by Paula Graves
“Scooby-Doo it is,” Sara said, locking the door behind them.
Gracie got the DVD from a cabinet in the living room and put the disk in the player while Jonah settled in front of the coffee table, his small fingers flicking over the chess set that took up half the glass surface. He picked up pieces and put them back, his brow furrowed as he looked down at the board.
Gracie punched a couple of buttons on the remote and the movie came on. Jonah picked up the black king from the board and clutched it in his little fist as he settled back to watch the movie.
Gracie detoured to Sara’s side, her green eyes full of heartbreaking maturity. “Daddy plays the black pieces,” she said quietly. “He’s teaching Jonah to play.” She blew out a deep sigh that broke Sara’s heart into a dozen little pieces. “He was, I mean.”
Sara wanted to put her arms around the little girl and hold her so tightly that nothing bad could happen to her again, but Gracie was sending off all sorts of “don’t touch me” signals. Sara settled for flashing her a gentle smile. “He will again. As soon as he comes back home.”
Gracie looked up at her as if she saw right through Sara’s bravado. But she said nothing else, just crossed to sit by her brother on the sofa. Sara saw her sneak her hand toward the chessboard, nab the black queen and curl her own little fist around the piece.
Blinking back stinging tears, Sara retreated into the kitchen. It was a large, airy room, full of warm colors and homey smells. At one end of the room, a rectangular table filled a large breakfast nook. Sara wandered over there and sat down in one of the side chairs, trying to remember.
She and Donnie had been here, in this house, that night. Why couldn’t she remember it?
She tried to picture Jim Allen sitting at the head of the table. He had always been a friendly man, a man who spoke easily, joked freely and told great stories. A charming man. A man who never met an adversary he couldn’t turn into a friend.
What was that story he’d told her one time, about the pig farmer and the Bible salesman—
She sat up straighter. He’d never told her a story like that before. She’d never been close with him. So why did she remember hearing him tell that joke so clearly?
“Miss Sara?” The sound of Gracie’s voice sent a jolt of raw adrenaline racing up Sara’s spine.
She quelled a jerk of surprise and managed to smile at the solemn-faced little girl. “Yes?”
“My kitten is all grown up now. You want to see her?”
A flash of memory flitted through Sara’s mind. A tiny white kitten with just a hint of chocolate on her nose, paws and tail. “Sure,” she said, rising to take the small hand Gracie extended toward her.
Gracie led her up the short flight of stairs to the second level and into a small room with lavender walls and a small bed with a frilly white comforter dotted with tiny purple violets. On the pillow, a sleek Siamese cat blinked sleepy blue eyes at their arrival.
“She was little the last time you saw her,” Gracie said, picking up the cat and curling her arms around her. “Isn’t she pretty?”
The cat purred with contentment, sliding one paw up to curl around Gracie’s neck. Sara smiled, remembering how much she’d always liked cats as a girl. She’d missed having pets when she and Donnie lived in Birmingham, but their jobs had made it impossible to give a pet the attention it deserved.
“She’s beautiful,” Sara said, hearing Donnie’s voice whispering in her ear as surely as if he were standing right there in the room with them.
He had been, she remembered with a start. He’d been standing right there in Gracie’s room beside her as the little girl—three years younger on that fateful night—had showed off her new kitten to them while her parents set the table downstairs.
“When this is over,” he’d said softly, “we’re going to get ourselves a cat. I promise, we’re going to slow things down and get our lives back.”
Tears burned her eyes as she reached out to stroke the cat’s dark ears. The rumble of the cat’s purr vibrated against her fingertips as she met Gracie’s soft gaze. “Gracie, you remember meeting me before, don’t you?”
Gracie nodded. “You and your husband. He was nice.”
Sara smiled. “He was.”
“Mama said he died. I’m real sorry.”
Sara squelched the urge to stroke the child’s soft cheek. “Thank you.”
Gracie blinked hard, as if she were fighting off tears. “I’m going to go check on Jonah. He might do something naughty if I don’t watch him. Mama says you have to keep an eye on him all the time or he’ll get into all sorts of things he shouldn’t.” She set the cat back on her pillow, where it curled up and settled back down for a nap.
