Beneath Winter Sand

by Vickie McKeehan

  Eleanor batted her eyes. “I do have my wits about me in a crisis.”

  “If you swooped in and took one bag with you to Georgia, what happened to the other?” Hannah asked, innocently.

  Eleanor’s smile was like a Cheshire cat’s. “Oh now, let’s not be condescending. Craig told me it’s safely tucked into The First Bank of Pelican Pointe right where Caleb and Cooper left it. I know Craig failed to get the gold out of there. I’m not without my sources. I do get my updates on a regular basis.”

  “Don’t you think your kids should have the remaining gold after everything you’ve put them through?”

  “That would work out perfectly for a little gold digger like you, wouldn’t it? Like I don’t know that if my kids get their hands on it, they’ll be spending money that rightly belongs to me.”

  “How do you figure it belongs to you?” Hannah fired back.

  “I’m the one who worked for it. I’m the one who figured out a way to keep it before my father spent every dime of it on that stupid ranch. Giving it to my so-called offspring is not an option. Not happening, my dear.” Her hands flitted in the air. “As you can plainly see, I’m paying my debt to the state of California. But that money’s mine. I could use it for things I need in the commissary. No one in my family sends money to take care of me. I rely on the kindness of strangers. So, make no mistake, one way or the other, I’ll get my hands on it…eventually. Be sure to pass that message along to my little darlings back in Pelican Pointe.”

  Eastlyn had heard enough. She snatched the phone out of Hannah’s hands. “I don’t think so, Eleanor. You’re gonna stop all the threats. Here. Now. Today. You’re gonna stop coming after the money and leave your kids alone.”

  “Like hell I will,” Eleanor declared.

  “Fine. We figured you’d say that. Then here’s the way this is gonna go down. We have Delbert Delashaw, your longtime boyfriend from Columbus, Georgia, in custody. Delbert is wanted for murdering an elderly woman, Orinda Salazar, for her insurance. Does the name do anything for you, Eleanor? It should. You collected half a million dollars in an insurance scam. We happen to know that’s part of what you used to live on during your life in Columbus. There are records back in Georgia showing as much.”

  Eastlyn put her face closer to the glass. “But here’s the thing, Eleanor. Delbert’s ratted you out. He’s turned on his wife-to-be and decided to cop a plea in exchange for giving them you. For the past several hours he’s been calmly explaining how you’re the one who executed the old lady and controlled all the money. You’re facing the death penalty in Georgia, Eleanor. Delbert’s already talking to the state investigators. And they like what they’re hearing.”

  “Damn you to hell! Damn all of you to hell!” Eleanor pounded the counter with her rolled up fists. “What the hell do you want from me? I’ve given you people everything there is to give!”

  The guard came over to take Eleanor’s arm and cut the interview short. “If you can’t control yourself, then I’ll take you back to your cell.”

  Hannah sent a pleading look toward the guard and took the phone back from Eastlyn. “It’s very simple. We want you to stop contacting your children. Forget about the gold. Let your kids have the money. You go to Georgia where death row is a lot more active than it is in California and you’re looking at vastly different accommodations there versus here. You’ll be facing lethal injection, Eleanor. They’ll put your mug and profile on their website for the world to see. No more getting outside for an hour. No more opportunities to get cozy with the guards. No more warm and fuzzy phone calls to your adoring men friends. Death row is different from the regular prison population.”

  Eleanor’s eyes became dead pools of gray. “You wouldn’t dare. No one crosses me.”

  “It’s already in the works, Eleanor. Unless you stop harassing your kids. That’s the only way you stay in California. Orinda Salazar is coming back to haunt you, every single time you send another asshole to Pelican Pointe. If I see one stranger trying to get in Caleb’s face, or Cooper’s, or Drea’s, I’m personally seeing to it that your ass is carted off to Georgia right alongside Delbert’s. Are we clear?”

  “No one tells me what to do.”

