Dead Right

“My most prominent citizens are sitting on pins and needles,” Toby said, his voice growing calmer. “I’m going to catch more grief than you can imagine if I don’t put an end to it. Soon.”

The man called Rex scowled and shoved his hands in the pockets of his heavy coat. Madeline had never met him before. A distant relation of Toby’s, he’d been called in from a neighboring town when their local tow truck owner said his truck wasn’t capable of getting the job done. “I’m sorry,” Rex said. “But with all this water and silt, combined with the weight of the car, I don’t wanna risk burning out the engine of my—”

“If we wanted to wait, we would’ve waited,” Toby interrupted. “We wouldn’t be standing out here in the cold, freezing our asses off. But we called you, and you said you could do it. So can we please get this damn thing out of the water? Your truck’s powerful enough to tow a semi, for cryin’ out loud!”

Madeline flinched, her nerves too raw to cope with the anxiety and frustration swirling around her. It had been an emotional seven days. A week ago, a group of teenagers had come here to party; a girl had fallen in the water and been too drunk to climb out. She’d slipped under the surface before anyone could reach her and the resulting search for her body, which police located as darkness set in almost twenty-four hours later, had turned up the Cadillac missing since Lee Barker disappeared.

As the owner, editor and primary writer of The Stillwater Independent, Madeline had followed the tragedy of the girl’s death since the first frantic call. But she’d never dreamed it would lead to this. Had her father’s car been here, so close, all this time? Since she was sixteen? That was the question she’d been asking herself for seven interminable days, while the town dealt with the immediate tragedy of losing Rachel Simmons.

Rex spat on the ground. “Toby, the divers don’t know what the hell they’re doin’. With the color of this water, they can hardly see down there, even with a light. I can’t be sure we won’t break a tow cable and send that car crashing right back to the bottom.”

Clay spoke up for the first time. “The divers said they found the windows down, right?”

Toby and Rex turned to face him. “What does that have to do with anything?” Rex asked.

“If the windows were down, they were able to get the cables through. You’ll be fine. Just pull it out.”

Clay was respected for his physical power and mental acuity, but he’d also endured enough suspicion where her father was concerned to give him a pretty big stake in all of this. Madeline knew the chief of police had to be thinking of that as he considered the stubborn set of Clay’s jaw. She could almost read Toby’s thoughts: Are you trying to help because you don’t know what’s in that car? Or are you trying to cover the fact that you do?

Madeline wanted to scream, for the millionth time, that her stepbrother didn’t have anything to do with whatever had happened to her father.

“Let me handle this, Clay,” Toby said, but there was no real edge to his voice, and his hazel eyes returned to the water-filled quarry before his words could be taken as any sort of challenge. Even the chief of police was careful around Clay. At six feet four inches tall and two hundred and forty pounds of lean muscle, Clay looked formidable. But it was his manner that made folks uneasy. He was so self-contained, so emotionally aloof, some people had convinced themselves he was capable of murder.

“Rex,” Chief Pontiff prodded. “Let’s get this done.” Rex indulged in a particularly colorful string of expletives but stalked to his truck, and the winch started again, slowly pulling the car from the water.

Madeline caught her breath. God, this is it.

“Watch those divers,” Rex called.

Chief Pontiff had already motioned them away. “Let the winch do the work, boys,” he shouted. “Stay back.”

The scrape of metal against rock made Madeline shudder. It was an awful sound—almost as awful as watching the dark, dirty water seep out of the car that had belonged to her parents when she was a child. Why was the Cadillac in the quarry? Who had driven it there? And—the question that had plagued her for twenty years—what had happened to her father? Would she finally know?

As the tow truck driver had predicted, the car got caught on a large rock. “I told you!” he yelled, cursing again. But before he could shut down the winch, the rusty rear axle broke and the Cadillac continued to emerge, groaning as it climbed out of its watery grave.

Madeline’s nails cut more deeply into her palms. The familiarity of that vehicle threw her back to her childhood—as if someone had yanked her up by the shoulders and deposited her in the front seat. At age five or six, she used to sit beside her mother while Eliza drove around town, visiting members of her father’s congregation, bringing food and consolation to the sick and needy.

Madeline had believed, back then, that her mother was an angel.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she pressed a hand to her forehead, trying to stave off the memories. She rarely allowed herself to think about Eliza. Her mother had been a gentle soul; she’d represented everything good to Madeline. But, as Madeline’s father had pointed out so often after Eliza’s suicide, she was also weak and fragile. He’d had little that was positive to say about his first wife, but Madeline had never blamed him. She hadn’t been able to forgive Eliza, either.

