Digging Up The Dirt

CHAPTER 31

An’gel waited for Dickce’s response. The idea made sense to her, but she wanted to know what her sister thought.

“I suppose that’s a possibility,” Dickce said. “If Hadley was truly in love with Coriander, they couldn’t have been open about it without causing quite a stink forty years ago. You know what people in this town are like, even now when we see interracial couples more often.”

“And what Hamish was like,” An’gel said. “He might have had a stroke on the spot if he’d ever found out about them.”

“Would have served him right.” Dickce sniffed. “But, look here, if Coriander went to England with Hadley and was tragically killed there, and Callie was lying in the ground at Ashton Hall all this time, why the heck is someone trying to knock off the members of the garden club board forty years later?”

“My guess is frustrated passion,” An’gel said. “One of those women must have been so fixated on Hadley all these years that, now he’s come back, she’s trying to make sure she has no competition. I know that might sound crazy but, frankly, I think one of them is crazy as a betsy bug.”

“Warped by unrequited love.” Dickce shrugged. “I suppose it happens. If that’s the case, though, whoever the deranged one is, she’s done a great job of hiding it all these years.”

An’gel nodded. “Yes. I’m betting on either Lottie or Reba. I don’t think it’s Barbie.”

“Maybe,” Dickce said. “I’m still not so sure you’re right about the motive. Maybe it’s something else entirely.”

“I don’t think so,” An’gel said. Why was Dickce so hesitant to agree with her? She hadn’t come up with any other reasonable motive. “We won’t get anywhere, however, if we don’t talk to Hadley and force him somehow to come clean. Only he can tell us who he was really in love with.”

“Ashton Hall then?” Dickce asked as she put the car in reverse.

“Ashton Hall,” An’gel said and settled back for the ride.

Fifteen minutes later Dickce pulled up in front of the Partridge ancestral home. An’gel saw workmen clearing away the downed tree, while others worked on clearing underbrush from outlying flower beds and the edge of the woods that separated Ashton Hall from Riverhill.

“Things are definitely looking better, don’t you think?” Dickce asked.

“Yes, but there’s still a long way to go if Hadley’s going to have everything ready for the spring garden tour.” An’gel stepped out of the car and shut the door. She waited for Dickce to join her before they proceeded up the walk to the front door.

An’gel rang the bell, and they waited. She rang it again and held her finger on it for several seconds. Moments later the door swung open, and Hadley stood there.

He flashed a brief smile but did not step back from the open door. “Good afternoon, An’gel, Dickce. As always, it’s lovely to see you, but I’m afraid I’m really swamped at the moment. Can’t we talk later?”

An’gel glared at him. She wasn’t going to be put off by these tactics. Hadley ought to know her better.

“No, we can’t talk later.” An’gel pushed against the door, and Hadley stepped back, his expression one of resignation. “We have to talk to you, and it has to be now. I don’t care what else is going on, it can’t be as important as what we have to discuss.” She walked into the entry hall with Dickce right behind her.

“Really, An’gel,” Hadley protested, “this is high-handed, even for you. I can’t imagine you have anything to discuss that calls for forcing your way in here so rudely.”

“You shut that door, Hadley Partridge,” An’gel said. “Three women are dead, one is missing, and another one is barely hanging on to life, and it’s all due to you. So don’t you tell me I’m being high-handed. You get yourself into that parlor and start talking to Dickce and me. We have to stop this craziness before someone else gets killed. Do you understand me?”

An’gel was ready to snatch Hadley bald-headed, as her mother used to say to her and Dickce when she was aggravated with them. Hadley stared at her as if she were a complete stranger, but after a moment’s hesitation, he nodded. “All right.” He led the way into the front parlor.

An’gel was right behind him, and Dickce brought up the rear. Hadley indicated they should be seated, and An’gel chose the sofa. Dickce sat beside her. An’gel stared pointedly at Hadley until he took a seat in an armchair across from them.

“Why is it you think I’m somehow responsible for all this?” Hadley asked. “I didn’t harm Sarinda, and I surely didn’t run Arliss off the road.”

“You were always too good-looking and too charming for your own good and anybody else’s,” An’gel said, trying hard to hold on to her fast-fraying temper. “The most eligible bachelor in Athena.” She snorted in a most unladylike manner. “I hate to admit it now, but even I fell for those so-called charms of yours. Briefly.”

Dickce coughed, and An’gel turned her head to glare at her sister. She suspected that Dickce was covering up a laugh. She turned her focus back to Hadley, who was sitting there looking like a juvenile who’d just been caught smoking or doing something else inappropriate.

Hadley opened his mouth to speak, but An’gel wasn’t done yet.

“You went around playing fast and loose with women’s hearts, and consorting with married women,” An’gel said. “Your parents raised you better than that, and you know it. Your mother spoiled you rotten, but even she didn’t want to see you running around with other men’s wives. Especially your brother’s.”

Hadley tried to speak again, but An’gel was on a roll. “I know you’ve told us you weren’t in love with Callie, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t in love with you. The same thing goes for Barbie Gross, Lottie MacLeod, Reba Dalrymple, Arliss McGonigal, and poor Sarinda Hetherington. And then there’s Coriander Simpson. What about her, Hadley?” An’gel finally paused for breath.

“What about her?” Hadley asked. “What do you mean? She was my brother’s servant, Callie’s maid. What does she have to do with anything?”

