Faithless

CHAPTER SIX

When T essa opened the front door, Sara was lying on the couch with a wet rag over her face.

“Sissy?” Tessa called. “You home?”

“In here,” Sara managed around the cloth.

“Oh, Christ,” Tessa said. Sara felt her hovering near the end of the couch. “What did Jeffrey do now?”

“Why are you blaming Jeffrey?”

Tessa turned off the CD player mid-harmony. “You only listen to Dolly Parton when you’re upset with him.”

Sara slid the rag up to her forehead so she could see her sister. Tessa was reading the back of the CD case. “It’s a cover album.”

“I guess you skipped the sixth track?” Tessa asked, dropping it into the pile Sara had made as she rummaged for something to listen to. “God, you look horrible.”

“I feel horrible,” she admitted. Watching the autopsy of Abigail Bennett had been one of the most difficult things Sara had done in recent memory. The girl had not passed gently. Her systems had shut down one by one, until all that remained was her brain. Abby had known what was happening, had felt every single second of the death, right up until the painful end.

Sara had been so upset that she had actually used the cell phone to call Jeffrey. Instead of pouring out her heart to him, she had been drilled for details on the autopsy. Jeffrey had been in such a rush to get off the phone that he hadn’t even told her good-bye.

“That’s better,” Tessa said as Steely Dan whispered through the speakers.

Sara looked out the windows, surprised that the sun had already gone down. “What time is it?”

“Almost seven,” Tessa told her, adjusting the volume on the player. “Mama sent y’all something.”

Sara sighed as she sat up, letting the rag drop. She saw a brown paper bag at Tessa’s feet. “What?”

“Beef stew and chocolate cake.”

Sara felt her stomach rumble, hungry for the first time that day. As if on cue, the dogs sauntered in. Sara had rescued the greyhounds several years ago and, in return for the favor, they tried to eat her out of house and home.

“Get,” Tessa warned Bob, the taller of the two, as he sniffed the bag. Billy went in for his turn, but she shooed him away as she asked Sara, “Do you ever feed them?”

“Sometimes.”

Tessa picked up the bag and put it on the kitchen counter beside the bottle of wine Sara had opened as soon as she got home. Sara hadn’t even bothered to change her clothes, just poured the wine, drank a healthy swig and wet a washrag before collapsing onto the couch.

“Did Dad drop you off?” Sara asked, wondering why she had not heard a car. Tessa wasn’t supposed to drive while she was taking her antiseizure medication, a rule that seemed destined to be broken.

“I brought my bike,” she answered, staring at the bottle of wine as Sara poured herself another glass. “I would kill for some of that.”

Sara opened her mouth, then closed it. Tessa wasn’t supposed to drink alcohol with her medication, but she was an adult, and Sara was not her mother.

“I know,” Tessa said, reading Sara’s expression. “I can still want things, can’t I?” She opened the bag, taking out a stack of mail. “I got this for you,” she said. “Do you ever check your mail? There’s about a gazillion catalogues in there.”

There was something brown on one of the envelopes, and Sara sniffed it suspiciously. She was relieved to find it was gravy.

“Sorry,” Tessa apologized, taking out a paper plate covered in tinfoil, sliding it over to Sara. “I guess it leaked.”

“Oh, yes.” Sara practically moaned as she removed the foil. Cathy Linton made a mean chocolate cake, the recipe going back through three generations of Earnshaws. “This is too much,” Sara said, noting the slice was big enough for two.

“Here,” Tessa said, taking two more Tupperware containers out of the bag. “You’re supposed to share with Jeffrey.”

“Right.” Sara grabbed a fork from the drawer before sitting on the bar stool under the kitchen island.

“You’re not going to eat the roast?” Tessa asked.

Sara put a forkful of cake in her mouth and washed it down with some wine. “Mama always said when I could pay to put a roof over my own head I could eat what I wanted for supper.”

“I wish I could pay for my own roof,” Tessa mumbled, using her finger to scoop some chocolate off of Sara’s plate. “I’m so sick of not doing anything.”

“You’re still working.”

“As Dad’s tool bitch.”

Sara ate another bite of cake. “Depression is a side effect of your medication.”

