Aftermath Read online

  The horror of it, her rationales, everything about that terrible secret everyone in Graylee shared made me shudder. I sat down hard on a sofa. “But that wouldn’t last for long,” I railed. “My dad was a genius, you said, an expert at whatever he set his mind to. He’d figure out ways to coax her, to manipulate.” I shook my head, grieving for all of those victims. “A seventeen-year-old wouldn’t stand a chance against him.”

  “Ellie swears nothing ever happened between them, that he was a gentleman.”

  The lies we tell our mothers. I had told plenty to my mom after I started in with boys—and grown men. I knew exactly what happened to a teenager who gained the attention of a charismatic, older guy determined to get what he wanted. After collecting myself, I stared up at her. She’d fully regained her defiance, armed herself with justifications again. I asked, “Why didn’t anyone tell the world? Call TV stations and newspapers? Put it on the Internet?”

  “It was part of his threat—if word got out, he’d never reopen the plants. Your daddy was a rich man and didn’t need Graylee. He’d kill the town out of spite. Most of us grew up here—and thanks to him we grew softer the longer we stayed. We couldn’t imagine starting over again someplace else. Even the pastors wouldn’t speak out against him, not with the donations he gave every year.”

  I leaned back to get her out of my space a little. “Your memorial ended with last year’s scholarship. Didn’t he pick someone for this school year?”

  “You can ask your friend Tim Bladensburg about that. I heard you’ve been hanging out together—maybe you can even shack up with him tonight. Because you’re not staying here.”

  I didn’t want to see Tim at that moment, or even Cade or David. The people I’d started to care about had disappointed me greatly, and I knew my next encounter with any of them would be an ugly confrontation. Taking a page from Tara, I decided to pull her stunt of refusing to go. I crossed my arms and stared at Cindy’s family portrait.

  “Goddammit, I said you’re leaving. Get out.”

  “No.”

  She stomped over to an oversized purse and started to rummage through it. “I’ll call the cops. Surely you can’t be sleeping with all of them already.”

  “What?”

  A cell phone came out, not a gun, thank God. Still, she pointed it at me as if it were loaded. “We’ve all seen you riding shotgun with Cade Wilson. But B.J. spent hours at your place today before he dropped you off, so maybe you’re trying out every guy you can.”

  The gossip network keeping tabs, ratting each other out. It was how my father’s commandments had been enforced, and the old habits didn’t die with him. Virtually overnight, I’d become the town slut in their eyes. The people of Graylee were primed to hate me, of course, and apparently I wouldn’t have the chance to change anyone’s opinions.

  I said, “You people have dirty minds.”

  “Your father made us that way.” She dialed a number and turned her back on me.

  All of my stuff was boxed up in a moving truck, heading down from New York. Probably impossible to intercept it, to get the driver to turn around and head…home? Is that what this came down to—tucking my tail and becoming the absentee owner whose only connection to Graylee would be income statements and tax forms? It’s what my New York friends had been begging me to do since I’d gotten the idea of reinventing myself down South.

  However, I still thought I could make a difference here, help people heal from at least some of my father’s sins, undo the fear and anger that still gripped everyone. It’s what my mother would’ve done, if she’d known what had happened. The only way I’d leave Graylee, I decided, was in a box of my own. Though I didn’t want to stay around Cindy for one more second, this was my town and no way would I let her kick me out into the cold.

  “Hey, Chief,” she said, “it’s Cindy Dwyer. Look, I appreciate you referring Ms. Wright to me and all, but it’s not working out between us…. Sorry, it’s just not. Unfortunately, she’s as stubborn as her old man and refuses to leave. Can you or one of your deputies—what’s that? No, I haven’t looked in a while.” She went to a front window and pushed back the lace on a world of white.

  I stood and chose a window at the opposite end of the room. A half inch had fallen, with more coming. It looked like the heavy kind, more ice than snow, which would linger in shadows even after the weather warmed. B.J.’s worst fears realized: we’d have a white Christmas for sure.

