They had just finished breakfast but hadn’t yet left the table when Helen ushered Lucas and a young deputy into the dining room. Instantly Amanda felt the tension rolling off Sawyer in waves.
“Helen, why don’t you take Melanie into the kitchen with you,” Sawyer said. A muscle ticked in his jaw as he gazed at the sheriff.
“Come on, darling. You can help me plan for that picnic lunch.” Helen left the room with Melanie in tow.
“Lucas, what brings you out here so early on a Sunday morning?” Sawyer asked.
“I got a call this morning,” Lucas replied. “An anonymous call.”
The thick tension in the room made Amanda want to jump up and escape, but she remained frozen in her seat like a spectator watching a train wreck.
“And what did this caller have to say to you?” Sawyer asked.
Lucas shifted from one foot to the other. “The caller said that on the night that Erica was murdered you were seen burying something on the side of your shed. I brought along Deputy Maylor. We need to check it out, Sawyer.”
“That’s crap and you know it.” Sawyer stood. “But fine, let’s go check it out.” He looked at Amanda. “I’d like you to come, too. It wouldn’t hurt to have a witness.”
“Tell me something, Lucas,” Sawyer said as they walked toward the French doors. “Why would your caller wait this long to call in that kind of a tip?”
“I don’t know. The caller didn’t stay on the phone long enough for me to ask any questions,”
Lucas replied. “It sounded like the voice was disguised, could have been a man or a woman. I know it’s probably nothing more than a crank call, but as an officer of the law you know it’s my duty to check it out.”
They stepped out into the steamy sunshine and headed toward the shed. It wasn’t until they reached the outbuilding that Sawyer broke the uncomfortable silence that had sprung up between them all.
“Tell me something else, Lucas,” he said, his voice deceptively soft. “Was it your duty as an officer of the law to sleep with my wife?”
Lucas’s handsome features blanched, and he halted in his tracks and faced Sawyer. “What in the hell are you talking about? I never slept with Erica. You should know me better than that.” A rich anger rocked through his voice.
“I’m talking about the fact that I’ve heard that twice before her death Erica was seen leaving Cajun Country in your company.” Sawyer didn’t raise his voice, but his own anger was visible in the tight clench of his hands at his sides, in the rigid posture as he faced his friend.
The young deputy looked down at the ground, as if wishing he were anywhere but here.
“That’s true,” Lucas said, the anger appearing to seep out of him as he drew a weary sigh. “Jenny was going through a bad time. She’d broken up with some loser of a boyfriend and was talking suicide. You know she was crazy about Erica, so I asked Erica to talk to her. That’s all it was, Sawyer. I swear to God it wasn’t about me, it was about Jenny.”
Sawyer said nothing, and Amanda wondered what he was thinking, if he believed Lucas.
“The Brotherhood, Sawyer,” Lucas said softly. “Just because college is long behind us do you think I could forget the bonds we forged? The promises we made to each other? I’d never sleep with your wife. That’s not the kind of man I am.”
“And I didn’t kill her,” Sawyer said. “Because that’s not the kind of man I am.”
Some of the tension eased, and Amanda drew her first full breath since the conversation had begun.
Sawyer pointed toward the shed. “Go on, check whatever you need to check.”
Amanda’s heartbeat raced as they moved to the east side of the shed, and the deputy and Lucas began to survey the ground. For the first time Amanda realized that Deputy Maylor held a small spade in his hand, ready to dig up whatever might have been buried.
Lucas walked back and forth along the side of the shed, his gaze intently focused on the ground. “Here,” Lucas said, and pointed to an area of ground that looked different than the rest. The grass wasn’t as green, and the patch was slightly higher than the areas around it. Maylor bent down and began to dig in the soil.
For several long moments the only sound was that of the spade against the earth. The deputy moved the dirt tentatively as if not wanting to disturb the treasure he might find.
Amanda wanted to scream at him to hurry up, to get this over with. She prayed there was nothing there, but the silent plea had barely left her head when the spade hit something foreign.
