Dead Right (Stillwater Trilogy #3)(37)
Author: Brenda Novak

A knock at the door interrupted him. “You haven’t showered yet?” Madeline asked when he answered.

“I got involved in reading these journals.”

“What about the farm?”

“I’ll go as I am, and shower when my clothes come.” He glanced over his shoulder at the materials spread out on the desk. “What do you know about Rose Lee Harper?”

“Rose?” she asked. “Where did you read that name?”

“Your mother mentions her quite often.”

“Oh.” She straightened the strap of her purse. “I guess that doesn’t surprise me. My mother was really empathetic. And what happened to Rose was so sad.”

He stepped out and shut the door behind him. “It said she committed suicide.”

“She did. But it was her whole life that was sad, you know?” They rounded the truck Hunter had seen the night before, the one Madeline’s brother had dropped off for her to use, and approached the car. When they reached it, she tossed him the keys.

“I’m driving?” he asked.

“It’ll help you learn your way around town.”

“How was Rose’s life sad?” he asked as he climbed behind the wheel.

Madeline got in on the passenger side. “Her mother left her to be raised by her father when she was little and went to live in some other state with another man. And Ray Harper didn’t start out as the best dad.” She pulled an elastic tie from her purse as he backed out of the drive.

“What’d he do wrong?”

“He didn’t have much money and—” she adjusted the rearview mirror so she could bunch her hair into a ponytail “—at first he spent what he did have on booze.”

Booze…Just the word made Hunter crave a drink, but he quickly put it out of his mind. He was doing so much better since he’d left California. “Did that change?” he asked, dodging the potholes in the narrow lane that led from Madeline’s house.

“He became devoutly religious. He used to bring his daughter over to the church to work for my father. She even helped out at the farm occasionally.”

“Doing chores?”

Madeline put the mirror back in place and motioned for him to turn left at the stop sign. “She’d do filing and tidy up my father’s office.”

“It was messy?” Hunter asked. “He strikes me as the type who’d be very organized.”

“He was, for the most part. He neglected the repairs and painting at the farm, but he stayed right on top of his church work. I think it was more a matter of finding something he could pay her for. They really needed the money. If it wasn’t for my father, I don’t know how they would’ve survived.”

“Her own father didn’t work?”

“Ray’s a handyman. He was then, too. Sometimes he could get work, other times nothing.”

Hunter loosened his seat belt a little. “If your father was trying to help them out, why not hire Ray to do some of the repairs around the farm?”

“He did. I remember seeing Ray once in a while. But it was mostly Rose Lee, working over at the church.” She shook her head. “Emotionally, she was really messed up, a very strange girl. My father used to counsel her for hours.”

“What about Katie Swanson?”

“Don’t tell me my mother wrote about Katie, as well?”

Madeline had put on a little makeup, which enhanced the already vivid green of her eyes.

Hunter returned his attention to the road. “You’ve never read your mother’s journals?”

“No. I…I couldn’t. Just seeing the covers brings it all back.”

He knew what “it” was—the pain. And she was lost in it now, remembering. But Hunter had to look at the whole picture, to know what had gone on before the reverend disappeared. That was necessary if he was going to figure out the possible motives of the people around him. “Madeline?”

“Katie was another of my father’s ‘projects,’” she said with a sigh. “She had a mother who’d sleep with anyone. No one knew who her father was. She was lonely and uncared for, and the man her mother was with at the time beat her. So my father stepped in before the state could get involved and arranged for her to live with Ray and Rose Lee.”

“Why wouldn’t he want the state to get involved?”

“He liked to take care of his own congregation.”

They reached Stillwater, passed a Victorian that had been turned into a store, the police station, Walt Eastman’s Tire Service. “Where to?” he asked.

“Keep going. The farm’s on the other side of town, off the highway.”

He stopped at Stillwater’s only light. “Ray and Rose didn’t mind having Katie with them?” he asked, resuming their discussion. “I thought they had financial problems, too.”

“Having Katie there was a good thing for them. They had an extra room in their trailer, and my father paid them to let her stay.”

“Where did your father get the money?”

“He collected alms for the poor every Sunday. There were specific members of the church for whom we were all praying, so it was really a joint effort. I think that’s what endeared my father to so many people. He took a real interest in the less fortunate.”

Hunter gave the car more gas as they cleared the busier streets and entered an open area. “Why do you think she ran away?”

“Word has it she was pregnant.”

He shook his head. “At fifteen?”

“You have to remember what her mother was like. Katie probably lost her virginity at twelve or even younger. And according to the rumors, she’d been sneaking out at night, seeing Tommy Meyers, who was three years older.”

“It was his baby?”

“Tommy’s always denied it, but my father was sure it was. No one really knows. She died before she had the baby, so there was no paternity test.”

“That is sad,” he said.

“It really upset my father. He and Ray, who blamed himself for not watching her more closely, spent hours out in his office, trying to come to grips with it.”

“By doing what?”

“Talking, of course. I could hear their voices coming through the door when I went to the barn to feed the chickens. Sometimes I’d see Ray’s truck in the drive late at night. They’d tried so hard to help her, you know?”

“Did your father have any other ‘projects?’” Hunter asked. Considering the luck he’d experienced with Rose Lee and Katie, Hunter hoped not.