Chapter One
Wilmington, North Carolina
August, 1998
The Carolina Women’s Penitentiary sat squat and ugly in the midday sun, high on a bluff overlooking the Cape Fear River. Behind its drab concrete walls, four hundred women counted down the days of their penance. Before the massive iron gate, a lone figure stood, suitcase in hand, a slender woman dressed in stiff jeans, a clean white tee shirt, and cheap loafers. She held her shoulders back and her head high as she waited. There was a loud click and a buzz, and the gate swung open. Gripping the handle of her suitcase, Kathryn McAllister stepped through the opening to freedom.
The gate slammed shut behind her, and Kathryn flinched, her reaction automatic after four years of doors closing behind her. But this time, she was on the outside. She set down the suitcase and took a deep breath of sweet, steamy air, holding it in until her lungs ached as she attempted to cleanse them of the stench of prison. But it was still there, would always be there, gnawing at the edges of memory long after it was gone from her lungs.
Kathryn stepped out of the loafers, peeled off her socks, and wriggled her bare toes in the dry, red dust of the roadside. She tugged at the elastic band that held her hair back. It snapped, releasing the fall of honey-colored curls to her shoulders. Kathryn combed her hair back with the fingers of both hands and raised her face to the sun.
After four years inside a damp, dark cell, its heat felt wonderful. She closed her eyes and reveled in the sunshine, replenishing her senses with the rich, earthy scent of summer, the buzzing of insects and the sweet trilling of birdsong.
Presently, she became aware of another sound, this one mechanical. An automobile was racing down the road toward her, a cloud of dust billowing out behind it. The electric blue Mustang convertible approached at a velocity roughly comparable to that of the moon shuttle. With admirable precision, the driver swerved and halted the car neatly beside her. “Honey, I am so sorry,” Raelynn said in that sugared drawl. “We should have been in and out of the courtroom in ten minutes. An open-and-shut divorce case. Instead, that old buzzard Connolly had to pick this mornin’ to rake my client over the coals. Took me a half-hour afterward to calm her down.” Eyeing Kathryn through mirrored sunglasses, she shook her head in righteous indignation. “And here you are, left standin’ in the street.”
Kathryn bent and picked up her suitcase. “At least,” she said wryly, “I’m on the right side of the fence.” She opened the passenger door, tossed the suitcase and her loafers in the back, and sank gratefully into the white vinyl bucket seat.
Raelynn talked the way she drove, eighty miles an hour and with more verve than Kathryn had ever seen in another living soul. Freed of any necessity to attempt conversation, she leaned back in the seat and let the wind sweep through her hair as Raelynn’s monologue floated in one ear and out the other.
They traveled inland, leaving behind the coastal plain and entering the Piedmont, where each crumbling plantation house, each tin-roofed shanty on stilts, had its own cotton patch, often growing side by side with endless green fields of broadleaf tobacco. They drove through villages that were little more than a handful of shotgun houses gathered around a weathered Baptist church and a defunct gas station whose rusted pumps still displayed the Flying A.
Raelynn finally ran down, and they traveled for a time in silence. A sign painted in blood red and tacked on a telephone pole warned sinners that Jesus was coming. “Are you sure you’re doing the right thing,” Raelynn said, tapping red-lacquered nails against the steering wheel, “coming back to Elba?”
Kathryn’s spine stiffened. “We’ve been over this before,” she said.
“And frankly, I still don’t get it. If I were you, I’d be on the first bus headed north of the Mason-Dixon line.”
They passed another sign, warning them to repent or burn. “Somebody killed my husband,” Kathryn said, “and framed me for murder. I’m not going anywhere until I find out who.” She paused. “And why.”
Raelynn tossed her thick, black hair away from her face. “As your attorney, I’m advising you against that course of action.”
Kathryn turned her head and looked at Raelynn. “And as my friend?”
Raelynn punched the accelerator and raced around a curve. “And as your friend,” she said, “I’m advising you to listen to your attorney.”
Kathryn squared her jaw. “I can’t.”
“Hell’s bells, Kat, you just got out of prison! Do you want to go back there?”
