Disturbing the Dead (11 page)
“Don’t you dare compare my wife to that—”
“I won’t stand here while you slander a kindhearted woman who always made our brother happy.”
“Oh, I’m sure she made Adam
happy
, in one way at least.”
“Stop this!” Natalie jumped up, her blonde hair swinging as she looked from her husband to her brother-in-law. “Don’t you realize what kind of impression you’re giving?”
Tom wanted to wrestle her back into her chair and tape her mouth shut. He cursed silently when he saw that Ed was pulling himself together, damping down his anger.
“Was money the only reason you didn’t like Pauline?” Tom asked Robert. “Did she do something to you personally?”
“I don’t have to explain anything to you.”
“No, you don’t,” Tom said, “but I think you’d be wise to try. You’ve expressed a strong animosity toward Pauline. You had a reason to want her dead and out of the way.”
Robert’s mouth fell open and a flush stained his cheeks a blotchy red. “You can’t come in here and accuse me of murder.”
“Answer my questions and this’ll be easier on both of us.”
Rigid in his chair, Robert expelled air through his nostrils in short bursts, like a bull revving up. For a moment he said nothing, then he blurted, “Pauline Turner was Melungeon trash, and she dragged my brother down with her.”
“Good God, Robert,” Ed exclaimed, “remember who you’re talking to.”
“It’s nothing I haven’t heard before,” Tom said, and he was surprised at how calmly he reacted to Robert’s ugly words. “I figure everybody needs somebody to look down on. For some, it’s Melungeons. For others, it’s bankers.”
Robert drew back defensively. “I wasn’t talking about people like you and your father, who try to make something of themselves.”
“That’s generous of you.”
Tom’s tone was mild, but the sarcasm wasn’t lost on Robert, and his jaw set in a hard line. After a moment of silence, though, he seemed to abandon the idea of counterattack. “I was talking about parasites like the Turners.”
“Let’s go, Natalie,” Ed said. “I’m not listening to this.”
“I want you to stay,” Tom said. “I need to talk to you.”
But Ed grabbed their coats from the brass rack and pulled the door open for his wife. “Come out to our house anytime,” he told Tom.
Then they were gone.
Damn it.
He wasn’t likely to get the two brothers together again and mad enough to air the family’s dirty linen in front of a cop.
But Robert was willing to keep talking. When the door closed, he went on, “She turned my grandparents’ fine old house into a pigsty. The yard was full of dog turds. You couldn’t walk through the door without gagging on the smell of cat piss. She was always dragging strays home with her. It got to the point where people were leaving boxes full of kittens and puppies on the doorstep.”
Tom thought of Holly, Pauline’s niece, who obviously shared her aunt’s love of animals. “So you think Adam was forced to lower his standards?”
“He certainly wasn’t raised to live that way. Our mother was appalled.”
“She didn’t like Pauline either?”
Robert’s mouth worked as if he were shifting around something too sour to swallow. “Not at first.”
“Oh? You mean your mother changed her mind?”
The words came out as a grudging admission. “She learned to tolerate the woman because of the child.”
“Pauline and Adam’s daughter?”
Robert’s short laugh held bitterness and derision. “Well, she was Pauline’s daughter, anyway.”
Tom frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Draw your own conclusions.”
“Consider me dense, Mr. McClure. You’ll have to spell it out.”
“My mother accepted Mary Lee as her granddaughter, but I never believed she was Adam’s child. And no, I don’t have any proof, if you’re about to ask. Maybe you should be looking for Mary Lee’s real father. There’s probably quite a tale to be told about Pauline’s secret life. You might find her killer if you take the trouble to find out what kind of woman she really was.”
“Did you tell my father you believed Adam wasn’t Mary Lee’s father?”
“Of course I did.”
Tom couldn’t have overlooked or forgotten something as explosive as Robert McClure’s allegation. The information simply wasn’t in the case records. Why would his father leave it out? Whom had he been protecting?
If anybody knew the truth about Pauline’s daughter, Reed Durham would.
