Inside the Mountaineer, Rachel chose a booth in a rear corner, away from the hubbub of customers coming and going. She tossed her coat into the booth and slid in after it, then sat for a moment breathing deeply and trying to calm down. She had to get some answers from Holly before she talked to Tom again, and although she felt guilty for taking advantage of the girl’s emotional turmoil, she knew this was a perfect time to pry.
Holly sat opposite Rachel with her arms wrapped around her waist, her gaze vacant and her thoughts obviously still on the street with her father and cousin.
“This is a nice place, isn’t it?” Rachel said.
Holly gazed around as if seeing the restaurant for the first time since they’d entered. Rachel hoped she was comparing it to Rose’s diner. Bright and clean, The Mountaineer had green vinyl booths, pine tables, framed nature photos on the walls and two wagon wheels suspended from the ceiling as lighting fixtures.
“Are you okay?” Rachel asked.
Holly regarded her with bleak eyes. “Now he’s gonna hurt you because of me.”
“He can’t do anything to me,” Rachel said with a confidence she didn’t feel.
“You don’t know what he’s like. He’ll find a way.”
“He’s not going to hurt either of us. I won’t let him. The police won’t let him. You have a lot of people on your side, Holly.”
“Then he’ll take it out on my grandma. Maybe I oughta go back home.”
“No, you can’t let him—”
The waitress’ arrival cut Rachel off. After the young woman took their order and left, Holly leaned over the table and burst out in a fierce whisper, “I hate him! I’d have growed up with a mother if it wasn’t for him.”
Rachel laid a hand on Holly’s. She was aware of other customers looking their way. To hell with them.
“How is he responsible for your mother being gone?” Rachel felt as if she were coaxing answers from a child, not an eighteen-year-old.
“He— He—” Holly gulped. “I’m afraid to tell you.”
Rachel wanted to scream in frustration. What would it take to free Holly from her family’s grip? To drag her demons out into the open? “Please let me help you.”
“You have already,” Holly said. “You gave me a job, you let me move into your house. You went and got me, and you didn’t let Grandma stop you from takin’ me.”
“Why won’t they let you go? Do you know something they don’t want you to tell anybody?”
“I can’t—” Holly shook her head.
“Why are you afraid of your father? Has he ever hit you or—or anything else?”
Holly bit her lip and didn’t speak.
The son of a bitch. “Please tell me what he did. I’m your friend, I want to understand.”
Holly stared into space for a long moment before answering. “The last night I ever saw Mama, they were yellin’ at each other. I was so scared, I got under my bed. I covered up my ears, but I could hear them yellin’.”
“What were they fighting about?”
“I don’t know. She said she wasn’t gonna help him, she wasn’t gonna let him get away with something, I don’t know what. He called her awful names. And he said—” Holly fought back a sob. “He said he’d kill her if she went against him.”
Rachel’s chest felt so tight that she had to force each breath in and out. “What happened then, Holly?”
“He beat her up. He beat her so bad—” Holly squeezed her eyes shut. “Her face was all bloody, her nose and mouth. Her arm was hurt because he shoved her and she fell down and hit a table. He said he’d kill her if she called the law on him. Then he walked out and left her like that.”
“Did he come back later?”
Holly shook her head. “She put me to bed and pulled up the covers and—” Her hand rose to stroke her hair. “She touched me like that. She called me her darlin’ little girl and told me not to worry. And I went to sleep. I thought it was gonna be all right. But when I woke up, Mama was gone. I never saw her again. She didn’t even say goodbye.”
“Were her clothes gone?”
“Yeah. But she left me behind.”
Rachel squeezed Holly’s hands. “What did your grandmother say about your mother leaving?”
“She said Mama needed to go somewhere and find a job, and she’d come back for me. But she never did. She left because she was scared of him, and she was scared to come back.” Holly sniffled, yanked a tissue from her coat pocket and dabbed her runny nose. “But don’t you think she could’ve took me with her? If she really loved me.”
“Oh, Holly. I’m sure it broke your mother’s heart to leave you. There must be a good explanation.”
