“My first car was a fixer-upper, too,” she said softly, then stopped abruptly. “I’m sorry. I…that was cruel.”
“Don’t apologize, Ivy. You didn’t have any more control over what happened than I did.”
“Yes, I did, Matt. If I hadn’t been such a coward, if I remembered seeing my parents’ murderer, and identified the killer, you wouldn’t have been convicted.”
He couldn’t argue, but didn’t want her beating herself up. Not anymore. “Try to remember now, Ivy.”
She sighed and ran a hand through her tangled wet hair, then closed her eyes as if painting a mental picture of the events of that night. “You picked me up and carried me to the van. You even saved the cloth Santa I dropped in the mud.”
“I was in the junkyard when I heard you crying,” he said gruffly. “You were running and crying like the devil was chasing you, like you were scared out of your mind.”
This time shame reddened her face as she looked at him. “You knew my father was abusive?”
Matt stared at her for a long moment. “Yes, Ivy. No kid should be treated like he treated you.”
“My dad called me poison.” Ivy traced a finger around the top of her mug. “I used to hate my name because of that.”
“God. What a bastard.”
She almost smiled at his comment. “Yes, he was,” she confessed. “It took me a long time to realize that it wasn’t my fault he had a temper.”
“No, some men are just born mean.” His mother had said that about Matt. Then he’d gotten arrested and gone to jail and proven her right.
“So he was chasing you?” he asked.
She looked down into the coffee as if the mug held the answers, but continued to frown.
“I don’t know for sure if Daddy was chasing me or if it was someone else. I have recurring nightmares. It’s always night, black outside, raining. Someone’s after me, a monster, but I can’t see his face.”
“The man who killed your parents,” he said quietly. “You don’t
want
to see his face.”
“But I do,” she insisted. “I have to. I know your life has been a nightmare these past few years, but, in a way, I locked myself in my own prison, too. I…can’t sleep at night. I can’t be close to anyone. I…I’m suffering from panic attacks.”
Guilt warred with his need for vengeance. An image of Ivy haunted by demons followed, tearing him up inside. “Then we should stop now. Talking about it will only bring the nightmares back.”
She shook her head, that false bravado flashing on her face. “No, tell me the rest, Matt. I have to know, to see this through.” She paused, emotion glittering in her eyes, but then she squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. “You went to my house after you tucked me into the van?”
He nodded. She must have read the police reports. “I was mad,” he admitted in a low voice. “A real hellion back then. Thought I’d teach your father a lesson. Teach him to beat on someone his own size.”
Her head jerked up as if she was surprised that he’d gone to her father to defend her. Had any man ever protected her? Taken care of her? Loved her or held her and tried to wipe that sadness from her? Matt wanted to, and he’d just reconnected with her again.
“When I arrived at your house,” he said, “I…saw your mother lying on the floor. There was blood everywhere. She was…already dead.”
“And my father?”
“I never saw him,” Matt admitted.
“So he could have killed my mother,” Ivy whispered.
“That’s what I thought at first,” he admitted. “I figured he was still around, but if he was, he had a knife, so I decided to get my tail out of there.”
“But if he killed my mother,” Ivy said, “then who killed him?”
Matt grimaced. He’d asked himself the same question a thousand times. Ivy’s mother had had lovers. He didn’t know if Ivy knew that fact, and he didn’t want to be the one to tell her.
But he had to consider the possibility that maybe one of her lovers had avenged her murder by killing the old man.
Matt had to think logically here. No, a john wouldn’t kill her old man to avenge her death. It had to be a man who’d cared for her. A man who’d gotten serious about Lily.
Or what if it was the other way around? What if Lily Stanton had been looking for a way out of her life with her abusive husband? Perhaps she fell for one of her lovers and wanted him to help her escape. Some of the customers who visited Red Row were prominent citizens, married men who didn’t want their visits advertised, either because of their wives or their careers. She might have been desperate, threatened to expose the man’s identity, and he killed her to keep her from divulging the truth.
Either way, identifying Lily’s lovers might lead them to her murderer.
