by Mae Clair
Her admonition was a slap to the face. He drew up short at the bottom of the porch steps, the first nagging tentacles of doubt dampening his inferno of anger. Vigilante justice wasn’t the answer, but the system was slow. The system would take time. It would be so much easier to settle the score with Layton personally. But committing such a crime would only hurt his mother and brother, who’d already suffered the tragedy of loss. And it would do nothing for his sister.
Raising his hands to his face, he dug his fingers into his skull. Eve was right. Of course she was. But—oh, God, Maggie!
Sucking down a lungful of air, he bent double, hands braced on his knees. Every time he closed his eyes, all he could see was his sister’s trusting face. He shook his head. “This is shit.”
Hovering behind him, Eve slid a hand onto his bowed back. “Think of what Maggie would want.”
That was the problem. His sister wouldn’t want him to toss his life away in a violent hell-bent act of retribution, but he needed to avenge her. The conflict made him want to kick something. To punch. To drive his fist into the hardboard siding and feel pain explode the length of his arm.
Instead, he pulled Eve close. His voice of reason. His sanity. She folded willingly into his arms, burying her face against his neck.
“I’m sorry.” He stroked a hand over her hair, conscious of her tears on his skin. Beating Roger to a pulp might selfishly satisfy his need for vengeance, but it wouldn’t help Maggie, and it wouldn’t put the banker behind bars where he belonged. The man deserved to rot in prison. For the first time since he’d made the decision, Caden regretted turning in his badge.
Slipping a finger beneath Eve’s chin, he tilted her face up toward his. Her gaze held a mixture of love and concern, as starkly visible as the tears on her face. A sense of calm washed over him. From the start, she’d been a healing tonic for his soul, soothing the anger and grief that had kept him bound in darkness for fifteen years. She believed in him, and that belief made him take a harder look at himself.
“I’ll call Ryan. We’ll go through the proper channels and do this legally.” He thumbed the tears from her face. “I’m sorry I lost my head.”
“You had a right.”
Cupping her face in his hands, he kissed her. What might have he done if she hadn’t been there to stop him? Now that he could think rationally, a new troubling thought wormed into his brain—Layton had killed Maggie, but why hadn’t Rosalind Parrish reported him for his crime?
* * * *
Eve waited in the living room for Ryan to arrive. She’d chosen not to eavesdrop on Caden’s call when he’d retreated to the kitchen to phone his brother. It was hard enough managing the tumbleweed of emotion in her stomach. The ghastly photo she and Caden had discovered lay face-down on the coffee table in front of her. She couldn’t bear to look at it, but the grisly image remained seared into her mind.
Tears burned Eve’s eyes.
What had motivated Roger to kill Maggie? And why was he still free if her aunt had witnessed, even photographed, the crime? The sick feeling rooted in her stomach mushroomed into a wave of nausea. Shocked, angry, and scared, she wanted to demand answers, but Aunt Rosie was gone, taking the ugly secret to her grave.
Why, Aunt Rosie? How could you have let Roger get away with something so monstrous?
And he was a monster. Suddenly, it all made sense.
Maggie had never seen the Mothman in the Witch Wood. She’d come face to face with a human monster. A man who’d already committed murder and was digging a grave to conceal the body of his victim. In her terror, Maggie had turned him into a creature that couldn’t be real, and thus, couldn’t hurt her.
But Roger had seen her. Chased her. When she’d told everyone she’d seen the Mothman, making no mention of him or a body, he must have felt momentarily safe. Like so many others, he’d probably wandered to the river the night the Silver Bridge fell to help with the rescue efforts. When he’d come upon Maggie struggling from the water, he used the opportunity to make certain she could never betray him.
Did that mean Roger had killed Wendy Lynch, too? If he’d been the “monster” in the Witch Wood and the remains proved to be Wendy’s…
Overcome with grief, Eve bit her lip to hold back tears. When Caden returned from the kitchen five minutes later, his face was grim but calm. Thank God, the worst of his anger had passed.
“Ryan’s on his way.” He sat beside her and wrapped his arm around her shoulder, drawing her against him.