“Let me add that to the list.”

“Are you having other problems?”

Tessa shrugged, wiping crumbs off the counter. “I miss Devon,” she said, referring to her ex, the father of her dead child. “I miss having a man around.”

Sara picked at the cake, wishing not for the first time that she had killed Devon Lockwood when she’d had the chance.

“So,” Tessa said, abruptly changing the subject. “Tell me what Jeffrey did this time.”

Sara groaned, returning to the cake.

“Tell me.”

After letting a few seconds pass, Sara relented. “He might have hepatitis.”

“Which kind?”

“Good question.”

Tessa furrowed her brows. “Is he showing any symptoms?”

“Other than aggravated stupidity and acute denial?” Sara asked. “No.”

“How was he exposed?”

“How do you think?”

“Ah.” Tessa pulled out the stool next to Sara and sat. “This was a long time ago, though, right?”

“Does it matter?” She corrected herself, “I mean, yes, it matters. It’s from before. That one time before.”

Tessa pursed her lips. She had not made it a secret that she didn’t think there was any way in hell Jeffrey had slept with Jolene just once. Sara thought she was going to renew her theory, but instead Tessa asked, “What are y’all doing about it?”

“Arguing,” Sara admitted. “I just can’t stop thinking about her. What he did with her.” She took another bite of cake, chewing slowly, making herself swallow. “He didn’t just…” Sara tried to think of a word that summed up her disgust. “He didn’t just screw her. He wooed her. Called her on the phone. Laughed with her. Maybe sent her flowers.” She stared at the chocolate running off the side of the plate. Had he spread chocolate on her thighs and licked it off? How many intimate moments had they shared leading up to that final day? How many came after?

Everything Jeffrey had done to make Sara feel special, to make her think he was the man she wanted to share the rest of her life with, had been a technique easily employed on another woman. Hell, probably more than just one other woman. Jeffrey had a sexual history that would give Hugh Hefner pause. How could the man who could be so kind also be the same bastard who had made her feel like a dog kicked to the curb? Was this some new routine Jeffrey had come up with to win her back? As soon as she was settled, was he going to use it on someone else?

The problem was, Sara knew perfectly well how Jo had managed to snatch him away. It had to have been a game for Jeffrey, a challenge. Jolene was much more experienced at this kind of thing than Sara. She had probably known to play hard to get, balancing just the right amount of flirting and teasing to get him on the line, then reeling him in slowly like a prize fish. Certainly, she had not ended up at the end of their first date with the balls of her feet braced against the edge of the kitchen sink as she writhed in ecstasy on the floor, biting her tongue so that she would not scream his name.

Tessa asked, “Why are you smiling at the sink?”

Sara shook her head, taking a drink of wine. “I just hate this. I hate all of this. And Jimmy Powell is sick again.”

“That kid with leukemia?”

Sara nodded. “It doesn’t look good. I’ve got to go see him at the hospital tomorrow.”

“How was Macon?”

Unbidden, Sara’s mind flashed onto the image of the girl on the table, her body flayed open, the doctor reaching into the womb to extract the fetus. Another child lost. Another family devastated. Sara did not know how many more times she could witness this sort of thing without cracking.

“Sara?” Tessa asked.

“It was as awful as I thought it would be.” Sara used her finger to swirl what remained of the chocolate sauce. Somewhere in all of this, she had eaten the entire piece of cake.

Tessa walked to the refrigerator and took out a tub of ice cream, returning to the original subject. “You have to let this go, Sara. Jeffrey did what he did, and nothing’s going to change that. Either he’s back in your life or he’s not, but you can’t keep yo-yoing him back and forth.” She pried off the top to the ice cream. “You want some?”

“I shouldn’t,” Sara told her, holding out her plate.

“I’ve always been the cheater, not the cheatee,” Tessa pointed out, taking two spoons from the drawer, closing it with her hip. “ Devon just left. He didn’t cheat. At least I don’t think he cheated.” She dropped several spoonfuls of Blue Bell onto Sara’s plate. “Maybe he cheated.”

Sara held her other hand under the paper plate so that it wouldn’t fold from the weight. “I don’t think so.”

