Dead Giveaway

by Brenda Novak

  After hitting a final key, he pushed away from his desk, and the printer whirred into action. As it pumped out the document he’d just created, Allie could see that it was a letter to the mayor; she hoped it explained the lack of evidence against Clay Montgomery. But she didn’t retrieve it for her father. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  He met her gaze. “What’s not to understand?”

  “You used to be as interested in this as I am.”

  Scowling, he yanked on his coat. “I’ve put the past behind me. The rest of this town should do the same.”

  “Dad, they’ve lost a friend, a family member, a neighbor. And they don’t know why.”

  “They’re out to pin it on someone whether he’s guilty or not.”

  Allie felt her irritation increase. “If we solve the case, we solve the problem.”

  “Maybe some cases are better left unsolved,” he grumbled.

  “What?”

  He didn’t answer. “I’m beat. I’m heading home.”

  Allie watched him sign the mayor’s letter, put it in the out-box and cross to the door. For a moment, she thought he was going to leave without saying goodbye. But then he turned back. “How about keeping things quiet tonight?” he said and tossed her a tired grin.

  Allie forced a smile. “Be careful, Dad. It’s ugly outside.”

  He paused to shake out his umbrella. “Where’s that damn Hendricks?” he asked, consulting his watch.

  Allie shrugged. “Late, as usual.”

  “Worthless,” he muttered. Then he opened the door and the wind blew into the room, smelling of rain.

  Allie used the coffee cup he’d been drinking from to keep his papers from scattering to the floor. At first she was so preoccupied with trying to make sense of her father’s uncharacteristic responses—some cases are better left unsolved?—that she wasn’t really seeing what was in front of her. But a moment later, her eyes focused on the cup she’d just moved. It had a teddy bear on it and said, “Life would be un-bear-able without you.”

  Life would be un-bear-able without you? Frowning, she picked it up to take a closer look. Where had her father gotten this? Her mother always chose plain, masculine items for Dale, and elegant, classy things for herself. Allie couldn’t remember ever seeing cutesy objects like this in her parents’ house. And it wasn’t the type of cup a man, especially Dale, would purchase for himself….

  She glanced over at the coffeemaker and the odd assortment of cups that accumulated there. Who knew where any of them came from? she thought, and carried the cup to the sink.

  4

  “There you are.”

  Allie twisted to see Officer Hendricks standing in the doorway of the storage closet, rubbing his giant belly as if he had indigestion. It wouldn’t have surprised Allie if he did. He ate more than anyone she’d ever known; he had a grease stain on his collar right now.

  “What ya workin’ on?” he asked, hooking his thumbs into his belt and leaning against the doorjamb.

  That was rather obvious since she was sitting on the floor with the Barker files spread out in front of her. But, contrary to what a police uniform generally signified, Hendricks wasn’t known for his deductive reasoning. “I’m searching for leads on the Barker case,” she replied.

  “Leads?” He scowled. “Why? We already know the devil who did it.”

  “We do?” She arched a sardonic eyebrow at him.

  He reacted by scratching the top of his head, where his thinning blond hair had been reduced to a mere three or four strands. “Shoot, you’re the one who took Beth Ann’s statement.”

  “And you can prove what she’s saying is true?”

  “Just because we can’t prove Clay’s the one, doesn’t mean he ain’t,” he countered.

  She’d heard that line from almost everyone in town. But she wouldn’t accept it from a fellow cop. “You can suspect all you want. But it doesn’t mean anything until you collect the proper evidence. Without it, we don’t have a case.”

  “The evidence is there somewhere,” he said. “We just haven’t found the thread that’ll unravel it all.”

  “That’s why I’m combing through the files, trying to figure out what’s been overlooked.”

  He took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his forehead. It was cold outside—cool in the station, too—but he always sweated profusely. “Last I heard, your daddy didn’t want us messin’ with the Barker case no more.”

