Sins of the Father: Rose Gardner Mystery Novella 9.5 Read online

  Sins of the Father

  Rose Gardner Mystery #9.5

  Denise Grover Swank

  Contents

  Copyright

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Part Two

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Three

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Family Jewels Sneak Peek

  Also by Denise Grover Swank

  About the Author

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  Copyright 2016 by Denise Grover Swank

  Developmental Editor: Angela Polidoro

  Copy edit: Shannon Page

  Proofreader: Carolina Valdez Schneider

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-939996-47-3

  Created with Vellum

  Part One

  1

  Rose

  “Have you heard the news?”

  I stopped fishing around in my purse and looked up at Brittany, the chattiest waitress Merilee’s Café has ever known. I’d long since tuned her out. “Sorry?”

  She repeated her question as I handed her a twenty-dollar bill to pay for the lunch I was picking up for myself and my best friend, Neely Kate. We were stuck working in my landscaping office since we were behind in giving proposals on several jobs. After a few slow months, we were finally edging into prime landscaping season. I would have also gotten lunch for Bruce Wayne, my RBW Landscaping business partner, but it was a warm and sunny early May afternoon and he was out with his crew.

  Even though I had no idea what Brittany was talking about, she was prone to hurtful gossip. I wasn’t sure I should encourage her. “What news?”

  “About Joe Simmons.”

  I tried not to gasp. I’d heard some things—none of them great—but I refused to gossip about him. He may have been my ex-boyfriend, but he was also my business partner in Gardner Sisters Nursery, and we’d tried very hard to be friends. I still cared about him. I couldn’t deny that I was beyond curious about what she might know, but I wasn’t going to ask. “No. I haven’t heard a thing.”

  She leaned closer and whispered, “He’s back in town.”

  “Really?” I couldn’t help sounding hopeful. The last time I’d seen him was at the hospital in February, a few days after everything had gone down—and I do mean everything. In the space of a day, we’d found out that Neely Kate was Joe’s illegitimate half-sister, Joe’s pregnant ex-girlfriend Hilary and their unborn baby had been killed by Joe’s father, Joe’s sister Kate had shown us all that she was truly crazy, and Joe had killed his father to save me. Then, while we were both in the hospital recovering from our wounds, my boyfriend Mason had broken up with me.

  My life had been forever altered that day, but Joe’s life had been shattered to pieces.

  Yet Brittany forged on, oblivious to my inner turmoil as she handed me my change. “I heard that he’s been at his farmhouse for a week. Only, nobody knew because he’s lying low. Probably hiding in shame.”

  That spiked my anger. “Shame?” I asked, snatching my bag out of her hand. “What on earth does that man have to be ashamed of?”

  My tone caught her by surprise. “His father. His sister.”

  I almost asked which sister, but as far as I knew, no one in town had discovered Neely Kate’s secret. “Joe’s father made his own choices, and so did his sister. In case you hadn’t noticed, people have free will. Their behavior was out of his control.”

  Her eyes narrowed and she spoke in a haughty tone. “Are you sure about that? From what I heard, Joe’s father was a bad man hiding behind fancy suits and a lot of money. Turns out he had criminal ties to a lot of businesses in southern Arkansas. Plus, he financed Joe’s campaign for state senator last fall. Sure, Joe was the chief deputy sheriff, but how do we know he wasn’t as corrupt as his dad? Maybe he was only working for the sheriff’s department to clean up his father’s messes.”

  “I know Joe Simmons. He would never be part of any of that.”

  She gave me a look that told me how much she pitied my naïveté. “I wonder why he came back. Surely he’s not getting his job back.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “Why on earth wouldn’t he get his job back? He didn’t do anything wrong!”

  She put a hand on her hip. “I’m not surprised you’d take his side. I heard that you were hooking up with Skeeter Malcolm, a known criminal, behind your boyfriend’s back. No wonder poor Mason Deveraux left town. How embarrassing would it be for the district attorney to find out his girlfriend is sleeping with the enemy?”

  I considered protesting her false allegations, but I knew it would be wasted breath.

  I heard a racket to my left and noticed that a woman had dropped her beverage, the broken glass pieces having scattered across the floor. She and everyone else watched us with rapt attention.

  Spinning around, I stomped toward the door. A man in a business suit scampered out of my way as I reached the door and flung it open. The little bell attached to the doorknob swung wildly, but I didn’t bother trying to fix it before the door slammed shut behind me. Merilee’s was right across the square from my business, and the food was delicious, but between the many memories of Mason and the rude waitress, maybe it was time to find a new place to get lunch.

  I tore across the square and didn’t stop until I entered my office.

  My dog Muffy jumped up from her dog bed under my desk and greeted me at the front door with a wagging tail. Her back end rumbled, and I waved my hand in front of my face, staving off the noxious cloud with an irritated groan.

  “Jeez, Muffy. Did you eat a case of beans this morning?”

