Chapter Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Eight
The place smelled like a campfire, and Leanne was flooded with memories of cold, dew-covered sleeping bags and burned toast. She trekked up the driveway and surveyed the blackened skeleton that had once been the garage.
A shiny black Cadillac was parked beside the guesthouse, and Leanne eyed it warily.
Maybe the insurance agent had shown up already.
She glanced around the property. The ranch house looked unscathed. Same for the stables. Leanne looked across the paddock to where the horses stood in the shade of a giant live oak, probably exhausted from last night’s adventure.
Sometimes it blew Leanne’s mind that her mom actually lived here—and Ben, too.
When they were growing up, Leanne and Ben had enough of everything, but nothing like this.
They hadn’t had horses, or acreage, or fancy cars.
Their mom had taught riding lessons and their dad was a cop.
Had her mother married Boone for his money?
Or did she love him? Leanne honestly didn’t know.
Her parents had been in love once—of that she was certain. They’d met at a rodeo in Abilene. As a kid, Leanne had loved hearing her dad tell the story of how he’d fallen for his future wife right away. A pretty woman on a fast horse, and I was done for, he’d say.
What attracted her mom was more of a mystery, but Leanne had always figured that her tall dad, with his badge and his quiet confidence, must have represented security. Regina’s own father was a cotton farmer whose bad judgment and gambling problems had cost the family their land.
But who knew? The more Leanne learned about her parents, the more she suspected she didn’t know either of them at all.
She stepped into the shadow of the burned-out garage.
The roof had caved in, and charred shingles dangled down with bright blue patches of sky peeking between the gaps.
She stopped beside the Rolls-Royce. The windshield was shattered, the hood smashed by a fallen rafter.
She studied the alligator burn pattern on the wood as she picked her way through the sooty debris, following the faint sound of scraping.
“Mom?”
“Back here.”
She stepped into the storage closet, where red and green tubs of holiday decorations lay overturned on the floor. Her mother knelt beside a pile of broken Christmas ornaments, sweeping shards of glass with a hand broom.
Leanne’s heart squeezed. Her mom wore overalls and muck boots and had her hair back in a scarf that reminded Leanne of her grandmother. Her mother’s eyes were bloodshot, and she’d aged ten years overnight.
“What happened here?” Leanne asked.
“The damn roof caved in. What does it look like?”
“Is it safe to be in here?”
“Probably not.”
Leanne crouched down to help. “What are they saying?” she asked, dropping chunks of glass into the dustpan.
“The insurance adjuster can’t come out till next week.”
“Next week?”
“They’re tied up with the wildfires in New Mexico. They said to take pictures of everything, and we’ll use them with the claim. Boone got about a hundred this morning.”
Leanne looked around. “Where is he now?”
“On the sun porch, meeting with the car guy.”
“What car guy?”
“Some special policy he’s got on the antiques.”
Leanne grabbed a contractor-grade trash bag by the door and dragged it over. The wooden shelving had collapsed, sending boxes everywhere.
“Anything salvageable?”
Her mom tossed a broken nutcracker into the bag. “No.”
Leanne sifted through the pile of shattered snow globes that her mom had collected for decades. Her wooden nutcracker collection was mixed in, too.
“This guy’s intact.” Leanne picked up a German nutcracker holding two beer steins.
Her mom plucked it from her hand and tossed it in the bag. “Don’t bother. What’s the point?”
Leanne stood and grabbed the shovel leaning against the charred Sheetrock. The burn pattern made a tall arc, and she wished she knew how to interpret the markings. She wanted to talk to Rick or one of the arson investigators.
Her mom stood as she surveyed everything. “What a mess.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why? It’s not your fault.”
“I know.”
Sighing, she looked at Leanne. “Ben came and picked up the records.”
“What records?”
“Your dad’s LPs. Some of them were melted, but he found a couple boxes that made it. Said he wanted them for keepsakes.”