  She retrieved another stack of files from the box in front of her. “He doesn’t want me wasting a lot of time on it, and I’m not.” When he left, her father had been too preoccupied to give her any new assignments. And it was a quiet night. She didn’t see any problem with pushing forward. She’d promised Madeline Barker some answers, and knew Clay’s stepsister would be calling any day to check on her progress. Madeline touched base with her once a week, sometimes more often.

  Besides, Allie knew if she wasn’t intent on some goal, she’d nod off the way Hendricks usually did. She’d been up since Whitney woke her at two-thirty this afternoon, doing homework with her daughter, taking Whitney to her piano lesson, helping her mother with dinner, and then going through Whitney’s bedtime routine. She was exhausted, but felt she owed the taxpayers. She believed pursuing the Barker case was the highest and best use of her skills. Maybe it was nineteen years old, but it was still very present in the minds of so many—Reverend Barker’s daughter and extended family, the Montgomerys, Jed Fowler, who’d fixed the tractor at the farm the night it all happened, Reverend Portenski, who’d taken over for Barker at the church, and Reverend Barker’s whole congregation. Even the Archers had a stake in it now that their son had married Grace—and they were a very prominent family.

  Allie couldn’t imagine why her father would make this case such a low priority, especially when he used to be so determined to solve it. He’d often berated his predecessor for bungling the original investigation and swore if it had been handled correctly they would’ve had the answers ages ago.

  So why not handle it correctly now?

  “What are you findin’ that we don’t already know?” Hendricks asked.

  “Not much,” she said. But she was actually quite intrigued by the report she held in her hand. According to Officer Farlow, the officer whose position she took when he moved to Tennessee, Reverend Barker’s nephew had found the pocket Bible Reverend Barker had carried with him everywhere. This was last July, and it had since been released into Madeline’s care, but Joe claimed he’d discovered it at a campground on Pickwick Lake and insisted that Grace Montgomery had buried it there.

  Records confirmed that Kennedy Archer had rented a spot at the campground during the month in question. Kennedy readily admitted Grace had been there with him, along with his two boys. But both he and Grace denied knowing anything about the Bible. Interestingly enough, Joe had camped with them one night, and although he and Kennedy had once been good friends, they were now pointing fingers at each other. Joe said it was Grace who’d stashed Barker’s Bible; Kennedy suggested Joe had buried it there in an attempt to frame Grace.

  Allie could see how Kennedy might be tempted to lie in order to protect the woman he loved. But she could also understand why Joe might resort to providing the police with “proof” against the Montgomerys. He was positive they were responsible for the death of his uncle and wanted to see them punished. He figured he’d waited too long. But, prior to last July, the Bible hadn’t been seen since the reverend went missing. If Joe had planted it, where did he get it in the first place?

  She made a note to ask Madeline if she could take a look at it.

  Hendricks gathered phlegm in his mouth and spat into the wastebasket behind her, jerking her out of her concentration.

  “Do you mind?” she asked, disgusted by the crude noise.

  “Mind what?” he replied and pointed at her notepad. “What’s that you’re writing?”

  If she ignored him, would he leave? she wondered hopefully. But
she wasn’t that lucky. Her silence only encouraged him to hunch down and peer over her shoulder. “If…Joe…found…the…Bible…at…the…campsite…as…he…claims…how…did…he…know…where…to…look?” He read slowly, trying to decipher her handwriting. “Where…else…could…he…have…gotten…it? Who…has…it…now?”

  “Hendricks, don’t you have—” Allie started, but he interrupted her.

  “Heck, I can answer those questions for you.” He used the door frame to straighten because his knees struggled beneath his weight. “Grace took the Bible off Reverend Barker when Clay killed him, just like Joe says.”

  “Then why would she keep it for so long before trying to dispose of it? She was an assistant district attorney, for crying out loud, and very successful at her job. Don’t you think she’d know better than to hang on to something that would raise so much suspicion if she was caught with it?”

