Blood Kin

by Judith E. French

  “Nervous, hell. Is there a chance Grace would hurt Bailey?” He shook Matt. “Talk to me. Didn’t she spend time in a mental hospital?”

  “A few weeks, but that was years ago. Not a sanitarium, a church treatment center . . .”

  “Why, Matt? Why was she committed?”

  “We’d . . . she’d been so sure she was pregnant, and then she started her period. She cut her wrist with a razor blade. By the time I found her she’d lost so much blood. She wasn’t rational . . . shouting that Beth had come back from the grave to kill her. Beth had been dead for years. I was afraid Grace might harm herself, so I hospitalized her.”

  “So she is capable of violence?”

  “Not against anyone else. She threatened to kill herself—that’s why I put her into the center. But she responded to treatment . . . got better.”

  “Better, hell! Someone took a shot at us yesterday! Could it have been Grace?”

  “Shot at you?” Matt’s eyes widened in shock. “No . . . not my Grace. She . . . I should have given her a child. Prayed for one. We both did. She would have been all right if—”

  “And you let Beth go through that alone?”

  “No, I didn’t know. I swear. No one did. We argued. After that one day . . . we argued. I never knew that Beth was pregnant.”

  “You knew it when she died! Why didn’t you come forth then? Why didn’t you testify at Will’s trial? Tell what happened? Tell the jury that you and Beth were intimate?”

  “I couldn’t because I didn’t know. It got out of hand. We were having fun on the beach. First Grace and Joe, and then Grace and Creed. I was cherry, Daniel. I’d never . . . I don’t know how it happened, but things just escalated. The girls were as drunk as—”

  “And you never told anyone that you and Beth—”

  “No . . . Couldn’t . . . couldn’t . . . Can you imagine Father’s shame?” Matthew groaned. “I couldn’t put him and Mother through that. It would have destroyed his ministry and any chance I had of finishing college. And Will Tawes would have killed me if he thought—”

  “If he thought you were the father of her child? And you let him take the blame? Let people think he—”

  “Nobody thought Will would be found guilty.”

  “You stood back and let people accuse him of having sex with Beth?”

  “No. They never charged Will with that. They said he beat her—not sexual assault. It wasn’t the same thing.”

  “Wasn’t it? Or were you such a coward it was easy to let the lies grow bigger and bigger?” He grabbed Matt, pulled him to his feet, and shook him as hard as the dog was shaking the tissue box. “How was it, then? Explain it to me, you sniveling coward!”

  “You don’t understand. . . . It was just a party. Joe and Creed brought hard liquor. Emery was there too. You know I didn’t drink. And Grace . . . you know how she was. . . .”

  “How was she?”

  “She’d been raised without structure . . . as wild as all the Widdowsons.”

  “She’d do it with anyone.”

  “No, that’s not true.”

  “And Beth Tawes? Was she like that?”

  Matthew shook his head. “She was so sweet . . . so young . . . just fifteen. Will never let her date. I didn’t mean—”

  Daniel shook him again. “Wake up. I have to know. What happened?”

  “It got out of hand. . . . We did things. Grace said it was all right, that Beth was okay with it . . . that she . . . she wanted it. You know how it was. They said things about Grace . . . but they were a lie. Just because her sisters were loose didn’t mean . . .” Matt sagged forward and Daniel caught him. “Her stepfather . . . her brother . . . But Grace wasn’t like that . . . not her fault.”

  Daniel dragged his brother to his feet and back down the hall to push him, still in his pajamas, into the claw-footed tub. He turned on the cold water full force, and Matt cried out:“Turn it off! Turn it off! You’re killing me.”

  “I’ll kill you, you whining bastard, if you don’t tell me what Grace is up to!” Then a terrible thought seized him. “Where does Grace keep her deer rifle?”

  Matt sputtered. “Freezing. Let me out!”

  “Where’s the damn rifle? What caliber is it? Is it a three-oh-eight?”

  Matt’s teeth began to chatter. He tried to climb out of the tub.

  “Where does she keep her gun?”

  “Not deer season.”

  “Where’s the damned rifle?”