  “Okay then,” Hannah said calmly. “Interview over. But if I were you I’d start learning the lyrics to Georgia On My Mind real fast, because the clock’s ticking and they’re coming for you very soon.”

  “You were great back there,” Eastlyn said once they reached the shuttle bus.

  “Let’s just hope Caleb thinks so.” Hannah held up her phone. “He sent me fifteen messages in the last hour. He’s anxious to hear what happened. Aw, he wants to know if I’m all right.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “Nothing yet. But I’m going to suggest we enjoy our evening to the max.” Hannah keyed in her thoughts to Caleb.

  Let’s grab something to eat and sit on your back deck. We’ll watch the sun go down from there.

  Sounds good to me. So, you’re okay?

  Never better. What’d you do while I was gone?

  Worried. Mostly. But I started a new project.

  Really? I can top that. I spent the afternoon ending one.

  Three and a half hours later Eastlyn dropped Hannah off at Caleb’s house. When she stepped inside the front door Molly greeted her while Caleb simply slipped his arms around her waist and gave her a kiss on the ear. “I made tacos, hope that’s okay.”

  “Anything. I’m starving. How was Molly?”

  “I took her for a walk through the meadow behind the house. Come on, let’s eat before the food gets cold. What did you think of Eleanor?”

  Hannah smiled. “You’re nothing like her. Don’t ever think you are. There’s something missing inside her, some part of her heart that doesn’t work like the rest of us.”

  “The sociopath who has no empathy,” Caleb concluded.

  They watched the sun go down over the rolling field of clover behind the house, nibbling on the tacos he’d made and drinking bottled beer.

  “You want to talk about what happened?”

  She shook her head. “Maybe later. Eleanor will either leave you alone or she won’t. But I can go to sleep tonight knowing I did my best. Talking about it more than that might ruin this moment. And I don’t want to do that.”

  Caleb didn’t either. It was at that point he realized he had everything he needed—a loving woman who possessed an abundance of empathy, a clever and brave dog, and a place like this to eat tacos and watch the sunset from his back deck.

  He didn’t need anything else.

  Twenty-Nine

  While Eastlyn and Hannah finished squaring off with Eleanor in one prison, Brent started his day signing in at another. At the Correctional Facility known as Soledad, Brent was there to see Flynn McCready. He’d run out of leads to pursue in the Bradford House murder and not much to lose by sitting down listening to a story or two out of the former bar owner.

  Flynn had been a longtime resident in Pelican Pointe and knew a lot of its history and its secrets. If not for his participation in the distribution of meth, Flynn would still be an institution there.

  Now, he was inmate number 704597621 and still so new to the system that he wore an ugly, garish orange two-piece uniform, baggy in size, and ugly in everything else.

  When Brent plopped down on the other side of a glass partition, Flynn looked much older than his years. Brent still had trouble believing the business owner he’d known for such a long time could’ve been stupid enough to get involved with something as serious as meth. What Flynn’s involvement taught him was a valuable lesson. Everyone could have a darker side. Flynn’s seemed to have originated with greed.

  “How’re they treating you?” Brent began.

  “If you’re here to talk to me about that bullshit Eleanor keeps shoveling about how I killed Layne and Brooke, you can just kiss my ass.”

  “Still denying that, are you?”

  “Damn straight because it
never happened. Eleanor Jennings is a lying piece of shit trying to get out of jail on a lie. She’s guilty as hell. She’s right where she needs to be.”

  “Then I guess you’ll be glad to hear that’s not why I made the trip.”

  “Then why?”

  “I’ve got a dead baby, buried on Bradford House grounds. It’s beginning to look like Douglas Bradford’s past reappeared in a big way.”

  “Why ask me?”

  “Because there are a lot of people in town that still remember you and Douglas used to be drinking buddies. You were his wingman or so the stories go. Plus, if I find out that you had anything to do with that baby’s death, you’re looking at a whole new ballgame. You’ll be in here until they carry you out in a box.”

  “Now, you just wait a minute. Don’t come in here accusing me of every fucking thing that ever went wrong in Pelican Pointe. That’s not fair. I’m no killer for God’s sake. You know that. You know me, Brent.”

