Free Dead Giveaway by Brenda Novak Page B

weren’t as detailed as they should be. She was looking for the word-of-mouth snippets her father and his predecessors had deemed unrelated or unimportant. If Hendricks was going to impose his presence on her, she figured she might as well learn what he knew. He loved gossip and generally picked up on whatever was being said around town. “There’re a few bare facts. Where he was born, that sort of thing.”
    â€œHe was born in Booneville, wasn’t he?”
    She nodded.
    â€œMy little sister was in his class when he moved here. Said he made good marks in school. Until he was older.”
    â€œDid his grades start to fall before or after Reverend Barker went missing?”
    â€œMary Lee told me it happened about the same time, but I’ve never checked his transcripts.”
    â€œWhat about his natural father?” she asked.
    â€œRan off is all I heard.”
    Clay’s file indicated that much, but no more. “Has anyone ever tried to locate Mr. Montgomery?”
    â€œNot that I recall. Why?”
    She shrugged, but to her surprise, Hendricks caught on, anyway.
    â€œYou don’t think Clay might’ve killed him, too?”
    She rolled her eyes. “I’m no genius, but my guess is Clay would’ve been too young.”
    He didn’t respond to the sarcasm in her voice. “So you were thinking of Irene? Of course!” He clapped his hands as if they’d just solved the case. “ Now I know why they paid you the big bucks in Chicago. I doubt anyone else has even thought of that.”
    Probably because Allie was the only person in Stillwater jaded enough to consider it. The cops on her father’s force had never come up against the kind of heinous criminals she’d dealt with. “It’s worth checking,” she said slowly.
    â€œSure. Makes sense.” Hendricks’s head bobbed like the bobble-headed puppy Allie’s grandmother used to display in the rear window of her giant Oldsmobile. “If Clay’s father was alive, he would’ve come around at some point. The Montgomerys have lived in Stillwater for…what, twenty-three years? But no one’s seen hide nor hair of him. Curious, ain’t it?”
    If Clay’s father was dead, and the circumstances surrounding his death were at all suspicious, Allie needed to examine that coincidence. But Hendricks was getting more excited than such a slim possibility warranted. “Not necessarily. There could be lots of reasons we’ve never seen him. So don’t get carried away,” she cautioned. “Chancesare, Mr. Montgomery’s alive and well and living in some other state.”
    â€œRight,” he said, but she could tell he wasn’t really listening. He was too busy jumping ahead. “If we got Irene for one murder, we’d get her for the other. It’s brilliant.”
    â€œHendricks.” She stood and grabbed hold of his arm to make sure he understood that she was serious. “It’s a real long shot, so don’t go spreading it around.”
    â€œWho me?” He waved a dismissive hand. “I won’t breathe a word,” he said. But it wasn’t a day later that someone approached her at the Piggly Wiggly to ask if Irene Montgomery was a serial killer.
    Â 
    Reverend Portenski’s hand shook as he removed the floorboard in the far corner of the old church and reached into the dark hole beneath. He had stumbled upon this small recess quite by accident a decade ago, when he was moving furniture and doing some repairs to the building—and had rued the day ever since.
    If only God would let him know what he should do with what he’d found. While trying to decide, he’d replaced the heavy table that had hidden the loose floorboard and tried to forget its existence, to forget what was beneath. But during the dark quiet hours of the night, when the pressures of the day began to dissipate, he remembered the