The Wedding Garden (15 page)

A
long time later, subdued and emotionally rent, Sloan and Annie sat side by side on the sofa talking and leafing through the photo albums Annie had inadvertently brought along. For now, peace flowed between them and the sweet joy of shared love.

She’d not said the words, but Annie loved him. Her love was in everything she did, as it had always been. Annie nurtured his broken soul with her smiles and gentle words.

His throat ached with loving her and with gratitude to God for bringing them to this moment. Maybe, God willing, they could make things work out, and he could be the father to his son and to Delaney that he had never had.

The idea scared him, but he would not let fear interfere with his life anymore. For it was fear he now knew that had kept him away from Redemption. Fear that Annie hated him. Fear that he would once again become the pathetic, despised bad seed of the murderer Clayton Hawkins and a woman who would abandon her child in the dark of night.

Annie was bent forward, her blond hair sweeping along her beautiful cheekbones, perusing the photos. Sloan tenderly
brushed her hair behind one ear. She turned with a curious smile and his heart flip-flopped.

“Find anything interesting?” he asked. She’d shown him pictures of the two of them together and they’d laughed at their funny hairstyles. Nostalgia rolled through him, bittersweet. All his memories of Redemption were not bad after all.

Annie tapped a snapshot. “Mother took this at Amy Childers’s birthday party. Remember? You won the prize for spinning a basketball on your finger the longest.”

Sloan chuckled at the skinny youth. “Look at those muscles.”

“Scrawny like Justin.”

Annie flipped a page and a photo caught Sloan’s attention. He frowned and leaned forward, all frivolity disappearing. “What’s that?”

“What’s what? Oh, that picture of Daddy? His fortieth birthday, Mom said. I don’t remember it either.”

“No, not the picture. That.” Sloan’s pulse started to race. He put a finger on Dooley Crawford’s wrist.

“A watch Mom bought him for his birthday. Why?”

Flashes of memory flickered through Sloan’s head. Memories of the last time he’d seen his mother.

“No reason.” Sloan began to shake inside. If Annie knew the suspicions dancing through his brain, she’d walk out and never look back. “Does your dad still have that watch?”

“Mom said he lost it that same night. She was really upset with him.”

Suddenly, other things began to click into place. The dark, creased pants, the blue dress shirt, a man who didn’t fit the description of Mama’s usual drunken guest. And most importantly, the fancy turquoise bracelet with silver sunbursts.

Sloan squinted at the date on the photo. Alarms went off in his head. Dooley’s birthday matched the date of his
mother’s disappearance. Coincidence? By itself, maybe. Coupled with the turquoise watch? No way.

“I thought it was a bracelet,” he murmured, finger tracing the telltale piece of jewelry. “But it was a watch.”

The man he’d seen through the crack in the door had not been a trucker who lured Mama away. Her visitor had been Dooley Crawford. Something was rotten in the Redemption Police Department.

“Sloan?” Annie sat back to gaze at him. “What are you talking about? Is there something about Daddy’s watch?”

Could the police chief possibly know more about his mother’s disappearance than he’d let on? Could he have done to Joni Hawkins what he’d done, years later, to her son?

There was only one way to find out.

Sloan yanked to a stand. “I have to go somewhere.”

“Where? Sloan, what’s going on? You look like a thunderstorm about to break.”

Maybe he was. “I need to talk to your dad about something.”

“About us? Sloan, don’t. You’ll only end up in trouble. Please don’t go.”

“I have to.” Afraid she’d stop him if he lingered, Sloan grabbed his keys and stalked out the door to his Harley. Annie followed, her frightened voice pleading with him to wait.

But he couldn’t. Too many years had passed while Dooley kept his secrets.

Tonight, Redemption’s police chief had some explaining to do.

The motorcycle skidded sideways as Sloan downshifted onto the gravel road leading to Dooley Crawford’s farmland. He’d stopped at the police station only to hear that the chief had left. According to Deputy Rainmaker, the chief usually drove out to check on his cattle before heading home. The
locale suited Sloan just fine. He wasn’t crazy about confronting the man in front of his wife, so this was better, and he knew the way to the Crawford farm. As kids, he and Annie had fished the pond and picked their fill of wild blackberries.

