The small media frenzy would not last long, Irene reflected, but while it did, the lodge was flourishing.
She took another swallow of tea and thought some more about previously unconsidered dots. Shards of one of her old nightmares flickered through her head.
It occurred to her that she was one of the dots.
I’m sorry Irene didn’t come with you,” Tess said. She poured freshly made lemonade into Luke’s glass and sat down in one of the living room chairs. “I have all sorts of questions for her.”
“She’s working on another piece for the Beacon.” Luke downed half the contents of his glass, savoring the tangy taste. “Adeline is leaning on her for more local stuff. The Ryland Webb story is getting deeper and wider by the hour.”
Tess chuckled. “Who would have thought that quiet little Irene would have turned out to be a fiery investigative journalist?”
“She’s a woman on a mission,” Luke said. “I’m supposed to be on one, too. I put Maxine in charge of the lodge, and the next thing I know, she’s issuing orders. She sent me out to scour the local terrain for toilet paper. Personally, I don’t see any reason why the guests can’t supply their own, but Maxine feels differently.”
Tess laughed. “I’ll bet she’s enjoying herself out there at the lodge.”
“She’s making money, that’s for sure. At any rate, on the way into town I got to thinking that you might be able to help me clear up one question that’s been bothering me.”
Tess’s intelligent face lit with interest. “What do you want to know?”
“The name of the person Pamela confided in the day Irene’s parents died.”
Tess’s enthusiasm faded abruptly. “You’re talking about the individual who called Ryland Webb and warned him about what Pamela had done?”
“Any ideas?”
Tess sighed. “Phil and I talked about it. We came up with one possibility, but neither of us believes that there’s any point pursuing it. I’m sure the person we’re thinking of did what he thought was the right thing, never guessing where it would lead.”
“How the hell could he believe that calling Webb was the right thing?”
Tess pondered the view outside her window for a moment and then turned back to face him. Her expression was very steady.
“First, I’d better give you some local history,” she said. “Phil and I were born and raised in this town. One way or another we’ve experienced the effects of three generations of Webbs.”
“I’m listening.”
“My mother told me a story once. It was about a girl named Milly, whom she knew in high school here in Dunsley. Evidently Milly was quite a beauty. The summer she graduated, Victor Webb gave her a job as a receptionist in his company’s headquarters in San Francisco. She was thrilled. She took off for the bright lights of the big city without a backward glance. My mother and her friends were incredibly envious of her good fortune.”
“I sense a bad outcome here.”
“You sense right. A year and a half after she left Dunsley, Milly returned with a baby boy. She raised him here. She was a single mother living in a small town where jobs have always been scarce, but she and her boy never seemed to lack for a nice roof over their heads and decent clothes.”
“Did she work?”
“Occasionally, but mostly just to keep busy, I think. As I said, she didn’t appear to need the money.”
“Where did the cash come from?”
Tess reached for the lemonade pitcher. “Milly told everyone that she’d had an affair with a man who was killed in a car accident before he could marry her, but that he left her something in his will. She stuck to that story until the day she died, although my mother and her friends never really believed it.”
“Milly’s dead?”
Tess nodded. “Cancer. But her son still lives here in town. And if the old rumors were right, Victor Webb is his father.”
“That would make Ryland Webb his brother.”
“Yes.”
The houses in the heavily wooded subdivision were not the most upscale in town, but they were solidly middle class. The vehicles in the paved driveways were of recent vintage. Luke saw gardens and lawns but no front porches. This was a neighborhood of backyard decks and patios.
He left the SUV at the corner and walked back to the police cruiser that was parked in front of a closed garage. The window was conveniently lowered on the driver’s side. A garage door opener was clipped to the visor.
He reached inside the vehicle and depressed the button. The garage door rumbled open in response. A heavy, silver SUV was parked inside.
Luke went forward to take a closer look. The finish on the front of the vehicle was badly dinged and chipped in several places. Myriad spiderweb cracks marred the windshield.
He heard the front door of the house open.
“What the hell are you doing in my garage, Danner?” Sam McPherson called out from the top of the steps.
Luke went to stand in the garage opening. “Out of curiosity, were you just trying to scare Irene to death the other day when you chased her on Lakefront Road, or did you intend to kill her?”
Sam came down the steps. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“That SUV looks like it went through a bad hailstorm.”
Sam scowled. “Some kids stole it. Took it joyriding. I haven’t had a chance to take it in to Carpenter’s garage.”
“How long have you been doing favors for your older brother, Sam?”
Sam looked as if he’d been punched in the gut. “What?”
“We’re going to talk. Either we do it out here where your neighbors can watch, or we go inside and do this in private. Your choice.”
“Why should I talk to you?”
“Because I know you’re Ryland Webb’s half brother. I figure it was you who called him seventeen years ago to warn him that Pamela had given the video to Elizabeth Stenson. Did he ask you to burn down the Webb house the other night? Or did he drive up here to do the job himself?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sam rasped, unnerved now. “Get out of here.”