She needed his strength every bit as much as he needed hers. Maybe it would have been better for both of them if they’d never learned the truth. As soon as the thought surfaced, she banished it. Caden needed the truth to be free of guilt, and Roger Layton had to be made accountable for his crimes.
A steely sense of determination washed over her. The resolve was still there fifteen minutes later when Ryan arrived, breathless and flushed.
Caden took him aside, speaking swiftly and urgently as he showed his brother the gruesome photograph. Ryan’s initial reaction—anger and a personal need for justice—was much like Caden’s had been, but his brother eventually managed to calm him down.
“We’re going to get this bastard, Ryan,” Caden said. “But we’re going to do it legally. I want you to arrest the S.O.B., and I want to be there when you read him his rights.”
Standing in the middle of the living room, the picture clutched in his hand, Ryan shook his head. His face relayed his shock. “I don’t understand. Why would he do this?”
“I think I have an idea.” Eve had been quiet since Ryan’s arrival, allowing Caden to explain how they’d discovered the photo and negative. As brothers, they’d needed those moments without her, a brief time to absorb the horror, anger, and grief. She wasn’t a police officer, but she’d been a little girl once and could easily understand how Maggie had twisted witnessing a horrific act into something that wasn’t real. Drawing a deep breath, she steeled herself for their reaction. “It goes back to what Maggie saw that day in the Witch Wood.” Quickly, she shared her thoughts about the Mothman, Maggie, Roger, and why he’d killed her.
Silence reigned when she was through.
Finally, Caden exchanged a glance with his brother. “She might be onto something.”
“So why didn’t Rosie go to the police with this evidence?” Ryan lifted the photograph between two fingers.
“I wish I knew.” The omission left a raw wound in Eve’s heart. Moving from the sofa, she joined them in the center of the room. A short while ago, the surroundings had comforted her with memories of her beloved aunt, but now they brought bitterness. Maggie had been Eve’s closest friend. How could her aunt have protected the man who’d taken her life? “I can only guess she couldn’t bring herself to turn Roger in, even knowing what a monster he was. She loved him too much. Now I understand why she broke off her engagement.”
“Well, I don’t care how much she loved him,” Caden snapped. “The man killed my sister.”
She understood his venom, the dread in her gut slithering into something thorny. “It’s why Aunt Rosie didn’t seek treatment for her cancer.” Suddenly her aunt’s willingness to let the disease claim her made sense. “She viewed it as payment for her sins. According to Katie, she prayed God would forgive her at the end.”
“God might, but I won’t.” Caden’s expression was hard, his mouth compressed in a rigid line. She couldn’t fault his bitterness. At the moment, she wasn’t even sure she could forgive her aunt, regardless of how conflicted Rosie might have felt.
“A deathbed confession more or less,” Ryan said quietly. He shook his head, looking down at the photo. “She must have planned to take the secret to her grave, but had a change of heart at the last moment.”
“Maybe.” Caden raked fingers through his hair. Hands on hips, he paced off a small circle. “So if it was Amos who trashed the place, why did he want the negative?” He paused only briefly. “To blackmail Roger?”
�
��Not a smart move considering how he ended up,” Ryan observed.
“Which could explain the money clip,” Eve said.
Ryan shot her a glance. “What money clip?”
Withdrawing it from her pocket, she explained how Glenda Whitmore and her husband had found it near the pond where Amos’s body was discovered. “See?” She passed it to Ryan. “Roger’s initials are on it— R-A-L.”
“A judge would say that’s circumstantial.” Examining the clip, Ryan turned it over in his hand. “It could belong to someone else.”
“I’ve seen him with it before,” Caden said. “All we’d have to do is ask to see his clip. If he can’t produce it, we know this belongs to him. The lab might be able to lift his prints, too.”
Ryan frowned. “That still doesn’t prove he killed Amos.”
“But we know he killed our sister.” Caden tapped the photo in Ryan’s hand.
“Yeah.” Ryan paced a few feet away. “Don’t be surprised if some slick defense attorney doesn’t try to twist this.”
Eve was appalled. “How?”
