Twice Dead - Catherine Coulter [27]
It was too late to dye her hair black. She went home and stayed there. She got at least twenty phone calls that day. She didn’t see Tyler, but he’d been right about what the sheriff had thought, because everybody else was thinking it, too, and was talking about it over coffee, to their neighbors, and not all that quietly. Tyler knew it, too, of course, but he didn’t say anything when he came over later that evening. He looked stoic. She had wanted to yell at everyone that they were wrong, that Tyler was an excellent man, that no way could he have hurt anyone, much less his wife, but she knew she couldn’t take the chance, couldn’t call attention to herself anymore. It was too dangerous for her, and so she listened to everyone talk about Ann, Tyler’s wife and Sam’s mother, who had supposedly disappeared fifteen months before without a word to anybody, not her husband, not her son. Ann had had a mother until two years before, but Mildred Kendred had died and left Ann all alone with Tyler. She’d had no other relatives to hassle Tyler about where his wife had supposedly gone. And look at poor little Sam, so quiet, so withdrawn, he’d probably seen something, everyone was sure of that. That he wasn’t at all afraid of his stepfather meant that the poor little boy had blocked the worst of it out.
Oh, yes, it all made sense now to everyone. Tyler had bashed his wife on the head—she probably wanted to leave him, that was it—and then he’d bricked her in the wall in Jacob Marley’s basement. And little Sam knew something, because he’d changed right after his mother disappeared.
Tyler remained stoic during the following days, saying nothing about all the speculation, ignoring the sidelong looks from people who were supposedly his friends. He went about his business, seemingly oblivious of the stares.
He was in misery, Becca knew that, but there was nothing she could do except say over and over, “Tyler, I know it isn’t Ann. They’ll prove it was someone else, you’ll see.”
“How?”
“If they can’t figure out who she was, then they’ll check for runaways. There are DNA tests. They’ll find out. Then there are going to be a whole lot of folk apologizing to you on their hands and knees.”
He looked at her and said nothing at all.
Becca went shopping at Food Fort at eight o’clock the next night, hoping the store would be nearly empty. She moved quickly down the aisles. The last item on her list was peanut butter, crunchy. She found it and picked up a small jar, saw that it had a web of mirrored cracks in it, and started to call out to one of the clerks, only to have it break apart in her hands. She yelped and dropped it. It splattered all over jars of jams and jellies before smashing onto the floor at her feet. She stood there staring down at the mess.
“I see you buy natural, not sugar-added. That’s the only kind I’ll eat.”
She whirled around so fast she slid on the peanut butter and nearly careened into the soup. The man caught her arm and pulled her upright.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Let me get you another jar. Here comes a young fellow with a mop. Better let him wipe off the bottom of your sneaker.”
“Yes, of course.” The man not two feet from her was a stranger, which didn’t mean all that much since she hadn’t met everyone in town. He was wearing a black windbreaker, dark jeans, and scuffed black boots. He was careful not to step into the peanut butter. Her first impression was that he was big and he looked really hard and his hair was on the long side, and as dark as his eyes.
“The only thing,” he continued after a moment, “it’s a real pain to have to stir the peanut butter before you put it in the refrigerator. The oil always spills over the sides and