Hard Truth

6

“Lorna Stiles?”

“Yes?” Lorna was out of breath from running to answer the phone before her mother’s old message came on the answering machine. She made a mental note to change it.

“T. J. Dawson. Mitch Peyton asked me to call.”

“Who?” She frowned, then remembered yesterday’s conversation with Regan. “Oh. Regan Landry’s friend.”

“Friend of a friend, right. I thought you were expecting my call.”

“Regan said she’d ask her friend-your friend Mitch-to speak with you, but I didn’t expect to hear from you this quickly. I appreciate you calling so soon.”

“Mitch said it was important.”

“Well, where would you like me to start?” Lorna tried to stretch the phone cord into the dining room, where she’d left her handbag. She wanted to write down his name and phone number but couldn’t quite reach the pen and paper. She started opening and closing the kitchen drawers, hoping to get lucky.

“You have a friend who’s been arrested on murder charges?”

“Yes. I believe she’s innocent, but the police-”

“What were the charges?’

“That she killed her son.”

“I mean, first degree, second… manslaughter…”

“Oh. I don’t know.” She felt her cheeks twinge with color. How could she not know? “I didn’t think to ask. I should have.”

“I can find that out.”

“When do you think you can start working on this?”

“In about three hours.”

“What?”

“I’m on my way from southern New Jersey to Baltimore. I’ll be driving along Interstate 95. Mitch said you’re in southern Pennsylvania.”

“Right. I’m about thirty-five minutes off of I-95, actually.”

“Would it be all right if I swung by on my way through the area? I can get all the information from you, we can talk about the case, my fee, see how much time you want to invest in this.”

“Fine.” She gave him directions from the highway, then hung up, and gulped. How much did private investigators charge? She had no idea, but figured them to be fairly expensive.

And just how much did she want to invest in Billie Eagan?

She’d been having second thoughts since volunteering to post the woman’s bail. That was one thing, since the money would be returned to her. But offering to take on the expense of a private investigator was something else. That had been a strictly emotional response to the situation, she had finally acknowledged to herself as she had lain awake the night before, questioning her sanity. She’d wanted to do what she thought her mother would have done under the circumstances to help her friend. However, as Regan had said, Lorna had only Billie’s word that she and Mary Beth had been friends. What were the chances Billie was playing on Lorna’s sympathy? She had never been what one might consider an upright citizen. For all Lorna knew, Billie could have fabricated the whole friendship story to get Lorna on her side, where she could take advantage of her. Like by having Lorna post bail to get her out of prison.

Well, she’d deal with that later. Right now, she hadn’t paid anyone anything, so no harm, no foul. Besides, at the moment, she had a client waiting for his monthly accounts receivable number, and she had another hour’s worth of work before she could send it to him. She pushed Billie Eagan from her mind, and went back to work.

She finished the receivables and went on to the payables report for the same company, pausing only to heat up a frozen pizza, which she ate sitting on the front porch. At one point, Brad Walker’s wife, Liz, passed by-at least, Lorna had been pretty sure it was Liz-but she hadn’t stopped and hadn’t returned Lorna’s wave. Maybe it hadn’t been her.

Lorna was still working when the doorbell rang at two-fifteen, startling her. She hadn’t realized how late it was.

The man standing on the front porch was tall-almost a foot taller than Lorna’s five feet six inches-and sported a baseball cap over curly blond hair. He wore dark glasses, and a beige T-shirt over deeply tanned arms, and cut-off denims over legs that were long and muscular. She knew he had to be the PI, but wished she could see the look on her face. She’d been expecting Barnaby Jones. What she got was more like a fair-haired Magnum, PI.

“Mr. Dawson?” She opened the inside door, leaving the screen door locked. Just in case.

“It’s T.J., yes. You’re Lorna Stiles?”

“Yes. Come in.” She opened the screen door and he stepped into the foyer and pretty much filled it. She took a step back unconsciously. The man looked as if he was feeling the heat as much as she was. “We can talk in here, or out on the porch. It might be cooler out there, though.”

“Then the porch gets my vote.”

“Can I get you something cold to drink first? Iced tea?”

“That would be great, thanks.”

He followed her into the kitchen, and on her way past the window she looked into the driveway where he’d parked his car under the magnolia-a taupey-colored convertible, the top down. It was exactly the car she’d expect a man who looked like he did to drive.

“What is that?” she asked, pointing out the window.

“Crossfire.”

“It’s lovely.”

“Lovely is just one of its attributes.”

“Fast?”

“Sure.” He grinned. “What’s the point of having a slow sports car?”

