Midnight Secrets (37 page)

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that until this is over, I’m living here.”

He prepared himself, sure that his blunt statement would get her back up. She surprised the hell out of him when she said, “I like the sound of that.”

A gut punch of arousal stole his breath. Damn, he wanted her. Here. Now. On the table, stripped bare, begging for pleasure. Zach downed his beverage in two gulps, hoping the ice-cold drink would diminish the heat. Until they got some things settled between them, that wasn’t going to happen.

She slid the notepad across the table. “I can’t believe any of them would do this. They all seem so harmless and have been so kind to me.”

His eyes scanned the list. “I agree, but you know as well as anyone that looks can be deceiving.”

She nodded. “Seems like every few months, I prosecute someone for a heinous crime while everyone else claims shock, saying he seemed like such a nice, quiet guy.” Savannah pushed away from the table and stood. “I need to go back and check on Gibby.”

“I’ll drive you. Maybe she’ll be alert enough to talk.”

“The doctor said she should be able to come home in a couple of days. I’m thinking about asking her if she wants to stay here.”

“I’d let her go home. She’ll be more comfortable there. Brody can protect her.”

“Sammie and Bri can help out, too. They’ll be here tomorrow.”

He was surprised Savannah didn’t suggest that Sammie or Bri would be protection enough for her, too. Not that it would do any good. Until this case was closed, he would be with her day and night. After that? Zach pushed aside the thought.

Fury swept through Savannah once more as she gazed down at Gibby. The bruises and swelling were more apparent than ever. Her sweet aunt was almost unrecognizable. How could anyone hurt an innocent old lady?

“I promise you, honey, it looks worse than it is,” Gibby insisted.

Savannah refused to believe this wasn’t her fault. If she had been more discreet, none of this would have happened. Was this the reason her grandfather had never pursued the truth? A killer in the midst of Midnight seemed ludicrous. Evil wasn’t limited to urban areas, she knew; it was just that her hometown had always seemed to stay the same. Now she knew that sameness had been hiding her parents’ killers.

“Miss Gibby, you feel up to talking?” Zach asked.

Gibby tried to sit up and then gasped. Savannah was there immediately to stop her and then raised the bed slightly. Zach put another pillow behind her head to help prop her up.

“I’ll try my best, Zach, but I can’t say I remember much. If I rightly recall, I was getting ready for bed and Samson started meowing real loud. He only does that if something upsets him. I went to pick him up and heard something out in the hallway. I opened the door and didn’t see anything, so I stepped out of the bedroom and went to the top of the stairs. I felt someone’s hands push me forward. Next thing I knew, I was waking up here in the hospital.”

“The doctor said you told him you’d fallen,” Zach said.

“Well, I wasn’t about to tell him what really happened. What if he mentioned it to someone?”

“Last night at Lamont and Nesta’s, you said you had something to tell me. What was it?”

“After your mama and daddy passed, your granddaddy was in a pickle. He was just so worried about you three girls and how this was going to affect you. Lots of people offered to help, some of them even wanted to adopt one of you or all of you, but there was one person who specifically wanted only you, Savannah.”

A chill zipped up her spine. Though Savannah and her sisters were identical, the discerning eye could tell them apart. However, even at an early age, people were calling Savannah “Little Maggie” because, except for the wavy hair she’d inherited from her father, she was the spitting image of her mother. She met Zach’s eyes and then looked at Gibby again. “Who was it?”

Gibby grimaced. “That’s the thing … I don’t know. Daniel was insulted by all the offers but that was the one that made him uncomfortable.”

Revulsion roiled in Savannah’s stomach. Someone had wanted her because she looked like her mother. Had that someone had anything to do with Maggie’s death?

“Did you notice if Granddad started treating any particular person different than before?”

“Oh, honey, he treated everyone different. Even me.” A fleeting expression of hurt appeared on Gibby’s battered face. “Guess he didn’t trust anyone after that, even family. You and your sisters were his life. He would have done anything to protect you.”

Savannah knew that to be true. Her granddad’s life had changed dramatically when her parents died. He had stopped socializing with friends and had rarely gone anywhere unless it pertained to his granddaughters. She had often felt guilty about them taking over his life so completely. Now, she wondered if he’d closed himself off for a different reason. Because he had no real idea who might have killed her parents, had he suspected everyone? And not knowing who was responsible, had trusted no one?

How she wished she had known these things earlier. If he had shared this secret, maybe they could have discovered the truth together. A fresh wave of grief immobilized her. She had known her granddad had dealt with a lot, she just hadn’t known how much.

A large hand grabbed hers and squeezed gently. She looked up into Zach’s face and was surprised at the depth of sympathy in his eyes. Longing built up inside her for this wonderful, caring man. She had hurt him with her silence but he was still here for her, offering her his sympathy and support.

Zach held her gaze for a moment, giving her the comfort she so desperately needed. Then, squeezing her hand once more, he turned back to Gibby. “Do you have any suspicions about anyone?”

“I wish I did, Zach. Lord knows there’s lots of mean people in this world and this town has its share. Problem is, this person is probably someone we know and would never suspect.”

“When you’re released, I want you to come stay with me until this is over,” Savannah said.

An unusual hardness changed Gibby’s expression from that of a badly battered victim to that of an infuriated, determined woman. “I most certainly will not. I’ve lived in that house more than seventy years. Nobody’s going to run me out of it.”

“Then Brody, Zach’s friend, will stay with you until it’s over.”

“If you think I’m going to argue about having that sweet young man that’s standing outside my room staying in my house, you’ve got another think coming.”