After leaving the bank, Tom turned left and walked up Main Street through swirling snow flurries to the law office of Durham & McCullough. Durham had been Pauline’s attorney and confidant and he still represented Mary Lee in a limited way.
He had also been a good friend to Tom’s father and was Tom’s boss for a few weeks, ten years before. During the last summer of Pauline McClure’s life, Tom was a University of Virginia student between his sophomore and junior years, undecided about his future. Law seemed the most attractive possibility, and he’d taken a job with Durham & McCullough to learn more about the profession. Never before or since had he endured such unrelieved tedium. When he headed back to school in early September, his biggest worry had been the choice of a career alternative. His father, at the same time, was falling into the grip of an obsession with Pauline’s disappearance.
Hoping the exercise would clear the painkiller fog from his head, Tom passed up the office building’s ancient elevator in favor of four flights of stairs.
When he walked in, the three female employees greeted him with a chorus of concern. Tom held up his free hand to silence them. “I’m okay, I’m fine.” He turned to Debbie Schiller, the pretty receptionist with long wheat-colored hair. She was Brandon’s fiancée. “I’m glad Brandon wasn’t hurt.”
To Tom’s dismay, her blue eyes filled with tears and her lower lip quivered. “Me too. When he told me about it, I nearly fainted.” Forcing a smile, she added, “I guess I have to grow some backbone if I’m going to be a policeman’s wife.”
Tom was trying to come up with something reassuring to say when Reed Durham threw open his office door. “Hey, Tommy. Come on in, son.” Despite the early hour, he already looked a mess. The tail of his blue shirt ballooned from his waistband and emphasized a spreading middle, his sleeves were rolled to the elbow, and his gray-streaked brown hair spilled across his forehead. “How’re you feeling? You caught the bastard yet?”
“Not yet. But we will.”
Durham ushered him into a room that looked more like a sportsman’s den than an office. Durham’s grandest trophy, a mounted marlin his wife wouldn’t allow in their home, took up most of one wall. Smaller mounted fish swam across the opposite wall, next to framed degrees and the same sort of civic association awards Robert McClure displayed. Among the family photos on the credenza behind the desk was an eight-by-ten shot of Durham and Tom’s father, grinning with fake pride as they held up two tiny bass.
“Here you go.” Durham snagged a set of keys from his cluttered desktop and tossed them to Tom. “I’ll leave it to you to figure out which key fits which lock. The house has been broken into a couple of times, and I’ve had enough extra locks installed to keep out squatters. I hope and pray Mary Lee will finally sell it now. I never thought I’d still be looking after the place at this late date.”
Tom jingled the ring of keys. Eight or nine, at least. He stashed them in his pants pocket.
Durham scooped a handful of darts from a drawer, walked around the desk and took aim at the target on the inside of his door. He scored a bull’s-eye.
Tom took a few darts from Durham. His own shot landed outside the center of the target. “You’re better at this than I’ll ever be.”
“Ah, but you’re a better marksman. I wish I could handle a gun the way you do.” As soon as the words were out, Durham grimaced. “Oops. Sorry.”
Tom laughed. “I wish I could say you oughta see the other guy, but I never got a shot off.” He unbuttoned his uniform jacket to lessen the pressure on his throbbing wound. The jacket, which he’d dug out of a storage box, had originally belonged to his brother and was a little tight around Tom’s more muscular shoulders and upper arms.
Durham hit the bull’s-eye again. Tom’s second dart landed closer, on the center ring but not inside it. Durham collected all the darts from the board and offered half to Tom.
“I had an interesting talk with Robert McClure before I came here,” Tom said.
“Oh, man. I can imagine.” This time Durham’s aim was off, and his shot landed in one of the outer rings. “I don’t get the stink of bile coming off you, so I guess you managed to duck when he started spewing it out.”
“He told me Mary Lee isn’t Adam’s daughter.”
Durham grunted. “Singing his favorite refrain.”
Tom struck the bull’s-eye with his dart, and laughed in surprise. “Do you believe she’s Adam’s daughter?”
