OVER HER DEAD BODY: The Bliss Legacy - Book 2 (32 page)

Erica spat out the word, “Bitch!” and glared at Dinah’s back and watched her disappear through the doorway.

Christiana squared her arms on the table and rested her head on them, her blond hair making a curtain to shield her obvious distress.

All of them looked as stunned as Keeley felt, and none of them seemed capable of offering up more than silence.

Keeley reached across the table and stroked Christiana’s head. At the same time Gus put his big warm hand on Keeley’s nape, squeezed, then leaned down to whisper in her ear, “I’m going to talk to Dinah.”

His breath still warming her ear, Dinah’s words still chilling her heart, Keeley watched him leave.

Question period was over.

A half hour later, her hood pulled snug to her head against the intermittent splatters of rain and the threat of more, Keeley was on her own and grateful for it. Mayday House seethed with tension and personal confusions, and with everyone caught up in their own reactions to Dinah’s story, no one had figured out a way to ease them. Least of all herself.

Everyone agreed on one thing: Jimmy Stark’s body had to be found, even if it meant leveling Mayday House to do it.

Keeley, a good couple of miles from Mayday House, trudged along the muddy country road and tried to make sense of things. Like her mind, the night was murky and dark, but her eyes were accustomed to it, and she knew the lumpy, puddle-studded farmer’s road well enough to watch her step.

What she could not do was ease her heart, organize her disoriented thinking, or shake the feeling she’d been washed up on a strange shore, where the trees were blue and the sky was green.

Before Dinah told her story, the mystery had centered on Mayday House and Mary Weaver. Now the mystery swirled around her own dear mother.

The idea of her shy, deeply religious mother having secrets was as difficult to accept as her part in covering up the death of Stark, or the shocking visual of Mary Weaver swinging a bedside lamp and killing Stark.

“Everyone has a darkness in them,” she remembered Mary telling her. “Sometimes they put it there themselves, and sometimes it arrives on its own. People come in shades of gray, darlin’.” She hadn’t thought back then that Mary was referring to herself—or to Aileen.

Keeley knew her mother’s story, or thought she did. Aileen had come over from Ireland with an American college student. She was eighteen when she became pregnant with Keeley. The boy, for “certain reasons,” was compelled to leave her.

When Keeley was ten, a year before her mother died, she’d asked about those “certain reasons” and she’d been told, her
“da
was a good man, but a melancholy one. One with his own calling.”

When she’d asked where he was, the answer was vague. “A place too far away to find.”

When Aileen died, whatever clues there were to Keeley’s father’s past or whereabouts went with her to her grave. There were no photos, no letters, no young girl’s diary in which to dig. Eventually, Keeley stopped wondering about her mother’s ill-fated love, and accepted it as a painful part of her life she was unwilling to talk about.

Keeley hadn’t thought about it for a long time.

She thought about it now, both the story she’d grown up with and about her mother who, if Dinah’s story was true, had kept quiet about a lot more than Keeley’s father. She’d been silent about a killing.

According to Dinah, she hadn’t wanted “publicity.” The word loomed large in her mind, as if it were an elephant at Sunday Mass; the idea of her mother concerned with such a thing was at odds with her every childhood memory of her. Yet Aileen had involved herself in covering up a killing and a secret burial because of it.

A burial that meant there was a body, Jimmy Stark’s body, deep in Mayday’s past—and future.

Nothing fit. Nothing made sense.

Keeley stopped walking and stared unseeing into the mist-shrouded night. The first pelting of serious rain slapped at her face, and with it came the terrible, stomach-turning sense she may be the only one to know where the body was.

The only one who would ever know if I keep it to myself, leave Stark where he is and honor the secret my mother and grandmother spent their lives protecting.

A clap of distant thunder made her look up. Her wet feet made her look down, and she turned and walked slowly back to the house.

Tomorrow at first light she’d find Jimmy Stark. Then she’d make her decision.

Dolan tossed his cell phone on the bed, took a breath so deep it was painful, then shot a stream of vile curses into his luxurious hotel suite.

Still alive. The bitch was still alive!

“Goddamn you, Mace.”