Rachel had no salve for wounds so deep. As long as Holly lived, she would always be a girl waking up to find her mother gone. If she learned her mother had been dead all these years, her body lying on a mountaintop a few miles away, would that final blow shatter her heart?
The waitress brought the food, glanced at Holly’s flushed face and puffy eyes, and served them quickly and silently. Rachel watched Holly drag a spoon back and forth through her soup. Let her eat. Leave her alone for now. But Holly would have to tell her story to Tom before long.
***
During the drive to the horse farm, Rachel’s gaze drifted every few seconds to the Range Rover’s rearview mirror, but for a long time the only vehicles she saw on the narrow country road were cars and trucks passing in the other lane. Then an enormous SUV seemed to appear out of nowhere, bearing down on them from behind. It was dark—blue? black?—but Rachel couldn’t tell if it was the same one Buddy had been driving when he’d followed her before. Her fingers squeezed the steering wheel and she held her breath as she stomped down on the gas pedal and sent her Range Rover flying over potholes and bumps. The SUV kept pace. Good God, he’s going to ram us. Rachel held on tight, determined to control her vehicle if he tried to force it off the road.
The blare of a horn jolted her, then the SUV swung hard to the left and sped by. As it passed Rachel got a look at the driver and saw the features of a stranger. “Idiot!” she muttered at him. “Grow up!” Her heart hammered wildly and she gulped air.
Beside her, Holly stayed silent, her face blank. She seemed immersed in her thoughts and oblivious to everything that had just happened. As soon as they reached the cottage, Rachel would call Tom. He had to be told that Troy Shackleford had beaten and threatened Holly’s mother before the woman disappeared. And Holly had to be protected from her father.
Where had Troy and Buddy Shackleford gone? While Rachel and Holly were in the restaurant, the two men had plenty of time to get to the farm, find their way to Rachel’s cottage, scout for a place where they could lie in wait.
Stop it. The Shacklefords were dangerous but not stupid. They wouldn’t try anything now, so soon after witnesses had seen them harassing her and Holly on the street. Besides, the farmhands would spot anybody skulking around in broad daylight. The farm was the safest place to be. And they were almost there. When Rachel saw the rail fence coming up on the left, she released a long breath and allowed herself to relax.
Along the right side of the road stretched acres of evergreens, planted in thick rows for harvest as Christmas trees. The winter sun cast a deceptively warm glow over the snow-covered landscape. Rachel slowed for the turn through the farm gate.
From the corner of her eye she caught a movement in the evergreens and the glint of sunlight off—what? She looked directly at the trees and saw it. A rifle barrel. Leveled at them.
“Holly!” she yelled. “Get down! Get down!”
Holly’s window exploded and she screamed and threw up her hands as glass showered into the Range Rover. A shard sliced Rachel’s cheek. Her window blew out. The shock of it made her let go of the steering wheel and the vehicle veered toward the ditch.
Another shot slammed into Holly’s door. Rachel grabbed the steering wheel and floored the gas. A third shot pie
rced the rear window.
Chapter Twenty-one
Tom raised the ax above his head and brought it down on the oak log. Not easy to do with one arm in a sling. The blow landed at the edge and shaved off a strip of bark.
“God damn it.” He tossed the strip onto the back porch in the direction of the kindling pile, and Billy Bob rose from his resting spot and shuffled over to sniff it.
Tom lifted the ax again, trying to ignore the dull throb in his other arm. God, he was sick of hurting and struggling to get the simplest things done. Sick of hanging around the house thinking about his father and Pauline McClure. The sheriff had ordered him to take the weekend off, but Tom thought it was crazy to be off duty at a time like this.
He slammed the ax down on the log and stared at the blade buried six inches in the wood. Had Pauline been running when her killer caught up and split open her skull? Did she know her life was about to end? Did she know why? The reason for many murders could be found in the victim’s own life. What had Pauline done to make her killer decide it was time for her to die?
Remembering Pauline’s note to his father, Tom tried to imagine Ed McClure sinking an ax into the head of the woman he loved. I’m not capable of it, Ed had said the day before. Of course he was. If he’d been driven crazy by jealousy, he might have had the strongest motive of any of the suspects.