“Of course she is.” Durham’s next shot missed the board and the dart struck the door with a
thunk
. “Well, damn,” he muttered. “Robert thought a woman like Pauline, from her background, well, she
had
to be the kind who’d run around on her husband. It was all lies. Robert was trying to get something he wasn’t entitled to.”
Tom tended to believe Durham, but he needed more information before making up his mind about the kind of woman Pauline was. “Adam never had any doubt that Mary Lee was his daughter?”
“No. He was crazy about her, called her his little princess. The child made his mother ecstatic. Adam was her favorite son, and before Pauline came along she’d just about despaired of him ever settling down and having kids. Too bad she died so soon after Adam did. The two of them kept Robert in check. With her gone, Robert went after Pauline like a cat after a bird.”
“Tell me about the challenge to Adam’s will.”
“It was the worst thing I’ve ever been through as a lawyer. I’m not cut out for nasty court fights.” Durham turned away from the dart board and moved to his desk. He plopped into his capacious chair, the black leather squeaking under his weight.
Leaning against an oak file cabinet, Tom asked, “How did Ed feel about what Robert was doing?”
“Totally against it.”
“How close were Ed and Pauline?”
Durham’s jaw tensed and his gaze shifted to the sky beyond the window. “They were friendly.”
The same uninformative statement Tom had heard from Mary Lee, with the same undercurrent of something unspoken. He debated whether to pursue the subject and decided to save his questions about a possible affair for Ed McClure. He wandered to the big marlin on the wall and gazed into one of its glass eyes. “Robert became president of the bank when Adam died, right?”
“Yeah, but he wasn’t satisfied. He wanted everything—the money and land their parents left to Adam, the very house Pauline lived in.”
Tom turned away from the fish. “What made him think he could keep Pauline from inheriting her husband’s estate?”
“Robert claimed she was drugging Adam right from the start, so he wasn’t responsible for his actions when he married her or when he wrote his will.”
“What?” Tom said with a startled laugh. “Are you serious?”
“Oh, yeah. Robert even suggested, never came right out and said it, but suggested real strongly that she might’ve killed Adam.”
Tom’s amusement faded. None of this was in the case record either. He stepped over to the window and watched snowflakes blow against the glass and melt into rivulets. What else had his father left out of the file? And why? He looked back at Durham. “How was she supposed to have killed him?”
“Oh…” Durham waggled his hands. “Some poison that could cause a heart attack, but no test could detect it. It was crazy. Adam had a plain old garden-variety coronary, like his father before him. They both died fairly young.” He laughed. “With any luck, Robert will too.”
Tom sat in a burgundy leather chair facing the desk. “Robert says Pauline was Melungeon trash, and she dragged Adam down to her level. He claims their house was a pigsty, with all those animals in it.”
“The goddamn son of a—” The rest of Durham’s words strangled in his throat. He drew a deep breath before he spoke again. “Pauline was the sweetest, most softhearted girl I ever met. And Robert’s a fussy little old lady. Pauline’s house was always clean. She had her housekeeper in to do the place top to bottom three times a week.”
“Do you think Robert could’ve killed Pauline?” Tom asked, putting aside the mystery of the unidentified second victim for the moment. “Is he capable of it?”
With a wry smile, Durham said, “I can’t see him getting his hands dirty. I doubt he takes out his own garbage.”
“He could have hired somebody.”
“Like O’Dell, you mean?” Durham shrugged. “It’s a thought.”
“Her killing looks like something personal.” Tom absently rubbed his aching arm. “The house wasn’t robbed. I don’t see how anybody benefited financially except Mary Lee, and she had to wait seven years to inherit. The other skull we found makes me think there’s some angle nobody’s even considered.”
“You’ll have a hell of a job running it down after all this time.” Durham shook his head and hair spilled across his brow again.
“I’d better get going.” Tom rose. “I told Brandon to pick me up out front right about now. Pauline’s housekeeper’s meeting us at the house.”
