“It is. That’s what I’m saying. The hate didn’t stop. Charlotte still hates her sister — even with Laurel dead, she hates.”
* * * *
The sound of a key in the street door turned them both that direction. Scott entered.
“Oh, there you are,” he said, as if they’d been the ones to arrive. Maggie thought there was an undercurrent of tension beneath his surface. “Dallas wants you to go over to the sheriff’s office.”
“Has something happened?”
He shook his head — not disputing her guess, but a refusal to tell them what it was. “You’ll have to talk to Dallas.”
Without discussion, she and Carson walked to the courthouse, then downstairs to the sheriff’s office.
Phones were ringing as much as when Maggie had arrived Monday afternoon, with the same woman appearing to have never left her spot. A deputy was on one phone, taking notes.
Dallas stood by the window. They went to him.
“Where’s the sheriff?” Maggie asked.
Dallas looked weary. “He’s not here. Rick Wade’s been murdered.”
Maggie felt her breath burn in her lungs.
If he’d killed Wade it would make more sense.
She thought that Wednesday night. And now Wade was dead.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Abner, the deputy, either didn’t have much information or wasn’t sharing it.
But in answer to a direct question from Maggie, he did say, “East of Buena Vista. Looks like he was on his way to Lynchburg.” The deputy paused.
“Five-oh-one?” J.D. prompted. When the deputy didn’t respond he added, “Sixty?”
“Neither. He was found on Robinson Gap Road. You know it? Six-oh-seven. Crosses the Parkway.”
“Why in hell…? That makes no sense, even for—” He bit it off, not stopping anyone from filling in Rick Wade.
The deputy shook his head. “No sense at all. But that’s where he was. That’s where the sheriff is now.”
“Okay.” Maggie fished out her keys.
The deputy shifted his feet. “I don’t know if Sheriff Gardner would like that, you going out there.”
“He can tell me so when he sees me. Us.” They moved toward the door. “Dallas?”
He shook his head. “But you two young people go ahead, fill me in later.”
“You okay, Dallas?”
J.D.’s question made her focus on the older man. His skin had none of its usual ruddy glow.
“I will be come morning. Just need some rest.”
As she turned toward the outer door, J.D. plucked her keys out of her hand and dropped them in her open bag. “Hey—”
“My truck. I’m driving.”
“I can—”
“You can. You’re not going to. Not that road.”
“Robinson Gap Road? What’s the big deal about that?”
“No big deal. Most useful when VMI — that’s Virginia Military Institute — uses it for a twenty-mile march for cadets. Other than that, you’ll see.”
* * * *
The drive to the town of Buena Vista was uneventful enough that Maggie found herself noticing blooming patches of blue, purple, and white she guessed were wildflowers. Would Jamie or Ally know their names?
She was almost dozing when Nancy called.
When Maggie told her where she was going, why, and with whom, her assistant grunted, then launched into reports on Chester Bondelle of Roanoke — no blots on his record — and Henry Zales. She summed up Zales with, “About as good as you’ll get for a divorce attorney. The files doing any good?”
Maggie expelled a short sigh. “Something about the transcript keeps bugging me.”
“Which one?”
“Which—? Oh, the official one. I only went through the dailies while I was waiting for the official transcript.”
“The dailies are all I’ve got because the prick was too cheap to get the official, but I can see if anything jumps out at me.”
“Thanks, Nancy. I’d appreciate that.”
“No problem. You better appreciate yourself back here soon before Vic pops for real.”
“I’ll be in Monday morning.”
J.D. didn’t comment when she ended the call. Soon they reached Buena Vista.
“That would be the usual route to Lynchburg.” J.D. tipped his head toward the road heading south, while he took one headed east, straight into the mountains.
It started as an ordinary road, with houses spaced out beside it. The houses disappeared. The road narrowed. Trees closed in on either side. The surface crumbled. The slopes going up on one side and down on the other steepened. The curves began.
Gradually at first, but then they came closer together, with a relative straightaway leading to a left hook, a sequence of twists, before what felt like a U-turn. Then smaller curves to the right that seemed destined to take them in a circle. Before they could complete it, official cars clogged the narrow way.
The outpost was an auxiliary deputy from Bedhurst, who greeted J.D. by name and didn’t object to them walking past him and between official cars. After about fifty feet, the ground on the right side — the inside curve of the road — dropped sharply away.
If Wade went over the edge, evidence collection would be a bitch.
They came around a large SUV and saw Wade’s truck hadn’t gone over and neither had he.
Another twenty-five feet away from them, his truck was wedged into the incline on the opposite side of the narrow road, but with the hood facing down, as if he’d driven up the slope, then turned, and started down it. The passenger door was open. His torso was held upright behind the wheel by the airbag, but his head lolled to the side, revealing the blood.
Gardner left a group and came toward them, his face even more haggard. “You made good time. Too good. If you don’t want more tickets, Maggie—”
“Carson drove. Ticket him. Any idea yet on when?”
“Some time after ten and before midnight last night.”
“That tight?”
