Hard Truth

by Mariah Stewart

  Chief Walker tapped on the arms of the chair with the fingers of both hands.

  “That’s pretty much what I thought. I’d heard Billie Eagan had a reputation for being tough with her kids.” He pushed himself out of the chair and stood up. “I just wanted to know if you had any firsthand knowledge of that.”

  “I can’t swear that Mel’s bruises were caused by her mother, but I strongly suspected that they were. I had heard her say things like ‘My mother is going to give it to me when I get home,’ things of that nature.”

  “Ever hear her say, ‘My mother said she’d kill me if I did…’ whatever?”

  “Yes, but all kids say stuff like that.” Lorna stood and followed the chief to the porch railing. “I remember times when I did something stupid, or maybe got a C on a test I should have gotten an A on, and said, ‘My mother will kill me for this.’ It’s just something kids say.”

  “Your mother ever hit you hard enough to leave a mark, or grab you hard enough to leave a bruise?”

  “Are you kidding?” She shook her head. “My mother never raised a hand to anyone, as far as I know.”

  “Billie Eagan did. I can’t help but wonder if that was all she did.”

  “Wait a minute, you’re not suggesting that she killed either Melinda or Jason?”

  He turned and looked at her. “When the girl went missing, I really thought the brother had killed her. He was the last person that we could prove had been with her. Then, right before we go to arrest him, he disappears. We figured he ran. Now it looks like if he did, he didn’t get very far.”

  “I can’t believe Mrs. Eagan had anything to do with what happened to either Melinda or Jason. Yes, she was rough with them, I know that, but I can’t believe she would have gone that far.”

  “Who knows where the line is drawn?” he said. “If you can lose it enough to break your kid’s arm, can you lose it enough to go one step further? Where does it end?”

  Lorna frowned. “But why would she have done that?”

  “Maybe the boy did kill the sister,” he said, shrugging. “Maybe she found out that he did it, maybe he even told her he had, and she hit him. Could have been accidental, but could have killed him, all the same.”

  “Does the medical examiner know what killed him?”

  “A blow to the head with something heavy. One blow to the front, one crushing blow to the back. Either one could have killed him.”

  “That’s horrible.” She shivered. “Poor Jason.” Even though she hadn’t liked him, had even feared him, he hadn’t deserved that. No one did.

  “Anyway, I just thought I’d let you know what was going on, since you were friends with the girl, and the remains were found on your property.”

  “Not mine anymore.”

  “It was when the body was buried. And, like I said, you were friends. In any case, I should probably get going. You take care, now, Lorna.” He walked to the police car and got in the still-open door. “We’ve been keeping an eye on the place while you were gone. We’ll continue to check on you when we do our rounds at night.”

  “I appreciate that, but I’ve been fine.”

  “All the same, you’re by yourself here.” He waved and then slammed the car door.

  “Thanks,” she called to him and returned the wave.

  She walked after the retreating car and watched as it disappeared a few hundred yards up the road to the left. Then she walked back to the house and stepped inside and poured herself a glass of iced tea. The temperature was already well into the eighties, and it was barely nine-thirty in the morning.

  She returned outside and sat on the top step, wondering if Billie Eagan had had a hand in the disappearance of either or both of her kids. It had made Lorna uncomfortable to admit that she’d known that Melinda had been abused by her mother but had pretended not to. All these years later, Lorna still felt guilty that she’d been too much of a coward to have confronted Mellie with it.

  But how do you make someone talk about something they don’t want to talk about, or confront something they’re not ready to deal with? she asked herself, not for the first time. Mellie had angrily brushed aside the few feeble attempts Lorna had made. How could she have forced her friend to admit that her mother had hurt her, when maybe Mellie didn’t want to admit it to herself?

