The Best Way to Lose by Janet Dailey Page A

and others were standing or tossingFrisbees. The local school band was putting on a summer concert from the bandstand in the park. Brassy notes filled the air, sometimes discordant. A hot summer sun held its angle in the sky, stubbornly lingering above the horizon.
    A scattering of lethargic applause followed the final note of a song. Trace stopped in the shade of an old oak on the edge of the park and rolled the ice cream around in his mouth. There was a break in the band’s playing, a shuffling of music and licking of reeds. His glance wandered idly over the park grounds with their panoramic view of the bridge spanning the Mississippi River below and the green cluster of trees on the opposite bank.
    His attention lingered on the stone marker, erected to commemorate the historic old trail known as the Natchez Trace. It had been established by the Indians long before any white men ever set foot on the continent, part of a trade route that extended as far north as the Great Lakes. In the settling of the nation it had been a post road for the mail, connecting Natchez to Nashville and creating a highway in the wilderness.
    An announcement was being made from the bandstand and Trace let his gaze wander back to it. Only snatches of the words reached his hearing, the rest of it being carried away by the rushing breeze. He couldn’t make heads or tails out of what was being said, but he recognized a couple of the local dignitaries on the bandstand. Some sort of plaque wasbeing presented to a dark-haired woman in a cherry-red dress.
    His tongue paused in its lick of the ice cream, the sight of Pilar momentarily jolting him. A restlessness ran through his nerve ends, coiling and uncoiling in frissons of tension. In the last two years he’d seen her, maybe, three times and the last one over seven months ago. Yet nothing had changed—not the feelings she aroused in him nor her stiffly cordial attitude toward him.
    His gaze locked onto her form, searching for little details. She was wearing her hair shorter; its length brushed the tops of her shoulders now instead of cascading onto her back, and its style was fuller and softer. The material of her cherry-colored dress was a shiny fabric like silk, padded at the shoulders in an old-fashioned style with short capped sleeves. The soft wind caressed it, blowing it against her figure to outline the shape of her hips and thighs, then swirling it to hide them.
    There was a movement in his side vision, and Trace glanced off his shoulder to see a stocky policeman ambling past him. More white hairs than iron gray were sticking out from under his cap. The short-sleeved shirt of his summer uniform was clinging damply to his thickening middle. Dark sunglasses protected his eyes, but it didn’t keep Trace from recognizing him.
    “Hey, Digger.” It was a lazily drawled greeting that brought the man up short.
    There was an initial blankness in Digger’sexpression while Trace came under the scrutiny of those sunglasses before a surprised smile broke across Digger’s face. He changed his course to wander over and stand next to Trace.
    “Hell, I didn’t know it was you standing there,” he declared and rested his pudgy hands on his hips to let the air circulate around his body. “When did you make it back into town?”
    “I grabbed a ride on the
Sophie B
when she left New Orleans.” His attention strayed to the bandstand while he answered the question. “She dropped me under-the-hill about an hour ago.”
    “Are you gonna be in town for a spell? You’ve been comin’ and goin’ like a yo-yo lately. In and out, in and out. You’ve done more travelin’ since you became a respectable businessman than you ever did before,” Digger observed. “And here I thought you were gonna drop anchor.”
    “The whole system needed a major overhaul. It should start getting smoother.” He munched on the sugar cone while he continued to watch the dark-haired woman on the bandstand.
    “A lot of people