Gayle Wilson - Bogeyman

He said that with the surety of someone who knew firsthand. Of course, an injury was why his football career had ended prematurely. Or so she’d heard.

“The safest thing to do is have it checked out,” Cade finished.

“I’ll get it checked out first thing tomorrow, I promise. Right now…Right now I just want to go to my grandmother’s. I need to get Maddie back to bed.”

Cade hesitated before he turned to look over his shoulder, probably searching for someone to drive them over to Ruth’s. His job was here, especially considering what she’d told him.

He turned back, looking down on Maddie. “I’ll take you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Doug can hold down the fort. We aren’t going to be able to do much out here until daylight, anyway. In any case, I need to go back to the office and call the state fire marshal.”

“The fire marshal?”

“Since someone was lurking at the back of your property, at approximately the same time a fire broke out in your home, we’re going to need to check for arson. That’s the state’s job.”

Despite the figure in the woods, the thought that someone might have deliberately set the fire that had destroyed the rental house had never crossed her mind. Things like that didn’t happen. Not in Crenshaw.

“Do you really think—”

“It’s a possibility we can’t afford to overlook.”

“Warm enough?” Cade glanced over his shoulder into the backseat of the cruiser.

“We’re fine,” Blythe lied.

Maybe he’d been right about the effects of adrenaline. Although the sheriff had insisted she keep the paramedic’s blanket, she had begun shivering shortly after they’d gotten into his car, and she hadn’t been able to stop.

Even Maddie’s solid warmth, still pressed against her body, hadn’t helped. Since there was no child restraint seat in the police cruiser, Blythe had fastened the seat belt around both of them. Hardly an ideal situation, but in light of everything else that had happened tonight, it seemed a small enough risk.

She hated to wake her grandmother. She glanced to her left, trying to gauge time by the sky. A thin tinge of yellow hovered just above the horizon, not yet strong enough to lighten it, but surely a precursor of dawn. By the time they’d driven the remaining five miles or so to the house, Delores would probably have breakfast started.

“You want me to call?” Cade asked, glancing back again.

“I’m sorry?”

“You want me to call your grandmother and tell her we’re coming?”

The offer was tempting. Even if Cade explained, Blythe knew she would still have to answer the questions of the two old women. It would be better not to worry them until she had to.

She shook her head before she realized he wouldn’t be able to see her. “She may not be up. Let’s let her sleep as long as possible.”

She wasn’t sure how her grandmother would react to the news of the fire. Right now, she wasn’t sure about anything.

She and Maddie had nothing left, not even a change of clothes. The little that had remained of John’s insurance had almost been expended in the move. Like it or not—and she didn’t—she would be dependent on her grandmother’s hospitality for a while.

There was no doubt in her mind that Ruth would welcome them without reservation. Her grandmother’s feelings had been hurt that Blythe had wanted her own place. And truthfully, that had been a decision Blythe herself had not been completely sure of.

Now that decision had been taken out of her hands. She had no choice but to move back into the family home. No choice but to allow herself and Maddie to sink back into the comfortable existence she’d known as a child. Her grandmother would pet and pamper them both. Delores would feed them, look after their clothes, and pick up after them if Blythe let her.

That was the thing she had feared most when she’d decided to come home. That the cocoon of family would again create the deadly inertia she’d had to struggle against after John’s death.

She had been determined to make her own way, even here. Although the idea of writing again had been only a cover story provided by Ada’s misconception, it had generated an undeniable sense of excitement. The thought of being able to make a living for the two of them by doing that…

“Is that where you got the idea to write about Sarah Comstock?”

Cade’s question seemed to fit so well into her internal dialogue it took her a few seconds to realize that, unless he was psychic, he couldn’t have known what she’d been thinking. Which made her wonder what he was talking about.

“I’m sorry?”

“The house. Living there.”

There could be only one meaning for the combination of those two phrases. Despite having reached it, she still didn’t understand. “Why would you think that?”

“Then it wasn’t? Somehow, when you came to the office the other day I thought it might be.”

“You’re talking about the house that burned. Why in the world—” Some premonition of what Cade must have been about to say stopped her breath.

It would explain so much if there was, as he’d intimated, a connection between the house they’d been living in and the murdered child. It wouldn’t explain everything, of course. Not unless you were willing to believe that the dead maintain some bond with the things of this earth, but still…

“From what you said that day, I thought maybe you knew. Audra Wright grew up in that house. Lived there until she married Abel Comstock. Old Miz Wright lived there until her death, maybe sixteen, seventeen years ago.”

“Audra Comstock,” Blythe repeated softly, beginning to realize the implications.

“Sarah’s mother.”

And the Miz Wright Cade had mentioned would be Sarah’s grandmother, Blythe realized, thinking of the strength of that tie. In her experience, an unbreakable bond. Especially in this locale, where family was the cornerstone of one’s existence.

All this time she and Maddie had been living in the home of Sarah Comstock’s maternal grandmother, and she hadn’t even known it. Not until the same night that house had been reduced to ashes.

Blythe had been wrong about the impending dawn. Delores’s old Chevrolet wasn’t yet parked in the driveway of her grandmother’s house. Nor could she see any lights on inside.

“Doesn’t look like Miz Ruth’s up.” Cade’s comment reinforced her own assessment.

“What time is it?” She leaned forward to look through the windshield as he pulled the cruiser parallel to the front steps.

“A little before five.”

“Delores should be here soon.”

Neither of them said anything for several seconds. Finally it dawned on her that Cade undoubtedly had other things to do.

Like put a call in to the fire marshal.

“We’ll get out and wait on the porch. My grandmother will be awake in a few minutes. She always gets up to unlock the door for Delores.”

Blythe could remember her mother arguing that the housekeeper should have a key to the house “just in case.” Neither her grandmother nor Delores had wanted that. She suspected that what they primarily objected to was any proposed change in the way they’d done things for so long.

“Actually, I’d rather you all wait inside the car, if you don’t mind.”

“Why?” Blythe’s fingers were already wrapped around the door handle in preparation of getting out.

There was a slight hesitation before Cade answered her. “Because right now I don’t know what went on out at your place tonight. Until I do…I prefer both of you to be where someone can keep an eye on you.”

The idea that they might be in danger hadn’t crossed Blythe’s mind, despite the shadowy figure on the edge of the woods and Cade’s mention of arson. Was he suggesting that whoever had been out there might have followed them here?