An’gel knew by the way he’d tensed up the moment she mentioned Coriander’s name that he was lying to her now. He knew exactly what Coriander had to do with everything.

“You’re still trying to lie to us even now,” An’gel said. “I swear to you, if you don’t start acting like the man your daddy and mama raised you to be and start telling us the truth, I’m going to, well, I don’t know exactly what, but it’s going to hurt like hell, I know that much.”

An’gel felt Dickce’s hand on her arm, and she realized she was getting too worked up. She had lost control of her temper, she realized, because she’d been on the point of getting up and slapping Hadley for all she was worth. She made herself take several deep breaths, but she kept her eyes locked on his.

Hadley must have read the determination in her gaze and in her words. He held up his hands even as his shoulders slumped in obvious resignation.

“All right, An’gel, you win,” he said. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

An’gel wanted to say, It’s about damn time, but refrained. Instead she said, “Let’s start with Callie.”

“I loved her with all my heart.” Hadley sighed. “She was my dearest friend, my sister. I wasn’t in love with her. I didn’t want to steal her away from Hamish. But she fell in love with me. Hamish wasn’t tender, he wasn’t romantic, he wasn’t understanding. You know what he was like. But he loved Callie, too, in his way. He was devastated when he realized how she felt about me.” He paused for a moment. “I loved my brother, and I hated to see him in pain. That’s why I left and didn’t come back until after he died. I hoped my being gone would help Callie and Hamish somehow rebuild their marriage.”

“It evidently didn’t work,” An’gel said. “If that truly was Callie we found out there under the tree, something went badly wrong after you left.”

“I have no idea what happened after I left,” Hadley said, his expression devoid of emotion. “I thought by cutting myself off completely, I’d done the best thing I could for us all. I never spoke to my brother again.”

“Do you think Hamish killed Callie?” Dickce asked.

“Who else would have done it?” Hamish replied. “He must have struck her in a rage, it happened accidentally. You know what a temper he had. Then, instead of calling the authorities, he decided to bury her and pretend to everyone that she had run away to be with me. I never knew it until I came back.”

That sounded truthful, An’gel thought. “I agree that Hamish is the most likely suspect in Callie’s death. But we have Sarinda’s death and Arliss’s accident to account for. Hamish wasn’t responsible for those.”

“No,” Hadley said. “I don’t understand what is going on with that.”

“I have a theory,” An’gel said. “I’ll explain it in a minute. First, though, tell me, did you ever have affairs with any of the garden club board members?”

Hadley looked pained. “I hardly like to talk about what happened so long ago, especially when the other parties aren’t around to give their consent.”

“We understand that,” Dickce said, “but you can’t afford such niceties of behavior now. Lives are at stake.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Hadley said. “Okay, then. Yes, I did have brief flings with a couple of them. Barbie Gross and Lottie MacLeod.”

An’gel exchanged a swift glance with Dickce. Barbie had lied to them after all, despite being so convincing earlier.

An’gel turned back to Hadley. “What about the others? Reba, Sarinda, and Arliss?”

“Sarinda was very sweet,” Hadley said. “I was pretty sure she was infatuated with me, but I simply wasn’t interested in her. Arliss, who’d divorced her husband not long before I left, was doing her best to get me into bed, but as attractive as she is, I wasn’t interested in her either. She was fun to flirt with, but that was as far as it went.”

An’gel felt a moment of sadness for Sarinda, who had never married. Had that been because of Hadley? she wondered.

“What about Reba?” Dickce asked.

Hadley grimaced. “She was married and had a child, and frankly I never found her that attractive. She was after me, though I did my best to discourage her. She even trapped me once—I believe it was at Riverhill, actually—in a bedroom and tried to force me into, well, you know.”

“We do know, actually,” An’gel said. “Barbie Gross saw you, and she told us about it this morning.”

Hadley looked startled. “I remember thinking at the time that somebody opened the door, but Reba was so determined that I didn’t have time to see who it was. I had to concentrate on getting her to understand I wasn’t interested.”

“Tell us more about Lottie and Barbie,” An’gel said.

“They were definite mistakes,” Hadley said. “You’re right, I was raised better, and I knew better than to get involved with married women. The problem was, I was trying to avoid commitment, and they seemed like ways to accomplish that. The thing with Barbie consisted of maybe three encounters, shall we say? We parted quickly by mutual agreement.”

“And Lottie?” Dickce prompted.

“That was a bit more than three encounters,” Hadley said. For a moment, An’gel thought he was actually blushing. “Let’s just say that Lottie was on the aggressive side, okay? And she wasn’t easily discouraged. It didn’t take me long to realize I’d made a huge mistake getting involved with her, and breaking it off wasn’t easy. She wanted to divorce her husband and marry me. She wasn’t happy when I told her there was no way that was going to happen.” He shuddered. “I don’t know who was worse, her or Reba. They were both nightmares, in a way. Reba kept pestering me, even after that incident at Riverhill.”

An’gel felt sure now that her theory was right. One of those three women—Barbie, Lottie, or Reba—was behind the murders and the attempts on Arliss and herself.

“There’s one more woman unaccounted for,” Dickce said. “Coriander Simpson.”

Hadley didn’t appear so surprised by that name this time, An’gel thought. Before he could respond to Dickce, however, a voice from the doorway captured their attention.

“I believe I can explain that.”