“True.”

“So, tell me about your friend,” he asked as she took a glass from the cupboard.

“It’s a long story.” She opened the freezer for ice cubes, which she popped into the glass.

“Start at the beginning. That’s what I’m here for.”

“Are we on the clock?” She reached into the refrigerator and took out the pitcher of tea she’d made earlier, and filled the glass. “Because I might have some reservations about this.”

“The clock doesn’t start ticking until I decide if I want to take the case, so you can give me the long version. And it will be strictly up to you, if you want to think about it a little more, or if you decide against hiring me. There’s no obligation. We haven’t signed any contracts. Right now, we’re just talking. So go on. Tell me from the beginning.”

She did.

“So that’s it, that’s all they have on this woman? A body with skull fractures front and back, and old signs of child abuse? And a kid who said he dropped Jason off at home and he was never seen again?”

She nodded. “That pretty much sums it up.”

“Doesn’t sound like a very solid arrest to me.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “You might not have much of a decision to make after all. I think they’re going to end up dismissing the charges.”

“Why would you say that?”

“They really don’t have anything of substance. Can you think of any reason why the chief of police would jump on an arrest this fast?”

“You mean some personal issue?”

“Right.”

“Not off the top of my head, but I haven’t lived around here in a long time. All I know is what I remember from before, and what the police are telling me now. I do know that the boy Jason was with that last night said he dropped him off around three and saw him go into the house. No one-except his mother-admits to having seen him after that.”

“Maybe the other boy didn’t drop him off at home. Maybe he took him someplace else. Maybe he killed him.”

Lorna stared at him. Had anyone considered that?

“The point is, there’s only the boy’s word that he’d taken Jason home, just as there’s only Mrs. Eagan’s word that she didn’t kill him.” He sipped his tea. “Why would the boy’s word be more credible than the mother’s?”

“One, because the mother was an alcoholic and an admitted child abuser. Two, because her daughter had disappeared a few weeks before Jason and she had been one of the first to be suspected, and I think they might have still harbored some suspicion there. Chief Walker was a patrolman at the time, and was involved in that investigation. Maybe he has some issues with having let her go back then, I don’t know. And three, because the boy who dropped Jason off was the son of a woman who, at the time, worked for the county.”

“So they might have taken his story as gospel?”

She shrugged. “I have no way of knowing if they had corroboration for that or not. I was only nine at the time, and my best friend was missing. I had no real understanding of what was going on, as far as the investigation was concerned, and I didn’t care. I just wanted my friend to come home. I knew the police suspected Mrs. Eagan-and, to be honest, I sort of did myself. I knew she’d been rough with Melinda, and I knew that Mellie was afraid of her. To my nine-year-old’s mind, that was enough to make her a bad person.”

“What changed your mind?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re willing to put up bail, willing to take on the expense of a private investigator to prove her innocent. Why?”

“I guess because there’s no one else to help her. I think everyone is going to assume the worst about her. She was an alcoholic. She did hurt her kids. Easy enough to believe she killed at least one of them.”

“But you don’t?”

Lorna hesitated.

“No, I don’t. And I believe that if my mother were still alive, she’d take Billie’s side. If for no other reason than to make sure the truth came out. My mother’s no longer with us.” She could have said more, but her throat tightened right about then, so she let it go. How important was it that he understand that she felt honor-bound to her mother, as well as to Mellie, to help find the truth?

“Your mother and Mrs. Eagan were close friends?”

“She says they were.”

“Who says they were? Mrs. Eagan?”

Lorna nodded.

“You mean, you only have her word that she and your mother were friends?”

Lorna nodded again, slowly. “Does that make me appear as stupid as I’m starting to feel?”

“Not stupid, no.”

“You’re searching for another word-perhaps, oh, gullible?”

“Gullible could work.” He smiled. “Can you think of any reason Billie Eagan would lie about being your mother’s friend?”

“Not offhand. The truth is, I don’t have any more reason to believe her than to not believe her. I just don’t know.”

“But you jumped in with an offer to help, all the same.”

“An emotional reaction, I’m afraid. One I’m not certain I’m not beginning to regret.”

“Hey, so far, this has cost you nothing but a little bit of your time. Like I said before, there’s no fee for talking to me about it. You can take all the time you need to think it over. And if you decide to go forward with an investigation, you can call it off whenever you want. Two hours or two days, it’s up to you. I work for you.”

She did like the sound of that.

“I would like to think it over before I sign anything with you.”

“I won’t hold it against you, either way.”

“You’re awfully accommodating. How do you stay in business with that take-it-or-leave-it attitude?”

