The Last Breath Read online

  “One who thought he saw him breaking and entering his own house two hours after the time of death, not standing over the body with a smoking gun.”

  “Ella Mae was suffocated.”

  He gives me a look. “It was a figure of speech. And between you and me and everybody else who’s going to read my book, I think Dean Sullivan’s testimony was coerced. Did you know the police held him for six and a half hours? That screams gross misconduct to me.”

  Six and a half hours? Is that even allowed? But still. “The judge and jury believed him.”

  “Of course they did. Mr. Sullivan was an upstanding, God-fearing citizen.” He points past me to the ramshackle ranch where the Sullivans once lived. “Just look at him now.”

  I gape at the neighboring property, so neglected I’d assumed it was abandoned. Front steps, rickety and rotting, lead to a front porch littered with trash and a ripped brown leather sofa. The yard, a foul-looking patch of dirt and rock, has seen neither fertilizer nor lawn mower since sometime last century. Even Dean’s prized rosebushes have hardened into brown and scraggly branches jutting up from the frozen earth, a tangle of sticks and thorns.

  “People actually still live there?” I say.

  “Dean Sullivan lives there. Alone. His family won’t have anything to do with him. His only friend is Jack Daniel’s. His house, his yard, his entire life is a mess.”

  A mess might just be the biggest understatement on the planet. Dean’s house makes some of the shanties in Dadaab look like palaces.

  “What do you think he’s hiding from?” Jeffrey asks.

  I don’t know what to say to that. I’d never considered the possibility Dean was still living there, much less hiding from something.

  I think for a moment. If everything Jeffrey said is true, then why not tell me this right away, when he stopped to ask for directions? Or better yet, why not tell Uncle Cal? I was barely eighteen when Ella Mae was murdered, and I’ve had practically nothing to do with the case since.

  “What do you want from me? You should be talking to my uncle Cal. He’s the one who handled everything.”

  “I’d love to talk to him, but unfortunately, he wants nothing to do with me.” He gives me a wry smile. “It might have something to do with me telling him I’m devoting an entire chapter to his shoddy defense of your father.”

  His words echo in my ears, bounce around my brain, feel foreign on my tongue. I don’t get it. Uncle Cal is known as the Tennessee Tiger, as tenacious and tireless in the courtroom as he is with his girlfriends, an endless string of gold diggers and social climbers. There’s no way his defense of my father—his own brother, for Christ’s sake—was shoddy. What is this guy talking about?

  Jeffrey arches a brow, seeming almost amused at my reaction. “This surprises you?”

  “Yes, this surprises me, and it also infuriates me. Cal is a brilliant lawyer, and he worked his ass off to put together Dad’s defense. He barely ate, he didn’t sleep and nobody—nobody—was more upset than Cal when his brother, the one he defended, went to prison.”

  He lifts his shoulders in a don’t-blame-the-messenger gesture. “Then why didn’t he try to appeal?”

  And here, I think, I have him. Lawyer, my ass. He doesn’t even have all the information. “You should check your sources, because I know for sure he did appeal.”

  “Once.” Jeffrey points a mitten to the sky. “Just one time, to the Court of Appeals.”

  “And it was declined.”

  “Denied.”

  “Same thing.”

  “But why did he stop there? Why didn’t he keep going?”

  “I don’t...” I take two steps to my trunk, pause and turn back. “He could have done that?”

  “Of course he could have. He definitely should have, but he didn’t.”

  My heart misses about five beats. Cal slacked on my father’s case? I still don’t believe it. Dad is his only brother. There’s no way.

  Jeffrey points to his card, still clutched between my fingers, and turns to go. “Think about it, and give me a call when you’re ready to hear more. And I hope you’ll be ready sometime soon, because in the spirit of full disclosure, you should know I’m writing this book with or without your family’s input. You can help me write it, or you can sit back and wait for your copy.”

