After Dark

by Beverly Barton

  Lane rang the doorbell several times before she gave up and tried the front door. Unlocked. How strange.

  “T. C. hasn’t arrived, yet,” Johnny Mack said. “I think we should wait on him.”

  “I don’t. I want to speak to Miss Edith right now! I want her to look me in the eye and deny that she killed Kent.”

  “She very well could deny it,” Johnny Mack said. “I don’t see her willingly admitting that she murdered her own son.”

  Johnny Mack followed Lane into the large foyer and almost ran into her when she skidded to an abrupt halt in the middle of the entranceway. She stood perfectly still. There was an unnatural quiet about the house. No activity whatsoever. Where was Mrs. Russell? For that matter, where was Edith?

  “Listen,” Lane said.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Johnny Mack replied.

  “Neither do I. Something isn’t right. This house is never deadly quiet. And the front door is never unlocked.”

  Johnny Mack grabbed her shoulders and whirled her around to face him. “I want you to go outside and wait on T. C.”

  “And what are you going to do while I’m waiting?”

  “I’ll search the house. Somebody has to be here. Since Edith fired Mrs. Bryant, she would make sure someone was with Mary Martha.”

  “I’ll help you look.”

  Johnny Mack tightened his grasp on Lane’s shoulders. “In case something goes wrong, I don’t want you in harm’s way. Stay here.”

  “Wait!” Lane cried, when he released her and turned to leave. “What if…maybe we shouldn’t have trusted T. C. Maybe he notified Buddy and Buddy told Miss Edith and she’s already left town.”

  “I don’t think Miss Edith has had time to escape. Besides, she’s the type who’d stay and put up a fight, not run. She’s confident enough to think she could beat a murder rap in this town.”

  “If she’s here, I’m not leaving this house without talking to her. I will not let her maneuver her way out of this. She’s going to confess what she did, even if I have to beat the truth out of her.”

  A piercing scream chilled Lane to the bone. She and Johnny Mack exchanged a quick, startled look, then immediately turned their heads in the direction of the ear-splitting yell. It had come from the second story of the house.

  “Stay here,” Johnny Mack ordered, then headed toward the staircase.

  “You’re not going without me.”

  When he paused to issue her a warning glare, she shook her head in a refusal to obey his command and caught up with him on the fifth step. He nodded and grunted, obviously realizing that she had no intention of being left behind. Whatever was happening in this house, she wasn’t going to wait and hear about it secondhand.

  Together, they raced up the stairs, flung open door after door and searched for the screamer. After coming out of the third room they had checked, Lane spotted the open doorway at the end of the hall. Standing there, her mouth agape, her shoulders trembling, Mrs. Russell wandered into the hall. When she saw Lane, she reached out toward her, and even though her lips moved, she said nothing.

  “That’s Mary Martha’s room,” Lane told Johnny Mack.

  Together they rushed up the hall where the housekeeper, as if in slow motion, headed toward them. Although she continued working her mouth, no words came out.

  Lane grabbed the woman’s shaky hands. “What’s wrong, Mrs. Russell? What’s happened? Are you the one who screamed?”

  She nodded, then grasped Lane’s hands tightly. “Help…help them. Please.” Mrs. Russell folded over, grabbed herself around the waist and began rocking back and forth as she cried.

  “Come on over here and sit down.” Lane led the woman to a settee nestled within a small alcove in the hallway, then knelt down in front of her. “Will you be all right here while we check on Mary Martha?”

  “I’ll be all right,” Mrs. Russell said. “But she’s not…she’s not…she…please, go help Miss Edith.”

  Lane didn’t know what to expect, had no idea what they would face when they entered Mary Martha’s bedroom. The room seemed unchanged in any way. A little girl’s fantasy room. Bright and beautiful and filled with light. No blood. No gore. No stench. Nothing the least bit frightening.

  Miss Edith sat on the side of the bed, her arms draped around Mary Martha, who lay quietly, her head in her mother’s lap. A serene scene of maternal affection. Edith repeatedly smoothed Mary Martha’s hair away from her face.

  “Miss Edith?” Lane approached the bed, Johnny Mack following directly behind her.

