Cold feet(43)
Author: Brenda Novak

He picked up the paper flower bouquet Brianna had made her for Mother’s Day. "I don’t know. I think she’s trying to get a restraining order. I tell you, she’s lost it. She’s gone nuts or something."

"What about the kids?"

He put the arrangement back on the table. "She took them with her."

"When?"

"Yesterday morning. I thought she’d be home by now. But I haven’t heard from her."

Madison sat in her overstuffed chair, still trying to recover from what had happened just before Tye arrived. How had she gone from "I’m not going to get involved with you" to hot, sweaty sex with Caleb in such a short time? "Have you called her parents?"

"I’ve tried. They won’t talk to me. She told them I attacked her." He shook his head in disgust.

Madison couldn’t picture her easygoing sister-in-law obsessing over something that wasn’t true. "Did you attack her, Tye?"

He whirled to face her, his eyebrows knotted. "I can’t believe you asked me that! Of course not."

She remembered how aloof and difficult he’d been as a teenager, and hated the fact that she didn’t quite believe him. Somehow she doubted Sharon would take the kids and disappear without a good reason. Sharon had always talked as though she really loved Tye. "So where do you think she is?"

"I told you, I don’t know. She’s imagining things." He walked to the window and peered out through a crack in the shutters.

Madison could feel his pensive mood from across the room. Finally, he turned to face her. "I don’t like that guy," he said.

He was talking about Caleb, but Madison didn’t want to discuss Caleb with him, so changed the subject. "Have you seen Johnny lately?"

"No, have you?"

"This morning. He’s living in my mother’s garage."

He moved away from the window. "I never dreamed the old bitch would let him do that."

"She hasn’t let him. She doesn’t even know he’s there. And don’t call her an old bitch. She has her shortcomings, but she’s not as bad as you think."

"She’s worse," he muttered.

Madison chose to ignore that comment. "Anyway, Johnny can’t stay there for long. She’s selling the house and, judging by the number of interested parties, I think it’s going to move very fast."

"Why would anyone want that place?"

"It’s a prime piece of real estate."

Tye’s forehead creased in consternation. "Isn’t your mother terrified that once she moves the police will find some evidence that’ll finally prove Ellis really did kill all those women? Then she won’t be able to play the persecuted wife of a falsely accused man."

Madison threw a lap blanket over her legs, feeling a little chilled. "She believes Dad’s innocent. You know that."

He rubbed his neck, disgusted or upset in some new way. "But surely she’s found that box in the crawl space by now."

Madison thought for a moment that her heart had stopped beating.

"Madison?" he said when she didn’t respond.

"How do you know about that box?" she breathed.

He paused, then said, "I’m the one who put it there."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SO MANY THOUGHTS converged in Madison’s mind that at first she could only stare at her half brother. "What are you saying?" she asked when she’d recovered her voice.

"Nothing earth-shattering," Tye said with a shrug. "I found that stuff out in the workshop the day Dad died."

Had he really? But what other explanation could there be? Madison wasn’t sure she wanted to ask herself that question, or confront the answer that came so readily to mind. She’d given the house keys to Tye when he agreed to clean up after Ellis shot himself. She’d gotten them back, of course, but he could easily have made copies. Which meant her father wasn’t the only one who’d had access to the crawl space beneath the house. Ellis wasn’t the only one familiar with the campus area. Ellis wasn’t even the only one who drove the blue Ford. If Johnny knew about the spare key, certainly Tye did as well. And Tye hated their father. He probably wouldn’t mind if Ellis took the blame for a crime he’d committed himself.

Even more chilling, what about her missing sister-in-law?

That Tye might have had something to do with the women who were murdered was a horrible possibility, one Madison couldn’t quite bring herself to believe. Especially because he had no reason to tell her about the box if he thought it might implicate him in some way. Yet his calm acceptance of what was hidden beneath the house disturbed her.

"Why–" Madison began, but her voice broke, so she tried again. "Why didn’t you say something before?"

"I knew it wouldn’t be welcome news. Not when you and your mother had stood by Ellis through the whole thing."

"Didn’t you feel you had a duty to go to the police?" she asked.

"What was the point? Dad wasn’t going to hurt anyone else."

Faced with her own logic, Madison winced at how selfish it sounded. Even if Tye hadn’t murdered those women, he’d shown no consideration for the victims, and she’d done her best to shove them out of her mind, too.

"How long have you known about the box?" he asked.

"Just a couple of weeks."

"So why didn’t you report it?"

She’d thought it was to shelter Brianna and her mother from any further repercussions of the past. Now she knew there was more to it than that. Deep down, even though she’d seen the contents of that box, she couldn’t believe her father had killed those women.

If you can’t trust your heart, what can you trust? Maybe she wasn’t so different from her mother, after all. "I still don’t think he did it," she said.

"What?"

Madison’s heart was not only beating again, it felt as though it might jump out of her chest. "I don’t understand where that stuff came from, Tye," she said, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. "But our father didn’t kill those women."

He shook his head. "My God, what would it take to convince you?"

"Haven’t you heard? Another woman was murdered."

"I know that. It’s a copycat killing," he said.

"I don’t think so." She hesitated, trying to search within the intuition that had kept her strong through the past–the same intuition she’d switched to "off" once she’d found that locket. "The original Sandpoint Strangler is still out there. I can feel it." She watched him closely, waiting for his response, and was greatly relieved when he merely scowled.

"But the evidence–"

"I don’t care about the evidence." Throwing off the blanket, she got up.