by Diana Palmer
“What did he want?” Keely persisted.
She turned and looked at her daughter with wide, frightened eyes. The hand holding the drink was shaking. “He…he didn’t say.”
“Why did he call, then?”
Ella looked around nervously. “Let’s go inside.”
They did, and Ella locked the door. She was rattled, all right. She couldn’t even find the right light switch to turn off the porch light.
“I’ll get it,” Keely volunteered.
Ella stood watching her, biting her lower lip. She was so pale that her skin looked like milk.
Keely stood quietly, waiting for the older woman to speak.
Chapter Seven
“I don’t know where to start,” Ella said hesitantly. “I know your father didn’t tell you anything about what happened here before he left with you.”
“Nobody ever tells me anything,” Keely replied bitterly. “I know that Dad’s mixed up in something, that the police are interested in him for whatever it is and that Jock is involved somehow.” She straightened. “And I know that you’re broke and Dad is threatening you for money.”
Ella bit her lower lip hard enough to draw blood. “You couldn’t know that. Who told you that?” she demanded.
“Is it true?” Keely prevaricated.
Ella looked around wildly and brushed her untidy hair back from her thin face.
Keely moved forward a step. “Is it true?” she repeated softly.
Ella took a deep breath. For once, she really looked her age. “Yes,” she said. “I thought the money would never run out. There was so much of it. Your grandparents invested in land when it was cheap. As the town grew, more people needed land, so they started renting it out for businesses. When they died, I continued the practice, raising the rents as the land prices increased.”
“What happened?” Keely prodded.
Ella laughed hollowly. “I got greedy. My parents would never buy me designer clothes or even a good car. They made me pay my own way, from the day I started working. They wanted me to go to college, but I thought I was smart enough. Your father thought I’d get all that money the minute I married, so he married me. But it didn’t work out that way.” She drew in a long breath, her eyes with a faraway look. “All I had was an allowance. Brent and I bought expensive cars and diamonds and ate in the best restaurants and took long trips overseas. We ran up a fortune in bills. My parents paid it, then they stopped my checks.” She laughed again as she glanced at her daughter. “Brent got used to living high. He couldn’t go back to wages. He found a way to make a lot of money quick.” Her face tautened. “You were far too young to understand what was going on. My parents died in a plane crash and we inherited the estate, but there wasn’t much left. Mostly just the land—we’d spent the rest. I wanted him out of my life. He wanted that game park, so I made a deal with him. I sold land and gave him the proceeds. I was free, still relatively young, and I wanted to celebrate. So I did. Then your father dumped you here and the luxury lifestyle was a thing of the past. I resented you for that. But it probably saved us from being tossed out into the street with the clothes we were wearing. I’d gone hog wild and didn’t even realize it. By the time I did, it was too late.”
She moved into the living room and sat down, heavily, in a chair. Keely sat down on the arm of the sofa across from her. It was unusual for her parent to speak to her like this, as an equal, without even sarcasm.
Ella brushed back her hair. “I managed to salvage a couple of the properties before they were foreclosed on for unpaid bills. But my renters found cheaper rents and moved out. I was left with empty buildings that I couldn’t repair, and nobody wanted to use them. Within the past six months, it was suddenly all gone, except for the house and the land it sits on.” She looked up at Keely. “Your father and Jock are broke and they need a grubstake. They want me to sell the house and property to fund it.”
“But it’s all you have left,” Keely argued. “Tell them you won’t do it. Sheriff Carson will look out for you.”
Ella bit her lower lip. “It’s more complicated than that, Keely,” she replied quietly. “You see, your father and I did something…illegal, when you were very small. If he tells what he knows, I can go to prison.”
Keely’s mouth thinned. “If he uses it, he’ll be incriminated, as well, and he can go there, too.”
The older woman smiled sadly. “They’d have to catch him first, wouldn’t they?” she asked. “He’s been one jump ahead of the law all his life.”
“What did you do?” Keely asked, reasoning that her mother would probably close up and say nothing else.
