by Nora Roberts
great deal as a girl. Joyce used to love to toddle on the paths in the woods when she was just a baby.”
Maggie moistened her lips. “Do you come back here often, Mrs. Morgan, at night?”
“I know I should stay away. Joyce has told me so all along. But—” Louella sighed, and the small, sad smile touched her mouth. “She has Stan. Such a good man—they take care of each other. That’s what marriage is, you know, loving and taking care of each other.”
“Yes.” Helplessly, Maggie watched as Louella’s hands grew agitated in her lap.
“William wasn’t a loving man. He just wasn’t made that way. I wanted Joyce to have a loving man, like Stan.” She lapsed into silence, closing her eyes and breathing shallowly so that Maggie thought she slept. Deciding it was best to call the Agees, she started to rise, when Louella’s hand closed over hers.
“I followed him here that night,” she whispered. Now her eyes were intense, fully focused. Maggie’s mouth went dry.
“Followed him?”
“I didn’t want anything to happen. Joyce loved him so.”
Maggie struggled to keep her voice low and even, her eyes steady. “You followed your husband here?”
“William was here,” Louella told her. “He was here, and he had the money. I knew he was going to do something dreadful, something he’d have gotten away with because of who he was. There had to be an end to it.” Her fingers tightened convulsively on Maggie’s, then relaxed just as abruptly as her head fell back. “Of course, the money couldn’t be buried with him. I thought, no, if they find him, they shouldn’t find the money. So I hid it.”
“Here,” Maggie managed. “In the attic.”
“In the old trunk. I forgot all about it,” Louella said as fatigue washed through her voice. “Forgot until a few weeks ago, when they dug in the gully. I came and took the money out and burned it, as I should’ve burned it ten years ago.”
Maggie looked down at the hand that lay limply on hers. It was frail, the blue veins showing sharply against the thin ivory skin. Could that hand have pulled a trigger, sending a bullet into a man? Maggie shifted her gaze to Louella’s face and saw it was now serene in sleep.
What do I do? Maggie asked herself as she laid Louella’s hand carefully back in her lap. Call the police? Maggie looked at the peacefully sleeping, fragile figure in the chair. No, she couldn’t; she didn’t have the steel for it. She’d call Joyce.
She went to the phone and asked the operator for Joyce’s number. There was no answer at the Agee house. Maggie sighed and glanced over her shoulder into the living room at Louella, who was still sleeping. She hated to do it, but she had to call Lieutenant Reiker. When she couldn’t get hold of him, either, she left a message with his office.
Coming back into the living room, Maggie gasped as a figure moved toward her. “Oh, you frightened me.”
“Sorry.” Stan looked with concern from Maggie to his mother-in-law. “I came in the back. The dog’s sleeping pretty heavily in the kitchen. Looks like Louella might’ve given him part of a sleeping pill to keep him quiet.”
“Oh.” Maggie made an instinctive move toward the kitchen.
“He’s all right,” Stan assured her. “He’ll just be a little groggy when he wakes up.”
“Sheriff—Stan,” she decided, hoping the lack of formality would make it easier for him. “I was just about to call you. I think Louella’s been here most of the night.”
“I’m sorry.” He rubbed his own sleep-starved eyes. “She’s been getting steadily worse since this business started. Joyce and I don’t want to put her in a home.”
“No.” Concerned, she touched his arm. “But she told me she wanders at night, and—” Maggie broke off and circled the room. Could she tell him what Louella had said? He was her son-in-law, but he was still the sheriff. The badge and the gun he wore reminded her.
“I heard what she told you, Maggie.”
She turned, her eyes filled with compassion and concern. “What should we do? She’s so fragile. I can’t bear to be a part of having her punished for something that happened so long ago. And yet, if she killed …” With her conscience tearing her in different directions, she turned again.
“I don’t know.” Stan looked at Louella while he rubbed the back of his neck. “What she told you doesn’t have to be true.”
