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Circle of Vengeance

By Ramona Richards

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Chapter One

Sunday, May 14, 1995
Lake Martin, Alabama

The littlest girl squealed, the high-pitched sound rocketing over the water to the twenty-foot walkabout boat anchored less than a hundred yards offshore. Beneath the bow top near the front, two sets of binoculars popped up as Lee and his uncle Chase observed the Marshall family at play. The extended family of Edmund and Margery Marshall scattered across the long sloping lawn that reached from the lake’s edge to the sprawling family compound on the hill above. Although the boat had drifted closer to shore from when they had first anchored, the boat was only one of a dozen or so floating in the fish-filled inlet near the Marshall compound. They were, as Chase had said, “Hiding in plain sight.”

Three generations of the affluent Marshalls had gathered for a leisurely picnic on this quiet Sunday—the patriarch and his wife who had worked to make the wealth, the three children who were helping build it, and the grandchildren who would never have to worry about it. Those grandchildren dashed about between the two Marshall brothers, who tried desperately to toss a football back and forth without tripping over one of their offspring. The tallest of the cousins—a boy not yet a teen—was clearly torn between joining his father and uncle and continuing to torment the younger ones with a lizard he’d caught.

Lee lowered his binoculars and slumped in the front passenger chair of the boat, bored as only a seventeen-year-old boy can be. The promised excitement of following his uncle, a private detective, around on one of his jobs had sounded thrilling. Instead, they had watched as the little girl and her cousins—all under twelve—scamper about in a scrambled version of tag for almost an hour. “Tell me again why we are watching a bunch of rich white folks without a care in the world.” Lee had a hard time keeping the envy out of his voice. He didn’t care. He could think of a dozen things he’d rather be doing.

His uncle took a long breath, a sign of his growing impatience. Sitting behind the wheel of the boat, he twisted, glaring at Lee. “I told you. Background. You see the little girl, the youngest, in The Little Mermaid t-shirt.”

Lee peered through the binoculars again. “Yeah. The one looks about five?”

“Yes. Just turned. Today is her birthday. Her name is Hope. She belongs to the youngest of the Marshall kids, the strawberry blonde studying on the blanket.”

Lee lowered his binoculars to study his uncle, the sharp angles of the man’s face, the crinkled skin of a rough scar that peeked from beneath the collar of his polo shirt. “That blonde looks like she’s my age. She can’t be more than seventeen.”

“Eighteen. Just enrolled at UAB.”

Lee took another look. He still couldn’t believe the blonde was old enough to be enrolled in the University of Alabama at Birmingham, much less—“And she’s got a five-year-old?”

Chase lowered his binoculars. “Yes. What of it?”

The tone in his uncle’s voice did not invite an answer to the question. “Nothing. Just unusual, that’s all.”

Chase lifted the binoculars. “Gen—the woman—isn’t involved with the girl’s father, but he likes to keep an eye out. And Gen’s started dating a new guy she met at UAB. Daddy doesn’t like it. Wants to know what’s going on.”

“So he hired you to keep an eye out?”

“It’s what I do.”

Right. Chase’s new license as a private investigator had barely had time to dry. “Is the new guy here?”

“Not so far.”

Lee raised the binoculars one more time, trying to take in the entire scene. The old man—obviously the eldest Marshall—stood at the grill with a soda in one hand, flipping burgers, hot dogs, and steaks. His wife spread plates and flatware on the picnic table, anchoring a stack of napkins with the ketchup bottle. Two dark-haired young women, probably the brothers’ wives, tried to help the older woman, without much success. The kids continued to race about the long lawn that sloped down to the shimmering lake and the Marshall boathouse and dock, making enough racket to wake the dead.

Placid. Happy. The very picture of the American dream.

As they watched, a tall man emerged from the main house carrying a cake box, his long strides carrying him closer to the Marshalls. Spotting him, Gen bounced off her blanket, the books she’d been studying scattering over it. She ran to the man, greeting him with a generous hug and a kiss on the cheek as he struggled to keep the cake box level. Gen’s pale complexion and reddish-blonde locks made for a sharp contrast to the man’s dark skin and hair.

“That’s the new guy?”

“Yes. Nicholas Eaton.” Chase’s teeth ground together, the gritting sound making Lee wince.

Eaton? Lee lowered the binoculars again. “Like the hotel chain guys? Those Eatons?”

His uncle’s voice was tight. “Yes. Oldest son. At UAB working on his MBA.”

“I guess rich attracts rich.”

Chase jerked the binoculars away from his eyes, his face a twisted mask of anger. “It’s not about the money.”

Lee scooted back against the hull, trying to move out of range of his uncle’s ire. He pushed his dark hair off his forehead. “Of course not.”

“He does not want his little girl raised by a”—Chase stopped, swallowing whatever he had been about to say—“a stranger.”

“So now what?”

“Now I gather the info, and we wait.”

“For what?”

Chase returned to watching the idyllic scene through the binoculars. “For the right time.”

Lee dropped it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the next answer—the right time for what? He too continued watching the Marshalls. Eaton and Gen had settled back on the blanket, their heads together as they studied one of her books. The oldest cousin had given up on the lizard and had joined in the football toss. The old man had started loading a platter with meat, and his wife began rounding up the family.

