Dead Right (8 page)

She glanced at Clay, wondering if he was thinking about Mike, too, but saw him staring over their mother’s head at the things on the table. From the veins standing out in his neck, she knew that what he saw bothered him as much as she’d expected. Hooking her arm through his, she rubbed her cheek against his shoulder to tel him that the past was behind them, that they couldn’t al ow this discovery to ruin the happiness they’d both found.

“How’s Al ie?” she asked to remind him of everything they had to protect.

He blinked, then let go of Irene, who was digging through her purse for a tissue.

Grace sensed him struggling to contain his emotions, but it was only when Madeline edged closer that he managed an answer. “Fine. Al ie’s…” His chest rose as he drew a deep breath. “Al ie,” he finished simply, using her name as the talisman Grace had intended it to be.

“Are you okay?” Madeline asked.

“I’m fine.” He stretched his neck. “But whoever put that stuff in the trunk is one sick bastard,” he said and stalked out.

Relieved, Grace watched him go. He’d been careful to say
is
one sick bastard. Not
was.
They’d handled this meeting as wel as she could’ve hoped. With any luck, this discovery would fade into the background and they’d be able to return to their lives.

As Madeline thanked Chief Pontiff for his efforts, Grace nudged Kennedy, indicating that they should go, too. She didn’t want to be in the same room with those panties, or with the other objects, either. The person she’d been was not the person she was now. “Grinding Gracie” was the one who’d been raped, repeatedly, by her stepfather, but Grinding Gracie was dead and gone. Grace wouldn’t
be
her anymore, she’d reject her pain, her inadequacies, her needs.

But halfway to the door she heard Madeline say something that made her freeze.

“How long wil it take?”

“Depends on the lab. Could take a few weeks. Could take months. Without a suspect, we don’t have a legitimate reason to ask them to rush.”

Graced turned back. “You’re going to try and get a DNA sample?”

He nodded.

“From what?”

“Everything.”

“But it’s been nearly twenty years! Any DNA wil be too degraded.”

“Not necessarily. This stuff was sealed up tight.”

She felt the pressure of Kennedy’s hand, warning her to be careful. She was sounding panicky, but she couldn’t help it. “But what good wil getting a profile do?”

Pontiff’s eyebrows rose. “What
good
wil it do?”

“It’s only helpful if you have something to match it against,” she said, “and you don’t even have a victim.”

Wearing the same rubber gloves he’d used while laying out these objects, he started putting everything back into a brown paper sack. “True, but like I told Madeline, there might be other cases out there. Besides, you never know what we might come up with in the future, right?”

Pontiff knew her professional background, knew she should readily agree. So she did. But she was praying the whole time that the scientists at the lab wouldn’t be able to develop the sample he hoped for. If they did, she knew whose DNA they might find. She also knew they might be able to match it to the panties she’d just identified as her own.

5

I
rene seemed to have taken the day’s events harder than anyone. Madeline helped her out to her car, then returned to the police station so she could talk with Chief Pontiff.

“I have a private investigator coming from California,”

she told him. “He might be able to help you decide what to do with al this—” she waved toward the box where he’d put the sacks of evidence “—stuff.”

Pontiff hesitated, obviously not as pleased with this news as she’d expected him to be. “I can do my own job, Maddy,” he said. “I understand you’ve been disappointed in the past, but I’m already planning to do everything that can be done. There’s no need to bring in an outsider.”

“He might see something we’ve missed,” she argued.

“The only one missing anything is you,” Radcliffe piped up, sounding exasperated. He had plenty of filing left to do

—evidenced by the tal stack teetering at his elbow—but he was more interested in eavesdropping. “Didn’t you see how Clay reacted? He nearly lost his composure.”

“Yes, I saw!” Madeline snapped, her patience wearing thin. “He was upset. But why wouldn’t he be? That was his sister’s underwear lying on the table.”

Pontiff sent Radcliffe a quel ing glance and stepped between them. “Maddy, we’ve grown up together. I’ve seen your pain and frustration over the years, and I’ve felt plenty of my own when it comes to your father’s case. This whole town has. The police chiefs before me couldn’t get to the bottom of it, but I’m determined to be different. I plan to find the truth, okay?”

