“That’s fine,” I said. “I understand. She told me that you became close to Heather after the Christmas before she left town.”
“You mean was murdered,” May said, her voice tight. “She was murdered.”
“Yes,” I conceded. “She was, but most people only just discovered that.”
“Most people?” she asked in surprise.
“Obviously the murderer knew.”
“Yeah. I guess that’s true.”
I looked up at Marco to get his take on her reaction, but his face was expressionless.
I shifted sideways in my seat, holding the phone over the console. “May, when I heard about people who hung out with Heather, your name kept coming up.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“I know she was hoping Wyatt would propose to her that Christmas. Did she ever talk about it?”
“Wyatt didn’t deserve her,” she said, “or at least she had me convinced of that. Heather was really good at convincin’ people she was right. I bought the whole ‘no one understands me like you do’ story hook, line, and sinker. She convinced me that we were best friends and she couldn’t handle her life without me. She called or showed up at my doorstep at all hours of the day and night, expecting me to give her my undivided attention. And I did, because she had this gravitational pull that had a way of grabbing hold of you and not letting go. But it seemed like a kryptonite kind of thing. The more time you spent with her, the more the need to be with her increased, but if she drew back, you started to realize you didn’t need her after all. That being around her was emotionally draining.”
“May,” I said, “are you speaking of your own personal experience or in general?”
A moment of silence, then she said, “Both. We’ve all discussed it over the past nine years. Compared our experiences with her. We think she’d have had hundreds of followers if she’d started a cult.”
I cast a glance to Marco again and he mouthed, You’re doing great.
Marco had been right about body language. I wish I could see her facial expressions. If she was nervous or reluctant, I couldn’t tell. “When you say we, who do you mean?”
“Mitzi, Dick…Anna Faith.”
“What about Abby Atwood?”
“I met her that Christmas when she came home from vet school. She wasn’t back for very long because she had a job back in Knoxville. She was goin’ to vet school and needed the money for her rent. I remember Heather was furious about her leavin’.”
“Why?”
“Because Heather hadn’t dismissed her. She dared to leave Heather’s orbit without permission.”
“Do you know who Heather’s boyfriend was?”
“Everyone knows Wyatt was her boyfriend,” she said slowly, like someone speaking to a child.
Was she insinuating there hadn’t been another boyfriend? But if Mitzi was right and May and Heather had been sleeping together, I could understand why she’d dodge the question.
Ask about Wyatt and the tavern, Marco mouthed.
I nodded, then asked, “Did Heather tell you much about Wyatt’s plan to ask Bart Drummond for the tavern?”
“She was the one who cooked it up. She manipulated Wyatt for weeks until he gave his father an ultimatum—either give him the tavern or he would walk away from the family. Neither one of them expected Bart to call them on it, which was shortsighted on their part. Bart doesn’t let other people control him. Anyone from Drum knows that, but I think Heather had convinced Wyatt that his father had invested too much time and energy in him to just let him go.”
“It backfired,” I said, “but Heather had a plan B. Or she made one.”
May didn’t say anything for several seconds.
I decided to lie. “We already know that Heather set Wyatt up with the DUI and breaking and entering arrest.”
She was silent for longer this time, and when she spoke, her voice was shaky. “Who told you that?”
Not an admission, but it was pretty far from a denial. “Someone who chooses to stay anonymous.” It didn’t take a genius to see I was scaring her off, so I switched gears. “The Drummonds paid Heather to leave town, but Mitzi told me that Heather said she had an idea for getting a bigger payout. Do you know what it was?”
“No, she wouldn’t tell me, but she insinuated she was workin’ with someone. While I wasn’t crazy about the idea of manipulatin’ people, I was happy she might be stayin’, even if she was defyin’ Bart Drummond. She said she wasn’t afraid of him.”
I took a moment, knowing that I needed to be careful with my next question. “How would you describe your relationship with Heather?”
“I know what Mitzi likely told you, but it ain’t true,” she said angrily. “I like men. Did I love her? Yeah, in a messed-up way, because she made me alienate everyone else in my life until there was only her, but we weren’t like that.”
“May, I don’t care about your sexual preferences,” I assured her. “Who you chose to love or sleep with is your own business. I’m just making sure I have all the puzzle pieces so I can figure out what really happened.”
“Okay,” she said in a softer tone. “Heather hooked up with some guy from her salon, but it only lasted a few weeks. He broke it off after his wife found out, but she didn’t tell a lot of people because she didn’t want anyone to know he’d rejected her. She was talkin’ about someone called Peep by then. Most people thought it was some cute name for the salon guy, but I think it was the person helpin’ her. Maybe even someone she’d found to get drugs for her.”
“Drugs?” I asked in surprise. Marco looked just as shocked.
May was silent for a moment. “I heard her talkin’ to someone on the phone, telling them she needed enough to make a grown man unconscious so she could put him in a compromisin’ position without wakin’ him up.”
“She was planning to set up Wyatt?” I asked.
“No,” she said slowly. “I think she was talkin’ about Bart. She pulled me aside before she left the party. Said she’d been plannin’ to blackmail Bart, but she was startin’ to chicken out. She’d decided it would be best if she really did leave. I begged her to stay, but she said I’d been a good friend and then told me goodbye.”
