Small Town Secrets

by Allie Harrison

  “What? Why would Chief Daniels want to meet with us?”

  Robert shrugged. “I have no idea. He called, said he needed me at the station right away and he wanted you there, too. About thirty seconds after he called, Stella, the station receptionist, phoned to tell me she thought Daniels had been about to eat a bullet in his office when she interrupted him. She’s worried.”

  Mac looked at Lizzy. The dark circles under her eyes tugged at his heart. This was taking a toll on her. At first, he thought he was causing the problems. His return to Mossy Point certainly stirred up a hornet’s nest. Then he reminded himself—Tony reminded him, too—none of this was his fault. The positive thing was he was here to hold Lizzy through it.

  Lizzy stood behind the counter with a coffee pot in one hand.

  “You can come with us,” Mac suggested. “Or you can go out to the orchard with my mom.” As soon as the words were out, he remembered what happened yesterday at the orchard. He had to remind himself Lizzy and his mom were safe with Stan locked up.

  “Are you kidding? I can’t just close up shop and leave. It’s okay. Go ahead. I’ll be fine.”

  He didn’t believe the small smile she gave him was real. “Are you sure?”

  “Tony will be back in an hour or two. I’ll be in here with customers. I’ll just keep giving out all the donuts I made last night. I might even put a FREE sign on the little self-standing sign outside the door. That should keep the crowds coming.” She slipped a few donuts into a bag. “Here, take these with you.”

  “And here, put my number in your cell,” he instructed.

  They spent the next few moments swapping numbers. Mac didn’t feel good about leaving her alone, but it was better than nothing. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. I promise.” His kiss was quick but hesitant. He knew her fear was still raw. It didn’t matter that Stan was in jail. The uncertainty of the situation was just as terrifying. And of course, she was obviously reminded every time she spoke or smiled; any facial movement tugged against the stitch in her cheek. It also didn’t help that everyone who’d ordered a cup of coffee thus far asked her what happened.

  “I’ll be waiting with coffee and more donuts. I have plenty.”

  He smiled. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Then he headed out with his father.

  The Mossy Point Police Station hadn’t changed much since the last time he was there. The night Kelly Mattis was killed.

  The only change was the name on the office where his father used to sit. Oh, and the receptionist was new, too. She was a real knockout. He wondered how Swornson, who liked to swap sex for tickets, handled himself around that classy lady in a sweet pair of wide-legged pants and high heels.

  Chief Daniels stood at the door to his office, waiting. He ushered them in and invited them both to sit. “Stella, would you mind getting us all some coffee?”

  “I’d be glad to,” the knockout receptionist replied, saying it in a way that told Mac she knew what Daniels needed to discuss and was eager to help.

  Mac set the small bag on Daniels’ desk. “Lizzy Signorino sent donuts.”

  “Oh, thanks.”

  Mac noticed he didn’t grab the bag to check them out or eat one.

  A moment later, Stella carried in a tray that held three cups of coffee poured into heavy ceramic mugs. All three refused sugar or creamer. Daniels waited for her to close the door before he said a word.

  Saying nothing, Mac watched his dad carefully. He wondered if Robert ever sat on this side of the desk before today and how hard it must be for him. He also knew this had to be important, or Daniels wouldn’t have summoned them both.

  “Would you care to tell us what this is about?” Robert asked. His voice was laced with frustration and indicated to Mac he didn’t care to sit on this side of the desk. He probably had more school kids coming today and didn’t have time for this.

  “Before we get started, I want you to know I’ve started the paperwork to put Swornson on administrative leave. The only thing I need to decide is whether I should make it paid leave or not. I’ve let this go on a long time, and I’m not even sure why. I guess I’ve always felt sorry for him, and I hoped he’d listen to me and follow a better path. So far, that isn’t to be.”

  “Did you need help with the paperwork?” Robert remarked.

  Yes, sitting on this side of the desk was eating at him, Mac thought with a mental grin, as he swallowed a drink of bitter brew that burned his throat.

