Dead Giveaway

Allie thought there might have been one murder committed on that property years ago—if the Reverend Barker hadn’t disappeared of his own volition. But there’d never been any proof.

This was probably a prank. Kids screwing around because of all the rumors that had circulated about Clay and his missing stepfather.

“Was it a man or woman you spoke to?”

“A woman. And she seemed damn convincing. She was so panicked I could barely understand her. Then the call was disconnected.”

Shit. Skeptical or not, Allie figured that couldn’t be good. “I’m not far. I can be there in less than five minutes.” Peeling out, she raced down the road.

“You want me to rouse Hendricks for backup?” the dispatcher asked, still on the line.

The other officer on graveyard wasn’t the best Allie had ever worked with, but if there was trouble, he’d be better than nothing. “Might as well try. I’ll bet he’s sleeping at the station again, though. I caught him with his chin on his chest an hour ago, and once he’s out, an earthquake won’t raise him.”

“I could call your dad at home.”

“No. Don’t bother him. If you can’t get Hendricks, I’ll handle this on my own.” Hanging up, she flipped on her strobe lights to warn any vehicles she might encounter that she was in a hurry, but didn’t bother with the siren. Once she got near the farmhouse, she’d turn it on to let the panicking victim know that help had arrived. Until then, the noise would only rattle her nerves. She wasn’t completely comfortable being a street cop again. She was too rusty at the job. As a detective in Chicago, she’d spent the last seven years working mostly in an office, the past five in the cold case unit. But her divorce, and coming home so that she and her daughter would be closer to family, meant she’d had to make some sacrifices. Hitting the streets was one of them.

Rain began to plink against her windshield as she drove down Pine Road and hung a skidding left at the highway. It had been a wet spring, but she preferred it to the terrible humidity they were facing as June approached.

Staring intently at the shiny pavement ahead of her, she ignored the rapid swish, swish, swish of her windshield wipers, which were on high but beating only half as fast as her heart. “What’re you up to, Mr. Montgomery?” she muttered. She couldn’t imagine he was really trying to kill anyone. Other than an occasional fistfight in the bar, Stillwater had next to no violent crime. And Clay was a real loner. But, like everyone else in Stillwater, she felt a little nervous around him. The Reverend Barker’s disappearance—an incident she clearly remembered—was highly suspicious. She didn’t believe such a well-respected man, the community’s spiritual leader, would drive off without saying a word to anyone and without packing or withdrawing any money from his bank account. No one would do that without good reason. And what reason, good or otherwise, could Barker have had to abandon his farm?

If he was alive, someone would’ve heard from him by now. He still had plenty of family in town: a wife, a daughter, two stepdaughters, a stepson, a sister, a brother-in-law and two nephews.

His daughter Madeline—who, like Clay, was thirty-four, a year older than she was—was certain he’d met with foul play. But Madeline was equally certain that her stepmother, stepsisters and stepbrother had nothing to do with it.

It made for an interesting mystery. One Allie was determined to solve. For her own peace of mind. For Madeline, whom she’d known her whole life. For Barker’s nephew, Joe, who was pressing her to solve the case almost as hard as Madeline was. For the whole town.

Gravel spun as she arrived at the farm and whipped into the long driveway. She realized that the property looked far better than it had when Reverend Barker lived there. The junk he’d stacked all around—the rusty old appliances, flat tires, bits of scrap metal and other odds and ends—was gone. The house and buildings seemed to be in good repair. But she didn’t have time to look the place over very carefully. She was too busy flipping her siren on and off before coming to a halt.

Leaving her lights flashing, she jumped out of the car and hurried toward the front door, only to be intercepted by a woman wearing a pair of slacks unbuttoned at the waist and holding a shirt and purse to her bare chest. “There you are,” she cried, stumbling toward Allie from the direction of the carport.

The woman appeared to be alone, so Allie relaxed the hand she’d put on her gun and reached out to steady her. It was BethAnn Cole, who worked in the bakery at the Piggly Wiggly. Allie had seen her several times. Beth Ann wasn’t someone she—or anyone else—was likely to forget. Mostly because she had the kind of face and body people admired. Tall, elegant and model pretty, she had healthy, glowing skin, long blond hair and slanted, cat-green eyes.

“Tell me what’s going on,” she said.

Suddenly, the other woman was crying so hard she couldn’t speak.

“Try to get hold of yourself, okay?” Allie used her “cop” voice, hoping to cut through Beth Ann’s near hysteria, and it seemed to work.

“I—I’m cold,” she managed to say, glancing toward the house as if she was afraid Clay might come charging out after her. “C-can we sit in your car?”

