“You was damned happy to do it at the time.” Watford’s lips curled with contempt. “You always wished you was Pauline’s daughter. Well, you got what you wanted, the money, the good life. And all you had to do was keep your mouth shut.”
Amy spun to face Tom and cried, “He made me do it! He said he’d kill me if I didn’t do what he said.”
“He never would have!” Bonnie rushed to her daughter and enveloped Amy in an embrace. “I wouldn’t let him hurt my little girl.”
Amy shoved Bonnie away. “You’re a monster just like he is! You killed my sister. She was your daughter too, and you choked her to death right in front of me.”
“She hurt me so much.” Bonnie plucked at Amy’s coat sleeve, only to have her hand pushed away. “I just wanted her to love me. I was her mother, but she acted like I was nothin’ but trash. She said all those hateful things, and I just couldn’t stand her talkin’ to me like that.”
“You’re crazy, you’ve always been crazy,” Amy said. “How could you expect Mary Lee to love you? She didn’t know she was your daughter. You thought she’d fall into your arms when you told her.”
So that was what happened. Tom imagined the chaotic scene, the horrified disbelief on the real Mary Lee’s face when she learned her whole existence was a lie. He kept his eyes on Watford, alert for any sudden action to stop the family’s dark secrets from spilling out of Amy and Bonnie.
“Well, you know something?” Amy went on. “I feel the same way she did. I’d rather be dead than be your daughter. Are you going to murder me too to keep me quiet about what you’ve done? Or maybe you’ll get him—” She spat the word in Watford’s direction. “—to kill me with an ax like he did Pauline.”
Bonnie slapped her in the face and knocked her sideways. Amy raised a fist to hit back.
“That’s enough!” Tom barked.
Amy’s hand hovered, then dropped.
“Stand against the wall,” Tom said. “Both of you.”
“Shut up,” Watford said. “You’re not givin’ the orders here.”
The mantel clock chimed the hour. One. Two. Three.
Holly, who’d been scrunched into a corner of the couch, looked up at Watford and demanded, “Which one of you killed my mama?”
“Your sorry mother was gonna turn her own family in,” Watford said. “You want to know what a connivin’ little bitch she was? She tried to fool me, told me she was gonna do what I said, get on a bus and leave and keep her mouth shut. She even got me to drive her to the station and watch her get on the bus. Then soon as she thought I was gone, she got right off and run into the alley straight toward the sheriff’s office. If I hadn’t caught up to her—”
“You killed Jeannie?” Bonnie said, her stricken eyes on her husband. “You swore to me last night that you didn’t have anything to do with it.”
He was an ax murderer, Tom thought, and his wife was upset because he lied to her. For a wild second, Tom felt like laughing.
“You killed my mama.” Holly rose from the couch. “You’re not gettin’ away with it.”
“Shut up and sit down or I’ll kill you too,” Watford said. “You’re no better than your mama.”
“Holly,” Tom cautioned. “Sit down.”
She didn’t seem to hear. She moved to the hearth, picked up the iron poker Watford had dropped, and advanced on him. “And you’re not hurtin’ Dr. Goddard.”
When Holly raised the poker, Watford loosened his grip on Rachel and turned the gun on Holly. Rachel hooked a foot around his ankle and shoved her elbow into his stomach. He grunted and the gun went off, the noise exploding in the room.
Tom lunged. The carpet seemed to suck at his boots like quicksand, yet he reached Watford by the time plaster started raining from the ceiling.
Tom knocked Jack to the floor and fell on top of him, a knee in his stomach. Jack got his pistol up and pointed it at Tom’s face. Pressing one hand hard on Watford’s throat, Tom raised his gun and cracked the butt into the man’s wrist. Bone crunched. Watford uttered a strangled scream and dropped the pistol. Brandon scooped it up.
