“Then don’t tell me our prayers aren’t useless!”
“Do you think Jesus’ prayers were useless? He prayed, ‘Not my will, but Thine.’ He understood that there was a symphony playing. What if God had been compelled to answer Jesus’ prayers to remove the cup? We’d still owe the debt of our sins. Instead, the Father saw the end from the beginning. His will was done. And thank God it was. Jesus’ life wasn’t wasted on that cross. And Beth’s life wasn’t wasted, either.”
That just made her angrier. She slid off the bed and crossed the room. “Those were things that impacted the world. We’re just one little family. She was one little girl! Why did he even give her to us? Why did he give us all those years to love her if he was going to rip her away . . . while I prayed?” She thrust her angry face into his and ground her teeth together. “I was in the janitor’s closet on my face, praying for her while she died! How does that make sense?”
Doug’s chest tightened as his own sorrow overflowed. “It doesn’t.”
“Why would he take her and leave me here, when I want to die?”
“Don’t say that, sweetheart.”
“Why not, if this is all there is? Struggles and heartache and waste. I wish she’d never been born!”
“Kay, you don’t mean that.”
“Want to see?” With that, she threw open the door and stormed out.
Despair rendered him useless. He had no more arguments, no more defenses. He couldn’t help his wife. He couldn’t even help himself.
ONE HUNDRED
KAY BOLTED THROUGH THE KITCHEN AND LIVING ROOM and ran up the stairs. Beth’s door was closed. Craig had been sleeping on a pallet in Doug’s study since she died. The room hadn’t been opened since that last night at the hospital. She turned the knob, threw the door open. It swung back and hit the wall. She stepped in, her chest rising and falling with the anguish that had driven her there.
It looked so serene, so pretty, and that fed her fury. She had decorated it herself when Beth was ten. She’d picked out the wallpaper, the colors, the curtains, the comforter. She remembered Beth bouncing with joy when they’d had the big reveal.
What was she to do with it now?
Livid, she pulled Beth’s favorite childhood book off the shelf. Beth had memorized it before she could read. Now Kay hated the sight of it. She slammed it on the floor.
“What was it for?” she asked God through her teeth. “What good was any of it?”
One by one, she pulled the books out of their places, hurling them onto the floor. She tore the comforter off the bed. Pink flannel sheets lay underneath. She yanked them off, cushy mattress pad and all. They wouldn’t be needing comfort in here anymore.
“Mom! What are you doing?” Deni came in and tried to stop her.
Kay flung the pillow to the ground. Then she attacked the drawers and began throwing Beth’s clothes out, her socks, her yellow shorts, her favorite T-shirts. She dragged the top drawer out, let it crash to the floor. Barrettes and bows and hairbrushes scattered across the rug. Paper sacks, little boxes, Ziploc bags of Beth’s treasures.
“Stop!” Deni said.
“I won’t stop,” Kay cried. “It was all a hoax!”
“What are you talking about?”
Jeff came to the door, and Logan peeked in, horror on his face.
“The pregnancy, the birth.” She jerked out another drawer, let it crash to the floor. “Every single day of teaching her and loving her and caring for her. Worrying what she ate and who she was with.”
She slid her arm across the top of Beth’s dresser, knocking off trophies and framed pictures.
“You’re wrecking all her stuff!” Logan flung himself to the floor. “Stop, Mom!”
Strengthened by adrenaline, she rolled up the area rug on Beth’s floor, trapping all her things in it. “None of it mattered. Isn’t this what you want from us, God? To amputate her from our lives?”
“It did matter!” Logan screamed. “It did!” He wrestled the edge of the rug out of her hands. “Dad!”
She heard Doug’s footsteps pounding up the stairs, but she wasn’t finished. She grabbed the pictures off the walls, tore down Beth’s posters.
Doug grabbed her shoulders, pulling her back. “Kay, I won’t let you do this.”
“You can’t stop me!” she cried. “I want it gone, every last bit of it!” She dragged the picture frames onto the rug and tried again to roll it.