The iron gate was unlocked, and Sloan felt a sense of satisfaction at knowing he’d discovered Dooley’s whereabouts. A hay barn sat beyond the pond in a stand of trees, a barn he and Annie had discovered as teenagers. He regretted that now. She’d deserved more respect than he’d shown.

The police chief’s pickup truck was parked near the pond and twenty or thirty head of red Hereford cattle milled around. Sloan revved the Harley to make his presence known.

Dooley looked up. Even from this distance, Sloan knew he’d been recognized. The chief tossed a feed sack into the back of his truck and dusted his hands down his pantlegs before taking a wide, defensive stance.

No point pretending they liked each other.

Sloan parked the bike and walked across the dry, browning grass, fists tight at his sides.

God, help me do this right. I don’t want to hurt Annie.

All he wanted was information about his mother.

When he was close enough to watch Dooley’s face, he said, “What do you know about my mother’s disappearance?”

The question shocked the chief. No doubt about it. He blinked, eyes widening. “What are you talking about?”

“You were at our house the night she disappeared.”

“You’re crazy.”

Sloan gave a cocky laugh he didn’t feel. “Keep that in mind while we have this friendly little chat.”

Dooley’s face hardened. “Get off my property.”

“Can’t do it, Dooley. You’re going to tell me what you know. Why were you there? Don’t deny it. I saw you. I didn’t realize then but I do now.”

Crawford’s chest expanded in an attempt to intimidate. “Get moving,
boy,
or I’m going to put you in jail where you belong. Just like your rotten-to-the-core daddy.”

Twelve years ago, the statement would have been fighting words, and Sloan would have lost his cool and consequently, the battle. Dooley didn’t know it, but he wasn’t dealing with an undisciplined teenager anymore. “We’re talking about you, not me. What were you doing at my house that night?”

“You were a kid. You can’t possibly remember.”

“I remember a fancy turquoise-and-silver watch on a man’s wrist, an expensive watch you don’t see very often. You owned that watch the day my mother disappeared. Your fortieth birthday.”

Dooley blanched but didn’t back down. “I told you to get off my property and I mean it.”

“If I leave, I ride straight to the county seat and the D.A.’s office with what I know.”

“Jim Watson is a friend. He’ll laugh you out of town.”

Sloan shrugged, though he was feeling anything but nonchalant. “If he doesn’t listen, the OSBI will. You owned that watch. I saw it. I saw
you.
You were there, but for some interesting reason, you never mentioned that in the reports. You told everyone my mother must have left with a trucker. Now that I think about it, where did you get that information? No one else remembers seeing Mama with a man that night.”

“There
was
a trucker, you little snot nose.” Dooley’s face mottled dark red. The chief was getting mad, and in Sloan’s experience, angry men made mistakes. “There were always truckers and bums and no-accounts like your daddy in Joni’s life.”

Sloan tried not to take offense, but protecting his mother’s memory was habit. “She wasn’t like that, Dooley.”

“Sure she was. Men dragged into that little house all hours of the night, but Joni wouldn’t give a decent man the time of day.”

Something in the chief’s tone tickled a memory. Had he heard Dooley say those words to his mother? Had there been something going on between his mother and the chief?

The notion turned Sloan’s stomach, but he wasn’t about to back off now that he knew he was on the right track.

“A decent man? Like you?”

The chief turned aside and spit, but Sloan could see he was rattled. “Shut up. You don’t know anything.”

I do now.
Grim satisfaction seeped into Sloan’s pores. “You were there. I have evidence.”

Dooley frowned, nerves twitching. Sloan had struck a nerve. “What kind of evidence?”

Very little. The memory of a child, a watch, and strong suspicion. “Enough to have everyone in Redemption wondering why their elected official covered up a woman’s disappearance and then, years later, lied to run her son out of town.” When Dooley’s furious gaze jerked to meet his, Sloan knew he was right. “Something real fishy about that.”

“All right, I was there. Are you satisfied now? But that doesn’t prove anything.”

Sloan’s mouth went dry. His insides churned, wanting to be wrong and knowing he wasn’t. “You had a thing for my mother, didn’t you?”