  “If you’re bored and need something to do, that’d be great. I had no idea how much damned paperwork was involved with this damned job.” Daniels paused. “The truth is, I called you here because I have some confessions.”

  “Do you need us to call you a priest?” Robert asked.

  Daniels met Robert’s gaze directly. “I’m telling you because I trust you, because I know whatever needs to be done regarding them, you’ll see it gets done.” He shifted his attention to Mac. “I’m telling you because you’re FBI and because if something needs to be done that your dad doesn’t have authority to get done, you will.”

  Mac met his father’s gaze for a moment and noticed Robert hadn’t taken any sips of his coffee but had his attention on Daniels. “This has to do with Kelly Mattis.”

  Mac’s heart skipped, and he forced his hand holding the mug of coffee to remain steady. What was Daniels going to do? Confess to killing her? Mac didn’t think they could get that lucky after all this time. Besides, he was pretty certain his dad had questioned everyone in a hundred-mile radius of town after Kelly was murdered.

  “I had sex with her.” Daniels spoke without blinking an eye.

  The room was silent for a long moment.

  “Kelly Mattis?” Mac asked after he cleared his throat.

  “Yes, Kelly Mattis.”

  “I’m not surprised, Chief,” Mac said. “I hope you practiced safe sex because I think every guy in my class had sex with her.”

  “I meant about an hour or two before she was killed. So what does that make me? Last, but not least?”

  Now that shined a new light on the situation. Mac found his dad staring at Daniels with concern. Both of them set their coffee on the desk as if neither of them trusted themselves to hold it any longer. Mac licked his lips, but it didn’t help his dry mouth, and then he faced Daniels again. “Did you kill her?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “Then I don’t care that you had sex with her,” Mac put in.

  “She called me from the dance, asked me to pick her up.”

  “What time was this?” Mac interrupted.

  “About nine o’clock.”

  “There weren’t any calls on her phone.” It was Robert’s turn to interrupt. “I checked.”

  “Maybe she called from the pay phone or from a friend’s phone. I don’t know. She never called me on her own cell anyway. She said her parents checked her phone all the time. I don’t remember the number that was used. I wouldn’t have cared back then, or even given it much thought. I don’t even know if you can go back that far in my phone records. I only know she called and I answered.”

  “Why’d she want you to pick her up?”

  “She was upset. She wouldn’t tell me exactly why.”

  “Probably because I was with Lizzy Signorino at the dance when Kelly thought I’d be taking her. Did she mention that?”

  “No,” Daniels replied. “But she sure had the hots for you.”

  He shrugged. He didn’t care, besides Tony had said as much.

  “She said you were the only guy she really loved, but that you weren’t interested. She said you were the only guy she’d ever given head to that was clearly distracted.”

  Mac supposed if his dad had to hear anything at all about it, that wasn’t bad. “Does this have anything to do with who might have killed her?” He glanced at his phone. “Because if it doesn’t, I want to get back to Lizzy.”

  Daniels continued, “We parked out the other side of the tunnel.” He leaned forward and rested h
is chin in the palm of his hand. “From where you were later. We had sex in my car, with her sitting on my lap. We’d been having sex for a year. I know I was older than her but she made me feel…I don’t know, important. I treated her like my girlfriend. Then that night I learned about all the others. I told her how I wished I could have taken her to the dance. She laughed in my face, said the last thing she needed was to be seen with me. She also told me she only kept me around because I was a better lay than some of the other guys she knew. A more mature lover, someone who knew what I was doing instead of the—and I quote—fumbling teenagers she usually had to deal with. I was really mad. She’d just straddled my lap, and I learned it’d meant nothing to her.”

  Again, the room was quiet for a long moment.

  “Why are you telling us this now?” Robert asked.

  Daniels scratched his head and shifted in his chair. “Kathleen Gresden knew I was seeing her, said she saw me pick her up from the dance, said she followed me and knew I took Kelly parking at the tunnel. She also said she saw Kelly hiking home later. She’s been kind of blackmailing me since.”

  “Kind of?” Mac let out.

