Grave Risk Page 22

  “Nope,” Jill said, rushing down the hallway after Austin. “I work alone.”

  Rex looked at Cheyenne. She shrugged.

  The clinic director was a woman who, Rex had observed, seldom got rattled under pressure and took a hectic day at the clinic in stride. She stood in the hallway staring after Jill, who caught up with Austin as he reached the open entryway to the waiting room.

  Jill was probably right. Austin was more likely to listen to her than anyone else.

  Jill caught up with Austin before he reached the front door. She noticed the slump of his broad shoulders. “Austin Barlow, you really haven’t changed at all, have you?”

  His footsteps faltered slightly, then he turned right onto the sidewalk without acknowledging her.

  “You’re still stubborn and too proud to accept help from anyone.” She fell into step beside him. “You shouldn’t drive, you know.”

  “Who said I was going to?” His deep voice matched the slump of his shoulders. He sounded tired…defeated.

  She took his arm, catching a scintillating whiff of yeasty-sweet aroma from the bakery ahead. “Let me buy you a Napoleon and a cup of coffee.”

  When he finally looked at her, she had the impression her face wasn’t registering with him. “I told you I’m not going to drive,” he said. “Tell Cheyenne I’m not her personal responsibility, and I’m not yours.”

  Jill gestured toward the front door of the bakery. “You still love Napoleons, don’t you?”

  He gave her a wry grimace. “Tastes change. Now I like cinnamon scones.”

  “And you like your coffee black. Come on.” She glanced through the shop window. “There’s no one in there except Steve, and he’s busy frying more doughnuts with his new, cholesterol-free oil, thanks to Noelle.”

  Austin shook his head. “So that’s what’s wrong with them.”

  “Hey, watch it. Those doughnuts taste great.”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “My sister is saving lives here.”

  “But she’s disappointing taste buds right and left.”

  Jill was relieved when Austin relented and held the bakery door open for her. She had counted on his inability to turn her down. Austin Barlow was many things—ornery, manipulative, prideful and maybe worse—but he had an ingrained sense of chivalry that stemmed from his need for admiration.

  When they had ordered and received their breakfast, complete with caffeinated coffee—Steve didn’t make decaf until later in the day—they sat at the table by the window. Jill made sure they were out of earshot from Steve, and from the doorway should someone else come in.

  “I don’t want a CT,” Austin said. “Or any other test Cheyenne wants to run on me. I’m not an experiment.”

  “Then why did you come to the office?”

  “I panicked. I was weak. I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

  “That’s ridiculous. It isn’t weak to seek help for a treatable problem.”

  “You don’t know what kind of problem it is,” Austin snapped. “And you don’t have to play guard dog. I’m not an idiot. I realize this blindness could return at any time. Now can we drop the subject?”

  “Why won’t you do something about it?”

  He glanced out the window toward the boat dock and the lake. “What if nothing can be done?”

  “Something can always be done.”

  “Not in my family.” He picked up his fork and cut a corner of his scone, then set the fork down and picked up his coffee cup.

  “I know your father died young.” Not to be callous about it, but in her opinion, that had been an act of mercy for Austin’s family. Austin’s father had been an abusive monster, drawing blood on Austin’s back from the beatings he had given the small boy more than once when Austin and Jill were in grade school. When Austin was older, the stripes of abuse had been less obvious, and before he turned twenty, his father had died.

  “And my great-grandfather and an uncle,” Austin said. “They had a terminal illness called histiocytosis X that didn’t show symptoms until it was already too late to stop the progression. My father’s symptoms began with blindness.”

  “And you’ve just decided that’s what’s wrong with you?”

  He leaned forward, giving her a straight look. “What are the odds, Jill? Be honest with yourself and with me.”

  “I’d say you shouldn’t jump to conclusions. You’re taking a grave risk with your life, here, Austin, and your son needs you.”

  He frowned at her. “Say that again?”

  “We’re talking about your life and Ramsay’s.”

  “Grave risk. That’s what Edith said about Chet. I heard her say that she and Cecil had taken a grave risk by not pursuing the incident further, and possibly allowing a killer to go free to kill again.”

  Jill digested that in silence for a moment, chilled by the words. But one thing at a time. “Right now, we’re talking about your life, Austin. You’re playing a deadly game with your life.”

  “I’m not. I’m making a very educated guess. My father died within three months of his blindness, and no treatment worked. Not only was he sick from the treatment, but his lungs collapsed from the illness. It was an awful death.”

  “It was a long time ago,” Jill said. “Medical science has progressed since then.”

  “You don’t think I’ve researched all I can about this condition? In all these years, the treatment hasn’t changed that much, and it just caused my father more suffering. Nothing could be done about it.”

  “So you’re convinced you’ve got the same disease.”

  “You have any other suggestions?” Austin growled the question.

  “Come on, you can’t just suffer through this and expect us not to try to help you.”

  He didn’t look at her, but continued to stare out the window. “The only hope I have is that it could go into remission of its own accord.”

  “But you haven’t even had it checked out, won’t allow Cheyenne to run tests.”

