Dead Even

by Mariah Stewart

  Mara sat up and exhaled. “I’m sorry, Julianne. I shouldn’t have said that. Not any of it.”

  She rubbed her temples, tried to rub away the throbbing pain that had settled in and kept announcing itself, over and over and over. Neither she nor Julianne seemed able to look at the other. The storm of emotions had been so swift and so strong.

  “My room is the same,” Julianne said after a few very long minutes. “I remember a lot of the dolls. And the stuffed animals there on the shelves.”

  She got up and went to the bookshelves and touched the spines of several books.

  “I looked at a lot of these last night. I remember some of them. I remember you reading to me at night.”

  “We always read together at night.”

  “Mr. Willoughby’s Christmas Tree.” Julianne took one from the top shelf. “I liked this one. The rhymes. I liked the way the tree kept getting smaller and smaller.”

  She smiled as she flipped through the pages. “I liked how the mice had the tiniest tree at the end. . . .”

  “You used to make me crazy, wanting me to read that over and over and over.” Mara managed a smile.

  “I remember.” Julianne skimmed the last page of the book, then slid it back onto the shelf.

  “Why didn’t you get rid of my stuff?” she asked. “You didn’t change anything.”

  “I wanted your things to be here for you when you came home.”

  “What if I was twenty when I came back? What if I was in college?”

  “It would still all be here.”

  “What if I never came back?”

  “It never occurred to me that you wouldn’t come back someday. I wasn’t sure how old you’d be, but I knew one day, I’d find you and you’d come home.”

  Julianne picked up a music box and brought it to the bed and sat down next to her mother. She opened the lid, and watched the tiny skaters whirl stiffly across the ice in time with “The Skater’s Waltz.”

  “It still works.” She closed the lid and the music stopped.

  “I kept replacing the batteries.”

  “How many times?” Julianne looked up at her. “How many times did you have to do that?”

  “Lots, I guess. I didn’t keep count.”

  Julianne leaned back against her mother, her head resting on Mara’s chest, and raised the lid again. She hummed along with the tinny music as the skaters resumed their dance. Mara put an arm around her child and closed her eyes tightly, giving silent thanks, no longer concerned about what came next. She allowed this first bit of closeness to fill her, every lonely corner, and knew that for now, it was enough.

  “So what do you think, Cahill? Same places as last night?” Will asked as they left the house next door to Mara’s and headed across the drive.

  “Sure.” She shrugged. “Makes no difference to me, either way.”

  “Maybe we’ll have a bit of action tonight, what do you think?” Keeping to the shadows, he took her hand for just a minute.

  “I don’t know. What if we’re wrong and this is all a waste of time? What if Jules decides it isn’t worth it to him to take the risk to get Julianne back? I mean, he has to know that Mara isn’t going to give her up without a fight.”

  “You’re right. And I don’t think he’s the type to back off without fighting back. I think the thought of displeasing his boss will urge him on, even if his paternal instincts do not. He’ll be here, maybe tonight. I doubt he’s going to want Julianne to spend a minute longer with her mother than she has to.”

  “Afraid she’ll find out just how much he’s lied?”

  “Afraid that mother-child bond will take over and she won’t come willingly. It would be interesting to see how he’s going to explain to his daughter that her mother has been alive all these years.”

  “Like that’s going to be an issue. He’s not going to get close enough to Julianne to have that conversation.”

  “How’s that going, by the way? What did Annie say about how Mara and her daughter are getting along?”

  “She said it goes back and forth. One minute Julianne seems happy to be home, talking to Mara about things she remembers. Then the next minute, she’s angry at her mother for taking her from her father. She said it’s like a seesaw that’s totally out of control.”

  “It’s probably going to be like that for a while,” Will said. “Julianne has gone through a lot. I’m sure her loyalties are being severely tested right now.”

  “Annie said it was to be expected. But it sounded as if it’s starting to wear on both of them.”

  “It’s going to wear even more when Jules shows up and we have to take him in,” Will reminded her. “That’s not going to be a pretty scene.”

  “Well, maybe we’ll get lucky and we’ll be able to get our hands on him before Julianne even knows he’s been here.”

  “That’s the plan.” They reached the backyard, and Will knocked softly on the door. He stepped back when Annie appeared and opened it.

  “Sorry,” she said softly, “but Julianne just went up to bed. It isn’t so easy to talk a twelve-year-old into going to bed early, you know? I told them that I’d be right up, that I needed something from my car. We’re going to watch a movie on the TV in Mara’s room.”

  The three stepped into the back hall and Annie closed the door behind them, then locked the dead bolt.

  “Got your walkie-talkie?” Will whispered.

  “Got the walkie-talkie, got the gun.” Miranda patted first one hip, then the other. “And got the all-important licorice.”

  “Guess you’re all set, then. See you later.” Will followed Annie down the hall.

  “See you.” Miranda leaned back against the wall. “Hey, keep in touch, okay? Feel free to call if anything exciting happens.”

  She slid down the wall, watching Will disappear into the darkness.

  Her walkie-talkie buzzed softly against her hip ten minutes later.