  “It seems I screwed my way from one manipulative blackmailing bitch to another. I knew about that stupid son of hers, choking animals. I think he even killed a cat or two. I know the Drakes, who live behind the auto body shop, had a litter of puppies earlier this year and found two out of the six dead, but I couldn’t place Stan Gresden there. However, I also found evidence in the woods near the tunnel that he—or someone—was killing small animals. I didn’t exactly overlook it. I tried to talk to him about it. I suggested some places where I thought he could get help. I guess he never took my advice, or it didn’t work for him. Or perhaps Kathleen didn’t think he needed it. She always justified everything either Stan or Elliot did. Not that it matters. I helped her hide him last night. Kathleen has made it clear on every occasion she is determined to keep her boys safe from anyone who would want to even cause either of them pain. It’s probably driving a stake through her heart with the idea he’s up at County in Lock-Up. The truth of the matter is, I’m tired of carrying around the weight of Kelly Mattis, and Kathleen Gresden has been an exhausting see-saw ride that I can’t handle anymore. Hell, I can’t even say no to buying her a cup of coffee in Lizzy’s shop, or she threatens to report me and expose me to the newspaper office.”

  He paused and shifted his gaze from Mac to his father, then back to Mac. “I needed to come clean.”

  Mac’s thoughts swirled like water going down a drain. He didn’t even know if any of this information was helpful. “How was Kelly Mattis when you were with her, besides upset about me?”

  Daniels shrugged. “What do you mean?”

  “Preoccupied? Worried? Her usual self?” Mac specified. “Did she say anything about being followed or threatened?”

  Daniels offered a lopsided grin. “No, she didn’t say anything negative. She was just…pissy. I think she needed the sex to let off steam. Her usual self was always preoccupied. I’m sure in this day and age, the girl would have a label of ADHD or something equivalent. At the very least, she was spoiled. After we had sex, she asked me for money, which also wasn’t unusual. I gave her a hundred dollars. I told her as soon as she graduated from high school, I wanted to date her for real. She laughed and said as soon as she graduated from high school, she planned to be out of this quote-unquote nothing town. I told her I wanted to marry her. She told me I was good enough to fuck, but not good enough to marry. She said if I didn’t give her five hundred dollars, she was going to report me, that it would be statutory rape. She was seventeen. I was almost twenty-four. I guess it finally hit just how much she used me, and how she thought she would continue to do so. I told her to get the hell out of my car.”

  Daniels stopped and shook his head as if doing so would shake away the memory. “I didn’t have the money. I was trying to work my way through the police academy. When I told her that, she yelled at me, told me to go to hell. We weren’t far from Marston’s Tunnel. All these years, I’ve been haunted by the idea of how she loathed and pitied me, how she laughed as if everything we’d had for the entire year had been nothing but a joke. Then she climbed out and left. And obviously walked right into the arms of a murderer. Maybe if I’d kept her in my car another ten minutes, if I hadn’t told her I wanted to marry her or even if I had told her I’d take her to get some of the money, she’d still be alive. I’ve spent the last eleven years working to give something positive to this town, do whatever it takes to keep the town safe, and give everyone a positive change to stay on the right path. This is another reason I wasn’t quick to arrest Stan or fire Jake. I was hoping I could get them on the right path. After this week of complaints against Jake and with what happened with Lizzy, I have no choice but to do something more, no matter how guilty I feel about not keeping Kelly safe.”

  The sound of a phone ringing filtered in from the outer office. With the door shut, it was muffled and was obviously answered by Stella since it only rang one time.

  Mac well understood the guilt; he held no love for Kelly Mattis. If he had a dollar for every time he wondered if he’d danced with her even once that night and it changed the outcome, he’d be a rich man and could retire tomorrow.

  “You didn’t see anyone else around or see which direction she headed when she left you?” Robert asked.

