by C J Baty
“And what exactly led you to these two as the guilty parties . . . Chief Lee?”
Marcus kept his voice even and with a tone of respect Justin knew he didn’t really feel.
Moses nodded his approval at Marcus’s use of his title.
“Since you asked so nicely, Mr. Drummond, I’ll tell you.” Moses took a quick glance at his notes then continued.
“Joe Thompson has led a very colorful life. Justin, did you know he’d done some jail time before he came here to work for your father? Mostly petty offences, but he did do six months on a burglary charge.”
“No, I didn’t, but people change, Moses. He’s been a good employee to my family. And a wonderful father to Alexander. He raised the boy all on his own after his wife died.” Justin couldn’t help but defend the man.
“True enough, some people do change,” Moses said. Justin noticed that Moses looked at Daisy before he continued. “As for the boy, that’s another
interesting fact we discovered. The boy was adopted just before he and his wife came to Beaufort about sixteen years ago.”
A small gasp escaped Daisy Lee.
“What the hell are you suggesting?” Richard stood and took a step toward Moses.
Moses shrugged his shoulders, looked at his notes, then said, “The evidence I have isn’t conclusive. Yet, I have to wonder. How did a former criminal who had no job and his wife get approved for an adoption? It seems sort of coincidental that when you two start poking around looking for your child that things start happening to the Warfield.” Moses shifted his gaze to Justin before he added, “And what about you? Weren’t you sure someone attacked you in your own home? Joe or Alexander would have had access to get in there, wouldn’t they?”
The room was quiet for a long moment. There was so much tension in the room Justin swore it felt like a sweltering heat pressing down on all of them.
One quick thump was the only warning the group of people received before the office door flew open. Peter and Damien Fitzgerald stormed in.
“Told you Robert said the Chief had them in here,” Damien blurted out, pointing at Lee.
“Goddamn, what are you doing here? I thought you would be long gone by now.” Moses barked his question at Damien. “Never mind. Just get out; you have nothing to do with this!”
Justin wondered briefly what was going on between Lee and Damien. Why would Moses think Damien would be gone? He didn’t have time to think about it right now, but he would talk to Marcus later and see if he got the same feeling.
“I see you’re still a little touchy about that article I wrote on the murders last summer, Chief. You know I was just doing my job,” Damien said, walking by Moses and planting himself in Justin’s desk chair. He promptly kicked his feet up on the edge of the desk and put his hands behind his head, smiling at Moses sweetly.
“When did you get back,” Justin asked as Peter joined him and Marcus.
“Just now. I found Damien in the bar arguing with Robert, so I made him come with me to look for you.” Peter rolled his eyes at Damien. “He’s a pain in the ass, you know?”
“Yes, that Robert Wyler is a pain in my ass,” Damien added.
“All right,” Moses huffed out. “What I need to know is when was the last time each of you saw Joe or Alexander?”
Moses actually wrote in his notebook as each person in the room gave their statement. Justin offered to call Robert and have him join them as he worked
with Joe on occasion. They waited for Robert to come to the office, and he gave his statement to Moses as well. Moses closed the notebook and put his pen in his pocket before he spoke.
“It’s clear that no one has seen or heard from Joe Thompson in several days.
Why? Where is he and where’s the kid? I also got to wonder, did something trigger this sudden disappearance act of theirs?” Moses rubbed one of his big hands over his chin as he stared into the faces of the people in the room.
He seemed to be waiting for something.
Justin was not about to tell the Chief what he and Marcus had already discovered in the journals they had found. It also didn’t miss Justin’s attention that no one else was saying anything about the journals either. It was clear not one of them trusted the Beaufort Chief of Police.
“I’m going to issue an APB on Joe and the kid.” Moses held up his hand to stop Justin from speaking. “It’s just for questioning, Justin, don’t get yourself riled up over this.”
Moses turned and strolled at an easy pace to the door and was gone. The room was quiet for all of thirty seconds before Damien broke the silence.
“What the hell is that asshole up to anyway?”
“Oh for the love of God,” Robert said as he rolled his eyes and slammed the door behind him on his way out.
“I get the feeling that man doesn’t care for me too much. What do you all think?” Damien glanced at the others in the room with a huge smile on his face.
For the first time since walking into the room, Justin began to laugh, and the others joined in with a sigh of relief.
15
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“D ON’T GIVE ME that shit! We had a deal!”
Moses paced beside his car on a lonely stretch of roadway. There were hundreds of these little hidden places all over the county and the rest of the state. You could bring somebody out here and fuck, hold a private conversation, or hide a body, and it would probably never be found out. The asshole on the other end of the line was going to find himself visiting one of these lonely stretches if he kept getting on Lee’s nerves.
“He’s here you idiot. I just saw him!” Moses shouted into the phone.
The other man continued to talk and nearly choked on his words.
“If you can’t live up to your end of the bargain, I’m sure the parole board would be happy to hear from me again.”
That comment sent his caller into a rage as he cursed and screamed at Moses. It had been Moses’s experience that animals always lashed out when they felt trapped. Moses smiled.