Doug’s face twisted as he got down on the floor with her, picking up the scattered things. “Please, Kay. Don’t destroy what’s left of her.” He picked up a picture of Beth and her friends. The glass had shattered, but the memory could be saved. “I want to keep this.” He grabbed the bows and Beth’s hairbrush, and the paper sack that had fallen out of a drawer. He opened it and looked inside.
“Aw, dear God . . .” He fell back against the wall, his hand covering his face.
Kay stopped her pillaging and took the sack. She reached in and pulled out a handful of Beth’s hair. Trembling, she brought it to her face. She could almost catch the scent of her child. Almost feel her.
It knocked the wind out of her . . . brought her to her knees. She fell into Doug. “Look what I did to all her stuff.”
“It’s okay,” he whispered in a soft, soothing voice. “We’ll just put it all back, okay? Until we’re ready to let it go. All of us.”
What had she just done to her children? She had ramped up their grief, intensified their mourning. What kind of mother was she? All these years, she’d been so careful to care for them, to protect them. Who would protect them from her?
Logan wiped his face with the back of his hand. “We’ll help you, Mom.”
Deni and Jeff got down on the floor, unrolled the rug, and opened the comforter.
Doug held her as tight as a swaddled baby while her children began to refold their sister’s clothes. Kay watched, spent, as they put the clothes back in the drawers, the barrettes and bows back in the dresser, the books back on the shelves.
“Her veil.” Deni’s lips quivered as she picked up the veil that Beth had worn when she’d played Mary in the Christmas play. “She was a good Mary.”
Thoughts of Mary, Jesus’ mother, flooded Kay’s mind as she remembered Beth’s portrayal of the young girl not much older than she — perhaps even the same age — who had found herself with child by the Holy Spirit. Suddenly Kay felt an affinity with the woman who gave birth to the son she had later watched die on the cross. Mary had suffered as Kay was suffering. She had probably wondered what it was all for. All the love and heartache, all the years of teaching, nurturing, and worrying had seemed to end with three nails and a spear. Kay knew Mary’s heartbreak. This woman who was remembered two thousand years later hadn’t seen the whole picture when she surrendered her child to the cross.
The sacrifice was too great. Kay wasn’t up to it. If all the suffering in the last year had been to make her stronger, it had failed miserably. She was as weak as a poisoned kitten.
But she laid her head against her husband’s chest, accepting his strength.
When everything was back in its place, the room looked almost as it had before.
But it was different. Beth wasn’t coming back, and Kay didn’t know if she could ever forgive God for that.
ONE HUNDRED ONE
THE DAY AFTER THE FUNERAL, CROCKETT CELEBRATED July Fourth at the soccer park. Tonight, fireworks would mark their freedom jubilee and the beginning of their recovery. But Mark wasn’t interested. He stayed with Deni, trying to lend her his strength. When he left her that afternoon, he sank into depression. That sorrow took him back to Magnolia Park late that afternoon, and the swing where Beth had often sat. He watched Melissa Tomlin’s house while she kept the killer’s secret.
Had Melissa already left for the soccer field? Was she in a festive mood, or was her secret eating her alive? She hadn’t been to the jail to see her father even once, but her mother came every day.
A few people sat on the
park benches, their small children playing, but most of the neighbors had gone to the soccer fields. Mark sat alone, praying that God would bring resolution to Beth’s case — and justice to Clay Tharpe’s accomplice. Maybe it would comfort the Brannings.
He heard the clicking of bicycle wheels and glanced back at the man turning into the neighborhood. He rode by on his mountain bike, never looking in Mark’s direction.
Mark’s heart bolted as he realized that the man was Ned Emory. Leaving the swing, Mark stepped behind the monkey bars, watching as Ned turned into Melissa’s driveway. The garage door came up, as though she’d been watching for him. Melissa stood in the shadows of the garage. Ned rode inside, got off his bike, and kissed her.
So Ned had lied, and all of his workers had covered for him. He had come here in broad daylight, probably thinking that the neighbors would be at the soccer field.
As the garage door closed, Mark’s mind raced with thoughts of Ned’s son Zach, still not fully recovered from his gunshot wound a few months ago. His other son Gary, his depressed wife, Ellen. Before his eyes, a family was being ripped apart.
