The Fifth Victim

“Where on earth could he be?” Reba whined as she paced the floor in the living room. “How could he leave his own welcome-home party without so much as a by-your-leave?”

Jim glanced across the room at Jamie’s most recent fiancée. Laura Willis sat on the sofa, her eyes downcast and her hands folded in her lap. The girl was a great improvement over some of the other women the boy had brought home—two other fiancées during the past eight years. Jamie wouldn’t marry this girl, just as he hadn’t married the ones that had come before her, but she probably didn’t realize it—not yet. But she would. Possibly tonight. Jim had a pretty good idea where Jamie had gone. Once he was back in Cherokee County, not even a winter storm could keep him away from Jazzy Talbot.

“Do you suppose he had car trouble and that’s why he hasn’t returned?” Laura lifted her head but didn’t make eye contact with either Jim or Reba.

“He could have called,” Reba said. “The phone is not out of order. I checked myself only a few minutes ago.”

“What’s the point of our staying up any longer?” Jim asked. “Jamie will come home when he comes home. That boy doesn’t have a responsible, reliable bone in his body.”

“Jim, really!” Reba’s voice screeched. “What will dear Laura think, hearing you speak about your own grandson in such a manner?”

Dear Laura? Jim chuckled inwardly as his lips twitched in an effort to refrain from smiling. The minute Reba had found out that Laura’s parents were part of the horse-breeding set, the Willis family from Lexington, Kentucky, she’d taken the girl to her bosom. More than anything, Reba wanted Jamie to make a good marriage; and to Reba that meant marrying the right sort of girl from a proper family. She’d certainly seen to it that their son, Jim Jr., and their daughter, Melanie, had married the right sort.

He supposed Jim Jr. and his wife had been moderately happy, especially after Jamie’s birth, but Melanie had been miserable with her state senator husband, the son of one of Reba’s college sorority sisters. Poor little Melanie. The sweetest child. The most devoted of daughters. On her fourth wedding anniversary she’d left her husband; and it had been a dozen years later before anyone had heard from her. Actually, they hadn’t heard from her, only about her. The police in Memphis had phoned to inform them that their daughter was dead. A drug overdose.

“I’m going to call Sheriff Butler.” Reba headed out of the living room.

“Wait up,” Jim called. “You and I both know where that boy is. There’s no use bothering Jacob Butler at this time of night. It’s nearly one o’clock. Besides, by now the roads are probably a holy mess, so Jamie wouldn’t even try to come home tonight.”

“You know where he is?” Laura’s sparkling blue eyes dared a head-on meeting with Jim’s dark gaze.

“No, no, he doesn’t know. He’s just guessing.” Reba turned back into the living room and scurried over to the sofa. She sat beside Laura, then gave Jim a condemning look.

“Hell, Reba, the girl might as well know the truth. She’ll find out soon enough.”

“Shut up, Jim,” Reba snapped shrilly.

“What—what is it that you don’t want me to know? Is there another woman?”

“Yes!” Jim said.

“No!” Reba said simultaneously.

Jim felt sorry for Laura. The girl was so young, probably not a day over twenty-two, and seemed to be madly in love with Jamie. Of course, they all were, every poor fool he’d ever asked to marry him. Most women easily fell under Jamie’s spell, even Jazzy Talbot. Now there was a woman for you! Too bad she didn’t possess a suitable pedigree. If she did, Reba might approve of her. If any woman could ever get Jamie to the altar, it would be Jazzy.

“Jamie has some good friends here in Cherokee County,” Jim said. “One friend in particular. And he usually pays this friend a visit the minute he gets home. That’s probably where he is right now.”

“Is this friend a woman?” Laura asked, her voice a mere whisper.

“Of course not,” Reba said. “It’s just an old high school buddy. The boys played football together.”

Grunting with disgust, Jim rolled his eyes heavenward. Let Reba lie for the boy; he wouldn’t. “You ladies stay up as long as you’d like. I’m going to bed.”

“Jim, please, phone Jamie’s friend and make sure he’s there and safe.” Reba looked at him pleadingly. “He could have had a wreck or—”

“You two go on up and get ready for bed,” Jim said. “I’ll call Jaz—Jay and see if Jamie’s there.”

“Come along, dear.” Reba stood and waited for Laura to rise to her feet, then she laced her arm through the younger woman’s and led her out of the living room, into the foyer, and toward the grand staircase.

After the ladies made it to the landing, Jim meandered into his study. Switching on the banker’s lamp atop his massive oak desk, he sat down in the leather swivel chair and flipped through his Rolodex. He had promised himself the last time Jamie came home after one of his long absences that he wouldn’t keep tabs on the boy. He’d done everything he could to rein the boy in, to make a man of him, and all to no avail. As much as Jim hated to admit it, Jamie was a total failure as a human being. He blamed himself and Reba. They had spoiled him rotten. Given him anything and everything he’d ever wanted. But nothing had been enough; nothing made him happy for very long.

The only thing he’d ever wanted that they hadn’t allowed him to have was a life with Jazzy Talbot. At twenty he’d wanted to marry the girl, but Reba’d had one conniption after another just at the thought.

“She’s nothing but a little white-trash whore,” Reba had said. “And that aunt of hers is as crazy as a Betsy-bug.”

Jim didn’t kid himself into thinking that if they’d let Jamie marry Jazzy, things might have turned out differently. The marriage wouldn’t have lasted. Nothing was permanent in Jamie’s life. He wanted variety, excitement, and challenges. But most of all he wanted what he couldn’t have. That’s why he still wanted Jazzy so damn much. He’d put that poor gal through hell more than once.

Jim lifted the receiver from the phone on his desk, dialed the number, and waited.

She answered on the fifth ring, her voice groggy with sleep. “Yeah?”

“Jazzy, this is Jim Upton.”

“What do you want?”

“Reba’s concerned because Jamie left his welcome-home party and hasn’t returned. By any chance is he there with you?”

Jazzy laughed. “I assume the new fiancée is not in the room with you.”

“No, she and Reba have retired for the night.”

“Jamie’s not here.”

“Do you have any idea where he is?”

“I might.”

“Would you mind telling me?”

Jazzy sighed. “He came by to see me at Jazzy’s Joint. We talked. I told him to get lost. And Jamie being Jamie, he didn’t take it well, so he latched on to the nearest woman he could find to make me jealous.”

“He picked up someone in the bar?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you know—”

“I think her name was April or Amber. She’s been in a few times, but I don’t know her personally. I’d say he’s probably with her.”

“Thank you, Jazzy. And … I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for waking me?”

“Yes, that, too, but mostly sorry that Jamie never had the backbone to stand up to his grandmother and marry you despite her protests.”

Jazzy was silent for several minutes. “Tell that new fiancée of his to run as far and as fast as she can.”

The dial tone buzzed in Big Jim Upton’s ear.