After another couple of breaths, he walked to the hotel phone on the desk under the window and picked it up.

“I’d like a map. Southern Washington. And a rental car, doesn’t matter what as long as they can deliver within the hour …. No, I’m not checking out, just a small emergency …. Call me when the car’s here. If you can do it in less than an hour, I’ll make it worth your while.” He put down the phone.

For the first time since this fiasco started, he felt in control. Maybe there was something to this clean and sober shit, after all. Maybe he’d finally found the smarts he’d buried under a ton of booze and cocaine for ten years.

Not that he couldn’t use a little blow right now, help him cope with the hot poker embedded in his brain.

I should never have relied on Mace, never have trusted him.

All this time—wasted—and she was still breathing.

Just like his antique of a father, William, still hanging on to life. He shook his head in frustration and disbelief. You’d think the bastard had something to live for, while Dolan had nothing at all, until he got what was due him—the miserable son of a bitch’s money. It seemed like forever he’d been waiting for his due, playing his stupid son-that-gives-a-shit game. Maybe he should rethink himself on that score when he got home.

After he’d done Farrell.

He tossed some clothes in his bag, and on top of them he placed his brand-new toy, a Smith and Wesson Sigma 9mm automatic. He’d bought it the day after Mace’s and his last meeting. It wouldn’t drop a charging rhino, but it would take care of his problems.

“Say your prayers,
sister.
You’re about to meet the man upstairs.” Not that he believed there was one.

He zipped up the bag, his mind racing. While he was taking care of family matters, he’d take care of Mace, too, end that useless partnership permanently.

The idea of that warmed him. In the next few hours his life was about to change for the better—and he relished his new sense of control. He grinned.

Maybe he was a chip off the dying geezer’s block after all. The old man always said if you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself.

His plan exactly.

Close to midnight, Gus, his leather jacket sodden, his jeans the same, walked the graveyard, went through the hole in the hedge, and crossed the backyard. He’d come back to get his car, because wherever Keeley had gone, this time it wasn’t anywhere near the church. He’d started with the priest’s house, thinking it would be her first stop, but instead of Barton he’d wakened his ancient housekeeper who’d told him “the father was away,” visiting his brother in the next town.

This time she’d eluded him.

He’d circled out from Mayday and walked until the heat of his anger at her for leaving the house alone turned to cold dread in his chest.

Sidestepping the lumpy sandbox, he crossed the grid of weeds and high grass, now rooted in a series of rain ponds dotting Mayday’s back lawn, and headed for the house. Nearing it, Gus shook the rain from his hair and glanced up in time to see the kitchen light go on.

He slammed through the back door. “Where in hell have you been?” The heat boiled up again. He wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled, but for that he’d need muscle, and his had gone soft with relief on sight of her.

She was heading toward the stove with a kettle in her hand; she stopped and frowned at him, then said, “Tea?”

“Jesus.” He forked his fingers through his wet hair, shoved it roughly off his forehead. “No, I don’t want tea. I want to know where you were.”

“Quit cursing.” She put the kettle on the stove and turned on the element. “It was either go for a walk or have one of my shake-and-quake episodes, so I decided on the former.”

“You should have—”

“I should have told you?” She walked toward him and touched his face. “I thought about it, but I needed to be alone. I had some thoughts to sort through. And the way I saw it, all the bogeymen were sound asleep at Mayday.”

“Not Mace.”

“The chance of that man having any interest in me is less than zero.” She gave him a direct look. “Even if he was, I was careful. Unless he was hiding in the backyard and knew the farm roads as well as I do, I knew there’d be no problem. There wasn’t.” Her jaw firmed. “Plus I took that.” She pointed to a can of pepper spray on the kitchen table. “I’m not careless, Gus, and I’m not stupid, but I won’t live in fear.”

He took her by the shoulders. “Well, I do—at least when it comes to you—and I want you to promise me you won’t do that again.”

“No. I don’t make promises I won’t keep.”