“Lila Barker? Oh, lord.” Durham frowned and laughed at the same time. “I doubt you’ll get anything useful out of her.”
“She probably spent more time with Pauline than anybody else. She might remember something she didn’t tell my dad.”
“Yeah, maybe, but…” Durham rubbed his face with both hands as if fighting sudden exhaustion. “Just don’t believe everything you hear.”
“Somebody else told me the same thing. I still don’t know what I’m being warned about.”
“Just be careful, Tom. You never know what’ll jump up and bite you on the ass if you turn over the wrong rock.”
The little brown and white mutt trembled on the steel examining table. Rachel stroked his head and murmured, “It’s okay, Teddy, it’s okay.”
He seemed oblivious to her reassuring touch. He looked neither at Rachel nor at Holly by her side, but fixed his eyes on his owner, an elderly man named Johnson.
“He pees all over the house,” Johnson said. “Since my wife died, he won’t mind me at all.”
At the sound of his master’s angry voice, the dog shuddered under Rachel’s hand and curled his tail between his legs.
A faint whimper escaped Holly. When Rachel glanced at her, the girl’s eyes were filled with tears.
Oh, no.
Holly had done well all morning, observing silently, getting a feel for the work, helping in little ways when Rachel gave half a dozen cats and dogs routine exams and vaccines. But maybe exposing her to an animal in trouble was too much for her first day.
The dog’s problem was obvious, but if Rachel stated it baldly the man would take offense. “He’s an old animal,” she said, “and he spent his entire life as your wife’s pet. I’m sure in his own way he misses her as much as you do.” Rachel imagined dog and man in an all-too-quiet house, each isolated in his grief.
“She called him her baby.” Johnson’s voice thickened, and his eyes grew moist behind his glasses.
“Are you disciplining him?”
“I give him a little tap so he’ll know he’s done something wrong.”
“You hit him?” Holly asked in a horrified voice. “No wonder he’s scared to death of you.”
Johnson’s face went red with outrage.
“Anybody who’d hit a little animal—”
“Holly,” Rachel said, “please go wait for me in my office.”
Holly clapped a hand over her mouth, threw Rachel a teary apologetic look, and fled from the room.
“I’m just trying to make him behave,” Johnson protested.
His harsh tone brought on wild tremors in the dog. Rachel pulled the animal against her, hoping the gentle contact would help. “He doesn’t understand why you’re punishing him. All he knows is that the person he loved all his life has disappeared. He has no one but you now, and he probably thinks you hate him.”
Johnson’s expression shifted from indignation to confusion. He reached out to the dog. The animal pressed against Rachel and issued a string of frantic whines. “My lord,” Johnson said.
Rachel suppressed a sigh and began her education of the dog’s owner. Johnson’s resistance melted and he began to listen to her. When he left she was satisfied the dog’s life would be better from now on.
Glad to have the busy morning behind her, Rachel went looking for Holly. She found the girl in the office, standing at the window and watching Johnson cross the parking lot with his dog tucked under his arm. Holly turned reluctantly. Like the little mutt, she seemed to cringe in anticipation of a blow. “Are you gonna fire me?”
“Of course not.”
Holly’s shoulders slumped with relief. This job, and all it represented, meant so much to her. Rachel would find a way to help her thrive here, even if it meant giving her lessons in courtesy and self-restraint.
“The dog’s going to be all right,” Rachel said. “But what would have happened to him if we’d made the owner mad enough to walk out without listening to me?”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Goddard.” Holly’s fingers plucked at the green polo shirt that was part of her employee uniform. “I couldn’t help myself. I can’t stand to see somebody hurtin’ a little animal.”
“I understand.” Rachel leaned against her desk. “When I was a kid, I’d ring the neighbors’ doorbells and lecture them about keeping their cats indoors so they wouldn’t be killed by cars.”
Holly’s laugh came out in a delighted gust. “I did stuff like that, too. But my grandma said—” Her face sobered. “She made me stop.”
“My mother made me stop too,” Rachel said, smiling although the memory was a bitter one. “You’ve got the right instincts, but I’ve learned there are better ways to make people listen than by accusing them.”