“Of course.” Allie didn’t hear or see anything that made her feel threatened, but until she knew exactly what had happened, she didn’t want to approach Clay. She’d never met a more difficult man to read. She’d gone to junior high and high school with him and had certainly noticed his swarthy good looks. But she’d never gotten close to him. No one had. Even back then, he’d made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t interested in making friends.

If she waited, maybe her backup would arrive.

She helped Beth Ann to the passenger side. Then, once again checking to make sure Clay wasn’t about to spring out of the azalea bushes near the house, she slid behind the wheel.

After locking the doors and turning off her flashers, she twisted in her seat and studied the other woman as well as she could in the dark. A floodlight attached to the barn had come on when she pulled in, revealing BethAnn’s smudged mascara. But it had been activated by a motion sensor and chose that moment to go off, and Allie didn’t want to turn on the car’s interior light until Beth Ann was fully dressed.

“Take a deep breath,” she said.

BethAnn sniffed and dashed a hand across her face, but more tears followed, so Allie started with a simple question, trying to relax her. “How’d you get out here?”

“I drove.” She pointed to a green Toyota Avalon not far from where Allie had parked. “That’s my car right there.”

“Do you have the keys?”

She nodded and sniffed again. “In my purse.”

Despite her desperation to escape, she’d been able to grab her purse? “What time was it when you got here?”

“About ten.”

“Are you the one who called in the complaint?”

“Yes, he’s an…animal,” Beth Ann responded. She broke into sobs again but spoke disjointedly through them. “He—he killed that reverend…guy everyone’s always talking about. The man…who’s been missing for…for so long.”

The hair rose on the back of Allie’s arms. Beth Ann had stated it so matter-of-factly, as though she had no doubt. And her words definitely supported the majority opinion. “How do you know?”

She rocked back and forth, still covering herself with her shirt but making no attempt to put it on. “He told me. He s-said if I d-didn’t shut up, he’d b-beat me to a bloody pulp, like he did his s-stepfather.”

Physically at least, Clay was capable of beating just about anyone. Nearly six-four, he had a well-defined body with shoulders broader than any Allie had ever seen. The long grueling hours he worked maintaining a farm that should have taken two or more people to run kept him in shape.

But he hadn’t been very big at sixteen. He’d been a tall, lanky kid with a shock of shiny black hair and cobalt-blue eyes. When he wasn’t aware of being watched, he occasionally looked lost, even weary, yet he consistently resisted any and all kindness. He hadn’t filled out until after she’d gone to college—presumably in his early twenties.

“Did he explain how he killed his stepfather?” she asked.

“I told you. He—he beat him.” Much to Allie’s relief, Beth Ann finally put on her shirt. Allie had seen a lot in her days working for the law—more dead bodies than she cared to count—but having the very busty Beth Ann sitting next to her half-naked, and knowing she’d probably just left Clay’s bed, was a little too up-close and personal. There was no cushion of anonymity in Stillwater.

“You’re telling me he killed Reverend Barker with his bare hands? At sixteen?” Now that Beth Ann was dressed, Allie snapped on the interior light so she could read the nuances of the other woman’s expressions. But storm clouds covered the pale, waning moon outside, and the cabin light was too dim to banish all the shadows.

“He’s strong. You have no idea how strong he is.”

Allie was familiar with Clay’s reputation. He’d broken a number of weight-lifting records in high school. But that was as a senior, when he’d had more meat on him, not as a skinny sophomore. “He might’ve weighed a hundred and sixty pounds at the time,” she pointed out.

Silence met the skepticism in her voice, then Beth Ann said, “Oh, I think he used a bat. Yeah, he used a bat.”

Something about this interview wasn’t right, but in an effort to avoid the kind of snap judgments that could sabotage a case, Allie tried to go with it a little longer. If Beth Ann was telling the truth—and by now, she thought that was a pretty big if—what could Reverend Barker have done to cause Clay to take a bat to him? Had he grown too strict? Was his discipline too severe?

That was possible. Allie remembered Barker as a particularly zealous preacher, and Clay had never been puritanical. He’d always liked women—there’d never been any shortage of females eager and willing to do whatever he wanted—and he’d been involved in a few fights. But he was kind to his mother and sisters. And, as far as she knew, he had no problems with drugs or alcohol.

“The police never found a murder weapon,” she said, hoping to draw more information out of Beth Ann.

“He must’ve gotten rid of it.”

“Did he tell you he used a bat?”

She glanced outside at the house. “No, but he must have.”