• nineteen •

“I am glad you are no relation of mine … if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty.”

—Jane to Mrs. Reed, Jane Eyre

From Windy Corner Luke drove to the south side of town to check on Jeremiah Edwards. His small one-story house stood out from its neighbors with its immaculate paint, tidy lawn, and porch bare of all clutter. When Edwards answered the door after Luke’s third knock—looking like the villain of a zombie movie with his pasty skin, deeply shadowed eyes, and crumpled overalls—the contrast between the house and its owner set Luke back a pace.

Edwards stooped in the doorway, open only far enough to admit his skinny frame. “Sheriff. Is there a problem?”

“Emily was worried when you didn’t show up for work today. ’Fraid that knock on the head you got Saturday night might’ve laid you up. I knew you didn’t have anybody here to take care of you, so I thought I better come by and make sure you’re okay.”

“Fine. I’m fine. Worked Saturday, took today off. Thought she knew.” He spoke as if each word had to be pushed out of him with all the force his lungs could muster.

“You don’t look fine. You look like hell. I’d go see a doctor if I were you.”

“No doctor. I look to the Lord for healing.”

“Better pray harder, then. And get some sleep.” Edwards started to close the door, but Luke put his palm against it. “While I’m here, I would like to ask you a couple questions about Saturday night.”

Edwards didn’t budge, only stared at him as if he didn’t comprehend the words. “Saturday night…”

“Maybe you didn’t hear what happened. What time did you leave?”

“Nine thirty, ten. Don’t remember.”

“Did you realize Jake Newhouse had been killed?”

Edwards passed a hand over his face. “Mrs. Cavanaugh told me.”

“Did you go downstairs at all during the evening?”

He shook his head slowly, as if it cost him all his strength.

That squared, as no one had reported seeing him anywhere other than the third floor. Luke took out his notebook to check the details of Roman’s story. “Did you see Roman when he came back up, somewhere around eight thirty?”

“No. Front room whole time. May have dozed off. Not working at that point, just there to keep an eye.”

Luke tapped his pencil on the cover of the notebook. “Sounds like you weren’t actually keeping an eye. Not an open one, at any rate.”

Edwards raised a hand as far as his waist and let it drop. “Long day. Tired. Good worker, Roman. Trust him.”

“Even though Emily doesn’t?”

“Trust him for work. Not women.”

“I see. So there’s nothing you can tell me that might help this investigation?”

Again the labored head movement, a few degrees to the left and back to center.

“All right. You get some sleep now, and be sure to call me if you need help, hear?”

“The Lord helps those that help themselves.”

Luke headed back to his office. As he rounded the corner onto Third, he saw a black BMW parked square in his own spot in the office driveway. What the heck?

He parked the SUV on the street and strode into the outer office. Heather, sitting at the front desk, mouthed at him, “Trouble,” with a tilt of her head toward his office door. “Mr. Newhouse.”

Oh, hell. Just what he needed to round off a frustrating day.

He squared his shoulders and strode into his office. Carter Newhouse stood by the window in a tailored gray suit and camel’s-hair overcoat, drumming his manicured fingers on the sill.

He faced Luke square on with fists at his side. “What are you doing to find my son’s killer?”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Newhouse. Won’t you have a seat?” Luke swung an arm toward the guest chair as he rounded the desk to sit in his own. He wasn’t about to be intimidated by a bully like Carter Newhouse, no matter how much money and influence he flashed around.

Newhouse strode to the chair but stood behind it, gripping the back. “Don’t toy with me, Richards. I want to know what’s going on.”

“If you’ll sit down, I’ll be happy to fill you in. I’ve had a long day and I don’t like craning my neck to talk to people.” He kept his voice calm, friendly. Newhouse hesitated, then yanked the chair out and perched on the edge of it, palms flat on the desk.

“We have about half-a-dozen possibles—people who were seen at or near the scene of the crime during the time window for the murder. I’m working at eliminating them. When I’ve finished eliminating all those who are innocent, we’ll be left with the guilty party. Simple as that. I’ve spent the last two days going over evidence and interviewing suspects. I have an idea of who’s likely and who’s not.”

Newhouse slapped a palm on the desk. “I don’t want your harebrained ideas. I want an arrest!”

Luke swallowed his anger and pride. “I understand your frustration, Mr. Newhouse. But there’s no point in arresting anybody if we can’t prove him guilty. Since we don’t have any eyewitnesses, the final elimination—the actual proof of guilt or innocence—can only come from the lab’s analysis of bloodstains and DNA.”

Newhouse opened his mouth, but Luke held up a silencing palm. “Sheriff Tucker has already asked the lab to make this case their top priority. That’s all anybody can do to make them work faster. So I suggest you go home and let us do our jobs. I give you my word we will catch whoever killed your son, and he will pay for his crime.” He added reluctantly, “Or she.”

