exposed (Twisted Cedar Mysteries Book 3) (24 page)

Dougal put a protective arm around her shoulders. Her nephew clearly had been feeling guilty about this for a long time. He needed to talk.

Wade resumed his questioning. “Who was downstairs Chester? Your mom and dad?”

Chester nodded.

“Anyone else?”

“No.”

“What else do you remember?”

“Mom was saying bad things to Dad. She was making him mad. And I got mad too. She couldn’t see me, but I ran at her and I knocked her right over.”

The poor kid was trembling. Charlotte put a reassuring hand on his back, while Cory stared transfixed at her brother.

“Do you remember anything else?” Wade, to his credit, sounded as calm as if they were discussing the recent change in the weather.

“There was a lot of blood. Grandma and Grandpa came downstairs. They talked for a while and then Dad told me Mom was going to be okay, but that he and Grandpa had to go get her some help. Then Grandma took me upstairs. She said I had to stay in my room. I don’t remember anything else.”

For a long moment everyone was silent. Then Charlotte asked, “Why now, Chester? Why are you telling us this now?”

“I knew Dad didn’t want me to say anything.” Chester dropped his gaze to the floor. “But when I was trapped with that man I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It’s not fair what happened to my dad. I decided if Ed didn’t end up killing me, when I got home, I better tell the truth.”

Charlotte couldn’t believe her nephew had been keeping such a big secret for so many years. What a terrible burden of guilt for a child. As Daisy’s sister, she felt nothing but sympathy for him. He couldn’t have foreseen the dire consequences of his violent outburst toward his mother.

Daisy herself would be the last to blame him.

As Wade continued to question him, it became apparent that it was the discovery of Daisy’s body this summer that had reawakened Chester’s disturbing old memory about the night he pushed his mother. Now nine-years-old, he was able to comprehend that his mother hadn’t been okay that night, as his father had claimed.

She’d died.

And in his mind he was to blame.

“Did you ever talk about this with your dad?” Wade asked.

Chester shook his head. “I tried. But Dad said I shouldn’t worry about it. He would take care of it.”

In the beginning Kyle probably thought he could. He’d grown up in this town as the golden boy. He’d excelled in so many areas, easily achieved his every desire and goal.

When tragedy struck his family, he’d probably figured the normal rules didn’t apply. Not to the Quinpools.

To Wade’s credit, when tears began to gather in Chester’s eyes, he put an end to the discussion.

“That’s enough for today. Chester, you’ve been a very brave kid.”

Chester gave a stoic nod. “Will I go to jail?”

“Absolutely not. Chester, you’ve done nothing wrong. Pushing your mom was an accident.”

“What about my dad?”

“That’s a bit more complicated.” Wade glanced up at Charlotte and she knew he was thinking of the fraud Kyle had committed, and the illegal burial of Daisy’s body. “But I think there’s a good chance he’ll be coming home a lot sooner than you expected.”

Chester slipped off his stool and wrapped his arms around Charlotte.

She hugged her nephew ferociously. This was only the second time Chester had come to her for comfort. She hoped she would always be here for him when he needed her. “I love you Chester. And Sheriff MacKay is right. You’ve been very, very brave.”

“That’s for sure.” Wade patted Chester on the back, then spoke softly to Charlotte. “I’d like to go over a few more things with Dougal. Okay if we use the study?”

“Sure.” She watched the two men retreat, closing the door behind them. She desperately wished she could listen in on their conversation. But she would just have to wait until later tonight for Dougal to fill her in.

Turning to Jamie and the twins, she threw out a suggestion. “Now that the rain has finally stopped—anyone up for a walk on the beach?”

“Yes!” Both twins answered, and Jamie gave her an approving smile.

The walk turned out to be exactly what they all needed. Just a few deep breaths of fresh sea air helped clear Charlotte’s head.

Jamie had thought to bring a football, and Chester seemed to come alive when he saw that. He went out for the long pass, then tried out his own spiral on his sister.

