Murder in Plain Sight. Marta Perry
Trey’s father had shot himself in an isolated hunting cabin belonging to the family a few days after receiving a diagnosis of cancer. The photo showed a rustic cottage surrounded by dense woods. His son had been the one to find his body.
Jessica’s stomach twisted. “Poor man,” she murmured, not sure whether she was talking about Trey or his father. Maybe both.
“Yes,” Sara said, her normal ebullience muted. “But you can’t let it change how you deal with him. If he’s interfering in your case, you still have the right to brush him off. Politely, of course.”
She hadn’t been able to brush him off even when she’d resorted to rudeness. This made it a hundred times harder. She would have been better off not knowing. And poor Geneva…how difficult that must have been for her.
“What did you say the client’s name is?” Sara was clicking away again, undeterred.
“Thomas Esch. But you’re not going to find anything about him. I told you—he’s Amish. I don’t know much about them, but I’m pretty sure they avoid publicity. The original account I read gave only his name and age.”
Sara nodded, scanning quickly down through her search results. “You’re right about that. There’s nothing here except accounts of his arrest. He was taken into custody right after the body was discovered. He was still at the scene, either asleep or unconscious.”
“Right.” That was what Trey had said. “I’ll read through the rest of the coverage later.” If it came to asking for a change of venue, she’d need that ammunition. She rose, stretching. “Is there anything left of that chicken soup your mother sent over?”
Since Sara was a native Philadelphian, Jessica had benefited from her mother’s apparent conviction that they both needed quantities of home-cooked food every week in order to survive.
“You can have the rest of it,” Sara said absently, her gaze still intent on the computer screen. “Wait a minute. Here’s something you didn’t mention. Did you know that the barn where the body was found actually belongs to the Morgan family?”
Jessica stopped in the middle of a yawn. “Are you sure?”
“That’s what the paper says. They didn’t tell you?”
“No. Neither of them did.” Her mind whirled for a moment then settled. Geneva, in all her protestations of how innocent Thomas was, in all her talk of the gardening he did for her—was that only meant to establish that Thomas had access to the barn they owned?
And Trey. How could Trey have talked about the case as much as he had without mentioning the fact that he owned the barn where the murder occurred? He’d glossed over the finding of the body without so much as a hint of it.
The sympathy she’d been feeling for Trey after learning of his father’s suicide vanished. He’d lied to her. Well, maybe not lied, exactly, but he’d omitted an important piece of the truth. Which meant that she couldn’t trust Trey Morgan any farther than she could throw him.
TREY’S STOMACH CHURNED mercilessly as he pulled into the rutted track. Not because of the road. Because it led to the cabin where his father died.
Jonas Miller waited, leaning against a tree as if he had all the time in the world to spare, although Trey knew perfectly well that any Amish farmer had a long list of chores. Still, Jonas took all his responsibilities seriously, including looking after the Morgan hunting cabin and the surrounding property. It was a message from Jonas that had brought Trey here so unwillingly this morning.
He stopped the truck and climbed out, trying not to look at the cabin. “Morning, Jonas. I got your message.”
Jonas nodded gravely, his blue eyes serious in a weathered face above the beard that marked him as a married man. “Trey. I wish I had not had to bring you out here already.”
Trey shrugged, trying to ease the tension out of his shoulders. “It’s all right. I know you wouldn’t have sent for me unless something was wrong.”
The last thing that had been wrong at the cabin had been his father’s lifeless body, slumped over the table, the gun fallen from his fingers.
Jonas was silent, as if he knew and respected what Trey was thinking.
Trey took a breath and blew it out. “So. You came over and found the door open.”
“Chust cracked a bit, it was.” Jonas sounded troubled. “The padlock was lying on the porch floor.”
“Did you look inside?” The longer they stood and talked, the longer he could put off the moment at which he’d have to go in.
Jonas inclined his head. “I took a look, ja. Thinking it might have been teenagers, tearing places up. It did not seem anything was disturbed, so I thought it best to let it be until you could see.”
He couldn’t delay any longer. “Let’s have a look, then.”
He strode toward the cabin. The hunting cabin, they’d always called it, although Dad had never had much taste for hunting. Trey and his brother had gone through a phase of wanting to bag a buck when they were in their teens, and Dad had gone along with them, more to see them safe, he supposed, than because Dad wanted to shoot anything.
Still, they’d come out here often enough, whenever Dad wanted to get away from the telephone and have a bit of quiet. They’d fish the stream, cook out over an open fire and go to sleep watching the stars.
Good memories, plenty of them. Unfortunately they didn’t seem to cancel out the one terrible one.
Jonas stood back to let him go up the steps first. Trey crossed to the door and bent to examine the padlock. It wasn’t obviously damaged. He put his hand on the rough wood panel of the door, blanked out his thoughts as best he could and opened it.
At first glance, nothing seemed wrong. His gaze touched the kitchen table and skittered away. Nausea rose in his throat. He wanted to leave. The need pushed at him, pounded in his temples.
He couldn’t. Jonas’s sense of responsibility had brought him here. Trey’s own sense of responsibility forced him to stay, even though he ought to be back at Leo Frost’s office right now, keeping tabs on Jessica’s activities.
The cabin wasn’t large—a big room downstairs, divided into kitchen and living area, three tiny bedrooms upstairs, the smallest not much bigger than a closet.
He moved cautiously around the living room area, feeling as if any sudden gesture would set loose the pain that clawed at him.
Jonas made his own circuit. He stopped at the massive fieldstone fireplace that took up much of the outside wall. He squatted. “Someone has had a fire here. The hearth was clean and empty the last time I looked.”
Trey looked for himself. Jonas was right. “So someone’s been here, but not the usual teenage party crowd. They’d make more of a mess than this.”
“Ja, they would. A tramp, you think? Chust looking for shelter?”
“Could be.” Trey frowned. That didn’t feel right. They didn’t have tramps any longer, and Lancaster’s homeless wouldn’t be likely to come clear out here to find a roof.
Jonas had moved on to the kitchen, and Trey forced himself to follow. The memories were out in the open now. His mother’s worries when Dad didn’t come home that night. His own conviction that Dad needed a little time alone to deal with the bad news the doctor had delivered. Cancer. Serious, but something that could be fought.
But Dad hadn’t chosen to fight. The man Trey had always thought the bravest person he knew had put a gun to his head instead of battling the cancer. It didn’t make sense to him. It never had. He’d spent months trying to find a way to make that fact fit, but he couldn’t. If there had been something else troubling his father—
Trey looked at the table. He’d come in the door cautiously that morning, calling his father’s