“Did she tell you where she was going?” I asked.
“No, but her aunt Hilde told me that she got a postcard from Tulsa. I was so hurt she hadn’t sent me one, but then I realized it was just Heather being Heather. Honestly, Hilde was lucky to hear from her at all.” She paused. “Although I guess maybe she didn’t.”
“Do you have any idea who she was talkin’ to about the drugs?” I asked.
“No, but I know she was meetin’ someone at the Mountain View Lodge. She got Mitzi fired over it.”
“Do you know how many times?”
“Two. Maybe three…that I know about. But I think some of those times were with the guy from the salon.”
“Do you know if she knew Paul Conrad?”
“She never mentioned him,” May said. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if she did. She mentioned getting stopped by a sheriff’s deputy who didn’t give her a ticket. In retrospect, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Paul pulling her over to get her number.”
Marco’s jaw tightened.
“Do you know when that happened?” I asked. “Before Christmas? Before Wyatt’s arrest?”
“Definitely after Christmas… I think before his arrest.”
“Did she ever say anything to make you think she might have been working with someone in the sheriff’s department to get money from Wyatt or his family?”
She gasped. “I never considered that, but if that’s what she was doin’, she never mentioned him.”
“Do you think she might have kept it a secret? She was meeting someone at the motel.”
She paused, considering it, then said, “I don’t know. But if it was him and she changed her mind, I can definitely see Paul gettin’ pissed enough to beat and kill her.”
I glanced at Marco,
who sat stock-still.
“If you think of anything else,” I said, “could you please leave me a message at Max’s Tavern?”
“Yeah, I will.”
“Thank you, May.”
“Yeah.”
She hung up, and I set my phone down and looked at Marco, my stomach tight. “She was lookin’ for drugs.”
“You think Hank was involved?”
“Maybe not directly,” I said, “but he was still dealin’ back then. I suspect she would have gone to him, or he would have heard something.” Had she told him the drugs were for Bart? Had he thought they were for Wyatt?
“To be fair,” Marco said in an even voice, “I don’t think he was the only source around. Especially when meth came into play.”
“But she wouldn’t have asked for meth for that, and we know that he had pills, which could have included sedatives.”
Marco didn’t respond.
I swallowed, fighting my rising dread. “We need to talk to him,” I said in a flat voice. “Now.”
I only hoped I could handle what he had to tell me.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“There’s no sense jumpin’ to conclusions,” Marco said as he headed toward Drum. “You don’t know it was him.”
“And I hope to God it wasn’t.” I turned to Marco. “But what if it was?”
He gave it a moment’s thought. “Then I guess you need to determine your line in the sand, your deal breaker. We know it’s unlikely he killed her, but he may have supplied her with the drugs. Especially if he believed she was going to use them on Bart. You know Hank’s committed crimes, Carly. I think you need to figure out which crimes cross the line for you. Have you given it any thought?”
“Not as much as I probably should have,” I admitted. “This shouldn’t even be a question. A year ago, I would have been horrified by all of it.”
“But a year ago, you were a different person. You’ve lived in Drum long enough to know the people here are desperate and unhappy enough to look for escape. Whether it’s goin’ to Max’s Tavern three or four nights a week to shoot the shit, hanging out at a friend’s house to get drunk, or finding an even deeper escape with drugs. I’m not condoning people gettin’ high, but to combat that kind of behavior, you need to understand why they do it. And in this case, I think you need to look at Hank’s motivation for dealin’.”
“I thought you were a sheriff’s deputy,” I said in a dry tone as I sat on my hands to quell my anxiety. “Aren’t you supposed to arrest criminals?”
“Unless you fix the disease and not just the symptoms, the cancer’s just gonna keep spreadin’,” he said with his eyes on the road.
“You sound like more of a social worker than a deputy.”
“Some days I feel like a social worker. There’s a lot of poverty and lack of education, both of which are contributors to crime. I’m no fan of Bart Drummond, but I sure hope his resort helps people around here get good jobs.” He shot me a glance. “Now let’s go over the rest of your conversation with May. Did you think she was on the up and up?”
“You didn’t?” I asked.
“It was hard to tell over the phone. I would have preferred to talk in person, but it seemed too risky.”
“Do you really think Paul would have May watched? Surely that would mean he was guilty of something. Do you think we have enough evidence to confirm that he was helpin’ Heather?”
“We don’t have any evidence. All we have are interviews, and there’s nothing directly tying him to Heather,” Marco said, “yet in my gut, I feel like he’s part of this.”
“Plus, his ex-wife confirmed that he met his girlfriends at the Mountain View Lodge, and we know Heather was meeting someone there.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Marco said. “I’m sure a lot of cheatin’ spouses go there.”
“Classy,” I said in disgust.
He turned to look at me for a second before turning back to the road. “There’s nothin’ classy about cheatin’. It’s dark and dirty, and it tears lives apart.”
“Why do I feel like you have personal experience with this?” I asked softly.
“My mother cheated on my father.”
