Killing the Secret

by Donna Welch Jones

  “No.” Mariah grasped Lexie’s arm. “You’ll die too.”

  “Go to Clay,” Lexie ordered. Mariah kept her grip. Lexie clenched Mariah’s hand and escaped the arm lock.

  “Clay, don’t let her out of your sight.”

  Lexie knew the house had a basement. Maybe she could enter there and make her way to the first floor. She found a small rectangular window with dirt covering the bottom part. Dirt flew as her hands cleared the window. The glass crashed easily with the weight of her gun. She found herself staring at solid wood about four inches from the frame.

  “Is anyone in there?” she yelled.

  “We’re here,” a hoarse voice answered.

  “What’s in front of me?”

  “An old cabinet.” A long cough interrupted Jamie’s speech.

  “You three help me pull it down.”

  “Beth is hurt!” Loretta’s voice screeched.

  “Get her out of the way,” Lexie ordered. “When I say three, you two pull down from the sides, while I push. One-two-three.”

  The cabinet crashed to the cement. Lexie saw them below.

  “You two need to push Beth up.”

  “I can’t. The window’s too high!” Loretta cried out on the verge of hysteria. “She’s already dying. If I don’t get out of here, I’ll die, too.”

  Loretta stood on part of the mangled cabinet. Jamie gave her a boost with her cradled hands. Loretta grabbed Lexie’s hands and walked up the wall. When she reached the top, Lexie pulled her out of the window.

  “Come on, Jamie. You need to get out right now.” Lexie’s voice was firm.

  “No. I won’t leave Beth. She’s still alive.”

  Lexie heard Loretta screaming at Mariah above the sound of the fire. She looked back to see her running straight toward Mariah.

  “You tried to kill us, you bastard!”

  Mariah stepped to the side when Loretta got close. She crashed to the ground. Mariah ran into the woods.

  “Go get her! “Lexie yelled to Clay.

  Clay was running into the woods as Turner’s patrol car came speeding out of the thicket. It swerved to miss the fire truck. Clay ran back to his car and started the chase down the winding road.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Sweat trickled from every pore of Mariah’s body. The patrol car twisted with each bump and hollow in the curved road. At times the rear end of the car hung in the air as she pushed the gas to the floor. At ninety mph the patrol car squealed in protest.

  Fire trucks passed her. The sirens vibrated in her head and lightening pains shot into her temple.

  Truck after truck, patrol car after patrol car, and three ambulances shot rocks in the air around her as they sped by. They hurried to their official destination, paying no attention to the murderer they passed. Her mouth parted, allowing a prickly laugh to escape.

  Her rearview mirror caught the reflection of a cloud of dust descending upon her with rapid speed. The particles swirled then ballooned toward the sky. The dust from the two vehicles merged. Her body lunged forward as the impact of the other car bumper sent her car flying forward. Her foot smashed the gas pedal, as her aggressor increased his speed. She’d sooner die than spend the rest of her life in prison. Her hands froze on the steering wheel, forcing her body and shoulder motion to manifest the strength needed to force her vehicle off the road, and down the side of the giant hill.

  She careened past trees allowing the car only inches to squeeze through on either side. A boulder loomed ahead. She turned the wheel to the right missing the rock head on, but scraping down the driver’s side which sent a death-defying squeal into the air. The trees blurred together as the car shot ever downward. The rocky ledge and certain death were getting closer and closer.

  Mariah’s body deteriorated into a trembling mass. Her hands released the wheel as she pushed herself to the passenger side. The door handle responded to her frantic squeeze, and she fell out the door. Fallen branches stabbed her back, and rocks punctured her arms and legs. Her roll continued until her body wrapped around a tree. Her face slapped the exposed roots.

  The earth shook beneath her body and the sky became a panorama of fire. Her funeral pyre had erupted without her.

