by Lauren Carr
“J.J. told me not to talk to you without him.”
“J.J. is a very smart young man,” Joshua said. “And as your friend, I strongly recommend that you take his advice.”
Noah backed away.
“I’m not here to ask you any questions,” Joshua said. “I know you’re worried about what’s going on, and J.J. is out of town for a couple of days, so I wanted to ease your fears. I’ve been talking to your social worker in Atlanta, and she’s going to do all she can to help you out. The police are not going to arrest you and haul you back to Atlanta.”
Noah let out a sigh of relief.
“J.J. and I are going to work with her to try to set something up.”
“What kind of something?” Noah asked.
“When I learn more, I’ll let you know,” Joshua said. “In the meantime, Tom said that you can stay with him. As far as the authorities are concerned, you will be Tom’s responsibility until we get things sorted out. You won’t be sleeping in the barn. You will be staying at Tom’s place. Is that okay?”
Noah nodded his head. “I like Tom. I like it here.” He offered Joshua his hand. “Thank you, Mr. Thornton.”
Joshua shook his hand. “I liked it better when you called me Josh.”
Noah grinned.
“I also have something else for you.” Joshua led him over to his SUV and opened the rear door. “Am I correct in thinking that those overalls are all you’ve got?”
Noah ran a hand over his clothes. “I bought them at Goodwill last summer with my first paycheck. Had to hitchhike into town. I don’t have a driver’s license yet.”
The daddy in Joshua came out. He practically poked Noah in the chest. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you that it’s dangerous to hitchhike? There are a lot of very bad people out there driving around hunting for nice kids like you to do unspeakable things to.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Don’t ‘yeah, but’ me,” Joshua said. “You don’t realize it, but there are a lot of people who care about you—like Poppy, Izzy, Tom”—he gestured up to where Suellen was watching them from the porch swing—“and Suellen. And me.” He took several bags of clothes from the backseat of the SUV. “We’ve all gone to bat for you. So don’t you go messing things up by doing something stupid like hitchhiking and getting yourself killed. If you need a ride into town, you have J.J.’s phone number. Mine. Tom’s. Poppy’s. Call one of us, and we’ll get you a ride.”
“But I don’t have a cell phone.”
“Next time you get paid, buy a disposable one.” He shoved the bags of clothes into Noah’s arms. “Have I made myself clear?”
“Yes, sir.” Perplexed, he looked down at the bags of clothes.
“You can’t go around wearing rags,” Joshua said. “I had to guess your size. I picked up some jeans and shirts and underwear for you.” Looking down at the holes in Noah’s sneakers, he said, “Size eleven boot?”
Noah nodded his head.
Joshua took a pair of old work boots from the floor behind the driver’s seat. “I needed new boots, so you can have these. I put new insoles in them for you. There’s a package of socks in there, too.”
His eyes growing moist, Noah cleared his throat. “You didn’t have to—”
“Noah, would you like to try them on to make sure that they fit?” Suellen said to him from the porch railing.
Hesitating, Noah turned to look back at the barn, where Poppy was signing paper work for the farrier, who had completed his work. Izzy was putting on her riding helmet in preparation for her riding lesson. Clyde Brady was headed up the driveway in his truck.
“I’ll cover for you,” Joshua said.
Clutching his new clothes to his chest, Noah trotted up the steps. Suellen held the door open for him. She stopped to turn to Joshua. “You really are a softy under that hard-core exterior.”
“You say that in public, and I’ll deny it.”
With a laugh, she greeted Clyde and then went inside the house.
Watching Clyde make his way across the driveway to where he was closing the rear door of his SUV, Joshua recalled his conversation with Andy, the farmer’s neighbor. Somehow, Joshua had trouble picturing the elderly man’s late wife, a woman in her late sixties, having an affair. Nor could he picture Clyde killing his wife in a jealous rage.
But Monica had sold the farm’s livestock to the neighbor. The Bradys were not extravagant people. They always bought second-hand vehicles and paid cash for everything. What kind of money problems could they’ve been having? She’d been keeping secrets from Clyde. What other secrets had she kept from her husband?
The old man looked bewildered. Oh, man, I hope he’s not losing it. “Clyde, are you okay?” Joshua asked him.
“Josh, is your wife here?”
“She’s out of town. Can I help you? I can put you in touch with her department.”
“She asked me about Vinnie,” Clyde said. “She said that he could have killed Monica to get back at me for kicking him out, which I never did. He was just a little kid. I never would have kicked him out, but he says I did.”
Joshua placed his hands on the old man’s shoulders to get his attention. “Clyde, have you seen Vinnie?”
His eyes wide, Clyde nodded his head.
“Where?”
Clyde grabbed his head with both hands. “Why does she have to play that damn piano so loud?”
As gently as he could Joshua said, “Suellen isn’t playing the piano, Clyde.”
“Yes, she is. Don’t you hear it? She’s playing …” He shook a finger at Joshua. “What’s that song she’s playing? On the tip of my tongue.”
“There’s no music, Clyde,” Joshua whispered.
