Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Summer
T en minutes later, Dixie and I were in my car, headed north of town with a plate of cookies in her lap. Since we had Rachel’s name and the general location of her farm, it hadn’t been hard to figure out where she lived with a map of the town and surrounding area.
“You really don’t know anything about Rachel Swan?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the road.
“No,” she said, “I’ve never even heard of her before.”
“That’s kind of crazy that her farm butted up against Lila Brewer’s farm,” I said.
“I guess it would have made going back and forth to each other’s places a lot easier,” she said. “My best friend lived on the other side of town, and I always had a hard time getting my mama to drive me over there,” she said, sounding worried. “How do you plan on asking her about Lila and Bethany?”
“Hmm. I’m not sure yet.” Which wasn’t necessarily that big of a deal since I often didn’t plan things out. The questions usually just came to me. But I had to admit I was nervous about talking to her. I wanted to help Magnolia, and I had a feeling that my interview with Rachel would be important.
“Do you think the cover that you have a buyer for the land is going to work with Rachel?” she asked.
“Good question,” I said. “And it is true. There is a buyer for the land. We just don’t know who it is.”
“It sounds like Lila and Rachel were pretty close,” Dixie said thoughtfully. “Maybe we should just go with the truth.”
I bit my bottom lip as I considered it. “You might have a point.”
Except the NDA was a big stumbling block for that plan.
We spent the rest of the ten-minute drive mostly in silence, both of us stewing. Dixie started giving me directions after we passed the Brewer farm.
I turned onto a narrow gravel lane and drove toward an older farmhouse with a small red barn to the right side. The house, freshly painted in white and a cheery red, sported a porch that ran the full length of the front. A chicken coop that was painted to match the house sat next to the barn and a small, penned area full of goats. As I drove up to the house, two big dogs, yellow lab mixes from the looks of them, trotted toward us, their tails wagging.
“Well, at least they look friendly,” Dixie said.
“Thank goodness,” I said. “We’ve had more than our fair share of unfriendly dog encounters.” But given our new professions, I was sure there’d be plenty more.
We both got out of the car and headed up to the front door, Dixie carrying the plate of cookies. I knocked and waited, my stomach doing flip-flops. I wasn’t sure how Rachel was going to react to our questions, but maybe if I did go with the truth—or as much as I was able to tell—she might be more inclined to answer.
The door opened and a woman with short brown hair and a warm smile that deepened the wrinkles on her forehead and around her mouth appeared in the opening.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Summer Butler, and this is?—”
“You’re Summer Butler, and you’re at my place ?” she said, her eyes widening with excitement. “Are you investigating another mystery for your show?”
“I am investigating a mystery,” I said, “but it’s not for my show. It’s for a client.”
She furrowed her brow in confusion. “I thought that was all just for the show.”
“Summer is a working PI,” Dixie said with a little bit of attitude. She was fed up with people thinking that I was a joke, and part of me couldn’t help thinking that it was because people thought she was a joke too, only for different reasons. “We brought you cookies.”
Then she thrust out the plate.
“Sorry,” the woman said as she took the plate. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I’ve seen your office in town. I just didn’t…” She took a breath and gave me a resigned smile. “How can I help you?”
“Are you Rachel Swan?” I asked.
She nodded, only her smile disappeared and she looked more wary. “I was ,” she said, hanging on to the still-open door. “I’m Rachel Lyons now.”
“Would it be all right if we came in and talked?” I asked, trying to look over her shoulder and get a look at her living room, but she blocked the opening. “We’re looking into a murder that happened around here.”
“Oh dear,” she said, her hand lifting to her chest as she leaned her shoulder into the doorjamb. “I’m more than happy to answer any questions you have, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to help you. I pretty much just stick to my farm and keep my nose out of everyone else’s business.”
“Actually,” I said, “this is about something that happened several years ago. Forty, to be exact.”
“More like forty- ish ,” Dixie quipped under her breath.
Rachel froze and her smile became wooden. “Oh?”
“Would you be willing to sit down and tell us what you know?” I asked.
Her gaze darted from me to Dixie, then back again. “Would you like some lemonade?” she asked. “I think it’s gonna be a hot one today. We can take it on the front porch and have ourselves a nice chat.”
