by Debra Webb
Paul just wasn’t strong enough to keep his distance. He rested his hand at the small of her back, offering what comfort he could.
The chief sighed, his face grim. “We can’t be certain just yet, but we believe so. We should have confirmation by morning.”
“Oh my God.” Her knees buckled. Paul pulled her against him.
On the way here Jill had left him a voicemail about the Amber Alert. Paul’s instincts warned they’d gotten his attention.
“What’s the hold up with identification?” Paul asked. Jill and her mother shouldn’t have to wait unnecessarily.
Dotson turned his hands up. “Burned beyond recognition. TBI’s gonna pick up the remains tomorrow morning and we’ll know more after they’ve completed their work. We’re pretty sure it’s him. A good portion of the bear he always wagged around, according to Ms. Claire, was recovered from the scene. She’s identified it just a few minutes ago.”
Jill turned her face into Paul’s chest, sobbing. That feeling of wrongness stabbed through him again. But he couldn’t press the chief for details right now, not with Jill falling apart in his arms.
“I’ll be around tomorrow to see how her and her momma are faring.” He hesitated before walking away. “It’s out of our hands now, Dr. Phillips.”
Paul didn’t bother responding. He helped Jill into the Land Rover, buckled her seat belt and closed her door. When he skirted the hood, he glimpsed the chief climbing into his cruiser. For three beats their gazes met.
And Paul knew the chief was hiding something.
No.
The chief was flat out lying.
~*~
Claire Ellington, holding up surprisingly well, insisted on seeing her daughter to bed without any help from Paul. Feeling more in the way than anything else, he retired to Judge Ellington’s study and paced.
He reviewed all that he’d absorbed about this case. The crime scene was all wrong, or staged. There was no motive. The child was missing and now suddenly found. How convenient that the body was burned beyond recognition, with only part of a stuffed toy to use for identification at this point. There were no dental records since the child had never been to a dentist.
That would certainly tidy up the missing child aspect of the case. But what about the murder? How did the chief intend to cleanly resolve that element? Would it simply go unsolved as the Benford murder had?
Paul knew in his gut that something was already in the works. The chief was dirty. The child had never been considered missing, not in the usual sense. No Amber Alert. Bullshit. People went postal when children were missing. Heavy media coverage, especially in a small town like this.
Nothing about this case felt right. Someone with enough power was keeping a tight lid on things. A very tight lid.
Somehow Benford and Manning were small pieces of the same bigger picture. It was a huge leap but his gut told him he was on the right track. He wondered if Jill really wanted to know what lay at the bottom of all this.
He stalled in the middle of the room, his gaze landing on the sideboard and the crystal liquor decanters there. Just one drink. That was all he needed. The stash he’d brought with him was gone. He reached for the bourbon then hesitated. If they pushed this investigation any further, things were going to get dicey. Jill was depending on him. He dropped his hand to his side.
He had to do this right.
Focus on the case. Walk off the temptation. Hands in his pockets, he paced the small room. Kate was the key. She knew all the answers, but they were locked inside some little compartment that was too painful to open. Only time would make that happen. Maybe not even then. There was no way to know what might have been done to ensure she never told the story of what happened the day she murdered her husband.
He thought again of the Benford murder. Of the coincidence that The LifeCycle Center had chosen Paradise as the site for the newest, largest and most aggressive infertility treatment facility to date. How convenient that salvation had appeared only one year after the closing of the chemical plant which had spewed pollutants into the ground water... rendering sterile a large percentage of the humans who came into contact with it over an extended period of time.
“Too damned convenient.”
A gasp in the entry hall jerked Paul’s attention there. Claire Ellington stood at the bottom of the stairs staring at him, and balancing a glass of milk on a shiny silver tray.
“How’s Jill?” He moved to the door of her husband’s study.
“She’s resting.”
“I’ll take that to her,” he offered.
“I’d prefer to do it myself.” She sent a pointed look at the study. “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep the Judge’s doors closed.”
“Sorry.” Paul stepped into the hall, closed the doors behind him. “I’ll go up with you.”
Claire looked exasperated at his insistence but she said nothing. Instead she climbed the stairs with him trailing a few steps behind.
He wondered for the second time in the last half hour why the woman wasn’t all broken up over hearing that her grandson was dead. She was as cool as the proverbial cucumber. Hadn’t shed a single tear that he’d seen. Jill, on the other hand, was devastated. Paul wanted to tell her about his suspicions that the boy was still alive... but what if he were wrong this time? He couldn’t put her through that without more than his hunch.
It didn’t take a film director with an eye for detail to see that something was seriously wrong with this picture.
Jill was curled into the fetal position on the bed. She sat up when they entered the room. Her eyes were red and puffy. He ached to somehow make this right, to comfort her. It had been so long since he’d attempted to comfort anyone, he wasn’t sure he remembered how.
“Drink this, dear. It’ll make you feel better.” Claire placed the glass in Jill’s hand. “I warmed it for you.”
Jill nodded and took a long drink from the glass of milk. Her mother sat down on the side of the bed, the silver tray held against her chest like a shield.