  Edith glanced up, her eyes slightly dazed, her expression mournfully sad. “She won’t ever suffer again. She’s at peace for the first time since she was a little girl.”

  Lane’s breath caught in her throat. Lord, no! Had Edith actually killed her daughter? Had she murdered both of her children? As Lane drew closer to the bed, she noticed that Mary Martha lay unnervingly still. She wasn’t breathing!

  Johnny Mack placed a hand on Lane’s shoulder. “Find a phone and call T. C. Tell him to get his ass over here as fast as possible and send an ambulance.”

  Just as Lane nodded agreement, Edith spoke, halting Lane’s exit.

  “I had no idea what was happening between Kent and Mary Martha. I knew they were very close, that they loved each other dearly, but it never once entered my mind that Kent would have…that he could have…. I should never have married. I should never have had children.”

  “Miss Edith, do you know what you’ve done?” Johnny Mack asked as he approached the bed.

  “Yes, I know,” she replied, and when Johnny Mack knelt beside the bed, she reached out and stroked his face. “So like John. In every way. He loved me once. When we first married. He wanted a son. Even knowing the risk I took in giving him a child, I…. It was wrong of me to bring babies into this world when I knew that my own dear mother had been sick. So sick. And her father before her. I knew and yet I took the chance, and my children paid the price.”

  “What are trying to tell us?” Johnny Mack took her hands in his.

  “If I hadn’t been so involved with social events and illicit love affairs…if I’d paid more attention to Kent and Mary Martha, I might have realized what was happening. I thought Kent was normal. If I’d spent more time with him, I could have put a stop to what he was doing and gotten him the help he needed. And maybe Mary Martha could have been helped, too.

  “But my children were never my top priority. I had them because John wanted them. My life was too full…. I was too busy to be bothered with them. And look what happened.”

  Lane eased closer to the bed, her heartbeat humming inside her head. How was it possible that she could actually feel sorry for Miss Edith, even knowing that she had murdered both of her children?

  “What happened?” Johnny Mack prodded. “Tell us what you did the day Kent died and what you did today.”

  Edith pulled her hands from Johnny Mack’s and gazed down at her daughter. “Look at her. So beautiful. So sweet and gentle and loving. But so damaged. And it’s all my fault. If I’d been a better mother, I could have spared her from so much. All these years, I didn’t understand. I didn’t know. Not until the truth came out about Will’s true paternity. That morning Kent had come by the house, and Mary Martha overheard us talking. I’ve never seen her react in such a violent way.”

  Edith covered her face with her hands and wept. Johnny Mack glanced at Lane, and she realized that he was as confused as she. Confused by their odd sympathy for a woman they both disliked intensely. And confused as to why she had felt compelled to murder her own children.

  Edith continued speaking, her voice eerily soft and completely controlled. “Mary Martha ran toward Kent and began hitting him with her little fists, and all the while she kept screaming, ‘You made me kill my baby, but you let her baby live. You didn’t want my baby, but you wanted hers.’ I didn’t understand. But I listened when Kent began talking to Mary Martha, telling her that Will was her baby, that her baby hadn’t
died.”

  Lane gasped. Was it possible that Mary Martha had been pregnant and the child had been Kent’s? Yes, of course it was possible.

  Kent had gotten his sister pregnant!

  “Miss Edith, are you saying that Mary Martha had at one time been pregnant with Kent’s child?” Johnny Mack asked.

  “Yes,” Edith replied. “That summer, fifteen years ago, only a few months before Sharon Hickman discovered she was carrying your child, Kent had taken Mary Martha to a private clinic in Birmingham for an abortion.”

  Lane thought she might vomit. Sour bile rose in her throat and left a bitterness on her tongue. Poor, pitiful Mary Martha. And that bastard Kent had encouraged her to believe that Will was her baby, the child he had forced her to abort. No wonder that all these years, Mary Martha had thought Will was her son.

  “You see, Mary Martha’s memories of that abortion had been buried deep in her subconscious until the truth came out about Will,” Edith said. “Then suddenly she began remembering…remembering what Kent had done to her. And remembering that he had made her abort their child.

