Dead Right (Stillwater Trilogy #3)(17)
Author: Brenda Novak

“Then what’ll it hurt to have some help?” she asked.

“I don’t want anyone getting in my way. This investigator is from…where did you say? California? He’ll have no idea how things are done in Mississppi.”

But maybe that was good, Madeline thought. Then he wouldn’t be influenced by the Vincellis, wouldn’t have to worry about making the folks around her angry. “An investigation is an investigation,” she said. “I hope you’ll do what you can to cooperate with him.”

Toby’s jaw tightened, which told her he wasn’t pleased with her answer. “What do you hope to achieve?”

“Resolution,” she said and left.

To Madeline, the rest of the week passed with agonizing slowness. After Rachel Simmons’s drowning, and the subsequent discovery of the Cadillac, it felt as if the whole town was holding its breath, waiting and watching to see what would happen next. Mothers who generally let their children run freely through Stillwater neighborhoods were keeping them closer to home. And, as she feared would be the case, Clay’s name was often associated with talk that there might be a sexual predator in their midst.

Madeline couldn’t believe anyone could suspect her stepbrother of being a pedophile. So what if the police had found a few dark hairs in the driver’s seat of the Cadillac? It’d been the family car, for crying out loud.

But it wasn’t just the hair, and she knew it. It was the fact that he didn’t give a damn what others thought of him and didn’t bother to hide it. They used his indifference as justification to blame him for anything they’d rather not see in someone else, even though he didn’t fit the profile of a pedophile. Pedophiles liked to be around children, sought them out, worked in situations that put them in contact with possible victims. Until Grace married Kennedy eighteen months ago and brought her two stepsons into the family, and Clay’s own marriage had gained him a six-year-old daughter, he was almost never around children. He’d lived on the farm alone and come to town once or twice a week for supplies or a game of pool at the billiards hall.

Besides, the things in that trunk had been put there twenty years ago, when Clay was only sixteen.

Fortunately, despite all the stress, Madeline had been able to get her paper out. And it had included the article she’d had such difficulty writing—the one on the discovery of her father’s car. Next week’s paper would feature an article on pedophiles and how they typically functioned. She was writing it with the hope that it would stifle all the talk about Clay. But she’d have to finish it later. Hunter Solozano would be arriving in Nashville in four hours. She had a long drive ahead of her and didn’t want to be late.

Shrugging on her wool coat, Madeline turned off her computer and let herself out, into the alley that led to the gravel lot where she’d parked her car. She’d just locked the door when someone tapped her on the shoulder. Someone whose approach she hadn’t heard.

Startled, she turned to see her father’s only sibling, Elaine Vincelli, standing right behind her.

Her thoughts had definitely been too macabre of late, if she could be frightened so easily. But she knew it wasn’t only her thoughts. Her dreams bothered her even more. Last night, Aunt Elaine had been chasing her around the farm with a knife, yelling, “How dare you be disloyal to your own father! How dare you side with those murderers!”

Madeline shivered as a few residual screeches echoed through her head. Reminding herself that it was just a dream, she offered her aunt a polite smile. “Hello.”

“Do you have a minute?” Elaine asked.

Clenching the keys in her hand, Madeline sighed. Temperatures were dropping fast as another storm approached, bringing with it an early dark—which was why she hadn’t noticed Elaine. She’d been too intent on getting off before the rain started. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No, of course not.” Her aunt positioned herself as if she expected to be invited in. And since a light drizzle had begun, Madeline felt she should oblige.

Stifling her impatience, she reopened the office. “Would you like to sit down?” she asked, waving Elaine in ahead of her.

“No, thank you.”

Her aunt had seemed tense, even a bit nervous in the alley but appeared more relaxed once the door closed behind them.

“What can I do for you?” Madeline forced a polite smile but hadn’t felt quite so uncomfortable in ages. She and her aunt had never been close. Madeline remembered her real mother saying that Elaine was a difficult person to get to know—probably the worst comment her mother ever made about anyone. Madeline suspected the real truth was that Elaine hadn’t liked Eliza any more than she liked Irene and Eliza knew it. Madeline’s mother had been too humble and sweet, too accepting of everyone, to appeal to a “keep up or get lost” personality like Elaine’s.

Madeline recalled overhearing a conversation between her father and Elaine, in which Elaine had called Eliza “pathetic” and demanded she be put in an institution where she could get professional help for her chronic depression.

Remembering her aunt’s unsympathetic attitude, Madeline figured it was little wonder she’d chosen to stay with Irene after her father went missing. She didn’t really know her maternal grandparents, who’d moved twice in the past year and now lived in Oklahoma. Her paternal grandparents were dead, and Irene had given her more love in the three years she’d been part of Madeline’s life at that point than her aunt ever had. Even in the dark days after Eliza’s death, Elaine hadn’t reached out to the ten-year-old girl her sister-in-law had left behind.

So why was Elaine here now?

“Chief Pontiff came by the house last night,” her aunt said.

“Did he have any news?” Madeline asked eagerly. She believed Toby would’ve contacted her, but she couldn’t imagine any other reason for her aunt’s visit.

“No, not yet. He told me you’ve hired a private detective.” She folded her arms across her broad, solid body. The white streaks of hair at her temples contrasted sharply with the black of the rest, and the way she’d combed it back off her face reminded Madeline of Ursula, the Sea Witch in Disney’s The Little Mermaid. “Is that true?”

Where was she going with this? “Yes. I’ve found someone who’s supposed to be exceptionally good. Why?”

“That’s my question to you,” she said. “Why? Why bother? Chief Pontiff’s looking into it again. Isn’t that enough?”