Dead Giveaway (Stillwater Trilogy 2)

"According to her--" Allie thumbed through some sheets of paper, came up with the statement she'd read only a few minutes earlier and quoted Grace. "'After hearing so many people accuse my mother and brother of killing my stepfather, I was finally ready to see for myself if he was buried out behind the barn.'"

"Yeah, right," Hendricks said.

"She wouldn't want to do it in the middle of the day--let anyone else know she'd begun to doubt her family. Besides, if they knew what she had planned, they might've tried to stop her.

Makes sense."

"I don't care. I don't believe her."

Allie wasn't sure she believed Grace, either. But she wasn't going to jump to the same conclusions as everyone else. When she operated from a preconceived notion, she often missed the most salient clues in a case. She'd learned that the hard way. While tracking down a serial ra**st in Chicago, she'd been so sure it was one man when it was really another that she'd misled the whole task force and the real culprit had slipped away. It had taken them an additional two years to find him. "We can't prove she's lying," she said. "As a matter of fact, right now we can't prove anything.

Joe marked the spot where Grace was digging, then we took a backhoe to Clay's farm. And what did we get for our trouble? The remains of the family dog, which died of old age before Barker ever went missing. That's it."

"We?" he challenged.

"The police," she clarified.

"I was there, and I'm telling you, as soon as we struck bone Grace was sure we'd found Barker. You should've seen her. She nearly fainted when we pulled that skull from the ground."

"She might've thought it proved someone in her family had killed her stepfather. She actually says that's what she thought in here." Allie slapped the report on the concrete floor.

"Finding out that you're so closely related to a murderer would be shocking for most people."

"I think she already knew her brother had done the evil deed and she was scared he'd get caught."

Allie stretched her legs in front of her because they were getting cramped from being crossed for so long. "Then why didn't we find any human remains?"

"Because Clay moved the body before we could get there, that's why."

"Was Clay watching you dig?" she asked.

"Yes sirree. No one steps onto his property without him knowing it. And it's best to get permission--with or without a search warrant. It could be dangerous to startle him."

She set aside the report she'd been reading, interested at last. "Did he seem nervous?

Frightened? Like Grace?"

"How could you ever tell? That man's made of stone."

Allie remembered the subtle evidence of vulnerability she'd witnessed in Clay last night, the embarrassment and humiliation, the anger and simmering resentment. He'd tried to flirt with her to ease the discomfort they were both feeling, so he wasn't without sensitivity.

"He's as human as the rest of us," she said.

"No, he's not. I could put a gun right between his eyes and c**k the damn trigger--and he'd dare me to fire. I've never seen a tougher sumbitch."

Clay was tough, all right. Allie suspected that life had made him that way. How else would he have survived the constant doubt, the suspicion, anger and animosity he'd battled for so many years? Allie could only wonder why he hadn't moved as far away from Stillwater as possible. What kept him around? The farm? As Barker's wife, Irene had inherited it when he disappeared. Then once Clay had graduated from college, she'd passed it on to him. Allie wasn't sure what kind of an agreement he had with his mother and sisters as far as the property was concerned, but surely he could sell out, pay them off if he owed them money, and buy another piece of land where no one had ever heard of the missing reverend.

"Why do you think he stays put?" she asked. If he'd killed Barker and buried him at the farm, that would explain it. But if he was innocent...

"Where else would he go?" Hendricks asked.

"There must be towns where he'd be welcomed. He's young, strong, handsome. Without Reverend Barker's disappearance hanging over his head, he'd be like anyone else."

Hendricks wiped the perspiration beading on his forehead. "Guess he stays 'cause he's got family in the area."

Why didn't they all find a new home? Allie wondered. Molly, the youngest of Irene's children at thirty, had left as soon as she graduated from high school. According to Madeline, she was currently designing clothes in New York. Grace had left, too, but she'd come back, and now that she was married to Kennedy Archer, Allie didn't think she'd leave again. Kennedy, along with his father, owned the bank. He wouldn't want to uproot his boys, abandon the family business and leave his parents. His father had just survived a bout with cancer. But Clay and Irene had never even attempted to get away. When he returned from college, she'd moved into town and let him take over at the farm. And that was that.

"Do you know much about Clay's background?" she asked, adjusting her position so she could see Hendricks without putting a crick in her neck.

"Aren't the details all there, in the files?" he asked.

Some of them were. But the Stillwater police force hadn't investigated many missing persons--or murders, for that matter--and the files weren't as detailed as they should be. She was looking for the word-of-mouth snippets her father and his predecessors had deemed unrelated or unimportant. If Hendricks was going to impose his presence on her, she figured she might as well learn what he knew. He loved gossip and generally picked up on whatever was being said around town. "There're a few bare facts. Where he was born, that sort of thing."

"He was born in Booneville, wasn't he?"

She nodded.

"My little sister was in his class when he moved here. Said he made good marks in school.

Until he was older."

"Did his grades start to fall before or after Reverend Barker went missing?"

"Mary Lee told me it happened about the same time, but I've never checked his transcripts."

"What about his natural father?" she asked.

"Ran off is all I heard."

Clay's file indicated that much, but no more. "Has anyone ever tried to locate Mr.

Montgomery?"

"Not that I recall. Why?"

She shrugged, but to her surprise, Hendricks caught on, anyway.

"You don't think Clay might've killed him, too?"

She rolled her eyes. "I'm no genius, but my guess is Clay would've been too young."

He didn't respond to the sarcasm in her voice. "So you were thinking of Irene? Of course!"