“No,” she agreed. “He barely had time for me, let alone another woman. Did I tell you about the time he fell asleep right in the middle of it?” Sara nodded. “Jesus, how do people stay interested in each other for fifty years?”

Sara shrugged. She was hardly an expert.

“God, but he was good in bed when he was awake.” Tessa sighed, holding the spoon in her mouth. “That’s one thing you have to keep in mind with Jeffrey. Never underestimate the value of sexual chemistry.” She scooped more ice cream onto Sara’s plate. “ Devon was bored with me.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I mean it,” she said. “He was bored. He didn’t want to do things anymore.”

“Like go out?”

“Like, the only way I could get him to go down on me was put a television on my stomach and wire the remote control to my-”

“Tess!”

She chuckled, taking a big bite of ice cream. Sara could remember the last time they’d eaten ice cream together. The day that Tessa had been attacked, they had gone to the Dairy Queen for milk shakes. Two hours later, Tessa was lying on the ground with her head split open, her child dead inside of her.

Tessa braced her hands on the counter and squeezed her eyes shut. Sara bolted from her chair, alarmed, until Tessa explained, “Ice cream headache.”

“I’ll get you some water.”

“I got it.” She put her head under the kitchen faucet and took a swig. She wiped her mouth, asking, “Yeesh, why does that happen?”

“The trigeminal nerve in the-”

Tessa cut her off with a look. “You don’t have to answer every question, Sara.”

Sara took this as a rebuke, and looked down at her plate.

Tessa took a less generous bite of ice cream before going back to the subject of Devon. “I just miss him.”

“I know, sweetie.”

There was nothing more to say on the matter. In Sara’s opinion, Devon had shown his true colors at the end, slinking out when things got tough. Her sister was well rid of him, though Sara understood that was hard for Tessa to grasp at this point. For Sara’s part, the one time she had seen Devon downtown, she had crossed the street so that she would not have to pass him on the sidewalk. Jeffrey had been with her, and she had practically ripped his arm off in order to keep him from going over and saying something to the other man.

Out of the blue, Tessa said, “I’m not going to have sex anymore.”

Sara barked out a laugh.

“I’m serious.”

“Why?”

“Do you have any Cheetos?”

Sara went to the cabinet to fetch the bag. She tried to tread cautiously when she asked, “Is it this new church?”

“No.” Tessa took the bag. “Maybe.” She used her teeth to open the package. “It’s just that what I’ve been doing so far isn’t working. I’d be pretty stupid to keep on doing it.”

“What isn’t working?”

Tessa just shook her head. “Everything.” She offered the bag of Cheetos to Sara, but she refused, instead tugging open the zipper of her skirt so she could breathe.

Tessa asked, “Has anyone told you why Bella is here?”

“I was hoping you’d know.”

“They won’t tell me anything. Every time I walk into the room, they stop talking. I’m like a walking mute button.”

“Me, too,” Sara realized.

“Will you do me a favor?” Tessa asked.

“Of course,” Sara offered, noting the change in Tessa’s tone.

“Come to church with me Wednesday night.”

Sara felt like a fish that had just been thrown from its tank, her mouth gaping open as she tried to think of an excuse.

“It’s not even church,” Tessa said. “It’s more like a fellowship meeting. Just people hanging around, talking. They’ve even got honey buns.”

“Tess…”

“I know you don’t want to go, but I want you there.” Tessa shrugged. “Do it for me.”

This had been Cathy’s device for guilting her two daughters into attending Easter and Christmas services for the last twenty years.

“Tessie,” Sara began, “you know I don’t believe-”

“I’m not sure I do, either,” Tessa interrupted. “But it feels good to be there.”

Sara stood to put the roast in the refrigerator.

“I met Thomas in physical therapy a few months ago.”

“Who’s Thomas?”

“He’s kind of the leader of the church,” Tessa answered. “He had a stroke a while back. It was pretty bad. He’s really hard to understand, but there’s this way he has of talking to you without saying a word.”

The dishwasher had clean dishes from several days ago, and Sara started to empty it just to give herself something to do.

