by Marta Perry
He tapped the pen in his hands against the desktop and found himself wondering what life had been like in the office when Frank was alive. He’d think most fathers would be proud to have a son to succeed them, but he’d never seen Frank and his father together. And he certainly had no experience of his own upon which to base a judgment.
Just now, with the spring term of court in session, he and Trey were handling all the work themselves. Since the judge was rarely present, the two of them had dealt with the caseload together, dividing it according to which of them had more expertise in a given area.
Jason didn’t miss the constant competitive spirit that had existed in the DA’s office when he was there. He and Trey were more of a team than he’d ever been with another attorney.
But he did miss the challenge of criminal law. He was beginning to think that, given a choice, a small private practice where he could take on defense cases as they came along might be a good fit for him.
Musing about the future led him, inevitably, to Deidre and Kevin. They wouldn’t want to leave Echo Falls. If what he had with Deidre proved to be the real thing, he might be here longer than he’d ever anticipated. That should dismay him, but it didn’t.
A discreet tap on the door brought him back to the current moment with all its complications. “Come in,” he called.
Evelyn glanced in with a look that said she hoped she hadn’t disturbed him. Since he’d been daydreaming, he instantly felt guilty. “Pastor Bennett would like a few minutes, if you can spare the time.”
“You mean now?”
“He’s waiting.” Evelyn lifted her eyebrows. “If you’re too busy, I can set up an appointment later.”
“No, no, that’s all right.” He closed the file that lay open on his desk. “Ask him to come right in.”
Jase stood, extending his hand, as the young minister came in. Bennett seemed ill at ease, and he darted a swift look around the office before his gaze landed on the day’s newspaper, which lay folded on the corner of Jason’s desk.
“I heard about the hit-and-run accident near the Morris house.” Bennett took the client chair Jason indicated. “Terrible thing.”
“Yes, it was.” He hadn’t come here to talk about Mike Hanlon, Jase guessed.
“I understand you found him. Do the police have any idea who the driver was?”
Jason shrugged. “They don’t confide in me.” In regard to a search for the driver, that was true enough.
“The newspaper says they’re looking for a vehicle with damage to the front end. I suppose there will be evidence they can match to the car.”
He nodded, waiting. The man was showing all the symptoms of someone who wasn’t sure he wanted to bring up the subject that had brought him here.
In the face of Jase’s silence, Bennett seemed compelled to speak. “I guess you’re wondering why I’m here.” His face flushed. “My wife told me what she said to you.”
How did anybody respond to a statement like that? He tried for a neutral but receptive expression.
“I thought... I... She also told me what you said to her. About bringing her concerns to me, I mean.”
“I guess she did so.”
“Yes, well. It was a shock.” His face worked, making him look even younger than his years. “I never knew she...well...”
“Suspected?” He finished the sentence, fearing if he didn’t, they’d be here all day.
“There wasn’t anything to suspect. I mean, I do admire Deidre. Well, anyone would. But there’s never been anything between us at all improper.” He straightened as he said it, meeting Jase’s gaze steadily. “I never said a word to her that the whole congregation couldn’t have heard. I swear it.”
“It’s not me you need to convince. It’s your wife.”
Despite Bennett’s obvious distress, Jase couldn’t find it in himself to feel sorry for the man. If he’d been more mindful of Deidre’s situation, he’d never have let her in for the kind of gossip that would lead to the anonymous letter the judge had shown him.
“I have... I mean, I think I have.” Bennett stared down at his clasped hands, a picture of misery. “I didn’t mean anything. I was trying to give her the pastoral care that...”
“Right.” Jason leaned forward. It was obvious what he was holding back. “The truth is that you developed feelings for Mrs. Morris, didn’t you?”
A moment passed. Another. Finally Bennett raised his head. His eyes were wet.
“Okay. You seem to know everything. I started having feelings for her. But I never said a word, not one word. What harm did it do? I just liked to be with her. To feel like she relied on my advice.”
“And while you were doing that, people were talking,” he said bluntly.
“No!” He looked honestly startled at the thought. “No, I’m sure nobody had any idea.”
“Somebody had an idea. Somebody wrote at least one anonymous letter. Maybe more.”
Bennett seemed incapable of doing anything but staring.
“You made things difficult for Mrs. Morris. And came close to ruining your own marriage. That doesn’t sound harmless to me.”
“I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t have any idea. I thought...”
“No, you didn’t think.” Jase let his exasperation show. “Didn’t they teach you anything about boundaries in that seminary you went to? You crossed the line, whether you meant to or not, and other people got hurt.”
Bennett wiped his face with the back of his hand, like a child who was guilty and ashamed. “I should apologize. To Deidre, to the congregation—”
Jase slapped his hand down on the desk. “No, that’s just what you shouldn’t do. Don’t you have any common sense? If you go to the congregation with this, it becomes public property. And Deidre has enough on her plate without dealing with you feeling sorry for yourself.”
The blunt words seemed to have the impact of a dash of cold water in the face. Bennett gaped for a moment. Then he seemed to grab hold of some shreds of his self-respect. His face firmed.
