by Debra Webb
She wondered if Billy had been able to tell himself it wasn’t her fault when he was making the notification to the man’s family?
Unable to sleep, she’d gone down to the basement storeroom and worn herself out on the boxing bag she’d had delivered less than a week after she’d moved in. Until Julian’s betrayal she had never once felt the need to be expertly prepared to defend herself. Since then, she’d taken every available self-defense class in the area and learned to defeat the stress and anxiety on the punching bag. Billy had taught her how to use the .38 she’d bought. She might not be an expert marksman just yet, but she could hit a paper torso from a reasonable distance with no trouble. Billy had advised her not to worry so much about where she hit her target. If the first shot didn’t stop him, then she was to keep shooting until he stopped moving.
She was as prepared as she could be and somehow she still felt helpless.
After standing in the shower until the hot water was depleted, she had rallied the wherewithal to pop her contacts into her raw eyes, drink coffee and throw a load of laundry into the machine. She had been ignoring laundry for a few days now. If she didn’t pull herself together soon she’d have nothing to wear.
Her fingers felt cold even clasped around the hot mug as she thought of her mother’s mirror and the message that had been left for her. If Julian or someone working for him had come into her house and moved things around and left messages, that likely meant he was close. Close enough to enjoy the results of his efforts. No matter that she despised the idea of feeling afraid, she would be grateful when the locksmith arrived to change the locks. As brave as she wanted to be, she was not going to be foolish just to prove a point.
She couldn’t help wondering if Julian had killed Geneva Phillips. Would he start killing people in her hometown simply to toy with her? She couldn’t see how he would have known the Phillips family would choose DuPont Funeral Home. Officer Damon Miller’s family certainly had not. Was Julian merely trying to make her feel uncomfortable in Winchester? Or maybe he wanted to turn the community against her. Make them fear her presence and simultaneously brand her the outcast she’d felt like as a child. Being the undertaker’s daughter had not been helpful when it came to making friends or being accepted. No matter that she was an adult now and reality had not changed. No one wanted to be friends with the woman who ripped the final remnants of humanity from a body. No one except Billy. And Herman.
The realization of just how important to her both men were terrified Rowan more than anything else. Julian would understand this, too. She had often spoken of Billy having been her only real friend as a child. Whatever Julian’s intent, she had to stop him. People were dying and she would not stand idly by and allow Billy or Herman to become another of his victims.
Rowan tugged her cell from the pocket of her jeans. Since at this point she had no work in the mortuary to do today, she intended to spend some more time going through her mother’s journals and through family albums—particularly from the last year of Raven’s and Norah’s lives—to see if there was anything that would prompt a memory of Alisha Addington from that summer.
Julian insisted she would remember.
She gritted her teeth as she tapped her contact for April Jones. Lieutenant Jones was the detective in charge of the Special Crimes Unit at Metro where Rowan had worked. Jones was also assigned to the joint task force with the FBI to find Julian. The bastard had murdered four people in Nashville in an attempt to show Rowan exactly what he was capable of—and show her, he did. Then he’d murdered her father and the police officer watching him...the same way he’d murdered Officer Miller last night.
She shuddered and pushed the painful memories away.
“Dr. DuPont, how are you?”
Rowan summoned her steadiest voice. “I’m good. How are you?”
After a few moments catching up, she listened to her former colleague and friend’s summary of how the SCU was doing without Rowan. They missed her. It wasn’t the same, and so on. Rowan appreciated the sentiments but she could never return. No matter that the unit as well as Metro’s chief insisted they would love to have her back, her name and reputation were far too tarnished now. The shadow of doubt would likely never lift completely. In truth, she wasn’t sure she would ever trust herself to analyze a killer on that level again. Perhaps in time.
“Anything new on the search for Addington?” It wasn’t necessary for Rowan to tell her what had been happening down here. Jones would know. As members of the same joint task force assigned to find Julian, Billy was in contact with both Lieutenant Jones and Agent Dressler. He had a responsibility to keep them informed of all related events.
“He’s a ghost.” The lieutenant’s tone reflected the frustration she felt with that admission as well as with the investigation. “It’s as if he vanished. I think he followed you to Winchester and is hiding out somewhere down there in those hills on the outskirts of town.”
Rowan laughed despite the troubling idea, and relaxed the slightest bit. “Unfortunately, you may be more right than you know.”
“Agent Dressler called this morning,” Jones went on. “He’s headed your way. Apparently that police chief of yours is convinced Addington is there. Particularly after the discovery of the bones. I can’t believe no one knew he’d been married. Even the FBI was surprised by that one. From the paper trail, it looks as if he and Anna Prentice were married in Mexico, which is why there was no marriage license here. They never even filed taxes together. A very odd couple, let me tell you. Dressler has interviewed her and she is one strange bird.”
Rowan couldn’t fathom how Julian had kept all his twisted lies completely separate and totally secret. Or straight, for that matter. And there would be more to come, Rowan felt certain. “He called me. I suppose you heard about that.”
