Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Summer
D ixie and I got back in my car, and I pulled onto the highway, trying to figure out what to do next.
“I want to look at the Brewer property again,” I said, turning on my blinker when I saw the entrance to their property up ahead.
“Okay,” Dixie said. “Are you looking for anything specific?”
“I want to check out the location where Bethany’s body was found. Even if we don’t know the exact spot, we do know she was found next to the stock pond.”
“Do you think you’re actually going to find something?” she asked. “It happened over forty years ago.”
“It’s not like I expect to find the rock that someone hit her in the head with or anything,” I said. “I just kind of want to get a feel for the land. I can’t help but think that Rachel is hiding something. I just don’t know what yet, but maybe if we look around, it’ll jog something loose.”
“It definitely can’t hurt,” Dixie said.
We parked in front of the dilapidated Brewer house and headed toward the barn. As we got closer, I realized it was in worse shape than the house and looked like it could fall down with a strong wind. We didn’t go inside, although part of me wanted to, but it wasn’t safe and I doubted we would find anything. Definitely not worth the risk.
Instead, we walked behind the barn and down a path between two overgrown fields until we found a pond several hundred feet from the house. It was about thirty feet in diameter, but there was a berm on one side, like it had once been fed by a creek and someone had blocked it off.
Dixie had brought the police report with her, so she opened it up and looked for the description of where Bethany’s body had been found.
“It says on a small hill,” she muttered, looking up, “so I’m guessing it was the berm.”
“Agreed,” I said. We both scanned the area around us, then glanced back toward the house to see the back of the barn, which obstructed the view of the house.
“So let’s say a stranger came back here and murdered Bethany,” I said. “Her parents wouldn’t have seen anything from the house, but how would the murderer have gotten back here unseen? They would have had to park a car somewhere. If they parked it on the Brewers’ land, surely the parents would have noticed.”
“By stranger,” Dixie said, “are you referring to Chuck Petty?”
“Of course the thought occurred to me,” I said. “It seems just way too coincidental that he left town around the same time she was murdered. The question is why would he murder her.”
“Good question,” Dixie said. “Are you thinking they parked somewhere else?” She gave me a pointed look. “Like Rachel’s place?”
“If the murderer parked on Rachel Swan’s property and walked over, that would mean he knew about the path, which would mean he was familiar with the land,” I said. “And, supposedly, he wasn’t friends with any of them. In fact, he tormented Lila. I highly doubt she would have invited him over and then showed him around.”
Dixie shrugged. “You’re right, but it would still be a way someone could get on the property without being seen.”
She was right, of course. Just because everything didn’t make sense right now didn’t mean it wasn’t a piece of the puzzle.
“What about the note?” I asked. “It was addressed to L from T. L would be Lila, not Bethany, but who’s T?”
“T could be a nickname,” Dixie suggested. “Same with L.”
“But the note was under the bed that was most likely Lila’s.” I said. “It makes sense that it would be addressed to Lila.”
A hush fell over us, and then Dixie said, “We could go back to the coffee shop and see if the ladies are still there. We can ask Linda and her friends if they knew anyone else who was close to Lila or Bethany.”
“No, they all said there was no one else, that the only person who ever got close to either one of them was Rachel.”
“We could find Tim,” Dixie said. “We could ask him about the alibi he gave Chuck.”
“Mm, yeah, that’s a good idea, but we don’t have his last name. I guess we could ask Linda and her friends. They’d probably know.”
“We could ask Maybelline,” Dixie said. “She would definitely know.”
I pressed my lips together. “No, I still think involving Maybelline is a bad idea. She’s pretty smart. She might start to put it together that we’re working for Magnolia. We still need to keep her out of this.”
“It’s too bad she’s such a gossip,” Dixie said with a dejected sigh.
“But she’s such a good source of information, which is exactly why she’s a gossip.”
While there were some people who liked to collect information and hoard it, Maybelline definitely didn’t fall into that category. The only promise I’d ever gotten from her to keep something quiet had only been for twenty-four hours.
“Okay,” I said, “let’s look around some more and see if we can find the path that Lila and Rachel used to get back and forth between their properties.”
