by Rita Herron
No other suspects were even considered. No one had thought to investigate the Stantons’ personal lives. The couple had had no money to steal, so robbery couldn’t have been a motive.
Only meanness could, Lumbar had stated. Meanness that came from the likes of out-of-control teenagers like Matt. The sheriff had even commented that he’d never had kids for fear they’d turn out like Matt.
Matt frowned. If he had a son, would the child turn out to be a hellion like he had been? Matt shook off the ridiculous thought, wondering where it had come from. He’d long ago given up illusions of marriage or a family. Maybe aggression did run in the family. Maybe the Mahoney genes were completely skewed with violent tendencies.
No, the best he could hope for was a good job, to become a lawyer.
Weary and frustrated, he stood and paced across the cold room. Tomorrow he’d start probing around town. Find out who might have had a motive for killing the Stantons.
He’d talk to Ivy. See if she remembered anything else.
He crossed the small, dusty room and glanced through the fog-coated window toward her cabin. The image of her frightened green eyes haunted him. The way she’d cowered from him one minute, then touched his cheek so gently the next. Was she sleeping peacefully in the cabin next door? Or was she haunted by nightmares just as he was?
Ivy thought remembering them would make them go away.
But would it, or would it only put her in more danger?
SHE WAS RUNNING through the graveyard, weaving in and out of the maze of tall tombstones. Blood streaked one stone monument, words scrawled in brown letters that said death was coming. The monster was right behind her. Clawing at her feet. Trying to drag her down into the ground. The earth opened up in front of her, an empty black hole. Two hands reached for her, pulling at her ankles….
She screamed and pumped her legs harder. Her muscles cramped. A shrill sound pierced the air. Mutilated chickens dropped from the sky in front of her. A skeleton rolled across the ground, brittle bones turned to ashes. Empty eye sockets stared.
Her mother’s…
No…
Then her father ran toward her, his hands stretched out, fists waving. But this time she held a knife. He panted, coming closer, the scent of his foul breath on her face. She lifted the knife and plunged it into his chest….
IVY JERKED AWAKE, TREMBLING and hugging the covers to her as she searched the shadow-filled room. Had she heard a scream, or had it been her own? And in her dream…had she killed her father?
Could that be possible? She’d only been eight, but still…
The piercing sound filled the room again, and she realized it was her cell phone. George Riddon had called right when she’d gotten in bed, but she’d let her voice mail pick it up. But she couldn’t keep avoiding him. They had to discuss work. “Hello?”
“Ivy?”
“George?”
“Yeah, it’s me. I…wanted to see if you were okay. You didn’t answer your phone last night.”
“I’m sorry, George. I was so tired I collapsed into bed.”
“Ivy, what’s going on?” He sounded agitated now. “You’re not sleeping well again, are you? Did you have another nightmare?”
“Yes,” she admitted as she ran fingers through her tangled hair, trying to unwind the knots. “But I’m fine now.”
“You want to talk about it?” His tone softened from businesslike to personal.
“No. I…I’m okay.” She had to change the subject, steer them back to a safer topic—work. “I’ve gathered some notes on a few of the legends. I’ll e-mail them to you when we hang up. And I’ve already snapped some photographs for the spread.”
“Great. Are you about ready to wrap it up and come home?”
“No. I want to get photos of the hollow itself, and there’s a small church called the Chapel of Forever I intend to include. An interesting lady named Lady Bella Rue lives on the outskirts of town. Everyone says she practices hoodoo. Let me talk to her, and I can add a special segment on black magic.”
“Sounds like the piece is coming along. When do you think you’ll be back in Chattanooga?”
Ivy stood and walked to the window, then pushed the curtain aside and peered through the glass. Darkness still bathed the woods, a storm filling the sky with mottled gray clouds. The bloody warning registered in her mind again, then Matt Mahoney’s troubled eyes. The scar on his face. The invisible ones that he couldn’t hide.
“I don’t know, George. Maybe another week.”