Ella took a sip of her drink. “I’ve lived with the guilt for years,” she said, almost to herself. “I thought it wasn’t going to bother me, what we did. I thought…” She took another sip of the drink. “A local boy saw Brent bringing in a shipment of cocaine and hiding it in our basement. He was going to tell the sheriff.” She grimaced. “My father was dying and he’d already threatened to disinherit me because of Brent. If there had been a scandal, and Brent and I had been prosecuted, I’d have lost everything. They could have proved that I…paid for the shipment that Brent was going to cut and resell on the streets.”
“What did you do?” Keely asked apprehensively.
“The boy liked to get high,” Ella continued miserably. “He did it all the time, anyway. He had a supplier, one of Brent’s dealers—she died and her sister married a local cattleman a few months ago. We promised him that we’d send the boy a kilo of coke, all for himself, if he wouldn’t tell on us.”
Keely was feeling sick. She already had an idea of who her mother was talking about. “And?”
“Oh, he agreed. In fact, we promised him a dime bag on the spot. That’s a hundred dollars of cocaine in street talk. What we didn’t tell him was that it was one-hundred-percent pure—it wasn’t cut with anything to lessen the effect. We gave it to his supplier, and he had her inject him. And he died. Of course, she didn’t know, either. But we had her in our pocket then, too, because she couldn’t prove that she didn’t know she was killing him.”
Keely’s eyes closed. “It was Sheriff Hayes Carson’s younger brother, Bobby, wasn’t it?” she asked huskily.
Ella sighed. “Yes. I’ve lived with the guilt and the fear all these years, terrified that Sheriff Hayes would find out. He wouldn’t rest until he put me in prison. He’s blamed others, and that took the heat off me. It was the only hope I had…”
“No wonder you paid for the game park for Dad,” she said, seeing clearly the pattern of the past. “It’s why you let him take me along.”
Her mother nodded slowly. “After Bobby died, I couldn’t bear to look at Brent anymore. He made me feel like a murderess. I was afraid, too, that he might get high one night and tell someone what we’d done. So he promised to leave town if I’d let him have the money for the game park. He even said he’d straighten up, give up drugs, try to get his life back together. He said he’d never wanted anything more than he wanted that game park.”
Keely’s eyes became tormented as she remembered what her mother had said; she’d had to pay her husband to take Keely with her.
“No,” Ella said quickly, reading Keely’s expression. “I wanted to hurt you that night. It wasn’t true. Brent wanted you with him. He said that if I fought him, he’d go to the police with the truth. He had nothing to lose by then. He’d already been arrested for possession twice and gotten off with the help of a lawyer. But he’d never get away with murder, and neither would I. So I let him take you.” She looked up. “I never even asked if Jock was the reason. You see, Jock had noticed you when he came by to see Brent and told him about the old game park that he was running. The owner wanted out. Brent said that Jock liked young girls. I didn’t even connect it, at the time.” She shivered. “I should be shot.”
Keely felt sick all over. Perhaps that accident, as terrible as it was, had saved her from something much more terrible. Now she realized wha
t had probably happened. Soon after her father had purchased the rickety old game park where Jock worked and started renovating it, Jock had been arrested. Apparently he’d served time in prison, too, because it was only two years later that he showed up at the park. That was when things started to go downhill, and only about a week before Keely’s accident. After that, Jock couldn’t bear to touch her. Probably it was his idea for Brent to dump Keely, so the two of them could pursue other illegal enterprises. Keely might have been part of the plan for those jobs, she thought with muted terror. She’d been saved from more than she knew at the time, even though she’d resented being deserted.
She hadn’t known her father at all. She’d thought he loved her. In those two years when it was just the two of them, and Dina keeping books, her young life had been happy and secure. Her father had, twice, even given up drinking; although Keely hadn’t known he was using drugs. But just before Jock had turned back up, Brent Welsh had involved himself with the flashy woman who took him for everything he’d saved; and there had been a good bit. Jock had been livid when he’d discovered that.
