Page 78 of The Perfect Hosts
“Wes asked me to buy those things. I didn’t have any idea what he was going to use them for.”
“Okay,” Jamie says, laying a piece of paper in front of Dix. “Could be. But right now your property is crawling with federal agents looking for anything that could have been used to make the bomb that killed Johanna Monaghan.”
Dix’s face turns stony. “I had nothing to do with that.”
“I don’t think Johanna was the target,” Jamie says. “Your brother was, but Johanna went into the barn and accidently triggered the trip wire.” Dix shakes his head but stays silent.
Jamie’s phone dings, and he lifts it to check his messages.
Found it. PVC, nails, duct tape, plus a notebook filled with notes. We got him.
Jamie smiles at Dix. “Dix Drake, you’re under arrest for the murder of Johanna Monaghan.”
“No,” Dix says, getting abruptly to his feet. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Turn around, and put your hands behind your back,” Jamie says.
“I didn’t do it,” Dix says, face taut and hands clenched. He tries to charge past Jamie, and the two go down to the floor in a heap. The interview room door opens, and Sheriff Colson and Deputy Ladd appear. While he and Dix are the same height, Dix weighs a good fifty pounds more, but Jamie is lither and faster and quickly pins his legs while Colson and Ladd hold down his shoulders.
Jamie’s eyes lock on Dix’s fawn-colored, metal-tipped cowboy boots. His blood freezes in his veins as he sees the face of an owl staring back at him. Not an owl, Jamie decides. The engraving and stitching on the boots give the impression of a winged animal with black eyes. He’s seen these boots before.Twenty-seven years ago, when Jamie lay broken and battered in a roadside ditch. He saw these boots approach him, illuminated by the beam of his assailant’s flashlight, then pause before drawing back and striking him over and over and over in the head. He feels the blood pooling in his head, his heart hammering in his chest.
They flip Dix over onto his back, handcuff him, and bring him to his feet. He is at least six-four with shoulders as wide as a linebacker’s, and Jamie feels as small and vulnerable as the twelve-year-old he was nearly three decades ago. Everyone is breathing hard, sweating.
“Nice boots,” Jamie says when he catches his breath. “Is that a bird on your boots?” He looks down at the metal tips. “An owl?”
“A nightjar,” Dix says, glaring at him. “I get them custom-made.”
Wes Drake wasn’t his attacker. It was Dix Drake, his older brother. Jamie feels it viscerally. His once-broken jaw aches, and his skull radiates with pain. He clutches the tabletop in front of him to keep from swaying but steps toward Dix. “I know what you did,” Jamie says, staring into the man’s flat, emotionless eyes. “You killed her.”
They both know Jamie isn’t talking about Johanna Monaghan.
“Prove it,” Dix says with a smirk as Colson and Ladd lead him from the room.
Jamie knows it will be nearly impossible to prove, but he won’t stop trying. It had to be blackmail. Wes must have known that Dix killed Juneau and nearly killed Jamie. How else would Wes have found Jamie half-dead in the overgrown ditch all those years ago?
He’ll reinterview everyone who was in town at the time of Juneau’s disappearance, he’ll test every bit of evidence in search of a forensic connection, and he’ll find a way to searchthe Drake property until his sister’s body is discovered. At least, Jamie thinks, they’ll get Dix for the murder of Johanna and he’ll go to prison for the rest of his life.
Took you long enough.He feels Juneau at his elbow.
“You could have just told me, you know,” Jamie says, and he can almost hear his sister’s laugh.
Chapter 41
Madeline
One year later...
A late-afternoon warm wind sweeps down from the mountains, lifting the hair from Madeline’s neck. It has been a long, frigid winter, and summer’s arrival is a welcome balm after so many months cooped up inside. For months, Madeline was afraid that there would be a knock on her door and the sheriff would be there to arrest them for the death of her husband. The knock hasn’t come. Yet. Blackjack whinnies and dips his head into the tender new grass in the meadow and chews it with his large yellow teeth. Pip runs ahead, then backtracks as if urging them forward. Chubby fingers are interlaced within Blackjack’s coarse dark mane, but he pays no mind. Sitting on the saddle in front of Madeline, tethered to her chest, is Isla, now a year old.
In the front-facing carrier, Isla begins to squirm and fuss, so Madeline brings Blackjack to a stop and carefully throws a leg over the saddle and eases to the ground. She releases her daughter from the harness and sets her down in the meadow carpeted with thousands of yellow bells that have replaced the crater that the gender reveal gouged into the earth. Isla gathers up fistfuls of the flowers in her pudgy hands and squeals with delight, Blackjack bends his sleek neck to the ground and nibbles on green needlegrass, and Pip chases a grasshopper from clover to clover.
“Madeline!” comes a voice across the meadow. “It’s almost time!” Madeline shades her eyes against the sun to see Lucy waving them toward her. They are dressed exactly the same: tan breeches, knee-high black leather riding boots, and long-sleeved T-shirts embroidered with a small dogwood tree above the heart.
The ranch is, once again, decorated for a party. There are balloons and flowers, but instead of champagne and fancy appetizers and people yelling about pistols and pearls, there is lemonade and cake and bouncy houses. And Reba agreed to come back and sing. The party is in celebration of the grand opening of the Lone Tree Equine Retreat Center—paid for through the trust created from Madeline’s inheritance from Wes.
Madeline decided to use the same caterer they had for the gender reveal, but there is no Mellie. Last Madeline heard, Mellie left Nightjar. She tries not to have any ill will toward the young woman who had an affair with her husband and manipulated her way into their home. She was one of Wes’s victims too, and Madeline knows all too well how good her husband was at controlling and manipulating the women in his life. Admittedly, Madeline was under his spell for a long time but finally came to the realization that one day he would kill her and leave their child motherless.
She’s learned to think for herself, to follow her instincts, to be a hand up for those who feel like they are in those impossible situations with seemingly no way out. This is her life’s mission now.