Last Kiss Goodbye

And he’d do whatever necessary to make sure it didn’t explode in his face.

IT TOOK MATT A WEEK to start acclimating into the world, renew his license, buy an SUV and track down Ivy Stanton. Apparently she worked at a small magazine called Southern Scrapbooks, a publication that showcased regional and small-town folklore, sites, restaurants, entertainment venues and other unique attractions, especially mysteries or oddities associated with small Southern towns.

As he knocked on the door to her home in downtown Chattanooga, he studied the Victorian house she’d rented near the river. The scenic, homey-looking place robbed his breath for a minute. A fall wreath made of fake leaves decorated the door, while a bird feeder swayed in the breeze in a nearby dogwood tree. White wicker rocking chairs flanked the doorway, and a chaise sat kitty-cornered beside a tea table, as if inviting someone to lounge for a lazy afternoon with a glass of sweet iced tea beneath the twirling ceiling fans on the porch.

Bitterness swelled inside him.

The beauty around him once again reminded him of the life he’d been denied. Latching onto his anger, he knocked on the door a second time, but no one answered. Irritated, he climbed back in his car and drove toward the magazine office. It was only a few blocks away, a nondescript, small building that was much older than Ivy’s house, tucked in a historic area that held many small businesses.

Five minutes later, he sucked in his breath as he strode into the office. A hum of voices swirled from a back room. In the outer area, a rail-thin brunette leaned over a table studying what seemed to be a photograph layout of restaurants and cafés.

He cleared his throat. “Excuse me, but where can I find Iv—Ann Ivy?”

The woman pursed her lips and glanced at him, and he was grateful he hadn’t completely slipped and used her name instead of the pseudonym she’d adopted for the magazine.

“She’s not here. I’m Miss Evans. Can I help you?”

“I really need to talk to Miss Ivy myself,” Matt said. “When will she be back?”

“I’m not sure. She went out of town to research a story.”

He chewed the inside of his cheek. “She contacted me about an upcoming issue, and I need to discuss some layouts with her.”

The woman’s cell phone rang, and she glanced at it, then back up, looking harried. “Listen, I’m really busy—”

“If you can just tell me where she went, I’ll track her down.”

“She’s on assignment. Some little Appalachian town called Kudzu Hollow.” Miss Evans reached in her pocket and handed him a business card. “Here’s her cell number.”

He pasted on a phony grin, then thanked her and left, his stomach churning.

Ivy had gone back to Kudzu Hollow. That was the last place he’d expected to find her. Why had she returned home now? And why would she do a story on the town?

Unless she’d seen the reports of his release…

Had she actually returned to talk to him?

Or did she believe he was guilty? If so, was she trying to find a way to put him back in prison?

His chest tightened at the mere thought. He’d die before he’d go back inside.

An hour and a half later, he was coasting up the highway toward eastern Tennessee, growing nearer and nearer his destination. A few phone calls, and he’d discovered Ivy had rented a cabin on the mountain. He’d reserved a cabin beside her.

Horns blared, a siren wailed in the distance and rap music pounded through the speakers of the black pickup in front of him. An eighteen-wheeler nearly cut Matt off, boxing him in next to a cement truck.

His claustrophobia mounted.

One day the real killer would know what it was like to lie in a cramped, six-by-six cell and piss in a pot in front of strangers. He would know what it was like to suffer.

To lose everyone he cared about. His entire future.

Yes, Matt Mahoney had been innocent when he’d gone to jail.

But he wasn’t innocent any longer.

Now he would finally confront Ivy Stanton and force her to admit the truth about what had happened that night. Find out why the hell she hadn’t spoken up years ago and defended him.

Then he’d make her pay for keeping quiet.

THE VOICES WOULDN’T BE quiet.

And the color red was back.

But only in Ivy’s dreams.

They had become more frequent since she’d seen that newscast of Matt Mahoney’s release. And even more intense since she’d come to Kudzu Hollow the week before. Nightmares of blood and screams, of that last kiss goodbye, the cold unbending skin of her mother’s lips, the eyes wide open in death…

Ivy shivered, willing away the vivid images as she clutched the metal fence surrounding the junkyard, but the photos and article chronicling her parents’ brutal murders remained etched in her mind forever.