Sara followed her downstairs, feeling as if she were floating on a sea of ice. Chill bumps raced up and down her arms and legs as she left the little girl in the living room with her brother and returned to the kitchen.
She sat at the table, clutching the edge as the mental ice shattered into a thousand little pieces, each fragment a snippet of memory. This table. This room. The kitten, Gracie’s gap-toothed grin, little Jonah’s newly skinned knee—“He’s as clumsy as his daddy,” Becky had told them with a rueful smile—and the look of worry in Jim Allen’s eyes as Donnie started asking a lot of inconvenient questions after dinner.
Questions about his relationship with Renee.
Sara hadn’t been expecting the third degree any more than Jim had, and she’d tried to coax Donnie into leaving, aware that an ambush was no way to get the answers he was seeking. All he’d done was alienate Jim Allen and turn Becky into a nervous mess. She’d fluttered around, playing the consummate hostess, trying to soothe the unexpectedly roiling waters.
“Miss Sara?” Jonah Allen’s quiet voice jerked her back to the present. She blinked away the memories, meeting the little boy’s red-rimmed eyes.
“Yes?”
“I’m hungry.”
Sara looked at her watch and realized it was nearly noon. “What would you like?”
“Chicken noodle soup?”
“I can handle that,” she said with a smile, pushing to her feet. She quelled the tremble in her knees and crossed to the cabinet to see where the Allens might keep their canned soup. “What about Gracie?”
“I’m not hungry,” Gracie called from the living room.
“Well, pretend like you are. What would you want?”
Gracie was quiet for a moment, then she said, “I guess chicken noodle soup for me, too.”
She looked down at Jonah, who was watching her with curious eyes. “You need something else?”
“Is my daddy going to die?”
Sara felt her heart shatter. Kneeling, she put her hands on his shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. “I know he’s in a very good hospital with some very good doctors.” Westridge was one of the best hospitals for trauma cases in the state. If Jim Allen had any chance of surviving his self-inflicted wound, he was in the right place to make it happen. “And he’s a strong guy, right? Big, tough guy.”
Jonah nodded. “He’s like a superhero.”
“That’s right. So you keep thinking about that, okay? Your daddy’s going to fight as hard as a superhero to get better and get home to y’all. Right?”
Jonah nodded. “Right.”
Sara watched him head back into the living room, hoping she hadn’t just given him false hope. Then she turned back to the pantry and started searching for the canned soup.
Opening the door of the cabinet over the sink, she found not cans but several small bags of hard candy. They were stored in plain plastic bags, tied up with shiny foil twist ties. There were a variety of colors—red, green and some pale yellow ones that made Sara’s lips purse at the mere sight. She picked up the bag of yellow candies and removed the twist top. A sharp scent rose from the bag and stung her nose.
Lemon drops, she thought, another memory bolting through the mists of her fragmented memory.
“I made them myself,”
Becky had said with a too-bright smile as she offered the cut-glass bowl full of sugar-crusted lemon candies, the desperate hostess trying to bring order to the chaos Donnie had created with his sharp questions for Jim.
Uncomfortable with Donnie’s sudden aggressive demeanor herself, Sara had smiled an apology and taken one of the candies. But after one taste of the too-tart piece of candy, she’d discreetly slipped hers into a napkin and into the trash can nearby.
Donnie, however, had eaten his lemon drop with unnerving calm, looking like a shark toying with his hapless prey. Sara had never seen that side of her husband before, and it had been utterly unnerving.
“She helped you grade papers,” Donnie had continued, refusing to be deterred by the trappings of decorum. “Renee spent a lot of time with you, didn’t she? After hours when everybody else was gone.” Donnie’s tone had been as sharp as a hunter’s arrow.
Sharp enough to cut through flesh and bone.
Jim had blanched, Sara remembered, but Becky... Becky had looked almost pleased. Her expression had been placid enough, but there had been satisfaction gleaming in her cool blue eyes, as if she were secretly enjoying her husband’s discomfort.
