Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) (6 page)

“Of course not. She’s your family. It’s about time I met her. And her husband.” Tom’s words rang hollow, without the warmth of enthusiasm, and his smile looked forced.

Rachel’s answering smile felt no more genuine on her face.
Just look at us. Just listen to us. You’d think we barely knew each other.
“Thanks. I know you’re busy—”

“Yeah, and I will be for a while. I’ll do my best to spend some time at home, but I can’t promise anything.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Rachel wanted Tom and her sister to spend as little time together as possible. Michelle could be charming when she made the effort, but she could also try the patience of a saint, and Tom was nowhere near sainthood. “It’s just as well that we’ll have some time alone together. I think she needs emotional support more than anything.”

Tom gave Rachel a long, assessing look, the kind of scrutiny that told her he was picking up on every tremor of anxiety. He knew her relationship with Michelle was shaky at best, and he had to realize that only something extraordinary would bring Michelle all the way to Mason County to seek comfort from Rachel.

“You haven’t told me exactly what kind of problem she’s having,” he said. “The longer you stall about telling me, the more I worry. Out with it. What’s going on with your sister?”

Rachel pulled in a deep breath, released it. “Some guy is stalking her.”

“What? Does she know who it is?”

“No, she doesn’t, and she hasn’t been assaulted or anything like that. But she feels threatened.”

“Has she reported it to her local police?”

“Yes,” Rachel said, “but they told her they couldn’t do anything unless she’s attacked or she can prove who’s harassing her. She’s scared, she feels defenseless, and I don’t blame her.”

“What did she tell you? What’s happening?”

Rachel repeated what little she knew. “I know it might not sound like much to the police, but this kind of thing can be terrifying for a woman, even if the nut case never comes near her.” She paused. “And I know from my own experience that sometimes guys like that don’t stop with threatening phone calls.”

“Right. To be on the safe side, you have to assume they’re going to escalate.” Tom frowned and raked his fingers through his hair. “Rachel, has it occurred you that this stalker might follow Michelle? If he’s really obsessed with her, he could show up at our door.”

Good god, Tom was right. Why hadn’t the possibility even entered her mind until now? Rachel wavered. Her first instinct was to argue for the right to shelter her sister, but at the same time some part of her was reaching for an out, hoping Tom would provide it. “Does that mean you don’t want her to come? You don’t think it’s safe?”

“Just hold on now.” Tom raised both hands. “I didn’t say that. She’s welcome, her and her husband both. But I want to get more details from her. Unless there’s some hard evidence, stalking isn’t easy to prove in a legal sense, and the police can’t do much about it.”

“I’m not trying to hand this over to you to fix,” Rachel protested. “You have enough to do without taking on Michelle’s problems.”

“Yeah, right, your sister’s being stalked and you want me to forget I’m a cop and ignore it.” Tom grinned, and the chill in the air between them gave way to a familiar warmth.

Rachel smiled. “Okay, I thought you might be able to do something, or give her some advice that would help. And if you can, I’m sure she’ll appreciate it. But mostly I think she’s just looking for a few days off the guy’s radar.” She scooped up a forkful of rice and went back to eating, hoping to signal her own confidence that it would all work out for the best. A confidence she didn’t feel.

“Well, I have one more place to go before I can call it a day.” As Tom rose to leave, he added, “I think you ought to know that Detective Fagan’s on his way here. He’s been working Shelley’s disappearance.”

Rachel’s fork slipped from her fingers and fell onto her plate with a
clink.
“Have you been talking to him about the Beecher case for the last month? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Tom gripped the back of his chair and sighed. “I’ve only talked to him two or three times about Shelley, and I didn’t see any point in mentioning it. It didn’t have anything to do with you.”

She crumpled her napkin and threw it onto the table. “It’s a good thing you’re working the case now. I wouldn’t trust Fagan to get anybody convicted for Shelley’s murder. Considering his record.”

