I stuck my hand out to help him up. “You never saw who hit you?”
“No.” He grunted as he struggled to his feet, clinging to my hand and the countertop to help him regain his balance. “Whoever it was sure packed a wallop.”
I shone my flashlight around the dilapidated room. “Did you at least find what you were looking for?”
“No, of course he didn’t.”
I jumped and turned toward the voice.
Annie stiffened and growled, the hair on her back standing up.
“June!” Morley’s voice was strangled.
She stepped into the room, dressed as if she had come straight from a closing. She plunked her enormous pink handbag on the counter. “Why couldn’t you have left this up to me, Morley? I was hoping you’d take the hint when I hit you over the head. Now I have to deal with her too.” She gestured toward me.
She had a pink purse. Of course. She was the one who had been in the hallway outside of Kenny’s room that night he was rushed to the hospital. I sighed. “Come on, June. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“Right.” She laughed. “You’ve stuck your nose where it doesn’t belong one time too many. And now that Marianne is taken care of—”
“Marianne?” Morley’s eyes bulged.
His wife made an impatient gesture. “Did herself in, didn’t she, Callie? Should have taken you down with her.”
Chapter Thirty
I gulped. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She leaned back against the kitchen counter and crossed her arms. “You just keep playing innocent. It’s not going to get you very far. At least no further than the walls of this shack, if you get what I mean.”
Morley drew himself up. “What are you talking about, June? I know we were all in on the planning, but we never went through with anything.”
She patted his hand. “You mean you never went through with anything. Marianne and I had a foolproof plan. Until she—” She pointed a finger at me. “Until she had to start nosing around and arousing suspicion.”
“But I didn’t—”
“Yes, you did. You and that dumb minister had to go and get the brilliant idea to try to get Kenny’s property.”
“Kenny’s property?” Did she truly not know about Erma’s deal with Kenny?
She rolled her eyes. “Whose land did you think it was? Did you think you’d get away with offing Erma to get your hands on that land? You’re not the only one who knows about Erma’s will, you know.”
June was accusing Houston and me of killing Sister Erma? I almost laughed out loud.
And actually, I knew whose land it was. The name on the deed to that land was Shelby Janosic. I stayed silent, hoping June would keep talking. The more she said, the more she incriminated herself.
Morley was staring at his wife. “What will? And you and Marianne. You robbed that store?”
She grinned at him. “Of course not. She robbed it, and I hid the stuff. And no one was the wiser for all of these years. Where did you think we got the money for that cruise to Europe, Dumbo?”
“But some of the jewelry surfaced recently, and you thought that Marianne double-crossed you.” The pieces were starting to make sense.
She scowled at me. “She always was a greedy cheat. Should never have gotten mixed up with her to begin with.”
“But she didn’t.” I was guessing, but I hoped it sounded like I wasn’t.
Morley looked back and forth between his wife and me. “Didn’t what?”
June tossed her head and looked away.
I eased my phone out of my pocket while she was looking away. Maybe I could alert Todd. “Marianne didn’t double-cross you, did she, June?”
“I’m getting tired of this.” She pushed herself off the counter and strode closer to me, her heels clicking on the linoleum. She snatched my phone and tossed it onto the floor. “I don’t have to answer any more questions. If y’all hadn’t decided to steal Kenny’s property, none of this would have happened.”
Annie maneuvered herself between us, growling.
“Marianne seemed to think it was Sharlene who stirred things up, not me.” I might as well press her while I could. She didn’t appear to have a weapon, and I was younger and stronger. I gripped my pepper spray inside my pocket.
“Sharlene. That girl is nothing but a druggie. She doesn’t know anything.” Her tone was scornful, but I caught the flicker of doubt in her gaze.
I pressed my advantage. “Marianne said that Sharlene saw something all those years ago.”
“Impossible.”
I shrugged. “That’s what she told me. And why didn’t the jewelry appear until after Sharlene came to town?” I was baiting her, since I was pretty sure by now that it had been Kenny all along who had decided to bring things out into the open. He must have found the stolen jewelry hidden on his property and decided to make a move and see what would happen.
She rocked back on her heels. “That girl is too stupid. If she would have seen something when she was a little kid, why would she wait until now to make a move?”
“Because all I ever wanted was a family.”
June, Morley, and I whirled toward the doorway. Sharlene stood there holding a baseball bat.
“I’ve heard enough to know what’s going on here.” She gripped the bat and stepped into the kitchen, her gaze focused on June. “You drove my mother to kill herself, and you two tried to kill me too, didn’t you? But you got poor Miz Erma instead.” She took a step toward June. “I know you know where my dad is. And you’re going to tell me.”
“Sharlene, no!” I shot a stream of pepper spray at June just as Annie leapt toward her.
A few seconds later, it was all over. Morley sat on top of his wife, while she screamed and scrubbed at her eyes.
Sharlene cried and shook in my arms as I held her. “It’s all over now,” I murmured in her ear. “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be all right.”
Especially since I could see what she wore around her neck. A necklace with a tiny lock hanging from it. A lock with a small key-hole in it, just the size of the key in my pocket. Good ol’ Sister Erma had come through for Jim’s kids. The land was Shelby’s—Sharlene’s. And not one day too soon.
