The Truth We Bury: A Novel Read online

  “I’m sure you already know the answers to both questions—to every question you’re asking me.” Lily’s bravado was a fraud.

  “He was arrested on a murder charge—let’s see—” Hatchett consulted his notepad.

  “Six years ago, in 2010,” Lily said. “He was cleared then, too.”

  “Yeah,” Hatchett interrupted. “We know about the insufficient evidence—”

  Lily talked over him. “He served his country, took his life in his hands, came home wounded—” The threat of tears stopped her. She wouldn’t let these men see her cry.

  Lawlor said, “Wounded mentally, right? We heard he’s had emotional issues, problems with anger management, depression. There have been calls in the past. Folks at his apartment complex have complained about him yelling, fighting—”

  “He has nightmares—”

  “Your son was jailed last year, wasn’t he, Mrs. Isley, and again a few months ago, for assault?” Lawlor’s eyes were hard.

  “He didn’t start either fight—”

  “But he finished both, didn’t he? Landed one guy in the hospital. He’s lucky his victim dropped the charges.” Lawlor smirked.

  Lily didn’t answer.

  Detective Hatchett handed her a business card. “If you hear from your son, ask him to give us a call, will you?”

  “He’s a person of interest in the matter of Ms. Westin’s murder. We’ve issued a BOLO, a be on the lookout.” Lawlor explained these things as Lily was showing the detectives out. She closed the door and, returning to the living room, picked up her cell phone, hunting through her directory for Erik’s contact information. Her phone went off before she found it.

  “Paul?” His name was a question, a plea. “The police have just left—”

  “Listen to me, Lily. I don’t have much time.” He talked over her. “If you hear from AJ, tell him to keep his mouth shut. I’ve got a call in to Jerry.”

  Paul’s attorney, Lily thought. His corporate attorney. Not Edward Dana, AJ’s former criminal attorney. It was three years since she’d seen Edward. She wondered if he remembered, if he thought of her at all anymore.

  “Lily?”

  She straightened. “Is it true, Paul? Did you go into AJ’s apartment and find—find Becca Westin—”

  “My God, Lily, it was the worst—I’ve never seen anything—even when I was in Nam, Cambodia—she was stabbed. The cops couldn’t say how many times, but there’s blood everywhere in AJ’s apartment, the bed, the floor. She—somebody had pulled down her pants. She was just a kid—just a kid, Lily—”

  “AJ couldn’t have done that, Paul.”

  “What if she did something that set him off? You know how he can—”

  “He couldn’t, Paul,” Lily repeated, tight-jawed.

  Paul changed direction. “The detective here, Sergeant Bushnell, says AJ and Becca dated. Do you remember meeting her?”

  “Not with him, no.” AJ had seldom brought his girlfriends home. Shea was the exception, the one who, since he’d been back from Afghanistan, had broken through his defenses. “I did meet Becca, though, last month in Wyatt, at Shea’s bridal shower.”

  “You think AJ’s been in touch with Erik? Have you heard from him? I tried getting hold of him, but he’s not picking up.”

  “The detectives who were here asked a lot of questions about him. I have a feeling they think he’s involved, maybe hiding AJ. But you know, AJ might be with Shea at her mother’s.”

  “Bushnell asked me for her contact information.”

  “You gave it to them?”

  “Hell, yes, I gave it to them. I want them to find our son, Lily, even if he—especially if he—before something worse happens. Something none of us can live with.”

  Like what? Lily wondered. A shootout with the police? Or himself? Would AJ kill himself if he had done this thing? Dread fisted in her stomach.

  “You know the cops won’t let him go so easily this time.”

  Lily went to stand at the bank of windows that overlooked the garden. “I don’t know anything at this point, Paul.”

  “He’s not nineteen, not a kid this time, mixed up with the wrong crowd. The cops are going to look hard at him for this. They’re going to think he got away with murder once; now he’s done it again.”

  “That was a whole different—”

  “I’m just telling you, Lily. He made fools out of them the last time. They won’t stand by and let it happen again, especially now he’s been diagnosed with all the PTSD bullshit. You can bet they’ll use it to burn him. Mentally unstable war vet and all that crap.”