  Neely Kate turned from her computer screen and quirked an eyebrow. I was rarely harsh with Muffy, even if she did smell like rotten eggs more often than any of us would have liked.

  I set the food bag down on her desk, then bent down and rubbed Muffy’s head. “I think we’re going to have to start getting our lunch somewhere else.”

  Neely Kate’s eyes widened in surprise as she removed a takeout container and opened the lid. “Why? What happened?”

  “I knew Brittany was a gossip, but I had no idea she would be so mean to my face.”

  Neely Kate slapped the container down on her desk, looking madder than if Miss Mildred had been dumped into the Wagon Wheel bar on Ladies’ Night. “What did she say?”

  I considered not telling her. I really didn’t want to repeat it, but now that I’d brought it up, I knew Neely Kate wouldn’t let it rest until I told her what I knew. “She blamed me for running Mason out of town.” My voice broke, which only fueled my anger. I’d finally gotten to a place where I wasn’t sad all the time.

  “She said what?”

  “She says he left because I embarrassed him.”

  “Because you were the Lady in Black?” she asked in surprise. “They put it together?”

  I cringed. While a few people knew about the alter ego I’d created to help James Malcolm (Skeeter to almost everyone else) from time to time, it wasn’t exactly common knowledge. “I don’t think so, but she said everyone thinks I was sleeping with James.” I paused to take a breath. “Does everyone really think
that, Neely Kate? I need you to be straight with me.”

  Neely Kate had an uncanny way of knowing what was going on in the county, but unlike Brittany, she rarely shared what she knew and never used it to hurt anyone. “Your name was tied to him in the news twice, Rose,” she said, reaching for my hand and squeezing it. “You have to know that people were wondering why he’d give two figs about you.”

  “You mean the two times Joe’s dad tried to kill me?” I couldn’t deny that James had been there to protect me in both instances. While it had made the news, I hadn’t heard a single rumor. Then again, I guess you don’t usually hear the rumors when you’re the subject of them.

  “You know people were wondering why he was with you. But only a few people talked about it, and I haven’t heard anything in over a month. Most of the talk was after people found out Mason was back in Little Rock. It’s all died down since then.”

  I took my food and sat down at my desk, pushing out a sigh. “Well, Brittany’s talking about it now.”

  “No one else is. And you haven’t seen Skeeter in over a month.”

  I didn’t comment on that. Truth was James and I had been getting together once a week at our old meeting spot behind the deserted Sinclair gas station for a couple of months now, with the exception of the week I’d spent in Houston to donate bone marrow for my sister. James and I had become friends. Our Tuesday night meetings were often the highlight of my week, and I wasn’t about to let a bunch of busybodies with loose tongues ruin it.

  “She specifically brought up Mason leaving?” Neely Kate asked. When I nodded, she rolled her eyes. “It was no secret that she had a huge crush on him, and she wasn’t happy when she found out you’d snatched him up. She’s stupid enough to think she had a chance with him.” She shook her head in disgust. “As if. I hope you had a vision of her and told her something terrible. Like that she’d spent hours waiting on customers with spinach in her teeth.”

  “I wish I’d been quick enough to think that fast.”

  She shot me an ornery grin. “Sometimes your gift is wasted on you.”

  Gift. I used to consider my visions a curse, but there was no denying they had saved plenty of lives since I’d started purposely using them instead of letting them happen spontaneously.

  “Have you had any visions yet today?” she asked.

  “No.” I often saw things in my visions that were none of my business, which made another aspect of my talent—spontaneously blurting out whatever I’d seen—particularly awkward. Trial and error had taught me that if I forced visions, I’d have fewer unplanned ones, so I’d been trying to force small visions with my friends, looking for benign things in the near future. Sometimes even those ended badly. Like when I saw Neely Kate plucking a hair from her mole or Jonah sitting on the toilet after he’d had a bad batch of tacos at the new Mexican restaurant.

  “It’s not too late to run across the street and have one now. I bet you could see her doing the horizontal mambo with Anita Stanford’s husband.”

  I cringed. “I think I’ll pass.” I opened my container, grabbed a piece of chicken from my salad, and gave it to Muffy as a peace offering. “But that wasn’t all. I’m sure she was up to something.” I stabbed a piece of lettuce with a plastic fork. “She dropped a piece of bait, hoping I’d give her more information.”

  “About what?”

  “Joe.”

  Neely Kate’s face paled. “What about him?”

  “She said he’s back in town. That he’s been out at his rented farmhouse for the last week.”

  Pain filled her eyes, and she turned back to the computer.

  “He’s been through a lot, Neely Kate.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  She’d found out they were half-siblings hours before the big showdown in the abandoned factory, where Kate had brought me, Joe, Hilary, J.R., Mason, James, and even Neely Kate together to seek revenge on her father. In all the craziness, Kate had told Joe that Neely Kate was their half-sister, and he’d never really acknowledged it. After the dust had settled, Joe had left town without a single word to Neely Kate.

  She had been hurt beyond belief.

