The Last of the Moon Girls

by Barbara Davis

  She could hear Rhanna in the kitchen now, talking with Evvie, their voices lost amid the sound of running water. It wasn’t hard to guess the topic of their conversation. She threw back the covers and sat up gingerly. The room swayed as she pushed to her feet. She waited for the dizziness to pass, then padded toward the kitchen.

  Rhanna flashed her a look of disapproval as she reached the doorway. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Getting some coffee.”

  “I’ll bring you coffee. You lie back down. There’s enough of a mess in here with all this black dust everywhere. We don’t need you on the floor to boot.”

  “You know there’s nothing wrong with my legs, right? I’m perfectly capable of standing.”

  “And perfectly capable of falling down and cracking your head again,” Rhanna shot back. “Let’s go.”

  Lizzy allowed herself to be steered back to the settee. Rhanna gave her pillows a quick plumping, then pulled back the blanket. “Down you go.”

  “Thank you,” Lizzy said as Rhanna retucked her blanket. “For taking care of me.”

  Rhanna’s lips curved, a soft, fleeting smile. “It’s me who should be saying thank you. After all the years, and all the mistakes, I’ve been given a second chance. And then yesterday I almost lost you. It made me realize how much I’ve missed.” She shrugged heavily. “I guess I’m trying to make up for lost time.”

  Lizzy swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. “You look tired. Did you get any sleep?”

  Before Rhanna could respond, there was a knock on the front door. Rhanna stepped away to answer it, returning a moment later with Andrew in tow.

  “You’ve got company,” she announced cheerfully. “And perfect timing too. He can make sure you stay put while I brew a fresh pot of coffee.”

  Andrew watched her go, then turned to Lizzy. “You look better.”

  Lizzy rolled her eyes. “Liar.”

  “Okay. You look cleaner.” He eased into the armchair nearest the settee, forearms propped on his knees. “Seriously, though, how are you?”

  “Sore. I feel like I’ve been pummeled with a baseball bat. Other than that, I’m okay. Rhanna’s doting on me like I’m an invalid. She’s been wonderful, actually.”

  Andrew’s gaze strayed to the coffee table. This morning’s copy of the Chronicle lay folded in half, presumably where Evvie had left it after reading it. Lizzy had already seen the headline. SECOND BLAZE AT MOON GIRL FARM TURNS DEADLY.

  Andrew picked it up, scowling at the photo of the collapsed barn. “Have you read it?”

  “I don’t have to. I was there.”

  He tossed the paper down with a look of disgust. “I should have seen it coming.”

  Lizzy stared at him. “How? Dennis wasn’t on anyone’s radar.”

  “Maybe, but he should have been on mine. He said something once, about you having the nerve to come back here and stir up talk about the murders. He trash-talked the Moons in general, but it was mostly you he focused on. I should have put it together.”

  “Why would you? It’s nothing half this town hasn’t said at one time or another. And there were things we didn’t know, Andrew. Things no one knew—and never will now that Dennis is dead. But it’s over. No one will ever be charged. But we know what happened, or at least who was to blame. And the Gilmans will know too. And the rest of Salem Creek can believe what they want. They always have.”

  Rhanna appeared holding a mug with a paper straw in it. She handed it to Lizzy, then turned to Andrew. “Can I get you one before I head to the market?”

  “Thanks, no. I’ve already had more than my share this morning.”

  Evvie came bustling out of the kitchen, wearing a pair of bright-yellow rubber gloves. “Not so fast,” she said to Rhanna. “I need to add some more cleaning stuff to that list of yours. The more I scrub, the more that mess spreads. It’s like the Exxon Valdez ran aground in there.”

  Lizzy ducked her head sheepishly and slid her eyes to Andrew. “I forgot to warn her about the fingerprint dust last night before we got home.”

  “Oops.”

  Another set of raps sounded on the front door, this time with the knocker. Rhanna pocketed her list and went to answer it. After several minutes of muffled conversation, she returned.

  “It’s Helen Hanley, Lizzy. She’s out on the steps, asking to talk to you.”

  Lizzy stared at her. She knew Helen had been notified of her brother-in-law’s death, but had no idea how many of the details had been shared, or how she’d taken the news.

