Dead Right (Stillwater Trilogy #3)(54)
Author: Brenda Novak

“Is she close to Clay?”

“She is now. Before, she wasn’t that close to any of us.”

They didn’t have time to discuss Grace further because movement in an upstairs window told Madeline they’d been spotted.

“Come on.” She stepped onto the wide veranda, where brown wicker furniture with green cushions waited for spring.

The porch light went on only seconds before Grace met them at the door, holding her seven-month-old baby girl wrapped in a fuzzy blanket. She greeted Madeline with a hug, but her body felt stiff and unnatural, and her expression held more than a hint of wariness as her eyes darted to Hunter. “I wasn’t expecting you,” she said, returning her attention to Madeline. “What a nice surprise.”

Madeline tried to bury her own apprehension—and the memory of that voice on her answering machine—in the positive feelings evoked by Isabelle. Taking the baby, she made the child laugh with a few sloppy kisses under the chin. “How’s my girl?” she asked, thinking this was as simple as life should be—for everyone. A comfortable home, a beloved sister, a laughing baby.

“She’s doing great,” Grace replied.

Isabelle seemed to agree. She cooed and jammed a chubby finger in her mouth while giving Madeline a drool-laden grin.

Madeline kissed the child’s downy head, breathing deeply, trying to reassure herself that in the end all would be well. “No more cough?”

“Not even a sniffle.”

“That’s good.” Propping Isabelle on her hip, she steeled her nerves and jerked her head toward Hunter. “I’d like you to meet Mr. Solozano.”

He held out his hand. “Call me Hunter.”

Grace didn’t immediately accept it. So far, no one had been all that welcoming.

“Hunter is your birth name—or a nickname you acquired because of your work?” Grace asked, finally offering him her hand.

“It’s my birth name.”

“Interesting. You don’t hear it very often.”

He backed away from her to lean against the pillar of the porch. Madeline noticed that his actions were very casual and unthreatening, a far different Hunter than the one who’d visited the farm. “No, you don’t.”

Grace waited in silence, leaving the burden of the conversation to them. So Madeline jumped into the gap, hoping to ease the tension. “Can you believe the airline lost his luggage?”

Grace gave them a bland smile. “No.”

“It should be here tomorrow,” he said.

“I hope it arrives safely.”

Silence fell again. “Hunter’s been reading my mother’s journals,” Madeline blurted out. She wasn’t sure why she’d brought up that particular detail. She supposed it was because she felt nervous and was hoping to show Grace that she hadn’t brought him to Stillwater because she doubted Clay or Irene. Hunter’s interest in the journals, something removed from them, meant that the investigation was all-inclusive—even more than Madeline had expected.

But, oddly enough, the mention of her mother’s journals didn’t seem to relax Grace. If anything, she held herself more rigidly than before. “I thought your mother had burned most of her journals,” she said.

“Not all of them.”

Grace turned her blue, enigmatic eyes on Hunter. “And what did you learn from those journals, Mr. Solozano?”

“Not much,” he said. “Madeline’s mother refers to a couple of people I’m interested in learning more about, though.”

Grace didn’t ask who. Now that Hunter had Madeline doubting everything and everyone, she wondered if that was because Grace already knew.

Stop it! I don’t want to think like that…

“Do you remember anyone by the name of Rose Lee Harper?” Hunter asked.

“Rose died before I moved to Stillwater,” Grace replied. “I know her father, but only as a slight acquaintance.”

“He still lives in town?”

“In the Shady Glen Trailer Park off Digby Road,” Madeline murmured. “He’s a handyman.”

The shadows deepened as clouds scuttled across the moon, obscuring the finer details of Hunter’s face. But he still looked handsome—and a little mysterious. “Didn’t Mr. Harper come to the farm often?”

“Not when I lived there,” Grace said.

“Ray and my father had a falling out before Dad remarried,” Madeline told him.

“Were you aware of that?” he asked Grace.

“Madeline might’ve mentioned it.”

Hunter shoved his hands in his pockets. “Do you know what it was over?”

Several lines appeared on Grace’s normally smooth forehead. “No, but…like I said, I wasn’t around at the time.”

“I think my father got tired of paying Ray’s rent,” Madeline volunteered. “I once heard them arguing about money.”

“Do you remember what was said?”

“Ray wanted more. My father refused.”

“When was that?”

“A few weeks before my mother died.”

“So it was after Katie and Rose Lee were gone.”

“Yes. I don’t think my father felt quite so sympathetic toward Ray’s financial needs when he no longer had children to support.”

“Do you have any interaction with Ray Harper now?”

“No,” Madeline said. “None. Why?”

The brief flicker of Hunter’s smile curved his lips. “Just curious.”

“That’s an interesting response, coming from an investigator,” Grace commented.

His smile widened—Madeline could tell by the glint of his teeth—but he didn’t explain himself. He proceeded to ask Grace what she knew about Katie Swanson.

“Almost nothing,” Grace said. “Again, I wasn’t around when Katie was alive.”

The wind was picking up. Madeline wrapped the baby’s blanket more tightly around her, and Hunter turned up the collar of his coat. “Do you recall the reverend ever talking about either of these girls, Grace?”

She stepped out to wipe some drool from her baby’s chin. With Grace only inches away, Madeline could see, even in the dim porch light, the dark smudges under her eyes. Grace didn’t look as if she was getting enough sleep—and this after positively glowing with happiness since her marriage. Was the baby suddenly fussy at night and keeping her up?

Or was it because of the panties she’d seen at the police station? The past resurrected, like the old Cadillac…