Pauline’s blood relatives made likely suspects in theory, and they were the oddest and most secretive bunch Tom had ever come across, but he couldn’t figure out what motive any of them had to kill her. No one except Mary Lee had benefited from Pauline’s death, and she had to wait seven years to cash in on Pauline’s six-million-dollar estate. That much money would have been worth waiting for, though. What Tom needed was solid evidence that Mary Lee, comfortable with her own trust fund, had been willing to kill her mother to get a fortune that she would have inherited eventually anyway.
As for Shackleford and O’Dell, Tom’s father had suspected both but never came up with a scrap of evidence tying them to Pauline’s disappearance. The case stood exactly where Tom’s father had left it: plenty of suspects and motives, but no proof against anybody.
Tom turned away from the chopping block and started up the steps. He would change into his uniform and get back to work. Five days into a murder investigation, he had no business wasting time at home. Whatever he felt toward Pauline McClure, his job was to find her killer.
As he crossed the porch to the door, he heard the faint tinny ring of the kitchen telephone. Inside, he used his teeth to remove his right-hand glove before he snatched the receiver from the wall hook. “Yeah! Hello,” he barked as he started struggling out of his leather jacket.
“Tom, it’s Joanna McKendrick. You need to get out here.”
She sounded frantic. In the background Tom heard someone crying and caught snatches of words…kill me…come after me… He went completely still, his jacket half off. A clutch of dread squeezed his chest. “What’s happened?”
“Somebody shot at Rachel and Holly—”
“What?” Rachel. Good God. He lunged for the door, panic compelling him to move, to go to her, but the short phone line stopped him. “Are they—”
“They’re all right. Rachel’s got a little cut on her face, but— Just listen, okay?”
Staying silent was the hardest thing he’d ever done. His mind raced, gruesome scenes of carnage flashed before him. She’s not hurt, he told himself. She’s all right.
“They went to town,” Joanna was saying, “and on the way back somebody shot at them from my Christmas tree farm across the road. I’ve called 911, but I want you here.”
“I’m on my way,” Tom said, and dropped the receiver onto the hook.
He wrenched off the sling and flung it into the trash can. “Let’s go, Billy Bob.”
He needed his good arm for driving, and trying to hold the radio mike and join in the chatter was hopeless. All the right things were getting done, from the sound of it—deputies converging on the shooting site, State Police jumping in to provide support.
Why had Rachel and Holly left the farm after Tom warned Rachel to be careful? My own damned fault. He hadn’t specifically told her not to leave home, because he wasn’t convinced that Bonnie and Jack Watford were right—or truthful—about O’Dell being a danger to Holly. But somebody was after Rachel too, and that black widow spider, sent in a package carefully wiped free of fingerprints, was the proof. Why the hell hadn’t he been firmer? Because he hadn’t wanted Rachel to think he was giving her orders. He should have put her safety and Holly’s first instead of worrying about whether she’d think he was too bossy. And Rachel should have had more sense than to take chances.
Damn it, why couldn’t he get a handle on this case? Everybody he talked to seemed to be hiding something, and the truth about Pauline’s death lay beneath a web of lies that he hadn’t been able to penetrate. How much more violence would erupt in the present before he uncovered the truth about the past?
Near the farm gate, he passed two unoccupied cruisers on the main road. Orange traffic cones and flares protected a scattering of glass on the pavement. When Tom roared up the farm lane to Joanna’s house, he saw another cruiser in the driveway behind Joanna’s Jeep Cherokee and Rachel’s Range Rover.
Tom parked in front of the house, and with Billy Bob beside him he strode across the snow-covered lawn to the Range Rover. Yellow crime scene tape wrapped the vehicle. A maze of cracks forked out around a bullet hole in the rear windshield. Ragged outlines of glass hung in the two front seat windows. He found a hole in the passenger door two inches below the window. Pushing the yellow tape up out of the way, he opened the door for a look inside. No exit hole. The bullet was in the door.