  “I just heard from John,” Will told her.

  “And . . . ?”

  “And guess whose body was just found facedown in the mud with a couple of bullet holes?”

  “I have no clue.” Miranda sat up straight, intrigued.

  “Maybe it would help if I told you where it was found.”

  “Go on.”

  “In a park down the road from Landry’s farm.”

  She processed the information. “Down the road from . . . I don’t know. Tell me . . . oh, no, please don’t say Regan Landry—”

  “No, no. Archer Lowell.”

  “Lowell? You’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope. No gun found, they’re rushing the testing on the bullets they recovered, see if they’re a match to anything we already have. They’re hoping that once the story breaks, someone will come forward, have a description of a car or an individual who might have been seen with him. Right now, they have nothing but the body and the bullets.”

  “Holy shit.” She was still in shock. “Poor, stupid Archer . . .”

  “Poor Archer was going to plant a bullet between those baby blues of yours. Save the sympathy.”

  “I can’t help it. He was so . . . pathetic.” Miranda shook her head.

  “Pathetic enough to have killed two men and walked away unseen both times.”

  “Well, I guess that’s good for me, though, right? At least I don’t have to worry about him trying to cross me off his hit list,” she said. “But who would have wanted him dead?”

  “Your mind does sort of wander back to that fourth-man theory now, doesn’t it? Someone had to have pulled the trigger.”

  “But we know there were only three men in that room, Will. Evan confirmed through the deputy sheriff’s office that there were only Channing, Giordano, and Lowell. When would they have added a fourth? And why? Doesn’t it seem that the more people who knew what they were planning, the more likely it would be that, sooner or later, someone would slip up and tell someone else?”

  “Unless one of the three arranged for a fourt
h to sort of oversee the game, make sure it was played out.”

  “But who could have done that? Channing had already played out his piece before Giordano was released from prison, and Archer was still behind bars when Vince was doing his thing,” Miranda reminded him.

  “Good point. Think there’s any chance we can get Vince to fill in the blanks?”

  “Yeah, fat chance. Same as they always are with him.”

  “Well, right now we’ve got the Plainsville police canvassing the area; we’ve got tests being run on the bullets. Guess we’ll have to wait and see what turns up from either source.”

  “Let me know what you hear.” She sighed. “This is really crazy, isn’t it? For just a split second, I felt relieved. Like I can stop looking over my shoulder. Archer’s not coming after me. Then up pops the specter of some unknown someone who might be keeping the game going.”

  “Let’s see what ballistics comes back with.”

  “Right. Thanks. Keep in touch.”

  Will slid his walkie-talkie into his hip pocket and walked to the kitchen. He stood at the window and slowly pulled the curtain back enough to allow him to look outside. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just another cold fall night. Leaves lay scattered across the lawn and part of the sidewalk. A car door slammed across the street, and a young couple got out and walked to a front porch. At the bottom of the steps, the boy waited while the girl searched her pockets for keys. Feeling a bit like a voyeur, Will watched them kiss hastily, then the girl ran up the steps and unlocked the door. She turned back toward the street and waved before going into the house and closing the door behind her. The boy gunned the engine before he pulled away from the curb, then disappeared around the first bend in the road.

  A few more moments of silence, then a car or two passed. Someone out for a walk strolled by, then crossed the street and disappeared down the driveway of the house at the end of the block. Silence again.

  Will opened his cell phone and checked his messages. He returned one call immediately, listened to the information he was given, voiced his thanks, and hung up.

  He began pacing again, not sure what to do with the information he’d just been given, or what it meant. He’d only known that all of his senses had gone on alert when he’d seen that black truck drive past Mara’s house two days ago. There’d been a truck just like it parked outside the prison when he and Miranda had come out after visiting Giordano. The driver’s face had been hidden behind a map, which in itself had aroused Will’s interest. Who could read something that was right in their face like that?

  No one he knew.

  And when an identical truck passed by shortly after he and Miranda had arrived here in Lyndon, Will’s keen eye had picked up the license plate number and called it in to Evan at the county detectives’ bureau and asked him to run a trace.

  Now he had a name, but it wasn’t one he recognized.

  Burton Connolly. Who the hell was he?

  Will was counting on Evan to find out.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  He walked along the back of the properties, counting over four from the end, observing the changes that had been made while he was gone. He stared at the fence that carved out the backyard of number 1733. Seven years ago, there had been no fence. From the other side, he heard a long low growl.

  Seven years ago, there had been no dog.

  It occurred to Jules Douglas that perhaps she’d moved, but then, he knew better. Mara would never leave this house. She’d stay here, weeping and mourning her loss, until the day she died. He’d bet she’d made a shrine out of Julianne’s room.

  He paused. Odd, how quickly he’d lapsed back into thinking of his daughter as Julianne. After seven years of being so strict with himself, of never permitting himself ever to refer to her as anyone other than Rebecca, now that he was here, she was Julianne once again. Strange.

  On the other side of the fence, the dog continued to growl. Damn nuisance. He never did like dogs.