“Then what’l it hurt to have some help?” she asked.

“I don’t want anyone getting in my way. This investigator is from…where did you say? California? He’l have no idea how things are done in Mississppi.”

But maybe that was good, Madeline thought. Then he wouldn’t be influenced by the Vincel is, wouldn’t have to worry about making the folks around her angry. “An investigation is an investigation,” she said. “I hope you’l do what you can to cooperate with him.”

Toby’s jaw tightened, which told her he wasn’t pleased with her answer. “What do you hope to achieve?”

“Resolution,” she said and left.

To Madeline, the rest of the week passed with agonizing slowness. After Rachel Simmons’s drowning, and the subsequent discovery of the Cadil ac, it felt as if the whole town was holding its breath, waiting and watching to see what would happen next. Mothers who general y let their children run freely through Stil water neighborhoods were keeping them closer to home. And, as she feared would be the case, Clay’s name was often associated with talk that there might be a sexual predator in their midst.

Madeline couldn’t believe anyone could suspect her stepbrother of being a pedophile. So what if the police had found a few dark hairs in the driver’s seat of the Cadil ac?

It’d been the family car, for crying out loud.

But it wasn’t just the hair, and she knew it. It was the fact that he didn’t give a damn what others thought of him and didn’t bother to hide it. They used his indifference as justification to blame him for anything they’d rather not see in someone else, even though he didn’t fit the profile of a pedophile. Pedophiles liked to be around children, sought them out, worked in situations that put them in contact with possible victims. Until Grace married Kennedy eighteen months ago and brought her two stepsons into the family, and Clay’s own marriage had gained him a six-year-old daughter, he was almost never around children. He’d lived on the farm alone and come to town once or twice a week for supplies or a game of pool at the bil iards hal .

Besides, the things in that trunk had been put there twenty years ago, when Clay was only sixteen.

Fortunately, despite al the stress, Madeline had been able to get her paper out. And it had included the article she’d had such difficulty writing—the one on the discovery of her father’s car. Next week’s paper would feature an article on pedophiles and how they typical y functioned. She was writing it with the hope that it would stifle al the talk about Clay. But she’d have to finish it later. Hunter Solozano would be arriving in Nashvil e in four hours. She had a long drive ahead of her and didn’t want to be late.

Shrugging on her wool coat, Madeline turned off her computer and let herself out, into the al ey that led to the gravel lot where she’d parked her car. She’d just locked the door when someone tapped her on the shoulder. Someone whose approach she hadn’t heard.

Startled, she turned to see her father’s only sibling, Elaine Vincel i, standing right behind her.

Her thoughts had definitely been too macabre of late, if she could be frightened so easily. But she knew it wasn’t
only
her thoughts. Her dreams bothered her even more.

Last night, Aunt Elaine had been chasing her around the farm with a knife, yel ing, “How dare you be disloyal to your own father! How dare you side with those murderers!”

Madeline shivered as a few residual screeches echoed through her head. Reminding herself that it was just a dream, she offered her aunt a polite smile. “Hel o.”

“Do you have a minute?” Elaine asked.

Clenching the keys in her hand, Madeline sighed.

Temperatures were dropping fast as another storm approached, bringing with it an early dark—which was why she hadn’t noticed Elaine. She’d been too intent on getting off before the rain started. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No, of course not.” Her aunt positioned herself as if she expected to be invited in. And since a light drizzle had begun, Madeline felt she should oblige.

Stifling her impatience, she reopened the office. “Would you like to sit down?” she asked, waving Elaine in ahead of her.

“No, thank you.”

Her aunt had seemed tense, even a bit nervous in the al ey but appeared more relaxed once the door closed behind them.

“What can I do for you?” Madeline forced a polite smile but hadn’t felt quite so uncomfortable in ages. She and her aunt had never been close. Madeline remembered her real mother saying that Elaine was a difficult person to get to know—probably the worst comment her mother ever made about anyone. Madeline suspected the real truth was that Elaine hadn’t liked Eliza any more than she liked Irene and Eliza knew it. Madeline’s mother had been too humble and sweet, too accepting of everyone, to appeal to a “keep up or get lost” personality like Elaine’s.

