Secrets in a Small Town (21 page)

She didn’t want to believe that Ty Garrett was a monster. If she were to believe her parents, Owen’s father seduced a young girl and then had her killed when she got in the way. It would devastate Owen if that were the truth. Sadness crept into her thoughts. Owen was a good man. How could the apple fall so far from the tree? She couldn’t imagine.

If her parents lied about being at Red Meadows, what did that say about them? Could she believe them about what they’d said about Ty Garrett?

She fished out the journal she kept in her purse and reread a few passages. Throughout, she found love and hope until the last entries. Had Mimi known something bad was coming? Had she lain awake at night, fearful for her unborn child? She swallowed the lump gathering in her throat. She wasn’t sure if she was morose for Mimi’s lost future or for her own turmoil. Piper tucked the journal away again, still unsure of where to turn. She needed to talk to her parents again and get them to somehow open up to her about the past but unless she had more solid proof…something to compel them to tell the truth… Her gaze returned to her purse where the journal remained hidden from view.

An idea came to her. She may have found a way to sway them.

But before she could leave, Owen walked into the library, a storm crashing behind his eyes, and she sensed she was at the heart of it. She nibbled her lip and tried a smile but he wasn’t having any of it.

“We need to talk,” he said without preamble. No “hello,” “hey, baby,” “had fun last night”…nothing. Just a curt demand for her attention.

She tried not to bristle but she didn’t do well with orders. Not even from men she found desperately handsome and devastatingly sexy. “About what?” she asked, settling back in her chair.

“Tell me the real reason you’re going after Red Meadows.”

She gaped, her mind furiously working, vacillating between the truth and total fiction and she was troubled by how quickly her first instinct was to offer up a fish tale. Just like her parents had given her. She chafed privately at her own drawn parallel and went boldly with truth.

“I want to write about it.”

He swore. “Why?”

“Because it’s the biggest story no one has ever told, sitting right here in Dayton. Imagine, if I can prove Ty Garrett wasn’t the monster everyone thought he was…it would change history. And it wouldn’t hurt for you, either. For once, you could talk about your father without censure in this town.”

“I could give a rat’s ass what anyone thinks of me or my father. I know who he was and that’s all that matters.”

“You’re lying. It matters a lot. You’ve always wanted people to forgive your father for his part in Red Meadows but that’s kinda hard to ask for when the man’s been painted as the villain all this time.”

“No one in Dayton is going to change their minds no matter what you find,” he shot back. “Besides, I don’t believe you have Dayton in mind for this story. Am I right?”

She hesitated. It was true, she’d been thinking of a bigger, national stage for her story but in the face of Owen’s anger, she was reluctant to admit to it. “I don’t know,” she flung back, anxious to turn the focus away from her. “But if you’d just stop thinking emotionally for a minute, you’d see that it’s a win-win for you and me.” He drew back, as if stung, and she reacted defensively. “I don’t need your permission to write this story.”

“No, you just needed my memories,” he said bitterly. “And what better way to get them than to pretend your motivation was purely altruistic.”

“Come on, Owen, you and I both know you didn’t really buy that story. But you wanted to believe it, so you did.”

“What about this morning?” he asked.

She colored, glancing around to see if anyone had caught their conversation. She lowered her voice, saying “What about it?”

“Was that part of the investigative process?”

This time she was the one who felt slapped. “Excuse me? I won’t even dignify that with an answer. No, wait, I will because that was the most vile thing anyone has ever said to me. I didn’t give you my…my…most precious gift because I was doing
research.
”

Unmoved by her answer, he simply shrugged and said in the most infuriatingly flip manner, “So that was just a bonus?”

“You’re a jerk,” she said, mortified to feel tears stinging her eyes. Damn, she was crying over a man—something she swore she’d never do. She gathered her papers to her breast and fixed her purse on her shoulder, needing to get the hell away from him. “You know what? I’m going to write this story and I don’t care what you think about it. I don’t care if you think I used you to get information—which, for the record, I did not—and when I win a Pulitzer for busting open the biggest scandal Dayton has ever seen, I’ll send you a Starbucks gift card for all your
help.
”

He liked her. Hell, he might even feel more than that for her but he was loath to admit to something that she didn’t share in the least.

