Page 81 of A Future To Remember

Miss Maydole nodded slowly while her gaze turned unfocused. “She wants to know about Doug’s murder too, I suppose.”

I let out a small gasp, and Levi looked equally surprised. “Murder?” I whispered. “Did you say your brother was murdered, ma’am?”

Her gaze focused again, settling back on me. “Yes. Doug was murdered. But I thought you woulda figured that, if you’re lookin’ into the sheriff’s killin’.”

Levi and I exchanged shocked stares. “I thought your brother killed himself, Miss Maydole,” Levi said.

The old woman puffed out a humorless breath. “Doug never woulda killed himself. He loved Mama far too much to risk not making it into heaven with her. And, mind you, the Parkinson’s wasn’t makin’ his life easy to bear. He was scared of what lay ahead, but he was determined to face it to the bitter end. Just like I’ve been with this cancer that’s killin’ off my liver.”

“Who would murder him?” I asked carefully.

“The same son of a bitch that killed the sheriff, girl. Ain’t you been payin’ attention?”

“Sorry, ma’am. I should’ve clarified my question. I meant, do you know who, specifically, would murder your brother?”

“Nope. If I did, he wouldn’t be walkin’ around a free man, that’s for sure. I’d’ve made sure this town knew who took Doug’s life. My brother was as dear to me as anyone I ever knew, and my life has been one long string of loneliness and pain since he breathed his last.”

Miss Maydole’s voice cracked with emotion toward the end of her statement, and a lone tear traced its way down her cheek. All this time later, and she was still mourning her brother’s loss so acutely.

I wanted to find his murderer, and I wanted to give her a sense of closure before she met her own end.

Moving closer to her, I squatted down to eye level and asked, “What did your brother mention about the night the sheriff died, Miss Maydole?”

She sighed heavily, as if she carried a tremendous burden. “He wouldn’t talk about it. He said it was to protect me, which is how I knew he’d seen more than he let on about that night. But he was scared. Whatever he saw shook him up, and he started gettin’ paranoid. He stopped taking Comanche out for his nightly walk, and he started keeping more and more to himself, closing all the drapes, shrouding his house in darkness. He lived right next door, and half the time, I couldn’t tell if he was home or not.

“Then, one morning, about two months after the sheriff died, I heard Comanche barking out on my back porch. I opened my back door, and that dog was frantic. I knew right then that something terrible had happened, so I followed the dog back to Doug’s, and I found him hanging from the ceiling fan in the bedroom.”

Miss Maydole’s voice cracked again, and she shook her head, shutting her eyes against the memory. I couldn’t imagine the trauma she’d been through, seeing her beloved twin hanging from the ceiling fan.

“My brother wouldn’t’ve done that to himself. And he definitely wouldn’t’ve left his back door open so Comanche could get out. He loved that dog more than just about any human. No way would he have let that pup run loose outside to get hit by a car. It was a miracle the dog had sense enough to come and get me!”

A sparkle of intuition shifted my gaze off Miss Maydole and over to a credenza against the far wall where various framed photos were displayed. In one was the image of a man perhaps in his fifties, hugging a beautiful red setter that was gazing up at him with a wide mouth that bore hints of a smile. The pair looked absolutely smitten with each other.

“What happened to Comanche after your brother passed away?” I asked. Somewhere, deep in my chest, I felt a tug of…something. Something meaningful and deep about the thought of a dog left to navigate the world after his owner vanished from his life. I wanted to tie that feeling to something else, perhaps. To a memory or something from my past, but everything was still so shrouded in the fuzz of amnesia that it left me feeling off balance.

“Comanche lived with me for a year until he died in his sleep. He was only seven. The vet said it was likely the old boy died of a heart attack, but you ask me, my brother’s death killed him. I think he saw what happened to Doug and who it was that killed him. And even though I showered him with love, Comanche never recovered. To be truthful, though, neither did I.”

We all fell silent for a few beats—Levi and me taking it in, and Miss Maydole simply looking sad.

And then she said something that really caught my attention. “Now that you know my brother was murdered, I suppose you’ll be lookin’ into Red’s death.”

“Red’s?” Levi asked.

My eyes widened while my intuition began chiming like a bell. “Red Shoemaker,” I whispered.

She nodded. Turning to Levi, she said, “Red owned an auto shop here in town back when Sheriff Penton Senior was alive. Cash Junior was the one that found him, crushed under a car he’d been working on.”

“You think Red was murdered?” I asked Miss Maydole.

She stared hard at me. “You don’t?”

I blinked, trying to make sense of it. “How were those two connected?”

“Other than sharing the same murderer? Don’t know. But maybe you should find out.”

I wanted to scoff. I wanted to think that no one would be so bold as to murder three well-known people within a small town and expect to get away with it.

But they had. Easily. Cash had said that not a clue had pointed to anyone for twenty-five years. Who could do that and get away with it?