Tom pushed his chair back under the table. “I’m not trying to defend him, but you know, it’s not always the fault of the police when a jury acquits a guilty person and sends him to a mental hospital instead of jail.”

That sounded like a defense to Rachel, and it stung. Had he been humoring her all along, secretly dismissing her anger at Detective Fagan as unjustified while letting her believe he agreed? She pressed her fingers to her side, where she felt the raised edge of a scar through the fabric of her shirt. The memory seldom invaded her conscious thoughts anymore, but now and then it still ambushed her at night, the whole terrifying experience playing out in her dreams, until the burning pain of the bullet slicing into her body jolted her awake. “Just keep him away from me while he’s here,” she said.

“There’s no reason you have to cross paths.”

Rachel rose, grabbed their plates and carried them to the sink. She took out her anger and disappointment on the dishes, scraping leftovers into the sink, jamming them into the garbage disposal. Tom hovered beside her as if uncertain what to do or say. “Go,” she said. “You have work to do.”

He laid a hand on her shoulder. Rachel froze.

“I don’t want to leave with you mad at me.”

Rachel closed her eyes, exhaled, forced her body to relax. She wasn’t being fair to Tom. Whether he was right or wrong, whether he did it smoothly or clumsily, his first impulse would always be to protect her, and that was all he was trying to do now. “Michelle, Fagan,” she said. “It’s just a lot at once.”

“I know.” Tom leaned to kiss her on the cheek. “We’ll have to make some time to talk. I’ll try not to be too late.”

Rachel turned to kiss him on the lips, reining in the urge to throw her arms around him and hold on. Then he was gone.

***

Driving away from the farm, Tom tried to put Rachel out of his mind for now. He couldn’t shake the feeling, though, that he’d let her down. He wished he’d told her earlier about Fagan working the missing person case so she wouldn’t have been blindsided by the news that the detective was about to show up in Mason County.

As if hitting her with that wasn’t enough, he’d come off sounding negative about her sister. Rachel had surprised him with the news that Michelle would arrive in less than twenty-four hours, and he knew he hadn’t done a good job of hiding his feelings. Rachel loved her sister, but nothing she’d told Tom made him want to have Michelle as a guest in their house. She was dumping a huge emotional burden on Rachel, with her story about being stalked. Tom wasn’t sure he believed any of it. Anonymous calls? Could be kids playing pranks. Things moved around in her office? The cleaning staff could be responsible. But if she really was being stalked, they had to worry about the guy following her to Mason County.

He drove a few miles down the road to the Hadley property. Blake and Maureen lived with their younger son Skeet and Blake’s mother in a big white farmhouse that had been in the family for generations. The farm around it had gradually diminished in size as family members went into other types of work and sold off parcels. Brian, the older of Blake and Maureen’s two sons, hadn’t done any farming, but he’d built a small house of his own on the land when he married. His widow, Grace, still lived there with their two kids, a boy who probably couldn’t remember his father and a girl born shortly after Brian’s murder.

Tom parked in the gravel driveway and mounted the steps to the wide, covered porch. He rapped the brass door knocker, in the shape of a banjo, hard enough to be heard at the back of the house, in case the family was still at the dinner table.

Blake, the tall, broad-shouldered head of the family, swung open the door. When he saw Tom, he crumpled his paper napkin in one hand, raising ropey muscles along his forearm. Before Tom could speak, Blake said, “Soon as I heard about the Beecher girl, I knew you’d be coming around. We’re finishing up supper. Might as well get the interrogation over with, I guess.”

“I didn’t come to interrogate you.” Tom opened the screen door and stepped into a hallway that stretched the length of the house. Photos of several generations of Hadleys, all of them with musical instruments, lined the walls. “I just need to ask you a few questions.”

“Well, you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t see the difference.”