“That long? Gosh, Ivy, I miss you. I could come and help so you can finish sooner.”
In the distance, sunlight fought to break through the clouds. But more rain rolled above the mountaintops. “George, I thought I explained that I need to be alone here so I can deal with my past. And there are stories about evil happening when it rains. I might be able to do something with that.”
A long tense silence followed, but Ivy was too busy watching Matt walk outside his cabin to fill it with chatter. He was shirtless, his broad chest peppered with dark hair, the muscles in his arms enormous. He scratched at his chin where thick beard stubble grew, and glanced at her cabin. For a moment, she felt as if he was looking at her, as if he saw her in her nightgown through the window. Her skin tingled and burned, a warm feeling pooling in her stomach as if he’d touched her.
“Listen,” George said, sounding concerned as he broke the quiet, “I wouldn’t be in the way. I only want to help you, be with you, Ivy.”
Guilt at the way she’d put him off surfaced, but she glanced at Matt again and tamped it down. She’d never misled George. “No, George, I really need to do this by myself. Please try to understand.”
“Let me support you, be a friend. That’s all I’m asking for now.”
But he did want more, and they both knew it. Undertones of the truth reverberated in the hurt tone in his voice.
“I wish you could let the past go,” he finally murmured. “I don’t want to see you suffer anymore, Ivy. It hurts me to watch you in pain.”
More guilt assailed her. But George needed to accept that a romantic relationship between them was never going to happen. And if he continued to push her, she might have to sever their business relationship, as well.
EILEEN MAHONEY WAS ABOUT to go out of her mind, and now her oldest boy was back to tip her over the edge the rest of the way. She put a kettle on for coffee, then hurried to the bathroom for her morning rituals. The day she’d seen that TV broadcast of her son being released, she’d known there would be hell to pay. She’d fretted for a whole week, expecting him at every turn. And sure enough, on that seventh day, he’d come knocking on the door, waving that piece of paper just like he was somebody she ought to listen to.
As if he hadn’t shamed her enough fifteen years ago.
As if she hadn’t sacrificed her heart, her soul and sanity already to try and save him.
But in the end, nothing had made a difference.
Now he had to show his sorry face and stir up trouble again. What had happened to her young’uns to make ’em all turn out so rotten? First, Matt being mean as a snake when he was little, fighting with his daddy ever whichaway and that. Then getting arrested for stealing. Then getting locked up for butchering the Stantons. It was a wonder he hadn’t knocked up some poor girl and left Eileen with a bastard grandbaby to raise.
And her other two—Benji and Robbie… Land sakes alive, they had about done her in. She’d thought that when Benji got accused of killing that kid and disappeared, the Lord would spare her any more pain. And when Robbie had joined the service, she’d actually believed one of her boys might do her proud. Then he’d gone missing… AWOL, they said.
It was a wonder she wasn’t in the crazy house, like old Miss Mazy, who pulled all her hair out when her boy turned bad and shot his sister last year.
Another month of rain.
Lord help, would it ever stop?
She swiped a washcloth across her face, nearly jumping out of h
er skin when she heard a knock on the front door. What if he’d come back again? She might have to call the law.
Hands shaking like Ms. Hattie once did with the palsy, she tugged her tattered housecoat around her shoulders, then peered out the window. No way would she open the door to the likes of her son, not when she was alone. But the sheriff’s patrol car sat in her drive, pretty as you please. Maybe he’d come to tell her that he’d locked Matt back up again, and she wouldn’t have to worry about him for another few years. By then, she’d probably be in her grave, anyway. God willing, she was ready anytime. But she didn’t want the rest of the town gossiping that her boy had killed her.
“I know’d that mean Matt Mahoney would murder her one day,” Ms. Hattie would say.
“How’d he do it? Butcher knife?” someone else would ask.
“Heard tell he locked her in the trunk of the car, drove it in the kudzu pit and left her there to suffocate.”
No, sirree. The Mahoneys had fed the town grapevine plenty as it was. And there were still some secrets they didn’t know. Some they never would….
