The Truth We Bury: A Novel

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  Ken said, “The Dallas police might want to interview you. They might want to check out your phone.” He seemed suspicious, too.

  “Why?” Kate was visibly alarmed. “I’ve told you everything Becca said, everything that went on. I don’t know anything else.”

  “We’ll be in touch,” Ken said. He switched his glance to Dru. “A word?” he asked, and it was clear that he meant for her to follow him, that his intention was to speak to her alone.

  She walked with him and Daryl onto the front porch, her stomach in a fist.

  The sun was down, the light uncertain. Dru couldn’t read Ken’s expression, but when he spoke, his voice was grave.

  “I didn’t want to say this in front of the girls—they’re spooked enough—but there was a break-in out at the xL late this afternoon.”

  “Oh, no. Is everyone okay?” Dru thought of Jeb, the way he had collapsed earlier.

  “Yeah. Neither Jeb nor Lily was there.” Ken looked off into the street at a car that passed.

  “You think it was AJ?” Dru asked.

  “Whoever it was knew where the safe was and the combination. No muss, no fuss. In and out.” Ken swiped one hand with the palm of the other.

  “Along with the cash Jeb Axel kept in there, they took his late wife’s jewelry,” Daryl said.

  “We think they were probably staked out close by and saw Lily and Jeb leave,” Ken said. “They knew the house was empty, that it would be for a while.”

  “They knew the family hardly ever locks the doors,” Daryl added.

  “I bet they will now,” Dru said.

  Down the way, someone shouted for Angie. Dru recognized Angie’s mom’s voice. It was that time, dark thirty. Mothers wanted their kids home. It passed so quickly, Dru thought, the years when you exerted a measure of control over your children’s lives. One day you were changing their diapers, and the next, with those same hands, you were giving them the keys to the car.

  “We can’t be sure it was AJ,” Ken said.

  “But it could have been,” Dru said.

  “If it was, he’s got the resources now to leave the area, leave the country, if he chooses. He knows his way around international travel. He could even have connections—”

  Dru interrupted, “You’re—the police are watching the airports, I guess.”

  Ken nodded.

  Daryl said, “They’re stretched pretty thin in Dallas, like our department here in Wyatt. They’re handling a big case involving a councilman up there, but there’s a BOLO out on AJ. Law enforcement across the state is on the alert for him.”

  “That’s not to say we’re looking only at AJ,” Ken said.

  “So I heard,” Dru said, and when Ken raised his brows, she said, “The detective from Dallas who questioned Shea made it seem as if they suspect her. I heard it from Joy Westin, too, that the Dallas police asked her about Shea, but she was here, Ken, with me, all night on Tuesday. She had nothing to do with what happened to Becca, no knowledge of it whatsoever.”

  “It’s procedure,” he said, “questioning those closest to the victim.”

  “But you know Shea’s not involved, right?” Dru wanted Ken’s affirmation, his support. He didn’t give it to her.

  “It’s not my call,” he said, and then, perhaps relenting, he said, “Look, it’s too early in the investigation to rule out anyone at this point, but AJ Isley is the main focus, okay? You should keep an eye out.”

  “You think AJ may come here for Shea.” Dru felt a renewed jolt of alarm.

  “It’s possible,” Ken said. “You and Shea should be vigilant, which is good advice in any case. Keep your doors locked. Be aware.”

  “The note Leigh found, it’s written in the same lip liner as the note that was on Becca’s body, isn’t it?” Dru hadn’t wanted to mention it in front of the girls. “Joy told me.”

  Ken looked annoyed. “It’ll take the proper testing to determine if the two were written with the same material, and only an expert can say if they’re the work of the same person. You just need to take care of yourself and your daughter—”

  The front door opened. “Sergeant Carter?” It was Leigh’s voice. “Van and I didn’t want you to leave without us.”

  “No,” he said. “If you’re ready, we can follow you home now.”

  Once they were gone, Kate and Shea went with Dru into the kitchen. She wished she could keep going, out the back door, into the oncoming night. But she stopped and turned to face them, leaning against the kitchen counter, waiting for the question that was inevitable.

