“No, no,” Rachel said. “Your mom and dad aren’t going to hate you.”
“But I could’ve saved Shelley and I didn’t.”
“You mustn’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault.”
Tom wasn’t so sure that Daniel and Sarah Beecher would forgive Megan for withholding the information. Right now they were consumed with grief for their older daughter, and they might lash out at their younger child if they thought she could have intervened and prevented Shelley’s death. He could imagine Megan carrying her guilt around the rest of her life, letting it destroy her self-respect and undermine every relationship she formed.
Megan’s future wasn’t his concern right now, though. He had to scrape her memory bare in search of something he could use to catch her sister’s killer. “Did Shelley say anything at all that could help us identify the person she suspected?” he pressed. “Think about it. Did she give you even a hint of who it was? Did you get any impression of what kind of man she was talking about? Think hard, Megan. It’s important.”
She clamped a hand over her mouth and struggled to calm herself. After she dropped her hand, she stared into space for a long moment, grimacing as if combing through her memories was physically painful. At last she looked at Tom, her eyes widening. “I do remember something else. I didn’t even think about it until now.”
“What is it?”
“You remember I told you she said it would be dangerous for me to know who really killed Brian Hadley?”
“Yeah. What about it?” Tom’s heart took off at a gallop, although his rational mind was telling him that a bombshell revelation was the last thing he could expect from Megan.
“She said if she told me, I might give myself away when I saw him. Because he’s somebody I know.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
“It’s better all around if I leave.” Michelle laid a folded blouse in her suitcase and smoothed out the slightest wrinkles with both hands. “If I were the only one being harassed, that would be different, but I can’t let this spill over onto you.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. It’s your safety I care about.” Rachel, standing by the dresser, wanted to scoop everything out of the suitcase on the bed, grab the clothes that lay ready to be packed and stuff them back into the closet and dresser drawers. Instead, she crossed her arms and kept her distance.
Michelle added a pair of slacks to the suitcase, giving them the same meticulous attention she’d shown the blouse. Why did she bother? Everything would get wrinkled, Rachel thought, regardless of how carefully she packed.
“I’m sure Tom will be happy to see me go.” Michelle reached for another blouse.
“What? Has he said or done a single thing to make you feel that way?”
That provoked a humorless little smile. “He doesn’t have to express his feelings overtly. You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t,” Rachel protested, hoping she sounded convincing. “Tom’s trying to help you. He wouldn’t have Dennis Murray looking into it if he didn’t care about you.”
“He’s doing it for you. And he probably thinks that solving my problem is the only way he’ll get me out of your home.”
Privately, Rachel couldn’t deny the truth of Michelle’s perception—hadn’t Tom suggested that Michelle go back home and hire protection if her husband and the police refused to help her? But she wouldn’t, couldn’t, tell her sister about that. And she wouldn’t turn Michelle away. The stalking episode, and Michelle’s confidences about her marriage, had made Rachel realize how alone her sister was, what a barren and friendless life she led. She need someone she could depend on. She needed Rachel.
Without bothering to contradict Michelle’s statements about Tom, Rachel said, “You have to stay until you’re safe again. Do you want me to go out of my mind worrying about you?”
Michelle began tucking underwear into the little pockets around the inside of the suitcase. “I’m leaving, Rachel. I’m sure Ben will let me stay at his house tonight, and I think he’ll drive me home tomorrow if I ask him to.”
Rachel crossed the room and laid a hand on Michelle’s arm to make her stop her systematic packing. “You haven’t heard what happened at Ben’s house this afternoon. While he was with you.”
Now Michelle looked at Rachel, eyes wide. Her voice came out faint and fearful. “What are you talking about? What happened?”
“Somebody broke in while he was gone. That’s the safe place where you want to spend the night. He has an alarm system, but somebody got into the house.”