  He stepped back into the shadows and moved along the outside of the fence, walked cautiously behind first his old garage—noting that it sported a new coat of paint—then slunk behind the garage belonging to the next-door neighbor. He was met by a fence there, too. What was it with all these fences?

  He poked around and was surprised to find that a portion of the fence closest to the garage could be moved aside quite easily. Poor construction, or had someone deliberately snipped the wire that held the end piece to the corner post?

  He shrugged, not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so to speak, and slipped between the post and the garage, then paused to review his surroundings. The grape arbor the old lady had planted years before had really taken off since he’d been gone. The vines were a thick tangle, and the last of the brown and yellow leaves clung halfheartedly to the branches.

  “Great shelter,” he murmured as he eased between the arbor and the side of the garage. A man could hide here for hours and never be seen from the house.

  Or, he realized, from the house next door.

  He worked his way to the front of the arbor, then studied the house he’d shared with Mara for eight years. It seemed like a lifetime ago. He barely remembered what it had been like, living there. Over the past few years, he realized how totally unimportant his life with Mara had been. Teaching advanced math at Miller College there in town—now that had been a plum gig, he snorted. He wondered how he’d ever tolerated it. Mundane students, mundane salary, mundane life. And a wife who just couldn’t hold his attention for all that long.

  The only thing that had made that time in his life tolerable was that endless line of ladies, all who were willing to play with a handsome professor. Of course, once Mara caught on to that and demanded a divorce, his hand had been pretty much forced.

  It still rankled that she had told him how it was going to be. That she had called the shots.

  She’d never cheated on him, she’d told him, and she wasn’t going to accept his cheating on her. The fact that she’d accidentally run into him while he was in the middle of romancing a fellow professor had made it pretty difficult to deny. Still, all in all, he was supporting her, wasn’t he? He was the one who went to work every day so that she could have the luxury of being a stay-at-home mom. You’d have thought she’d have shown a little more gratitude.

  But no. It was, “Jules, it’s over. I’ve already talked to a lawyer. He’s filing the papers on Monday. . . .”

  He’d begged and pleaded, of course he had. Who wanted to get booted out of the house he’d worked so hard to buy? But in the end, it had turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

  The best day of his life had been the one on which he’d decided to walk away from it all. He’d gone along with Mara’s request that the divorce be amicable, agreeing to share custody of Julianne, agreeing that the best thing for her would be to have both parents in her life, parents who were friendly and respectful of each other.

  Like that was going to happen.

  He’d had his game plan completely laid out right from the start. Phony identifications, in a multitude of names. Phony credentials. Stock certificates cashed in. Bags packed. A car purchased in the name of one of his new aliases, credit cards in the same name. He’d been planning for months to leave Mara and take Julianne with him, knowing there was nothing, nothing, he could do to Mara that could possibly hurt more than taking her daughter from her.

  So that was what he did.

  The hardest part had been the tears he’d felt obligated to make himself shed when he told his daughter about how her mommy had died and gone to heaven.

  The easiest part was hitting the open road with his adoring daughter and traveling around, seeing the country.

  Stumbling onto the Valley of the Angels five years ago had been the icing on the cake. The reverend had needed a man who was very adept with numbers. Jules had needed a place to lay low. It had been a marriage made in heaven. He’d been permitted to try out the ladies who’d flocked to th
e reverend’s side, but he’d never touched the underage ones. Uh-uh. Personally, he’d thought that whole thing was sick, but as long as they kept their hands off his daughter and paid him as handsomely as they did, well, he didn’t really give a damn. Most of those girls were on the skids when they were brought in anyway, hooking and using drugs and putting their lives in danger every day. At least the reverend offered them a safe haven, one where they could get themselves cleaned up and off drugs, get fed and clothed. Okay, so after a while they were turned over to some old geezer with money to burn and a desire for sex with a girl young enough to be his granddaughter. They were still off the streets, weren’t they?

  Frankly, Jules didn’t give a damn about any of it. He was getting his. Money and a fine young new wife who never questioned him, who never seemed to care how often he spread his handsome talents around. It had been one sweet life, until Mara had pushed herself into it, sent whoever it was she’d sent to grab Julianne and split.

  He shook his head. That was all Prescott needed to hear, that Jules didn’t know who had spirited her away. When the reverend had asked, Jules had told him it had been a private detective hired by Mara. Prescott hadn’t pressed it, but in his heart, Jules wasn’t 100 percent certain himself. He assumed Mara was behind it. Who else would care enough to go to all the trouble of getting someone into the compound, waiting patiently while the whole scheme was set up? It had to be Mara. Jules had known better than to show any sign of doubt when discussing it with Prescott. The reverend had been incensed that he’d been duped by Miss Ruth—whoever she really was—and that there was now someone on the outside who knew what really was going on inside the Valley of the Angels.

  Thinking about Prescott made Jules feel just a little bit edgy. He knew that the reverend would make good on his threat to come after the girl himself if he had to. If it came to that—if it looked as if Jules couldn’t control his own child, his own life—well, just where would that leave Jules?