The Ex Who Wouldn't Die (Charley's Ghost Book 1)

by Sally Berneathy

  “So you went to his place without the gun?”

  “Yes. My bike was already packed for the trip, so I rode over to his place. He opened the door a crack and asked me if I had the gun. I told him he had to give me the signed papers first. He freaked out, started yelling at me, and I started yelling at him. I tried to get inside so we could yell at each other in private. He blocked me, and that made me really mad.”

  “He wouldn’t let you come in? Did he have company? Somebody he didn’t want you to see? A girlfriend?”

  “Possible. But usually when I catch him red-handed, he gets...” She spread her hands, searching for the right word. “He turns into Super-Conman. Ultra slick. Really lays on the charm.”

  “He didn’t do that this time?”

  “No, he just kept shouting at me to go home and get the gun, and he was adamant that he wasn’t going to let me into his apartment. Naturally I kept trying to get in.”

  “You thought he was hiding something in his apartment?”

  “He didn’t want me inside his apartment so I was determined to get in.”

  “You threatened him.”

  “I advise—”

  Amanda interrupted her attorney’s admonition. “Brian, there’s no point in my denying it. Yes, I threatened him. I’m sure all the nosy neighbors heard me, that time and a hundred other times. I threatened him on a regular basis. But I never actually threatened to kill him. It was always something like pouring hot wax in his ear while he slept or drilling a hole through his forehead, inserting a peg and hanging a potted plant from it, stuff like that.”

  Daggett grimaced. “And you don’t think those things would have killed him?”

  “Obviously I didn’t do any of them. They were just fantasies.” That probably didn’t sound right. “Anyway, I never threatened to shoot him. That’s far too quick and easy, not enough suffering.”

  Her father cleared his throat. Amanda refused to look at him. She didn’t have to. She could envision his reproving expression.

  “So after you threatened Charley, he let you into his apartment?”

  Amanda shifted on the hard, wooden chair. “Sort of. I stomped on his foot with my motorcycle boot, and when he bent down, I shoved past him.”

  Daggett flinched as if he could feel Charley’s pain. “When you were inside his apartment, did you see anything unusual?”

  “Greasy pizza boxes, dead French fries, empty beer cans, dirty socks. The usual.”

  “What happened after you got inside?”

  “Nothing. We yelled at each other some more. He was obsessed with that stupid gun, and I was obsessed with getting him to sign the divorce papers. I finally gave up and left.”

  “This gun Charley gave you, was it a .38 revolver?” Daggett asked.

  Amanda sucked in a quick breath. It was not a good sign that the cops knew about Charley’s gun. “Yes.”

  “Would you be willing to bring your gun in for us to test fire so we can eliminate a possible match to the bullet that killed your husband?”

  “No,” Brian said.

  “Yes,” Amanda said. They knew about the gun, and she knew it hadn’t been used to kill anyone, was still in a box in her apartment. Giving it to the cops would be the fastest way to get past that issue.

  “Good.” Daggett shuffled his notes. “What time did you last see Charley?”

  “About five-thirty. I left his apartment, got on my bike and rode away. I didn’t look back because I knew he’d be standing in his doorway, watching me.” She shivered. “He always did that, went to the door and stood there and watched me, trying to look pitiful and make me feel bad. I’m sure one of those neighbors saw him after I left.”

  Daggett shook his head. “The neighbors say you ran out of the apartment, slammed the door, raced down the stairs and rode away as if the devil was chasing you, but Charley never opened the door or came out.”

  “Oh.” Amanda bit back a brief, unexpected feeling of rejection. It was a good thing if he didn’t come to the door and look longingly after her. No reason to feel rejected. “Okay, but what about the gunshot? Surely all those people who were fascinated with our fights would have heard a loud gunshot if I blew him away while I was there.”

  Daggett shook his head again. “Sofa cushion. Homemade silencer. Nobody heard the shot. Nobody saw Charley after you went inside his apartment.”

  Amanda bit her lip. Apparently her father and Brian hadn’t been overreacting when they’d insisted on accompanying her or when they’d warned her to say nothing. This was starting to get scary. They might really arrest her. Put her in jail.

  “Who found Charley?” she asked.

  “One of the neighbors. Said he went over to borrow a cup of sugar.”

  Amanda snorted. “More like a can of beer or a baggie of marijuana.”

  Daggett lifted an eyebrow. “When Charley didn’t answer the neighbor’s knock, he tried the door. Said Charley often left it unlocked. It opened, and the neighbor walked in to see Charley’s body. He went home and called us.”

  “I wonder if he got his cup of sugar first.”

  Daggett looked down at his notes but not before she saw the edges of his lips twitching upward. He’d like to smile, she thought, but he wasn’t going to let her catch him at it.

  “We’d really appreciate it if you’d bring in the gun and a list of anybody Charley had dealings with.” He lifted his gaze to hers, his stern look restored. “Victims of scams, rejected girlfriends, buddies, anybody.”

  “I’ll bring in my gun, you can compare it to bullet that killed Charley, and when it doesn’t match, we’ll be done, right?” Amanda moved to the edge of her chair, ready to rise, ready for this to be over.