From the pattern of glass shards on the seats and floor, Tom guessed that one bullet had gone straight through and out the driver’s side, taking part of the window with it. The shot had probably missed Rachel’s head by inches. If she’d been sitting forward, if the car had been in a slightly different position— Jesus Christ. Fighting a wave of nausea, he slammed the car door and headed for the house.
Brandon, white-faced and wide-eyed, answered the bell. “Hey, Boss. Sergeant Murray and the Blackwoods are searching the shooting site. I checked around over here and didn’t see any sign the shooter’d crossed the road, so—”
Brandon rattled on, but Tom didn’t listen. He needed to find Rachel. He followed the murmur of voices into the living room on the left. The drawn draperies, the blazing fire, the soft glow of lamps made the room seem smaller than it ever did in the blaze of sunlight. Rachel sat on the brown leather couch with Holly. When she rose and came toward him Tom felt the first moment of peace he’d known all day.
He wanted to put his arms around her, but when he took her by the shoulders to pull her close he felt her resist and realized he was in serious danger of making a fool of himself. He touched her cheek. The bandage there was too damned close to her eye for comfort. “How bad is that?” he asked.
When she leaned to pet Billy Bob her hand trembled, but she spoke calmly. “Just a scratch. I’m fine. I think he was trying to hit Holly. Thank God he didn’t.”
“Are you sure it was a man?”
Rachel frowned. “No, now that I think about it. I don’t believe I saw anybody. Just a rifle barrel, sticking out from a tree at the edge of the road.”
“Did you get any idea of height? How high up was the gun held?”
She ran both hands through her hair, pushing it back from her face. Her flushed skin and her quick, short breaths betrayed the turmoil she was trying to hide. “I can’t even guess. It happened so fast.”
“The shooter must have been waiting for you to come back. Which means he knew you’d gone out.”
“Right.” Rachel glanced at Holly, who sat on the sofa with Brandon, and lowered her voice. “Could we talk in the hall?”
Out of Holly’s hearing, Rachel told him about their encounter with Troy Shackl
eford and his nephew Buddy. “They would’ve dragged her into a car and taken her away if I hadn’t stopped them.”
Tom listened with mounting exasperation. “What were you doing in town anyway? I asked you last night to be careful.”
Anger flared in her eyes. “Holly needed some new clothes, and I thought we’d be okay if—”
“Clothes? You almost got killed because you went shopping?”
“You told me to be careful, you didn’t say we had to hole up at home in fear for our lives. But if you’re determined to blame me for this, go ahead. I blame myself, okay? Mea culpa!” She struck her breast with her fist. “Satisfied?”
She was ready to crack, but Tom couldn’t summon the words to calm her. Aware that he was making matters worse, he said, “None of this would be happening if you hadn’t brought Holly home with you.”
“Don’t you dare throw that in my face! I did the right thing for her, and you’ll never make me regret it.”
“Hey!” Joanna called from the kitchen doorway. “What’s the matter with you two?” She marched toward them with a tray of cups filled with steaming tea.
Rachel glared at Tom, he glared at her, she turned her back on him.
“Here,” Joanna said, holding the tray out to Rachel. “You need something hot and sweet.”
Rachel took a cup of tea, and Joanna shot a reproving look at Tom. “You leave her alone. She’s been through enough. You ought to thank God she’s standing here alive.”
He did. When he thought of Rachel dying at the hands of some nutcase, an icy fist closed around his heart. But he didn’t answer Joanna, and she moved on to the living room.
One gulp of the hot liquid made Rachel gasp and wince.
“It’s too hot to drink that fast,” Tom said.
“Thank you for pointing that out.” Rachel set her cup on the hall table next to the phone. “If you’re finished trying to make me feel guilty, will you listen for a second?”
“Is it important? I’ve got a lot to do.”
“You might find it relevant to your work.” Folding her arms, she launched into a story about Shackleford beating up Holly’s mother, Jean Turner, the night Jean left. “I think he killed her. I think that second skeleton you found is Holly’s mother.”
Disturbing the Dead Page 18