Clay’s arm went around her shoulders, and she turned into his coat. She wasn’t sure she could watch what was coming next.

“It’s okay, Maddy,” he murmured.

She took what comfort she could from his warm strength. He was capable of surviving anything. Secretly, she wished she was as tough. She also wished Kirk was here with her. They’d dated for nearly five years, but she’d broken off the relationship a few weeks ago.

“That’s it.” Pontiff waved the divers out of the water as Rex towed the Cadillac onto stable ground.

This time when he stopped the winch, Rex shut off the truck’s engine, too. Madeline felt Clay tense, so she forced herself to look and saw her cousins hurrying to the car.

Chief Pontiff sent her an anxious glance, adjusted the hat keeping the rain out of his face and intercepted them. “Give us some room,” he said, barring them from getting too close.

Madeline was glad that Irene, Clay and Grace stayed put, or she would’ve been standing there alone. She didn’t want to move any closer to that car. She had no idea what she might see and feared it would only fuel her nightmares. Every few weeks, she dreamed that her father was knocking on her front door in the middle of the night. He was always wearing a heavy coat that parted to reveal a skeleton.

Grace, a more refined, elegant version of Clay, took her hand and Irene edged closer. Clay stepped in front, but he seemed even more reserved than usual. No doubt he was thinking of his new wife and stepdaughter and how this might affect them. Since marrying Allie, he was happy at last. But for how long? The police were quick to point a finger at him. Last summer they’d nearly put him on trial for her father’s murder—without a body, without an eyewitness, without any forensic evidence at all. Unless there was something in the car that proved Clay wasn’t involved, this could put him at risk again.

“Door’s rusted shut,” Pontiff said. “Get a crowbar.”

Radcliffe, who was in his early twenties, returned to one of the police cars and produced the crowbar, which he carried to his chief.

As Pontiff began to pry open the door, the car complained loudly, ratcheting up the tension that made Madeline’s muscles ache. Then her heart lurched as the metal gave way and water from inside came pouring out over everyone’s shoes.

Pontiff didn’t seem to notice. No one did. They were all busy staring at the gush of water as if they expected parts of her father to come floating out with it.

How could this be happening? she wondered. How could she have lost her mother and her father—in two separate incidents?

She didn’t see anything that could be connected to a human being, so she inched closer, straining her eyes for the smallest bit of clothing or—she grimaced—bone. At least, if her father’s remains were in the car, she’d know he hadn’t meant to leave her. She’d never been able to accept that he’d walked out on her. As the town’s beloved pastor, he was a God-fearing man, always ready to help out in an emergency, always a leader. He would never abandon his flock, his farm, his family.

Which meant someone must’ve killed him. But who?

As the water seeped over the ground to the lip of the quarry, mixing with the runoff from the rain, Madeline clenched her jaw. Nothing macabre. Yet.

They were opening the trunk. The Cadillac’s keys had been left dangling in the ignition, but the locks were corroded so they were using the crowbar again.

Bile rose in Madeline’s throat as the minutes stretched on. She tried to keep her mind busy. But what did one think about at a time like this? The teenage girl they’d buried on Wednesday? The miserable weather? The years she’d lived without her father?

Pontiff lifted something with one hand. “You recognize this?”

Belatedly, Madeline realized he was speaking to her and nodded. It was the Polaroid camera she’d seen her father use on various occasions. A chill crawled down her spine. Seeing his camera made him seem so close, but it didn’t tell her anything.

“Is that all?” she asked around the lump in her throat.

The police chief pulled out some jumper cables, a couple of quarts of oil, a sopping blanket. Familiar items that could be found in any trunk.

There’ll be something that’ll finally reveal the truth. Madeline was praying so hard she almost couldn’t believe it when she heard him say, “That’s it.”

“What?” she cried. “There’s nothing that tells us where he went?”

Pontiff shrugged uncomfortably. “I’m afraid not.”

She didn’t move—felt absolutely rooted to the spot—as Clay wiped her tears with his thumb. “I’m sorry, Maddy.”

Sorry didn’t have any meaning. She’d been expecting so much more. It couldn’t be over. If so, she was right back where she’d been before they discovered the car. Where she’d been all along—faced with this nagging mystery and the prospect that she might never know.

“There…” Her teeth chattered from the cold. “There h-has to be…something else here,” she said. “You’ll…look, won’t you? You’ll…let the car dry out and…and go over it inch by inch?”

Chief Pontiff nodded, but she could tell he wasn’t optimistic.