He laughed. “Well, actually, we just sold the business, my partner and I. He got married and moved to Ocean City, Maryland, and it got to be too much for him to be driving back and forth to Baltimore. There’s too much work for one person, and after these past three years working only with my partner-who’s also my cousin-I’m not inclined to hire another PI. There was someone interested in buying us out, so we sold the business, the building, the whole works. So, basically, I’m more or less unemployed right now.”

“Oh.” Lorna frowned. “Maybe it isn’t a good time for you to take this on.”

“I still have my license, and I’m coming off a month at the beach. I’m ready to get back to work. And I have all the time in the world.”

“Are you sure?”

“I would have referred Mitch to someone else if I weren’t. This doesn’t sound like a very complicated case. If you’re still undecided, I can always get copies of the police reports and look them over with you, see if there’s anything there that’s worth pursuing.”

“I don’t know what I want.” She stopped rocking. “I think I’d just really like to know what happened to Melinda and Jason. I want to know the truth.”

“And if the truth leads back to Billie Eagan and proves she killed one or both of her kids?”

“Then I hope she’s convicted and rots in prison.”

He nodded. “Fair enough.”

“So, where do we go from here?”

“You tell me.”

“Where would you start if I hired you?”

“Like I said, I’m going to want copies of the old police reports. Then I’d track down the kids Jason was with that last night, talk to them. Talk to Billie. And I’d like to take a look at the place where his body was found.”

“That’s easy enough. It’s across the back field.”

“Maybe we could take a look while I’m here.”

“Sure. I’ll get my keys and drive us over,” she said, rising from the rocker.

He stood as well, asking, “How far is it?”

“Not far. But it’s already so hot and humid, I figured you’d be more comfortable driving.”

“Won’t bother me if it won’t bother you.”

“Then we’ll walk.” She smiled in spite of the fact that the very thought of walking in the hot sun across acres of dry, dusty field made her want to whine unpleasantly in protest. “Ready?”

“Sure.”

They started toward the porch steps, then Lorna paused and said, “Be right back,” before grabbing the near-empty glasses of iced tea and disappearing into the house. She returned in less than a minute, carrying two bottles of water, one of which she handed to T.J. “Just in case.”

“Good idea.”

He moved closer to the steps, then stopped while she locked the house behind her.

“We didn’t used to have to do that,” she explained, “but since I’m here by myself, I try to remember to keep the door locked. It annoys me that I have to do it, but you never know.”

“I noticed you have an alarm system, though.”

“After my younger brother and sister left home, Mom lived here with my grandmother until Gran died, about six years ago. Mom had the alarm installed then.”

“You don’t use it?”

“I know the code to disarm it, but not the one to set it.”

“Isn’t it the same code?”

“Oh. Maybe.” She frowned. “I guess I could call the alarm company. I just figured with the locks on the doors, I should be all right.”

“Still, if you’re paying for the service, you should look into it.”

“I don’t know if it will be worth it, frankly, since I’m not sure how long I’ll be here.”

They walked past the barn, and a few of the feral cats poked out tentatively to watch. Lorna noted the water bowl she’d left for them was empty, as was the bowl of dry food.

“I wonder if they’re eating that,” she muttered.

“What?”

“The barn cats. I was just wondering if they were eating the dry cat food I left for them, or if it was being eaten by raccoons or field mice or whatever.”

“I doubt the mice would stand a chance. I counted four cats in the doorway. How many more are there?”

“I don’t know. They’ve been out there in the barn for as long as I can remember. A few years ago my mother rounded up the kittens and took them to the vet down the street to neuter them so they’d stop multiplying, but who knows if there aren’t others? Gran liked them because they kept the mice population down, and she never had to resort to traps or chemicals to get rid of them.” Lorna smiled. “Gran called the cats ‘nature’s mousetraps.’ ”

At the edge of the field, T.J. stopped and took in the vista.

“How much is yours?” he asked.

“All of it, except for the back section, where the body was found. We sold off thirty acres a year and a half ago to pay for my mother’s radiation and chemo.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” Lorna pointed off to the right. “There’s a pond behind that wooded section, and a small orchard. There’s also a small family burial ground.” She turned toward the left and said, “Down there is an old vineyard my great-uncle started back in the 1940s. It was pretty much ignored after he died.”

“I thought I smelled grapes.”

“That wouldn’t have been from Uncle Will’s vineyard, I doubt there’s much going on down there after all these years. The grapes you smelled were from the arbor in the backyard. My gran’s jam grapes. An altogether different kind of fruit.”