“That would be lovely,” I said, and Rachel turned around and went back into the house, shutting the door behind her.
“You think she’s coming back out?” Dixie asked.
I frowned. “Yeah, I think so, but she obviously doesn’t trust us if she’s not letting us in her house.”
“Well, to be fair,” Dixie said, her mouth twisting to the side, “I’m not sure I would trust us.”
“It’s not like she doesn’t know who we are,” I said. “She knows I’m Summer Butler.”
“Which is maybe why she won’t let us inside,” Dixie said. “She’s hiding something.”
I turned toward her, hiking up my brow. “What on earth could she be hiding? We’re asking about something that happened over forty years ago.”
Dixie’s gaze drifted over the front yard. “Back when people thought I started the barn fire and killed my parents and Pawpaw, I didn’t want to talk to people about anything having to do with the fire or really, to be fair, about anything else either. Maybe she’s hiding something, and that makes her shut down. Maybe that’s why she’s off at this farm by herself. Or…” Her mouth twisted to the side. “Maybe she just doesn’t like to talk to people period.”
“Maybe,” I conceded, but I wasn’t so sure. She’d been married for twenty years, after all, which meant she’d been close to someone . I still wasn’t sure how I was going to go about questioning her. If she was this closed off already, then I was beginning to doubt that I’d get anything out of her.
“All I know,” Dixie said dryly, “is that I’m not sure I’m going to be havin’ any of that lemonade. I’ve seen Ozark .”
I had to admit that she had a point. A couple of minutes later, the front door opened, and the woman came out, carrying a tray with three glasses of lemonade and the plate of cookies Dixie had shoved at her.
Rachel motioned to a porch swing and two wicker chairs that formed a seating area to the left of the door.
Dixie and I both sat in the wicker seats as Rachel set the tray on a coffee table in front of our chairs. She handed us each a glass, then took the remaining glass and sat down on the swing.
“We’ve been told that your family moved to town in the middle of your junior year,” I said. “Where did you move from?”
Instead of answering, she said, “If you’re here asking about something that happened about forty years ago, then you have to be asking about Bethany’s murder.”
“Yes,” I said. “I have a client who wants to know about what happened to her. I’m sorry that we can’t tell you anything more about them. We’ve promised to protect our client’s identity.”
“Your client isn’t one of those podcasters, are they?” she asked with a sour look.
“Oh, no,” I said, trying not to sound too defensive, “definitely not. I wouldn’t touch one of them with a ten-foot pole, especially after Mo and Molly dragged me, my family, and my boyfriend through the coals just a couple of months ago.”
Rachel nodded with a solemn look. “I know what they did to that poor girl, Magnolia Steele. It seems like she’s been through enough with her father and the serial killer, not to mention her mother’s death.”
I resisted the urge to sneak a glance at Dixie. Rachel didn’t strike me as the type of woman who sat around listening to podcasts. It seemed more likely that she was watching out for anything that had to do with Lila or her relations, given how much she knew about what happened to Magnolia. While it hadn’t been heavily publicized, if she was as secluded as she claimed to be, I doubted she was paying much attention to pop culture.
“As I mentioned,” I said, holding her gaze, “this has nothing to do with a podcast. My client is someone who wants to know what happened to Bethany Brewer.”
I couldn’t help thinking that I’d be more likely to get answers if I told her Magnolia was my client, but that NDA stood in the way. I was legally bound to keep it quiet.
Rachel didn’t respond, so I continued. “I know that you moved to town and became good friends with Bethany’s sister Lila when you were juniors.”
“Well, that’s not quite true,” Rachel said, resting her elbow on the arm of the swing. “I did move here from Birmingham our junior year, but we really didn’t become friends until the next summer.”
“Your properties connected, correct?” I asked.
She nodded. “That was before my daddy sold much of the land to pay for the taxes. We cut a path through our land to hers, so it was a lot quicker and easier to get to each other.”
“Before you came to town, Lila and Bethany were best friends. Is that correct?” I asked.
She frowned. “Yes. They’d been best friends since they were small. No one else seemed to want to have anything to do with them.”
“How is it that you became friends with Lila when no one else would?” I asked.
