One Deadly Sin (37 page)

“Dammit, Dad. You lied to me, pumped me for information, played on our relationship. Don’t you think you owe me the truth now?”

“That is the truth, son.”

“What about the other truth? What happened in 1989?”

Again, James didn’t reply.

It was full day, almost noon, and the sun shone yellow and hot. But darkness seemed to gather and swirl around Holt. “What do you know about Edie’s father?”

His own father remained mute, and Holt shoved him. “Say something, damn you!”

But it was Edie who spoke. “I don’t care, Holt! I don’t care anymore.” She got between the two of them, stood in front of Holt’s father as if he’d been the one wronged and not her. “Whatever happened, it’s in the past. Can’t we just leave it there? If I’d known digging it up would hurt so many people, I never would have come here. Oh, God, please Holt. Just leave it alone. My father’s dead. Yours is still here and alive.”

“Think I don’t know that?” Holt snarled.

James stepped out from behind Edie, so she was no longer in the crossfire. “I’m sorry,” he said to her.

Holt dove for his dad, spun him away. “Don’t say you’re sorry to her! You let her get arrested. You let me arrest her!”

“I tried to get her to go away, Holt. Tried to save her. But you’re not one to take a hint, are you?” he said to Edie.

Holt gazed at his father through narrowed eyes. “You tried? What do you mean? How the hell did you—” He stared at his dad. Outrage surged over pain and disbelief. “That was you at the motel?”

James only gazed at him directly, confession enough.

“Oh, my God,” Edie said. “Please don’t tell me you’re the one who tampered with my bike.”

Holt whipped his head around to stare at her. “That was an acci—” A clutch of sickness grabbed his belly and crammed his throat. An accident like the rest.

His father was shaking his head, holding up his hands as if asking for peace. “I swear, I don’t know anything about your—”

Before Holt knew he was doing it, he’d rammed his father against the tool shed. “Who are you?” Holt hauled his father up by the shirt front, shaking him. “Who the hell are you!”

“Holt, son, I didn’t touch her bike.”

“You could have killed her!” Almost on its own, Holt’s right arm pulled back and punched forward. Connected with his father’s chin. James went sprawling on the grass.

“Oh, God,” Edie moaned.

“Holt!” His mother flew down the lawn. “What in heaven’s name is going on? Dear Lord.” She stooped to check her husband. Looked wildly up at her son. “Have you lost your mind?”

James groaned as he sat up, age and defeat in his rounded shoulders. His wife cradled him, looking up at her only son as if she’d never seen him before.

“Holt Drennen, you apologize to your father this minute.”

“Hush, Mimsy,” James said softly.

“I won’t—”

“Yes, you will.”

His mother’s protests stopped dead. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Edie slink away. Sink onto a picnic table bench, head in her hands.

Holt ignored them all. James hadn’t shielded himself. Hadn’t lifted a finger to protect himself, let alone said anything in his defense. Not that there was anything to say.

Holt stared at the yard he knew so well. Remnants of a tree house James had built when Holt was nine still sat in the big maple in the corner. When Miranda was a few years older Holt had planned to fix it up for her. Forever in need of a new spring, the screen door at the back hung wide open as it always did when someone ran out without closing it. He’d loved this house his whole life, yet he’d married Cindy, eager to get away. How could he have forgotten that need to be on his own? The excitement of creating something that was his alone? He’d crawled back here a wounded dog. But he was long past healed.

“I’d appreciate your packing a bag for Miranda,” Holt said stiffly to his mother. “We’ll be leaving.”

Mimsy shot to her feet. “What? Leaving? Where are you going?”

James struggled to stand, too. “Holt. Son. Don’t do this. Not without cooling down some.”

Mimsy’s eyes filled. “What’s happened? Please, someone, tell me what’s happened.”

Holt opened his mouth to tell her. That her husband was knee deep in the murder of three of her fellow townspeople. That he’d likely killed Lucy Keel. Terrorized the woman Holt loved, and withheld information that could prove her innocent.

But the shock and distress in his mother’s eyes were too powerful. He glanced over at James. He could hardly look at the man. “Let him explain it.”

Holt began the long slog across the yard to the drive in front.

His mother called after him. “But… you can’t take Miranda. This is the only home that child knows.”

He managed to get around the corner without falling. He stumbled to the car, leaned hard against the roof, arms braced, head hung between. His legs were trembling, his shirt soaked through.

“Give me the keys. I’ll drive.”

Where had Edie come from? Oh, yeah. His mind filled with what had just happened. Nausea swirled at the back of his throat.

“And don’t give me any crap about this being an official vehicle I can’t drive,” she added. “This is an emergency.”

He looked over his shoulder at her. Black hair tumbling down her back, those big dark eyes full of sympathy and love.

But instead of bolstering him, it twisted inside him. His father had loved him, too. And Edie had betrayed him twice now.

Holt turned stiffly. Leaned against the car. “You should have told me.”

“Why is that? So I could break your heart that much sooner?”

“Oh, so you withheld valuable information in a murder investigation to what—protect my tender feelings?”

Edie’s face heated. “Okay, at first, yes, I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want you to know about the list and my connection with the angels. But then—”

“Then it was easier to keep on lying. Maybe because lying is a way of life with you.”

The words cracked Edie’s ribs in two, clean as an ax. And while she stood there speechless, bleeding inside, he got in the car and drove away.