  Why did Ken want to talk to you?

  Shea was the one who asked.

  “Y’all were out there a long time.” Kate’s observation was oh-so-casual.

  Or was Dru imagining that? Her mind scrambled for clarity, direction. What could she say but the truth? But did she want to repeat what she’d been told by Ken in confidence in front of Kate, whom she was unsure she could trust?

  “Mom?” Shea mixed an element of warning into her query.

  “There was a break-in at the Axels’ this afternoon. Someone took a lot of cash and jewelry.”

  Shea’s eyes widened. It was a moment before she took it in, before surprise hardened into accusation. “By someone you mean AJ, right?” Her voice shook. “Did his granddad or his mom see him?”

  “No. They were out. Ken said they don’t have enough information yet to say who it was.”

  Shea put her fingertips to her temples, dragging her hair behind her ears.

  Kate put an arm around her waist, pulling her close. “It could have been anyone.”

  “If it was AJ,” Dru said, “he’s got what he needs now—the funds to leave here, the state—the US, if he wants to. It’s possible he’ll try to contact you, Shea, that he’ll try to talk you into leaving with him.”

  “Well, he hasn’t, if you’re asking,” Shea said, “and you can tell that to Ken for me.”

  “AJ may not be himself, honey. The man you remember, that you fell in love with—”

  “Stop.” Shea held up her palms at Dru. “There isn’t going to be a wedding. I’ve given up on that, but I am not giving up on AJ. He. Didn’t. Do. This. None of it. I don’t know who did, but it wasn’t him.”

  “All right, fine,” Dru said. She went to the table in the breakfast nook and picked up the tea glasses. Kate helped her carry them to the sink. Shea loaded them into the dishwasher. She walked Kate to the back door.

  “You sure you don’t want to spend the night?” Shea asked. “You’re off tomorrow, right?”

  “Yeah, and I would,” she said, “but I promised Erik I’d meet him at Bella Vista in the morning at six thirty. He wants to get a hike in before work.” Kate glanced over at Dru. “’Bye, Mama Dru,” she said.

  Dru smiled. “See you later, Katie gator.”

  In the predawn hours while walking, sleepless, through the house, keeping a vigil, Dru couldn’t get Kate’s secrecy about the texts she’d shared with Becca out of her mind. Why, if they meant nothing, hadn’t she mentioned them to Shea, at least? Dru knew Kate; she knew when Kate was afraid, and she would bet money the girl was afraid now. But of what or whom?

  11

  Lily was almost back to the ranch when her phone chimed again. This time she saw Paul’s name in the ID window, and instantly her heart was in overdrive. How much could it stand? How many more times could this happen, she wondered, before it would simply pound out of her chest?

  He was breathless when she answered and didn’t bother with a greeting. “Have the local cops gotten in touch with you?”

  Thinking he was talking about the break-in, Lily said, “No. They talked to Dad—”

  “Is he gone?”

  “Who? Dad?” Lily fumbled for sense.

  “No, damn it. AJ. Look, some guy down there at one of the private airfields called Bushnell and said he saw AJ talking to a pilot who flies for an oil-field service company out of Lubbock.”

  “Here in the Hill Country? When?�
��

  “Less than an hour ago.”

  “Which airfield?”

  “I don’t know. Bushnell said something about a lake.”

  “There are dozens of lakes and private airstrips all over the Hill Country.” Lily thought for a moment. “It wasn’t Monarch Lake, was it? That’s the lake nearest the ranch. But there’s no airfield there.”

  “Guy’s name—wait a sec, I wrote it down here somewhere.”

  Lily heard the rustle of papers being pushed around. She imagined Paul at his desk. It was huge. Topped with a mattress, she could nap on it.

  “Evers. Wylie Evers is his name. You recognize it?”

  “He’s a neighbor. His ranch, the Triple Oak, shares a boundary with the xL. Was Hershey the name of the lake? That’s close to the Triple Oak on the far north side.”

  “That’s it,” Paul said. “Lake Hershey is the location of the airfield.”

  “Is Wylie sure it was AJ?”

