Dead Giveaway

by Brenda Novak

  “Allie?” he said immediately.

  “I’m fine,” she replied.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I can’t explain right now. Jed and I are going to the cabin. I’m sorry, but it looks as if I won’t be able to make dinner.”

  “I’m not worried about dinner,” he said. “I’m worried about you. What does Jed want?”

  “I’m not sure yet. But I’ll call you as soon as I know.”

  “Should I come up there?”

  “No. We’ll be finished before you could ever reach us,” she said and disconnected.

  Clay wasn’t about to sit home and wonder. Grabbing his car keys, he charged out of the house—and right into a middle-aged man several inches shorter than he was who’d just climbed the stairs to the front door. With his graying dark hair tied back, he looked like some kind of Willie Nelson wannabe.

  But even after twenty-five years, Clay recognized his own father.

  Allie couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. She sat in the log chair she’d taken at the cabin, her stomach churning as she stared at Jed Fowler. “Why wouldn’t you speak to me when I came to your house?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer, but he’d nearly run her off the road, trying to initiate this private meeting. When she’d realized who was driving the blue truck that had come so close, she’d stopped at the most public place she could find, a small strip mall not far from the gas station where Hendricks had gone, and had her finger on the Send button of her phone, with 911 already programmed in. But Jed had managed to convince her that he merely had something to say, so she’d called Clay to tell him who she was with and that she was fine. Then she and Jed had come to the cabin.

  After all the effort he’d put into getting her alone, it was still difficult to drag anything out of him.

  “Jed, please,” she said. “You have to speak more freely. I…I need details. I have to understand.”

  “I didn’t trust you,” he said simply.

  “Why not?”

  “I thought you’d go along with the rest of ’em.”

  “The rest of them,” she repeated.

  He shoved his hands in the pockets of his work coveralls. “The Vincellis. Your father. The mayor.”

  “What makes you think I won’t?”

  There was a two- or three-second lag before every answer, but at least Jed was willing to talk about the Barker case. That was something, after keeping his mouth shut for nineteen years. “I’ve been watching you,” he said at last.

  She’d noticed. His unwavering attention had made her very uncomfortable and suspicious. So did the fact that he’d been following her. To Clay’s farm. To Grace’s stand. To the gas station where she’d picked up the tape. Today he’d been driving a truck someone must’ve brought in for repairs, because she hadn’t recognized it or she would’ve realized who he was a lot sooner.

  “Are you the person who left me that package?” she asked.

  He looked puzzled for a moment. Then the confusion cleared. “You mean the one in your mailbox?”

  Her phone rang, but she turned it to silent and slipped it into her purse. She was finally getting somewhere and was afraid it would spook Jed if they were interrupted. “Yes.”

  “It came from Portenski.”

  Just as Grace had said.

  “I saw him deliver it,” he added.

  Jed had been watching her very closely indeed. He’d even been keeping an eye on her house while she slept! “Do you know what was inside it?”

  “No.”

  “Pictures.”

  He grimaced.

  “Do you want me to tell you what was in them?”

  “No.”

  He said only that one word, but she could tell he was having a strong emotional reaction. “Why?”

  He sighed heavily. “I can guess.”

  “How?”

  “I could tell by the way Barker looked at her.”

  Allie sat up straighter. “By the way he looked at whom?”

  “Grace. I was afraid it was happening again.”

  A chill ran down Allie’s spine. “Again? You knew it had happened before?”

  He stared at the floor as if he was ashamed. “I could’ve stopped it.”

  “But?”

  “Eliza wouldn’t let me.”

  Eliza. Jed was talking about Barker’s wife. The framed program he kept in his living room flashed through Allie’s mind.

  “But I had no proof,” he went on. “Only what she told me she suspected. And she was terrified of him. She wouldn’t let me say a word to anyone. She promised me, when she was ready, she’d have me take her away from Stillwater. She said that was when we’d turn in the pictures she’d found.”