But it wasn’t over. Not yet, anyway. A day later, Harry, Aunt Dot, and I sat in Aunt Dot’s kitchen, staring at the scant contents of Jim Janosic’s wallet. A picture of a preschool-aged Sharlene. A Social Security card. A couple of pieces of lined paper, folded into a small square.
I unfolded the well-worn pages. “Did you read this, Harry?”
“No, I thought we’d look at everything together. What is it?”
As I read the letter from Jim to his children, I swallowed hard, my heart breaking for Jim, a man I had never met. I refolded the tattered letter as he must have done a thousand times and laid it on the table. I couldn’t believe another human being would be so cruel to another. I blew out my breath. “Jim wrote this letter to Shelby and Benji, but apparently couldn’t bring himself to send it to them. It explains everything that he wanted his children to know.”
Harry reached for the papers but didn’t look at them. “Does it corroborate Morley’s story about Marianne blackmailing Jim?”
“Yes, for sure.”
“In what way?” Aunt Dot leaned forward.
“Apparently, at least from Marianne’s side, her and Jim’s entire relationship was a cover for her plan. They had met while he was still in the halfway house after being paroled from prison. He details the whole thing in there.” I waved my hand at the letter.
“I knew they had met early on, but I never realized it was so soon after his release.” Harry rubbed his eyes.
I nodded. “Yeah. Anyway, she apparently gave him this big story about how she’d always wanted to settle down and start a family. Of course, he was vulnerable and fell in love with her. They had Shelby almost right away, then Benji not too long afterwards. Readjusting to life after prison i
s difficult, I imagine, and she took advantage of that. She was smart.”
“And beautiful.”
“On the outside, at least.” I didn’t want to tell them the terrible things in the letter. “Bottom line is, she targeted him. Studied his court case until she knew it inside and out. Then she went after him.”
“But why?”
“He trusted her too much from the get-go, apparently. Early on, he told her about another crime he had committed. As Morley said, Jim had never been caught nor charged for it.”
Harry groaned. “And of course, he didn’t want to serve another prison term.”
“Right. Also, by the time he realized Marianne’s true colors, they had already had the kids.” I shook my head. “He felt stuck in an impossible situation. If he didn’t stay with Marianne and do what she wanted him to do, she would report him, and he knew he’d go to prison. If, on the other hand, he took the kids and fled, she would still tell, and he’d end up without his kids either way.”
“I wish he would have told me.” Harry smacked his fist into his other hand. “I suppose all of this was taking place about the time they moved here to Short Creek. Shelby—I mean, Sharlene—was about two or three when they moved here. They left when she was about five.”
“But why did Marianne want to blackmail him? Simply because she was a mean person?” Dot asked.
Too bad it wasn’t that easy. “No. She had bigger plans than that. Sounds like by the time Jim finally left, she was running a huge drug ring, partially funded by the fencing operation she had going through the dry-cleaning business.”
“A drug ring here? In Short Creek?” Harry stood abruptly.
“Sounds like it.”
“Why did he leave, Callie? I imagine he was sick of living a lie.” Dot reached for her tea mug.
“Well, that, probably. And it sounds like she made him do some of her dirty work. Better him getting caught than her, I guess. But this letter is…horrible.” I shook my head. “Apparently, she convinced him over the years that he was a worthless human being, and she had never loved him, and he was stupid to ever fall for her lies. She threatened to not only go to the police, but to quote ‘never let Shelby and Benji forget what a low-life they had for a father.’ At the end of the letter, he tells Shelby and Benji how much he loves them and misses them.”
Aunt Dot dabbed her eyes. “That’s so terribly sad.”
“It’s heart wrenching. He apologizes to them for being a terrible father, then says something like, ‘I was only trying to protect him, but they’ll never believe me. I can never be a part of your lives because I’m a dead man.’”
“Him, who?” Harry asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Lord, have mercy. It gets worse and worse.” Harry slumped down onto the couch.
We sat in silence, Aunt Dot’s lips moving in silent prayer. My heart ached. For Jim. For Sharlene. And Benji, wherever he was. For Harry and the rest of Harry’s family. God, please bring good out of this in some way. Redeem all of this pain, Father. Don’t let it be for nothing.
Finally, Aunt Dot blew her nose. “So, Marianne was finished with Jim’s services and decided to throw him away? Or is it true that he left of his own will, as Morley said?”
“Who knows?” I traced my finger around the edges of the letter. “And here’s the other thing. Maybe Kenny wasn’t really protecting Jim, as Morley thought he was. Maybe Jim left on his own, figuring Marianne would make good on her threats.”
Aunt Dot sighed. “This is getting complicated.”
“I still wish he would have talked to me or one of our other family members. It seems like we could have done something. Gotten him legal advice, at least. Maybe things wouldn’t have been as bad as he thought.” Harry turned Jim’s battered wallet over and over in his hands. “I can’t believe he carried all of that alone for so long. No wonder he went bonkers.”
A yellowed piece of paper fluttered from the wallet onto the floor.
