Love Inspired Suspense April 2021--Box Set 2 of 2

by Laura Scott

  Liam wasn’t given time to react to the words about his and Paige’s relationship as the woman continued with her diatribe, repeating her words as though they were a kind of mantra.

  “We were all tarred with the same brush. It got to where I couldn’t go to the store to buy eggs without people thumbing their noses at me.”

  She pointed to the door. “Now, get on your way, both of you. We’ve got nothing here for you.” Another spiteful glare at Liam and then Paige. “Yes, I knew the Walkers, knew that they saw trash whenever they looked at me. Your ma always looked like she’d been crying, like it was my fault somehow. I don’t know anything. Anything at all. And even if I did, I wouldn’t be sharing with the likes of you.”

  Liam shook his head when Paige would have protested and cupped her elbow. “Let’s go. There’s nothing to learn here.”

  To their surprise, Cal Jr. followed them out to the enclosed porch. “Don’t pay no mind to Ma. She says a lot of things, but that’s all it is. Just talk. She wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Liam challenged. “She sounded pretty certain in what she was saying, blaming us and the rest of the survivors for what’s happened to her, to you.”

  The man’s face hardened. “Sure as I am that she can’t drive. I take her everywhere. Ma wasn’t lying about being disabled. She can barely make it from the bedroom to the kitchen without falling. I’ve picked her up off the floor enough times to know she’s not faking it.

  “If she were out trying to kill people, I’d know about it. I do my best to take care of her, but she’s gone sour inside. Real sour. For your own good, don’t come back.” He held the porch door open and waited pointedly until they stepped through it. “I don’t expect to see you again.”

  Outside, the wind snapped with a mighty energy, the keening edge of it sharp against the skin, but Liam scarcely noticed. He was still ensnared in the hatred he’d seen in Mrs. Hawkins’s eyes, a hatred so intense that it bored a hole into him.

  What had he and Paige done to merit such loathing? He had saved the woman’s husband’s life, and all she wanted to do was to blame him for ruining her own. Hawkins’s son was right: she had gone sour inside. Could that turn her into a killer? Could she and her son be in on it together?

  Neither one of them appeared to have the cunning to carry off murders designed to look like accidents, but looks could be deceiving.

  Liam held her car door open for Paige. When they pulled away from the house with its grim atmosphere and inhospitable occupants, it was with relief. Mrs. Hawkins’s accusations pierced his soul. Though he knew he didn’t deserve the condemnation the woman had leveled at him, Liam couldn’t deny the dark feelings that swept through him.

  He chewed on the idea that mother and son were behind the killings. Could it be? The son hadn’t seemed hostile except toward the end, but he might just be more adept at hiding his feelings than his mother.

  He shared his thoughts with Paige.

  “Mother-son killing teams aren’t common, but they’re not unheard of,” she said, her tone pensive.

  The dilapidated house was filled with bitter grudges and black moods. Did it also hold a pair of murderers?

  SIX

  “We opened a can of worms back there,” Liam said.

  “And then some,” Paige said as they lingered over coffee after a home-style meal of meat loaf and mashed potatoes at a corner diner. “My grandmother used to say that about people who’d made themselves particularly unwelcome.”

  They sat side by side in a booth, both with their backs to the wall. Paige never sat any other way and figured it was the same with Liam.

  The diner was one of those places where red vinyl stools were pushed up to gray Formica counters and the same red vinyl covered the booths. The Formica was chipped and the vinyl cracked, which added to the vintage feel of the place. The food wasn’t fancy and suited Paige just fine.

  The homey meal had settled some of the hard feelings that the visit to the bus driver’s wife had stirred up. Equally disturbing was Mrs. Hawkins’s referring to Liam as her man. Granted, Paige liked Liam, admired him even, but she certainly didn’t claim any relationship beyond client and operator with him. She sneaked a glance at him and hoped he had ignored the woman’s words.

  “I’d say unwelcome was putting a positive spin on it,” Liam said. “Mrs. Pope—or Hawkins as she goes by now—made it clear she couldn’t get rid of us fast enough.”

  “Except when she wanted an audience for her complaints,” Paige added.

  “Yeah. She’s got that down to an art, doesn’t she?”

  “She’s so bitter over the accident, yet she didn’t lose anyone. Seems the only thing she lost that she really cared about was her husband’s paycheck.” Paige acknowledged that she’d taken some hits from the woman’s comments and was perhaps judging her overly harshly. Liam, though, had taken the brunt of it. He didn’t deserve the charges she’d leveled at him.

  As she pondered the question if Hawkins could be behind the murders, she couldn’t make the pieces fit. The woman had been openly hostile. Would she have shown her hand that way if she were responsible for the killings?

  Sharing her thoughts with Liam, she said, “Could she be cunning enough to let us see how much she hated the survivors in the hope that we’d dismiss her?” She shook her head to her own question. “I don’t see her as that devious, as disagreeable as she is. Honestly, I don’t think she has the brains to pull off killing three people and make it look like accidents.”

  “What about Cal Jr.?” Liam asked. “Could he have planned it? He was quiet until the end, but there was plenty of anger in him when he told us not to come back.”