  More pictures? Or were they the same ones? “Were you and Eliza lovers?” she asked.

  “Like your father and Mrs. Montgomery? No.”

  There was no judgment in his words. He was merely clarifying. So Allie felt comfortable doing that, too. “What was the nature of your relationship?”

  “We were…friends,” he said simply. “She was always…so sad. I…I wanted to help her. But…”

  “But?”

  “I didn’t act soon enough.”

  “Or she gave up the fight before you could.”

  “Is that what you think?” he asked, responding quickly for the first time. “That she took her own life?”

  Allie felt her eyes widen. “Isn’t that what you think?”

  The way he clenched his jaw told her it wasn’t what he thought at all. He thought…“You’re not saying Barker killed her!”

  When he didn’t deny it, Allie knew that was exactly what he was saying. “That’s why you’ve got her picture in your living room,” she breathed as the truth dawned on her. “As a reminder.”

  Again, he said nothing but Allie knew she was right. That framed program was his tribute to a friend he’d cared about, a friend he felt he’d let down. “Is she the one who told you what Barker did to—” Allie swallowed hard and forced the words out “—the girls?”

  “She told me she found some pictures. Told me they were despicable. That her husband was worse than the devil himself. And that was the last day I saw her alive.”

  Allie’s heart raced as she tried to fit the various pieces together. Had Barker resorted to murder to cover up his sick obsession? Had he killed his wife, Madeline’s mother? Was Stillwater’s beloved pastor a sadistic pedophile and a murderer?

  “Why didn’t you go to the police after Eliza died?”

  “With what?” he asked.

  “You didn’t have the pictures?”

  “No. And everyone considered Barker to be some kind of saint. Who would believe what I had to say?”

  “That’s why you’ve stuck by the Montgomerys all this time,” she said.

  “Barker deserved what he got.”

  Allie agreed, but that was up to a court to decide. Not the Montgomerys. As much as her heart sympathized with Grace and Clay, with all of them, she knew no court in Mississippi would condone the fact that they’d taken the law into their own hands.

  “What happened the night Barker went missing?” she asked. She’d expected to keep prodding Jed, but now that he’d revealed as much as he had, he responded readily.

  “The reverend came home early.”

  Allie covered her face with her hands. Did she really want to hear this? There was a possibility that what she learned would forever stand between her and Clay. But could she hide from the truth? Could she risk her daughter’s well-being on a man who had such dark secrets?

  Of course not. As much as she wanted to trust blindly, she couldn’t.

  Jed waited as if he understood her reluctance.

  “And?” she said at last.

  “I called Irene at Ruby’s. That’s where she was, for choir practice.”

  “How? Weren’t you out in the barn?”

  “There was a phone there, right outside the door to Barker’s office.”


  “I see. And what did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You didn’t say anything.”

  “What could I say?”

  Allie thought of Jed trying to tell Irene that he thought her husband was about to molest her daughter. “So what did you do?”

  “I kept calling, asking for her and hanging up, trying to get her home, just in case he…”

  His voice fell off, but Allie knew what he meant.

  “Then what?” she said.

  “Irene came home. But when I started up to the house to speak with Barker about the tractor, I heard yelling.”

  “Go on.”

  “I was afraid for Irene and the kids, so instead of heading back to the barn—” he frowned and scratched his sun-reddened neck “—I looked through the window.”

  Allie said a silent prayer that he wouldn’t tell her something she’d feel obligated to report to the authorities. “And what did you see?”

  “They were in the kitchen. Barker was beating Irene. Then Clay got into it, trying to protect his mom.”

  At sixteen. Poor Clay…Allie could imagine him trying to fend off his mother’s attacker regardless of any disadvantage. She could also imagine where his actions might have led. “Did he…kill him?”

  Allie could scarcely hear for the beating of her heart. Grace had told her no, and Allie had believed her. But would Grace tell her the truth?

