by Jacie Floyd
“Fine,” Fleming said. “For the record, this conversation is being recorded.”
“Then I’d like to instruct my client not to say anything further.” Drew stood directly behind Arthur. Johnston was a tax attorney and probably came along for the ride, but it sounded like good advice to Dylan.
Arthur waved the warning aside.
The chief handed him a packet of eight-by-tens. “What do you know about these?”
The senator’s face drained of all color. His hands began to shake, and for a second, Dylan feared he might collapse on the spot before he squared his shoulders and relocated his steel backbone.
Dylan peered over his uncle’s shoulder and froze. He stared with disbelief at a picture of his uncle carrying Lana’s limp body out of the furniture factory.
Shock ripped through Dylan like a howitzer blast. Beside him, Gracie drew in a startled breath, and gripped his hand tight enough to break bones.
Surely there was another explanation beyond the obvious. “It’s easy to photo-shop pictures,” he began, rising to his uncle’s defense.
Arthur dropped his head into his hands.
“Don’t say anything, Arthur,” Drew Johnston advised. “You haven’t been accused of anything, arrested, or Mirandized.”
“Mirandized?” Arthur looked up, wearing an expression of stunned disbelief. “Why would anyone need to Mirandize me?”
“With all due respect, sir.” Fleming tapped his pen against the incriminating photograph. “This is a picture of you carrying a dead woman. And since we know where Lana was found, there’s at least circumstantial evidence that you put her there. This photograph was in the automobile of a person who is also now dead. Those are some mighty big coincidences.” The police chief reduced the room to a shocked hush by reading the senator his rights.
Drew cautioned him again, but Arthur ignored the advice again. “I’m so sorry,” he said to Dylan.
“What is it you’re sorry for, Senator?” Police chief Fleming asked. “Killing Henry? Killing Lana Harris? Getting caught?”
“No! I didn’t kill anyone.”
Dylan wanted to sympathize, but his empathy withered beneath the weight of his uncle’s betrayal. This was the man he’d looked up to his whole life, the man who’d been a surrogate father, confidante, mentor, and friend. Apparently, all of it had been a house of cards built on the unsteady foundation of deceit, infidelity, and possibly murder.
“What did happen?” Chief Fleming asked.
Arthur cleared his throat and began in a shaky voice. “I went to meet Lana at the mill that night. When I got there, she was already dead. I swear. A head wound.” He gestured to a spot on his temple and grimaced. “There was blood everywhere.”
He paused for a sip of water. “It was wrong, I know, but I panicked. I was afraid I’d be incriminated in her death. That would be the end of my marriage, my career, everything I valued. My only thought was to get her out of there. Later, I intended to come clean with Matt and let him handle things. But it was several days before our schedules coincided, before I could talk to him in person. He came to look into things. But he died, here, at the cabin of all places.”
Dylan shuddered at the callous reference to his father’s passing as if it were just another inconvenience in his uncle’s run of bad luck. Fascinated in a sick sort of way, he listened to Arthur’s justification and rationale of surreal events.
“I couldn’t do anything about the body while people kept coming around to investigate Matt’s death. Afterward, I was afraid to go near the cellar in case someone would see me. I made sure the boy was taken care of. Nothing I could’ve done at that point would have brought Lana back. As time went by, I thought it would be best to leave her body where it was.
“When I found out about Margaret’s failing health, I tried to get her to sell or give the cabin to me. At first she agreed. Then later, whenever I brought the subject up, she looked at me so strangely that I thought she might know something. When Dylan told me someone had been harassing Margaret as Matt’s illegitimate son and then Dylan decided to renovate the cabin, something had to be done.”
“The fire.” Outrage seared through all the other emotions that rocked Dylan to his soul. “You heartless bastard. You hired Lenny Castellano to set the fire!” His arm tightened around Gracie. “Gracie could have been killed. But that didn’t matter to you, did it? What was one more casualty, after all?”