There was no turning back now. She’d come here for answers and she couldn’t leave until she had them. The only way for her to move forward in her life was to travel backward in time.

She’d spent the last week incognito, using her pseudonym, Ann Ivy, so the locals around Kudzu Hollow wouldn’t know her true identity. She’d driven the countryside and town taking photographs and studying the people. Soon, maybe she’d gather enough nerve to approach the locals about her parents’ murders.

And to visit their graves.

But one step at a time.

Having finally gotten up the courage to stop by the junkyard today, she studied the landscape. Rusted and stripped vehicles of all sizes and models filled the overgrown yard, everything from Corvettes to pickups and broken-down school buses that had transported their last group of kids. Weeds choked the land, and kudzu climbed like snakes up the broken windows, over tires and hubcaps and scattered car parts. Tall trees dropped dead leaves, adding a layer of brown and gold to the dilapidated site, a reminder that winter was on its way. Winter and death.

Ivy tried to banish her anxiety, then imagined her father working the lot, selling off parts as needed, trying to rebuild an engine in the station wagon he’d kept, huddling with a cigarette as he swiped at grease on his coveralls. That brief memory seemed to stir the pungent air with the scent of those filterless Camels he liked so much, the smell of his booze, the sound of his angry booming voice as his boots pounded on the squeaky floor of the trailer.

She shuddered and clutched her jacket around her, willing other memories to follow, but the door slammed shut with a vicious slap, and there was nothing but emptiness. And the sense that she had run from the trailer to the junkyard more than once. Taken solace in the rusted old cars. Pretended they weren’t broken, that they could magically transport her far away from her miserable home.

Frustrated, she yanked her gaze sideways, beyond the junkyard to the trailer park where she’d lived. Weeds choked the brown grass, and the trailers were faded and rusted, although families still dwelled in some of the same single-and double-wide mobile homes that had stood for twenty years. A few new ones had been added, she noted, although the rain had washed mud and leaves onto the aluminum sides, aging them automatically. Several small children in ratty jackets and jeans played chase in the yards just as she had probably done, and two neighborhood women sat on a sagging porch, chatting. Tricycles and plastic bats and toys littered the ground, and a couple of stray cats slept beside a double-wide while a mangy dog scrounged for food in the overflowing garbage.

Although the scenery seemed familiar, Ivy couldn’t remember anything about that fatal night her parents died.

Except that last kiss goodbye.

Suddenly another image returned, this one more disturbing. She had been running through the junkyard, had fallen in the mud. A big boy suddenly appeared, piercing her with his dark brown eyes. Bad-boy Matt Mahoney. He reached for her, and she froze in terror, the world spinning and spinning until she spiraled downward into a black abyss of nothingness. The tunnel of darkness sucked her into its vortex, and the memory crashed to a halt.

The familiar rush of renewed panic that had started after Miss Nellie’s death squeezed Ivy’s chest again. The accompanying light-headedness, the flash of white dots before her eyes, the inability to breathe—she couldn’t control it. A sudden gust of wind rattled the power lines, and gray, mottled storm clouds rolled over the tops of the ridges. Rain splattered the earth, the howling wind blowing leaves and debris across the brown grass. Tree branches swayed with its force, lightning zigzagged across the turbulent sky, illuminating the jagged peaks, which rose like a fortress guarding the town’s secrets. The earth suddenly rumbled, and the ground shook beneath her feet.

Her heart pounded. What was that noise? An earthquake maybe? A tornado?

Or the ghosts of the people who had died in the town, the ghosts that Miss Nellie had warned her about? The spirits that wandered the junkyard, trapped beneath the kudzu, begging to escape…

NIGHT HAD SET IN by the time Matt reached the mountains. Although the majestic scenery and fresh fall air was a welcome reprieve from the city, a storm brewed on the horizon. Thunderclouds rumbled across the sky, and lightning flashed above the treetops. As he neared the hollow, rain slashed the Pathfinder, drilling the ground. It was almost as if Satan had sent this storm to remind him of that awful last night he’d spent in Kudzu Hollow.

A glutton for punishment, he drove toward the trailer park, unable to face the town just yet. The graveyard for cars still sat in the same location, but weeds and kudzu had overtaken the place. Apparently, no one had kept up Roy Stanton’s business.