  Paul made it sound like a joke, as if the trauma AJ had endured, going to war, had had no effect, and to speak of it in terms of mental and emotional harm was shameful, unmanly. But Lily couldn’t tell Paul anything about war; he’d seen his share of action. He knew about the damage—enough to keep it to himself. The only wounds that were real were the ones he could see, the missing arm or leg, the gaping abdominal wound. AJ had come home in pristine condition. “Not a scratch on him,” Paul had said, and somehow he made it sound like an insult. There was little mention of how, while under siege from enemy fire, AJ had carried a man with half his face shot off to safety, slung over his back like a sack of rocks.

  “You think he did it.” Lily’s anger was tinged with disbelief. “You think he stabbed that girl to death.”

  She heard Paul’s breath go, and the despair in his voice when he said he didn’t know what to think. “He’s different, Lily.”

  “He’s better now. Since Shea,” she added.

  “He’s been jailed twice in six months for assault. Have you forgotten? And last month at the restaurant in front of Shea—”

  “I’m not forgetting anything, Paul.” She wasn’t going to think about the restaurant incident where AJ had made a scene, shouting at the waiter, even raising his fist to him, when the poor man confused their orders. AJ had been red in the face. “Mad enough to kill,” Paul had said at the time. Shea was the one who had calmed him, who had brought AJ back to himself. He’d apologized then, profusely, to everyone present, including the waiter.

  “I think you need to be prepared.” Paul suggested it softly.

  Prepared? Lily puzzled over the word. How did one prepare for the eventuality that their son might have strangled and stabbed someone to death?

  “I’ve got to go,” Paul said. “Bushnell wants me downtown. You’ll wait there in case AJ comes home?”

  “I doubt he’ll come here,” Lily said, looking around. Paul was one of the most successful real estate developers in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. His specialty was commercial property, but he built residential projects, too. They’d lived in several of them. Finished only last year, the condo development was his latest venture. AJ had never really moved in; he’d never called it home. He had told Lily once that while he was overseas, he’d dreamed of the old clapboard house at the ranch almost nightly.

  “What do you mean? Lily, what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to try and find AJ, Paul, before the police do.”

  It took only minutes to change into jeans, a fitted tee, and her old western boots. She brushed her hair into a ponytail at the back of her neck, and once it was done, she felt marginally better, more like herself. She packed an overnight bag with an extra pair of jeans, a couple more tees, and a flannel shirt. It was early May, but the nights could still be chilly in the Hill Country. She added underthings and her toiletries. She traded purses, exchanging the frivolous suede poof for a worn, hand-tooled leather pouch that more closely resembled a saddlebag than a handbag, and then, before going downstairs, she sat on the side of the bed and called Winona, anxious for her to answer. But she didn’t.

  “Winona,” Lily said when the voice mail picked up, and she couldn’t help the quaver in her voice. “Something’s happened—” Bad. She started to add that but didn’t. “I’m on my way there, to the ranch, but when you get this, will you call me? If you see AJ, tel
l him—tell him I need to speak to him right away. Okay?” Lily blinked at the ceiling, thinking of how much she felt like the child she’d once been, sorely troubled, first by her mother’s untimely death, then as a very young woman when there’d been all that terrible business in Arizona. Winona had been there for her then, too, holding Lily close, murmuring comfort . . . “Vas a estar bien, querida . . . Ahora estoy aquí.”

  Lily brought her glance down. “I should be there around four,” she said. Ending the call, she thought about calling her dad. But no. She wouldn’t tell him she was coming. He’d know something was up, and she didn’t want to be trapped into giving him the news over the phone. Hearing AJ was in trouble—again—might just break him.

  Downstairs, Lily got into the car, and after setting her tote on the passenger seat, she got her phone out of her purse and tried AJ’s number, willing him to answer. But there was only a sequence of rings, one . . . two . . . six, and this time not even his voice mail picked up.

  2

  Dru’s cell phone played through a range of notes as she was pulling the second pan of lemon bars from the oven. She could let the call roll to voice mail, or she could shout for Shea to come take it. But no. Some snaky sense of dread had her setting the pan on the counter and reaching for her phone. Her heart eased when she saw Amy’s name in the caller ID window.

