“Do you think he’s bad?” I asked quietly, my stomach churning at the thought.
“No, Magnolia. Like I said, I think he’s caught up in something that’s spiraled out of control, and he’s in too deep to ask for help.”
I took a moment to absorb that. It rang true to me, though I had no idea what it might mean. “I want to tell you everything, Owen,” I finally said, “but I need to tell Owen Frasier, the nephew of Gordon Frasier, not Detective Frasier. Can you separate the two?”
“In the interest of transparency, I feel that I should tell you that I might not be Detective Frasier much longer, so it might be a moot point.”
“I need your assurance anyway.”
He studied me for a moment before meeting my eyes and holding my gaze. “Magnolia Steele, everything you tell me is friend to friend.” Then he extended his hand across the table.
I hesitated. How many friends had I acquired since I’d come back to Franklin only to find out that they had secret agendas of their own? At least I knew exactly where Owen stood. I grabbed his hand and shook. “Friend to friend.”
He dropped my hand and offered me a genuine smile. “Let’s get to work.”
I pulled the envelope out of my bag, but after I placed it on the table, I kept my palms on it, holding it down. I wasn’t ready . . . not yet. “I haven’t seen much of this. The night you brought Melanie’s and Amy’s files over, Brady stayed up to look at all of these. When I woke up a few hours later, he was still looking at them, at well past three in the morning. I asked if he’d been up all night, but he told me he’d gone to bed and gotten up to look at them again. I have no idea if he was being truthful or not. I saw a few photos on the table and something about one of them looked familiar. It didn’t immediately strike me that they were all dead, more that they were naked. At first, I thought he was looking at porn. But it all happened so quickly. He gathered them together and told me to go to bed, saying he’d be in there soon. But I kept thinking about those files, and after he was asleep, I got up and found the envelope in his hall closet. I took it to his guest bath and dumped it out and started to look it over, but it all hit so close to home . . . and then I saw Melanie’s photos, and I knew it was her.”
“And you said they were connected by a mark?” Owen asked.
“Yeah, a backward C with a line through it.”
“Like a brand?” Owen asked with a frown.
Why had I never thought of that? Anxiety swamped my head. “Exactly like a brand.”
“If Brady knew about your connection to the case, it helps explain why he latched on to you so fast,” Owen said. “He seemed so protective so quickly.”
But he hadn’t known until last week, and he’d been protective weeks before that. Literally since the first time we’d met.
Owen gave me a sad smile, putting his hand lightly over mine. “We’ll face this together, Magnolia.”
“That’s exactly what Brady told me.”
That gave him pause. “In all fairness, I’m not taking this to the department either, so maybe you’d feel better sticking with him.”
I shook my head. “No. I already told you that I like that you aren’t emotionally involved with me. I need someone more clearheaded.”
“I’ll try my best to be that person,” he said, holding my gaze.
I lifted my hands and let him tug the envelope across the table. I rested my hands in my lap and glanced at the single other guest in the diner, the man halfway across the restaurant from us, as Owen dumped the contents on the table.
“This is all kind of a mess,” Owen said.
“What does that mean?” I asked, turning back to face him.
“Brady’s usually neat and organized. This is unlike him.”
My mouth dropped open as I saw the haphazard way the papers and photographs were stacked. “He never looked at it again.” I lifted my gaze to Owen’s. “I was looking at the photos in the bathroom, and Brady somehow figured out what I was doing. He unlocked the door and found me. I had gotten some of the papers and photos stuffed back inside the envelope, but he cleaned up the rest. If it’s all unorganized, that must mean he never looked at it again, right?”
His mouth twisted to the side. “Yeah.”
A shiver ran down my spine. “It’s like he wanted me to see them.”
He didn’t protest at first, but after a few seconds he said, “Now, that’s a stretch.”
“Brady had seen my scar the night before. He reacted to it but didn’t say anything. He was very curious about where I’d gotten it. Maybe he couldn’t tell me there was a connection between me and the serial killer, so he planted those files so I’d make the connection.”
“Again, it’s a stretch,” Owen said. “He could have pressed you more. I’ve seen the man in an interrogation room. He has a way of winning people over and getting them to share things no one else would share.”
The blood rushed from my head.
Owen cringed. “I’m not suggesting what he told Maria was true—that he befriended you to get information.”
It was impossible for me to consider that possibility right now, so I just shook my head. “I must be mostly immune to whatever charm Brady possesses. I had way too many secrets for his liking, even if he told me he’d be patient about getting answers. He saw my scar, and I refused to tell him about it. Of course, Emily was killed hours later, and she supposedly had the mark too.”
Owen’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not suggesting that Brady’s the killer, are you?”
“No. There’s no way he could have gotten out of bed, left to kill Emily, then come back in time to get ‘woken up’ by the call to go to her murder scene. And he seemed freaked out the next morning—like he’d just made the connection. He came to find me at Ava Milton’s because he was terrified the killer had found me. There’s no faking that kind of worry and fear.”
“Good, because secrets or no, he’s not capable of doing something like that.” He glanced down at the pile and picked up one of the photos. Not Melanie. I’d tried to avoid looking at them last week, but there was no ignoring them now. Tears clogged my throat.