The cell phone on Joshua’s hip vibrated. Clyde’s eyes glazed over. He tried to ignore the phone vibrating against his hip bone and urged Clyde to concentrate. “Clyde?”
“I don’t remember.”
Joshua snatched the vibrating phone from the case he wore on his belt. “Thornton here.”
“Joshua Thornton, this is Mary Wells, in Atlanta. We spoke this morning about Noah Dickens. I think I have some good news for you.”
While Joshua tried to concentrate on the caseworker’s report about the progress she was making, Clyde stared straight ahead, seemingly in another world. Joshua was unsure of whether the old man was indeed trying to remember where he had seen his nephew, trying to recall the name of a song that only he heard, or mentally in another world altogether.
Either way, it was bad news for Cameron’s investigation. Even though he had no official role in the case, Joshua was a prosecutor, so naturally, he’d been thinking about how to help Cameron put together a winning case before her only eyewitness fell apart due to old age. But he also had to concentrate on Noah Dickens’ situation and the steps he’d need to take to keep him at the Russell Ridge Farm and Orchards with those who cared about him.
It was a difficult task.
“That is great news,” Joshua said to the enthusiastic social worker before they ended the call.
Clyde had wandered over to where Captain Blackbeard was sipping water from the spring. He was staring at the horse as if he had never seen him before.
“Clyde?”
Abruptly, Clyde whirled around and yelled. “Great Balls of Fire!”
Joshua almost dropped his phone.
A wide grin filled Clyde’s face.
“Great Balls of Fire?” Joshua asked.
“That’s what Suellen has been playing on her piano,” Clyde said. “Jerry Lee Lewis. She’s been playing Great Balls of Fire.”
Charley cawed.
Joshua turned around and saw that Suellen was holding the door open. A transformed Noah Dickens stepped out onto the top step of the porch.
Joshua had known that cleaned up, the young man would be attractive, bu
t he hadn’t realized what clean clothes that fit and a haircut and a shave could accomplish. Joshua had been right about his size. Noah was approximately the same height that his own sons had been at sixteen, but he was smaller boned and thinner. The clean jeans fit Noah like a glove. He had put on one of the half dozen T-shirts, a black one with a Captain America shield across the front of it.
The long hair that he had worn down to the middle of his back in a ponytail had been cut. His dark hair was still long, but Suellen had chopped several inches off so that it only reached the middle of his neck and had added layers to it.
“My mother used to cut my hair,” Suellen said as she made small adjustments to the haircut. “Luckily, I remembered how to do it. Figured that as long as he was cleaning himself up, I might as well help out.” She turned to Noah and whispered, “You’re going to be fighting the girls off with a stick.”
“Thank you, Ms. Russell.”
“Suellen,” she said.
His cell phone still in his hand, Joshua said, “I just got off the phone with your caseworker in Atlanta.”
“Good or bad news?”
Joshua sat down on the top step of the porch and urged Noah to sit next to him.
Noah refused. “Must be bad news, then.”
“No, it’s not bad news,” Joshua said. “I want to keep you in the loop and let you know what has to happen in order for us to keep you here. There are things that you need to do.”
Slowly, Noah eased down next to him.
“Do you know what it means to be an emancipated minor?”
Noah nodded his head. “You’re a minor, but you’re also an adult.”
“An emancipated minor has all of the rights and responsibilities of an adult,” Joshua said. “When a judge grants someone’s request to become an emancipated minor, he legally becomes an adult. He doesn’t have to have a guardian. He can make his own decisions. But he also has the same responsibilities that other adults have. So if you become an emancipated minor, you’ll need to support yourself. Get a job—”
“I have a job.”
“Get a place to live, and maintain it.” Seeing the question in Noah’s eyes, Joshua said, “Tom has an apartment that he can rent to you. You seem to have a good head on your shoulders. Your caseworker believes that if we take a couple more steps, we’ll have a good case and will be able to request that a judge in Atlanta grant you an emancipation order and make you an adult.”
“Why in Atlanta?” Suellen asked from where she was leaning over the porch rail and listening in.
“Because Noah is a ward of the state of Georgia. So the request has to be made to a judge there.”
“So all I have to do is move into Tom’s apartment and keep it clean and pay my bills.” Noah grinned. “I can do that.”
“And we need to get you back in school,” Joshua said.
Noah’s face fell.
“According to your caseworker, the last grade you completed was the eighth grade,” Joshua said. “So you’re pretty far behind.”
“How will I go to school while working full time to support myself and to pay rent?”
“With tutoring this summer and after school, we can get you up to speed.” Joshua offered him an encouraging grin. “We can make it work.” He slapped Noah on the back. “Don’t worry. We’re all on your side. Everything is falling into place.”
“That’s him.”
Clyde Brady suddenly aimed a gnarled finger at Noah’s face. Clyde’s eyes were filled with fury as he pointed at the young man on the porch step next to Joshua.
“What do you mean, Clyde?” Joshua rose to cut the old man off.
Noah stood up and backed away from the old man who was approaching him.
“That’s him,” Clyde said. “That’s the man who killed my Monica.”