“But it makes sense,” Maggie insisted. “She knew about the money. If she’d hid it in the trunk, then forgotten about it, blocked it out because it reminded her—” Maggie shook her head and forced herself to continue. “Stan, it’s the only explanation for the break-in here.” She covered her face with her hands as her sense of right and wrong battled. “She needs help,” Maggie said abruptly. “She doesn’t need police or lawyers. She needs a doctor.”
Relief ran over Stan’s face. “She’ll get one. The best one Joyce and I can find.”
Shaky, uncertain, Maggie rested a hand on the table. “She’s devoted to you,” she murmured. “She always speaks so highly of you, of how you love Joyce. I think she’d do anything she could to keep both of you happy.”
As she spoke, Maggie’s gaze was drawn down to where her palm rested—on the color snapshot of Morgan and Stan, near the gully. It would all be laid to rest now, she thought as she stared down at the photo. Louella had suffered enough, been punished enough for—
Distracted, she narrowed her eyes and looked closer. Why it came to her now, Maggie would never know, but she remembered Reiker’s words. “We found a ring, too, an old ring with a lot of fancy carving and three small diamond chips … Joyce Agee identified it as her father’s.”
But in the picture William Morgan wasn’t wearing the ring. Stan Agee was.
She looked up, her eyes dry and clear with the knowledge.
He didn’t have to look at the picture under her hand. He’d already seen. “You should’ve let it go, Maggie.”
She didn’t stop to think, to reason; she only reacted. In a dead run, she headed for the front door. The move was so unexpected, she was into the hall with her hand on the knob before he’d taken the first step. As the door stuck, she cursed it, cursed her own inefficiency for not having it seen to weeks before. As she started to tug a second time, Stan’s hand closed over her arm.
“Don’t.” His voice was low and strained. “I don’t want to hurt you. I have to think this through.”
With her back to the door, Maggie stared at him. She was alone in the house with a murderer. Alone, she thought desperately, except for a fragile old woman who loved him enough to have shielded him for ten years. Maggie watched him rest his hand on the butt of his gun.
“We’d better sit down.”
Cliff drank his second cup of coffee and wished it was bourbon. If he’d tried to make a fool of himself over a woman, he could’ve done no better. Drinking in the strong, bitter taste, he scowled down at the laminated counter in the café. The scent of frying eggs and sausage did nothing for his appetite.
How could he have botched it so badly? What woman in her right mind, he asked himself, would respond favorably to a shouted, angry proposal? Maggie had given him the heave-ho, and now that he’d cooled off a bit, he couldn’t blame her.
Still, he wasn’t one of the fancy crowd she’d run with in L.A., he reminded himself. He wasn’t going to change his manners for her any more than he expected her to change for him. She’d chosen to change her life before he’d been a part of it.
Chosen, Cliff thought again, cursing himself. She’d chosen her home, and he’d never seen anyone put down roots so quickly. He shouldn’t have panicked at the mention of the recording in L.A. She’d be back. The land was as important to her as it was to him. Perhaps that had been their first bond, though they both insisted they’d had no common ground.
She’d be back, Cliff told himself again. He’d been an idiot to think bullying her into marriage would assure that. Maggie wouldn’t be bullied, and she was here to stay. Those were two of the reasons he loved her.
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nbsp; He should have told her that, he thought, pushing the unwanted coffee aside. He could have found the words to tell her he’d been in love with her for weeks and that at dawn, with the morning light spilling over her face, he’d realized it. It had taken his breath away, stolen his senses, made him weak. He could’ve found the words to tell her.
Straightening from the counter, he checked his watch. She’d had an hour’s sleep. Cliff decided a woman didn’t need any more than that for a proper proposal of marriage. He tossed the money on the counter and began to whistle.
He continued to whistle as he took the road through town, until Joyce dashed into the street and frantically hailed him.
“Oh, Cliff!”
Though he’d stopped the car in the middle of the street, he was halfway out of it as he spoke. “What is it, one of the kids?”
“No, no.” Struggling for calm, Joyce gripped his arms. She, too, hadn’t changed from the dance, but the hair she’d worn up was now escaping its pins and falling in clumps. “It’s my mother,” she managed after a moment. “She hasn’t been in bed all night—and Stan, I can’t find Stan anywhere.”
