Pall in the Family (24 page)

Tish kept the secret as she grew up. No one had believed her when she tried to tell them about what she saw, and then she got scared that her knowledge would put her in danger, so she let it drop. Then, two years ago, she ran into Milo in Chicago, and he asked her to do a reading for him. He said he was interested in learning about his past. She faked the reading and told him that his father's murderer had buried the gun in the woods. Milo launched a plan to get access to the land and dig up the gun to link it to the murderer. They'd been arguing recently because she finally told him that she had faked the reading and only assumed the gun had been buried out there. They both thought Joe was the killer.

According to Milo, Tish said she had lost the ability to do readings after the fake one. Either it was guilt or some cosmic consequence, but her practice fell off. She was desperate to fix things.

“It makes sense now,” Mom said. “Tish had been irritable and stressed for months. She went to tons of conferences to try to improve her skills. Whenever I tried to talk to her about it, we ended up arguing.”

Sara's séance accusing someone of being a murderer pushed them all over the edge. Tish thought it could have been the Starks Sara was referring to, Milo thought it was his stepfather, and Cecile thought Sara actually had knowledge about Mike's death. I secretly wondered how much the newspaper stories had to do with Sara's séance. She may have been playing a very dangerous game of trying to draw out the murderer. I wasn't sure we'd ever know what really happened that night, except that it triggered everything that had come after.

I left it to Mac and Tom to sort out all the conflicting stories. I barely had time to thank Mac for coming to the rescue before he headed back to the station to begin the long process of building a case against Cecile and Joe. Alex offered to take Seth and me to the vet clinic, and we gratefully accepted.

I opened my eyes the next morning and squinted
at the brightness. Every muscle ached from having been dragged around the woods by Baxter the night before.

Baxter. I tried not to think about him. He had been so brave. I wished I could take back even one of those times I had pushed away his wet nose. I would have placed a large bet that Baxter would have run for cover before ever protecting me, and I was thankful I had been wrong. He'd been my very own secret service dog and now he was . . .

I got out of bed, pushing all thoughts of Baxter out of my head. It would be even worse dealing with Seth if I was teary-eyed. I went downstairs in search of coffee and news.

In the kitchen, Mom came up to me with tears in her eyes and hugged me.

“It's okay, Mom.” I patted her back and tried to pull away.

“No, it's not. You could have been killed.” She squeezed once more and released me, but gripped my hand. “It was bad enough when you were in Ann Arbor and I imagined you to be in danger all the time, but for it to happen here, right under my nose.” Her lower lip quivered as she fought for control.

“Mom, it just got out of hand is all.” I sat at the table and focused on the coffee she slid in front of me.

“It wouldn't have gotten ‘out of hand' if you had known what to expect going in.” She stood in front of me, arms crossed. “Clyde, you wouldn't go into a building on a police call without assistance, would you? If you were expecting trouble?”

My mind flashed again to Jadyn. I remembered the adrenaline racing through my system as we caught sight of him and chased him through the alleys behind the apartment building. I knew I wouldn't have done that if my partner hadn't been with me. I would have called for backup; the kid would have gotten away.

“No,” I said.

“Then why do you go through life without using the support that has been given to you?” She had her hands out, pleading. “Why do you insist on ignoring your gift when it could save your life?”

“It wouldn't help, it never helps. In fact, I
did
know something about last night. I had a dream about it. It didn't help in the least, except I thought it was Mac who was going to be shot.”

“Is that why you started avoiding him?” She sat across from me.

“What?”

“He told me. He said things were going just fine between the two of you, and then you withdrew for no reason. He didn't understand it.”

“I thought I could protect him if we stayed apart,” I said without meeting her eyes.

“The thing about your gift, Clyde, is it will never be of any use until you learn how to understand it. You can't pay attention to some of it and not all of it. You have to know what you're doing, or you're going to end up getting hurt.”

“Mom, when was Mac here?”

“He came by looking for you after Tish's funeral. He spent some time with Vi and then left.”

“Who spent some time with me?” Vi clumped into the kitchen using Mac's cane. She clearly hadn't slept much and was covered in scratches from her brawl with Cecile.

“Mac,” we said in unison.

“Yeah, he had it all figured out.” She flicked her hand and made her way to the table to sit with us.

“What are you talking about?” Mom said.