She knew, Sara thought, her stomach knotting. Becky knew about Jim’s affair with Renee. And she’d enjoyed seeing her husband squirm.
Donnie hadn’t been the only predator in the room that night.
Chapter Sixteen
Not staring at Becky Allen was harder than Cain expected. But he didn’t want to spook the woman, especially when all he had at the moment was speculation.
“We can’t overlook the fact that Jim Allen shot himself,” Brad Ellis said in a hushed tone. “Even if she told him about the pregnancies, it doesn’t mean she knew he was the father or that either one of them would take that information and kill those girls.”
“We don’t even know if this suicide attempt is related to either murder,” Carl admitted.
“Are we sure it’s a suicide attempt?” Cain asked quietly.
The two older men looked at him. “You think someone else shot him?”
“I’m not sure of anything.” He slanted a look toward Becky Allen. She was staring at the door to the E.R. bay, as if waiting for a doctor to come out and give her news. “How much longer before someone can confirm Ariel Burke was a patient of Dr. Clayton’s?”
Ellis rubbed his chin. “The Burkes were out when I called. And Dr. Clayton’s office won’t tell us anything about any of their patients without a warrant.”
“The girl is dead.”
“Doesn’t seem to make a difference to doctor-patient confidentiality.”
Frustrated, Cain put his hands on his hips and felt a slight vibration under his right forefinger. He tugged his phone from his front pocket and saw that he’d missed a call from Sara. “I need to get this.”
He headed outside and dialed her back, but the call went directly to voice mail. He left a message and went back into the waiting room.
He found Deputy Ellis and Carl Dunkirk talking to a man in surgical scrubs. He reached the small huddle as the green-clad doctor shook his head. “It’s going to be days before we can try to bring him out of the coma. Just because the gunshot didn’t kill him doesn’t mean the brain injury won’t finish the job. And I wouldn’t get your hopes up about his being able to remember much if anything about what happened.”
“Is it possible the wound wasn’t self-inflicted?” Carl asked.
The doctor gave him an odd look. “I’m not an expert on forensics. I will tell you that there was stippling around the entry wound, so I’d guess the muzzle was within six inches of his head when it fired.”
But that didn’t mean he was the one who pulled the trigger, Cain thought, glancing across the room at the waiting area, wondering if Becky was watching them. What would she make of this powwow between cops, doctors and the Monster of Ridge County?
Jeff Allen still sat on the sofa, his lean body hunched forward in misery.
But Becky Allen was nowhere in sight.
He scanned the waiting area, looking for Becky’s blond hair and maroon scrubs, but she wasn’t there.
He grabbed Carl Dunkirk’s arm, making the older man wheel around in surprise. Dunkirk scowled at him. “What?”
“Becky Allen’s not in the waiting room.”
Dunkirk’s gaze followed the same route Cain’s had—first to the sofa, where Jim Allen’s eldest son sat in quiet misery, then around the room, returning finally to Cain. “Did you see where she went?”
“No.”
Dunkirk strode across the room toward Jeff. Cain fell into step, murmuring a warning. “Don’t scare the kid, Mr. Dunkirk.”
Dunkirk’s step faltered, and he turned to look at Cain. “Is that what I did to you?”
For a second, Cain was back in the interview room at the Ridge County Sheriff’s Department, sweating and shaking as he waited for Dunkirk to stop staring at him and start asking questions. He’d already been one big nerve, aching from the loss of his friend and scared by the fury he saw on the deputy’s face.
Before he found the words to answer Dunkirk’s question, the older man put his hand on Cain’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. We all wanted answers, and you seemed like the obvious one.”
“And we could be wrong about Jim and Becky Allen, too,” Cain warned softly.
“But you don’t think we are, do you?”
Cain shook his head. “Just keep it cool with the kid. He’s not likely to know anything about it, is he?”
Dunkirk glanced at Jeff. “No, he’s not.”
They continued toward the boy at a slower pace, sitting on either side of him. When Dunkirk spoke, his voice was gentle. “How’re you holding up, Jeff? You need something to drink? Maybe something to eat?”