  “If I allow those tests to be run on me, the results will be exactly the same as my father’s, my great-grandfather’s, my uncle’s. And then there will be all kinds of pressure put on me to take the treatment for it, which I don’t plan to do. You know the routine, and so do I. Doctors have to do what they have to do. And I’m doing what I have to.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me you came back home just to die.”

  Austin met her gaze, and she felt the impact of it. In those eyes, she saw a world of regret.

  “I came back home to set things right if I could, Jill.”

  “Austin, you’re talking about Chet’s death?”

  He closed his eyes, looking sick and weary. “And Edith’s and Cecil’s.”

  “You were in Hideaway the very day Edith died.”

  His eyes slowly opened. “I could have set something in motion before I ever came here.”

  “How?”

  “I called Edith before coming here.”

  “You called her? About what?”

  “I needed to tell her the truth about my part in Chet Palmer’s death.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Fawn woke late Tuesday morning to the cold gloom of a late autumn day, though it was still September. It seemed as if even the weather mourned Cecil Martin’s death.

  She tossed back the covers and went to stare out her bedroom window to the gray, fog-shrouded lake below. She wasn’t going to school today, but she wasn’t attending Cecil’s funeral, either.

  Blaze was mad about it and that hurt. But she’d made a promise to Cecil just last week.

  Cecil had said, “Punkin’, don’t spend too much of your life brooding about the past and mourning death. Death’s got to come, and when it does it’s too late for anyone to do anything about it. When my time comes, I want you to promise me you won’t mope around at some silly service, praying over this old empty shell. When we meet in Heaven, I want you to tell me what you did to celebrate life on the day of my funera
l.”

  How she’d loved old Cecil. How she would miss him.

  So she wasn’t going to attend the funeral. The memory of finding him dead on the floor in the stockroom was enough to give her nightmares for a long time to come. She wanted to remember him as the smiling old buddy she’d come to love this past year.

  Too many deaths. When would it end? She wasn’t silly enough to think she was cursed—that God was making others pay for loving her—but it sure seemed to her that too many people around her had died.

  Sometimes love hurt too much. Actually, most of the time it hurt. There hadn’t been many people she could trust with her love. Great-Grandma June, when she was alive. Karah Lee. Taylor. Bertie.

  Edith and Cecil.

  She would not cry. She’d cried enough after she found Cecil on Saturday night, and she still burned with embarrassment over the lack of control she had shown.

  She’d spent most of her life avoiding tears. They made a girl weak, and there’d been no room for weakness in her family. Any sign of it had made her an object of scorn, not only from her mother, but her stepfather.

  She definitely couldn’t show weakness to her stepfather. She hadn’t even cried when her mother chose not to believe her about the rape.

  So today she was doing exactly what Cecil had told her to do. Listening to the singing pipes of the cottage while Karah Lee showered, Fawn opened her closet door and pulled out a dress—The Dress.

  She could think of nothing that reflected life more fully than the upcoming wedding of her foster mother—the one woman in the world she wanted to call Mom—and Taylor Jackson. Both had endured pain in their pasts.

  Karah Lee’s parents had divorced when she’d graduated from high school, which had spooked her for marriage for far too many years.

  Taylor was a forest ranger who still patrolled the Mark Twain National Forest that checkerboarded this section of the state, and also helped police the town and take call as a paramedic for medical emergencies. His tragedy involved the death of his teenaged son, and the subsequent failure of his marriage when his wife could no longer handle the grief.

  That Karah Lee and Taylor—both sometimes prickly and awkward around the opposite sex—could forge a bond of love that completely involved their faith in God…well, it was a miracle. Definitely a reflection of the best life had to offer.

  Fawn would celebrate by working on The Dress. And she would set aside her dreams of independence a little longer. Bertie was wise, and Blaze—much as Fawn hated to admit it—was smart. They both had given her good advice about her dreams for the bed and breakfast.

  The one person who had helped her change her mind, however, was Jill. She’d said exactly what Fawn needed to hear. You are loved.

  And in order to grow up, she was going to have to learn how to stick with relationships through the scary times. She was going to have to learn to trust.

  Karah Lee loved her. Taylor loved her. Maybe, for just a year or two, she would give herself a chance to learn what it was like to be loved in a family. A real one.

  She settled the material on her bed, then gazed once more out at the gray lake. She was just about to get up and reach for the tiny seed pearls that she would sew into the neckline of the eggshell silk, when she caught sight of someone on the community boat dock.

  It was a tall man with dark hair and a mustache. Sheena’s dad, Jed Marshall. He wore a denim jacket, and his hands were jammed into the pockets as he stared across the water toward the cliffs on the other shore.

  Someone else stepped onto the dock, and Jed turned. It was another man—short, stocky, with dirty blond hair. Junior Short.

  They spoke for a few moments. Jed shook his head and backed away. Junior reached forward and grabbed Jed by the sleeve.

  Quick as a striking snake, Jed shoved the hand away and shoved Junior backward, toward the water.

  For a few long seconds, the two men squared off like a couple of dogs circling for a fight.

  There was a knock at her door, and Karah Lee poked her head inside. “Not going to school today?”

  “Today’s the funeral.”

