Dead Giveaway

by Brenda Novak

  “You’re letting hate twist you into a monster,” she told Joe.

  “And your father’s a saint? Like the Montgomerys? No doubt he’s trying to crawl out the window right now. But he won’t get far before he runs into Roger,” he said and that was when she knew Joe’s brother was waiting outside, blocking her father and Irene’s only escape.

  “Allie?” Kirk ran up the stairs.

  “You’re too late,” Joe said, and he was right. The shrill cry of a siren broke the silence, drawing closer and closer. Then the sound died abruptly.

  “You called the police?” Allie cried.

  “In addition to a few other key individuals. Figured this could use a little documentation,” he replied with a grin.

  Kirk made him release her, but it was only a few minutes later that Officers Hendricks and Pontiff, together with Allie’s mother, came hurrying up the stairs—Pontiff first, then Evelyn and a huffing and puffing Hendricks.

  “What is it?” Evelyn asked when she spotted Allie. “Why was I supposed to meet you here?”

  Allie made sure her expression told Joe what she thought of him. The unfeeling bastard had dragged her mother out to see this firsthand.

  “Sometimes the truth hurts,” he murmured carelessly in her ear.

  Kirk reached out to steady her, but Allie couldn’t hold back the tears. Especially as she watched Hendricks and Joe force open the door to the bedroom and turn on the light. Sure enough, her father was inside. He had his clothes on, but there was a lipstick smudge on his shirt, his face was beet red and his hair mussed.

  Although Dale was trying to shield her from view, Irene was there, too, and looked even worse. Her hair, which was normally teased high, was completely flat on one side, and her mascara was running with her tears.

  But the worst was yet to come. Striding into the room, Joe picked up a scrap of fabric that had been shoved under the bed. “What’s this?” he said and held it up for all to see.

  It was a tiny sheer teddy.

  19

  As the sun came up, Allie sat at her kitchen table, staring into the cup of coffee that had grown cold more than an hour ago. She’d brought her mother home with her and tried to feed her—with no success. Finally, she’d given her a sedative and put her to bed in Whitney’s room. She already knew she’d never forget Evelyn’s gasp of pain as they both stood facing the proof of Dale’s infidelity.

  The images that once again entered Allie’s mind threatened to make her ill. Pushing her coffee away, she squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to block out the worst of what she’d seen and heard. But it was no good. Everything came back to her: her father’s halting apology, Irene crying that Dale was the only man she’d ever loved, Joe calling them both the most degrading of names, Kirk almost punching him, the mayor showing up in the midst of the chaos. It was difficult to believe that less than a year before, Allie had been married and living in Chicago, and longing for Stillwater as if it was still the perfect haven it’d always been for her.

  Maybe she and Sam hadn’t had the best relationship, but her life had been far saner than it was now. She was divorced, Dale and Evelyn would probably soon follow, she’d lost her job, and her father was about to join her in the ranks of the unemployed. Beyond all that, she loved a man who was, most likely, going to prison.

  God, she wanted to be with Clay….

  “Home’s supposed to be…safe,” she muttered. She’d come back to Stillwater to recoup, rebuild. Instead, she felt as if her life had fallen apart bit by bit—and at a faster rate after she’d returned than before.

  She wondered how her brother would take the news of what had happened last night. Briefly, she considered calling him, but couldn’t make herself go through with it. She had to come to terms with this new reality first. Actually, she wasn’t sure how she’d ever tell Daniel that their father had been sleeping with Irene Montgomery. Finding out that Dale was having an affair was bad enough. Betrayal was never easy to accept. But cheating with Irene Montgomery? That created all sorts of additional complications.

  If Allie had her guess, it was only a matter of time until Joe began to fight for another search of the farm, saying that her father had purposely avoided the barn when they were digging there before. As she left this morning, he was already claiming that Dale knew all about Barker and had been keeping quiet for Irene’s sake.

  Allie remembered her father’s comment that the Montgomerys had been through enough. Did he know what had happened?

