“That’s not what I meant,” the woman insisted, her voice cracking a bit. Jennifer suspected she must be close to Mary’s age, especially if she remembered her. “I just thought someone would have killed that witch long before now.”
Chapter 30
“Sam wouldn’t go with you, huh?” Leigh Ann stated, tossing a Macon map over her shoulder to Teri who was stretched out across the entire backseat of the little Beetle. Jennifer watched in the rearview mirror as it dropped toward Teri’s bare legs. It was way too hot for anything but shorts.
“My money says he has no idea what Miss Jennifer here is up to. He’s obviously got more sense than we do and better ways to spend a Saturday morning,” Teri said, opening the folded paper and obscuring her head from Jennifer’s view. “Didn’t you learn to read maps in school, Leigh Ann?”
“Sure,” Leigh Ann insisted, “but once we’re off pavement I get all confused with those tiny black lines, and none of these roads are marked.”
“Sure they are,” Teri told her. “See that number on that post?”
It whipped past.
“That was a road number?” Leigh Ann asked, craning her neck. “They actually expect you to read signs like that?”
“Just keep on like you’re going,” Teri instructed Jennifer. “We’ve got at least a mile or two to go yet before our next turn.”
“What exactly did that woman who was related to Mary tell you over the phone?” Leigh Ann asked, settling back in her seat.
Jennifer checked her rearview mirror, this time to look at the road. They were kicking up a lot of red dust, but then dust was preferable to getting stuck in mud. On a road like that, there wasn’t much in between. If they got caught in one of Macon’s typical heat-breaking downpours, they might just find themselves slogging their way back through it.
“She said Mary hadn’t seen or spoken to anyone in her family for more than forty years,” Jennifer answered.
“Never once contacted them?” Teri asked, her dark eyes appearing above the edge of the map.
“Not once.”
“And you expected them to feel warm and fuzzy toward her?” Teri snorted. “If my mom didn’t hear from me, assuming I ever get to move out of her house, she’d let me know on a regular basis that I was falling down on my familial obligations.”
“But that’s your mama. I got the impression Mary’s family was just as glad to see her go, no questions asked. Mrs. Bedford assured me she had no intention of kicking in any money for the burial expenses.” Jennifer rolled her window up. She had no air conditioning in her car, but she could deal better with heat than with the dirt that was blowing in.
“What’d this relative have to say about her?” Leigh Ann asked, letting the wind whip through her hair. “What kind of crap did she pull for them to cut her loose like that?”
“She said she was always interfering in everyone’s life, that she had this uncanny way of finding out things.” The car hit a rut, and they all bounced and came down hard.
“Time for new shocks,” Teri pointed out.
“It’s on the list,” Jennifer assured her. It just wasn’t high on the list.
“Reading mail, listening at doors, spending a lot of time thinking about what was none of her business,” Leigh Ann suggested. “It’s easy to pick up on what’s going on around you if you take the time.”
“Spoken like a pro,” Teri mumbled from the back, then piped up. “Deductive reasoning isn’t so much a talent as it is simple observation. So what did Mary do with this information she gathered?”
“That’s a no-brainer,” Leigh Ann said. “Do you know who she was blackmailing?”
Jennifer pulled the car hard to the left to avoid a large rock in the road. “Technically, I don’t think it was blackmail. No money was involved. She was after—”
“Power,” Teri finished. “Once money is spent, it’s gone. But power—now that’s a much more lasting pleasure.”
“Teri!” Leigh Ann chastised.
“I was speaking theoretically, of course. I take it she ultimately chose the wrong person to screw over.”
“Yep,” Jennifer said. “Her uncle. Seems they were a little too much alike. He gave her twenty-four hours to clear out. She never looked back but why should she? She came to Macon and got herself hired into the household of one of the city’s premiere families on the pretext of being a nurse.”
“You mean she wasn’t?” Leigh Ann asked.