“Lack of a body at the time it happened. No witnesses. Roger could say he was trying to help her, and she was swept away in the current.”
“No sane person will buy that.” Caden stalked to his brother’s side. “Did you look at that flipping picture? The man is strangling her, trying to shove her under the water. Look at his face for God’s sake. That is not the face of a man trying to rescue someone.”
Exhaling, Ryan nodded. “You know how the system works, Caden. I’m just trying to cover all bases so he doesn’t walk.”
“Right now I’m more worried he’ll rabbit. If Amos was trying to blackmail him—”
“But how could he?” Eve interrupted. “He didn’t have the negative.”
“Maybe Roger is the one who trashed the house,” Ryan said.
Caden shook his head. “He wouldn’t risk getting caught. Not with a high profile career at the bank.” He looked from Ryan to Eve and back again. “But he might have hired someone. Someone who botched the job and didn’t deliver the goods.”
Eve caught on immediately. “Amos.”
“So how did Roger know about the negative in the first place?” Ryan asked.
Clenching his fists, Caden smiled tightly. “I vote we ask him.”
* * * *
He didn’t find Roger and perhaps that was for the best at the moment—Caden’s emotions still seesawed between anger and restraint—but Lillian served almost as well.
“Where is he?” he demanded, his gaze narrowed on the thin woman standing inside Eve’s office at the Parrish Hotel. Having quickly realized Roger wasn’t in the ballroom, nor was he anywhere else in the building, they’d found Lillian among her party guests. Taking charge of the moment, Eve had asked Lillian if she would accompany her, Ryan, and Caden to her office where they wished to discuss something with her in private. Caden had to admire the way Eve handled the request, asking him and his brother to remain outside the ballroom so as not to cause a scene.
He’d fidgeted, every bit as agitated as Ryan who’d stood scowling beside him, but bided his time until he saw Lillian nod and head in their direction. Once they’d reached Eve’s office, Caden wasted no time in demanding to know where Roger had gone.
“I told you already.” Lillian’s mouth was a thin, white line as she faced the two brothers within the confines of the small office. “I didn’t even realize he’d left until a short while ago.”
“Kind of unusual for a guy to skip out on his own party, isn’t it?” Ryan had taken a position in front of Eve’s desk, arms crossed over his chest in a hardline stance. His gaze was as coolly unforgiving as the edge in his voice. Only Eve kept up a slim measure of cordialness, inviting Lillian to sit in one of the chairs.
The older woman shook her head, then turned her attention back to Ryan. “Roger does what he wants, when he wants.” She paused briefly, her mouth compressing further. Her gaze tracked back to Ryan, then shifted to Caden. “This is about the photograph Rosalind took the night the Silver Bridge collapsed, isn’t it? You must have found the negative.”
Cadent felt like the floor had buckled beneath him. “You know about it?”
She gave a clipped nod. “I only found out after Rosalind died. She mailed me a copy of the photo with a letter.”
Shifting, Caden fisted and unfisted his hands in an effort to leash his anger. How many freaking people had known about his sister’s murder and done nothing? If Roger had been standing in front of him, he would have smashed the guy in the face, but Lillian required different handling. “Why didn’t you go to the police?”
“Why should I?” Lillian’s gaze snapped with the same sudden fire as her voice. “Rosalind kept what happened that night a secret for fifteen years. Then to ease her own conscience, she shifted the burden to me. I pitied her at first. I even put flowers on her grave a few times thinking how horrible the knowledge must have been. But then I realized she wanted me to destroy the man she’d been too cowardly to betray. Not only him, but my family as well. All over a girl who died fifteen years ago.”
“That girl was my sister.” Ryan took a threatening step forward. “You’re lucky Caden and I don’t take Roger apart, rather than hauling his ass to jail.”
Lillian lifted her chin like a stern-faced schoolteacher staring down an unruly student. “I don’t care what happens to Roger, but you’re not going to drag my family down in the process—or the business my grandfather and father built. That’s Jeremy’s inheritance. He’s the only one I care about.”