  “She has two, the Winchester and a Ruger ten-twenty-two. Ohh, I think I’m going to be sick—”

  Daniel pulled his brother upright and handed him a towel. “The rifle, Matt?”

  “Closet. Under the stairs.”

  Daniel raced down the steps and threw open the closet door. A gun rack with brackets for two weapons stretched across the back wall. Both gun racks were empty, but an open empty Remington .308 ammunition box lay on the floor beside a single .22 cartridge.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  As Bailey and Grace neared Elizabeth’s dock in the small, open Boston Whaler, Bailey couldn’t imagine what Daniel could have found. She should have been excited, and she was, but she was also afraid that she was going to be seasick and throw up all over Grace’s spotlessly clean deck.

  The sun was bright, the sky a brilliant azure blue with racing white clouds, but the wind was strong off the bay, the seas rougher than usual, and the water dark. Between the creepy memory of having nearly been killed in a boat the day before and this afternoon’s bouncing over the choppy waves, she wasn’t certain she ever wanted to set foot in a boat again.

  “Whatever Daniel has to show us, it had better be good,” Bailey said between yawns. She couldn’t imagine why she felt so lethargic. Anticipation and all the caffeine she’d consumed today should have supercharged her, but instead she found herself fighting to keep her eyes open.

  Grace nodded vigorously as she pulled back on the throttle and slowed the engine. “He said it would be something you’ll remember for the rest of your life.” This was the first time Bailey had seen Daniel’s sister-in-law in deck shoes, jeans, and a shirt. The tall, big-boned, usually prissy woman not only looked good, but she maneuvered the boat into the slip as easily as parking a car on a city street.

  “You make this look so simple.”

  “It is simple if you’ve been doing it nearly fifty years, like I have. Never did come natural to Matthew, though. Of course, his mother’s people were from the Eastern Shore. Kent County. What can you expect?” Grace chuckled. “You sit tight while I snug us to the post. I don’t want to lose you overboard. The current runs pretty fast through this gut.”

  Something’s going to run through my gut if I don’t get on solid ground soon, Bailey thought. She’d never been seasick before, but she felt as though she was now.

  “Give me your hand,” Grace said.

  Bailey regarded the ladder nailed against the side of the dock; it seemed to be moving up and down with the waves. “I’m not sure I can step—”

  A pair of mallards were flushed from under the structure, startling Bailey as they flew up. She jerked back, nearly losing her balance, but Grace’s long fingers gripped hers so tightly that one of Grace’s rings cut into Bailey’s hand. Grace gave a heave and Bailey found herself standing on the salt-treated walkway.

  “Whoo,” Bailey said. The muscles in her legs felt weak and wobbly. “I don’t know what’s come over me. I’m so tired.”

  “Being on the water does that to some people.” Grace scrambled back into the open boat, picked up a long, thin, fabric case that Bailey hadn’t noticed earlier, and brought it up on the wooden planks.

  Bailey’s eyelids felt heavy as she watched Grace secure both bow and stern to the posts with heavy lines. Someone had cut and nailed sections of old tires, painted white, along the side of the dock to keep the force of the water from damaging vessels by banging them against the frame. Bailey had noticed the cushioning when she’d been here with Daniel, a
nd it seemed a clever idea, especially with a boat as nice as Grace’s. “I’m finished here. Come on,” Grace said.

  What was it Daniel had said? “Nothing on Tawes is as simple as it seems.” That was certainly true. Bailey belonged to a gym in Newark and she worked out faithfully twice a week, but she’d never developed the muscle strength and agility that this fifty-something minister’s wife seemed to come by naturally.

  Grace led the way up the sloping lawn, and Bailey had a hard time keeping pace with her longer stride. Either the slight hill was steeper than it seemed or the ground was slippery, because Bailey felt as though she might make a misstep and fall on her butt if she weren’t careful. She kept expecting to see Daniel open the front door or come around the house, but he didn’t, so she assumed he must be inside. “Didn’t he give you any hinc . . . hint”—she corrected herself—“of what he’d found?”

  “No.” Grace looked back at her and smiled.

  The smile made Bailey uneasy. What was wrong with her? She swayed, but Grace caught her by the arm.