  Cindy went on, “My stars, look at—yes, I can imagine all the calls you’re getting already. Well, okay, but…fine, here she is.” She looked in my direction and then at her phone and maybe considered throwing it at me, but then she straightened her back and marched over.

  “You can stop right there,” I said. “I’m not talking to him.”

  Into her cell, she said, “Chief, this is how crazy she is: she refuses to talk to you even. I can’t have a demented person staying here with guests due to arrive any—” After another pause, she sighed and turned from me again. “Okay, but if I’m found dead, you’ll know who did it.” She mashed the icon with her index finger to end the call. “Mashed” was a word my mother had used, and it fit Cindy’s action perfectly. “Stabbed” would’ve been too surgical a description; she was crushing a bug.

  My host retrieved her purse and stowed her phone, keeping her back to me. She ordered, “Stay away from my other guests and don’t expect breakfast in the morning.”

  “Gosh, I was counting on French toast.”

  She whirled, lower lip curling under her top teeth to form an F and probably the remainder of a familiar curse often heard on the streets of New York. Then Southern manners and good breeding kicked in. Her mouth clamped shut, and she strode across the hall, disappeared into the dining room, and soon was banging pots around in the kitchen.

  Just wait until she discovered I had no money to pay her. My phone buzzed against my butt, and I checked the screen. Cade. I let his call go to voicemail. Earlier, I’d had a fantasy of helping him with road flares and people who’d fallen, and then curling up at his place with a brandy and wicked intentions. Because of what I knew now, I couldn’t go through with that, not in a million years. Not with any man in Graylee. Shit.

  A startling bump against my shin was followed by a long slide of fur across both legs. I looked down at a fat tabby, which peered back with hazel eyes and meowed a greeting. “Hey,” I murmured, “do you like Danish Modern?”

  The cat merely reversed course across my legs and batted my knees with a couple of tail flicks. “Good,” I said, “because I’m kidnapping you.”

  B&B cats were used to being handled. This one went limp as I hefted her, all warm, doughy flesh and silken hair, the purrs already relaxing me. I hugged the tabby to my chest and carried her to the suite Cindy had assigned me, with the memorial room bearing down overhead.

  Inside, I set the cat on a rug and locked the door. Cindy would have a spare key, and she wasn’t the only one worried about an attack. After considering all of the horizontal furniture in the room, I slid a squat chest of drawers across the threshold.

  Feeling a little more secure in my bunker, I visited the bathroom, washed my hands, and then opened the bedroom drapes. Bleak light from the cloud-choked sky reflected my mood. Only the drift of more snow over the back yard—flowerbeds, shrubs, grass, and pines all shrouded in white—broke the stillness. Nothing else moved outside, not a single bird flitted and no squirrels scampered. If I pushed up the window sash, I knew I’d only hear the soft hiss of a million snowflakes landing.

  The tabby had just settled on my bed when phones pealed from other rooms, startling her upright. She puddled again into a furry orange blob, considered me through slit eyes, and then closed them once more.

  Cindy answered in the kitchen, her muted voice coming through the wall. From her comments, I gathered some guests would arrive late due to the driving conditions. Her ton
e displayed understanding and patience, the gracious innkeeper extending her offer of a sanctuary, a kind of refuge, while she harbored the same terrible secret as did everyone else in town.

  Somehow, I’d landed in the middle of a gothic novel. No, darker than that—something David Stark could’ve written if there were sinister supernatural elements at work. I checked the cat to make sure she hadn’t become an undead monster. Nope, just a napping tabby. Something about David niggled at me, though. He knew all about my dad, of course, “everything,” he’d said, but that wasn’t it. Whatever the insight was, I couldn’t grasp the threads before they submerged and were lost under the surface of my thoughts.