“Maybe we should back up a bit.” Playing peacemaker, Eve moved between Ryan and Lillian, gingerly touching the woman on the forearm. “Please, Lillian. This is difficult for all of us. Won’t you have a seat?” She motioned to one of the chairs in front of her desk.
Lillian’s gaze remained icy, but she complied. Swearing under his breath, Caden paced a short distance away and braced a hand against the wall. Where the hell would Roger go? He almost believed Lillian. She was a doting mother, but her marriage to Roger had always seemed an unlikely match. Turning, he rested his shoulders against the wall, tamping down the urge to act like a cop in an interrogation room. “Start at the beginning, Lillian. You said Rosalind sent you a letter.”
“Yes. It was mailed without a return address and arrived a few days after her death. I’m assuming she had someone send it for her.”
“Probably Adam Barnett.” Eve slid into the chair opposite Lillian, speaking neutrally as if to ease the tension in the room. “He took care of settling her estate.”
“That may well be. When the letter arrived, I thought it was odd.” Lillian paused for a moment, looking down at her hands. “When I read it…” For the first time, she faltered, the hesitation in her voice a clear sign of her inner struggle. “No one wants to believe something so heinous of the man they married. Roger and I have never had an ideal union, but I didn’t think him capable of murder.” Clearing her throat, she sat straighter and faced them.
“I still have the letter somewhere, tucked away. I should have destroyed it, but I hid it instead, the same way Rosalind hid the negative to the photo. She called herself a coward for not being able to report Roger to the police. She said she loved him too much to betray him.” Lillian made a soft scoffing sound. “I don’t know how he inspired such devotion from her, but maybe he was different in those days. Not as ruthless.”
“He was a killer,” Caden reminded her flatly.
Lillian cast him a glance, then continued without commenting. “In her letter, Rosalind said she’d been walking along the river that night with her camera, just as she often did. She got caught up in the chaos when the bridge fell and tried to help. When others took over, she snapped several photos. Some made it into the Point Pleasant Herald but there was one shot she didn’t realize she’d captured.”
“Roger and Maggie,” Eve said softly.
Lillian nodded. “Sh
e refused to believe it when she developed the shot. She even enlarged that part of the image, examining the details under a magnifying glass, but couldn’t deny what she saw. Afterward, she broke off her engagement with Roger, but kept telling herself Roger was innocent. That maybe he’d been trying to help Maggie.”
“What kind of shit-logic is that?” Caden pushed away from the wall with a snarl. Clenching his jaw, he stalked across the room and loomed over her chair. “My sister was on the Silver Bridge that night because of me.” He jabbed a thumb against his chest, overcome by a crushing wave of guilt. “I couldn’t save her. The least Rosie could have done—the least you can do now—is bring her killer to justice.”
Lillian blinked up at him. “Caden Flynn, you’re talking about my husband.”
“Somehow I don’t think you love him.”
“Who are you to judge?”
“You just said the only one you care about is Jeremy.”
“Yes!” She surged to her feet, a tiny combatant when measured against his height. “Rosalind blocked the incident from her mind. That’s what she said in her letter. That she put the photo and negative away and made herself believe they didn’t exist. It was only when she was diagnosed with cancer and started going through old papers to get her estate in order that she found them. Even then she didn’t have the courage to do anything about it. She sent a copy of the photo to me and a copy to Roger, urging us do the right thing—what she couldn’t.”
Caden felt the blood drain from his face. He exchanged a sharp glance with Ryan before looking back to Lillian. “She sent Roger a copy?”
“Yes.” Lillian sagged into her chair. “He doesn’t know I have a letter, too. Rosalind hoped Roger would turn himself in, but if he didn’t, she wanted me to follow through and do what she couldn’t.”
“So all this time he’s known the negative is hidden somewhere in Rosie’s house?” Caden ground his teeth. “He must be the one who left notes on Eve’s car, trying to scare her away.”
“No, that was me.” Drawing a deep breath, Lillian shifted her attention to Eve. “I couldn’t risk you might find the negative. I thought if I could frighten you enough to make you leave Point Pleasant, life would go back to normal. Roger wouldn’t have to worry about the past hanging over his head, and I could forget about Rosalind’s letter.”