“He said he needed me to keep everyone interested in Milo so no one would get hurt.” She gestured around the table. “You can see how well that worked out.”

“Start at the beginning, Vi,” I said.

“He came here after Tish's funeral and said he'd been looking into old cases. He suspected that Joe or Cecile or both of them had . . . killed Mike all those years ago.” Her voice trailed off, and she stared past me out the kitchen window.

“So, why didn't he arrest them and save us all this trouble?” Mom's brow was furrowed, and a storm was brewing in her eyes. She got up and went to the coffeemaker, a reflex when she expected a long conversation.

Vi pulled herself together and summarized Mac's investigation. Mac had followed leads that were on Sara's computer. She'd been investigating Milo. When Milo came to town, Sara's lawyer instincts kicked in, and she decided she should know more about this guy who was trying to change the town and was causing trouble between her and Gary. In researching Milo, she found the newspaper reports about Julia, and that led her to the older reports about Mike Jones. Joe and Cecile were big believers in psychic phenomena. Mac assumed that, when Sara had accused someone at the séance of being a murderer, they thought she knew more than she did.

“What a mess.” Mom put the coffeepot on the table with milk and sugar. “But why kill Tish?”

“I think I can answer that,” I said. “Tish knew all along that the Starks had been involved somehow. She either let it slip that she knew or . . .” I stopped, remembering Cecile hiding in the bushes while I told Tom that I was sure Tish knew something.

I put my head back in my hands. Cecile must have gone straight to Joe and told him Tish was a threat.

“Mac thinks that Milo told them he was on to them and why,” said Vi.

My head popped up and I looked at her.

“According to Mac, Milo had been very up-front with Cecile about what he was doing in town. He wanted to find the gun that killed his father and prove it was Joe who had pulled the trigger.” Vi stirred her coffee.

“But he never suspected that his mother was involved as well, because Tish never told him that part.” I finished the tale. Maybe it wasn't what Cecile had overheard that caused Tish's death, but it probably didn't help.

I put my head down on the table, thinking about the mess we had made, and how I had put my family in danger.

Vi patted my arm. “You know, we were all in it together. We all wanted to catch the killer.”

* * *

Tuffy and Seth
shuffled in looking for breakfast, and we were distracted by looking at Tuffy's cast. We'd called Gary from the vet clinic the night before to get permission to treat his broken leg. When Gary heard how much it was going to cost, he offered to let me keep the dog. He admitted that he and Tuffy had never gotten along, and he was almost bankrupt from his gambling debts. Seth was now the proud owner of a shih tzu. Grace was not going to be thrilled. The vet said Tuffy would have to wear the cast for about a month and would need lots of care during that time. Seth had already become Tuffy's servant, so not much had changed on that front. We all purposely avoided talking about Baxter.

The doorbell rang, but Tuffy didn't have the energy to bark. He looked at Seth from underneath his messy fringe and sighed. I followed my mother out to the front hallway and caught a glimpse of Milo as she pulled the door open. He was standing next to a pretty blonde woman who could only be—

“Julia?” Mom said as she stood there gaping.

“I knew it!” Vi said from behind me.

While the ladies stood staring, I gestured for Milo and Julia to come in.

“Clyde, I'd like you to meet my fiancée, Julia Wyatt.”

“She's not dead?” Seth had come out of the kitchen to see what was going on.

“Seth!” Mom exclaimed.

Julia laughed. “No, I'm not dead.”

Mom hustled them into the living room and then headed off to the kitchen for more coffee. We sat and continued to stare at Julia. Milo reached over and took her hand, and she smiled.

“So, tell us!” Vi said, and rapped Mac's cane on the floor.

Julia jumped and looked at Milo.

“Julia drove in from Chicago last night. We're heading back tomorrow as long as I'm not needed at the police station,” Milo said.

Mom bustled in with a tray of coffee mugs and cookies.

“What did I miss?” she asked as she sat next to Vi on the loveseat.

“Not a thing, Rose,” Vi grumbled.

“Mac thought it would be a good idea for us to stop by and talk with you. He thought it would clear the air a bit.” Milo sipped his coffee and seemed to consider how to proceed. “I helped Julia run away right after high school. She was eighteen and legally an adult, but we wanted to be sure no one would look for her.” Milo glanced at Julia, who nodded. “Her father was a vicious drunk, and after Julia's mother died, he drank even more.”