Blake led the way past the unused dining room to the kitchen, where the family sat at a big round table. Maureen, as rangy as her husband, sat next to Blake’s frail mother, who had been in a wheelchair since suffering a stroke. Brian’s widow, Grace, a pale-skinned young woman with brown hair and eyes, sat between her children. Crowded together in the middle of the table were several nearly empty vegetable serving dishes and a platter holding the remains of a chicken.

Skeet, the person Tom most wanted to talk to, wasn’t there.

“Evening,” Tom said to the women. “I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner. Is Skeet around?”

“Out with some friends,” Blake said. He stood behind his wife with his arms folded across his chest.

Tom gave up any hope he’d had of going home to Rachel after he finished here. He wanted to talk to Skeet tonight, and he’d probably have to spend some time tracking him down. “I’d like to speak to the two of you,” he told Blake and Maureen, “and you, Grace. One at a time.”

“Oh no, you don’t.” Blake glared at Tom as if expecting a fight. “You’re not going to separate us and try to get us to contradict each other. You’ll talk to all of us together or you won’t talk to any of us.”

“Fine, if that’s the way you want it,” Tom kept his tone amiable. “I don’t think the kids should be present, though. And I won’t bother Mrs. Hadley.” He nodded toward Blake’s mother, who looked around in confusion, her paralyzed right arm pressed to her waist.

Grace said, “I’m staying here with Grandma and the kids. Lucy and Mark need to finish their dinner.” She placed a hand on each child’s head. Mark, a seven-year-old who had Grace’s pale skin and dark hair, squirmed away as if embarrassed by his mother’s protective gesture.

Tom wouldn’t press Grace to talk to him now. As Brian’s widow, she might seem to have the strongest motive for stopping Shelley’s effort to free his killer, but she was the least likely of this bunch to abduct a girl, strangle her, wrap her in plastic, and dump her in a ravine. Unless, of course, she had help.

Blake and Maureen brushed past Tom and led the way up the hall to the living room. The two of them sat together on the couch, presenting a tense united front. Nudging a toy fire engine out of the way with the toe of his boot, Tom sat in an armchair across the coffee table from them. In no hurry to get started, he glanced around the blandly pleasant room, done in beige and several tones of green, distinguished only by the upright piano in one corner and the family pictures lining the mantel and covering every wall and tabletop. The Hadleys, like the Beechers, cared about family above all else.

Tom figured the silence would get to one of them, and less than a minute passed before Blake blurted, “The Beecher girl’s death hasn’t got anything to do with us.”

“I hope it doesn’t.”

Blake jumped to his feet, fists clenched at his sides. “Whatever you came here to say, spit it out.”

Tom remained seated, looking up at Blake. “When somebody is murdered, the first thing the police have to do is find out whether the victim’s had any disagreements with anybody, whether somebody has a grievance against them. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Sit down.” Maureen grabbed her husband’s wrist. “Let’s answer his questions and be done with it. Then he can get on with finding out who really killed the girl.”

Blake took his place on the couch, but he hunched forward, hands gripping his knees, poised to jump up again at any second.

“Thank you, Mrs. Hadley,” Tom said. “I know you’ve all been unhappy about Shelley’s investigation into Brian’s murder.”

“Investigation!” Blake scoffed. “She’s just a kid. Was. What did she know about investigating crimes? Your own father found enough evidence to get Vance Lankford convicted and locked up for killing our son. Don’t tell me you think your dad got the wrong man.”

“I’m not investigating Brian’s death. As far as I’m concerned, that’s been settled by a judge and jury and his killer is in state prison. My job is to find out—”

The front door slammed. Skeet Hadley charged into the living room, his face red with fury. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Rising from his chair, Tom said, “I’m investigating Shelley Beecher’s murder.”

“And you came straight over here to accuse us.” Skeet jerked off his black leather jacket and flung it on the chair next to Tom. A younger version of his father, Skeet had the same rugged good looks but was a little taller and more muscular, his curly brown hair long enough to hang over his forehead and brush his shirt collar in back. “Well, if you don’t have the evidence to arrest one of us, you can leave right now. You’re not welcome here.”