  There had been times Lorna had wanted to talk to her own mother about it, but she’d always rationalized her way out of it. What if she was wrong? What if Melinda really had fallen down the steps that time she’d broken her arm? What if Melinda got really mad and stopped talking to her? And what if her mother had said something to Melinda’s mother and Mrs. Eagan got mad and really hurt Mellie? It would have been Lorna’s fault. The list of what-ifs and possible consequences seemed endless. As a child, Lorna had hid behind excuses for her silence. As an adult, she was ashamed that she had, but still wasn’t sure what she could have done differently back then.

  What if Chief Walker was right? What if Mrs. Eagan had killed Melinda, even by accident? And what if she had killed Jason, too?

  What, Lorna wondered, could she have done-should she have done-that would have made a difference, all those years ago?

  The question stayed with her, nagged at her. It followed her to the family burial site that afternoon when she took one of the urns holding her mother’s ashes, as she had promised she would do.

  “Okay, Mom, we’re here,” she said aloud as she went through the black iron gate into the enclosed area that sat by itself on a slight rise. She held the silver-colored urn to her chest as if it were a child. “I’m not really sure how to do this, but I’ll give it a shot.”

  She walked among the graves, some of them ancient, the engraving on several of the markers now little more than faint scratches on stone. The air was heavy with the sounds and scents of August, the zzzzz of the cicadas only barely drowning out the buzz of the yellow jackets as they fed on the season’s first fallen apples rotting on the ground on the other side of the fence.

  “Guess you’d want some here, by Gran, and some over there, by your aunt Emily.” Lorna removed the lid and tilted the urn slightly, letting the breeze catch the coarse gray dust and carry it. “Maybe a little by Grampa… and the rest over here by Dad.”

  Lorna stood behind her father’s headstone and sprinkled the ashes, watching them disperse on the ground around her. He’d been gone for so long, it was hard sometimes to remember all the things she’d thought she’d never forget. She could recall his laughter and the sound of his voice, and the way his eyes narrowed when something displeased him, and the look on his face when her mother came into the room. Mary Beth had been his life; the children had often seemed to be afterthoughts, as far as he’d been concerned. He had loved them in his own way, Lorna felt certain, but he’d always somehow looked upon them as belonging more to his wife than to him. She was his. The children were hers. They had never held the importance in his life that she had, and all three children had instinctively known.

  When Lorna was growing up, her mother had always been the dominant force in her life, her father’s absence felt more than his presence had been. The one thing she could never forget was the way they had all grieved when he died so unexpectedly, the anger that first year after his passing, how Rob had withdrawn and for a long time after been awakened nightly by nightmares, and the way her mother had never been quite the same.

  Well, she thought, tears coming for the first time since she’d stepped through the iron gate, they were together again, wherever they were. She’s all yours again, Dad.

  When the container was empty, she set it on the ground. She had thought it would have been more difficult. Then again, she’d shared her mother’s last days, watching the life fade away, mystified by the way it had drained from her in stages. The end had come quickly, mercifully, and having held her mother in her arms as she’d breathed her last, for Lorna, watching the ashes scatter was almost anticlimactic. She did it because she’d promised to, but she felt no more or no les
s of her mother’s presence once the urn was empty.

  “There you go, Mom. One down, two to go.”

  The graves were untidy, so Lorna spent a half hour pulling weeds. She’d come back later in the afternoon, or tomorrow, if it was cooler, and bring that hand-mower she’d seen in the barn, to cut the grass. Overgrown graveyards always made her sad, as if those laid to rest had all been forgotten.

  Well, I guess for the most part they have been, Lorna conceded. At least since Mom came out to Woodboro.

  Before she left town, Lorna would ask around to see about having someone tend to the graveyard, after the property was sold. Her grandmother-who had kept such a tidy and immaculate house-would definitely not be pleased to have her final resting place such a tangle of weeds. Lorna owed her that much.

  She finished weeding, tucked the urn under her arm, and set out for the house. She worked for a few hours on the monthly billing for a boutique in Woodboro, then turned off the computer. She was just about to open the refrigerator door when the phone rang.

  “Lorna? Chief Walker.”

  “Hi, Chief.”

