“I’ve found something,” he said.

  Clay’s arm froze momentarily before carrying the bottle to his mouth. After another long swig, he set his drink back on the table. “What?”

  Hunter took Madeline’s puffy journal from his coat pocket and slid it across the table.

  “You found a child’s journal?” he said without picking it up. He slouched lower in his chair but watched Hunter closely.

  “It’s Madeline’s,” he explained. “From when she was eight and nine years old.”

  “We were living in Booneville then,” he said with a shrug. “Whatever’s in it couldn’t refer to me. Or any of my family.”

  “I realize that, of course.”

  Clay lifted his half-empty bottle with two fingers and swung it from side to side. “Then why are you showing me her journal?”

  “Have you ever read it?”

  One lazy eyebrow arched up. “Aren’t journals supposed to be private?”

  “She gave it to me.” Hunter took it back again, opened it and began to read aloud.

  “Katie has another sore on her neck. She won’t tell me how she got it. But Daddy said someone must have grabbed hold of her necklace or something. Why would that be such a big secret?”

  Clay regarded him with half-closed, heavy-lidded eyes. “So Katie was teasing her about some minor injury. What’s that supposed to prove?”

  Hunter flipped through a few more pages and read another entry.

  “I’m so mad at Mom. Daddy wanted me to go to Jacksonville with him to see his cousin. We were going to stay two whole days. But she wouldn’t let me go. And when I started to cry, she shook me hard.”

  “What do you have to say about that?” Hunter asked.

  “From what I hear, Madeline’s mother wasn’t right in the head.” Clay spoke in a monotone. “Committed suicide. It was a real tragedy.”

  “I think it might’ve been her father who was sick,” Hunter said meaningfully. “And now I’m wondering just how sick.”

  Clay broke eye contact and gazed at the candle flickering in a red votive glass at the edge of the table. “I should warn you that won’t be a popular opinion around here.”

  “Fortunately, I’m not running for office.”

  Clay said nothing.

  “When did you find out about it?” Hunter asked.

  “Find out about what?”

  “What he was doing to your sister.”

  Clay appeared relaxed, but Hunter suspected that illusion was created only at the expense of great effort. “He didn’t do anything to my sister. Ask Chief Pontiff. She told him as much last week.”

  “Why don’t I ask her?” Hunter countered softly.

  “Because you’d have to go through me first,” Clay said.

  Hunter didn’t respond to the comment. He had no intention of approaching Grace; he was sure she’d suffered enough. That was why he’d called Clay instead. He’d wanted to witness Clay’s reaction—which had turned out to be exactly as he’d expected.

  Locating one more entry in the journal, Hunter cleared his throat and read again.

  “I saw a naked lady in a magazine in my dad’s drawer. She had a man on her!”

  Clay’s lips curved into a smile, but it seemed more nostalgic than anything else.

  “Interesting that she’d find pornography in her father’s desk, don’t you think?” Hunter said. “Someone who preached so energetically against sins of the flesh?”

  “When we were kids, Madeline told us she’d found that magazine.” Clay’s odd smile lingered. “She said it was gross.”

  “To a nine-year-old, I’m sure it was.” Hunter used his straw to stir the ice in his glass. “But when she was older, didn’t it make her question her father’s adherence to his own standards?”

  “Why would it?” Clay said. “The minute he found out she’d seen that magazine, he told her he’d confiscated it from one of his parishioners, who was a ‘vile sinner on the surest road to hell.’ He burned it in front of her, said he’d planned to do that all along.”

  “Bummer he had to dispose of it before he was finished with it,” Hunter said sarcastically.

  “He didn’t need it. He had other things to entertain him.”

  Hunter’s stomach muscles tensed. “Like…”

  Clay shrugged and wouldn’t volunteer any more. So Hunter asked him directly. “Who do the other panties belong to?”

  Madeline’s stepbrother used his index finger to circle the top of his beer. “How much is she paying you?” he asked instead of answering.

  Hunter shoved his club soda away. “Why? Are you going to try and buy me off?”