His uncle flinched and turned to Dylan with a shamed face. “I never intended for that to happen. No one was supposed to be there. And you weren’t hurt. Neither one of you.”
Dylan’s lip curled in contempt. “No thanks to you.”
“How did Henry Stillberg enter the picture?” Fleming asked.
“As the night watchman at the factory, he knew I occasionally met Lana there. He started putting the squeeze on me for a little cash now and then. After her death, he told me the security camera had caught pictures of me carrying out the body.” He picked one of the photographs up and shook his head. “His demands escalated over the years. But I paid them. I would have paid anything to keep the story under wraps.”
“Are you Clay’s father?” the police chief asked.
Arthur’s shoulders slumped before he exposed another guilty secret he’d lived with for so long. “Yes.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Dylan had suspected as much. “And you let everyone here think my father was the two-timer? Even Clay?”
“I couldn’t claim him. You must see that,” Arthur pleaded. “And Matt had been quite the playboy before he married. It amused him to let the reputation linger.”
“Did he know about Clay?” Gracie asked.
“He figured it out. He didn’t approve, but there wasn’t much he could do. I’d broken it off with her, but whenever I was here, she’d come around. When Lana told me there was another baby coming, she demanded that I make a choice. When I wouldn’t, she went to Matt, thinking he’d pressure me to do more for her. He offered her a generous settlement if she went away with Clayton before she had the second child. She agreed, but wanted to see me one last time, and we set up the meeting at the factory. Matt told me not to meet with her, but I went anyway.” He shook his head sadly. “When I got there, she was dead.”
“Did you love her?” Gracie asked, as if any explanation could excuse the heartache Arthur’s folly had caused for so many. One careless affair had destroyed countless lives. If that was the kind of thoughtless damage people wreaked in the name of love, Dylan wanted no part of it.
His uncle’s expression returned to icy calm. But as he took another sip of water, a tremor shook his hand. “I was crazy about her. She was so vital and alive and beautiful. Like an addiction. The sex was amazing. I couldn’t get enough of her. When I was with her, she was everything to me. But when I went home, I couldn’t picture my life with anyone but Delia. Father would have been furious. It would have been detrimental to my political future. I was torn between the two women. Truly torn.”
Chief Fleming cleared his throat and veered the narrative away from the emotional and back to the factual. “Did you get tired of being blackmailed? Agree to meet with Henry and then run him off the road?”
“Absolutely not. I didn’t even know he’d be in town. I transferred another hundred thousand dollars to him on Thursday.”
“How often did he make a demand?”
“Once or twice a year.”
“And you weren’t tired of forking over that kind of dough?”
“It was worth it to me, as long as he kept the secret.”
“Was he threatening to tell someone? Is that why you killed him?”
The sharp exchange ricocheted back and forth between them.
“No.” Arthur resumed his normal air of confidence. “As long as I paid up, he never threatened to tell, and I didn’t kill him. I think it must have been Lana’s killer who did. If he was blackmailing me, chances were good that he’d be blackmailing the actual killer, too.”
“Didn’t you ever try to find out who it was?”
“At first, but later I just tried to forget about it.”
“Not very admirable, Uncle.” Dylan’s stomach turned over.
“Few men’s secrets are. I thought you knew that.”
Dylan had heard enough. “Am I free to go?”
“Sure,” Fleming said. “Just don’t leave the county.”
Gracie accompanied him from the cramped office, and so did the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t know if his head or his heart would explode first, but he needed fresh air immediately.
Outside on the steps, he bent at the waist, put his hands on his knees, and drew great gulps of air into his lungs. Gracie rested a cool hand on the back of his neck, but he shrank away from her. “I don’t think I can ever forgive him.”
“Understandable.” Her clipped voice reminded him that the unpleasant facts affected her and her loved ones, too. “He caused people I care about enormous pain and not for good or honorable reasons. I don’t picture this being a resolution Clay can embrace with pleasure.”