CHAPTER FIVE
A.J. HAD TO FIND this woman’s killer. He wiped sweat from his brow as the crime scene unit photographed the area, then whacked the kudzu from around her neck to free her. He had wanted to process the crime himself, but had decided to call for the crime unit on this one. Besides, wading into the knee-high snake pit of kudzu and rusted cars was not his idea of a good time.
He liked crime work to a point. But he drew the line at rats gnawing on him. And the equipment he had in the Kudzu Hollow sheriff’s office was not the most updated. But he would do his job. Find the killer. Put him behind bars.
Atone for the past. He’d been doing that for the last fifteen years. All because of one stupid mistake he’d made as a kid.
Lady Bella Rue shook her head as the men lifted the body, placed it on a stretcher and carried it to the embankment. “That’s Dora Leigh Werth.”
A.J. nodded. His deputy, Jimmy, had latched onto one of the female crime techs and was soaking up the details as she methodically searched for evidence. Plucking a feather from the kudzu here, a piece of torn clothing there, she bagged it for forensics and trace—a needle-in-a-haystack task that hopefully might lead to a clue. Then again, there was no telling how long some of the debris in the junkyard had been here.
A.J. had scoured the area for footprints and signs the killer might have left before the CSI unit arrived, but found little. A few dog paw prints. Trash. Beer bottles tossed into the kudzu. The junkyard drew teens who wanted a quiet place to sneak a drink or smoke weed. Sometimes the boys parked here with dates, using the spooky tales and atmosphere to entice their girlfriends into a make-out session.
He had used the same routine when he was young. But then the trouble had begun….
“Tell me again why you were here,” he asked Lady Bella Rue.
She gripped the string of knots around her neck and whispered another Hail Mary. “I came to spread a protective spell over the land,” she said simply. “I sensed something evil was about to happen around the junkyard.”
“You lost your son near here, didn’t you?”
Beneath the black hat, her face paled. And Lady Bella Rue was not a pale woman. Her skin had once been a glossy shade of caramel, a mixture of her black and white heritage that had fed the gossip vine for years—just who were her daddy and mama? Some said her mama had come from Africa, had been a witch doctor in the old country. Others claimed she worked out of Red Row. Others suggested she had been spawned by the devil.
“He fell off a cliff on this side of the mountain when he was only three,” she said in a low voice. “He wandered away from me while I was picking roots.”
Or she had pushed him. A.J. knew the rumors.
“How well did you know Dora Leigh Werth?”
“As well as I know everyone around here,” Lady Bella Rue said with a bark of laughter. “You know, Sheriff, that half the town is afraid of me. Talulah is my only real friend, though, I do what I can to protect the others, anyway.”
Yeah, she was a real saint and he was a fucking virgin. “And why do you do that if you don’t like the people in town?”
“I pity those with closed minds.”
Or maybe she thought she could atone for killing her son. He stared down at her hunched figure, the gnarled hands of a conjurer. “How do I know that you didn’t kill this woman? That the spells you claim protect people haven’t been causing havoc all these years?”
Her cackling laughter echoed off the mountain. “I am not that powerful, Sheriff Boles. And what purpose would it serve me to kill this innocent woman?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she knew something about you that you didn’t want revealed.”
“People think I killed my own boy. They already call me a witch, the devil’s child. What worse could they possibly say about me?”
He shrugged. He had no answer to that question. “Sometimes people don’t have a motive. They just snap and turn evil.”
Her head tilted beneath the veil. “You would know that, wouldn’t you?”
He didn’t like the eerie way she seemed to look into people, as if she could read their minds, see inside their souls. “I’ve seen a lot on the job over the past few years,” he admitted.
She clucked sarcastically, as if she knew he was hiding sinister secrets himself, and he kicked at the muddy ground.
“Look at me, Sheriff,” Lady Bella Rue said. “Dora Leigh was a hefty woman. My arthritic hands don’t have the strength to strangle her, much less drag her out in that field of kudzu and bury her beneath it.”
“But you have strength in your black magic?”
She adjusted her hat, looking nervous. “I dabble.”
“And who says she was strangled?” A.J. asked, his eyes slanting toward her. “The coroner hasn’t revealed anything about her cause of death yet.”
“Actually she was stabbed first. But that didn’t kill her. I saw the vines being wrapped around her neck, choking the life out of her,” she whispered.
