Skeletons in the Mist (The McCall Twins) (18 page)

Roxy didn’t want to hear this. The more details she learned of Hank Tavish’s last days, the guiltier she felt. Somehow ignorance truly was bliss.

“I don’t know for sure, but I think he found out that week about you—about the fact that you weren’t his daughter.” Devon looked her in the eye. “And I think that’s why he killed himself.”

EIGHTEEN

The room grew quiet. Chas watched as the blood seemed to completely drain from Roxy’s face. She shook her head in obvious disbelief. He reached for her arm, afraid she was going to faint on him. She didn’t. She just continued standing there dumbfounded.

“Maybe you should sit back down,” he finally said softly, giving her a gentle shove toward the chair she’d vacated earlier. She slid into it bonelessly, her face still white as a ghost.

“How do you know all this, Devon?” Briggs spoke this time, his pen tapping incessantly against his legal pad.

Devon shrugged.

“Does this have something to do with the night your aunt died? Because if it does, you’d better tell me.” Briggs gave the kid a stern look and
straightened. “I need the facts to help you, Devon. I’m not sure why you’ve waited this long to tell us what happened that night, but it’s now or never.”

“Dylan heard my aunt talking on the phone to someone okay!” The words came out in a rush and Devon swore, avoiding Roxy’s gaze.

“When?” Briggs asked.

“The night she died,” Devon finally admitted. “I came home. Dylan was outside on the porch. He’d been there awhile. I asked him why and he wouldn’t talk to me at all at first. I finally got out of him that he’d been eavesdropping on one of Aunt Myra’s phone conversations.” Devon’s eyes fell. “He was always doing that—picking up the receiver and listening in. Little shit.” Something that looked an awful lot like a tear started to slip from one of Devon’s eyes but he reached up and slapped at it quickly.

“Go on,” Briggs prodded. “Just tell me everything you know—even if it doesn’t seem important to you.”

Devon’s eyes remained angry but he shrugged his shoulders. “I tried to get more out of Dylan but
he didn’t know much—just that Aunt Myra said that Roxy and Rachel weren’t Dad’s daughters. Apparently she had some paperwork or something and she was accusing whoever was on the phone of being their real father. When I asked him who she was talking to, he didn’t know.”

Chas reached a hand forward and squeezed Roxy’s shoulder, for all the good it would do. The expression on her face was one he wouldn’t soon forget. She looked confused and devastated all at the same time.

“Did you ask your aunt about the situation?” Briggs wanted to know.

“No. Not with my brother there. I told him to go find Woody and hang out at the junkyard while I talked to Aunt Myra. I knew she wouldn’t say anything in front of Dylan. She was always trying to protect him from things. She knew that my father’s death had messed him up pretty bad. That worthless coward.” Devon’s eyes turned stony again.

“What happened when you confronted your aunt, Devon?” Briggs asked.

“She denied it at first. Aunt Myra was good at storytelling and she did her best to make something up about the phone call that Dylan had overheard. Eventually she admitted it was true. She’d been going through some paperwork of my dad’s and found some journal that was apparently Dinah Tavish’s. I guess the whole story was in the journal. I saw it lying on the counter in the kitchen. I didn’t get a chance to read it though. Someone called on the phone again and at that point I took off. I was pissed. All these years I’d watched my father swim in depression over everything that had happened to his first family, and their whole existence had been a lie. The love of my father’s life had been a cheating bitch.”

“My mother wasn’t a cheating bitch,” Roxy argued defensively. “You didn’t know her.”

“I know she was cheating on my father. And I know that journal was real.”

“So where is it?” Roxy wanted to know, not that Chas could blame her. He wanted to know too.

“I have no idea. Maybe it’s still in the house. I didn’t exactly get a chance to look for it before I was
arrested. I just know that Aunt Myra had it at one time. I told you before, I saw it sitting on the counter in the kitchen.”

“Ms. Tavish, I realize that you have questions about this but I really need to get back to the night of the murder,” Briggs said impatiently. “Where did you go when you left the house—after you had words with your aunt?”

“I took off and went over to Tabitha’s. We’d been hanging out a lot. When I got there I saw that she was crying. Turns out her mother’s boyfriend has been messing with her.” Devon looked over at Chas. “You can’t tell her I told you. She’ll get really mad at me. She made me promise. The only reason I know is because I walked in on them.”