Madeline recal ed overhearing a conversation between her father and Elaine, in which Elaine had cal ed Eliza

“pathetic” and demanded she be put in an institution where she could get professional help for her chronic depression.

Remembering her aunt’s unsympathetic attitude, Madeline figured it was little wonder she’d chosen to stay with Irene after her father went missing. She didn’t real y know her maternal grandparents, who’d moved twice in the past year and now lived in Oklahoma. Her paternal grandparents were dead, and Irene had given her more love in the three years she’d been part of Madeline’s life at that point than her aunt ever had. Even in the dark days after Eliza’s death, Elaine hadn’t reached out to the ten-year-old girl her sister-in-law had left behind.

So why was Elaine here now?

“Chief Pontiff came by the house last night,” her aunt said.

“Did he have any news?” Madeline asked eagerly. She believed Toby would’ve contacted her, but she couldn’t imagine any other reason for her aunt’s visit.

“No, not yet. He told me you’ve hired a private detective.”

She folded her arms across her broad, solid body. The white streaks of hair at her temples contrasted sharply with the black of the rest, and the way she’d combed it back off her face reminded Madeline of Ursula, the Sea Witch in Disney’s
The Little Mermaid.
“Is that true?”

Where was she going with this? “Yes. I’ve found someone who’s supposed to be exceptional y good. Why?”

“That’s my question to you,” she said. “
Why?
Why bother? Chief Pontiff’s looking into it again. Isn’t that enough?”

“Police involvement hasn’t been enough in the past,”

Madeline pointed out. “I know Toby’s not happy about me bringing in an outsider. He told me as much. But as objective as he’s trying to be, he’l most likely go down the same road as everyone else.” He’d already refused to let Al ie search the car, hadn’t he? But Madeline didn’t mention that because her aunt was probably behind it. “I’m sure you’ve heard about the black hairs he removed from the driver’s side of the Cadil ac.”

“Is that why you’re hiring a P.I.?” Elaine asked. “Because of the Montgomerys?”

“That’s part of the reason.”

“I don’t think this wil help. Al the circumstantial evidence points at them. Any investigator worth his salt would see that.” She lowered her voice. “And maybe next time Clay won’t get off.”

Was she
warning
Madeline? For Clay’s sake? That didn’t make sense. For years, Elaine and her family had been dying to see the Montgomerys in jail, especial y Clay.

“At the very least, an investigator from somewhere else should have a more open mind,” Madeline said.

“It doesn’t matter how open his mind is, the proof is the proof.”

Madeline transferred her purse to her other shoulder.

“There is no proof. Not so far. You said yourself that it’s al circumstantial.”

Her aunt began to toy with the perpetual-motion skier on Madeline’s desk. It was a Christmas gift Kirk had used to invite Madeline skiing. But he’d been angry when she wouldn’t leave Stil water to take the seven-day trip. Instead of heading off together, they’d broken up.

Ironical y, had they gone, she would’ve been out of town when the rescue workers found her father’s car. Which was precisely why she wouldn’t leave. She couldn’t risk missing something that would final y unravel the mystery.

“You’re going to force me to say it, aren’t you?” Elaine murmured.

Madeline put the skier inside her drawer. Things were difficult enough these days without such a vivid reminder of Kirk and how much more comfortable her life had been with him in it. She’d thought she might get a cal from him once he heard the news about her father’s car. Lord knows everyone else had cal ed. But he was obviously as determined as she was to make the split permanent. “Say what?” she replied.

“That I think you might be right about the Montgomerys.”

Madeline forgot about Kirk and the skier. “In what way?”

“Maybe they aren’t to blame for…whatever happened.”

Last summer, when the district attorney had dropped the charges against Clay, the Vincel is hadn’t hol ered as loudly as Madeline had expected them to, but this was a
complete
reversal. “Are you serious?”

“Would I joke about something like that?”

Definitely not. Elaine Vincel i didn’t joke about anything.

“Joe and Roger stil think Clay’s guilty,” Madeline said.

“Have they been causing trouble?”

The ominous note in her aunt’s voice suggested there’d be repercussions for Joe and Roger if they had—and Elaine could definitely make good on such a threat.