  “He looked like he has his hands full just taking care of his mother. I have to give him props for putting up with her. It can’t be easy living with someone so knotted up in anger and self-pity.”

  “She got to me,” Liam admitted, his frustration evident in the crumpling and uncrumpling of his paper napkin until it was nothing but shreds. “I knew the families who lost kids blamed me, but I didn’t expect it from her. I even thought she might be a little thankful that I’d saved her husband’s life.” His laugh was hollow. “Seems like I messed up a lot of people’s lives that day, some I’m only finding out about now.”

  Paige reached out and stilled his hand in hers. When he withdrew, she knew a sharp sense of loss. Well, what had she expected? He didn’t want solace from her; he wanted results.

  “You know better than to take anything she said personally. She wanted someone to blame, and you were handy. It’s as simple as that.” Paige didn’t doubt that if Mr. Pope had died, his wife would have blamed Liam for that, too. She was one of those unhappy individuals who was always looking to lay guilt on someone else so she didn’t have to deal with the consequences of her own choices.

  “She took some shots at me, too,” Paige reminded him. “I can’t say they didn’t sting, but I’m not going to waste a minute worrying over them. My grandmother would say her heart’s as sour as a lemon that’s sat too long in the sun.”

  “Your grandmother sounds like quite a woman.”

  “She was. After the accident, I spent a lot of time with her, even lived with her for a while. She knew how things were at home and did her best to make it up to me. When she died last year, I felt like I’d lost my best friend. My parents didn’t come to the funeral. They were busy with their new families, so it was just me and my friends from S&J there to mourn her.”

  Grief ambushed her, and tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. “Sorry about that,” she said, knuckling away the errant tears. “I don’t usually cry like that.”

  “No, I don’t guess you do.” This time, it was Liam who took her hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze.

  The warmth of his hand was comforting. Too comforting. Put it away. She needed to keep things on a
professional level. Hadn’t she just reminded herself that the only thing that could exist between Liam and herself was a business relationship?

  The reminder, though, did little to ease the zing of attraction his touch sparked. As unobtrusively as possible, she removed her hand from his.

  After pushing her dishes to the side, Paige propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her folded hands. “Let’s start back at the beginning. Tell me everything you remember about the day of the accident.”

  “I spent years trying to forget that day.”

  “It’s important. Go back in time and try to remember. No detail is too small.”

  “Okay,” he said, voice unutterably weary. “I’ll do my best.” He paused as he picked his way through memories.

  A small smile kicked up the corners of his lips. “I remember Brett sitting by Rosemary Wilkins on the bus trying to sweet-talk her into going out with him the next night, telling her that he was the only man for her. Rosemary was flirting back, flipping her hair over her shoulder, smiling at him, the way girls do. Nothing serious, just playing along. I remember thinking that prom was only a few weeks away and that he was looking for a date. He had a way with the girls. I was envious over that.”

  “That was Brett,” Paige agreed. “Always the flirt. He had a thing for Rosemary, but he liked a lot of girls back then, and they liked him back. What else?”

  “Marie was talking to me, telling me about the new dress she’d bought for the senior prom and how I needed to get her a corsage to match it. Blue, I think it was. I remember sort of zoning out.” He gave a sheepish look. “Guys don’t care about dresses, you know. We look like we’re interested, but we’re not. I pretended like I was paying attention, but I was really going over the game in my head, replaying it, wondering if I could have made that last pass if I’d put a spin on the ball.”

  “Brett used to tell me the same thing when girls started talking about dresses. Anything else?”

  “There was Sam Newley. He never said much, but when he did, you tended to listen.” Liam’s expression turned thoughtful. “He was always quiet, but on the way back, he got real still, sort of watchful, like he was waiting for something. I remember wondering what was making him so skittish-looking and left Marie to check on him, but he just shook his head. I finally gave up and went up front. I wanted to talk with the coach about the game. Then everything went wrong.

  “One minute we’re riding along just fine, and the next, we’re falling off the bridge. It happened so fast that nobody knew what was going on. In a couple of minutes—or maybe it was seconds—we were underwater. We didn’t have time to react except to panic. Everybody started scrambling for the exit doors, but they wouldn’t open. I used my elbow to break a window near the front door and managed to get out that way. Once I was out, I opened the doors. Kids started pushing their way out, but the bus kept sinking. Our coach was knocked out, but another kid and I managed to get him to the surface.”

  Paige shuddered inwardly, thinking of the absolute terror that Brett and the others must have experienced. She wanted to tell Liam to stop, but she didn’t. She needed to hear this as much as he needed to say it. For too long, she’d avoided the day that her brother had died. Now it was time to face it.

  “People were trying to scream, but they couldn’t.” Liam’s voice grew hoarse, as though the words were stuck inside and could only escape if he pushed them out one at a time with a great effort.

  Paige kept her voice soft. “What happened next?”