“What is that?” I bent to pick it up. It was a clipping from the Temple newspaper, dated a few weeks before Jim Janosic left Short Creek for the last time, twenty years ago.
“Why would he have saved this article in particular?” I re-read the short blurb about a homeless man who had been found by hunters who were tracking a deer. “It says the man was alive when they found him but died shortly afterwards from blood loss.”
Harry leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know. I remember hearing about it when it happened. Someone shot the poor guy and left him for dead, apparently. He didn’t have any ID.”
“Maybe the man was from around here? Maybe Jim knew him?” Aunt Dot picked up her crochet hook.
“Maybe so.” Harry stood to pace around the room. “Jim always was a tender-hearted person. I remember many a time when we were in town, he would stop and give whatever he had to the homeless people who hang out down there around the library. I wouldn’t doubt that—”
“No, I think it has to be more than that.” What was it Kenny said to me in the hospital? She thought no one saw what she did…I saw what she did. You can’t let her get away with it…But which “her?” June or Marianne? I scanned the article again, looking for an address. “The body was found very close to Kenny’s property.”
Harry let out a low whistle.
“That would explain June not wanting anyone else to own that property. If someone were to start digging around, maybe something would be found that she didn’t want to be found. Something that would point to her.” I drew in a deep breath, surprised to see my hands shaking.
“And we already know that Marianne and June were at least in on the robbery together.” Harry pressed his hands down flat on the table. We stared at each other.
Aunt Dot scrunched up her nose. “What would that have to do with the man who was shot?”
The look on Harry’s face told me his thoughts had gone the same direction as mine. I touched Aunt Dot’s hand. “Harry and I are thinking it’s possible either June or Marianne shot the man. That would explain what Kenny said he saw…and always regretted never telling.”
She gasped. “They murdered the poor homeless man?”
“Well, shot him at least. Whether they actually intended him to die or not, we might never know. Unbelievable.” Harry shook his head.
“But why? And where does Jim fit into this?” Aunt Dot asked.
“I don’t know. But in his letter, he said something like ‘I was only trying to protect him.’ Maybe it was a drug deal gone bad. Or maybe the poor guy was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Jim tried to save him.”
“That would be just like Jim.” Harry brushed at his eyes. “He was no saint, but I can’t imagine him not trying to protect an innocent person from harm, if it came down to that.”
“Oh, my.” Aunt Dot sat back in her wheelchair. “But back to Kenny’s property. Are you saying you think Marianne and June hid the gun somewhere on the land? And that’s why the barn was blown up?”
“Probably. And any other evidence.” Like…a sick feeling hit my stomach. Oh, no. Please, no. A gun could be easily retrieved and disposed of after the fact, even twenty years after the fact. Hardly worth blowing up a building or filing an injunction to stop a building project. “I need to talk to Todd.”
Chapter Thirty-One
“Not exactly what we were planning for groundbreaking,” I murmured to Todd a couple of days later. We huddled under umbrellas in the relentless rain, watching as a bulldozer pushed the burned rubble of Kenny’s barn aside. A backhoe operator waited nearby, ready to dig just inside the tree line of the woods, where June, a day ago, had confessed to burying the bodies of two more homeless men. Apparently, they had been expendable workers in her little kingdom.
He shook his head. “Still hard to digest. I’m glad to know at least Kenny wasn’t aware of the extent of it.”
“Yeah, I was relieved about that too. It was bad enough that he knew about the first guy that the hunters f
ound and didn’t tell. What a terrible burden to carry.”
“For both him and Jim. How are you handling all of this?” He pulled me close to his side, and I stuck my hand into his warm coat pocket.
I wiped moisture from my face with my other hand. Was I crying? Or was it only rain? “I’m so sad.” I leaned my head against his shoulder, watching one of Todd’s buddies from the sheriff’s office wrap yellow police tape around the entire scene. “I feel like the more I get to know God’s heart, the more I’m grieved by sin and all the suffering that goes with it. He never intended for stuff like this to happen.”
He nodded. “It’s a daily struggle for those of us in law enforcement. Sends some people off the edge.”
“I’m sure. But we’re supposed to have His heart of compassion.” I stared up at him. “We can’t give up and turn away. We have to keep praying. Keep sharing the truth of the gospel. God can take even the most messed-up lives and heal them. Like He’s doing with Sharlene.”
He cupped his warm hand around my cheek. “Absolutely, sweetheart. Right over this property line, where so much evil took place, we will build a house of hope that will shine God’s light into broken hearts.”
Where sin did abound, grace did much more abound. Yes. Yes, and amen.
I got Mona’s text just as Todd and I left the property.
I tried to call you, but you didn’t answer, and I need to talk to you!!!! God is so good!!!! Smiley face, praying hands emoji, smiley face, balloons emoji.
I smiled. “Must be good news.” I touched her number, and she answered on the first ring.
“No sign of cancer! It’s all gone, Callie! I knew God healed me that day you prayed. Can you believe it? The doctors couldn’t believe it, and they did the test more than once. I told them that God healed me, and they just stared at me, but then one of them said he’s never seen anything like it and then Rob just picked me up and twirled me around right there in the office. Are you so excited?”
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