by Lauren Carr
The rest of the Rawlings family was no further help.
Bridgette had been in a tanning booth in East Liverpool from four o’clock to four-thirty. Joshua noted that there was no checkout time on the salon’s sign-in sheet. He also noted the salon was a few blocks from the hospital and Bridgette had been alone in the tanning booth the whole time.
Hal Poole had been in a meeting at the church in New Cumberland, but no one saw him between two and five o’clock.
Cockiness prevented Wallace Rawlings, the last to be inter-viewed, from having a lawyer present. After refusing to shake Joshua’s offered hand, he plopped down into the chair at the head of the conference table.
“Let’s get on with this. I have a very busy schedule. From here, I have a meeting with New Cumberland’s mayor, and after that the county commissioner. Then tonight, I have a dinner engagement at Senator Brunswick’s home.”
“I’m impressed.” Joshua slid into the chair across from Wallace. “Not terribly, but I am impressed. I’m glad to see that you can keep up such a busy social schedule with your only daughter being murdered and all. I couldn’t possibly do it if I were in your shoes. I guess you aren’t into this mourning thing.”
“Victoria and I weren’t that close.”
“That’s right,” Joshua breathed. “She wasn’t your daughter. At least, that’s one of the rumors I heard.”
“That’s correct,” Wallace said. “Tad MacMillan was her father. I assume, since you’re investigating this case, he’s not a suspect.”
Joshua was too busy digesting his blunt confession about Vicki’s paternity to hear the accusation of bias. “Did you tell her that Tad was her biological father?”
Wallace's round face reddened with rage. “No, I wanted to. Victoria must have figured it out on her own.” His tone was void of emotion. “The only reason we let that product of sin stay under our roof as long as we did was because my father ordered it and forbade us from telling anyone what she really was. Fortunately, God drove her out.”
Joshua said, “Even if Tad had slept with Cindy, which he says he didn’t, what makes you so certain Vicki wasn’t your daughter? Cindy was your wife, after all.”
“I would never take to bed a woman who smells of another man,” Wallace said. “I knew before she confessed her sins on our wedding night that she had been with Tad MacMillan. She reeked of him right up to the day she died.”
“Why did you marry her?”
“Because my father ordered it. ‘Obey thy father and thy mother.’”
“Actually, it’s ‘respect your father and your mother,’” Joshua corrected him. “You can disobey someone and still respect them.”
Insulted by the correction, Wallace glared. “What other questions do you have?”
“You married this woman and she had this baby you swear wasn’t yours? You must have hated Cindy.”
“I despised her.”
“Enough to kill her?”
“I resent that question.”
Joshua was as unfazed as Wallace was infuriated. “Vicki was a constant reminder of your wife’s infidelity. How you must have hated her, especially with all the dirty laundry she was airing. And then, with her arrest and pending trial—”
“There would have been no trial. You do know Clarence Mannings, don’t you?”
“Yes, I beat him before.”
“But you weren’t the prosecutor on Vicki’s case. He was enough to scare Marjorie Greene.” Wallace’s cocky attitude returned. “She was talking deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“It doesn’t matter now. That troublemaker is dead, and I was in a meeting with Greene and Mannings in New Cumberland from four to five.” Wallace smiled. “Victoria was killed at about four o’clock. I have an alibi.”
“Yes, you do…for Vicki’s murder, but not for Beth Davis’s murder at six o’clock.” Joshua asked, “Are you missing a trench coat by any chance?”
Wallace’s grin disappeared. His glare returned.
Joshua didn’t realize how much he missed silence.
At some point while having a family and traveling to the far corners of the world, he had forgotten about the solitude back home. The memory came back to him quickly.
On summer evenings, Joshua would sit on the porch steps and play the guitar for his grandmother, who would listen from her rocking chair until after the last porch light on their street went out. That was the routine all the way up and down the cobblestone streets in Chester.
Since then, the neighbors had changed, as had the custom.
Most of Joshua’s childhood friends from the neighborhood had moved on to one of the surrounding cities. Some of the older neighbors died off and left their homes to their children, who sold them to young families.
While the new generation residing on Rock Springs Boulevard may have sought the solitude of small town life, it was apparent by how few of them sat on their porches that they were too busy or sophisticated for guitar music and neigh-borly conversation.
After spending the day untangling homicidal chaos, Joshua fell right back into enjoying the peace and quiet on his front porch after dinner.
The children had gone their separate ways. Sarah had made friends on the middle-high basketball team. They went to the school playground for her to show off her athletic talent. Tracy was stenciling a border in her room. Murphy and J.J. were surfing the Internet in search of new iTunes music to download. Donny was reading a science fiction paperback in his room.
The twins had found their father’s old guitar in the attic. Joshua was pleased to discover his musical talent was coming back to him when he tuned it. He had broken into a chorus of Puff the Magic Dragon when a shadow fell across the porch steps.
