Price of Innocence

by Patricia McLinn

“Was Anya from Bedhurst?”

  He shook his head. “If she’d been from here she’d’ve been just another in our bumper crop of eccentrics. It was being from elsewhere that got her called a witch.”

  “Along with speaking incantations over her potions and poisons,” she said with a dry smile.

  “Incantations? That’s—” He cursed under his breath. “She had a Polish grandmother and an Indian father who taught her about herbs and plants. She’d repeat the recipes to herself in whichever language she’d been taught them to help remember. That’s all.”

  “Why’d she come here?”

  “Her father had told stories about the Cherokee living around here generations ago. She came here to die.”

  “But—”

  “Yeah, she lived here more than twenty years. She said it was the medicines she made. Doctors had given up on her.” He shook his head before Maggie could ask. “I never knew what she had. It was her story to tell if she chose. She never chose. She never explained, never complained. She said a person was the sum of what they did.”

  “Actions speak louder than words,” she quoted. “Judge Blankenship’s mantra.”

  He looked up. “That’s right.”

  “Why didn’t you hate the judge for saying that about your mother?”

  He held her eyes a beat, then surprised her by smiling.

  “You don’t beat around the bush, Ms. Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Frye.” He continued, “It … settled things in my mind. I’d been between two worlds. At home, where my mother had all the darlings and I love yous, but not the actions, and at Anya’s cabin, where she grumbled and spoke sharp, then fed me and taught me and looked out for me. I knew which one worked for me. But the kids at school, and people in town, and my mama, were saying Anya was a witch. So if I liked being around her, I had to have something wrong with me, too.”

  Actions speak louder than words.

  “What Judge Blankenship said validated you.”

  “If you want to call it that. The judge and the law got my respect because Nola couldn’t wave them off. She had to deal with them.”

  Maggie felt for Nola Carson’s little boy. She saw the pain of his young life. She understood it.

  She thought of Jamie. And Ally. Even of herself.

  They’d known pain. They’d made good and valuable lives.

  And someone had tried to kill Jamie.

  Or had they?

  “You would have liked her. You wouldn’t have understood her, but you would have liked her.”

  At J.D.’s low words, Maggie’s conscious mind took in what she’d been looking at

  Pan Addington Wade

  Beloved daughter, wife, friend

  “You love her. Pan,” she said to him.

  He twisted his head to look at her for an instant, then returned to the headstone. “I do.”

  She nodded. Not surprised by his words. How she felt about them, though…

  “She would have liked you, Maggie. She wouldn’t have understood you, but she would have liked you. She would have loved you.”

  She looked up, met his gaze.

  “She would have loved you,” he said, “because she’d have seen that I love you.”

  * * * *

  As Jamie stood on the stairs looking down to his serious, intelligent face, Detective Ford Belichek succinctly explained how three weeks in a house with the air-conditioning off during a heat wave could make a body unrecognizable and difficult to identify.

  One track in her brain wondered how she hadn’t asked the question earlier. At least asking it now meant she’d started emerging from the haze … didn’t it?

  Belichek didn’t fill in details.

  He didn’t need to. Her imagination did.

  He didn’t sugar-coat what he did say, but he also didn’t say more than necessary.

  She felt both grateful and oddly irked by his consideration.

  Strange. She seldom felt irked with people.

  She was still thinking about that when he stopped.

  “Any more questions?” he asked.

  “About that? No.” What a strange, polite conversation to be having about an unknown person who died and decomposed in her house.

  “Then you better get back upstairs and put pants on.”

  She stared at him for two blank beats.

  Then she spun around, holding the bottom of her shirt tight against her derriere, suddenly — and much too belatedly — aware of the view his angle below her position on the open stairway gave him.

  She ran.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Jamie stayed upstairs until Maggie and J.D. returned a few minutes later.

  When she came down, she wore the thick red sweater he’d watched Ally touch with such sorrowful affection in Jamie’s closet.

  She didn’t meet his gaze.

  He’d have to factor that in as he assessed her answers.

  Before he could ask any questions, though, J.D. said something to Maggie, who looked up and said for them all to hear, “J.D.’s right. We should eat before we get started.”

  Belichek resisted grinding his teeth — barely.

  But he couldn’t complain too much — Carson quickly had scrambled eggs placed in front of them, along with toast and fruit.

  With the dishes stowed in the dishwasher, they took their previous positions in front of the fireplace. Except Carson brought over a chair from the computer setup opposite the kitchen.

  “Start from the top, Jamie,” Maggie said.

  “I finished the book last night — night before last — at the cabin. In the morning, I started packing. I’d thought I’d pack, get a good night’s sleep, and leave early the next morning — this morning I guess.” Her forehead wrinkled. The rest of them nodded, confirming that timeline. “But when I had things packed, I decided to drive on home. I thought I could—” She sighed. “—get things done around the house, kick back for a while, sleep in my own bed. Like I told—” She tipped her head toward him without making eye contact. “—I drove straight through.”

  “How long?” Carson asked.