“It was weird,” Tessa continued. “I was doing my stupid motor exercises, putting the pegs in the right holes, when I felt like someone was staring at me, and I looked up and it was this old guy in a wheelchair. He called me Cathy.”

“Cathy?” Sara repeated.

“Yeah, he knows Mama.”

“How does he know Mama?” Sara asked, certain that she knew all her mother’s friends.

“I don’t know.”

“Did you ask her?”

“I tried to, but she was busy.”

Sara closed the dishwasher and leaned against the counter. “What happened then?”

“He asked if I wanted to come to church.” Tessa paused a beat. “Being up there in physical therapy, seeing all these people who are so much worse off than I am…” She shrugged. “It really put things into perspective, you know? Like how much I’ve been wasting my life.”

“You haven’t been wasting your life.”

“I’m thirty-four years old and I still live with my parents.”

“Over the garage.”

Tessa sighed. “I just think what happened to me shouldn’t go to waste.”

“It shouldn’t have happened at all.”

“I was lying in that hospital bed feeling so sorry for myself, so pissed at the world for what happened. And then it hit me. I’ve been selfish all my life.”

“You have not.”

“Yes I have. Even you said that.”

Sara had never regretted her words so much in her life. “I was angry with you, Tess.”

“You know what? It’s like when people are drunk and they say they didn’t mean to say something and you should just excuse them and forget it because they’d been drinking.” She explained, “Alcohol lowers your inhibitions. It doesn’t make you pull lies out of your ass. You got angry with me and said what you were thinking in your head.”

“I didn’t,” Sara tried to assure her, but even to her own ears, the defense fell flat.

“I almost died, and for what? What have I done with my life?” Her hands were clenched in fists. Again, she shifted her focus. “If you died, what’s the one thing you would regret not doing?”

Instantly, Sara thought but did not say, “Having a child.”

Tessa read her expression. “You could always adopt.”

Sara shrugged. She could not answer.

“We never talk about this. It happened almost fifteen years ago and we never talk about it.”

“There’s a reason.”

“Which is?”

Sara refused to get into it. “What’s the point, Tessie? Nothing’s going to change. There’s no miraculous cure.”

“You’re so good with kids, Sara. You’d be such a good mother.”

Sara said the two words that she hated to say more than any others. “I can’t.” Then, “Tessie, please.”

Tessa nodded, though Sara could tell that this was just a temporary retreat. “Well, what I would regret is not leaving my mark. Not doing something to make the world better.”

Sara took a tissue to blow her nose. “You do that anyway.”

“There’s a reason for everything,” Tessa insisted. “I know you don’t believe that. I know you can’t trust anything that doesn’t have some scientific theory behind it or a library full of books written about it, but this is what I need in my life. I have to think that things happen for a reason. I have to think that something good will come out of losing…” She stopped there, unable to say the name of the child she had lost. There was a tiny marker out at the cemetery with the girl’s name, tucked between Cathy’s parents and a much-loved uncle who had died in Korea. It pained Sara’s heart every time she thought about the cold grave and the lost possibilities.

“You know his son.”

Sara furrowed her brow. “Whose son?”

“Tom’s. He went to school with you.” Tessa took a mouthful of Cheetos before folding the bag closed. She talked while she chewed. “He’s got red hair like you.”

“He went to school with me?” Sara asked, skeptical. Redheads tended to notice each other, what with sticking out from the general population like a sore thumb. Sara knew for a fact that she had been the only child with red hair her entire tenure at Cady Stanton Elementary School. She had the scars to prove it. “What’s his name?”

“Lev Ward.”

“There wasn’t a Lev Ward at Stanton.”

“It was Sunday school,” Tessa clarified. “He’s got some funny stories about you.”

“About me?” Sara repeated, her curiosity getting the better of her.

“And,” Tessa added, as if this were more enticement, “he’s got the most adorable five-year-old son you’ve ever seen.”

She saw through the ruse. “I meet some pretty adorable five-year-olds at the clinic.”

“Just think about going. You don’t have to answer now.” Tessa looked at her watch. “I need to get back before it gets dark.”

“You want me to drive you?”

“No, thanks.” Tessa kissed her cheek. “I’ll see you later.”