A fire lit up her eyes. “First of all, there was nothing wrong with those girls. People used to say they were touched in the head, but they weren’t. They were just quiet. They were also embarrassed that their parents wouldn’t put them in anything except for clothes from the thrift store. But Lila liked to read, and so did I, so we started tradin’ books toward the end of our junior year. We were friendly, but we didn’t see each other outside of school. Until that summer, that is. That summer was when we really got to know each other. Lila, Bethany, and I used to hang out after our chores—well, after their chores. Their parents gave them tons of chores to do durin’ summer break. Mine, not so much,” she said with a shrug. “We went swimmin’ in our stock pond. We read aloud to each other. We explored the woods that used to be at the back part of our property. The three of us were like the three musketeers.”
“So what happened?” I asked. “Because I know that, at some point, Bethany no longer ate lunch with you guys at school during your senior year.”
Her mild expression quickly turned into a scowl. “And just who have you been talking to? Those busybodies that like to gossip at the coffee shop once a week? Or was it Maybelline?”
“It definitely wasn’t Maybelline,” I said. “I don’t want this information getting out, so I’m trying to be as discreet as possible, and Maybelline has a reputation.”
“For runnin’ her mouth,” Rachel grunted. “Or more accurately, spammin’ her Facebook page.” She made a face, looking displeased. “Keep in mind that Lila and I were a couple of years older than Bethany. And on top of that, Bethany had always been a little immature for her age. Part of it was probably caused by her strict upbringin’, but I think part of it was because she wasn’t as smart as everyone else her age. She kind of lived in her own head and was socially awkward. Being held back in elementary school likely didn’t help.”
“So what caused the rift between Bethany and you two?” I asked. “The age difference?”
She nodded. “That and, well, things just became strained between the two sisters. I tried to stay out of it, and I even tried to include Bethany, but something happened between them and they just stopped talkin’.”
“And you don’t know what that was?” Dixie asked. “I find that hard to believe since you and Lila were best friends. Best friends tell each other everything, especially in high school.”
I turned to look at Dixie, guessing that she would know better than I. When I was in high school, I was filming Gotcha! , so I didn’t have any regular friends, let alone best friends, back then. I was pretty isolated, especially since most of the cast and crew members and I didn’t get along. But then again, once I thought about it, Dixie didn’t tell her best friend everything either—having told her nothing about the barn, or about her relationship with Trent Dunbar, the boyfriend she’d been with when the barn fire had started.
But it didn’t matter, because Rachel was squirming in her seat.
“Lila was a pretty private person,” she said. “And she was pretty tough, or at least she liked people to think she was. Her daddy used to beat her, you know?”
“I didn’t know,” I said, but I wasn’t surprised.
“She learned to keep a stiff upper lip and never let people think anything bothered her, but I could see that things did bother her. They bothered her plenty. She just pretended like they didn’t.”
“That still doesn’t explain what happened between the two sisters,” I said. “If they were best friends since Bethany was practically born, that friendship was sixteen years in the making. Something big had to have happened for the two sisters to stop speaking to one another. Especially given that they shared a bedroom.”
“I suppose…” Rachel shifted in her seat again. “If I had to pinpoint a cause, then it would probably be because Lila started to like hanging out with me more than her little sister.”
“But I thought you said the three of you spent time together over the summer,” I said. “Like the three musketeers.”
“Well, that is true,” Rachel said, staring down at the wooden planks of the porch floor, “but like I said, Lila loved books and Bethany, well…let’s just say that it was a struggle for her to read. So, Lila and I were reading and discussing books that Bethany didn’t understand, and she felt left out.”
“So you’re saying,” I said slowly, “that the falling-out occurred because you and Lila were discussing books that made Bethany feel like she wasn’t as smart as the two of you.”
Rachel studied the wall of the house for a moment, then said, “When you put it that way, it seems pretty ridiculous. But you have to remember, we were a bunch of teenage girls, and you know how emotional they can be.”
I did know how emotional teenage girls could be, but I also knew how close siblings could be—well, or as close as I could get to it with my cousins Dixie and Teddy. We’d been like siblings growing up. But then again, we’d gone ten years without speaking to each other, so maybe it wasn’t so far-fetched after all.
“Bethany was murdered the next spring,” I said, realizing I was jumping quite a bit, but I wasn’t sure what else I was going to get from her about their friendship.