Clink.
Amanda’s heart seemed to stop beating. Deputy Maylor glanced up at Sawyer, then worked the spade to uncover what had been buried. A knife. Sawyer hissed in surprise and stumbled back a step.
“Maylor, go get an evidence bag,” Lucas said.
“Somebody is setting me up,” Sawyer said as the young deputy strode off in the direction of the patrol car. “I didn’t bury that knife.” The timber of his voice indicated not only how stunned he was by the discovery of the knife, but also how upset he was. “I’ve never even seen that thing before.”
Amanda stared at the knife. The blade was about six inches long and had on it what appeared to be rust, but what she knew was dried blood. The handle was what looked like mother-of-pearl, although it was difficult to be sure with the dirt clinging to it.
There was no doubt in her mind that this was the missing murder weapon. Somebody had used that knife to stab Erica, then had buried it here where it would point yet another finger at Sawyer.
“Am I going to be arrested?” Sawyer faced Lucas, his features taut with strain.
Emotion pressed against Amanda’s chest, and unexpected tears burned at her eyes. The silly picnic chatter seemed like a lifetime ago as she waited for Lucas to answer Sawyer’s question.
Lucas released a deep sigh and stared off toward the swamp. “I find it damned suspicious that I got that call this morning. I also wonder how anyone could have seen you do anything on the night of the murder. This isn’t exactly a highly populated area.”
He looked at Sawyer once again. “I’ll send the knife to the lab, see what they can get off it. At this point we don’t know if it is the murder weapon and we can’t even determine if the knife was buried the night of Erica’s murder or a month before, or last week for that matter. For the time being you aren’t under arrest. We’ll see what the lab results are. In the meantime I don’t have to tell you that you need to stick around, don’t leave town.”
He hesitated a moment, then continued, “If you haven’t contacted a lawyer, get one now. I’m not the only one driving this train, Sawyer. I told you before that the district attorney and the mayor are both pushing for your arrest. Get your things in order, because I don’t know how much longer I can keep you out of jail.”
“Are we done here?” Sawyer asked. When Lucas nodded, Sawyer turned on his heels and headed for the house. Amanda hurried after him.
He went directly to the kitchen. “Where’s Melanie?” he asked Helen.
“She went up to her room,” Helen replied.
As Sawyer took the stairs, Amanda was at his heels. The energy that rolled off him felt dark and sick and she worried about his intent.
Melanie turned as they entered her room, her little smile fading as Sawyer strode over to her and knelt down before her. “Melanie, you have to talk now,” he said, a crazed urgency in his voice. “You have to tell Daddy what you saw the night that Mommy died.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and her eyes widened in alarm. “Tell me, Melanie. You must tell me now.”
“Sawyer!” Amanda shoved between him and his daughter. “Stop it!” she exclaimed.
He stood, his eyes wild. “Get out of my way. I’m talking to my daughter.”
“No, you’re frightening your daughter and I won’t allow it.”
His eyes blazed and his nostrils flared. “You won’t allow it? I think you forget your place here.”
“Then maybe I don’t have a place here,” Amanda replie
d, equally as angry.
“Fine, pack your bags.” He didn’t wait for her reply but whirled around and stalked out of the bedroom.
For a long moment Amanda remained frozen in place, wondering how things had so quickly flamed out of control. Was she fired? He’d hired her to take care of Melanie. She couldn’t just stand by and watch while he browbeat her. Her job was to protect Melanie’s mental health, and that included protecting her from a father who had obviously just had a momentary meltdown.
She turned to face Melanie, her pale little face radiating stress. Amanda sat on the edge of the bed and motioned the child into her arms. Melanie came into her embrace eagerly and buried her head against Amanda’s heart.
“Your daddy didn’t mean to yell at you,” Amanda said as she smoothed her hand over the softness of Melanie’s dark hair. “He was just upset, that’s all. He was upset and he misses the sound of your voice.”
Pack your bags.