Teeth tight, Dooley looked ready to throttle him. “A thing?” he ground out. “Like the thing you had for my daughter?”

The sickness in Sloan’s belly exacerbated. He gazed toward the horizon where the dying rays of the sun bled into the sky. Annie’s father and Joni?

Lord, what have I uncovered?

The ugly possibilities pushed at his brain. Sloan wished
he’d never started this in the first place. But he had, and for the love of his mother, he had to finish it.

He dragged his gaze back to Dooley. The police chief pointed a revolver straight at his chest.

“Y
ou couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you, Hawkins?”

Sloan raised one hand slowly. “Be cool, Crawford. Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

“The only thing I regret is not sending you with your mother that night.” His finger danced around the trigger, threatening. “Get your hands in the air. I don’t trust you as far as I can throw that pickup truck.”

Focus locked on the pistol—a 9 mm automatic—Sloan slowly raised his hands. “Where? Just tell me where my mother is, and I’ll keep the rest quiet.”

“You want to know where she is?” A sneer pulled his lips apart in a grotesque smile. He motioned with the gun. “Start walking.”

Sloan blinked. “Walk where?”

Dooley motioned again, this time toward the barn. “Move it. And keep your hands up where I can see them. No monkey business.”

Doing as he was told, Sloan walked the short distance to the barn, hopes sinking like the sun. All the while his mind raced with a mix of questions about his mother and concern
for his own safety. He’d been in tight fixes before, but this might be the worst, and he’d walked right into it like a man who didn’t know the first thing about self-protection. Some security expert he was.

When they reached the barn, Dooley said, “Open it and go inside.”

Sloan hesitated, searching for escape. Once inside that barn, he’d be at Dooley’s mercy. The chief shoved the gun against Sloan’s temple. “Open the door, or die now.”

Seeing no other choice, Sloan unbolted the latch and went inside the dim barn with the chief close behind. Scents of hay and feed filled his nostrils. His gaze roamed around the structure in search of a weapon. On the opposite wall farm tools dangled too far away to reach.

“Before you kill me, at least tell me where my mother is.”

Dooley cackled. Spittle formed at the corners of his mouth. “Might as well tell you, Hawkins. She’s right here where I can keep a close eye on her, and you’re going to join her.”

The horror of Dooley’s meaning slithered through him like snake venom. Some part of him had always known Joni would not willingly leave him, but he’d always hoped she was alive and well in some other state. Now he knew, and the knowing was every bit as bad as the not knowing. His arms fell to his sides. “You killed her.”

“No. No. You have it all wrong. I never meant for her to get hurt. I swear it on her grave.” Dooley waved the gun. “Get your hands in the air!”

Sloan jerked his arms up as he swallowed the bile rising in his throat. “She’s buried here?”

“Right there.” He pointed the barrel of the pistol toward a concrete slab. “Right there where I could take care of her.”

Sloan slumped on to a hay bale and put his head in his hands. He didn’t care if Dooley shot him here and now. His
mother was dead. Annie’s father had killed his mother. Joni had never left Redemption at all. And now, Dooley planned to kill Joni’s son.

“Why?” The question was a choked whisper. “What did she ever do to you?”

“Nothing. Don’t you understand anything, boy? Joni and her men, dozens of them coming and going in her house, sleeping on her couch. She swore nothing was going on, but I’m a man. I knew better.” His nostrils flared with disgust. “Year after year, I begged her to be with me, and she turned me down. Me. A respected man of the community. She’d take in her drunks and truckers, but Police Chief Dooley was left out in the cold.”

Shaking inside, Sloan raised his head to glare at his mother’s murderer. “What about your wife and family, Dooley? Didn’t they matter?”

“You sound like Joni. I got tired of her using my marriage as an excuse. I was crazy about her. I bought her things but she refused to take them. I even offered money, but she returned anything except the tips I left for pie and coffee. Hundred-dollar tips. For the kid, I’d tell her. Did you know that? I paid for your fancy basketball shoes.”

Sloan shook his head, sick. The man had been obsessed with a woman he couldn’t have. “What happened that night? What happened to my mother?”