  Clay’s gaze never wavered. “Would it work if I did?”

  “No. It’s not about the money.” Returning Madeline’s five thousand was the only way Hunter could ease his guilt over what had happened between them earlier. He’d decided to send her a check the minute he got back to L.A.

  “What’s it about then?” Clay asked.

  “I want to help her.”

  “If that’s true, you’ll go home tomorrow,” he said and walked out, leaving the rest of his beer on the table.

  Ray swore as he tried to stanch the blood from the cut on his right arm. The glass had sliced him so smoothly he hadn’t realized how deep the injury was. He was pretty sure he needed stitches. But he couldn’t go to a doctor. He’d seen the shows on TV, knew they’d trace the break-in at Madeline’s place back to him. It wasn’t as if he lived in a big city. He was probably the only person who’d cut himself tonight.

  Holding his arm close to his body, he fumbled with the gauze from the old first aid kit he’d found under his bathroom sink. He wanted to bandage the wound, but it was awkward with just his left hand. The damn thing wouldn’t stop bleeding. Maybe if he applied a little more pressure…

  A knock on his front door made him go rigid with fear. Had Madeline seen him? Had she sent the police? The bitch wasn’t even supposed to be home. When he found her car gone, he’d thought he was safe.

  He glanced up at the tiny window above the shower. It was too small and too high to climb out of. But he could get to the back bedroom, crawl through that window and sneak out via the woods, heading toward the highway, where he could flag down a trucker. He was just trying to calculate how much of a lead that would afford him when the second knock came. It was more insistent than the first, but the voice that accompanied it left Ray sagging in relief.

  “Hey, Ray. You in there? It’s me, Bubba.”

  Bubba lived next door and was always trying to bum cigarettes off him. But it was after midnight. He’d thought he was safe. “Don’t have any smokes,” Ray yelled.

  “That’s not why I’m here. The light in your car is on, man. Wouldn’t want to let your battery run down, ya know?”

  Ray had been planning to go back out and clean up the car. He couldn’t leave the blood on his seat and steering wheel. “Don’t worry about it,” he called. “I’ll take care of it in a minute.”

  There was a long silence, during which Ray hoped Bubba was lumbering back to his own damn trailer. At nearly five hundred pounds, Bubba was on state assistance because he couldn’t work. But he managed to get around pretty damn well if he wanted something.

  “I saw you bringin’ in some groceries earlier. You don’t happen to have a beer, do ya?”

  Son of a bitch. Ray gritted his teeth. Bubba was still there. And he’d obviously seen the six-pack Ray had carried in earlier. Which meant he wouldn’t leave until he had a cold beer in his fat hand.

  Hastily wrapping the gauze around his cut and taping it as well as he could, Ray changed his clothes, being careful as he slipped the sleeve of his shirt over his injury. Then he shoved the box he’d taken from Madeline’s house into the back bedroom, where it couldn’t be seen. He wanted to go through it right away, make sure he had what he thought he had. But with Bubba nosing around, it’d have to wait.

  “Hey, Ray?” Bubba’s voice again.

  Ray felt a muscle twitch below his left eye. Bubba was annoying on a good day. And this was not a good day.

  Hauling in a calming breath, he said, “Yeah?”

  “You okay in there?”

  He was just closing the door of the back room, but the hesitancy in Bubba’s voice gave him pause. “Sure. Why?”

  “The blood, man. I tried to turn off the light for you and found blood all over the inside of your car. Are you hurt?”

  Fuck! That was it. Clearing his mind, Ray began walking very deliberately toward the living room. Bubba was no problem. A man that obese could die at any moment.

  Too bad it’d have to be tonight.

  Chapter Seventeen

  If that’s true, you’ll go home to California tomorrow…

  Hunter sat at the table he’d shared with Clay more than an hour earlier, mulling over that statement while nursing another watered-down soda. He had half a mind to take Clay’s advice, to get out of town while he could.

