Dead Right (Stillwater Trilogy 3)

“Out with friends. But then he came home.”

“And from that point he’s only got his mother and sisters to vouch for him?”

“More or less.”

Hunter’s discomfort increased. Was she really sure about Clay—or just blind to the possibility? “What about your stepmother’s first husband?”

“What about him?”

“He never called or came to visit? Never paid child support? Never sent a Christmas card?”

“Growing up, we never heard from him. Didn’t even know where he was. But he showed up last summer. Turns out he’s been living in Alaska all these years. He flies fishermen to remote lakes and streams, that sort of thing.”

Hunter tucked that piece of information away to examine later. A boy abandoned by his father could easily harbor a deep resentment of adult males. “Tell me a little more about Irene.”

“After my father met her, they got married and she brought her children to live with us. Clay and I were thirteen. Grace was ten; Molly was eight.”

“Did you get along with your stepsiblings?”

“Very well.”

“You never fought?” He didn’t bother hiding his skepticism.

“We had the usual squabbles. But to be honest, those years were some of the best of my life. In the summer, after we finished our work, Clay would give us rides on the tractor. Sometimes Grace and I would dress up in Irene’s old clothes and pretend we were getting married. Molly would beg us to put makeup on her, and we’d weave dandelion wreaths to wear in our hair.”

He found the images her words created oddly appealing, like something out of a book. “What about your stepmother?”

Her turn signal clicked as Madeline passed the car in front of them. “Mom would make lemonade and bake cookies and we’d go out on the porch to read the Bible. I can still hear the creak of her rocking chair, the insects buzzing, feel the heat of late afternoon…”

“So your stepmother was as religious as your father.”

The hesitation in her manner told him she wasn’t as sure of her next answer. “No…he was the one who insisted on daily Bible study. But she made a party out of it. She knew how to make the most mundane tasks fun.”

Hunter sensed Madeline’s desire to steer his interest away from the Montgomerys. But if she wanted him to solve this disappearance—this probable murder—he had to investigate all possibilities and eliminate them one by one. “Did your father and your stepmother ever fight?”

Her teeth sank into her bottom lip and, for some reason, Hunter thought of the condom a client had recently handed him as a promotional piece for his strip joint. He’d shoved it in his wallet, but he had no plans to use it, at least in Mississippi. Fortunately, he wouldn’t be tempted—not by Madeline Barker, anyway. She had a boyfriend.

“They had occasional disagreements,” she was saying. “But they didn’t get violent. My father never raised his voice. And my Mom—Irene,” she clarified, “wasn’t the type to fight. If Dad asked her to join the church choir, she joined the choir. If he asked her to host a funeral luncheon, she hosted a luncheon. She wanted nothing more than to be a good wife, to please him.”

“She wanted nothing more than that? You don’t think she was too servile? That she might’ve resented her lack of power in the relationship?”

“This is the South, remember?”

“I understand that Mississippi might not be a hotbed of feminist activism, but that doesn’t mean she liked it.”

“I would’ve known if she resented him. She didn’t.”

Possibly. “Did your father expect to be obeyed?” he asked.

“He did,” she admitted without reservation. “Like I told you, it’s fairly normal where I live, and was even more so twenty-five years ago.”

Hunter had been raised by a strong, very opinionated mother who’d endowed him with a great deal of respect for the opposite sex. He found this take on women very old-fashioned, as if he’d slipped into the fifties—or earlier. “Do you fit the Southern mold?”

“I believe in equal jobs for equal pay, but I like it when a man is nice enough to open the door for me or pump my gas,” she said.

His smile was slightly mocking. “The best of both worlds?”

“I don’t see why those things have to be mutually exclusive. I want what’s right, but I’m still a woman and I enjoy being treated like one.”

“Does your boyfriend perform those little courtesies?”

She blinked at him. “What boyfriend?”

The boyfriend who meant Hunter didn’t have to worry about whether or not he was attracted to her. “At the airport, you said you were involved with someone.”

She looked away. “Oh, right.”

He didn’t think it said much for the relationship that she could forget this boyfriend so easily. But that was her problem. “Are you two planning on getting married someday?”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

What was so invasive about that question? He’d asked her much worse. But she had a point. He was wandering off topic. “Fine. If you had to name your father’s greatest fault, what would it be?” he asked, forcing his attention back where it belonged.

She answered without even having to think about it. “He was too preoccupied with his work. His church and the people in it were everything to him. But he was good to us.”

Hunter wondered if Irene would tell him the same thing. “Was there any life insurance?”

“My father had a small policy, but my mother’s never tried to collect on it.”

“Why not?”

“We were hoping he wasn’t…gone forever, of course.”

We…That was interesting. It’d been difficult to pay the mortgage, yet Irene hadn’t tried to prove that her missing husband was dead so she could collect on his life insurance. Had she truly been hoping for his return? Or did she fear that going after the money would spark an investigation by the insurance company?

If wife number two was to blame, money wasn’t the motive or she would’ve applied for the insurance. And he doubted she would’ve kept Barker’s daughter.

So maybe Barker’s death had been triggered by anger or jealousy…“Any chance that either your father or Irene could’ve been having an affair?”

“No.”