by Lauren Carr
Grinning at the gesture of love, she plucked the cherry out of the bowl with her fingers and ate it. Joshua ate one last spoonful of hot fudge from the bottom of the bowl and sat back in his seat.
“We have nothing more than Silas Starling’s word that he did not sneak across the road to the gas station while Dylan was filling up his van, kill him, and then hide the van back behind the service station so that he could get rid of it later,” she said. “I watched the whole interview that Karrie did with Wendy about her brother and how he’d abandoned her. According to her, Silas never left her side. But, it is Silas who said he did leave Wendy to go to the gas station to look for Dylan.”
“So he could have killed Dylan,” Joshua said.
“I don’t think so,” Cameron said. “We never told Silas that we had copies of Karrie’s interviews with Wendy. She’s the one saying he never left the diner. He’s the one saying he did.”
“Didn’t one of your witnesses say she saw Dylan’s van at the gas station?”
Cameron nodded her head. “Catherine and Harrison. They said it was parked back behind the gas station. Silas said he only went across the street and checked the front and side of the gas station. He never looked back behind the building.”
Joshua was rubbing his chin. “The guy killed his mother and wife. He tried to kill you, J.J., and a vampire blogger. He admits he had the motive and opportunity to kill Dylan Matthews. Why do you think he didn’t do it?”
“Because witnesses saw the van back behind the gas station at two o’clock in the morning,” Cameron said. “After it became apparent that Dylan wasn’t coming back, Silas called his grandmother, who drove to the diner to pick him and Wendy up, and took them to his grandma’s house, where they stayed for three months. According to Silas, they left the diner at around ten o’clock. Granted, we don’t know what happened after they got to his grandmother’s house. Did Wendy go to sleep, giving Silas the opportunity to borrow his grandmother’s car in order to slip back to the service station and to dispose of Dylan’s body up at the abandoned mental hospital? Then, did he drive the van to the airport and take a cab back to the hotel so that he could drive his grandmother’s car back home?”
“Could have,” Joshua said. “Or Wendy could have been so upset about Dylan abandoning her that she couldn’t sleep, so Silas comforted her the whole night. As obsessed as he was with her, he would not have walked away from that.”
“Unless he had a dead body and a van to dispose of,” she said. “If his statement is right, then I know who killed Dylan.”
“Your problem will be proving it.”
“Too bad we can’t find the cabdriver,” Cameron said.
“If he’s still alive and has one hell of a memory, he could identify Dylan’s killer.” Joshua gestured to the server for the check.
“That would be way too easy,” she said as she extracted her vibrating cell phone from its case. “But we did find his van, which contained the murder weapon. If I’m lucky, we’ll learn that it’s also the crime scene, and our forensics folks will find enough evidence to tell us who the killer is.”
She read the caller ID and announced that the caller was Detective Cross. She answered the call and brought the phone to her ear. “I hope you’re calling with some good news.”
“We found Clyde Brady’s truck,” the detective said. “It had been abandoned in an alley behind a bar in East Liverpool that Clyde used to frequent back in the day. Tad told me that Clyde and Monica used to live in an apartment above it. We asked around, but no one’s seen him. But I’d take that with a grain of salt. These type of patrons wouldn’t admit it if they had.”
“Where could he be?” Cameron asked Lillian and Joshua, hoping that one of them would think of an answer.
“Odds are he decided to skip town,” Lillian said. “He did kill two women.”
“Tad said he most likely doesn’t even know that he killed them,” Cameron said.
“If he doesn’t know he killed them, why is he running?”
“He’s not running away from the police,” Cameron said. “He’s chasing a killer. Only in this case, he is the killer. The way his mind is twisted, he could see someone and think that he’s the man who killed his wife, and there’s no telling what he’d do then. Clyde is in serious trouble, and he needs help.”
“We have a BOLO out for him,” Lillian said. “Every cop in the Ohio Valley is looking for him. If he’s still in the area, we’ll find him.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Dylan Matthews was handsome, self-centered, and ambitious, and he knew how to wrap an audience around his little finger.”
When Joshua and Cameron returned home after their lunch, they were not prepared to hear Suellen’s voice coming from the study. Freezing in the foyer, they exchanged glances before realizing that someone must have been listening to a recording. They followed the sound of her voice.
“The Fourth of July concert in Moon Township was supposed to be our big break,” Suellen continued. “It was our biggest audience ever.”
In the study, they found J.J. stretched out on the sofa watching a recording of Suellen on his tablet, which he had propped up on his chest. Sitting regally on the desk, Irving was eying the remaining half of J.J.’s lunch, a bologna sandwich.
When he saw Joshua and Cameron, J.J. quickly paused the recording, wiped a crumb from his mouth, and sat up, swinging his feet to the floor. Joshua didn’t miss the fact that in doing so, he also wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.
“Back from lunch already?”
Joshua checked the time on the clock resting on the corner of his desk. “It’s after two o’clock.”
“Did you record a statement from Suellen about Dylan Matthews’ murder?” Sitting on the arm of the sofa, Cameron picked up his tablet, which he had set on the coffee table.