  But it was already too late. When he’d read Madeline’s childhood diary, the mention of Katie’s neck injury had jumped right off the page. He’d immediately connected it to the word collar used by whoever had called Madeline’s office and left that raspy message.

  Or was he grasping for something that wasn’t there?

  He didn’t think so. Someone knew what had happened and was nervous about its coming out. But he felt surprisingly confident that it wasn’t Clay who’d called. Clay wouldn’t have left that message on Maddy’s answering machine. He loved her, for one thing. And the Montgomerys’ position was that Grace had never been molested. Understandably, he wanted to distance his family from such a strong motive for murder.

  And that meant someone else was involved. Hunter wanted to figure out who it was. But there was so much else to consider—including the memory of making love to Madeline against that tree and the desire to be with her again. He wasn’t ready for a relationship. Falling in love would be the ultimate betrayal of his daughter. He couldn’t love Antoinette, but could he love someone else? Find happiness elsewhere?

  Besides, if Clay had killed Reverend Barker, the evidence he was finding suggested Barker deserved it. How could Hunter pursue a case like that? Maybe it wasn’t right for Clay to take the law into his own hands, but being sixteen and pitted against a man as powerful as Barker, he might not have had much choice. Given the circumstances, Hunter—anyone—might’ve done the same thing.

  Hunter didn’t want to see Madeline’s stepbrother go to prison for trying to protect his family. And he didn’t want to get emotionally involved with Madeline. Two powerful reasons to turn back. And yet, the existence of those other panties suggested Barker had hurt more than Grace. Should the reverend be exposed for what he’d done to these women?

  If there were others, why hadn’t any of them come forward?

  A chilling thought stole over Hunter: Maybe they were all dead…

  Katie was a hit-and-run. Rose Lee was a suicide. They’d both been close to the reverend, and they were both gone. So was the reverend’s first wife, who’d become obsessed with “protecting” Madeline. What if the girls had been molested, and Eliza had found out? Then the three of them would know. Which made it damned convenient for Barker that they’d all met tragedies that would silence them forever.

  Hunter thumbed through the journal again. Katie has another sore on her neck…I found a naked lady in a magazine in my dad’s drawer…My mother wouldn’t let me go…

  Madeline resented her mother and idolized her father. But what if her mother hadn’t taken her own life? Or did it because of the helplessness she felt?

  He remembered the letter Madeline had discovered in that secret compartment of Eliza’s jewelry box. She’d been begging for help, which seemed to fit. Maybe Eliza was afraid for her life, afraid for Madeline, and was trying to get away. If so, didn’t she deserve to be remembered differently?

  And what about Katie’s mother and Rose Lee’s father? They probably had no idea that the man they’d trusted to help them had likely molested, maybe raped, their daughters—repeatedly. It was even possible that Mr. Harper blamed himself for Rose Lee’s suicide and had lived in hell for the past twenty-some years.

  Who else was out there suffering because of the reverend’s actions?

  “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to leave.”

  Hunter blinked as the booming voice penetrated his concentration. It was the bartender. Hunter was almost the last person in the place.

  “It’s closing time,” the man explained. “Do you need me to find you a ride home?”

  Hunter chuckled dryly. “No.” For once he’d closed down a bar stone-cold sober. “I’m fine.”

  After the initial fifteen or twenty minutes, he hadn’t even craved a drink. But maybe that was because he was fighting something else; he craved the feel of Madeline’s body. Craved it more than the booze. That was why he hadn’t left the bar. He didn’t want to go back to the motel.

  The blood was immediately apparent. There was a spotty trail, smeared with a few pawprints from before Madeline had locked Sophie in an upstairs bedroom. Someone had obviously cut a hand or an arm reaching through the window to open the door. From there, the trail led to the middle of the room, then disappeared as if the intruder had wrapped something around his or her injury.

  Hunter could hear the low murmur of Chief Pontiff and Officer Radcliffe, questioning Madeline in the other room. They’d already photographed the kitchen and taken a sample of the blood. By the time he’d returned to his motel and found the message the night manager had tacked to his door, the police had been at Madeline’s for almost an hour.