  “That day, the day Kent died, I’d left her in the garden to go into the kitchen and ask Mrs. Russell to prepare us some iced tea, but when I returned Mary Martha had disappeared. At first, I was frightened when I couldn’t find her, but then as I neared the row of shrubs that separate our property from the Nobles’, I heard her talking to Kent. I walked through the wooden arbor in the middle of the hedge, and that’s when I saw—” Edith sucked in a deep breath. “Kent was on his knees, obviously drunk, and Mary Martha had Will’s baseball bat in her hands. She was striking him with it, and before I could reach her, she hit him in the head repeatedly.”

  Edith gulped down tears. “She kept saying, ‘You made me kill my baby. You made me kill my baby.’”

  “And Will saw what happened, too,” Lane said. “He just doesn’t remember it all. Not yet. That’s why he…. You weren’t asking him what he’d done; you were asking Mary Martha. She’s the one he heard crying.” Lane shook her head sadly as the truth became crystal clear. “Why did you put us all through this nightmare when you could have admitted the truth? Mary Martha wasn’t responsible for what she did. She wouldn’t have gone to prison.”

  “She would have spent the rest of her life in a mental institution,” Edith said. “I couldn’t allow that to happen.”

  Johnny Mack rose to his feet and faced Lane. “Call T. C. Now. I’ll stay with Miss Edith. And while you’re at it, call James. She’s going to need a lawyer.”

  “Right. I’ll check on Mrs. Russell and see if I can get her to go downstairs. T. C. must have been delayed by something. He should have gotten here by now.”

  When Lane found the housekeeper just where she had left her, she asked her if she wanted to go downstairs, to her own room, but the woman refused to budge.

  “I should go back in there and see to Miss Edith. That poor woman.” Mrs. Russell sobbed quietly. “Miss Mary Martha dead. Sweet, pitiful child.”

  “Yes, Miss Mary Martha is dead.”

  “I suppose she’s better off, but it’s such a shock. When I first saw her, I thought she was just sleeping, but then Miss Edith told me she was dead…. I shouldn’t have screamed, but I couldn’t help it. I was so shocked.”

  “It’s all right.” Lane patted Mrs. Russell on the back. “I’m sure Johnny Mack could use some help seeing to Miss Edith. He’s going to stay with her while I make some phone calls.”

  Lane helped the housekeeper to her feet, then gave her a pat on the back before she went in search of a telephone in one of the bedrooms. Just as she started to enter the nearest room, she heard something downstairs. Footsteps on the marble floor in the foyer? Maybe T. C. had finally arrived.

  Lane flew down the stairs, but came to an abrupt halt when she saw Buddy Lawler waiting for her at the bottom. He’s the chief of police, she reminded herself. Even if he doesn’t want to arrest Miss Edith, he’ll have no choice. And once he learns that she has killed Mary Martha—Buddy will go crazy when he finds out that the girl he’s loved since they were kids has been murdered by her own mother.

  “What are you doing here?” Buddy asked.

  Lane took several tentative steps farther down the stairs. “I could ask you the same question.”

  “T. C. told me about your telephone call,” he said. “I told him that I’d handle the situation.”

  “Then, T. C. isn’t coming?”

  “Whatever police business there is here, I’ll be the one to handle it.”

  “All right.” A peculiar uneasiness settled in Lane’s stomach. “But I’d think it would be easier if you let T. C. arrest Miss Edith.”

  Why was Buddy so pale? Why was he sweating so profusely when the temperature was only in the low eighties today? And why were his hands trembling?

  Lane stopped at the foot of the stairs, instinct warning her that she couldn’t trust Buddy, that even if he was a policeman, his first loyalty was and always had been to the Graham family and not to upholding the law.

  “Get Miss Edith a glass of water,” Johnny Mack instructed the housekeeper.

  Mrs. Russell nodded, hurried into the adjoining bathroom and returned with a glass, which she handed to her employer. Then she glanced at Johnny Mack. “I can’t believe that Miss Mary Martha’s really dead. But she is, isn’t she?”

  “Yes,” he replied.

  Mrs. Russell clasped her hands together and shook her head sadly. “She was fine earlier today. But this afternoon when I brought her a nice bowl of ice cream, she was…” Mrs. Russell nodded to the bowl which lay in the middle of the floor, its melted chocolate contents staining the area rug. “She enjoyed a little treat in the afternoons.” The housekeeper continued shaking her head. “I panicked when Miss Edith told me that Miss Mary Martha was dead. I didn’t mean to scream. I just don’t understand what happened. How did she die?”