“A gas station called in when news got out. Pulled their video. He was pumping gas at nine-forty-five. Give him time to drive to here, that makes it after ten, easy. He was found at eleven-thirty. That’s when the call came in, actually, making it tighter on that side, too.”
Maggie’s brain completed each of the computations, but somewhere deeper than her brain was already shouting, J.D. Carson could not have done this.
Could.
Not.
Have.
He had an alibi.
An alibi she could rely on, because it was her.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
She’d been at J.D.’s cabin at ten-nineteen. He’d arrived no more than fifteen minutes later. He could not have driven from this spot to his cabin, much less get sweaty from a run in the forty-nine minutes after Wade was seen alive on the gas station’s tape.
She’d left at ten-fifty. That left only forty minutes before Wade was found. Also not enough time.
J.D. asked the sheriff the question she should have asked. “Who called it in?”
“Car load of kids. On this road, that time, that weather, they could’ve been up to no good, but they did the right thing, so there’s that.”
Was it possible for J.D. to be innocent of this murder, yet guilty of one or both of the others?
No.
Everything inside her said they were connected. Had to be. Rick Wade had gotten too close, had figured out too much, the murderer disposed of him.
She kicked her brain back into gear. “The way his truck is positioned, are you thinking it got there before or after he got shot?”
“Not pinned down yet, but before is more likely. Looks like a handgun. Can’t see anyone making that shot on this road in the dark from outside the truck.”
Carson nodded agreement.
“A passenger who shot while Rick was driving would have risked the truck going down instead of up.” Gardner shook his head. “No. More likely som
ething blocked the road and made Wade swerve. Truck comes to rest. He’s stunned. Shooter walks up out of the dark, opens the passenger door, shoots, drives away. But not before using an evergreen branch to rub out any footprints or tire tracks left by the rain.”
“Did the carload of kids see any other vehicles?”
“Haven’t said so yet. Locals and state are questioning them again now. Also checking their phones, social media in case there’s anything there.” He shook his head. “Not likely the way this is going. A garroting, a shooting if Pan Wade’s connected, and now run off the road. No repeats.”
“Teddie,” J.D. said grimly.
Maggie quickly explained Teddie Barrett’s role as a witness and what she knew of his death. “This was set up with an accident to start, like Teddie. A gun, but no need to be a good shot. Like with Pan,” she said.
The sheriff didn’t seem impressed.
“You keep following up on Pan’s murderer, but for us this takes priority, while it’s fresh. We’re pulling Barry in for questioning, what with those free trucks. Why Wade was going to Lynchburg’s our top priority. Any ideas there?”
Maggie filled him in on what Wade had said at the memorial. Gardner had already heard the gist, and her details didn’t answer any of his questions.
They were firmly dismissed.
* * * *
2:28 p.m.
They stopped at a barbeque place in Buena Vista for a late lunch. She was going to object, but her stomach growled. Overruled.
The food and service were good and unfancy, including rolls of paper towel on the tables to cope with barbeque sauce.
Their conversation was sparse since what was on both their minds was best not talked about in public. Especially not when the public was eating.
Back in his truck, where a heat and heaviness seemed to close around her, they still didn’t talk. Not until the welcome sign announced they’d entered Bedhurst County.
He said, “Want to go to the office? Get dropped at the guesthouse? Or…”
She looked over, but he was focused on the road, which she’d considered narrow and twisty until she saw Robinson Gap Road.
“You think Dallas is at the office?”
“No.”
“No,” she agreed. “He needs to rest. And if he knew I was at the guesthouse he’d want to hash things over all evening.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “We should fill him in, though. By phone.”
She nodded. “Not the office, not the guesthouse. So? You said or…”
“Or we go to the cabin.”
If you walk into my home uninvited a second time, you better be prepared.
But she wasn’t uninvited this time.
She also recognized the neutrality he’d used — the cabin, not my cabin, which could be construed as a close relative to my bed.
That made a difference. A huge difference.
“The cabin.”
* * * *
She put the call on speaker and reported.
“What does this tell us?” Dallas asked at the end.
“Could have been somebody at the memorial. That’s when Wade talked about going to Lynchburg,” Maggie said.
“No help, since everyone was there.”
“True, but what if it was something he said at the memorial? Nobody was trying to kill him before that — that anybody knows about. Then hours after he talks about going to Lynchburg, he’s dead.”
“I’ll call Henry. There has to be more to that.”
“Good luck. Investigators have got to have him in for questioning. I’ll call Bel — Belichek, a detective I know — and see what more he can find out.”
She filled them in on Bel tracking Darcie Johnson, another woman who’d consulted Henry Zales.
Carson asked, “What about the phone calls? Rick was studying them.”
“How do you know?”
He looked at the road. “Exactly how you think I know. I was watching him. As much as I could. Saw him studying something on his computer, but couldn’t see exactly what. Didn’t realize they were phone records until—”
“The memorial, when he mentioned them. That’s why you reacted.”
He frowned, but answered readily enough. “Yeah. That’s when I realized what he’d had up on the screen. Phone records fit the format of the list he was checking. Confirmed it when I got that copy this morning.”
