Page 51 of Every Deadly Suspicion

“Don’t blame yourself, Mandy. Edda never would have wanted that. If there is more to this, I’m sure Hanna will get to the bottom of it.” His alarm buzzed. Fire line. “I gotta go. Don’t beat yourself up.”

Jared jogged to his car. He was heading back to a kind of hell on earth. The kind of environment the guy who killed Edda deserved.

CHAPTER 26

“IJUST GOT A CALL FROMMARCUSMARSHALL,”Everett said when Hanna answered the phone.

“Sorry, Everett, I didn’t tell him.”

“It was only a matter of time before he dug it up. You do know that more inquires will come from this? What have you decided?”

“I’m going to say yes. Mandy wants the chance to talk to Joe, and well, I don’t think I could live with myself if I said no. I have a meeting with parole on Wednesday.”

The line went quiet.

“Are you still there?” Hanna asked.

“I am. I hope you know what you’re doing. I remember vividly the turmoil this town went through over three decades ago. The stress of that time probably killed my father.”

Hanna didn’t remember exactly when Big Al passed away. She did remember her mother being sad about it.

I hope I know what I’m doing as well.“He’s a sick, dying old man.”

“Yeah. Do you have an arrival date?”

“Not yet. I’ll let you know as soon as I do.” She paused brieflyand then took advantage of the fact that he was still on the line. “Everett, we still need to talk to Chase about Scott.”

Everett said nothing, but she could hear him breathing.

“You can’t think he had anything to do with that.” It was a clipped, staccato sentence. He almost punctuated every word with a pause.

“It doesn’t matter what I think, Everett. We need a formal statement.”

“You searched my house and his room, took Scott’s laptop and phone, and interviewed me. I doubt Chase can add anything else. I’m tired of all the intrusions.”

“The sooner he talks to us, the sooner we’ll be out of your hair.”

“I’ll talk to him and get back to you.” The line went dead.

It was the first time Hanna could ever remember Everett being angry. In general, he was easygoing, pleasant. He was not a hard-charging type A personality. Scott was, but not Everett. Hanna chalked it up to grief and loss.

She tried to rub away the tension in her neck. Right now, the advice to keep your world small was perfect. Hanna concentrated on Joe and what it would look like to have him in her home.

Tuesday rolled by in a cloud of administrative duties. Hanna found it hard to concentrate on anything. By Wednesday morning, anticipation for the visit from parole had her imagination running in overdrive. Though she’d made her decision, worst-case scenarios flooded her thoughts. What if Joe was a disgusting old con, vicious and mean? What if he was unrepentant? What could she expect from a man nearing his sixties who’d spent more of his life in jail than he had free?

On top of everything, she was getting attached to Gizmo as well. Something about the dog calmed her, gave her peace. They walked in the warm, dry morning, just before the sun rose. Then she’d feed him, and he’d curl up somewhere. When she was on the couch, he’d curl up in her lap. There was something so settling in petting a sleeping dog. Hanna would have to find a way to make it work because there was no way she could give the dog to Mandy.

Nathan offered to try and take time off to be with her when parole got here, but she wanted to handle it on her own, and she didn’t want to take him away from Edda’s investigation. Besides that, she wasn’t certain Nathan really understood the situation with Joe. At least not the way Jared or Mandy would.

She walked into her guest room with Gizmo on her heels. So far, the only people who had used it were a visiting missionary couple. The people Hanna bought the house from had been older, and the husband was confined to a wheelchair. The guest room had an en suite bath with a shower made to accommodate a wheelchair. With everything that had been happening in her life, Hanna hadn’t really thought about the nuts and bolts of everything, but that was probably a perfect situation for Joe.

She leaned against the doorframe, considering the bedroom, and became more convinced that she was doing the right thing. God had provided her this house long before she ever knew she’d be hosting an invalid.

There was a knock on the front door. Parole was early.

Hanna went to the door only to discover that it wasn’t parole; it was Marcus Marshall with a film crew.

“What do you want, Marcus?” Hanna asked, keeping the screen door closed.

---