  The detective leaned back, ready to continue.

  “How did you get along with Charley’s family?”

  That was an easy question. “Charley didn’t have any family. He and his younger brothers were orphaned when Charley was ten, then his brother drowned a year later.” There was, she thought, no need to go into the horrible details. None of Charley’s life story was pertinent to the present situation.

  The silence in the room reminded her of the silences she typically caused at family gatherings. It would seem she had expanded her silencing ability to police interviews.

  Amanda stole a glance at her father. He was looking at his knees. That wasn’t a good sign.

  Brian appeared to be as puzzled as she at the reactions to her uncomplicated answer.

  “Both your husband’s parents are very much alive,” the detective finally said, “as well as two brothers, three sisters, several aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews and too many cousins to count. Half the population of Silver Creek, Texas, is related to your deceased husband.”

  Chapter Five

  The walls of the room seemed to move closer, making it harder to breathe. Silence whirled around her, trapping the words inside her head where they bounced from one side to the other and back again, echoing over and over.

  “Both your husband’s parents are very much alive, as well as two brothers, three sisters, several aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews and too many cousins to count. Half the population of Silver Creek, Texas, is related to your deceased husband.”

  Her oft-repeated assertion that every word out of Charley’s mouth had been a lie took on a new depth of meaning.

  Charley had a family, a large family. She had in-laws she’d never met, never even known existed.

  Charley had claimed to be an orphan from Waco, not Silver Creek, had told her in graphic detail how his father, a twice-convicted drug-dealer, had been shot by an aggrieved husband when he’d caught Charley’s father with his wife in a local motel the night Charley was born. Then when he was ten, his mother, a prostitute, died in his arms of a drug overdose.

  If his parents had any relatives, none stepped forward to claim Charley or his five-year old brother, Grady. Both had been sent to foster homes. Before a year was out, Grady drowned in the Brazos River, though
Charley had taught him to be a strong swimmer. The couple had later been charged with physical abuse by another foster child, and Charley felt sure they killed his brother. As for Charley’s experience, he lived in five different foster homes where he’d been used and abused and discarded, finally running away to Dallas when he was sixteen.

  Amanda had cut him a lot of slack, excused much of his bad behavior, because of his troubled childhood.

  All those lies had tipped the scales in her decision to marry him. When she’d been indecisive, he declaimed sadly that he didn’t blame her for not wanting to marry someone who was the son of an adulterer and a prostitute, someone who’d never been a part of a family and would likely be a poor excuse for a husband and father.

  She’d protested that her own family, while intact, was certainly no model for a ’50s TV series, and to prove she didn’t hold his unfortunate circumstances against him, she had, of course, agreed to marry him.

  Lies, lies and more lies.

  He’d manipulated her as surely as he’d manipulated all his other victims.

  If he weren’t already dead, she’d kill him. Rip his lying tongue out of his filthy mouth, cut off his arms and legs with a chain saw then shove his body in a wood chipper set on slow.

  She glanced across the room to her father. He met her gaze briefly but couldn’t maintain eye contact. Charley had a family, and her father had known it before today. A long time before today, she’d guess from his reluctance to face her.

  Detective Jerk, on the other hand, was studying her intently. “You’re saying you didn’t know anything about your husband’s family? He never took you home to meet his parents? No holiday dinners with the in-laws?”

  Amanda glared at him. She’d just realized the enormity of her husband’s deception, been confronted with the probability of her father’s, and this creep wanted to twist the knife. She drew in a deep breath and leaned forward, returning the detective’s gaze defiantly. “What part of con artist do you not understand? Charley conned me just like he conned everybody else.”

  “He married you.”

  “Con artists don’t marry their victims? Give me a break. You hear about that on the news every day.”

  “When the victim is wealthy. You’re not. Your parents are, but they’re both in good health. You won’t be inheriting money for a long time, and you’ve never made a lot at any of your short-lived jobs.”

  Amanda narrowed her gaze. “Thank you for pointing that out.”

  “So,” the rude detective continued, “if it was all a scam, what was the scam? What did Charley Randolph expect to gain from marrying you?”

  Amanda was pretty sure she knew the answer to that one, but she wasn’t about to admit it to this creep. He seemed to know everything about her. He probably already knew the answer to that question.

  How many times had her father bailed Charley out of trouble, used his influence to get the charges dropped or provided a lawyer who could keep Charley out of jail?

  For a long time—maybe until this very minute when so many truths had been shoved in her face—she had believed that, in his own selfish way, Charley had loved her...that amidst all the deceit, that one element had been genuine.

  He’d admitted that he lied when they met, when he came into the real estate office where she worked and said he wanted to buy a house. He had no money to rent a house, much less buy one. His excuse had been that he saw her entering the building and fell in love at first sight. He’d told “a little white lie” in order to meet her. Weeks later when she mentioned her father was a judge, he’d seemed surprised.

  Had that been a lie too?

  Had he pursued her because her father was a judge and could get him out of trouble?

  “Mrs. Randolph?”

  She rose from the wooden chair. “Apparently, Detective Daggett, you know more than I do about my ex-husband. Since I can tell you nothing else, I assume we’re finished and I can go home.”