  “We’re running out of time to change the menu,” Dru teased.

  “Oh, Dru, I’m not calling about the luncheon.” Amy sounded upset. “I just heard some news from Ken—it’s not good.”

  Ken Carter was Amy’s brother and a patrol sergeant on the police force in Wyatt.

  “What’s happened?” Dru’s dread returned.

  “I don’t even know how to tell you, and when I think of Shea—”

  Dru liked Amy; she really did. They’d met while Dru was still teaching sixth grade full-time at Wyatt Elementary, and even then, Amy, a kindergarten teacher, could take forever to get to the point. “Just say it, okay?” Dru suggested.

  “The police in Dallas found Becca Westin dead this morning in an apartment there. Ken said she was murdered.”

  There was a moment of utter, blind incredulity, then Dru’s startled “What?” And on its heels, “Are you sure? What was she doing there? She’s in town here. Shea told me just the other day Becca was staying in Wyatt for the summer with her folks.”

  “They found her car and her purse and identified her from her driver’s license, Ken said. It’s going to kill Shea, isn’t it? Becca being her bridesmaid and all.”

  “Yes, but my God, I’m thinking of Joy and Gene.” Dru named Becca’s parents.

  “I think someone, one of the deputies here in Wyatt who knows them, is on his way to tell them.”

  “But who would do such a thing? Do they know? Becca was—was so sweet and quiet, a little—”

  “Angel,” Amy supplied.

  “Yes,” Dru said, although she’d been thinking mouse, that Becca had always been as quiet as a mouse. “She was over here a day or two ago, helping us with wedding things—”

  “Mom?”

  Dru met Shea’s anxious gaze. “Amy, I’ve got to go. Thank you for calling. The luncheon Friday, it’s still on, right?” She wasn’t really asking so much as she was delaying the moment when she’d have to face Shea. Dru knew the annual year-end event to honor Wyatt Elementary’s teachers would take place. As heartless as it seemed, it was the nature of life for those who were outside an immediate zone of calamity to go on with their business, their routines.

  Amy confirmed Dru’s expectation and the date of the occasion.

  “What happened?” Shea asked when Dru ended the call.

  “That was Amy.” Dru paused, searching for words, as if there might be some that were better. Finally, she just got it over as quickly as possible. “Honey, there’s no easy way to tell you. Amy heard from Ken—her brother in town who’s a patrol sergeant?—that police in Dallas found Becca dead this morning in an apartment there. Someone—she was murdered.”

  Dru held Shea’s stare, and when she said nothing, when the color had drained from her face, Dru guided her to a chair in the breakfast nook, brought her a glass of water, and sat across from her, taking her hands. They were trembling, and Dru chafed them.

  “I don’t understand,” Shea said.

  “Well, I don’t, either. Wasn’t she home with her folks for summer break?”

  “She was home for good,” Shea said. “She wasn’t going back to Dallas.”

  “Really? You didn’t tell me that.”

  “Culinary school was only an experiment for her, a way to get out of Wyatt. She never liked to cook. You saw her. She’d come over, and I’d be all up to my elbows helping you with some job, but she never got into it with us.”

  Dru thought about it. “You’re right. It never occurred to me before.”

  “Mama, are they sure it was Becca?”

  “They found her car there. Her purse with her driver’s license was in the apartment.”

  “But she was sick yesterday, in bed at her parents’. She didn’t even go with us when we went to pick up the jars.”

  The mason jars. Shea had been searching for them for weeks. She was being married in the backyard, wearing her grandma’s—Dru’s mother’s—bridal gown. Rather than a formal affair, Shea wanted a simple garden ceremony near sundown with dancing afterward that would begin at twilight. Dru wasn’t a constant gardener, but the mostly messy riot of flowers and vine-covered cedar arbors had cottage charm. The roses, irises, and clematis were just coming into their first flush of blooms, enough to fill any number of mason jars. Shea wanted sunflowers, too, which they didn’t have on hand and so far hadn’t found a source for. But they had finally located an antiques shop near Fredericksburg that had a supply of old mason jars, and the girls—Shea and her bridal attendants, Kate Kincaid, who was her best friend and her maid of honor, and bridesmaids, Leigh Martindale and Vanessa Lacy—had gone to pick them up yesterday; they’d had lunch at one of the local wineries, made an occasion out of it.