Sweat rolled down Matt’s neck as he bounced over the ruts in the road and neared his old home. His mother’s parting words echoed in his mind: I’m so ashamed of you, Matt. Your brothers are thugs, and I knew you wasn’t any good, but I never thought you’d be a killer.

She hadn’t believed him innocent any more than the locals had. Her lack of faith had cut him to the core.

Determined to show her the papers exonerating him, he veered into the parking lot and stopped in front of his old homestead. Weeds filled the yard, and what little grass was left was patchy, with mud holes big enough for a small kid to get mired in. Rust stains colored the silver aluminum, a broken windowpane marked the front, and red mud caked the steps to the stoop. What had he expected? For his mother to have inherited some money and be living in a mansion?

For her to have hung a Welcome Home banner out for him?

He cut the engine, inhaled a deep breath, grabbed the papers and climbed out. Ducking against the downpour, he ran up the rickety steps and knocked. His heart pounded as he waited. But no one answered.

He knocked again, then glanced sideways. Someone nudged the front window curtain back slightly. His mother, years older, and now fully white-haired, with prominent wrinkles around her mouth, peered through the opening. When she saw him, her gray eyes widened in fear.

“Go away, boy. I don’t want you bothering me.”

Pain shot through his chest. “Come on, Mom. Let me in. It’s Matt.”

“I told you to go away. I don’t want trouble.”

He waved the papers like a white flag, begging the enemy for a truce. “But I’m free. Just read this. The judge cleared me, and these papers prove it. I told you I was innocent.”

A moment of hesitation followed, then his mother shook her bony finger at him. “I said go away, or I’ll call the sheriff. I don’t have sons anymore. They’re all dead to me.”

Her words slammed into him with a force worse than the punches he’d taken in prison.

Gritting his teeth, he jogged down the steps, grief digging at his throat. Rain sluiced off him as he plowed through the mud to the Pathfinder. When he got inside, he buried his head in his hands, desolation and shame searing him like a hot poker. He’d hoped like hell that at least his mother would believe him now. But the papers hadn’t changed her opinion.

Which meant the rest of the people in town probably hadn’t changed theirs, either.

A SUDDEN MOMENT of déjà vu struck Ivy. Had it been raining the night her parents died? Her stomach knotted, the onset of another attack imminent. Beneath the wind, she detected a cry echoing from the hills, but the sound might have been her own thready voice trilling out a prayer to the heavens.

Whirling around, she ran toward her car, shivering and eager to return to the cabin she’d rented. Darkness descended quickly, the shadows stealing daylight and reminding her that night would soon trap her.

And so would her nightmares—the blood, the screams, the mangled bodies.

She cranked up the defogger, squinting through the blinding rain as she drove around the mountain and into Kudzu Hollow. The town seemed tiny to her after living in Chattanooga for the last few years. The park, the brick storefronts, sheriff’s office and small diner were reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting. At first glance, the town appeared to be the perfect place to raise a family. And the cabin on the creek where she was staying would be a romantic spot for a young couple to honeymoon.

But Miss Nellie had been right. The rumors about the ghosts and the killings destroyed any romanticism. Whispers of death floated from beneath the green leafy kudzu vines that crawled along walls and the ground. Locals claimed that nothing could kill the kudzu. It was parasitic, killing its own host. Just as the people couldn’t destroy the evil here, or force the ghosts to move on to another realm. Just as the evil drew the devil to the town and the families killed their own.

A flashing sign for a local pub named Ole Peculiar drew her eye, but she headed to The Rattlesnake Diner on the next block instead. Determined to learn more about the locals, she veered into the graveled parking lot, climbed out and rushed up the steps, shaking water from her hair as she entered.

A short, sturdy, middle-aged waitress wearing a colorful dress, white apron and a name tag that read Daisy, approached her, her short gray curls framing a tired face. “Hello again, Miss Ann. You back to take more pictures?”

Ivy smiled. “Not at the moment. I’m starving.”

Daisy removed the pencil tucked in her brown bouffant hair. “Well, what’ll it be, honey? Rattlesnake stew?”