“She didn’t even finish high school according to the woman I spoke with. However she managed it, by chance or by plan, she found herself conveniently available to take Clarisse Ashton’s place after she died.”
“Do you hear what you’re saying?” Teri asked. “Are you implying she had something to do with—”
“I’m simply saying she took advantage of a situation,” Jennifer assured her. “No reason to believe it was any more than that, at least not at this point.”
“Yeah? Well, deep down, I think she loved Shelby,” Leigh Ann said.
“You would,” Teri said.
“She stayed,” Leigh Ann pointed out.
“Of course she stayed. She didn’t have any ‘up’ to go to from being Mrs. Shelby Ashton,” Teri pointed out.
“My mama always says it’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as it is a poor man,” Leigh Ann added.
“Yeah? So why didn’t she?” Jennifer asked.
Leigh Ann gave her a puzzled look. “I don’t know. Next time I see her, I’ll ask.”
“Turn here,” Teri shouted out, as they passed a turnoff to the left.
Jennifer stopped the car. “That doesn’t even look like a road.”
“You have to trust the navigator,” Teri insisted.
“Why?” Leigh Ann asked.
“Because if you don’t, she’ll stop navigating.”
“You better do what she says, Jennifer,” Leigh Ann warned, “because if she gives me back the map, we’re goners.”
Jennifer backed the car up and made the turn. “There’s no sign.”
“It’s the first black line after that last intersection. It doesn’t have a number on the map. I think it may be private property.”
“I’m beginning to wish we’d unwound a ball of string.” More than the heat was getting to Jennifer. “Even if we do find this place, I’m not at all sure we’ll be able to find our way back out.”
The trees on either side of the narrow road were tall, offering some small respite to the heat. Wire fencing tacked onto makeshift posts ran along either side, but if there was livestock in those fields, they couldn’t see them. They probably had enough sense to find a nice cool pond or at least the shade of a large oak tree to lie in.
“I don’t think it’s too much farther,” Teri told her. “The line runs out just up this way a little, right where you drew that circle on the map. Who’d you get these directions from anyway?”
“Ned, down in the morgue at the Telegraph office, yesterday afternoon while I was waiting for Sam to get off work.”
“I know him,” Leigh Ann said. Leigh Ann knew everybody. “I wouldn’t take directions from him. He’s a little strange.”
Maybe someday she’d learn to listen to Sam.
When the unpainted wooden structure came into view, Jennifer stopped the car just outside the open steel gate stretched across the road.
Teri rose up from the back and leaned over the seats between Jennifer and Leigh Ann. “What a dump.”
It was indeed a dump. It looked like a cabin that had grown in the most unplanned, unexpected directions. Additions shot off from both sides of the main, two-story midsection. The wood, never painted, had been allowed to weather to an ugly gray. Stone steps led up to the only nice portion of the structure, a full porch across the entire front of the original house. Guinea hens fluttered loose around the grassless yard.
“Remind me again why we needed to come out here,” Teri said. “I’ve heard those things peck.”
A woman appeare
d at the door, pushing open the screen. She must have heard the noise from the car. Small and slender, with long dark hair, she wore a tank top and a pair of the shortest shorts Jennifer had ever seen this side of Daisy Duke. She gave them all a narrow-eyed stare.
Jennifer opened her car door.
“Don’t go up there. I bet she’s got dogs,” Leigh Ann warned.
“Dogs and hens I can handle. I just hope she doesn’t have a shotgun resting inside that door.” Jennifer stood, pulling the wrinkles out of her denim shorts, squinting at the sun, and wondering exactly what she was going to say.
Teri pushed the driver’s seat forward and climbed out behind her.
“Oh, all right,” Leigh Ann grumbled, “but if I get bit, pecked, or shot, I’m holding you responsible.”
The woman walked farther out onto the porch and stood holding onto one of the wooden supports. Jennifer could see now that she was not much more than a girl, certainly no more than twenty.
Jennifer put on her friendliest smile. “Good morning. We’re looking for Malcolm Reed. Is this his place?”
