Blood Kin (32 page)

“There must be a reasonable explanation. . . .” Matt rubbed his head. “I have a splitting—”

Daniel swore. “Where is Grace?”

Matthew blinked. “Bailey? Have you seen Bailey?”

“Bailey?” Daniel yanked him upright and shook him. “Why? Why would Grace—”

“I . . . heard someone downstairs . . . after I became ill. I was all right until breakfast. We had French toast, and I drank two cups of coffee. There was a funny taste. Then . . . I started to feel dizzy, and Grace insisted I come back to bed.”

“What about Bailey?”

Matt looked dazed. “Maybe I was dreaming, but after I came back up here, I thought I heard—”

“Bailey's voice?”

“It could have been. Precious barked, and I heard the front door open. It may not have been.” Matthew began to tremble. “You have to find her, Daniel. You need to find Bailey before—”

“Before what? Is she in danger? Why would Grace want to harm her?”

“Beth.” He swallowed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Bailey's Beth's girl. You know Grace was always jealous of Beth. Obsessed with her at times. Sometimes . . . No.” He shook his head. “It's personal.”

“Tell me,” Daniel insisted.

Matthew flushed. “In our most intimate moments . . . when we were doing . . . having marital relations, she used to beg me to call her Beth. God help me . . . sometimes I did. It seemed to make her so happy.”

Daniel was so angry, he could barely keep from smashing his fist into his brother's face. “And you never thought that was bizarre?”

“Odd, yes,” he admitted, “but not completely crazy. She always thought I was still in love with Beth.”

Daniel swore. “The woman's been dead for years. How could—”

“You don't understand. Beth and I . . . Before Grace and I became a couple, I was fond of Bailey's mother—maybe even thought I was in . . . I was nineteen,
a freshman at a Bible college. What did I know about love at nineteen?”

“And Grace has brooded on that—been jealous all this time?”

Matt nodded. “She suspects that Bailey . . .”

“What? What does Grace suspect?”

“That Bailey . . . that's she's my natural daughter.”

Daniel gripped his brother's shoulders until Matt winced with pain. “Why? Were you and Beth—”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know?” Daniel had the urge to shake the answer out of his brother. “How can you not know? Did you have unprotected sex with Beth or not?”

“I don't remember. I was drunk . . . out of my head,” he blubbered. “I never meant . . . I just wanted to be one of guys. You know how it was—being the minister's son, always being judged by our father. Just once I wanted the others to accept me. To be like—”

“What are you talking about?”

Matthew dropped his head into his hands. “Joe told me they were having a party . . . on the beach. At the island. Grace said I should bring Beth. Somebody had liquor and . . . I'd never drunk anything but beer before. I didn't think it would . . .” Sobs racked him. “It made it worse that Grace and I were never able to have children. Grace wanted a son . . . a boy to carry on . . . to be pastor after—”

“To hell with that.” Daniel crouched in front of his brother. “How could you not know if you were intimate with Beth? Was she your—”

“My girlfriend, yes . . . before Grace. It was all so innocent.”

“Innocent?” Daniel swore. “Somebody got Beth pregnant. She died having some man's child. Was it yours?”
He felt suddenly as though he wanted to make a run for the toilet his brother had just thrown up in. If Matt had fathered Bailey, then that made her his niece. He'd not only fallen in love with his niece; he'd just had sex with her.

Matt collapsed onto the mattress again like a puppet with cut strings. “Sleepy. Really sleepy.”

“Not yet. You can't sleep yet! Is she dangerous? Could Grace hurt Bailey?”

“Dangerous.” His brother's words slurred drunkenly. “Unpredictable. Nervous. She had such low self-esteem. Her doctors never thought she was an actual threat to anyone but herself.”

“Nervous, hell. Is there a chance Grace would hurt Bailey?” He shook Matt. “Talk to me. Didn't she spend time in a mental hospital?”

“A few weeks, but that was years ago. Not a sanitarium, a church treatment center . . .”

“Why, Matt? Why was she committed?”