Chas grimaced. Hearing the accusation against Abel Flannigan a second time pretty much sealed its validity. “I won’t say anything to her,” was all he finally said to Devon. He didn’t want to get into Abel Flannigan’s murder case with the kid at this point. There were other tasks at hand.

Devon continued. “Anyway, Tabby came with me and we walked back to my aunt’s house, just
talking. When we got there I saw that the screen door was hanging open…” Devon’s voice broke off and he stared down at the floor. His hands started to shake.

“What time was it when you got to the house, Devon?” Briggs asked, writing things down as fast as Devon was saying them.

Devon looked up, surprised. “I don’t know. Three or four in the afternoon, I guess.”

“Okay. So you went in the house?” Briggs asked.

“Yeah. Tabby left to head for the junkyard. I told her I’d see her later. I went inside and I found Aunt Myra lying on the floor in the hallway.” Again, his eyes watered and he rubbed at them. His breath hitched. “I didn’t see the blood at first. I’m not sure why because there was a lot of it. When I did see it, I panicked. I ran over to her. I slipped a couple of times and almost fell. That’s when I saw the gun. It was lying on the floor next to her.”

“What did you do then?” Briggs asked, but Chas already knew what the kid was going to say. When Chas had arrived on the scene, he’d found Devon holding the murder weapon.

“I picked it up. I don’t know why. I just did.” He shook his head, anguish and regret in his eyes. “I wasn’t thinking. I should have called the cops but instead I just stood there in shock. And then Dylan walked into the house. He took one look at the scene and he freaked out.” Devon reached up and swiped at his running nose. “He took off running and screaming and I just kept standing there.”

“The gun belonged to your father,” Briggs said, his expression solemn. “Do you know where it was normally kept?”

Devon shrugged. “I never saw it before that night. Most of my dad’s things were in a back bedroom in boxes. Aunt Myra was slowly going through the stuff.”

Chas glanced at Roxy. He was surprised she’d been quiet for so long. She was just sitting there rubbing at her temples with her fingers. She was obviously confused and shocked, to say the least.

Devon chose that moment to look over at her. “You can choose to believe me or not. I don’t really care what you think. But I hope you’ll do something for me. If I don’t get out of here, you
need to tell Dylan I didn’t do it. I didn’t shoot Aunt Myra. I loved her.”

“Who did, Devon?” Briggs asked.

“I don’t know. There was nobody in the house by the time I got there.”

“We need to go back to that house and look for that journal,” Chas said, standing up abruptly. He hated to rush Roxy at this point, given the news she’d just gotten, but he really had no choice.

“I agree. If this is all tied to that journal then maybe it will shed some light on who Myra was talking to before she died.” Briggs stood up too. “You’ll handle this and be in touch with me?”

“I’ve got it covered,” Chas assured him. He turned to Roxy, who was still seated at the table. She had stopped rubbing her temples and was staring at Devon intently.

“I don’t expect you to believe me,” Devon finally said, sniffling again. “That’s why I didn’t tell you before.”

“I do believe you,” she surprised everyone in the room by saying. “I wish I didn’t, but I do.” She looked up at Chas. “I want to go with you. To get
that journal, I mean.”

“We’ll talk about it in the truck,” he promised her, mostly just to get her moving.

She turned back to Devon. “I know you have no reason to trust me. I know you hardly know me. But at one time we were close, Devon. I do care about you. I always have.”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t remember much about you. I’m not trying to be mean, that’s just the way it is.”

A look of sadness crossed her face. She stood up slowly. “If you know where Dylan is, now would be a good time to tell us.”

Devon stood as a guard walked back into the room to escort him to his cell. “If he’s not at the junkyard, I really don’t know. Woody would have taken care of him for me. Is it really true that Tabitha’s missing?”

Chas could see the worry on Devon’s face. Clearly he and Tabitha were close in one way or another. “She’s been missing for two days now. She never made it home the other night.”

Devon’s face fell as he met Chas’s gaze. “You
need to look at Flannigan. I swear I’m telling you the truth about him. He may have hurt her.”

“I’ll look into it,” Chas promised.