“Don’t stop on my account.” Tess Bauer was standing before him. For her, she was dressed casually in jeans with a sports jacket over a blue blouse. Her honey-colored hair fell to her shoulders. Joshua continued to strum while she sat on the step next to him. “I came to call a truce.”
“I didn’t know we were at war.” After hitting a sour note, he set the guitar aside. “Did you bring me a peace offering?”
“What do you want?” She smiled at him.
Realizing she didn’t smile during her news reports, he thought how out of place the expression looked on her face. “Amber,” he answered.
“She’s afraid.”
“She’ll get protection.”
“That’s what they always say,” Tess replied. “Every time anyone gets someone to testify against Rawlings, they disappear off the face of the earth.”
“So Amber thinks it would be better to disappear before that happens and leave it to someone else to get rid of Rawlings. Not only is she running from him, now she’s running from the police. There’s a warrant out for her.”
“Amber didn’t do anything.”
“She’s a material witness,” he told her. “You should know that.”
“I do. I thought you’d understand.”
“I need to question her,” Joshua said. “Where did you find her?”
“She found me,” Tess said. “After Diana died, I vowed that I was going to get whoever was behind the drugs that killed her. It wasn’t hard to find a lot of people who could tell me that Reverend Orville Rawlings was the valley’s drug lord but no one who would talk on camera.”
“Until you met Amber.”
“She showed up at my apartment one night.” She nodded her head toward the rise in the hill over Chester. “I rent a little two-bedroom on Nevada. She wouldn’t even go into the studio. I had to record the interviews at home because she was so afraid.”
“If she was so afraid, why’d she consent to the interviews?”
“She and Vicki were close. She wanted to help her.”
“Best fr
iends?”
“Closer than that.”
Joshua cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Shocked?”
“Lady, I’ve been all over the world and back.”
“So I heard.” Tess hugged her knees to her chest.
Joshua noticed that she had trimmed her fingernails to a normal length and had replaced the dark color with a delicate French manicure more in keeping with her conservative manner.
Tess gazed up at the stars peeking at them from above. “Chester must seem awfully boring after living in the likes of Hawaii and San Francisco.”
“And Naples and London.” He laughed. “Nah, I haven’t had time to be bored.”
“Dad, who are you talking to?” Tracy stepped out onto the porch. She had Admiral on his leash.
“Hey, kiddo,” he called out to her. “It’s Tess Bauer.”
Tess twisted where she sat on the step to look up at the girl above her on the porch.
After complimenting her on her work, Tracy announced that she was taking the dog for a walk.
“If you can wait a minute, I’ll come with you.” Joshua started to stand up.
“That’s okay. I’m meeting Ken.”
“Aw, so this isn’t a humanitarian trip to give Admiral some exercise,” he said. “It’s a date.”
“And Admiral is our unwilling chaperone.”
Joshua returned to his seat on the step next to Tess. When Tracy stepped around him with the huge dog, he leaned to the side to make room for them to descend to the driveway. In doing so, his thigh brushed up against the journalist’s leg.
“Who do you think you are?” In an instant, Tess was on her feet and glaring down at him.
Her fury was so abrupt that the dog hid behind his mistress’s legs as if they were big enough to conceal him.
“You think that you can have any woman you want. You think that women will fall all over themselves and degrade themselves by putting up with your sick fantasies in hopes that you will honor them by choosing them to be with you!”
Confused by the outburst, Joshua mentally replayed the moments before her explosion in search of the action that motivated it.
She continued ranting, “Well, I’m not like those other women. I don’t need you. I don’t have to put up with any of your shit!”
Both Joshua and Tracy sensed that the man on the porch step was no longer the source of her fury.
“You can’t make a fool out of me,” she yelled. “I’m in control here.”
“What are you talking about?” Joshua asked.
“You’re free to walk away at any time or, better yet, to stand up for yourself. If you don’t stand up for yourself, then they’ll think that they can get away with humiliating you because you’re unable to walk away.” She laughed loudly. “Not only can I walk away, but I can also fight back!”
Joshua rose from where he had been sitting peacefully on the porch moments before. “I’m sorry if I offended you.”
Tess slapped him across the face.
Without another word, she turned, shoved Tracy aside, and stormed out the driveway and up the road.
The father and daughter gazed at each other.
“I see you still have a way with the ladies.” Jan was coming up the driveway with a wide grin on her face. Joshua and Tracy had been so enthralled by Tess’s wrath that they hadn’t noticed their audience.
When she saw Ken waiting for her across the street, Tracy greeted and bid farewell to Jan in one breath before rushing off with Admiral.
“What was that all about?” Her amusement at his expense was evident.
“I have no idea,” he answered.
After they sat back down on the same step where he had been enjoying the summer evening, she handed him a green tin. “I brought you some more of that tea you like.”
“You don’t have to keep bringing me tea,” he told her. “Let me pay for it.”
“You don’t have to pay me.” Jan cocked her head to one side. “However, if you do want to repay me, there is something you can do for me. I want in.”
“In? On what?”