Michelle sank onto the bed, shoulders slumped. The folded nightgown she held fell open and draped her knees and legs with pink nylon and lace. “Oh no. Do you think it was because he was with me, because we’re friends?”
Pushing the suitcase aside, tempted to shove it all the way into the closet, Rachel sat next to her sister. “Will you stop seeing yourself as Typhoid Mary? It has nothing to do with you. Tom thinks it’s connected to the murder investigation. Ben knew Shelley, he was helping her, letting her use his computer equipment. The person who broke in might have thought Shelley left something there. My point is that Ben’s house isn’t secure. I’d worry about you a lot more if you were over there instead of here.”
Michelle clasped her hands in her lap so tightly that it seemed to Rachel she would crush the delicate bones. Frustration and desperation flooded her pale face. “I keep going over and over every person I’ve ever met, trying to figure out who would do this to me. How could I matter that much to somebody and not even know who he is or what he wants?”
“We’ll find out eventually.” Rachel patted Michelle’s shoulder. “I wish I could help you more. I hate seeing you so anxious.”
Michelle bowed her head and spoke in a near-whisper. “All the anxiety and stress…It’s doing something to my mind.”
“You’re letting Kevin’s doubts get to you. Don’t start doubting yourself, Mish.”
Michelle straightened and pushed her hair away from her face with both hands. “It’s not that. I’m not talking about Kevin. I feel as if…” She turned to Rachel, her eyes begging for understanding. “I feel like a door has cracked opened in the back of my mind. And memories are slipping out. I think I’m remembering things from—from back then.”
Rachel went cold inside. If a secret door swung open in your memory, what would you see? She had silently asked Michelle that question many times, when she wondered what, if anything, of their life before Judith remained in the recesses of her mind. But now she felt a surprising resistance, an urge to flee before she heard the answer. “You can’t remember,” she said. “You were too young.”
“I was three—”
“Just barely.”
“Old enough to remember a little, at least. And it is just a little, flashes now and then.”
The same way it happened to me, Rachel thought, dread squeezing her heart. She had already experienced the cataclysm of losing her identity, discovering that her life was a lie, and she had spent the last several years rebuilding her sense of self. She didn’t want to go through that again vicariously, through Michelle.
She forced herself to ask, “What do you remember?”
Tears spilled over, but Michelle swiped them away before they could run down her cheeks. “A sad house. A terribly unhappy house. Shouting. Anger.” Michelle looked at Rachel. “Is that what it was like?”
Rachel nodded.
“They were fighting about me, weren’t they?” Michelle said. “Because she had an affair and got pregnant with me.”
Rachel had promised not to protect Michelle from the truth anymore, but this was one reality she couldn’t bring herself to confirm. She didn’t need to. She saw in her sister’s eyes that her silence was confirmation enough.
“But we were happy with Mother, weren’t we? She took us out of an unhappy home and gave us a wonderful life.”
Rachel stiffened and drew away from her sister. When Michelle reached for her hand, Rachel s
natched it away. “You were happy. You were the one she loved. You looked like the daughter she’d lost, she gave you her name, she made you her replacement. She doted on you. Of course you were happy.”
Michelle pressed her hands to her chest as if trying to stanch bleeding from a wound. “She cared about you too. I know she did.”
“I was nothing but collateral damage. I just happened to be on the playground with you, so she had to take me too. You were her dead husband’s child, after the car crash you were all that was left of him. But I was a different man’s daughter, and I didn’t fit into her fantasy. The very sight of me must have reminded her every single day that her husband had betrayed her and you weren’t hers either. A child knows when she isn’t loved, Mish.”
Tears flowed freely down Michelle’s face now, but she cried silently, her body rigid. When she spoke, her voice had a bitter edge, a hardness Rachel had never heard before. “Were you any happier when you uncovered the truth? Was it worth it, what you put us all through? Was it worth Mother’s life?”