A few minutes later, the kid was back in his cell and Chas and Roxy were seated in his truck. He started up the engine, then glanced over at Roxy. She’d been silent the entire walk outside. “I’m sorry you had to hear all that.”

She shook her head. “Why? It’s obviously the truth. I had to find out some way.”

He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel as he sighed. “So what are you thinking about all this?”

She hesitated, then rubbed at her temples again. “I don’t know, Chas. None of it makes any sense in some ways. And in other ways it explains a lot. My father was very disconnected from me after my mother and my sister died—even before that at times. I always thought it was because we were girls and he was a man. We liked dolls and makeup and dresses. He liked football and hunting and poker.” She looked over at him sadly. “Maybe he was disconnected from us because we weren’t
really his. Maybe somehow subconsciously he suspected it.”

“I’m sorry, baby.” He didn’t know what else to say to her. He couldn’t imagine finding out that the father he’d known his whole life wasn’t really his father.

“Yeah, me too. I’m having a hard time believing that my mother was a cheater. She always seemed so in love with my dad—with Hank.” Her voice cracked and she shook her head again. “None of this matters right now. We need to find that journal.” She met his gaze again. “Would it still be in the house?”

“It depends on where she left it. I know there was no journal bagged into evidence. I would have seen it myself.” He backed the truck up and headed for the freeway. “Trace and I will check out the house. If it’s there, we’ll find it.”

“I want to go with you.”

He’d been expecting her to say this. He made sure his answer was firm. “No.”

Surprised, she glared at him. “What do you mean, no?”

“I mean, you can’t come with us. The house is still a crime scene. Nobody gets in there but law enforcement until it’s cleared.”

“I have a right to enter that house, Chas. It’s technically mine now.”

“You have no right to do anything I don’t want you to do. I’m the detective in charge.” He knew the words were going to piss her off and he was right.

She swore vehemently. “She was my aunt. Those are her things you’re going to be digging through.”

“I understand that and I’m sorry. But I have a job to do. I’ve crossed too many lines as it is with you. I need to go by the book as far as the crime scene goes.”

“Is that right?”

“It sure as hell is.” He watched her seethe. He couldn’t really blame her for being frustrated. “Listen, you don’t want to go into that house right now anyway, Roxy. It’s exactly the way it was the night of the murder.” He saw her blanch and forced himself to remain stoic. “Until we release it, nothing can be cleaned up. It’s no place for any
family member to be at this point.”

She slumped a little, the fight obviously leaving her.

“Hey.” He reached over and squeezed her knee. “What I will do, is promise to keep you in the loop as much as I can, okay?”

Her expression softened. “Do you promise not to hide anything from me? I mean if you find that journal? I need to know, Chas. I have a right to know.”

He put his hand back on the steering wheel. “Technically everything I find out is classified information, Roxy. If stuff about a crime scene gets leaked to the media or the public, things can get real messy. Sometimes mistakes like that can make or break a case.”

“Like I said, I’m talking about the journal, Chas. It’s my mother’s diary. I need to know what’s in it.”

He couldn’t blame her for that. “If I find the journal, you’ll be the first to know.”

NINETEEN

Chas stared down at his desk, his eyes so tired they were getting gritty. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in days, not that he could blame some of that on anybody but himself.

Hours earlier, he had dropped Roxy off at his house and left Josh there to babysit her. Then he’d picked up Trace and together they had scoured Myra Tavish’s house. They had found no sign of any journal. They had found no further helpful evidence at all. That fact was frustrating.

Now Trace had gone out to grab them some fast food so they could pour over the evidence that had initially been collected from the crime scene again.

He leaned back in his chair and rested his eyes for a moment.

“Is this what you’re doing to figure out who killed my brother?”

Chas’s eyes snapped open and he found himself face to face with none other than Abbott Flannigan. Immediately his mood took a dive. He could tell that Abbott had consumed his normal amount of excessive alcohol for the day. This conversation was likely to go as well as the one Chas had had with Abbott the night before, when he’d notified him of Abel’s death.

Abbott Flannigan was about as appealing as both of his brothers. They were all large men—each at least fifty pounds overweight. Abel had been the tallest of the three, but they were each well over six feet. They ranged in age from thirty-six to forty-two, Abel having been the youngest.