Vows of Silence

by Debra Webb

  “There is one thing that Taylor failed to ask you ten years ago.”

  His patience at an end, Canton snipped, “What? If I cared that my wife was screwing around with the bastard?” His jaw worked a moment before he answered his own question. “Hell no, I didn’t care. It kept the bitch off my back, if you want to know the truth. But the humiliation was something else entirely. Discretion never was one of my former partner’s finer points.”

  “Actually,” Rick countered, “I was going to ask if you remembered Charles having had any dealings with Bent Thompson.”

  Surprise captured Canton’s expression to the point that his lower jaw sagged. “Bent Thompson?”

  The name brought a certain stigma with it. No one wanted to confess even knowing the small-time hood, much less having had any dealings with him.

  “I would say no, most assuredly,” Canton replied thoughtfully, “but there was that once about a week before Charles disappeared that he stayed late for a meeting. He said it was private, not company business.” Canton lifted his shoulders and let them drop in a show of indifference. “I assumed he intended to meet one of his female friends. I wasn’t particularly concerned since my wife was out of town.” His brow furrowed as if he was working hard to recall the precise events that occurred next. “As I was leaving the office that day, I noticed Thompson parked across the street. Generally I didn’t pay attention to who visited whom along this street, but that day the cigarette smoke rising from the open window of his car drew my attention.”

  Elm Street, the one running parallel to the building, was occupied by a number of businesses, from small medical practices to accounting offices. Some were housed in new upscale buildings like this one and others had merely taken over former homes.

  “I’m sure he wasn’t the first person to sit outside in his car and smoke, mind you,” Canton went on, “but he seemed to blow the smoke in my direction almost as if he wanted me to see him.”

  Bent Thompson liked to intimidate. Rick could definitely see where he would enjoy making a man like Canton shake in his shiny leather loafers.

  “But you can’t be sure he was the appointment Charles had that day.”

  Canton shook his head. “No. I left immediately. Whatever Thompson’s or Charles’s business that day, I wanted nothing to do with it.”

  “Speaking of your wife,” Rick asked, “where is she?”

  Canton rolled his eyes. “She’s on vacation in Europe. Her trip was planned weeks ago. Check for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

  Rick stood. He’d gotten all he needed from Canton for now. “I appreciate your time, Mr. Canton.” He tucked his notepad back into his shirt pocket. “I may have other questions later.”

  Canton nodded. “I know the drill.”

  “If you remember anything else relevant to Bent Thompson or those last few days before Charles disappeared, I’d appreciate it if you gave me a call.”

  Canton didn’t bother standing but he did ask, “Do you think Bent Thompson could have killed Charles for that money that was never recovered?”

  It wasn’t such a stretch to come up with that scenario, but Rick wasn’t sure of anything just now. “At the moment I’m investigating all the possibilities. I’d appreciate it if you kept this conversation between us.”

  Canton nodded, but Rick didn’t trust the man as far as he could throw him to keep quiet. Good thing Rick wanted just the opposite.

  He thanked the secretary as he strolled back through the outer office and he nodded to the receptionist as he exited the lobby.

  Rick had accomplished both the things he needed to with this visit. He had let Canton know that he was still a suspect, though he made a valid point regarding what Charles’s having abruptly gone missing cost him. Killing his partner and then hiding the body wouldn’t have been an advantageous move for Canton.

  In addition to making the man feel like a suspect once more, Rick had also slipped Thompson’s name into the rumor mill. Bent Thompson had himself a hell of a temper. If word got back to him that Rick was investigating him as a part of Ashland’s murder, he might just come calling. That was exactly what Rick wanted him to do. He wanted him mad as hell and talking way too much.

  As Rick settled into his truck, his cell phone buzzed. He and his deputies still had radios for backup and dispatch, but cell phones were a mighty handy tool and considerably more discreet when you didn’t want folks around you to hear both ends of the conversation.

  “Yeah, Brewer, what’s up?”

  Caller ID was another handy tool on the job.

  “One of the boys on patrol just called in a blue Explorer with Georgia plates out on Long Hollow Road. He’s pretty sure it was Lacy.”

  “Thanks, Brewer, I’ll check it out.”

  Rick had his whole force keeping an eye out for the persons of interest in this investigation. Lacy, Melinda, Cassidy, Kira, Canton, Thompson and the Ashlands all fell smack into that category.

  He started his truck and pulled out of the parking lot onto Elm. Long Hollow Road. Who would Lacy be going to see out that way? It wasn’t exactly a part of her old stomping grounds and she didn’t have any relatives that he knew of out that way.

  The Carters.

  Maybe he was way off the mark, but the idea was just too coincidental. His first thought was what the hell did Lacy know about Pamela Carter and Charles Ashland, then it hit him. Melinda was Lacy’s best friend. She would have told her about her husband’s mistresses if she knew.

  Only one way to find out.

  He headed in that direction. The Carter place was well out of town and way south of Houston, putting those folks on the same side of the town’s society line as him. He’d be right at home in that neck of the woods.

  It was Lacy who would be out of place.

