by Brenda Novak
Teddy made a face at his brother. “See?”
“Grandma won’t like it,” Heath said.
“So? Grace is giving me cookies tomorrow,” Teddy insisted. “Now I’m not gonna bring you one.”
Heath stuck out his tongue in return. “You wouldn’t anyway.”
“Maybe I would,” Teddy said.
Kennedy thought there was actually a pretty good chance of it. Teddy might be headstrong, but he was also generous. “I’ll tell Grandma it’s fine for you to help Grace every once in a while.”
“Grandma’s going to be m-a-d,” Heath said. “I don’t think she likes Grace.”
“Grandma doesn’t even know her,” Teddy said.
“Yes, she does,” Heath replied. “I heard her on the phone. She said that Grace is a tramp and her mother killed some reverend dude.”
The frustration Kennedy sometimes felt toward his mother reasserted itself. “Grace Montgomery graduated first in her class at Georgetown, which is a very tough law school. And she’s become an excellent assistant district attorney. There was an article in the paper not long ago saying she’s never lost a case.”
“What does that mean?” Heath asked.
“It means she’s earned some respect, okay? And your grandmother doesn’t know that anyone killed the reverend.”
“You’d have to be an idiot to believe anything else,” Heath said.
Kennedy twisted in his seat to give his oldest son a pointed stare, and Heath immediately backed off. “That’s what Grandma said,” he added sheepishly.
Rubbing the five-o’clock shadow on his jaw, Kennedy returned his focus to the road. “Sometimes Grandma says a little too much,” he said, although almost everyone in town suspected the same thing. He’d even wondered on occasion. “The Reverend Barker went missing years ago. No one knows what happened to him.”
“Does that mean I can go to Grace’s tomorrow, Dad?” Teddy said.
Kennedy remembered the resentment shining in Grace’s eyes when she’d looked up at him in the parking lot of the pizza parlor. “Does she realize you’re my son?”
“I don’t know.”
“Has she said anything about me?”
“No.”
“Okay, you can mow the lawn, but don’t go inside the house.”
“Why not?”
“That’s the rule. Either obey it or stay completely away.”
“What about my cookies?”
“She can give them to you at the door, okay?”
There was a moment of silence, but Teddy sounded somewhat mollified when he answered. “Okay. I left her a note. I bet she’ll have them for me tomorrow.”
“Will you bring me one, too?” Kennedy asked.
“Cookies have carbs, Dad,” Teddy replied.
Kennedy chuckled. “Do you even know what carbs are?”
“No, but Grandma does. She hates them.”
“That’s because she’s watching her weight.”
“Mom used to make the best cookies,” Heath said.
Kennedy heard the melancholy in his son’s voice and felt the familiar weight of his loss. Heath and Teddy missed their mother terribly. Kennedy missed Raelynn, too. He missed her fingers curling through his hair, her laugh, her presence in their home. He also missed not having to deal with his overbearing mother on a daily basis.
“I’ll get you both one,” Teddy said softly.
Again, Kennedy remembered the look Grace had given him. “Just don’t mention that one of them is for me,” he added with a rueful laugh.
4
“So…tell her,” Madeline prompted, nudging Kirk Vantassel’s foot with her own.
They were sitting around the coffee table in the living room, relaxing after the impromptu dinner Grace had served—chicken and pasta with a green salad and sourdough rolls. Kirk had brought over some Vicki Nibley for Mayor signs, and Madeline had made a big deal about what traitors they were not to support the candidate endorsed by her paper. Kirk admitted he didn’t have strong political views. He said he was just trying to help his father get a date with Vicki, who’d been a widow for nearly five years. His reasoning made Grace laugh. But now that Madeline was changing the subject, she felt a measure of unease trickle through her veins. Grace knew from their earlier conversation that her stepsister was leading them straight to the topic she least wanted to discuss.
“Tell her what?” he asked, sprawled out on one end of Grace’s plush, olive-colored sofa.
