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“Just believe me.” He struggled against her questions. “I don’t want you to get involved in this.”
She came back to the chair and dropped onto her knees in front of him. “If you don’t tell me what this is about, I’ll go to the doctor and the sheriff myself,” she threatened, because she was frightened by the failure of any of this to make sense. Culley was talking and acting mysterious and wild.
“I don’t want to leave you, Cat.” Tears shimmered in his eyes, but they weren’t caused by pain. “But if the sheriff finds out, he’ll arrest me . . . and I’ll never see you again.”
“But why would he arrest you?” she persisted.
“Because I ... I know who killed your mother.”
For a moment, his statement lay in the absolute stillness of the room while Cat stared at him. “What?” It was a small, little sound. She was almost convinced he was crazy. “She died in a plane crash.”
“Caused by a broken oil line.” He nodded. “But it didn’t break on its own. It had help. Someone cut it partway through.”
“How . . . how do you know that?” She was skeptical and hesitant, yet he sounded so convincing.
“Because ...” An anguish swept through his expression. “Remember the night you met the Taylor boy in the hangar and you thought you heard something?”
“Yes.” She nodded slowly. “Was that you?”
“No. It was him. I saw him tampering with something in the motor. After you and Taylor left and he’d sneaked away, I checked. I figured he’d done something to it, but I couldn’t tell what.”
“You mean . . . you knew something was wrong with that plane? You knew and didn’t tell anyone?” She stared at him, drawing back when she realized the crash that had killed her mother and so severely injured her father could have been prevented.
“I didn’t know for certain ... I didn’t know if he’d had enough time before you heard him. If I had known Maggie ...” The torment was in his voice, a wretched sound to hear. “Don’t you see, Cathleen? That’s my punishment. I thought something was wrong with the plane, but I never told anyone. And . . . she died. Not your father. She died.”
“How could you!” She began to sob angry tears, hurting all over again. “How could you kill my mother!” Her fists beat at his legs and thighs as she cried passionately and released all the stored-up violence that had been churning inside since her mother had died so suddenly.
Culley cried with her, more silently but with no fewer tears. When she had finally exhausted herself and lay crying on his knee, his hand touched her hair, barely stroking the shiny ends.
“Please don’t hate me, Cathleen,” he whispered hoarsely.
“Why? Why didn’t you tell somebody?” It was a plaintive demand.
“Who would have believed me?” he reasoned sadly.
“Maybe he was clever and cut it where it wouldn’t be seen. Maybe they wouldn’t have found it even if I told them. And if they had found it, it was only my word that he’d done it. And they would have started asking what I was doing there . . . saying I did it.” There was a long pause. “A lot of things happened before you were born, but it’s never been a secret that I’ve never cared whether your pa was alive or dead. Folks have long memories around here. They remember ole Crazy Culley, and they’d have believed I did it, not him.”
“Who did it, Culley?” She raised her tearstained face to look at him.
“Stricklin was in the hangar that night, probably carrying out Dyson’s orders.”
“No.” She looked at him with disbelief.
“You see? Even you don’t believe me.”
The sadness in his eyes was touched with irony. Cat slowly began to understand his dilemma. Who would believe such a tale—especially coming from her uncle, who had been institutionalized for so many years? She felt the frustration of his hopelessness.
Conceding it was the truth, she had to ask, “But why would they do it?”
“Calder had something they wanted and he wouldn’t let them have it, so they tried to get rid of him. Maggie just happened to get in the way.” That’s how he’d figured it. No matter how innocent a victim she had been, it didn’t lessen his desire for revenge. When he attempted to shift his position in the chair, the movement pulled at the wound in his side, making him wince and g
o white with the splintering pain. Culley pressed the loosened bandage against the fleshy part of his waist.
“Let me put a clean dressing on that.” Cat wiped the tears from her cheeks and rose to fetch new bandages. “How did this happen? Do you know who shot you?”
While Cat cleaned the wound with disinfectant the best she knew how and folded a torn section of a freshly laundered bedsheet, Culley answered her questions between grunts of pain. “Some security guard . . . over at Dyson’s mine. I’ve been visiting there . . . nights and cutting the oil lines on . . . their equipment. Sometimes . . . pouring sugar in the gas tanks if... I haven’t got time for. . . nothing else. I thought it might spook ’em and . . . flush them out into the open where they’d show their hand. I spooked ’em, all right. That place has ... got more guards than a criminal ward. And I still can’t prove nothing.”
She taped the new dressing in place with small strips of adhesive. “I’ve done the best I can.” The worry showed in her eyes that it might not be good enough. “But it really looks bad, Uncle Culley.”
