Max’s glance was grim. “He’d been living in seclusion since Carol Ann was committed to an insane asylum six years ago. Does that count?”
“I mean…yeah.” I nodded at the cars. “Are you guys, like, in trouble or anything?”
“Not really, but we’re not making any friends with the cops, that’s for sure. The last time the cops were out here was to question my dad in April about twenty dead horses on the property.” He grimaced. “And at least we still had the Bells on the property then. They could offer some reasonable amount of assurance that the rest of the family wasn’t batshit crazy. Or a threat to ourselves.”
This time, I didn’t miss the name—why hadn’t I noticed it before? “The Bells? As in, related to Joe Bell, please tell me no?”
“As in his aunt and uncle, yeah. Though, to be fair, they’d pretty much written him off after everything that happened with Carol Ann. But I think they were grateful to my dad for giving him someplace to live.” Max winced, his skin seeming stretched a little too tight across his face. “And now, someplace to die.”
“You said Joe wasn’t connected to what happened to Carol Ann, though. That’s what you said, right? Was that not the case?”
Another wince. “He didn’t cause it or anything, no. No way. They dated for years before she got sick. He worshipped the ground she walked on—she was the rich girl in the county, he was the hired help, that sort of thing.”
“Your family didn’t have a problem with that?”
“Carol Ann was always a little…flighty,” Max said. “Joe wasn’t. He was normal. Nice. Good with the horses, gentle as anything. Easygoing.”
I looked at him. We were almost at the house now. “And this is the guy who took his own life.”
“Yeah, well. It’s been a rough patch of years.”
We climbed the steps to the house, and I felt my skin ice over, like the temperature had dropped a good ten degrees between the grassy front yard and the porch. The sensation fled as soon as it came, but I still held my arms close to my body, my hand curving around the strap of my pack.
I felt not one stirring of the demon inside me. Probably a good thing.
Right?
“Officer Michaels, this is Delia Thompson,” Max said, refocusing me. “I told you she was coming for a visit.”
Officer Michaels was a stocky man, but his uniform fit him well. He hadn’t gone soft recently; he was just big and fleshy in the way I expected most small-town cops to be. He nodded to me, his face impassive. “Did you know the deceased?”
“No, sir,” I said. “Max had told me about him, but I’d never met him.”
“How long will you be staying?”
“I don’t know.” I tightened my hand on my strap. “Um, should I not be here? Am I causing a problem or anything?”
Fortunately, the cop was already shaking his head. “No, no.” His gaze slid to Max’s, who put a protective hand on my arm.
“I told her Joe was dead,” he said firmly. “That—that we didn’t know what had happened, but that it looked like he’d hung himself.”
Officer Michaels looked at him for a long moment, then seemed to collapse in on himself a little, like a turtle withdrawing into its shell. “Hell of a thing,” he muttered,glancing back into the house, where I could hear other people talking. “I’ve known your dad a long time.”
I fought to keep my face steady. What did that have to do with anything? Unless…“Um, is there any possibility that Joedidn’tdo this to himself?” I asked, eyes wide and hopefully guileless. “That there’s someone else out there in the woods or whatever?—”
Michaels’s sigh was gratifyingly dismissive. “We don’t have a reason for it, but there’s always the possibility that someone else was involved, talked Joe into doing it. But—and I know we’ll tell the other story in town, but Max has never been able to lie to me in his life. I know you know, and I appreciate your discretion.”
He didn’t seem to notice me gaping, just kept on rolling. “But the gunshot injuries were clearly self-inflicted. The coroner will have her report on that pretty fast. Possibly later today. The body will be available for burial after that, unless she finds anything.” He quirked a glance at Max. “You taking responsibility for the body, or should I contact the Bells?”
“I’ve already spoken with them. Ware Funeral Home will take care of the body once it’s released from the morgue. We’ll bury Joe in the Bells’ plot.” He gave me an additional explanation. “Joe’s parents disowned him a long time ago, moved out of town, God only knows where. The Bells were sort of his guardians.”
“Oh.” The more I heard about Joe, the sketchier he got. Not that anyone in this family made any sense.
“Right.” Officer Michaels nodded firmly, as if he’d come to some decision. “I might have more questions, but this is almost certainly going to be ruled suicide or, at best, accidental death. The latter would be easier for everyone, but we’ll have to see what the coroner says. Max, if you don’t mind?—”
I let them draw away from me as my attention was pulled to the far side of the porch, where it graciously wrapped around thehouse, giving ample view to the now-empty paddock stretching beyond. A couple stood shoulder to shoulder at the fence, looking out over the vast space. The wind lifted the woman’s white hair and blew it back from her face; the man wore a ballcap pulled down over his forehead, though it looked like he had no hair at all. The Bells, had to be.
I closed my eyes, guilt washing over me as an unexpected thought assaulted me. If I’d have stayed here all those days ago, would their nephew Joe still be alive? Had my willingness to abandon the Graham estate, to run back to Chicago and act like everything was going to be okay, somehow left him unprotected? Why hadn’t I asked to see the lake house when I’d come out here? I’d gotten a creepy feeling about it without even seeing it. Would I have been able to identify the signs of affliction in that house?