Holly nodded. “I won’t do anything like that again, I promise.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Rachel pushed away from the desk. “Will you clean the exam table so it’ll be ready when—”
Raised voices from the outer office interrupted her. Shannon, at the front desk, said, “Sir, please, you’ll have to wait till—”
“Get out of my way!” a man shouted. “I’ll find her myself.”
Rachel froze. Fear hit her like a punch, took away her breath. She’d heard those same words so many times in her memory, in her nightmares, that for a moment she was thrown back into the past, where a wild-eyed young man with a pistol had come looking for her.
“It’s Uncle Jack!” Holly cried, backing against a wall.
Rachel forced her mind to the present and clenched her hands to stop their shaking. It was just another of Holly’s crazy relatives. She could deal with this. She could.
Shannon cried, “Dr. Goddard!”
Rachel raced out to the reception area. Shannon stood next to the desk, both hands raised to stop the stocky man who leaned menacingly over her.
“Can I help you, sir?” Rachel asked.
He faced her, his hands curling into fists. He was probably in his fifties, with sun-weathered skin and graying black hair, but he looked fit enough to do some damage.
“I come to get Holly and take her home,” he said. “This girl says she’s in the office. Where is it?”
“What’s your name, please?”
Shannon scooted back behind the desk.
“Jack Watford. Holly’s uncle. Her grandma wants Holly back home right now.”
What on earth was wrong with these people? Why were they so determined to hold on to Holly? “She’s an adult, Mr. Watford. She can make her own choices, and she’s chosen to work here.”
“I’m takin’ her home. Now where’s the office?” Rachel was about to answer when Watford threw back his head and bellowed, “Holly! You come out here right now!”
“Call the police,” Rachel told Shannon, “and tell them we have an intruder causing a disturbance.” The Mountainview City Police had only one officer, Lloyd Jarrett, on duty during weekdays, and he was probably nodding off at his desk right now.
“You don’t have to call the police,” Holly said from the office doorway. “I don’t want to cause any trouble.”
Oh, God. Why didn’t Holly have the sense to stay out of sight?
“Come on,” Watford said, “let’s go home. I’ll come back and pick up your stuff.”
Holly shuffled forward, arms wrapping her waist, her head down.
Behind the desk, Shannon spoke into the phone, summoning help.
“Holly,” Rachel said, “do you want to stay here or do you want to go back to your grandmother’s house? Tell me the truth.”
When Holly raised her head, her cheeks were wet with tears. “You know I want to stay here. But—”
“Then it’s settled.” She had to make Holly believe that her own wishes mattered, that she didn’t have to wait meekly for other people to decide her fate. Rachel told Watford, “You have your answer. I want you to leave.”
“This ain’t none of your business,” he said. “Come on, Holly.”
Rachel held up a hand to stop Holly in her tracks. She asked Watford, “Why do you want to drag her back home against her will? Why can’t her family be happy she has a job and she’s starting a life for herself?”
Watford leaned closer and spoke in a low growl. “You leave our family alone, you hear me?”
The beer and tobacco stink of his breath made her queasy and she had to swallow hard before she could speak. “Get out of my clinic right now, or I’ll have the police throw you out.” She envisioned Lloyd Jarrett, short and skinny and probably incapable of throwing anybody out of any place. She prayed that his gun and uniform would make an impression.
“Holly,” Watford said, “come on now.”
“No.”
The single defiant little word made Rachel want to shout with joy.
Stand up to him.
You can do it.
“What did you say to me, girl?” Watford demanded.
Don’t let him bully you.
“I said no.” Holly’s voice gathered strength. “I’m stayin’ here.”
“The hell you are.” Watford bumped Rachel aside, and she stumbled against the reception desk. Holly yelped when his hand closed around her wrist.
Her blood roaring in her ears, Rachel lunged at him. She grabbed his free arm and wrenched it backward, at the same time planting a foot behind his knee and pushing hard. His legs went out from under him, he let go of Holly and tumbled to the floor.