Newhouse might be caught up in the angry stage of grief, but he was also a lawyer. He must know firsthand how a case could fall apart in court if the evidence wasn’t strong enough. Luke watched his need to blame someone, to force action, wrestle against his common sense.

Newhouse buried his head in his hands, clutching his fingers in his perfectly groomed hair. Then he let go, smoothed his hair back, and stood. “You have until Friday.” He strode out of the office without a backward glance.

Infected with Newhouse’s impatience, Luke reached for the phone to call the ME about autopsy results. But it rang before he picked it up.

“Luke? I’ve had an interesting conversation with Cordelia.” Emily told him what the drama teacher had said.

“Think she’s telling the truth?”

“On the whole, yes. She dropped her guard completely. I don’t think she’s a good enough actress to pull that off unless it was genuine.”

Luke rubbed his neck. He’d told Newhouse he just needed to eliminate people. So why did he get this sinking feeling in his gut as suspects dropped away? Of course, none of those who looked innocent could be completely cleared until the lab results came in. He cheered up a tiny bit at that thought.

“Listen, Em, I really appreciate all you’ve done. Could you do one more thing for me?”

“What is it?”

He didn’t like the cautious note in her voice. “Could you go see Jake’s mom? She’s a mouse of a thing and I’m afraid I’d intimidate her. She might speak more freely to you.”

“What do you want me to ask her?”

“Just try to find out anything you can about Jake that might shed some light. We’ve got half-a-dozen people with some kind of motive, but there might be something else we don’t know about.”

“Should I go see her tonight?”

“Nah, better wait till tomorrow when Newhouse isn’t home. She’ll never peep when he’s around.”

“All right, tomorrow morning it is.” He gave her the address, and she said a curt good-bye.

At least she was still willing to help him. She couldn’t be too mad at him.

Or could she? She wasn’t helping him solve the case regardless of outcome; she was only trying to clear Katie. If she ran across anything that threatened to implicate Katie, would she pass it on?

Luke couldn’t answer that question to his own satisfaction. And it raised another one: Could he continue to love a woman who would not only lie to him personally, but deliberately pervert the course of justice?

*   *   *

Tuesday morning Jeremiah showed up as usual, looking far worse than he had on Saturday, but apparently ready to work. He mumbled some excuse about the day before, which Emily decided not to question. She wasn’t his mother, after all.

After breakfast she drove to the Newhouse home. The building was clearly intended to have the status of a mansion, but she couldn’t accord that title to such a modern monstrosity. It was a successful man’s monument to his own success—certainly not a home.

The impression was only strengthened when the maid ushered her into the reception room, in which the unfriendly black leather club chairs were the warmest element. All else was metal and glass, creating an effect so coldly masculine it froze Emily’s blood in spite of the quite adequate radiant heating. She couldn’t believe a woman had been permitted to have any influence on the design or decoration of this place.

When Mrs. Newhouse entered, her shuffling steps noiseless on the white carpet, Emily’s impression was confirmed. Beneath the immaculately groomed façade, her shrinking form and ruined face told a story not only of fresh grief but of a lifetime of being beaten—perhaps literally—into submission. She doubted Mrs. Newhouse had any say even in her choice of clothing.

Emily had planned her strategy, but now she said her opening speech with more sincerity than she’d intended. “Mrs. Newhouse? I’m Emily Cavanaugh. It was my house where—the party took place. I just wanted to tell you how terribly sorry I am and ask if there’s anything I can do to help.”

Mrs. Newhouse touched Emily’s fingers in greeting, then subsided into a chair. She clutched a lace-trimmed handkerchief, but her reddened eyes were dry. Emily suspected she’d cried herself out over the last two days. She waved Emily to the opposite chair.

“Thank you, you’re very kind.” She spoke barely above a whisper, putting one word after another as a weary wanderer still miles from shelter drags his unwilling feet. “But I really don’t see what anyone can do. Jake is gone. Nothing can bring him back.”

“Is he—was he your only child?”

“I have an older son, Robert. He lives in Portland. A lawyer, like his father.” She stared out the massive window. “So much like his father.”

A volume of history seeped through the cracks of those few words. “You were closer to Jake, then?”

Mrs. Newhouse heaved a sigh that seemed to come from her toes. “For a while. When he was little. But then I lost him, too.” She turned to face Emily. “Truthfully, Jake has been gone from me for a very long time. All that’s changed now is I’ve lost any hope of ever winning him back.”

Emily felt some guilt at exploiting the woman’s unearned confidence. She must never have the opportunity to speak to a sympathetic human being, or she wouldn’t open up like this with a stranger. But Emily reminded herself she meant to use any revelations to help catch Jake’s killer, not to exploit them to his mother’s harm. She forged ahead.