“I made some decisions tonight after the chief told me about... Cody,” she said quietly, then cleared her throat of what Paul presumed was emotion. It would be the first she’d displayed since hearing the news.
He remained at a distance, observing, his gut clenching with growing apprehension. The voice of reason was screaming at him. Wrong... wrong... wrong!
“Karl’s friends at MedTech are holding a memorial service for him tomorrow at the church they attended.” She paused for a moment, allowing Jill to digest that information. “I think it’s a fine idea. There’s really no need to wait until the body is released for burial. In fact, I’d like to include Cody in the service. There’s no point in dragging this out. You’re here. The sooner we get this behind us, the sooner we can pick up the pieces. I’m sure you need to get back to Jackson and your own work there.”
Jill said nothing. She simply stared at her mother, the half empty glass of milk clutched in her hand.
“We’ll call the doctor in the morning and see if Kate can be released long enough to attend the service. Since official charges haven’t been filed, I can’t see why they wouldn’t allow it.” Claire breathed a sigh of finality, as if all was right in the world now that she’d made certain decisions. “Drink up now.”
Jill obeyed and Claire took the glass. She pressed a kiss to her daughter’s forehead before rising to go. She looked directly at Paul and smiled, it wasn’t pleasant. “She needs her rest.”
He let the tension dissipate for a few seconds after her departure before he approached Jill. She sat there, staring at nothing at all.
When he eased down onto the side of the bed she looked at him, a high-octane blend of fear, pain, and disbelief in her eyes. “She wants me to leave.”
He couldn’t argue the point. It certainly sounded that way to him.
“She just wants to pretend it all away.” Jill hugged her arms around her middle. “Just like when my father died.”
&n
bsp; Paul tugged her right hand free and held it in his. Her skin was so soft, her hand so small compared to his. “Is this the way she always reacts to trauma? She’s just been told her grandson is probably dead and she hasn’t shed the first tear.” An atypical response to the death of a family member—a child at that—if Paul had ever seen one.
“My grandparents died when I was really small, so I don’t remember.” She stared at their hands as if the contrasting tones and textures fascinated her. “No one we were especially close to ever died until my father.” Her gaze grew distant, misty. “She just called me and said, ‘Jillian, your father is dead, you’ll need to come home for the funeral.’” Jill shook her head. “Not once did I see her cry.” She looked at Paul in earnest. “But I know she loved him. And I know she loves Cody. Maybe it’s just her way. Otherwise I can’t explain it.”
Maybe. Paul wasn’t convinced. “I don’t know about exposing Kate to this memorial service. It could set her back.”
Her fingers tightened around his. Every part of him tensed. “I can’t believe this is happening. It just seems so impossible.”
“Look,” he said softly, drawing her gaze back to him, “there are some things we need to discuss but we’ll do that in the morning.” They both needed a good night’s sleep.
She nodded, fresh tears blooming on those golden lashes.
He started to get up... but hesitated. One more look into those tortured eyes and he had to touch her. He stroked one finger down her soft cheek, reveling in the feel of her skin. “I’ll figure this out. I swear I will.”
“Thank you.”
He told himself to go but he couldn’t make it happen. Slowly, he leaned forward and brushed his lips to hers. Just the barest of touches, but it was enough. For now.
“Good night.”
She fisted her fingers in his shirt and pulled him back down to her. “You could stay... with me... tonight.”
He smiled. The alien sensation in his chest startled him. “Not tonight. When we spend the night together it won’t be about loss and pain.”
She moistened those lush pink lips and released him. “You’re ruining that bad guy image of yours, you know.”
It was all he could do to walk out of her room. But it was the right thing to do.
He closed the door behind him, drawing up short when he came toe to toe with Claire Ellington.
“I want you to stop filling my daughter’s head with nonsense,” she demanded in a harsh whisper. “You’re only making matters worse.”
Paul held his tongue out of respect for the woman, though he wasn’t sure yet whether she deserved it, but mostly he did so out of respect for Jill.
“Good night, Mrs. Ellington.” He moved around her and strode to the far end of the hall, past the staircase, to the guestroom. He didn’t look back.
In his room, he studied the article on the Endocrine-disrupting pollutants he’d printed at the library.
This, he suspected, was where it started—whatever the hell it was.
All he had to do was follow the map from there.
By midnight, Paul had yet again reviewed all the reports from Kate’s case and all the other material he had gathered. It was like reading a book or watching a movie a second or third time and noticing something missed the first time or even the second. There was a major cover up going on in Paradise.
All he had to do was prove it.
To do that he had to stay alive.
The thought came out of nowhere. But Paul had learned long ago to trust his first instincts. He wasn’t about to change his MO now. He wasn’t wanted here. Hell, Jill wasn’t even wanted here. No one who represented a threat to the perfect balance in Paradise was welcome.
He stripped down to his boxers and slipped under the covers. Tomorrow he intended to check out a couple more things in the old issues of the Paradise Gazette. Like the number of births during the two years before and after the dumping of the pollutants was discovered. He also wanted to know if the Benford murder had ever been solved. He had a feeling the answer to that would be resounding no. More than anything, Paul just wanted to see the reaction on the chief’s face when he asked about it.