She looked a little startled at the swift change in direction. “Yes, that’s true.”
“Lila and Bethany’s parents were briefly considered suspects, but then quickly ruled out, correct?”
She nodded. “To the best of my knowledge, that’s true.”
“I’m trying to figure out why, though,” I said. “If their father beat them and she died due to a blunt force injury to her head, wouldn’t it stand to reason that perhaps their father got a little carried away with a beating and perhaps accidentally killed her?”
Rachel’s eyes flew wide. “Well, I suppose that makes sense, but I have no idea what the sheriff was thinkin’. I just know what people speculated and the Brewers were never arrested.”
“What about Lila?” I asked. “Was she ever worried about being a suspect?”
Rachel swallowed, looking nervous. “No, she wasn’t there that night. She and I were at a party and she got home late. They said she got home after the window of the possible time of death.”
“And they had no other suspects?” I asked.
She shook her head. “You have to understand, I was seventeen years old, and I wasn’t privy to the sheriff’s thought process, not that he’d have been inclined to tell us anyway.”
“Didn’t her parents press the sheriff to find the murderer?” I asked.
She shook her head again. “They were pretty private people. If they did, I didn’t know anything about it.”
We drifted into silence, and I let it hang between us for a bit. That was something I’d learned from one of my PI classes that I’d taken online. If you let someone stew in silence long enough, eventually they’re going to want to fill it.
Rachel squirmed again, so it must’ve been working, but not enough to pry any unsolicited information out of her.
“What about Chuck Petty?” I asked innocently, lifting the glass of lemonade to my lips and taking a small sip, but I watched her closely and noticed the way she stiffened at his name.
“Well, now,” she said with more of a Southern drawl than she’d been using up to this point. “ That’s a name I haven’t heard in a good bit. What makes you ask about him?”
“ Well ,” I drawled myself, “I hear he ran away around the time that Bethany was murdered. That seems awfully coincidental.”
She shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. I heard he was at a party that night too.”
“The same party you were at?” Dixie asked.
“Oh, no,” she said. “We never ran in the same circles, but his friend Tim said that he and Chuck were hangin’ out by the creek, fishin’ I think, at least ten miles south of Sweet Briar. A convenience store owner said that he saw Chuck during the murder window, which gave Chuck his alibi.”
“So why do you think he ran away?” I asked.
“Lord only knows,” she said. “He was a very unhappy boy.”
“How so?” Dixie asked.
“Well, his father was the mayor of the town at the time, and he wielded his power like a club. He was pretty hard on Chuck and expected great things from him. But Chuck, well…let’s just say that he wasn’t the brightest either. And he made up for his lack of intelligence with his fists. He was constantly gettin’ into trouble, and his father was constantly gettin’ him out of it.”
“Is that why the sheriff didn’t push harder on his alibi?” I asked.
“What?” she asked, sounding startled. “Of course not. I’m sure it’s because his alibi was solid.”
“Not really,” I said. “If what you say is true, it’s possible that the convenience store owner may have only seen Tim, not Chuck, and Tim just vouched for him.”
“Sounds like a solid alibi to me,” Rachel said, her back stiffening.
“But I still don’t understand why he ran away,” I said. “You’ve said that his father was tough on him, and he wasn’t very bright, but why would he skip town just a month or two before his high school graduation? Was he not going to graduate?”
“I have no idea about that,” she said, her irritation showing. “I didn’t have access to Chuck Petty’s report cards. I just know that he struggled with school and people gave him a hard time about it, and he beat them up when they did.”
“Rachel,” I asked, my voice stern, “do you think Chuck Petty murdered Bethany Brewer?”
Her gaze held mine, and I could see tears filling her eyes. “I wasn’t there that night,” she said. “I don’t know what happened. Everything else is pure speculation. It happened over forty years ago and it’s in the past, and that’s exactly where we need to leave it.”
Standing, she said, “I need to go feed my chickens. I hope I’ve answered all of your questions, and you two have a nice day.”
Then she walked around to the back of the house, leaving us both still sitting in our chairs.
I turned to Dixie, and she looked just as startled as I felt. One thing was for certain: Rachel knew more than she was telling us, and I had to figure out how to get her to spill it.