  “About eight hours. That includes a pit stop, gas, and fast food.”

  “Did you notice anything when you came in the house?” Maggie asked.

  “I … I don’t know. Not until—” Her gaze cut toward him, but again didn’t reach him. “Everything happened so fast.”

  “Go back and start at the beginning,” he said.

  “I did—”

  “Before you left Fairlington. When was your last day at work before you left?”

  “Oh. That was the Friday before Labor Day.”

  “Everybody at the foundation knew you were leaving?”

  “Of course.”

  “And knew where you were going?”

  “In general, that I was going to a cabin to finish the book, yes. I guess only Bethany Usher knew precisely, but I asked her not to tell anyone and she wasn’t going to be in the office much while I was gone.”

  He was aware of Maggie and J.D. connecting that name with the foundation employee who hadn’t returned from vacation.

  Before either — probably Maggie — could say anything, he asked, “Bethany Usher is the name of the person whose cabin you stayed at?”

  “At her family’s cabin. It was a different last name — Young.”

  “Why wasn’t she going to be in the office much while you were gone?”

  “Vacation time.”

  “Who is Bethany Usher?”

  “She works at the Sunshine Foundation, helping Celeste — Celeste Renfro who runs day-to-day operations as well as coordinating client services.”

  “How long has she been with the foundation?”

  “Celeste? More than ten years. She’s the backbone of the operation.”

  “Bethany Usher.”

  “She started in early June.”

  He left a gap for her to add more. She didn’t. “Who did you talk to at the foundation the last day you worked?�
��

  “Everyone.”

  “Names? And what they do.”

  “Hendrickson York, he deals with donors. Celeste, I told you. She keeps the ship running and deals with the clients. Adam Delattre, who keeps us connected, runs the computers, and crunches the numbers.” Those came quickly. She thought a beat, then said, “Denise Gutierrez, one of our volunteers. One of our best. I talked to her, too.”

  “Anything unusual happen that Friday?”

  She shook her head. “Not at all. It was a good day. I wrapped up what I needed to for my time away.”

  “How about earlier in the week?”

  “Unusual things happen of course — no two days are alike. But something that could explain this? Nothing.”

  “Unusual like what?”

  “I… I can’t think of anything right now. Celeste could tell you. She remembers everything.”

  “That Friday before Labor Day, did you go out after work?”

  “No. Adam — Adam Delattre, the tech guru — suggested it, but I wanted to get home, read over my notes for the rest of the book so it was in my head during the drive.”

  “What did you do after leaving work Friday?”

  “I went straight home. Fixed some dinner. I took a couple things over to my neighbor who lives behind me, Imogen Wooton, things from the fridge that would go bad being left for a month. Then I came home, packed, read the notes, watched a little TV, and went to bed.”

  “When did you leave for North Carolina?”

  “Saturday, late morning. I had everything packed and I left.”

  “Was that your original schedule?”

  “I didn’t have a hard and fast plan. It depended how quickly I pulled things together at home. As it happened, it all came together great.”

  They’d said at the foundation she’d planned to leave Sunday. And she was hedging.

  “Did you tell anyone you were leaving Saturday?”

  “No.”

  “Did anyone see you leave?”

  “I have no idea.” She hadn’t considered the matter until this moment. “I wasn’t aware of anyone noticing me leave — didn’t wave at anyone or talk to anyone or anything like that.”

  “Then what?”

  “I drove to North Carolina.”

  “Where?”

  “It’s a little place along the New River, south of the New River State Park, in Ashe County.”

  “That rusty pickup we passed when we left your place, that was the one you drove to North Carolina and back?”

  She looked at him blankly for an instant. “We saw—? Oh, yes. I parked it in back.”

  “Why not in the garage?”

  “It would never fit. My little car barely fits.”

  So, she probably hadn’t checked the garage. Hadn’t seen her car there. Or she’d have added that her car was in the garage.

  “Whose truck is it?”

  “Bethany’s. The woman whose family owns the cabin. She’s been using my car while I was gone. It’s a lot easier to street park than her truck and the truck made more sense for the mountains, so we swapped.”

  “Nice swap. Beat up old truck for a new car.”

  Jamie didn’t respond, but Maggie’s indignation rippled through the silence clearly.

  “Did you spill potting soil in your garage?” Belichek asked Jamie.

  “Potting soil? No. Why—? Oh. The bag leaning against the wall?”

  He grunted confirmation.

  “Bethany might have done that.”

  “You gave her a key to the garage?”

  “Sure, so she could get the car.”

  “To the house?”

  “No. The garage and the car.”

  She said it very firmly. She was telling him — and herself — the body couldn’t be Bethany Usher. She expected argument.

  He shifted gears.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  “Why are you bringing in a management company at the Sunshine Foundation?”

  Her brows flicked up at the change of topic, but she followed willingly. “To take the foundation to—”

  “The next level. Right.”