Ivy swallowed. She’d thought the dish a legend, but apparently the cook, Boone, an old-timer who’d lived in the mountains for decades, had inherited the recipe from his grandmother. “A bowl of your vegetable soup. And sweet iced tea, please.”

Daisy nodded, then waddled away, and Ivy twisted her hands together as she studied the handmade arts and crafts along one wall. Local artisans’ paintings, photographs and jewelry decorated the café in an artful arrangement, with price tags attached. Photographs and sketches of local scenery included valleys and gorges in the mountain, a little white chapel at the top of a cliff, the creek behind her cabin, a water wheel, then one of the junkyard. A charcoal sketch of Rattlesnake Mountain hung in the center, the etchings of the natural indentations that resembled a nest of rattlesnakes along the stone surface, sent a chill up her spine.

According to her research, the originators of the folklore and black magic in the area had been birthed by a small group of witches who believed that the rocks, mountains, trees and rivers were all inhabited by spirits—spirits that never knew human form. Rattlesnake Mountain once held pits of rattlesnakes that the practitioners of hoodoo and voodoo used for their evil spells. The sorcerers were given a Christian name, then a secret name, that was used only for black magic purposes.

Daisy delivered the soup. “Here you go, sweetie.”

“Thanks. This looks delicious.”

“You still working on the scrapbook on the town?” Daisy asked.

Ivy nodded and sipped her iced tea. “Yes.”

“My daughter and I are making a scrapbook of my grandbaby. We’re even thinking of starting a scrapbooking club.”

“Really?” Ivy smiled. “My mother used to belong to one of those.” At least her adopted mother, Miss Nellie, had. That club and the popularity of scrapbooking had actually triggered her idea for the magazine.

“You see that chapel?” Daisy pointed to the photograph on the wall. “The locals call it the Chapel of Forever. It’s where Hughie and I got married. Legend says that if you marry in that chapel, your marriage will last through eternity.”

Ivy made a mental note to add that bit of folklore to her magazine feature article. “Do you know when or how the legend got started?”

“No, but I’ll check around and see if someone else does. Maybe Miss Gussy. She’s been around longer than me.”

The bell on the door tinkled, and they both glanced up as an odd, elderly woman stepped inside. Dressed in all black, in a long skirt that nearly touched the floor, a hat and veil that half covered her wrinkled face, and army boots with thick socks rolled over the edges, she was almost spooky. Two other ladies whispered and gave her a wide berth as they left. Two teenagers got up and hurried toward the door. Another woman followed the eccentric lady in, the polar opposite in appearance. Platinum-blond hair formed a pile of curls on top of her head, gaudy costume jewelry adorned every finger and a skintight, bloodred dress dipped low enough to reveal massive cleavage that a man could get lost in. Shiny white, knee-high boots hugged her killer legs and completed the outfit.

“I cannot believe the two of them have the nerve to show up here,” Daisy said.

Ivy frowned. “Who are they?”

“The one in the red, that’s Talulah. She’s the head mistress down on Red Row.”

“Red Row?”

Daisy leaned closer. “The row of trailers where all her prostitutes live. A seedy place that no decent citizen would ever visit.”

But the men probably kept them in business, Ivy thought, as the two women moved to the rear and grabbed a booth, ignoring the stares and blatant whispers.

“And the other woman?”

“Lady Bella Rue. She calls herself a root doctor. Folks say she’s a lady of darkness, that she’s connected to the moon, the spirits and the devil himself. Even killed her own boy, though no one could prove it.”

Ivy sipped her tea, her curiosity spiked.

“I think folks around here were just too scared of her to pursue it,” Daisy continued. “They say she’s a seer to boot.”

“You mean she can see the future?”

Daisy nodded. “Some people think she cast a spell on the town—that’s what brings all the evil when it rains. The kudzu sparkles yellow sometimes, then other times has this metallic blue-green mist rising from it. Folks say Lady Bella Rue’s tears of guilt turn the kudzu those odd colors, or maybe it’s devil’s breath.” Daisy hesitated long enough to inhale a breath. “Better stay away from her. If you anger her, she might put a hex on you. Once she does, bad luck and death will follow you the rest of your life.”

Ivy’s hand trembled as she placed her glass on the table. Bad luck and death had already been a part of her life, and had brought her here now.