An illegitimate baby, Kirk had been raised by his grandmother in the small brick house next to the library on First Street, until his father was old enough to take him. Because he was eight years older than Grace, she hadn’t had much contact with him when she lived in Stillwater. But she’d always liked him. He was the strong silent type, immovable in his loyalties and affections. And he wasn’t bad-looking. He had a crooked nose—something he’d acquired playing football—and fine brown hair that lacked body. A pair of intense brown eyes easily redeemed his appearance, however. And he had great hands. Large and masculine, with plenty of nicks and gouges from his work as a roofing contractor, they were very different from George’s long, narrow fingers and perfectly manicured nails.
“Tell her what you heard at the tavern last night. I didn’t bring you over here just so you could wolf down two plates of pasta,” Madeline teased, pulling her long auburn hair over one shoulder.
Picking up her wineglass from the table, Grace stood and crossed the room to stare out the front window. Barker would never be forgotten, she thought bitterly. Even after eighteen years, it seemed that every conversation, at least with anyone remotely connected to Stillwater, included him—if not directly, then in some kind of subtext.
“I ran into Matt Howton,” Kirk said.
Grace sipped her wine. “Matt? I don’t recall him.”
“He’s John Howton’s oldest. Tall, skinny guy, about twenty-three. Works for Jed Fowler down at the auto shop.”
At the mention of Jed Fowler, tension knotted the muscles in Grace’s back and shoulders. “What did Matt have to say?”
Kirk leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs and letting his hands dangle between his knees. “We were just kicking back, having a few beers and shooting some pool, you know? And then he asked me how Madeline’s doing, which led to the fact that you’re in town, which led to what he thought about your stepfather.”
“And?” Grace asked, bracing herself.
“He suspects Jed Fowler might’ve had something to do with what happened,” Madeline inserted, as if she couldn’t wait for Kirk to get to the point.
Grace wasn’t surprised by this declaration. Matt wasn’t the first to suggest the taciturn repairman had been involved in the reverend’s disappearance. But the excitement in Madeline’s voice indicated there was more. “Did he say why?”
“First, you know Lorna Martin, who lives behind Jed’s shop, says that on the night our father disappeared, she heard Jed’s truck pull in around midnight, right?”
Grace nodded.
“The light went on in the shop and stayed on until 3:00 a.m.,” Madeline continued. “She insists it’s the only time she’s ever seen him there so late.”
“She reported that to the police,” Grace said.
“Now tell her what Matt said,” Madeline urged Kirk.
“Matt claims Jed has a file drawer he always keeps locked,” Kirk said.
Grace’s stomach began to hurt. She’d had enough of locked file drawers. From her experience, nothing good was ever inside. “So?” She scowled as she turned to face them. “Maybe he’s got something valuable in there.”
Kirk’s eyebrows notched up, as if it surprised him that she wasn’t more excited about the news. “Maybe he does, and maybe he doesn’t, but according to Matt, he acts very strange about it. Matt was doing some stuff in the office two days ago and happened to find the drawer unlocked for a change. Curiosity got the better of him, so he opened it. Jed walked in at that moment and got so angry
he nearly fired him.”
“I’ve never seen Jed angry,” Grace said. “I’ve never seen him express any emotion.”
“Exactly,” Kirk agreed smugly. “Obviously, there’s something in that drawer he doesn’t want anyone to see.”
Jed had long been a dangerous variable. “What could it be?” Grace asked.
“Maybe it’s evidence,” Madeline replied.
“If he’s guilty of murdering our…father, why would he hang on to something that could possibly incriminate him?” She’d used her prosecutor’s matter-of-fact tone, but she knew of at least one very plausible reason he might’ve done exactly that—if he were the culprit. And Madeline launched right into it.
“Who can say for sure? But it happens. I’ve seen enough forensic shows to know that much.” She drained her glass. “Heck, you’ve probably dealt with a few criminals who’ve kept trophies, haven’t you?”