“Might as well tell you. You’re not leaving here anyway.” Dooley patted his pocket, removed a roll of antacids and thumbed one into his mouth, all the while holding the 9 mm steady. “It was my birthday. Forty years old and miserable. Carleen wanted to throw a big party and after I flat-out refused she bought me that watch. I hated it. The only gift I wanted was Joni. Carleen thought I had to work, but I needed to be with Joni. Just that one night. Surely, I thought, she’d let me stay with her. It was my birthday. She owed me that much.”

“I heard you talking. Both of you.”

As if suddenly aware of Sloan’s presence, Dooley jerked the gun higher. “Shut up. This is all your fault. Always was.”

“How do you figure?”

“I heard what she said to you, too.” Dooley sneered. “You came to the door, whining, wanting to know who was with her. ‘Nobody important,’ she said.” His voice took on a snide tone, imitating Joni’s insult. “Me. The man who loved her more than anyone else, was ‘nobody important.’”

Stall, Sloan. Stall for time.
Somehow, some way, he had to keep Dooley talking until he could figure a way out of this mess. “Guess that made you pretty mad.”

“Furious. We argued. I begged her. A man like me begging a woman like that.” He jabbed the gun at Sloan. “Do you know how humiliating that is to a man of my position?”

“So you killed her?”

“No!” Dooley kicked out, striking Sloan in the shin. Sloan grunted, reflexively bending to rub the offended leg. “Get your hands up in the air like I told you. Stupid boy never listened. I only wanted to kiss her, to apologize, to show her how much she meant to me, but when I put my arms around her, she went crazy.”

Dooley turned to pace, apparently reliving the awful moment. Sloan desperately searched his surroundings. If he dove for Dooley’s knees and knocked him off balance, he might be able to get control of the weapon. He tensed, ready to pounce, but before he could act, Dooley stopped and spun. “Don’t even think about it, Hawkins. You’d be dead before you could take your next breath.”

“You’re going to kill me anyway.”

Dooley chuckled. “True. A pleasure, I might add. Strange to love the mother and hate the son, but there you go. You were always her first concern. Always the one she promised to
spend time with. I followed the pair of you sometimes. I watched her with you.”

The police chief was a sick man.

“How did my mother die? At least tell me that.”

“Why should I? Maybe I’ll let you die never knowing.”

“You won’t get away with killing me.”

“I got away with Joni’s, didn’t I? Everyone believed me.”

“You started the rumor?”

“Of course.” He seemed proud. “And the town bought it easily. Running off with a trucker fit Joni’s lifestyle, just as your disappearance will be accepted. You ran off before when trouble came. You’re going to do it again. No one will ever know you’re buried in that corner next to your mother. I’ll add another concrete stall for birthing calves and no one will be the wiser. A dead body is a simple thing for a police chief to dispose of.”

Sloan’s blood ran cold. This man had disposed of his mother’s body here in this very barn. His mama, the woman who’d soothed his nightmares and bandaged his skinned knees, had ended her days in a barn. He shook with loathing. “So, her death was accidental?”

“Of course it was an accident. I told you. She fell. I just wanted to kiss her, but she fought me like a tiger. Broke my new watch. Next thing I know she’s on the floor, her head bleeding, her neck at an odd angle. I didn’t kill her.” He leaned toward Sloan, voice rising to a shout. “She fell. Understand? I
did not
kill her.” Using the gun hand, Dooley wiped the side of a shaky hand over his eyes. Sloan started to make his move.

Dooley leveled the gun at his face and the chance was lost. “Enough talk. Get up. You got a grave to dig.”

Annie shook so hard she was weak. Hands pressed to her mouth to keep from crying out, she gazed at the two deputies
standing on either side of the barn. One—Jessie Rainmaker—gave a headshake and held a finger to his lips.

When Sloan had burst out the door with fire in his eyes, she’d known something terrible was going to happen, but not this. Not the admission by her father that he’d killed Sloan’s mother. The horror of that truth was too much to bear. Her father was a murderer.

And Sloan was in danger.

Oh, Lord, Oh, Lord, please help us. I’m so scared.