Leanne stared at her. “He actually said that? Keepsakes?”
“Well, I assumed. Why else would he want them?”
Leanne gritted her teeth and looked away. Their dad’s collection of classic jazz records was probably worth some money. He’d had hundreds of them.
“What’s the problem?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you care about the records? You don’t listen to jazz.”
“Forget it.” Leanne crouched down and plucked another nutcracker from the pile, one her father had carved in his shop. It was a cowboy with a lasso made of burlap twine. “Just hope he’s not selling them for drug money, that’s all.”
“He would never.”
Leanne glared up at her.
Her mom muttered under her breath and turned around.
Using the shovel, Leanne filled the big black bag until it was nearly too heavy to lift. Broken ornaments and Santa plates and snowflake mugs. The Christmas cookie tins were unscathed, but her mother didn’t want them, claimed she was done with all of it.
“This is going to take days,” Leanne said. “We should hire someone to help.”
“Boone already did. They’re coming tomorrow. I just want to get all this personal stuff up first.”
Leanne hauled the bag to the front of the garage and deposited it near Boone’s pickup truck.
Unlike the antiques, it had somehow escaped the falling rafters.
She found the charred remnants of what had once been the wooden ladder for the attic.
Beside it was a half-burned bankers box.
Leanne poked through the singed, soggy carboard and melted vinyl.
She looked up. The plywood floor was gone, and the attic was a crazy network of seared beams.
“Why didn’t the sprinklers go off?” Leanne asked.
“They did. That’s what Glenn told us, anyway. He said they slowed the burn, but not by a lot.”
Glenn Meachum was the fire chief and a longtime friend of Leanne’s dad.
“A twenty-thousand-dollar sprinkler system, and what good did it do?” Her mom shook her head. “Damn waste of money.”
“Those are designed for kitchen fires. Or maybe a fireplace ember that lands on the roof,” Leanne said. “If someone douses the place with accelerant, a residential sprinkler system isn’t going to do much.”
“Tell that to the sales rep who sold it to us. You know, if they hadn’t gotten here when they did, the stables could have burned down, too. Bunch of psychopaths.”
“Who?”
“Whoever did this!” She glowered at Leanne. “Starlight and Reesie could have been killed!”
“All of you could have been killed.”
“They were after the horses, not us. Trust me. These people are sick.”
Leanne sighed. Her mom had a long-standing suspicion of animal rights activists, and she seemed to have already made up her mind.
Leanne looked up at the crackled wood with slices of blue sky showing through. “You shouldn’t have put his things up there.”
“What things?”
“Dad’s things. I wish you’d left them with me.”
“What do you want with all that junk? It’s just a bunch of old baseball magazines and paperbacks.”
“And all of his notebooks. His work stuff.”
“Like I said, junk. What does anyone need with all that?” She turned to look at Leanne. “Oh, don’t tell me. The Rawls case? That’s what you’re upset about? Goddamn it, Leanne.”
“I’m upset about your house nearly burning down! And with you guys in it! I’m upset about the horses and the cars and, yes, all of Dad’s worldly possessions that shouldn’t have been chucked up in the attic to rot!”
Her mom fisted a hand on her hip. “Now you’re being petty.”
“How it that petty?”
“I was doing you a favor not saddling you and your brother with all of your father’s crap after he died.”
“It’s not crap to me. I would have gladly taken it, if I’d known you were going to toss it in the attic and never look through it again.”
“You had every opportunity to sort through your father’s things when we moved. You chose not to.”
Leanne’s skin flushed with anger. “When we moved?”
“Yes.”
“You mean when you moved. Yes, Mom, when you moved in with Boone a whole two months after Dad died, before we’d even picked out a tombstone, I should have come running over here to claim all his stuff.”
Leanne glared at her mom. She was tired of holding back her feelings.
“I don’t appreciate your tone, Leanne.”
“My tone?”