“What are you thinking?” Ella asked.
She looked up. “How happy we were for a couple of years. I guess it was while Jock was in prison, because he left when Dad and I settled into the game park and only came back a few days before Dad brought me here.”
Ella looked relieved. “At least Jock didn’t have much access to you, did he?”
“No,” Keely replied. “I was afraid of him.”
“I still am,” Ella confessed. “Your father could be dangerous when he was drunk. But he said Jock was dangerous cold sober.”
Keely smoothed her hands over her knees. “Thank you for telling me the truth.”
Ella’s eyes were troubled. “I was scared, Keely,” she said abruptly. “I couldn’t face the fact that I’d helped kill a man, even if nobody knew. I started drinking and I couldn’t stop. It helped me forget.” She bit her lip again. “I should never have said that I didn’t want you, Keely. Or that your father was disappointed you weren’t a boy. I wanted you so much. I would have given up anything rather than lose you. Carly was right. I should never have said such a thing.”
It didn’t mean that Ella loved her. But it was something. “Thanks,” Keely replied.
Ella cocked her head. “Are you getting involved with the Sinclair boy?” she asked worriedly. “Brent would find a way to use you to his advantage if he could, you know. He’s an addict. He can’t stop. He’s more dangerous now than he ever was when I lived with him, especially in his situation and with Jock egging him on.”
Keely was trying to come to grips with the idea that her own parents had a hand in the death of Sheriff Hayes’s young brother, and that her father was a drug dealer. She’d known about deals he’d made to acquire animals that weren’t quite what she thought of as legal. But he’d hidden his worst side from her during those two years they were together. From her vantage point now, she’d been naive and stupid. Perhaps, she thought, it wasn’t so much ignorance as denial. She hadn’t wanted a larcenous parent. Even an alcoholic, which is what she thought her father was, didn’t have the stigma of a thief. Then again, it was a matter of degree.
“You’re remembering things, aren’t you?” Ella asked. “Listen, Keely, I may not be a good parent. I may be the worst alcoholic in town. But I’ve never laid a hand on you in anger or put your life at risk, and you know it.”
That was the truth. Keely might feel used by her mother, but she’d never been afraid of her. She nodded.
“I’d like to tell you that I’m going to start over. That I’ll stop drinking and carping and seducing married men.” She shrugged and made a self-mocking smile. “But it would be a lie. I’ve been like this too long. I can’t change. I don’t want to change. I like getting drunk. I like men.”
“I know that,” Keely said in a resigned tone. “If you could just stop trying to make me feel inferior, that would be something. It hurts when you make fun of the way I am. Dad certainly isn’t perfect, but he made me go to church every Sunday. He even said once that he was going to make sure I didn’t end up like both of you.”
Ella thought about that. She was still holding her drink. She took another sip. “Well, he was right to do that. Yes. He was. The best way to give up being an alcoholic is never to start drinking in the first place.”
“I don’t like the smell of it,” Keely murmured.
Ella laughed. “Neither do I,” she confessed. And she smiled, really smiled, at her daughter.
“Did either of your parents drink?” she asked out of the blue.
Ella’s eyes darkened with pain. She took a big gulp of the drink. “My father did.”
She waited, but no other confessions were forthcoming. She wondered at the hatred in Ella’s eyes when she talked about her father. Keely remembered that she never had talked about him, or about her mother, either.
“More secrets,” Keely murmured absently.
Ella only nodded. “Some are best kept forever.” She got up. “Well, I’m going to bed. If the phone rings, do us both a favor and don’t answer it.”
“I wish I could,” Keely confided, “but I still have a job that requires me to go out at all hours.”
Ella frowned. “Do you have a cell phone?”
She flushed. “No.” She couldn’t afford even a cheap disposable one.