  If he’d followed his first instinct and gone back to the cottage, this might never have happened…

  Stepping over the blood, he started toward the living room. He was planning to join the others, but as he passed the door to the basement, he noticed that it stood slightly ajar.

  “It had to be Mike,” Madeline was saying. “Maybe he just wanted to scare me. But I don’t know anyone else who’d break in. Nothing was stolen.”

  Hunter opened the basement door a little wider and flipped on the light. “Madeline?” he called.

  “What?”

  “Has anyone been in the basement tonight?”

  There was a few seconds of surprised silence. “No. Why?”

  “The door was open.”

  Chief Pontiff appeared in the living room doorway. “So? Maybe she went down there earlier and left it that way.”

  “No, I didn’t.” Madeline came out, with Radcliffe a step behind. “I thought I heard someone outside before I fell asleep, so I went around to check the windows and doors. I passed the basement. I would’ve noticed because I don’t like Sophie going down there.”

  Hunter squinted at a few dark spots toward the bottom of the stairs—and on the railing. “Does that look like blood to you?” he asked, pointing.

  “I’ll be damned,” Radcliff muttered and they all followed him into the basement.

  “There you go,” Chief Pontiff said, crouching beside one speck. “That is blood.”

  “What’s it doing down here?” Madeline asked.

  Hunter turned in a circle, trying to see into the dark recesses. “Anyone have a flashlight?”

  “I do,” Radcliffe piped up. But he handed it to Pontiff, who slowly swung the beam around the perimeter of the concrete room. When he reached the area behind the stairs, Madeline clutched Hunter’s arm.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “My father’s things!”

  That section looked as if it had been ransacked, but they’d been rummaging through boxes there earlier, and it hadn’t been all that neat to begin with. “What about them?”

  She reached out and held the flashlight steady, directing the beam more carefully between the gaps in the wooden stairs. “The big box on top, the one we didn’t bring up yesterday is gone.”

  “Why would anyone want to steal your father’s belongings, Maddy?” Pontiff asked.

  Madeline sat on the couch, holding the cup of hot tea Hunter had thrust into her hands. He stood at the window, presumably watching the sunrise as he listened to them talk.

  “I have no idea,” she said.

  “Are you sure something’s actually been taken?” Radcliffe sat across from her. “With all the stuff you’ve got in that basement, it could be difficult to tell. Maybe you shoved a few boxes off to the side and don’t remember doing it.”

  She felt embarrassed to have had these men tramping through her private neurosis. Embarrassed and exposed. It was a bit like having a car accident in holey underwear. Such an exposure was a minor consideration; she realized that. But still, it wasn’t a pleasant experience. “I know exactly what was where. Hunter and I were just down there yesterday morning. There was a heavy box filled with stuff from my father’s office.”

  “You haven’t had a chance to search everything carefully,” Pontiff argued. “If his stuff is shoved off to the side somewhere, maybe buried under something else, we’d be connecting this break-in to your father’s case when it might be completely unrelated.”

  “Finding the Cadillac’s probably made you nervous, Maddy,” Radcliffe added. “Maybe you’re jumping at shadows.”

  Frowning, Hunter turned and folded his arms across his chest. “Shadows don’t drip blood on the floor.”

  Both policemen looked up, obviously not pleased that he—the hotshot from out of town—would presume to contradict them. “I’m not talking to you,” Radcliffe snapped, clearly irritated.

  “I don’t care,” Hunter said. “Like Maddy just told you, I was down there with her yesterday morning. I saw the box she’s talking about.”

  “Other than Maddy, who would see any value in her father’s personal artifacts?” Pontiff challenged, getting quickly to his feet.

  “Someone who was afraid I might go through them?” Hunter said.

  Pontiff exchanged a glance with Radcliffe. “If there was anything incriminating in those boxes, why haven’t they gone missing before?”

  “Maybe whoever’s responsible for Madeline’s father’s murder wasn’t concerned until now.”