  Until now, the only thing we’d known about Joe was from the sheriff’s official statement: Chief Deputy Joe Simmons was taking a leave of absence of indeterminate length to deal with personal issues. We’d had no idea when or if he was coming back. Every single text and phone call I’d made to him had gone unanswered.

  “I’m sure he just needs more time,” I said.

  Neely Kate started to pound on the keyboard as though trying to beat it into submission before she said, still typing furiously, “Why would I care? You know we bickered like cats and dogs after you two broke up. This doesn’t change a thing.”

  “Neely Kate . . .”

  She turned to me, her eyes a mixture of anger and pain. “Let it go, Rose.”

  “But—”

  “Let it go.” The coldness in her voice caught me by surprise.

  Muffy sat at my feet and let out a low whine. I leaned over to rub her head. Time to change the subject. “After I finish lunch, I need to go to a job site and look something over with Bruce Wayne. Wanna come?”

  “No.”

  I gave her a long stare, and after a good minute of ignoring me, she spun her chair to face me full on. “Rose, I know you’re trying to make me feel better, but Joe made his choice. I never expected anything from him at all, so whatever. His loss.”

  I didn’t believe that for a minute. Truth be told, I was bitterly disappointed with him myself, but I also felt compelled to give him a break. He’d watched his father kill his pregnant ex-girlfriend, then killed his father to save me. That would mess anyone up. I couldn’t blame him for needing time to deal with it all. But my heart was breaking for my best friend.

  I had to figure out a way to fix this all. And I had a pretty good idea of where to start.

  2

  Joe

  God knew I’d burned plenty of bridges over the last ten years, but I was pretty damn sure I’d burned the last few I had left.

  I could kiss any hope of a relationship with Neely Kate goodbye.

  She had reached out to me—multiple times—and I’d ignored her on pretty much every medium that existed. When I first found out the truth, I’d been ashamed. I still was. But now my shame was for a different reason.

  Neely Kate was my half-sister.

  Three months after the discovery, I was still struggling to wrap my head around it. I’d known her for months and never once suspected. I tried to reassure myself with the knowledge that she hadn’t known either. But looking back, I wondered if I should have suspected. She had my grandmother’s blue eyes, my cousin’s thick blond hair. Then there was the way we’d always bickered back and forth—like siblings—even before my breakup with Rose. And the fact that I’d always known that my father was a philanderer.

  Common sense told me there was no way I could have known. For one, I had no idea about my father’s involvement in Fenton County twenty-five years ago. And two, he’d always been so careful to make sure something like this never happened.

  But my sister Kate had figured out the secret and gone to great lengths to prove it was true.

  My mother hadn’t seemed all that surprised by the news; nor did she seem to care. Her only concern was that Neely Kate would try to “get her grubby hands on our money.” Then again, her immediate response to finding out about my father’s death and Kate’s arrest for kidnapping and attempted murder had been to hire a publicist. Her attempt to rewrite history to be more favorable to the Simmons family might have actually worked if the FBI hadn’t become involved.

  One of J.R. Simmons’s precious Twelve had been arrested after the big showdown in the warehouse, and he turned state’s evidence against his peers and my father. Once that happened, the rest began turning on each other and spilling the goods. Plenty of dirty deeds had been uncovered—a lot of them committed by my father. It was enough to make a man want
to hang his head and hide away forever.

  But Neely Kate and Rose weren’t the only ones who’d reached out to me.

  Two weeks after Hilary’s funeral, Maeve Deveraux had showed up at my parents’ front door in El Dorado. My mother had been the one to answer the door. Under different circumstances, their meeting might have been humorous—Maeve with her quiet peace and confidence, and my mother clothed in her false outrage and smothered guilt.

  “I can’t believe you had the audacity to show up here unannounced!” my mother had shouted. “How dare you?”

  “With all due respect, Mrs. Simmons,” Maeve had said, her soft voice full of authority, “I’m here to see Joe. Not you. Will you please let him know that I’m here?”

  But Maeve’s serene dignity only pissed off my mother more. “Who do you think you are? You have no right to be here.”

  I stepped out of my father’s office with a glass of whiskey in my hand, even though it wasn’t yet noon. My heart flooded with relief when I saw the only mother figure to have shown me unconditional love and acceptance, even though I’d done nothing to deserve it. Especially from her. “Mother, the very fact you’re so eager to throw her out on the street proves you know who she is, but I can see that you need a formal introduction.” I stumbled into the foyer, ignoring the worry in Maeve’s eyes. I gestured toward her. “Mother, this is Maeve Deveraux, mother to Savannah Deveraux, the mother of my first child—and the woman your husband paid to have viciously killed, along with my unborn baby.”

  Pain ripped through my chest, making it difficult to breathe. I took a gulp of my whiskey before continuing. “The woman your husband systematically destroyed even though she wasn’t his designated target. No, Maeve Deveraux was just a casualty of war, collateral damage. And it wasn’t enough that he had her daughter and grandchild murdered. No, my father had to toy with her son’s life too.”