Sara wiped Cheeto dust off her sister’s face. “Be careful.”

Tessa started to leave, then stopped. “It’s not just the sex.”

“What?”

“With Jeffrey,” she explained. “It’s not just the sexual chemistry. When things get bad, y’all always get stronger. You always have.” She reached down to scratch Billy, then Bob, behind the ears. “Every time in your life that you’ve reached out for him, he’s been there. A lot of men would just run the other way.”

Tessa finished with the dogs and left, pulling the door gently closed behind her.

Sara put up the Cheetos, contemplating finishing the bag even though the open zipper on her skirt was cutting into her flesh. She wanted to call her mother and find out what was wrong. She wanted to call Jeffrey and yell at him, then call him back and tell him to come over and watch an old movie on television with her.

What she did instead was return to the couch with another glass of wine, trying to push everything from her mind. Of course, the more she tried not to think about things, the more they came to the surface. Soon, she was flashing through images of the girl in the woods to leukemia-stricken Jimmy Powell to Jeffrey in the hospital with end-stage liver failure.

Finally, she made herself focus back on the autopsy. She had stood behind a thick glass wall while the procedure was performed, but even that had seemed too close for Sara’s comfort. The girl’s physical results were unremarkable but for the cyanide salts found in her stomach. Sara shivered again as she thought about the plume of smoke rising from her gut as the state coroner cut into her stomach. The fetus had been unremarkable; a healthy child who would have eventually led a full life.

There was a knock at the front door, tentative at first, then more insistent when Sara didn’t answer. Finally, she yelled, “Come in!”

“Sara?” Jeffrey asked. He looked around the room, obviously surprised to see her on the couch. “You okay?”

“Stomachache,” she told him, and in fact her stomach was hurting. Maybe her mother had been right about not eating dessert for dinner.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t talk earlier.”

“It’s okay,” she told him, though it wasn’t really. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” he said, his disappointment evident. “I spent the whole fucking afternoon at the college, going from department to department looking for someone who could tell me what poisons they keep around there.”

“No cyanide?”

“Everything but,” he told her.

“What about the family?”

“They didn’t offer much. I sent out a credit check on the farm. It should be back tomorrow. Frank’s been calling all the shelters, trying to get the story on what exactly happens on these missions.” He shrugged. “We spent the rest of the day going through the laptop computer. It was pretty clean.”

“Did you check instant messages?”

“Brad cracked that first off. There were a couple back and forth with the aunt who lives on the farm, but mostly those were about Bible studies, work schedules, what time she was going to come over, who was going to fix chicken one night, who was going to peel carrots the next. It’s hard to tell which were from Abby and which were from Rebecca.”

“Was there anything during the ten days after the family left?”

“One file was opened the day they went to Atlanta,” Jeffrey told her. “Around ten fifteen that morning. The parents would’ve been gone by then. It was a résumé for Abigail Ruth Bennett.”

“For a job?”

“Looks like it.”

“You think she was trying to leave?”

“The parents wanted her to go to college, but she’d said no.”

“Nice to have an option,” Sara mumbled. Cathy had practically poked her girls with a stick. “What kind of job was she looking for?”

“No idea,” he said. “She mostly listed office and accounting skills. She did a lot of stuff on the farm. I guess it’d look well-rounded to a potential employer.”

“She was homeschooled?” Sara asked. She knew this wasn’t true everywhere, but in her experience, people tended to homeschool for two reasons: to keep their white children away from minorities or to make sure their kids weren’t taught anything other than creationism and abstinence.

“Most of the family are, apparently.” Jeffrey loosened his tie. “I’ve got to change.” Then, as if he felt the need for an explanation, he added, “All my jeans are over here.”

“Change for what?”

“I’m going to talk to Dale Stanley, then Lena and I are going to the Pink Kitty.”

“The titty bar on Sixteen?”

He scowled. “Why is it okay for women to call it that, but men get kicked in the nuts for it?”

“Because women don’t have nuts.” She sat up, feeling her stomach lurch. Thank God she hadn’t eaten any Cheetos. “Why are you going? Or is this your way of punishing me?”