  “I thought I did…once. What do you know about the baby, Flynn?”

  “I know if I tell you it ought to be enough to get me out of here and into a better place.”

  “Okay. You start talking, tell me a story, and I’ll listen.”

  Flynn eyed the guard and then leaned closer to the partition. “It was a long time ago back when Doug still lived that swinging lifestyle he loved so much. But it came with a hefty price. He got mixed up with this crazy chick named Felicia Atherton, tall, model-thin, gorgeous redheaded goddess, she was. They dated for about six months. All that time Felicia was all about becoming first lady of Pelican Pointe, if you know what I mean. She was after marriage, pestering Doug every other day to head to Vegas for one of those funky, quirky weddings. That’s all she ever talked about. Felicia threw out a lot of bait, but Doug just wouldn’t bite. Somewhere in all this, she got pregnant. At first, Doug didn’t believe her, didn’t even think it was his. Dumb bastard. But when she started showing fairly quick that proved him wrong. A few months went by and she goes into labor. Doug runs her over to Santa Cruz to the hospital there where she delivers the baby, a little girl. They come back to Bradford House and I think all is well with the two of them. I figure any day now Doug’s gonna take that leap into marriage. Never happened. Before two months go by, the baby’s gone. No more baby. Doug claims he thinks Felicia did something to it while he was out of town on one of his trips to San Francisco.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  “Yeah. That crossed my mind. But since Doug was always the luckiest son of a bitch I ever knew, I thought…well maybe. Whatever happened, it happened quick, because the baby was gone. One night, Doug comes in to the bar and gets drunker than I’ve ever seen him. Finishes off a bottle of vodka and starts on another. He tells me this story about how he helped bury the baby in the yard because he didn’t want anyone to know Felicia had killed it, didn’t want his constituents to know he’d been a part of it.”

  “You should probably know at this point, I have a reliable witness to that event. So be sure your facts line up with what I already know.”

  Flynn’s eyes got big. “I’m telling you everything Doug told me. But there’s more. Felicia isn’t done with Doug quite yet. One day out of the blue, she shows up with another kid, this one a little older and a baby boy. I guess she figured with another baby in the picture, Doug would give in and marry her. But by this time, Doug realized Felicia was off her rocker. I mean, bat-shit, crack-whore crazy. He decides to end this thing once and for all. He takes the baby to a couple he knows in town who’s been trying to adopt. It’s Carla and James DeMarco’s lucky day. You remember the DeMarcos, right? That Italian couple over on Cape May. Anyway, there’s no doubt Carla and James are overjoyed, just ecstatic, at the idea they’re finally about to become parents. After that, they think Doug hung the moon because he says a few words over the baby and pronounces it adopted, done deal. Since Felicia kept calling the baby Andy, and had already made up a birthdate, Doug stuck with that on the phony paperwork. Because after all, Doug didn’t have a clue where the kid came from or a single piece of paper to show that it was even adoptable. To this day, I have no idea where Felicia got a baby that fast and neither did Doug. But it didn’t matter much to him where the baby came from as long as he could get the little guy out the door. He’d made the DeMarcos happy. The kid was no longer his responsibility. All ends well, right?”

  “What happened to Felicia?”

  “Doug sent her off to a mental hospital outside Visalia. Woman stayed there for damn near three years before she finally got out. Last I checked, she lived in a trailer park back in Turlock.”

  “Turlock? Why Turlock?”

  “I guess that’s where her people were from. I don’t know. Now is that enough to get me out of here and transferred to the Men’s Colony down in San Luis Obispo?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “If what you told me just now checks out. If it does, I’ll be in touch. Thanks, Flynn. I’ll be talking to you soon.”

  After Brent’s visit with Flynn, a lot happened quickly over the next few days with the case. He spent a several days in Turlock, cooperating with the sheriff’s department there, helping them track down Felicia Atherton. They let him stay to watch the Atherton woman’s interview that ended up lasting more than five hours.