“I did. He’s determined to haunt you, Dr. DuPont. And then he’ll likely kill you if he gets a chance.”
“It certainly appears my destruction and demise are his ultimate goal,” Rowan admitted. “I’ve been trying to find some connection between my family and his daughter, Alisha, whose remains were found. According to Mrs. Addington and a couple of local witnesses, Alisha was in Winchester looking for my family.” Rowan rubbed at her temple with her free hand. “I still can’t wrap my head around the idea that Julian was acquainted with my family before he and I met, which wasn’t until I was in college. It’s unnerving. I feel as if there’s this big mystery about my life and I was there but I had no idea it was happening all around me.”
“Makes you wonder if you really ever know anyone.” Jones sighed. “Surely your father would have mentioned knowing Addington. Particularly since he had reservations about the man’s intentions.”
So Billy had passed along his and Herman’s thoughts on the subject to the task force, as well. Rowan wanted to be annoyed by the idea, but he was right to do whatever necessary to aid in the search for Julian.
“I’m certain he would have,” Rowan agreed. “He wasn’t exactly a fan of Julian’s.”
“Maybe your mother, then.”
“If there is a connection,” Rowan confessed, “that has to be the case. It must have been through her. But good grief, where do I begin? I’ve been going through her writing journals and photographs. It’ll take some time and I still may not find what I’m looking for. Her writings are scattered, sometimes fiction, sometimes whatever was happening in her life at the time. There’s no consistency.”
“You sound worried, Rowan.”
The only time the lieutenant called Rowan by her first name was when she was worried. “The police officer on my protection detail was murdered last night right under my nose. I am worried. I don’t want anyone else to die.”
A moment of silence passed. “I feel you. You are in a very difficult situation. But his murder is not on you. It’s on Addington. You know this better than anyone.”
Ro
wan did know it, but knowing it and feeling it were two very different things. “I’ll try harder to bear that in mind.”
They spoke for a few minutes more and finally Jones urged, “Call me anytime. I’m here if you need me.”
Rowan thanked her and they ended the call. She squared her shoulders and put the subject away for a bit. She should have breakfast and get on with this blind stumble down memory lane as written by her mother. She slid her phone into her back pocket and headed for the kitchen. Most people wanted to remember their mothers.
It wasn’t precisely that Rowan didn’t want to remember her. It was more that she didn’t feel comfortable remembering her. Norah had been a good mother, to the best of Rowan’s recall, but she was never as involved with her and Raven’s lives as their father had been. Norah was always off on some adventure or shut away in her room at her writing desk. There were moments, of course. Rowan had flashes of memory with her mother. Picnics in the backyard. Walks in the woods. But none of the usual ones like birthday parties, holidays or school events. Sundays in church. Her father was always front and center at those events. Strange.
She reached into the fridge for a cup of yogurt. No matter how she distracted herself, she couldn’t stop thinking about the officer last night and how she should have fought Billy on the issue of assigning a protection detail. One cop in a car was not going to stop Julian Addington. Now there would be two cops assigned, twice the potential victims.
Though her appetite was nonexistent, she forced a spoonful of yogurt. The oddly sour taste spurred her gag reflex. She spit the yogurt in the sink and washed it away. Then she checked the date on the container. It had expired two weeks ago.
“What?” Hadn’t she just picked this up on Sunday morning? Since she didn’t attend church services, popping into the market while everyone else was at church made for a less crowded and faster shopping experience. Fewer prying eyes and not so many tongues wagging behind hands.
Rowan would have to make it a point to check the expiration dates in the future. How irresponsible of a store to sell dairy products expired for nearly two weeks. She opted for fruit instead. After poking her head into the fridge once more, she came away with molded raspberries...molded blueberries. Strawberries that were more brown than red.
What in the world?
Tossing each container into the trash, she was taken aback by finding two more items had gone bad. They had looked perfectly fine when she bought them earlier in the week. Finally, frustrated, she reached for an apple. Her thumb sank into the mushy piece of fruit. She stared at the brown that gushed out.
The apple was spoiled, too. For heaven’s sake.
She checked the rest in the bowl on the counter. All of them were rotten.
Okay, this was too much. She trashed the apples and washed her hands. If she’d had no appetite before, she felt completely ill now.
Maybe she’d just have another cup of coffee, check the laundry and then get on with what she had planned for the day. In the undertaking business you never knew when a walk-in would appear at the door or a call from the hospital would come. It was imperative that she took advantage of every available opportunity to search her family’s past. The sooner she uncovered this secret past Julian seemed to want her to find, maybe the sooner she would find him.
He had to be stopped...even if she had to kill him herself.
The idea had her going still, a hand on the carafe. She’d never been forced to kill anyone or thing. She wasn’t sure she could. But it was no longer because she didn’t know how or didn’t possess the necessary equipment. She had trained extensively with the .38 that usually stayed in her bedside table. The self-defense classes had taught her how to disable a person with nothing more than her hands and feet. She was as prepared as she could physically be. It was the emotional part that lagged, but she was working on that aspect, as well.