  “Careful, honey. It’s easy to turn an ankle on these old walks. See how some of the bricks are broken and crumbling?” Grace pointed down at the ground where grass sprouted in the cracks of the path. “Best have Daniel rip them all up and lay down new ones.”

  “I hope I’m not coming down with whatever Matthew has. I don’t feel good at all.”

  “Something’s going around,” Grace agreed. “That’s for certain. You never can tell. People traveling from one place to another by plane. They bring all kinds of germs into the country.”

  They entered by way of the oversize door to the wide front entrance hall, and Grace paused at the bottom of the steps. “Daniel! We’re here!” she called, and then in a lower voice said, “Place certainly does look good. I believe he must have used ammonia on that old light fixture. That crystal hasn’t shone so nice in years.”

  Bailey waited. Daniel didn’t answer. Surely, she thought, he must have heard the boat motor. “Daniel!” Her voice came out more of a croak than a shout. She was getting sick. Funny, but her throat wasn’t sore. Other than a little nausea, she was just sleepy.

  “He must be in the attic,” Grace said.

  Bailey looked at the stairs. They seemed to go straight up, and all she wanted to do was sit on the bottom step, lean back, and wait for Daniel to bring his “find” to her. “I thought he was finished in the attic. He told me the next thing he had to do was replace a windowsill at the back of the house.”

  Grace tugged at her arm. “No, that’s where he told me he found it. He probably can’t hear us. We may as well go up.”

  Bailey noticed that the older woman still had the green case in her left hand and wondered what it was. The steps seemed terribly steep, taking all the energy she had to ascend them. She used the polished cherry banister for support.

  “Daniel!” Grace called again. “Yes, he’s up there,” she said when she reached the second-floor hall. “I hear him nailing something.”

  Bailey listened. She didn’t hear anything but the ragged sound of her own breathing and their footsteps on the wide maple boards. If anything, the house sounded empty.

  “I swear, you city girls are weak as kittens,” Grace said. “Wouldn’t be if you’d had to work like I did. Up at five, milk two cows before breakfast, walk to school, and then—like as not—hoe weeds out of the corn until supper after walking home.”

  They walked past bedrooms and a bath in the upper hall. At the end of the passageway were two doors, smaller than the others, opposite each other. On the left, three narrow steps led to a board-and-batten door opening to the attic stairway. Grace pressed the hand-wrought brass thumb latch. “You don’t see many of these. Elizabeth told me that one of those antique dealers was always after her to sell it to him. Can you imagine the nerve? Wanting to buy the hardware off your doors?” She motioned to Bailey. “You go on ahead of me.”

  “No, I think I’d better use the bathroom first. My stomach feels woozy.” She glanced back down the hall. “I think I—”

  Grace stepped back, unzipped the long case, and pulled out a rifle. “Do as you’re told!”

  Bailey’s mouth gaped. She stared first at the weapon and then up at Grace’s face. Her features were almost smooth, almost expressionless. Bailey shivered. “I don’t . . . don’t understand. . . .”

  Grace lowered the muzzle of the rifle until it touched Bailey’s midsection. “Up those stairs without another word, Beth Tawes, or I’ll put a hole through you from here to Judgment Day.”

  “What?” Grace’s voice seemed distorted. Had Bailey heard what she’d thought she’d heard? Had the pastor’s wife called her by her dead mother’s name? “What did you call me?”

  Grace poked her hard with the barrel of the rifle. “No more backtalk out of you. I’d just as soon shoot you here and now.”

  “Shoot me? But . . . why?” The torpor that had gripped Bailey melted away. All she could see was the gun and the glint of hate in Grace’s eyes.

  “All right, Beth, have it your way.” Her finger tightened on the trigger.

  “No! No! I’m going!” Bailey half ran up the first steps. She stumbled, caught herself, and made her way up the narrow, winding staircase to the shadowy attic. “Daniel!” she cried, darting away and trying to take shelter behind an upright beam. “Daniel? Are you—”

  “Shut up! He’s not here, you little fool.” She motioned toward the west end of the attic. “That way.”

  “Please . . . I don’t understand. Why are you doing—”

  Grace squeezed off a shot. The bullet whizzed past Bailey’s head and tore through the shingles overhead. Bailey gasped.

