by Laura McHugh
“I think he loaned Roger some money. He’d taken cash out a while ago, at the same time Roger hired a new lawyer to try to get his custody agreement changed. The amount Roger paid was close to the amount Shane took out of the bank. Then later on, around the time of the murders, Shane was in some financial straits, as you know. Bills coming due, not enough to cover them.”
She had looked into his finances after all, after I told her what Becca and I had found in his boxes of paperwork.
“You also mentioned hearing from one of his coworkers that Crystle’d had an affair,” she continued. “This alleged affair was apparently with someone they both knew, and it is starting to look like that person was Roger. Imagine if you loaned your friend some money and then something made you think he was messing around with your wife. It might make you pretty angry.”
It took a moment to grasp what was happening. She had followed all the leads I had given her, though instead of casting suspicion on Crystle—that she might have done something to Shane—it was being used against him. She was focusing on motives for him to kill the Calhouns and ignoring the rest.
“Did you read what Henley wrote about Crystle?” I asked. “The part about watching him die? Even if he did this—if—” The words choked off, my throat threatening to close up.
There was a slight softening in Kendrick’s eyes, a hint of compassion, or possibly pity. I’d seen the same look the night before when she was dealing with Hannah. “I promise you that we will look at everything.”
“What about Chad?” I blurted. “I know you’re friends, but Hannah told me he offered once to take Roger out. And when I talked to him, before Roger’s body was found, he said, ‘Roger always was a waste of flesh,’ almost like he knew he was dead. Hannah said he didn’t have an alibi for that night.”
Kendrick mashed her lips together and exhaled sharply through her nose. “Chad had nothing to do with it.”
“You said you’d look at everything.”
“I will. And I have. He was with me.”
“Then why did Hannah say he didn’t have an alibi?”
“Because he has two small children with his longtime girlfriend, and it wasn’t necessary for her to know he was with someone else overnight.”
“You and Chad.” I thought back to the night before at the Barred Owl, how Kendrick had lit up when he hugged her, her offer to drive him home. They seemed like complete opposites, never mind the fact that he was in a relationship with someone else. Even Kendrick, with her rigid demeanor and love of rules, was able to loosen up and go out to a bar and unapologetically enjoy herself. Why couldn’t I do the same?
“Pick your jaw back up,” she said. “I don’t let my personal life get in the way of my job. Missy Pettit is sitting in jail right now, and we’re going to see if there’s anything she’d like to share.” Kendrick picked up the phone and waved me out. “I’ll be in touch,” she said, pushing the door shut behind me.
* * *
—
I could hear Leola’s dogs bouncing up and down on the other side of the door as I waited for her to answer. Low clouds had moved in, and the air smelled like snow. The garden spinners whipped around so fast they blurred.
Leola appeared in her housecoat, sagging nylons, and loafers, her hair flat on one side as though she’d been napping on it. She invited me in and I told her I couldn’t stay long.
“I wanted to ask about Charlie,” I said. “See if he’s doing all right. I saw him last night, and he was pretty upset about his friend Henley.”
Her chin wobbled, dentures clacking as she worried them back and forth. “More than friends,” she said. “She was special to him.”
“They were dating?”
“Can’t say for sure,” she said. “He wouldn’t have told me that. But they were awfully close. I thought they might end up together someday.”
The dogs whined at her feet, but Leola didn’t seem to hear them. “I hate to see him like this,” she said. “He’s hurting and angry, and I can’t blame him. He doesn’t want to talk to his granny about any of it. Shane was always the one he went to, when he wanted to talk.”
The wind buffeted the house, rattling the windows, and I was reminded of something Hannah had said. How it had stormed so hard the night before Macey and Roger were killed. “Leola—you remember telling me how Shane brought you the lantern, after the storm? Was that back in the spring?”
“It was,” she said. “The lily of the valley was blooming.”
“Was it a Sunday, do you think?”