“Punishing you for what?” he asked as she followed him back to the bedroom.

“Just ignore me,” she told him, not really sure why she had said that. “I’ve had a really, really bad day.”

“Can I do anything?”

“No.”

He opened a box, “We found a book of matches in the girl’s room. They’re from the Pink Kitty. Why would I punish you?”

Sara sat on the bed, watching him root through boxes to find his jeans. “She didn’t strike me as the Pink Kitty type.”

“The whole family isn’t the type,” he told her, finally finding the right box. He looked up at her as he unzipped his pants and kicked them off. “Are you still mad at me?”

“I wish I knew.”

He pulled off his socks and threw them in the laundry basket. “I do, too.”

Sara looked out the bedroom windows at the lake. She seldom closed the curtains because the view was one of the most beautiful in the city. She often lay in bed at night, watching the moon move across the sky as she drifted off to sleep. How many times last week had she looked out these same windows, not knowing that just across the water lay Abigail Bennett, alone, probably freezing cold, certainly terrified. Had Sara lain in bed, warm and content, while under cover of darkness, Abby’s killer had poisoned her?

“Sara?” Jeffrey stood in his underwear, staring at her. “What’s going on?”

She didn’t want to answer. “Tell me more about Abigail’s family.”

He hesitated a second before returning to his clothes. “They’re really weird.”

“Weird how?”

He pulled out a pair of socks and sat on the bed to put them on. “Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’ve seen too many people using some sick religious justification for their sexual attraction to teenage girls.”

“Did they seem shocked when you told them she was dead?”

“They’d heard rumors about what we found. I don’t know how since that farm sounds hermetically sealed. One of the uncles gets out a bit. I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something about him I don’t trust.”

“Maybe you’ve got a thing against uncles.”

“Maybe.” He rubbed his eyes with his hands. “The mother was pretty upset.”

“I can’t imagine what it’s like to hear that kind of news.”

“She really got to me.”

“How so?”

“She begged me to find out who did this,” he said. “She might not like it when I do.”

“You really think her family is involved?”

“I don’t know.” He stood to finish dressing, all the while giving Sara a more detailed impression of the group. One uncle was overbearing and seemed to have a lot more power over the family than Jeffrey thought was normal. The husband was old enough to be his wife’s grandfather. Sara sat with her back against the headboard, arms folded across her chest as she listened. The more he told her, the more warning bells she heard.

“The women are very… old-fashioned,” he said. “They let the men do all the talking. They defer to the husbands and the brothers.”

“That’s typical of most conservative religions,” Sara pointed out. “In theory, at least, the man is supposed to be in charge of the family.” She waited for him to make a wistful comment, but when he didn’t, she asked, “Did you get anything from the sister?”

“Rebecca,” he supplied. “Nothing, and there’s no way they’ll let me talk to her again. I have a feeling the uncle would string me up by the short hairs if he knew I talked to her in Abby’s room.”

“Do you think you’d get anything from her anyway?”

“Who knows?” he asked. “I couldn’t tell if she was hiding something or if she was just sad.”

“It’s a hard thing to go through,” Sara said. “She’s probably not thinking right now.”

“ Lena got from the mother that Rebecca has run away before.”

“Why?”

“She didn’t find out.”

“Well, that could be something.”

“It could be just that she’s a teenage girl,” he pointed out, as if Sara needed to be reminded that one out of every seven children ran away at least once before the age of eighteen. “She’s pretty young for her age.”

“I imagine it’s hard to be worldly growing up in that environment.” She added, “Not that there’s anything wrong with trying to keep your kids away from the world in general.” Without thinking, she said, “If it was my kid…” She caught herself. “I mean, some of the kids I see at the clinic… I can understand why their parents want to keep them as sheltered as they can.”

He had stopped dressing, staring at her with his lips slightly parted as if he wanted to say something.

“So,” she said, trying to clear the lump in her throat. “The family is pretty wrapped up in the church?”

“Yeah,” he said, his pause letting her know he was aware of what she was doing. He continued, “I don’t know about the girl, though. I got this sense from her even before Lena told me she’d run away. She seemed kind of rebellious. When I questioned her, she sort of defied her uncle.”