The secrets in Paradise lay in the past. Buried bone deep. But those ugly secrets were rising to the surface now, coming back to haunt this town. Or maybe the ugliness had always been here.
Above all else he feared that at the very center of it was Jill.
Chapter 10
Friday, July 15
It was late when Jill woke the next morning. Tears rushed, brimming against her lashes, making her chest ache with grief and regret. Grief for the loss of a precious child. Regret that she hadn’t spent as much time with him and his mother as she should have. And that she had come home and somehow failed to save him.
Seeing the little boy in Lynchburg had made her think. She wondered if Cody would have recognized her after all these months as anything other than someone who looked like his mother. She shook off the unnerving sensation that accompanied thoughts of the Lynchburg child. The resemblance was just too surreal.
When Kate recovered and understood that her child was dead, she would be devastated. What if the police discovered that Kate was responsible? That just couldn’t be true. Jill refused to accept that scenario. She closed her eyes and wondered, considering what she knew now, if maybe it wouldn’t be better if her sister stayed in Never-Never Land.
Jill pushed to a sitting position and scrubbed the dampness from her face. She had to pull it together. She owed it to her sister to put on a brave front, to be the closely connected twin she had refused to be for nearly two decades.
She held her head in her hands and struggled with the overpowering need to lie back down. She glanced at the clock again, almost nine. She never slept this late.
Maybe all the stress and exhaustion had finally caught up with her. She felt so... groggy, listless, like she’d overindulged in champagne the night before. Champagne, even a little, always gave her a hangover. Throwing back the covers, she dropped her feet to the floor and stood. The room shifted a bit, then steadied. She licked her dry lips and slowly, one wobbly step at a time, moved toward the door. A shower would wake her up. She paused by the dresser and picked up a note addressed to her. A smile teased her lips as she read the scrawled words. Phillips had gone back to the library and would return as soon as he could. She traced the bold strokes with a fingertip and thanked God again that he was in this with her. She stared at her reflection and for the first time in her life admitted, if only to herself, a deep dark secret. She was so tired of being alone.
After a long, hot shower Jill felt more human. She swabbed her hair and body dry with a thick terry cloth towel that smelled of the same spring-scented laundry detergent her mother had always used. She closed her eyes and allowed herself to go back in time and relive one of her childhood’s pleasurable moments. Her mother hanging towels on the clothesline in the backyard. Jill and Kate racing around the yard, the sun reflecting off their blond heads. Her mother’s gentle laughter and pleasant voice as she sang ‘Ring Around the Rosy.’ The sweet smell of the spring air. Her lids fluttered open and she wondered how everything had changed so very much.
“Don’t start that.” Jill squared her shoulders and reminded the weary woman in the mirror that she had to be strong today. She slung the towel around her and shimmied it back and forth to dry her back. A prick of pain made her wince. She dropped the towel and twisted to try and see the source of the discomfort in the mirror. There was a red mark in the center of her back, right over her spinal cord, high between her shoulder blades.
“What in the world?” Frowning, she fumbled through the drawers until she found a hand-held mirror to take a closer look. The mark was small, circular and angry red. A little puffy.
“Damn,” she breathed. Just her luck to get bitten by a spider or something equally repulsive. She shuddered.
Now wasn’t the time to worry about her arachnophobia. Apparently all the Ellington
women had some sort of phobia. She slipped on her gown and hurried back to the bedroom. She searched the bed and its covers for any signs of a spider. She shivered at the thought of having one of the creepy little buggers crawling around on her bare skin.
Disgusted at not being able to find the multi-legged perpetrator, she smoothed the rumpled covers and considered the worst. If she developed other symptoms she’d drop by the hospital and have it checked. She wondered vaguely if it had anything to do with her earlier grogginess. Just something else she didn’t have time to worry about today. She hoped the one black dress she’d brought was suitable. The fabric slid over her skin as she stepped into her heels. A quick mirror check and she was good to go.
She grabbed a clip for her hair and went downstairs. A quick call to her office as well as one to Cullen Marks was necessary and then she had to talk to her mother. Maybe coffee first. She hoped their appearance at this memorial service could be brief, in and out. She had no desire to face all the suspicious looks and cold receptions she would no doubt be exposed to by the people she had known her entire life. It was more than apparent that she was just another outsider to them now. Someone who threatened what they loved most—their perfect way of life.
The realization that it had been her mother’s idea to go to the memorial service nudged Jill hard. Was her agoraphobia suddenly cured? Jill shook her head. Just as she’d always suspected. Her mother’s phobia was a matter of convenience. She didn’t want to face the world either.
Speaking of her mother, where was she this morning? She searched the downstairs then hustled back up the stairs. Two knocks at her mother’s bedroom door without an answer had a new kind of worry rushing through her veins. Jill opened the door and found her mother sitting at her dressing table wearing nothing but a slip and staring at her reflection as if she expected a response to some question she’d asked herself.
“Mother, are you all right?”
For several seconds, Claire didn’t speak. She seemed lost in thought, or strangely mesmerized by the image in the mirror.
“Mother.” Jill moved to her side, crouching down to her eye level. “Please talk to me.”