“We need to see Wade’s phone records,” Maggie said.
“Surely Sheriff Gardner—”
She cut off Dallas. “With all he has to do, we’d be doing him a favor going over them first.”
He chuckled, revealing he’d been pulling her leg. “Welcome to the dark side, Maggie.”
J.D. said abruptly, “There’s something else Rick’s murder tells us. Shooting wasn’t the murderer’s first choice.”
“Sure. Because it was dark and—”
He interrupted her. “He — or she — could have set it up to shoot Wade in the daylight. Or at that gas station, with the target well-lit. That would present fewer variables than with an ambush, even on that road. And Teddie. That was a maybe-it’ll-work try. This is the work of someone who wanted the target close and not moving.”
“It didn’t take good shooting to kill Pan Wade,” she said.
“No, it didn’t,” he said in a thoughtful voice. “Rick Wade was a darned good shot.”
“But we don’t know for sure Teddie was murdered.”
J.D. glinted a look at her. “You were more certain before.”
In other words, when she’d suspected him of killing Teddie. “Being skeptical is what I do, and we can’t know for sure.”
“Certainly lookin’ more likely,” Dallas said. “And I see what J.D.’s saying. There could be a pattern. Pan’s shot with her own gun, but that’s on impulse. When the murderer has more time, he—or she — uses other means. Runnin’ Teddie off the road — yes, yes, Maggie with the caveat if he was murdered — garrotin’ Laurel, tryin’ to run Wade off the road, then followin’ up with a shootin’. I think you have something there, J.D.”
“They might not be connected.” But Maggie didn’t believe that.
These deaths were connected.
J.D. Carson hadn’t killed Rick Wade, so he hadn’t killed any of them.
He wasn’t a murderer.
She’d prosecuted the wrong man. The verdict had been right.
And her attraction to this man…
“They’re connected,” Dallas said. “I’ll raise what you said with the sheriff, J.D. Those are good points.”
“Not tonight,” J.D. said.
Another voice came through the phone — Evelyn, also saying, “Not tonight.”
With a lift of the lines at the corners of his eyes, J.D. said they’d sign off now and meet at the office in the morning.
* * * *
J.D. had not liked Rick Wade since they were kids at recess. It was an instant antipathy and an enduring one. Then Wade made Pan unhappy. He wouldn’t have thought he’d waste a moment’s sorrow on the guy.
But damned if there wasn’t sorrow in what he was feeling.
Maybe it was because Pan had loved Rick at one time. Maybe it was the loss of someone he’d known his whole life, even if he hadn’t liked him.
He’d never expected to feel this. Not for Wade.
He glanced toward Maggie.
There were a lot of things he’d never expected to feel.
Not part of the plan.
Not part of the plan at all.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
He opened the cabin door, stepped back to let her go in first.
She flashed back to walking in to the guesthouse for the first time. How she’d made sure not to let him get behind her, to corner her.
But he’d been with her when Rick Wade was killed.
That opened everything to be viewed from a different angle.
“Have a seat.” He gestured briefly to the stools at the island. “I’ll make coffee.”
She watched his efficient movements, said nothing until he handed her a coffee mug fit for his large hand, but requiring both of hers. “Thanks.”
She sipped as he settled on the other stool.
“This is good. You should make the coffee at the office.”
“Only if you want to put Scott’s nose out of joint.”
She smiled. Tipped her head toward the rest of the cabin. “You’ve done amazing things here.”
“Wanted to do them sooner, let Anya enjoy them. She wouldn’t hear of it. She liked things the way she liked them.”
“And then she left you her property,” she said musingly. “Anya, the woman in the woods…”
His mouth twitched. “At least you called her the woman, not the Wood Witch.”
“Was she? With her potions and poisons?”
His eyes narrowed. “You shouldn’t listen to gossip. Especially not Bedhurst gossip.”
“Give me something else to listen to, then.”
She wasn’t sure that would work, even when his lips parted. But, sure enough, words came.
“Anya grew herbs, medicinal plants. Collected others from the woods. Guess you could say she made potions. No poisons.”
“And she taught you?”
“Yeah. That was one of the things you got wrong at the trial. It wasn’t the Army taught me about being in the woods and surviving on my own. It was Anya. Only reason they put me into the unit was I already knew about surviving, and they figured they could improve my shooting.”
“Which they did.”
“Which they did,” he agreed.
“What you said to Dallas on the phone about Teddie’s death—” If you ever stop cross-examining me, I might tell you more. “—that was interesting. Running him off the road was a second effort. The night before, when you took him home and he was drunk… If someone got him drunk on purpose, it would make it easier, look even more like an accident…”
She clamped down on the urge to follow up.
Okay, Carson, I’m not cross-examining you. I’m not asking you a question at all. You’ve got the chance to tell it the way you want.
As if he recognized the challenge to make good on his earlier words, he said, “I came out of the restaurant side and saw Teddy weaving on his bike across the parking lot toward the highway. None of his friends who thought it was quite the sport to get him drunk considered how he’d get home. Drunk. On a bike with no lights. In the dark.”
Proof of Innocence Page 28