  After the third day, Brent checked out of the motel, glad to be heading back home. He drove back with the knowledge that when he arrived in Pelican Pointe, he’d have an update that would satisfy everyone.

  Brent decided to get all the parties involved in one place. He picked Bradford House because it served several purposes. One, he wouldn’t have to repeat the story more than once if everyone heard it at the same time. And two, he could provide a visual because it was important to show how the story had developed over time.

  He was certain he’d covered all his bases by the time a steady stream of people gathered in the main living room. He stood near the huge picture window, looking out over the piles of dirt dug up across the front yard.

  He looked out at Hannah and Eastlyn. “The guards tell me that since your visit Eleanor has gone nuts. She’s gotten in several fights and lost all her privileges. She’s back in solitary confinement.”

  Hannah let out a sigh. “You know what they say happens when a psychopath loses control. They say the results are never pretty.”

  Caleb squeezed her hand. “Brilliantly played, because, above all else, narcissists love themselves. They fear death. Look at what Bundy did in Florida once he was convicted. He fought against getting the chair. He’d killed at least thirty-five women, and yet, didn’t want to die himself. Add to that, Eleanor, like Bundy, doesn’t want to lose the attention, attention is what she thrives on, making people’s lives messy and full of chaos.”

  Cooper shifted in his chair and looked at Eastlyn. “Brent says all that stuff you guys said to Eleanor might actually come true. Delbert really has decided to testify against her to save his own ass.”

  Brent shifted his feet. “Let’s not get carried away there. I don’t think for a minute that will happen. For one, Georgia knows Eleanor’s locked up here for life. I don’t think the state’s attorney back in Georgia will spend a dime on extraditing Eleanor there. They’ll budget the money to go toward locking Delbert up for Orinda Salazar’s murder. Cost considerations aside, that’s the way the system works, whether we like it or not. But the bluff was a good idea and effective. Holding that over her head might be the only thing that keeps her off your radar…at least for a while.”

  Since everyone had arrived and settled in, Brent decided he might as well build up to why they were here. “The lab confirmed that Eleanor did hold on to the murder weapon. It’s the same gun used to kill Orinda Salazar. And just for peace of mind, I talked to Flynn McCready again about Eleanor’s accusation that he was the one who killed Layne and Brooke.”

  Cooper gripped Eastlyn’s hand in his. “And?”

  “For the second time, Flynn
not only denied it was true, but he confirmed that Douglas and Eleanor had been carrying on an affair for years.”

  Caleb flinched at the thought. “So that’s one thing she came clean about. I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a man left alive in Pelican Pointe who didn’t sleep with her.”

  Hannah poked him in the ribs. “At least you’re getting more of the story, which is what you wanted.” She studied the chief’s face. “Is that why you asked us here?”

  Brent smiled widely. “I figured while we have everyone under one roof, I’d go over how Micah Lambert became Andy DeMarco.”

  Hannah sat up straighter in her chair. “You know how he was kidnapped? Should we go get Andy? Is it for real?”

  “I wouldn’t include Andy just now. At least not yet. I thought it best to go over what I learned step by step. Before we drag Andy into this mess, I need everyone to understand how this all went down. We managed to solve a twenty-year-old double murder, Hannah’s parents. That alone is extraordinary. But when you include the murder of a baby, that’s exceptional. That doesn’t happen every day. I feel good about the way we accomplished this and so should all of you. As it turns out, the guy who held most of the answers to this was Flynn McCready. All the rumors in town kept pointing me to the man who knew Bradford better than anyone else did.”

  Quentin spoke up. “I take it that wasn’t Jack Prescott.”

  “Not even close. I’m not sure anyone knew the dark side to Bradford except for the handful of old-timers in town who knew what he was up to. Douglas liked to party and he was involved with a lot of women.”

  “And to think my mother died thinking her brother was gay,” Quentin said, shaking his head. “Not to mention Jack professing allegiance to the man he thought he knew.”