“Do you have an idea who took part in the beating?” Sam asks Ellie. It’s got to be especially upsetting for Sam, hearing about the gruesome murder of a Black man, but her expression and voice remain professional.
Ellie looks down at the untouched glass of lemonade I gave her, as if thinking. As if she hasn’t thought a million times about her answer. “Everyone was hooded, as I said,” she says. “So I don’t know. I thought I heard Byron Parks’s voice, but everyone said he was at a poker game. And as I said, the truck belonged to my ex-boyfriend, Reed Miller.” She doesn’t look at me. “Kayla’s father,” she adds.
“I’m sure he had nothing to do with it.” I can’t stop myself from speaking up, and Sam gives me a small shake of her head.
“Kayla may be right.” Ellie nods toward me. “I didn’t think he was in the Klan and it’s hard to picture, but it was definitely his truck. And he was very jealous.”
I wish she hadn’t added those last few words. I struggle to keep my mouth shut.
“We’ll talk to him,” the investigator says, “and we’ll want to talk to your brother, too.”
Ellie’s expression is pained. “Please don’t,” she pleads. “He had nothing to do with it and he’s terminally ill.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman says, “but—”
We suddenly hear voices coming from the path behind the deck and we all turn to see the investigators wheeling a gurney from the woods, a black body bag resting on top. Anton and his team of construction guys follow at a distance.
Ellie and I both turn our heads away. It seems like only yesterday that I watched as Jackson was carried from our unfinished house in a similar bag.
Sam and the investigator—whose name I can’t recall—finally leave. Ellie and I walk them through the house and out the front door. Once they’re gone, Ellie turns to me.
“I’ve got to get back to Buddy and Mama.” She touches my arm and I know before she speaks that she’s apologizing. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I had to tell it the way it happened.”
“I know. But he didn’t do anything.”
She looks toward the street to where the investigator’s van had been parked. “Maybe we’ll finally get some answers,” she says, turning back to me.
And then she leaves me alone in my brand-new house that feels as haunted as any ancient mansion.
* * *
I’m tucking Rainie in that night when my phone rings. The caller ID tells me it’s Sam, and I give my daughter a rushed kiss on the forehead before leaving her room and answering the call in the hallway.
“I thought you’d want to know this,” Sam says. “We had Winston Madison’s dental records on file from the sixties when he first disappeared, so we were able to check the—”
“Is it him?” I interrupt her.
“It is,” she says, and I shut my eyes. “The remains in your yard belonged to Winston Madison, without a doubt.”
Chapter 50
I talk to my father from my car late the following morning as I drive home from work. He spent the early morning at the police station in Carlisle, where they questioned him for two hours. I’d barely slept last night as the reality of what had taken place in my backyard sank in. A man had been tortured to death there—a good man who hadn’t deserved to die. Was there a chance my father might have to pay for his death?
“For a while there, I thought they were going to slap the handcuffs on me,” Daddy says, and I hear anxiety in his voice. “They asked me five different ways how, if I dropped my truck off at Buddy’s shop when I said I did, around six, it could possibly be gone when Buddy stopped by the shop an hour later. I said I don’t know, that they need to look at the people who had access to the shop and who could have gotten my keys. I think they believed me about not being in the Klan, but they know I was the injured party in my relationship with Ellie, so I had a motive.”
“I’m so sorry you have to go through this,” I say. Then I hesitate before adding what’s been on my mind. “Did you know before now that there was a … grave … in my yard?” I ask. “Is that why you didn’t want Jackson and me to build—”
“No!” he says. “I had no idea. I only knew something terrible had gone down there.”
I think of how Ellie must be feeling, knowing for sure now that it was Win in that grave. “Poor Ellie,” I say.