Part 2
Avery’s lips parted, but the answer seemed to catch behind her teeth.
The paramedic interrupted. “We need to move her.”
Benton stepped aside. “We’ll speak at the hospital.”
Grant moved toward the stretcher. Wade shifted into his path.
It was not a threatening movement. Wade did not raise his hands or widen his stance. He merely occupied the space.
Grant stopped.
“You’re done here,” he said quietly.
Wade looked past him toward the open truck, the spilled feed dust in the bed, and the Bellamy crest carved over the entrance. The crest had been there longer than anyone alive. Grant liked to mention that when donors came for bourbon dinners and when employees asked why raises had been postponed.
“Maybe,” Wade said.
The paramedics rolled Avery toward the ambulance.
Deputy Benton instructed the other deputy to photograph the steps, the blanket, and the gravel around them. Teresa appeared in the doorway again, carrying nothing now. Wade noticed that her right hand trembled once before she tucked it behind her back.
Grant noticed too.
“Teresa,” he said, “go inside.”
She looked at him.
For thirteen years, Teresa had answered members of the Bellamy family with yes, ma’am or certainly, sir. This time she did not speak. She walked backward through the foyer and let the door close between them.
Wade rode to the hospital in his own truck because the ambulance crew would not let him come inside. The driver’s door rattled at highway speed. He had meant to fix the hinge for three winters and had bought the replacement pin twice, losing it once in the tack room and once somewhere beneath the passenger seat. The ordinary irritation of the noise made him angrier than Grant’s threat had.
At a red light outside Versailles, he realized his hands were shaking.
He placed them flat on the steering wheel.
The light changed. A driver behind him tapped the horn.
Wade moved.
Bluegrass Regional Medical Center smelled of disinfectant and burnt coffee. He gave Avery’s name at the desk and was told to wait. He sat beneath a television showing a home renovation program without sound. A man across from him slept with a paper cup balanced on his stomach. Two teenage boys argued quietly over a charging cable.
Wade called his daughter.
Molly answered on the fourth ring.
“You never call in the afternoon unless a horse has eaten something stupid.”
“It’s not a horse.”
The humor left her voice. “What happened?”
“Avery Quinn got hurt at the house.”
“How hurt?”
“She was conscious. Cut above the eye. Maybe a concussion.”
“And you?”
“I’m fine.”
“That was not my question.”
Wade rubbed a thumb over the mud dried on his jeans. Molly had been a nurse for six years and had inherited her mother’s intolerance for incomplete answers.
“I carried her to the ambulance.”
“Did you see what happened?”
“No.”
“Do you know who did?”
He looked at the blank wall beside the television.
“No.”
Molly was quiet. “You said that too carefully.”
“Grant was standing over her.”
“Dad.”
“I didn’t see it.”
“What did he say?”
“He said she fell.”
“And Avery?”
“Said he took her phone.”
Molly exhaled. “Is the sheriff involved?”
“Deputy Benton came out.”
“Good.”
Wade almost laughed. “Grant fired me.”
“Good.”
“That’s not good.”
“It might be the first useful thing that family has done for you.”
“Molly.”
“I’m serious. You sleep in a house they own, drive a truck that needs a tetanus shot, and work seventy hours a week for people who put their names on barns they never enter.”
“They pay me.”
“Barely.”
“They pay me enough.”
“You told me last month the payroll cleared late.”
“That was a bank error.”
“That is what they told you.”
Wade watched the sleeping man’s cup tilt, right itself, and settle.
“I’ll call when I know more.”
“Don’t go back there alone.”
“I live there.”
“Then don’t go home alone.”
He ended the call before she could repeat herself.
Deputy Benton arrived twenty minutes later with a paper notebook tucked beneath her arm. She bought coffee from the vending alcove, tasted it, and made a face that briefly softened her expression.
“You family?” she asked Wade.
“No.”
“Boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Supervisor?”
“Until about an hour ago.”
One eyebrow lifted. “You were fired at the scene?”
“Grant said I was done.”
“Because you helped her?”
“Because I didn’t put her down when he told me.”
Benton wrote something.
Wade looked at the notebook. “You always take statements beside a vending machine?”
“I take statements wherever people decide to talk.”
“I don’t know anything useful.”
“You know what you observed.”
She led him to a quiet corner near a window. Wade described turning into the drive, Avery’s position, Grant’s words, Vivian’s attention toward the driveway, Teresa in the entrance, and Avery’s missing phone. Benton asked him to repeat Grant’s exact order.
“Put her down. She stays here.”
“Was he angry?”
“Controlled.”
“What does that mean?”
“He wasn’t surprised. He wasn’t scared. He was irritated.”
“That’s an interpretation.”
“It is.”
“Did you see blood on anyone besides Ms. Quinn?”
“No.”
“Torn clothing?”
“No.”
“Any sign the woman had fallen from a horse?”
“She was fifty yards from the nearest mounting block, dressed for office work, and there were no horses loose.”
“Had she been drinking?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Any medical condition?”
“Not that I know.”
“Any reason she might accuse Mr. Bellamy falsely?”
Wade leaned back.
“You need to ask that?”
“I need to ask everything.”
“He signs her paycheck. Owns the cottage she rents. Controls most of the professional references she could use in this county. She has plenty of reasons not to accuse him.”
Benton’s pen paused.
“That’s not what I asked.”
May you like
“It’s the answer I have.”
A doctor allowed Wade into Avery’s room shortly after six. She had a narrow bandage above her eyebrow and a hospital bracelet around her wrist. Her left forearm had been cleaned. Without the dirt, the scratches looked smaller, but the bruising beneath them had begun to darken.
