Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) by Sandra Parshall Read Free Book Online Page A

guess.”
    “I didn’t come to interrogate you.” Tom opened the screen door and stepped into a hallway that stretched the length of the house. Photos of several generations of Hadleys, all of them with musical instruments, lined the walls. “I just need to ask you a few questions.”
    “Well, you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t see the difference.”
    Blake led the way past the unused dining room to the kitchen, where the family sat at a big round table. Maureen, as rangy as her husband, sat next to Blake’s frail mother, who had been in a wheelchair since suffering a stroke. Brian’s widow, Grace, a pale-skinned young woman with brown hair and eyes, sat between her children. Crowded together in the middle of the table were several nearly empty vegetable serving dishes and a platter holding the remains of a chicken.
    Skeet, the person Tom most wanted to talk to, wasn’t there.
    “Evening,” Tom said to the women. “I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner. Is Skeet around?”
    “Out with some friends,” Blake said. He stood behind his wife with his arms folded across his chest.
    Tom gave up any hope he’d had of going home to Rachel after he finished here. He wanted to talk to Skeet tonight, and he’d probably have to spend some time tracking him down. “I’d like to speak to the two of you,” he told Blake and Maureen, “and you, Grace. One at a time.”
    “Oh no, you don’t.” Blake glared at Tom as if expecting a fight. “You’re not going to separate us and try to get us to contradict each other. You’ll talk to all of us together or you won’t talk to any of us.”
    “Fine, if that’s the way you want it,” Tom kept his tone amiable. “I don’t think the kids should be present, though. And I won’t bother Mrs. Hadley.” He nodded toward Blake’s mother, who looked around in confusion, her paralyzed right arm pressed to her waist.
    Grace said, “I’m staying here with Grandma and the kids. Lucy and Mark need to finish their dinner.” She placed a hand on each child’s head. Mark, a seven-year-old who had Grace’s pale skin and dark hair, squirmed away as if embarrassed by his mother’s protective gesture.
    Tom wouldn’t press Grace to talk to him now. As Brian’s widow, she might seem to have the strongest motive for stopping Shelley’s effort to free his killer, but she was the least likely of this bunch to abduct a girl, strangle her, wrap her in plastic, and dump her in a ravine. Unless, of course, she had help.
    Blake and Maureen brushed past Tom and led the way up the hall to the living room. The two of them sat together on the couch, presenting a tense united front. Nudging a toy fire engine out of the way with the toe of his boot, Tom sat in an armchair across the coffee table from them. In no hurry to get started, he glanced around the blandly pleasant room, done in beige and several tones of green, distinguished only by the upright piano in one corner and the family pictures lining the mantel and covering every wall and tabletop. The Hadleys, like the Beechers, cared about family above all else.
    Tom figured the silence would get to one of them, and less than a minute passed before Blake blurted, “The Beecher girl’s death hasn’t got anything to do with us.”
    “I hope it doesn’t.”
    Blake jumped to his feet, fists clenched at his sides. “Whatever you came here to say, spit it out.”
    Tom remained seated, looking up at Blake. “When somebody is murdered, the first thing the police have to do is find out whether the victim’s had any disagreements with anybody, whether somebody has a grievance against them. You understand that, don’t you?”
    “Sit down.” Maureen grabbed her husband’s wrist. “Let’s answer his questions and be done with it. Then he can get on with finding out who really killed the girl.”
    Blake took his place on the couch, but he hunched forward, hands gripping his knees, poised to jump up again at any second.
    “Thank you,