  Her body lay still. Her brain not sure if she’d ever move again. Long and short pains assaulted her entire body. Blood popped out of small indentions and oozed out of larger ones. The curve of her body released the tree trunk and she lay on her back. Wiggling her fingers and toes, turning her head in a no motion, Mariah began her exploration. She touched her face then smoothed off the dirt. Soothing her riddled hip with a gentle sweeping movement, she moved her hands to feel her knees and elbows, then bent with a great deal of pain. Soon her brain activated enough to make her wonder when her pursuer would appear. Wrapping her arms around the tree, she pulled herself up then rested her forehead on the bark for a moment before trying her legs. They worked—one sore, the other one throbbing in unison with the hip that impacted nature.

  The sound of running steps trickled into her aching head. The blonde curly hair of a young man in uniform appeared above her as she sank back to the ground. His face was a puzzle.

  “Come to confirm my death?” Mariah squeezed the words out of her tortured body.

  He stuttered the affirmative.

  “I will make you rich if you will help me.”

  His blue eyes widened, his tongue apparently tied.

  “You can have all the girls and booze you want and burn that stupid uniform just for a few minutes of your time.”

  “They’d catch me.”

  “Look at the fire and smoke in the valley. They’ll all think I died in the car crash. You’ll be a hero who drove me to my death.”

  Clay stared at her through bloodshot eyes.

  “Just get me to town. Let me take your vehicle. I’ll leave it at the Tulsa Airport.”

  “I got to get back up the hill.”

  “You won’t be long enough for anyone to notice. Just drive me to town. I’ll clean up at your place, and be gone. You’ll be a wealthy man.”

  “How much money?”

  “$100,000.00”

  “Not enough,” the blonde curls rippled with his shaking head.

  “All right, $250,000.00. I don’t have time to negotiate. We need to hurry.”

  “How’re you going to get it to me?”

  “You’ve got the upper hand. If I don’t pay; you can talk. I’ll send you the money when I get to Switzerland. Just don’t start flaunting it around or people will get suspicious.”

  “I’m not stupid.”

  The climb up to the road was slow and painful, but her new accomplice served as an adequate crutch, as well as her savior.

  Chapter Fifty

  “Help me!” Lexie yelled to the firemen.

  “I’ll go down,” one fireman offered.

  “No, you’re too big. I need to go.”

  An explosion sent spikes of fire skyward. Lexie turned to look down the hill in horror. “Please, God, not Clay.”

  She returned quickly to her task. “You two guys ease me down into the basement.”

  Her stomach scraped against the fragmented glass and dirt as they lowered her down onto the cabinet debris.

  She put the halter around Beth’s body. “Okay guys, pull her up easy.”

  Jamie and Lexie supported Beth’s lower body as the men pulled her through the opening.

  Lexie heard the chief yell for the EMSA people. She helped Jamie put on the halter. “Hold onto the rope. The men will pull you,” Lexie encouraged.

  Jamie grabbed the rope as burned fragments of the kitchen floor fell, hitting the basement floor and swirling around Lexie as she pushed Jamie toward the firemen.

  A few minutes later, the halter was lowered to Lexie and she started climbing up the wall. Finally, strong arms pulled her exhausted body out of the window.

  The EMSA team was working on Beth when Lexie and Jamie got to the ambulances.

  “Get in there a
nd lie down,” Lexie instructed.

  Jamie went without argument.

  “You need to be checked, too,” the chief advised.

  “I’m okay,” she muttered.

  As soon as Jamie was strapped in the ambulance, the attendants turned on the siren and headed toward the hospital.

  “Lexie!” a shaky voice called from behind her.

  “Clay!” Lexie wrapped her arms around his trembling body. “I was scared to death you’d crashed.”

  “Mariah went off the hill.” His voice was subdued. “Looked like a ball of fire. I ran down. There was nothing left.”

  Lexie heard her name being called then looked up to see Red coming toward her with long strides. He enveloped her in his arms as her legs buckled. He picked her up in one motion and carried her to a third ambulance.

  The oxygen allowed her body to relax. She no longer had to work so hard to breathe. The woman cleaned the glass cuts on her hands, arms, and midriff. Each time her eyes opened Red was beside her, so she allowed her eyes to shut again. He was keeping watch over her.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  “Wake up, Lexie,” the nurse said. “It’s time for your medicine.”

  Lexie wrinkled her forehead in an attempt to keep her eyes open, but they quickly closed as if by reflex.