If she had been at home when Julian murdered her father...she could have killed him with whatever weapon her hands found first. Not the slightest doubt rose to counter the conclusion. The bastard had murdered her father.
Rage swelled inside her even now. She felt fairly confident she could do it now or tomorrow or on whatever occasion presented itself. No matter that at her very core she wanted to help others—compassion had always been her primary focus—a man like Julian didn’t deserve understanding or compassion.
He deserved what he so cavalierly dished out.
He deserved death.
She shuddered and banished the uncertainty that attempted to creep into her bones.
Her mug refilled, she walked into the small laundry room off the kitchen and abruptly slipped on the damp floor, almost falling. She barely caught herself and hot coffee splashed on the floor amid the mounds of bubbles. Luckily her hand was spared the steaming hot liquid.
“What in the world?”
Bubbles had overflowed the lid, streamed down the front of the washing machine and spread across the floor.
She turned the washing machine off, grabbed towels from the next load she’d intended to wash and started mopping up the mess. Now she needed to add having the washing machine repaired to her list of things to do.
Once the floor was dried, she hung up the towels. She couldn’t wash them until she had the machine checked out. Maybe it was the detergent she’d used. She opened the cabinet over the washing machine and grabbed the detergent bottle. Reading the label, her mouth gapped.
It wasn’t laundry detergent; it was dish detergent. No wonder bubbles had overflowed. How could she have mistaken dish detergent for laundry detergent? She plopped the bottle onto the closed lid of the washing machine and shook her head in frustration.
“What is wrong with you?”
This was something she certainly knew better than to do. She and Raven had done this very thing when they were kids. They’d wanted to help their dad since their mother was away. Unable to find any laundry detergent in the house, in their ten-year-old minds dish detergent should have worked just as well. Bubbles had ended up all over the kitchen as well as the laundry room floor.
Like now.
The bell for the entrance door of the funeral home chimed, and Rowan shook off the frustration. Her attention had been elsewhere and she’d made a mistake. She’d been doing a lot of that lately. And maybe she hadn’t gone to the market earlier this week. Maybe it had been the week before.
Or maybe she was losing her mind.
Some sort of mental instability ran in the family, didn’t it? After all, a mentally sound mother wouldn’t have hanged herself for her twelve-year-old daughter to come home and find her dangling body, would she?
Perhaps Norah DuPont hadn’t been an aspiring writer. Maybe she’d been suffering from some undiagnosed condition and the writing had been her way of releasing the demons in her head. Rowan regretted the thought no sooner than it formed. Her mother had lost a child. Obviously, she couldn’t bear the pain. But being the child left behind, Rowan couldn’t help seeing the act as selfish and unstable.
After taking the elastic hairband from around her wrist, Rowan fashioned the long strands into a ponytail as she descended the stairs. She took a big breath and checked out the window before opening the door. Though she doubted Julian would appear and ring the bell, particularly with daylight and a Winchester PD cruiser sitting outside, no need to take chances. Billy and another man—this one in a khaki-colored uniform and carrying a toolbox—waited.
The locksmith, she presumed.
She unlocked and opened the door. “Good morning.” It actually hadn’t been good, but pretending all was well proved considerably more appealing than confessing that she felt as if she’d slipped over some ledge and couldn’t quite climb back up. Besides, the more uncertainty she shared with Billy, the more overprotective he became.
Billy removed his hat and gave her a nod. “Morning. This is Houston Smith. He’s he
re to change the locks for you.”
A locksmith with the name Smith. “Thank you for coming so quickly, Mr. Smith.”
“Happy to do it, ma’am. Mr. DuPont took care of my daddy when he passed. He was a fine man.”
Rowan managed a smile as she stepped back for the two to enter. It wasn’t until Billy was inside that she got a clear view of the parking lot and street. Several commercial vehicles were scattered about. She spotted one from the Tullahoma Telegraph and another from the Winchester Gazette as well as the Tennessean.
Billy ushered her back and closed the door. “I should have sent you a text and warned you about the crowd outside.”
“How long have they been out there?” She hadn’t looked out front this morning. She’d been too busy throwing away spoiled food and cleaning up those damned bubbles.
He ran his fingers through his hair. “The first one showed up about three this morning.”
His answer gave Rowan pause. How would he know that unless... “I told you I didn’t want you hanging around playing protector, Billy Brannigan!”
The locksmith cleared his throat and stared at the floor.
Rowan didn’t care. She was not going to allow Billy to get away with going directly against her wishes. Damn it!
He gestured to the second-floor landing. “Why don’t you start with the private residence, Houston? There are two doors. You can key those alike, and then she’ll need another keyed-alike set for the four doors down here.”
“I’ll get to it, Chief.” Houston nodded to Rowan and hustled up the stairs.
When he had disappeared from view, Rowan turned back to the man staring down at her with resignation written all over his face. “I appreciate that you want to keep me safe, Billy. I really do. But I will not have anyone else dying on my account. I can take care of myself! You know this. I can hit a target well enough to get the job done—you said so yourself, and I’ve put you down on the floor a couple of times with my defensive moves.”