  Covering a yawn, she got up and tried to busy herself by cleaning up—throwing out the leftover eggs she’d cooked for her mother, washing the dishes, putting them away. But she had no energy, could hardly move. Thinking about the conversation she had to have with her daughter when she picked Whitney up from Emily’s in a few hours didn’t help. How was she going to explain why Boppo was coming to live with them? And later in the day, Allie had a meeting with Grace. They’d arranged it yesterday. Would Clay’s sister be surprised about Dale and Irene? Or did she already know about the affair? What about Madeline and Molly? And Clay? Surely Kirk had called them all by now. Except Clay, of course.

  Remembering Clay’s evasive answers when she’d told him that she was afraid her father might be cheating on her mother, and his reluctance to come to the cabin after that, she guessed Clay had known all along. It bothered her that he’d heard her deepest fears and hadn’t leveled with her—but not because she couldn’t understand why. His silence emphasized the fact that he had other people to protect, other people who meant more to him than she did.

  Of course. What they’d had was…fleeting, unreal. A one-time encounter. She knew that and yet she had a hard time really believing it. Making love with Clay had felt so powerful, so visceral and meaningful.

  Suddenly claustrophic, Allie dried her wet hands and walked outside. It was a mild Sunday morning. No one on her street seemed to be up yet.

  She sat in the plastic chair she’d placed on her porch and stared across the street at Jed Fowler’s. She had to find out who shot Clay. She also had to prove that Clay wasn’t guilty of murder and that her father hadn’t turned a blind eye to the fact that he was.

  A neighbor’s cat jumped from the top of her mailbox to the ground, reminding her that she hadn’t retrieved yesterday’s mail. Chances were good that there’d only be a stack of bills. But, like Madeline, she was expecting her tax return. Thinking the money might help her survive until her life improved, she walked down the driveway and checked inside the box.

  There was a large package jammed inside. After struggling to pull it out, she realized it hadn’t come through the mail. It had no return address or postage. Just her name in big bold letters across the front.

  Who’d delivered this? And when?

  She checked the box again, and found a page of coupons and a few bills. Nothing else.

  Instinctively, she looked around her, but whoever had brought it was long gone.

  When she opened the package, she could see why.

  The man the jailer led down the narrow gray hall outside Clay’s cell stood several inches taller than Clay, which made him six-eight or so. Shackled and wearing handcuffs, he was on his way to the empty cage next door, but he was smiling as if his arrest and subsequent lockup didn’t bother him at all.

  Leaning against the bars of his own cell, Clay watched, wondering why this Goliath of a man seemed so damn happy. It couldn’t be because anyone was making him feel welcome here. The jailer handled him more roughly than he had Clay and responded curtly to every question.

  “When’s dinner?” the man asked. “I’m looking forward to my three squares a day, you know? It’s a bitch on the outside. You gotta feed yourself.”

  “You’ll eat when it comes,” the jailer responded. The officer’s disgust was obvious, but his rudeness didn’t disturb the new inmate. The man laughed as the jailer clanked the door shut and stalked off. Then he turned to Clay.

  “How’s the food?” he asked.

 
; “Terrible,” Clay said. “Is it supposed to be good?”

  The man shrugged. “Sometimes it’s not bad. Beats foraging out of a garbage can.”

  Clay studied him in return. “Is that what you normally do?”

  “Hell, no. It’s just a little trick I learned.”

  Clay pushed away from the bars and moved closer. “Trick?”

  “There’s always something worse. If you think about what’s worse, what you have doesn’t seem so bad.”

  “You should go on the Positive Mental Attitude circuit,” he said, flopping onto his bed. “Except I don’t think your attitude is winning you any points with the police.”

  The man waved an indifferent hand. “Who cares about those assholes? Anyway, I don’t want to do public speaking. I can make a lot more money robbing banks, and for that I don’t have to sell tickets.”

  Propping his head on his hands, Clay tried to make himself comfortable. “That’s what you’re in for? Robbery?”