Quietly, Kathryn said, “I’ll never go back there.”
“Then give up this ridiculous obsession of yours and move on with your life. It’s too late to do Michael any good, and it’s not about to change anybody’s feelings toward you. The public has already crucified you. They’re not going to appreciate you rising like Lazarus to claim your innocence.”
Kathryn’s mouth narrowed into a grim line. “The conviction was overturned,” she said.
“And the Yankees won the Civil War. But you couldn’t prove it by anybody around these parts.”
Of their own accord, Kathryn’s fists clenched. “I spent four years rotting away in that concrete tomb, while the monster who killed Michael walked away a free man. I’m going to find him, and he’s going to fry for what he did.”
Raelynn pursed her lips and said nothing. After Kathryn’s conviction, it had taken four grueling years of appeals before they got the break they needed in the form of an elderly widow named Clara Hughes, who had seen Kathryn jog past her home on Old County Road at the precise time that Michael McAllister, mortally wounded, had made his ill-fated call to 9-1-1. Clara’s razor-sharp memory was corroborated by the journal she kept, in which she chronicled the daily activities of a large segment of the population of Elba.
Armed with this new evidence, Raelynn had returned to court. One steamy June morning, a week before the court date, a second miracle occurred: old Judge Harper, affectionately known in some circles as the hanging judge, and declared by his detractors to be too ornery to die, keeled over right there on the bench, smack in the middle of a rape trial. Three days later, Judge Harper was buried with the pomp and circumstance that befitted a man of his stature, and a new judge was assigned to overhear Kathryn’s case.
Judge Graves took a week to mull over the evidence, but in the end, he ruled in their favor, declaring that the old lady’s testimony was sufficient to establish reasonable doubt. The conviction was overturned, and Kathryn became a free woman. One who had been tried and found guilty in the eyes of the upright and outraged citizens of Elba, North Carolina, who weren’t gullible enough to believe an overturned conviction meant a tinker’s damn. Kathryn McAllister would be watched and feared, talked about and despised, for the rest of her life. Or until the real killer was unmasked.
“Listen,” Raelynn said, her normally buoyant voice uncharacteristically somber, “whoever killed Michael wasn’t fooling around. What if he comes after you? If you end up dead, sugar, all my hard work will be for nothing.”
Kathryn’s tension slowly dissipated, and her heart rate returned to normal. Raelynn was a dear friend, and she was genuinely concerned. Bitterly, Kathryn said, “I’m not quite the innocent I was four years ago. Prison has a way of doing that to you. I can take care of myself.”
“Honey,” Raelynn said, “I sure as hell hope you know what you’re doing.”
They reached the outskirts of Elba, and Kathryn intently studied the sleepy little town, pondering the secrets it held and making mental note of the changes that had taken place since she’d seen it last. Rollie’s Auto Emporium and Repair Shop had disappeared, and a sleek, modern convenience store had sprung up in its place. Two kids sat on the curb drinking Slush Puppies and wiggling their toes in the dust. Next door, in front of Carlyle’s Barber Shop, an ugly yellow dog lazed in the shade of Hobie Carlyle’s green-striped awning. The municipal building, circa 1880, was built from burnished red brick with freshly-painted white wooden trim. Oblong planters brimming with red geraniums lined the walkway, and parked out front, nose in to the curb, sat Elba’s two police cruisers.
Somewhere in this picture-postcard town, she would find the answers she sought. Somehow, she would uncover the secret to Michael’s murder.
A shiver skittered down her spine and she quickly turned away. Across the street, in the parking lot of the Dixie Market, her mother-in-law was climbing out of a new bottle-green Cadillac. The last time she’d seen Michael’s mother had been at the trial. Neely McAllister had sat directly behind the prosecution table, dressed in a beige silk dress and her grandmomma’s pearls, weeping copiously into a lace hanky.
Neely had never liked Kathryn, had never approved of Michael’s marriage to the slender Yankee upstart who was absolutely nobody. As she was fond of telling anybody who’d sit still long enough to listen, Kathryn hadn’t even had the common decency to come to Elba and meet Michael’s family before dragging him off to get married in some stranger’s living room. Neely might have been able to forgive Kathryn for her common beginnings. She might have been able to forgive her for any number of inadequacies. But she had never forgiven her daughter-in-law for depriving her of the chance to attend the wedding of her only son.