Chest rising and falling fast enough to hyperventilate, she listened with every fiber of her being to the conversation going on inside the barn. The deputies listened, too, expressions tight with shock. They’d come, thinking to protect their boss, and now this. They must be as heartsick as she.

“What about my bike, Dooley?” Sloan’s voice penetrated the metal door. “A Harley is hard to hide.”

“Shut up and keep digging. I gotta think.”

“Want a suggestion?” He sounded calm, almost arrogant, but he had to be scared. That was her Sloan, cool on the outside, boiling on the inside.

“What? Don’t try anything with me, Hawkins. I’ll gut shoot you and bury you alive.”

The statement curled Annie’s toes. That was her father talking. The man who’d bought her a pony and taught her to swim.

Oh, God in Heaven, help us. This can’t be real.

“Bring the Harley inside. Bury it with me.”

Annie jerked. How could Sloan make such a macabre suggestion? Her gaze flew to Deputy Rainmaker. Though his face was grim and shocked, he winked and motioned for her to go back to the car. She shook her head. She couldn’t leave. Not with the two men she loved most in the world locked in a battle of life or death.

The deputy bared his teeth, jerked his head and mouthed, “Go!”

He was right. She endangered them all by staying. On wobbly legs, she crept away, careful not to make a sound. All the while, she flung half-baked prayers toward Heaven. Save Sloan. Save her father.
Oh, God, help.

Her father was a murderer.

When she reached the far corner of the barn, away from the entrance, Annie folded double, hands tight on her belly. Her daddy had killed Joni Hawkins and buried her body under this very building. Poor Sloan. Her father had been responsible for all those lonely, heartbroken years Sloan had endured as a child. He was responsible, too, for Sloan’s exile. Lies and deceit and cover-up. Her own father.

Suddenly, the barn door opened and Sloan stepped out, hands in the air. From where she hid, she could only see his back. Then her father stepped out, holding a gun to Sloan’s head. She knew the moment he spotted the two deputies. All the starch went out of him.

Annie caught snatches of conversation.

“Put it down, Chief. No need for anyone to get hurt.”

“Jessie, am I glad to see you.” Unaware that they’d been listening for a long time, the police chief seemed determined to keep up the charade. “Put this man under arrest.”

“What’s the charge?” Deputy Rainmaker’s expression was a mix of wanting to believe his boss and knowing the hard facts.

“Breaking and entering, assault with a deadly weapon. He tried to kill me with a shovel. Threatened to bury me in my own barn.”

The other deputy stepped up beside her father. “Let me have the gun, Dooley. I’ll take it from here. We heard everything.”

“What do you mean? What did you hear? Hawkins threat
ening me?” When both deputies just stared at him with sad expressions, he stopped blustering. Looking bewildered and then beaten, he lowered his weapon. Deputy Rainmaker wrenched it from his grasp.

“Chief, I have to read you your rights.”

And that’s when Annie slipped away to the waiting police car. She couldn’t listen any longer. Her father was a criminal. Everything bad in Sloan’s life could be traced back to Dooley Crawford.

The jubilant hope that she and Sloan could finally be together faded with the daylight. She would always be a reminder of the man who’d killed his mother. Her family had caused all the heartache in his life. Why would he want her now? The best thing she could do for Sloan was to leave him alone.

Sloan watched in despair as Chief Dooley Crawford was loaded into the back of a police car next to his sobbing daughter. According to the deputies, Annie had come to them, afraid of a showdown between the police chief and Sloan. She’d been right. And now she’d be shattered.

On legs of rubber, Sloan started toward the car, relieved to be alive and yet heartsick at what the night had revealed. He needed to hold Annie, to comfort them both and explain the unexplainable. He’d come to the farm for answers, with no idea of the deceit and death he would uncover. He hadn’t come to cause Dooley’s downfall. But he had.

All he’d ever done was bring Annie unhappiness.

The police car’s engine roared to life. Sloan picked up his pace. The deputy put the transmission into gear. The cruiser made a slow circle to turn around and as Annie’s window came into his line of vision, their eyes met for one brief, painful moment.

“Annie,” he said.

Then her face crumpled and she turned away and left him standing in the dust…alone.