For the first time since he was a kid, he felt lost. An awesome wave of homesickness overcame him and he wished he were back in Bridgeport, sitting at Mama Jo’s table, eating cornbread and ribbing his brothers. He was too old to cry but the sucker punch to his gut was enough to make his eyes sting. Maybe it was time for a trip home. He’d put it off too long and Mama Jo had been after him for quite some time but he’d always had too much on his plate to commit. He’d give it some serious thought. His foreman could run the operation while he was gone. And Piper? She could go to hell, for all he cared.

I will not accept anything but the truth,
she told herself as she marched to the door.

She let herself in and found her parents sitting at the breakfast nook, speaking in low but urgent tones. They stopped as soon as she entered, their guilty expressions fueling her resolve.

Piper reached inside her purse and slammed the journal to the table, causing both to jump at her sudden action. “This is the journal of a woman who was in love with Ty Garrett, the man you claim was a monster. Her words don’t support that claim. Now, either you level with me and tell me what you know or I’ll walk away and you’ll never see me again because I can’t be around two people who have blatantly lied to me my entire life. You have a chance to redeem yourselves right now.”

Coral’s mouth trembled and she looked ready to lose it. She looked to Jasper. “You were supposed to throw that away years ago,” she said, blinking back tears.

“I thought I did.” Jasper stared at the journal as if it were a snake about to bite him. “Where’d you find that?” he asked, his lips white.

“Does it matter? The fact remains that I have read it and I know more than I did before, and your stories are smelling like fiction. How did you know Mimi LaRoche and how did you happen to gain possession of her journal?”

“Piper—” her father started, but Coral interrupted, seeming to collapse in on herself, as if the strain of whatever secrets she was hiding had suddenly become too much.

“It’s time to come clean. We took a chance that this day would come eventually,” Coral said dully, giving in, causing Jasper to stare at her in alarm. She waved away his protests with a weary motion. “She’s not going to stop. We’ve raised an independent woman, who is very focused and driven.” At that, she spared Piper a smile that made her feel terrible for pushing so hard but Piper had to know what they were hiding from her. She couldn’t pretend everything was fine when it wasn’t. Acting had never been her strong suit. Coral leaned back in her chair and sighed, saying, “I’d do anything for a cigarette right about now.”

Piper’s eyes bulged. “Since when do you smoke?”

“I gave it up years ago, but it doesn’t mean I don’t wish for one now and then,” Coral answered. “And for the record, we’re not the only ones who’ve been hiding things. Did you think we wouldn’t notice that you’ve stopped being a vegetarian?”

“Says who?” she said, being evasive, though she wasn’t sure why. She was an adult. It was her choice. But still, she’d have preferred to keep that knowledge from her parents. “Did Farley tell you?” she asked, ready to pummel the man for snitching, but Coral shook her head, further confusing her.

“Darling, I can smell it on your pores.”

“Are you telling me I have meat stink?” she countered.

Jasper’s mouth twitched with a tired smile. “I think we’re getting off topic here.”

Ever the professor, but Piper was grateful. “No, you’re right. Okay, back to the point. I will share my secrets if you share yours.”

Coral made a resigned sound and nodded. “What I’m about to tell you may change the way you feel about us. Are you willing to take that chance?”

She swallowed. “Yes. I have to know.”

Coral and Jasper linked hands and the single action said without words that, no matter what, they’d face the situation together. For two nonconformists, they were surprisingly—and endearingly—traditional when it came to the love they felt for one another.

Coral began, taking the lead, while Jasper provided emotional support. “We were young college professors at the city college when we heard of the Aryan Coalition. Of course, we were disgusted by their tenets but intrigued, too. As students of human behavior we were fascinated by the way the
purists
perceived their place in society. We decided to infiltrate the group and then write a book about our findings.” A sad, contrite smile followed. “We were so naive and arrogant. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.”