“You’re being disrespectful.”
She snorted.
“You know, Leanne, I’ve had about enough of your ungrateful attitude.”
Leanne shook her head and turned away.
“You have no appreciation for what’s been done for you.”
She whirled around. “How is that?”
“You think your father was so wonderful to live with? With his black moods and his drinking and his damn whittling projects at all hours of the night? He was depressed, Leanne. And he took it out on me for years.”
Leanne clenched her teeth and turned away. She’d heard all this before. All the excuses that supposedly made it okay for her mom to start sneaking around with Boone.
“I’m tired of you thinking he was such a hero. You want to know the truth?”
Something in her mother’s voice made her turn around.
“He was not.”
Leanne’s stomach tensed.
“The truth is, I’m glad all that crap is gone.” She gestured at the attic. “The boxes, the work stuff, the legal pads. Your dad was obsessed with his job, and it ruined our marriage.”
Leanne turned around.
“Fine. Turn away. Turn a blind eye to reality, too.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means open your eyes, Leanne. You think he had nothing to do with this mess? He was in the room.”
A chill swept over her.
“What room?”
“The interview room when they wrung that confession out of Sean Moriarty. How do you think they did it? They tortured him, that’s how.”
She swallowed. “How would you know?”
“Because I heard the tape. He recorded it.”
“He—”
“He was there, and he recorded the whole damn thing.” Anger sparked in her mother’s eyes. “It was a coerced confession, just like they’re saying. They held a gun to his head and made him do it. Why do you think your father went and crawled into a bottle for all those years?”
“I don’t believe you.”
“No?”
“Where’s the tape?”
“I got rid of it when he died. Why on earth would I keep such a thing? Unlike him, I know how to let go of the past.”
She stared at her mother’s tight, angry face. The utter meanness radiating from her was as hot as a furnace, and Leanne knew she’d been wanting to do this for years.
She turned and walked away.
“All right, leave. That’s your solution to everything.”
Leanne stopped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I know you, and that’s what you do when you don’t want to face up to things.”
She shook her head and walked away.
“See?” her mom called after her. “There you go again.”
· · ·
Leanne drove.
The highway stretched out in front of her, straight and limitless. She could go to Lubbock or Dallas or anyplace she wanted.
But she didn’t want to go anywhere. She just wanted to drive.
Bile rose in her throat. She swallowed it down.
It rose again, and she pulled onto the shoulder. She jabbed the brakes and skidded to a stop. Flinging the door open, she leaned out and stared at the jagged pavement.
Her stomach churned. She let her mouth fall open and waited, but nothing came out. No vomit. No bile. None of this toxic stew that was roiling around inside her.
She slumped back against the seat. Staring through the dusty windshield, she felt numb. Cold.
She wished she’d never gone over there.
She wished she’d never prodded her. She had sensed that she was poking a wasp’s nest. But still she’d kept doing it. She’d wanted to make her snap. She’d wanted a confrontation after months and years of keeping her feelings in lockdown.
Leanne leaned forward and rested her head against the steering wheel.
She had to turn around. She had to go back. She had responsibilities, even though all she wanted right now was to crawl into bed and pull the covers over her head.
She took a deep breath, angry now for a whole host of reasons.
Less than a day ago, she’d felt sharp. Focused.
Determined. Her victim had been identified, which was a major step forward.
Things had been coming together, finally, and she’d felt such a sense of purpose about what she needed to do.
She’d felt like she was up to this case, that she could handle it.
That for once in her life she was stepping out of her dad’s shadow, doing something completely on her own.
Where had that gone? Leanne wanted it back. She needed it. But instead, her mom’s words filled her brain, expanding and swirling, crowding out every other thing.
She stared through the windshield at the infinite highway. She wanted to drive and drive, leaving behind her job, her family, her memories—all of it—leaving everything in the dust.
Open your eyes, Leanne.
She yanked her door shut and pulled onto the road.