  “But you’re not going to the funeral.” Karah Lee’s gaze wandered with curiosity over the material on the bed.

  “I’m doing what Cecil told me to do, Mom. Now get out of here. Isn’t it bad luck or something for the bride to see her wedding dress being stitched?”

  “Nope.” But Karah Lee left anyway, wearing a grateful smile in spite of the pall of the day. She loved hearing Fawn call her Mom. She might also be a little excited about the wedding, even if she had threatened, on more than one occasion, to elope.

  When Fawn glanced out the window again, all she saw was Jed Marshall, standing alone on the dock, head bowed, arms crossed over his chest.

  What was going on?

  The front door of the bakery opened and six elderly ladies from a tour bus entered, cameras slung around their necks, jackets and coats wrapped around their shoulders to protect them from the unexpected coolness of the day. Their laughter and chatter filled the small bakery.

  “You’re saying that Chet’s death really was just a tragic accident?” Jill leaned closer to Austin.

  “I’m saying it should never have happened.”

  “But you did have a part in it.”

  “I never meant for Chet to die.”

  “What do you know about it, then?” Jill asked.

  “I already told you that the death bomb couldn’t have been made with the ingredients we had accumulated for the prank.”

  “But the selenium could have mistakenly been placed in the sulfide container,” Jill said. “Or someone could have grabbed the wrong container by mistake.”

  Austin glanced over his shoulder as the door opened once again, and more tourists from the bus entered. He scooted closer to the table. “I’ve had a lot of years to think about it, believe me. It’s lived with me like another bad nightmare in my life.”

  “Who actually put the ingredients together?”

  “Jed. He said he knew the recipe.”

  “You helped him?”

  “Junior and I did.”

  “Could the sulfide have been replaced with selenium with you watching?”

  “At the time, I didn’t think so.” Austin picked up his fork again and crumbled the scone onto his plate without taking a bite. “We checked and double-checked those ingredients.”

  “Whose idea was it to pull that prank?” Jill had lost all interest in her coffee. She hadn’t wanted it to begin with.

  “I can’t remember who suggested it first. Chet was such a…such an unlikable person. Jed was outraged when Cecil chose Chet instead of Mary for his assistant.”

  “What was Mary’s reaction?”

  “She wasn’t happy, I can tell you that, but that’s no reason to kill somebody.”

  The noise in the small dining area had increased to the point that Jill had no fear of being overheard. “Could Jed have still been jealous because Mary had danced a couple of times with Chet the year before?”

  Austin looked up at her. “Jed had a temper, but that would be just plain silly. She danced with lots of guys.”

  “What made you call Edith so long after the fact?”

  “I had my school records mailed to me. Notations on my senior report brought it all back. Then I started having these symptoms.” He pointed to his eyes. “Jill, I didn’t want to die with that lie on my conscience.”

  “So if you had already called Edith and confessed, then why did you come to Hideaway?”

  He picked up his coffee cup and inhaled the steam. “I found a message from her on my machine one evening. She wanted to know if it was possible someone else might have known about the plans we had for that prank. She sounded worried. At the same time, I got to thinking more and more about making things right with everyone I could, so I drove here.”

  “You drove.”

  He held his hands up. “Yes, I drove, and you saw me driving Saturday. After today, tha
t won’t happen again.”

  “So you just happened to show up the day Edith died.”

  “She’d called me just the day before. I needed to talk to her, anyway, and I wanted to do it in person, not over the telephone. I saw Edith’s old car at the spa when I came into town that morning, and so I went in.”

  “Have you spoken to Jed and Junior about all this?”

  Austin winced. “I tried to talk to Jed and Mary at Edith’s funeral dinner. That was the wrong thing to do. First of all, Mary got mean in a hurry. Said if I exposed our actions now, it would ruin us all. She threatened that if I said anything, she would tell the sheriff that I intentionally poisoned Chet.”

  “What about Jed?”

  “I think he was more shocked by his wife’s response than he was upset with me. That whole thing’s been hanging over all our heads for nearly three decades. I think, in a way, it would be a relief to come clean.”

  “And Junior?”

  Austin shook his head. “Mad as a bull. Wouldn’t talk about it.”

  Jill recalled the discussion she’d had with the girls about Mary on Saturday evening. There was still something missing.

  That button…that blue button. Edith would have saved that for some reason, but what could it have been?

  And where had Jill seen that button before?

  “Austin, before Edith died, she mentioned Chet Palmer. She also said something about records. I never figured out what she was trying to tell me.”

  “You think Edith might have said the wrong thing to the wrong person?” Austin asked.

  “I don’t know, but I have the feeling she might have thought she had.”

  “And Cecil?” he asked.

  “I tried talking to him about it, but he wasn’t willing to discuss it with me.”

  “Same here,” Austin said.

  “You should be careful, then. If you mention the wrong thing to the wrong person, you could be placing your own life in danger,” Jill warned.

  He shook his head. “My life doesn’t seem worth much these days, Jill.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I’ll say what I want. But your life is valuable. You need to be careful. That’s why I didn’t want to drag you into this.” He stared down at his hands. “Guess I’m messing that up, too.”