  “No,” Jed replied. No… Relief flooded Allie. Clay hadn’t done it. “But Barker would’ve killed Clay, if not for Irene,” he added.

  “What was Barker doing?” she asked.

  “Beating him bad. I was about to go in and break it up when Clay made a run for the living room. Barker grabbed him by the hair and pulled him back. Then Irene panicked and picked up something—I couldn’t tell what it was, don’t know to this day—and brought it down on Barker’s head.”

  Allie’s eyes were riveted on Jed’s. “And then he dropped,” she finished.

  “And then he dropped,” Jed echoed.

  “You could see him?”

  He nodded. “He wasn’t moving.”

  It was beginning to get dark outside, so Allie lit the kerosene lamp. She needed to do something with her hands. She felt so jittery, so rattled. “What happened after that?” she asked as she blew out the match.

  “They buried him.”

  “Where?”

  “Behind the barn.”

  The flicker of the lamp’s flame cast moving shadows on the table. “Weren’t they afraid you’d see them?”

  “They were too afraid of everything else to worry about me, I suppose. They tried to move careful and quiet-like, but…”

  “It was too late. You’d already seen what happened.”

  Another nod.

  “Only you didn’t let them know.”

  “Figured we were all safer that way.”

  “Why do you think they didn’t go to the police?”

  Jed’s expression didn’t change. “For the same reason Eliza didn’t.”

  “Grace might’ve told them about the pictures.”

  “Who knows if she knew where to find them. And even if they had them…” He clucked his tongue, and Allie knew what he was thinking. Even if they did, they were pictures that would humiliate a thirteen-year-old girl in the worst possible way. Pictures that would require she testify at her mother’s trial in a town where she and her family weren’t liked in the first place.

  “You should’ve seen Grace that night,” he added.

  Allie doubted Grace would’ve been strong enough to go through a trial. And what if they’d lost? What if the court had ruled that Barker wasn’t killed in self-defense? What if the prosecutor managed to convince a jury that Irene had murdered her husband because she’d found out what he was doing to her daughter?

  Allie couldn’t remain sitting any longer. She stood up and circled the room, careful not to look at the bed. Clay’s blood was still on the sheets; no one had cleaned up since he was shot. The last few times she’d gone to the cabin, she’d been too busy searching for evidence. “So why are you breaking your silence after so long?” she asked. “Why are you telling me?”

  Jed’s whiskers made a rasping sound against his callused hand. “Because I don’t think Clay ever will. And I don’t think he’ll let Grace tell you, either.”

  Allie had to agree. Clay was too loyal to his family. And knowing Clay, he’d view it as a burden he wouldn’t want her to carry.

  “I thought knowing the truth might help you defend him,” Jed murmured.

  “At least I know what we’re up against.”

  “I had to do something this time. Clay doesn’t deserve to spend the rest of his life behind bars.”

  And Jed didn’t need any additional regrets. Allie understood. He’d spoken more words in the past hour than he’d probably ever strung together at one time, which proved how passionate he felt about Eliza and Barker and the Montgomerys. But Allie had one more question. “So why didn’t the police find Barker’s remains when they searched the farm?” she asked.

  Jed shrugged. “They should’ve. They were searching in the right place.”

  And that was why Jed had confessed to Barker’s murder. Suddenly it all made sense. Jed hadn’t tried to confess because he was in love with Irene. He felt responsible because he hadn’t stopped Barker when Eliza had told him what Barker was.

  What Barker was…Allie shook her head in stunned disbelief. Madeline wanted the truth. But wasn’t a truth like that the worst thing a daughter could ever hear?

  22

  “Alaska isn’t like any place you’ve ever seen.” Lucas smiled as if Clay and Molly had every reason to smile with him. Their father had been going on about the beauty of his adopted state and his love of flying ever since Molly had invited him in. And he’d been talking as fast and animatedly as Clay remembered, as if Clay had given him some sort of welcome, which he hadn’t.

