Kay swallowed. Had he really followed Deni? Why would he do such a thing? “Deni, are you sure about him watching you?”
“Yes, Mom. I’m almost positive.”
Kay met Doug’s eyes, silently telling him they might need to listen. Yes, Deni could be a drama queen. But she knew when someone was following her.
Doug just shook his head. “ ‘Almost’ and ‘positive’ don’t go together, Deni. If he was watching you, it was because he was worried about you. The color of his skin is the primary reason he’s a suspect, and you know it.”
“Fine, Dad. Think what you want. But if you’re refusing to consider him because of political correctness, and he strikes again, then you’re no better than the racists who’ve accused him.”
“Yeah, Dad.” Jeff’s tone was level, careful. “Guilt is guilt, no matter what color your skin is.”
Kay let her gaze float to the backyard next door. Had they failed to consider the things that were right under their noses? Could it be that Brad was the killer?
thirty-seven
Kay struggled with her doubts about Brad over the next few days. Doug was firm in his defense of him, and when she saw Brad or Judith, Jeremy or Drew, she was, too. But then she’d think of the things Deni and Jeff had said, and she’d wonder.
But there were other things weighing on her mind, things that also threatened their survival.
Like what they were going to eat.
Kay sat on the floor in the pantry a week after Hank’s announcement, staring up at the empty shelves. How on earth was she going to feed her family? Though they’d all worked hard to plan their meals and ration their food, they were still running out.
She rubbed her face hard, then let her fingers slide down it as she took a mental inventory. There were a couple packages of dried beans, several bags of rice, and a few jars of canned tomatoes and squash the Keegans had traded for a bicycle. There wasn’t enough to last more than a few days. Then they would be desperate.
She wanted to believe things would be all right. God had provided so far, hadn’t He? They’d had something to eat every day, and no one had gotten sick from the water. But things were getting scarier. The banks still hadn’t opened and no one had access to their cash. People were scrounging for things to trade or barter.
If she were the only one losing weight, she wouldn’t mind it at all. She’d needed to lose ten pounds, anyway. But Beth was getting too thin, and Logan could hardly keep his shorts up. The nine-year-old’s ribs were starting to show through his tanned skin, and the athletic bulk Jeff had worked so hard to build was slowly shrinking. A few more weeks, and Deni, who used to count every calorie that went into her mouth, would begin to look anorexic.
Doug stepped into the doorway. “Honey, are you all right?”
She set her elbows on her knees, and looked up at him. “I don’t know what we’re gonna do, Doug. The shelves are almost empty.”
“We’ll just have to start hunting more, bringing home meat.”
“It’ll spoil. I don’t know how to preserve it.”
He stared at her for a moment, as if he hadn’t thought of that. “We’ll ask Eloise. I’m sure she knows. If not, we’ll find some others who are old enough to remember how it’s done. Or we’ll talk the librarian into opening the library, so we can look it up. And Hank’s right about us starting a garden, plowing up the front and back yards. I think we should start on that this week.”
Her face twisted. “Doug, we spent thousands of dollars on landscaping. Now we’re going to dig it all up?”
“A beautiful lawn is worthless, Kay. We can’t even mow. We need the land, and that’s all we’ve got. Maybe it’s not too late to plant. By fall we’ll have some of our own produce. We can learn how to can and put up enough to get us through the winter. And we’ll figure out some way to get some chickens so we can have eggs.”
She breathed a laugh. “Chickens. They’ll be worth a fortune. The farmers are going to be the richest people on the planet. Whoever would have thought?”
She wished she could be strong, stoic. A good wife and mother would know how to cook from scratch and keep her family healthy. She would even know how to make the drab, repetitive, day-to-day meals taste good.
“I’m tired of this, Doug. I’m tired of feeling inadequate. I keep begging God to help me be a better wife and mother.”
He stooped down beside her. “You’re a perfect wife and mother. Why would you think you’re not?”
“Because I don’t know how to do any of the hard stuff. A month ago the main things on my mind were the wedding, the soccer and baseball schedules, and keeping my manicure appointments.”
“We’ve all done a little growing up. We’re figuring out what’s important.”
Tears burned her eyes. “I feel like one of those families on some stupid reality show. Take everything away from them and see how they react. I keep looking around for the camera!”
Doug laughed. “Me, too. Like some network would have enough money to stage a prank at this scale. No, this is definitely a God thing.”
Kay looked up at him. “What if God doesn’t provide, Doug? What if making us go hungry is part of His plan? I never dreamed the day would come when I couldn’t feed my family. I’m the college-educated mother, who could get a job and do what was necessary if money ever got tight. But none of the rules apply anymore. It’s worse than the Depression. At least then they had places they could shop if they got two coins to rub together.”