“How?”

“He’s a lawyer. He didn’t want her to answer any questions. She did anyway.” He was nodding to himself as if he admired her courage. “I don’t guess that kind of independence fits into the family dynamic, especially considering it’s coming from a girl.”

“Younger children tend to be more assertive,” Sara said. “Tessa was always getting into trouble. I don’t know if that was because Daddy was harder on her or because she acted up more.”

He couldn’t hide his appreciative grin. He had always admired Tessa’s free spirit. Men often did. “She’s a little wild.”

“And I’m not,” Sara said, trying to keep the regret out of her voice. Tessa had always been the risk-taker while Sara’s biggest childhood infractions were usually education-related: staying too late at the library so that she could study, sneaking a flashlight into her bed so that she could read past bedtime.

She asked, “Do you think you’ll get anything out of the interviews Wednesday?”

“Doubtful. Maybe Dale Stanley will have something. They’re certain it’s cyanide salt?”

“Yes.”

“I checked around. He’s the only metal plater in the area. Something tells me this goes back to the farm. It’s too coincidental to me that they’ve got a bunch of convicts running around on that place and this girl turns up dead. Plus”-he looked up at her-“Dale Stanley’s house is a brisk hike from the Catoogah line.”

“Do you think Dale Stanley put her in the box?”

“I have no idea,” Jeffrey told her. “At this point, I’m not trusting anybody.”

“Do you think there’s a religious connotation? Burying someone in the ground?”

“And poisoning them?” he asked. “That’s where I get stuck. Lena ’s certain there’s a religious connection, something to do with the family.”

“She’s got a good excuse to be against anything that smacks of religion.”

“ Lena ’s my best detective,” he told her. “I know she’s got… problems…” He seemed to understand this was a gross understatement, but continued anyway. “I don’t want her running off in one direction just because it fits with her view of the world.”

“She has a narrow way of looking at things.”

“Everybody does,” he told her, and though Sara agreed, she knew he thought he was an exception. “I’ll give her this, that place is weird. There was this guy we ran into early on. He was out there by the barn toting a Bible and preaching the Word.”

“Hare’s father does the same thing at family reunions,” Sara pointed out, though her uncles’ two sisters tended to laugh in his face so hard when he began to proselytize that Uncle Roderick seldom made it past the first sentence.

“It’s still suspicious.”

She said, “This is the South, Jeffrey. People hold on to religion down here.”

“You’re talking to the boy from central Alabama,” he reminded her. “And it’s not just the South. Go out to the Midwest or California or even upstate New York and you’ll find pockets of religious communities. We just get more press for it because we’ve got better preachers.”

Sara didn’t argue with him. The farther you got from a major metropolitan city, the more religious people tended to be. Truth be told, it was one of the things she liked about small towns. While Sara wasn’t religious herself, she liked the idea of church, the philosophy behind loving your fellow man and turning the other cheek. Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to find that dictum being upheld much lately.

Jeffrey said, “So, let’s say Lena ’s instincts are right and the whole family’s in on it. They’re this evil cult and they buried Abby for whatever reason.”

“She was pregnant.”

“So, they buried her because she was pregnant. Why poison her? It doesn’t make sense.”

Sara had to agree. “For that matter, why would they bury her in the first place? Surely they’re pro-life?”

“It just doesn’t hold up. There has to be some other reason.”

“So,” Sara said, “it’s an outsider. Why would an outsider go to the trouble of burying her alive then killing her?”

“Maybe he comes back and removes the body after she’s dead. Maybe we found her before he could finish doing whatever he does.”

Sara hadn’t considered that, and the thought now sent a cold chill through her.

“I sent samples of the wood to have it analyzed,” he said. “If there’s some DNA on it, we’ll find out.” He thought about it, then added, “Eventually.”

Sara knew the test results would take weeks if not months to get back. The GBI crime lab was so behind it was a wonder any crimes in the state were ever solved. “Isn’t there a way for you to just go out to the farm and start talking to people?”

“Not without cause. That’s assuming I don’t catch hell from Sheriff Asshole for being out of my jurisdiction.”