Doors banged open as the other deputies stormed into the house from front and rear. Boots pounded through the hallway. Bonnie screamed when the men burst into the room with guns drawn. She cowered at the approach of the Blackwood twins, but as soon as they touched her she started slapping and kicking. They grabbed her by the arms and forced her against the wall.
“Get your hands off my wife!” Jack yelled. He bucked, trying to throw Tom off him.
Tom gripped Jack’s injured wrist hard enough to make the man let loose a wail of pain. “Settle down and shut up,” Tom ordered, “or I’ll break something else.”
Where was Rachel? He glanced around and found her huddled with Holly, safely out of the fray.
Just then he spotted Amy trying to edge along the wall to the door. “Stop her!” he called out, and Brandon sprang at her. She surrendered more meekly than Tom expected, sobbing as the cuffs clicked around her wrists.
Tom snapped cuffs on Jack and left him to the deputies. He bent over Grady, whose eyes fluttered open when he heard his name.
“I let them get in the house,” Grady said in a hoarse whisper. “My fault. Sorry…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Tom said. “Don’t talk. I’ll get an ambulance.” Darla was going to be furious, and she’d give Tom all the blame for her husband’s injury.
After he called for an ambulance, Tom stepped back into the living room and looked for Rachel. She stood at the fireplace now, gripping the mantel with both hands. Sweat soaked her hair and her face was chalk-white. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
Chapter Forty-three
“What a gorgeous morning!” Rachel stepped out of Tom’s truck into two inches of fresh snow. Soaring spruces and pines around the church parking lot looked like a Christmas card with their dusting of white and decorations of red cardinals and blue jays. “It’s wonderful to feel free again.”
Tom rounded the rear of the truck. “Thanks for coming with me. I drive out this way all the time, but I haven’t been to their graves since they were buried.”
They walked past rows of headstones, their boots laying down the first footprints in the new snow. The Bridger family plot was on the far side of the cemetery.
During the drive, Tom had stayed quiet, and his hands had gripped the steering wheel as if he were bracing for an ordeal. Rachel was bursting with questions, but she’d allowed him his silence. Now, walking with him toward his family’s graves, she was relieved when he spoke.
“You’ll be glad to know Jack Watford admitted setting the fire at the animal hospital. You don’t have to worry that somebody else is still running around free.”
“Good. I’d love to put all these crazy people out of my mind forever.” Rachel knew, though, that a long time would pass before she stopped thinking about the real Mary Lee, who’d grown up not knowing who she was. What had the girl felt in the last moments of her life, when the truth was so brutally laid out for her? The echoes of Rachel’s own past stirred up memories that ambushed her at odd moments and left her aching and empty. At times she was tempted to tell Tom about her life, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She might never allow him that close.
She had to focus on getting through the immediate future. Perry Nelson’s hearing loomed ahead, only a few days away, and she would have to be strong to confront him in court. She also had to prepare herself to face Luke again, because she knew he would seek her out when she went home for the hearing. Until she saw him, she couldn’t be certain whether she would let herself be drawn back into her old life or resist and keep moving forward, away from the past.
A gust of wind swept snow off the nearby trees and it fell over them in a wet, cold shower. Rachel tugged her coat collar around her neck. “Would you believe Shackleford called and asked Holly to visit him in jail? She said no.”
“Yeah, I he
ard,” Tom said. “I’ve told the jailer to restrict his phone privileges. He says he wants to be sure his daughter knows he didn’t kill anybody.”
“Oh, right, Mr. Innocent Bystander.”
“He helped hide Pauline and Mary Lee’s bodies, but Bonnie killed Mary Lee and Jack killed Pauline and Jean. Jack hasn’t admitted to killing O’Dell, but we found O’Dell’s rifle hidden in the Watford house and it had Jack’s prints on it. Mrs. Turner says after O’Dell shot me, he went to Jack for help, and he was so out of control that Jack was afraid he’d crack and spill everything if he got caught.”
“So Jack killed him with his own gun.”