  The intermittent buzzing of incoming texts had ceased, making me wonder if my New York friends had given up on me, at least for the day, because I hadn’t responded to anyone in a number of hours. Actually, my right butt cheek still tingled periodically, the nerves there continuing to fire as if more messages were coming in, but those were phantom signals. Time to get caught up with my peeps.

  I slipped the cell out and clicked the power button, but the screen remained dark. Two more tries, same null result. Perfect—a dead battery and an explanation for the cessation of texts. And where were the charger and my emergency battery boost? In my purse, with Tara. Cade’s voicemail must’ve been the last thing to get through.

  Barricaded in hostile territory, cut off from the world, I joined the cat on the bed and tried to nap. Immediately, though, my recollection of Tara brought updated to-do lists to mind, each item punctuated by a flare of anger. The rage found new kindling as I considered David and Cade, the tender shoots of romantic feelings ripped out as I imagined the horror they’d allowed to perpetuate for so long. My friendship with Tim, which already had begun to flower, also was destroyed by the secret he’d kept from me. Eliminate them and also consider my track record with at least some of the women in town—Cindy, Paulina, Luz—and I was socially adrift.

  My old fears kicked in, the nightmares that had crept up in childhood with the faint echo of hooves that became louder as I progressed from adolescent to teenager: lonely, abandoned, unattractive, unloved. The Four Horsewomen, my constant companions. I slid under the covers, curled my body around the cat, and willed myself to sleep.

  When I awoke, the cat had moved. I couldn’t see her because the room was dark, but through the covers I felt her against my feet. Night had come on—the uncovered windows merely darkened rectangles against dark walls. Without thinking, I patted my back pocket for my cell, and then felt around the low table beside the platform bed until I touched the cool, glassy front of the phone. Then I remembered the battery had died. I padded into the bathroom, shut the door so as not to disturb Ms. Kitty, and turned on the light. Half-past eleven on my watch.

  I used a paper cup to drink from the tap until the dryness in my throat went away. The cat probably was thirsty, too, so I found a small plastic container in one of the drawers, rinsed it clean, and filled it with water. She meowed an inquiry as I approached but ignored my offering when I set the container beside her.

  During my return to the bathroom, I heard the cat lapping the water. Although I was starving Cindy’s pet along with myself, at least we were staying hydrated. However, only I had an obvious place to pee, so I pulled the chest of drawers away from the exit and opened the door enough for the tabby to depart. She did so without a backward glance, disappearing down the black hallway.

  Cindy had turned off every light in the house. Other than the pendulum clicks of a grandfather clock, the inn was silent. Either her guests had arrived and settled in, or it was just me and her, with a long night ahead. I decided to close the door, lock up, and set the barricade in place again. If the tabby returned, she’d let me know.

  I went into the bedroom and peered out one of the windows I’d uncovered. Lights from some neighboring houses cast enough of a glow to notice the snowfall had stopped. From the icy glaze of white atop nearby shrubs, I guessed about an inch had fallen. Nothing by New York standards, of course, but it might’ve set a record for Graylee, and only further emphasized my isolation—I hadn’t brought the proper footwear to walk on snow and ice. Even if I gave in to my habitual need for company, no way would I be able to get to Cade, let alone David out in the country. Not that I wanted either of them. But still….

  I imagined the stirring of hooves and saddle creaks from my four tormentors. Sleep wouldn’t come for a while again, and I needed a distraction to keep them at bay. The tablet computer Mr. Pearson had given to me was in one of my suitcases, and its battery still had a few hours of life, so I switched on the overhead lights and checked e-mail and Facebook to get caught up and share my news.

  When I considered telling my friends about what I’d learned, though, I paused. It was too horrible to post in a forum normally devoted to flippant or snarky observations, pet videos, family photos, and tributes to recently passed loved ones and celebrities. I realized I didn’t want any of my friends to know, or at the very least I didn’t want them spreading it around like juicy gossip.

  So here I was, another Graylee guardian of the secret: protecting it with my silence, doing my father’s bidding in a way. Without any pressure, I’d chosen to become one of them.