“Can’t you make wine from jam grapes, and jam from wine grapes?”

She laughed. “All I know is that the grapes on Gran’s arbor are big and dark purple. I only saw the other ones-the wine grapes-when I was little, before the weeds and the trees started taking over the vineyard and it got too spooky to play in.”

“Spooky?” He cracked a smile. “Did your young imagination convince you that it was haunted?”

“Oh, sure. I went through a stage where I saw ghosts and haunts everywhere. I think it started after I found out that there really were bodies buried in the family cemetery. Then when Uncle Will started acting up, it made a believer out of me.”

“Uncle Will acts up?”

“He died in the late forties, and he’s never really left.” When T.J. chuckled, she shrugged and said, “Hey, you can believe it or not, but I’ve heard him and seen him. Once you’ve met a ghost head-on in your upstairs hall, it isn’t much of a stretch to believe that those weird sounds coming from the vineyard are caused by demons. The older kids in the neighborhood used to tell me that, and I believed them.”

“I noticed that up along the main road there were a bunch of houses that had really large properties in the rear. Makes it more of a real neighborhood, I suppose, than a typical farm community.”

“Right.” Lorna pushed a long strand of hair from her face. She wished she’d grabbed one of the straw hats hanging near the back door. Sweat was beginning to bead on her face and some more ran down the front of her shirt, making her skin itch. “Most of those houses have ten acres or more out back. Callen was founded by six brothers-they each built one of those red brick houses along Callen Road, where you came in. Three on one side, three on the other. They wanted their houses fairly close together, but also wanted to farm. The three brothers on one side shared the acreage behind their homes, the brothers on the opposite side of the street did the same. It’s only been in the last fifty years or so that the farms have been broken up and the properties sold individually. When I was growing up, there were kids in every one of those houses, and we all went to school together and played together. Summers, everyone swam in our pond and we played in everyone’s yards.” She twisted the cap off her water bottle. “We really had the best of everything. Farm life, and town life, too. It was a great way to grow up.”

She paused to take a long drink from the bottle, then asked, “How about you? City boy? Small town?”

“Small New Jersey town near the bay.”

“Beach town?”

“Actually, it’s an old seaport town.” He stopped at the top of the ridge and looked over his shoulder. She’d fallen a few steps behind, and he waited for her to catch up before asking, “I’m assuming that’s where they found him? Where the yellow caution tape is on the ground?”

“I’ll bet the local kids just couldn’t resist coming up here to look at that hole in the ground,” she grumbled as she passed him and kept walking straight ahead.

“Any of those houses occupied?” He caught up with her easily.

“I don’t think so. I did hear that one of them was sold, the white one there on the corner. Not sure about the others. The brick one is the sample house for the development.”

They stepped around the lot markers on their way to the makeshift grave that had recently held the remains of Jason Eagan.

“I guess the police department has closed down construction for a few days.”

“I would expect that they did. I saw a few police cars out here this morning. I was wondering if they were looking for Melinda. For her grave, I mean.” Lorna stood with her hands on her hips, about ten feet away from the excavation where Jason had been found.

T.J. walked to the edge of the excavation, then knelt on one knee. He studied the hole in the ground for a long moment, leaning forward to get a better look. Finally, he asked, “Did the police dig down beneath the remains, do you know?”

“No, I don’t. Why?”

“Because if the killer dug the hole to this depth, I’m guessing he-or she-was pretty strong physically. There appears to be considerable rock once you get past the top layer of soil.” He looked over his shoulder to where she stood, and asked, “Is Mrs. Eagan a large woman?”

“Mrs. Eagan? She’s shorter than I am and probably weighs about half what I weigh. She’s always been thin and on the frail side. She’s a recovering alcoholic, apparently at one time a heavy smoker. Even twenty-five years ago, she was pretty thin. Pale.” She walked to the excavation and looked down. “I see where you’re going. If the killer dug this hole, chances are, the killer was not Billie Eagan.”

“So that’s one thing in her favor.” He stood up. “When do you suppose she’ll be getting out?”

“I think she’ll be out today or tomorrow. Do you want to speak with her?”

“I do. I think we need to hear her side of the story and make certain she’s agreeable to working with us. Do you know where she lives? So you can get in touch with her?”

“She lives right over there, behind the vineyard.” Lorna pointed off to the left.

“Think we could walk over and take a look?”

“I don’t see why not.” She glanced back at the hole in the ground where they’d found Jason Eagan. As she had when she heard his bones had been discovered, Lorna reflected that she’d never liked Jason. That he was mean to Mellie and to her, and had a foul mouth. She couldn’t remember he’d ever had a nice word for his little sister. Still, she wouldn’t have wished this on him. “You ready?”