A strained silence fell across the room, the rain pounding the roof accentuating the tension. It was almost as if the townspeople sensed winter and death were imminent. That these two women’s presence in town represented a bad omen.

A middle-aged lady at the next table waved Daisy over to her side. Ivy ate her soup while she listened. “I heard that Mahoney boy has been released.”

Daisy refilled their tea, ice clinking. “Some fancy lawyer got him out. I just hope he doesn’t come back to town and stir up trouble.”

“Land sakes alive. We breathed a lot easier when he was in jail. We’ll have to go back to locking our doors at night.”

“You’re right. We don’t need his kind around,” another woman said. “Although I thought he did us a service when he killed those Stantons. The woman was a slut. I heard she worked for Talulah on Red Row.”

Ivy clenched her hands in her lap, anger knifing through her. Her mother had not been a slut! She’d loved Ivy. Had brushed her hair and played dolls with her and collected Santa Clauses. She’d strung glittery Christmas lights all around the trailer and tried to make it pretty. They’d even baked homemade sugar cookies and strung popcorn for the tree they’d cut down in the woods.

She had not deserved to die.

And what about Matt Mahoney? Had he deserved to go to jail for murder?

Not according to Abram Willis and the judge who’d released him…

ARTHUR BOLES BURIED his face behind the local newspaper and sipped his coffee, unable to focus on the words on the printed page for studying the young woman talking to Daisy. Ivy Stanton.

He would have recognized her anywhere. After all, he’d kept tabs on her all these years that she’d lived with Nellie. Years during which he had worried that she would remember something, that she’d return to Kudzu Hollow, see his face and spill her guts about that night. Years where he wished he’d silenced her already.

Years where he’d thought of her mother’s lush wanton body, the way Lily Stanton had taken him into her nest and given him pleasure without asking for anything but money. God, he’d missed her over the years. Missed her lips touching his, her mouth closing around his cock, the sight of her spreading herself for him to bury his length in. Missed the way her tits had swayed when she rode him, and the way she’d use her tongue to make him come. And the way her eyes had gone all melting and soft when he’d returned the pleasure.

Not that there hadn’t been replacements. Red Row still stood to serve its customers. The anonymity was an important part of the business. And if one of the whores did decide to talk, well, hell, he’d shut her up like he had the others.

And how ironic. Talulah, that old root doctor and Ivy Stanton all in one room together. All held the secrets to his past. Maybe the key to his future.

All expendable…

But he still couldn’t help himself from staring at Ivy Stanton all grown up. She’d turned into a beautiful, seductive woman. Not in the same bold, untamed way her mama had, for an air of innocence surrounded her. A naivete her mother had never possessed. Oh, maybe she had once, but she’d lost it long before he’d come along. Lily had not been lily-white. She had even taken the innocence of others and been proud of it. Young boys ripe for a woman’s body had come to her, and she had taught them well.

His cock swelled, and he rubbed it beneath the table, grateful it was dark and he’d taken a booth in the back corner. He could almost taste the sweetness of Ivy Stanton, the unbridled passion she had yet to discover. The fear and tension radiating from her slender body. The feel of those silky blond curls tickling his bare belly.

Maybe he would toy with Ivy a little. See if she did remember him. And just as her mother had taken the innocence of the young men in town, his son for one, he’d steal that innocence from her daughter….

UNEASY WITH THE CLIMATE in the diner, Ivy paid her bill and rushed outside, tugging her raincoat around her. Suddenly aware of the shadows, she darted toward her car, climbed in, locked the door and started the engine. The fine hairs at the nape of her neck prickled.

Someone was watching her.

Rattled, Ivy checked the street and sidewalks for strangers, but here everyone was a stranger. A lone figure clad in a black hooded sweatshirt stood beneath the awning of the pub, smoking a cigarette. Was he watching her?

She pulled onto Main Street, then drove through town, slowing as the rain intensified. Bright lights nearly blinded her from behind as a car suddenly raced up on her tail. She tensed, checking the mirror, and glanced around the darkened street. In Chattanooga, she sometimes sensed she was being followed, but had finally chalked her uneasiness up to Miss Nellie’s constant paranoia.