it…”

  He leaned forward and held my gaze. “I’ve done a lot of messed-up shit in my life and look at me now—I’m the chief deputy sheriff, even after everything our father did. After everything I did that our father swept under the rug, from DUIs to drunk-and-disorderlies, to assault charges from bar fights.” He leaned forward and held my gaze. “You’ve dealt with far more shit in your life than I have, and you’re a much better person. Whatever you’ve done, we’ll deal with it. Within the family. I swear it.”

  I stared at him in disbelief.

  “Get started.” He glanced up at the ceiling. “I know from experience that Rose likes long showers in the mornings, but she knows Kate’s escaped, so she won’t dally even though I’m here and she’s been avoidin’ me lately.”

  I tasted bitter on my tongue. Had he figured out that she was seeing Skeeter?

  He noticed my reaction. “I suspect her avoidin’ me is Dena’s doin’ too, but that’s beside the point at the moment. All I’m sayin’ is you need to start talkin’.”

  At least he wasn’t accusing Rose of hiding a relationship, which was surprising given that she’d spent the night somewhere else last night.

  Joe mistook my silence for reluctance, although I had plenty of that too. “Neely Kate, I promise I won’t judge you for what you’ve done. I just need the truth.”

  I nodded, then stared down at the shaking coffee cup. “I got myself into a difficult situation that I saw no way of gettin’ out of. My boyfriend wasn’t the man I thought he was, and he used me for…” I struggled with the right words so I didn’t set him off. There was no delicate way to put it. “He gave me to other men for sex.”

  Joe was silent for so long I finally looked up at him to see his reaction. Tears filled his eyes and he took a deep breath when his gaze met mine. “Did you kill your boyfriend?”

  I shook my head, my heart beating so fast I could hardly catch my breath. “No. I killed a man he forced me to have sex with.”

  He swallowed and sat back in his chair. “Self-defense?”

  I glanced away again. “I’m not sure a jury would see it that way.”

  “How’d it happen?”

  The coffee cup started to rattle on the table from my shaking hands.

  Joe reached over and moved the cup to the side and clasped both my hands in his. His warm gaze held mine. “I’ve done plenty of bad things in my life. No judging from me, Neely Kate.”

  “Have you killed a man?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said without blinking. “I killed our father, and it wasn’t self-defense. So if I turn you in, I’m turning in myself too.”

  “You’ve been cleared of any wrongdoin’.”

  “And the authorities are under the assumption I had no other choice. I could have apprehended him, but in that flash of a second, I realized he’d continue to make our lives a living hell. So I didn’t even entertain another option. I just pulled the trigger.” He squeezed my hands tighter. “And here’s the kicker—I’m not the least bit sorry. God help my soul. I don’t regret it for one minute. Now tell me what happened.”

  “My boyfriend sold me to other men for sex,” I repeated, holding his gaze almost in challenge, although for the life of me, I didn’t know why I was feeling confrontational.

  “Does Rose know?”

  I shook my head. “No. She knows something bad happened in Ardmore, but she doesn’t know what. I can’t tell her yet.”

  “Rose won’t judge you, Neely Kate, not that there’s anything to judge. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  I released a bitter laugh. “I did plenty wrong, but I know Rose won’t judge me. I’m just not ready. I can barely stand to tell you.”

  “How long did this go on?”

  “Months and months.”

  He was quiet for a moment, looking perfectly still on the outside, but I saw emotions vacillating in his eyes—anger, grief—but after a few seconds, he was holding my gaze again, perfectly calm as he said, “So there’s a pattern of abuse. I suspect he locked you up at first.”

  I was surprised he knew that, but then I wasn’t. He was good at his job. “But not at the end.”

  “No, because he broke you.” His voice cracked and he took a breath. “The statute of limitations on rape and kidnapping is six years in Arkansas. I’ll ch
eck them for Oklahoma.”

  My eyes flew wide. “What? No!”

  “We’re not lettin’ that bastard get away with this, Neely Kate, and if that supposed boyfriend of yours now was worth his salt, he wouldn’t let him either.”

