Dead by Midnight - Beverly Barton [101]
She suspected that Tyler sensed she was the more empathetic agent. “Is he mentally ill? Is he on medication?”
“I don’t know. He has mental problems, but he’s never been diagnosed by a doctor for anything other than anxiety. I have no idea if he’s on medication or not. If he was, he’d hardly tell me. You see, we aren’t close and haven’t been for a number of years.”
“Other than your father’s mental instability, is there any other reason you think he could be the killer?” Derek asked.
“I’ll have to give y’all some backstory,” Tyler said. “It’s the only way you can possibly understand.”
“We’re listening,” Derek told him.
“Maybe we’d better sit down.” Tyler issued the invitation with a sweep of his hand, indicating the plush velvet settee and chairs in the parlor. “Would y’all like some iced tea or lemonade? I can have Amelia Rose fix us—”
“Nothing, thanks,” Derek replied.
After the three of them were seated, Derek and Maleah on the settee together, posing a united front, and Tyler in a chair across from them, Tyler began his story.
“My parents came from two of the oldest families in Danville. Their marriage was practically an arranged affair. Their parents were good friends and everyone pretty much expected the two of them to marry, which they did. Mother was only twenty-one when I was born eighteen months after they married and according to Dad, she soon felt trapped and wanted out of the marriage and out of Danville. When I was two years old, she just up and left one day. I didn’t see her again until I was six. She came back to Danville to see me. That was the first time my father threatened to kill her.
“He was ashamed of the fact she had gotten involved in the pornography business and had posed in various magazines and had made several movies. They had an awful row and I heard everything. My mother left in tears and I didn’t see her again for years.”
“Your father’s attitude was understandable, given the circumstances,” Derek said.
“I suppose it was,” Tyler agreed. “But you have to understand that I grew up listening to his tirades about my mother, how she was a slut who didn’t deserve to live, how evil men had lured her into making indecent movies and all the actors in those movies should be taken out and shot.”
“Those were his exact words—taken out and shot?” Maleah asked.
“Yes, ma’am. His exact words. I thought once he remarried—a fine lady named Brenda Lee—that things would get better. And for a while, they did. Then Mother moved back to Danville a few years ago and my father did everything he could to run her out of town. They’ve had some horrible fights, but the harder Dad tried to make her leave, the more she dug in her heels, determined to stay.”
“What you’ve told us may prove that your father hates your mother and is ashamed of how she’s lived her life, but not that he’s a murderer,” Derek said. “If he is a killer, then why did he wait all these years to start murdering porno actors and why only actors from that one particular movie? And why not start by killing your mother?”
“Dad had settled down the past couple of years, at least to a certain extent, even though he never accepted the fact that I had made a place in my life for Mother. But then when Midnight Masquerade was released on DVD this past fall, that set him off again. I think he zeroed in on that one movie and became obsessed with the people who were in it. And as for why he didn’t kill Mother first—I don’t know. Maybe he’s saving her until last.”
Silence fell over the parlor for several minutes and then Maleah asked, “You really do believe your father is the Midnight Killer, don’t you?”
With a sheen of moisture dampening his big blue eyes, Tyler swallowed and said softly, “I don’t want to believe such a horrible thing about my own father, but yes, I think there’s a good chance that he’s the killer.”
Feeling like a prisoner trapped in her own house, Lorie had decided she needed a project of some kind to keep her mind occupied. The idea