“I realize that.” And, apparently, it weighed heavily on her. Her lips quivered, then pursed as Paris’s voice rose behind her.
“Come on in, Mom. There’s nothing you can do for Dean. Maybe he’ll finally get the care he needs.”
With a sniff, Elaine raised her chin. “It’s my care he needs. I’m the one who’s always been there for him. I’m the only one he trusts.”
Jonah beckoned her outside. “Come and take a ride with us, Mrs. Wheeler. Maybe we can arrange for you to see your son.”
“Don’t do it!” Paris cried. “You know Butch told us not to talk to anyone, especially them. He’ll handle it.”
“Butch doesn’t give a damn about Dean, and sometimes I don’t think you do, either,” her mother said. “Tell your father where I went,” she added, and walked to the Jeep Cherokee without bothering to get her purse.
Jonah parked in the shade of a cypress tree at Willow Lake Park. RVs in orderly rows extended to their right, but only a few stalwart golfers walked the adjacent course. It was too hot to be outside for long, even with the sun in rapid descent, but this gave them a quiet place to talk.
“Do you believe your son murdered Julia?” he asked Elaine as he turned off the engine and shifted in his seat to face her.
She stared into the distance.
“Elaine?” Francesca prompted from the backseat.
Lifting her glasses, she dabbed at her eyes. “I know he didn’t.”
Elaine wanted to talk. She was dying to rescue her son. She’d already spent most of his lifetime doing it. All they had to do was give her the opportunity to speak.
“So…are you willing to let him take the rap for it?” Jonah asked when she didn’t say anything.
“That’s what Butch thinks we should do.”
When she lifted her glasses again, he delved into the jockey box for the napkins he’d stuck there after grabbing some fast food on his way from the airport. “Here you go.”
She didn’t thank him. She was too immersed in her own worries for that, but she accepted the napkins.
He rolled down the windows. “What do you think you should do?”
“Some of what Butch says makes sense. But…I’m not sure I can keep silent. It shouldn’t have come to this. It was just a—a terrible accident.”
April Bonner’s death, and the deaths of those women in Dead Mule Canyon, was no accident, but Jonah held back, hoping she’d feel comfortable enough to reveal what she knew. “If it was an accident we can work it out.”
She seemed to forget that Francesca was even in the car. “Can I depend on that?” she asked as if it was just the two of them. “Will the police believe me if I tell the truth?”
“They’ll do what they can. No one’s out to get anyone here.”
Seeming to take solace in his response, she blew her nose. “You already know that Butch likes the ladies.”
“That’s become apparent, yes.”
“When I took Julia in, I had no idea he would…get involved with her. This was before we found out what a womanizer he is. I’m guessing Paris knew, or suspected, but she never came to us with her concerns. She was probably embarrassed or trying to protect him. She loves him. And he is the father of her child. But…”
“But?” Jonah repeated when her words drifted off.
“If she’d confided in me, maybe I wouldn’t have been foolish enough to try to help Julia.”
Jonah could feel Francesca’s interest but was careful not to respond to it. He didn’t want to destroy the sense of intimacy that made Elaine feel safe enough to talk. “You can’t blame yourself for attempting to do a good deed.”
Once again she had to raise her glasses to wipe away tears. “I felt awful for her,” she said. “Julia wasn’t a bad person. She was just a kid. Too eager to have her own way, perhaps, like most teenagers. But she didn’t mean any harm.”
“So they became…intimate?”
“I guess so. Although I didn’t sense anything wrong, not until the argument.”
Jonah used the electric controls to slide his seat farther back. “What argument?”
“It was late at night. Butch and Paris had been drinking. I could hear it in their voices. Their shouts woke us up, but I tried to ignore the noise. It’s not my place to get involved in their marriage. Living in the same house, I have to be very careful to allow them their privacy. But then I heard screaming and knew something was terribly wrong. By the time I could get out of bed and up the stairs, Julia was lying on the cement outside the back door, bleeding from the head.”
“Was it Butch?”
“No.” She laughed bitterly. “I wouldn’t risk Dean for Butch’s sake. It was Paris. She’d seen Butch pat Julia’s bottom and was certain they were having an affair. She confronted Julia and demanded she move out, but Julia had nowhere to go. She tried to reason with Paris, claimed she hadn’t been sleeping with Butch, but Paris couldn’t or wouldn’t believe it. The argument escalated, and Paris shoved her off the stoop. She landed on a piece of wood with a long nail protruding from it. I think it killed her instantly. She was dead when I reached her.”
This “accident” didn’t explain what had happened to April Bonner or the other victims, so there had to be more to the story, but Jonah played along. “And you didn’t call the police?”
“No. Paris was frantic they’d put her in prison, and I was afraid of that, too. She’d had a reason to hate Julia, and she’d pushed her.” She sniffed, folded her hands in her lap and looked straight ahead as she spoke. “I know how it sounds, but there was a little boy sleeping in the house, my grandson, who needs his mother. I—I couldn’t bring myself to turn her over to the authorities. I didn’t see any point in her going to prison for a death she didn’t mean to cause. I knew how much it would change her, how much it would change all our lives, especially Champ’s. And the accident was because of Butch as much as Paris, although he wouldn’t be the one punished for it. He shouldn’t have been cheating on her.” She shook her head. “That girl has been through so much.”
“Putting her body in the freezer was better?”
She settled her glasses more firmly on her nose. “We knew that Julia’s family weren’t likely to come looking for her. Even if they did, we knew they’d believe us if we said she left without telling us where she was going.”