  “Armed robbery. And an accidental shooting they’re calling assault with a deadly weapon.”

  “Accidental,” Clay repeated.

  “That’s what I said.”

  Tired of the square pattern on the mattress above him, Clay sized up the newcomer again. “Isn’t it hard to be a bank robber when you’re so tall? You don’t exactly blend into a crowd.”

  “Oh, maybe that’s what’s wrong,” he said, smacking his forehead.

  Clay couldn’t help laughing. “Well, if you decide to go straight, there’s always basketball.”

  “Not an option for me, amigo. I can’t handle a ball to save my life. And you can blame my mother for that.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Well, you can’t blame my dad. No one knows who he is.”

  Clay thought of his own father. “Sometimes even that’s a blessing.”

  “Maybe.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you can’t play basketball.”

  “When my mother decided to turn her life around and became devout, my life did not improve. From that point forward, she wouldn’t allow me to own a ball.”

  Clay leaned up on one elbow. “Why not?”

  “She didn’t believe in sports. They’re competitive,” he said with another shrug. “Someone has to lose.”

  “It’s a cruel world,” Clay said.

  “Exactly.”

  “I suppose everyone wins in a bank robbery?”

  “She doesn’t know about my career. She’s living in a cult in Oregon and refuses to acknowledge me.”

  Clay shook his head at what this man had been through. “You’re right. There’s always something worse.”

  “Glad I could make you feel better about your life,” he said with a hoot of laughter.

  They fell silent for several minutes, and Clay relaxed, hoping to doze off. It wasn’t as if he was getting much sleep when he was constantly worrying about Allie and his family and what might be happening at the farm.

  “What are you in for, anyway?”

  Clay opened his eyes. The other inmate had wandered right up to the bars separating them. “Me? Nothing. I’m falsely accused.”

  “Aren’t we all.”

  Now that he’d been interrupted, Clay doubted he could drift off again, so he sat up. “Want to tell me how you accidentally shot someone?”

  “The shooting wasn’t the part that was accidental,” he admitted.

  “Oh?” Clay raised his eyebrows. “Then which part was?”

  “The part where I let the dumbass see me,” he said, laughing some more.

  This man had tried to kill a witness. On purpose. Clay no longer found the situation funny. “Attempted murder?”

  “That’s what they claim,” he replied with a wink.

  “That’s what they claim,” Clay muttered to himself. Obviously, he was locked up with someone who, despite his apparent good nature, had no conscience.

  Suddenly, Clay didn’t feel like talking anymore. He couldn’t relate to this man. They had nothing in common, and he hoped they never would.

  Lying back, he threw an arm over his eyes to signal the end of the conversation. He’d be out of here soon, he told himself. Tuesday would have to come eventually. There was no reason to think about this inmate or the fact that he’d meet a lot more men who were an even greater danger to society if he went to prison. But as he let his mind wander, he realized something that hadn’t occurred to him before. He’d assumed that whoever shot him at the cabin had acted out of anger or vengeance.

  But what if the motivation behind the shooting was more random than that? The guy in the next cell had tried to kill a man just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The shooter at the cabin might have been doing the same. Which meant Clay must have seen something, or come close to seeing something, that could give the guy away.

  Now if only he could remember the people and cars he’d spotted as he approached the cabin that night…

  “Are you okay?” Madeline asked.

  Allie tightened her grip on the cell phone. She’d gone to Clay’s farm for privacy. Now that her mother was at her house, she craved some time alone, a few minutes to deal with her own emotions. Especially after seeing the pictures she’d found in the package that had been delievered to her earlier.

  Taking them from her purse, she lined them up very carefully on Clay’s kitchen counter. She’d had them all day and yet it still made her teeth chatter and her body quake to look at them.

  She forced herself to answer Madeline in a calm voice. “I’m fine.”

  “You must be heartbroken.”

