But he hadn’t accepted the truth. The letters she’d read showed that his doubt continued, but something or someone had warned him to let it go. Other than Mosby, had he been threatened by someone else? If so, who? The real killer?
“Thank you, Gibby. I know this was a hard thing to talk about. I’m sorry it brought back bad memories.” Savannah stood and leaned over and kissed Gibby’s soft, wrinkled cheek. “I’ve got to go.”
“I know what you’re thinking, Savannah Rose. It’s best to let sleeping dogs lie. Stirring up those old memories won’t do anyone any good.”
Denying evil in your midst was natural. Gibby was an elderly woman who had lived in Midnight her whole life. Upsetting the equilibrium of what was safe and secure took more than just courage, it took determination.
“Don’t worry. I’m good at wheedling the truth out of people without them even realizing it.”
Gibby nodded, her relief obvious. While Savannah would do everything she could not to upset her aunt, there was no way she was going to just let this go. The awful and terrible thoughts she’d had about her father for the last eighteen years haunted her. What if he was innocent? Instead of questioning what she had been told, she had accepted that the man she adored didn’t exist and was a monster instead.
If Beckett Wilde was innocent and had been murdered, too, she would stop at nothing to discover the real killer. Heaven help anyone who tried to get in her way.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO
Three hours later, Savannah was headed back to the house. Exhaustion dimmed her reeling thoughts. She had spent several eye-straining hours reading old newspapers and was no closer to finding the truth. In fact, she thought dismally, she felt as if she was even further from the truth than before.
Midnight Tales, aptly named since it held more gossip than real news, was now a weekly newspaper. Eighteen years ago, it had been printed daily. The library had a copy on microfiche of every edition the newspaper had produced. The murder-suicide had been such big news that the newspaper had actually printed two papers a day for seven days. Every salacious event had been painstakingly detailed. The police chief, the coroner, the maid who’d found her mother’s body, and all the people who had heard the argument between Maggie and Beckett at the country club had all been interviewed. Each interview seemed to lead to the same conclusion—that Beckett Wilde had killed his wife in a drunken rage and then committed suicide.
Savannah remembered that her grandfather had stopped his subscription to the newspaper after her parents’ deaths, but she hadn’t asked why. She had certainly never read the articles until now but could see why they had infuriated Daniel Wilde, especially if he believed his son was innocent. The articles had painted her father as a philanderer and a drunken womanizer. The eyewitness accounts of Beckett’s argument with his wife were particularly damning.
There had been shouting. Savannah couldn’t discount it since there were so many witnesses. However, her sweet-natured mother losing her temper and making a scene was so out of character. What had set Maggie Wilde off?
Tomorrow she would begin a low-key investigation. As she had promised Aunt Gibby, she would be as subtle as possible. Not only for Gibby’s sake but also for her own. Having the town gossips scurrying around with news that Savannah was investigating Beckett’s and Maggie’s deaths after all these years wasn’t something she wanted revealed. Not only because she simply hated being the subject of gossips, but also because she didn’t know where this would lead. What if the murderer still lived in Midnight?
Savannah blew out a relieved sigh as she turned onto Wildefire Lane, seeing a hot bubble bath and a glass of wine in her immediate future. She needed the downtime to allow her thoughts to coalesce and to make plans.
Tomorrow her first order of business would be to talk to the former police chief, Harlan Mosby. He wasn’t in good health and was in a hospital in Mobile. Had he been involved? Or had he been paid to shut the investigation down? If not, then why had he made those vague threats to her grandfather about taking care of his granddaughters?
Her mind on the myriad avenues she might have to pursue, she was almost at the house before she saw that she had company. Zach’s car was parked in the drive and he was sitting in