“Just keep your part of the bargain; that’s all you need to do. I’ll be watching.”
Moses hung up before the man finished his next excuse. After talking to that piece of slime, Moses felt like he needed a shower.
Seeing that faggot journalist, Damien Fitzgerald, walk into Justin’s office today had been a shock. It nearly threw him off his game. The son of a bitch had written an article on the murders in Beaufort last summer that had caused him nothing but headaches. He was still reporting to the state’s investigative office over some of the allegations in that damned article. The incompetence of his staff was high on the list. Nobody made Moses Lee look like a fool, especially not some pansy-assed friend of Justin Warfield.
Moses opened the squad car door and slid inside. He lit a cigarette and took a long draw of the smoke into his lungs. He thought about the meeting in Justin’s office earlier in the day. They were holding back. Every last one of them. He knew it. No one except Brooks had even said a word about his accusation concerning the kid’s parentage. They didn’t mention the journals either and there was no doubt that some of them had read them by now.
Justin for one, and Marcus Drummond for another. He didn’t trust that man at all. What did they know that they weren’t willing to share? Even Daisy held her tongue, though she did seem shocked when Moses had hinted the missing boy could be her missing kid.
He hadn’t thought about kids in a long time. Not since Caroline had gone and got rid of their child. The further along she’d gotten the more crazed she’d become knowing that Justin was going to realize the baby wasn’t his as soon as it was born. She’d caused the miscarriage herself. The right amount of drugs and a well planned fall down a flight of stairs and his child was gone. He couldn’t stop her and it was because she had to keep Justin Warfield, no matter what. Moses would have killed her then, if she hadn’t been whisked away to that sanatorium. He was left with nothing but hate, and he had directed it all at Jus
tin Warfield.
Tossing the cigarette butt out the window, he started the car and turned around to head back to town. At the next crossroad, he stopped. Turning left would take him out to the old whorehouse. He did wonder if Celia had told Daisy and Brooks anything he should know about. Maybe he should pay her another visit himself. He smiled as he realized he needed to see the kid too.
He wanted to scare the little shit into running away from the house. Moses needed his deputies to be the ones who picked up the kid as soon as they spotted him. He turned the car left, and the wheels spewed gravel in every direction as he pulled away.
Fifteen minutes later, when he pulled up in front of the run down house, Celia Lee was twirling around in the yard singing to herself. Seeing her like this, Moses doubted she could have told Daisy anything that would have
been of any use. Though something was different about her today. When she stopped spinning to look at him, her eyes seemed clearer with an awareness he hadn’t seen in them for a long time. She recognized him and her face fell into a frown.
“Hello, Moses.” She began twirling again.
“Celia, what are you doing?” Moses asked as he got out of the car and walked to where she was still revolving around in circles.
“I’m dancing. I love to dance. Bradley always said I was a very good dancer.”
Celia began to sing again. Her voice was clear and strong. Moses didn’t recognize the tune.
“I feel really good today, Moses. You know those pills you bring me, they make my head all fuzzy.” She stopped twirling and looked straight into Moses’s eyes. “I stopped taking them a while back. And you know what, my head isn’t so fuzzy anymore. I can remember things. Things I’d forgotten for a long time.”
Moses stared at his mother, though he rarely thought of this woman as his mother. She was lucid for the first time in months. That could be a problem.
“I know Daisy came to visit you,” Moses said then added, “What did you talk about, Celia?”
“We talked about her poor baby and what happened to it.” Celia stepped backward, away from Moses.
“What about her baby?”
“Just that someone took the baby and that she wants to find it.”
Moses watched his mother take another step away from him. She was distancing herself from him.
“Did you remember anything about the time when her baby was taken?”
Moses asked, stepping toward her.
“No. I don’t remember anything about that,” Celia said. She looked at Moses and stiffened her back. “But I do remember that you were asking questions about Bradley the last time you were here.”
“No. It’s funny how you don’t remember much about who my father was but you remember a lot about Bradley Warfield. Like how he wrote in books about all the time the two of you spent together.”
Celia stopped moving and stared at Moses. A frightened look appeared on her face, making her wrinkles look deeper. She looked much older now.
“I got nothing to say to you about Bradley. It ain’t none of your business,”
Celia shouted and ran toward the broken steps of the porch.
Before she reached the first broken step, Moses grabbed her arm, yanking her around to face him. She struggled to pull away from Moses, but he held her thin arms in a bruising grip.
“Tell me! Tell me about you and Bradley, Celia!”
“No. I can’t tell you. You can’t know. Bradley said if I really loved him, I’d never tell. And I do love him!”
“Hey, you’re hurting her, man. She’s just an old lady,” Alexander shouted as he came running from behind the house.
The kid startled Moses at the same time as Celia lifted her arm and bit into his hand where he gripped her. Moses yelled and jerked his hand away from Celia, pushing her back.
Her foot caught on one of the broken boards lying around the steps of the porch and she fell back, hitting her head. Celia didn’t scream. The only sound was of her small body breaking through the rotten porch boards.
