Dead Right (18 page)

“So you’d say they were close?”

“Not exactly.” She seemed thoughtful, almost philosophical. “Clay and my father were too different to ever be very close.”

Hunter wanted to talk about the ways in which her father and her stepbrother were incompatible, but she’d already knocked on the door, and a petite woman with short brown hair and brown eyes opened it before he could say more.

“Hi, Maddy.” She embraced Madeline, then turned to Hunter. “This must be your private investigator.”

“With a surfer-boy image,” Madeline said wryly.

“Boy?”
he echoed, slightly offended—especial y since he’d overheard her tel Kirk he was too young for her.

She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “Al ie, this is Hunter Solozano. And this,” she waved a hand at the shorter woman, “is my sister-in-law. The only woman who could bring my hard-to-get brother to his knees.”

“I don’t think anyone’s ever brought Clay to his knees,”

Al ie said, chuckling.

“Somehow I’m not surprised to hear Clay was a chal enge,” Hunter said.

“He was more than a chal enge,” Madeline responded.

“To most women around here, he was the impossible dream.”

And what had made him so remote? Hunter asked himself. Was it possible that the reverend had been
too
hard on his new son?

“Whitney’s the one who has him wrapped around her little finger,” Al ie said as she waved them in.

“Whitney is Al ie’s seven-year-old,” Madeline explained.

“She’s in school right now, so you won’t get to meet her today, but she’s darling.”

The inside of the house was as tidy as the outside. The living room smel ed of fresh paint and was decorated in a rich burgundy. A wedding photograph sat on one end of the fireplace mantel; it showed a man who had to be Clay with the woman Hunter had just met and a young girl with round cheeks and long blond hair. The mantel also held a col ection of candlesticks in varying shapes and sizes.

Al ie was friendly enough as she offered them a seat, but there was something about her eyes that bothered Hunter.

They seemed wary, a bit furtive. Considering the situation, however, he supposed that was natural. It couldn’t feel good to have others suspect your husband of murder. Maybe there were even times when
she
wondered about the missing reverend and the part her husband might’ve played….

“We can’t sit down. We won’t be here very long,”

Madeline said. “We were just hoping to talk to Clay for a minute. Is he around?”

“He’s out fixing the levee along the creek.”

She didn’t offer to cal him in. Hunter sensed that she was reluctant to let them speak to Clay. But if Madeline felt the same thing, she ignored it and barreled on as comfortably as any journalist would. “If you don’t mind, we’l walk around back and look for him.”

“I’l go with you,” she said, but judging by the smel emanating from the kitchen, they’d caught her with food on the stove.

“There’s no need to interrupt what you’re doing. We’l find him.”

“We could cal his cel phone,” Al ie said.

Madeline smiled at Hunter. “My brother’s final y entering the twenty-first century. He refused to get a cel phone for the longest time. And I could understand it, I guess, since he rarely troubled himself to pick up his regular phone.” She chuckled. “He was such a recluse until Al ie came along.”

Al ie had picked up the phone next to the couch, but Madeline told her not to bother. “I want to show Hunter the farm, anyway,” she said.

Clay’s wife was slow hanging up. “You’re sure? It could be quite a walk.”

“We’l cal if we don’t find him.” Madeline indicated that she had her own cel . “Okay if we go out the back?”

Al ie’s eyes ranged over Hunter in an assessing fashion.

Was she merely curious?

It was difficult to say, but Hunter could tel she was no al y. She smiled with her lips, but there was a stubborn protectiveness about her that put him on edge.

He returned her smile as if he hadn’t noticed, then fol owed Madeline into the kitchen, which was as old as hers but much larger. They walked through the back door to a deep porch that overlooked several acres of farmland.

The barn he’d spotted before stood to the right, beside the chicken coop he’d already assumed was there. Some farm equipment was clustered beyond that, as wel as a couple of rusted trucks that seemed to hail from the 1950s.

“My brother restores old cars and trucks,” Madeline explained before he could ask. “It’s his hobby.”

They crossed the porch, but she didn’t immediately descend the four steps. Instead, she leaned on the railing, gazing out into the distance, reminding Hunter of the picture he’d seen of her at age eight.