“Of course. That was a stupid and self-indulgent thing to say.” He stood. “You’re right. I have to do my best to repair things with my wife. Other than normal interactions at church, I’ll stay away from Deidre—Mrs. Morris—altogether. I don’t want to cause any more trouble.”
“I think that would be the best thing you could do.” Jason rose, too. It was easy enough for the man to be sorry. But he didn’t know exactly how much damage he’d done Deidre with the judge through that anonymous letter.
At least Bennett could be relieved that this awkward interview seemed over.
Bennett reached the door before he glanced back, a rueful smile lighting his face. “Deidre always treated me like a naive little brother, anyway.”
Jason exhaled as the door closed behind him, feeling as if he’d skirted a minefield. At least that aspect of the judge’s suspicions had been allayed. And if he accepted that Dixie’s death had nothing to do with her presence in Deidre’s house, his whole case against Deidre’s fitness as a mother fell to pieces.
Regardless of the judge’s opinion, Jason knew that his own moment of truth had arrived. He had to speak privately with the man, tell him what he’d found and say he was finished with this. If that cost him this position, well, so be it. Then, at least, he could go to Deidre with a clean conscience.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
KEVIN HAD WOKEN in the night with another nightmare. While he seemed his usual sunny self this morning, Deidre felt as if she’d been pulled through a knothole backward. The phrase her grandmother used to say brought a wry smile to her face. Sometimes those old expressions caught the feeling perfectly.
At the moment he was busy putting together a complicated structure with his linking blocks, humming to himself as he often did when his mind was enga
ged. Sometimes she imagined him off at college, still humming while preoccupied with final exams.
She tried to focus on the updates she was making to the business website, but her brain seemed hopelessly fuzzed from lack of sleep. The events of the previous night played themselves over and over in her mind.
That visit from Mike Hanlon had been so frightening at the time that in spite of repeating the story both to the police and to Jason, she still hadn’t fully absorbed it. Little details kept resurfacing in her thoughts, like the smell of stale beer that clung to Hanlon’s clothes.
He never touches the hard stuff, but he can turn into a mean drunk on four or five beers.
She’d forgotten that conversation with Dixie, but it came back to her now. Funny, how Dixie had talked about her brief marriage with such detachment, as if it had happened to someone else.
Deidre frowned at a close-up photo of a double wedding ring quilt. In retrospect Dixie’s attitude had been odd. She seemed to have no trouble separating her essential self from the things that happened to her.
One thing was certain—Dixie had never expressed any fear of Mike. She’d claimed that the only time he’d tried to get rough with her, she’d hit him with the nearest hard object, which had happened to be an aluminum skillet.
Dented the skillet and didn’t even raise a lump on his hard head. I told him next time I’d use a cast-iron one.
No, Dixie wouldn’t have been afraid if Mike had come to the door that evening and said he wanted to talk. That part of the chief’s reconstruction made sense, but she still wasn’t sure of the rest of it.
Granted, Hanlon could have been the person who’d gotten into the house and searched through the boxes of Dixie’s belongings. He probably had been, no matter who else had done what. He’d passed by when she and Judith had carried the boxes home, and he’d easily guess they were from Dixie’s place.
But that still didn’t explain what he’d been looking for. That mention of insurance—she just didn’t buy that as an explanation. He couldn’t have thought Dixie had insured her life and named him as beneficiary. That was such an un-Dixie-like thing to do.
Deidre pushed her chair back and stared at the single box, now sitting under the table. Once she’d been through both of them, she’d been able to combine the contents in one overstuffed box. It looked perfectly innocent.
Jason had cautioned her not to get rid of anything, and she wouldn’t, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have yet another look through the contents herself. She’d already searched several times without finding anything that seemed pertinent, but maybe she was missing something.
Unlikely. Presumably Hanlon had known what he’d been looking for, and he hadn’t found it. So how could she?
Assuring herself that Kevin was completely occupied, she pulled out the box and began setting the contents out, one by one, on the table. Miscellaneous papers, none of which seemed important now but should probably be kept. A packet of photos, stuffed into a manila envelope. Those she emptied out onto the table.
Most of them were fairly recent—pictures of Dixie with Kevin riding the carousel at last year’s fair, a snap of him on the first day of kindergarten, one of the falls, several with the other servers at the restaurant, laughing it up after a long shift probably.
Some went further back, though. Funny that Dixie had never put those in an album, but Dixie had laughed at Deidre’s collection of photo albums. Deidre had one for each year, and they lined a bottom shelf in the living room cabinet.
Dixie wasn’t a saver, she’d always insisted, but apparently these were important enough that she hadn’t wanted to throw them away.
Deidre spread them out and studied each one. Most of them were from Dixie’s high school years, after she’d left Echo Falls, showing Dixie clowning with a number of people. Deidre studied the young faces. Had Dixie stayed in touch with any of those high school friends? She’d never seen any indication of it, but here were the photos to prove she’d cared enough to hang on to them.