“We’ll find Louella.” Cliff brushed the hair from her face as he’d done since she’d been a child. “She might have been restless and gone for a walk. With the excitement last night—”
“Cliff.” Joyce gripped his arms tighter. “I think she went out to the old place. I’m dead sure of it; it wouldn’t be the first time.”
He thought of Maggie with a little ripple of unease. “Maggie’s home,” he said soothingly. “She’ll look out for her.”
“She’s been getting worse.” Joyce’s breath began to shudder. “Oh, Cliff, I thought I was doing the right thing, the only thing.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“I lied to the police. I lied before I’d thought it through, but I know I’d do the same thing again.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes briefly, then dropped them. When she looked at Cliff now, she looked at him with a surface calm that was deadly. “I know who killed my father. I’ve known for weeks. Mother—it seems Mother’s known for ten years.”
“Get in,” he ordered. He was thinking of Maggie now, of Maggie alone in the house, surrounded by woods. “Tell me while we drive.”
Maggie’s back was stiff and straight as she sat on a low bench. Moving only her eyes, she watched Stan pace the room. She wanted to believe he wouldn’t hurt her. But he’d killed once, ten years before. Now he’d have to deal with her or pay for it.
“I never wanted Joyce to sell this house.” He paced to the window, then back to the center of the room. “I never wanted it. The money meant nothing to me. Her money—her father’s money—never has. How could I’ve guessed she’d get it into her head to put it on the market when I was out of town?”
He ran a hand over his shirt and left faint streaks. He’s sweating, Maggie noted. It didn’t help her nerves.
“She lied to the police about the ring.”
Maggie moistened her lips. “She loves you.”
“She didn’t know—I’d never told her all these years. Then, when I finally had to, she stood by me. A man can’t ask for more than that.” He paced again, so that the soles of his shoes hitting hardwood and rug were the only sounds. “I didn’t murder him,” Stan said flatly. When he looked at Maggie, his eyes were glazed with fatigue. “It was an accident.”
She gripped that, clung to that. “Then if you go to the police and explain—”
“Explain?” Stan cut her off. “Explain that I killed a man, buried him and drove his car into the river?” He rubbed the heels of his hands over his face. “I was only twenty,” he began. “Joyce and I’d been in love for two years. Morgan had already made it clear that there couldn’t be anything between us, so we saw each other in secret. When Joyce found out she was pregnant, there couldn’t be any more secrets.”
He leaned against the window and stared into the room. “We should’ve known there was something wrong when he took it so well, but we were both so relieved, both so thrilled at the idea of being married and starting a family, that we never caught on. He told us to keep it quiet for a few weeks while he arranged for the wedding.”
Maggie remembered the stern face from the photograph. “But he didn’t mean it.”
“No, both of us were too wrapped up in each other to remember what kind of man he was.” Stan kept moving in the same line, to the window, back to the center of the room, to the window again. “He said he was having trouble with groundhogs up at his old place. I was young and eager to do anything to keep on the right side of him. I told him I’d bring my shotgun one evening after work and take care of them.”
He saw Maggie shudder and glance at the pistol on his hip. “It was dusk when he drove up. I didn’t expect him. When he got out of the car, I remember thinking he looked like an undertaker, all in black with shiny shoes. He was carrying a little metal box that he set down on the stump of a tree near the gully. He didn’t waste any time,” Stan continued. “He told me outright that he’d never let a small-town nobody like me marry his daughter. He said he was going to send her away. Sweden or somewhere. She’d have the baby and give it away. He didn’t expect me to keep quiet for nothing. He told me he had twenty-five thousand in the box. I was to take it and disappear.”
So the twenty-five thousand had been payoff money, blackmail. Yes, she could believe that the man in the photo had thought money would ensure anything.