He let his hands drop, afraid this time he would throttle her, and said, “Fair enough. We both understand the rules.” And if she thought he was going to let her out of his sight until this business with Mace was cleared up, she was dead wrong. But it wasn’t worth arguing about. Most things weren’t. You meet an immovable object, you don’t butt heads with it. You watch, keep your mouth shut, and wait it out. Maybe she didn’t get it yet, but she was his and he’d protect her; he wasn’t asking her permission. “This relationship of ours grows more interesting every day,” he said.

She lifted her chin, and he saw the tension in her face. “If you’re worried about it, you can always leave and—”

He touched her mouth with his fingers to shut her up and lowered his head to ensure he met her eyes. “The only thing I’m worried about is you and Mayday house. I want you safe, because I don’t want to lose you. Ever. Leaving is not an option. You got that?”

She nodded, but her tension didn’t appear to ease.

The whistle of the kettle cut through the kitchen with the pitched whine of an emergency siren. Keeley set it aside, then turned off the stove element. “How did you make out with Dinah?” she asked, her back still to him. “Do you believe her about not knowing where Jimmy Stark is buried?”

Gus shrugged out of his wet jacket and went to hang it on one of the hooks beside the back door. “Yes, I believe her. All she did was repeat what she said. She fell asleep, and when she woke up, the body was gone. Mary didn’t volunteer the information about what they did with it, and Dinah didn’t ask. It looks as if they all played the game of let’s-pretend-it-never-happened and went on with their lives.” He stopped. “Except—”

“Except what?” She poured the boiling water over a teabag in a brown teapot.

“Stark’s death was the reason Dinah gave up Christiana. When she left Seattle for Mayday House, no one knew she was carrying Stark’s kid, and after what happened, she decided to leave it that way. For her sake and Mary’s, so she says. The way Dinah saw it, as links to a dead man go, a kid is as strong as they get. She didn’t want the link. To Stark. The porn movie. Any of it.”

“So the adoption was done under the radar.”

“Apparently the women”—he watched her face, saw it close up at his use of the plural—“talked it over, decided it would be best.”

“I see.” She carried the teapot to the table, where she’d set out a mug and poured herself some tea— with only a slight tremor.

Tense, Gus thought, seriously tense. “After the baby was born, Dinah left. Went back east. She hasn’t been back here since—until now.”

Keeley didn’t seem to be listening. Her mug cradled between her hands, she stared into nowhere.

He sat down in the chair opposite her across the table. “You all right?”

“As well as can be expected for a daughter who’s just found out her mother was involved in covering up a killing.”

“We screw up. It’s what people do. Then they’re stuck with it.” He knew all about being in that hellish place. He’d spent half a life there, living with a bogus murder charge, certain no one would believe a street kid.

“It was a clear case of self-defense. They should have called the police. The priest at St. Ivan’s. Anyone. They shouldn’t have lied.” She closed her eyes a moment, then slowly opened them as if it hurt to do so.

He wanted to tell her people lied all the time, but knew his hard-earned cynicism wouldn’t help. But a change in direction might. “There’s one other thing.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It was Dinah who sent the books. Or more accurately arranged they be sent.” Good old Cassie, Gus thought, a true-blue gofer until the end.

Her eyes lifted to his, still tired, only dimly interested. “Why?”

“Her way of helping the cause. She figured a good scare and you’d do what I wanted you to do. Sell out.” He lifted her chin, smiled into her eyes. “She had no idea she was dealing with a warrior woman.” The smile she gave him in return looked fragile. “It’s late,” he said. “And you’re tired. The smart thing to do is go to bed. Think about it tomorrow.”

She drank her tea, and as if she hadn’t heard him, stared out the window. “That’s what they should have done,” she murmured. “They should have called Father Randall.” It was as if she were slipping into a dream state, as if her thoughts were smothering her.

Gus had no idea who Father Randall was and at this point didn’t much care. Second guessing a years-old mind-set was a waste of time. Best to deal with reality. And reality right now was getting this woman to rest. He walked around the table and pulled out her chair. “Come on. You need sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be rough.”

“By rough, you mean Christiana and Paul, don’t you?”

“They want to organize the next step.”

“Finding the body.” Her voice was flat, lifeless.

“Has to happen, Keeley.”

“You’re right,” she said in the same dry tone. “Tomorrow will be rough.”