  He waves one last time, and I watch him climb into his car and drive away, my mind swirling, humming, tripping over his message. About Cal’s shoddy defense, about Dean Sullivan’s coerced testimony, but mostly about Jeffrey Levine’s steadfast belief in my father’s innocence. How is it possible to have that much blind faith in a person he’s never met? How can a complete stranger be so unequivocally certain Ray Andrews did not murder his wife, while I—his own daughter—can’t?

  Turning back to the rental, I slip his card into the front pocket of my jeans and push it with two fingers until it’s as deep as it can go, flush against the bottom seam.

  Maybe sometime soon I’ll work up the nerve to call Jeffrey and ask.

  3

  Ella Mae Andrews, September 1993

  ELLA MAE THUNKED her empty mug onto the wooden floor planks and gave her porch swing another shove with the heel of a foot. The metal chains squawked in time to her movement. Back. Forth. Back...

  Somewhere in the distance a lawn mower whined, and Ella Mae envied both its gusto and its purpose. With two stepchildren in college and the third headed that way next fall, she found herself with more and more time to fill in her already spotless house, in her increasingly aimless day. She checked her watch. Ten o’clock, and already she was bored as hell.

  A green truck crested the hill, heading in her direction, and the sight of it made her feel like dancing. Even if the driver was merely turned around, maybe she could strike up a conversation. By the time she’d given him precise, detailed directions, she would have killed a good fifteen minutes, maybe more. Would it be completely pathetic if she offered him a cup of coffee?

  Good Lord. When had life become so dreary? She should probably think about getting a hobby.

  Ella Mae stood and walked to the edge of the porch, watching and waiting until the truck was close enough to read the letters above the cab: Golan’s Moving & Storage. The new neighbors, and about damn time, too. The old Bennett house had been empty for over a month now, a month in which Ray had done nothing but complain about how the property was going to pot. Two hornets’ nests under the gable, a milky film on the windows and a patch of crabgrass crawling dangerously close to Ray’s prized fescue. As if Ella Mae gave a shit about grass.

  But now. Now she sure could give a shit, and her heart dealt an extra, hopeful beat at the idea of new neighbors, a new girlfriend, new anything.

  A black sedan with Illinois plates pulled to a stop at the curb, and a family of four clambered out. Two blonde kids—both lanky girls in their early teens—tore across the front yard, screaming and giggling with the sort of giddiness that can only come at the tail end of a long drive.

  Their mother was considerably less merry. She unfolded herself from the car, smoothed her rumpled dress and squinted into the sun at her new home.

  “It’s pretty,” she said. Her tone implied she didn’t really care how it looked.

  The husband, a tall man with his daughters’ flaxen hair and the build of a former athlete, popped the trunk. “I know it’s a little smaller than we’re used to, but just take a look at that view.” His accent was northern and nasal, but in Ella Mae’s ears it sounded electric, exciting, exotic. “That’s not something we would’ve ever found back in Chicago.”

  Chicaaago.

  The woman didn’t seem to notice the rolling fields of grass and wildflowers beneath smoky mountaintops, a view that, the first time Ella Mae saw it, stilled her soul and nipped at her heart with its beauty. Instead, the woman sighed, her expressi
on unchanged, her tone as mousy as her appearance. “Pretty.”

  “Come on,” her husband said. He stepped around the car and swung an arm around his wife’s hunched shoulders. “Can you at least try to want to live here?”

  “I just told you it was pretty.”

  Ella Mae knew she was eavesdropping. She knew they would notice her soon, gripping the rails on the edge of her porch, and see she was hanging shamelessly on their every word, but she didn’t go inside. She wanted to move even closer and hear everything, lean in and get a better view.

  She didn’t care if they saw her. This was the most excitement she’d had since last month, when she’d chased Bill Almaroad’s cows out of her begonias with a broomstick.

  The man looked down at his wife. “We agreed this move would be a good thing, remember? A new job, a fresh start.” He deposited a chaste kiss on her cheek, and she shrunk even further into herself. He released her, sweeping a long arm toward the house. “Welcome to our new adventure.”