“We'd . . . she'd been so sure she was pregnant, and then she started her period. She cut her wrist with a razor blade. By the time I found her she'd lost so much blood. She wasn't rational . . . shouting that Beth had come back from the grave to kill her. Beth had been dead for years. I was afraid Grace might harm herself, so I hospitalized her.”

“So she is capable of violence?”

“Not against anyone else. She threatened to kill herself—that's why I put her into the center. But she responded to treatment . . . got better.”

“Better, hell! Someone took a shot at us yesterday! Could it have been Grace?”

“Shot at you?” Matt's eyes widened in shock. “No . . . not my Grace. She . . . I should have given her a child.
Prayed for one. We both did. She would have been all right if—”

“And you let Beth go through that alone?”

“No, I didn't know. I swear. No one did. We argued. After that one day . . . we argued. I never knew that Beth was pregnant.”

“You knew it when she died! Why didn't you come forth then? Why didn't you testify at Will's trial? Tell what happened? Tell the jury that you and Beth were intimate?”

“I couldn't because I didn't know. It got out of hand. We were having fun on the beach. First Grace and Joe, and then Grace and Creed. I was cherry, Daniel. I'd never . . . I don't know how it happened, but things just escalated. The girls were as drunk as—”

“And you never told anyone that you and Beth—”

“No . . . Couldn't . . . couldn't . . . Can you imagine Father's shame?” Matthew groaned. “I couldn't put him and Mother through that. It would have destroyed his ministry and any chance I had of finishing college. And Will Tawes would have killed me if he thought—”

“If he thought you were the father of her child? And you let him take the blame? Let people think he—”

“Nobody thought Will would be found guilty.”

“You stood back and let people accuse him of having sex with Beth?”

“No. They never charged Will with that. They said he beat her—not sexual assault. It wasn't the same thing.”

“Wasn't it? Or were you such a coward it was easy to let the lies grow bigger and bigger?” He grabbed Matt, pulled him to his feet, and shook him as hard as the dog was shaking the tissue box. “How was it, then? Explain it to me, you sniveling coward!”

“You don't understand. . . . It was just a party. Joe
and Creed brought hard liquor. Emery was there too. You know I didn't drink. And Grace . . . you know how she was. . . .”

“How was she?”

“She'd been raised without structure . . . as wild as all the Widdowsons.”

“She'd do it with anyone.”

“No, that's not true.”

“And Beth Tawes? Was she like that?”

Matthew shook his head. “She was so sweet . . . so young . . . just fifteen. Will never let her date. I didn't mean—”

Daniel shook him again. “Wake up. I have to know. What happened?”

“It got out of hand. . . . We did things. Grace said it was all right, that Beth was okay with it . . . that she . . . she wanted it. You know how it was. They said things about Grace . . . but they were a lie. Just because her sisters were loose didn't mean . . .” Matt sagged forward and Daniel caught him. “Her stepfather . . . her brother . . . But Grace wasn't like that . . . not her fault.”

Daniel dragged his brother to his feet and back down the hall to push him, still in his pajamas, into the claw-footed tub. He turned on the cold water full force, and Matt cried out:“Turn it off! Turn it off! You're killing me.”

“I'll kill you, you whining bastard, if you don't tell me what Grace is up to!” Then a terrible thought seized him. “Where does Grace keep her deer rifle?”

Matt sputtered. “Freezing. Let me out!”

“Where's the damn rifle? What caliber is it? Is it a three-oh-eight?”

Matt's teeth began to chatter. He tried to climb out of the tub.

“Where does she keep her gun?”

“Not deer season.”

“Where's the damned rifle?”

“She has two, the Winchester and a Ruger ten-twenty-two. Ohh, I think I'm going to be sick—”

Daniel pulled his brother upright and handed him a towel. “The rifle, Matt?”

“Closet. Under the stairs.”

Daniel raced down the steps and threw open the closet door. A gun rack with brackets for two weapons stretched across the back wall. Both gun racks were empty, but an open empty Remington .308 ammunition box lay on the floor beside a single .22 cartridge.

As Bailey and Grace neared Elizabeth's dock in the small, open Boston Whaler, Bailey couldn't imagine what Daniel could have found. She should have been excited, and she was, but she was also afraid that she was going to be seasick and throw up all over Grace's spotlessly clean deck.