Clay Tharpe had said there was another person who wanted Tomlin dead. Melissa’s father had given them Ned Emory’s name, implying that he was involved in the murders. But why had Scott Anthony gunned down Tharpe? He sure hadn’t done it to protect Ned.
But here Melissa and Ned were, together in her house. Mark had to do something, but what? An affair wasn’t enough to justify an arrest warrant.
“Hey, Mark. What are you doing here?”
Mark turned. Jimmy Scarbrough was walking his bike toward him. Mark managed a smile for the former sheriff’s son. “Hi, Jimmy. I could ask you the same thing.”
Jimmy just shrugged, but his gaze strayed to the trees where Beth was found. “I just keep thinking about her.”
Mark messed up the fourteen-year-old’s hair. “Yeah, me too.”
“The last time I saw her was right here. I said something stupid about her haircut and she started crying.”
Mark turned fully to the boy now. He vaguely remembered hearing about that. “When was that, exactly?”
Jimmy shrugged as though he couldn’t remember. “After the banks opened. Sometime before . . . it happened. I followed her to tell her I was sorry, and she kept crying and telling me about the lady whose husband died. She said she heard the lady sitting here in the park talking about how her husband had disappeared, and she felt bad for her.”
Mark looked back at the Tomlins’ house. So Melissa had been here when Beth was here. He turned and stepped toward the boy. “Jimmy, did she say if she talked to the lady?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Please, try to think. Could the lady have found out her name that day?”
Jimmy thought for a moment. “Well, I yelled her name when I saw her. She probably heard that. After I asked Beth what she did to her hair, I saw her look at them, like I’d embarrassed her.”
Or like he’d just written her death warrant. Mark wiped the beads of perspiration from his lip. He tried to imagine what had happened that day. If Melissa was Clay Tharpe’s accomplice in the murder, then Clay would have told her about his witness.
“She seemed scared, and said she couldn’t talk because someone might get hurt. Then we got off the subject and started talking about Craig. I wish I’d listened better.”
Mark’s mind ran through the facts. Somehow the killer had learned her name and told his accomplice. If Melissa heard Beth identified in the park that day, she could have told Clay how she’d altered her appearance, and where he could find her. “Jimmy, you’ve helped me a lot today.”
“Really, how?”
“Never mind that. I’ll tell you all about it later. Right now, I need you to come with me to the sheriff’s department to fill out an affidavit, with everything you can remember about that day.”
Jimmy’s chest puffed out a little. “Sure, I can do that.”
At the station, Mark got the affidavit, then raced to Brad Caldwell’s office. “I need a warrant so I can go arrest them both while they’re still together, Brad. We’ve got probable cause. We’ve got Melissa Tomlin having an affair with Ned Emory. Melissa’s husband was abusive. She and Ned could have planned his murder and hired Tharpe, who worked for Ned. Ned lied about having a relationship with her, and she lied about knowing Clay. And now Jimmy can connect Melissa to Beth and prove she could have been aware of Beth coming to the park every day at the same time.”
Brad read the affidavit. “This is all soft, Mark. These things are all circumstantial. We need a smoking gun if we’re going to get a conviction. And just because Ned is having an affair with her doesn’t mean he’s a murderer. I know the man. He doesn’t strike me as a killer.”
“If we wait for a smoking gun, it might be after they’ve turned it on the next person they want dead. Come on, Brad. Don’t tell me they’ve committed the perfect crime. That they’re going to get away with it. It’s Beth we’re talking about. Melissa set her up, and Ned’s her lover. We have to catch them while they’re together. We have to go now.”
Brad studied the affidavit again. Finally, he let out a long sigh. “I hope I’m not gonna regret this.” He wrote up the warrants. “Arrest Melissa for conspiracy to commit murder. We don’t have anything solid on Ned right now, except that he lied to police, so bring him in on perjury. It’ll buy us time to get evidence that either clears him or implicates him.”
That was good enough for now. Mark’s burden was a little lighter as he hurried away.