  “She was smothered,” Edith said quite calmly, then lifted a satin pillow from the floor. “With this.”

  “Oh, Lord have mercy!” Mrs. Russell said.

  “Why did you do it?” Johnny Mack asked. “How could you have killed her?”

  “I—I…. You think I smothered Mary Martha?” Edith gazed at him, an expression of surprised disbelief on her face. “I didn’t kill my daughter. He did.”

  “Who did?” Johnny Mack asked, fear clawing at his throat.

  “Buddy did. He said that he killed her because he loved her. He did it to protect her, to keep her from spending the rest of her life locked up in a mental hospital.”

  “Buddy did this?”

  “Yes, he did it because he loves her so dearly. Everything he’s done, he’s done to protect her, just as I have. He killed Jackie when she overheard a conversation between Buddy and me and she tried to blackmail us. And he shot you. And he tried to kill Will.”

  “And you knew what he was doing and didn’t do a thing to stop him.”

  “By the time I realized just what lengths he’d go to in order to keep the truth from coming to light, it was too late for me to do anything. Buddy and I were in this together. I couldn’t turn him in without revealing that Mary Martha had killed Kent.

  “I had no idea that he’d actually…that he would take her pillow and smother her. I followed him upstairs and found him doing it. I tried to stop him, tried to pull the pillow off her face, but—” Edith broke down and flung herself across her daughter’s lifeless body.

  “Stay here with Miss Edith,” Johnny Mack told a stunned Mrs. Russell.

  The police had to be alerted that their chief was a murderer. Buddy Lawler was a dangerous man, one whose actions were unpredictable. Lane was alone downstairs. Lillie Mae and Will were alone next door. And no local policeman would question the chief if he showed up at either house. Johnny Mack’s guts tightened, and he sensed danger close by. He had to get to Lane. Now.

  When he reached the landing, he heard voices. Lane was talking to someone. A man. He stopped at the head of
the stairs and looked down into the foyer. Buddy Lawler glanced up at him, and their gazes locked for a split second.

  “Johnny Mack is upstairs with Miss Edith.” Lane lifted her foot and eased backward, up one step. “Let me tell him that you’re here.”

  Buddy rushed Lane before Johnny Mack could reach her. He clamped his hand over her mouth, twisted her arm behind her back and dragged her off the stairs and into the foyer.

  “Don’t hurt her!” Gut-wrenching fear dampened Johnny Mack’s face with perspiration as he ran down the stairs.

  “You stop right where you are, Cahill,” Buddy warned.

  Johnny Mack froze to the spot, halfway down the stairs, halfway to Lane. “Let her go. You don’t want to add another murder to the list, do you? Lane’s never done a thing to you.”

  Buddy unsnapped his holster. Johnny Mack realized he could never make it to Lane in time. He was too far away. He watched helplessly as Buddy withdrew his Magnum and aimed the weapon at Lane’s head.

  Buddy eased his hand away from Lane’s mouth and down to her throat. “Tell your lover goodbye.”

  “Buddy, please, you don’t want to hurt me.” Lane spoke to her abductor, but her gaze settled on Johnny Mack’s face.

  “You’re right, I don’t want to hurt you,” Buddy said. “But I didn’t want to hurt Mary Martha either. I had no choice. I did what I had to do. She was too sweet, too fragile to endure years in a mental hospital. I knew she’d rather be dead than to go through that.”

  “You killed Mary Martha?” Lane gasped.

  Trembling from head to toe, Buddy tightened his hold on Lane and dragged her backward, toward the partially open front door. Johnny Mack waited until Buddy had taken Lane outside before he ran the rest of the way down the stairs. He had to find a way to stop Buddy. The man wasn’t thinking straight; he was acting irrationally. There was no telling what he would do next. Where the hell was T. C.? He should have been here by now. A blood-chilling thought crossed Johnny Mack’s mind—what if T. C. had told Buddy about Lane’s call and that was why he had shown up? What if T. C. wasn’t on his way to the Graham house?