“What drew him away from you?”

“What draws any boy away from his mother? He was desperate to please his father. And being close to me would never accomplish that.”

Emily’s shock must have showed on her face. She’d known going in this wasn’t a happy marriage, but she was nevertheless appalled by the depth of dysfunction that statement implied.

Her hostess shot her a sidelong glance. “My husband despises me, Mrs. Cavanaugh. There’s no secret about that. And because I’ve never been able to stand up to his bullying, Jake grew to despise me as well.”

Without thinking, Emily said, “I got the impression he despised women in general. Except as sex objects, of course.”

Mrs. Newhouse winced, and Emily immediately regretted her lapse into bald honesty. “I’m so sorry—I didn’t mean—”

She waved a hand weighted with a diamond bracelet that might as well have been a handcuff. “Don’t apologize. What you say is no news to me. I know Jake—behaved badly with girls. I’ve heard the gossip, and I always dreaded the day would come—” She sat straight and peered into Emily’s eyes. “Tell me truly—may I call you Emily?”

“Of course.”

“And I’m Mildred. Tell me—was Jake killed by a girl he’d wronged? Or a jealous husband or boyfriend?”

Emily hated to answer that, but Mildred had asked her for the truth. “We—Lieutenant Richards isn’t sure yet who killed him, and until we know who, we can’t know exactly why. But it does seem fairly likely to have been one or the other of those.”

Mildred collapsed back into her chair. “I knew it. I knew he would bring down judgment upon his head. My poor, poor, foolish boy.”

She lay there for a minute, then with an energy Emily would not have thought she possessed, she sprang from her chair and faced her guest with blazing eyes. “It’s all his father’s fault. Jake wanted to make him proud, wanted to be the golden boy like his brother. He didn’t have the brains for law school or even college, but he had the looks.” She shuddered as if remembering how his father’s version of those looks had ensnared her in her youth. “He had the looks, and he knew how to use them. Just like his father did.”

She seemed to re-collect herself and walked to the window, where she pounded her fists against the glass of her prison. “And it worked. His father was proud of him for being such a ‘ladies’ man.’” She turned back to Emily. “What an ironic phrase that is. A man who cares nothing for women except to use them for his own pleasure and ego is called a ladies’ man. Ladies’ bane would be more like it.”

Emily stood to face her. Clearly this woman had some backbone if she could make a speech like that. Hesitantly she asked, “Why have you put up with it all these years?”

Mildred’s eyes were as bleak as the gray, tempestuous sea that made her backdrop. “I kept hoping Jake would come back to me. I knew if I left his father, I’d never see him again.” Then realization visibly dawned. “But there’s no point in staying now.”

She looked around as if seeing the room in its true character for the first time. “I could leave. I could leave all of it. I have my own money, you know. Not a lot, but enough to live on. I could walk out of here right now and never look back.”

She lifted her hand and stared at the diamond cuff. Then with a savage movement she tore it off her wrist and dashed it against the window. The diamonds screeched their way down, marring the smooth surface of the glass. “You thought you could tie me with trinkets and threats, Carter Newhouse? You never tied me at all. Only my own doting foolishness did that. Well, now the worm has turned.” She strode to the door, then turned back as if remembering Emily’s existence. “If you’ll excuse me, Emily, I have some packing to do. The clothes on my back and a few things I brought with me into this travesty of a marriage. I won’t take anything that came from him.”

Emily was flabbergasted. While she applauded Mildred’s decision, she felt it would be irresponsible to leave her in this fevered state. “Do you have anywhere to go? You’d be welcome at Windy Corner until you decide exactly what you want to do.” Then she mentally kicked herself. Of course the woman wouldn’t want to stay in the house where her son was killed.

“Thank you, but no. I’m going as far away as I can get, and the sooner the better. He won’t let me go easily, you know. So it’s better if no one knows where I am.”

“Won’t you even stay for the funeral?”

A spasm of pain crossed the pale face, where two bright spots of color now burned. “No. If I stay even an hour, I might lose my nerve. But if I might—call you and find out where and when it will be held—?”

“Of course.” Emily scribbled her number on a sheet of the small notebook she carried in her purse and handed it to Mildred. She’d even be willing to force herself to attend as Mildred’s proxy. What a terrible life this woman must have led, to be willing to sacrifice her own son’s funeral in order to escape it.

Mildred took Emily’s hands. “Thank you. You’ll never know how much you’ve done for me.” She leaned forward and kissed Emily’s cheek, then turned and hurried from the room. As Emily left the house, she heard Mildred telling the maid to take the rest of the day off.

Stunned, Emily drove down the hill into town to report to Luke. She’d learned nothing that would help the case. But about the dark side of marriage and parenthood she’d learned a great deal. Perhaps being childless had not been an unmixed curse after all.