MARK STOPPED BY THE SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT TO GATHER SOME backup. Sheriff Wheaton and two other deputies joined him in the van. They parked at Magnolia Park, so that Melissa and Ned wouldn’t be tipped off by the sound of their engine. Using the same technique they’d used when they arrested Clay Tharpe, London went to the back to catch Ned when he made his escape. Wheaton banged on the door, hard enough to give anyone inside a heart attack. “Po-lice! Open up or we’ll kick it in!”
The door swung open. Fear bleached the color from Melissa’s face as they bolted inside and clamped the handcuffs on her wrists. “You’re under arrest for conspiracy to commit the murders of your husband and Beth Branning. You have the right to remain silent — ”
“What? Why would I do that? I didn’t even know that girl!”
The back door opened and London pushed a very agitated Ned Emory in. He, too, was cuffed. His shirt was unbuttoned, his face burning. “Sheriff, I’m not involved. You don’t understand!”
“You lied to a police officer, Ned!” Mark bit out. “Doug asked you point blank if you had a relationship with Melissa Tomlin and you said no.”
“I’m a married man!” he cried. “I didn’t want to admit to an affair!”
“We haven’t broken any laws!” Melissa said. “You won’t hold us fifteen minutes when my lawyer hears this! I never saw that girl in my life. And I was babysitting neighborhood kids the day my husband was killed. I can prove it.”
Getting in her face, he said, “You hired Clay Tharpe! He gave you half the money he got from your husband.” His teeth came together. “And you saw Beth at the park. You heard her name. You knew she came every day to load her newspaper boxes. You helped Tharpe plan her attack!”
“I didn’t!” she screamed. “I’m innocent!”
Ned jerked out of London’s grip and came toward them, his cuffed hands behind his back. “I didn’t know anything about all this. All I did was cheat on my wife. I wouldn’t have a relationship with someone who could come up with a scheme like that, especially against Beth.”
The very utterance of her name sent Mark over the top. “We’ll see if a judge and jury buy that.”
“I’m telling you,” Ned said. “I’m a father. I’ve sat in the ICU next to my son struggling for his life. I wouldn’t put another family through that, believe me.” He tossed his head toward Melissa. “She came up to the conversion plant every day, flirting with whoever would show her attentio
n.”
“Shut up, you moron!” she shouted.
Ignoring her, he went on. “She did have a thing with Clay, but she started coming on to me too. I figured, why not? After the stuff with Clay, I wouldn’t have kept seeing her if I thought she was to blame. But she didn’t mean enough to me to murder someone over her. She’s a fling, that’s all. A meaningless diversion.”
Melissa’s face went rabid. “A fling?” she cried. “You told me you loved me! You should have wanted Blake dead! He terrorized me and abused me! If you were half a man, you would have stepped up to the plate like Clay did, instead of making me come up with a solution of my own. He loved me enough to help me! You were just a coward!”
Mark’s chest hurt as Melissa condemned herself in a fit of rage. Ironically, her ranting seemed to clear Ned. Maybe he hadn’t been involved after all.
By the time they’d loaded the two of them into the van, neighbors were standing out in their yards. The affair had been exposed, along with Melissa’s deadly schemes.
“My son!” Melissa cried. “I want to see my little boy!” She was sobbing, trying to get out of the van. She turned to Sharon, the next-door neighbor who stood on the edge of her lawn. “Sharon, please go to my mom’s house and tell her what’s going on. Tell her to get me a lawyer. Tell her to take care of Danny until I get out.”
Mark’s heart went out to Melissa’s mother, who’d lost so much. Her husband, who had obviously been trying to save their murdering daughter. And now this.
Wisely, Ned was silent as they rode to the sheriff’s department. Melissa didn’t shut up, and every word she shouted would be used against her in court. Brad would recommend that the judge refuse to set bond. She’d be held in the county women’s facility in Birmingham. Mark hoped she’d come to learn what real fear felt like — the kind that Beth had felt before she died.
ONE HUNDRED TWO
OCTOBER USHERED COLOR INTO THE DARKNESS OF Kay’s life, and she found herself still among the living. Civilization slowly bought back what it lost. Three television stations returned to the airwaves. Families who could afford it replaced their flat screens with old vacuum-tubed TVs — awaiting the day when solid-state sets would be manufactured again.
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