The sun was bright, the sky a brilliant azure blue with racing white clouds, but the wind was strong off the bay, the seas rougher than usual, and the water dark. Between the creepy memory of having nearly been killed in a boat the day before and this afternoon's bouncing over the choppy waves, she wasn't certain she ever wanted to set foot in a boat again.

“Whatever Daniel has to show us, it had better be good,” Bailey said between yawns. She couldn't imagine why she felt so lethargic. Anticipation and all the caffeine she'd consumed today should have supercharged her, but instead she found herself fighting to keep her eyes open.

Grace nodded vigorously as she pulled back on the throttle and slowed the engine. “He said it would be something you'll remember for the rest of your life.” This was the first time Bailey had seen Daniel's sister-in-law in deck shoes, jeans, and a shirt. The tall, big-boned, usually prissy woman not only looked good, but she maneuvered the boat into the slip as easily as parking a car on a city street.

“You make this look so simple.”

“It is simple if you've been doing it nearly fifty years, like I have. Never did come natural to Matthew, though. Of course, his mother's people were from the Eastern Shore. Kent County. What can you expect?” Grace chuckled. “You sit tight while I snug us to the post. I don't want to lose you overboard. The current runs pretty fast through this gut.”

Something's going to run through my gut if I don't get on solid ground soon
, Bailey thought. She'd never been seasick before, but she felt as though she was now.

“Give me your hand,” Grace said.

Bailey regarded the ladder nailed against the side of the dock; it seemed to be moving up and down with the waves. “I'm not sure I can step—”

A pair of mallards were flushed from under the structure, startling Bailey as they flew up. She jerked back, nearly losing her balance, but Grace's long fingers gripped hers so tightly that one of Grace's rings cut into Bailey's hand. Grace gave a heave and Bailey found herself standing on the salt-treated walkway.

“Whoo,” Bailey said. The muscles in her legs felt weak and wobbly. “I don't know what's come over me. I'm so tired.”

“Being on the water does that to some people.”
Grace scrambled back into the open boat, picked up a long, thin, fabric case that Bailey hadn't noticed earlier, and brought it up on the wooden planks.

Bailey's eyelids felt heavy as she watched Grace secure both bow and stern to the posts with heavy lines. Someone had cut and nailed sections of old tires, painted white, along the side of the dock to keep the force of the water from damaging vessels by banging them against the frame. Bailey had noticed the cushioning when she'd been here with Daniel, and it seemed a clever idea, especially with a boat as nice as Grace's. “I'm finished here. Come on,” Grace said.

What was it Daniel had said? “Nothing on Tawes is as simple as it seems.” That was certainly true. Bailey belonged to a gym in Newark and she worked out faithfully twice a week, but she'd never developed the muscle strength and agility that this fifty-something minister's wife seemed to come by naturally.

Grace led the way up the sloping lawn, and Bailey had a hard time keeping pace with her longer stride. Either the slight hill was steeper than it seemed or the ground was slippery, because Bailey felt as though she might make a misstep and fall on her butt if she weren't careful. She kept expecting to see Daniel open the front door or come around the house, but he didn't, so she assumed he must be inside. “Didn't he give you any hinc . . .
hint
”—she corrected herself—“of what he'd found?”

“No.” Grace looked back at her and smiled.

The smile made Bailey uneasy. What was wrong with her? She swayed, but Grace caught her by the arm.

“Careful, honey. It's easy to turn an ankle on these old walks. See how some of the bricks are broken and crumbling?” Grace pointed down at the ground where
grass sprouted in the cracks of the path. “Best have Daniel rip them all up and lay down new ones.”

“I hope I'm not coming down with whatever Matthew has. I don't feel good at all.”

“Something's going around,” Grace agreed. “That's for certain. You never can tell. People traveling from one place to another by plane. They bring all kinds of germs into the country.”

They entered by way of the oversize door to the wide front entrance hall, and Grace paused at the bottom of the steps. “Daniel! We're here!” she called, and then in a lower voice said, “Place certainly does look good. I believe he must have used ammonia on that old light fixture. That crystal hasn't shone so nice in years.”