Dead Right (Stillwater Trilogy #3)(55)
Author: Brenda Novak

“No,” Grace said indifferently. “Any reason you’re asking?”

He shrugged. “I’m not a big fan of coincidences.”

If they weren’t coincidences, what were they? Madeline wondered. But confronting that question made her heart beat so hard she was afraid she might drop the baby. So she sat on the nearby wicker loveseat and pretended to be engrossed in playing with her niece.

Please let this end soon. Let Grace give all the right answers…

“I’m not sure I see any alarming coincidences,” Grace said.

Hunter moved away from the pillar. “The girls were both helping Madeline’s father. Both names show up in his wife’s journal. They were both living with Ray Harper. They were only a year apart in age. And they died within six months of each other, just a year before Madeline’s mother. Three deaths within an eighteen-month period. That’s a lot of tragedies in so short a time, wouldn’t you say? Especially for a place like this?”

“Accidents happen,” she countered. “We lost a teenage girl out at the quarry just last weekend.”

“How many others have you lost in the past twenty years?” he asked.

Grace didn’t answer. But Madeline knew that from Rose Lee to Rachel, they hadn’t had any other unusual deaths.

“There’s nothing to connect their deaths,” Madeline said, speaking up in spite of herself.

“Isn’t there?” Hunter asked. “Did the police ever catch the driver of the vehicle that struck Katie?”

His words raised goose bumps on Madeline’s arms. “No.”

Grace suddenly glanced at her watch. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go. Kennedy’s got a late meeting, and I promised the boys I’d pick them up from their Grandma Archer’s by eight.”

Hunter held his finger up to Isabelle, who grabbed hold of it. “Sure. We won’t keep you.”

Madeline blinked, taken aback by his response. He’d asked about Rose Lee and Katie, which had nothing to do with anything, as far as she knew. And he hadn’t asked about the night her father went missing or the panties that were found in his trunk.

Grace smiled politely. “Thanks for stopping by.”

“Thanks for giving us a few minutes of your time,” Hunter said.

Madeline kissed Isabelle, handed her to Grace and pivoted to head back to the car—only to bump into her private detective, who was standing on the walkway, gazing up at the house. “You have a lovely home, Mrs. Archer.”

“We like it,” she said. Then she waved and disappeared inside the house.

Hunter remained where he was, studying the grounds. But Madeline got in the car. By the time he joined her, Grace emerged from the detached garage behind the house and began backing down her long drive.

“Nice Lexus,” Hunter said.

Madeline fastened her seat belt. “Why didn’t you ask her about the night my father went missing?” she asked. She knew it hadn’t been an oversight. Hunter was too good for that.

“Two reasons.”

She started the engine. “The first?”

“I’m sure she was prepared for that. She must’ve answered similar questions a hundred times.”

“And the second reason?” Madeline pulled away from the curb. Please don’t tell me she’s hiding something, too.

“Haven’t you ever played with a potato bug?” he asked.

Madeline shot him a look that said he was making no sense. “A what?”

“A potato bug. If you poke them, they curl into a protective ball.”

“You’re saying that’s what Grace would do.”

“Exactly. And what do we have to gain from that?”

Madeline drove in silence until they reached the outskirts of town and saw the lighted Vacancy sign at the Blue Ribbon Motel. Then she asked the biggest question of all. “So…does she know more than she’s saying?”

“Yes.”

Foreboding curled through Madeline’s whole body. “How could the conversation you just had tell you that?”

“It didn’t,” he said.

She looked over at him.

“I’m sorry, Maddy. But the odds aren’t in her favor.”

Grace’s hand shook as she called Clay on her cell phone from inside her car.

“Hello?” He’d answered on the first ring.

“We’ve got problems,” she said. “It’s Madeline’s private investigator.”

“What about him?”

“He’s even better than we thought.”

Chapter Fifteen

Hunter’s luggage had finally arrived. He sat on the cheap, rickety bed at the Blue Ribbon, staring at his black suitcase while strumming thoughtfully on his guitar. He needed to get some sleep so he could hit the Barker case early in the morning. But something was bothering him. He wasn’t sure what it was. Most likely, it was more than one thing. That message on Madeline’s answering machine. Their encounter with Mike.

The fact that he wanted to be in bed with her now…

He was tempted to call her—and if not her, Maria. He wanted to go back home as soon as he finished this job and fight for custody of his daughter even if she wouldn’t speak to him. But he knew that would make her life miserable, that she’d hate him more because of it. Antoinette wasn’t the best mother in the world, but she wasn’t the worst, either. He couldn’t really justify such a fight. He could enforce the visitation agreement, but Maria didn’t want that. Not right now, anyway. Having no good options made him long for a drink.

The pool hall was only a block away. He could walk there.

He imagined the music, the crowd, the dim lighting. If it was like most bars, a man could hang around the dark edges of the room and be almost anonymous. Even in Stillwater.

Focus on something else. Work.

He’d piled the police files Madeline had provided on the floor. He frowned at the sheer volume of reading material—one entire box with another two behind it—and figured he’d better get started. There was Madeline’s childhood diary to read, too.

Setting his guitar aside, he hung up the damp towel he’d just used for his shower, flung his wet hair out of his eyes and pulled out a statement by Bonnie Ray Simpson—the neighbor across from the farm—that said she was “fairly certain” she saw the “headlights” of Barker’s car turn into his drive the night he disappeared.

Unfortunately, “fairly certain” didn’t help him. Neither did “headlights,” considering every car had a pair.