Doug slid down to sit opposite her on the floor. “Don’t forget what Psalm 37:25 says. ‘I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.’ ”
“I know what it says.”
“Don’t you believe it?”
She sighed. “I want to.”
“Then do. Just make up your mind to take God at His word.”
She closed her eyes. “I’m just tired, Doug.”
He crossed the floor and slid his arms around her. “So am I.”
She laid her head against his shoulder, and tried to stop crying. It was silly, blubbering on the floor like this, when there was so much work to do.
A door slammed, and they jerked apart.
“Dad! Dad, hurry!” Logan’s panicked cry shook the house. “Dad!”
They launched out of the pantry. “In here!”
Logan skidded into the kitchen, his wide eyes wet with tears. “Dad, they’re dead. Murdered, like the Abernathys!”
Deni? Jeff? Beth? Kay’s heart felt like lead. “Who?”
“The Whitsons.”
Relief sighed out of her, and her heart began beating again. It was someone else.
But Logan was losing it. “They have a kid who’s only six years old, and he’s dead, too.”
Kay grabbed her son and held him while he cried. “The Whitsons? The ones who said they’d been stockpiling since Y2K?”
Doug nodded. “That’s them. Who found them?”
Logan almost couldn’t talk. “Their neighbors hadn’t seen them in a couple of days, so they went to check on them. They’ve been dead for a while. Whoever it was took all their food and supplies.”
Doug’s face was white. “They were survivalists, so they were better set than any of us. I heard they had oil lamps in every room, lanterns, a ton of food that they wouldn’t share . . .”
“Mom, what is it?” Deni and Beth came into the house. “Did something happen?”
Logan sniffed. “More murders.”
Kay let Logan go, and grabbed Doug. “Go see what you can find out, Doug. Maybe the killer left clues this time. Maybe someone knows who did it.”
“Dad?”
Doug turned to Deni. “What?”
Her face was white. “Find out where Brad was when it happened,” she said.
Kay looked down at Logan. He hadn’t been privy to the conversations about Brad. She’d insisted that Deni and Jeff keep their suspicions to themselves, because she didn’t want it get
ting back to Jeremy and Drew.
Logan pulled away from her. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing.” Doug silenced Deni with a look.
Doug went to get his rifle and told everyone to stay in until he got back.
As Kay watched him head out across the back lawn, between the houses on the other street, her own despair choked her. She didn’t want to cry in front of her children, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.
They all needed a good cry. And now was as good a time as any.
thirty-eight
The Whitson murders proved to be much like the Abernathys’, as far as Doug could tell. Ralph Whitson must have heard the intruder and gone to confront him. A fatal mistake. According to the sheriff, Ralph lay on the living room floor, a .22 caliber bullet through his head, and his wife was dead just outside the bedroom door. Their six-year-old had been shot in his bed. Again, none of the neighbors had heard the gunshots, so the killer must have used a silencer. The assailant had taken all the Whitsons’ survival supplies and food.
One man couldn’t have done that on his own. Even with two or three people, it would have taken several trips.
Deputies dusted for prints, but it was difficult to know whether the prints belonged to the victims or the killer.
Doug hung around outside the Whitson house, listening to the rumors being swapped like baseball cards. Everyone had something to tell the sheriff. There were so many leads it was hard to take any of them seriously. One blamed Zach and his brothers, who were heard partying every night. Another blamed a family of teenage boys who lived with their father.
But most of them blamed Brad.
Doug knew it couldn’t have been him. He hadn’t been out at night since the beating days ago. But how could anyone prove it?
After the family went to bed that night, Doug kept watch, but he doubted anyone in the house slept very well. He listened all night for sounds of approaching enemies. Every chirp of a bird or cricket, every creak from wind blowing against the house, set him on edge. When Jeff got up to take over, Doug napped like a grunt in a foxhole.
But deep sleep was impossible. There would be no end to the fatigue—or the fear—until the killer was found.
thirty-nine
After breakfast the next morning, Deni went down to the lake for her first water run of the day. Chris was there, sitting on the grass in front of the message boards that someone had put up in the last few days, reading the myriad messages that already covered the plywood. Deni hadn’t seen her since the night Hank popped all their bubbles a week ago. She didn’t even know if her friend was speaking to her after she’d called her a fool.
Deni offered a tentative smile as she approached her. “Whatcha doing?”
“Reading.” Chris glanced up at her without returning her smile. “Did you know the Broadwaters are interested in trading three chickens for a .12 gauge shotgun? And the Stedmans are looking for a cow to buy. He’ll barter with the use of his tiller.”
Deni lifted her eyebrows. “We could sure use that tiller, if we only had a cow.”
That solemn look on Chris’s face cracked, and a grin tugged at her lips. “I never dreamed I’d hear you say those words.”