“Right. He used the same gun to shoot at you and Holly, and he probably left the shells at the site so we’d think O’Dell did it.”
They paused and watched a mockingbird, with a red berry in its beak, land on a headstone in a flurry of scattered snow. The bird gulped and its throat bulged as the berry went down.
“Why did Shackleford help hide the bodies?” Rachel asked. “Why didn’t he turn Bonnie and Jack in?”
“Jack knew about the deal with Natalie McClure and threatened to pin the murders on Shackleford and Natalie. I think Shackleford was glad to see Pauline dead, but to hear him tell it, he ought to get a medal for trying to stop the killing. He claims he pulled Bonnie off Mary Lee, but it was too late, the girl was already dead. Then Pauline ran out the back door screaming for help, with Jack right behind her. Being the noble fellow he is, Shackleford tried to go to her rescue. She grabbed the ax from the woodpile to protect herself from Jack, but she was shaking so much she couldn’t hold onto it. Jack snatched it, Pauline ran into the woods, Jack went after her…You can imagine the rest.”
All too well. Rachel shuddered at the image of an ax coming down on the woman’s head.
“How’s Holly doing?” Tom asked.
“She’s completely adrift right now,” Rachel said. “She can’t stop wondering whether her grandmother knew Jean was dead all along and covered up for Jack.”
Tom shook his head. “No, I’m convinced Mrs. Turner believed Jean was alive. She told me she was scared to death of both Jack and Shackleford. We’re not charging her with anything. She did what she had to do to stay alive and keep Holly safe. By the way, Reed Durham and the prosecutor want to have a meeting with Holly. I told them I’d arrange for you to bring her in.”
“For heaven’s sake, hasn’t she given enough statements? Why does she have to go through that again?”
When Rachel glanced up at Tom, his lips twitched as if he were suppressing a smile. “It won’t be too rough this time. They need to clear up one more thing.”
Rachel stepped in front of him to make him stop and look at her. “What thing? What’s going on?”
“Oh, it’s nothing much.” Tom absently studied the treetops before bringing his gaze back to Rachel and allowing his smile to break through. “Just a little matter of Holly’s multi-million-dollar inheritance.”
Stunned, Rachel stared at him for a moment. Then she gave a short laugh and said, “You’re joking, right? It’s not very funny, Tom.”
“It’s true. Holly’s getting Pauline’s estate, once the courts get it away from Amy.”
“But how?” Rachel said as she tried to sort through the various inheritance possibilities in an insane situation like this one.
“It’s in Pauline’s will. Everything was supposed to go to Mary Lee. But if they died at the same time, and they did, it would all go to Pauline’s sister, Jean, and her daughter, Holly. Jean’s dead too. Holly gets it all.”
“Oh, my god,” Rachel said, beginning to believe it. “That’s fantastic.” Tom, grinning at her excitement, took her arm and they moved on. “Think what this will mean to her. She can go to college— She can do anything she wants to. She can have the kind of life she deserves.”
Rachel laughed out loud with pleasure of this surprise, but she fell silent when she saw that Tom had stopped at a double headstone. He crouched and brushed away drifted snow to reveal the names of his parents, John and Anne. Next to this site were the graves of Tom’s older brother, Chris, and his wife, Carol.
Rising, Tom slapped snow from his gloves. He looked down at his parents’ graves for a long time before he spoke in a voice hoarsened by unshed tears. “I guess I’ll never know the whole truth about Dad and Pauline. I want to believe Reed Durham, but I keep thinking that he’s got plenty of reason to lie about it.”
“You can choose to believe the best of your father,” Rachel said. “For your own sake.”
Tom nodded. “I know he loved my mother, to the day they died. And he was a great dad to Chris and me.”
“That’s all you need to know. That’s all you’ll ever need.”
They stood in silence for a moment longer, then turned and walked back to the truck, retracing their footsteps in the snow.
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Disturbing the Dead Page 32