  “Lorna, I have Billie Eagan down here at the station with me. She’s asking to speak with you, and I was wondering if-”

  “To me?” Lorna frowned. “Why would she want to talk to me?”

  “Well, I asked her if she wanted to make any calls, and she said the only person she’d want to talk to was Mary Beth Stiles, but she knew she’d passed on. I told her you were back, and she asked to talk to you instead.”

  “You’re not holding her, are you?”

  “Actually, we are.”

  “Then she should be talking to a lawyer,” Lorna protested. “I’m not a lawyer.”

  “I’m well aware of that. I already told her we’d recommend to the court that she be given a public defender. No question she qualifies. But she still wants to talk to you.”

  The chief fell silent for a moment, then said, “You’re her one call, Lorna. What do you want me to tell her?”

  He lowered his voice. “You coming down here or what?”

  4

  The Callen Police Department was housed in the back of a small, one-story, redbrick building, the front section of which served as the municipal offices. The library was in the basement, and the jail-such as it was-was in the annex, a low-slung square of gray block and mortar that connected to the main building through a short corridor.

  Lorna parked behind the building and went to the side door, which led directly into a small lobby. Through the glass, Lorna saw Brad Walker leaning against the wall, talking to his father, and when Lorna knocked, he nodded in her direction. Chief Walker stood and waved to her.

  “Come on in,” he told her. “Just give that door a push-it sticks in hot weather. Here, let me do that.”

  He went to the door and gave it a shove. “Don’t want the air-conditioning to escape. It’s hot as hell out there.”

  Lorna pushed a strand of hair back off her forehead. “It is that.”

  “You ready to talk to Billie Eagan?” he asked.

  “Sure. I’m still not certain why she wants to see me, but sure, I’ll talk to her.”

  “She’s in here, in the conference room. Normally, we’d have her in a holding cell while we wait for the sheriff to drive her out to the prison, but the air conditioner out there hasn’t been working, and it’s just too damned hot for man or beast. Joel Morgan, of the PD’s office, was in on another matter, and the judge asked him to handle Ms. Eagan’s case, at least through the preliminary hearing, which won’t be until next week. He’ll be by in a minute to talk to her.”

  “She’s been charged?”

  “Charged, arraigned, and has a room reserved at the county prison.”

  “Can’t she get bail?”

  “That’s up to her, I guess, if she can post bail. You can discuss that with her, makes your visit sort of official.”

  The chief gestured in Lorna’s direction and she followed him through a door at the end of the room. Billie Eagan sat at the head of a rectangular table, her hands folded in front of her, her pale, thin arms stark against the dark wood. Her hair was straight, stringy, gray, no longer the thick, dark strawberry blond Lorna remembered from her childhood. She wore a sleeveless cotton blouse that was stained on one side. When she looked up at Lorna, it was through watery blue eyes set deep into a gaunt face.

  “Hello, Mrs. Eagan,” Lorna said from the doorway.

  “Lorna.” Billie’s voice was as flat and low-pitched as Lorna remembered.

  “Chief Walker said you wanted to see me.”

  Billie nodded. “I do.”

  “Lorna,” the chief touched her on the arm, “I’ll be right outside here, if you need me.”

  He closed the door behind him, leaving the two women alone. Lorna moved farther into the room, taking a seat across the table from Billie.

  “I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about your momma.” Billie’s voice still held a trace of the West Virginia hills where she’d been born. “She was as near to being a friend as anyone I ever knew. She was a good woman, through and through. I just wanted you to know.”

  Lorna hesitated. She hadn’t recalled her mother speaking of any particular friendship with Billie Eagan.

  “Surprised, are you?” Billie looked faintly amused.

  “I didn’t know that you and my mother were… friends,” Lorna said awkwardly.

  Billie nodded.

  “Well, I appreciate you thinking of her.”

  “I think about her every day.”

  “You do?”