“I never dreamed I’d really mean them.”
They gave in to the laughter overtaking them, erasing their angry exchange days ago. Deni dropped down on the grass next to her friend. When their laughter faded into sighs, Deni looked at her. “Hey, I’m sorry about calling you a fool and everything.”
Chris shrugged. “It’s okay. You were upset. We all were. What a night that was. The night of our rude awakening. Thought it couldn’t get worse, and then . . . the Whitsons.”
Deni nodded. “Yeah, it got worse, all right.”
Chris sighed. “I don’t know who to trust anymore. And all the rumors going around . . . that your next-door neighbor is the guy.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard. My dad had to keep people from killing him the other night.”
“Did you tell them about him following you?” Chris asked.
“Yeah, but they think I’m just paranoid.”
“Everybody’s paranoid. There’s another rumor going around that Dr. Morton is the murderer. Apparently, he was seen out the night before last, when the Whitsons must have been killed. And he wasn’t just out, he was kind of sneaking between houses and across backyards.”
Deni frowned. “Really? That’s weird.”
“Yeah. My neighbors, the Abrams, said their dog started barking. They went out, and there he was. He said he was walking to the Gradys on Arbor Drive to help their little boy with asthma. Only guess what? There aren’t any Gradys on Arbor Drive. In fact, there aren’t any Gradys anywhere in the neighborhood.”
Deni’s mouth fell open. “Has anyone told the sheriff?”
“Yeah, the Abrams did. Nothing’s come of it yet, though.”
Deni heard someone behind them, and glanced back. Cathy Morton, Derek’s pregnant wife, stood there with an empty pail. Deni’s heart sank. Had she heard every word?
The woman, who usually looked so vibrant and put-together, had a gray cast to her skin and dark circles under her eyes. Her lips trembled. “My husband is not the killer.”
Deni got up, reaching out for her. “I know. Of course he’s not. They’re just . . . rumors. I’m sure he has a perfectly good explanation.”
Tears came to Cathy’s eyes, and muttering something under her breath, she went to the water and dipped her bucket in, her hand on her belly.
Feeling like a jerk, Deni sat back down on the grass. “Well, that stank.”
“Yeah, it did,” Chris whispered. “When will I learn to keep my mouth shut?”
“Well, if she didn’t hear it from us, she’d hear it from someone else.”
Chris’s sad gaze followed Cathy back to the street. “She seems so nice. It’s hard to believe he could be involved. Why would a guy who’d vowed to save lives go around taking them? And your neighbor seems nice, too. I don’t think he did it, either. I’m leaning toward some of the troublemakers in the neighborhood. Like the Emorys.”
Zach’s family, Deni thought. Yes, Zach and his brothers were known to cause trouble. But could Jeff’s friend really be a killer?
“Whoever did this did it out of greed,” Chris said. “Taking the Abernathys’ diamonds and the Whitsons’ food and survival supplies. There’s money to be made in those things, both during and after the outage.”
“Which makes it more unlikely that someone who makes plenty of money, like Dr. Morton, would need to do that.”
“Everybody’s poor right now,” Chris said.
Deni knew that was true. Even the most affluent among them was desperate for money now. “The thing is, it could be anybody. Somebody we least expect. The person we trust the most. Let’s face it. Oak Hollow just isn’t a safe place right now. That’s why I’m thinking about leaving.”
Chris caught her breath. “Leaving? Where would you go?”
“I might take Vic Green up on his offer and let him take me to D.C. I have to be with Craig.”
“What? Are you crazy?”
“Not crazy,” Deni said. “Desperate.”
“Not that desperate.” Chris got up, gaping at her. “Deni, you haven’t thought this through. You don’t even know him! You’re gonna take off with him, be totally dependent on him, for the time it would take to get across the country?”
“I don’t have any choice.”
Chris’s face twisted. “Of course you have a choice. What’s gotten into you? You don’t even have any money.”
“He’s one of those misers who keeps his money under a mattress or something, instead of the bank. So he has plenty, and he doesn’t want anything from me.”
Chris let out a bitter laugh. “Think again! You think he just has wholesome feelings about a pretty twenty-two-year-old woman who wants to travel with him?”
“He’s Mark’s dad,” Deni said. “He’s been nothing but nice. He’s going
anyway, and he offered to take me along as a favor. It’s not like he’s pressuring me or anything. I don’t think he cares whether I go with him one way or another.” She rose and got the garbage can she’d rolled here, then pulled her shoes off. Stepping into the lake, she filled it up.
Chris stood on the edge of the bank. “What are your folks going to say? Surely your dad won’t stand for this.”
“I’m twenty-two, Chris. I have every right to live where I want to. I’m getting married, and I’m going to be with my future husband.”