  “With a mouth like that, you should’ve been a used-car salesman,” Clay said.

  Molly glanced nervously at him. Lucas merely blinked. “What?”

  Evidently, Clay’s response wasn’t one Lucas had been expecting. Clay was a little surprised himself. He’d dreamed of seeing his father ever since Lucas had left them. At first, he’d imagined a happy reunion, a day when his father would finally realize how much he loved his family and return to apologize and make everything better.

  But after that summer when Clay and his mother and sisters had subsisted almost entirely on oatmeal and they hadn’t even been able to pay the electric bill, Clay’s dreams had become far less optimistic. During the Barker years, whenever he thought about meeting up with his father, there was always some degree of violence involved. Usually, Clay threw a single punch that broke the old man’s jaw.

  Clay was still considering whether or not to make that dream a reality. But Molly seemed more willing to accept him. And his father no longer looked like a worthy adversary, which came as quite a disappointment. Age was taking its toll, and he wasn’t nearly as big as Clay remembered.

  “What did you say?” Lucas said, referring to Clay’s comment.

  “Don’t mind him,” Molly said quickly.

  Until that moment, their father had avoided meeting Clay’s eyes.

  “I said, with a mouth like that, you should’ve been a used-car salesman.”

  Lucas chuckled uncomfortably. “Why’s that?”

  Clay let his gaze drift over the Flying Makes Me Higher Than a Kite T-shirt, blue jeans and brand-new flip-flops his father was wearing. “Because I’ve never met anyone who fits the stereotype more—all talk and no integrity.”

  “Clay—” Molly started, but he ignored her, keeping Lucas pinned beneath his unswerving regard.

  Their father wiped his forehead as if it was getting too hot in the room. And it was. The humidity was causing beads of sweat to trickle down the middle of Clay’s back.

  “I deserved that,” he said. “You’ve got every reason
to be angry, Clay. I understand—”

  “You don’t understand anything,” Clay interrupted. “What makes you think you can step foot on my property?”

  “I came because I wanted to help.”

  Molly moved closer to Clay. “He just got here,” she said softly.

  “I don’t care.” Clay’s hands curled into fists in spite of his determination not to swing them. “We don’t need his help. I already did his job.” Not that Clay felt he’d managed very well. He’d had so little to work with—not much maturity, very little wisdom and no resources. He’d had to become a man at thirteen. “If he’d never left, Grace wouldn’t have been hurt,” he pointed out. “We wouldn’t even have known Barker.”

  Instead, they had to live with their stepfather’s remains in the cellar, as well as the terrible memories he’d created.

  What a difference Lucas could’ve made—for everyone.

  To his credit, Lucas put up a hand to silence Molly instead of letting her argue for him. And he didn’t cower as Clay had expected. “I thought you could use some support,” he said.

  “Now? Where were you when Molly was eight years old? Where were you when Grace—” Clay’s throat constricted at the memory of her ghost-white face. How could Lucas love her and Molly so much less than Clay did? Lucas was their father.

  And how could Molly talk to Lucas as if he’d done nothing wrong?

  Clay couldn’t begin to understand, which only made his anger blaze hotter. Swallowing hard, he decided to end the conversation. Lucas didn’t deserve a single kind word from Molly. He didn’t deserve anything. Their father simply hadn’t cared enough. What he’d wanted for himself had mattered more than all of them.

  “It’s time for you to go,” Clay said. “We have nothing to say to you.”

  Lucas smiled at Molly. “You turned out to be a beautiful woman.”

  “Shut up,” Clay said, disgusted.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have come back at…at this late date, Clay,” his father said. “But someone called me, a female police officer. She was asking a bunch of questions, and I—” he sighed “—I might’ve made some mistakes in what I said. I’ve been worried about that. I didn’t want to make the situation worse for you. I—I wanted you to know that if I blew it, it wasn’t intentional. My wife said I should—”