The girl nodded, but the suspicious stare was still there.
Jennifer nodded in rhythm. “Is he in?”
“He’s busy. I can take him a message, but it’d better be important. He don’t like to be disturbed.”
One of those additions must be his home office. Most likely he had the newspaper printed by some company in town.
“All we want is to ask him a few questions,” Jennifer assured her.
“What about?”
“Juliet Ashton.”
“Why?” the woman asked, her brow wrinkling.
Not who. So she most likely knew who Juliet was, even though she’d obviously been born years after her death.
“You know about Malcolm and Juliet?” Jennifer asked.
The woman shrugged. “That was a long time ago.”
“Yes, it was,” Jennifer agreed, edging toward her.
“He has me now.”
And she—lucky her—had Malcolm.
“Of course he does.” What was this girl’s IQ? Functional but probably not much better than that.
“Her stepmother was killed and her aunt has been arrested for the murder. Mr. Reed wrote an article about the death and—”
“And what?” a male voice demanded.
Jennifer swung her head to the left. A scraggly figure had come around the side of the building, wearing torn jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. He was, indeed, holding a shotgun, and he looked more than ready to use it.
Chapter 31
“Oh, hell,” Teri muttered under her breath, staring straight at Malcolm Reed’s finger twitching on the trigger of his shotgun. Leigh Ann stood frozen in what looked like horror.
“Mr. Reed,” Jennifer addressed the long-haired, unkempt, middle-aged man. His photo in his newspaper made him look a whole lot better than he did right then. And a whole lot more reasonable. “I’m sure you’ve heard that Eileen McEvoy, Mary Ashton’s sister-in-law, has been accused of her murder.”
“What of it?” he demanded.
Teri and Leigh Ann had lined up directly behind Jennifer. Next time she invited someone along, she’d find someone with a little more guts. But, in all fairness, the man did have a crazed look in his eyes. She just hoped he wasn’t high. She suspected that he wasn’t all that reasonable sober either.
“I’ve made all the comments I intend to make in my column.” He cocked one barrel of the shotgun.
Jennifer opened her hands in front of her. “We’re leaving. If you know of anything at all that might help clear Eileen... I just wanted to remind you that she did everything she could to help Juliet.”
“I guess that just wasn’t enough, now was it?”
“Obviously not, but I still don’t understand why she did it, why Juliet killed herself.”
“That bitch of a stepmother of hers killed her.” He was livid.
“You don’t mean that literally,” Jennifer insisted.
“Do you?” Leigh Ann piped up from behind.
“I mean it however you want to take it.”
“I understand your loss,” Jennifer started and then realized her mistake. Grief that deep did not seek sympathy. It lived in a world all its own.
“No you don’t. And she didn’t just kill herself,” Malcolm said, his angry words catching in his throat. “We weren’t even together then, so why don’t you go talk to someone who cares.”
But he did care. His tirade in his newspaper proved that much. So did his demeanor right then.
“Did you ever know a Tiffany or a Darren?” Jennifer asked.
His face turned white. “What kind of games are you playing? Just get the hell off my land,” he warned, cocking the other barrel of the gun.
Jennifer, Teri, and Leigh Ann scrambled past the gate for the Beetle, tumbling in as fast as they could. Jennifer gunned the engine, swung the car around, and took off before they could even get their seatbelts on.
In the rearview mirror, Jennifer watched Reed discharge the gun into the air. The man was, indeed, crazy.
“You heard what he said, didn’t you?” Jennifer asked, trying to keep at least one eye on the road in front of her.
“Yeah, get the hell out,” Teri said. “No one holding a shotgun has to tell me twice.”
“Not that. He said she didn’t just kill herself.”
“Maybe he feels like he died with her,” Leigh Ann offered, holding on tightly to the handle above her door.
Jennifer shook her head as they sped down the dirt road. Without hardly even slowing down, she took a right at the end of the fence and swung onto the next road, spewing dirt and gravel in their wake.