He chewed the inside of his cheek. If she had used black magic to murder the woman, it would be hard to prove. Even A.J. didn’t like to admit he believed in the gift, because the power of magic was in believing. And he knew for a fact that Lady Bella Rue kept all sorts of eerie hoodoo items at her place. Gourds. Roots and herbs. Rattlesnake skin. Bones of animals. Chicken heads. Poisons. Some of the kids even claimed she had fingers from humans, but he had no proof. Yet.
She angled her veiled head toward him. “So you believe my spells and charms work?”
He stared beyond her to the woods, refusing to back down. “I think you live on the dark side of life. That you try your hand at black magic. That you have secrets, Lady Bella Rue.”
“Everyone has secrets,” she said with conviction. “But yours will be revealed, Sheriff Boles. Then everyone will know the truth about you.”
His gut tightened as anger bled through him. What if the old woman was right?
No…he couldn’t let the past catch up with him. He was sheriff now, respected by the town.
He’d do whatever necessary to protect his reputation.
“WHAT ARE YOU HIDING from me?” Ivy asked as Matt literally closed down in front of her.
“Nothing.”
She didn’t believe him. “Matt, what else happened that night? After you saw my mother’s body, what did you do?”
He finished his coffee and poured another cup, stalling. “I ran,” he said, disgust riddling his voice. “I thought your old man, or the killer, whoever it was, might still be around.”
“Did you hear anyone in the house?”
He shook his head. “No. For the past fifteen years, I’ve retraced that night a thousand times in my head to check if I missed something. But I don’t remember hearing or seeing anyone else. And when I got away safe, I wasn’t about to call the cops. I figured I’d get fingered for the crime.”
Which was exactly what had happened.
Ivy dropped her eyes back to her coffee. “Then they found my dad later that night in the junkyard, with a kitchen knife in his back?”
Matt nodded, his dark eyes hooded. “And the cops found my fingerprints on the doorknob. Apparently, I’d stepped in blood, too, which was on the bottom of my boots, along with mud from the junkyard, where I’d seen you earlier. The case was a slam dunk.”
“What about your lawyer? Didn’t he argue that you had no motive?”
“My lawyer was some young, overworked, smart-ass kid doing a stint for the D.A. He was living off of his daddy’s fat wad of money and didn’t give a rat’s ass about whether or not I was innocent or guilty. All he wanted to do was finish his assignment, work for his old man and buy a Mercedes.” Matt sighed. “Besides, I was pretty stupid. Instead of going home and telling my mother what I’d witnessed so she could have backed me in court and provided me with an alibi, I tried to find A.J.”
“And?”
“And he wasn’t home. In fact, nobody was at his house. So I hid out in the junkyard all night.”
Ivy rubbed a hand over her forehead. “All night. You mean in one of the cars?”
He nodded, but stared at his boots. “In that old Impala near where I left you.”
Her throat ached so badly she couldn’t swallow. “You came back to check on me?”
“I…figured you might have seen your mama’s killer.” He rammed a hand through his hair, leaving the shaggy ends in a mess. “I thought the killer might come looking for you, too.”
Emotions fluttered through Ivy. He had returned to protect her. To make sure she was safe. And when he’d needed her, she’d retreated into her own silent world of denial.
She started to reach out to offer him a comforting hand, but he stiffened, his shoulders rigid. “I don’t want your sympathy or pity, Ivy. I was a stupid kid then. If I hadn’t been up to no good, stealing hubcaps that night, I wouldn’t have been in the junkyard at all.”
“And you wouldn’t have saved me. Then you wouldn’t have gotten in trouble.”
“I didn’t mean to imply you were at fault.”
“It’s the truth, Matt. You must have hated me all these years.”
He hesitated, his voice rattling with emotions when he finally spoke. “I don’t hate you.”
Ivy’s heart splintered. Her cowardice had hurt him so much. God. She couldn’t ever go back to running.
“Neither one of us was at fault,” he said, “but someone did kill your parents and they’ve gone free all this time.”
“Someone who knows why we both returned to Kudzu Hollow.” Which explained the message to her. It also meant Matt would be in danger.