Piper could imagine her parents, young and confident, yet hungry for the accolades publishing such a book would create. However, the image clashed completely with the one she’d associated with her parents her entire life.

“It soon became apparent that we were in over our heads. The Aryan Coalition was a hub of criminal networking, from drugs to guns, and they were making money hand over fist. Ty Garrett was at the center of it all. He had a way about him that drew people in and made them think that his ideas were their ideas. It was dangerous.

“Before long, there were so many within Dayton who secretly followed the Aryan Coalition. As you can tell from your research, when it all came crashing down, a lot of people were arrested or killed in the raid. It was shocking how many people were involved.” She drew a deep breath as if for strength. “There were some who chose to band together after the raid to create something good to make up for the terrible things they were associated with at Red Meadows.”

“Like a penance?” Piper asked.

“I suppose. Your father and I invited a few people we’d known at Red Meadows to come here to the farm so we could start rebuilding fresh and clean, without the stain of what we’d done.”

Piper could hardly manage the words but she managed to ask the single question that haunted her. “Did you become a racist?”

“God, no,” Coral gasped, shaking her head. “Never. But we did things we aren’t proud of in the name of research. And we carry the knowledge of that every day.”

Piper imagined it was a very heavy burden. She was carrying a pretty hefty load herself at the moment. She could still see Owen’s pain reflected in his stark gaze when she’d admitted she was going to write the story, that she’d planned to all along. “So why all the secrecy?” she asked.

Coral and Jasper shared looks. Jasper decided to take it from there. “Honey, when the raid happened…it was never supposed to happen like it did. When we realized something big was going to happen, we tried to contact the FBI, to let them know secretly but they brushed us off.”

“Maybe because they already had a man on the inside,” Piper interjected, continuing in a rush when her parents didn’t agree. “No, you see that’s what I found out… Ty Garrett was working for the FBI, under deep cover, to bring the Aryan Coalition down. But something went wrong and Ty ended up getting killed along with a score of other innocent people—one of whom would’ve been Owen himself if Ty hadn’t stepped in.”

“An FBI agent wouldn’t gun down an innocent child.” Coral scoffed at the idea.

“According to the documents, two children died that day,” she reminded her mother. “The youngest one being only six months old.”

Coral’s eyes misted. “Tabitha Aberline,” she remembered, a hitch in her voice. “It was a terrible accident. The bullet ricocheted and hit Patience, who happened to be running to safety with Tabitha in her arms. They both died that day. It was so awful. She was only a little younger than you. I used to babysit her.”

“I’m so sorry,” Piper offered, feeling her mom’s pain. “But that’s what I’m saying…kids did die that day. And you don’t know for certain that Owen’s life wasn’t in danger, particularly if someone was trying to cover their tracks and figured Owen was old enough to understand his father’s business.”

“Honey, I know you’re looking for ways to clean up the past, because for some reason you’ve gotten soft on Garrett, but we were there…he was no angel.”

“I’m not saying he was perfect. He probably had to keep up the facade in order to keep things kosher so no one suspected.”

“I saw a man beaten because of Ty Garrett’s orders,” Coral said quietly, shuddering at the memory. “It was horrific.”

Piper closed her eyes briefly to shut away the image but she stuck to her guns. She believed William Dearborn. “I think William’s shame and regret caused him to pull away from society, from his family. He shared a few things with me…things that were never in the reports.”

“Such as?” Jasper asked.

“Well, he was close to Ty, sort of his right-hand man, but he didn’t figure out the deception until right up to the raid. He said he heard Ty arguing with someone in the storeroom where they kept the drugs ready for shipment. He peeked inside and saw Ty with a guy he didn’t recognize but the expressions on their faces were intense. Ty said something like, ‘This wasn’t the deal’ but he didn’t catch the guy’s response, because gunfire erupted on the compound. Within minutes, the whole place was filled with smoke, bullets flying and people screaming.”

Coral looked as if she were trying to put it gently as she reminded Piper, “William wasn’t a good source of reliable information, honey. He had problems with reality.”