The knock sounded again, and she rolled her shoulders to ease the knot of tension as she tottered to the front door and unlocked it. Mercy, her knees were killing her this morning. That rain drove her arthritis plumb crazy.
“Morning, Mrs. Mahoney.”
Sheriff Boles tipped his hat, and she smirked. He acted like he was important these days, but she remembered when he’d been nothin’ but trouble hisself.
“I hate to bother you so early, but I have to ask you a couple of questions.”
She held him at the door, refusing him entrance. It wasn’t proper, her not being dressed. She wasn’t like those whores down on Red Row. “If this is about that boy of mine, I know he’s back in town.”
“Then he did drive out here last night?”
She nodded, clutching her housecoat to her neck. “Why? Did he do something again?”
The sheriff shrugged and glanced across the front yard. “What time was he here?”
“About dark. But I didn’t let him in.”
“Do you know where he was going when he left?”
She shook her head. “What’s going on, A.J.?”
He tilted his head, his hat shading his eyes. She’d never quite trusted A.J. Back in high school, all the no-account boys had worn their hats pulled down to hide their eyes ’cause they was stoned. A.J. still wore his hat thataway.
“Dora Leigh Werth was murdered last night. We found her body in the junkyard, under the kudzu.”
Eileen swallowed, fingernails clasping the housecoat again. “I know’d when he come back they’d be trouble. But why in God’s name would he kill old Dora Leigh?”
“I TOLD YOU, I HAD no reason to kill Dora Leigh Werth,” Matt said. Although he wasn’t surprised to find A.J. on his doorstep at breakfast, already wielding accusations. “I didn’t even know the woman.”
“Then how can you explain the fact that she was murdered last night, only hours after you arrived back in town?” A.J. asked. “And she was stabbed in the back with a kitchen knife. Then strangled by the kudzu and left in the junkyard.”
Just like Ivy’s father, Roy Stanton.
A.J. didn’t even have to say it. Matt heard the implication.
“Hell if I know. There have been other murders in Kudzu Hollow since I’ve been in jail, and I didn’t commit them.”
“But this one is too similar to the one you…to the Stanton killings.”
It was too late. A.J. had said it. Matt would always be a murderer to his mother, to the town. But he’d thought his one-time best friend honestly believed him.
“Dammit, A.J.” He dropped his head forward, rubbing his neck to calm his raging temper. He refused to let A.J. see how much his deception hurt. Matt was a grown man now. He hadn’t had any friends in forever. He didn’t need one now.
“Maybe someone murdered her to set me up again. The same person who left that bloody message and chicken on Ivy’s pillow.” He paced, his boots pounding the wooden floor of the cabin. He felt like a caged animal. He could not be locked up again like a savage. Not for another crime he hadn’t committed. He’d rather die first.
“I’d be a fool to come here and kill someone my first night in town,” Matt continued. “You think I want to go back to jail?”
“I don’t know.” A.J. narrowed his eyes, grasping. “Maybe you don’t know how to handle being out. I’ve heard of it happening. Some guys like the security. Prison gives them a free place to live, food. They don’t have to work.”
Fury heated Matt’s veins. “Well, I’m not one of them, A.J. I didn’t deserve to go to jail fifteen years ago, but let me tell you, it was hell. Pure hell. Every damn day, I dreamed about freedom. About what I was missing. About the things we talked about doing. The girls we wanted to date. The cars we planned to drive. I may not have had big career dreams, but I sure as hell didn’t intend to live my life in the state pen being turned into some kind of…” He couldn’t say it.
Shame seared through him.
He thought he saw pain flash in A.J.’s eyes.
“I thought you were my friend back then,” Matt said. “I came looking for you that night to tell you what happened, but I couldn’t find you anywhere.”
“I was at home—”
“The hell you were. I know for a fact that’s a lie. I came by—”
“I was drunk.” A.J. sucked in a harsh breath. “I passed out in the backyard, in the garage.”
