The Truth About Love

by Sheila Athens

  But now she understood why his eyes had been so convincing.

  He’d been innocent the entire time.

  Maggie sank to the floor as if she couldn’t hold herself up anymore. “Does this prove he killed her?”

  “It doesn’t look good.” Suzanne took the last article from Gina. “But it also doesn’t prove anything beyond the shadow of a doubt.”

  “Will I be in trouble? For having this in my attic all these years?” Maggie’s hand covered her mouth. “And not knowing?”

  “The authorities won’t be happy that you hid the fact that Seth was there that weekend.” Suzanne placed her hand on Maggie’s knee. “But we’ll help you as best we can.”

  Gina, too, believed that Maggie hadn’t known. That she’d been in a violent relationship in which she would have been afraid to question her husband. Not in her own mind and certainly not out loud to her abuser. But she knew that Suzanne couldn’t promise a free ride to Maggie Buchanan. Not with so many parts of the legal system outside her control.

  “Why would he do that?” Maggie’s questioning gaze begged the other women for an answer. “He’d never even been to my house before.”

  Gina knew the crime scene had revealed no indications of robbery or attempted rape.

  “You told us he’d just hit you. That he was mad you couldn’t have sex with him,” Suzanne said. “So he went next door. Men hurting women is all about establishing power.”

  Gina lowered her head in an unspoken tribute to Barbara Landon. The other two women fell silent, too, each with her own thoughts.

  After several seconds of quiet, Gina looked around the attic, wondering if there might be more evidence here. An old living room chair with a leg broken off sat in one corner. An artificial Christmas tree was bursting from its torn box. The handlebars of an exercise bike held a string of holiday lights.

  She rose and looked behind an armoire that had been partially refinished, to the only place in the attic that wasn’t visible from the top of the staircase.

  Behind it, a rusty, green metal tackle box like Gina’s grandfather had owned was tucked under the rafters. But unlike Gina’s grandfather’s, the lid was bolted shut with a thick lock.

  “There’s something back here,” Gina called back to Maggie. “Do you mind if I get it out?”

  Maggie’s shrugged approval looked like that of a woman defeated.

  Gina closed the sagging door of the armoire to give herself more room. She knelt and twisted until she could get both of her hands behind it. She pulled out the tackle box and set it in the ring formed by the three women.

  “Seth was a fisherman?” Suzanne asked.

  “Not”—Maggie swallowed—“for years. I haven’t seen that thing . . .”

  “Since?” Suzanne prodded her.

  “I don’t know.”

  “How do we get the lock off?” Gina asked, looking around for those big pincher things they used on cop shows. But, no, that would be wishing for too much to have a pair of those handy.

  “Bring it downstairs,” Suzanne said. “Out to the yard.”

  Gina’s eyes questioned her. Suzanne nodded toward the staircase.

  Gina lifted the green metal box and scrambled downstairs, glad to get out of the stuffy attic. Her lungs gasped for the cool air of the hallway. She forced her legs to carry her through the living room and out the front door into the yard. Suzanne’s and Maggie’s footsteps followed behind her.

  When she turned around, she saw that Suzanne had picked up her messenger bag as they passed through the living room.

  “Set it on the ground,” Suzanne said as she pulled a small pistol from her pouch. “And stand back.”

  Gina’s eyes widened. She’d never known her boss carried a gun. It hadn’t been in there during their visits to prisons because—surely—the guards would have confiscated it before letting her in to visit their clients. Their clients who were convicted murderers.

  She set the box on the ground and backed away, as her boss had instructed.

  A single shot rang through the air. The lock spun on the latch and fell to the ground.

  Gina looked at Suzanne in awe. She was a crusader, a role model, and Annie Oakley all wrapped into one.

  “So open it,” Suzanne said impatiently. “See what’s inside.”

  Gina knelt on the ground and unfastened the big, rusted silver latch. The lid squeaked open. Inside, two trays attached to the lid rose as the cover fell open. The little bins in the trays held rusty fishhooks and a couple of tiny bobbers. A dirty rag was bunched up in the bottom well, covering anything else in the tackle box.

  She pinched the rag between one finger and her thumb and gently moved it aside. Underneath sat one item. An ornate wooden box.

  Gina gently lifted the wooden box from Seth Rowling’s tackle box. Her heart beat faster, as if it knew what was in the box. Maybe, just maybe, the contents of the box would help them prove it was Seth Rowling and not Cyrus Alexander who had killed Landon’s mother.

  She took a step, holding it out to Maggie.

  “I don’t want it.” Maggie held her hands in front of her and backed away. “You open it.”

  Gina looked down at the intricately carved box. She had visions of unleashing something evil, like Indiana Jones had done when he released those melting faces from the Lost Ark of the Covenant. She suddenly wasn’t sure she wanted to know what was inside.

  “Go ahead,” Suzanne said.

  Gina swallowed and looked down at the box, unable to make any other move.

  “For Landon,” Suzanne said. “And for Cyrus.”

  Gina’s hand shook as she slowly lifted the ornately carved lid. There were four objects inside.

  A smooth, flat rock the color of butterscotch.

  A folded-up slip of paper.