With his own pain almost more than he could deal with at the moment, he still felt the need to comfort Gracie. He reached out and stroked her cheek. “I’m sorry,” he said, aware of the inadequacy of his words.
She wouldn’t meet his gaze, shifting her line of focus over his shoulder to the Town Square. “Not your fault.”
“It’s my family.”
“You’re related to him, you’re not responsible for his actions.” She peeked at her watch, and he remembered she had other places to be.
“You should get to the hospital.”
“I can stay here a bit longer.”
He took her hand and tugged her in the direction of the church parking lot. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”
He could see her waver, but his insistence and her concern for Clay and David tipped the scales.
As they walked along, Gracie asked the question Dylan had been asking himself. “Do you really think he killed Lana? And Henry?”
In the past twenty-four hours he’d guessed that Arthur was Clay’s father. Even when the truth had stared him in the face, Dylan hadn’t wanted to see it. Too ironic to accept the fact that his father’s good name had been cleared at the expense of his uncle’s. And it hurt to know Arthur had been capable of wreaking such havoc. “The man I know couldn’t have committed murder. But obviously, I don’t know him at all.”
“If not him, then who?”
That was the million-dollar question, and one he could only guess the answer to. “I don’t know, Gracie. There are still pieces of the puzzle missing, and some of the pieces I have don’t fit.”
She tilted her head to the side and studied him. “Which ones?”
The puzzle piece with Karen Hammonds’ name on it kept coming to mind. “There are a couple of things I need to check out then I’ll tell you, okay?”
Gracie frowned. “This doesn’t bode well for our investigative partnership, does it?”
“Well, look at it this way,” he said. “We teamed up to find out who Clayton’s father is, and our quest has been overwhelmingly successful.”
“And neither one of us likes the answer.”
“Be careful what you ask for,” he said. “Isn’t that what they say?”
“I guess.” Her face fell into a dispirited expression.
“Are you going to tell Clay?”
“Probably, but it will depend on David. This is a lot to absorb, you know, on top of everything else.”
“I know.” It would probably take him a lifetime, and then some, to make sense of it.
“Will I see you later?” she asked as they stopped beside her car.
Dylan shrugged. He couldn’t seem to think straight. Bleak thoughts whirled around in his head. His relationship with Gracie was a more challenging complication than he could deal with at the moment. “You heard the police chief. I can’t go very far.”
She leaned over and gave him a kiss of sweet comfort. “We’ll talk later, then.”
“Later.”
She was so good, so decent. He couldn’t imagine why she’d want to have anything to do with anyone named Bradford. But maybe someday they could find a way to put all of this behind them. For now, he needed some time and space to clear his head. He climbed into his truck and headed toward the burned-out cabin.
Seeing the charred ruins again, his hands shook at the realization of how easily Gracie could have been a victim of his uncle’s thoughtless crime. He drove on past the remains, restless, edgy, wanting to put an end to the half-truths and all-out lies, to dig down to the bottom of this secret once and for all. There was more to it, he could feel it.
And there was one place he hadn’t visited since his return—one place that seemed to lie at the heart of the whole, tragic affair. He had a hunch that the Old Maine Furniture Factory might hold some of the answers that had eluded him everywhere else. He’d go there and see what secrets lurked in the corners of the drafty, old place.
Maybe he was closer to a solution than he’d realized.
The set of keys Lawrence Sutton had given Dylan before he came to East Langden were in his glove box. One of them fit the main door to the furniture factory.
The old, weathered structure loomed cold and forbidding, with most of its windows boarded up, shingles missing from the roof, and weeds sprouting around the foundation. Dylan retrieved a flashlight from under the seat and strode toward the door. It opened with a creak and a groan. Flashlight in hand, Dylan stepped inside a building steeped in the stale odors of raw lumber and sawdust.
His footsteps echoed as he crossed the hall to the business offices. With a cursory inspection, he saw that they had been emptied long ago. They contained no furniture, no safe stocked with Bradford secrets, no clues of any kind—if he would even recognize one if he saw it. Incriminating evidence would probably have to hit him over the head before he knew what he was looking for.