Light had dawned as Malcolm stood there, gun in hand, angry as hell even after all these years. The photo of the two of them—Malcolm and Juliet. The paper with lists of names hidden with it. She’d only risked asking about Tiffany and Darren because she’d had to know for sure, and his reaction left no doubt. Any hatred that Eileen McEvoy had for Mary paled against the emotions that Malcolm Reed still carried with him, would probably always carry with him.
“Have you ever thought about what you’d name your children?” Jennifer asked, gunning the engine once more, the little Beetle courageously straining forward.
“Sure,” Leigh Ann said.
“Ever made a list of boys’ and girls’ names?”
“We’re tearing away from some madman with a gun and you’re talking about your firstborn-to-be who, I might point out, already has a name?” Teri asked, holding onto the back of the driver’s seat as they bounced over the rough ground.
“Ever considered Tiffany or Darren?”
“Of course not. Those are old names,” Leigh Ann pointed out.
“Right. Thirty years old.”
“Are you saying—” Teri began.
“That’s right. I think Juliet was pregnant with Malcolm’s child.”
“So you mean that’s why she killed herself,” Teri asked, “because of the shame? Her daddy would have had a fit.”
“Yes, he would have but that’s not why,” Jennifer assured her. “She could have handled him—he loved her so much—and she would have remembered that if someone else hadn’t interfered, hadn’t convinced her otherwise.”
“A child out of wedlock was a big deal in those days,” Leigh Ann insisted.
“To some people,” Jennifer agreed. “But Malcolm wouldn’t care that they weren’t married, before or after the child was born. If he didn’t, I have a feeling Juliet wouldn’t either. He’d celebrate their child.”
“But her parents—” Teri started.
“I suspect her father never knew. He never had the chance to tell her it would be all right. No wonder Malcolm hated Mary. Snoop and master manipulator, a deadly combination. Juliet must have told him what she’d done, how she solved their ‘problem.’ He couldn’t forgive her, so he left her. And she couldn’t forgive herself.”
“Do you mind letting us i
n on exactly what you mean?” Teri rose up between the seats.
“Don’t you see?” Jennifer asked. “Mary must have forced Juliet to have an illegal abortion.”
“Forced her?” Leigh Ann asked.
“Pressured her, convinced her that her father would have nothing more to do with her,” Jennifer corrected. “Juliet wanted that baby.”
“Why are you so sure?” Teri asked.
“Because she made a list of names. Because she shared that list with Malcolm. She wouldn’t have done that if she wanted an abortion.”
“And you think she told Malcolm about the operation,” Teri added.
“Yes, but not until after she’d gone through with it.”
“And when he found out—” Leigh Ann started.
“All hell broke loose,” Teri added.
“And Juliet killed herself,” Jennifer finished.
Chapter 32
“All of it?” Jennifer gasped, staring in disbelief at Monique, Teri, and Leigh Ann in turn.
“Every last penny,” Monique assured her. She shut the door to Jennifer’s apartment behind her. “Mary mortgaged the house for its full value and took out liens against all of its contents.”
They’d barely had time for a glass of lemonade before Monique had come knocking. Leigh Ann and Teri, stretched out on the hardwood floor, too dusty from their trip to the country to be allowed in contact with upholstered furniture, were still sipping on theirs.
“You’re not serious. That must have been—” Teri began.
“Millions of dollars,” Monique supplied. “And that’s not all. Her bank accounts were totally cleaned out.”
“But why?” Jennifer asked.
Monique shrugged. “Who knows? Once the bank officials realized Mary was dead, they moved to put a claim against the mansion and its furnishings. Eileen received the news by registered mail this morning.
“This whole mess is a nightmare,” Monique continued. “Eileen has enough on her hands with the humiliation of being charged with a murder she didn’t commit. And now she has to deal with the mess Mary made of the estate.”
“When did Mary do all of this?” Jennifer asked. “She was the one who did it?”
Dying to Be Murdererd Page 14