  “Why? Why?” Grace’s voice mocked her. “You should have stayed away. I warned you. Everyone tried to warn you, but you wouldn’t listen. Now, whatever happens, you’ve no one but yourself to blame.” She came toward Bailey, the rifle raised so that the muzzle pointed toward the center of her chest.

  “It was you.” Bailey glanced frantically around for some way of escape. “You’re the one who shot at us yesterday.”

  “A little late to figure that out now, isn’t it?”

  Step by step Grace backed her toward the last room, the place where Daniel had found her mother’s big trunk. Everything seemed to be as it had been the first time Bailey had seen the attic, but the dust and cobwebs were gone. Daniel had swept the floors, polished the small windows at the ends of the house until they gleamed, and arranged the boxes and furniture neatly along the walls.

  Sunshine streamed though the hand-blown panes of glass and illuminated the whitewashed walls and the honey-colored floorboards. People didn’t die in attics that looked like this, Bailey thought crazily. Not on sunny afternoons. Not in a castle turret that any child with an imagination would love to make a secret playground. In every movie she’d ever seen, monsters lurked in the shadows and stalked their victims amid peals of thunder, downpours, and howling winds.

  “Hurry up!” Grace ordered. “I don’t have all day.”

  “Please,” Bailey begged. “Why are you doing this? What did I ever do to you?”

  “You know perfectly well what you did,” Grace said quietly. “You tried to steal my life. My Matthew. You tried to make people believe nasty things about me—about my family—when it was always you.”

  Bailey nearly tripped over something on the floor. She glanced down and saw that it was The Pink Fairy Book. Books, papers, and photos were scattered around the trunk. The domed lid hung open.

  “Get inside.” Grace didn’t shout. She didn’t laugh. She might have been telling Bailey to pass her the salt, but the calm request was more frightening than any crazed cackling.

  “In the trunk?” Bailey froze. Next to the window stood a can of gasoline. “What are you going to do to me?”

  Grace smiled. “I’m going to make certain you don’t cause any more trouble, dear. None at all. You’re going to suffer a terrible accident.”

  Bailey sh
ook her head. “I can’t do it. I won’t.”

  “You wanted this house so badly. I’ll let you have it.”

  “No.”

  “I haven’t the time for hissy fits. You’re going into the trunk dead or alive, miss. It really doesn’t matter.” Grace smiled thinly. “And I’m going to burn this house down around you.”

  “You’ll have to shoot me first. I won’t let you put me in that trunk.”

  “Fine, have it your way. You always did.” Grace glared at her. “Little Miss Perfect.”

  “I’m Bailey, not Beth. You don’t know anything about me or my life.”

  “I know you well enough that I tried to bury you and that bitch of a mother of yours alive before you were born. Don’t you remember? You must have heard her begging for your life.”

  Bailey raised her hands, palms out, and took several steps back. “Grace, please. You don’t want to do this. Not really.”

  “Oh, but I do. I got the best of her. I smashed her over the head with a shovel and pushed her into one of those caved-in graves out in the old cemetery on Creed’s road. There were still pieces of the coffin in the bottom. I didn’t see any bones, but I’m sure they were there.”

  Bailey shook her head. “I don’t believe you. You couldn’t—”

  Grace smiled. “Couldn’t I? You should have heard her screams. I had to keep hitting her to make her stop, but she tricked me. She pretended to be unconscious. But when I turned my back on her, she crawled up out of that hole and hit me in the knee with a brick.”

  Pride surged through Bailey. Beth had fought to protect her.

  “I limped for weeks afterward,” Grace continued in a monotone. “Your mother was sneaky that way. Stubborn little whore—too stupid to die. She almost broke my—”

  Bailey flung herself onto the floor and rolled behind the big camel-back trunk. Grace fired the gun and glass shattered. Bailey seized a book, hurled it at Grace’s head, and scrambled to her feet to run.

  There was a thud as the heavy volume of fairy tales struck the older woman on the left cheekbone. Grace staggered back, then lunged forward and swung the rifle at Bailey. The barrel struck her in the left shoulder and she nearly fell again, but she kept moving and dodged behind an oversize wing chair. The rifle cracked again. Chair stuffing flew.