The Mulberry Tree

Rick’s voice lowered. “Do you think you and Bailey could be called co-conspirators in this murder?”

Matt took a deep breath. “Yes, I think that’s not only probable, that’s likely.”

“Matt . . . ” Rick said, and he sounded as he did when he was a child asking his big brother to protect him, to shield him.

“All right,” Matt said, “just stay calm. Say as little as possible. Bailey and I are flying out of here this morning. There’s someone we need to see, and she might have some answers about why these murders have happened.”

“Murders?” Rick said, his voice rising. “Plural? As in more than one?”

“I’ll explain everything later. Listen, I’m going to shut this phone off, so you can give the number to the police, and you can honestly say that I didn’t tell you where we’re going or who we’re going to see. Remember that: you know nothing.”

“Okay,” Rick said, sounding six years old again. “But why did James Manville’s widow come here to Calburn? What—”

“Gotta go,” Matt said, then pushed the button to end the call. He moved the switch on the side of the phone to disable it.

For a moment he stayed in the bathroom and tried to calm himself. Murder was not in his realm of expertise. Part of him wanted to panic, but he knew he couldn’t. He had to keep a clear mind so he could think about what must be done. Should they return to Calburn? Since he and Bailey had sent Alex, who was underage, to Dolores, it was probable that he and Bailey would be charged as accessories to murder.

Matt took a few minutes, then left the bathroom. Bailey was sitting up in bed, waiting for him.

“What’s happened?” she asked, her eyes serious.

Matt debated whether or not to tell her, but she was a grown woman, and she deserved to be told the truth. “Your sister has been murdered, and Alex has been charged and taken into custody. The police are looking for you, for both of us, so if we want to get out of here, we’d better do it now.”

Bailey sat there blinking at him.

“How much cash do you have?” he asked.

“I don’t know. A hundred, maybe. Why?”

He could see that she was working hard to hold herself together. “Because we’re going to drive to Atlanta, and we’ve got to pay cash for gas. We can’t use credit cards because they can be traced.”

Bailey looked up at him, her face calm, but her hands were clutching the bedcover hard. “Shouldn’t we go back to Calburn to be with Alex? Why should we go to Atlanta? What could some ancient woman—if she’s not senile—tell us that could help Alex?”

“I don’t know,” Matt said honestly, “but if Manville trusted this woman enough to leave the paper about your marriage with her, then maybe he trusted her with other information. You have any other ideas of how to help?”

“No,” she said slowly. “No, but Alex must be so frightened. And my sister—”

Matt grabbed Bailey’s arms and pulled her up out of the bed. “You can cry later. You can have a nervous breakdown later if you want—in fact, we’ll both have one—but now you have to get dressed, get packed, and get going.”

Twenty minutes later they were in the rental car, but Matt didn’t start the engine. “I want to check on something,” he said, then got out. There was an ATM machine on the side of the bank next door to the hotel, and he stuck his card in and punched some buttons.

Minutes later, he got back into the car and started the engine. “Frozen,” he said. “My bank account has been frozen.”

Bailey just nodded and buckled her seat belt.

Twenty-nine

Martha McCallum was eighty years old, much younger than Bailey and Matt had speculated. They’d been in the car for nine hours straight, arriving in the late afternoon, too late to visit the nursing home. They’d used all the cash they had for gas and food, so they couldn’t afford a motel. Matt pulled the car down a dirt road, where they had a dinner of the last of the bread and cheese and shared a gallon of springwater. When the sun went down, they snuggled together in the tiny backseat and tried to go to sleep.

“Your foot,” Bailey said.

“Right,” Matt said as he moved his foot. “Maybe one of us should sleep in the front. Or one of us should do a Daniel Boone and sleep outside on the ground.”

“Bugs or a gearshift,” Bailey said. “I can’t decide which.”

He pulled her head down on his shoulder and smiled. He was glad she was able to make a joke, because from the way she’d cried for the first three hours of their trip, he thought she might never smile again.

At nine the next morning, they were in the lobby of the nursing home, waiting to see Martha McCallum. They’d both had sponge baths in the rest room of a nearby service station and done their best to look presentable.