The words crawled up Addison's spine like icy claws. "Jesus."
"I was home the night it happened, but didn't hear a thing. Mailman saw the blood the next morning. I never heard a man scream like that. Ran like a screaming banshee over here to call, the sheriff. Threw up on my rosebush. Sheriff McEvoy said the place was a mess. Blood everywhere. Poor woman was butchered like a cow."
A shiver swept through Addison. "Was the killer caught?"
"Cops never found him. I'll tell you this: Folks around here lock their doors at night. And they will for a long, long time."
"Does the sheriff know why she was murdered? Was it random?"
"I was never friendly with the woman, but I can tell you she had a reputation."
The need to defend rose up inside her, but Addison held it at bay. "What kind of reputation?" she asked, knowing fully what the word meant and how it was usually applied.
"Some speculate it was one of her men who killed her. Believe me, child, she had a lot of them over the years."
Addison lowered her cup and-leaned back into the sofa. She felt sick inside. She wanted to be alone so she could sort all this out. But she wasn't, so she simply acknowledged the information. "I see."
"Child, I don't want to be the one to tell you all this. Siloam Springs is a small town. Talk is cheap and vicious in small towns. Agnes Beckett received her share over the years."
She nodded her acceptance of that.
"If you're looking for information on the murder, I've got the last three editions of the weekly newspaper in my recycle pile."
Addison brightened somewhat at the idea of having some solid information at her fingertips. Information that wasn't hearsay or rumor. ''I'd appreciate that very much."
Jewel took the last bite of shortbread. "I hope you're not too terribly upset with all this. Did you know her well?"
"No, not well."
"I guess that's a blessing under the circumstances." The older woman rose and disappeared into the rear of the trailer.
Addison let out a breath. She looked down at her hands, found them shaking. She hadn't known Agnes Beckett. But she did know one thing for certain. The day Agnes Beckett had given up her three-day-old baby, she'd saved Addison from what probably would have been a very hard life.
Jewel returned with a small stack of newspapers. "It made quite a stir here when it happened. First murder in over fifteen years. And so brutal."
Addison winced, not wanting to imagine the brutality of a stabbing. It was incomprehensible what human beings could do to each other. It was incomprehensible that it had happened to her birth mother just three weeks earlier.
"Thank you." Rising, she slipped into her coat.
"The stories in there will be more objective than the ones you'll hear from anyone in this town, including me."
"Where is she buried?" The question sprang free before she'd realized she was going to ask it.
"Twin Oaks, I imagine. Down the road a ways, past the bridge on the left. Only cemetery in town."
It was sleeting when Addison walked back to the car. Tiny particles of ice mixed with rain pelted her. as she stood on the broken asphalt staring at the mobile home where her birth mother had lived-and died-just three weeks earlier. She wondered what had become of her belongings. If she'd had a decent burial. If anyone had mourned her passing.
Feeling more alone than she'd ever felt in her life, she slid behind the wheel and headed for the motel.
*
An hour later, Addison sat cross-legged on the queen-sized bed in her room at the Red Rooster Motor Lodge, using her manicure scissors to cut articles from the newspapers Jewel Harshbarger had given her. On the bed next to her lay a half-eaten club sandwich, a bag of soggy french fries, and the soda she'd picked up at the motel restaurant.
She'd read each story twice, forcing the words into a brain not ready to absorb, each time their significance cutting a little deeper. The Preble County coroner had ruled Agnes Beckett's death a homicide. The sheriff's department concluded later that the murder was the result of a robbery. Judging from the marks on her neck and left wrist, what little jewelry she'd been wearing was yanked off and taken, as well as her purse, which was found a few days later minus the wallet.
What Addison found most disturbing was the fact that in the three weeks since the murder, a suspect hadn't been mentioned. The thought sent a powerful sense of outrage rolling through her. Was it because of Agnes Beckett's lack of social status that the police weren't pushing for an arrest? Would the murder of a more affluent person have generated a greater degree of public outrage? Would the woman who had lived in that tiny mobile home be forgotten? Her murder left unsolved?