“That’s right,” he confirmed. “Cole admitted it to me before he died.”
“And you found her there? You found Abby yourself?”
“My wife and I were in the woods. We found the metal pipe in the ground. We dug her out ourselves.”
Mary took the tissue from her sleeve and wiped her nose. “Several years ago,” she began; then: “I guess I should back up.”
“Take your time.”
She seemed to do exactly that, and Lena pressed her lips together, fighting the urge to shake it out of her.
“I have two sons,” Mary said. “William and Peter. They live out west.”
“I remember you telling us that,” Jeffrey said, though Lena didn’t.
“They chose to leave the church.” She blew her nose in the tissue. “It was very hard for me to lose my children. Not that we turned our backs on them. Everyone makes their own decisions. We don’t exclude people because they…” She let her voice trail off. “My sons turned their backs on us. On me.”
Jeffrey waited, the only sign of his impatience his hand gripping the arm of the chair.
“Cole was very hard on them,” she said. “He disciplined them.”
“Did he abuse them?”
“He punished them when they were bad,” was all she would admit. “My husband had passed away a year before. I was grateful for Cole’s help. I thought they needed a strong man in their lives.” She sniffed, wiping her nose. “These were different times.”
“I understand,” Jeffrey told her.
“Cole has- had- very firm ideas about right and wrong. I trusted him. My father trusted him. He was first and foremost a man of God.”
“Did anything happen to change that?”
She seemed overcome by sadness. “No. I believed everything he said. At the cost of my own children, I believed in him. I turned my back on my daughter.”
Lena felt her eyebrows shoot up.
“You have a daughter?”
She nodded. “Genie.”
Jeffrey sat back in the chair, though his body remained tense.
“She told me,” Mary continued. “Genie told me what he had done to her.” She paused. “The box in the woods.”
“He buried her there?”
“They were camping,” Mary explained. “He took the children camping all the time.”
Lena knew Jeffrey was thinking about Rebecca, how she had run away to the woods before. He asked, “What did your daughter say happened?”
“She said Cole tricked her, that he told her he was going to take her for a walk in the woods.” She stopped, then willed herself to go on. “He left her there for five days.”
“What did you do when she told you about this?”
“I asked Cole about it.” She shook her head at her own stupidity. “He told me that he couldn’t stay on the farm if I believed Genie over him. He felt that strongly about it.”
“But he didn’t deny it?”
“No,” she told Jeffrey. “I never realized it until last night. He never denied it. He told me that I should pray about it, let the Lord tell me whom to believe- Genie or him. I trusted in him. He has such a strict sense of right and wrong. I took him for a God-fearing man.”
“Did anyone else in the family know about this?”
She shook her head again. “I was ashamed. She lied.” Mary corrected, “She lied about some things. I see that now, but at the time, it was harder to see. Genie was a very rebellious young girl. She used drugs. She ran around with boys. She turned away from the church. She turned away from the family.”
“What did you tell them about Genie’s disappearance?”
“I sought my brother’s counsel. He told me to tell them she had run away with a boy. It was a believable story. I thought it saved us all the embarrassment of the truth, and neither of us wanted to upset Cole.” She dabbed the tissue at the corner of her eye. “He was so valuable to us then. My brothers were both away at school. None of us girls were capable of taking care of the farm. Cole ran everything along with my father. He was critical to the operation.”
The fire door banged open and Frank came in, stopping in his tracks when he saw Jeffrey and Mary Ward sitting at the desk. He walked over and put his hand on Jeffrey’s shoulder, handing him a folder. Jeffrey opened the file, obviously knowing Frank would not have interrupted unless it was important. Lena could tell that he was looking at several faxed pages. The station was run on a tight budget and the machine was about ten years old, using thermal rolls instead of plain paper. Jeffrey smoothed out the pages as he scanned them. When he looked up, Lena couldn’t tell if he had read good news or bad.
“Mary,” Jeffrey said. “I’ve been calling you Ms. Ward this whole time. Is your married name Morgan?”
Her surprise registered on her face. “Yes,” she said. “Why?”
“And your daughter is named Teresa Eugenia Morgan?”
“Yes.”
Jeffrey gave her a minute to collect herself. “Mary,” he began. “Did Abby ever meet your daughter?”
“Of course,” she said. “Genie was ten when Abby was born. She treated her like her own little baby. Abby was devastated when Genie left. They were both devastated.”
“Could Abby have visited your daughter that day she went to Savannah?”
“ Savannah?”
He took out one of the faxed pages. “We have Genie’s address listed as 241 Sandon Square, Savannah.”
“Well, no,” she said, a bit troubled. “My daughter lives here in town, Chief Tolliver. Her married name is Stanley.”
Lena drove to the Stanley place while Jeffrey talked on his cell phone to Frank. He kept his spiral notepad balanced on his knee as he wrote down whatever Frank was telling him, giving the occasional grunt to confirm he’d heard what was being said.
Lena glanced in her rearview mirror to make sure Brad Stephens was behind them. He was following in his cruiser, and for once, Lena was glad to have the junior patrolman around. Brad was goofy, but he had been working out lately and had the muscle to show for it. Jeffrey had told them about the loaded revolver Dale Stanley kept on top of one of the cabinets in the garage. She wasn’t looking forward to confronting Terri’s husband, but part of her was hoping he tried something so that Jeffrey and Brad had an excuse to show him what it felt like for someone larger and stronger than you to bring down a world of pain on your ass.
Jeffrey told Frank, “No, don’t put her in a cell. Give her some milk and cookies if you have to. Just keep her away from the phone and her brothers.” Lena knew he was talking about Mary Morgan. The woman had been startled when Jeffrey had told her she wasn’t to leave the police station but, like most law-abiding citizens, she was so scared of going to jail that she had just sat there, nodding, agreeing with everything he said.
“Good work, Frank.” Jeffrey told him, “Let me know what else you come up with,” and rang off. He started scribbling on his pad again, not speaking.
Lena didn’t have the patience to wait for him to finish with his notes. “What did he say?”
“They’ve found six policies so far,” he told her, still writing. “Lev and Terri are listed as beneficiaries for both Abby and Chip. Mary Morgan is on two, Esther Bennett is on two others.”
“What’d Mary say about that?”
“She said she had no idea what Frank was talking about. Paul handles all the accounts for the family.”
“Did Frank believe her?”
“He’s not sure,” Jeffrey said. “Hell, I’m not sure and I talked to her for half an hour.”
“I wouldn’t guess they’re living high on the hog.”
“Sara says they make their own clothes.”
“Paul doesn’t,” she pointed out. “How much were the policies worth?”
“Around fifty thousand each. They were greedy, but they weren’t stupid.”
Lena knew that anything exorbitant would have raised suspicion with the insurance agencies. As it was, the family had managed to collect a half-million dollars over the last two years, all of it tax free.
“What about the house?” Lena asked. The policies had listed each beneficiary as living at the same address in Savannah. A quick call to the Chatham County courthouse had revealed that the house on Sandon Square was purchased by a Stephanie Linder five years ago. Either there was another Ward sibling Jeffrey didn’t know about or someone was playing a nasty joke on the family.