“After over forty years?” Dixie exclaimed. “It’s probably overgrown. It doesn’t take long for nature to take back the land. Enough so that you could never tell people were there.”
“True,” I said, “but let’s still look around anyway.”
“Neither one of us are exactly dressed for that,” Dixie said, glancing down at her dress and then over at mine.
She was right. Most of the land was full of overgrown weeds, tall enough that it would scratch our legs, not to mention all the bugs that were hiding in the undergrowth.
“Then let’s go change,” I said. “And in the meantime, we’ll try to figure out Tim’s last name and see if we can talk to him about Chuck.”
Dixie agreed with a nod. “We don’t have any other leads to chase, so we might as well follow that one.”
But changing clothes meant going back to our farm, which unfortunately also meant seeing Meemaw.
“Look at the bright side,” Dixie said once we were back in my car, heading that direction. “We can check on your house. I haven’t seen it since I left for Atlanta.”
“Buddy’s coming right along,” I said. “He’s determined to be on the next season of Darling Investigations , so he swears he’s going to meet his deadline, even if they have to work twenty-four hours to meet it.”
When we walked through the front door, Meemaw was vacuuming the living room with her decades-old Hoover. I’d tried to buy her a newer vacuum cleaner that had better suction, but she was a firm believer in “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” even if it took her ten times as long to vacuum the room. She shut the appliance off when she saw us and turned a sharp glare on us. “Well, look what the cat dragged in.”
“Hey, Meemaw,” Dixie said with a cautious smile.
She and our grandmother had a contentious relationship. It didn’t help that Meemaw had blamed Dixie for the barn fire that killed Pawpaw and Dixie’s parents. While Dixie had served time in juvie for the crime, she’d been cleared of all wrongdoing this past summer. Meemaw hadn’t exactly apologized, though her guilt had been obvious, albeit short-lived. And Meemaw still harbored some irrational and undeserved resentment. The fact that Dixie was “shackin’ up” with a man only added fuel to her perpetual fire.
“We just need to change clothes and then we’ll be out of your hair,” I said.
“Are you gonna be home for dinner?” Meemaw asked. “I’m making fried chicken and mashed potatoes.”
I stopped and put a hand on my hip. “What are you up to?”
She only made fried chicken and mashed potatoes when she wanted a family dinner, which meant she definitely wanted us there tonight.
“Can’t a woman want to spend time with her grandchildren? Do I have to have a reason?” She took a breath, starting to get worked up. “ Maybe I just wanna spend time with my grandchild who’s been fornicatin’ up in Atlanta.”
Dixie laughed. “So you’d rather have me fornicatin’ here in Sweet Briar?”
Meemaw held her finger up and pointed it at Dixie. “I’d rather not have you fornicatin’ anywhere, but if you’re gonna do it, I’d rather you be doing it under my nose.”
“I never took you as a voyeur, Meemaw,” Dixie said, restraining a laugh.
Meemaw’s eyes narrowed to pinpricks and I could feel the anger rolling off of her in waves. I knew better than to stick around for this, so I bolted to my room at the back of the house and started rummaging through my dresser drawers for a pair of jeans.
Dixie appeared in my bedroom doorway five seconds later, grinning ear to ear. “I love it when I can best her.”
“You liar,” I said, “you may love it, but you never best her.”
“Maybe so,” Dixie admitted, “but I get closer and closer every time.”
Dixie and I changed into jeans and T-shirts, and we both made sure to get our work boots for walking through the fields. Teddy might have done the majority of the work around the farm, but Dixie and I helped from time to time.
We packed our original clothes in a bag so we could change when we were done out at the Brewer farm. It might be October, but the day was warm and sunny, leaving little doubt that we’d leave the property a hot, sweaty mess. I told Dixie we could go to Luke’s house and shower before we tracked down Chuck’s alibi, Tim.
But before we left the farm, we headed out to the overseer’s house so Dixie could see the progress. There were even more guys working inside than when I’d checked on the house the day before. The windows were open, and we could hear a cacophony of noise from the power tools inside.