  Allie hugged herself. Madeline had no idea. But Clay’s stepsister wasn’t referring to the pictures. It wasn’t difficult to guess she didn’t know about them. She was talking about the scandal involving Allie’s father that had erupted last night. In typical Stillwater fashion, word was rolling through town like a tidal wave, and Allie was as humiliated and embarrassed as she’d expected to be. When she thought of her father in that room with Irene, she still felt a very poignant ache in her chest.

  But these pictures…They were more heartbreaking than almost anything else could possibly be. They’d upset her so badly she couldn’t even keep her appointment with Grace. She didn’t know what to say to Clay’s sister. Should she bring up the abuse Grace had suffered? Tell her about the pictures?

  “It hasn’t been easy,” she said into the phone. “But…somehow my mother and I will get through it.” How had Grace survived? How did the family cope?

  “I have to admit I suspected Mom was seeing someone. She’s been a little secretive for…gee, months and months. But I never dreamed…” Madeline let her words fall away and tried again. “I mean, I feel guilty by association. Ashamed. I want to apologize.”

  Allie managed to keep her brain working well enough to answer, but it took a real effort. Her mind had drifted to Barker’s Bible and the supposed “love” he felt for his stepdaughter. It wasn’t love. He’d been sexually obsessed.

  “There’s no need for you to feel guilty, Maddy,” she said. “I know you’re not responsible for what your father, I mean—” she cleared her throat “—stepmother has done.”

  Maddy seemed a bit confused by Allie’s mistake but didn’t comment on it. “I didn’t know, I swear.”

  “Did Clay?” Allie asked, gazing through his kitchen window toward the barn outside.

  “I doubt it.”

  She turned to glance around the kitchen. She’d had to kick out the cardboard they’d used to cover the broken window downstairs in order to get in. But it had been worth it to find a place where she could be alone and was unlikely to be disturbed. Her mother was refusing to accept Dale’s calls or speak of the affair. And she was ignoring Allie—as though Allie was to blame for the situation—and lavishing one hundred percent of her attention on Whitney. Evelyn was trying to buffer herself from the pain. But Allie knew she’d have to deal with it at some point and worried that this would only put off her recovery
.

  Then there was Joe. Allie was afraid that even though his chances of getting a search warrant had improved by a large margin, he’d be back late tonight to find what he could. Clay’s absence was too good an opportunity to pass up.

  “I’m sure Grace didn’t know, either,” Madeline was saying. “She would’ve told me.”

  Allie picked up a Polaroid of Grace at twelve or thirteen years old. She couldn’t tell where it had been taken but Grace was naked and spread eagled, her wrists and ankles tied. Another showed Barker with his mouth between her legs, his head slightly distorted as if he’d held the camera out and taken the picture himself.

  Of course Grace would tell Madeline if their mother was having an affair, Allie thought sarcastically. Clay and Grace told Madeline everything, right?

  Swallowing a sigh, Allie shook her head. Madeline had no idea. The Montgomerys loved her and treated her well, but they kept their secrets to themselves.

  And she could see why. There were pictures here that revealed such depravity she couldn’t even bear to pick them up.

  Swiping her arm across the counter, she sent them fluttering to the floor. She didn’t try to hold back her tears. What she’d seen wounded her in a way she’d never been hurt before. How could any man, least of all a minister, do what Barker had done? Experience had taught Allie how evil some people could be. In Chicago, she’d gained quite an education in that department. But this was different. The perpetrator wasn’t a stranger. He was a man who’d dressed up as Santa Claus and dangled her on his knee, a man who’d encouraged her to be chaste and good and to save herself for marriage—the worst kind of hypocrite.

  And the victims! Although older than Allie, they were women she’d known. Rosy Lee Harper had overdosed on sleeping pills at sixteen. Allie still remembered getting out of school to attend her funeral. And Katie Swanson had run away at—Allie couldn’t quite remember because she’d been so young at the time—fifteen? Almost everyone in town had gathered to help find her, even Barker. He’d led the search! They’d combed the entire area until they received word that she’d been found dead on the highway, the victim of a hit and run. Both girls came from very poor families who’d relied heavily on the support of their minister.