She looked up at me, her eyes rheumy. “Could have been. He was off work.”
“How long did he stay?”
“Quite a while. He helped me clear a downed tree out of the yard—chopped it up for firewood, stacked it by the porch to season. I made him stay for supper. We had cured ham and the last jar of the Red Hot cinnamon applesauce I’d canned in the fall. I remember because the fridge was out and most things went bad, but I wouldn’t let him leave without feeding him first. Chopping wood’s hungry work.”
“Do you know what time he left?”
She eyed me quizzically, blinking. “No, but I’m sure it was dark. He was tuckered out, his back giving him a bit of trouble. I felt bad about that, that he’d aggravated it helping me. He was ready to go home and sleep.”
It wasn’t an alibi, exactly, that he’d spent the day helping an elderly woman, but he was worn out, his back hurting, and he had to be at work in the suburbs early the next morning. It didn’t seem like an ideal time to commit a double murder and carry two bodies out into the woods. If he’d killed the Calhouns after leaving Leola’s, driven all the way back to the conservation area to dump the bodies, and then disposed of the truck, that could have taken most of the night. It might not be enough to convince Kendrick that he was innocent, but it opened a window of possibility for me.
* * *
—
Hannah was waiting on my porch in the dark when I got home, wearing only a T-shirt and jeans, her skin icy to the touch. I was worried that she’d been drinking or worse, but she was perfectly lucid.
“I couldn’t wait to tell you,” she said, squeezing my hands. “Kendrick’s got something. They talked to some friend of the Pettits sitting in jail for armed robbery, and she offered information about a murder. They were trying to see if she knew anything about Roger and Macey, but it was something else entirely.”
Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. She looked different somehow, more alive. More like herself.
“That’s great,” I said. “But how does that help?”
“She claimed she saw a human bone belonging to someone named Dalmire out on the Pettits’ property. They couldn’t find any missing persons reports under that name, but there was a Dalmire who used to live around here, and he hasn’t been seen in several years. Should be good enough for a warrant to search the salvage yard. It’s what Kendrick’s been waiting for.”
Hannah gave me a quick hug, her arms tight around my rib cage, her tears wetting my cheek.
Earl had spent the better part of the day talking to his lawyers, discussing his options without telling them why he was fooling around with the trust. His own son had been making threats, demanding that Earl release the money that he wasn’t meant to get until his twenty-fifth birthday, and Earl wasn’t sure he’d be ready for it even then. He didn’t understand what Jason was doing at first. The sudden outburst of crazed demands and accusations made Earl think the boy was suffering a mental break, that he needed help. Then it became clear that Jason was extorting him, his volatility pushing Earl to consider acquiescing, imagining the relief he’d feel if he gave him what he wanted and set him out of the house. His son had said some things that were deeply unsettling, and Earl had been grateful when he got home from signing all the papers at the lawyer’s office that Jason was in his room with the door shut, t
hat there was time to pour himself a drink before going up to talk to him.
Now the furnace eased off and the big house was quiet save for the sleet clicking against the picture windows. A glass of whiskey sat half finished on the table. Earl clutched the phone to his ear, though the person on the other end had hung up. He couldn’t seem to unbend his arm, to move his feet. He’d been given a heads-up, a courtesy not everyone received, and he wasn’t sure what to do with it.
He had thought, when he met Daphne, that he had finally been forgiven for Emily. His wife had been beautiful and selfless, a rare combination in his experience, and she loved him, despite and possibly because of what had happened to his sister, and how it had shaped him. When they’d married, he had no desire to touch any other woman. Then when Daphne got sick, he knew it had been a cruel joke, a brief respite. His wife had taken care of everything in the home, doted on Jason, granted Earl room to believe he was worthy of a normal life—all of which made it more difficult when he was left alone with a troubled little boy. Consumed by his own grief, he’d struggled to comfort his son properly. He should have spent more time with him before Daphne had died, then maybe things would have been different, though Earl knew it was possible that Jason had always been that way and he just hadn’t noticed, that Daphne had smoothed Jason’s edges as she had smoothed everything else in Earl’s world.