  “Come on, Sis. If you can crawl through fire, surely you can open your eyes.”

  Lexie forced her puffy eyes open. She looked at her brother who sat beside her. “Don’t you have something better to do than harass hospital patients?”

  “My boss is off so I thought I’d play hooky.”

  Lexie’s tone went serious. “So what happened with the fires?”

  “Firemen worked most of the night. All that rain we’ve been getting helped some. They called in the volunteer fire departments from the three surrounding counties. There's still a few men working, making sure it doesn’t start up again.”

  “How about the area where Mariah’s car caught fire?”

  “Her car was a burned out shell. What a terrible way to die!”

  “In her case, it was the appropriate way to die,” Lexie said vehemently, “since that was how she planned to kill her former teammates.”

  “True. Anyway, the creek stopped the fire on one side and the firemen got it under control quickly. It was the house that took the work. Chief said that it probably saved the women’s life that Mariah locked them in the basement. The cement floor and walls slowed down the burn. If she’d locked them any other place in the house, they’d never have survived.”

  “Have you talked to Sean yet?”

  “No, that’s where I’m going next, but I wanted to talk to you first,” Tye answered.

  “He withheld evidence, so you need to charge him and let the judge decide his fate,” Lexie directed.

  “Lock him up?”

  “No, he’s not going anywhere but his front porch. Just have him tell you his story. I can’t separate the truth from the lies about his children. Maybe he’ll talk since Mariah is dead.”

  “Loretta didn’t shut up last night at the hospital,” Tye said with a grimace. “Adam interviewed her for over an hour and she spilled her guts, with numerous cuss words intermingled.”

  “I’d like to read that.”

  “As it happens, I brought you the paper. Wanted you to see Mariah’s story, not to mention Adam’s accolades to Sheriff Lexie.

  “Thanks, big brother. I guess you’re useful even when you’re playing hooky.”

  Tye reached down and ruffled her hair. “I’m going to see Sean and you need to get some rest.”

  Lexie unfolded the paper to view the front page. Two two-inch headlines monopolized the page: POLITICIAN’S WIFE DIES IN FIREY CRASH and SHERIFF WOLFE SAVES THREE LIVES introduced separate stories.

  Her eyes immediately went to Mariah’s story:

  Mariah Haverty Toleson is implicated in the murders of four women, including Abbey King, wife of local resident Gary King. Toleson attempted to murder three Diffee residents Friday night by locking them in a basement and setting the house on fire.

  Loretta Wells of Diffee unfolded a twenty-year-old saga last night after her near-death experience. Wells’ history explained why Toleson committed a series of murders to cover up her past.

  The story began near the Illinois River the day after the team won the Oklahoma Division of the Girls High School Basketball Championship.

  The eight: Heather (Hobart) Blanchard, Loretta (Baldwin) Wells, Terri (Davidson) Womack, Jamie Evans, Abbey (Lansing) King, Tina (Morris) Smith, Beth (Ross) Flanders, and Mariah were a source of pride to the people of the small town of Diffee, Oklahoma. Resident Ruben Thomas described the girls’ impact on the town.

  “’Town closed down every Friday night so we could all go watch the girls play. They were great! Their senior season was flawless—not a loss, not even close.’”

  Lexie turned to page three to continue Adam’s story. Adam reported that Wells said it was after the season ended, during a celebration campout at the lake, that the young women followed Mariah into the woods to play a trick on her. The joke ended abruptly when the team members saw a shocking sight—Mariah had a penis. The shocking story continued:

  “Our season and our reputations would’ve been left in ruins if anyone found out a male played on our team. So we swore never to tell Mariah’s secret,” Loretta confessed in tears.

  According to Loretta, Mariah was obsessed at the prospect of becoming First Lady. Wells believed this provoked the series of murders that started with Terri, Tina, Heather, and Abbey. Mariah’s plot was to end last night when she trapped Beth, Jamie, and Loretta in a burning house. Mariah’s plan would have succeeded had it not been for the detective work of Diffee County Sheriff Lexie Wolfe. Wolfe accumulated evidence and figured out who the killer was in time to rescue Beth, Loretta, and Jamie from the fiery deaths planned by Mariah Toleson.