  “Not absolutely, according to Bushnell, but—”

  “Did he actually see AJ get on the plane?”

  “No. Where would he get that kind of money? I told Bushnell, my son works as a chef, no way could he—”

  “Paul?” Lily’s voice rose, tight, shrill. She couldn’t help it. “There was a break-in here this afternoon. Someone got into the safe and took Dad’s cash, five thousand dollars, and Mama’s jewelry.”

  “Where were you? Where was Jeb?”

  “Dad was out looking for AJ. I was at the grocery store. I’m on my way back now.” The lie came quickly, sounding hollow, tasting of shame. “Dad called the police, the Wyatt police,” she said when Paul didn’t respond.

  After several moments, she realized he was giving her an opportunity to see it, the ugly inevitability of the truth that seemed to be taking shape—that their son was the thief, and worse, he was guilty of murder. Not a victim but a perpetrator, a fugitive, a wanted man.

  “Dad?” Lily called, entering the back door, setting her purse and keys on the island.

  “Office,” he answered.

  He was sitting at his desk, writing, and he looked up when she appeared. “They want an inventory,” he said.

  Lily sat down. “The police? Of everything that’s missing,” she surmised.

  He nodded.

  “I don’t think I can remember all the jewelry. Your mom had a wad of it.”

  “Because you kept buying it for her.”

  “She loved it,” he said. “Remember how she used to say nothing went better with denim and western boots than diamonds? She was partial to turquoise, too.”

  “I remember a ring with turquoise, big and shaped like a triangle.”

  “I bought that for her, our tenth wedding anniversary. She’d seen some work by that Navajo artist—”

  “Lee Yazzie.” Lily supplied the name. Her mom had loved his work.

  “Yeah. I had him make a bracelet for her, too. A cuff, your mother called it.”

  “What did the police say?”

  “They think AJ was hanging around, waiting for the house to be empty.”

  Although it was what she had expected to hear, Lily felt her air go as if she’d been punched.

  “I had to tell them AJ knew about the safe, knew the combination.”

  Lily held her dad’s gaze. “Do you think it was him?”

  He tossed down his pen. Maybe.

  The word—the doubt was there in his eyes. It would tear him up if AJ had done this. How could he? The question rang through Lily’s mind, heated, angry. How could AJ put them in this position of having to speculate, wonder—was he capable? Could he have hurt that girl? Lily thought if it was true, if she had to face the fact, it would crush her. It would crush them all.

  “I can’t stomach it,” he said, echoing Lily’s thinking. “The cash, yeah. He’s on the run, scared. He needs money to get away. But his grandma’s jewelry? What’s he going to do with it? It’s not as if he can sell it, or even pawn it without the cops finding out. If he knew a fence—but AJ’s not—he’s never run with—”

  “It’s not even that, Dad.” Lily’s pulse ticked in her ears. “If he’s taken the money and jewelry, if he’s on the run, it means—it means he—” She stopped, unable to finish.

  Her dad stared at her, and when his eyes reddened, she realized he was seeing her through the glaze of tears. It astonished her. In her entire life she hadn’t ever seen her father cry, not even when her mother died. Winona had said that he did cry then, just not in front of Lily.

  She went to him, wrapping his shoulders in her embrace from behind, setting her cheek against his, which was damp now. He closed his hands over her forearms, and they held on to each other.

  “I love that boy either way,” he said in a rough voice.

  “Yes,” Lily said. “I do, too.”

  “We’ll find him, find a way to help him—forgive him if he did all these terrible things.”

  “Yes,” Lily said, although she wondered, How? How did you—how could you forgive a person who wantonly took the life of another? People had done it; she had read about them. Even Holocaust survivors had forgiven those who had tortured them. But those monsters hadn’t been their own children. The very idea that this was the awful possibility shaping her future vacuumed her breath from her lungs. She felt she might collapse, burdening her father with her dead weight, and from somewhere she summoned the effort to straighten, to back away. She found tissues in the half bath and brought him one, keeping one for herself.

  He used it, wiping his eyes, blowing his nose, his movements somehow suggesting disgust, resentment.