  And that’s when he noticed Ella Mae. A jolt of something she hadn’t felt in a good while shot clear to her toes and crackled and popped on her skin like a Fourth of July sparkler. Later, she would think back to this very second, and think it was appropriate their eyes met right as that last word rolled off his tongue. Adventure. But for now, she simply smiled and waved.

  “Hi, y’all.” Ella Mae started down the steps toward her new neighbors. “I’m Ella Mae Andrews. Welcome to Rogersville.”

  * * *

  Later that evening, Ella Mae noticed that Ray barely smiled when he pulled up to find two strangers on his front porch, grinning and sipping wine from the good glasses, the ones they hardly ever used except for birthday dinners and at Christmas. He barely smiled when Ella Mae handed him a martini, extra cold and extra dirty, and told him she’d made his favorite supper—peppered beef Stroganoff with garlic bread. He barely smiled when Dean complained about the sad state of his lawn, and said he had a lot of work to do before it could measure up to the one he’d kept back in Naperville, which had won Cedar Glen’s finest front yard five years in a row.

  Oh, Ray was friendly enough. His manners were too refined to have been rude. He chatted about the town’s history and the fine school system, and he asked after their girls. But he barely ever smiled, and that wasn’t her husband’s way with company at all.

  After the main course, when Ray and Ella Mae were serving up dessert in the kitchen while their guests waited at the dining room table, his good graces went down the drain, along with the remnants of his second martini.

  “It’s a school night,” he pointed out, a bit too loud for Ella Mae’s taste.

  Ella Mae was fully aware it was Wednesday and that the company was messing up his Wednesday night routine—supper, a mindless blur of sitcoms, bed. She was also aware that Wednesday night was like every other night in this house.

  “Shh, keep it down, will you? I left a message for you at the pharmacy.”

  “I just wish you would’ve warned me ahead of time,” he said.

  “I tried.” She began carving her famous rhubarb and strawberry pie into generous triangles with a butcher knife. “I had to make an executive decision, so stop fussing. It’s not like you had anything important planned for tonight.”

  “The game’s on.”

  This from a man who thought fumble meant sticking his hands down her pants. Ella Mae squinted and planted a fist on her hip. “Who’s playing?”

  Ray shrugged, his hesitation a beat too long. “Doesn’t matter, now that I’m missing it.”

  Ella Mae returned to her pie. “I didn’t think so.”

  “Besides, we don’t know anything about those people. They could be sociopaths or serial murderers for all we know.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. He’s the new vice principal at the high school, and she’s a stay-at-home mother of two adorable girls. They’re perfectly normal, everyday members of society. They’re neighbors. We’re being neighborly.”

  “Whatever. I don’t like him.”

  Ella Mae wasn’t surprised. She’d only known Dean a few hours, but already she could see he wasn’t a man’s man. Too groomed, his clothes too stylish, his looks entirely too playboy handsome. Oh, yes. Cherokee High’s newest vice principal would certainly be a popular man about town, but not with the husbands.

  “Let’s get back to our guests, shall we?” Ella Mae slid the last piece onto a plate and pointed Ray to the forks. “And be nice. I’m looking to make a new friend.”

  Over the course of the next hour, Ella Mae tried. She honest-to-God tried. She asked Allison about her kids and if the girls played any sports. She asked about her favorite books and if Allison would be interested in joining the book club. She even offered to take Allison on a tour of the town and show her the best places to shop. Allison was painfully shy, said all of ten words over the course of the entire meal. By the time they moved outside for coffee and brandy on the porch, Ella Mae regretted her offer, and she dreaded those hours alone in a car with Allison.

  Her gaze landed on Dean, sipping on a glass of Ray’s best brandy and looking more comfortable in his skin than an out-of-town semistranger should. Talk about opposites attracting. Dean was gorgeous and funny and charming, and for the life of her Ella Mae couldn’t figure out what a man like him saw in quiet, mousy Allison.

  Three hours alone in a car with him, on the other hand...