Alexander pushed past Moses and lifted Celia into his arms. His face paled when he saw the back of her head caved in and a piece of wood sticking out of her neck. He cried out and dropped her body, backing away from the porch. Blood soaked his clothes and dripped from his hands.
Moses stood and watched as his mother’s blood spread around her on the broken boards. Her falling had been an accident, but the last thing he needed was another investigation. He supposed he should be feeling regret or some kind of sadness, but he didn’t. This woman had stopped being his mother a long time ago. Now she was just another problem he was going to have to solve. He heard Alexander mumbling beside him. Without looking at the kid, Moses spoke. Keeping his voice low and even.
“If I were you kid, I’d start running, and I wouldn’t stop until I reached California. This is going to look bad for you.”
“I didn’t do nothing,” the kid said, tears streaming down his face. “She was a nice lady, and I wouldn’t hurt her. She fell when you pushed her.”
“Run, kid. Run now.” Moses turned his eyes on Alexander and glared at him.
16
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MARCUS LEFT JUSTIN and Peter finalizing details on the Washington wedding plans. Damien said he was going to his room to work on his current article, and Robert headed back to the bar. Daisy and Richard walked to the lobby with him and said their goodbyes. They were going to go for a drive down the coast and maybe visit Daisy’s mother again. Finally alone with his own thoughts, Marcus reviewed the farce of a meeting that Moses Lee had held court over only a short while ago.
He felt it in the pit of his stomach. The nagging ache that told him something was wrong . . . very wrong.
Lee’s vague insinuation that Alexander was Daisy and Richard’s son was the first item on a growing list of questions that Marcus was tallying. What did Moses know and where had he got his information? Most private adoptions were sealed tightly. Everyone involved was assured of privacy in nearly every instance. The laws protecting the information were hard to break, even for law enforcement. Marcus didn’t believe for one second that Moses would have gone to that much trouble to find out who Alexander Thompson’s true parents were.
He also didn’t understand why Moses wanted to point a finger at Joe Thompson. What had the man done that could be construed as criminal?
Marcus didn’t really know the man so he couldn’t vouch for his character, but Justin knew him. At least, Justin thought he knew him, and Marcus trusted Justin’s judgment in this one. He was hoping that Justin’s loyalty wasn’t misplaced in this situation.
The other thing that had really stood out to him during the meeting was the conversation between Lee and Damien. The article Damien had referred to had made a lot of trouble for the Beaufort police department and Chief Lee.
He could see where Lee wouldn’t exactly appreciate Damien being back in town, but why did Damien’s appearance fluster Moses so much? What did he mean when he’d said, “I thought you would be long gone by now”?
Marcus ended up standing in front of the bar, so he figured he’d have a mid-afternoon drink while he waited for Justin. It was Wednesday, so the crowd was small at this time of day. He seated himself in a booth at the far end of the room next to the left side of the bar. A waitress handed him a short menu with a list of sandwiches on it.
“I didn’t know you served food in here,” Marcus stated as he checked the list and saw several things that sounded good.
“Robert’s giving it a try to see how it goes. So far, people are liking it.” Her badge said her name was Anna, and she was blowing bubbles with her gum.
“Well then, I’ll have a ham on rye, extra brown mustard, and Havarti cheese instead of Swiss,” Marcus said, handing the menu back to Anna.
“Anything to drink?” she asked, writing down his order on her pad.
“A tall Stella.”
Robert walked toward his table as Anna headed away with his
order. He stopped and seemed to be waiting for an invitation to sit. Marcus waved his hand with a “come on” motion, and Robert slid into the opposite side of the booth.
Anna returned with his drink, and Marcus thanked her. He took a sip from the tall frosty glass of ice-cold beer. It had a full-body flavor that he enjoyed.
Robert waited while he drank from his glass then finally spoke up, cutting straight to what he had to say.
“I don’t for one minute believe that Joe Thompson is behind the shit that has been going on at the Warfield.”
In spite of the animosity Marcus had felt for the man sitting across from him when he first returned to Beaufort, he now knew Robert a little better. He was loyal to a fault to the people he included as his friends. He worked hard at this job, and he took pride in the Warfield, nearly as much as Justin and Peter. More than that, behind the bad boy good looks, Marcus had discovered an intelligent and kind man. Surprisingly, he liked Robert.
“I don’t know him personally, but I trust both Justin’s and your judgment of the man’s character. More importantly, I don’t trust Moses Lee. He’s lying about something.”
Anna appeared with his sandwich and long slice of dill pickle. Both men stayed quiet until she was out of earshot. Marcus took a bite of the sandwich and hummed his approval.
“Good sandwich. Good idea.” Marcus nodded at Robert.
“Thanks.” Robert grinned.
“So what happens next?” Robert asked as he relaxed into his seat.
“Justin and I may have a lead on where Bradley hid more of his journals.
Hopefully the ones that are missing in the time line.”
“Damn. There’s more of those awful things?” Robert tensed and rubbed his palms over his face.
“There’s a barn on the manor property where Michaels says the old man kept important things. We haven’t had a chance to check it out yet. Moses interrupted us this morning before we could get to it.”