  “Maybe she was moving it to another hiding place,” he said. “Like she tried moving Reverend Barker’s body.”

  “There’s no proof that she was moving anyone’s body,” Allie reminded him.

  “What do you suppose she was doing at the farm in the middle of the night with a flashlight and a shovel?”

  “According to her—” Allie thumbed through some sheets of paper, came up with the statement she’d read only a few minutes earlier and quoted Grace. “‘After hearing so many people accuse my mother and brother of killing my stepfather, I was finally ready to see for myself if he was buried out behind the barn.’”

  “Yeah, right,” Hendricks said.

  “She wouldn’t want to do it in the middle of the day—let anyone else know she’d begun to doubt her family. Besides, if they knew what she had planned, they might’ve tried to stop her. Makes sense.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t believe her.”

  Allie wasn’t sure she believed Grace, either. But she wasn’t going to jump to the same conclusions as everyone else. When she operated from a preconceived notion, she often missed the most salient clues in a case. She’d learned that the hard way. While tracking down a serial rapist in Chicago, she’d been so sure it was one man when it was really another that she’d misled the whole task force and the real culprit had slipped away. It had taken them an additional two years to find him. “We can’t prove she’s lying,” she said. “As a matter of fact, right now we can’t prove anything. Joe marked the spot where Grace was digging, then we took a backhoe to Clay’s farm. And what did we get for our trouble? The remains of the family dog, which died of old age before Barker ever went missing. That’s it.”

  “We?” he challenged.

  “The police,” she clarified.

  “I was there, and I’m telling you, as soon as we struck bone Grace was sure we’d found Barker. You should’ve seen her. She nearly fainted when we pulled that skull from the ground.”

  “She might’ve thought it proved someone in her family had killed her stepfather. She actually says that’s what she thought in here.” Allie slapped the report on the concrete floor. “Finding out that you’re so closely related to a murderer would be shocking for most people.”

  “I think she already knew her brother had done the evil deed and she was scared he’d get caught.”

  Allie stretched her legs in front of her because they were getting cramped from being crossed for so long. “Then why didn’t we find any human remains?”

  “Because Clay moved the body before we could get there, that’s why.”

  “Was Clay watching you dig?” she asked.

  “Yes sirree. No one steps onto his property without him knowing it. And it’s best to get permission—with or without a search warrant. It could be dangerous to startle him.”

  She set aside the report she’d been reading, interested at last. “Did he seem nervous? Frightened? Like Grace?”

  “How could you ever tell? That man’s made of stone.”

  Allie remembered the subtle evidence of vulnerability she’d witnessed in Clay last night, the embarrassment and humiliation, the anger and simmering resentment. He’d tried to flirt with her to ease the discomfort they were both feeling, so he wasn’t without sensitivity.

  “He’s as human as the rest of us,” she said.

  “No, he’s not. I could put a gun right between his eyes and cock the damn trigger—and he’d dare me to fire. I’ve never seen a tougher sumbitch.”

  Clay was tough, all right. Allie suspected that life had made him that way. How else would he have survived the constant doubt, the suspicion, anger and animosity he’d battled for so many years? Allie could only wonder why he hadn’t moved as far away from Stillwater as possible. What kept him around? The farm? As Barker’s wife, Irene had inherited it when he disappeared. Then once Clay had graduated from college, she’d passed it on to him. Allie wasn’t sure what kind of an agreement he had with his mother and sisters as far as the property was concerned, but surely he could sell out, pay them off if he owed them money, and buy another piece of land where no one had ever heard of the missing reverend.

  “Why do you think he stays put?” she asked. If he’d killed Barker and buried him at the farm, that would explain it. But if he was innocent…

  “Where else would he go?” Hendricks asked.

  “There must be towns where he’d be welcomed. He’s young, strong, handsome. Without Reverend Barker’s disappearance hanging over his head, he’d be like anyone else.”

