You Can't Escape (35 page)

“Ah, well.”

It took them half an hour to reach the Fowler property, which was the adjoining property to Jordanna’s family’s. The entrance to the three-hundred-twenty-acre farm was similar to that of the Treadwell property: a quarter-mile-long rutted drive that led to a Victorian style house. As they approached the high windows, peeling gingerbread and listing front porch came into view. Some weeds were working their way through the gravel, but overall the place seemed fairly well-tended, certainly better than the way her father had left their homestead.

Jordanna walked up to the front porch and waited for Dance, who wasn’t far behind. The utilitarian metal cane gave him stability and more ease of movement.

She tried the ancient bell, but no sound emanated, so she rapped with her knuckles. When that brought no response, she slapped her palm loudly against the door frame.

“Not here,” she said.

“Want to interview the Benchleys?”

“Yeah.” She checked her cell phone for the time. “When’s that detective getting here?”

“We’re bound to still have a couple hours.”

Suddenly a wisp of lacy curtain was pulled back and an elderly female face stared out at them through a wavy windowpane. Faded blue eyes raked over them.

Jordanna called loudly through the closed door, “I’m Jordanna Winters. I grew up next door?” She swept an arm toward the south. She was pretty sure Mrs. Fowler wouldn’t remember her, as they’d hardly ever seen each other and it had been years. It took an inordinately long time for the door to be opened. When it finally was pulled inward, a stooped woman with white hair and a soft face covered in wrinkles stood leaning in the doorway, one gnarled hand gripping the ivory handle of a polished mahogany cane. “Winters,” she repeated in a voice that sounded as if it hadn’t been used for years. She eyed Jordanna as if she were some specimen under glass. “You’re one of Dr. Winters’s daughters.”

“The middle one.”

“Your mother was a Treadwell.”

“That’s right.”

She pushed the door open farther and shuffled back, a tacit invitation. As Jordanna entered the shadowy environs, followed by Dance, the older woman said to him, “What’s wrong with your leg?”

“Wrong place at the wrong time,” he said easily. “Nice cane.”

She looked at his and frowned but didn’t comment. She moved slowly into a parlor off the hall entry, and Jordanna and Dance followed her inside. It took her a few moments to settle herself into a chair next to a fieldstone fireplace with an oversized firebox, now fitted with an electric heater. Glowing red filaments created the illusion of flames. Though it wasn’t quite midday, the shades were drawn and the room was dark. A floor lamp offered weak yellow light. “I’m Virginia Fowler,” she stated, waving a finger at Dance. “Sit down. You make me nervous. You a farmer? That happen to you on the job? You don’t look like a farmer.”

Dance took an overstuffed chair that looked as if it might be difficult for him to get out of, and Jordanna perched on the edge of a love seat that offered up a whiff of dust. Looking faintly amused, Dance said, “No, I’m not a farmer. I got too close to a bomb.”

“Bomb.” Her brows shot up. “Well, how did that happen?” Then, before either of them could answer, she asked, “You with those police fellows?”

“The police came here?” Jordanna asked.

“Said someone was trespassing on my property. Defiling the cemetery.”

Jordanna started. “I was at the cemetery,” she admitted. “Someone had recently buried a woman’s body there, just covered it with dirt. I reported it, but the body was moved before the police got there.”

Virginia’s eyes pinned Jordanna where she sat. “That officer said there was nothing there. He apologized and said he would make sure to keep people out.”

“Drummond?”

“Think that was his name, yes.” She pursed her lips, then said, “I don’t know who’d be messing around out there.” Turning to Dance, she asked, “This bomb, was it meant for you?”

“I don’t know yet,” Dance answered honestly.

“Does it have anything to do with my cemetery?”

“Nope. Separate issue,” he said. Then: “Do you live alone?”

“Yes. Why? You planning to rob me?”

She glared at Dance, who asked casually, “You got anything worth taking?”

Jordanna hid a smile as Virginia sized him up for a long, long moment. She was half certain they were about to be flung out on the porch. Then the older woman’s lips quirked, and she turned away from him and focused in on Jordanna.

“So, how come you were looking for a body on my property?”

“I was actually following directions to where an unidentified man’s body was discovered a few years ago, just across Summit Ridge from your property. Do you know Zach Benchley? He’s the boy who found the body.”