The front door opened with a jingle of the bell, and Officer Lloyd Jarrett stepped in. “Well, now.” He looked from Rachel to Watford. “What seems to be the trouble?”
Tom kept an eye out for potholes as Brandon maneuvered the cruiser up the long driveway to Pauline McClure’s house. Brandon’s wild driving on the way out had jolted the pain in Tom’s arm up to full strength, and he didn’t need any more shocks. He blew out a breath of relief when they cleared the last crater and Brandon slammed on the brakes.
The gray stone mansion and a detached four-car garage sat in a clearing circled by five acres of woods.
As they got out, Tom said, “A full-scale massacre could have happened out here and nobody would’ve seen or heard a thing.”
Brandon stared open-mouthed at the house. “Oh, man. I think I saw this place in some horror movie.”
Boarded-up windows and dead vines spider-webbing the walls gave the house an atmosphere of forbidding isolation, emphasized by a gray sky and swirling snow flurries. In the front yard garden, mounds of fallen leaves rotted around blackened coneflower stalks, but Tom could imagine the plot as a spectacular swath of summer color when Pauline had been alive to tend it.
They took the flagstone walk through the garden to the covered porch. Mounting the steps ahead of Brandon, Tom pulled out the keys Durham had given him. In addition to its original lock, the oak door had two deadbolts, installed after Pauline’s disappearance to keep out vandals and squatters. Tom began the trial and error process of finding the right key for each lock.
A couple of toots from a car horn made Tom and Brandon turn. A twenty-year-old Plymouth Reliant, painted neon yellow, bounced up the driveway without missing a single pothole and shuddered to a stop behind the cruiser.
A tall, angular black woman in a red coat unfolded herself from the car. “Good day, gentlemen,” she called. “I trust I’m not tardy.” She slung the strap of a purse onto her shoulder and strode up the walk.
The housekeeper? Not exactly what Tom had expected.
When she reached them, Tom realized his first impression of a young, energetic woman had been wrong, at least as far as age went. The braids coiled on her head were as much gray as black, and the skin around her luminous dark eyes formed soft pouches, with wrinkles at the corners.
“Mrs. Barker?”
“I am.” She sucked in a breath and released it. “I vowed I would never set foot in this house again. But when I heard your voice on the telephone, I felt as if your father was speaking to me through you. I knew in my heart I had to help you find the monster who murdered that gentle lady.” She added with no change in tone, “I can sense it even now.”
“Sense what?” Tom asked.
Her eyes met his. “Evil. Can’t you feel it? The very air we’re breathing is drenched with evil.”
Jesus Christ, Tom thought, one of those. Next she’d be claiming she had “the sight” and wasn’t bound by the natural world. Brandon gaped at her as if she’d brought the horror movie set to life.
“Thanks for coming out,” Tom said. “Let me get the door open and we’ll go in.” So far he’d managed to open only the top lock.
Mrs. Barker’s icy hand on his stopped him. “Allow me.” She rotated her open palm above the keys, then touched two with a fingertip. “This silver one is for the middle lock. This blue one fits the bottom.”
Tom tried them. The bolts slid back. He turned the knob and pushed the door open. He answered Brandon’s astonished expression with a shrug. Maybe Mrs. Barker was an amateur locksmith.
Tom gestured for the woman to enter the house, but she stood with her eyes shut and her head thrown back. “The moment I turned into the driveway that morning, a terrible foreboding swept through me. It grew stronger and stronger as I approached the house. I wanted to flee, but something told me I had to go inside. I rang the bell, but there was no answer. I knocked, and there was no answer. Something made me try the door, and I discovered it was unlocked.”
“Was that unusual?” Tom asked.
Her eyes opened. “It was unprecedented. Mrs. McClure believed a woman living alone in the country must take precautions.”
Tom studied Mrs. Barker, wondering what this articulate, intelligent woman’s personal story was. He vaguely recalled hearing about her popularity as a fortune teller for rich and poor alike. Why had she been cleaning Pauline’s house for a living? He pulled his mind back on track. “What did you do when you found the door unlocked?”