  Pamela Carter’s father lived in a small house a good distance off the main road. The dirt trail—calling it a road would have been totally inaccurate—leading to the house was rutted and narrow. Trees encroached on the space as if they’d tried their best to swallow up the only means of entry. The limbs scratched at Lacy’s SUV, but she had bigger worries on her mind than the proper care of her vehicle’s paint job.

  She’d had the good sense to bring along her high school yearbook from the last year that Pamela had been pictured there. Lacy had been a senior, Pamela a sophomore. She’d apparently dropped out of school after that. Lacy’s parents had purchased school year-books for another two years after Lacy’s graduation probably as some sort of fund-raiser.

  For the entire twenty-five minutes it took to get to the Carter home, Lacy had considered what she would say. That she was an old classmate of Pamela’s and she wanted to catch up was what she’d decided upon. She didn’t know the Carters, and she was hoping they didn’t know her.

  Lacy’s father was a retired engineer, so the probability that he’d worked with Mr. Carter was highly unlikely. From what Lacy remembered, the Carter family had eked out a meager living and the roof over their heads by working on one of the larger farms in the county. Pamela had worn what looked like hand-me-downs to school as had the rest of her siblings. Four girls. All married before age eighteen except for Pamela.

  The other girls had all been older than Pamela and Lacy vaguely remembered them. In particular she recalled the year their mother had run off with a traveling salesman. Apparently stuff like that didn’t happen only in the movies. She might not have remembered Pamela at all had she not disappeared about the same time Charles had, prompting the grapevine to latch on to the idea that the two had run off together.

  Of course Lacy and her friends had known that wasn’t true. But the part she didn’t know was whether or not Pamela and Charles had been together between eleven in the morning and four in the afternoon on the day he died.

  She needed to know that. She needed to find out who had been with Charles during that critical five-hour time period. Someone had killed him, maybe even using her father’s gun, sometime between eleven and four.r />
  As she parked, Lacy tried her best to remember the state of his body when they’d found him. She’d been too horrified at the time to consider how long he’d been dead. And she’d spent the better part of ten years trying to forget that night. She needed to remember.

  Were his muscles stiff? Had rigor mortis set in? What was his coloring like?

  She just couldn’t remember.

  Cassidy was the more rational one in a time of crisis. Maybe she would recall. But asking her would alert her to what Lacy was up to. She couldn’t do that. Melinda wasn’t there and she doubted that Kira remembered any more than she did. They’d both been pretty shaken.

  Lacy climbed out of her Explorer and prayed the Carters didn’t own any dogs. When she reached the porch without incident she breathed a little easier.

  The wooden boards squeaked as she walked across to the screen door. She could hear a television set playing inside. Whatever color the house had once been, any signs of pigment had long since faded into something grayish and peeling on the ancient and weathered wood siding. The roof was tin, she’d noticed as she drove up to the house. One rusty piece on the right side had come loose and was a bit turned up on one side. She imagined that the area leaked when it rained, especially if the wind blew. The roof had probably leaked like a sieve last week during those heavy rains.

  Although it was only June, the Alabama heat had already taken a toll on the neglected yard, leaving patches of brown grass here and there. Even last week’s near flood hadn’t done much to revive it.

  A broken window had been boarded shut, but the yard actually looked well-groomed. It might not win any awards from the local home-and-garden club, but it was livable.

  She cleared her throat and rapped against the wood frame of the screen door. It rattled on its hinges as if it might just fall off if she knocked with too much enthusiasm.

  “If you’re sellin’ something, you’ve come to the wrong place.”

  She couldn’t make out the man through the screen. The sun behind her back made seeing inside difficult. “No, sir, I’m not selling anything,” she assured him. “I’m here to talk to you about your daughter.”

  “If she ain’t paid her bills I can’t pay ’em for her. Go see one of her sisters.”

  Obviously, she should have specified which daughter she’d come to talk about.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Carter, it’s Pamela I’ve come to talk to you about.”

  The silence that followed was haunting. Made her shiver in spite of the sun beating against her back.

  “Pamela’s been gone a long time, lady. You must not be from around these parts or you’d know that.”

  “Actually, I moved away almost fifteen years ago. I just got back to town yesterday. I was really hoping to talk to you if you have a moment.”

  “You ain’t some reporter, are you?”

  The edge in his voice warned that he’d been bothered by reporters before.

  “No, sir. I’m not a reporter. I attended Ashland High with Pamela.”

  Lacy stepped back as the screen door moved outward. “Well, come on in then, missy.”

  The house, or what she could see of it, wasn’t exactly dirty but it was cluttered. What appeared to be clean laundry was left in a chair. Newspapers were stacked knee-high next to the sofa. The place lacked the usual organization a woman brought to a space.

  Lacy perched on the edge of the seat he offered. He settled onto the couch straight across from her.

  “What you wanna talk about?” he asked as he lowered the volume on the television set with the remote control.

  “I heard that Pamela moved away a few years back and I wondered how I might reach her.” It was a flat-out lie, but she had no idea how to go about this without fibbing.

  He glanced at the yearbook in her lap, then back at her. “We don’t rightly know what happened to her. She just left for work one day and never came back.”