We found Buddy in the kitchen with a caulk gun in his hand.
“Well, if it ain’t my favorite PI,” he said when Dixie and I walked through the front door. He grabbed a towel out of his back pocket and swiped at the sweat on his brow. “Here for your daily update?”
“Dixie’s back in town, so I thought I’d show her around,” I explained. “So she can see for herself that we’ll be moving in next Friday.”
He released a hearty laugh. “It ain’t changed since yesterday morning. At this rate, I think you’ll be in by next Wednesday.”
Dixie’s eyes widened with excitement. “We’ll be cookin’ in this kitchen next week?”
“Sure will,” Buddy said, his gaze drifting over to the gas range, then back to us with a wobbly smile.
Uh-oh. This was the first sign of uncertainty I’d noticed since I’d issued the deadline.
Dixie didn’t notice as she was too busy surveying the room, and I could see how she would be awed. She’d only ever lived with Meemaw in the time capsule she called a house, and her parents’ mobile home…and the occasional live-in stint with previous boyfriends. But this was far nicer than anywhere she’d ever lived, Bill’s apartment in Atlanta included. She’d been excited before, but it had always felt like she was holding herself back. Like she didn’t believe it would actually happen. And now…now she could see a different future for herself. Even if it was just a renovated house.
“I want to see my room,” she whispered.
Wearing a huge smile, I swept my arm toward her bedroom, knowing they were finished with it. I was excited to see her reaction.
But she didn’t rush into it, as I might have expected. Instead she practically tiptoed, as though it would all change back to the run-down house it had been before I started the renovations. Not that her room had even existed before. It was part of the new addition.
She swung open the bedroom door and gasped. The room was painted a soft pink and had crisp white six-inch baseboards and thick crown molding. Buddy’s crew had already hung a gold-tone curtain rod over the wide windows, which were ready for the wood shutter installation early next week.
“What do you think?” I asked, suddenly nervous.
“I think it’s the most perfect room in the world.”
I let out the breath I hadn’t been aware I was holding. “This is your home too, Dixie. It’s on Baumgardner land. I don’t know what you and Bill are planning, if you’re planning to move to Atlanta or…well, in any case, you’re always welcome?—”
She spun back to face me, confusion in her eyes. “I’m not moving to Atlanta.”
“But you spend so much time there now. And Bill, his work?—”
“I spend so much time up there because I can’t stand bein’ under Meemaw’s thumb. Once this house is done and we’re moved in, I’m hunkerin’ down and you’ll have to pry me out.” She grinned. “But Lauren would be plenty happy with that kind of drama for season three. I could make sure to put up a huge fuss.”
I laughed. “Well, the good news is that I’ve agreed to let Lauren include some shots of the house. It just might get us out of filming another disastrous family dinner.”
Her smile faded. “What do you think is up with the dinner tonight?”
I frowned. “I don’t know, but Meemaw was acting strange yesterday morning. Maybe she just wants to give us another lecture about the perils of livin’ in sin.”
She smiled, but it looked forced. For all her bluster about besting our grandmother, I knew deep down that Dixie wished the woman would just love and accept her. I’d hoped for the same thing for over a decade when I’d been banished. But our grandmother was set in her ways and not likely to change now. Maybe moving out from under her roof would help improve all of our relationships.
“Have you considered what you’ll do with the house when you move in with Luke?” she asked.
I blinked in surprise. “Who said I was movin’ in with Luke?”
“I know he keeps askin’, which means it’s just a matter of time before you do.”
I leaned against the windows overlooking the fields and sighed. “Just because Luke Montgomery wants something, doesn’t mean he’s going to get it.”
But I had to admit that his pressure to get me to bend to his will wasn’t sitting right with me. Sure, a successful relationship was all about agreeable compromise, and I also conceded that Luke had made quite a few compromises to be with me, most notably dealing with my notoriety, but I’d sold part of my soul to save this land by agreeing to film Darling Investigations , and I wasn’t about to just walk away from it.
I had no idea who would win this particular battle. Or if there would actually be a winner. But now wasn’t the time to think about it. We had a case to investigate.