  Dangerous. Just thinking about Dean in that way was dangerous. Ella Mae flushed to the tips of her ears, and she gave herself a good scolding. Married women should not be thinking naughty thoughts about their equally married new neighbor, no matter how sexy he might be.

  And then Dean laughed, a low and raspy sound that resonated somewhere deep in Ella Mae’s belly.

  Oh, God. She was thinking naughty thoughts about Dean Sullivan again.

  “Thank you again for dinner,” Dean said, his gaze lingering on Ella Mae a smidge longer than necessary. “I can’t imagine a more perfect greeting on our first night in town.”

  “You’re welcome anytime.” Goose bumps tightened her skin, and Ella Mae looked away, out over her backyard, blinking into the inky blackness. There. Much better.

  “And thanks for asking Gia to hang out with the girls tonight. I keep telling Allison they’re old enough to—” Dean broke off at his wife’s sharp look. “Well, we just worry.”

  “Our younger daughter was diagnosed with Type I diabetes last June.” Allison’s voice was quiet as ever, but for the first time, Ella Mae heard footprints of fire in her tone. “Gave us quite a scare.”

  Ella Mae felt a familiar tug, like some sort of phantom limb in her uterus, at the mother’s worry she saw in Allison’s expression. She loved Ray’s three kids fiercely, honestly she did, but it wasn’t the same kind of love she had for her own flesh-and-blood child.

  “That must have been terrifying,” Ella Mae said.

  “It still is,” Dean said. “Every time we think we have things under control, Caroline gets the flu or has a growth spurt, and we have to adjust her diet and insulin.” Dean turned to Ray, gave him a wry smile. “I have a feeling we’re about to become the pharmacy’s new best customers.”

  Finally, a subject that got Ray to smile, really smile, and he puffed out his chest. “Glad to hear it. Though lucky for you, the money won’t be coming from your pocket. The school system recently overhauled their employee insurance plan, as I’m sure you know. I was an advisor to the task force.”

  “Then I should thank you, since their plan is one of the reasons we moved here. There aren’t many plans out there robust enough to cover anything more than the bare minimum of insulin.” Dean shook his head, made a sour face. “No matter what you think of her husband’s politics, Hillary Clinton is right. The health care system in this country is flat-out broken.”

  Ella M
ae winced. Uh-oh. Dean had said the C-word.

  Ray grew about four inches in the wicker chair, and his tone took a turn for the nasty. “Now I know politics in Chicago are a whole lot bluer than down here in the South, but let me assure you in no uncertain terms. Hillary’s plan is a disaster. Too top-heavy, far too regulated. Anybody who thinks it would work in the real world, isn’t living in the real world.”

  Unlike his neighbor, Dean didn’t seem to get the least bit riled up. He lifted his lips in a friendly smile, crossed his legs casually at the ankle. “I’m living in the real world, Ray. And my world has gotten a lot more expensive since our plan back home dropped the coverage for dependents. Do you know how expensive it is to find insurance for a kid with diabetes? I’m not saying she’s not worth every penny. Just that her care is expensive and that clinics and hospitals seem to be in the business of making sure she stays sick, instead of caring about her health.”

  Ella Mae popped out of her chair. “Ray, honey, would you like some more Scotch?”

  Ray raised his glass in the air, jiggled it around. Dangit. Still a good two fingers left.

  She whipped her head around to Allison. “More ice water?”

  But Ray wasn’t to be distracted, and he turned back to Dean, his tone and stance on edge. “I’m not saying the insurance system isn’t broken, Dean. Just that the healthcare system is fine as it is, and the Clintons should concentrate on what’s really ailing this country—the economy.”

  “Then what do you suggest for families like mine?” Dean’s voice was as amiable as ever. “One whose employers drop the dependents from their insurance plan when one of their employee’s family members is diagnosed with a chronic or life-threatening illness.”

  Before Ray could respond, Ella Mae stepped in front of him, blocking his view of Dean and reaching for his still full glass, and giving him a look that left no doubt as to how quickly he needed to stop picking a fight with the neighbor. “How about I refresh y’all’s glasses?”