  Hendricks wiped the perspiration beading on his forehead. “Guess he stays ’cause he’s got family in the area.”

  Why didn’t they all find a new home? Allie wondered. Molly, the youngest of Irene’s children at thirty, had left as soon as she graduated from high school. According to Madeline, she was currently designing clothes in New York. Grace had left, too, but she’d come back, and now that she was married to Kennedy Archer, Allie didn’t think she’d leave again. Kennedy, along with his father, owned the bank. He wouldn’t want to uproot his boys, abandon the family business and leave his parents. His father had just survived a bout with cancer. But Clay and Irene had never even attempted to get away. When he returned from college, she’d moved into town and let him take over at the farm. And that was that.

  “Do you know much about Clay’s background?” she asked, adjusting her position so she could see Hendricks without putting a crick in her neck.

  “Aren’t the details all there, in the files?” he asked.

  Some of them were. But the Stillwater police force hadn’t investigated many missing persons—or murders, for that matter—and the files weren’t as detailed as they should be. She was looking for the word-of-mouth snippets her father and his predecessors had deemed unrelated or unimportant. If Hendricks was going to impose his presence on her, she figured she might as well learn what he knew. He loved gossip and generally picked up on whatever was being said around town. “There’re a few bare facts. Where he was born, that sort of thing.”

  “He was born in Booneville, wasn’t he?”

  She nodded.

  “My little sister was in his class when he moved here. Said he made good marks in school. Until he was older.”

  “Did his grades start to fall before or after Reverend Barker went missing?”

  “Mary Lee told me it happened about the same time, but I’ve never checked his transcripts.”

  “What about his natural father?” she asked.

  “Ran off is all I heard.”

  Clay’s file indicated that much, but no more. “Has anyone ever tried to locate Mr. Montgomery?”

  “Not that I recall. Why?”

  She shrugged, but to her surprise, Hendricks caught on, anyway.

  “You don’t think Clay might’ve killed him, too?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m no genius, but my guess is Clay would’ve been too young.”

  He didn’t respond to the sarcasm in her voice. “So you were thinking of Irene? Of course!” He clapped his hands as if they’d just solved the case. “Now I
know why they paid you the big bucks in Chicago. I doubt anyone else has even thought of that.”

  Probably because Allie was the only person in Stillwater jaded enough to consider it. The cops on her father’s force had never come up against the kind of heinous criminals she’d dealt with. “It’s worth checking,” she said slowly.

  “Sure. Makes sense.” Hendricks’s head bobbed like the bobble-headed puppy Allie’s grandmother used to display in the rear window of her giant Oldsmobile. “If Clay’s father was alive, he would’ve come around at some point. The Montgomerys have lived in Stillwater for…what, twenty-three years? But no one’s seen hide nor hair of him. Curious, ain’t it?”

  If Clay’s father was dead, and the circumstances surrounding his death were at all suspicious, Allie needed to examine that coincidence. But Hendricks was getting more excited than such a slim possibility warranted. “Not necessarily. There could be lots of reasons we’ve never seen him. So don’t get carried away,” she cautioned. “Chances are, Mr. Montgomery’s alive and well and living in some other state.”

  “Right,” he said, but she could tell he wasn’t really listening. He was too busy jumping ahead. “If we got Irene for one murder, we’d get her for the other. It’s brilliant.”

  “Hendricks.” She stood and grabbed hold of his arm to make sure he understood that she was serious. “It’s a real long shot, so don’t go spreading it around.”

  “Who me?” He waved a dismissive hand. “I won’t breathe a word,” he said. But it wasn’t a day later that someone approached her at the Piggly Wiggly to ask if Irene Montgomery was a serial killer.

  Reverend Portenski’s hand shook as he removed the floorboard in the far corner of the old church and reached into the dark hole beneath. He had stumbled upon this small recess quite by accident a decade ago, when he was moving furniture and doing some repairs to the building—and had rued the day ever since.