He moved on to the carpenters’ workshop. All the wood for the famous custom-made Bradford tables, beds, chests, dressers, and chairs had been cut, sawed, planed, shaved, shaped, and fit together in this cavernous room. The flashlight beam illuminated the workbenches and bays for tools and supplies. Years of carpentry residue still coated the wood floors and panels with a fine film.
Except for the set of high-heeled footprints in the dust that led all the way across the floor to an open door in the back. A storage area? He tiptoed over and peered inside.
Empty shelves lined the walls. A mouse scurried away from his light to a hole in a corner. He pushed the door open wider and stepped inside. He regretted the action as soon as he spied the figure concealed behind it. Recognition dawned the second before his vision burst into an explosion of bright sparks, then utter darkness, as he collapsed beneath a heavy blow.
The groan that emerged from Dylan’s parched throat rumbled around inside his head like thunder through a canyon. He wanted to stuff his fist inside his mouth to muffle the sound, but his hand wouldn’t obey the command. He tried again and recognized the bite of ropes around his wrists.
Slowly… painfully… he levered his eyelids open.
He lay in the small storage room he’d been about to investigate when the world around him had faded to black. A pair of inappropriate pink high-heeled sandals hammered a trail back and forth before his eyes. He forced his gaze upward from magenta toenails to hot pink Capri pants and a ruffled halter-top.
As the woman made the turn in his direction, he wasn’t particularly surprised to see the artificially preserved face of Karen Hammonds. The awkward piece of the puzzle.
He fumbled to sit up, ignoring the panoramic light show that strobed in front of his eyes. “What’s the point of this, Karen?”
“I wanted to talk to you.”
He raised an eyebrow at her extreme measures. The simple gesture shot an arrow of pain straight through his temple. “You could have asked.”
&n
bsp; “I planned to arrange a meeting, but when you showed up here, where I’ve been holed up for the past few days, there wasn’t any point in doing it the polite way. I need you to hear me out.”
He nodded and winced as about twenty jackhammers pounded through his head. “I’m all ears.”
She wasted her time and his by batting tired coquettish eyes his way. “I need your help.”
“Okay.” His tongue—like his brain—felt thick and fuzzy. “Why don’t you untie me?” He shifted his hands behind his back, testing the flexibility of the ropes.
“Not yet,” she said. “I don’t trust you.”
How ironic. “Then we’re even.”
“I need to get out of the country fast, and I need you to take me.”
Okay, now he really didn’t think the day could hold any more surprises. “Why me?”
“Because you have a private jet and access to all those piles of lovely Bradford money.”
“Why would I take you anywhere? Or give you money?”
Karen tapped a hot pink fingernail against her lip. “Because right now, your uncle’s sitting in a boatload of trouble, and I can get him out.”
Mention of Arthur brought forth another round of nausea. Dylan swallowed it back. “You know, I don’t feel as kindly toward my uncle as I normally do. I might need more of an incentive than that.”
“No way,” she scoffed. “Everyone knows you Bradfords have more family loyalty than the Kennedys.”
“Not anymore.” Dylan worked his wrists against the ropes while he took a verbal stab in the dark. “But I would like to know why you killed Lana Harris. And Henry Stillberg.”
For one blessed moment, she halted her round of frenetic pacing. “Figured that out, did you?”
“There’s no other reason for you to be here and to be in such a hurry to get out of Dodge. Maybe for the right information I’ll agree to help you.”
She sighed in disgust, reached into a frilly, impractical handbag, and withdrew a .38 handgun. “Maybe you just need the right incentive.”
Damn. Why hadn’t his family thrown more of their wealth and political influence behind a bill for stricter firearm laws? “He who holds the gun,” Grandfather Bradford had always said, “holds the power.” Or something like that. With one leveled at his chest, Dylan couldn’t argue with the premise. “Just stay calm and tell me what you want.”