“Do you miss living here?” he asked.

Al ie stood at the door, but Madeline didn’t turn. She shaded her eyes against a pale yel ow sun and stared off into the distance. “A little. Mostly it makes me sad.” She waved toward the barn. “When my father wasn’t over at the church, he was usual y in there.”

“Taking care of the animals?”

“Writing his sermons. See that window?”

Hunter nodded.

“That was his office.”

“It’s already been searched?”

“A few times.”

“Can I see it?”

“Of course, but there’s not much left. Clay gutted it a year and a half ago.”

Hunter felt his eyebrows go up. “He needed the space?”

An odd expression flitted across her pretty features. “No.

I guess he just decided Dad wasn’t coming back.”

“Which is understandable,” he said for Al ie’s benefit, but when he turned he found she’d gone back inside.

Madeline pushed away from the railing. “Come on, let’s take a look.”

The cool, dark interior made Hunter think of the barn in
Charlotte’s Web.
He supposed it was because he didn’t see barns very often. But there were no horses or pigs.

Mostly, it was a large garage where Clay worked on cars.

“That’s a 1953 Hornet convertible,” Madeline said of a sky-blue car that could’ve been used in the making of
Grease.

“How much is it worth?” he asked.

“A couple of hundred thousand.”

Hunter coughed. There was a vehicle worth that much money sitting inside an old barn in the hil s of Mississippi?

“How do you know?”

“Because it’s on eBay. The current bid is $160,000.”

“Wow.”

“He didn’t start out with cars this expensive,” she said.

“He’s been working his way up.”

“Pretty soon the farm wil be his hobby.”

“I doubt it,” she said.

“Why not?”

“He was born to work the land. He loves it.”

“How did he get started with cars? His father? Your father?”

“Neither. He’s just always loved them—and had the talent for doing whatever needed to be done. After my father disappeared and Clay came back from col ege and father disappeared and Clay came back from col ege and took over the farm, he ripped out the stal s and converted it into a garage.”

“So your father had animals in here?”

“The meanest son-of-a-bitch horse you’ve ever met,” a deep voice responded.

Hunter turned to find a man standing in the doorway. He had thick black hair fal ing across his forehead, blue eyes and a dark shadow of beard growth covering a very square jaw. He was tal , too. Probably three inches tal er than Hunter and fifty pounds heavier.

Hunter might have felt a little intimidated, but he preferred to think of himself as light and fast—a skateboarder, surfer or skier as opposed to a footbal player, wrestler or one-man army.

“You must be Madeline’s stepbrother.”

He didn’t bother to smile. “And you must be the dick from California.”

Despite the situation, Hunter couldn’t restrain a laugh.

Clay’s flat, emotionless voice suggested that he wasn’t necessarily referring to Hunter’s profession. “I can see you’re a man who says what he means.”

“Any other kind of man isn’t a man.”

“And if I prefer the term P.I.?”

“You’re in Mississippi, son,” he replied. “We don’t give a damn about being political y correct around here.”

Son…
He was definitely pushing his advantage in age and weight. “Which makes me what?” Hunter asked. “A liberal?”

“You tel me.”

“I am what I am,” he said with a shrug. When he didn’t act threatened or upset, Hunter recognized a positive shift in Clay’s attitude. He would’ve relaxed—except that he suspected Al ie had cal ed Clay the second they’d stepped off the porch and that Clay didn’t like them snooping around. At least not on their own.

“How old are you?” Clay asked.

Hunter cast Madeline a sidelong glance. “Did you tel him to ask me that?”

“You look young,” she said with a shrug.

“I look like a certified badass,” he corrected, hoping to ease the tension, and was rewarded with the low rumble of a chuckle from Clay.

“So?” Madeline said to her stepbrother.

“So what?” he responded grumpily.

“If you’re finished putting Hunter on notice, we’l move ahead with the tour.”

Clay held out a large hand, one that was nicked and gouged. “Be my guest. If he stays long enough, maybe we’l see what kind of dick he real y is.”

Hunter turned and cocked an eyebrow at Madeline’s stepbrother. “I’m a damn good one,” he said.

“Which means what?”