“Not about this,” she insisted. “Just because he was a recluse doesn’t make him crazy. Trust me, Mom. My instincts are right. William may have been a lot of things, but he wasn’t lying about the stuff he told me about Red Meadows.” Coral was clearly doubtful but she let it go, freeing Piper to continue with the last bit of damning evidence that she felt was proof positive that William had secrets to tell that someone wanted quiet. “Someone killed him not two days after I talked to him about Red Meadows. Someone knew he’d talked. And I think it was the same someone who killed Mimi LaRoche all those years ago.”

Coral’s eyes softened. “Oh, Mimi…such a beautiful, talented girl. I tried to warn her away from Ty Garrett in the safest way possible without outing ourselves but she was infatuated and my efforts were lost. Of course, she didn’t know he was leader of the Aryan Coalition because they’d met at the college where he worked as a carpenter.”

“But she had to know something was up by the time the end came near, because her last journal entry talked about the purists when they came to visit her.” She looked at Coral. “Do you know who killed Mimi?” she asked, afraid of the answer.

“No,” Coral answered, dabbing at her eyes. “We assumed it was Ty because we knew he couldn’t afford to have the information come out about his relationship with a black woman.”

“So how’d you get her journal?”

They exchanged glances. “Mimi didn’t have any family and, since we knew her from the college, after she died we volunteered to go through her effects to find what could be donated to charity and what could be thrown out. We found the journal between the mattress and the box spring. We’d considered giving it to the police but by that point, the investigation had simmered down and everyone was ready to close the door on the whole sordid affair. People needed to be able to grieve and move on. They wouldn’t have been able to do that if they’d known Mimi’s death was also possibly connected to the
purists.
”

Just saying that word made Jasper and Coral cringe. Piper could feel the shame radiating from their pores. She reached out to them. “Why’d you hide this from me all this time?” she asked.

“Because our shame was our burden. Not yours.”

“Why do you blame yourself so much? Your crime was pride and arrogance, but you weren’t like those people.”

“It left a stain, sweetheart,” Coral said with a sniff as Jasper nodded, his head bowing under the memory. “We almost moved out of Dayton completely but then we were offered positions at UC Santa Cruz and we figured it was best to try and rebuild, to help those who also shared the burden. We also felt we owed it to the fallen…to honor their memory in some small way.”

“Did you ever write your findings?” she asked.

Coral and Jasper paused, each waiting for the other, then Coral nodded her head, as if just admitting it was bad, as well. “We never published it,” she added in a rush. “It’s sitting in a box in the closet. It hasn’t seen the light of day since we put it away twenty-five years ago.”

“May I see it?” She held her breath. A first-hand account, written for posterity, in her parents’ possession. It was almost too much to hope for.

“Why?” Coral asked, pained. “It’s like digging up the dead.”

“Because it might have something you’ve forgotten about that day. Something that might help prove that Ty wasn’t the monster, that maybe he was the victim, too.”

Distaste registered on her mother’s face but she rose with a stiff nod. “I suppose, but I think you should prepare yourself for disappointment.”

Coral left and Piper went to her dad. He looked older, worn. She pressed a kiss on his receding hairline and hugged him tight. “I don’t think less of you for being at Red Meadows,” she told him. “I love you more for being honest with me.”

He patted her arm. “We tried to outrun the past so it wouldn’t touch you but it did anyway. I’m sorry, peapod.”

She grinned. “You have nothing to apologize for, Dad.”

Piper returned to her seat and he gave her a mock stern face. “So…eating meat, huh?”

She gave a sheepish grin. “Yeah. I’m actually quite the carnivore.”

He chuckled and offered a wistful sigh. “Ah, I remember the days of steak and potatoes. Now it’s just potatoes. I miss a good rib eye. Soy burgers and tofu balls just don’t cut it sometimes. Can you keep a secret?” he asked in a conspiratorial whisper. She leaned forward to listen. “When your mother is gone on her educational summits…once in a while I eat a good, drippy burger, for old times’ sake.”

She clapped a hand over her mouth to contain her laughter, enjoying the sparkle that had returned to her father’s eye. This was the man she knew. And she was relieved to have him back.