“Gaylon is at his home in Little Rock,” Margaret replied briskly. “I saw no need for him to be involved in this.”
Dean cocked his head curiously, trying to read the woman’s expression. “You act as though you were expecting me.”
She nodded. “I was. I received a call this afternoon from Bill Watson. He was...delighted that you’d visited him. He wanted me to know the details of your conversation.”
“I wish someone would tell me what the hell is going on here,” Mayor Charles Vandover complained, looking from his mother to Dean. “Why did you go see old Bill, Gates? What is this vendetta you have against my family?”
“I have nothing against your family, Mayor,” Dean replied. He hadn’t been asked to sit down, so he remained standing, his good arm at his side, the other resting in the white sling across his chest. “Or at least, I had nothing against any of you until someone dropped a potting bench on me and almost killed me.”
Chief Roy Peavy jumped up from his seat. “What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded, the loud, officious voice incongruous with his mousy appearance. “You aren’t blaming us for your own damn-fool carelessness, are you?”
“I wasn’t careless. I was deliberately attacked. And yes, I think someone in your family was behind it.” Dean looked at Margaret again. “How much do they know?” he asked her.
She looked almost as old as Watson had earlier, though Dean knew she was nearly twenty years younger than the man. “Nothing,” she admitted. “I’m the only one who knows the truth.”
“So you’re the one—”
“I asked that you be warned about interfering with my family business,” she cut in flatly. “I never intended for you to be seriously injured.”
“Who was he?”
“The son of a man who once worked for me,” Margaret replied with a resigned sigh. “He has a rather long record, and he isn’t particular about how he comes by the money to support his habits. It wasn’t the first time I’d had him do a favor for me.”
Charles also rose from his chair, staring at Margaret incredulously. “Mother?”
“Please sit down, Charles. You, too, Roy. This won’t take long.”
Margaret drew a deep breath. Dean noticed that she still hadn’t invited him to take a chair. “How much is it going to take to keep you quiet?” she asked him coolly.
He narrowed his eyes. “You think that’s why I’m here?”
She shrugged delicately. “Why else? As you pointed out, you have no reason to hate me, no reason to want to humiliate me and my family in this town because of something that happened long before you arrived. You he
ard something that made you suspect the truth and you figured you could make some money from it, just as Bill Watson did for all those years. I’ve had you investigated, Gates. I know you’ve put every penny you own into that worthless old inn. Obviously, you think you’ve found a way to recoup some of your investment.”
“Mother, what the hell is this all about?” Charles demanded. “What does Gates have to do with Bill Watson?”
Margaret sighed. “I guess this man is going to make sure you know the truth. Maybe it’s time you do. You’ll probably have to support him the rest of his life because of it, just the way I’ve had to support Watson before him.”
Dean folded his arms, waiting to hear what she’d tell her son.
“My father murdered Ian and Mary Anna Cameron, and Buck Felcher,” she stated baldly. “He participated in an official cover-up and later killed Stanley Tagert, the crooked police officer who’d been in league with him. He then took the money he’d made through the sale of contraband merchandise and, through shrewd investments, made enough to establish himself and his heirs as prominent and powerful citizens of this area. Bill Watson knew the truth from the beginning. He blackmailed my father for years. I found out everything several years later, when it was my turn to pay for Watson’s silence.”
Charles and Roy seemed stunned.
Dean concentrated on Margaret. “You didn’t care that two innocent people were murdered, that their reputations were ruined in their hometown?”
“I never knew them,” Margaret stated simply. “I loved my father. He was a powerful, respected man in this town. How could I let his name be smeared by something that had happened years before I was born? He was already dead when I discovered the truth about him. The Camerons left no heirs, no one to suffer from their tragedy. I saw no purpose in letting the truth out.”
“Did you deliberately cause trouble for Mark Winter when he began to research a book about the murders?”
Margaret hesitated. “I made it clear that the local citizens wouldn’t care to have their dirty laundry aired in public through a book that cast our town in an unfavorable light.”
She had a unique way of rationalizing her behavior, Dean thought wryly. She made it sound as though it hadn’t been herself and her own family reputation she’d been protecting, but the entire population of the small town she and her kin had dominated for so many years.
Margaret glanced at Roy. “You’ll say nothing about any of this, of course,” she said. “I will pay for Mr. Gates’s silence. And Mr. Winter’s, as well, I presume.”
“No,” Dean said with a cold smile. “You won’t. I’m not here for your money, Mrs. Vandover. I’m here to let you know that the whole truth will be printed in the Destiny Daily, exactly as Bill Watson told it to us. We have a letter from your father backing him up.”