Halfway across the parking lot, Neely looked up and saw her. The older woman stiffened as she recognized her daughter-in-law. Chin thrust high, she deliberately turned her back on Kathryn and stormed toward the entrance of the market.
Kathryn squared her jaw and focused her gaze directly ahead of her. She couldn’t fathom why she always allowed Neely McAllister to get to her. The woman simply had a way about her, like an itching powder that burrowed just beneath the top layer of skin and refused to budge.
Raelynn crossed the railroad tracks and turned down a side street, pulling up in front of a modest white frame house. It was set back from the street behind a tidy lawn, and shaded on one side by a tall oak tree draped with Spanish moss. “Here we are,” she said. “Welcome home.”
Kathryn followed her into the house. It was small, but homey, and after four years in a cell, she found it more than adequate for her needs. Abundant sunlight poured in on the hardwood floors. There was plenty of fresh air, plenty of space, a half-dozen window sills where she could grow her beloved African violets. “This is perfect,” she told her friend. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
Raelynn blew it off with a wave of her slender hand. “Since Momma died, nobody’s been using the place anyway. You need a place to stay, and the house…” She paused to run a finger along the fireplace mantel. “The house,” she continued, “needs somebody to love it.”
“I’ll pay you back,” Kathryn vowed. “Every penny I owe you.”
Raelynn patted her arm. “I know you will, darlin’. Hell, it’s only a few thousand dollars. Just enough to keep you going until you can get back on your feet. I want you to think of all this as a temporary setback. Your life’ll get better soon enough, it’s just going to take some time.” Her face softened. “You’re strong, Kat. I don’t think you know how strong. If I’d gone through what you have, I’m not sure I would’ve made it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We all do what we have to do to survive.”
Raelynn dimpled. “Listen, sugar, there’s food in the fridge and fresh linens on the bed. I have a client coming in at three, so I have to scoot. Think you’ll be okay on your own?”
Freedom. Glorious, blessed freedom. After four years of being told when to get up, when to go to bed, when to go to the bathroom, she wasn’t sure she remembered how to handle being in charge of her own life. But after all she’d survived, she was certain she could relearn the art of independence. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Just as soon as I figure out where to start.”
Raelynn eyed her tee shirt and jeans, and grimaced. “Well, sugar,” she said, “far be it from me to tell you what to do. But if I were you, I’d start with some new clothes.”
Police Chief Nicholas DiSalvo sat in his swivel chair, feet up on his desk, doing his best to perform his sworn duty to protect the good citizens of Elba, North Carolina, by tearing sheets of paper off a legal pad, crumpling them up, and free-throwing them into his office wastebasket.
He’d seen Michael Jordan play once, when the Bulls went up against the Knicks at the Garden. Now, that was something truly beautiful: Jordan and Ewing, head to head. He paused a moment to savor the memory before he wadded up another sheet, aimed, and sank it with deadly accuracy.
Outside, on the street, traffic moved lazily. Inside the municipal building, with its twelve-foot ceilings built long before the days of central air-conditioning, the clock ticked indolently in the sultry heat. Crime in Elba, North Carolina, population 2,703, ran primarily to barking dogs and kids shoplifting Jujubes at the Bijou. Hardly worth writing home about. But for a man who had nothing left to live for, Elba was as good a place as any to bury himself.
He crumpled another sheet of paper, took aim, and raised his arm. From the open doorway, Rowena Hathaway pointedly cleared her throat. The sound did double duty, serving as both salutation and criticism, for there was no love lost between Chief DiSalvo and the secretary he’d inherited from his predecessor. Rowena had made it abundantly clear, when Shep Henley retired and Nick took over the job of Chief, just where her loyalties lay.
With a sigh of regret, he lowered his arm and swiveled around in his chair. “Rowena, my sweet,” he said with a wolfish grin. “What can I do for you this fine morning?”