He squeezed Julia's hand. She looked at her lap.

“I'm not going to go into detail, but she needed to get away from him before something truly terrible happened.”

I remembered all those times trying to “see” Julia that summer she disappeared. All I saw were bruises and tears, which must have been why she decided to run.

“Now that my father is gone,” Julia began, “we thought it would be safe to return here. But, after everything that has happened, we're thinking we'll just stay in Chicago. There are too many bad memories here.” Her voice was soft and, when she finally looked up, it was to nodding heads and sniffles from Mom.

Milo went on to tell us that Mac knew about it even all those years ago. As a new police officer, he'd gone out to the Wyatt house on domestic disturbance calls. But there was never enough evidence, and until Julia was eighteen, she would have nowhere to go, so she didn't press charges. She just tried to stay out of trouble and avoided her dad if he'd been drinking. Milo hatched the disappearance plan after a particularly violent outburst from Julia's father when she'd talked about going away to college.

Although they couldn't get married because Julia didn't want any paperwork to trigger a renewed search, they'd been living happily in Chicago. Then, Milo talked to Tish and began his quest to reveal his father's killer.

* * *

After Milo and
Julia left, I sent a text to Tom to see how things were progressing at the station. Rather than text back, he arrived on the doorstep ten minutes later. We had all reconvened in the kitchen, and I led Tom there to fill us all in at the same time.

Vi greeted him as he sat down at the table. “What's the news, Tom?”

Tom shook his head. “It's all sort of confused right now, but everyone is busy trying to compile the evidence and avoid Mac. He wants the case against Joe and Cecile to be airtight, and he wants it yesterday.”

“Have they confessed?” Mom asked.

“No, they asked for lawyers the minute we got them to the station, so a confession is unlikely. We did just get a report back on the gun Stark had with him in the woods. It's the same gun that killed both Tish and Sara. Unfortunately, it has all sorts of fingerprints on it, including yours, Clyde.”

“They must have other evidence against him,” I said.

“Mac has a couple of people in the woods digging in the area where Joe had started. I'm not sure what he's looking for. . . .”

“He probably thinks Joe was digging up the rifle that killed Milo's dad.” Seth's head was down, examining Tuffy's cast, but he was apparently paying attention.

“What about Gary?” I asked.

“He's off the hook. He came down last night to volunteer the information that he had been threatening Sara on her website. He wanted to scare her into selling her land to Milo so he could get the money to pay off his gambling debts.” Tom nodded thanks as my mother slid a mug of coffee in front of him.

“Poor Sara. She probably would have given him the money if she knew he needed it.” Mom pushed the cream and sugar toward Tom.

“What about Clyde's car? Who cut her brake line?” Seth asked.

“Once we got fingerprints from the Starks, we checked them against a partial print found under the car. It matched Cecile.”

“I knew it!” Vi slammed Mac's cane against the floor. Tom jumped. “Cecile would be mortified if anyone knew that she used to work in her dad's garage. She could probably cut a brake line in her sleep.”

Seth and Mom nodded. Tom looked confused.

“Thanks for coming to the rescue in the woods, Tom.” I smiled at him. Seth sighed, and I imagined the accompanying eye roll.

“I wish I could say it was my idea, but Mac knew you were in danger once we saw that the Starks weren't at home. I don't know how he figured it out.”

“Tish had reported them back when she was a kid. No one listened to her then, but Mac must have found the report and put it together with the articles we found at Sara's,” Seth said, and all eyes shifted to him.

“What?” Seth said.

“How did you know all that?” Tom said.

“It's obvious, now that we know who did it.”

“Oh, this is for you.” Tom slid a folded piece of notebook paper across the table.

I opened it with shaky hands.
Meet me at the bridge tomorrow. Ten a.m. Please?

“What? What is it?” Mom said, as I slipped the note into my pocket and smiled.

The rest of the day was quiet. Vi had called all my Friday clients and cancelled. Not one of them had an issue with the lack of a dog walker, but they all wanted details of the arrest in the woods. Alex and Diana stopped by to check on everyone. They said the gossip in town was that I had led the police to the killer using my psychic ability. Mom fielded phone calls and gave me pointed looks as she told people I was not open for business.