“One.” Not that she wanted to be reminded of it. She was silent for a few seconds. “I thought you’d decided it was Mike Metzger?” she said at last.
A week before he went missing, the reverend had caught nineteen-year-old Mike smoking pot in the bathroom of the church and turned him in to the authorities. Mike hadn’t been too happy about it. He’d made a few threats before the reverend disappeared and afterward admitted he was glad Barker was gone. But his mother swore he was home in bed on the night in question, and the circumstantial evidence pointing his way wasn’t strong enough for police to press charges. Mike was now in prison for manufacturing crystal meth in his basement, but Madeline had sworn for years that he was to blame for her father’s disappearance.
A furrow developed between Madeline’s large hazel eyes. “I’ve never wanted to believe it could be Jed,” she muttered. “I’ve always liked him. But there’s no denying he’s a bit…different.”
Grace couldn’t argue with that. “It’s easier to imagine Mike doing something horrid.”
“Right. But I think I might’ve been too closed-minded. We already know that Jed was at the farm that night, working on the tractor.”
“He was in the barn. That doesn’t necessarily make him guilty of murder. Mike lived less than a mile away. That’s certainly a walkable distance.”
Rising, Madeline poured herself and Kirk some more wine. At least five-eight, she was tall, slender and regal. Only the light dusting of freckles on her nose detracted from the sophistication of her appearance. “Jed had a better opportunity.”
Kirk scooted forward a little. “Picture this. The reverend comes home from the church, sees the light on in the barn and walks down to see how the tractor’s coming along. He and Jed argue, get into a scuffle—”
“Argue over what?” Grace asked. “At least Mike had a motive. Why would Jed want to hurt our dad?” The word dad tasted so bitter on her tongue she almost couldn’t say it.
“They could’ve had a disagreement over anything,” Kirk said.
“But our father never even came home that night.” Grace consciously steadied her hand so she could take another sip of wine before repeating what she’d said hundreds of times before. “If his car had pulled up, I would’ve heard him.”
“Maybe you were preoccupied,” Kirk said.
“No. He—he expected our chores to be done. We always watched for him, didn’t we, Madeline?”
“Usually,” she said with a nod.
Grace drew a deep breath. She’d watched for him more carefully than the others. “He never drove up on the night of August third,” she stated calmly.
“What else can you remember?” Kirk asked.
Far more than she wanted to. She remembered how hard it’d been to wipe the sticky blood from her hands. The sound of the shovel scraping through the mud. The smell of rain and damp leaves. She remembered sitting in a tub of hot water, shivering, her teeth clacking together while her mother scrubbed her clean as if she was a baby. And she remembered the pink color of the bathwater when she got out.
She fought to blank her mind. “Nothing special,” she said. “That night was no different than any other.”
“Except that Jed never came to the door to get paid for his work. Don’t you think that’s strange?” Madeline asked.
It was strange. Grace didn’t know what he’d seen that night. Or whether he’d ever divulge it. At times, she believed he’d fixed the tractor and gone home without noticing anything amiss, just as he’d told the police. At other times she was certain he knew much more than he was saying. “Maybe he saw that Dad wasn’t home yet and decided not to bother us.”
“Or he was too busy hiding the body and hightailing it out of there,” Kirk volunteered.
Grace shook her head. “Jed’s not the type. You still haven’t given me a motive. Why would he want to harm the town’s most popular spiritual leader?”
“He didn’t consider him a spiritual leader,” Kirk responded. “He quit going to church several months before the reverend disappeared. Don’t you remember? One day he got up, walked out and never returned.”
“He’s not the only person to ever quit church.”
“He’s the only one I know who walked out in the middle of a sermon delivered by your father.”
“Maybe he didn’t like the way Dad preached.” Grace hadn’t liked it, either—not once she realized that what came out of his mouth had no correlation to what was in his heart.
“I went to Jed’s repair shop with Daddy once in a while,” Madeline said.