“Good God,” Owen muttered as he looked at another photo. “I’m guessing the wounds weren’t postmortem.”
“I read a few of the reports,” I said in a broken voice. “They all had the same cause of death: blood loss. I think he slashed Melanie Seaborn’s throat, but only after he cut her many, many times first. He was punishing her for something—something she said she didn’t do, but I didn’t hear what it was. At the end, she kept saying she was sorry.” I paused. “But I had a concussion, so a lot of what I remember is blurry and fuzzy.”
Owen’s gaze lifted to mine. “You were in the same room? You saw the entire thing?”
“I have no idea how long she was there. I was running from my best friend’s boyfriend. I’d caught him cheating and taken an incriminating photo, and he chased me deep into the woods. It was raining and I was drenched, and I found a deserted house and went inside. I’d lost Blake by then. I thought I heard a woman scream under the floor, but it was storming, so I wasn’t sure. Then a man came out of the basement and dragged me down the stairs. The woman, Melanie—” I choked on her name, “—was tied to the rafters with her arms over her head. She was only wearing her bra and panties, and her body was already covered in slashes.”
Owen looked grim.
I took a second to regain control before continuing. “He tied me to a metal pole, and then he realized who I was. He called me by name.”
“He called you Magnolia?”
I nodded. “And my last name too. He slammed my head into the pole, and I lost consciousness for a while, but I could hear the woman screaming and saying she hadn’t done it. The man came back to me and threw my dress up. He cut that mark into my thigh and told me that if I said anything to anyone, he would kill my mother and brother and make me watch before he killed me too. Then he killed the—Melanie. Her screaming suddenly stopped.”
“How did you get away?”
“I have no idea. I passed out, and when I came to, I was at the edge of the woods behind my mother’s house.”
“He let you go,” Owen said in amazement. “Why?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, but he told me if I was a good girl, he’d let me go.”
“Did he force himself on you? Or coerce you into doing something?”
I studied him for a moment. “Are you asking if he raped me? No. It felt like he was letting me go for personal reasons.”
“Then you might be right about the connection to your father.”
“Yesterday, I asked Brady how Melanie had been taken. He said she was a nurse and hadn’t shown up for her shift the next day.”
Owen looked surprised. “A nurse. Do you think she was connected to your father somehow?”
“I have no idea. Two weeks ago, if you’d told me that my father had been unfaithful to my mother, I would have called you a bald-faced liar. Now I know that he likely had at least three affairs. Maybe she was another one of his liaisons.”
“You said you think he’s alive?” Owen asked.
“I’m pretty sure I saw him at Momma’s funeral. In the trees at the edge of the cemetery. I waited until everyone left and shouted at him to leave me alone.”
Owen looked shell-shocked.
“This is where I need to make sure you’re really keeping this to yourself,” I said. “There’s a risk of incriminating myself.”
He turned even more serious. “You have my word.”
“I’m 99.9% sure that Daddy killed Rowena Rogers.”
Chapter 16
His mouth sagged; then he recovered enough to ask, “Did you see him?”
“No, but he did it to save me, so I’m sure it was him.”
“In the basement of Savannah House?” he asked.
“Yeah. Rowena found out that I had Daddy’s gold. She sent her goon to tell me to deliver it to her last Saturday night.”
“Gold?”
“It’s what Geraldo Lopez was looking for in my apartment,” I said, suddenly feeling exhausted. It felt good to tell someone else who might help me, but it was also emotionally draining. “I’d found it days before, hidden in a ceramic dog in my mother’s garage. Momma didn’t even know it was there. My brother had moved the entire contents of Christopher Merritt’s Nashville apartment into her garage, telling her the items belonged to a friend who’d been transferred to Hong Kong.”
“What?”
“I told you I know things.” It was a smug statement, really, but I didn’t sound smug. If anything, I sounded defeated. So many secrets. So many destroyed lives.
“Who told you this? Your mother? Your brother?”
“My sister-in-law. Belinda. My brother won’t tell me anything.” I shook my head. “Except at the will reading, he was upset I got Momma’s house, more upset than he should have been.” Then I told him what Roy had said, or rather what he’d implied, and Belinda and Brady’s differing accounts of the confrontation that had come later.
He was quiet for a moment. “How well do you trust Belinda?”
“Before last week, implicitly. Now . . . I don’t know.” I told Owen about Belinda’s parents, and how she blamed herself for Roy’s abuse because she’d encouraged him to work for Bill. I considered not telling him the rest, but we’d made an agreement, and I planned to see it through, so I went on to tell him that she’d held me at gunpoint to draw my father out of hiding.
“And you don’t know if you trust her?” he asked as though I were insane to consider it.
I supposed he had a point, and yet Belinda was more than the mistakes she’d made. “She’s a good person who made a few errors in judgment.”
“Errors in judgment that could get her arrested.”
I gasped. “You swore that—”
“Calm down, Magnolia,” he said with a frown. “I’m not telling anyone, but you need to think about what you just said. If your sister-in-law risked your life, do you really want to trust her?”