For over an hour they played, they ran, they laughed.

And Charlotte felt a profound joy like nothing she’d experienced before.

There was no more beautiful sound on earth than the sound of children you love having fun.

* * *

It was after ten o’clock when Chester finally settled to sleep in the room he shared with his sister. Leaving the door ajar and the hall light on, Charlotte headed downstairs, anxious to talk to Dougal. She found him stretched out on the sofa in the family room, snoring softly.

Not having the heart to wake him, she went to the kitchen to open a bottle of wine. She’d barely popped the cork when he joined her, yawning and stretching.

“Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be. It’s been an incredible rollercoaster of a day.”

He went to the cabinet where the wineglasses were stored and took down two. How easily he moved around her kitchen, now, as if it were his second home. Charlotte couldn’t help wondering about the future.

Dougal had made it clear from the start that he wasn’t the marrying kind. And he definitely loved his cabin out in the forest. Moving in here with her, becoming de facto father of two children—who would be teenagers before they knew it—that was the sort of scenario she could see scaring him off forever.

Of course, if Kyle was released from prison as Wade has suggested was likely, the twins would soon be moving back with their father. The idea of getting her freedom back, was not at all appealing.

They carried their glasses and the bottle back to the family room and made themselves comfortable on the sofa. Then Dougal made what seemed to her an unusual toast.

“To Ed.”

She echoed the words, tapping her glass to his before taking a swallow of the pinot noir. She closed her eyes, savoring the taste and the sensation of relaxation that came with it.

“So why the toast to your dad?”

“It’s strange. I spent most of my life wishing I could formally renounce him as my father. But today was a revelation for me.”

“In what way?”

“Before I answer that, I’d like you to read the last chapter of the book. Unless you already have?”

She shook her head. There’d been no time. Plus, she’d been more than a little reluctant. She’d come to really admire Shirley Hammond—at least the Shirley Hammond that Dougal had resurrected in his book—and she dreaded what she knew was about to happen.

“I’ve got the book downloaded on my phone.” Dougal pulled it from his pocked and scrolled ahead to the final scene of the final chapter.

She took the phone from him somewhat reluctantly.

“Read,” Dougal prompted.

So she did.

* * *

Wednesday April 7, 1976, Basement of Twisted Cedars Library, Oregon

Shirley knew she didn’t have much time left. Maybe a few minutes, or even just seconds.

Not for the first time it struck her how unfair life could be. Particularly for mothers. Not once had Ed expressed any anger or resentment toward his biological father. He’d never even asked her who the man was.

If he’d asked her when he first showed up on her doorstep four years ago, she wouldn’t have told him. Her parents’ admonitions, particularly her mother’s, had been so successfully engrained. Despite her education and exposure to discourse on all manner of subjects related to women and sexual abuse, Shirley had indeed felt like the guilty party.

It was her shame. Her disgrace.

She’d lived her entire life, ever since she’d turned thirteen, believing these things.

A world that should have been opening up to her with opportunities for fun, love and happiness, had instead tunneled inward, leaving her in a sort of prison.

Shirley saw quite clearly now what she’d never fully understood before.

Her life at the cottage and her devotion to her books had been her way of escaping from reality. Once she would have claimed she was merely doing what she loved.

But what if the abuse hadn’t happened? What if she hadn’t been forced to have a baby at age fifteen and then forced to give it up?

She might have become an entirely different woman.

For sure she wouldn’t be standing on this ladder, with her own scarves tied around her neck.

Her vision blurred as tears came to her eyes. She didn’t try to stop them. Someone had to cry for her, for how little her life had amounted to in the end.

She’d been a good librarian, she supposed. That was the only legacy she had to leave...

Except for him, of course.

How many more people would he hurt in his angry quest for revenge?

She prayed to God it would end with her.

And maybe, if she told him the truth, it would.

“Your father...” Her voice came out faint and raspy, but she could tell he heard her.

He froze in his spot, staring at her.

“Don’t you want to know who he was?”