  “No. I sat there for a few minutes, wallowing over how I’d wished for a life with her when I was nothing to her. When I searched around, I didn’t see her. I purposely went the other way when I left and ended up at the Streetside Bar. I stayed until Jerry kicked me out at two. I didn’t want to be at home alone. And if she considered going to my place, which I’m pretty sure she probably didn’t, I didn’t want her to find me there. I thought she deserved to find her own way home in those spiked shoes she was wearing. The next morning, my head pounding with a hangover, before I learned she was dead, I felt guilty because I remembered she had a sleeveless dress and no jacket and it was a cool night. At least I thought it probably was. I drank, hoping to forget. And it worked to a certain degree. I felt bad she was probably cold. I admit when I first heard she was dead, which was later the next afternoon, I thought perhaps she’d stumbled down the embankment in those heels and broke her neck. Or fell because of her heels and froze. I had to tell myself it wasn’t that cold. I was shocked as shit to hear she was…like that in the tunnel.”

  “Did you happen to give her a bracelet?” Mac asked, even though he knew Daniels had not been in metals class—at least not for a few years. The single sip of coffee he’d had now seemed to churn and boil in his stomach. Nothing Daniels told them led them in any direction or answered any questions.

  “A bracelet? No. I’d bought her a pair of diamond earrings about, oh, I don’t know, maybe six months earlier, and I’d had to take them back.” He paused and chuckled bitterly. “Hell, I’d saved three paychecks to buy them, and she said she was allergic. I never bought jewelry again. Besides, all she really wanted was the money.”

  “How much did you give her? Total.” He had his phone on vibrate and felt the buzz of it as a call came through. He ignored the call, uncertain if he was making headway in the cold case of Kelly Mattis or not.

  Daniels let out a heavy breath as he thought about it. “Probably a few thousand dollars when it was all said and done. I have to admit, I didn’t keep track. Fifty bucks here. A hundred there. Twenty if it was all I had in my pocket.”

  “You said you ended up at the Streetside after she left you?”

  “Yep. I would venture everyone there could vouch for me. Her murder is like an omen. It seems like everyone remembers exactly where he or she was when it happened.”

  That was true. What everyone was doing when it happened always was a hot topic.

  “So if you feel you need to arrest me for having sex with a minor, then so be it.” Daniels looked at Robert.

  Robert slowly shook his head. “I’m not a cop an
ymore. I’m not going to arrest you.”

  Daniels gazed at Mac, too. Before Mac could reply, his phone buzzed again with an incoming call. Mac finally ventured an absent glance at the display. “I’ll have to postpone arresting you, too, Daniels. It’s my colleague, Pickering. Maybe they found something.”

  He couldn’t help but notice the previous call had been Lizzy. A wave of guilt was nearly strong enough to sweep him off his feet. She’d dealt with so much since his return to the Point. He should have taken a moment to answer and make sure she was doing all right. He planned to call her right back.

  He answered his phone with, “Yes, Liam?”

  “We found nothing substantial searching the Gresden residence.”

  Mac felt his stomach drop. He needed something to keep Stan away from Lizzy. With a good lawyer, Stan could probably get out with a slap on the hand with an assault charge. Hell.

  “You need to get to the storage unit Kathleen Gresden rents. You aren’t going to believe what we found there.”

  “What?”

  “Just get here. You need to see it.” Pickering disconnected before Mac could ask more.

  Mac slipped his phone back into his pocket, he glanced at his father. “It sounds like the search revealed something.”

  ****

  Mac drove his dad to Kennedy Storage units on the north side of town.

  He stopped at a stretch of yellow caution tape that was across the entrance of the row of units where he knew Kathleen Gresden’s unit was located. After all that had happened, he remembered seeing Kathleen at Kennedy’s Storage the same night he saw Lizzy.

  One of his fellow agents had stretched yellow caution tape at the opposite end of the row as well. He and his father climbed out, and he held the tape up while his dad stooped under. Daniels parked next to his truck and joined them. He and Daniels followed Robert after they both bent under the tape.

  The large garage door of one unit was open. All three of them stopped just at the entrance as if they were fearful of entering the shadowed area. There were a few boxes and several pieces of furniture in the unit. Red Christmas tinsel poked out of one of the boxes as if trying to escape.