Jeff shook his head, looking miserable. “Mom offered to grab something while she was out, but I just don’t think I can eat anything.”
“Where’d she go?” Cain asked.
Jeff looked up at him, his expression puzzled. “Do I know you?”
Cain shook his head. “I know your dad. From the high school.”
Jeff’s lips curled in a faint smile. “Everybody seems to know Dad from the high school.”
“Small towns,” Cain said with an answering smile. “Did your mother go home?”
“I think so. She said something about needing to get some insurance forms at home, and asked if I’d be okay to stay here alone.” He lifted his quivering chin. “I’m going to have to be the man of the house until Dad comes home. Might as well start now.”
Dunkirk rubbed Jeff’s shoulder gently. “You’re doing good, son. Your daddy’s going to be real proud when he hears about it.” His eyes met Cain’s over the boy’s head.
“We just talked to the doctor over there,” Cain said. “I get the feeling he thinks your dad’s a real fighter.”
“He is,” Jeff said with a firmness his shaking hands belied. “He’s the toughest guy I know.”
“We’ll make sure the doctor comes and talks to you in your mom’s absence,” Dunkirk said, pushing to his feet. He nodded for Cain to follow.
Cain caught up at the E.R. admitting desk. “Do you think she really went home?”
Dunkirk shrugged. “Maybe. Probably.” His brow furrowed suddenly, and he started to look around the room again. “Where’s Sara?”
He must have missed seeing her leave with the kids, Cain realized. He and Brad Ellis had been deep in conversation around that time. “She took the two younger Allen kids home to get them away from all this stress.”
Dunkirk’s frown deepened. “Is that all?”
Clearly, he knew his daughter well. “She wanted to take a look around, see if being back there would jog her memory. About the night of the accident.”
“And what if it does?” Dunkirk asked, his tone grim. “What if Becky walks in right in the middle of a memory flash and figures out that Sara is remembering something that could incriminate her or Jim?”
Cain swallowed a curse and checked his phone. No new calls from Sara since the one he’d missed, not even an answer to the message he’d left. He tried her number and got voicemail again.
He met Dunkirk’s gaze. The older man nodded. “Go. I’ll get Ellis to send a cruiser for backup. Meanwhile, I’ll see if we can rush that DNA match.”
“Okay.”
“Stay in touch,” Dunkirk called after him.
Cain hit the door at a run, dodging foot traffic and slow-moving vehicles as he raced across the parking lot to his truck.
* * *
SARA TIGHTENED HER grip on the bag of lemon drops, a fuzzy feeling in her head, as if a thousand little bubbles were popping behind her eyes. The world seemed off-kilter, knocked a hair off its axis so that everything spun a fraction of a second too fast.
She could taste the tartness of the candy lingering in her memory, the sour burn that had made her roll it out into her palm and into a napkin before the sugar crystals finished melting on her tongue. Donnie was the one who liked tart foods; she preferred smoother, richer treats like good chocolate or salted caramels.
Had the Allens known that about Donnie? Had they given him something in the lemon drops that had made him tipsy? Is that why she’d been driving the Silverado that night?
She rubbed the sudden ache in her head, trying to remember what had happened next. He’d eaten the lemon drop as he’d grilled Jim Allen, asking about his relationship with Renee. He’d heard the rumors, he told the coach, about his yearly affairs with senior girls at the high school. “Like clockwork,” Donnie had said, his words hard and precise.
Except they hadn’t been precise, had they? At first, perhaps, but as the scene in the living room had escalated, Donnie’s movements had become loose-limbed and agitated, his words slurring and finally becoming little more than gibberish.
She’d been terrified, she remembered, afraid that his obsession about his sister’s murder had finally driven him over the edge. That he’d finally snapped from the grief and anger, and it had struck her, as she grabbed his flailing arms and pulled him out to the truck, that she wasn’t sure what to do next. Should she take him home to his parents, whose grief had driven them far too close to madness as it was? Should she try to drive him back home to Birmingham, even though his wild-eyed ranting was starting to scare her?