Where Truth Lies
Beneath the small-town charm is a big-time secretMuseum curator Grace McKenzie is shocked when she receives word that her ex-fiancé, Steven Hatfield, has been murdered. In his will, Steven has left her his art gallery in New Hope, Pennsylvania.Anticipating that she would turn down the bequest, he asked that she spend a week at the gallery before making her final decision. Motivated by a sense of duty to a man she once loved, Grace agrees to go to New Hope for one week. She isn’t the only person drawn to the small town. FBI agent Matt Baxter has returned to his home town for one reason only – to clear his father of a bogus murder charge.While he and Grace seek answers, they discover that beneath the surface of this charming, peaceful town lies an old secret a few of its citizens would rather keep buried. And when their search takes an unexpected turn, they have only hours to find out where the truth lies – or be buried with it.
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“Move under that streetlight where I can see you.” She gave the shovel a shake. “And put your hands in the air.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Cool as a cucumber, the stranger did as he was told. Grace estimated that he was between thirty-five and forty, with dark hair, eyes that watched her with undisguised amusement, and a little lopsided smile that, at any other time, would have made her want to smile back. Not this time.
“Maybe you should put your weapon down before it misfires – ”
“And maybe you should stop cracking jokes and take this situation a little more seriously.”
“Sorry.”
“Are you aware that breaking and entering is a crime?” Resting the shovel on her shoulders and holding it with one hand, she used the other to take her mobile phone out of her bag.
“I wasn’t breaking and entering.”
“You did last night. I have the bump to prove it.”
“I’m sorry about the bump. And the concussion, but the man who inflicted those injuries wasn’t me.”
Her finger above the nine key, she stopped. “How do you know about the concussion?”
“My father told me.” When she frowned, he added, “I’m Matt Baxter.”
The phone almost dropped out of her hand. Matt Baxter. The FBI agent.
Also available fromChristiane Heggan
NOW YOU DIE
THE SEARCH SCENT OF A KILLER DEADLY INTENT DECEPTION
CHRISTIANE HEGGAN
To Gerd and Maria, for their warm
and wonderful hospitality.
To Anne and Jerry for persuading us
to accompany them to Austria.
And to Bob, who turns every vacation
into an unforgettable adventure.
Prologue
Point Pleasant, PennsylvaniaJune 13, 1986
“What do you mean, she’s dead?”
The two men stood under the moonless night sky. They were in their early twenties, solidly built, with the speaker only an inch or so shorter than his friend. Both had been celebrating, and while they had drunk more than their share, they were sobering up fast.
“I don’t know what happened.” The other man’s voice shook as he ran his hand through his hair. “One minute she was fine and the next she stopped breathing.”
“Don’t give me that crap! You were having sex with her, for God’s sake! You have to know what happened.” He kept stealing quick, frightened glances toward the car, but made no move to approach it. “What did you do to her?”
“Nothing! I slapped her a little when she started hitting me, not hard, just enough to shut her up, and…” He took a shallow breath. “She hit the back of her head on the door.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I didn’t mean to kill her, I swear.”
“Maybe she’s not dead.” Finally gathering the courage to take some kind of action, the shorter man walked toward the old Chevy Impala parked off the road, and peered inside. At the sight of the lifeless body sprawled on the backseat, one arm dangling, he swallowed. Fighting off a wave of nausea, he opened the door.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking to see if she’s dead.” He leaned over the body and pressed two fingers to the girl’s throat, waiting to feel a pulse.
“Well?”
“She’s dead. And we’re in deep shit.” He sat on the ground and took his head between his hands. “I told you this was a bad idea, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“Hey, I didn’t hear you complain once we got underway, did I? You were just as anxious to screw her as I was, standing there, waiting your turn.”
“Shut up.”
“It’s the truth. You’re in this just as deep as I am.”
“You’re the one who killed her.”
“And you’re the one who forced her into the car.”
“I’m going to be sick.” He wrapped his arms around his midriff, and started rocking back and forth. “What are we going to do?” he moaned.
“First things first.”
“Meaning what?”
“We have to get rid of the body.”
The man on the ground looked around him. “Where?”
“The river?”
“Are you crazy? That’s the first place the cops will look. And once they find the body, there will be evidence, you can be sure of that.”
“Then you think of something, Einstein.”
There was a short silence before the man on the ground stood up. “She was hitchhiking, which means that anybody could have picked her up, right?”
“Right.”
“And everyone in town knows that she has a history of running away, once when she was fifteen, and another time when she was seventeen. She ended up in Tennessee that time, and stayed there for a whole week before she called her folks to say she was all right.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Nobody’s going to be surprised to hear that she did it again. If you remember, Chief Baxter was pretty pissed off the last time. His entire police department and more than a hundred volunteers combed the countryside for days, looking for her.”
“So?”
“So they’re not going to bust their asses looking for her now. Sure, they’ll go through the motions, but after a few days, they’ll assume that she took off again, and this time she intends to stay away.”
His friend finally got it. “And all we have to do is bury her someplace where they won’t find her.”
“That part isn’t so easy.”
“Yes, it is. I know a place.”
One
Boston, MassachusettsOctober 9, 2006
“Oooh, and don’t forget this baby.” Angie Viero took the black dress out of Grace’s bedroom closet and held it at arm’s length. “No vacation is complete without a sexy little number like this one.” She was a short, compact woman of thirty-five with a lovely, expressive face and thick, curly black hair everyone loved except Angie.