47

B
erding was one of those tiny towns that grew up along the old highways. Those mostly two-lane affairs, abandoned for the faster lanes of the interstate, were dotted with small towns, one blending into the other, then stretching into fields and out into town again. Holt had grown up with the names: Trenton, Three Corners, Goosefoot. They came fast, their main streets awash with the signs of businesses that had once been thriving. The AC Pajama Factory. Bradford Tractor and Farm Equipment. Even the Starlight Drive-in was nothing but dust and ghosts.

An Everest of rusted cars in an auto salvage yard signaled the entry to Berding. Next, a strip of stores set back from the highway were mostly empty windows except for a small antique-cum-consignment store called Pearl’s. The most prosperous-looking building was Walker Funeral Home, a sturdy, red-brick building with a parking lot and a landscaped walk. Holt appreciated the irony of the mortician being the richest man in a dying town. Especially now when it seemed as if everything around him was dying, too. His family. His so-called love life.

The garage was on the far end of town. A single gas pump sat close to the road. A small shed perched behind the pump, attached to the garage, whose two open doors showed the lifts inside. A mechanic saw the car with its Redbud PD markings and came out wiping his hands on a grease rag. “You here about that truck I got a call on?”

Holt set his face, burying the pain behind hard lines. But he couldn’t keep that pulse from slamming against his skin as the mechanic brought him to a side lot, where his father’s big black pickup was parked.

He walked around the truck. Couldn’t see any damage, especially the kind he’d have expected. “What’s wrong with it?”

The mechanic scratched his head. “Busted fan belt.”

Holt’s jaw tightened. “Anyone pay you to say that?”

The man looked confused. “Pay me?”

“Let me see the paperwork.”

The mechanic shuffled off, and while he was gone Holt bent to examine the front end of his father’s truck. He rubbed fingers over a spot on the left end—a paint scratch and a small dent in the left-side bumper. Been there for months. Given the force needed to push Lucy off the road, he would have expected more. Much more.

He rose, flummoxed.

The mechanic jogged up, handed over a clipboard. Holt scanned it.
Fix fan belt, if possible. Install new if not.
There was a cost estimate, and his father’s contact information.

“No front-end damage?” Holt asked.

“Front end? No sir.”

“You sure.”

“Look—alls we’re supposed to do is fix the fan belt. Thing was torn clear through. Waiting on a new one from the dealership. We’ll put her in, truck’ll be right as rain.”

The mechanic headed back to work, and Holt leaned against the front of his father’s truck. He scrubbed his face, relief making him almost shaky.

Jesus Christ in heaven, he didn’t do it. His father hadn’t killed Lucy.

He stared out at the garage, trying to ease the shakes, inhaling the metallic smell of engine parts, gas, and oil.

Which meant—what? That he hadn’t messed with Edie’s bike? Or with the three dead men?

Maybe.

But one thing he did know: There was another full-size black pickup with front-end damage out there. And someone else had been behind the wheel.

Holt had left Edie stranded, so she walked to Amy’s, calling her on the way to fill her in.

“I called over to the Drennens’ just to make sure everything was all right,” she said when Edie arrived. “Mimsy was so upset. I could barely hear a word for the tears. Did Holt really hit his father? I can hardly believe it. Any chance this’ll all blow over before the end of the day?”

“Probably not.”

Amy tsked. “And he’s taking Miranda? Just about broke Mimsy’s heart to say it. Where in the world will he take that child? The only motel is the Cloverleaf”—she shuddered audibly—“and she can’t go there.”

So much had happened, Edie had forgotten Holt’s determination to take Miranda and leave.

Amy’s face brightened. “What about here? I’ve got the room. At least until he can figure out what to do.”

“I don’t know—”

“You don’t want him here?”

“Oh, it’s not me. I’m not sure he’d want to stay anywhere near me.”

“What are you talking about? He’s crazy about you.”

“Yeah. Easy come, easy go.” She told her what Holt had said.

Amy patted Edie’s hand. “He was just lashing out and you were there. He didn’t mean it.”

“Felt like he meant it.”

“Well, we’ve got enough trouble without fighting among ourselves.” She rose and took Edie by the hand. “Come on, girl. We’ve got fences to mend.”

Amy drove them to the municipal building where Holt’s car was parked in front. Edie eyed it warily. “Might be better if I stayed here. Don’t want to remind Deputy Fish or Agent Lodge of my existence.”

“You want me to soften him up?”

“Yup.”

“Coward.”

“Yup.”

But Amy smiled and went inside. She was gone long enough for Edie to get restless with concern. She got out of the car and leaned against it, breathing in the fresh air. Didn’t look good if it was taking Amy so long to talk Holt into letting bygones be etc. etc.

While she was out there a car drove up and parked next to Holt’s. Her heart sank when she saw who it was. Lodge.

He slammed the door, walked around Holt’s car, scowling at her over the front end. “What are you doing loitering near the chief’s car, Miss Swann?”

Her first instinct was to flip him off, but she remembered Amy, who believed in her and was counting on her to behave accordingly. So she answered. Not eagerly. And maybe not with all the respect Lodge assumed was his due, but she managed to keep her response short and sweet.

“Waiting.”

Lodge narrowed his eyes. Seemed short and sweet wasn’t his cup of Jack any more than wiseass was. He ordered her to turn around, and when she did, he slammed her against the car, spread her legs, and in full view of the town square, patted her down.

“I’m not carrying a weapon.” The protest came out half-strangled, Lodge’s heavy hand squelching her against the car.