“I know Zach,” she said shortly. “Driving that contraption all over hell and gone. Probably ran over the poor devil and killed him himself.”

Not exactly a mutual admiration society, since Zach had tried to blame Mrs. Fowler for the deed as well. “According to the ME, he died of exposure,” Jordanna said.

She huffed at that. “Zach’s no real Benchley, y’know. His father sure wants everyone to know that he was adopted, so’s the whole family’s not tainted. Doesn’t want anyone to really think he’s a Benchley. Being part-Treadwell yourself, you gotta know about that.”

“The Treadwell Curse,” Jordanna confirmed.

Virginia frowned, her brows forming a silvery caterpillar above her eyes. “What’s that? There’s no Treadwell Curse.”

“It’s just what everyone calls it,” Jordanna said, wanting to move back to the issue of the missing body.

Virginia Fowler waved a bony finger at her. “Well, I think you’ve got that mixed up, dear,” she said briskly. “The Benchleys . . . now they had troubles. All this land was theirs once, you know. Yours, too. Used to be owned by Danners and Garretts at the turn of the last century, but most of them moved on or maybe Ukiah Benchley pushed them out. My late husband knew all the history, but I’m not as clear on the details.

“But I do know Old Ukiah was from a railway family,” she hurried to say, sensing Jordanna was about to interrupt. “Lots of money that he spent on drink, gambling, and women of ill repute. Mean as a poked snake, from all accounts, but mighty attractive. That’s another Benchley trait. Good looks.” Her eyes glittered. “But then Ukiah married a woman who couldn’t produce an heir, so he adopted back his illegitimate son, who was as wild as his old man. Started having children when he was barely into his teens, but those kids started dying young. That’s when it became evident something was wrong. You want to name it, you should call it the Benchley Curse. Why do you think they have that old cemetery?” She hitched a thumb toward the back of her house. “Started putting the afflicted there. To keep ’em away from the ones going to heaven.” She snorted, as if she thought that was a bunch of rot.

“My mother suffered from the disease, and she was a Treadwell,” Jordanna said. “I didn’t name it the Treadwell Curse. That’s just what people call it.”

“Who does?” the old lady demanded.

“Everyone I’ve talked to,” Jordanna responded, faintly impatient.

“That’s rot. The Treadwells tried to help the Benchleys. That’s all, dear. They tended to the sick when everyone else shunned them. The true Benchleys sold off all their property to the Treadwells, like your mother, and my husband, and those adopted Benchleys, Zach’s family. There are three or four of them left, that’s all. A few brothers and a sister, Agnes. I don’t recall the brothers’ names . . . Oswald and . . .” She shook her head. “Anyway, Agnes is the only one that drives and she goes into town now and again and gets supplies. The Treadwells are about all gone, except for you and your sisters, so the Benchleys have to do it for themselves now.” She eyed Jordanna. “How many Treadwells are there left?”

“I only know of my sister, Kara. And I have an aunt who never married and lives in Malone. Evelyn Treadwell.”

“Oh, that’s right. I remember her. She have any children?”

“No,” Jordanna said.

“Well, it’s too bad for the Benchleys that the Treadwells died off. But you only get that particular affliction by being a Benchley. That’s a fact. And there are only a handful of them left, too.”

“The Benchleys you mean are the ones living at the curve of the road, the place with the ‘No Trespassing’ sign,” Dance put in.

She nodded. “They don’t much like socializing, that’s for certain. Never married and had children. Their way of ending the disease.”

Jordanna was torn between frustration and amusement. She’d come here for information about the cemetery, but Virginia Fowler was intent on giving her her own faulty family history. Jordanna knew her mother had been sick with the Treadwell Curse. Her father knew it, Kara knew it, and Emily had known it. “My mother died of the Curse.”

“Eh?”

“My mother died of the Treadwell Curse.” She hesitated, then added reluctantly, saying what she’d sometimes thought, but had never wanted to voice. “And my older sister started acting erratically just before she died in a car accident her senior year of high school. She may have had it, too.”

Virginia’s eyes bored into Jordanna’s. “I don’t mean to upset you, dear, but you should look into your family history a little closer.”

“If the Benchleys and Treadwells were so interconnected, maybe there was an undocumented liaison between the families,” Dance offered up.