“Must have been hard watching your brother get the benefits of being a legitimate Webb all these years. Ryland was the golden boy, wasn’t he? The local crown prince. You never told anyone that you had just as much Webb blood in your veins as he did. Why was that, Sam? Was it because Victor Webb paid your mother to keep the secret, and after she was gone you felt you had to do the same?”
Sam made fists of both hands. “Shut up.”
“You seem to do okay on a small-town police chief’s salary.” Luke angled his head toward the garage. “Nice new car. House in a good neighborhood.”
“I don’t have to listen to this.”
“Yeah, you do have to listen, Sam.” Luke started toward him. “Because the way I figure it, you’re an accessory to at least three murders, maybe four. I’m not sure about Hoyt Egan yet. It’s possible that your brother handled that one all by himself.”
“You can’t prove anything.”
“That’s what your brother keeps saying. But you’ll notice that he’s going down in flames. Won’t be long before he breaks. If you didn’t help him commit any of the murders, you’d better be prepared to prove it.”
“I don’t have to prove a damn thing,” Sam said.
“You’re wrong. You’d better prove to me that you didn’t try to force Irene off the road into the lake the other day, or I’m going to take you apart.”
Sam’s face worked. “For God’s sake, man, I didn’t try to kill her. Why the hell would I do a thing like that?”
“Maybe because Ryland Webb asked you to do it?”
Sam’s eyes hardened. “I don’t take orders from Ryland Webb, damn you.”
“Pamela trusted you, didn’t she? You were her uncle, after all. Not like she had a lot of close family to turn to. The day she gave the video to Elizabeth Stenson, she confided in you. She told you that
Ryland had abused her for years and that the secret was about to come out. But instead of honoring your niece’s trust, you called your brother and warned him about what was going to happen.”
“No, damn you, I didn’t call Ryland.”
“Did you kill them yourself, McPherson?”
“No.” Sam looked as if he were drowning in a sea of anguish. “God help me, I didn’t believe Pamela that day. I thought she made up the story about being abused because she wanted to get back at Ryland for sending her away to boarding school. I didn’t know what was on that video she gave to Elizabeth Stenson, but I was afraid that Pamela was about to create a lot of trouble for herself and the family. So I did the only thing I could think of.”
All the dots were connected now. Ice sleeted through Luke’s veins.
“You didn’t call Ryland,” Luke said. “You called your father, Victor Webb.”
Forty-seven
It took more courage than she had ever dreamed she possessed to walk into the ghastly kitchen. Pushing through the invisible veil of the old nightmare aroused a wave of nausea and terror so powerful she had to cling to one of the counters to keep from falling.
Fighting the vertigo, she looked down at the floor. Oh, God, the floor. It was the same imitation white stone tile that her mother had chosen for the room on the grounds that it would be easy to clean. The kitchen had been repainted over the years, but no one had replaced the tile.
Easy to clean.
Don’t think about the blood. You are not going to be sick. You can’t be sick. You came here to look at the evidence. This is a crime scene, and you were the first witness. You are also a journalist. Do your job. Step back and take another look.
She straightened and studied the sunny kitchen. Very slowly she unlocked the vault in her mind and dragged the nightmares out into the light of day.
She took her notepad and pen out of her handbag. Then she forced herself to cross the kitchen, open the back door and walk out onto the small porch. She closed the door behind her and stood still for a moment, bracing herself.
The plan was a simple one. She would retrace her movements that night, recalling as many of the dreadful details as possible to see if she could come up with anything that might serve to link Ryland Webb to the murders of her parents. Even the smallest sliver of memory or evidence might be enough to pressure Webb into a confession.
Taking a deep breath, she checked the time on her watch and reopened the door. Moving slowly, she stepped back into the kitchen. The nightmarish images she had worked so hard to hide in the vault smashed through her.
Panic and anguish screamed in her head. It took everything she had to get the emotions under control. So much for the theory that facing your fears rendered them less awful, she thought.
She made herself take her time, reliving it all in as much detail as possible from the first chilling realization that the door was partially blocked by some heavy object, to the moment when she managed to punch in the emergency number on the telephone.
At first it was disconcerting, even disturbing, to discover that, although the images stored in the vault were shattering and intense, there were very few of them.
Then again, that made sense, she reflected. All the psych articles she had read over the years pointed out that when an individual was thrust into the center of a traumatic event, the deluge of adrenaline and shock created a very narrow range of focus. It was a survival mechanism, she thought. You can’t deal with everything that comes rushing at you in that sort of situation, so you tune out the nonessential elements and concentrate on what you need to do in order to keep going.
Nevertheless, when she rechecked her watch a short time later, she was stunned to realize how little time had passed between the moment she had discovered the bodies and when she made the call that brought Sam McPherson to the front door. Not long at all, she thought. At the time it had seemed an eternity.