  A tangle of bright purple yarn.

  And a silver charm bracelet containing one tarnished charm—the silhouette of a little boy’s head.

  Gina gently pulled the bracelet out of the box and turned her head to read the inscription.

  L . . .

  The charm spun a quarter turn on the end of the chain. Frustrated, Gina knelt to set the box down inside the tackle box. She laid the charm across her other palm so she could read it.

  Landon.

  A chill ran up Gina’s spine and spread like a lightening bolt across the back of her scalp.

  She looked up at the curious face of her boss. Her scalp tickled with beads of sweat. “The charm. It says ‘Landon’ on it.”

  Suzanne’s expression was grim. “A souvenir.”

  If Suzanne was right, Seth had taken it when he’d murdered Barbara Landon. Gina tried to imagine what it must have been like for a young single mother to know she was about to be stabbed to death, leaving a young son alone with a killer.

  Maggie turned away from them. She braced one hand on a tree next to her and threw up.

  “What else is in the box?” Suzanne said, nodding toward it.

  Gina knelt to set it on the ground in front of her. Her hands shook as she took the slip of paper from it. She eased it open, not wanting to damage it. Sloppy handwriting, slanted at a harsher angle than Gina had ever seen, was written in blue ink pen.

  Dear Lord,

  Please forgive me.

  Seth Atchison Rowling

  She handed the note to Suzanne, who read it quickly, then looked up at Maggie. “Seth was a religious man?”

  Maggie was still bent over, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She scoffed. “Does a religious man beat his wife? Does he kill people?”

  Suzanne read the note aloud to her.

  Maggie rose and stilled for several seconds, as if she was soaking it in. Finally, she spoke, her voice tinged with hatred. “I guess if he’d felt really bad about it, he would have come forward while he was still
alive.”

  A wave of anger roiled inside Gina as she thought of Cyrus Alexander, sitting in prison for fifteen years while Seth Rowling’s tackle box held his ticket to freedom.

  “This was here the entire time,” she said. “You could have gotten Cyrus Alexander out of prison at any time.”

  “I . . . I didn’t know.”

  “But you had suspicions. You said so yourself.”

  Maggie fixed her gaze on Gina’s and held it for several seconds. “Have you ever done anything you regretted?” Maggie’s voice filled with venom. “Or are you too young and perfect for that?”

  Gina took a step back as if Maggie’s words had lashed out like a viper’s tongue in her direction. Of course Gina had done something she regretted. She’d done the exact thing Maggie had done. She’d allowed an innocent person to go to prison. Maybe it didn’t show on the outside, but Gina had done plenty that she regretted.

  “You could have called the police,” Suzanne said.

  Maggie turned, her anger aimed at Gina’s boss. “The same police who didn’t take Seth away when he broke my jaw? The same ones who acted like it was ‘my duty’ to have sex with him when he raped me? Are those the police you’re talking about?”

  Suzanne spread her hands in front of her as if to diffuse the situation. She took three long, slow breaths while Maggie glared at her. “We’re in this together,” Suzanne said. “If an innocent man is in prison, we all want to get him out.”

  A profound sadness settled over Gina like a fog settling into the valleys of a mountain range. Her body was suddenly very tired. Her brain was tired. Even her heart was tired. She didn’t have the energy for anything else today. “What do we do now?”

  Suzanne knelt to place the slip of paper back inside the box. “We need to let the police know what we’ve found.”

  Of course. They needed to act on the news that Gina was still absorbing.

  Suzanne placed the lid on the box and tucked it under her arm. “The world needs to know what a bastard Seth Rowling was.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Landon still couldn’t figure out why Gina insisted on meeting him at his condo when he was getting back from Orlando at eleven o’clock at night. He’d have much rather swung by her place, crawled into bed with her, and made the world disappear as he lost himself in her soft, silky body.

  “Hey,” she said as they both got out of their cars at the same time. He hated the tentativeness in her voice. It was so anti-Gina. So opposite of the confidence that made her so attractive. “Do you mind if I come in?”

  Actually, he’d mind if she didn’t come in. He’d been thinking about her for the last twenty-four hours. Hell, he’d been thinking about her for the last week. He was still mad as hell that she hadn’t told him Morgan’s Ladder was dropping the case, but the more he thought about it, the more he believed that she’d planned to try to talk her boss out of it. He motioned for her to follow him.

  As he led the way up the sidewalk, his stomach flip-flopped. He never got nervous around girls, but she was different. She made him feel things no one else made him feel.

  He unlocked the door and stepped inside to turn off the alarm, then stood aside to let her in. He followed her down the front hall toward the living room. A quick glance at the living room told him he hadn’t put his laundry away a couple of nights ago. He hadn’t really felt like doing much the last few days. But she wasn’t here to judge him on his housekeeping skills.

  He tossed his keys in the wooden bowl on the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. “I would have been happy to come to your place.”

  She ignored his comment. “We talked to Grady Buchanan’s daughter.”

  His stomach clenched. His breath grew shallow. “And?”

  “She confirmed your father and her father were out of town when your mom was murdered.”

  He frowned. How was this news?