  “She used to stop by once or so a week. Drop off a bag of groceries. Sometimes something she might’a baked. She made these little lemon muffins with poppy seeds…”

  Lorna nodded. Her grandmother’s recipe.

  Her mother used to make muffins for Billie Eagan?

  “She always took me to my doctors appointments, stopped at the drugstore on the way home to pick up my prescriptions. She even made sure I got to my meetings at night, said I needed the support if I was to overcome my addictions,” Billie continued. “Every once in a while, she’d bring me a pack of cigarettes.”

  “My mother bought you cigarettes?” Lorna’s jaw dropped.

  “Oh, she didn’t like doing it, I know she didn’t. But she knew how hard it was for me to quit, especially on top of everything else I was trying to quit at the time. Said she’d gone through that once with cigarettes herself, and she knew how tough it was, so she-”

  “My mother never smoked,” Lorna said flatly.

  “She tell you that?”

  “Well, no, I never asked her, but she hated cigarettes. Hated smoking.”

  “Yes, she did. Said she’d been real happy none of you kids ever picked ’ em up. But back when she was younger, she did. Stopped when she found out she was pregnant with you and never picked ’em up again.” Billie leaned back in her chair. “Or so she said.”

  “I’m stunned. I never knew that about her.”

  “I guess there’s lots of things you didn’t know.”

  Lorna stared at Billie, not sure what to say. Billie stared back.

  “Like what?” Lorna finally asked.

  “Your mother never believed that I had anything to do with whatever happened to Melinda.” Billie’s face hardened. “I know everyone else around here thought I did, but she believed me. Even after Jason ran away-at least, back then, that’s what we thought happened to him. Now they tell me they found him there in the field.”

  Billie’s lips tightened. “Can you imagine that? All these years, I thought he’d run away, maybe to the city someplace. And there he was, just a couple’a acres away from where I lay my head every night.”

  “No, Mrs. Eagan. They found Jason at the back of our farm, over where the new houses are being built. Your house is over on Conway Road.”

  “I lost that house long ago. After all that craziness, after the police started questioning me when Jason went away and they needed s
omeone to blame, I lost my job. I lost my house. I got sick. I lost everything…” For a moment, her eyes seemed to cloud over, and her lips shook slightly.

  “Where have you been living, then, all these years?” Lorna asked.

  “Here and there, moved around for a long time. I guess I should’a gone home to my family, but I always thought Jason would come back, maybe Melinda, too. Then, a few years ago, when I got really sick, your mother let me move into that cottage out there near the grapes.” Billie glanced up and saw the look of surprise on Lorna’s face. “Oh, I guess that was something else you didn’t know.”

  “No. No, she never mentioned it.”

  “Maybe she thought you wouldn’t have approved,” Billie said softly.

  “It was her property, her cottage. She didn’t need my approval.”

  “Well, by then, you were over there near Pittsburgh and setting up your business-she was real proud of that, that you had your own business, but I’m sure you knew that-and your sister and brother had both moved away. I guess maybe she got a little lonely sometimes.”

  Billie smiled for the first time since Lorna entered the room. “Or maybe it was that goodness of hers, coming through. She was such a kind soul.”

  Lorna’s throat tightened unexpectedly.

  “Anyway, I just wanted you to know how much I miss her. Not only the things she did for me, you know? I miss talking to her, miss having her company.” When Billie looked at Lorna this time, there were tears in the corners of her eyes. “I never knew anyone else like her.”

  “Neither did I,” Lorna whispered.

  The door opened, and Brad stuck his head in.

  “The public defender is here to see Mrs. Eagan, Lorna. You about finished?”

  “Oh. Sure. I’ll just be a minute.” Lorna nodded, then turned back to Billie after Brad closed the door. “Mrs. Eagan, I have to ask you something.”

  Billie looked up, waiting.

  “Did you kill Melinda?”

  “No. No, I did not.” The answer was quick, and sure. “I do not know what happened to that child, I swear on her life.”

  “What about Jason? Did you kill Jason?”