Virginia said stubbornly, “It all goes back to the Benchleys. That’s who’s buried out in the cemetery. Benchleys. My husband’s with his family at Everhardt Cemetery out north of town, and that’s where I’m going, too.” She waved a dismissive hand. “The state can figure out what to do with this property and that cemetery.”

They talked for a while more, but Virginia never budged from her insistence that the Benchleys were to blame for the disease, not the Treadwells. As their conversation wound down, Jordanna asked, “Do you know the Freads?”

“I don’t believe so. Who are they?”

“Their daughter, Bernadette, is missing, and when I saw the body last night, I wondered if it might be her.”

Virginia wagged her head from side to side, then returned to her favorite topic with a relentlessness that made Jordanna want to scream. “If your mama really died of that disease, you ask your doctor father about her,” Virginia Fowler said, staring her down. “Bet you’ll find out she’s a Benchley. And if that’s true, my dear, you’d best be practicing that ‘safe sex’ because you don’t want to be having any children. . . .”

Boo sat in the pew, his eyes on Reverend Miles, who was talking, and talking, and talking . . . sermonizing . . . in front of the congregation. Normally Boo liked church. It was soothing, and it reminded him of when Mama was alive. She could sing like a nightingale, Pops would say. Boo had never seen a nightingale, but he heard they sang at night, and that reminded him of Mama, too, because she’d disappeared into the night.

But today he was just scared. He’d heard Buddy on the phone and he knew he’d done something bad again. When Buddy had gone to the barn, Boo had been with him, staying in the shadows, watching. When he’d seen the hot tip of the branding iron, he’d been mesmerized, almost overpowered with the desire to trace his own scar with his index finger. But he’d stopped himself, told himself that God wouldn’t want him to dwell. Then Buddy had fallen to his knees and begged God’s forgiveness for killing another who wasn’t supposed to die. It had been a necessity, he’d sworn, his forehead pressed to the rough boards of the barn floor. He’d had to do it . . . just like the last time....

Boo’s eyes had drifted to the door with the bar. Something terrible had happened in there. He wanted to look, but Buddy had been so angry over his special treasure box, he was afraid what he would do if he caught Boo sneaking around some more, looking at things he wasn’t supposed to. Instead, Boo had gone back to his bed, tossing and turning all night, wondering if he should tell someone, confess Buddy’s sins so that both he and Buddy could be cleansed. Boo had been so angry with Buddy for taking Mama’s special treasures from him that he’d stayed in his room for days, lying on his bunk, face turned to the wall. Buddy had railed at him, telling him he needed to grow up, to stop waiting for Mama, who wasn’t coming back. Boo had slowly fought back his anger and forgiven him. Buddy was all he had left, unless you counted
her
, which Boo didn’t.

But maybe someone needed to know that Buddy had done something unforgivable. He looked at the reverend. He was a good man. A pious man. He would know what to do, wouldn’t he?

He leaned forward, half in a trance, ready to walk up the aisle in front of God and everybody, right in the middle of Reverend Miles’s sermon, when a hand darted out and grabbed him by the wrist.

“What are you doing?” she hissed, a harsh whisper that sent a cold shiver down his back. Buddy might look up to her, but she scared Boo.

“Nothing,” he muttered.

“Don’t bother the reverend. What’s wrong with you?”

Her hand was curved around his forearm, hard fingers holding him in place. In the pew in front of them, an older woman turned and gave them a
look
. Boo wanted to yell at her to turn around, but he didn’t. He was in church, and he knew better.

“Let us pray,” Reverend Miles intoned and everyone bowed their heads.

Boo had a moment of panic. He hadn’t been paying attention to what they were praying for, and he needed to know. Maybe prayer was all that was needed to cleanse their souls, so he squeezed his eyes shut and fervently prayed with all his being.

“Stop moving your lips,”
she
muttered, her grip tightening.

Boo felt embarrassed, but he blocked out her voice and kept right on praying. And why did she have her eyes open anyway?

“Amen,” the reverend said at last, and they all repeated “Amen” back to him. Boo opened his eyes. The first person he saw was Nate Calverson, the second, his wife. He didn’t like Nate much. He pretended to care about the Lord, but he really didn’t. That was his wife’s doing, Buddy had said.

“Calverson’s as much of a prick as his father was,” Buddy had added. “They own practically everything around here. They’re locusts. Gobbling up farms and ranches.”