  This was the first Dru had heard that Becca hadn’t gone along.

  “She told us she’d been up vomiting all night long,” Shea said. “We all talked about how we hoped we wouldn’t get whatever bug she had.” Her voice broke now and grief came, crumpling her features. Tears slid down her cheeks.

  Dru found a tissue. “You were over there, then? You saw her?”

  “No, she called. I was on my way there. I’d already picked up everyone else.” Shea blew her nose. “Do the police know who did it? Did Amy say?”

  “No,” Dru answered.

  Shea left the kitchen to call AJ.

  Dru cut the lemon bars, wrapped them, and stowed them in the freezer. She was slicing red cabbage for the Asian pasta salad for the teachers’ luncheon when Shea reappeared. Dru looked questioningly over her shoulder.

  “He didn’t answer. He’s probably still with his dad. They were getting their final tux fittings this morning.”

  Dru rinsed the cutting board. She wondered if there might be enough of the pasta salad to take to the Westins. She could roast a chicken, make another pan of lemon bars. For a moment, thinking of them—Joy and Gene—her throat closed. What would she do if she were to lose Shea, especially this way, through an act of wanton violence?

  “I tried calling Erik; he didn’t pick up, either.”

  “Well, he must be with AJ, right?” Dru said. Erik was AJ’s best man. He’d need his tux fitted, too.

  “I don’t think so. He just started his new job and couldn’t get off. He’s going up later this week, I think.”

  “Where’s he working again?”

  “Greeley.” Shea named the Madrone County seat north of Wyatt. “He’s a salesman at the Ford dealership there.”

  “As charming as he is, he should be good at that,” Dru said. She thought Erik Ayala, with his dark Latino good looks and his white, white teeth, could probably sell glasses to a blind man. She liked Eri
k better than AJ, really. His heart was lighter, and he kept it in plain view.

  But he was dating Kate. In fact, they’d recently become engaged, and Kate’s mother, Charla, couldn’t shut up about how much it thrilled her.

  “Should we postpone the wedding?” Shea asked.

  Dru turned off the tap, dried her hands. “It’s only two and a half weeks away.”

  “How can we cancel it?” Shea turned up her hands.

  “How can we go ahead when Becca’s—there’ll be a funeral in a few days.”

  “Oh, Mama.” Shea’s troubled gaze locked with Dru’s.

  “It’s possible your uncle Kevin is already on his way.” Dru’s younger brother, the only family she had left, was coming from North Dakota, where he lived with his wife, Mary, and their two daughters, twelve-year-old Kara and fourteen-year-old Lacey.

  “They’re driving their RV, right? Making a vacation out of it?”

  Dru nodded. “We’re going to need to make a decision quickly.”

  “AJ’s parents have way more people coming than we do.”

  “The bigwigs,” Dru said. The politicos and socialites, Paul Isley’s wheeler-dealer business associates. There was no telling what those ritzy, yacht-owning folks would make of the outdoor vintage-style wedding Shea and AJ planned. Not that she or Shea, or even AJ, cared. But Dru had wondered if she ought to say something to Lily about the meadow where the reception would be held, that it could be the ruin of the oh-so-fashionable stiletto heels some of those women seemed to favor wearing.

  “I talked to Kate,” Shea said. “Leigh and Vanessa, too. None of them knew Becca had gone to Dallas. They’re as shocked as we are. They’re coming over when they get off work.” Kate was an ER nurse at Wyatt Regional. Dru thought Leigh and Vanessa worked for local businesses as administrative assistants.

  Shea sat at the breakfast table.

  “How about a latte?” Dru asked.

  “I’ll have one if you’re making one for yourself.”

  Dru whipped milk by hand, and while it heated in the microwave, she poured the last of the breakfast coffee into each of two mugs, then capped them with the white froth. They weren’t lattes, exactly; they were knockoffs. The poor man’s latte. She and Shea loved them.