Page 73 of Dead to Rites

“Diane, dear,” she said. “Would you make Lorelei some tea? Lorelei, do you take it with anything?”

Was she really giving me an opening like that?

I found my voice. “Just plain, thank you.”

Diane left. I could hear her in the kitchen, the sound of water running, and the faint clink of a mug or teacup being set down on the kitchen counter.

And then, much more faintly, I could hear her voice, low and urgent.

Calling Wes.

Oh, crap.

My heartbeat accelerated. Now I only had a few minutes before Wes showed up, depending on how far away he’d been when Diane called. I’d been hoping he would be at the trunk-or-treat, but that had never been a given.

Still, if he’d been at a jobsite…preferably one over in Prescott Valley…then I might have a little more time than I thought.

I perched on the edge of the chair, one hand tight on the armrest.

Now or never.

“Mrs. Lindley,” I said, “I’m very sorry to show up like this, and I don’t have time to beat around the bush, so I’ll just say it.” A breath to give me courage, and then I went on, “I know about Tomás Padilla.”

Meg went utterly still. Her face had already been pale, but I saw how her hands shook as she threaded her fingers together and waited.

“I know what happened in 1968,” I told her. “I know Father Frank was helping you decide whether to come forward. I’m not here to threaten you, though. I’m here because I think someone who loves you has done something awful to protect you, and the only way to stop them from doing more awful things is for you to come forward yourself.”

She still sat there, unmoving. If it hadn’t been for the rise and fall of her chest, I would have thought that my revelation had been the final blow that took her from this earth permanently.

But then tears began to slip from under her closed eyelids.

“Oh, God.”

“Mrs. Lindley — ”

“I knew,” she cut in, and that was just another sign of how distraught she was, because I didn’t think Meg Lindley had a habit of interrupting people. “I knew when Frank was killed. I knew, and I’ve been sick about it ever since.”

She opened her eyes then. They were faded blue, faded in a way that Hazel’s gray eyes had never been.

“Tell me what you know.”

Speaking quickly because I still had no idea when Wes might show up, I told her about Hal Pruitt and his revelation, about the references in Hazel’s journal, about the newspaper article Jude and I had found at Sharlot Hall Museum. And I told her I believed that Wes was the one who’d killed Father Frank, even though I didn’t have any physical evidence yet.

The entire time I was talking, quiet tears streamed down Meg’s cheeks. When I was done, she spoke again.

“We went to a party that night,” she said. “Someone Donald knew but I’d never met before. It was out toward Chino Valley.” A pause, her gaze somehow distant, as if she was looking far back in time to an evening she couldn’t forget, no matter how hard she tried. “Donald had too much to drink. He wasn’t an alcoholic — he never missed a day of work because of it — but that night he was relaxing with people he liked, and at the end of the evening, he told me I needed to drive, that it wouldn’t be safe for him to drive us home.”

Her mouth compressed, and I waited. I feared that if I spoke a single word, if I interrupted her in any way, she might not continue.

A second or two of silence, and then she went on. “I didn’t want to. Donald did most of the driving, and I wasn’t very good at it. But I’d always been taught to be obedient to my husband, so I got behind the wheel and started heading home.” Once again, she paused, her lips tightening. “It was very dark out there, and it was hard to see the road. I didn’t — I didn’t see him. Why would anyone be walking on a dark road like that at almost eleven o’clock at night?”

Because they didn’t earn enough to afford a car, I thought. But I guessed that Meg’s question had been mostly rhetorical, so again, I didn’t say anything.

“I wanted to get out of the car,” she said, and now the words were coming faster, as though she needed to blurt them all out before she lost her nerve. “I wanted to help. But Donald said there was nothing we could do, and that we needed to keep going. That if we told anyone what had happened, our whole lives would be ruined.” She swallowed, and tears glittered in her eyes again. “So I drove away. God help me, I drove away. And the next morning, Donald took the car to the shop and told them we’d hit a deer. It happened all the time back then, so no one thought twice about it. Or if they did, they didn’t say so.” At last, she looked over at me. “I let him tell me what to do. That was what Donald did. He wasn’t cruel — he just thought he knew better, and I thought the same thing.”

My heart ached for her. I might have loved dressing in vintage clothing, but I was suddenly, violently glad that I’d been born when I was born, that I lived in a world where I could make my own decisions and decide my own fate.

She went on, “I wrote a letter to the Padilla family last winter. I wrote it three times, trying to get it right, but I never sent it. Wes must have seen one of the drafts. I didn’t realize until later that he’d seen it. I went to Father Frank and started telling him the whole terrible story, and he encouraged me to send the letter. Several weeks ago, he told me to choose, that I couldn’t in good conscience continue to delay what I needed to do. I told him I’d think about it. So I thought about it, and I decided he was right. I told Wes the next morning that I was going to come forward and that I needed his help to do it the right way. He told me that of course he’d help me, that he loved me and he’d take care of it.”