  It was only going to get worse, Lily thought, resuming her seat across from him. “I talked to Paul,” she said, and recapping the conversation as quickly as she could, she told her dad that AJ had been spotted at the Lake Hershey airfield.

  “Why didn’t Evers call me?” Her dad didn’t wait for Lily’s answer. “The son of a bitch is ten years older than I am and half-blind. He wouldn’t know shit from Shinola.” He pawed through the papers on his desk. “Where the hell is my phone?”

  They spent a half hour hunting for it, finally finding it outside in the seat of an Adirondack chair, one of two that sat in a grassy meadow halfway between the house and the barn. Lily didn’t know what led her to look there. The chairs were out of the way, a detour to nowhere. Her dad was vague as to how his cell phone could have ended up there. Maybe he’d stopped there going to or from the barn.

  “Why?” Lily asked.

  “To watch the grass blow,” her dad answered.

  That might have been a reasonable response for someone other than her father.

  She was in the kitchen, breaking eggs into a bowl to make an omelet for their dinner, when her dad came to tell her he’d talked to Wylie. In addition to the eggs, she’d found a box of frozen spinach, a can of mushrooms, and a chunk of Gruyère cheese. Not that either she or her dad had an appetite. But there was something soothing about going through the motions of preparing a meal.

  “The way Wylie described him, it could have been AJ.” Her dad went to the refrigerator, pulled out a beer, twisted off the cap, and drank deeply.

  Lily watched him, shaking her head no when he asked if she wanted one. She turned her attention back to whipping the eggs. It relieved her that he hadn’t seemed to notice that the refrigerator shelves were still fairly empty.

  “I figured it had to be years since Evers saw AJ. How can he remember what he looks like?”

  “Dad, you know how it is around here. You can’t go a month without running into everyone you know.”

  “Yeah. Wylie said he saw AJ and Shea in town a couple of weeks ago, shook AJ’s hand. He knows it was him at the airfield. Like Wylie said, there’s a lot of air traffic goes in and out of there—tourists, nature freaks, the bunch of damn fools that buy land and a few head and think they’re in the cattle business.” He took another swallow of beer.

  Lily didn’t reply.

  Her dad spoke in
to the silence. “Five thousand dollars would get you somewhere. Mexico. Canada. And from there, you could go anywhere.” Her dad pitched his empty bottle in the trash and got another. “Wylie wondered if the wedding was off.”

  “I hope you told him yes.”

  “I did. I guess all the folks who are coming are going to have to be contacted.”

  He had only just now thought of it, what calling off the wedding would entail. “Dru and I talked about it earlier,” she said.

  Lily and Paul hadn’t discussed the wedding once since this happened. How would they word their regrets? As parents of the groom, we’re sorry to inform you of the cancellation of our son’s wedding due to the fact that not only may he have murdered a bridesmaid, but he might very well be a fugitive on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. Would that be socially acceptable as an explanation? She could have the notes printed, she thought, on her monogrammed, beveled, and gilt-edged notecards. The jolt of her laughter came unaware, butting against her ribs, finally wedging itself in her throat beneath the fist of her sorrow. Maybe she could add a caveat: If any of you happen to see AJ, please inform the police.

  “Lily?”

  She glanced at her dad. “Did I ever tell you what Millie Kramer said to me once? She’s married to Harvey Kramer, the bank president who does most of Paul’s financing?”

  “I’ve met him a time or two, but not his wife.”

  “It was during the first year Paul and I were married. We were out to dinner—some fancy restaurant—with several other couples, and in front of all of them, she said—and she thought it was funny, a cute joke—she said when Paul told her and Harvey he was planning to marry me, their advice was that he should just get a red Corvette.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “A sports car would be cheaper, less maintenance—you know, than a gold digger like me. That’s how they saw me. They still do. They think I married Paul for his money.”

  “I never liked Harvey. The guy’s a know-it-all, arrogant as hell.”

  “I’ve never fit in with those people, Dad. In all this time, I haven’t made a single friend. They’re so much older, but it isn’t even that. There’s no common ground.” Lily stopped, hating the way she sounded.