While Zach swallowed what sounded like a snort, Savannah grinned at her aunt. Brody James had probably not been called sweet since he was in diapers. Zach had introduced her to him when they arrived at the hospital. The man was well over six feet tall and more than two hundreds pounds of mostly muscle. A look from his dark brown eyes would make the meanest criminal turn tail and run. But Aunt Gibby had always had a different way of looking at people.

“Do you need anything?”

Gibby shook her head. “Hester, bless her heart, is coming back in a few minutes with some of my things. She’s also going to take care of Samson and Oscar for the next few days.” Waving her hand at them, she closed her eyes. “You go on now and find out who this terrible person is before he hurts someone else.”

Savannah leaned over and kissed Gibby’s forehead, feeling an intense affection for the woman who had been in her life for as long as she could remember. They had often laughed at Gibby’s antics and tolerated her eccentricities. This incident had brought home to Savannah just how much she loved the older woman. It could have been so much worse.

Zach opened the door for her and they walked out of the room together. Brody was leaning against the wall. Heavily muscled arms were crossed in front of him in a forbidding pose, the vivid tattoos on them making him look all the more fierce.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice and looking out for Gibby. She’s very special to me.”

Brody gave a nod. “My pleasure, ma’am. She’s a real sweet woman.”

Savannah held back a laugh. Apparently both Brody and Gibby thought the other was sweet.

“Besides,” Brody continued, “Zach only has to ask. He knows Logan and I would do anything for him.”

Based on her earlier conversation with Zach, Savannah knew that both Brody and Logan had served with him in Afghanistan. She was surprised to see a slight flush of color on Zach’s cheeks at Brody’s words. There was definitely a story there.

Zach backslapped Brody once again and then they headed outside, back to the patrol car.

Savannah breathed in the hot, humid air of another steamy summer’s day in Midnight. Everything seemed peaceful, normal and nonthreatening. The phrase “still waters run deep” aptly fit this town. Who would have guessed that her lazy little hometown held a murderer in its easygoing, laid-back midst?

Suddenly remembering a question she’d meant to ask Zach the moment she saw him this morning, she said, “The police and coroner’s reports. Did you have a chance to find them?”

His already grim face went darker. “Yes and no.”

She stopped in the middle of the parking lot. “What does that mean?”

“The police report was half-assed … barely one page. No photographs of the scene. Two statements from witnesses claiming your father was enraged at the country club. One statement from the bartender at Shorty’s Bar saying your father had four bourbons. Two more witness statements from the bar’s patrons who said he sat at the bar drinking for a couple of hours and then left.”

“No photographs?” Savannah shook her head, appalled at how unprofessional and inept Mosby had been. “What about the coroner’s report? There should be a—” She broke off abruptly when he started shaking his head.

“Only one coroner’s report—your mother’s. Nothing for your daddy.”

“That makes no sense. There has to be.”

“If there was, it’s been lost or was destroyed.”

At a loss, she could only stare at him. She would review the police report and coroner’s report for her mother’s death, but it was the one for her father she had hoped to glean the most information from. That report was the only substantial piece of evidence she would have had to prove that he didn’t kill himself. The coroner would have pointed out any other injuries her father had, including defensive wounds. Beckett Wilde would have fought tooth and nail to save not only his life, but also his wife’s. The murderer would have had to be as large as or even larger than her father to be able to hang him. And he would have fought with all of his might to prevent that. The report could have revealed so much. Without it, she had nothing.

Unknowingly, she spoke the words out loud. “What am I going to do?”

“Not you, Savannah. We. And what we’re going to do is find out who killed your parents.”

She took him in then—strong, determined jaw, intelligent eyes, and the honor that had drawn her to him so many years ago. This was a man she could depend on. It shamed her that she had told him she forgave him and trusted him but she so obviously hadn’t. But now they had come full circle. The trust was there as it had once been.

She held out her hand to him and blew out a silent relieved sigh when he took it. Giving him a smile of confidence because she truly believed that between the two of them they could conquer anything, she said, “You’re right. We are.”

Chapter

Twenty-seven

Savannah rubbed her throbbing temples as she tried to decipher Mosby’s illegible handwriting. What she could make out was a hodgepodge of opinion, not fact. He arrived at the scene, saw her mother’s body on the dining room floor. He started looking around, found Beckett hanging from a giant oak tree out back with a note of confession stuffed in his shirt pocket. It supposedly said he killed Maggie and couldn’t live with the guilt. So where the hell was the note? Why were there no photographs? No coroner’s report for her father? There was absolutely nothing other than a half-page report of Mosby’s rambling conjectures.

She dropped the worthless report on the table and sighed. “If nothing else, this report confirms that Mosby was in on the cover-up.”

Zach nodded. “Or he did the crime.”

That was true. She had never considered Mosby a suspect, only a dishonest officer of the law. “What about the deputies back then? Couldn’t we talk—”

She cut off when Zach started shaking his head. “I checked. There were only two and they’re both dead.”

“Dead how?”

“Car accident and heart attack. Besides, there’s no indication that any other law enforcement official was even at the crime scene. Apparently Mosby handled this on his own.”

“And the coroner?”

“He’s gone, too. He retired and moved to Florida. Died just last year.”

She huffed out a breath. Everything led to a dead end. “Okay, so even if Mosby did the killings, he would still have to have help. My dad was a big man. No way could he get him in that tree by himself.”

Zach shrugged. “Mosby was a strong man. I had a few run-ins with him and can attest to that. And a motivated man can often do more than what looks possible. His motive to kill your parents is what I can’t get my head around.”

“I agree. It makes no sense.”

“I found out he’d been taking bribes from multiple sources for years. If he didn’t do the deed himself, he might’ve just agreed to a cover-up for the money alone.”

Standing, Zach picked up their coffee cups and went to the kitchen counter. “Want more coffee.”