“Was there a problem between them?” Grace knew there wasn’t, so she risked another sip of wine.
“I sensed something unfriendly going on. When Daddy invited him back to church, Jed said he’d already heard more than enough from a man like him.” She ran a finger around the rim of her glass. “That shows some animosity, doesn’t it?”
“But the police couldn’t find any evidence to indicate that Jed did anything wrong,” Grace said, finally facing them.
“They never really looked. They pumped him for information, trying to get him to point his finger at Mom—that’s it.”
“And now you think he’s the one guilty of murder?” She realized after she’d spoken that she’d emphasized the wrong word. Fortunately, no one seemed to notice.
“Daddy didn’t drive off into the sunset, Grace. He wouldn’t leave me hanging. He wouldn’t leave Mom, you, Clay, Molly, the farm, his congregation. Not after what my real mother did,” she added softly. “He hated her for taking the easy way out.”
Grace bit her tongue. Madeline must’ve seen some of the cracks in her father’s marriage to the woman from Booneville, sensed the growing strain between him and his stepchildren. But it seemed that she’d chosen to ignore certain incidents and remember the past differently. If not for her loyal support and insistence that Irene was a good wife and mother, Grace thought the investigation might’ve gone on for years. They might even have gone to trial without a body. “But Jed, Maddy? He has no history of violence.”
“He’s not telling the truth about that night,” she insisted.
Did Madeline really want the truth? Grace longed to tell her to forget her father. To let what had happened go—because she’d only suffer more if she ever found the answers she craved. She stood to lose her mother, her sisters, her brother…Hadn’t she lost enough?
“You weren’t even there.” Madeline had been spending the night with a girlfriend, completely unaware that anything unusual was happening at home. But then, she’d been unaware of a lot of things. The reverend made sure of that.
“Jed said something strange to me once when I was at the shop to pick up my Jeep,” Kirk said. “At the time, I blew it off. But after talking to Matt…”
Grace stared at her own reflection in the window again. “What was it?”
“I was asking him about that night. At first, he wouldn’t say much, just gave all the same old lines. But when I asked him what he believes happened to Lee Barker, he said he thinks Madeline’s father got exactly what he deserved.”
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A shiver ran from Grace’s head to her feet.
“What he deserved?” Madeline repeated. “See, Grace? My dad was a preacher, for heaven’s sake. A good man. What could he deserve?”
Grace closed her eyes, yearning for the innocence Madeline took for granted. “It means Jed didn’t like him, that’s all.”
“No, it’s more than that,” Madeline said. “And I’m going to prove it.”
The rain came in a constant downpour that night. For the first time since Grace had moved into Evonne’s house, she felt out of place as she sat alone on the leather couch in the living room, watching the water cascade down the back windows. Her conversation with Madeline and Kirk bothered her, but no more than the storm. She kept picturing the gullies formed by the runoff, the water moving the topsoil at the farm, dumping it into the irrigation ditches and washing it far away from the trees behind the barn. They hadn’t had time to dig much of a hole….
But no one had found Barker’s grave in eighteen years.
She poured herself some more wine. What if Madeline managed to convince the police that Jed had killed her father? Would he defend himself by revealing all he knew? What would that be? And how would she face Madeline again if her stepsister ever learned the truth?
She sipped her chardonnay, remembering her encounter with Clay a week ago. She’d told him she was here to decide whether or not to come forward. But that was a lie. Her hands were tied, and they both knew it. Or she would’ve told the truth years ago.
So why was she here? To find some way to justify her continued silence, she decided. To live with what had happened. That was all.
Trying to shake off the foreboding that seemed to hang around her like cobwebs, she set her glass aside and used her cell phone, which lay on the seat next to her, to call Clay.
“Hello?”
She took a small measure of comfort in her brother’s deep, steady voice. “I hate nights like this,” she said without a greeting. “Don’t they make you want to sit out on the porch with your gun—see what might turn up?”