  “I kicked my old boyfriend’s ass when he showed up to harass me, and my new boyfriend stood back and watched. He knew I needed to prove to myself that Branson couldn’t control me anymore.”

  “You beat him up?”

  I gave him a look of challenge. “Is that so hard to believe?”

  “Hell, no,” he said, his face shining with pride. “You’re a spitfire.”

  “My boyfriend would have preferred to have beat the crap out of Branson himself, and in fact did beat the crap out of his brother. He might have seriously injured him if I hadn’t stopped him.”

  “He kicked his ass in your defense?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “So Branson—the trafficker who pretended to be your boyfriend—set you up with men to have sex with?”

  Tears filled my eyes. I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation with him, but that wasn’t what broke me down. “You called him a trafficker.”

  “He sold you for sex, didn’t he?” he asked in a no-nonsense tone.

  “It didn’t start out that way.”

  “Maybe not, but how soon after you started dating did he start his . . . transactions?”

  “A month or two.”

  “That’s no boyfriend, Neely Kate. Let’s call a spade a spade. He’s a trafficker. I don’t ever want to hear you call him your boyfriend again.”

  I started to cry harder.

  Joe stood and pulled me from my seat, then engulfed me in his arms. “Oh, honey. I wish you’d told me sooner, even though I understand why you didn’t.” He leaned back and looked into my eyes. “Do you still want to keep this from Rose?”

  I nodded.

  “She’s turned off the shower. Leave her a note that we’re goin’ for a walk, and then you can tell me the rest.”

  Chapter 8

  I wrote a quick note and left it by the coffee pot. I also checked my phone, which was now charged to eight percent. Jed had made two calls and sent three texts. Turning my back to Joe, I called him back.

  The phone barely rang once before he answered. “Neely Kate. Are you okay? Why weren’t you answering?”

  “My phone died, but Joe showed up poundin’ on my door to let me know that Kate broke out. I’ll call you back in a bit.”

  “Is Joe there now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does he know any details about her escape?”

  I thought about the body that was still in my basement. “Not yet. I’ll call you later.”

  “Call me the moment he leaves.”

  “I will.”

  As I hung up, Joe said, “This would go a whole lot faster if you just invited your new boyfriend over to share info.”

  I gave him a piercing gaze. “You think I’m gonna fall for that?”

  “Does he love you?”

  “We haven’t gotten that far in our relationship. We only started something when we went to Ardmore. He went with me as a friend.”

  Suspicion covered his face. “He went as your friend? I’m not buyin’ that for one minute. Why’d he really go, and how’d he find out you were goin’ in the first place?”

  This was such a tangled web, I had no idea how to tell him parts and still keep others a secret without leaving huge gaping holes, but plenty of my secrets weren’t mine to share.

  I headed for the back door. “We better get goin’ if we’re gonna evade Rose.”

  He followed me outside.

  “My boyfriend—let’s call him Bill,” I said as I started walking toward the path through the hayfields that connected Rose’s property to Joe’s. “I’ve known him for a while, and he made it clear months back that he was interested in me, but I’m still married to that lowlife Ronnie. Plus, I don’t trust my judgment with men at this point. After Branson and Ronnie… I wasn’t ready to start something. But Bill found out I was goin’ to see Kate and didn’t want me to go alone. So he went with me.”

  “And the reason you’ve been seeing Kate is because she says she has something on you?”

  “After you and I went to see her, she started sendin’ me letters, tellin’ me little things about meetin’ my momma, like what color shirt she was wearing. But the last letter said she knew what happened in Oklahoma and if I didn’t come see her, she was gonna tell everyone.”

  “And Bill went with you?” He dragged out the name as though it was a personal insult against him. “You’d already told him what happened?”

  “No. I didn’t want anyone to know, but my car is crap and I didn’t trust it to go to Little Rock. I planned to let him come with me and ditch him at the hospital and take a Greyhound bus to Ardmore.”

  “Did he go in to see Kate with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’d you get in off the books?”

  I hesitated. “I’d rather not say right now. It’s not pertinent to this story.”

  He looked unconvinced but nodded. “Obviously you didn’t ditch him.”

