Free Dead Right by Brenda Novak Page A

investigation,” she said. “I hope you’l do what you can to cooperate with him.”
    Toby’s jaw tightened, which told her he wasn’t pleased with her answer. “What do you hope to achieve?”
    “Resolution,” she said and left.

    To Madeline, the rest of the week passed with agonizing slowness. After Rachel Simmons’s drowning, and the subsequent discovery of the Cadil ac, it felt as if the whole town was holding its breath, waiting and watching to see what would happen next. Mothers who general y let their children run freely through Stil water neighborhoods were keeping them closer to home. And, as she feared would be the case, Clay’s name was often associated with talk that there might be a sexual predator in their midst.
    Madeline couldn’t believe anyone could suspect her stepbrother of being a pedophile. So what if the police had found a few dark hairs in the driver’s seat of the Cadil ac?
    It’d been the family car, for crying out loud.
    But it wasn’t just the hair, and she knew it. It was the fact that he didn’t give a damn what others thought of him and didn’t bother to hide it. They used his indifference as justification to blame him for anything they’d rather not see in someone else, even though he didn’t fit the profile of a pedophile. Pedophiles liked to be around children, sought them out, worked in situations that put them in contact with possible victims. Until Grace married Kennedy eighteen months ago and brought her two stepsons into the family, and Clay’s own marriage had gained him a six-year-old daughter, he was almost never around children. He’d lived on the farm alone and come to town once or twice a week for supplies or a game of pool at the bil iards hal .
    Besides, the things in that trunk had been put there twenty years ago, when Clay was only sixteen.

    Fortunately, despite al the stress, Madeline had been able to get her paper out. And it had included the article she’d had such difficulty writing—the one on the discovery of her father’s car. Next week’s paper would feature an article on pedophiles and how they typical y functioned. She was writing it with the hope that it would stifle al the talk about Clay. But she’d have to finish it later. Hunter Solozano would be arriving in Nashvil e in four hours. She had a long drive ahead of her and didn’t want to be late.
    Shrugging on her wool coat, Madeline turned off her computer and let herself out, into the al ey that led to the gravel lot where she’d parked her car. She’d just locked the door when someone tapped her on the shoulder. Someone whose approach she hadn’t heard.
    Startled, she turned to see her father’s only sibling, Elaine Vincel i, standing right behind her.
    Her thoughts had definitely been too macabre of late, if she could be frightened so easily. But she knew it wasn’t only her thoughts. Her dreams bothered her even more.
    Last night, Aunt Elaine had been chasing her around the farm with a knife, yel ing, “How dare you be disloyal to your own father! How dare you side with those murderers!”
    Madeline shivered as a few residual screeches echoed through her head. Reminding herself that it was just a dream, she offered her aunt a polite smile. “Hel o.”

    “Do you have a minute?” Elaine asked.
    Clenching the keys in her hand, Madeline sighed.
    Temperatures were dropping fast as another storm approached, bringing with it an early dark—which was why she hadn’t noticed Elaine. She’d been too intent on getting off before the rain started. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
    “No, of course not.” Her aunt positioned herself as if she expected to be invited in. And since a light drizzle had begun, Madeline felt she should oblige.
    Stifling her impatience, she reopened the office. “Would you like to sit down?” she asked, waving Elaine in ahead of her.
    “No, thank you.”
    Her aunt had seemed tense, even a bit nervous in the al ey but appeared more relaxed once the