  Andrew pushed out of his chair. “You don’t need to talk to her if you’re not up to it, Lizzy. I can send her away.”

  Lizzy flashed back to yesterday’s confrontation at the market, the silent plea in Helen’s eyes, the bruise she had tried, and failed, to cover. She had one of her own now to match it.

  “No. Don’t send her away. I’ll talk to her.”

  Evvie and Andrew exchanged glances but said nothing.

  A few moments later, Helen stood in the parlor, her little girl perched solidly on one hip. Her eyes were puffy and red rimmed, and she wore no makeup. The yellow-green bruise stood out in ugly relief against her cheek.

  “I’m sorry I had to bring Kayla. I couldn’t get a sitter on short notice, and I didn’t want to wait.” Her hand came to her mouth, her eyes pooling with tears. “Oh my god . . . your face. This is all my fault.”

  Lizzy sat up and patted the settee beside her. “Why don’t you sit down?”

  Helen eased down onto the settee and folded her daughter into her lap. She was crying softly, swallowing sobs as she pushed the words out. “The police came last night. They told me about Dennis—about what he tried to do. I came to say I’m sorry.”

  “It was Dennis, Helen. You have nothing to apologize for.”

  “I do,” Helen sobbed brokenly. “I’ve been a coward. All these years, I’ve let him bully me into keeping quiet, and last night he almost killed you.” She sniffled loudly, using the collar of her shirt to blot her tears. “I’m going to the police when I leave here. I should have done it last night, but I wanted to talk to you first, to look you in the eye and say I’m sorry. For what happened to you yesterday, and what happened to your family all those years ago. I should have ended it when Hollis died. I should have, but I didn’t.”

  Andrew leaned forward, forearms braced on his knees. “You’re talking about Heather and Darcy Gilman.”

  Helen hung her head. “Hollis was a good man. He was simple and gentle, but he was broken too. Even before Afghanistan. But he was worse when he came home. He was withdrawn, and he had nightmares. He started drinking. I begged him to get help, to see someone, but he wouldn’t. Then I found out about a group that met over in Rochester. PTSD sufferers dealing with the things they’d seen and done. I finally convinced him to go. Then Dennis got wind of it, and that was that. He made it clear that I didn’t get a vote. It didn’t matter that my husband was a basket case, or that there was a little girl who needed her daddy to get better.”

  She had begun to cry again. She wiped her eyes, flashing Kayla a Mommy’s all right smile before going on. “I was furious at him for letting Dennis push him around. One night he got drunk and we had a horrible fight. That’s when it came out.”

  Lizzy knotted her hands in her lap, willing herself to be patient. She’d waited eight years to learn the truth. She could wait a few minutes more.

  Kayla had begun to squirm in her mother’s lap. Helen jiggled her gently, then pressed a kiss to the top of her blonde head. When she was quiet again, Helen went on. “The summer the girls disappeared, Hollis and Dennis had started hanging out with them. Hollis was never a ladies man, so Dennis hooked them up. The four of them would go out riding around. Dennis would bring along a few bottles of smash.”

  Lizzy frowned, unfamiliar with the word. “Smash?”

  “A concoction of hard cider and homemade hooch. It’s cheap, and you don’t need an ID to buy it. Plus, it gets you drunk pret
ty fast. And according to Hollis, Heather liked to get drunk. She was kind of screwed-up. Had a lot going on at home, apparently. Dad stuff.”

  Lizzy seized on the offhand remark. “Dad stuff?”

  “She told Dennis she woke up one night and found her father standing over her bed, and that he was always walking in on her when she was getting dressed. He’d pretend it was an accident, but she said it happened all the time. One time, she came right out and told Dennis that’s why she was hanging out with him, because it drove her daddy crazy. Anyway, one night the four of them were riding around. They ended up back at old man Hanley’s place. Heather and Dennis went off on their own. Darcy stayed with Hollis in the car. But when Hollis started getting friendly, she got spooked. She said she needed to pee and wandered away. When she didn’t come back, Hollis went looking for her.”

  Evvie had been standing in the doorway. She stepped forward now, clearly troubled by what she was hearing, but perhaps more uncomfortable with the fact that there was a little girl in the room. “Maybe Kayla would like to go out to the garden with Rhanna and me,” she suggested pointedly. “While the grown-ups talk?”