“I entered the house.” Spine stiff and chin up, Mrs. Barker marched past Tom and Brandon into the foyer.
Tom flipped a switch next to the door and the brass chandelier lit up. The foyer was larger than the living rooms of more modest houses. Peacocks fanned gaudy tails across the wallpaper. The silence seemed a physical sensation, a heaviness in the air. Motes swirled in the light, and dust invaded Tom’s nostrils.
“I stood here,” Mrs. Barker said. “I called Mrs. McClure’s name, but she didn’t answer. Two of the cats ran down the stairs and rubbed against my legs.”
When she glanced down, Tom did too, half-expecting to see the cats.
“I looked in the living room.” Mrs. Barker stepped through the doorway to the right.
The living room had no ceiling light, and in the gloom Tom saw only a large empty space, wall color indiscernible, the outlines of boarded-up Palladian windows faintly visible. His imagination supplied fine furniture and carpet, elaborate draperies, gold-framed paintings.
“The lamps were on,” Mrs. Barker said. “One of the dogs was sleeping on the rug. One of the cats was in the front window. Mrs. McClure wasn’t here. I went to the dining room next.”
She turned, the folds of her red coat swishing around her body, and crossed the foyer. Tom and Brandon followed. With both hands, Mrs. Barker slid open oak doors to reveal another empty room. Tom felt for a light switch and brought a crystal chandelier to life. Thirty people could have been seated comfortably in the dining room. A sad picture came to mind of the widowed Pauline, alone after sending her daughter to boarding school, sitting at an enormous table to eat her meals.
“I began to fear she was ill or injured,” Mrs. Barker said. “I rushed through the rest of the house, searching for her.”
She led Tom and Brandon across the foyer and down a hallway past a library, a den, a powder room. At the end of the hall, Mrs. Barker stopped short of the last closed door. Her eyes clouded with an emotion Tom would have called fear if he’d seen any reason for her to be afraid.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She licked her lips, her gaze fixed on the door. “I would prefer not to go into the kitchen.”
“Why?”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
More bad vibes, probably. Tom felt them, too, crawling like millipede legs up his spine, but he told himself his reaction was normal in a house where a murder—maybe two—had been committed. “Did you see something out of the ordinary in the kitchen?”
“It’s not only what I saw or didn’t see. It’s what I felt. I feel it now. A terrible anger. And hatred. Evil, consuming hatred.”
Brandon backed against the wall and gaped at the kitchen door.
Jesus Christ,
Tom thought,
am I the only sane one here?
“What did you see in the kitchen?”
“The cats and dogs hadn’t been fed. I knew for certain something was terribly wrong. Mrs. McClure would never have neglected them.”
“Did you see any signs of a struggle, anything broken or out of place?”
She shook her head. “No. But the animals refused to follow me into the kitchen.”
Tom trusted the animals’ instincts a lot more than Mrs. Barker’s emotional sensors. Pauline might not have been killed in the kitchen, but something sure as hell happened there. “I want to take a look, but you can wait here. Brandon, you coming?”
Startled, Brandon lurched away from the wall, hitched up his gun belt, squared his shoulders. “Yes, sir.”
Tom nudged open the swinging door, aware that his father’s hand had probably performed the same motion ten years before, that he was retracing his father’s invisible footsteps.
Tom circled the kitchen while Brandon hung back at the door. If the windows hadn’t been boarded up, the kitchen might feel cozy and cheerful, with its strawberry vine wallpaper, light oak cabinets, and breakfast nook. Maybe Pauline had eaten her solitary meals here instead of the cavernous dining room.
After Pauline’s disappearance, the State Police crime scene techs had found no blood in the kitchen—or anywhere else in the house. But something about this room disturbed Tom. His heartbeat quickened.
Jesus Christ.
He shook his head to clear it. He was letting Mrs. Barker spook him.