  “But the thing is”—she hesitated, as if she didn’t know how to say whatever came next—“she had a boyfriend there with her that weekend. A boyfriend who fit Cyrus Alexander’s description.”

  She paused. Landon sucked in a big, gulping breath. He searched her face for clues. For more information than she’d already shared. Was this the news he’d expected to hear these past few weeks? That he’d sent an innocent man to prison? But they’d been certain of the killer once. How could they be certain again? And know for sure? “You and Suzanne think he did it?”

  She nodded slowly. “Do you remember a bracelet your mom used to have? One with a little charm on it?”

  Hot tears sprang up, right behind his eyes. He hadn’t thought about that bracelet in years. One hand went to his other wrist, as if touching the inexpensive piece of jewelry. “The outline of a little boy’s head. With my name on it. Her girlfriends had all chipped in to buy it for her when I was born.” He panicked. How could he not have remembered it?

  “Maggie Buchanan’s husband had it hidden in his tackle box.”

  Landon lowered himself onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar. Like always, Gina was sending his life into a tailspin. Nothing in his head seemed to make sense. “Where did he get it?”

  “He took it from your mother.” Her words came out slowly, as if she didn’t want to hurt him with their sharpness. “When he killed her.”

  Landon searched her eyes. He didn’t understand what she was saying. How could the police not have questioned the boyfriend before? If he and Cyrus Alexander looked alike, how could the police have not seen the resemblance? “But why did he do it? Did he have an alibi?”

  Gina shook her head. “Maggie Buchanan didn’t tell the police he was there. She was afraid the sheriff would tell her father he’d been at the house with her. No one even knew he was in town.”

  “But why? Why would he do it?”

  “We’ll never know for sure, but he had a history of beating up women, especially when he was drunk. And apparently he drank a lot.”

  Landon couldn’t take a breath deep enough to fill his lungs. If the authorities didn’t know the boyfriend was in town, they never questioned him. They never would have known there was another tall, blond man who looked like Cyrus Alexander. “This means Cyrus Alexander has been in prison this entire time . . . ?” He couldn’t finish his sentence. He couldn’t think about what he’d done to that man. To his son, Tim. To their family.

  She nodded. “And he’s innocent.” But unlike the other times they’d discussed the case, she didn’t act like she had something to prove. She, of all people, knew what he was going through. She knew what it was like to send an innocent person to prison.

  He turned his chair toward the counter and rested his head on his arms. He needed to think. To absorb the news. His chest heaved, gasping for breath. Though his eyes were open, all he saw was spinning rings of light where his arms and kitchen counter should be. His foot slipped off the rung of the chair and hung loose, without foundation, much like Landon felt right now.

  She laid her hand on his back and rubbed silently for several minutes. She seemed to understand that he couldn’t talk. That he didn’t know how to feel or what to say.

  Finally, he raised his head. Her eyes were rimmed in tears.

  “I did all this,” he said. “I made this happen.”

  She held his face between her palms. “You were nine years old.”

  “How soon can they get Cyrus out?”

  “A few days maybe.”

  He reached for her, overwhelmed by the feelings of guilt and shame and remorse crashing inside him. He pulled her to him and they clung to each other.

  Then he realized that she might go. That she’d shared her news and might leave him now.

  He raised his head to look at her. “I know I left your house in the middle of the night. And we have a lot of things to talk about.”

  She bit her lip and
nodded. He could see in her eyes how much he’d hurt her.

  “But would you stay here tonight? If I asked you to?”

  A ball of anger and empathy tossed around inside Gina’s chest like a tumbleweed. She understood why Landon didn’t want to be alone tonight. She’d been through the guilt of finding out that the person she’d helped convict hadn’t really committed the crime. But—damn it—Landon hadn’t let her explain the other night. He’d made love to her—twice—then walked out without giving her a chance to clarify the note he’d seen in her breakfast nook. She’d thought a lot about him since their meeting at the gym. A man who let his anger and emotion get the best of him, a man who wouldn’t talk things out with her, was not a man she wanted to sleep with again.

  Or maybe he’d just used finding the file notes as an excuse to leave. He’d gotten what he wanted and used the notes as a convenient reason to escape. Men did a lot of things to get laid. They lied. They cheated. She’d learned that lesson loud and clear from Christopher, who hadn’t been able to resist sleeping with someone else, even when he and Gina had had a healthy sex life.

  But either way, Landon’s emotions tonight were real. And she’d been through it. She owed it to him—as one of the few people who understood what he was going through—to stay with him. She wanted to help him get through this.

  “I’ll stay for a little while.” She set her purse on a nearby chair. “But I’m not committing to anything longer than a couple of hours.”

  He heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

  “And I’m not sleeping in your bed with you.”

  “I didn’t mean that—”

  Gina held up her hand to stop him. She was here to help him work through his emotions, but her heart wasn’t ready to talk about what had gone on between them the other night.

  “I just”—he ran his fingers through his hair—“want you to stay.”

  She took his hand and led him to the couch, where they sat side by side. He leaned down to take off his tennis shoes and socks. She kicked off her flip-flops and placed her newly pedicured feet on the edge of the coffee table.