“I got frantic. I couldn’t believe he was threatening to take away everything I’d ever wanted. He could’ve done it, too.” Stan wiped at the sweat that beaded on his upper lip. “He would’ve done it without a second thought. I shouted at him. I told him he wasn’t going to take Joyce and our baby away from me. I told him we’d go away, we didn’t need his filthy money. He opened the cash box and showed me all those bills, as if it would tempt me. I knocked it out of his hands.”
His breath was coming quickly now, heavily, as if he were reliving that moment—the anger, the despair. Maggie felt her pity well up to tangle with her fear.
“He never lost his temper. Never once. He just bent down and scooped the money back in the box. He thought I wanted more. He never understood, wasn’t capable of understanding. When it got to the point where he saw I wasn’t going to take the money and go away, he picked up my gun just as calmly as he’d picked up the box. I knew, as sure as I’d ever know anything, that he’d kill me where I stood and he’d get away with it. Somehow he’d get away with it. All I could think was that I’d never see Joyce again, never hold our baby. I grabbed for the gun—it went off over my shoulder. We started struggling.”
He was panting now, his eyes glazed. Maggie could visualize the struggle between man and boy as clearly as if it were happening in front of her eyes. She shut them. Then she saw the scene in the film she’d scored in which overpowering need had erupted into irrevocable violence. But this was real and needed no music to spark the drama.
“He was strong—that old man was strong. I knew I’d be dead if I didn’t get the gun away. Somehow—” Stan dragged both his hands up his face and into his hair. “Somehow I had it in my hands and was falling back. I’ll never forget—it was like a dream, a nightmare. I was falling back, and the gun went off.”
She could picture it, all too clearly. Both sympathetic and afraid, Maggie dared to speak. “But it was an accident, self-defense.”
He shook his head as his hands dropped back to his side, back, she noted with a tremor, near the gun on his hip. “I was twenty, scraping pennies. I’d just killed the most important man in town, and there was twenty-five thousand dollars in a box next to his body. Who’d have believed me? Maybe I panicked, maybe I did the only sensible thing, but I buried him and his money in the gully, then sent his car into the river.”
“Louella …” Maggie began.
“I didn’t know she’d followed me. I guess she knew Morgan better than anyone and understood he’d never let me marry Joyc
e. I didn’t know she’d watched everything from the woods. Maybe if I had, things would’ve been different. It seemed she never really came out of the shock of losing her husband; now I understand better. She’d seen it all—then, for some reason of her own, she’d dug out the cash box and hidden it in the house. I guess she was protecting me all these years.”
“And Joyce?”
“She never knew.” Stan shook his head and tugged at the collar of his shirt as if it were too tight. “I never told her. You have to understand. I love Joyce. I’ve loved her since she was a girl. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her if I could. If I’d told her everything, everything he’d threatened to do and what had happened, she might have thought—she might not have believed it was an accident. I couldn’t have lived with that. For years I’ve done everything I could to make up for what happened in that gully. I dedicated myself to the law, to the town. I’ve been the best father, the best husband, I know how to be.”
He picked up the color snapshot and crushed it in his hand. “That damn picture. Damn ring. I was so wired up I didn’t notice I’d lost it until days afterward. My grandfather’s ring.” He rubbed a hand over his temple. “Ten years later it’s dug up with Morgan. Do you know how I felt when I learned that Joyce had identified it as her father’s? She knew,” he said passionately. “She knew it was mine, but she stood behind me. She never questioned me, and when I told her everything, she never doubted me. All these years—I’ve lived with it all these years.”
“You don’t have to live with it anymore.” Maggie spoke calmly, though her heart was in her throat. He was strung so tight she couldn’t gauge when he might snap or what he might do. “People respect you, know you. Louella saw everything. She’d testify.”
“Louella’s on the edge of a complete breakdown. Who knows if she’d be capable of making a coherent sentence if all this comes out? I have to think of Joyce, of my family, of my reputation.” A muscle began to jerk in his cheek as he stared at Maggie. “There’s so much at stake,” he whispered. “So much to protect.”
She watched his hand hover over the butt of his gun.
Cliff started up the steep lane at full speed, spitting gravel. Joyce’s breathless story told him one vital thing. Maggie was