At the bottom of the stack were a few photos dating back to Dixie’s life in Echo Falls, including a class picture when they’d been about nine or ten, standing in a self-conscious row on the steps of the elementary school. There was one of her and Dixie dressed up for their first dance.
That made her smile, because the same picture was in one of her albums. They’d still been little girls then, even though they’d thought themselves so grown-up.
The last of the batch had to have been the summer they were twelve, judging by the fact that while Deidre still looked like a child, Dixie had suddenly blossomed into a young woman. Deidre held it up, looking at it closely. They’d been in the woods, with the stream in the background.
Had it been one of their excursions to the falls? She’d stood tall for the photo, trying to match Dixie’s height, while Dixie had her arms across her chest, as if trying to hide her breasts.
Billy had probably taken the picture. He’d usually accompanied them on their hikes, trailing along behind or darting off into the woods in search of something, coming back with a leaf or a blossom for them to admire, much the way Kevin did. The photo had the slightly crooked look that marked his attempts at photography.
And that was it for photographs. She couldn’t see that any of them had any relevance to Dixie’s murder. Pushing them back into the envelope, she laid it aside. Jason was welcome to look through them, but it wouldn’t help.
At the bottom of the box was Dixie’s collection of china pigs. For someone who’d insisted on traveling light, Dixie had had a weakness for the useless objects, ranging in size from a small piggy bank to an assortment of six-inch figures with silly expressions and odd hats, all the way up to a large one intended to grace a flower bed.
She picked up a pig wearing a graduation mortarboard. Dixie had won it at the county fair, throwing baseballs at milk bottles, and had been inordinately proud of it, saying it was the only thing she’d ever won.
Memory produced an image of the two of them, wandering from stall to stall at the fair, with Dixie clutching the pig and saying he was her good-luck charm.
Her reverie was cut short by the ringing of the doorbell. Kevin glanced up and then returned to his construction, his humming uninterrupted.
To her astonishment, it was the judge. He wasn’t one to drop by, and generally called first, as if an appointment were needed. But here he was, and Deidre decided to take that as an olive branch.
“Please, come in.” She turned to Kevin. “Look, Kev, your grandfather stopped by to visit.”
Kevin scrambled to his feet, thank goodness, making her feel that her efforts to teach manners hadn’t been entirely in vain.
“Hi, Grandfather. Want to see what I’m making? It’s going to be a space station.”
Franklin’s face softened in the indulgent smile he wore just for Kevin. “That sounds great.” He squatted next to the stack of blocks. “Your daddy used to make airports and cities when he was your age.”
The tension that had seized Deidre’s stomach at the sight of the judge eased. She appreciated it when Kevin’s grandfather made an effort to interact with him this way, but it happened all too seldom. Usually the judge had some other agenda when he came over, and she suspected that he had little tolerance for the slightly untidy coziness that characterized her home.
Besides, each time they’d talked recently, there had been a barrier between them. He’d reiterated his desire to have them move in each time, and she’d continued to say no. But she hadn’t quite been able to bring up Sylvia’s idea that he wanted to take Kevin away.
Smiling, she left the two of them alone, retreating to the workroom. She heard their voices from there, but couldn’t quite distinguish the words. If only the judge could always be this way, life would be easier for all of them.
He hadn’t immediately mentioned
his plans for them to move in with him and Sylvia, and she hoped maybe today was the day when he wouldn’t press her.
But before she could get comfortable with that thought, the judge joined her. He stood for a moment, surveying the objects from Dixie’s collection that still stood on the worktable.
“Collecting things for a yard sale?” he asked.
“Not exactly.” She didn’t want to bring up Dixie and risk causing a flare-up of his disapproval. “I’m glad you stopped over to see Kevin. There’s plenty of time to spend with him. He doesn’t have to get ready for kindergarten for another half hour.”
“It’s always a joy to see my grandson, but he said that he has to see a new doctor next week. Is something wrong?”
Deidre’s heart sank. Why hadn’t she realized Kevin might mention it? Maybe she shouldn’t have told him at all, but she hadn’t wanted to spring it on him.
“It’s nothing to be alarmed about. But I talked to the doctor about those nightmares I told you about, and she felt I should make an appointment with a child psychologist for Kevin. She thinks it will help him adjust to the trauma of the accident to talk with a professional a time or two.”
He was already frowning. “I don’t see why. The boy seems perfectly well-adjusted to me. It’s not as if he even remembers what happened.”
“Not consciously, no.” This was a conversation she’d hoped to avoid having with him, but she couldn’t dodge it now that it had come up. “But he’s been having nightmares nearly every night. The doctor feels that even if he doesn’t consciously remember, the memories are there, surfacing and upsetting him when he’s asleep.”
“Sounds like a lot of psychological babble to me.” The frown grew heavier. “What is this child psychologist supposed to do about it? Make him remember? It seems to me that’s the worst thing for Kevin.”
“The aim isn’t to force him to remember, but just to get at the fear that is causing his nightmares. That way he can deal with it instead of having bad dreams every night.”
“All children have nightmares,” the judge said with authority. “I remember Frank at that age, having nightmares every time his mother let him watch an unsuitable program. They grow out of them.”