Dead Right (Stillwater Trilogy #3)(39)
Author: Brenda Novak

“He was hardest on Clay. But a lot of men are tougher on their sons than their daughters.”

“So you’d say they were close?”

“Not exactly.” She seemed thoughtful, almost philosophical. “Clay and my father were too different to ever be very close.”

Hunter wanted to talk about the ways in which her father and her stepbrother were incompatible, but she’d already knocked on the door, and a petite woman with short brown hair and brown eyes opened it before he could say more.

“Hi, Maddy.” She embraced Madeline, then turned to Hunter. “This must be your private investigator.”

“With a surfer-boy image,” Madeline said wryly.

“Boy?” he echoed, slightly offended—especially since he’d overheard her tell Kirk he was too young for her.

She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Allie, this is Hunter Solozano. And this,” she waved a hand at the shorter woman, “is my sister-in-law. The only woman who could bring my hard-to-get brother to his knees.”

“I don’t think anyone’s ever brought Clay to his knees,” Allie said, chuckling.

“Somehow I’m not surprised to hear Clay was a challenge,” Hunter said.

“He was more than a challenge,” Madeline responded. “To most women around here, he was the impossible dream.”

And what had made him so remote? Hunter asked himself. Was it possible that the reverend had been too hard on his new son?

“Whitney’s the one who has him wrapped around her little finger,” Allie said as she waved them in.

“Whitney is Allie’s seven-year-old,” Madeline explained. “She’s in school right now, so you won’t get to meet her today, but she’s darling.”

The inside of the house was as tidy as the outside. The living room smelled of fresh paint and was decorated in a rich burgundy. A wedding photograph sat on one end of the fireplace mantel; it showed a man who had to be Clay with the woman Hunter had just met and a young girl with round cheeks and long blond hair. The mantel also held a collection of candlesticks in varying shapes and sizes.

Allie was friendly enough as she offered them a seat, but there was something about her eyes that bothered Hunter. They seemed wary, a bit furtive. Considering the situation, however, he supposed that was natural. It couldn’t feel good to have others suspect your husband of murder. Maybe there were even times when she wondered about the missing reverend and the part her husband might’ve played…

“We can’t sit down. We won’t be here very long,” Madeline said. “We were just hoping to talk to Clay for a minute. Is he around?”

“He’s out fixing the levee along the creek.”

She didn’t offer to call him in. Hunter sensed that she was reluctant to let them speak to Clay. But if Madeline felt the same thing, she ignored it and barreled on as comfortably as any journalist would. “If you don’t mind, we’ll walk around back and look for him.”

“I’ll go with you,” she said, but judging by the smell emanating from the kitchen, they’d caught her with food on the stove.

“There’s no need to interrupt what you’re doing. We’ll find him.”

“We could call his cell phone,” Allie said.

Madeline smiled at Hunter. “My brother’s finally entering the twenty-first century. He refused to get a cell phone for the longest time. And I could understand it, I guess, since he rarely troubled himself to pick up his regular phone.” She chuckled. “He was such a recluse until Allie came along.”

Allie had picked up the phone next to the couch, but Madeline told her not to bother. “I want to show Hunter the farm, anyway,” she said.

Clay’s wife was slow hanging up. “You’re sure? It could be quite a walk.”

“We’ll call if we don’t find him.” Madeline indicated that she had her own cell. “Okay if we go out the back?”

Allie’s eyes ranged over Hunter in an assessing fashion. Was she merely curious?

It was difficult to say, but Hunter could tell she was no ally. She smiled with her lips, but there was a stubborn protectiveness about her that put him on edge.

He returned her smile as if he hadn’t noticed, then followed Madeline into the kitchen, which was as old as hers but much larger. They walked through the back door to a deep porch that overlooked several acres of farmland. The barn he’d spotted before stood to the right, beside the chicken coop he’d already assumed was there. Some farm equipment was clustered beyond that, as well as a couple of rusted trucks that seemed to hail from the 1950s.

“My brother restores old cars and trucks,” Madeline explained before he could ask. “It’s his hobby.”

They crossed the porch, but she didn’t immediately descend the four steps. Instead, she leaned on the railing, gazing out into the distance, reminding Hunter of the picture he’d seen of her at age eight.

“Do you miss living here?” he asked.

Allie stood at the door, but Madeline didn’t turn. She shaded her eyes against a pale yellow sun and stared off into the distance. “A little. Mostly it makes me sad.” She waved toward the barn. “When my father wasn’t over at the church, he was usually in there.”

“Taking care of the animals?”

“Writing his sermons. See that window?”

Hunter nodded.

“That was his office.”

“It’s already been searched?”

“A few times.”

“Can I see it?”

“Of course, but there’s not much left. Clay gutted it a year and a half ago.”

Hunter felt his eyebrows go up. “He needed the space?”

An odd expression flitted across her pretty features. “No. I guess he just decided Dad wasn’t coming back.”

“Which is understandable,” he said for Allie’s benefit, but when he turned he found she’d gone back inside.

Madeline pushed away from the railing. “Come on, let’s take a look.”

The cool, dark interior made Hunter think of the barn in Charlotte’s Web. He supposed it was because he didn’t see barns very often. But there were no horses or pigs. Mostly, it was a large garage where Clay worked on cars.

“That’s a 1953 Hornet convertible,” Madeline said of a sky-blue car that could’ve been used in the making of Grease.

“How much is it worth?” he asked.