“She had her reasons.”
“And she could still have them. You did say that she stayed with your brother last night.”
He was right.
“And the musician?”
“Colt?”
“Yeah. Him. How’s he involved in this?”
“He’s not up for discussion, Owen.”
He looked irritated, but his expression softened. “Sorry. I realize it isn’t easy to share these things.”
Which made me realize that I was spilling out my life story and he’d hardly shared anything. “Why are you so certain your uncle is innocent?”
“I thought you believed Rowena Rogers.”
“Yes, but what made you decide he was innocent?”
His shoulders rose as he took a big inhale. “I saw how the accusations ripped him apart. How he let it define him, even after he quit the force. He’s an old man now and still bitter. I just never thought someone who was guilty could let his department’s betrayal rip him apart like that.”
“So you became a cop to avenge him?”
“No, more like to show them they could damage one Frasier, but they couldn’t destroy us all.” A wry grin twisted his mouth. “Which is funny since I’m about to lose my job.”
“Only, you don’t seem devastated by the thought.”
He chuckled. “Let’s just say that I’ve been bucking the status quo for years now. I would have been kicked out ages ago if not for Brady. He’s the sensible one.” His smile fell. “If you have to choose between Brady and Belinda, Brady’s the safer bet.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but I figured it didn’t matter. I wasn’t counting on either one of them right now.
Debbie emerged from the kitchen carrying two plates, and I gestured to the photos. “Debbie’s coming out.”
Owen picked up the pile, flipped it over, and began to stuff the papers back in the envelope.
“Y’all doin’ okay?” she asked as she set our plates down. “Let me get you both some refills; then I’ll let you get back to it.”
“So why are you so interested in clearing your uncle’s name?” I asked after she left. “You’re about to hang up your badge.”
“It was never about me. It was more about helping Uncle Gordon get his pride back. I figured that I could help him get closure by proving that your dad was shady.” Then, as if realizing what he’d just said, he grimaced and added, “Sorry.”
“That’s one of the reasons I’m here with you now, Owen.”
Debbie returned with a pitcher of tea and water and refilled our glasses before heading back into the kitchen.
“You didn’t go to the police after you woke up in the woods?” Owen asked as he set the envelope down at the end of the table.
“No, I completely blocked out what happened in that house.”
His brow furrowed in a thoughtful look. “How did you explain the cut on your leg or your concussion? To your mother or yourself?”
“I didn’t. I was covered in mud from the rain, which helped disguise the blood on my clothes, and Momma thought I had a hangover, which explained my vomiting the next morning. But I knew I had to leave Franklin, so I bought a plane ticket to New York City. Every time I even thought about coming home, I had a panic attack.” He started to say something, so I added, “The only reason I came back a month ago was because I was humiliated, homeless, and broke. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here at all.”
“But you’re still here. You could have gone back.”
“I found out my mother was dying. And then I decided to dig into my father’s disappearance. You know I never believed the story about how he’d run off, so I was dead set to prove it wasn’t true. Now . . .” I paused. “Now, I’m trying to figure out his connection to the serial killer, because I know there is one. Every time something big happened with my father, the serial killer struck.”
Owen glanced down at the envelope.
“The
file showed that there were murders twenty, seventeen, fourteen, and ten years ago. And now these recent ones,” I said. “Twenty years ago was the Jackson Project, and Daddy being accused of murdering Tripp Tucker’s fiancée was seventeen years ago.” I paused. “If you’ve investigated him, you knew about that one.”
He nodded.
“That coincided with his lawsuit with Tripp. Then fourteen years ago, he ran off.”
“And ten years ago?” Owen asked.
“I think Daddy came back for my high school graduation.”
“Holy shit,” Owen said. “What if your father is the killer?”
“My father is a lot of things, but I know he loves me. He saved me in the Savannah House basement. Besides, I would have recognized his voice.”
“We need to go out to that house,” Owen said. “The one where you witnessed the murder.”
“Brady’s been trying to get me to go out there since last week, and I keep putting him off.”
“Why?”
“Because it scares the crap out of me. When my memories of that night returned, I went out there to see if it was real. It’s still there—and still abandoned—but I couldn’t bring myself to go down into the basement. But I also didn’t go with him because I don’t trust him. Still, I’m not sure how I feel about going out there with you and leaving him hanging.”
“Then go with him.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“I’m serious. We’ve both established that Brady’s not the kind of guy who would hurt you. That way he’ll see it, and you’ll get him off your back.”
“You don’t want to see it?” I asked.
“I’ll see it. You can see it first with him.”
“I’m only going one more time, and that’s one time too many.”
“Fair enough.”
I toyed with the lettuce on my plate, suddenly losing my appetite.
“You said the killer has been texting you.”
“Ever since I got back into town.” I told him about all of the texts, including the warning that had specifically targeted Belinda. Plus the magnolia blossoms, the necklace Brady had given me, and the dead cat he’d left on Momma’s porch. It had looked like my childhood cat.
Curtain Call: Magnolia Steele Mystery #4 Page 15