“I’m so sorry, Marco.”
He shrugged. “She had a few boyfriends off and on over the years. I didn’t realize what was going on until I was in high school. My father is a dreamer, and I can see how my pragmatic mother became disillusioned with him and found what she was lookin’ for with someone else…and then another someone else. Mom said they stayed together for me, but it only made me feel like we’d all lived a lie. All along, she’d been cheating on him, and he knew about it. She’d end one and tell him never again. Then a year or two later, she’d start makin’ excuses about goin’ to help her cousin with her baby, or some such errand, when she was really meetin’ her latest fling.”
He paused before continuing. “I didn’t put it together at the time. I only saw my father shrink deeper and deeper into his shell. And then my senior year of high school, she thought she found the one, the guy who was worth breakin’ the cycle for, so she left. Left Dad. Left Drum. Left me the day after I graduated from high school. That guy didn’t work out, but then she found her current husband. And Dad…he was left with nothing. He lost his house in the divorce. He’d lost his wife years ago. When I went away to college, he moved to Knoxville to be close to me, but I didn’t visit him much because I blamed him for what happened. Since then, he’s retreated from the world even more. Now he lives in a one-bedroom apartment with a couple of cats.”
“You lost something too, Marco. That counts for something. That matters.”
His mouth quirked to the side as he kept his eyes on the road. “I was a grown man. They both figured I was fine on my own. Neither one of them thought to make sure I was okay. Mom was too excited to be free, and Dad just wanted to ignore everything.”
Which explained why he hadn’t called either one of them to help him after he was shot. Why he hadn’t allowed anyone to help him. He believed he couldn’t count on anyone. Funny how I’d come to believe that too.
And yet here we were, counting on each other.
“When I first found out,” he continued, “I thought, Well, that’s no surprise. Dad ignored her for years. Of course she went looking for love and comfort somewhere else. But over the last few months, I’ve spent a lot of time thinkin’ about their relationship and what I remember. And now I wonder if I got it all wrong. What if my father retreated deeper and deeper into his work because she broke his heart over and over again? What if I broke his heart when I chose her over him?”
“Oh, Marco…”
“I think it affected me more than I realized,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “It’s made it hard for me to trust people. To accept them at face value. My parents seemed to have a decent relationship, and my mom always acted like a good, caring person. I realize that’s why I’ve had trouble committing.”
Was that why he hadn’t been seeing women over the last few months? Because he’d been trying to sort out his feelings? Had I gotten everything wrong?
“My mother had an affair,” I said. I’d told Marco that Randall Blakely wasn’t my biological father, but I’d given him no details, and he hadn’t pressed. “I have no idea why she cheated. When I was young, my parents always seemed so happy and in love. They were trying to have another baby and couldn’t get pregnant, so they went to an infertility specialist. I don’t know for certain, but I suspect they found out my father was sterile…and that’s how he knew I wasn’t his biological child.”
I ran a hand over my head. “I was young, only eight or nine, so I only understood bits and pieces of their arguments. It wasn’t until I was much older that I put the pieces together. I realized that the accusations my father had hurled at her were about his own brother.”
I took a breath. “My uncle left Dallas around the time Mom died. I know he wasn’t at the funeral, because I looked for him. He’d
always been so nice to me. I don’t know if he knew I was his child, but I’d like to think he didn’t. That he wouldn’t have knowingly left me with a murdering sociopath. But then again, maybe he never left at all. Maybe my father had him killed.”
“Carly.” Marco’s voice sounded strangled.
“But your insight has made me re-examine my past relationships. I’ve never been in love, not really. The only person I felt comfortable committing to was Jake, because he’d been my best friend for years and I was sure I could trust him.”
A new thought struck me.
I was repeating the exact same pattern with Marco.
“What?” he asked, noticing the change in me.
These feelings I’d noticed the past few days, were they my broken psyche’s way of finding a relationship? Was I doomed to repeat every mistake of my past?
“What are you thinkin’, Carly?” he asked, his question laced with anxiety.
No, I might be repeating my previous pattern, but Marco wasn’t Jake. And there was no reason we couldn’t remain friends. Just friends. These feelings I was experiencing couldn’t be trusted—they’d tarnish and tear something beautiful. Not that Marco was looking for that anyway. His relationship patterns were just as messed up as mine.
I gave him a smile. “I’m thinkin’ that you’re a very insightful man. More so than most. I’m thinkin’ that I have terrible judgment in men, so I’m very lucky to have stumbled into a friendship with such a good one,” I said with a laugh.
“I’m not Jake,” Marco said. “And I’m not Wyatt.”
“No,” I said. “You’re Marco, and I need you in my life. I don’t want to screw that up.”
He glanced at me, his eyes filled with sadness. “I need you too, and I would never do anything to risk losing you.” He shifted his gaze back to the road. “When I said I’ll never lie to you, I meant it. No secrets. I won’t give you a reason to distrust me.”
“Thank you.” I reached over and took his hand, squeezing tight. Some days Marco felt like my lifeline. But there was an implicit danger in relying on anyone that much—if I lost him, this, where would I be?
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