“She was afraid that she’d die before you could find out who did it.” J.J. took a bite of his sandwich. After chewing and swallowing it, he continued. “Then she wouldn’t be able to testify. So she asked me to record her statement about everything she remembered about that Fourth of July. I interviewed her. Since we had no idea at the time who our main suspect was, her answers were only her unbiased observations. A judge should allow it to be admitted as evidence.”
“Did you edit it?” Joshua asked.
“No,” J.J. said, shaking his head. “It’s all raw footage. I actually shot it the night before we went to State College. This is the first time I’ve seen it.”
Cameron hit the “play” button, and the interview continued.
Suellen was sitting with her feet curled up under her in the window seat of her living room. Instead of looking directly into the camera, she was looking beyond the camera to where Cameron assumed J.J. was sitting off to one side.
“I was always nervous before concerts, and this one was no exception,” Suellen said. “It was the Fourth of July, and our last concert had been over Memorial Day weekend. For me, it was summer break, and I got some well-deserved rest after a very hectic sophomore year in college. As a matter of fact, after our last concert, Dylan gave me some songs to look at. He wanted me to write the lyrics for them, but between visiting my family and all, I didn’t have time to do it.”
“What happened at the concert?” J.J. asked off-camera.
“Well, first off, Dylan Matthews; his sister, Wendy; and Cat Foxworth, our backup singer, who was living with Dylan, were late. Luckily, they didn’t miss the concert. Cat said they’d gotten a flat tire. They got there only, like, a few minutes before we were introduced.”
“But they did get there on time,” J.J. said. “What happened during the concert?”
“Right before our last song, Dylan announced on the stage in front of our audience that it was our last concert,” Suellen said. “Bruce Springsteen’s agent had signed him as a solo singer. Since Dylan was our
lead singer, he broke up our whole group right there on the stage.”
“How did the band take that news?”
“It was a miracle that Dylan didn’t get killed onstage,” Suellen said. “As soon as we were offstage, our guitarist, Harrison Calhoun, slugged Dylan. He gave him a bloody nose. They got into a huge fight. Cat and I broke it up.”
“You mentioned that Cat was living with Dylan,” J.J. said. “Did she know about his plans to break up the group? Was she planning to go to California with him?”
“I really don’t know,” she said. “At the time I assumed—”
“Don’t tell us what you assumed,” J.J. said off-camera. “Tell us only what you know.”
Suellen smiled at his direction. “Then to answer your question, no, I don’t know whether Cat was planning to leave with Dylan. I do know that after she and I broke up the fight, while I was holding Harrison back, I heard Cat and Dylan talking. Suddenly, out of the blue, Cat started slapping and kicking Dylan. Keith Black, our bass player, broke them up. Oh, she was so mad at Dylan. Then Dylan told her to get her overnight bag out of his van because he was leaving, and she told him to keep the bag. She didn’t want to see his face ever again.”
Suellen giggled. “He wasn’t one bit mad. Keith never got mad about anything. All he cared about was the next party or gig. After breaking up the fight, he told us that it had been a nice ride while it had lasted and that he hoped we’d have nice lives, and then he took off with two groupies he had taken up with on the way to the concert. I never saw him again.”
Cameron hit the “pause” button, freezing Suellen’s image. “According to Suellen’s statement to me, she then packed up and went home.”
“While she was packing up her gear, Dylan cornered her and asked her to write the lyrics for the songs, which she didn’t have a chance to do,” J.J. said. “He was upset, and he pushed her. She was mad that he was abandoning the group, so she told him to shove it. She told him to send her his address in Hollywood and said that she’d send him the songs.”
“But she never did get his address,” Cameron said.
“She found the songs,” J.J. said. “It turns out that Silas Starling wrote them for Wendy. Did he know that Dylan had stolen his songs?”
“No,” Cameron said, “he says he didn’t know, and I believe him. I think Dylan was killed before he had a chance to dump Silas—”
“Because when Dylan invited Silas to go get gas with him, he refused,” J.J. said.
“Dylan left and never came back,” Cameron said.
“But he ordered dessert before he went to get gas,” J.J. said.
“That tells me that he had every intention of returning to that diner,” Joshua said.
“But something stopped him,” Cameron said. “Or rather, someone.”
“Suellen had already left to go back home,” J.J. said.
“And our other three suspects were at the bar right across the street,” Cameron said, “which was located right next to the gas station where Dylan was getting gas”
“Which one of them killed him?” J.J. asked.
“I know which one did it,” Cameron said with a small grin. “I just need to figure out how to prove it.”Joshua knew exactly when it had happened. After his first wife, Valerie, had suddenly died, he’d noticed that his sense of hearing had seemed to heighten. He could be sound asleep, but if any of his children, even after they had grown, moved about in his house, he would instantly wake up and be aware of it. Without opening his eyes, he would know who was moving from what room and to where.
Eighteen-year-old Donny would get up at least once, if not twice, and head from his room in the attic to the kitchen for a snack. Joshua could easily pick out his size fourteen feet pounding on the stairs—they were much less dainty than the pitter-patter of Izzy’s tiny feet trotting to the bathroom between one and two o’clock in the morning.