“Yeah, I’m finished here.” He fell into step with her.

“Those are Uncle Will’s vineyards,” she told him as they headed toward the overgrown maze.

“Was he a winemaker?”

“No, but he wanted to be. If he’d lived, he would have been.” She told him the story as they walked the distance to Billie’s cottage.

She had just finished the story-“Unfortunately, the trellises were taken over by weeds and the vines all choked out”-when they came to the back of the small cottage. T.J. pointed to the last few rows of vines, which were obviously alive and doing just fine.

“Not quite all choked out.”

“I can’t believe it.” She stared at the vines that twisted gently over the T-shaped structures. “How could they have survived all these years?”

“Someone’s been taking care of them.”

“It must have been Billie.” Lorna shook her head. “I wonder what she’s been doing with the grapes.”

The irony of a recovering alcoholic tending grapes that would be made into wine was not lost on Lorna.

T.J. picked a small bunch of grapes and popped a couple into his mouth.

“These are great,” he said, nodding. “Nice flavor.”

“Those have to be some of the vines Uncle Will brought back from France.”

“I’ll bet they made some delicious wine.”

“Well, they probably did in France. He never got to make any here.” She pointed to the house. “What were you planning on doing here? Peeking through the windows?”

“For starters.” He walked through the backyard, around to the front, and up the one step to the tiny porch, eating the rest of the grapes along the way. When Lorna came around the corner, he was standing on the scruffy front lawn, looking from the road to the porch.

“No neighbors close by, no streetlights. When Jason’s friend dropped him off, he would have gotten out of the car out there, on the side of the road.”

“Oh, the Eagans weren’t living here then. They lived down the road a bit.” She pointed off to the left. “We used to go through the back field as a shortcut. That would only take about ten minutes.”

Lorna held a hand up to her forehead to block the sun’s glare. “That’s the way she went home from my house, that night. Through the field.”

“Anyone else use it as a shortcut?”

“Just about every kid in town. We stopped planting to the end of the property line because whatever crop went in got trampled. If it wasn’t the kids, it was the deer. After awhile we stopped planting about five to eight feet from the edge.”

“Could we walk back that way?”

“Sure. Are you done here?” She nodded in the direction of the cottage.

“For now. I’ll want to come back and speak with Billie once she’s released. At the moment, though, I’d rather see the house they used to live in.”

She stumbled slightly on some rocks and rolled her eyes at her clumsiness. Way to impress the hot guy, she told herself. Story of my life.

“It’s cooler over along the tree line,” she told him as she headed for the shade. Her shirt was sticking to the area between her shoulder blades and perspiration was pooling at the waistband of her shorts. T.J., on the other hand, was barely breaking a sweat. By the time they reached the back of the house where the Eagans used to live, her hair was wet and stringy. This is not a good look for anyone, she told herself as she polished off her bottle of water.

“Do you know who’s living here now?” T.J. asked.

“No. No clue.”

“Let’s walk around to the front.”

He was already on his way, so she followed him along the fence. They reached the road that ran past the house, and he crossed it to take a look at the property from that angle.

“Is this the way the house looked twenty-five years ago?”

“It’s been painted a few times since then, but if you’re asking me if the front door was over there,” she pointed to the front of the house, which actually faced sideways on the lot, “then yes, it looks the same. The front of the house and the porch were always facing the side of the property.”

“And that rise was always there, on this side of the house?”

“Yes, there used to be shrubs growing along it.”

“So cars would have stopped out here, along the road?”

“Yes. There’s no real driveway, as you can see. There never has been one. Mrs. Eagan didn’t have a car, but times when my mother would bring Melinda home from something, or pick me up if I’d been playing here, she pulled along the other side of the house, where the rise slopes to almost nothing.” Lorna pointed to the opposite side from where they’d been looking. “She’d park there, between the house and the fence.”

“Well, as I see it, unless Jason’s friend got out of the car and walked him to the door, there’s no way he could have seen over the rise, or past the house if he parked where your mom did. The front door is on a side of the house that faces away from the road, from any space to park. How could he have seen where Jason went once he got out of the car?” T.J. stood with his hands on his hips.

“Good question. But what difference does it make? Remember, Billie admitted she and Jason argued after he got home, admitted that the argument got violent. What difference does it make whether or not Dustin Lafferty-that was the boy who was driving that night-could see whether Jason went into the house?”

“It’s a minor point, I agree. But it just makes you wonder, if he lied about that, what else did he lie about?”