  Helen looked confused at first, then glanced at Kayla and seemed to understand. “Oh, right. Are you sure you don’t mind?”

  “She’ll be fine with us,” Rhanna assured her, smiling that smile women reserve for children under three. “Kayla, is it? What a pretty name.”

  Helen mouthed a silent thank-you as she relinquished her daughter. “That’s a good girl. Go with the nice ladies. Mommy will be right here.”

  “We’ll be right out back if you need us,” Evvie called as they headed for the mudroom.

  Helen looked suddenly bereft without her daughter. She glanced from Lizzy to Andrew, and back again. “I’m sorry. I should have thought about Kayla. She won’t remember her daddy, but she doesn’t need to hear the rest of this. I’m just so . . . I haven’t been sleeping well since Dennis moved in.”

  Lizzy didn’t bother to hide her surprise. “You and Dennis were . . .”

  “No.” Helen shuddered visibly. “Nothing like that. But he moved in a few weeks ago. He said it was so he could help with Kayla, but I think it was to make sure I stayed quiet.”

  “Dennis knew that you knew what happened to the girls?”

  “He did. Hollis told him about getting drunk and spilling everything. Dennis was furious. That’s when he started watching me.”

  “You said Hollis went looking for Darcy when she didn’t come back,” Lizzy prompted, wanting to get back to the night the Gilman girls died.

  Helen closed her eyes, as if preparing herself. After a few minutes, she blew out a breath and squared her shoulders. “It took a while, but he finally found her. She was bent over, throwing up from all the smash. She started crying when she saw him, and took off running. Hollis went after her. Not to hurt her, just to keep her from going where she shouldn’t. But it was too late. By the time he caught up to her, she wasn’t in the cornfields anymore. She was in the back fields, where Hollis’s daddy didn’t let anyone go.”

  “Because of the marijuana,” Lizzy said quietly, stealing a glance in Andrew’s direction. Not a flicker of surprise. Had everyone known?

  “Yeah,” Helen said, nodding. “The pot. There was this big shed out there where they used to dry the stuff. Darcy ran toward it. I guess she thought she could hide. All of a sudden the door opened and out came Mr. Hanley, drunk as a skunk and waving a shotgun. Darcy started screaming. The old man didn’t bat an eye. He just stepped up behind her and smashed in the back of her head with the butt of his rifle. She went down like a ton of bricks.” She paused, a hand to her mouth. “Hollis said he used to hear the sound of her skull cracking when he closed his eyes at night.”

  Lizzy fought an unexpected wave of queasiness. Helen’s story fit perfectly with the coroner’s findings. Blunt force trauma to the occipital and parietal regions. But that was what killed Darcy. The ME’s report said Heather had been strangled. “What about Heather?”

  “She and Dennis must have heard Darcy screaming, because they came running. Heather took one look at Darcy facedown in the dirt, and started wailing her head off. Even drunk, the old man could see he was in trouble. He told Dennis to shut her up. When Dennis didn’t move, his father pointed the gun at him. He said if Dennis didn’t shut Heather up, he’d do it himself, and then he’d shut the boys up too. Dennis didn’t realize the old man was serious until he pointed the gun at Hollis. He knew Dennis’s weak spot.”

  Andrew’s mouth dropped open. “He threatened to shoot his own son?”

  Helen nodded. She looked paler now than when she’d first arrived, drained and shaky. “He would have done it too. Dennis knew it, even if Hollis didn’t, so he wrapped an arm around Heather’s throat and just . . . squeezed. She fought but he was too strong. Hollis was horrified at how long it took—nothing like it happens in the movies—but finally she stopped fighting.”

  Lizzy remained silent, shaken by the gruesome scene Helen had just painted—and by the realization that Dennis’s determination to keep the truth buried had more to do with his own guilt than with either his father’s or brother’s.

  “The pond,” Lizzy said numbly. “How did the girls wind up in the pond?”

  “Mr. Hanley told them to fill the girls’ pockets with stones from the wall behind the shed, and then drag them into the pond. When they didn’t snap to, he told them to stop acting like girls. He said a man does what he has to. I guess it worked, because they did what he said. Not that they had much choice. They were in it too by then. It was Dennis who called in the anonymous tip, to make the police think it was your grandmother who’d killed them.”