Chapter Fourteen
After an hour of driving her unmarked police cruiser on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Cameron couldn’t take the silence anymore.
So far, it had not been a good road trip. As if being shot at wasn’t enough, Cameron had to check out a new cruiser from the motor pool to use while they replaced the shot out windshield. Between the bureaucratic paperwork, moving all of her stuff, and the nagging feeling that she was forgetting something in her own car, Cameron was in a foul mood by the time they got back out on the road.
J.J. sitting in the front passenger seat with earbuds stuck in his ears was annoying her more than he usually did.
He was most likely listening to some music. Is it rock? Or it could be classical, since Suellen was a symphony conductor. Or maybe even opera? Or, considering his age, it could be rock or punk music. As he listened to the recording, he tapped his fingers, alternating between one hand and the other, to a beat that only he could hear.
He used both hands because, as she had learned shortly after meeting J.J. and Murphy, both twins were ambidextrous. While they were so identical that it was still difficult for Cameron to tell them apart, in many ways, they were opposites of each other. Murphy was the thrill seeker, the winning football quarterback, and the naval officer. At the other end of the spectrum was J.J., who was quiet, artistic, and analytical.
But Joshua had clued her in on a rather strange way to tell them apart. When they were in the same room, J.J. was always to the left of Murphy. “They were five years old before their mother pointed that out to me,” Joshua had said. “They do it subconsciously. They aren’t even aware that they do it.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re mirror images of each other,” he said. “And it doesn’t end there. J.J.’s heart, liver, and spleen are on the opposite side of his body—they mirror Murphy’s organs. They are truly mirror images of each other.”
Luckily, J.J. had decided to let his hair grow out when he’d entered law school, which made it easier for Cameron to tell them apart the few times she’d seen them together.
Not knowing what J.J. was listening to was driving her nuts.
Since she had married Joshua, Cameron had come to know enough about all of his kids to know what to expect from them. The fact that she was a detective didn’t hurt. She could read Donny like a book as soon as he entered a room. His body language alone would tell her everything. She knew when a girlfriend was mad at him or when he’d gotten a date with a girl he had been pursuing. Donny was an open book for the detective.
J.J. was a whole other ball game.
Although he had been polite, he’d also been silent during the long drive from the police department in Moon Township, where they’d booked Silas Starling. It was getting on her nerves.
Finally, she reached over and yanked the earbud out of his left ear. “Hey!”
He jumped in his seat, and she wondered whether he’d been asleep with his eyes open. He pulled the other earbud out. “What?”
“What are you listening to?”
“A lecture by a law professor about suspects’ rights concerning the search and seizure of cell phones,” he said. “What’s it to you?”
“Just curious,” she said under her breath.
J.J. turned off his cell phone and ran his fingers through his hair. “All right. What do you want to talk about?”
“Why are you studying law?”
“Because I want to be a lawyer when I grow up…like my daddy.”
Expecting one of her husband’s playful grins, she cast a glance across the cruiser in J.J.’s direction—but he wasn’t grinning. He was serious. “You don’t want to be a musician?”
J.J. shrugged. “That would be nice, but it’s not realistic.”
“Is that you or your father talking?”
“Me.” His tone was firm.
“But you’re so talented.”
“Talent isn’t enough,” he said. “When I was at Penn State, there were a lot of music majors playing in the orchestra. They dream
ed of playing on the big stage. And maybe that was a dream I had at first, after Suellen told me how talented I was. But as I practiced and performed with musicians who had placed all of their dreams in that basket, I learned something.”
“That a career in music wasn’t for you?”
J.J. slowly shook his head. “In the music business, just like with any of the arts, there are a lot of talented people out there. Some have more talent than you. Some have less. The ones who make it to the top and have careers in the arts have to make sacrifices. Financial security. Family. Suellen and her husband never had any children.”
“She said they hadn’t been blessed with them.”
“Because by the time she was established enough in the career that she had wanted so badly, it was too late.” J.J. lowered his voice. “Dad was right when he forced my hand and made me go to college to study law. If I had taken the position that Suellen offered me in the philharmonic, I would have made a big mistake that I probably wouldn’t have been able to fix. I do love music but not enough to sacrifice getting married and having a family. I can have those things if I’m a lawyer, and I really love the brainwork that goes into working cases.”
“You get that from your father.”
“Dad says it’s a curse.” J.J. shot a grin at her. She saw Joshua’s genes in his smile—Joshua’s dimples and all. “I liked the way you recorded what went down back there.”
“The recording app on my cell phone has proven to be a very handy device,” she said.
“But you were smart about it,” J.J. said. “You never showed your hand—even when Silas lied right away and said that he hadn’t heard you, you didn’t give it away. You gave him rope and let him hang himself first, which gave you the edge you needed to make him talk about Dylan Matthews.”
“Well, our case against him for killing Dylan hinges on our ability to prove his motive.”
J.J. agreed. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and find that one of the band members knows something.”
“No one knew that Dylan was going to dump them.”
“Except maybe Cat. She was living with him.”