  “Some of the kids got out on their own. I tried to get to Marie, but I couldn’t reach the back. Danny and Brett called out that Rosemary was trapped and the emergency door wouldn’t open. They told me to save the others and get help. They’d all work together to get her out. Pope was blocking the front exit. He was really out of it, couldn’t seem to make his arms and legs work. I remember wondering if he was sick. I had to get him out before I could rescue any of the others. I got him and some of the other kids to the surface, thinking I could get to Marie if they weren’t in the way.”

  He choked over the words, cleared his throat and continued, “I went back for her, only by that time the bus had shifted, filling the back end with water. I can still see the look on her face. She knew she was going to die and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I remember Brett and Danny trying to push the girls forward, to get them out, but it was too late. Eventually, divers went back for the bodies.” His shrug was eloquent with pain. “Those that made it out were all taken to the hospital, the rest...you know.”

  She knew all too well. The bodies had been taken to the morgue. As much as she’d tried to put that memory away, it was all too vivid in her mind.

  Two police officers had made notification visits. She remembered the tortured grief in her parents’ eyes upon learning of Brett’s death. Her mother had given an anguished scream, her father shaking his head in denial.

  They’d had to go to the morgue to make the identification. Up until then, her parents had clung to a desperate hope that Brett wasn’t among the dead. The reality had sent them into a chasm of grief that had swallowed them in darkness. Uncontrollable sobbing on her mother’s part and tight-lipped silence on her father’s.

  In the end it had been her grandmother and Paige who had seen to the funeral arrangements, making the necessary decisions, from choosing the coffin and the flower spray to be laid on top of it to the suit Brett would be laid out in.

  She’d done her best, had supported her parents in every way she knew how, but it hadn’t been enough. Nothing had been enough. Still, the grief was almost better than the vacant expressions both wore as life without Brett set in. They’d moved through the house like shadows. Her mother’s skin had been so translucent that Paige imagined she could pass her hand through it.

  All the while, she’d tucked away her own grief, burying it deep inside her heart where no one could see. When her parents had praised her strength, she’d basked in the rarely given compliment.

  She’d taken over the running of the household, had made certain that her parents had meals and dutifully sat through every news show about the accident that they insisted upon watching since Brett’s funeral.

  So adept had she become at hiding her own feelings that she hadn’t even known she was headed for a breakdown. When she’d passed out in school with no memory of what had happened, her parents finally took action. She’d been hospitalized for a week and returned home only when the psychiatrist assigned to her case had been satisfied that she would be given the proper care.

  It had been then that her grandmother had stepped in and brought Paige to live with her for the summer. From that time on, Paige had done everything she could to bury the day Brett had died. She read no accounts of the accident, watched no more news reports rehashing it and, when the anniversary of it occurred, studiously avoided all media. Though her brother lived on in her heart, she had effectively blocked out the day he’d died.

  Aware that she’d remained locked in the past for too long, she looked up to find Liam watching her, eyes dark with concern. “You’re remembering, too, aren’t you?” He stroked her jawline with his thumb, the gesture tender.

  She didn’t have words and could only nod. With an act of will, she dragged herself back to the present and focused on Liam. He was still hurting after Mrs. Hawkins’s attack, and who could blame him? He’d saved the woman’s husband and all she could do was berate him.

  “You did the best you could. More than anyone could expect.” Paige winced at the banality of the words. They sounded lame even to her own ears.

  Liam slammed down his knife with enough force to have other diners turn and stare. “It wasn’t enough.”

  * * *

  A waiter looked up and started in Liam’s direction until he waved him away. “Sorry.”

  “No problem.”

  “Is there anything else on the
trip home that stands out?” she asked. “Anything at all?”

  Paige wasn’t going to be able to talk him out of his guilt, so he was grateful that she turned the subject back to what had happened on the bus ride itself. Something was there, if they could only identify it. His gut churned as he reviewed the bus ride in his mind.

  A beat passed, then another, as he gathered his thoughts.

  “Just the normal ragging on each other. We were a bunch of kids, high on life, on winning the last game of the season. You know how kids are. We thought we were invincible, that nothing bad could touch us.” He snorted out a laugh at the irony of it. “We couldn’t have been more wrong.”

  “What about the trip to the game? Did anything out of the ordinary happen then? Something that when you looked back it gave you pause?”

  “I wish I could say there was. The cheerleaders led us in some cheers. I remember Marie telling me that she’d have a special cheer just for me at the game. And she did.” The memory had a smile slipping onto his lips. “She was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen, standing at the top of the pyramid, her blond hair blowing in the wind.

  “Only the thing with Sam sticks out.” Liam hunched his shoulders in a defeated gesture. “And I’m not even sure if there was really something there or if I imagined it. I don’t want to waste our time on something that might not even be real.”

  “Memories can be tricky, especially after all this time, but you’re an observant guy. If you say there was something there, I believe you.”

  He flashed a smile. “Thanks.” His smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “Even if there were, what would it matter? Sam died before the killings started. He can’t have anything to do with what’s going on now. Not that he would. Sam never hurt anyone. It wasn’t in him. He was the kindest, gentlest man I’ve ever known.”

  “I don’t know that it does matter,” Paige said. “I’m reaching, trying to come up with something that would explain why these accidents/murders started when they did. You said they started about six weeks ago. When did you say Sam died?”