Matt stared at the corner of A.J.’s eye. It was twitching. It used to do that when he lied.
Was he lying now? And if so, why?
IVY SPOTTED THE SHERIFF’S car at Matt’s cabin, and worry nagged at her. Why was he visiting so early? Had he discovered the identity of the person who’d threatened her? If so, why wouldn’t he have come to her?
Then again, before he’d left he’d received a call about a murder. Maybe that explained his visit.
Fear coated her throat as she swallowed. Surely he didn’t think Matt had ridden into town and killed someone last night?
Not the Matt who had phoned the sheriff when he’d seen the terror in her eyes. Not the young boy who’d carried her to safety in the junkyard fifteen years ago. Not the one who’d slept in the car next to her to protect her.
She hadn’t defended him fifteen years ago, but she had to now.
Furious, she shrugged on a raincoat over her denim skirt and blouse, then braced herself against the wind as she crossed the damp grass toward Matt’s cabin. The two men had stepped outside onto the porch. Matt’s gaze latched onto hers, his eyes shooting over her, questioning. Sheriff Boles stared blatantly, tilting his hat so she could see his raised eyebrows. A flicker of male interest appeared in his eyes and sent a shiver through her.
“Good morning, Miss Stanton.”
“Is it?”
His mouth twitched sideways. “Not really, but I was trying to be pleasant.”
“Did you find out anything about the intruder in my cabin last night?”
“Haven’t talked to forensics yet. I’ll let you know when I do.”
Matt cleared his throat. He’d shaved, showered and dressed in jeans and a white shirt that contrasted with his dark skin and hair. But she remembered him bare chested and her cheeks reddened.
“What’s going on here?” Ivy asked.
“The sheriff was just leaving,” Matt said in a cold voice.
“I came to question Matt about Dora Leigh Werth, the woman we found murdered in the junkyard last night.”
“I don’t know her,” Ivy said.
“And I explained that I don’t know the woman, either,” Matt said, a hint of steel in his voice.
The sheriff jammed his thumbs in his belt loops. “She has a teenage son. He was pretty torn up.”
“That’s a shame,” Ivy said. “Do you have any leads?”
“I’m working on it.” The sheriff cut his eyes toward Matt, who stiffened, his lips pressing
into a thin line. “I told you to leave town last night, but now you’d better stick around.”
“You can’t possibly think that Matt killed her?” Ivy asked. “Because he was innocent fifteen years ago. In fact, Matt picked me up and carried me to a van to hide out, then he stayed in the car next to me to protect me.”
A.J. rocked back on his heels. “You remember what happened that night?”
“I’m starting to,” Ivy said, forcing a strength into her voice that she didn’t feel. “And before I leave, I hope to remember the rest.”
A long, tense second ticked by. “Then see me when you do,” Sheriff Boles said. “I’ll make certain the killer is punished.”
Ivy nodded, although the menacing look in the lawman’s eyes sent another wave of icy chills down her spine.
The sheriff turned and stalked toward his police car, and Matt swung her around. “Ivy, I don’t need anyone fighting my battles for me. And you shouldn’t go around confessing that you remember things. It’s too dangerous.”
“I…simply told the truth.”
Matt’s jaw tightened. “I’m not sure you can trust A.J.”
“You think A.J. might be involved? That he knows something about my parents’ murders?”
Matt shrugged. “He’s changed.”
“You two were good friends when you were teenagers, weren’t you?” Ivy asked softly.
He nodded, and she could almost read his thoughts. He and A.J. weren’t friends anymore. Now Matt had no friends.
“Just don’t go announcing that your memory is returning. If the killer is still around, he may come after you.”
She flinched. Matt was right about the danger. But he was wrong about not having any friends. She would be his friend if he would let her.
“Then we’d better figure out who killed my parents, Matt, because I’m not backing down or running away this time.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEY HAD TO FIND her parents’ murderer.
Ivy had made the statement as if he and she were working together.