  The thought made me tremble. However, it also rearranged my feelings about the people here, gave me a dose of empathy. Things were more complex than I’d believed. If I exposed the terrible price my father had exacted from the Stapleton Scholars and their families, I could force the victims into the light as well. They wouldn’t want that scrutiny, wouldn’t want to tear off the scabs of shame, to dredge up deep pains and dark memories.

  Yes, the people here conspired with my father to perpetuate his sins, but they also were trapped by the affluence he’d provided them. For a Graylee resident who didn’t have a daughter chosen by my dad, and whose livelihood and lifestyle depended on him, it would’ve been easy to look the other way and then find someone to blame when those comforts were in danger. People did it all the time throughout history. Much easier to live with the guilt—and rationalize like crazy—than to do something about it.

  I tossed the tablet aside. Even with a better appreciation of what the townspeople were faced with, I still couldn’t understand why they’d let it go on for decades without real opposition. Could anyone have resisted the lure of the good life and stood up to my father?

  Tim and Abby sprang to mind. What if, in actuality, he wasn’t renovating their home but repairing—because something had happened to it? For those who stood up to my father and brought about layoffs and skyrocketing rents, people in town could escalate their calls to death threats. Cindy had told me to ask Tim about the current year’s Scholar. What if the Bladensburgs refused to knuckle under and someone acted on their threats? The new porch he’d installed—needed because of a firebomb? Maybe those roof shingles had looked dark from smoke and flames rather than decay. But why target his family? My father had never picked minority girls.

  I certainly didn’t have perfect recall like Dad, but I did inherit a little of his ability—it just took me longer to process and organize my thoughts. I pictured the memorial room again and how the row of frames on my right halted halfway across the wall, missing the current year. Now that I focused on it, the previous year’s winner looked different from the earlier Scholars. The newsprint hadn’t yellowed, but the teenager’s face still looked tan rather than pale. And the name—Isabela…Garcia? Yes, I could see it now.

  My father’s prejudice certainly wouldn’t have stopped him from desiring young women of color. Maybe he’d even gotten a sick, illicit thrill targeting a lovely girl from the ghetto. Unfortunately, there were plenty of examples of that throughout history, too. In the family photo I’d seen in Abby’s home, Tim’s sister was beautiful and certainly could’ve caught my father’s eye. And she was a senior this year.

  Tim had called himself a pariah. Possibly, the status applied to th
e whole family and only Abby and Tim stayed, to rise above Graylee’s scorn. In fact, maybe Tim had struck back. I remembered his refusal to enter the house when we first met—perhaps he’d been inside once before, back in July. Could my best friend in town have participated in my father’s murder?

  CHAPTER 20

  I dismissed the thought at first, recalling Abby’s scornful face when she’d nailed me for conjuring other slanderous ideas about Tim. However, helping Landry kill the goose that laid the golden eggs definitely would’ve cemented his pariah status with anyone who suspected him. They’d probably assume Graylee now teetered on the edge of collapse because of my dad’s death.

  Tim, of course, would remain a sphinx if I asked him. My only chance of piecing together what really had happened was by gathering more clues. Stuck in Danish Modern purgatory, how would I do that? My gaze fell upon the suitcases I’d rolled against the wall and hadn’t bothered to unpack. In one of them I’d stowed the case file Cade had given me.

  I found the thick folder shoved beneath a pile of bras and panties that would’ve given credence to Cindy’s “town slut” accusations. Settling back on the bed, I started to read. The mound of paper didn’t intimidate me. When I’d dated the NYPD detective a few years back, I would pore over his case documents while he snored in the bedroom. Often I ended up more prepared for his upcoming trial testimony than he was.

  Not one of my longer or wiser relationships, but at least I’d become familiar with typical criminal file organization. Cade’s entire incident report was in caps, which made it hard to read, but I guess it saved him the bother of using the shift key and allowed him to type even faster.