“What?” Brandon said. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing.” Tom searched for keys to fit the three locks on the back door. When he finally swung it open, he looked out onto a flagstone patio, a lawn, and another garden. Pauline might have been killed outside. Probably was, if an ax was the weapon. He imagined her struggling with her assailant in the kitchen, breaking free and frantically throwing open the back door, escaping into the night. He saw her killer pursuing her, grabbing an ax that leaned against a stack of firewood outside the door, running after Pauline with the weapon raised and ready to strike. Maybe she had tripped, fallen—
If she’d bled on the ground, the killer could have shoveled up the evidence and hauled it away. But the crime scene report didn’t mention disturbed soil in the yard.
A gust of freezing air struck Tom on its way into the house. He saw three possibilities: Pauline was murdered somewhere else; the killer had expertly covered his tracks and concealed the spot where Pauline died; or the investigation was so slipshod that vital evidence on her property was overlooked. Tom didn’t want to think about the third scenario, or what it would say about his father as the cop in charge.
“Mind if I take a look around outside?” Brandon asked.
“Go ahead.” Brandon probably wanted to get out of the house because it was giving him the creeps. Tom locked the back door after Brandon and returned to the hallway.
Mrs. Barker wasn’t there. He found her deep in the shadows of the living room, standing at the fireplace with her dark hands spread on the white marble mantel.
She spoke without looking around. “I feel her presence so strongly. On a snowy winter’s day like this, she would curl up in her big chair by the fire, with her animals around her, and knit or read. She said she found peace in this room.”
The shadows near the fireplace seemed to float before Tom’s eyes, shifting into an image of a small woman nestled in a massive wing chair.
Get a grip, Bridger.
He unhooked his flashlight from his belt and switched it on, and the apparition vanished. He cleared his throat. “What did you do after checking the kitchen that morning?”
“I looked upstairs. I looked in the garage, and her car was there. Then I called Mr. Durham.”
Durham wasn’t mentioned in the initial report. “You didn’t call the police first?”
“Mrs. McClure told me to notify Mr. Durham if anything ever happened to her, if she was in an accident or incapacitated, and he would see to everything.” Mrs. Barker paused, and when she spoke again her voice quavered. “She said he was her rock, the one person she could depend on.”
“Didn’t he tell you to call the police?”
“Not right then. He told me to wait for him. I fed the animals while I waited. I had to put their food in the dining room to persuade them to eat. Mr. Durham arrived and we went through the house together. We talked about the possibility that she had been kidnapped for ransom. Then he told me to call your father.”
Why didn’t Durham call? Tom would rather hear the explanation from Reed Durham than Mrs. Barker.
He asked, “Had Shackleford and O’Dell been working here the day before?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t here.”
“How would you describe her relationships with them?”
Mrs. Barker frowned at a spot Tom couldn’t see on the mantel and rubbed it with her fingertips. “Cordial, from all appearances. But I didn’t care for Shackleford. I had a strong sense of corruption—immorality, criminality. It surrounded him like a black aura.”
“Why did Pauline have scum like him working for her?”
Mrs. Barker abandoned her cleaning effort and faced Tom. “It was a way to make certain the child was provided for.”
“What child?”
“Her sister Jean’s little girl. Holly. Troy Shackleford is her father, but I’m sure you know that. Mrs. McClure had an arrangement with Shackleford. Most of what she paid him was passed on to Jean for the child’s support.”
Interesting. Maybe Pauline didn’t have much contact with her family, but she’d cared enough to find an indirect way to help her sister and niece.
Before Tom could pursue this line of thought, Mrs. Barker went on, “But I was always uneasy about having him around. He’s the one I would have predicted would do something like this—”
When she reached toward his wounded arm, Tom took an unthinking step backward, out of her range. His flashlight beam bounced with his movement, illuminating her faint, brief smile. She lowered her hand.
“I have to admit I’m quite surprised that Rudy O’Dell shot you,” she said, “and people don’t surprise me very often. He was so shy and tongue-tied I rarely heard him utter a sensible word. Harmless as a baby rabbit. Something has driven him to this extreme. Something…wicked.”