  Before he could form his next question, Jamie — looking at her cousin — said, “I’m not going to stop developing the Sunshine Foundation because you don’t like it, Maggie. But, as it happens, I am going to do less of the day-to-day running of it. This management company specializes in supporting nonprofits. That’s why this book had to get done. To fund organizational support for the foundation, letting the staff concentrate on what’s most important.”

  “Your payment for this book is all going to pay for management?”

  “It will benefit me, too. I won’t have as much administrative work.” She sounded a bit defensive.

  Belichek pulled it back on track. “What made you think the nonprofit management company would get the foundation up a level?”

  Her face drooped an instant, then snapped back. “I took a hard look at myself, my running of the foundation, and … other factors.”

  “You didn’t think you could take it to the next level?”

  “No.”

  “Why?” He thought he knew from reading her journals, but did she know? She hadn’t said it right out.

  “I… I realized I haven’t been good at anticipating issues. Of seeing the signs of possible trouble ahead of time. We’ve come through those issues, but could we be a lot farther ahead if we’d avoided them in the first place?”

  So, she did know, at least at some level, that her optimism could get her — or her foundation — in trouble. At the moment, he was more interested in the implications for her personal life.

  “The same thing with your relationship with Carl Arbendroth?”

  Unprepared for that question, Jamie looked up and met his gaze. “What?”

  “Not seeing the potential for trouble ahead of time.”

  “How do you—?” Color rushed into Jamie’s face. “That’s what you were doing, when I came up the stairs and saw you. You were reading my journals.”

  “Yes.”

  “All of them? You read all—?”

  “Yes.” Not quite true yet, but it would be.

  “Those are private and personal. You had no ri—”

  “Nothing’s private or personal in a murder investigation,” Maggie said. “Especially not for the victim.”

  Belichek had heard her say that before — hell, he’d said it himself. Often in a tag-team with Mags or Landis or both. This was different — except it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

  He picked up the familiar thread and kept it going. “Knowing about the victim is usually the most important step in finding out the killer. That’s my job and that’s what this is about — along with making sure you stay alive.”

  Her color fled as fast as it had arrived.

  She wasn’t over this. She would neither forgive nor forget that he had breached her privacy.

  He’d live with that. As long as she continued living.

  Belichek returned to his question. “Why Arbendroth? Why date him?”

  “It wasn’t until we broke up and he had trouble letting go that…”

  “Didn’t ask about the break up. Before that. Why’d you date him in the first place? Why keep dating him?”

  “He’s attractive,” she said defensively.

  “You base romantic decisions solely on looks?”

  “No.”

  “You get asked out regularly and—” Her cheeks darkened again at the reminder of what he knew of her personal life and how he knew it. “—some must be at least as attractive as Arbendroth. They sure have to be smarter. Why him?”

  Maggie stirred, then stilled.

  Jamie cut her a look, a different kind of color coming into her cheeks.

  Belichek tried again. “Why Arbendroth when he made you uncomfortable?”

  “Uncomfortable? I wouldn’t say that. He needed a little bolstering. A boost.”

  “And you had to provide it,” Maggie concl
uded.

  “If it gave him more confidence… It wasn’t a sacrifice. We had fun.”

  “Until you broke up and he wouldn’t let go,” Belichek said. “What about the other guy you’re uncomfortable with?”

  “Other—? I’m not.”

  He studied her. She meant it. Did he read it into her journal writings? Or was she blind to it?

  “Go back to Arbendroth. Why did you break up?”

  Her glance toward him didn’t reach all the way. “He was getting very serious very fast. I didn’t want to lead him on when I knew…”

  She didn’t finish the thought as she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth.

  “Did that figure into your decision to go to North Carolina?”

  “Yes.” Except she said it a little too fast. “The time away would help him with the break. And my being someplace he couldn’t possibly — he didn’t know about took away any temptation.”

  He didn’t doubt that she viewed that as a bonus. He did doubt that it covered all her reasons. There was something else.

  But she was tense, guarded against that topic. He shifted back to an earlier one.

  “Tell me about Bethany Usher.”

  Her eyes blinked open. “What about her?”

  “How did she come to work for the foundation?”

  “Celeste hired her.”

  “How did she know about the job? Was it posted? Did she answer an ad?”

  “No. We were thinking about adding someone. She was recommended.”

  “Who recommended her?”

  “Oh, gosh, we get so many recommendations, I don’t know how I could ever sort out who exactly…”

  “How did she accrue vacation time for a week off?”

  “She needed some personal time. That doesn’t always happen according to the calendar or how long you’ve been employed.”

  “How well do you know Bethany Usher?”

  “She’s a nice person. She’s been working for the foundation for months and she’s enthusiastic.”

  Maggie raised a finger.

  Belichek nodded, giving her the floor. “That translates to Jamie doesn’t know a thing about the woman, who could be a saint or a sinner or anything and everything in between.”

  “That’s not true. Just because I give people the benefit of the doubt—”

  “It is true.” Maggie, having prevailed in a stare-off between cousins, continued, “I bet she barely knows Bethany Usher.”