Accused

EPILOGUE

The red Corvette convertible exited Interstate 10 and drove into Loretta, Louisiana, population one hundred seven, give or take. This was bayou country, the backwater where people lived their entire lives without ever leaving Beauregard Parish. Where the residents were happy to be isolated from the outside world. Where modern conveniences were unknown. Where there's no cable TV because the few dozen mobile homes and single-family homes don't constitute a sizeable enough market for the cable companies to incur the expense of laying lines the one-hundred-twenty-seven miles from Lake Charles, the nearest big city. Where the information superhighway bypassed these people like the railroads bypassed two-bit cowtowns back in the 1800s.

In Loretta, Louisiana, the "Net" is something you catch crawfish in.

The beautiful woman driving the red sports car wore dark sunglasses, a black funeral dress, black heels, black gloves, a black wig and a black scarf tied beneath her chin. The low-slung car kicked up a cloud of dust as she drove down Main Street past old black men sitting in folding chairs out front of shuttered storefronts and spitting tobacco juice into Coca-Cola bottles; they perked up at the sight of a glamorous woman in their quiet town. She parked in front of the Loretta State Bank amp; Trust, the only banking institution in town. It was a family-owned bank that remained open only to provide jobs for the family, a small-town bank where a safe deposit box could be secured for a nominal fee with few questions asked. She got out with a large black satchel and walked inside through the front door past an old black security guard who tipped his hat to her.

"Afternoon, ma'am."

She did not remove her sunglasses. She went directly to the vault entrance manned by another old black security guard and signed in. The guard craned his neck to read her entry through his bifocals then pushed himself out of his chair with great effort and said, "This way, Miz Rawlins." He led her into the vault.

"Box 8," he said. "One of the big ones."

The guard found the box and inserted his master key and turned it. She inserted her box key and turned it. The lock released. The guard removed the oversized box and strained to heft it.

"Must've got gold bricks in here."

He led her to a private room inside the secure confines of the vault. He placed the box on the table with a heavy thud then left her alone, shutting the door behind him. She removed her sunglasses and lifted the top of the box open. The inside was filled not with gold bricks but with neat stacks of $100 bills. Three million dollars. She was thirty-five years old, and she would never again be dependent on a man.

Two days later, Rebecca Fenney stood wearing sunglasses and a black bikini on the flybridge of her fifty-six-foot Riva Sport Yacht, one hand on the wheel, the other on the throttle opened wide, her red hair whipping in the wind, as the sleek craft cut through the waters of the Gulf of Mexico heading south to Cancun.

She loved this boat.

She glanced down at the photo attached to the dash, of her and Trey in happier times, in Hawaii earlier that year when she was still the love of his life. In every woman's life, there's always another woman. First a prostitute in Dallas and then a teenager in Galveston. She sighed.

"You put me in your will then two weeks later you fall in love with Billie Jean Puckett?" She shook her head. "My dearest Trey… Did you really think I was going to let you leave me for a teenager?"

"Innocence is the absence of guilt," the judge had instructed the jury. And the jury had found her innocent. Absent of guilt. And she was-entirely absent of guilt. She felt no guilt at all. Because a woman's life is not lived in a man's world of truth or lie, right or wrong, black or white; a woman's life is lived in shades of gray. Rebecca Fenney had simply done what she had to do to survive in a man's world, what any woman would have done. Sometimes a woman must take matters into her own hands.

Or a knife.