“On your murder investigation. This is my chance. I never got to pursue my dream to be a writer. Now, if you bring down the Reverend Rawlings for a double murder, then there’ll be a big story. If you let me have an exclusive, then I’ll finally be able to do what I want to do with my life instead of running that little drug store on the corner.”
“What if it isn’t Rawlings? Then, you have no story and wasted your time.”
“Who else could it be?”
“I thought you said it was a murder for hire and Tad was behind it,” he reminded her.
She snorted. “Have you even tried to pursue that? Have you talked to him about it?”
“I know Tad too well.” He recalled Tad’s nausea upon finding the bodies. “He took Beth’s death very hard. I was there when we found her.”
Jan agreed. “Tad is no killer. But I still want to know what Beth meant when she told him she was going to make Maggie hate him.”
“You still haven’t figured that out?”
“I wouldn’t have to figure it out if you’d tell me.”
“I haven’t confirmed it, but I think I know and you would, too, if you think about it. What could Beth know that would make Maggie hate him?”
She shook her head. “I give up. Tell me.”
Pleased with himself for his deduction, Joshua said, “Beth was Maggie’s mother.”
“No.” It was a statement.
“Yes,” Joshua asserted. “Tad never told anyone who Maggie’s mother was for a reason. Beth and I used to date. After I left her for Valerie, she started partying with Tad and got pregnant. He never said she was Maggie’s mother because he was afraid I’d be offended that he had slept with my old flame.”
“No,” she replied firmly. “Beth never slept with Tad. If she had she would have told me, if only for bragging rights. Yes, she got wild after you dumped her, but she didn’t have any baby. I certainly would have known about that.”
“Didn’t Beth leave town to go to school at West Liberty?” he asked. “Wasn’t she gone for several months? Like long enough to have a baby?”
Admitting that Beth had, Jan still shook her head. “They never slept together. There’s no way Maggie could be their daughter.”
“What else could Beth threaten to tell Maggie that would make her hate Tad?”
“I guess we need to ask Tad that.” Her enthusiasm matched his dread. “Who are your other suspects?”
“You.”
Jan hesitated before laughing at what had to be a joke. “Why would I kill Beth? We’d been friends since school.”
His tone told her that he was serious. “You were always jealous of Beth. She stole drugs from your store. You’re lucky I convinced the Frosts to accept the insurance company’s settlement instead of dragging your butt into court. As it is, your insurance premiums will be raised and the store’s reputation is ruined. You can thank Beth for that.”
“Thanks a lot.” She stepped down off the porch.
Joshua stopped her. “That’s how a murder investigation really works. You ask questions, accuse people, sometimes your friends, and they get offended. It’s one confrontation after another. It’s not fun and games.”
She came back to where he remained seated on the steps. “You don’t really think I’d kill Beth, do you?”
“You two weren’t the best of friends. I saw that the first morning I stopped in at the store.”
She stood over him with one foot propped up on the step next to his thigh. “I knew Beth was having problems. I was afraid she was going to make a mistake just like the one she made, but I didn’t want to hurt her by firing her. That wa
s my mistake. I let our friendship get in the way of business.”
He could see even in the dark that she was sad.
“You’re right,” she confessed, “I was jealous of Beth. Men always came so easy for her. She’d go through one guy after another, especially after Wally.”
His head snapped up to look at her profile in silhouette in the evening dusk. His gasp was audible. “Wally Rawlings?”
Vigorously, she nodded her head. “Right after you dumped her. She claimed she was in love. I told her that she was subconsciously trying to get even with you.”
“Beth hated Wally.”
“But she hated you more for dumping her,” Jan told him. “She had this insane idea that Wally was going to dump Cindy Welch and marry her. Then, she was going to go off and live at the Rawlings estate, and you were going to kick yourself for dumping her. Of course, that didn’t happen.”
Joshua murmured, “Are you saying Wally was fooling around with Beth right up to when he married Cindy?”
“And afterwards. It was months before Beth got it through her head that she was the other woman and not some soap opera vixen. Then, she went off to school and it was over.” She didn’t understand his surprise. “Tad knew all about it. Didn’t he tell you?”
Before Tad MacMillan’s office had become a place of business, the lab in the back of the building had been an elderly spinster’s kitchen. The cabinets, counters, and appliances survived the renovations. After dealing with a mouthy eight-year-old boy who had stepped on a rusty nail, Tad went to the lab and removed a bottle of water from the refrigerator. He took a couple gulps before he noticed Joshua sitting at the break table.
“Why didn’t you tell me Beth had slept with Wally?”
Tad gulped another mouthful of water, and then leaned against the counter. “I only have fifteen minutes before my next appointment. I do have to make a living. I have a mother and a daughter to support.”
“Answer my question,” Joshua ordered. “My back is killing me and I’m short on patience.”
Tad put the water back into the refrigerator and stepped behind him. Even though they were arguing, the doctor examined his cousin’s aching back. “Beth slept with Wally a long time ago. This has nothing to do with her murder.”