He’d tried to straighten Jason out, to instill values by raising him in the same way he’d been raised by his own father—telling himself that hard work ironed out moral wrinkles. Wear somebody out on the farm and they’d develop respect for themselves, a sense of purpose and accomplishment. They’d learn that no one is too good for honest work, be it shoveling manure or harvesting grain, and as a bonus, they’d be too tired to make trouble. But Jason was stubborn and Earl hadn’t been able to break him enough to reform him. His flaws had leaned toward unfixable.
All of this was punishment for Earl’s failings. For the women. The liquor. For Emily. For thinking he’d been forgiven. Whatever crimes Jason had committed fell on him, too, because he had failed to fix him. Still, he loved his son. And now the police were coming to take him in for questioning, and there were decisions to make.
Earl was jolted by a knock at the door, a series of powerful thuds, like an axe driving down into a log. Were they already here? He didn’t want to open the door but knew that he would. He straightened his spine, drew his shoulders back, and turned the knob. Charlie Burdett stood in the dark gap.
He hadn’t seen Charlie much since he was a boy, since his father had suffocated in a silo at Sullivan Grain and was buried in the fine walnut casket Earl had paid for. Earl never forgot anyone who died on his watch, nor failed to feel a wash of guilt when he saw their families around town. There was a scholarship fund for the children of the fallen, which was helping Charlie go to technical school. The Burdetts were still on the company’s Christmas card list, and Earl personally signed each card by hand. Dear Leola and Charlie, he had written, may you have a blessed holiday season.
Charlie’s face was pale and wind-bitten in the glare of the porch light. He hoisted a shotgun and Earl stared dumbly.
“Drop the phone,” Charlie said. “We gotta talk.”
The phone slipped from Earl’s fingers and clattered to the floor. “Charlie,” he murmured, his arms hanging heavily at his sides. “What is this?”
Charlie ignored his question, gesturing with the barrel. “Come on outside.”
The wind slipped stealthily into Earl’s pressed shirt and stiff blue jeans, eliciting an involuntary shudder. Charlie urged him to the edge of the porch, where Raymond Pettit materialized from the darkness, sleeves rolled up on his thick, tattooed forearms, head down like a charging bull. He pushed past them and into the house.
Charlie forced Earl forward, the shotgun prodding between Earl’s shoulder blades every time he slipped on the light glaze that filmed the walkway. When they reached the grain bin behind the barn, Earl turned to face him, the frigid wind hitting the back of his throat and making him gasp.
“My son.”
“Start climbing,” Charlie said, nodding toward the metal staircase that spiraled around the massive silo.
“What if I don’t.”
Charlie aimed the shotgun at his groin. “I shoot you and watch you bleed out.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?”
Charlie shook his head, and Earl sensed a slight softening in the boy’s demeanor, a reluctance beneath the bluster. “I don’t want to. I’m just keeping you out of the way.”
“You want money?” Earl said. He hadn’t planned to bargain, but it was an old habit when cornered.
Charlie grabbed his shoulder and shoved him onto the stairs. They were slick, and he gripped the handrail, ascending into the darkness. When he reached the narrow platform at the top, the wind hurling grains of ice, he could see the lights of town, the outline of his kingdom. Down below, away from the main house, the wooden shack his grandfather had erected when the Sullivans pushed down roots in Cutler County.
His family had spent generations building their small-town empire, fortifying it with good deeds and hard work, yet it was the same for everyone when the wolf was at the door wanting in. You had to hope that you were ready, that what you had built was sufficient to withstand the threat. That was the lesson his father had taught him: be strong, be good, be prepared. But a big brick house was worthless if the wolf was already inside, his own son the one baring his teeth, threatening to bring the walls down on top of them.
Charlie was right behind him, wedging himself against the rail to steady himself from the hungry gale and block Earl from reaching the stairs.