The words reverberated through her head. Had he meant it? Was she now supposed to gather her things and leave? Just like that?
She tightened her arms around Melanie. Melanie raised her head and looked at Amanda with tear-filled eyes.
“Don’t go.”
For an instant Amanda wasn’t sure if she’d actually heard the whispered words or merely imagined them. She stared at Melanie and watched as her lips formed the words again. “Please, don’t go.”
Amanda once again tightened her arms around Melanie. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’m not going anywhere,” she said firmly.
Now all she had to do was tell Sawyer that she was staying and then she’d let him know that his daughter had finally spoken.
SAWYER STOOD at the window in his office, staring out at the shed in the distance, guilt ripping him in half. God, he’d lost it. Worse, he’d lost it with his daughter.
His head filled with a vision of Melanie, her eyes wide with fear and her body trembling as he’d demanded she speak. She’d been afraid of him. Of him!
What had he been thinking? How could he have done that to her? She’d been through enough without having a father yell and scream at her.
He moved away from the window and sat in the chair behind his desk. He dropped his head into his hands. He knew if the sheriff was anyone other than Lucas, he would already be behind bars. Still there was no way that knife would yield his fingerprints. He’d never seen it before the deputy had dug it up. He prayed there were other fingerprints on it. The killer’s fingerprints.
Who had made that anonymous call? Who was trying to frame him for his wife’s murder? The real murderer, of course, but who? Dammit, who could it be?
Melanie. He needed to go back up and apologize to her…and to Amanda. She’d shocked him, jumping between him and Melanie like a mother bear protecting her cub.
Now that the heat of the moment had passed and he’d regained the senses that had momentarily fled, he realized he admired Amanda for that. He liked the fact that she’d jumped in to protect Melanie despite the consequences she might face from him.
And he’d told her to pack her bags. He got up from the desk. He needed to tell her he was sorry. Before he could get around the desk, she appeared in his doorway.
“Amanda.”
Her chin was raised in a gesture of battle. “I’m not leaving.” Her eyes glittered with emotion. “Melanie doesn’t want me to go. She needs me. And you might not know it but you need me to be here for her.”
“You’re right.” His words appeared to take some of the defensive wind out of her. “And I owe you an apology. I don’t know what got into me. I can’t believe I acted like that to you, but more importantly, to Melanie.”
“Apology accepted,” she replied.
He looked at her in surprise. “That easily?”
“I’m not one to hold a grudge. Besides, I know that wasn’t you upstairs. That was a man pushed to the edge by the discovery of a murder weapon in his backyard.”
Sawyer rubbed the center of his forehead, where a headache throbbed with dull intensity. “I don’t know how to fight this. I don’t know what to do next to help myself.”
She stepped closer to him, her features radiating a deep empathy. “Did you believe Lucas? About Erica?”
Sawyer dropped his hand from his forehead. “I’d like to believe him, but truthfully I don’t know what to believe. There are really only two people I’m sure had nothing to do with Erica’s death, and that’s you and Melanie. Beyond that I can’t afford to trust anyone.”
“Whoever made that anonymous call to Lucas killed Erica,” she said. “Surely Lucas realizes that.”
“If there was an anonymous call.” For all he knew Lucas had buried that knife a week before, then had pretended to get a call. He sighed, his suspicions exhausting him. “Where’s Melanie? I need to apologize to her.”
“She’s back in the kitchen with Helen supervising the preparations for our picnic. And before you talk to her I need to tell you something about her.”
“Okay. What?”
She paused a moment, and fear bubbled up inside him. “Is she okay?” Dear God, was she going to tell him that Melanie didn’t want to see him? That he’d further traumatized his daughter with his actions?
“She’s fine,” Amanda assured him. “But after you left the bedroom, she spoke.”
Sawyer stared at her, wanting to believe, needing to believe that finally the wall around Melanie had tumbled down. “Wh-what did she say?” The emotion that rose up inside him had nothing to do with the fact that his daughter might be able to tell the authorities what she’d seen. Rather it was the pure joy in knowing that his daughter had taken a step toward healing.