The question, the accusation in it, cut like a knife to the heart. Rachel had heard it before from her sister, but not for a long time, and she hadn’t expected to ever hear it again. “She killed herself. I didn’t kill her.”
“She killed herself because you made life unbearable for her, you dug it all up and threw it in her face.”
Rachel sat still for a moment, then she rose, fighting to stay calm. “If you still feel that way, if you’re always going to feel that way, I don’t see how we can go on. I don’t see how we can ever trust each other.”
Panic bloomed in Michelle’s upturned face. She grabbed Rachel’s hand and squeezed it tightly. “No, don’t say that, please, Rachel. I’m sorry. I do trust you, you’re the only person I trust, and I love you so much. Please don’t shut me out of your life.”
Rachel didn’t try to stop her own tears. “I love you too,” she said. “You’re my sister, and I’ll always love you.”
“Tell me how you did it,” Michelle begged. “You put your life back together and went on. Tell me how you got that door closed again.”
“I didn’t,” Rachel said. “Once it’s open, you’ll never be able to shut it again.”
Chapter Thirty
The locksmith shop, a two-story, flat-topped box of a building covered with brown siding and sitting alone by the road, appeared deserted when Tom and Brandon walked in. A voice said from somewhere behind the counter, “With you in a sec.”
Tom peered over the counter and found Jordan Gale crouched next to a steel cabinet, rummaging on a lower shelf.
Jordan raised his head, seemed momentarily startled when he saw who had come in, then smiled and said, “Hey, guys. Be right with you.” He plucked something off the shelf and stood. “Here’s what I need. Okay, sorry, what can I do for you?”
“We need to ask you about the night Brian Hadley died,” Tom said.
Jordan’s mouth fell open. Then he laughed. “Whoa. Where’d that come from?”
“You know Shelley Beecher was looking into the case? Trying to get Vance Lankford out of prison?”
“Yeah, sure, everybody knows about that.” His expression sobering, Jordan set a small box on the counter and wrote Atkins on it with a felt-tip pen. “What’s it got to do with me?”
“For some reason I thought you weren’t living here at the time,” Tom said.
“I wasn’t. I was living in Manassas.”
“But you were at the concert that night.”
Jordan frowned and shook his head. “No, I wasn’t. Where’d you get that idea?”
“Did my dad ever talk to you about what happened that night?”
“No. Why would he? Like I said, I wasn’t there. I wasn’t even in Mason County.”
“You sure you weren’t here visiting your parents?”
Jordan leaned on the counter with both hands and shook his head. “Yeah, I’m sure. Why are you asking about it?”
Tom pulled a photocopy of the newspaper picture from his jacket’s inside pocket and spread it on the counter. He’d used correction fluid to cover the name Shelley had written on it. He pointed. “Is that you?”
Bending close to the paper, Jordan squinted and studied the photo. After a moment he shook his head. “Naw, that’s not me.”
“Have you ever seen this picture before?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, it’s just a picture of a crowd. I don’t think I’d remember it anyway. What’s this about?”
Ignoring the question, Tom asked another of his own. “When you came home to visit your folks, while you were living in Manassas, did you ever see Rita, or Brian, or Vance?”
Jordan’s large, sincere eyes held Tom’s gaze as he answered. “Yeah, I always got together with Rita, even if it was just to say hello. But Brian and the rest of them, that wasn’t my crowd. I didn’t know any of them real well.”
The guy appeared and sounded as guileless as a puppy, but Tom could swear Jordan was holding back something. He couldn’t guess what. He doubted that pressing him about the newspaper photo would be useful. The picture was so grainy that Tom couldn’t claim with any certainty that it showed Jordan at the concert. Shelley’s question mark indicated she’d had her doubts too. When Tom had called the editor to ask for the original so he could have it enhanced, he’d learned that all the photos were taken by a stringer who had long since moved out of the area.
He changed direction. “So you and Rita stayed friendly after you broke up? Even after you moved to Northern Virginia? That’s kind of unusual for couples that have been married.”
