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“It wasn’t like I wanted to consecrate the ground or anything. She wasn’t a very admirable person.” Homing in on Moody, she said, “I’m sure you deduced that from what people told you about her. I looked up to her because she was pretty and popular and self-confident. All the things I wasn’t. But I can’t honestly tell you that I loved her.”
She glanced at Dent, who was biting the inside of his cheek and looking as tightly wound as a spring. Obviously he wished she hadn’t told Moody about her memory loss. His fuming gaze telegraphed a warning that she should shut up.
But she wasn’t finished. “I want to know who killed her, Mr. Moody. Because, regardless of her personality or promiscuity, she didn’t deserve to die that way, with her skirt bunched up around her waist, her bottom bared, lying facedown on the ground, holding on to that dainty little purse she carried that day.” She lowered her head and took a deep, shuddering breath. “She was robbed of all dignity and grace.”
She stared at a spot on the grimy vinyl floor, her head coming up only when Moody said, “Well you’re wrong about one thing.” He sloshed the last of the whiskey into his glass and swirled it as he talked. “That dainty little purse was found the following day in the top of a tree, fifty yards from where her body was discovered. It had her name stitched inside, so it was brought to me. I took prints off it, but there were only hers. So I returned it to your parents, and they cried, happy to get it back.”
He paused and let that sink in. “If you saw her lying there facedown holding on to it, you were at the scene of where she died. And you were there ahead of the tornado.”
Chapter 19
The silence inside the cabin was so prolonged and absolute that Dent imagined he could hear the dust motes spinning in the stifling air.
Bellamy stood frozen, her gaze fixed on Moody as he hauled himself up out of his chair, wove his way over to the screened door, pushed it open, and stepped out onto his sorry excuse for a porch.
Tilting his face skyward, he remarked, “Looks like we finally may get some rain.”
Dent glanced out the nearest window and noticed that clouds had gathered in the west, blocking out the setting sun. The atmosphere inside the cabin was gloomy, but due less to the weather than to Moody’s disturbing disclosure.
When he came back inside, the screened door shut behind him with a loud clap that caused Bellamy to jump. As though there had been no suspension of conversation, she asked gruffly, “You think I killed her?”
Moody halted and, swaying on his feet, eyed her up and down. “You? No.”
“But you said… you said…”
“I said that if you saw her with her purse in her hand, you had to have seen her before the tornado struck.”
“Maybe you got it wrong,” Dent said. “Maybe the purse was found at the scene, and you’re too drunk now to remember where you got it and when.”
Moody glowered at him. “My crime scene was compromised, but I know when I came by the fucking purse. It’s in my notes,” he said, gesturing to the file lying on the bed. “Dated.”
Bellamy returned to the bed and sat down beside Dent. In a haunted, breathy voice, she asked, “I had to have seen her purse there, in her hand. Why else would I have said that?”
“You only imagined it because you’d seen her carrying the purse,” Dent said. “Within days, everyone knew the position her body was in when she was found. It was all over the news.”
She looked deeply into his eyes as though desperate to believe his explanation. But he didn’t think she did.
Moody settled back into his chair. “The bruise on the front of her neck was a band.” He ran his finger across his throat in an even line. “The ME’s opinion—which I shared—was that she’d been strangled by a garrote of some kind. Typically that happens from behind. She was overpowered and didn’t put up a struggle.”
Dent felt a slight tremor go through Bellamy. “Are you sure?” she asked.
“We didn’t get any skin or blood from beneath her fingernails.” Addressing Dent, he said, “First thing I looked for when I questioned you was scratch marks on your hands and arms.”
“I didn’t have any. Did Strickland?”
“None that couldn’t be explained by him crawling under his Mustang to escape the tornado.”
“That should’ve eliminated us as suspects.”
“Not necessarily. She also had a knot on the back of her head, which she’d got before she died. What we figured is that she was struck from behind. By what, we were never able to determine. She fell facedown and was rendered unconscious, or at least too stunned to defend herself while the perp finished her off.”
“With her panties,” Bellamy said quietly.
“According to you, your stepmother, and the housekeeper who did the family laundry, she wore only one kind. Made of stretchy lace. Strong enough to choke someone to death. Rupe demonstrated in court how it could have been done. That was another of his shining moments.”
“Didn’t his courtroom shenanigans irk Strickland’s defense attorney?” Dent asked. “Did he ever file an appeal?”
“Right away, but before the appellate court had time to consider his case and make a ruling, Strickland was killed.”