Then there were Irving and Admiral, who would leave Izzy’s bedroom to accompany Donny on his raids of the kitchen.
Joshua had grown so accustomed to the nighttime activity that he could snooze through it. But J.J.’s footsteps, which were lighter than Donny’s and heavier than Izzy’s, woke him up. Raising his head from the pillow, he followed the sound of J.J.’s footsteps down the stairs and heard them turn into the study.
Joshua slipped out of bed, put on his robe, and silently arrived in the study in time to find J.J. pouring some cognac into a snifter. “How about pouring one for me while you’re at it?”
Wordlessly, J.J. took a second snifter out of the liquor cabinet. After he handed it to his father, they clinked their glasses. Eying each other, they each took a sip before sitting across from each other in the wingback chairs in front of the fireplace, where Joshua loved to read during the chilly winter months.
“When am I going to be able to sleep again?” J.J. asked in a soft voice.
“I can only speak for myself,” Joshua said. “For me, the pain never went away. It just got more bearable.”
“Even after you met Cameron?”
“Cameron is different,” Joshua said. “I love her—I’d give my life for her. I share something with Cameron that I was never able to share with your mother. Just like I shared something with Valerie that I could never share with Cameron. Your mother was my first love. Like Suellen was yours. You will love again—and there’s no telling how powerful it will be—but it will never be the same as what you had with Suellen.”
J.J. stared down into the golden-brown liquor in his glass.
After taking a sip of his drink, Joshua cleared his throat. “Sheriff Sawyer called me today.”
“Am I under arrest?” J.J. asked with a weak laugh.
“No. They’re releasing the crime scene,” Joshua said. “The forensics team is through. I called in a crew to clean up the house. It should be ready for you to move into next week.”
J.J. lifted his head to look into his father’s eyes. Joshua saw fear, followed by dread.
Slowly, J.J. shook his head. “I don’t want to move into that house.”
“Suellen left it to you, Son.”
“But—” His response came out as a squawk. J.J. stopped and swallowed.
Seeing the fear increase to panic, Joshua reached over to pat his hand. “You don’t have to move in right now.”
With a sigh of relief, J.J. took a sip of his drink.
Sucking in a deep breath, Joshua asked, “Do you remember when we lived in Oakland, California, after your mother passed away?”
“Of course,” J.J. said. “Murphy and I were sixteen. It was where we lived before moving here after you left the navy.”
“Do you know why we came back to Chester?”
“Mom died, and you couldn’t take care of all of us by yourself while traveling with the military.”
“That’s part of it but not all of it.” Joshua paused to take a sip of his drink. He gazed down into the snifter and said, “I left out some things when I told you kids about how your mother died.”
“What kind of things?”
“For one, she didn’t have a heart attack in her sleep.” Joshua’s eyes met those of his son. “She had a heart attack in the shower…with me.”
J.J. felt his cheeks turn pink. “Am I correct in assuming that you two weren’t exactly whistling Dixie in that shower?”
“You are correct.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“After your mother collapsed, I carried her into the bedroom,” Joshua said. “I tried to help her and gave her CPR, but her heart attack was too massive for that. That part of what I told you kids was the truth. She died in my arms. Her last words were that she loved me…and our whole life together.”
J.J. fought the tears working their way to his eyes.
Joshua took a sip of his drink. “I was never able to sleep in that room a
gain.”
“Because—”
“Everything in that house reminded me of your mother, and I could not deal with it. It was just too painful,” Joshua said. “Especially that bed and that bedroom. Every night, after all of you kids were in bed, I would go sleep on the sofa in the living room. Then in the morning, I would fold up the blankets and grab the pillows and take them up to the bedroom so that you wouldn’t know.”
“Murphy and I knew,” J.J. said. “We knew you were sleeping on the couch. We kind of figured out why.”
“That’s the real reason we had to move away from Oakland,” Joshua said. “I wasn’t just running away from home. I was running away from my memories of your mother. I thought that if I could forget about her, the pain would go away.”
“So you understand why I don’t want to move into that house.”
“I made a mistake, Son,” Joshua said. “What I didn’t realize at the time was that when I ran away from California, I brought the five biggest reminders of her right along with me. Tracy is the spitting image of your mother. Sarah and Murphy have her enthusiasm for life. Donny has her sense of humor. You inherited her love for music and her calm, reasonable personality.”
J.J. stared into his drink. “So you’re saying that as hard as you tried, you couldn’t escape the pain.”
“I know that you have some wonderful memories of the time you two had together,” Joshua said. “The answer isn’t running away from those memories. The answer is facing your grief and dealing with it. There’s no way around it. You can’t sell the farm. Suellen left it to you because she didn’t want it to be sold. All of those employees need their jobs at the orchards and the dairy farm and are depending on you to keep the businesses going.”
“A lot of people are depending on me now,” J.J. raised his eyes to meet Joshua’s. “Kind of like how we all depended on you when Mom died.”
“Exactly.”
“I guess this is your way of telling me that I need to suck it up and put on my big-boy pants?”