Ella went to her purse and dug out hers. “When you go out at night from now on, you take mine. I’ll be with Carly if I go out.” She waved away the instant objection. “We can use hers. You have to have a way to call for help. Your father and Jock might even try to kidnap you. Brent sounded desperate.”
“Why don’t they just rob a bank?” Keely asked, exasperated.
“Don’t even joke about that,” her mother said at once, and went pale.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said it.”
Ella turned toward the hall. “I’m going to bed. Be careful if you have to go out. Call the sheriff’s office and have the deputies watch out for you.”
“I will.” She was thinking, though, of Sheriff Hayes’s brother and how he’d grieved for him after he’d died of that so-called drug overdose. She couldn’t bear the thought of being in any way involved, even if she’d had nothing to do with it. Her parents were responsible. Inevitably, one day it was going to come out. You never really knew people, she told herself. Not even your parents.
But despite everything, it made her feel warm inside, the unexpected concern from the one parent she’d thought hated her. She didn’t go to bed at once. She savored the feeling of having a real mother for the first time in her life. Even if that mother was the next best thing to a killer.
Clark phoned her two days later and asked her to the big charity dance at the local community center on Saturday. She wasn’t on call for that one night, so she couldn’t refuse.
“Is this desperate or what?” he asked miserably. “It’s the only thing going on in Jacobsville for the foreseeable future, unless you want me to sign us up for the summer square-dancing workshop,” he added grumpily. “I’ll never get to see Nellie.”
“I like dancing,” she replied. “It’s okay. You can sneak out and nobody will even miss you. Then you can say you had a stomach upset.”
“You’re a genius,” he exclaimed.
No, she was just getting good at lying, she thought. She still was concerned about Boone’s perception and Clark’s headlong fling into disaster. And in the back of her mind was the thought of her father and Jock and their schemes.
Things were routine at work. She and her mother were getting along for the first time. Even Carly was kinder to Keely. And it seemed that the work she did around the house was slowly appreciated, right down to her cooking. She felt as if she had a new lease on life.
But on Saturday morning, while she was worrying over the one good dress she had that she was wearing to the dance, there was a phone call.
She answered the phone herself. Her mo
ther was sleeping late—she and Carly had gone out on the town the night before—and she was expecting to hear from Clark. But it wasn’t Clark.
“Has your mother put the house on the market yet?”
She knew that voice. It wasn’t her father’s. It was Jock’s.
She hesitated, sick with fear.
“Answer me, damn you!”
“N-no,” she stammered. “She hasn’t…yet…”
“You tell her she’d better get moving. I know what she and your father did. He may not want to tell, but I will. You hear me, Keely?” And he slammed the phone down.
Keely wouldn’t have understood the threat even a week ago. She understood it now. She couldn’t very well go to Hayes Carson and tell him that her mother had been accessory to a homicide. There could be no protection from that quarter, especially if Hayes found out who the homicide had been. Clark couldn’t help her, either. She didn’t dare involve Boone. She sat down, sick and frightened, and wondered what in the world they were going to do.
Later, when Ella woke up, Keely had to tell her about the phone call.
Ella was hungover, but she sobered quickly. “Jock knows, then? I was afraid Brent would get high enough to tell him.”
“What can we do?” Keely asked miserably.
Ella drew in a long breath. “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about this.”
“You don’t have the time!” Keely said. “What if he goes to the sheriff?”
Ella looked at her daughter and actually smiled. “Thanks,” she said huskily. “It means a lot, after the way I’ve treated you, that you’d mind if I went to jail.” She shrugged. “Maybe it would be just as well to get it out in the open, Keely. It’s been so many years…if I had a good lawyer…”
“Yes,” Keely was agreeing.
She glanced at the younger woman, so hopeful, so enthusiastic. Ella knew that no judge in Jacobs County would let her walk away from a homicide; not when the sheriff’s brother was the victim, regardless of how much time had transpired between the death and the present. Keely was young and full of dreams. Ella was long past them. But she might be able to do something to save her daughter. She might be able to spare Keely, if she had the guts to do what was necessary.