She made herself examine the kitchen counters, trying to recall if there had been any dishes or cooking utensils out when she got home that night. It seemed to her that the countertops had been clean. Did that indicate that the killer had arrived after dinner and the dishes had been done? Or had he come before her mother had even started the evening meal?
It was hopeless. She wasn’t going to get any answers from the kitchen. What else did she remember about that night?
There had been a great deal of confusion, she thought. She recalled Sam’s horrified expression when he had seen the bodies. He had been shaking when he called Bob Thornhill.
When Thornhill arrived, he and Sam had taken her outside to one of the cruisers, bundled her into the passenger seat and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. Later Thornhill took her home to his house for what remained of that terrible night.
She recalled sitting huddled on the bed in the Thornhills’ spare bedroom until dawn, the soft, relentless hiss of Gladys Thornhill’s oxygen machine a sad pulse beat in the darkness.
The phone had rung just as the sky began to turn a dull gray over the lake. Bob Thornhill came out of the bedroom and trudged down the hall to answer it.
Irene rubbed her temples, struggling to recall more details. She knew she could not possibly remember every word of the conversation, and several of her therapists had warned her about the danger of inventing memories of that night. Still, some of the truth was there.
Think like a good reporter, not a frightened teen.
The low-voiced, one-sided discussion she had overheard never seemed important before. But in light of what had happened in the past few days, it took on new meaning. For the first time she tried to reconstruct it as accurately as possible.
“…Yes, sir, she’s with us. Pretty much what you’d expect, sir. She’s in shock. Hasn’t said hardly a word.…No, I asked her that, and it’s clear that she got home too late to see any of it, thank God. Judging from the condition of the bodies, I’d say it went down at least a couple of hours or more before the poor kid walked in the back door.”
There had been a long pause, during which Thornhill listened to the person on the other end of the phone.
“Not much doubt about it. Hugh Stenson went crazy, shot Elizabeth and then turned the gun on himself. Terrible, terrible thing.”
Another pause.
“Yes, sir,” Thornhill said. “I called the aunt. She’ll be here tomorrow.”
There had been a few more soft-spoken words, and then Thornhill hung up and made his way back down the hall to his dying wife.
“Who was that?” Gladys Thornhill mumbled.
“Webb.”
“What did he want?”
“He was worried about the girl. Called to see how she was getting on.”
“At four-thirty in the morning?” Gladys asked.
“He said he had just heard the news.”
“What did he want, Bob?”
“I told you, he was concerned about the Stenson girl. Asked if there was anything he could do.”
“I know him.” Bitter resignation laced Gladys’s words. “Sooner or later, he always wants something. Someday he’ll make you pay for what he’s doing for me, mark my words.”
“Try to get some sleep.”
Irene shuddered. In light of what she now knew, it was obvious that Webb had called Bob Thornhill that night to make sure the daughter of his victims had not seen or heard anything that might implicate him as the killer. Perhaps Thornhill had unwittingly saved her life when he assured Webb she had not come home for at least two hours after the deaths and that she was in a state of complete shock.
She let herself out the kitchen door and made her way to the edge of the lake. Stepping onto the old wooden dock, she went to stand at the far end. She studied the surface of the lake the way her father had done when he wanted to think things over.
“I know him. Sooner or later, he always wants something. Someday he’ll make you pay for what he’s doing for me, mark my words.”
There had been a disturbing intimacy ab
out the way Gladys spoke, she thought. True, she had lived in Dunsley all her life. She certainly knew Ryland Webb. But Ryland had been many years younger than Gladys Thornhill, a different generation altogether. It was odd that she had spoken of him in such a resentful, knowing way.
“I know him.”
A cold thrill of comprehension whispered through Irene.
In her shocked and dazed condition on the night of the murders, she had assumed that Ryland was the one who called the Thornhills that night. He was the father of her best friend that summer. It had seemed natural that he would call to check on her. But what if it had been Victor Webb who phoned?
Gladys and Victor Webb had been contemporaries. The two had no doubt gone to school together before Victor left Dunsley to make his fortune. Everyone in town knew that Victor Webb had paid Gladys’s medical bills during the last year of her life.
The dots were connecting so quickly now that she could barely keep up with them.
Her cell phone rang, jarring her out of the trance of concentration into which she had plunged. She jumped a little and then quickly opened her handbag, half turning.
She saw him then. He had come from the shadows at the side of the house. He had a gun in his hand.
“Don’t answer that,” Victor Webb said. “Take the phone out very slowly and drop it into the water.”
Her first, disoriented reaction was that he looked so normal. He was dressed in a black-and-tan golf shirt, a khaki windbreaker and a pair of light-colored golf slacks. He looked as though he had just come off a fairway.
Somewhere in the back of her mind was the knowledge that she ought to be terrified, but all she could feel in that moment was a rage that was so red and so powerful, it swamped every other emotion.
“I said drop the damned phone into the water,” Victor barked. “Do it now, you stupid bitch. You’re just like your damned parents, nothing but trouble.”