Her mind ticked over possible reasons why someone would have wanted to kill her parents. They hadn’t had money. In fact, they’d fought about it all the time….
If her father had killed her mother and she’d witnessed it, it made sense that Ivy had been traumatized enough to repress the memory.
But if her father stabbed her mother, then who had killed him? Someone who cared for her mom?
But whom? From what Ivy remembered, her mother hadn’t had many friends. She had worked at the local pub for a short time as a waitress, but her father had put an end to that. Ivy recalled that bitter argument because it had turned into a physical fight. Her mother had cried and cried, claiming that she wanted the tips, that it was the best money in town, the only way she could afford to save a penny.
And she had wanted to save money, Ivy remembered. At night, she’d tell Ivy stories of faraway places. Show her pictures of cities she wanted them to visit. Of big fancy houses and shopping centers, and schools. Even colleges that she dreamed of Ivy attending. Tall massive stone structures with architecture that resembled castles from a fairyland.
“See those pretty green vines growing on that building?” she had said.
Ivy had stared in awe at the photos. “It looks like a castle, Mommy. Like something a queen would live in.”
“It’s not a house,” her mother had explained. “It’s an Ivy League university.” She had hugged Ivy into the circle of her arms then and traced her finger over the beautiful green vines crawling up the stone structures. “That’s the reason I named you Ivy. Because one day I want you to attend an Ivy League school. Then you can make something of yourself, be important. Not like your mama and daddy.”
Tears pressed against Ivy’s eyelids as she recalled her mother’s words. Lily had loved her and would still be with her if someone hadn’t brutally stolen her life.
“Ivy?” Worry tinged Matt’s voice. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She placed her empty coffee mug on the counter, inhaling sharply. “I’m just tired. It’s been a long day.”
He nodded. “Then I’ll go. Let you get some sleep.”
Ivy nodded, as well, but she didn’t turn around. She wasn’t sure she would sleep. Not with memories of that bloody message and dead chicken taunting her. Not knowing that someone might try to harm her.
And that Matt might be in danger, too.
MATT ORDERED HIMSELF to leave. Being in the same room with Ivy disturbed his equilibrium. Resurrected his protective instincts. Made him want to hold her and erase the fear from her eyes. Made him want other things he couldn’t have. A kiss. A touch. A night with her in his arms.
But he had a mission and nothing would deter him. Especially a woman. Still, Ivy looked so lost he could hardly drag himself away. Traces of guilt and helplessness had echoed in her voice. And fear lingered in her eyes as well as the memory of that gruesome threat.
Restless energy pounding through him, he laid a hand on her shoulder and gently turned her to face him. Her creamy skin looked ashen. “Ivy? Did you remember something else?”
She shook her head. “Not about that night. Just…little things about my mother. The reason she named me Ivy.”
He smiled. “For those deep green eyes of yours.”
“No. Because she wanted me to attend an Ivy League college. She said my eyes were the same color as the ivy.”
His throat tightened. In spite of the fact that she’d frequented Red Row, Lily had loved Ivy. Had Lily been working to save money to help her daughter escape the life she’d been saddled with? She should have found another way, a life that hadn’t been so dangerous.
“But my father called me Poison Ivy,” Ivy whispered, a bleak note in her voice. “He said I was poison to his marriage.”
Anger sent a blade of pain through Matt. “Like I said earlier, Ivy, your father was a bastard.”
She bit down on her lip, and the soft glow from the lamp across the room cast her beautiful face in an angelic glow. Matt wondered what she saw when she looked at him. The scar on his face? The animal he’d become in the pen?
The filth, the fights, the unspeakable acts…
He wished he could will away his past. He ached to kiss her, almost tipped up her chin and claimed that soft mouth for his own. Let her tenderness soothe his blemished soul.
But he couldn’t. He had killed. Not her father or mother. But since then, he had taken lives. In dirty ways he never wanted her to know about.
“Do you think you can sleep?” he asked gruffly.
She hesitated. “I…don’t know. But we both need to try. Tomorrow…tomorrow I want to talk to some people in town.”
“Maybe you should heed that warning and leave, Ivy. It’s dangerous for you to ask questions.”
“I can’t leave,” she whispered. “The nightmares follow me everywhere I go.”