Be Afraid (Morgans of Nashville 2)

Jenna answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

“This is Rick Morgan. I’m here at the news station.” He tightened his jaw, released it. “The reporter I mentioned does want to interview you.”

A beat of silence and in the background he heard the whisper of wind. She was no doubt sitting on the back deck. Open spaces. “When?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Where?” He imagined an easel positioned in front of her. Was she working on that bride picture?

“Let me ask?” He cradled the phone against his chest. “Where do you want to meet?”

Susan’s eyes sparkled with victory. “How about her studio? Far more interesting than here or the police station.”

Nodding, Rick raised the phone to his ear. “Your place.”

More silence, as if she weighed and measured more pros and cons. She had chosen a cabin in the woods that had been the scene of a murder. These were the choices of someone who didn’t want to be noticed or visited. More whys swirled around Jenna.

“Fine,” Jenna said. “Nine o’clock?”

“I’m sure she’ll make that work.”

“No exterior shots of my house. Just the studio.”

Still thinking like a cop. “Understood. Her name is Susan Martinez.”

“Right.” She hung up without a good-bye.

Martinez’s shining eyes had the look of a woman who liked to win. “So we’re set?”

He relayed Jenna’s request, her address, and the time. “I want to be there. This is a Nashville homicide case.”

“Sure. We might even be able to use you in the story.” She sat back. “You said her name is?”

“Jenna Thompson”

She hesitated. “She’s from . . . ?”

“Baltimore.”

“Why’d she leave Baltimore?”

“She didn’t. She’s on sabbatical.”

“Why?”

“You’ll have to ask her.”

“Anything else you can tell me about her?”

“No,” he said honestly. “Nothing.”

“Okay.” Nodding, she rubbed her hands together. “Looks like I have some homework to do tonight.”

As the wind blew in through her open car window, Jenna ended the call with Rick and stared out at the small, worn house in East Nashville. The yard had turned to dust and the house’s siding, once white, had muddied to a dirty gray. Two old tires lay under a half-dead tree with browning foliage that offered little shade. A broken bicycle leaned against the house.

Jenna got out of her car and moved with purpose toward the front door. Inside, she heard the blare of a television. She rang the bell but it didn’t work. She banged on the door once and, when she heard no sound, banged again. Finally, the faint sound of shuffling footsteps drifted out from under the front door. After several chains scraped free of locks, the door opened a crack. An older woman stared up at her, hair graying but eyes sharp as if she were always on the lookout for trouble.

“What do you want?”

“Mrs. Dupree?”

The dark eyes thinned to near slits. “Who wants to know?”

“I’m Jenna Thompson.”

“I don’t know you. What’re you selling?”

Jenna tightened her hold on her purse strap. “My parents called me Jennifer. My older sister was Sara.”

Mrs. Dupree shook her head. “This some kind of joke? Because if it is, it’s not funny.”

“You remember me?”

She clutched the fabric at the base of her throat as if she suddenly felt a flush of heat. “I remember all the trouble that my boy caused that family. And all the trouble the cops and reporters caused me.”

Trouble. Okay, if that’s what she wanted to call it. “I was hoping I could talk to you about your son.”

“Why?”

“I’m trying to understand.”

“I’m not talking.” She moved to close the door.

Jenna blocked it. “Ma’am, I don’t want to cause you trouble. But I’ve come a long way. I’d like to understand Ronnie better.”

“Why?”

For several beats her thoughts slowed and she heard only the birds chirping and the wind rustling. “I don’t know.”

A sigh shuddered through the old woman. “You have any idea what a nightmare my life was after all that?”

Old bitterness melted away her good intentions. “Have any idea what my life was like?”

Mrs. Dupree raised a defiant chin. “I didn’t know what he was planning to do. He never told me.”

“He gave you no hint of his plans for my family?”

“No. I told that to the cops over and over. I didn’t know.”

Didn’t know or didn’t want to know. She knew from her research that he’d lived in this house. Surely a house so small couldn’t hide secrets well. “Did he ever mention my sister, Sara?”

The dark eyes sharpened. “I ain’t giving my information for free.”

“You want money?”

She folded thin, withered arms over her chest. “I ain’t got much.”

Jenna dug in her pocket and pulled out five rumpled twenties. “One hundred bucks. That’s all I have.”

The woman took the money, counted it, and stuck it in the pocket of a housecoat. “He talked about your sister a lot. He said he loved her. Said they were going to get married.” She smoothed a well-lined hand over gray hair. “You look a lot like her.”

“I’ve heard that.” She glanced past the woman to the den styled with a recliner, a box television, and a coffee table piled high with magazines and papers. “How did Ronnie meet my sister?”

“You mean how did white trash end up at such a nice high school?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“It is. But I ain’t going to deny who I am or what my boy was. Ronnie could play football. Wasn’t so smart but he could tackle better than anyone. He played on that fancy football team in exchange for the education. Then, he got his leg broke and couldn’t play anymore. The school gave him a janitor’s job, which he took ’cause that’s all there was to get. He’d been working at the school a few years when your sister came along.”

Sara had been a cheerleader, Ronnie a maintenance man, and they’d have crossed paths. Memories of her sister and father fighting reached out from the shadows. I’ll date him if I want to! Doors slamming. Her mother crying. Was it Ronnie who Sara had been fighting to date?

“Did they ever date?”

“He said they did. Ronnie stole one of my rings and sold it so he could pay for the tux and the rental car so he could take her to prom. He came home that night and was angry. Said Sara had ditched him for another boy.”

That would have been in the spring. By late August her family was dead. “Do you know where he got the gun?”