“Which means if you’re involved in this mess, you should be worried.”

If Clay was surprised that Hunter would stand his ground, he didn’t show it. There was a slight tightening around his eyes and mouth, that was al .

“Good thing he’s not involved.”

Al ie had joined them. She came up behind Clay and put her hand on his back in an obvious effort to calm him. That simple action let Hunter know that Al ie loved and supported her husband one hundred percent. The devotion in Clay’s eyes when he realized his wife was there said he felt the same way about her.

This case was going to be more difficult than Hunter had thought. The people here stood together, guarded their secrets wel .

“Welcome to a smal southern town,” he muttered.

Evidently, stereotypes were stereotypes for a reason.

“He’s
not
involved,” Madeline said, repeating Al ie’s comment.

Hunter pul ed his instant camera from the pocket of his coat. “And what kind of dick would I be if I took everything I was told at face value?” he asked with a smile.

Madeline clasped her hands in front of her, so tightly he could see the veins stand out. “You’re here to prove Clay innocent.”

He wasn’t here for any such thing. He was here to find out who’d kil ed her father, and at this point everyone was suspect. But he didn’t say so. He wandered over to take a look at the office.

Clay’s voice stopped him just as his hand curled around the doorknob. “That’s locked.”

He glanced back. “Because…”

“I like it that way.”

“Stop it.” Al ie nudged her husband meaningful y. “You have to forgive Clay, Mr. Solozano. When the police couldn’t figure out what happened to Madeline’s father, they blamed him. It was ridiculous, of course. Clay was only sixteen at the time. But Reverend Barker was a beloved pastor, and folks in Stil water wanted someone to pay for their loss.”

“I understand,” he said.

“That room is locked because we never use it,” she went on. “There’s just the three of us—me, Clay and my daughter, Whitney. We have plenty of space, and it gets cold in the winter. There’s no heat in that room.”

“I see.”

“My father used to have a space heater,” Madeline volunteered. “And an air-conditioning unit that sat in the window.”

“It was so old Clay final y threw it away,” Al ie said, stil trying to compensate for her surly husband.

“Is there a key?” Hunter asked pointedly.

“Somewhere,” she said. “I’m not sure—”

Surprisingly, Clay interrupted. “It’s in the cupboard above the fridge.”

Al ie hesitated long enough that Hunter knew she hadn’t planned to tel them. “I’l get it,” she said at last.

Hunter and Clay stared at each other while they waited; Madeline kept up a stream of nervous chatter.

“The convertible’s looking good,” she said. “How’s the bidding going?”

“Better than I expected.” Her stepbrother offered no specifics.

“When’s it over?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“Are you going to have trouble letting this one go?”

His gaze final y strayed from Hunter’s face. “Trouble?”

“Isn’t this one of the rarest cars you’ve owned?”

“There’s another one right behind it.”

“You put so much work into each vehicle, I’d want to keep them al .”

“The work is the part I like.”

“What are you planning to do next?” she asked.

“The Chevy sitting beyond the tractor.”

“Not the truck!”

“It’s about time, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know. I’m so used to seeing that old hunk of junk, this place won’t look the same without it.”

No comment.

She peered into the car. “Even when you’re finished, it won’t be worth nearly as much as this baby, wil it?”

“No.”

“So why mess with it?”

“I’m ready for something different.”

He didn’t do it for the money. That was clear. A few other things were clear, too. Clay had a giant chip on his shoulder, and he had little, if any, interest in seeing his stepfather’s murder solved.

“How do you feel about Lee Barker?” Hunter asked.

Madeline’s lips parted as if she wasn’t comfortable with the suddenness of this question. But Clay didn’t seem startled. He looked Hunter right in the eye, stubborn, defiant. “I don’t think about him anymore.”

“And back then?”

“We had our differences, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Just the usual stuff,” Madeline added. “The kind of problems any teenager would have—”

Hunter raised a hand. “Let
him
answer, okay?”

Clay folded his arms across his chest. “I already did.”

“You don’t like the fact that I’m here, do you?” Hunter said.

“You thought I’d be excited about it?”

Not real y. It was obvious that Clay didn’t trust him.