  Beth and Sheriff Wolfe are recovering at the county hospital. Jamie and Loretta were examined at the hospital and released last night.

  “Terri’s husband, Ronald, who was charged with her death, will be released after a court appearance to drop the charges,” Lasell Detective Stan Johnson reported during a phone interview.

  Wade Cartwright, spokesman for Donovan Toleson, reported that Mr. Toleson doesn’t have a statement at this time regarding the tragic death of his wife, or the allegations of murder and attempted murder.

  Reading the long story made Lexie’s body feel like she’d been running for miles. Her eyelids shut out the paper, and it dropped to her chest.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Tye approached Sean’s porch. He hated confronting the old guy. Whatever he did, it was to protect his kids, not because he was a criminal. Getting Lexie to cut Sean some slack wasn’t going to happen. Hopefully, the judge had more empathy than his sister.

  The old man wasn’t seated on the swing. Tye’s gaze darted from the porch to the surrounding area. He called out, “Sean?”

  Tye saw the front door was ajar. Peering through the opening into the dark living room he saw the closed blinds and the curtains tightly drawn. Pulling the screen open a few inches he called, “Sean? Man, I need to know if you’re okay.”

  Wood on wood creaked somewhere in the room. It took a few seconds for Tye’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. Finally, pinpointing the location of the sound, he saw Sean rocking back and forth in an old chair. Every few seconds the chair squealed as if in pain from contact with the wooden floor.

  Sean’s eyes didn’t divert from the photo in his hands. Age crevices in his face caught the escaping tears.

  Tye sat down at the end of the sofa closest to Sean’s rocking chair. The steady rock and squeal was the only communication in the room.

  Tye didn’t know what to say, and even if he did know, this didn’t seem to be the time. He sat, waiting silently for the next squeal from the chair. In what seemed like an hour, but was probably twenty minutes, the squeal stopped and Sean moved his arm, plac
ing the photo in Tye’s hand.

  “This was my family—my wife Rose, my son Michael, and my daughter Mariah. They’re all gone now.” He grabbed the photo back from Tye and continued, “I’m so sorry Bud killed those women. I should’ve had him locked up after he drown Mariah. I couldn’t do it. He was my son, and the only family I had left.”

  Sean pulled the photo to his chest. The rock and squeal started again. “So sorry, so sorry everyone died.”

  “Tell me about your daughter, Mariah.” Although Tye said the words softly they sounded intrusive in Sean’s self-made tomb.

  “A beautiful girl. She sang like an angel. There were days when the thought of her smile and giggles was all that kept me sane,” Sean said tenderly.

  “How did she die?”

  The squeal and rock stopped. Sean’s voice boomed from his dark corner, “He killed her! I know he did!”

  “Did you see it?”

  “No. Michael said she drowned, but she didn’t. She swam like a fish—under the water, on top of the water, and diving into the water. He lied.”

  “Why did he lie?” Tye questioned in a gentle tone.

  Agitation crept into Sean’s demeanor. “He wanted to be Mariah Rose so he killed her. I let him become her, because he was so sad, so sad.”

  “I don’t understand how he became her.”

  “Fool!” Sean yelled. “It was easy.” His voice suddenly went to a monotone, “Nobody cared about us in Bogotá’. Who we were, or what we did, didn’t matter. I told them Michael drowned. I cut Mariah’s hair short, dressed her in his clothes, nailed her in a wood coffin and buried her. Michael’s name was on the tombstone. It’s as if she never was. I did that to my precious girl.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I retired from the Embassy. My commanding officer was glad to sign the paperwork. He thought I was going nuts after losing my wife and child. Looking back, he was probably right. Of course, he didn’t know the half of it.”

  Sean let out a moan then continued, “I took Michael to Switzerland as Mariah. The hormone treatments started then. Right before his senior year we moved back to Diffee to live in this old house that my folks left me. I was about broke. The doctor refused to do the sex reassignment surgery until after Michael spent a year as a female. Returning to Diffee seemed like the perfect solution. It was a cheap place to live and no one had ever met my children.”