  “Ex-husband? Your divorce wasn’t final, Mrs. Randolph.”

  “He’s dead. I think that’s about as ex as it can get.”

  The cop gave her a tight smile. “Go home. But don’t plan any long trips.”

  She returned the pseudo-smile. “I’ll send you a copy of my itinerary.”

  Brian took one arm and her father the other as they hustled her out of the interrogation room. She let them. She wanted to get out of there. She’d had enough of answering questions. She wanted to get her father alone and interrogate him. She wanted answers instead of questions. She doubted those answers would be anything she wanted to hear, but she needed to know the truth. There’d been little enough of that since she married Charley Randolph.

  

  That evening Amanda settled into her father’s car for the drive home to her apartment. Finally she would have a chance to talk to him alone.

  He backed out of the garage into the spring evening.

  The neighborhood had a rich aura, cool and shady and prosperous. Mature trees lined both sides of the street, and the low sunlight touched the leaves, spinning the greens from light to dark as they fluttered in the gentle breeze. Though she couldn’t hear birds from inside the well-insulated car, she knew the lilting songs of the robins and cardinals, the raucous summer calls of the blue jays and the ever-changing chorus of the mockingbirds.

  The drive from her parents’ house in Highland Park to her place off Harry Hines Boulevard was only a few miles, but the distance was more than spatial—it was a journey from the upper crust to the lower, to an area where Amanda could operate her motorcycle shop, live above it and have relatively low mortgage payments.

  “It’s going to be all right,” her father said, turning the corner and heading away from the quiet, tree-lined street. “The only evidence they have against you is circumstantial.”

  Amanda studied his profile, the strong nose, stubborn jaw and clear brown eyes. He had always been her hero, her best friend and her opponent. Her inheritance of his independence and his obstinacy guaranteed the two of them would butt heads, but he’d never lied to her. At the moment, however, he seemed to be making an effort to divert her from asking for the truth, from forcing him to either admit to something awful or to lie to her.

  He wouldn’t lie.

  She couldn’t believe he’d lie.

  But he could refuse to tell her.

  “How long have you known about Charley’s family?”

  For a couple of blocks they rode in silence.

  Eventually, her father did not disappoint her. “I ran a complete background check on him as soon as you said you were thinking about marrying him.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Another long silence. “Charley didn’t want you to know.”

  Amanda’s head snapped in her father’s direction. “You hated Charley! Why would it matter what he wanted?”

  Emerson slid smoothly into the traffic on I-35E. “Mandy, Charley is dead. Soon the police will find who killed him, or at least be certain you didn’t, and everything—your marriage, the things he did—it will all be over. Charley is dead, and you need to put it behind you and get on with your life.”

  Amanda shook her head and laughed, angry and amused at the same time. “Stop that slippery lawyer talk! You know better than to think I’m going to let this go until you give me a straight answer.”

  Emerson’s lips lifted in a faint smile. “You are definitely your father’s daughter. You’d have made a good lawyer, you know.” For a moment, his eyes gazed into the distance...to the possibilities for her life she’d thrown away? He gave a resigned sigh. “So what do you want to know about Charley’s family? They’re small town, hard-working but uneducated. Blue collar. Maybe he was ashamed of them. Charley always pretended to be somebody he wasn’t.”

  “That’s nuts. He’d make up a story about a drug dealer and a prostitute mother to cover the fact that his parents were blue collar? I don’t think so. I think he’d have hidden his family no matter who the
y were. Charley was always pretending, always lying about who he was. Maybe he had to disconnect from everything and everybody real in his life so he could live the fiction he created.”

  “That’s possible.” Emerson pulled off the freeway, gaze focused on the road ahead. “Perhaps in order to become the persona or personas he became, he needed to block out the truth even from himself.”

  “Could be. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know the answer to that question, but that still leaves my original question which can be answered. Why didn’t you tell me about Charley’s family, my in-laws? They were my family too.”

  “I’m your family. Your mother, your sister and I. We’re your family. If Charley chose not to share his family with you, that was his decision.”

  “Damn it, Dad, you’re doing that lawyer thing again!”

  Emerson turned down the driveway beside the large building that housed her shop, Amanda’s Motorcycles and More. He pulled close to the outside staircase leading up to her apartment and stopped.

  “You’re my daughter. I’m your father. I love you beyond all reason, and my number one priority has always been your happiness, yours and your sister’s. But I don’t worry about Jenny like I do about you. She’s easier. Her life flows smoothly along her pathways, no speed bumps. You came into the world screaming and waving your clenched fists, and you’ve been fighting ever since.” He touched her cheek with the back of one hand. “You refuse to take advice. You refuse to learn from the experience of others. You’re stubborn and willful and determined to make your own mistakes, and because I love you, I try to stop you. Maybe my advice isn’t always right, but it isn’t always wrong, and always my intentions are to spare you pain and make you happy.”

  Amanda gave a frustrated sigh. “You’re not going to answer my question, are you?”

  Her father leaned across the console and kissed her cheek. “I love you, Mandy.” He opened his door and started to get out of the car.