Page 77 of Call Back

Chapter 15

Partof me wanted to run far away until the entire mess was resolved, but I wasn’t going anywhere now that I was finally getting answers. I had to go back out into the world. Hopefully I could do it armed with more information.

“What is Bill James’s involvement?” I asked bluntly. I wasn’t ready to share anything Momma had told me, especially since she’d asked me not to tell anyone. “Why did you warn me to stay away from him?”

“I think he’s dangerous.”

“Obviously. Why?”

“I’m sure James was much more involved in a land project your father was running than he claims.”

I held up my hands. “Whoa. Wait. You think my father was running the Jackson Project?”

“You know about the Jackson Project?”

Crap.He had no idea what I’d learned over the last few days. “Ava Milton mentioned it yesterday.”

That piqued his interest. “After I told you about Emily’s murder?”

“No. I was cleaning a bunch of newspaper articles out of her attic. She’s hoarded boxes and boxes of them. I’m surprised the fire marshal hasn’t fined her.”

“So what do you know about the Jackson Project?” he asked.

How much should I confess? “I know that he suggested some of his clients invest in the project, but it got sued and his clients lost a lot of money.”

“Magnolia,” he said in a patient voice. “Your father knowingly bilked millions of dollars from investors in the Jackson Project.”

“Okay . . .”

“He brainstormed it. It was his pet project.”

“What?” Feeling like I was about to jump out of my skin, I got to my feet and walked over to the window.

Brady stood too, though he had the sense to stay several feet away. “I’m sorry.”

I kept my back to him as I watched the horizon turn pink through blurry eyes, which pissed me off. I’d kept my shit together for ten years, fourteen if you counted my father’s disappearance, and I did. I’d been called delusional and a liar in my insistence that my father had been innocent of any wrongdoing. But the deeper I dug, the less I recognized the man I’d loved. Nevertheless, I was done with crying. Crying didn’t solve shit . . . unless you were trying to weaken a man’s resolve. In this case, my tears weren’t going to do a single thing to change the facts.

“No,” I said as I clutched the neckline of my pajama shirt, twisting it around my fingers in an effort to ground myself. “I knew he was involved, but not that he was in charge.”

“He did a good job of hiding his involvement by using Winterhaven, a dummy corporation, but Owen figured it out. Even if your father created it, I’m sure Bill James is dirty, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he played a role in all those kidnappings and disappearances.”

“And murders,” I added. “There were recent outright murders, but let’s also call the disappearances what they were. Murders.”

“But recently they got sloppy,” Brady said. “They never left dead bodies behind before Goodwin’s murder. And now Amy’s murder . . . I have to wonder if the serial killer is tied to the other disappearances and murders. It all changed with Max Goodwin’s death.”

The day I came back. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the serial killer had started killing again, and Daddy’s old business partners had started dying within days of my return.

“How many women?” I asked.

He looked startled. “What?”

I spun around to face him. “How many women have been murdered by the serial killer?”

He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. “I don’t know, Maggie. Eight. Maybe more. That’s if we count Emily Johnson and Amy Danvers. Amy’s case was curious, but then I saw the mark on Emily . . .”

“How did you know the details of Amy’s body before you got that packet? I thought her case was handled by the Brentwood police.”

“It was, but I’d become invested in the case because of your involvement. And like I said, the suicide seemed fishy to me, so I asked to see the report. It was the photos that stuck with me. No one thought much of the cuts on her legs, but I knew I’d seen that mark before.”

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