“She said, ‘Don’t go.’”
“Did she say anything else?”
Amanda shook her head. “I tried to get her to say more, but that was all. It wasn’t much, but it was a breakthrough. Still, the worst thing we can do right now is to push her in any way.”
“Believe me, there will not be a repeat of my earlier performance with my daughter.”
Amanda’s blue eyes soothed him. He’d never met a woman who had such a core of calm inside her. “So, what happens now?” she asked.
“We live our lives. We enjoy each moment we have because we both know that at any time Lucas could show up at the front door with handcuffs for me. In the meantime I’ll try to figure out who is the guilty party.”
Once again he was nearly overwhelmed with a sense of helplessness as he realized that his freedom was tenuous at best.
And unless he thought of some way to find Erica’s killer, he might not be around to hear his daughter say another word.
Chapter Seven
It was a gorgeous Friday afternoon, and Amanda sat at the patio table sipping a glass of iced tea. Sawyer had taken the afternoon off from work and had come home to take his daughter to a movie. He’d asked Amanda to come along, but she’d declined, believing that father and daughter could use some quality time alone. Melanie hadn’t spoken since that one time.
It had been five long days since the knife had been dug up by the shed. Each minute of each day she had feared the knock on the door that would take Sawyer away, but so far that knock hadn’t come.
Sawyer had contacted his college friend Jackson Burdeaux to represent him if and when he was charged with the murder.
She stared off toward the dock and remembered the kiss they had shared. There had been several times during the past week that she’d thought he was about to kiss her again, but each time, he’d moved away from her and the moment had passed.
Taking another sip of her tea, she acknowledged to herself that she’d wanted him to kiss her again, that Sawyer Bennett was crawling as deeply into her heart as his daughter had.
It was foolishness to allow herself to feel anything for him other than that of employee for employer. Certainly his future didn’t look bright and to get involved with him on a romantic level could lead only to utter heartbreak.
The French
doors opened and Helen stepped out, carrying a small platter of freshly baked sugar cookies. “Thought you might like a little something sweet to go with that tea.”
“Thank you, Helen,” Amanda replied, pleased that the dour woman appeared to be warming up to her. “Why don’t you sit for a minute and eat one with me.” Amanda gestured to the chair opposite her at the table.
Helen hesitated a moment, then sat and reached for one of the cookies. “These are Melanie’s favorites,” she said. “That little girl has a sweet tooth like her daddy.”
“You’ve worked for Sawyer for a long time?”
“I worked for his parents for ten years before I came here to work for him.” She frowned, her gray eyebrows knitting together across her brow. “I know they’re spinning in their graves right now, knowing that their son is in trouble.”
She bit into the cookie, then continued. “They knew that woman was trouble the minute he brought her home to meet them. Thank the Lord they died before he married her and all this evil happened.”
“How did they die?” Amanda asked, curious to know anything and everything about Sawyer.
“A plane crash. Mr. Bennett, he loved to fly, and he’d chartered a small plane to take him and Mrs. Bennett from here to Shreveport. Something went wrong and the plane went down. Killed both the Bennetts and the pilot. Damn shame it was. Sawyer took it real hard and married that woman soon after.”
When Sawyer had talked about his marriage to Erica, he hadn’t mentioned that before their wedding he’d recently lost his parents. How much had that loss played into his decision to marry Erica?
Helen stood. “I’ve got to get back to the kitchen.” She started to walk off, then turned back to Amanda. “Melanie, she’s all I worry about. That baby girl has already had too much bad in her life. I misjudged you. I thought you’d be gone by now. I think you’re stronger than I realized.” With that she turned on her heels and disappeared back into the house.
Amanda grabbed one of the cookies from the platter and munched thoughtfully. Helen certainly didn’t hide the fact that she’d hated Erica. Was it possible that Helen had removed Erica from Melanie’s life? Was it possible that it had been Helen who had met Erica on the dock that night and stabbed her to death?
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