  “He found me at the bus station and told me he’d take me. I refused, so he bought a bus ticket and insisted on coming with me anyway. I realized he was serious and let him drive me.”

  “Why was he so insistent?”

  “He was worried about me. He said he’d let me do what I needed to do and be there for backup if I needed it.”

  “So he knows you killed a man? I know you said he was helping you…”

  I hesitated, then said, “He helped me dig up the body.”

  Joe stopped walking and turned to me in shock. “And where is that body now?”

  I couldn’t tell him that Jed had removed the body, dug a new hole, and burned it. He might not be so lenient where Jed was concerned. “I’d rather not say.”

  His back stiffened. “You’d rather not say.”

  “I trust you with me, Joe. Maybe that’s pure stupidity on my part based on all the other people who have screwed me over in my life, but there it is. I trust you. But I don’t trust you one iota with Bill. I’m not about to tell you anything to incriminate him.”

  A hard look filled his eyes. “First of all, I’ll do everything in my power to protect you. You can trust me. I swear. But you realize just tellin’ me your boyfriend helped you dig up a body has already incriminated him, right?”

  “Joe,” I said, sounding as exhausted as I felt. “I can’t fight you on this right now. If I’m tellin’ you, I need to do this with as little animosity as possible.”

  Regret washed over his face. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I don’t trust this guy’s motives, but I need to put that on the back burner for now. Is the body in the same place?”

  I studied him for a few seconds, starting to have second thoughts, but the dead man in my basement meant there was no going back. “The body can no longer be found.”

  He started walking again, quiet for a few moments. “Who else knows you killed this man?”

  “Branson’s brother. And Branson, since his brother is his bestie again.”

  “And they could have told anyone. How do they know you killed him?”

  “Beasley, that’s Branson’s brother, found me standin’ next to the body. He knew that the man I was with was plannin’ to hurt me, and he showed up because he felt guilty.”

  He stopped walking again. “Plannin’ to hurt you?”

  I didn’t stop. I just kept going and let him catch up.

  “How did Beasley know that man was plannin’ to hurt you?”

  “There was a contract,” I forced past a lump in my throat. “I refused to sign a waiver to let him do it, so I knew he was likely goin’ to kill me.”

  “Why was he likely to kill you?”

  My voice came out in a whisper. “He liked it rough. Really rough. No safe word.”

  “So he raped you and b
eat you?”

  My eyes burned as I nodded.

  He turned and walked several feet away from me, then stopped and placed his palms on top of his head. After a few seconds, he spun around and asked in a tight voice, “Where is that contract now?”

  “I don’t know.” Why hadn’t I thought of that? But I suspected Jed had. He wasn’t one to let things like that slide.

  “If we can find that contract, we can prove self-defense, Neely Kate.”

  “The man I killed was from oil money, Joe. His family put up a huge reward to find him. If word gets out that I killed him and then hid the body instead of callin’ the police, we both know what’s gonna happen to me. Who will they blame? An ex-stripper with a criminal record or the son of a mega-rich oil man?”

  “Criminal record?”

  My gaze dropped to the dirt path. “Shopliftin’ charge.”

  “That’s nothin’, Neely Kate.”

  I glanced back up at him. “We both know it’s enough. No one else can know I killed him.”

  “So who do you think is in your basement?”

  “I got a call yesterday—a Dallas number—warning me it was in my best interest to call the guy back. Bill”—I almost used Jed’s name—“said it was a number for a PI firm, but he wasn’t so sure it really was.” I pushed out a breath. “So we went to Little Rock and I insisted Kate tell me what she really knew. I told her that someone was askin’ around about me, but a guy had been asking about me around Ardmore, too, a few months ago, so it could have been Kate—”

  “Or it could have been that you stirred something up just by showin’ up,” Joe finished.

  “Yeah.”

  “So who’s the guy in the basement?” he asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine, but I’d say it was the guy askin’ around.” I searched his face. “So what are you gonna do about the body?”

  “Nothin’ yet.”

  I stared up at him in shock. “You’re kiddin’ me.”

  “I want to dig up more information before we report it.” When I started to protest, he held up a hand. “The guy is dead, Neely Kate. One or two days isn’t gonna change anything.”