“Yeah, Rita and me, we’ve always been good friends. We never should’ve tried to take it any further than that. We didn’t have any business getting married right out of high school. Big mistake, but it wasn’t any reason for us to stop being friends.”
“She must have talked to you about what was going on with Brian and Vance.”
“Uh…” Jordan seemed suddenly uneasy, his gaze jumping around, avoiding Tom’s eyes. “What do you mean exactly?”
“Did she talk about their disagreements? Their rivalry over her?”
Jordan considered the question for a moment, then cleared his throat. “You know, there’s one thing I never told anybody about. It didn’t happen the night Brian died, so I never thought the cops would be interested. I mean, they had plenty of evidence against Vance as it was, so…” His voice trailed off.
“What is it?” Tom asked.
“Well…” Jordan picked up the box on the counter, seemed to be reading the label absentmindedly, set it down again. “There was this time a few months before Brian—uh, before he died, the band played in Manassas at some kind of fundraising thing. Up where I was living with my sister, you know? Rita told me to come on over when they were rehearsing, and we could hang out. So I went, and when I got there everybody was standing around listening to Brian and Vance yelling at each other. Rita told me Brian just had his first meeting with somebody from a record company about making an album, and Vance went apeshit about not being included.”
“He thought he ought to have some say in it?”
“Well, yeah. You see, Brian and Vance started the band together, they were supposed to be partners, now here Brian was acting like he made all the decisions, and Vance thought he was getting screwed out of his share,. Brian said him and Rita singing together, that was what brought in the audience, that was what the record company was interested in. Who played backup didn’t matter much.”
“And Vance didn’t like hearing that,” Tom said.
“Oh, no, not one bit. I heard him say…” Jordan paused. “Hell, none of this matters now. I don’t know what the point is, repeating it.”
“Tell me,” Tom said. “Let me decide whether it matters.”
Still looking doubtful, Jordan scraped a hand over his chin and frowned, thinking, before he went on. “I heard Vance say Brian was lucky that he—Vance, I mean—didn’t have a gun on him, ’cause if he did
Brian would be a dead man.”
“Was that the only time you ever heard Vance threaten Brian?”
“Yeah. I mean, like I said, I wasn’t around them much. Rita told me it didn’t mean anything, Vance was just blowing off steam. But…”
Tom waited, and when Jordan didn’t go on, he said, “But what? What were you about to say?”
“Well, it seemed to me like Brian was bound and determined to show Vance who was boss, who was the big man, you know? Rita told me that was when Brian started coming on to her, and they had a triangle kind of thing going right up to the day Brian died. To tell you the truth, I’m kinda surprised it took Vance so long to kill him.” Jordan shrugged. “And that’s all I can tell you about those two.”
“All right.” Tom folded the photocopied picture and tucked it back into his inner pocket. “Let me know if you think of anything else.”
“Sure will.” As Tom and Brandon turned to go, Jordan added, “Oh, hey, how’re the new locks working out at Dr. Goddard’s place?”
“Fine. No problems. I think it’s secure now.”
“Glad to hear it.”
When they were back in the cruiser, Tom asked Brandon, “So? What do you think?”
“He’s lying about not being at the concert. And he’s lying about something else too, but I’m not real sure what.”
“Yeah, same here.” Tom had to smile at how much alike he and Brandon were in their assessments of people. He always liked to have Brandon along to reinforce or contradict his perceptions, but he seldom heard a contradictory opinion.
“You think he’s the one Shelley suspected?” Brandon asked. “Maybe she showed him that picture and spooked him?”
“Could be.” Tom started the engine and pulled onto the road. “The fact that he was there doesn’t mean he killed Brian, though. Did you notice he never answered my question about what Rita told him?”
“Yeah, I noticed. And that story he gave us about Brian and Vance arguing is old news. He was trying to distract us.”
Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) Page 21