“How about Social Services?” Sara suggested. “From what you said, I’ve gathered there are children on the farm. Some of them could be runaways, underage.”

“Good point,” he said, smiling. Jeffrey loved it when he found a way around an obstacle. “I’ll have to be careful. Something tells me this Lev guy knows his rights. I bet the farm keeps ten lawyers on retainer.”

She sat up. “What?”

“I said he’s probably got ten lawyers-”

“No, his name.”

“Lev, one of the uncles,” Jeffrey said. “It’s weird, but he kind of looks like you. Red hair.” He slipped on a T-shirt. “Pretty blue eyes.”

“My eyes are green,” she said, aggravated by his old joke. “How does he look like me?”

“Just like I said.” He shrugged, smoothing down his Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt. “Do I look like a redneck who belongs in a strip club?”

“Tell me about this guy, this Lev.”

“Why are you so curious?”

“I just want to know,” she said, then, “Tessa is going to that church.”

He gave an incredulous laugh. “You’re kidding.”

“Why is that so hard to believe?”

“Tessa? In a church? Without your mama standing behind her with a whip?”

“What does that mean?”

“They’re just really… devout,” he said, combing back his hair with his fingers. He sat on the edge of the bed. “They don’t seem like Tess’s kind of people.”

It was one thing for Sara to call Tessa loose, quite another for someone else to do it- even Jeffrey. “What are her kind of people?”

He put his hand on her foot, obviously sensing a trap. “Sara-”

“Just forget it,” she said, wondering why she kept trying to pick a fight.

“I don’t want to forget it. Sara, what’s wrong with you?”

She slid down the bed, curling herself away from him. “I’ve just had a really bad day.”

He rubbed her back. “The autopsy?”

She nodded.

“You called me because you needed to talk about it,” he said. “I should’ve listened.”

She swallowed as a lump came into her throat. That he had realized his mistake meant almost as much to her as if he hadn’t made it in the first place.

He soothed, “I know it was hard, baby. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there.”

“It’s okay.”

“I don’t like you going through something like that on your own.”

“Carlos was with me.”

“That’s not the same.” He kept rubbing her back, making small circles with his palm. His voice was barely a whisper when he asked, “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Tessa wants me to go to this church with her tomorrow night.”

His hand stopped. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

She looked at him over her shoulder. “Why?”

“These people,” he began, “I don’t trust them. I can’t tell you why, but something’s going on.”

“Do you really think they killed Abigail?”

“I don’t know what they did,” he told her. “All I know is that I don’t want you mixed up in this.”

“What’s to get mixed up in?”

He did not answer. Instead, he tugged her sleeve, saying, “Turn over.”

Sara rolled over onto her back, and a smile played on his lips as he ran his finger along the half-open zipper of her skirt. “What did you have for dinner?”

She was too embarrassed to say so she just shook her head.

Jeffrey slid up her shirt and started to rub her stomach. “Better?”

She nodded.

“Your skin is so soft,” he whispered, using the tips of his fingers. “Sometimes I think about it and I get this feeling in my heart like I’m flying.” He smiled, as if a private memory was playing out in his head.

Several minutes passed before he said, “I heard Jimmy Powell’s back in the hospital.”

Sara closed her eyes, concentrating on his hand. She had been on the verge of crying most of the day, and his words made it harder to resist. Everything she had been through in the last forty-eight hours had tightened her up like a ball of string, but somehow his soft touch managed to unravel her.

She said, “This will be the last time,” her throat tightening as she thought of the sick nine-year-old. Sara had known Jimmy all of his life, watched him grow from infant to child. His diagnosis had hit her almost as hard as it had his parents.

Jeffrey asked, “You want me to go to the hospital with you?”

“Please.”

He lightened his touch. “And how about later?”

“Later?” she asked, feeling the urge to purr like a cat.

“Where am I sleeping?”

Sara took her time answering, wishing she could just snap her fingers and it was tomorrow and the decision had been made. What she finally did was gesture toward the boxes he had brought over from his house. “All of your stuff is here.”

The smile he flashed didn’t do a very good job of hiding his disappointment. “I guess that’s as good a reason as any.”