The Homewreckers(94)

“This is my house,” Creedmore protested, heaving himself out of his armchair. “You can’t tell me what to do. In fact, I want you to leave my home, right now.”

“If I leave here, I leave with your wife,” Makarowicz said. “Is that really what you want?”

Dorcas placed a hand on her husband’s arm. “Holl, please. I want to tell him what happened that night. I have to. Why don’t you go out to your office?”

He brushed her hand away. “I’ll go out to my office and call Web Carver.”



* * *



Dorcas Creedmore waited until she heard the slam of the back door. “I need a drink,” she announced, getting up and walking out of the room. When she returned she was holding a large glass tumbler with a straw protruding from it. The glass was full of a clear liquid that smelled like vodka. The ice cubes clinked as she walked.

“You were saying,” he prompted her.

She arranged herself on the same little French chair near the fireplace, and sucked down a third of the drink.

“Mothers know when their children are in trouble,” she began. “I knew something was wrong, that Super Bowl Sunday, and I knew I needed to see what that text was about. I sent him into the kitchen to take out the garbage, and I grabbed his phone while he was gone.”

“You saw the texts?”

She sucked down more vodka and nodded. “She told him she was pregnant. Little Holl texted her to meet him at the beach house.

“I didn’t tell my husband about that text message from Lanier Ragan right away,” she said. “I was beside myself, and I knew he’d say I was overreacting. Maybe if I had…”

“What did you do?” Mak asked.

“Little Holl left right before halftime. He said he was going to his friend Scotty’s house, but of course I knew he was going to meet her. Our friends left too. It was starting to storm, and everyone wanted to get home before it got worse. I made some excuse to Holl. I can’t remember what, and I got in my car. I didn’t have a plan. I just knew I had to go.”

Dorcas gulped down another swallow of vodka. The glass was nearly empty now. She looked down at it and shook the ice cubes, as though to wring out one last ounce of liquor.

“It was storming so hard. When I got to Thunderbolt, there had been an accident on the bridge. The police had the bridge closed down. Fire trucks and ambulances, and the state patrol. I had to sit in my car, waiting, for nearly two hours! I was absolutely wild with anxiety. By the time I finally got to the beach house, I saw Holland’s car was parked in the driveway. The house was dark. I checked and it was still locked up tight. There was no sign of her. I sat in my car and waited for maybe half an hour.”

“What did you intend to do?” Mak asked.

“Do? I was going to tell Lanier Ragan to leave my boy alone. He had his whole future ahead of him. I wasn’t going to let him throw away his life for that little whore.”

Makarowicz wanted to point out that nineteen-year-old Holland Creedmore Jr. wasn’t a boy. He was old enough to have sex with a married woman six years his senior. But he didn’t want to put the “boy’s” mother on the defensive.

“What time was this?”

Dorcas’s face scrunched up. “I guess it was close to two by then. The longer I waited, the more worked up I got. Finally, I got out of the car and walked around toward the back of the house. I had a little flashlight on my key chain, and I was using that because it was raining so hard, and it was pitch dark.”

Dorcas Creedmore shook the ice cubes in her glass. Without another word, she got up and left the room. When she returned, her glass had been refilled.

“I was walking out toward the dock. I thought … I don’t know what I thought. I wasn’t myself. At all. And then, I stumbled over something in the dark. I thought it might be a dead raccoon, or a feral cat. But … it was her.”

Dorcas had done away with the straw. She took a gulp of vodka, holding the palm of her hand to her chest. She looked up at Makarowicz, who was waiting.

“It was her. She wasn’t moving. I shined the flashlight and could see there was blood on her face. I touched her, and I knew. I knew she was dead.”

“Where was Holland? Your son? Where was he?”

“I didn’t know.” She was crying now, her shoulders rising and falling with each sob.

“What did you do next, Mrs. Creedmore?”

“I … I called Holl. He was sound asleep. I told him something terrible had happened, and he had to come right away. I was hysterical. It was raining so hard. I unlocked the house, and I waited, in the dark, for Holl to get there.”

“You didn’t think to call the police?” Makarowicz asked. “You’d just found a dead woman, in your backyard, and you didn’t call the police?”

“I told you, I wasn’t myself.”

“What happened next?”

“By the time Holl finally got to the house the rain had stopped. I showed him the body. There was nothing we could do for her. She was dead. So we, that is, Holl, moved her into the old boat house. She was a tiny little thing.”

“Where was your son while all this was going on?”

“Turns out he was in the dock house. Sleeping. We found a nearly empty pint bottle of rum next to him. Holl said we should let him sleep it off. He’d spotted a car, I think it was a Nissan, parked behind some trees in our neighbor’s driveway. The house was for sale, and it was vacant. Holl got a flashlight from the house and looked around and he found her purse, in some bushes near where we found the body, and the keys were in it. Holl said…”