  A man does what he has to.

  Lizzy suppressed a shudder. Dennis had used the same words yesterday. His father’s words. That had been his father’s legacy—the murders of two young girls and then covering up the evidence. She frowned suddenly. “You said they were in it—Hollis and Dennis—but Hollis wasn’t in it. He didn’t hurt either of the girls.”

  Helen stared down at her hands, her fingers so tightly laced that her knuckles had gone white. A tear slid down her cheek, then another. Finally, she lifted her head. “They loaded the girls into an old cart and wheeled it to the pond. Dennis waded in with Heather first, and watched her sink. But when Hollis picked Darcy up, she let out a moan.”

  Lizzy’s stomach did a slow, queasy roll. She’d forgotten the rest of what Roger had said. One of the girls—Darcy—had shown evidence of drowning. She looked at Helen, unable to find words.

  “Dennis didn’t say anything but Hollis knew. They had to finish it. Dennis took hold of Darcy’s legs, and they dragged her in. They waited, just to make sure, but she stayed down.”

  Salt and stagnant water . . . like a mud flat at low tide. Or a pond.

  “She was alive when she went into the water,” Lizzy whispered, registering the horror of it. “She might have survived the blow to the head if she hadn’t been dragged into the pond.”

  “Hollis never forgave himself.”

  And there it was. The reason Hollis had driven his car into a tree. Lizzy closed her eyes, trying to blot out the image in her head. “When he . . . died,” she said haltingly, “there was a note. You gave it to the police, but they left it behind. Then it disappeared.”

  Andrew pulled several tissues from the box Rhanna had placed nearby for Lizzy and passed them to Helen. She took them with a grateful nod. “That was Dennis,” she said, dabbing at her eyes. “He told me to burn it, to say I never saw it. He was afraid people would tie what Hollis wrote back to the girls.”

  “It was never about Hollis. All of it—the note, the fire—was about protecting himself. Because he killed Heather.”

  “I’m not sure Dennis knew the difference anymore. His whole identity was wrapped up in being Hollis’s protector. When Hollis died, he lost that. Then he lost the farm. And then he heard you were back, and asking questions. That’s when things got bad. When
the stories started showing up in the paper, I knew it was him, but I couldn’t say anything. He said he’d take Kayla, and I’d never find her.”

  “Did he mean he’d take her and run, or that he’d hurt her?”

  Helen’s eyes flashed with remembered panic. “I don’t know. I just knew something terrible would happen if I went to the police. That’s why I bumped into you yesterday and said what I did. I didn’t know what else to do. And then last night, the police came to the door, and I thought . . .” She paused, pressing a hand to her mouth. “When they told me you got out, that you were okay, I knew I had to tell the police everything—and give them the letter Hollis wrote before he died.”

  Lizzy gaped at her. “You have the letter?”

  “It was the last thing he ever wrote, and he wrote it to me. I couldn’t just burn it. I’m going to take it to the police and tell them everything. But I needed to see you first. I felt like I owed it to you—and your grandmother. I know I can never be sorry enough, but I had to say it anyway.”

  “Thank you for that,” Lizzy said quietly, knowing just how hard today must have been for her. “The bruise on your cheek—that was Dennis?”

  She touched the discoloration gingerly. “He came home drunk, making a lot of noise. I had just gotten Kayla to sleep and I asked him to be quiet.”

  Andrew blew out a slow breath, like a pressure cooker releasing steam. “I know Dennis was helping you financially. Will you and Kayla be able to manage?”

  Helen shrugged, wadding the tissues in her hand. “I don’t know. I haven’t had time to think about it. My parents are in Florida. They’d probably let me come, but I have to talk to the police first. I might end up in jail for not telling them what I knew.”

  Andrew scrubbed a thumb over his chin as he mulled over her response. “Why don’t you wait a day before talking to the police? Lizzy and I have a friend, a detective, who might be able to offer some advice. And you need to get yourself a lawyer before you say anything.”

  Helen’s face fell. “I can’t afford a lawyer. Especially now.”