Ed took a step closer to the ladder, his face a convoluted mess of emotions she couldn’t decipher.

“You blame me for all the misery in your life. But I was fifteen. Do you know how old your father was? Forty-one.”

Ed’s eyes practically popped out of their sockets and Shirley felt an amazing sense of lightness come over her.

Never in her life had she breathed so much as a word about what had happened to her.

She’d never guessed it would feel so...liberating.

“Your father, was my father. John Hammond the first. Isn’t he the one you should have hated?”

“No! You’re lying!”

In a flash she realized what she had to do. She was tired of playing according to other peoples’ scripts. If her life had to end, she could at least choose the moment.

And the moment was now.

Letting go of the rafter, she jumped away from the ladder. The last sound she heard was the metal crashing to the concrete floor.

Followed by her son’s anguished cry.

* * *

“I don’t know what to say.” Charlotte handed Dougal back his phone.

She looked shell-shocked, and Dougal realized he’d made a miscalculation. He took her cool hand in his. “I thought it would be easier if you read it.” But clearly he’d been wrong.

“It’s just so—vile.”

“I agree.”

She laughed bitterly. “And I thought poor Sam was the father of Shirley’s baby. How much happier everyone would have been if that had been the truth.”

It would still have caused a scandal back in the fifties, but Charlotte was right, nothing was worse than incest.

“I wonder if anyone in town guessed the truth.”

“I doubt it.”

“Poor Shirley. Poor, poor Shirley...” Charlotte went to the cabinet where the family photo albums were kept and selected one.

Dougal expected it to be one of the older albums with pictures taken when Shirley was growing up. But it turned out to be a lot more current than that.

She opened the album to the first page. “This is Daisy on her fourteenth birthday.”

Dougal studied the picture, taken at the dining room table. Daisy was sitting in front of a lavish birthday cake. Beside her was Charlotte and standing behind them both was Daisy’s father.

Dougal’s senses recoiled as he realized why Charlotte wanted him to look at this particular photograph. It was hard to be sure, but it almost seemed as if John Hammond had been looking down at Daisy’s cleavage.

“Jesus. Do you think your father...?” He couldn’t say the rest. As Charlotte had so appropriately said earlier, it was just too vile.

“Ever since Chester was abducted, I’ve felt that too many bad things happened in Twisted Cedars this summer. Most of them involving our three families—the Quinpools, the Lachlans and the Hammonds.”

“You felt it couldn’t be coincidence,” Dougal continued, guessing where she was going with this. “And you think incest might be the cause?”

“I don’t know. But I can’t help wondering.” Charlotte set aside the album and began pacing.

“From my research I do know that incest is one of those awful patterns that tend to be repeated in families.”

“All my life I’ve felt so fortunate that I was adopted by a nice family like the Hammonds. I’ve had so much, Dougal. I wasn’t just grateful for the material benefits—which were many, including this beautiful property and a free education. I really thought I was part of a fine, historical family that believed in helping others and contributing to their community.”

“Everyone in town sees the Hammonds that way. Not just you.” In his teen years Dougal himself had envied the Hammond girls, not appreciating at all, how lucky he was to have Katie Lachlan for his mother.

“But if this is true, then it’s just been a sham. What kind of man abuses his own daughter?” She shuddered. “I remember my mom telling me a girl could be too pretty. That it could result in attracting the wrong sort of attention. I never guessed she might have been referring to our
father
.”

A question occurred to Dougal, and for a moment he hesitated. He didn’t want to stir up trouble. But if there was one thing he and Charlotte had shared up until now, it was honesty. “Did he ever do or say anything inappropriate to you?”

“No.” Charlotte visibly recoiled. But then her expression turned thoughtful, and she sighed. Sinking into an arm chair on the other side of the room she admitted, “Not really. But I do remember a time when my father seemed to be paying me more attention. I was in my teens. Daisy had just moved out to live with Kyle. My mom started acting really possessive, and I thought at the time it was weird, as if she was jealous of my father wanting to spend more time with me.”