Lee rolled his shoulders. The tension radiating off his uncle made him nervous, fidgety. He’d been eager to come along, to learn more about his uncle’s new private investigation business. It had sounded exciting, like one of those adventure movies he loved. But this . . . was not that. He knew Chase had not told him the whole story. He also knew that if Chase had anything to do with this, that family was about to have their rich, white peacefulness turned topsy-turvy. And Lee didn’t want to have anything to do with that.

But he had a bad feeling he was in it for the long haul.

* * *

Present Day
Pineville, Alabama

Jill Turney fidgeted. I waited for her answer, trying not to watch her foot. Jill sat, legs crossed, on one of the bistro stools at the front of my Overlander, the Airstream travel trailer that was my temporary home and office. Professional, polished, and poised, a lawyer in her prime. Her dark hair remained in a neat, tight French braid, but her floral-embroidered Kate Spade boot bounced like an impatient child in church, making her entire body tremble. Her fingers twisted the strap of the matching handbag, which she clutched in her lap.

We had met a few weeks ago, and Jill had finally decided to hire me. When she had made that announcement a few minutes ago, I asked one direct question. “What do you want me to do?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“No. Tell me what you want me to do.”

She couldn’t answer. Her foot gyrations increased in strength, and the Overlander began to rock a bit. Hm. I obviously needed to check the stabilizers underneath. I had, after all, recently had an issue with a local raccoon who liked the underside of my travel trailer. The cooler temps of autumn had made him braver, enough so that he’d already tangled once with Cletis, the orange campground tabby. That had been a fight to raise the dead. It definitely dragged me out of bed at two in the morning. Cletis had won, but I’d had to wrangle him to the vet for stitches.

I sighed and sat down on the edge of the recliner, which was on the opposite side of the trailer’s living room from the bistro stools. “Look, Jill, you’ve been gone from Pineville a long time. I know this thing has plagued your family—”

The foot froze. “This thing?” Her voice rose in pitch. “This thing? You mean the murdered woman found in Daddy’s barn. The murder they tried so hard to blame on Daddy that it ruined all our lives? You mean that thing?”

Well . . . yes. Finding a dead body on someone’s property does tend to affect how people view folks.

“Jill—”

“Ricky’s been arrested. Again.”

Ah. Her older brother. Twelve years her senior, Ricky Turney was as well-known to local law enforcement officials as Otis was to Sheriff Andy Taylor in good old Mayberry. And for similar reasons.

“Your parents called you.”

Jill nodded, a short, clipped snap of the head. “They don’t have the bail money, so of course they called me. They don’t even know how much it’ll be this time, since it’s not exactly his first offense. He won’t be arraigned until tomorrow, and I’m tempted to leave him there to rot.” She uncrossed her legs and clamped both feet on the floor. “I am so tired of this, Star! It has to stop. Now!”

“Um, rehab—”

She waved away the suggestion before I could get it out. “No good. He won’t go, or if he does go, he won’t stay. He’s going to kill himself, or even worse, someone else.”

“He drives while under the—”

“Of course, he drives! Mama can’t stop him, and Daddy won’t. I think Daddy would personally love it if Ricky took out half the county. But it’s not even really the booze, you know?”

“How so?”

“It’s that woman! She ruined my family, and she’s going to get my brother killed! Even my own psychiatrist tells me that Ricky and I will never be normal as long as that’s hanging over our heads. The ‘root cause,’ she called it. Root of all our evil.”

“You see a psychiatrist?”

“Star!”

I straightened. “You have to say it, Jill. I’m not a mind reader. You and Ricky have toyed with this since I got to Pineville. Since Mike introduced us and you found out I was a private investigator. But I can’t ask. And I cannot assume. You have to tell me, tell me exactly what you want from me.”

She suddenly sat completely still, staring down at her hands. “You know, I work with investigators every day. This shouldn’t be so hard.”

“That’s work. This is family.”

She closed her eyes. “Yes. You understand. Family is different.”

Boy howdy, was that an understatement. I’d arrived in Pineville earlier this year in an attempt to solve my own family cold case. It had almost gotten me killed because my judgment had been clouded by family intrigue. And I’d left this small Alabama town, planning to resume my former life in Nashville, only to return for another case. Then another. That I’d ended up staying in Pineville longer than I had planned astonished a lot of people. Including me.

Part of the reason I had lingered now sat in front of me, trying to finally work up the nerve to say the words she’d hinted at for several months. I’d met Jill when the local chief of police, Michael Luinetti, had introduced us not long after my first case was resolved back in the spring. She’d been in town only for a short stay, during one of her many trips home to bail out her brother. I’d met Ricky as well, although he wasn’t exactly coherent at the time. He referred to Jill as “the one who got away,” meaning she’d escaped small-town Alabama for the lights and corporate world of Chicago. The story they told me about the unsolved crime on their family farm riveted me, so I embraced the idea of working with them. But Jill had to be specific with what she wanted me to do.

Jill took a deep breath and finally spoke, her voice still carrying the twang of her north Alabama roots. Law school and four years in Chicago had dimmed it not one whit. “I want to hire you to solve the murder of Genevieve Marshall Eaton. I want you to find out who really killed her and clear my family’s name of this curse.”

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