  Lacy pressed her hand to her chest. “My goodness, Mr. Carter, when did that happen?” She felt like such a hypocrite doing this. But she needed information.

  “On Christmas Eve exactly ten years ago,” he said somberly. “She left here on her way to work at the Dairy Dip but Ralph Gunther, her boss, said she never showed up for her shift. We never heard from her again.”

  That had to be horrifying. Not knowing what had happened to your child, no matter how old.

  “No one, not even co-workers or former classmates, ever heard from her?”

  He shook his head slowly from side to side. “Me and her sisters figured she’d run off with that Ashland fella seeing as he went missing about that same time. She’d been seeing him, but considering his body turned up we must’ve been wrong.”

  Lacy moistened her lips. “She and Charles Ashland were involved?”

  He nodded, smoothed a broad hand over his dingy white T-shirt. “I raised her better than that, but that Pamela, she had high hopes, you know. If she couldn’t find herself a rich man to marry she intended to hook one any way she could. I warned her she’d only find trouble that way.”

  “Hook one?” Lacy inquired as if she didn’t understand.

  “Well, I can’t be sure,” he said with a negligent wave of his hand. “But her sister, Carmen, the oldest, claims Pamela was pregnant by Ashland.” His gaze turned distant. “Guess we’ll never know.”

  Lacy felt the blood drain from her face. “But Carmen couldn’t be sure unless Pamela confirmed her pregnancy with a test…”

  “I guess she was far enough along she knew for sure,” he said knowingly. “Had herself a doctor over in Rainsville.”

  Lacy’s heart started to pound. “Maybe she was afraid of what Charles Ashland would do and she just ran away.”

  Mr. Carter shook his head. “Nope. I don’t think she would’ve done that. She wanted to be one of them.” He shrugged. “You know them high-society folks. I guess she figured getting pregnant was a guaranteed way to make it happen. Must’ve backfired on her since she disappeared so suddenly.”

  Lacy didn’t remember saying goodbye, but somehow she managed to make her way back to her Explorer without throwing up or passing out.

  She started the engine and turned around in the half-dead grass. She drove as fast as she dared back down the narrow path that served as a driveway.

  She shouldn’t have come here. What she’d learned had only made things more confusing. If Melinda ever found out… It was one thing to have affairs, but to get another woman pregnant…

  Lacy shuddered and her stomach roiled as she pulled out onto the highway.

  Charles was an even bigger bastard than she’d known.

  She had to find out who killed him, no matter who it turned out to be.

  Who was she kidding? If the police couldn’t figure out what had really happened to Charles, how the hell could she hope to? But she had to try. Didn’t she? Her insides knotted with anxiety. She had to try. She couldn’t keep pretending it didn’t matter.

  Just then, in her rearview mirror, blue lights flickered. Not a squad car…a truck. She recognized it from earlier that morning.

  Rick Summers.

  He’d followed her.

  Chapter 7

  “You were speeding.”

  Lacy stared at Rick dumbfounded. She’d barely pulled out onto the road when she spotted his blue lights. No way could she have been speeding.

  She finally found her voice. “That’s impossible.”

  She couldn’t tell what he was thinking with his eyes hidden behind the dark eyewear, but if the muscle throbbing in his jaw was any indication he was madder than hell.

  “You were swerving recklessly,” he accused.

  “What?” If she’d swerved it was only because seeing those lights in her rearview mirror startled her.

  He grabbed the door handle and jerked it open. “Get out of the vehicle, Miss Oliver.”

  What the…? “You can’t be serious?” Was he playing some sort of intimidation game here? “I haven’t done anything
wrong.”

  “Get out now or I’ll consider your actions failure to consent.”

  Confusion clouded her ability to think. “Failure to consent to what?”

  “A sobriety test.”

  He had lost his mind.

  “It’s the middle of the day? You think I’ve been drinking? For God’s sake, Rick—”

  “Get out of the vehicle, Miss Oliver.”

  Flustered and furious, Lacy unsnapped her seat belt and slid out of the Explorer. She slammed the door. “Now what?”

  He pointed to the middle of the road. “See that white line?”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “I want you to walk it.”

  “This is harassment,” she muttered as she stormed to the middle of the road. “You can barely see the damned line it’s so faded.”

  “Start walking, Lacy Jane.” He ripped off his concealing eyewear to allow her to see just how serious he was.

  Oh, so now it was Lacy Jane.

  Rage pulsing in her veins, she started forward, careful to put one foot directly in front of the other as she’d seen it done in the movies.

  When she’d taken a dozen or so steps, she stopped and wheeled around. “Satisfied?”

  He towered over her. She gasped. She hadn’t realized he’d been right behind her.

  “Now close your eyes and hold your arms straight out from your sides.”

  “I will not!”

  “You will.”

  Sucking in a deep breath to slow her building rage, she closed her eyes and stretched out her arms.

  “Now touch your nose with your right forefinger.”

  Shaking with fury, she barely managed the feat. She did the same with her left finger before he could ask. “See?” she demanded as she dropped her arms and opened her eyes to glare at him once more.