Free After Dark by Beverly Barton

continued humming, continued rocking, apparently oblivious to all that was around her. Buddy reached out and caressed the doll’s cheek. Mary Martha gathered the doll close to her chest and held it there as if she thought Buddy was going to snatch it away.
    â€œDon’t take my baby! Don’t you take my baby!”
    Mary Martha’s pathetic cry pierced her mother’s heart. This tragedy was her fault. Everything was her fault. But it was too late to do anything that could help Mary Martha. And too late for recompense on her part. Nothing could change the past. The most she could do now was protect her child.
    â€œNo, no, sweetheart,” Buddy said. “It’s all right. I’m not going to take your baby away from you.”
    He rose to his feet and turned his back, but not before Edith saw the sheen of tears in his eyes. If anyone on earth loved Mary Martha, Buddy did. He had been in love with her since they were children, and his devotion to her was touching. There was nothing Buddy wouldn’t do for Mary Martha. She envied her daughter on that count.
    Edith clasped the top round on the rocker with white-knuckled ferocity. Taking a deep, calming breath, she nodded toward the settee by the fireplace and said, “Why don’t you sit down, Buddy? We’ll stay a few more minutes. Our just being here with her will somehow reassure her, don’t you think?”
    Buddy nodded, then sat on the settee. His gaze rested sorrowfully on Mary Martha. “Do you think it’s all right to talk in front of her? I mean, you don’t think she’d get upset, that she’d actually understand what we’re saying?”
    â€œJust what did you want to talk to me about?” Edith asked.
    â€œWell, we haven’t had much chance to discuss the current situation, not with Kent’s funeral and then Mary Martha going to pieces the way she did.”
    â€œAnd what is the current situation?” Edith walked over to the vanity, picked up a silver brush and returned to stand behind her daughter’s chair.
    â€œFor one thing Lane is the main suspect in Kent’s murder. How do you want us to handle that? Do you want to see her arrested or not?”
    â€œOh, yes, that situation.” Edith ran the brush through Mary Martha’s fiery gold hair and wished that she had taken the time to do this when her daughter was a child. “Lane deceived Kent. She made his life miserable and all for what? For a baby she knew had been fathered by Johnny Mack Cahill. Even if she didn’t strike the blows that actually killed Kent, her part in the deception helped to kill him long before he died.”
    â€œYou know what the local gossip is, don’t you?”
    â€œTell me.”
    â€œI hear folks are saying they think Will killed Kent, and Lane is just taking the rap for him.”
    Edith had loved her grandson—the boy she had thought was her grandson. Even now, knowing Will wasn’t her own flesh and blood, she still cared for him. But she couldn’t—wouldn’t—allow Johnny Mack’s son to inherit anything from John Graham’s estate.
    â€œHmm…Interesting. But we know that poor boy is as innocent of any wrongdoing as…as my Mary Martha,” Edith said. “He’s a good boy, even if he is the spawn of the devil.”
    â€œYes, of course.” Buddy stared directly at Edith and nodded agreement. “And speaking of the devil—I plan to call on our visitor and find out just who he is and what he wants.” Buddy rubbed his hands nervously up and down the front of his thighs. “If by some chance he really is Johnny Mack, then we don’t want him hanging around and muddying the water, do we?”
    â€œBy all means, pay this man calling himself Johnny Mack Cahill a visit. Tonight. If he is who he says he is, give him fair warning that he’s not wanted here now any more than he was fifteen years