“What did he do to her?” Charlie said, his features pinched against the wind. “To Henley.”
Charlie had come for Jason, not for him, though it made little difference. Earl closed his eyes, a weight pressing on his chest. He remembered the look on Henley’s face after he’d drunkenly tried to kiss her and she’d struck her head on the bedpost. The shame that had burned through him like an electrical current. He thought of all the times he’d protected his son when he shouldn’t have. Times he’d felt something coming, like the pressure drop before a storm, and hadn’t known how to stop it. Vigilance was exhausting. Over the years, Jason had started fires, gotten into fights, been expelled from a private school for stalking a fellow student. His attitude had seemed to improve over the summer, though, and Earl had thought his son was making progress. He grew lax, didn’t realize he was involved with Henley until it was too late.
The wind screeched through the metal staircase, and Charlie leaned closer. “Where is she?” he asked. “Did he kill her, like Raymond said?”
Charlie’s voice wavered and threatened to break, the gun forgotten, dangling at his side. The boy’s eyes were watering from the cold, or he was crying, and Earl knew he could push past him if he wanted, that Charlie wouldn’t hurt him. His own face was wet and stinging from the sleet. He imagined Henley weighted down in the freezing river, buried in a silo full of grain. He thought of Emily, blood spilling out of her mouth, onto the hay. He looked down and couldn’t see the ground. He wondered what was happening in the house, what was happening to Jason.
“Tell me,” Charlie sobbed.
“I don’t know,” Earl said finally. He didn’t. And he didn’t want to. The bucket was empty and would never be filled. He’d been a fool to think otherwise. Snowflakes spun down, fat and wet, plastering his shirt to his skin. “The police are coming,” he said. “Forget about whatever’s going on down there, forget about me. It’ll all play out. You should leave while you can. No one has to know you were here.”
It had been dark for what felt like hours, everyone else in the office gone home while I stayed to finish up some paperwork. In the empty parking lot outside the break-room window, the gooseneck lamp illuminated a curtain of wintry drizzle drif
ting down. I was debating eating an expired yogurt that I’d found in the back of the office fridge when Leola called, her voice shrill and frantic.
“I’m worried about Charlie.”
“What’s going on?”
“He got a phone call and lit outta here, and I’m scared he’s going after the Sullivan boy. I don’t want him to ruin everything he’s worked so hard for, everything Shane did for him. And I don’t know who else to call.”
“Did you try Earl?” I asked.
“Yes. I tried the number he’s got listed, and he didn’t answer. Maybe you can talk sense into Charlie, Sadie, before he does something he can’t undo. He might listen to you.”
I thought of Shane and all the fights he’d gotten into and wondered, if he were here, whether he’d talk Charlie out of doing serious damage to Jason Sullivan or take a swing at Jason himself. If Charlie was determined to do something, I doubted that he’d listen to me any more than he’d listen to Leola, but I promised her I would try. I dialed his number, though of course he didn’t pick up, and I found myself driving out of town as fast as I dared on the slick roads, my car sliding sideways for an agonizing moment as I neared a low-water bridge, tires catching on the narrow gravel shoulder just in time to correct course and avoid dropping into the creek bed. I regretted my suspicion, inherited from my mother, that the mechanic was always trying to dupe me into buying new tires before I really needed them. I tried not to think about the lack of tread as freezing mist veiled the car and ice clogged the wipers and spread across the road in dark patches that were all but invisible.
Everyone knew where the Sullivans lived, though I’d been inside the big brick house only once, for a holiday party Earl had thrown for Sullivan Grain employees and their families back when Daphne was still alive. Mom had sewn red pleated skirts for me and Becca to wear, and Dad had given Shane strict instructions not to touch anything. The house had seemed like something out of a fairy tale at the time, the grand columns wrapped in twinkling lights, rising up from the empty fields like a mirage that might disappear if you looked away.
